BBB: Froth v Parfait :: $$ Whuppity Update :: Whup the Fuck Update :: Meta Inside Update :: Updates 29 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in 2006 Mid Terms, 2008 Election, Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Democrats.34 comments
Well! Fly high boyz, keep an oxygen mask near by! Deb Orrin enters. The whrrrrrr of the Message Machine….
But Warner spokeswoman Ellen Qualls said he’s keeping his $5,000- a-month job: “This is a private matter between Jerome and the SEC relating to activities years ago.”
She declined to say if Warner disclosed Armstrong’s SEC woes or if Armstrong, 42, meets the ethical standards required for, say, a White House job, saying Warner isn’t now a candidate.
[there is a clue!]
Dems are madly wooing left-wing bloggers – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton just hired one and Warner spent $50,000 to dish up sushi and a chocolate fountain for 1,000 at the Yearly Kos blogger convention.
Some Dems suspect Warner fears ditching Armstrong would spark rage from his ex-business partner, Markos Moulitsas-Zuniga of the Daily Kos Web site, who’s had nice things to say about Warner so far.
Armstrong and Kos are often touted as Internet wunderkinds in the 2004 Howard Dean campaign – but Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi and top aide Kate O’Connor say it ain’t so.
Warner should get used to the word “tout”, it is not going away.
Trippi said Armstrong’s role was “mostly to help placing our blog ads for $3,000 a month” and “Markos had almost nothing to do with the campaign.”
Both Trippi and O’Connor – while often at odds in the Dean campaign – agreed that contrary to the Kos myth, Dean’s real Internet stars were Nicco Malley, Mat Gross and Zephyr Teachout.
Trippi also said that Armstrong never disclosed his SEC woes when he was hired in June 2003 – when the SEC probe was well under way, saying: “It was never disclosed to me.”
Several Dem activists were startled that Warner would risk his own image to keep Armstrong.
“Anyone can hire someone who turns out to be a bad seed or problem. The question is what you do about it and what that shows about your own standards as a leader,” said a veteran Dem fund-raiser who had been considering Warner for 2008.
Get used to it…
And I am going to reprise the Whupdate at 7:30 from the last posting, after I had finished reading the Armstrong Memorial Manifesto, posted today at MyDD (oh come ON, was there ever Due Diligence done? Ever?)…
Last WHUPDATE, 7:30 pm, PT…
Made it to the end of the Jerome By the Stars Memorial Manifesto-knot.
AND again, as I said in an earlier piece w/r/t Kos and his “support” for Dean. He never once mentioned on the FP the 527 that the Democrats put in motion, the Osama ad that aired second week of December and further, that as Dean has said (CNBC with Russert) every single Democrat, but CM-B, in the primary line up was a party to the 527. That is a classic “gangland” style routine. All become party to the “crime”.
Every Democrat but Carole Moseley Braun. And I m sure it was held out to her as her “way back in”.
Every single Democrat running in the primary. You can recall them.
Good going boychicks. Ya never got off the Clark bus, imo.
Which is fine. Good luck… reserved for you is the special future of those who will be kept around but have failed, by the way the rather scabrous former member of the Ohio leg who was pivotal in the 527 was one of those as well… it was his way back in. Think you are a bit dodgey now, a bit shady now? Wait.
This WILL be fun to watch. I think you are going to find out what it really means to be used by the party.
Cauterize the wounds, gangrene moves in fast.
Apparently they CAN live with the various, several and at variance versions… Trippi for attribution with Orrin…
Trippi said Armstrong’s role was “mostly to help placing our blog ads for $3,000 a month” and “Markos had almost nothing to do with the campaign.”
Jerome in that quixotic, long manifesto of memory and then this Trippi comment in the thread to Jerome’s self-expostion:
| The journey with Trippi, Dean and DFA (3.00 / 2)
No blogger had more impact on my thinking about the early Internet strategy of the Dean campaign than Jerome Armstrong. Sure there were others, Markos among them — but the two that stick out in my mind are Jerome and Aziz. I will remember that our friendship started with Jerome posting about some pundit like comment I made in the New York Times — essentially calling me an “idiot”. So add to his bringing Meetup.com to the Dean campaign the fact that he had the foresight to be the first blogger to attach that moniker to me!Note to reporters: Question: Was paying Jerome and his partner $3000 a month worth it. In the first week after the March Meetup over $400,000 was contributed to the Dean campaign by Meetup members who added the now famous .01 to their contribution. I’d say hiring Jerome and Markos at the “get rich” price of $3000 was one of the best decisions I made in the campaign. |
| by Joe Trippi on Thu Jun 29, 2006 at 04:17:25 PM EST |
OK! between youse guys. Froth…
But Rogers Cadenhead is noticing as well…
Frothy froth…
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
$$ Whuppity Update, 10:30 pm, PT
And then the froth turns hard…. Stoller ‘splains… It might help this gobble gobble gobble go down if you let your brains drain out before reading:
DavidNYC, Kos, Chris Bowers, and I are the ones who manage the process of choosing netroots candidates. Periodically, we open threads on our blogs and ask for nominations from local bloggers on races they are covering and candidates they like. The last thread was here. We do due diligence, but mostly we defer to good local blogs and netroots communities, who advocate in those threads. And then we try to pick the candidates that have real support among bloggers and netroots progressives (like DFA).
That’s so so sweet…. But in the Cegelis – Duckworth run, boyos openly admitted, when the race ws very close – and they were surprised!, that they had listened to “DC” and so were shocked. Which means they listened to, and dropped Cegeslis on cue, for Rahm and whoever else.
And D.Throat in the thread points out, from the StollerSplainin’:
The netroots selection process is still too top-down for instance, and I don’t know how to get around that problem.
Some day all that diligence is gonna come due. Let’s see how the money goes. And the money for Lamont and for Webb… the two the netroots boys have tied their stars to.
Machine politics, fully tied to the party… it moved online.
See who they tout – see how the cash flows.
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WHUP THE FUCK Update, 7:00 am, PT
Well! if you might have been feelin’ fine about ’06 (pick a year, any year) do do do catch Schumer in the NYO. You may drink early… then again as we struggle to become a bigger, blowsier version of empire by long term occupation — truly the Brits had that stiff upper lip, I wonder, what do we have to entertain ourselves as empire fails? You will drink early and late! … if you had hopes for either empire or a few seats in ’06, read Chuck:
“We have to win,” said Senator Charles Schumer, banging a table with his fist at a diner close to his Park Slope home on Monday morning. “You have got to be strong and focused. If you get thrown off course, you lose.”
They should know!
Like Atlas with a drab tie and a Brooklyn accent, Mr. Schumer carries the weight of the Democratic Party’s hopes on his shoulders.
He has spent much of the past year discharging his duties as chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, nagging reluctant recruits into running for office and applying his legendary fund-raising skills to transform the Democrats’ debt-ridden coffers into a $64 million war chest.
But though Mr. Schumer is better known for his maniacal work rate than his philosophical musings—and despite a miniature flurry of good news for the ruling Republicans—Mr. Schumer has the air of a man who has the fall elections all figured out.
But, if you knew that Democrats lack head, heart, soul (oh, easily remedied! grab Wallis or Obama and seek the evangelicals, that’ll work!), spine AND balls, … then you knew what is out there, with a few exceptions, is Democratic asses. Hanging in the wind.
He views fundamental disagreements over strategy within the party as a trifling detail that is actually generating more contributions for his Senate races.
And when it comes to Iraq, an issue on which the Republicans are once again attempting to make the Democrats look like indecisive quislings, Mr. Schumer sees no need even to take a position.
“The average person knows: We are not commander in chief, we are not in the majority—our job is to hold Bush’s feet to the fire,” said Mr. Schumer. “And the whole issue of Iraq will be how well George Bush is doing in Iraq, not if Democrats have a substitute plan or not.”
The theme of the 2006 elections, according to Mr. Schumer, is that they will be—must be—all about the Bush Presidency.
“This is going to be a referendum on George Bush,” Mr. Schumer said.
Don’t let me stop you, why not now? Better now, than when it mattered, as in ’04… when it was not accomplished… but whose counting?
I really screamed with laughter when Teixeira sort of mused that maybe we needed a “little bit” I think it was, to get a position on Iraq.
No wonder they settle for the little screamer online. A bit of flotsam looks fine, if you are drowning.
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The Meta Mama update, very inside meta. The Stay at Home and Blahg Update….
Good goin’ guys. More and more I think Blahhgging is a return to the womb strategy.
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Rip Snortin’ Toutin’ Update… 8:05 am PT
Riehl World View’s take on the Warner camp, as advised by Vis Numar… are we sure Jerome IS Vis? Or vas Vis? Does Jerome know? For attribution of course. We don’ wanna speak outta school. And get hit by a star. Or a moonbeam. Or a jar.
I agree, this is too much fun. So, why stop?
Let’s not stop … AND MORE:
Stopping in at Opinionater…(behind that big wall) Suellentrop has an entry up on the SC ruling re: Gitmo. At the close… is the political take, or, one person’s political take.
Georgetown law professor Marty Lederman wins the prize for most-linked instant analysis of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Bush administration’s plan to try the Guantanamo detainees before military commissions.
“[I]t is hard to overstate the principal, powerfully stated themes emanating from the Court, which are (i) that the President’s conduct is subject to the limitations of statute and treaty; and (ii) that Congress’s enactments are best construed to require compliance with the international laws of armed conflict,” Lederman writes at SCOTUSblog.
That was for anyone needing a set-up (and Greenwald demurred over the Lederman take, but you can find that on the Blahgs, as Leftischer Blahgs all said when Opinionator took them to the edge of the cliff, if it is behind the wall, nobody reads it!), here is what we want…I don’t think the Dems, as led by Mr Schumer and … Mr Emanuel, how could we forget? … can parse this tourniquet:
What about the political fallout?
Reed Hundt, a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, writes at TPMcafe that things are looking up for the Republicans.
Karl Rove will “use the Supreme Court’s pro-prisoner decision to the R’s advantage this fall,” he writes. “To thwart this tactic, Democrats need to clamor for legislation calling for no bail, confidential reports to Congress on the danger to the country from these prisoners (conducted by the 911 Commission), trials starting no later than in the fall, and harsh penalties.”
That will be easy. As soon as they have a position on Iraq. Other than lying down that is. I exempt a very few from that, Feingold, Murtha, the few who signed Barbara Lee’s resolution agaisnt permanent bases …
I am sorry, Kerry’s 2006 opinions do not matter: zero’d himself out day after the loss in November. But the consolation prize, and he should accept it and go home to Teresa, was the money.
Top down… the little ones learn from the … well, the bigger ones. We lack for truly big in this party.
