Blogmocracy in Action!
Guest post by: Anonymous!
This author wishes to remain anonymous ~ and credits the Boiler Room Crew #’s 1-7…
(I wish to thank profusely the members of the Boiler Room Crew at Diary of Daedalus, whose assistance in providing links and information was invaluable.)
During Labor Day Weekend 2004, CBS hyped a story for its Wednesday edition of 60 Minutes, promising revealing truths about George Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard (“TANG”). CBS’s underlying motivation was to contrast Bush, who never shipped overseas, with Democrat nominee John Kerry, who (lest anyone ever forget) “served in Vietnam.” Of course, we were endlessly reminded of Kerry’s winning of three Purple Hearts in rapid succession, while the media memory-holed his subsequent perjury before Congress on war crimes and his subsequent traitorous collaboration with the enemy in Paris. 1972’s Jane Fonda sycophant was now 2004’s war hero on a scale Audie Murphy would envy.
Of course, Kerry came under fire from others who had served with him, the “Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.” CBS, who gave no credence to the Swiftboat Veterans and certainly no forum, was on a mission to “lay bare” the “bogus” service of George Bush in TANG during this period – playing to the image of the spoiled, rich politically connected “dodger.” It would appear that they now had something that would “blow the roof off” the story and Dan Rather would be their messenger.
I didn’t set my DVR to record the 60 Minutes broadcast, believing I’d be home by the time it aired. However, my job involves lawyers and they are unbound by the constraints of the “working day.” It is also the nature of working for lawyers that any overtime is comprised of “hurry up and wait” – hence, you find yourself with lots of time to surf the web. Free Republic had earlier announced a live thread for the broadcast. That live thread can be viewed in its entirety here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210516/posts?page=107#107 – In all over 450 comments. But what grabbed my attention early was several posters who appeared to be questioning the documents, including one “TankerKC” at comment 107, at 8:19 p.m. EDT, who posts the following to “Howlin.”WE NEED TO SEE THOSE MEMOS AGAIN!
They are not in the style that we used when I came in to the USAF. They looked like the style and format we started using about 12 years ago (1992). Our signature blocks were left justified, now they are right of center…like the ones they just showed.
Can we get a copy of those memos?
Members of Free Republic, “Freepers,” in later time zones were asked to record the show and pay attention to the memos, to attempt to get another look at them. Watching this story unfold in real time as it aired through the time zones, the skepticism continued. Fortunately for posterity and unfortunately for CBS, after the program aired on the West Coast, the network posted the memos to their website. That “good look” everyone wanted was now available.
A second thread relating to a New York Times companion article went up on Free Republic at 11:10. And that, as they say, is when the fecal material collided with the rotary cooling device.
Because at 11:59 p.m., EDT, an unassuming lawyer from Atlanta, Georgia, going by the handle Buckhead, fired what one pundit has accurately described as “The Shot Heard Round the Internet”:
To: Howlin
Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman.
In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts.
The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90′s. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn’t used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80′s used monospaced fonts.
I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old.
This should be pursued aggressively. (Emphasis added.)
You can read the entire thread here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210662/posts
The significance of Buckhead’s post is that he’s the first one to use the word everyone else seemed to be delicately dancing around – he states without equivocation that the documents are forgeries.
By the next morning, news of the suspected documents hummed along the wires – Powerline had the story; Fox News had the story; Drudge had the story – all crediting Free Republic, and most notably Buckhead, for blowing the lid off the Dan Rather’s “explosive expose.” There is chatter at Little Green Footballs (LGF) in various unrelated blogposts from about 6:15 a.m. onward, and Charles weighs in with a blogpost put up at 8:32::
Bush Guard Documents: Forged
Thu Sep 9, 2004 at 8:32 am PDT • Views: 2,070
Here’s today’s Boston Globe story on President Bush’s Air National Guard service, focusing on memos purportedly from the personal records of the late Lieutenant Colonel Jerry B. Killian: Bid cited to boost Bush in Guard.I write “purportedly” because, as Power Line points out this morning, the documents (which can be found in PDF form at CBS News) are highly questionable.
Johnson then cites Buckhead’s post #47 verbatim - without any attribution whatsoever except to say it came from “Free Republic.” And while he provided a link, there is no valid reason not to credit Buckhead by name, as the rest of the right/conservative blogosphere was doing.
