Just one BIG question on this. The vetting procedure for candidates from many different agencies and all the parties only caught this now? It appears that some are more equal than others, comrade.
To the re-education camps with me!
Lan astalem,
GoingThere
Careless, Conspiracy, Heretic, Immigration, Irresponsible, Nanny State, Obamania, Uncategorized, Your Government
Thx WIKI: Astroturfing in American English is a neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.
The democrat dream machine caught in the smear zone again? Dream a little false grass roots dream for me…
“Sarah Palin was a member of an Anti-American separatist organization”
The NYT had to retract the claim on the 3rd of September this year. Here’s what FactCheck.org says about the claim as well.
[Sarah Palin] was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, a group that wants Alaskans to vote on whether they wish to secede from the United States. She’s been registered as a Republican since May 1982.
Will the MSM attack this like the blood in the water it is? NOT LIKELY… A search using google and yahoo results in much-ado about astroturf the real thing. Ah yes the stumbling herd of the economy that only moments ago no one knew anything about or what to do about it commands the headlines. Makes one wonder why the sudden interest by previously uninterested dems does it not? Oh yes the economy is very important indeed.
The O-ne/Biden sucks harder than McCain/Palin…volkswagens through garden hoses comes to mind.
Update: Moonbats just suck Daily KOS also covering astroturfing tracks! Just how stupid are these people? Nothing goes away on the net, NOTHING…
Lan astalem,
GoingThere
Careless, Conspiracy, Democrats, Heretic, Limousine Liberal, Moonbats, Nanny State, Presidential Election, Your Government
UPDATE of a more serious vein
WHOSE economic policies led to the credit crisis?
In the NYT 5 years ago, “The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago…Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.”
Please do read the original post above. Below the fold is a comment left by a reader of that post that is lengthy but should be read as well. Crickets chirping indeed… Read more…
I was not going to write anything on this topic because of the risk of sounding like sour grapes or a democrat crying in my self loathing snob-beer. Not to take anything away from the selfless ego stroking that Vice President Gore has shown when championing the cause of global warming but the Nobel Peace Prize?
Why? It certainly isn’t about the “science”.
Follow the money…BILLIONS and BILLIONS of dollars to be made.
Follow the self loathing logic…many chances to put the USA and BUSHITLER in their guilt ridden places.
Follow the hunting of a president…the forces of irrationality will do anything for the power.
Follow the facism and cries of heracy…why is it that this publically funded “scientific” effort does not submit to true peer review of it’s findings? Why can these “scientists” get away with doing so?
Troothers get more respect than people that question the validity of global warming theory…I’ll write that again.
Troothers get more respect than people that question the validity of global warming theory.
Gore 1 and who cares about anybody else’s score,
GoingThere
ps…I guess this makes up for the discovering the Internet gaff huh Al? OH AL!
gt
I’ve been reading up on statistical analysis lately, as the job requires such skills to be learned and applied regularly. One thing leads to another, as the internet tends to, and you’re either reading random articles from various foreign presses…or viewing porn. I happen to be reading random articles at this moment…
One moment I’m reading about “The Question”, the classic DC comic hero…next, it’s on to apophenia. The definition: “the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data”
So my mind being politically motivated as it is, instantly had to draw a connection to modern politics. Specifically, conspiracy nuts. I have to visit Screw Loose Change.
The conspiracy crowd has been busy lately…as Pat from SLC comments:
Yes, yes, I know, they don’t have to propose a coherent theory; they are just asking questions…
Every now and then you come across a nutter when you’re out enjoying a fine Pilsner, and it just spoils it for you. I’m not going to get into the details of why they are wrong on the specifics of 9-11, and instead leave that to the professionals at Popular Mechanics
Lets say hypothetically a new disaster occurs similar to 9-11. We’ll abstract it a bit for the sake of storytelling. I, as a spectator, watch a building get hit by a bus, which then explodes, and I turn to the person next to me and state, “That was weird that the bus blew up, there must have been explosives in it. I think everyone should get out of the neighboring buildings.”