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The Here it is again UPDATE:
… the Freeper angle and Vis Numar (calling Jerome? Is it true, any of it?)… it fluttered a few days ago, but is in comments just now… so let’s open it up.
How smelly can an old Pandora’s Box be?
Why Are We Back In Iraq posts on this angle. Calling all stars… to the white courtesy telephone. Fill us in… we are star struck…
And this is fun. Not stopping!
Riehl World View has posted on Viz Numar…
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To Return to Earth…
Jane Mayer in The New Yorker (not behind a wall) on the legal mind behind the White House’s hidden war on terror.
Conventional wisdom holds that September 11th changed everything, including the thinking of Cheney and Addington. Brent Scowcroft, the former national-security adviser, has said of Cheney that he barely recognizes the reasonable politician he knew in the past. But a close look at the twenty-year collaboration between Cheney and Addington suggests that in fact their ideology has not changed much. It seems clear that Addington was able to promote vast executive powers after September 11th in part because he and Cheney had been laying the political groundwork for years. “This preceded 9/11,” Fein, who has known both men professionally for decades, said. “I’m not saying that warrantless surveillance did. But the idea of reducing Congress to a cipher was already in play. It was Cheney and Addington’s political agenda.”
You know what Fran Liebowitz says (a friend just sent me this):
“we live in a post-factual era…we keep waiting for them [the bush admin] to get caught, but they get caught every day, all day long. nobody cares!”
Not enough… that is for certain.
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Real Updates. 12:15 pm, PT:
What the justices did would have been unthinkable in prior military conflicts: Judicial intervention in the decisions of the president and Congress on how best to wage war. They replaced his wartime judgment and Congress’ support with their own speculation that open trials would not run intelligence risks. Their decision to impose specific rules and override political judgments about military necessity mistakes war — inherently unpredictable, and where our government must act quickly and sometimes secretly to protect national security — for the familiarity of the criminal justice system.
We knew where Yoo was anyway, but since he spoke up…
And Ron Brownstein in the LAT, standard issue [but he does it so very well!] to goose the Dems and give them content to goose the fundraising. Goosing the goose, searching for the golden goose to bleed it dry and still have no position on Iraq.
And, did you know that the Kerry camp focus grouped Abu Ghraib?
Yes they did, In Arkansas (the Middle Kingdom?) and decided not to say much on that. Why do the Dems even poll? focus group? if the whole exercise is to under pin their decision to say little to nothing?…
Back to Ron in the LAT:
WASHINGTON — President Bush’s job approval rating is up slightly, but discontent over the Iraq war, especially among women, is continuing to boost Democratic prospects in the struggle for control of Congress, a Times/Bloomberg poll has found.
Bush’s job approval rating edged up to 41%, his highest since January in the poll. But Democrats held a formidable advantage, 49% to 35%, when registered voters were asked which party they intended to support in fall congressional elections. […]
Bocklage, who said she voted for Bush in 2004, practically seethed as she discussed his record. “He’s just out of control,” she said. “The economy is going down the toilet. Everything is being shipped out to other countries to be manufactured…. We have veterans who are homeless, we have old people on Social Security who are freezing every winter. And the gas prices!”
I always think, and what would the country be bitching about if the deaths were, say, 1,000 in Iraq and gas was 2.25 or so a gallon… and everything else about Iraq, the classified bombing runs, the night patrols, the fast approaching 20,000 seriously injured, the PSTD numbers that we cannot even imagine yet, the hideous killing – on both sides – the shrinking to disappearing to always-was-a-joke coalition… if all that were what it is… and we still did not have Bin Laden, but every once in a while a marquee name gets nabbed.
America would not care. Not a bit. They’d all fall in with the “bringing Democracy” to ”some people” far away, elsewhere… and head out to the links in the golfmobile. Or whatever they are called.
But against the backdrop of Zarqawi’s death, 51% of those polled gave Bush positive marks for handling the war on terrorism — an increase of 8 percentage points since April and the first time in this year’s Times polls that he received majority support on that question.
It is a long piece… have to digest it… and I feel the need for a quadruple espresso. Time to grind the beans from Bologna.
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Over the yardarm UPDATE… 1:30 pm, PT.
I dragged myself to Dkos… and noticed that, naturally, it is fundraising day, end of Q2… so I looked over the Act Blue page.
Where is the niche, the box to click, the luuuuv for Sherrod and for Duckworth – a Fighting Dem no less???? hmmmmm ?
If you don’t leave with the one that you started out with, do you also leave (behind) the one you left the old one for… I am sure you know what I mean. No fault divorce and all of that. I’m not a numbers person, so no doubt there is an explanation that is simple. Moving right along…
Adult Blogger has a thought provoking comment in the thread. Going to ponder that a bit.
BBB: Meta Madness! Jerome unleashes… himself? 40K words, historic histrionics? :: Many Whups and Ups. 29 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in 2004 Election, Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Democrats.9 comments
It’s a My Journey… sort of thang. Lordy. Can anyone stand this? Opera Glasses and Masses… absolutely masses… of Popcorn.
And that imagery (“Dolphins of God”) is in over the transom, apparently from someone’s YKos pics on Flickr. Well whoever’s it is, it was made public. Just as public as Kos and Jerome wanna-be.
Welcome boys, you are in the ring.
Good luck to all boyz – and the women assists too!!. It will take some digesting of the slobber Jerome puts out, I suspect a less than stellar (all stars are not the brightest) read.
But! I could be surprised.
And thanks to one of the ”throats”, in comments to the previous thread, for the quick link to whatever it is Jerome is doing… I thought he left blogging? Twice? For the greater glory that is politics… ?
Only the stars know!
Is this a “brilliant” plan to stay on the Warner payroll? Save us from pundits as operatives. Astrologers as operatives… and so on.
And then from an adult, Chris Nolan at Spot-On on the strangled opera that is playing out.
Fly higher boys. Touch the sun, oh! I hear Reagan speeches, penned by… Peggy Noonan no less, at the Challenger explosion memorial ceremonies… I really do!
How appropriate, a Republican voice over for the boyz activities.
Fitting.
From Chris Nolan at Spot-on:
But Spot-on readers have known for more than a year that Moulitsas has questionable ethics, a bad temper, likes to pick fights and thinks of himself as far more important than he is.
Our take – Love For Sale – ran two week ago and has presaged pretty much everything that’s been written since. Much of that piece relied on previous reporting, beginning in January, 2005 when we looked at the line between journalism and activism and found DailyKos and company coming up short.
Then there was Moulitsas’ behavior at the DNC Western States meeting in Sacramento in Jan. 2005. In his response , Moulitsas compared himself to Daily Show host Jon Stewart.
A few months later, Spot-on ran a piece about the Federal Elections Commission’s decision not to treat bloggers as political entities and why it’s important (they can hide money for campaigns):
And we got a good look at the bullying tactics at work when Moulitsas threatened Carol Darr, director of GW’s Institute on Politics, Democracy and the Internet for doing nothing more than criticizing his approach to the FEC (Darr doesn’t think people should hide their political spending).
oh you just know there is more to come… The Crash that keeps on giving… 😉
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WHUPDATE, from the Jerome … whatever that is! 3:15 pm, PT:
Part of the problem encountered in late 2003 for the Dean campaign was a direct result of the official campaign infrastructure being overwhelmed.
hmmm I think the infrastructure at issue, with a head the size of the Titanic, was Trippi.
Not saying Dean was blameless, mind you. It is painful to hear the boyz toss “people-powered” around. Especially as they don’t mean it, it is just regurgitated drool from them.
“You have the power” got more than a little over done toward the end of 2003, too…
What was that about firing Trippi, again? But keep trying… Human pinatas. Someone get these boyz crisis management consults…. too late! Soon, failure analysts can move in.
And they will just keep showing up, ever the human pinatas.
AND this: Cogent comment from this posting:
Submitted by JNH (not verified) on June 22, 2006 – 16:11.
As far as I’m concerned, Markos Moulitsas needs to just… go away.
I have come more and more to the conclusion that he’s just an amateur who doesn’t know how to plan anything. A smarter guy would have presided over Yearly Kos, then after it was over, announced that all good things must come to an end, that he was moving on to new fights and new horizons, and leaving Daily Kos in the hands of his trusted bloggers, and that he was sure everyone would keep up the fight. He could go on to his consulting or writing career or whatever. That’s how you secure your success… by not wallowing in it and keep moving.
Instead, he’s retreated into his hidey hole at Daily Kos and is engaged in an embarrassing, self-indulgent public shootout with his enemies, and all these people freshly back from Yearly Kos have to deal with all the spent shells all over the floor and punchdrunk Kos groupies beating up on anyone who isn’t sufficiently obeisant to him.
What a debacle. This guy wants to “crash the gates” (as his groupies repeat endlessly in a hundred variations) but I don’t think he could even plan things well enough to crash into a men’s room stall.
This is the beginning of the end of Daily Kos. The individual members will do fine (Yearly Kos energized them) but this is what happens when you send an amateur to do real activist work. I fully predict that Moulitsas will be announcing his “break” or “farewell” within the next few weeks. (Too little, too late).
Well Kos made that very announcement, tho in a different setting, in the Newsweek whatever-THAT-was article… but then he stayed.
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Slightly OT Whupdate…. but really, the congealing fuckball we are trapped in, nothing is OT.
Looking at Blogometer today, there is a round-up of all the yeling and screaming about the Obama evangelical ooze and sqeeze, and a conf call that bloggers <laugh> participated in….
Rope in Hillary too… let’s be clear, they, Billary, are using his black face to front for them.
OBAMA: Not The Dreaded L-Word!
Sen. Barack Obama‘s (D-IL) 6/28 contribution to a Call to Renewal conference call were not well recieved by the progessive blogging community. Some were so upset they invoked the ultimate progressive epithet. Chris Bowers at MyDD tells Obama: “Well done. Your mentor, Joe Lieberman, would be proud.” The Agonist chimes in: “See, now, this is a Lieberman moment. Because what Obama is doing is using Republican talking points about Democrats and religion to criticize his own party.”
Worst damn people ever to struggle forth from a swamp of a state. Sorry AR. But really!
Late horns being tooted against Obama…. Quite a few of us saw it long ago… I wrote on Obama – and that wing of the party, in Amen, last fall at LSF after his really quite subversive diary at Dkos… and using extracts from the extensive writings on Obama at Black Commentator.
hmm… recollecting that I x-posted Amen at BMT with an interesting thread and in particular this comment (bolding is mine):
And further, it will require us to innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise (including market- or faith-based ideas that originate from Republicans).
Well, that’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve read in a while. The Democratic Party has been broken and trained by the bullies of the GOP. They’ve accepted their new role as the “beta” party to the “alpha” Republicans.