At 9:01:38, someone using the handle “CeeJ” posts for the first time at LGF, revealing the following.
At approximately 10:30, Charles Johnson posts what has come to be called the “Smoking Memo.” According to Johnson, by using the default settings in Microsoft Word, he typed one of the questionable TANG documents and superimposed that word document onto the pdf of the CBS document, and Voila! Johnson has offered definitive proof that the memos indeed probably were typed on a PC using modern-day word processing programming.But, hold on a second. Let’s back up. Poster “CeeJ” has already done this an hour earlier, as indicated by the screenshot of his post, above. He doesn’t merely suggest that someone open the default settings and type up the memos. His post indicates that he’s already done that – and advises that the results are identical to the documents proffered by CBS.
Johnson will update his “Smoking Memo” thread a scant 30 minutes later to advise that another blogger, Jeremy Chrysler at “Pacetown,” has performed the same operation on a different memo, published on his blog at 11:31 a.m. Pacetown will later update that thread to thank the readers of LGF for stopping by, even going so far to point out that they caught some small errors in his overlay, which he apparently fixed.
But here’s the thing. Pacetown’s blog post was up at 11:31 CDT – his website was based in Kansas City, not California, as LGF, which as indicated above, uses the PDT timestamp. So Pacetown had already posted an overlay of the memos an hour before Johnson’s Eureka! thread. Even more intriguing is Johnson’s crediting of Chysler’s work later in his original post. Pacetown is an obscure blog – there’s no real reason why Johnson would even take note of it (indeed, the BRC at Diary of Daedalus needed to use the “wayback machine” to locate it as it appears to have been taken down). It is not outside the realm of possibility that someone contacted Johnson and advised him that he was not the first to create the “Exhibit A” to forgery; hence a quick update giving credit?
But looking at the archived Pacetown website, something even more interesting emerges later in the day. At approximately 9:32 p.m. that same night (September 9), Pacetown will have a thread featuring something that will soon become very, very familiar to those following the TANG Memo scandal. You can view it here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041027160435/http://www.spacetownusa.com/archive/2004_09_05_blogarchive.html
That’s right folks. A .gif animation, a throbbing memo. In fact by all appearances the same throbbing memo seen countless times and what would solidify Johnson’s role in the Rathergate scandal. At this point I know what you’re thinking – you shrug your shoulders and say “so what – he probably got it from LGF.”
Except that although Johnson will reference and post an an animated .gif in a post on the evening of September 10, 2012, he will not publish the singular “throbbing memo” thread at LGF until Saturday, September 11, at 9:30 a.m. You can view that page here:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/12551_One_More_CBS_Document_Example
To be fair (a word that has over the last three years vanished completely from his lexicon), Johnson’s phrasing in both threads does not say categorically that he created the animated .gif – it most certainly implies it. In the post on September 10th, he writes “and compare that to my MS Word document overlaid on the CBS news ‘original,’ in an animated GIF alternating between the two.” He uses the words “here’a an animated GIF” in the blogpost on September 11th. Which is interesting in retrospect – because other threads dealing with Johnson’s manipulation of the memos contain enough usage of first-person pronouns to make an Obama State of the Union speech green with envy.
Let me state this without equivocation: I am not saying that Charles Johnson stole the animated .gif. I am not even stating that Charles Johnson even saw the animated .gif. I can prove neither. And the wizards at the BRC have compared the two. It is not the same document at both sites – there are variances in size and coding details that indicate they are unique – so it would appear that Johnson has duplicated the work of an individual credited at Pacetown as “Shaun.” Of course, Johnson can always claim that he came up with the idea on his own, but somehow that stretches the limits of credulity. He certainly knows of the Pacetown website – he’s linked to it – and he knows it is featuring an of the properties of the memo forgeries as well. It is not outside the realm of viable speculation that Johnson kept an eye on Pacetown, saw the “throbbing memo,” waited a day to see if it was picked up and when it went unremarked upon, decided to recreate it then threw it out there on LGF. I’m sure he’ll deny it. But the fact remains that Johnson publishes his “bombshell” antimated .gif a day after someone else. The difference was that LGF was a well-known website at that time; Pacetown wasn’t.