Turns out there was explosives in the bus, and, the building in turn collapses, and through various seismic activities, the one next to it collapses too. That fact I was there was coincidental. The fact my friend was there was also coincidental. Now…a spectator sees this, and remembers me, and my comment. The cogs they start-a-turnin (whether it be pot, boredom, or both) and decides it was a little odd that I knew about the explosives, and especially odd that the tower came down; he looks me up. I used to work for the government. I’ve volunteered for political campaigns. I run a right wing blog. I have a family member that’s worked with buses (*I don’t, but for sake of the story*). I was raised Christian. I’m from Canada.
To a normal person, this is all just part of life. People say things. People do things. One doesn’t have anything to do with the other. But with Apophenia, one sees a right wing zealot who was brought in from another country who was trained by the government because he had the know how to attach a bomb to a bus. Is this valid? Of course not…but it must be because the official story is so ludicrous!
One of the psychological (yes I said it) short-comings with people who pose such elaborate theories, is that in practice, the theories themselves (in violation of Occam’s Razor) start as a questioning of one or two facts, but then have to account for everything that the questioning cannot account for.
SLC documents the new thinking in the conspiracy:
The hijackers existed and had plans to hijack the planes, but when they executed their assault on the cockpit, they were dumbfounded to discover that the jets would not react to their input. The planes were remotely controlled from somewhere (presumably WTC-7), at least in the case of the first two flights. Flight 93 was shot down. And Flight 77… what in the world are they going to do with Flight 77?
I recorded a special that the History Channel ran that’s pretty incredible that covers the whole history of 9-11 Conspiracies. Top Down analysis is an interesting way to look at an event. To reach a conclusion and then find the events that support it. Not really a scientific method, but a method…I suppose.
The official record hasn’t really changed. Loose Change has. Adjusting for things that have been disproved, filling in holes as the questions are posed, discarding what didn’t work, keeping what’s provocative. The burden of proof is not on Dylan Avery…which is a great position to be in…because then you don’t have to develop a cohesive sequence of events.
Dylan Avery might be retarded…or just suffering from Apophenia. The official account doesn’t seem to cover some of this problems. I mean, I don’t know for sure, I’m just asking.
There is currently a controversial debate concerning whether unusual experiences are symptoms of a mental disorder, if mental disorders are a consequence of such experiences, or if people with mental disorders are especially susceptible to or even looking for these experiences. -Dr. Martina Belz-Merk
Update: From the SLC comments.
There are no planes. There are planes, but they’re remote controlled from pods under their wings. Then they’re not remote controlled (although now you have the hangers-on in both camps), and they’re hijacked. There’s a possibility that space beams and lasers from underground bunkers were controlling them. There was a controlled demolition. It doesn’t matter that no explosives were seen, heard, found, or that they won’t ever be, but it LOOKED like a controlled demolition. But they weren’t hijacked by Islamists. OK- they were Islamists, but they were just the patsies. Well, maybe there were two planes who flew into WTC 1 and 2, but there was a Pentagon missile. We can prove that – ignore the hundreds of witnesses who saw a plane crash into the Pentagon, the giant whole and pieces of fuselage, and the families who heard their loved ones’ final terrified moments from the confines of phone calls – they’re just fakes. Well, maybe they’re real after hearing the NORAD tapes, but flight 93 wasn’t real. I haven’t seen the bodies, so they’re not real. Don’t listen to the coroner who examined the human remains – he’s a government worker. WTC7 was a controlled demolition – it just fell for no reason. OK – maybe fires were raging in it all day, and the debris from the Twin Towers falling on it weakened its unusual structure, but fire can’t melt steel. We know fire has never melted steel. OK – so nobody was actually claiming fire melted steel except for us, but it still isn’t possible that fire caused the for-some-reason-fireproofed steel to lose half of its strength…we have professors who disagree with the “government conspiracy” perpetrated on the sheeple, but we don’t actually agree or even know that the “official government story” is, but David Ray Griffin wrote a book that is as irrefutable as Newton’s law of gravity, etc. etc. etc.