I found Obama’s lecture — this was the term that came to me as well — cautious, reasonable, smooth, seductive, and completely fallacious. I couldn’t finish it because it made me feel enervated and agitated, at the same time. It’s a dangerous piece of writing, for that reason. It’s a winningly political, sugarcoated spoonful of medicine to intended to sedate uppity radicals.
What made me angriest was the part about how the people in Illinois, he’s met in his travels, don’t think Bush is a criminal, or a liar, etc, etc. So, why are these ill-informed, middle-of-the-road, people in utter denial, more important than me, or any of the people venting their spleens in the blogosphere. Why are politicians bending over backwards to cater to a mushy middle, with a total lack of civic awareness. That amounts to the ill-informed dictating policy. Frightening! No wonder we’re in such a mess.
“I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or prostitute.” ~ Rebecca West
by Recordkeeper
And of course I did not comment in the Obama diary at Dkos being, you know, like, banned!
They’d best gold leaf the dittos that are left. So they look to be valuable.
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BIG WHUPPER: 6:31 pm, PT
Have they read their own reviews? From the kids that brought us the last month, this in Blogometer from Bowers (I have not even finished the Memorial Manifestnoto from Jerome yet, must rely on a digest!):
Many progressives saw opportunity in the court’s failure to strike down partisan mid-decade redistricting.
Chris Bowers at MyDD: “We have a pretty good chance to take the trifecta this year in California, Colorado, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. We already have the trifecta in Illinois. After the 2006 elections,
[why not now?]
Democrats need the guts to wake up and realize that the public will not revolt in the face of Republican power grabs, and that Republicans will not play nice because we decide to do so. Redrawing the maps in those states will make it all but impossible for Republicans to hold the House after the 2006 elections.”
Same old same old… the Siren song from the operative class, or they up-chuck some garbled caution (see DavidNYC at SSP, just below at Blogometer) that is too obscure for anyone but another operative to stop and disagree with:
…someday, just in time! the Dems find their own body parts. Guts, spine… balls, heart, brain, soul… It gets macabre.
Meanwhile the R hit them over and over with massive 18 wheeler pile-ups on the electoral freeway.
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Last WHUPDATE, 7:30 pm, PT…
Made it to the end of the Jerome By the Stars Memorial Manifesto-knoto.
AND again, as I said in an earlier piece w/r/t Kos and his “support” for Dean. He never once mentioned on the FP the 527 that the Democrats put in motion, the Osama ad that aired second week of December and further, that as Dean has said (CNBC with Russert) every single Democrat, but CM-B, in the primary line up was a party to the 527. That is a classic “gangland” style routine. All become party to the “crime”.
Every Democrat but Carole Moseley Braun. And I m sure it was held out to her as her “way back in”.
Every single Democrat running in the primary. You can recall them.
Good going boychicks. Ya never got off the Clark bus, imo.
Which is fine. Good luck… reserved for you is the special future of those who will be kept around but have failed, by the way the rather scabrous former member of the Ohio leg who was pivotal in the 527 was one of those as well… it was his way back in. Think you are a bit dodgey now, a bit shady now? Wait.
This WILL be fun to watch. I think you are going to find out what it really means to be used by the party.
Cauterize the wounds, gangrene moves in fast.
Real Estate: Louche cat seeking Townhouse List. :: Whipsnapper, Slapwa Updates :: Navel Update 28 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Democrats.13 comments
… drop me a line – Marisacat on plain old vanilla AOL.
It seems unfair that Trevino, Red as can be… seems to know more about the TownHouse List than lefties do… he seems to know quite a bit.
Fun chats with Armando and Joan?… chats with Kos lui-meme?… did that do it?
Love how they all list to the Red side. Must go with liking Ben Nelson and Bob Casey (who lspths too you know, debates should be fun…) and forever ad nauseum protecting Bill Nelson, tho he is expected to win easily against Harris.
What is it that makes Kos et al, who love to use LIBERAL (their BlogAd subdivision, the drinking conflabby) be so cosy with either migrating Repubs or conservative Dixie-Democrats.
One McNerney does not a difference make. [CYA]
Trevino may be as muddled a piece of merchandise as Kos is — and it is my distinct recollection that Kos was most subservient to Tacitus, that silly dictum that people were to be polite to Tac, but he yawned and insulted his way thru his visits in 2002/3 to Dkos.
However, it was clear long ago that the tougher operative is Krempasky. And yet Leadership, thugs and liegemen, women assists, a fair selection like to hang and visit with the RedState crew.
I promise you, what ever side Kos is on, the broad left of the aisle (which would not include the Blue Dogs, for example) did not benefit from Kos & co hanging with the RedState boys.
But, is it, all that Redness, the other side?
What is the agenda with these people?
So. let me be blunt, I hear, once at least, the Townhouse list was sent with BCCs in the open.
Failing that, send me anything that is, or might be, amusing.
Real post to come…
To fill the time (and this will be looked at again): my the boys are cranky. Is that just plain old Bitchiness? Do you think?
Snip:
Find some way to support bloggers, or stop asking us to support you. I have been working on the problem of getting more money to bloggers for over a year now.
The biggest obstacle I see to it is that progressive donors and progressive organizations are worried that if they fund bloggers, bloggers will eventually say something “crazy,” and the organizations and donors in question will end up looking bad.
Fine. If that is their rationale, I can live with that. However, don’t then go and tell bloggers that they should stop criticizing Democrats and progressive orgs whenever Dems and progressive orgs do something stupid.
hmmm. No I think they are worried, as one small example, about blogs (that would be Kos lui-meme) saying things like this.
But what makes me angry was Kerry and his gang’s inability to take advantage of the situation. I may regret saying this later, but fuck it — they should be lined up and shot.
Or, Wankers are cracking slightly under the pressure… Or, the two mixed? As in, cranky, bitchy weak wankers?
Buck up Boyos. My guess, the pressure has only just begun (cue the Carpenters).
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hmmm. Well, this is a Whipsnapper of a something. 3:00 am, PT:
With these rather palsied slaps, Trevino still manages to aggrandise Kos. But there are points. Certainly the close is true… and most certainly Kos and his adherents are reactionary. And while this is not a medical dx (far from it), Kos is absolutely unstable in his responses to political events.
Other than that, it is just a scream, from Tacitus to Kos.
Best of Luck to all the Boyos.
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Slapwa Update, 4:15 am, PT
I thought this (the photoshopped pic) rather jumped any number of land and sea creatures, but did not bother to note it. However, with this a sort of reverse prize must be awarded. I suppose it is just barely possible that torture, murder and sexual debasement under military occupation might not be parodied? (Aside from abusing the prisoners, England and Ganer conceived a child from sex performed in front of prisoners, Jim Mikaleshevski, NBC.)
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hmmm: Have a Navel Update, 12:30 pm, PT
Over at Crossed Swords there is a post and thread on the Trevino Bircher/Markos article. Armando is in the thread, if you can stand it (or did you yearn for that batterer? seems some did). Make sure food is fully digested!
Meta Navel. I did call long ago for meta-morphosis… I did.
BBB: Frying the Circuits :: Whopper Whupdate! :: Updates and Whup Uppity ::Spearing Bologna Update 28 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in 2006 Mid Terms, Big Box Blogs, DC Politics.6 comments
First, a link to an index of all there is at MCat on the Big Box Blogs.
Then onward… Billmon was not done, yesterday the Swiftboating of Kos, then today: Star Crossed. He goes to the expected place, but certainly with a thorough and detailed exposition, Nancy and her astrologer, Joan Quigley.
As a native San Franciscan, I certainly knew the Quigleys… they owned a hotel on Stockton and lived in the penthouse. The Campton Place Hotel is at that location now.
Nancy however had the perfect out, two of them. First Ladies, frankly they do as they please and whatever direction they go in, get excoriated. Well, then again, Laura seems loaded with teflon blood… but other than LB: excoriated. AND, in Nancy’s astrological quest, she had the “rationalisation” of the assassination attempt. Don’t think boys have that one. They are still proffering “character references” in the face of what seems to be a concerted if not orchestrated take down.
But hey, they wanted to “Crash the Gates” or something similiar. I’d have avoided the word crash. Too many bad visuals.
Maybe they mis-read the stars? <laughing>
Nor was Nancy a brash boy, or a few of them as a gang, out to take on — well who did they not plan to take on? Other than Ben Nelson and a few other DINOs who definitely were not on their list…
Brash boys found to be hip deep in astrology projections, masses of it online still, are different. And if the “boys” as plural, were not into astrology, the sainted Blogfather surely was.
From billmon:
As far as I’m concerned, the Kill Kos Koalition has every right to make astrology the central issue in this outrageous scandal, now that corruption, extortion and illicit Viagra use have all been taken off the table. But, given that something like 40 to 50 million Americans also believe the stars guide their destinies, I’m not sure they’re going to get much traction. But hey, at this point anything’s worth a try, right?
But before they go much further down that road, they probably should consider the collateral damage they might do to the reputations of a couple of other flaky, California fringe types who also dabbled in the occult, UFOs and New Age mysticism.
I’m speaking, of course, of our 40th president, the GOP demi-God, Ronald Reagan, and his lovely wife Lucrezia . . . I mean, Nancy. Both of the Reagans were confirmed believers in astrology — particularly Nancy, who used the services of a San Francisco socialite cum star gazer to plan her husband’s every official move.
hmm. But here is the deal – and really it is a tick tock: Nancy was vulnerable to bad press, but boyos were just plain vulnerable. The place where the traction counts, as many on the blogs miss, is with the pols.
As for CA and our “fringes”, we can be as lunatic as we wish to be out here, we are somewhere around the 5th or 6th economic power on the planet – come down from the stars – and we have 55 EV. We treasure our fruits and nuts…. <laugh> it is called the Central Valley, Inland Empire, our ag business. So whereas Jeralyn at TalkLeft says dismiss Kos “at your peril”, I am confident that it is dismissing the CA powerhouse that would imperil one.
Boys, unlike Nancy, had a lot to lose. There is a distinct difference. Since the Reagan era, we have had a couple or so decades of entrenched Republican power – and redistricting – of which the Texas – Delay plan was merely the most egregious. AND: Just upheld by the SCOTUS, in large measure. That gerrymandering, bi-partisan as it was…changed everything. Think boyos know about it? As they prattle “majority”? They don’t seem to take it into the range of their star gazing.
And no time off for Blog King, the taking down of Lieberman needs his touch. The thread is a hoot (and short, where is the enthusiasm?) . Lamont is sure to win, wheels coming off Lieberman’s campaign – and much talk of how they will be taking on all DINOs – they already name Cantwell (D-WA) is in their sights… once there is a majority.
Well you gotta feed the second string Iditarod team something.