In any event – what is important to note is that Johnson was not the first one with a blog to either post a “typeover” of the memos in Word or to publish the famous “throbbing memo.” In both instances, Pacetown had it first..
All of this is significant when you consider that subsequent to the initial dissemination of the forgery speculation on the morning of September 9, 2004, Johnson would encourage the myth that he was one of the crucial individuals that “broke” the Rather story. He has inflated his role to that of Powerline and Fox – all of whom reported the story before he did. He has been known to say “I and others” in interviews about Rathergate and delighted in Rather’s downfall, sniped about Mapes’ book deal and snarked about the Rather lawsuit against CBS, right down to the day it was dismissed. His subsequent fame as the result of Memogate led to his participation in the founding of Pajamas Media. His blog, which had since 9/11 enjoyed a healthy following, morphed into an award-winning website, one of the most widely read every day and cited on right-wing talk radio, Fox, WND, CNS, et al., much the same way Newsbusters and Weasel Zippers are now.
That Johnson catapaulted himself into the role should have come as no surprise. All you need do is look back at the blogpost he put up the initial day of the scandal – September 9, at 9:10 p.m.:
The 12-Hour Scandal
According to Drudge, CBS News has launched an internal investigation into whether 60 Minutes aired forged documents relating to Bush’s National Guard service.Our first post about this, shortly after Power Line’s post, was at 8:30 am Pacific. By 8:30 pm Pacific, an investigation is underway at CBS.
To Johnson’s mind, it was LGF and Powerline (apparently in that order) that not only broke the story, but became the driving force behind the CBS investigation. Odd, then, that Powerline, Fox and Drudge all gave credit to Free Republic. But not Johnson.
Afterward, Johnson would on occasion whine about those that didn’t acknowledge his crucial role in Rathergate. Witness the following:
DC PR Firm Claims Credit for Rathergate
Here’s a story at PRWeek claiming that a DC right-wing PR firm was instrumental in “driving” the CBS Killian memo story, and that they were “in touch with bloggers:” Two DC firms ramp up efforts over latest presidential controversies. (Hat tip: Mike.)WASHINGTON: Two DC PR agencies eagerly fanned the flames of election-year scandal last week – one for the left and one for the right.
Creative Response Concepts (CRC), the VA-based agency promoting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, used right-wing blogs and news sites to turn a CBS report casting doubt on President George W. Bush’s National Guard service into a potential black eye for both the network and the Democrats.
A CRC client, the Cybercast News Service (CNS), was among the first to voice suspicion that documents suggesting Bush had received preferential treatment in the Guard were forgeries.
“After the CBS story aired, [CNS] called typographical experts, got them on the record that these papers were fishy, and posted a story by 3pm Thursday,” said CRC SVP Keith Appell. “We were immediately in contact with [Matt] Drudge, who loved the story.”
CRC worked with CNS and the Media Research Center, another media watchdog client, to push the story into the mainstream press.
“We’ve been communicating with bloggers and news websites to make sure they know it isn’t just Rush Limbaugh and Matt Drudge who are raising questions,” added CRC president Greg Mueller.
Please note: no one from this public relations firm ever contacted me; I have never even read the Cybercast News Service article to which they refer. Spelling it out explicitly: LGF has never been in contact with Creative Response Concepts, in any way, at any time. I’m not very pleased that they would try to send such a message, while claiming credit for breaking the story.
Really? Maybe the bloggers they contacted were Powerline, Drudge and Free Republic. You know the ones that in fact broke the story and made it a national headline. You arrived at the party 12 hours after Buckhead left it, was back at work and having his late-morning Starbucks, pal. It is height of narcissism to discount a story simply because you were not one of the sources.
It would be a delicious case of karma almost 6 years later, when LGF minion Killgore Trout would post a story about Reuters cropping photographs regarding the Israeli flotilla raid, which would be credited by Commentary and Weekly Standard, among others, to LGF. When AllahPundit at Hot Air linked the story instead to “Yid with Lid,” Johnson snotted about stealing credit, calling Allah a “dishonest dirtbag” for failure to properly credit the investigative skills of the LGF crew that found the story. Allah issued an apology and retraction.
Except for one thing. The website Elder of Ziyon had the story first.
