Interesting (to me) stuff

Well I've not been posting, sometimes because I didn't have anything to say [one hand clapping]. Other times because I've just felt too busy.

In the last couple of days I had an interesting experience. I went to a site that had the Giuliani ad opposing the moveon ad attacking Petraus.

I pointed out that their ad was fact free and that Petraus has in fact been saying the same thing about Iraq for several years and been wrong. I was slammed because I provided no links to my claim that Petraus has been wrong. Fair enough. Although no one responded to the fact free part of my email.

I went back and found Petraus' op ed from 2004 in the Washington Post and posted a link to that. Unfortunately, the link wasn't working. That is you couldn't just click on it and it would take you there. I didn't realize that when I posted. However, you could copy it and post it in the browser and it would take you there.

I came back to the thread and they were all high fiving themselves that I had merely directed them to a newspaper article, and the link didn't work. So I tried copying it and pasting it and what do you know, there we were at the (unfortunately for him) enduring words of Petraus from 2004.

Are they just that stupid do you suppose, that they can't copy and post? I don't know. I might have made fun of my not posting a live link, but I would certainly have tried to go back to that location to make sure that factually the article was or wasn't there. Also, before I made fun of someone for citing to an article I would have been damn sure that I knew for sure what I was making fun of. And that I was right.

It was a true "fact free zone." They were so sure they were right (Right?) that they didn't need to check. Of course, their demand for a link was simply BS because they knew or should have known what Petraus had said in the past before they wrote about it. How scary.

Of course the other part of that is that no one has ever responded to my allegation that the Giuliani ad was fact free. In fact, as a sort of aside, the Giuliani ad was kind of creepy. It was saying (as I translate it) that this here guy is our "man on horseback." Essentially, it is saying that we must not criticise a general because he is a general and for no other reason.

That used to be called fascism.