It just goes on and on and on like that. The eternal game of Truther grabass. There is no end to it, because there is no end to the human imagination. No matter how many times they’re shown to be wrong and they realize it, no matter how many facts they’re shown and reluctantly (after fierce internal battles) realize that the facts trump their carefully constructed fantasies, no matter how many stupid theories they previously stood behind as it they were gospel, only to shift around later and pretend they never believed them, they will keep going.
They all agree on central, faith-based premises like “BOOSH is evil, the government lies, 9-11 was an inside job,” but they have no real coherent or consistent way to factually prove this (not to mention a limited and selective understanding of contemporary history). And when they have to incorporate things like (after years of denial) the hijackers were real and were Islamic terrorists, you can almost hear their hearts leap into their throats. – Good Lt
Wikipedia speaks truth. It’s a matter of fact. If it’s on the Wiki, then it must be a truthism.
It’s hard in such an anonymous community like the “internets” to keep people accountable for their works…their statements…etc. However, it has been done:
Wikipedia Scanner — the brainchild of CalTech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith — offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.
Inspired by news last year that Congress members’ offices had been editing their own entries, Griffith says he got curious, and wanted to know whether big companies and other organizations were doing things in a similarly self-interested vein.
“Everything’s better if you do it on a huge scale, and automate it,” he says with a grin.
This database is possible thanks to a combination of Wikipedia policies and (mostly) publicly available information.
The online encyclopedia allows anyone to make edits, but keeps detailed logs of all these changes. Users who are logged in are tracked only by their user name, but anonymous changes leave a public record of their IP address.
Anonymity seems to have backfired. So what’s the first thing that I do? Click through to the Democrats. That organization built around a moral vacuum, they must have a sordid history with Wikipedia! Not really…I don’t see Dem or Repub staffers being computer savy. Sorry…they just don’t do…normal. So, they did edit Rush Limbaugh’s site back in 05…but it’s probably just a intern trying to be funny. However, recently the Democrats have edited Apple’s WIKI to say…bad things?! Gasp!!!
There are also several instances of Apple creating advertisements that bear uncanny resemblance to already existing works. Apple’s little problem with ripping off artists
Hotair has a rundown as well…and the comments of course are going to be more numerous, and frankly…funnier than mine.
Now, the question is, in a web community where the Wikipedia changes are driven by the users…if corporations, political parties, etc. are part of that community, is there anything wrong with them acting in their own self interest to either protect, or promote their companies?
I think no.
GoingThere said something in the comment section that got me thinking.
“Personally dishonest no. Intellectually dishonest yes.”
How it is that such a thing can exist, I don’t know. That a person can believe something so fervently, based on an abstracted ideal. 9-11 truthers. National isolationists. Conspiracy junkies. They all believe what they believe in the face of common sense, and intellectual reality. Allah addresses the idea…not to whit, Michael Moore
…The full Truther bear hug asserts that 9/11 was an inside job; Moore’s practicing the “mainstream” version, which confines itself to “just asking questions.” It’s the spirit of free inquiry, man. Asking questions — who could be against that?
He’s been looking for an alternate explanation since, literally, the day after. It reminds me of a piece published last year in the Times explaning how Iran has made anti-Americanism a de facto tenet of Islamic doctrine. Same with the far left: the idea of the United States being victimized, particularly by third-worlders and in so horrendous a fashion, contradicts the dogma too starkly. Even the usual compensation, that we “deserved” it, doesn’t quite account for office workers having to nosedive onto asphalt from 100 stories up. So they make the only cognitive move they can. (Chomsky, notably, is an apostate on this subject.)
As Allah stated, you can circumvent the personal responsibility of throwing yourself behind an idea by “just asking questions”…then you don’t have to stand strong when the “reality” you’ve constructed is contradicted by the “reality” of those pesky things…facts.