How do we know? At The Blogmocracy, a post by Daedalus on June 7, 2010 at 6:42 p.m., traces the timeline of the flotilla story. Killgore uploads the story at LGF at on June 6, 2010 at 7:05 a.m. PDT; Elder of Ziyon has the same photo posted by “Suzanne” at 3:37 a.m. that same day. Even if EOZ was in the same time zone as LGF, 3:37 is still earlier than 7:05. So where did Kilgore get the story?Pesky little fact checkers, those time stamps, huh?
So again, another “coincidence” but here’s Johnson screaming for the credit. For the Cliff Notes version of the “Flotilla Affair,” you can read the royal smackdown by Ace of Spades here:
http://minx.cc/?post=302524
But there’s one comment in Ace’s blogpost, said in his irreverent best, that sums it all up perfectly:
“Buckhead” just emailed me about stealing credit. He says, “Lot of that goin’ ’round, Hoss.”
Tags: Dan Rather, Rathergate
Well then what can he take credit for now? A Tennessee flag faux pas.
@ song_and_dance_man:
Tennessee Nazis! Nazis are everywhere, man. Just like Elvis…
@ Iron Fist:
He sooo wanted that flag photo to become something it wasn’t since he usually steals stories from others. I can’t count the times I submitted a story and never got credit for them. However I did get a few hat-tips when it was obvious I found a good story.
Also, that was a great time to be on 1.0. I was lucky to have found the site a few months before the Rathergate story broke.
@ song_and_dance_man:
Only credit he can take is for a failed blog….
@ song_and_dance_man:
SADM -- the one complaint I heard repeatedly from credible, reasonable sources was that they would forward a story idea to Johnson and he would put up a thread without giving credit. The only time he couldn’t do it was if someone linked to it in the threads and it was such a good story he couldn’t pass it up and would have to credit it. His typical excuse for not crediting a story was “well, a lot of people sent me that story.” Fine. Then at least have the graciousness to start the story with “Several lizards have found this and forwarded it to me.” To be sure he did it a couple times to give himself credibility but if I recall when someone asked why they weren’t given credit for finding a story, he got rather churlish about it.
Ha so Charles is a phoney with this as well!
@ Carolina Girl:
Charles is an idea jacker.
@ Carolina Girl:
It wasn’t just stories either. I found a lot of good musicians who had hardly been heard of—and then, voila, they became finds of Fosters.
No biggy. My attitude was, at least the finds got shared through the blog.
I only bring this up because of this threads story.
@ song_and_dance_man:
I miss you when you’re not around, chum!
hey SADM…I miss you too, but my aim is getting better…
wook ouut!
@ Carolina Girl:
You might enjoy this. These are the kinds of relatively un-known’s I find.
O, and thanks.
for what it’s worth
Obama Tanking on Intrade
http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2012/06/04/obama-tanking-intrade
song_and_dance_man wrote:
Durka durka durka plink plink plunk…
(Do I get a record contract now?)
@ heysoos:
I use that line too. Now I’m worried about having similar senses of humor.
We’re gonna have to go to lunch again soon.
there is hope yet
WLS state champ lends a helping hand
http://www.springfieldnewssun.com/springfield-oh-sports/high-school-sports/wls-state-champ-lends-a-helping-hand--1385613.html
COLUMBUS — Lending a helping hand was more satisfying than winning a state championship Saturday for Meghan Vogel.
@ rain of lead:
That’s good news! Lets hope he hits bottom and breaks out some mining equipment!
back to work
ya’ll play nice
Carolina Girl wrote:
Yes he did..and he would always fall back on several people e-mailed me the story. He did this more times than he would give credit. The person he would give credit to the most it seemed would be Kilgore-Trout. I saw him being hat tipped more often than others and saw cj saying all too often the meme that too many e-mailed me the story to give credit. He literally stole credit from others digging up stories.
/but of course he can always lay claim to the fact that the wiener photo could actually be his.
This is a devastating post. Charles Johnson gets his wish, his role in Rathergate will be diminished.
@ rain of lead:
Good!
@ Lily:
By now Chuckles has probably tweeted a pic of his willy to all those foolish enough to follow him. Eeeeeeewwwwwwww!
@ Iron Fist:
Whatever happen to Un Mata Hari?
@ Iron Fist:
Yikes!!!!!!!!! But I’m sure his few followers are pleased.