Webb fits right in to that plan! Such a progressive. Not. Assuming he can win against the well funded Allen… shall they shoe horn Webb in, then target him? Don’t worry, I am laughing.
Each day just gets squeezed out… slobber for the thread dwellers.
Mush little doggies.
And the shame is that it did not have to be this way.
More to follow… another day, operatives are waking (or long awake!) and soon the blogs are squirming.
***********************************************************************
Swing on a Star, Whopper WHUPdate:
Riehl weighs in. DonkeyCons picks it up. Armstrong still swimming with the stars… or is that with the fishes? metaphor! metaphor! Pace!
But remember, I called for, begged for meta-morphosis.
Frying circuits… ? we are talking deep fry.
***********************************************************************
UPDATE, a post from “aemd” in the previous thread that sums it up:
aemd – 28 June 2006
Maybe OT, maybe DUH but WTF.
I see it as all about marketing, marketing of politics. Failed dotcon wizards looking for the next big game.
Markos and crew are all about marketing.
His pitch is that he wants nothing more than a Democratic majority. He’ll push your brand, society be damned. It’s a hell of a sell to ANY Democrat in ANY race. A Democratic candidate would be foolish to turn down the services of a group that has no skin in the game other than winning.
You got the money, honey, they’ll make the time.
ESPN politics. Yeah, go team.
************************************************************
Have a laugh UPDATE: 10:38 am PT
Boyz should know. “How to Trash Your Brand”. Think this falls inside the cookie cutter: takes one to know one.
***********************************************************************
Whup Uppity Update, 1:00 pm, PT
Oh this is too easy. The old taking candy from a child post. Look what the Koserei are planning. And lui-meme pipes up, swipes DC and NYC…
What! no harsh words for the Left Coast!?! I’m here after all… 😉 Ah, but so are others. All those jui$y “technologists”.
Topic A and up to around 750 comments so far… Next year’s bashola:
YearlyKos 2007: Where do you want it?
by Nolan
Wed Jun 28, 2006 at 10:12:58 AM PDT
Well, now that the dust has somewhat settled on YearlyKos, it’s time to start thinking about a location for 2007. All throughout the event in Las Vegas we were consistently asked, “where is it going to be next year?” and we consistently answered “we don’t know, it’s up the community” – which is true.
I think they all grew more navels, while rolling in the sand… what was in those chocolate fountains!?! And I see they push the fiction that Vegas was the winner of the vote. Sorry! Chicago won. But Vegas was second and it really worked for Reid and the Left Coasters.
Get it?
***********************************************************************
UPDATE, 2:45 pm, PT – the Spearing Bologna Update
This probably should be a separate entry, but let’s just go with it.
What is a blogger? – don’t worry, no navels being contemplated!
I only ask as reading Cilliza (his entry for the 26th) today I see that a second “blogger” was tapped along iwth Peter Daou to join up! with Hillary … oh yes do laugh, cuz there surely is a snicker in this, somewhere.
Anyway turning this over – and a bit antsy to spear some bologna (not here for my health!) I pulled up the boyz bios.
Let me preface by saying I have never used “blogger” to describe myself. Don’t much care for the word… seems a tad vulgar in an uninteresting way. Easily, a bit too easily, transmits to Blahger. Vulgar+uninteresting means bottom of the pile in my book.
Have a sip of champagne, the bubbles will cheer you up – if you think of yourself as a “blogger” – and if your head is the size of the Titanic, maybe the bubbles save your life. PSA…;).
So I pulled up (quickly, no great expenditure) bios. Have a laugh. And snicker, muttering the word “blogger” with some derision as you do it… 😉
Peter Daou
Peter Daou is the founder and editor of the Daou Report. In 2004, he directed online rapid response and blog outreach for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Peter has appeared on MSNBC as a blog analyst and has served as an online communications consultant to leading political and public policy institutions including the United Nations Foundation, Media Matters, AARP, The Patriot Project, Nuclear Threat Initiative, and Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Foundation. In addition to the Daou Report, Peter administers News Unfiltered (in partnership with U.S. Newswire) and UN Dispatch, a blog about the United Nations.
That is from HuffPo (I said I did this quickly) so it is something he submitted to a non critical receiver (not that that means anything)… and I sure do notice it works as an online ad. Not sure how many saw it… hmmm Well I guess he is stuck with “rapid response” and “Kerry”. Good Luck Peter! And it seems his life before online is non-existant. mmmOk.
and
Jesse Berney
this is from his most recent site (an earlier one called Wage Slaves apparently was trashed in toto)
Jesse Berney is a writer and political activist who lives with his wife in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of St. John’s College in Annapolis and previously worked as an editor for several technology-related publications in San Francisco. He recently left the Democratic National Committee after four years writing and editing web and email content and is now the Online Mobilization Coordinator at the AFL-CIO.
Copyright Jesse Berney. The opinions expressed here do not reflect the positions or policies of my employer.
OK. Now I did not spend much time, but I did snag this, from, snicker again, the BlogAds weblog (what’s a blogger to do but blog and talk about it… ):
Blogosphere emergence
Anyone who attended our “emergence” panel at the IPDI last week might enjoy this video.Success depends on: do all the traps have similar triggers? are all traps set? are all close enough to each other? And, for self-perpetuation, how quickly are they reset after being sprung? Others? (For emergence geeks: lots more tangents in “Six degrees” by Duncan Watts.)
At IPDI, Peter Daou, Mike Krempasky and John Aravosis and I brainstormed about what makes a blog hurricane happen and whether one can be seeded. Peter and I agree that higher order behaviors are emerging as the blogosphere grows in size and connectedness; John and Mike were more skeptical, though they agree that hurricanes do happen. (It’s the attribution of quasi animal spirits to the blogosphere that puts them off, I guess.) We all agreed, at least, that blog hurricane forecasting is still in the 1920s at best. (Mike forwards a journalist’s take on the panel. )
BBB: Splitsville :: Update 27 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, U.S. Senate.20 comments
First, quick link to a posting earlier today from Jedmunds at Pandagon that I liked. Something righteously mournful before I step into the cow patties of BlogKnot.
hmmmmm. Linking to Billmon again. Earlier, I had tucked him at the end of a long, ever upped and whupped post. But no. It is a bit of a fork in the road. The last grafs especially.
But in the end it doesn’t matter. The Lieberman Dems don’t hate and fear Kos and the Daily Kos “community” because they are too far to the left. They hate them because they represent an emerging power center within the Democratic Party that they don’t control — what’s more, one that is now much closer to the public mainstream on the central issue of our time (the Iraq War) than they are.
The overriding concern for the neolibs, I think, is not that Kos and the netroot activists will lead the party off to the far-left fringes, but rather that they are willing, even eager, to form alliances with conservative nationalists like Jim Webb (the Va. Senate candidate) who’ve been forced out of the GOP because of their opposition to the neocons and their insane schemes. From Marty Peretz’s point of view, this is very bad. Left unchecked, it could even pose a threat to the sacred alliance with Israel.
The relationship between the party and Israel and or AIPAC/JINSA is so deep in the DNA, as to be rock solid. I just don’t see it. And yes, the tough old pol that is Lieberman was going to lash out. A given, an absolute given.
One of the tied-in sites, ever part of the link game, has 71 posts up against Lieberman. Count ’em. Not a problem, this stuff is old as the hills. Or maybe I was an absolute minority years ago when Hill made her ”explosive” comment on the Today Show. Enh. I thought of Mary Todd Lincoln and Dolly Madison, for starters. Not new.
So – I am not casting purity scolds over those 71 posts. But with the post from Billmon… And if you look at the opening of just this one post (of the 71) from the ”Lakers”. Note what they slam Joe Lieberman for.
I wish I could impute nefarious intent to the effort of traditional media types to make the blogosphere’s opposition Joe-nertia “all about the war,” but if I had to guess I’d say it was more due to abject laziness and a lack of native curiosity. As I’ve written many, many times before, my rabid lambiness took root during the Alito cloture vote, when Lieberman sided with the Gang of 14 to put a sexist, elitist, fundamentalist Dobson-loving bigot like Strip Search Sammy on the Supreme Court. I feared the country could not survive another one. And when interviewed for the new Time Magazine article on the race, Markos noted that he himself had said “enough” after Lieberman dicked everyone around on Social Security.
Nelson has been no different. He was instrumental in forming the group, the Gang of 14, that did not save filibuster, but killed it (with help from Reid and Biden, who caved early on, in spring, on Owens, Janice Rodgers Brown and others). He begged Dobson for a public thank you for his vote for Alito (Washpo, March 27) and it became clear he is in regular phone contact with Dobson.
Pretty stark. All I am saying is, Lieberman has a lot to work with.
Who decides who these sites support? The sites at issue being: Dkos, FDL and MyDD, Swing State Project – at a minimum. I mean behind Bowers and the list of 4 bloggers they cough out.
Kos, Chris Bowers, Matt Stoller, and DavidNYC (1+ / 0-)
- Recommended by:
- melvin
ask for recommendations of candidates, but the decision is basically up to them (that’s probably why two of the candidates are from the Philly suburbs [Bowers’s influence], and four of the candidates are from the West (Kos’s influence)].
I wouldn’t be surprised if Paul Hodes, Kirsten Gillibrand, and/or Linda Stender get put on the page soon (DavidNYC and Matt Stoller’s influence).
Don’t take my bluntness and attitude personally-the best weapon for the Democrats is the unvarnished truth, and the truth usually hurts.
by DemocraticLuntz on Mon Jun 26, 2006 at 04:38:33 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
Sorry, I don’t think it is just the boyz.
I have posted, I was among those who early on chafed against Joe Lieberman. But when the boys began to (suddenly) marshall against Lieberman – even tho he is deserving of being primaried – I did not support their move — merely as a thread commenter!… but also I took time to send an email to a Dkos poster, local CT person who had long wanted a primary against Lieberman, well and good, but was being roped inside now to be part of the charge… and I did ask, what is up, there is a whiff, have a laugh, I got my head patted.
And may I say, not only honored to be banned (banned a few places, I think), but relieved and delighted. Thanks Boyos.
See Bowers own diary at DKos on Netroots selections, several candidates are added to the “stable” and there is considerable push back in the thread as to the manner of selection… My own guess one or two on the list have no idea the reactionary and unstable stable they have walked into.
And a choice quote made recently by one of the principals in the Bowers new consulting firm. Frankly I have read the brief text at the site and I am unsure what it is, or is not. Read the comment from “thereisnospoon” … who is David Atkins… and if you know what it all means, tell me.
Elections are a question of making coalitions and getting votes without sacrificing principles.
The Democratic Party gets plenty of votes from Communists and pretty crazy authoritarian lefties whose viewpoints I find almost as repulsive as Joe’s. That doesn’t mean I don’t advocate taking their votes…
My bigger question is, what is the agenda?