The idea that Iraq is not central to the war on terror is an example of this intellectual dishonesty. Yes, disagree with why we got there, how we got there, and extrapolate your “facts” about someone else’s deep seeded dishonest reasons, whether that is revenge or maybe they’re working for the Israeli lobby (cue scary music). The truth is, we are there, and it is now central to the war on terror. But, politicians being what they are, and people with baggage in the form of emotional hatred now feel that the mistakes of the past can be remedied with a future mistake. Time did not stop in 2001. I can grant you that al Qaeda did not have contact with Iraq, though it is an arguable point, but they have a presence now.
I suppose an analogous situation would be if I was to go to a doctor, and he told me I had cancer. The doctor does several scans, throws me through the MRI machine a few times, and even cuts my open to check my gal bladder. My body’s not in great shape he determines, but I don’t have cancer. I go home, and over the next two years eat, drink, and make merry, and start to develop lung cancer. I return to the doctor who laughs and says, “Well son, I thought we worked this out, you don’t have cancer.” One of my friends tells me that if I’d never gone to the doctor in the first place, I never would have developed cancer, another states that if I change the “eat, drink, and make merry” part…the cancer will magically evaporate (he was also very upset that I aggravated the cancer by hanging out with Jewish people)…even, and still another, let’s call him John Edwards, doesn’t believe in cancer at all, and thinks I’m being sold on a future bumper sticker slogan. I would probably find more comfort in the friend that said, “Look, you may not have had cancer then, but you have it now…something needs to be done, let me introduce you to Dr. Petraeus.” My other friends, who didn’t attend medical school, tell me how crazy I am for considering this option, that they have a better treatment for my cancer, and this Doctor hack, with his years of education, doesn’t know jack about cancer, not like what they learned at their Law School.
My point is that the pundits always seem to know more than the professionals. They have access to special information, secret alliances, under the table deals, and shadow conversations.
Our President talks to the Saudis. No shocker there. They’re leaders of a nation, he’s a leader of a nation, and they interact. I’m sorry if I’m not shocked that they have a dialogue.
Fire melts steel. Call me crazy, but that’s how I believe they made the first swords…and they didn’t even have jet fuel.
Politicians raise money. Sometimes people donate money to them who are bad. Does that make the politicians bad? Not necessarily. Does that make them complicit in fraud? Not necessarily. I’ll wait for evidence that’s admissible in court.
If a company can’t make money, it should not exist. Companies are not here to serve the people. Companies are here to make money and sell a product to a consumer. If they can’t turn a profit because people won’t buy their goods, or they inefficient, then they don’t deserve to exist. This means you farmers. This means you GM. The government shouldn’t subsidize you. If I wanted your product, I would buy it…so don’t take my money in the form of taxes to give to them anyways if I decide not to buy it. That violates the free market in my mind.
I think intellectual honesty is lacking in today’s discourse. As conversation digress to tangents, and tangents to still more digressions, people loose sight of the forest. The details cloud the vision, and what starts as a conversation about subject A, turns into an editorial about subject Z.
To address the venerable Miss Platt specifically. While I appreciate you and others visiting my site, if I see one more non-related 5 page essay complete with attachment that you sent to your local Congressman and newspaper editorial, I am going to pull my hair out.
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No matter how hard we try to veer you back towards the subject at hand, you seem to disregard the general posts and instead use the comments section as your very own springboard into Bush historical melodrama. Yes we get it…there’s a huge political shadow society that has everyone fooled but you. The very same information that we all have access to has a secret code between the lines that only you can read, and if anyone else can’t see that, then they must be watching Hannity exclusively, shutting off their brain and sticking the shit nozzle of Republican propaganda in their ear before giggling and turning on the pump. Yes we get it…you’re the only one who is in the know, and you have the monologues to prove it. Relax a bit, and while I’ve been alluding to it, I’ll be direct. Every time you throw your car into reserve and press the gas on the one way road of conversation, people just want to veer out of the way, and then comment to their cell phone buddy on the other end how their own intellectual journey was nearly cut short because some crazy lady decided to not heed the road signs.