Iron Fist wrote:
That is if he can tell the difference between his wiener and wieners wiener…
@ doriangrey:
I wonder what happened to Un Mata Hari?
@ Rodan:
Replaced by some dude named Harry, I suppose…
Rodan wrote:
For someone who tweets as much as he does he doesn’t appear he has a female in his life. He has no un-mata-hari.
Someone/a friend/or someone he paid to play the part….
doriangrey wrote:
He did say he couldn’t tell the difference even though Weiner admitted it was his. Double-down stupid.
Iron Fist wrote:
Or Gus? He certainly has a man crush on ole cj.
@ Lily:
Dorian said he saw Charles with a Persian woman. So who knows.
LI cops demoted for being Republicans?!
Long Beach Police Commissioner Michael Tangney, a longtime Democrat, demoted the cops, cut their overtime, switched them to midnight tours and even filed false internal charges against them for “political payback,” the veteran officers claim in a $39 million lawsuit.
Nothing worse than a democrat with authority and a gun.
Rodan wrote:
Yup, and I have seen her since, but no Chunkels the Clown.
Rodan wrote:
Does he now distant himself from it…blaming all the knuckle-dragging-creationists-conservative-nazi’s- for dragging him in on it?
They fooled him again would seem like his reaction to it now.
@ doriangrey:
Maybe she was repulsed by him or it could have been a business meeting? Charles does do programming.
Rodan wrote:
Really? A woman would want to be with him?
Rodan wrote:
Apparently living here in my neck of the woods, I see her shopping at my local grocery store from time to time.
doriangrey wrote:
Maybe she dumped him because well it’s cj.
Rodan wrote:
Do you drink wine at your business meetings?
thundering and getting dark here in ABQ…very rare…boy, do we need rain
doriangrey wrote:
You actually saw chunkles with a woman??? Still he could have hired her. Just sayin.
Rodan wrote:
Doesn’t have to be an ‘or’.
@ doriangrey:
You should ask!
Rodan wrote:
That’s what I was thinking.
@ doriangrey:
When taking out client but in the context of eating food. If Charles and the Persian woman were drinking heavily, then no way was it a business meeting. Maybe he knows her from the industry? Its just odd.
I was there and I recall Charles was only the place where it came out..Charles was not really part of it otherwise. I remember him asking stupid questions and making stupid comments…This was long before he stabbed us all in the back, of course…short sighted fool that he is, I doubt he sees himself as anything but unchanged and riding the high road on his high horse.
@ quiet man:
delete your critics…maintain perfection
DG -- I was watching Judge Judy the other day and I swear the dumber than a box of rocks defendant looked EXACTLY like Charles Johnson in drag. I almost did a spit take when I saw her.
@ quiet man:
He thinks he’s changing the world and preventing the 4th Reich from rising.
@ heysoos:
Hey toots -- you’re over here!
Rodan wrote:
Yeah…that is the most pressing issue around the world. Not.
Dana Loesch has a good one on Breitbart. The DOJ is going to “monitor” the Wisconsin election. Who’ll monitor the monitors?
@ Lily:
He really believes Nazis are gaining power.
@ Iron Fist:
Like Stalin said, it’s who counts that votes that determines who wins.
@ Rodan:
Yep, and that is what scares me. Tomorrow is going to be an exciting day!
heysoos wrote:
Yeah…and I just washed my truck yesterday.
@ Iron Fist:
I don’t trust Holder and his Department of Just Us ™
@ Rodan:
Raaaaccist!
/
@ Iron Fist:
On what grounds do they have the right to monitor an election of a sovereign state where no federal question is present? Because polls show they’re losing? If I were Wisconsin I’d tell them to get lost.
@ Carolina Girl:
Yeah, there’s something fishy here.
Rodan wrote:
Are you suggesting that Obama may have instructed Erick Holder to deploy his Weapons of Mass Deception???
It’s all part of Baby Doc Baraq’s plan to steal a second term.
@ doriangrey:
Yup, Holder’s Department of Just Us ™ is up to dirty tricks. I bet they will try to invalidate the recall.
Iron Fist wrote:
Holder should not still be in his job,much less trying
to impact an election.