I used to say that about Republicans. Now I say it in earnest about whatever the game plan is that targets Joe, loves Ben (a strong conservative voice in congress), likes Military Mary, has no trouble with Pryor (another of the Gang of 14)… the list is long. The consulting group(s) supposedly to elect candidates, run on the troubled Democratic ticket (no other way to put it), but are willing to trash the Democratic party in that very way. That very particular way.
It is the flip side of the innuendo now starting swirl about the so called grassroots, ground level (and Lamont did well at the convention, getting a third, no dispute – better than I had expected him to manage) opposition to Lieberman.
If there is going to be a trope run that Kos is being targetted by the “Jewish Lobby” and tying the knot the way it was in the Billmon piece, which Kos front paged… well, I decline. Again.
So, what is the agenda?
Because the boys are not necessarily gold, from Suellentrop, behind the TimesSelect wall, new today:
Hotline editor Chuck Todd dropped Warner from second to third place last week in his rankings (done jointly with Hotline associate editor Marc Ambinder) of the likely Democratic contenders.
And Todd’s rankings were published before the blogstorm over Armstrong’s past as a political astrologist. (Conservative blogger Dan Riehl uncovered how, for example, Armstrong once connected “the rise of the political version of religious fundamentalism with the astronomical exploration of the Kuiper Belt in 1992.”) The American Prospect’s Garance Franke-Ruta, writing at Tapped, suggests that both controversies call into question Warner’s judgment: “If Warner didn’t know, when he hired Armstrong, that this kind of stuff was in his background — the S.E.C. settlement, the political astrology — it’s a sign his PAC failed to do its own due diligence.”
And a bit more:
The American Prospect’s Matthew Yglesias has a different interpretation for the many changing and contradictory posts by Moulitsas about Armstrong’s clients, which go beyond the questions about Warner. (Russell Hughlock of the Buckeye State Blog notes that Moulitsas shifted his support in an Ohio primary, and that he declared war on the Democratic Leadership Council and then never followed up on it). Perhaps Moulitsas is merely erratic and intellectually incoherent! There “is something along the lines of ‘Markos’ affections for candidates seems [sic] idiosyncratic and not driven by a consistent ideological worldview’ that I heartily agree with and I think is a problem,” Yglesias writes.
It is entitled, Warner’s Falling Star.
UPDATE: 4:00 pm, PT
Blogometer has several entries related to Kos, Lieberman, Newsweek (oh those old ink guys… hard to beat them, sad to say) the top one right now is:
Where is the old Kos?
As a long time fan of sports talk radio (KNBR 68, THE Sports Leader), the Blogometer loved DailyKos‘ founder Markos Moulitsas the first time we read his over the top rhetoric and unapologetic anti-war stance. Markos is a bright and strategic thinker and the Blogometer truly wishes him well on his quest to help reshape the party. But as Markos becomes a polished operative he may be losing the impish truth-teller qualities that drove him to fame.
For example, Markos attributes his absence from a Time magazine piece on CT SEN to his refusal to play along with the reporter’s “anti-war frame.” Markos says he told Time he was targeting Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) due to his stance on Social Security.
No doubt Markos did not like Lieberman’s Social Security posturing, but Markos hated Lieberman long before that debate.
DailyKos’ popularity is built on the coherence of its anti-war stance, not Social Security or any other progressive issue. But Markos has bigger plans past Iraq and Pres. Bush.
He is working on a new book focussing on his “Libertarian Dem” philosophy and Ex-Navy sec. Jim Webb (D) is perhaps Markos’ ideal embodiment of his ideal Dem candidate. Markos’ realizes the MSM currently keeps him in an anti-war only cage and he is desperate to expand his portfolio. Markos’s will do much better getting his case across if he maintains the honesty that made him so powerful to begin with.
One way of looking at it, and certainly one way to try to send a message. Give it a kiss and blow it on its way…
But one thing is sure, a book by Kos about Webb — hmm so he is going to win?? tho either way, sounds like a remainder table book… duller than dead dish water. Esp on some confused political philosophy that Kos made up…
It also sounds like Kos found some rather odd symbol to latch onto. White male, military (rose to be Sec of Navy) and let it be said, REPUBLICAN. This just has an adolescent stench off it..
Another from Blogometer – give Kos a pacifier, surely he has had enough attention. I recall that Nico Melli from the old Dean campaign said during the great flail over Zephyr Teachout in early 2005, that Kos loves to be in the middle of great controversy.
If he wanted it, this is it. I keep saying, be happy.
For the best rundown of the entire Kos/Armstrong/Hackett/Brown kerfuffle lefty BuckeyState Blog pens a lengthy history and concludes:
To date kos has failed to directly address the central issues.
Does Armstrong barter his services with clients to include the editorial influence of kos, if so is kos party to this ? Instead he has diverted attention from this question by attacking those asking these questions.
Kos at the end of the day I think has poor judgement and is naive – Hackett flip flop, the DLC attack that never came, Warner and Yearlykos- all leave many wondering. While Armstrong and kos have a symbiotic relationship, and some business ties (in the past, and with their recent book) I don’t believe there is any transfer of money for editorial influence – I think Jerome simply gets some of that for free, that at least is my impression. I personally don’t care how this story turns out, the netroots in the Ohio Senate race are now poisoned beyond recovery thanks to these bozo’s – I just hope I don’t have to witness them screw up any more races in the state I live.
BBB: En Garde! Form ranks! ::Updates :: WHUPdates :: imported Armando :: Put ’em update 26 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in 2006 Mid Terms, Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Democrats.19 comments
Yes Meta-Kos again. Not to pat the boy on his head, but to look at a few things… some of those proud defenses. Oh don’t be silly. Friends and associates are free to defend and define their friends and associates just as they wish. Nevertheless gonna take a look at a couple… [after I feed the cats and unload the washer…].
Bowers spreads the joy… thereisnospoon joins in. [links from Deepest Troat] Well! we know that is not liberal. Silly liberal money, supporting boys doin’ bidness. BlogPAC in that one? Love the catch phrases:
A different kind of political research and analysis firm:
”of the net roots, by the netroots and for the netroots”
oh my, does that ooze or what? As aemd posted a day or so ago, google “netroots endorsed” and look at how it is being shopped around. Or look at Webby. George Allen long ago rehired (for at least the third campaign together, iirc) La Civita, credited with the SBVfT campaign.
So what do we have in Jim Webb?
A candidate that won’t be easily demonized or swift boated by the usual conservative cowards.
We have a candidate who is backed by a genuine and proven people-powered machine. And we have a candidate who can win and put us one seat closer to a Harry Reid-led Senate.
”People powered”. I notice they all love to use that. I suppose they mean Raising Kaine, credited with drafting Webb.
Think Webb can hold up?
I think he is sadly out of shape for a tough run, or even an easy one against Allen… And is it the boyz behind him? What is the deal? is it, maybe, jam in their guy, milk the “netroots” for support… I am sure they are desperate to unseat Joe. Get a really big name. Ah but which of Joe’s hands, and which faction of the party is running against the Boyz? This really is old Bosses and raw, very raw new Bosses-wannabees. But always a boss.
But! there he is, Webb, barely out of R hands, being pushed (he is a Libertarian Democrat, you have heard of those, Kos has been pushing that awkward load of crap) right on top of a big slam on Lieberman.
“People powered.”
Update: This is what a libertarian democrat looks like. From a just-released press release on the Flag Burning Amendment:
“Jim Webb has great respect for our national flag and great respect for our Constitution, and is proud of the many contributions his family has made in defense of both. Like many combat veterans such as General Colin Powell and former Senators John Glenn and Bob Kerry, he does not believe it is necessary to amend the Constitution in order to protect the dignity of our flag. This is yet another example of deliberately divisive politics that distract Americans from the real issues that are facing our country,” said Kristian Denny Todd, spokeswoman for the Webb campaign.
Who knows. I see one down (bad Joe!), one up (Good Webb!), in the boys little black book…. Both problems. I want neither. If the criteria is that anybody with a “D” will vote for Reid – wellllll.
Then we stand for nothing. Having just seen Al Sharpton represent “for the left” (but he is not) on Tweety with Melanie Morgan… And Kos is “liberal” or “progressive” (but he is not), that is about it.
And over at TAPPED, from Ben Adler, an explanation of what is at stake, at issue, what’s really the deal!…between Kos and TNR. Yeah really.
It’s because TNR is an institution that gives space to the conservative — not moderate — rantings of liberal-haters and Democrat-haters like Kaplan.
Oh and Kos lui-meme does not? That just begs for a lot of examples of Kos hating the left. In fact, Boyz hating the left. Women, coalition, single issues, peace workers, demonstrators, it goes on and on…. It is a drill — it is so old.
Well it is obviously different being a Blog Confrere of Kos, as opposed to a long time reader of the site….
OH! Excuse me, it is not Dkos, it is the BLOGOSPHERE’s problem with TNR.
THE BLOGOSPHERE’S BEEF WITH TNR. I think Marty Peretz‘s Friday evening post on The Plank, in which he defended TNR from its left-wing blog attackers and excoriated their grammar, actually made a lot of fair points.
Well that is clearer. But Kos only speaks for himself? And his many many declared battles? Just his, right?
[I have not had a subscription to TNR in 15 or more years… I had forgotten they existed frankly til reading DKos. It was an issue with him way back. Yeah they were terrible on the war… and even their acknowlegement rather stank. It is an odd publication, frankly and I love it when Sirota goes after Beinart.]
And don’t miss this from the TAPPED post… — Remember Webb while reading this. Armando knob polishing for Ben Nelson, FP no less… Nelson who was desperate to please Dobson over Alito. Wanted a public “thank you” from Dobson… and love and hugs for Gene Taylor of MS, beloved by the hard Christian right, why he endorsed Massa for NY-29 – another one barely off the R rolls… it goes on and on:
TNR, on the other hand, indulges Bush crony Greg Mankiw with a non-sensical cover story in favor of social security privatization, and indulges neo-con Lawrence Kaplan (and Peretz) in contemptuous anti-left diatribes.
The analogy is perfect, in fact, in explaining why Kos et al hate TNR’s favorite senator, Joe Lieberman, and don’t have the same venom for Max Baucus and Ben Nelson.
It’s not because Lieberman is more conservative. The blogosphere is pragmatic, non-ideological, and very tolerant of moderates (see their recent embrace of Mark Warner).
What they do not tolerate is the public flagellation of their party’s left-wing that gives aid and comfort to the enemy.
This whole “Bush crony” thing is getting very fragile. What with the Clintons and all. The last three three – four little grafs are deadly. Has nothing to do wtih pragmatic politics, nor with idealogical divisions nor with anything else.
Boys have favorites and non-favorites. And who calls the shots?
