Glenn Greenwald on Jeffrey Toobin then:
Greenwald told Business Insider late Tuesday night that he thinks some left-leaning members of the media — such as Time magazine's Joe Klein and The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin — have shifted stances on surveillance and civil liberties for "principle-free, hackish, and opportunistic" reasons.Glenn Greenwald on Jeffrey Toobin now:
...
"If they started a club called Liberal Pundits to Defend the National Security State, no auditorium in the country would be large enough to accommodate them.
"To call them principle-free, hackish, and opportunistic is to be overly generous."
@JeffreyToobin Thanks - it's good to have passionate, clashing debate on the substance without lots of personal rancor.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 31, 2013
25 comments:
Of all the people I expected to make a Ted reference, DG was not one of them.
Oh, sure....if you wanna insist on the DEFINITION of "personal rancor".
How like a faux-progressive. You probably also believe that there's no magickal energy generation device.
Thank you, Miss Manners.
...and Glenn battles on in the "great Pot vs. Kettle" war of 2013.
Who is winning that damn thing anyway?
suck a large duck. Your obsession with Greenwald has condemned you to niggling, beyond Greenwald, beyond niggling. You have become piteous.
see ya, wouldn't want to be ya.
Droneglass' main purpose - at least since Obama's reelection - is flack-catcher against principled left/liberal critics of the current administration (a political role similar to that formerly played by Rahm Emmanuel, though for money and with less subtlety).
Greenwald is by far the most effective of these critics, and therefore the preeminent target.
IN 2013 nobody will pay Droneglass even a modest salary for exercising his literary talents in such loyal service to the ruling class. What could be more powerful testimony to the advanced decomposition of the Democratic wing of the Property party... or to the their brazen indifference to exposure from the left?
I reckon Lumpy already knows this, but the members of the Dinocratic wing of the Imperial Property Party don't need to care about exposure from the Left, because all the Dinos need to do when that happens is to point at the Reptilian wing of the IPP and yell:
"EEK! SCARY RACIST FUNDAGELICAL SHOUTYCRACKER REPTILIANS! BOOGA BOOGA!"
aaaand the Driftys of the world will obediently fall into line in defense of the "moderate" wing of the Imperial Property Party.
Selah.
Hamfast and Lumpy should get their own blogs; they could argue with each other about the width, depth, and orientation of everybody else's impurities to their heart's content.
SCARY RACIST FUNDAGELICAL SHOUTYCRACKER REPTILIANS!
So you PREFER the racist fundagelical Reptilians to be in power?
What's your plan for shifting the political machinery to the left, then (and it can't rely on magic energy in the water)?
Both of you, of course, have missed the real and frequent posts Drifty has written criticising Dems at State (especially) and national levels, since forever; But since you both only showed up when the Greenwaldo Show started, I guess I am being silly to expect you to.
"all the Dinos need to do when that happens is to point at the Reptilian wing of the IPP and yell: EEK! SCARY RACIST FUNDAGELICAL SHOUTYCRACKER REPTILIANS!"
in which case they are also right - e.g. re racist scumbags who alibi the murder of Trayvon Martin.
I see Lang still believes the Received Fauxgressive Narrative that Martin's death was white-on-black violence, whereas I see it as Macho Moron-on-Macho Moron violence.
As for ZRM, I don't prefer the Reptilians.
I merely do not quake with terror that they might return.
I have spent most of my life surviving Reptilian dominion.
I can do so again, if need be.
Hence, I see no reason to stain my soul (vicariously) with the blood of swarthy moppets slaughtered as "collateral damage", in order to achieve the trivial goal of maintaining the slight advantage of one wing of the Imperial Property Party over the other wing of the IPP.
Yes, folks, the purity of my soul (such as it is) IS more important to me than the achievement of marginal and ephemeral political advantages. I'm horribly selfish that way.
Oh, and actually, ZRM, I hung out here often during the Chimperial Years, under a variety of noms de Web.
"Monster from the Id", "Ivory Bill Woodpecker", and "Kid Charlemagne" were three of them.
You don't need to take my word for that; ask Drifty.
My take-away is that Glenn considers his opponents guilty until proven innocent.
If he turns around and stabs a dagger in Toobin's back tomorrow, we can assume his public utterances are all tactical in nature.
-- Nonny Mouse
How unseemly shrill. It's not like anyone is going to jail. Well, nobody we personally know. Or like anyone's being tortured, or indefinitely jailed without charge, counsel or trail. Well, nobody who matters, at least.
My goodness, Mr. Greenwald! Please temper your intemperate intemperateness. So distasteful, and just plain mean to some of the best journalists the Fourth Estate has to offer. Tut, tut.
I see the purity trolls are out in full force again.
Could someone please give me a winning strategy for getting a super progressive elected? Cause if Dems struggle to get elected half the time and can't fight the filibuster and dirty tricks of the right, how will your uber prog do it with less members supporting him?
I'm all for a world without drones and less NSA spying, but other then crying about them there seems to be very little being done other then throwing mud on the president and side tracking from other debates going on.
Oh, and actually, ZRM, I hung out here often during the Chimperial Years, under a variety of noms de Web.