He should be on indefinite leave while Fast & Furious is
investigated. Hopefully he will eventully hear a cell door
slam behind him.
O/T but I found it an interesting item, thought others might too. Saw it over a Debbie Schlussel’s site
Muhammad Ali’s Grandson is Bar Mitzvahed
It’s getting ugly!
Rodan wrote:
Well, on the positive side, pretty soon everybody’s investment portfolio is going to have lost the stunning 98.4% of it’s value that mine already has. Not that I am bitter or anything, but I do have a bottle set aside for when the Market Makers and stock brokers start jumping out of the skyscraper windows.
Carolina Girl wrote:
It’s not limited to just Wisconsin.
Feds to Monitor NM Polls on Election Day
Its all part of the plan…
@ Rodan:
I bet it was a carpet.
@ Da_Beerfreak:
Do you think these are trial runs to prepare for larger scale challenges in November elections?
@ doriangrey:
@ Bunk X:
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rodan wrote:
Did I forget to mention that that bottle is for whoever helps those assholes jump?
citizen_q wrote:
I sure do, and I don’t expect the Gutless Old Party to lift a finger to try stopping it.
@ Da_Beerfreak:
I’ll bet every one of the counties in California is in the eastern part of the state -- the San Joaquin, Imperial and Central valleys.
I register “decline in state” in California, so I’m allowed to actually vote with a Democrat ballot. I’m sure only Obama appears on it, but we can write in.
What was the name of that convicted felon again??
citizen_q wrote:
With this administration I would have to say yes.
/has the DOJ ever done something like this before concerning state elections? Or is this a new precedent?
@ Carolina Girl:
Keith Judd.
Tomorrow is the California Primary?
Are any other states having a Primary tomorrow?
@ Da_Beerfreak:
He’s getting at least ONE vote in California.
@ Carolina Girl:
Glad I could help.
Something dorian said on the radio show is quite apt -- there is a real chance in the general in November that Obama COULD lose California. We have so many wierder than you’ll ever know political parties out here on the ballot and so many varying degrees of liberal nuts that they could very easily vote Peace and Freedom, Green, Communist, or whatever because they’re mad at Obama, that the Republicans could garner just enough votes to pull it off. I think it might be a long shot, but it could happen.
@ Lily:
The claim is that they can use the civil rights act to monitor for civil rights violations.
(TRANSLATION:
We don’t want ANYTHING to interfere with the DEMOCRAT VOTER FRAUD.)
@ Da_Beerfreak:
They are using the civil rights act as an umberalla?
Lily wrote:
Just like they use the Commerce Clause for other
puposes.
Yeah obama cares about the economy…
A YouTube video released by Senator Jim Inhofe’s office shows a top Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official admitting that the whole point of President Obama EPA’s air regulations was to kill coal and that this decision was “painful” because it causes coal communities in states like Pennsylvania and West Virginia to “go away.”
http://weaselzippers.us/2012/06/04/top-epa-official-obama-coal-regulations-will-be-painful-every-step-of-the-way-as-they-destroy-communities-that-depend-on-coal/
@ RIX:
Yes they care SO MUCH about voter rights -- except those of white folks in Pennsylvania.
RIX wrote:
Disgraceful. This administration is beyond words. I’d like to see them all locked up like they should be.
@ Lily:
This is a criminal enterprise.
They have the Media & That counted for a lot
last time.
This time the media can’t convince people that BHO
is creating jobs when they have spent months & months
out of work.
Worse, people know that the future of thir children is
at stake.
@ RIX:
A comment over at W/Z about the shutting down of coal…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If anybody has doubts about the impact of the EPA, unions et al… on our coal communities, I invite you to come to my “neck of the woods” and I’ll personally give you a tour of places like Shamokin, Shenandoah, Ashland, Frackville and so on… all of which wore the label “City of Opportunity” and at one time or another lauded the fact that they had more jobs available than they had residents. Now, thanks to over-reaching governmental bullshit, corrupt unions and politicians, these towns are literally falling apart, poverty is rampant, crime is on the rise etc… These places have been turned into ghettos and a once TRULY diverse culture is being wiped-out…. all according to plan.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is horrible.
National Day of Blogger Silence on Friday:
http://www.ace.mu.nu/
Please read. I’d like to know what everyone things, especially the admins here and at DoD.