And really … who is speaking for whom here? who embraced Warner?
All I know is that Armstrong is in the employ of Warner. Kos supposedly was “only joking” when he intro’d Warner… yeah right.
And he dropped 50K 70K 100K on a party 100 stories UP. Well the air was thin. And people drank the free booze.
Nothing new.
What was in the ”chocolate” fountains?
… more to come.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In over the transom: WHUPDATE>>>
The Ethical Werewolf has a great post on issues of SEC, stock touting and, you guessed it, who else!…. Jerome.
But in the thread, I see Armando and Rogers Cadenhead and Petey (JJB will remember Petey!)… stars DO align. Enjoy!
Sheesh. In case anyone missed him:
Disgusting post.
I really have lost a great deal of respect for you on this. I don’t think anyone can read you in the same way after this.
You deny being paid by Edwards do you? Markos denies pay for play. Jerome denies having engaged in pay for play with Markos.
Who should believe you as opposed to believing them?
Finally, do you realize the poll results you link to show Warner going from 14 to 10 over the time period that raised your eyebrows.
A slimy idiot is what you are portraying here.
Despicable. Did you check with Ezra before you chose to post this? The site does bear his name.
Posted by: Armando | Jun 26, 2006 8:34:58 AM
Several posts in the same vein in the thread. is there any joke left to make?
One last treat, a nice short summation comment from Ethical Werewolf’s thread:
Obviously, the insane over-the-top reactions of the Kos crowd indicate that they are worrying about credibility problems too. The lady doth protest too much.
Posted by: brett | Jun 26, 2006 5:31:03 PM
I agree…
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
UPDATE, 9:40 pm, PT
Bowers cross posted diary announcing their first client, Jerry McNerney, who really IS a good guy. CA-11 against Pombo. IIRC, this is his second try against Pombo. Be interesting to watch and see if they damage his directness and progressive message. When he posted his own first diary last January, there was only slight interest… just from individuals and one former front pager, a Californian, who was polite but not enthusiastic.
UPDATE: 10:20 pm, PT
Not sure anyone can stand it, but Garance at TAPPED has a round up piece on Jerome, related issues. She seems happy it all happened, semi-out of view, in ’06 rather than ’08.
Not so fast, boyos have never shown any evidence of learning.
Which is the whole point of the expostion of events across years in re: touting, SEC, Jerome et al. I don’t think that will be changing.
But then some buy that Kos is a hapless bystander. Find a bridge and put a biiig price on it. In fact, sell a bridge that does not even exist. A bridge in Omaha. LOL A bridge in Vegas.
Call Ted Stevens!, he can help us. These are pork issues.
And they really are … same thing: Scammers!
*********************************************************
UPDATE:
and I scrounged up the first post that Rogers Cadenhead put up last November, when he had been invited out of the Kos (?) Bowers BlogAds group. At the time the change in rules made it look as tho RC Raw Story and Smirking Chimp would not be eligible any longer – under a new definition of what a “blog” is. I jsut checked. LOL RS is there… I could not see Smirking Chimp.
Also the price that RC quotes for Dkos ads, that is for the “strip ads” the revolving strip that runs UNDER the top premium ads. Strip ads now are 1950 a week… NO SCRATCH THAT, 1950 WAS LAST WEEK>>> it is now 2K — and Premium… and remember it could be argued that his numbers are drifting downward… but that never stopped a tou… oooops! a blogger.
The top ad is 4250 a week. I see that, right now, as thereisnospoon’s diary advertising the Bowers et al new consulting company is on the Rec List, that Jerrry McNerney has the top ad on Dkos. Also their first client.
A bit of a congeal there. But … they only fuss when caught, right?
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
UPDATE, WHUP BACK AND PUT ‘EM UP!! Tuesday, 5:30 am, PT
Hillary hires Peter Daou of Daou Report… and Kerry blog outreach (that must have been frustrating!). Read the story in the NY Post. It is a scream.
NYT weighs in. Catch this (I am sure they said with a straight face):
The Clinton camp is clearly counting on Mr. Daou, who directed blog outreach and online rapid response for Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004, to help improve Mrs. Clinton’s image among liberal bloggers, who are fast becoming a constituency in their own right and may thus play a significant role in selecting the Democratic Party’s nominee for president.
One blogger in fact has said that Kos lui-meme can stand between Hillary and the nom. Yikes, is all I have to say.
Indeed, several potential candidates — including Mark R. Warner, the former governor of Virginia, and Gov. Tom Vilsack of Iowa — made an appearance this month at a bloggers’ convention in Las Vegas. But Mrs. Clinton was not among them.
Well in fairness she is not the only smart one who stayed away. Nancy Pelosi begged off at the end.
In a statement, Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said, “Peter’s experience building bridges between the blogosphere and the Democratic Party will be a huge asset for us.”
There is that bridge again…
In a statement that was posted on Salon.com, Mr. Daou, who will be a Web consultant for the campaign, said the “nascent power base” of liberal bloggers “is only beginning to make its presence felt” and will “reach fuller potential with the participation of Democratic leaders.”
Hoping…
In addition to working for Mr. Kerry’s campaign, Mr. Daou has been an online consultant to the United Nations Foundation and AARP.
Always nice to know the tidbits.
Kos should relax. This surely is a hurry-up campaign strategy thrown together after all of his less than pleasant commentary about Hill. Yeah right.
He is not quite as big as Rupert… not yet. But give him time!
And I do believe this is the moment to segue into one of the proud defenses that Kos linked to in his Meta piece of yesterday….So: Meta-Kos again
A person claiming personal friendship and full bore family time with Kos. The blog from whence it came can be found at a link somewhere inside the text. I’ll be kind and leave this sotto voce. And of course! the blogger may be very right. This may indeed be a very spot-on take on Kos.
In which case I will eat a fried cat. I feel pretty safe. I made the same promise over “Fitzmas” hype, and made the promise as it ramped up and made it repeatedly as Fitzmas ramped and ramped. Ramped right into the desert and C-span’s televised Plame-gate panel.
Here is a tease from the text:
What Markos has done is provide progressives, those who feel their government and the ideals of our country are being hijacked by the radical right, with a place to express themselves. If Markos retired to a remote island off of Fiji tomorrow, Daily Kos would continue for years.
Markos has never held himself out as the Pied Piper of the netroots.
No?… just follow him into the desert to fountains of chocolate. Talk about a party planned for rubes. And of course! not his party, but Warner’s. But it was the keynote, cornerstone. One friend wisely noted, Warner planned to really plumb the ”netroots” for his own PAC and for his PAC to become a gateway to ”netroots” cash. Sounds likely. Lotta back scratching with the boys. Of course, not all fell for it (the party). Thank the lord. Some dignity.
There is more. It did not end soon.
He repeatedly has expressed his discomfort at the media’s attempts to cast him in this light. He has no ambitions of being the maestro or rock star of the movement. I have known Markos for 4 years. […] I’ve spent time with him and his family in San Francisco and at their home in Berkely. I’ve hung out with him in Washington, Boston, New York and Denver. Here’s how I see him.
What Markos has is passion and a vison. While he has been hugely successful in implementing his vision through Daily Kos, trust me on this one, he’s only just begun.
His plans for the future will take progressive activism to heights not dreamed of today. The mainstream media is playing catch-up and Markos is way beyond them.
In short, anyone who discounts Markos does so at their peril.
WELL!, Should we expect parties 200 stories up and fountains of cherry coke soda next year? Triple Dose Meta-Kos panels? A diamond in every goodie bag? Vegas would be the place for a tiny tiny diamond.
Dancing bears? Surely some pol will pick up the cost. And ride for a fall a few days later. Warner? Warner?
As for Markos being ”way beyond” the media…. well… he did say he was on a “different plane” at the NDN annual conflabby. hmmm. I said then, “out beyond Pluto?”
”Progressive activism”? More Boyz Bidness from the Armstrong, Bowers and Kos? Oh too right, I forgot! he is just the hapless bystander. Or, Jesus never met John the Baptist. I mean, we are headed to Holy Hosts consecrated to The Kos soon. Virgin birth anyone?
My guess, the author was under some stress. A lefty misspelled “Berkeley”. [Note, I consider myself to be of the left.]
There is more – and I will put more up – but I need to digest real food and not gag too hard while I do it…
By the time the word “blog” is understood by mainstream Americans, bloggers will have moved on. Markos and those in the netroots once again will leave big media in the dust. Politicians, if they are smart, will hang with the netroots to avoid a similar fate.
Business is as business does. I hear a pitch in there. Friends of Kos (FOK).
I’m not sure that I or any other solo blogger with a day job will make it to these next levels — the medium will be far too advanced for one person, as opposed to a community like Daily Kos or Firedoglake to get there. But I think you can take one thing to the bank. Markos not only will be there, he’ll be leading the charge.
Ooops. But the theme, the meme and the ream (all over the blogs in Koserei push back) is that The Kos of the Holy Hosts does not matter.
But still he will lead?
And the writer clearly seems to need to know that Kos is The Leader. Even if he is on Fiji. Or the writer offers another tabloid blog. Inside the roping system. Its a campaign. But you got that one, I bet.
Did not work for me. And this was sold by Kos from his FP as a “character reference”. This was written by an adult. A professional. A media (punditry is all) person, I do recall cable channels sending the equipment for remotes for the blogger to hook up for those “Breaking News” snap! interviews from the home base.
As I said, it is a business, sold as a movement. Or a religion. Hard to say by now. I can tell you, in San Francisco, we know a thing or two about cultish behavior.
Stop! Stand down! I said “cultish behavior”.
This was the close (following a dismissive take on “attacks on Jerome”… some idea apparently that they should not be occurring. Naive. And that from an attorney, mind you)
All these stories do is make the entire online media community appear petty and superficial. They are a distraction and it’s time to move on.
Well… it was not hard to do. And the beg to move on or to say that this that or the other was “nothing” was the refrain in the “character reference”. Running scared. But despite the “going dark” comments Kos made to Newsweek… I see Boys running fierce.
Business day.
UPDATE, 8:30 am, PT
… at the very bottom I will link to Billmon. Whom I have read since he was “weekend guest blogger” at DKos in 2002/3. When he and Steve Soto left, the political operatives moved in, to the Front Page… with no clue as to what they were… and we were left to figure out what was going on. I got it, others did as well. Many were naive (stand down, I did not call Billmon naive).
With one snip:
But I still haven’t explained why I’m even talking about this stupid crap. The reason is what happened over the weekend: i.e. the major slime job in Newsweek, and David Brooks’ ridiculous column in the New Pravda. The campaign against Kos, which I’d originally dismissed as just another pissy TNR vendetta, is starting to look more and more like a coordinated effort: a Swiftboat operation.
