Wow, an honest-to-go…

Wow, an honest-to-goodness blog smear campaign! And you can watch it unfold before your very eyes. “DavidNYC” at the Daily Kos gets the ball rolling.

As you’ve probably noticed, there have been several Alan Greenspan-related posts on the main page in just the past day or so. In one of those threads, blogswarmer Bob Brigham suggested that we “unleash the blogosphere” on Greenspan. It’s a brilliant idea – no one is more worthy of having a halo-ectomy than St. Alan – so let’s have at it.

If you’re interested in joining this research project, here’s my thinking on how it should proceed. (And feel free to chime in with suggestions on the process as well.) We should hunt down anything Greenspan has ever written, said or done that reflects poorly on him. This would include erroneous predictions, older statements which contradict things he’s said recently, and anything that’s just plain wrong, venal or stupid. The only rules are that it has to be true (of course) and sourced (preferably with a link, but if you’re using Lexis, that’s cool too – just tell us where it’s from).

And for those of you who want to really get down & dirty in the trenches, we can turn this into a one-degree-of-separation venture. That is, if you can find similar material for anyone who is closely linked to Greenspan, that’s fair game, too. Good examples would be Greenie’s idol, the nutbag “objectivist” Ayn Rand, and Andrea Mitchell, his NBC reporter wife. (An aside: We can debate the merits of this approach all you like, but suffice it to say, there is no question that Republicans do the same crap to us all the time. If you still want to play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules, fine – but I’ve moved on to brass knuckles.)

So dig up all the dirt you can, show to the world that Alan Greenspan has >gasp< make mistakes in the past (20/20 hindsight is so helpful here) and that’ll discredit him.

Oh, but please don’t call it a “smear campaign”. DavidNYC posts an update:

Update [2005-3-4 13:50:22 by DavidNYC]: A commenter below helps provide a more articulate clarification of our goal here: “We have strong reasons to believe that Greenspan’s predictions and words are not credible, and clarify his credibility is critical to the health of the nation. Therefore we are looking for volunteers to join in a deep investigation into Greenspan’s thinking and philosophy. We need to look back on all the things he has said and endorsed about economics and economic policy and compare those with the current policies he is advocating today.”

And, to make it amply clear, this is emphatically not a call for a “smear” campaign. This is a call to reveal the truth about Alan Greenspan (and his associates).

The truth would be the whole truth. Cherry picking your “truth” is a smear campaign, plain and simple.

And speaking of predictions going bad how about this one, or this one? And if you look at more than just main stories & diaries on dKos, if you check out the commenters as well (search Google for “site:www.dailykos.com ‘I predict’ kerry election”) I’m sure we could put together quite a dossier on bad predictions over there. Does that actually mean anything, after the fact? Not really.

(Cross-posted at Redstate.org. Comments welcome.)

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