"Monster from the Id", "Ivory Bill Woodpecker", and "Kid Charlemagne" were three of them.
You don't need to take my word for that; ask Drifty.
I don't need to; Although we disagree on much, it's not like you call me a liar for disagreeing.
But let me talk to Sybil now....
HitandMiss,
I think the Teabaggers showed a viable method for getting ideologically pure congress-critters elected. Steeplejack a portion of the Democratic party from the left and build a voting block in Congress. This is probably a more effective and less risky approach than a 3rd-party presidential run; it also has the virtue of being orders of magnitude more likely than a 3rd party candidate taking the Oval Office.
-- Nonny Mouse
but Nonny, that entails work. And getting one's pure, pure hands dirty with electoral politics. And raising money. Basically, all the things that are WRONG WRONG WRONG EVIL about the Democratic party.
As dg has reiterated here to the point of monotony, somewhere around a third of America's electorate want nothing more than to take it straight into Handmaid's Tale Valley by way of IngSoc Avenue. In that context, all the GRAR about "the Imperial Property Party" looks juvenile at best, flat-out toxic at worst.
If you sincerely believe Elizabeth Warren & Louis Gohmert are playing on the same team, perhaps you should consider backing away from the bong for a New York Minute & taking a long hard look at the massive judicial ratfuck the GOP is currently pulling on the state level to rig the midterms - & 2016 - in their favour, while putting the jackboots to women & poor people like never before. The Purity Posse's obsession with a relatively inert national political scene at the expense of intense state-level right-wing trolling is both a tell & a crying shame. With enemies like that, the GOP barely needs friends.
"Could someone please give me a winning strategy for getting a super progressive elected?"
Move to Finland.
The Right got the American political agenda cranked this far into Batshitville one little increment at a time, over a period of decades, building a rock-solid machine from the municipal ground floor up - either you're willing to do the same, or you're willing to deal with the status quo. Choose wisely.
jim, jim, jim, jim! Thank you. Thank you for clearing the ground and focusing on the crux of the matter. Is or is not Elizabeth Warren the same as Louis Gohmert? Because if you demand a very clear distinction between the two before you'll answer they are not the same, you're a "purist." Red herring, maybe?
Yes, the GOP is fucked. Yes, Gohmert is impaired. Yes, Warren is salutary.
But how can anybody defend the shit that comes out of this White House in the manner of fundamental constitutional shredding? It's not a strategic move. It's not a political move. It's not eleventy-dimensional-chess, much as we would like to believe Obama plays it. It's raw, hideous, cynical, and jes' plain dumb thinkin'. We have no basis for giving the current administration the benefit of the doubt. None. We have substantial basis for recognizing we've been (again) fucked, and fucked and fucked and fucked.
There is nothing in the Constitution--a damaged text, no doubt--that prohibits Batshitville. Sorry.
Anon 1:41 AM,
No-if you refuse to acknowledge the difference(s) between the two parties and accept that those differences matter in a whole lot of ways, then you are a purist. (Conversely, one can become an apologist by ignoring the ways the two parties march lockstep.)
I think your third paragraph is spot on though. I would take it a step further myself: Not only should you *not* give this administration a pass, you should also assume that the *next* Presidency will continue the processes enthroned by Bush and ratified by Obama if left unchecked. The US really needs the other two branches of government to stop acting like the Executive's little buddies.
None of the above rules out having rational, honest reasons for preferring to see one party have more influence in finding the solutions than the other however.
-- Nonny Mouse
The US really needs the other two branches of government to stop acting like the Executive's little buddies.
This is kind of a weird statement, considering the unprecedented, some might say treasonous, levels of obstruction both the Lege and the Judge are throwing up in the face of the Ex.
IN fact, the only place they all seem to agree is the need to conceal spying, although the Lege is making some movement on disagreeing about that....
I mean, except that they all agree that they all are the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human beings they have ever met.
Zombie,
Apparently I cut my own qualifier while editing that post. Add on issues of security and surveillance to the offending sentence. And yes, happily there is an actual debate happening over this issue in Congress now.
-- Nonny Mouse
That makes a hell of a lot more sense, Nonny.
Missy and Nonny -
Strategy? Someone mentioned strategy!!! Yay me!
Here it is. First off, it's a 30 year committment.
Next, is to get Democrats elected up and down the ticket from dog catcher to President for the next 30 years. I'm not kidding. DEMOCRATS. REAL ONES. Sooner is better and here's why...
The sooner we can have Democrats in the majority in the house, senate, and keep the President D as well, the sooner we can start replacing them with more and more progressive types. The senate majority has to be close to 75 unless we can get better than caver Harry Reid to change that small but crucial detail of the super duper majority bullshit.
I do not support trying to infiltrate bagger-style as it weakens the entire party and strategy. Only after a solid majority is in place, can you risk loss of majority by replacing blue dog assholes with more progressive types.
The key element is committment to elect only dems everywhere (states too) regardless of the media churn non-scandal scandal-machine. People get lost chasing shiny objects and get discouraged by the gibberish spew of a vocal SMALL minority of idjits. It's a big lift sure, but it can be done.... with committment.
Best,
Myrtle June :-)
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