Now that I have berated you, let me make you an offer. I have a seldom used section on the left side of the menu called “Liberal Slant“, where my pal Practical Radical used to post before life gobbled him up and shat him on the doormat of responsibility. If you truly want a platform, I will provide you with one, and let you create your own recurring column…maybe it’s the “keep your (political) enemies closer” but more than likely it’s the “stuff more content into my site so I don’t have to work as hard” and probably more so “I have the icon and they all flow together and I don’t want to have them graphically redone just so I can delete a sidebar button” What say you?
Big business in bed with the Democrats!!!! NEW WORLD ORDER!!!
Oh Drudge and his non-stories…who cares! The iPhone still look fantastic, even with Pelosi on it (which is probably hard to do). But…we know many executives at big business lean left, and conspire to control the world, and outsource the jobs…Jobs, Gates, Soros (better known as the puppetmaster of the political left)…shock me shock me shock me. Rich people shouldn’t be allowed to spend money in politics! (*sarcasm off*).
So it’s rearing it’s ugly head. Abramoff supposedly is going to point the finger at 6 to 8 “seriously corrupt” Democratic Senators. While the blogosphere is murmuring on the right, I’m wondering how the right is going to justify this. One of two ways…we’ll hear the “swiftboating” argument, thus negating any sort of factual basis for said statements…or we’ll hear the slide scale argument that they’re not that corrupt really when you look at how corrupt the Republicans are, blah, blah, blah. Democrats are going to cling to the “relative” perspective like a Republican to their paycheck (those rich old white kooks).
Capt’n Ed has the support for his case that Harry Reid is one of those accused:
The AP, which has done a good job of covering Reid’s Abramoff connections, revealed that Reid intervened on at least five occasions for Abramoff clients. He collected donations from them “around the time of each action.”
I don’t think that there’s any doubt that Reid will be one of the lucky six to eight Democratic Senators smoked out in this prosecution. The question will be who the others are or were. If enough of them sit in the next Senate, the Democrats may find themselves in trouble for holding their majority. If Reid has to leave, the Governor of Nevada would have to appoint his replacement … and Jim Gibbons just won the seat for the Republicans.
While it’s wishful thinking…It’s doubtful…as we’ve seen by Murtha’s recent push to be majority leader, Democrats are held to a different ethical standard than Republicans. I’m calling on “The Right Wing” to come up with a funny comment here…
As big of a deal as the Abramoff was a couple of years ago…it’s all going to be very hush hush now…shhhh….he might point towards our guys…Rangel, Reid, Dorgan…it’s all in your head…Democrats have no “culture of corruption”, that’s strictly a conservative thingy.
So here’s the zany conspiracy theory I’ll throw out there…listen closely. Abramoff is really a Democrat operative. If he was truly a Republican rube, then he would have offered up the information before the election…ehhhh…so he must be in the pocket of…of….that’s right, the Kennedy’s. Where is the offshore account I say? Remember Chappaquiddick!
Ridiculousness aside, this could be a very big development. Democrats campaigned on the idea of “cleaning house”, and it may very well be the thing that sinks them…this isn’t a Kerry flip flop that just kills your Presidential ambitions…this is a “turn in your badge and gun” incident. To clarify, and Republicans who have had illegal dealings with Abramoff should also be booted (this means Rove if that happens to be the case), I will stick to consistency…clean them all out. I’m going to be the true non-partisan here…w00t…dredge the swamp.
No, not a legal proceeding protecting the snail darter nor for you homophobic republicans, a comment on your last typical night on the town in San Francisco (I wanted to try out reading like a proud, practical and “progressive” liberal. How did I read?)
All kidding aside and just factual evidence, you decide…
Historical presidential party legislative seat losses:
FDR 1938, 71 House: 6 Senate
DE 1958, 47 House: 3 Senate
JFK 1962, 47 House: 3 Senate
RMN 1974, 43 House: 3 Senate
WJC 1996, 49 House: 9 Senate
GWB 2006, ~30 House:~ 6 Senate
Historical deception, ooops, perception,
GoingThere
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