A Message for a Commenter

A comment was left a few posts ago that I thought was worth pulling out to the front page:

If Pat and James quote something from 911bloglines--a Rick Seigel disinfo factory--all these alledged "debunkers" don't think to question it just because it's Pat and James--if a debunker says it, it must be reliable, reguardless of the source.

You really don't get blogging, do you? The point of including links to your source is so that you both present your opinion and the source of the facts/somebody else's opinion that you based it on so that people can check your work and decide for themselves whether they agree with you.

But if I quoted something from Nico's news aggregator, debunks would act as if I got it from the "Weekly World News", next to Elvis' alien love child.

You don't understand what a news aggregator is. The news aggregator is NOT the souce. It's a site that collects information from other sources and presents them in a very quick fashion so that readers and bloggers can decide what to read/blog about next. Here's the page I go to of Nico's.

It has feeds from SLC, from various sources for tags for Google News 9/11, 9-11 Blogger, 9-11 Conspiracy Smasher, DU breaking news... you name it. Convenient. Links to the original source. I can't imagine why anybody would try to recreate it (although he should add a function for JREF Conspiracy Theory topics).

For all you debunks who still don't get Jenny's "obsession", it is really that bad--Pat and James taking ANYTHING from Nico's news aggregator is the online equivalent of taking "news" from a supermarket tabloid. Even if it's true, the published source calls into question their credability.

What Nico's site says is "there's something over here you might like to read". I judge the source itself.

As for Nico himself, I judge him by his actions and not his reputation. He claimed that Les Jamieson was a URANTIA member and I rolled my eyes. Then he posted a couple links and I could see it was legitimate. And then he proved that one of the founding members of 911Truth.org was also a URANTIA member and I was flabbergasted. And so we were ahead of the curve in realizing that Les was going to get bounced in favor of Luke and Tom. Hope they can handle the LaRouchies!

So Nico has credibility with me when he's discussing fellow 9-11 Deniers. He's been around since the beginning so he would know these folks well, whereas I'm trying to catch up.

I don't agree with the no-planes stuff. I don't agree with any of you folks on 9-11. You may think that you represent the "responsible" wing of the Truth Movement, but you're almost all kooks to me, and the idea that "no-planers at the Pentagon" are somehow more reasonable than "no planers at the WTC" is just risible.

Oh, and by the way, that's what Do-Over Boy claims over at the Loose Change Forum as he prepares to jettison Killtown:

Loose Change Forum is from now on taking a NO TOLERANCE POLICY on "No Planes At WTC"

From this post forward, anyone seen promoting that theory ... first offense, 7 day suspension. Second offense, banning.

This is our forum, and we refuse to allow our reputation to be tarnished any further.

Here's a question for Dylan: How about banning people who post about the Cleveland Airport Mystery? Or about the cellphone calls?