At the very least, it’s snowballing into a more systematic media attack on Left Blogistan, which makes it my fight as well as Kos’s.
Clearly I just don’t have that feeling. As for it swelling into an attack on Greater Left Blogistan… that is nothing new from MSM. It flared hot, bright and mean in 2003. Yes it appeared to be against Dean or Dean supporters, but really, if one listened closely, the objective was to discredit a new medium.
Tuer dans l’oeuf. Kill it in the egg.
Kos is part of Blogistan, but has gone to war on the Left, on women, on abortion (he demonised it – and others have taken up the cudgel) and reproductive rights, on all manner of small “d” voters and activists within the so-called left of the aisle, grassroots (as opposed to what I call “greasy roots”).
He worked hard to alienate. And, clearly,I believe he should enjoy the fruits of that labor.
It is old news. But I guess news to some.
************************************************************
NOW it is a Whupdate: Whip those doggies. Mush!
Kos front pages the Billmon piece. They have their manifesto and marching tune. Yes, that was blunt. Nothing in the Meta-Kos would do it (honestly it was a pathetic service). More had to be brought in. I can guess the thread.
BBB: Apology, Zengerle – and a toss of the stars… And Meta Kos – from lui-meme… Who better to Meta? 25 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Democrats.19 comments
Zengerle explains, apologises for the Gilliard “e-mail”- with a starry starry night at the end…
I had never read the original 5/31 Michael Sherer article in salon, The Blogfather, that sparked the storm. Here it is… (Honda ad, not too bad)
Gilliard has a piece up, from this morning, prior to The Plank posting… a sort of round-up.
Trapper John tells the official version. It has always been amusing that the story is that Kos switched support to Dean – from Clark…. Even then it seemed the actual support for Dean was fron his friend Armstrong, and as a team they ended up doing the several months of “technical” work for Dean.
Wise always to remember, these are operatives. It is the keynote (but don’t call Warner’s speech in the desert “keynote”!) in the orchestration of a “movement”… or a story line that is sold as a movement. And a business that is built as a movement. Be a wise shopper! But, hey, that is a horse they need to beat to life: the movement. Be sure and save the movement, save the nation. Hard to argue for a life-saving operation to… <laugh now> save an operative. Lacks that zing and pull to the heart strings.
Or maybe it was Dean’s stars they followed… Hard to be sure by now, or then. I do know that 3 days before Iowa loss + take down, Kos hit up the Dean people hard for money for the DNC. The long thread that ensued is no longer part of the record, only the text of Kos’s piece remains. He did not get much, it was basically pity money – he and “dncdoug” begged hard (and more than a tad mean too), Kos came down into the thread even… it was getting out of control. And the very next day, he re-ran the play, another hard-edged beg for money.
Well, with what was coming, and months of leaks about Iowa, nobody ws going to be pleased with the DNC much for a long time – and it was get the money now.
If you had half of a politically aware brain, it was clear what was going on. DNC leaned on the boyo. Hard.
Have a laugh, people had gotten madder about the smell of the whole thing when “dncdoug” came into the thread to pat us down. And put us down… It was not a happy event.
My first strong clue that Kos was a party operative, and little more was that, there was never a single word on the FP about the 527 that operated with Democratic monies, dirty as hell – and ran the Osama ad, one of three ads. Not. one. word. Told me a very great deal – especially as a politically aware person who values the long arc plays, and thus I was clued in to watch the little fellow closely – and clued-in by December 2003.
The Osama ad story broke late at night, Friday December 12. By mid-day Saturday, the WaPo had up what was their Sunday editorial on the dirty play. Because the story was unique – and stank so badly – it was a good editorial. I was surprised. And then FP silencio at the House that Kos built.
Plenty of party operations and Democratic elections plays just as dirty, but that was well worth a write up. If you supported Dean. Or, if political stories interested you… they don’t much interest Kos and never did. Not in his stars I guess. It always seemed logical, and operational, to support Dean, if you have a site populated early by the restive Dean people — Kos was asking who supported who very early on, it was clear in late 2002 quite a few favorable to Dean — We also had cash.
Some things really are simple. Distasteful as revisiting the primaries is… but hey, it is TJ kicking that smelly (and leaking like mad) old horse.
Kick it, get kicked back.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
UPDATE: 6:45 am. PT
Beltway Blogroll takes a round up look, at the Return of the Blogfather (hey the boys picked that one, and drove it hard – as marketing, if they are checking for bite marks, look to their own incisors) and a look at the Karen Collins diary that her husband Jesse Kornbluth wrote about in Huffpo. And more…
The ‘Blogfather’ Breaks His Silence
Jerome Armstrong used the MyDD forum he created to finally respond to ethics outcry against him and co-author Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of Daily Kos.
“Let me just state for the record that any payola allegations or some quid pro quo deal involving Markos and myself are complete fabrications,” wrote Armstrong, whom Moulitsas calls his “blogfather.”
Armstrong’s comment was posted as an addendum to a post authored by Matt Stoller that was dismissive of the ongoing controversy. “I think these insiders and Republicans are just obsessed with us,” wrote Stoller, who has faced criticism himself at The Channel Changer for his “apparent lack of concern about the (Jerome) Armstrong dust-up.”
and:
UPDATE: Moulitsas’ stay-the-course message, apparently written in response to a critical New York Times piece by conservative writer David Brooks (subscription only), was not well-received by one diarist at his site. And her admonition to Moulitsas that “The Cover-Up Is Worse Than The Crime” was not well-received by the Daily Kos community.
The diarist, Karen Collins, just happens to be married to journalist and former America Online editorial director Jesse Kornbluth, who counter-attacked at The Huffington Post. Some excerpts:
For better or worse, Markos is on trial. And this is tragic, for the site is one of the greatest on the Web and Markos, on his worst day, is a zillion times the man and thinker that Brooks is on his best. But in his e-mail, Markos got it exactly backward. If the “news” about Armstrong is indeed nothing, he would have done better to suggest that his friends in the progressive community write about it. … But there’s an easy way out: Markos, do what my wife asked — give us an explanation. And then promise you’ll never send another e-mail that makes you look like Vito Corleone [of “The Godfather” movies] telling the Tattaglias and Barzinis what to do.
UPDATE:
Have a laugh, at MyDD Eric Boehlert dissects the Newsweek piece — did people expect something else? based on what? What about either Kos, DKos, the business of politics or MSM indicated anything different? Nothing. Kos runs, or tries to run!, take-downs at his tabloid, and Newsweek eventually looks over at him. Big soft whup. But boys have tender flesh.
1. Markos is described as a “rock thrower” and ” party-loyalty enforcer,” who is filled with “growing belligerence and paranoia” and who last week posted a “berserk” rebuttal to a New Republic hit piece. (Newsweek intentionally plays dumb and describes The New Republic as a “venerable liberal journal.” That’s the same “venerable liberal journal” that forcefully backed Bush’s pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.)
Kos has used ”liberal”, often. And surely allowed ”liberal” to be used about him and his business site. He is not a liberal, not a progressive, nor is the site liberal, nor, get a grip! is the party.
Laugh again, check the first comment:
Re: Newsweek Makes My Head Hurt (none / 0)
This merely means the conventional media is going to be shocked, SHOCKED, when a blue tidal wave sweeps over the country in November. 🙂
Carry on, it is a business day, first of a new week… yes, November should be a blow out. All those liberals in tow, let’s see if they are still writing checks.
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
UPDATE: 12:15 pm PT
Meta Meta Meta Meta…Meta Mama! from Kos lui meme! (I am still calling for meta-morphosis…) Tis but a wild cry in the desert on my part! but what do I get? Kos (dark?, going dark?…) and a lisitng of who in Greater BlogKnot endorses or pushes back or just … joins.
And A Ringing, hear that? A Ringing Endorsement. Read on…
In any case, given reports of rabid squadrons of venom-spitting lambs roaming the internets, I thought it’d be fun to do a catch-all thread of some of the best responses.
Really, as much as people try to paint us as “angry”, fact is we have a lot of fun with this stuff. We make politics fun, and do so effortlessly.
[… that is just a flat out beg for everyone to remember all the bitching – and moaning over at Dkos – MCat]
As for my marching orders for the week, I’m running a little late on putting them together. So feel free to post pictures of kittens or orchids until I get back. Tour De France previews are also acceptable.
[Well, all of that is safer than discussing Democrats’ chances, I do agree. Carry on! -MCat]
hmmm… as I said, it is a new business day… and Ezra Klein at TAPPED posts a full throttle endorsement. I think. But then I’d have to assume that Warner, a very nervous pol, and Sherrod who was not answering calls, were happy happy happy to be in the Brooksie ”tag you’re it” column:
Like a childhood hacker becoming a brilliant computer programmer, what Jerome once did wrong, he’s now doing right. He’s hyping his candidate to the nation’s political influencers, and he appears to be succeeding. Call foul on that, and you better be willing to call foul on the entire political system, where Carville and Shrum and Rove do precisely the same thing, but with far less transparency in who they’re talking to and targeting.
have a laugh… I had dropped off to an actual nap, awoke 30 minutes ago ready to lope onward… BUT NO! and I get a whiff of a beg to move on.
Poor sods. Showing their necks.
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
WHUPDATE:
I do believe I called for an ant hill to be pushed over.
Enter Cadenhead. Who was invited off Advertising Liberally a few months ago. Oh, yes yes! I shall hunt for his writings on this… you know how FOK (Friends of Kos) are, Link!? Link?!… well it beats coming clean!
Two snips from a long entry:
Jerome Armstrong Pushed Second Stock
I’ve been trying to pin down MyDD founder Jerome Armstrong’s stock-related activities in 2000, when the SEC alleges that he touted a Chinese Linux company called Bluepoint on Raging Bull without disclosing that he’d received $20,000 in stock from the company’s management.
Though Armstrong’s message board postings related to Bluepoint are no longer available on Raging Bull, I found dozens of messages on the InvestorsHub site in which he promoted a related company before a merger, never revealing he was issued 25,000 shares in the deal.
An SEC filing reveals that Armstrong received the shares in a reverse merger executed by the Chinese wireless startup AccessTel, which acquired a publicly traded online mall called Shopss.Com on Dec. 18, 2000.
AND don’t miss Cadenhead’s close:
In an October 1, 2000, posting on InvestorsHub, Armstrong said that SEC enforcement of messages on an over-the-counter message board was extremely unlikely:
The only thing anyone ever gets nailed for in the OTC is deliberately and misleadingly pumping to dump, anything other than that is just too ordinary for the SEC to bother.
We’ll just let all of that sink in. Reading around the BlogSnots and BlogKnots amd just plain bloggers, over the past few days… I can be a loving friend but in some situations, I need documents before I defend some actions, especially to an ad hoc collection of readers, posters and bloggers who are so desperate to be a “community”.