@ Lily:
I have been innthe SEIU facility in NYC.
It is in Midtown, occupying an entire floor
of a high rent building.
They are down with the struggle, but not at their
expense.
@ RIX:
Of course! They live in luxury and use the dues for it. Most members of the unions do not trust their leaders they are corrupt they only hang on to keep their jobs. My husband could go on a rant of how corrupt unions are he was up close to it….they are crooks period.
While I was at the SEIU facility members were coming
in to pay dues (apparently it was not being paycheck
deducted)
They did not look all that well off & they got to see
their leadership in luxury.
Wonder what they were thinking?
Later y’all.
@ RIX:
Damn them to hell and I will not vote the way they tell me.
Great thread!
Good show last night too!
I’ve seen Mary Mapes on TV being interviewed. Not an impressive person.
I believe that Dan Rather basically had a breakdown. He is still in denial about the forgery.
In 2000 they sprang the Bush DWI on him -- almost cost him the election.
God only knows what fast one they will try to pull on Romney.
@ Speranza:
I don’t believe Rather intended to deceive, but like Foster’s Tennessee(as I mentioned earlier) flag FUBAR, they wanted them to be true for political reasons beknownst to them and us alike.
Speranza wrote:
The Health Care issue will be raised to make it seem Romney is Obama-like lite.
@ Carolina Girl:
We might do that here.
@ song_and_dance_man:
Well Romney is not a Conservative, he is Liberal. I am only voting for him because I hate 3rd World Liberation Ideologues and to call the GOP’s bluff.
@ Speranza:
They have nothing on him. He was hit with everything in the GOP primary. They will probably hit him on Syria is he gets too bellicose. It won’t work since Obama wants to go into Syria also.
Speranza wrote:
Like Charles Johnson!
@ Rodan:
He will win, and when he does, and must be forced to lean more Right. That will be the job of the Congress(granted that we pick up both sides) and the People if we are to regain any momentum to back slap the Left to their minority status.
Rodan wrote:
Recently CJ said that he had nothing against Dan Rather?
Lily wrote:
He has to be singularly unappealing to women.
@ Rodan:
I tweeted Liberty Chick and Ace that I’d given you the heads up. I’ll have a dead screen at Barbarian that you can use here if you like.
One of the real goals is for all conservatives and those sympathizing with the tactics of the Twitter Gulag to cease sending tweets from (I believe) 12:01 a.m. Friday to 12:01 a.m. Saturday. It might be good for those Twitter freaks to see how much of their traffic comes from the conservative blogosphere that they seem so indifference to.
Speranza wrote:
What a putzy schmuck. Yet he has a problem with us? Those who were faithful to him for untold wasted years.
@ Speranza:
I think Rather did have personal animus against George Bush. But I think he relied and trusted on Mary Mapes, who had no integrity and no incredibility. She lied to CBS, she lied to the producers and I’ve no doubt she lied to Rather.
But sorry, Dan, you should have asked for more proof than Mary Mapes’ say so. You should have asked to see the authentication reports. Especially since you received these documents in such a cloak-and-dagger manner.
@ song_and_dance_man:
I am not holding my breath. I am voting for Romney/GOP for Machiavellian reasons. I know they will screw up either by not doing what is needed on the fiscal/economic front or invading Syria. That will give me the pretext top go after the Republican Party and expose it for the fraudsters they are.
@ Carolina Girl:
That sounds like a plan!
@ song_and_dance_man:
This is an example.
Romney’s Transition Leader Favors Implementing Obamacare
Foster and Rather sitting in a tree….
@ Speranza:
He claims that he believes Rather was duped. That’s not what he used to think.
@ Rodan:
I heard about that. One thing that irks me to no end about the Rino’s who wield the power in DC, is whenever a Lefty has a plan they legislate the False Conservative Merchants are quick to jump on board to display how they can make it better, rather than eliminate the new entitlement.
doriangrey wrote:
Buying large quantities of Cheetos and Mountain Dew?
Rodan wrote:
I too believe that Rather was duped. His firing offense was his refusal to admit it. Being a journalist has the consequence of making sure, from the get go, that your sources are genuine before you launch. He apparently didn’t do that and throw Mapes under the bus. And why? Because he wanted it to be true and went down with his Fake but Accurate BS.