For some – it is a business. And those for whom it is not a business, nor a Democratic party business (electability will not save the nation, nor is it the Statue of Liberty) need to consider the implications of what people will do and say to defend a business.
Sorry to be blunt, but it has to be said.
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
RE-WHUPDATE:
I had linked to this yesterday from Riehl but just as a link, will do so again – With a clip. I was being kind (really) til more hit the light of day. But… onward:
There is also ample evidence on the Internet that, whether illegal, or not, Armstrong’s judgment, both political and financial, is certainly subject to question. In this post, poster MyDDdotcom indicates he also posted on stocks as 426figures.
Yep, used to post on RB as 426figures, good to be here, thanks… SYCD looks like a good buy at .11, if CMIX or TGHI works out to form I’ll load up again there… that Pokemon run thing sure was a fun one:)
Following the trail of 426figures leads one to this post, which claims to display a variety of screen names for MyDD’s Jerome Armstrong.
could get Jerome B. Armstrong (426figures, four2sixfigures, 426, im426, jeromejackson, mydddotcom etc…to start a message board. He does specialize in Shells and RM’s over on Ihub,SI or RB. We all know how involved he was on the early boards For SCII, I think he even started the RB thread. Not sure what his new alias is now he does change them alot
Evidence of Armstrong’s bad judgment might be seen here on this board, upon which a poster, 426figures, consistently touts another stock, that of InvestAmerica, Inc (INVT).
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
FURTHER WHUPDATE :: Had enough boys?, cuz i am not done, I have been clear about that.
Back to Cadenhead, he did a round-up post on Thursday the 22nd, and this was his close:
My personal view is colored by the fact that I wouldn’t trust Bowers to tell the time. But I think the 85 bloggers in the Liberal Blog Advertising Network and popular Kos diarists need to take a hard look at these guys and how closely they want to be associated with them.
Politics has a tendency to attract people who put their own interests above party or principle when the money starts rolling in, as Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff have ably demonstrated. I’d hate to see well-respected liberal bloggers like Joshua Marshall and Atrios burn too much capital in defense of More-Kash Moulitsas.
AND:
I see TAPPED has several entries, Ygelsias and others and a reply to Siegel over blogofascism or whatever it was. I am sure everyone knows their way to TAPPED, I’ll skip links….
One thing about Greater Blogland, if it can be turned into a joke, they will.
Funny in a business as serious as a heart attack. Meanwhile dispatched to the campaigns goes on, too.
How does the money work in KosyLand??
BBB: Boy Blog King returns to the desert.:: Updated, Whupdated and a PSA Whupdate. 25 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in Big Box Blogs, Blonde Sense, DC Politics, Democrats.33 comments
Newsweek. Seems Boy King will roll up the orb and septre – choosing (well that is the story) to go dark for a few months.
Intense meditation (yoga anyone?), work on political races is cited as the agenda. Dark thoughts about Hillary and Joe.
Not as dark as the thoughts that Warner is having. And Sherrod.
People love to center on Hackett, well we are a militaristic culture… but I wonder if Hackett and Cegelis feel they were barely pumped, but surely dumped.
I promise you one thing, this will whiz right by most Kos-sacks. They have not caught the meaning of much the past couple of years. But Kos and Thugs gamed for keeping the duller butterknives around. And those who loved the hype. It was like being at a make-up counter. Car salesroom.
Or listening to a stock tout. They got sold. And then they kept selling each other: Incestuous amplification. Same thing that sold the war, if you read Jane's Defence Weekly.
One of the hard realities, you cannot read just the people who presume to tell you they agree with you. It is important to read widely. Many Kos-sacks did not. They came to Kos for "the truth".
Stock bubbles. Tulipmania. And finally just bubbles…
Look on the bright side, Newsweek left out the Jerome the Astrologer stuff. But Blogs have a purpose. And RedState and others are not done.
Whiz bangs in the desert. Maybe they make an annual trek to the place of broken dreams. Yes, I can see them doing that. The last bright neon at the place that Kos built.
Shed a tear.
UPDATE. 7:14 am, PT
Or read Capitol Hill Blue. Several extracts.
WHUPDATE, 7:55 am, PT:
Or as Dkos waddles onward, sans Boy King for a bit (you know they never leave), another site is hyping their ''community'' – and their ''family values''. And that they are "progressives". And building a ''movement''. Truly a Barnum moment. One born every minute.
Have a Kool Aid canape:
This has been a banner week for progressive family values on display here at FDL, the subject of our Late Nite column last Saturday. We’re building a progressive community here unlike any I’ve seen anywhere on the web.
And yet, we’re just part of a more broad cultural movement. Any sustainable political movement derives its power from a more basic cultural movement. Some other time, I may write in more depth of what I think may be happening culturally, but tonight, you can offer your own ideas here in the discussion thread. Read the rest of this entry »
UPDATE, 8:30 am, PT
Julian Borger in The Guardian, from the 22nd, so a bit of swift reprise. The last graf is simple truth.
If the only lesson politicians draw from the Dean experience is that the web is a good place to raise money, Ms Teachout argues, they will fail to break through the apathy and cynicism of the electorate. But she has left politics and is teaching at the University of Vermont.
The top "Deaniacs" who stayed in politics are mostly working as fundraising consultants for Democrats in Washington. It is far from clear at this stage who has coopted whom – the blogosphere or the political establishment.
PSA and a WHUPDATE, 11:00 am, PT
Jerome is heard from – that's the PSA – and BowersSpeak (I guess it is one corner of a large mouth?).. OOOPS it was StollerSpeak! wonders why the likes of Brooks are obsessed with Boys Who Blog (and do other things, too: swing on a star!).
I think these insiders and Republicans are just obsessed with us.
Oh, it is just that endlessly reflecting mirror of Boy Bloggers' own obsession with their various selves.
Italics and emphasis are mine:
Update [2006-6-25 8:44:56 by Jerome Armstrong]: Let me just state for the record that any payola allegations or some quid pro quo deal involving Markos and myself are complete fabrications. Perhaps they are obsessed because they represent a party that has shown it's complete inability to govern in this country, and they recognize that a people-powered movement is happening in this country that is going to oust them into the bin of history.
No one person is the leader of this movement, but as it grows, the fight from the opposition that resists the change that must happen in this nation will arise. Let them fight, we will still win.
"We will still win"…?…?
Well, that would be novel. Looking at the record. Does Warner still want the Boys' Blogging Home Almanac Way to Win? Sherrod? uh, Sherrod??
When you read the boyos, from any of the various mouths, remember… Democrats are paying for that scheisse consulting. In DC and in spots across the nation.
Meanwhile that sort, the tired touts and the rest of the litter – and all the other assembled Democratic <cough> consultants and operatives, go up against the hard spade work the Republicans have done for decades.
Have a contortion.
UPDATE, 3:20 pm, PT
Or watch as a once True Believer come to his senses. It took seeing his wife attacked in her diary at Kos. Jesse Kornbluth at HuffPo… had aemd not posted it to a thread I would have stopped reading in the early grafs. Slobber wobber dobber for KosWorld. Keep reading….
And it seems there are more irrational believers [billmon] than one ever knew. Pity. Kos cannot save the nation, save a Democrat, save the political process, nor I suspect in the long run save his own ass. Frankly I am unsure why people ever believed that…
Voluntary contortionists. Good luck to all True Believers.
BBB: Boy Speak…::Whuppity update! :: Whup Whup Update too! 24 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in Big Box Blogs, DC Politics, Democrats.16 comments
From Politics TV – Blog Channel comes:
Towards the end of his opening remarks at the NDN Annual Meeting at a hotel in downtown Washington, DC, Markos Moulitsas (founder of DailyKos.com) remarked that
“this week has been a very interesting week for me…”
WATCH NOW: Windows Media / QuickTime [Length: 2:05]
Politics TV runs a tease… any more and you have to listen… but here is the pertinent snip:
"This week has been a very interesting week for me. And I know I have sort of arrived in a scary way, because now I'm not being attacked for what I've said and done. People are making stuff up about me now. They're inventing things. And so I know now I'm on a different plane."
.
hmmm.
[thanks to NYCO]
Riehl World View, new. A look at the money end (see below for whuppity update), and some thoughts on who works for who. Links.
York at NRO has several grafs of text from the NDN speech. Greensooner in comments indicates Kos was just as … planetary last year… Then again, if you are on a separate "plane" are you necessarily on any planet? Might be floating out past Pluto? But still on a differnt "plane"…?
Beats pondering the Democrats' chances. Or ''joining up'' with Democratic operatives and telling yourself you have "joined a movement" … as he'd like us to believe SImon Rosenberg has. Boys go back. A ways. Let's spin that top the other way.
kaus has updates. On Kos, Armstrong and interplanetary relocation. A whole new meaning to off-shoring.
Round-up piece at Beltway BLogroll at NJ. Enjoy – or not.
I don't think Warner, official Southern White Male / Red State Dem – and I am sure his best hope was for the Veepessa spot… he cannot be too happy. Last I had looked at the official blog… it seemed the videos of Great Splash in the Spasmodic Desert … were down.
AND, I heard that Sherrod is getting calls, and not taking them, asking if Jerome is still on the payroll.
WHUPPITY UPDATE… 9:46 pm. PT
This is whup-uppity as we (which is me) are coming out of the closet, so to speak… Riehl World View has publicised the available financials from BlogPAC… it was in a comment here two days ago (Deeper Throat, that was before Dankest Deepest Throat arrived), time to bring it up above the fold. Plus, an online friend had alerted me a few months ago.
I have been waiting…. I am patient. Eventually the harvest comes in. Or cocktail hour arrives. A simple cocktail for me, for others, the planets align. What is at the mid-coeli? A dollar sign?
You can see Blog PAC's FEC filings here. They've already had more than one request for additional information as regards itemized expenditures and affiliated organizations or relationships. The pdf's aren't linkable, but are listed as Requests for Additional Information at link above. …
Update: If you look at the BlogPAC disclosure records, you'll see that from Jan – Mar of 2005 – their only disbursements were to another blogger / consultant – Bob Bingham – from the Swing State Blog. According to slate, he was a one time employee of Armstrong, as well as a leading force behind BlogPAC. Interesting. They've been collecting money on line and paying it to … themselves for consulting?? I don't know. But those filings could prove interesting, either now, or in the future.
So. Does Bob Brigham of Swing State Project (too? … ?)… still work at the Skyline offices (pdf.) at NPC, under the soft wing of the Rappaports? Angels of the Desert Con-flabby…
And then there is Whup Whup update…
I mean, what does one say about Donald Brooks? But! a middle brow to bitch about a middle brow online … hmmm, well … what is it? not a movement, that is for sure…. A mix of ATM and one armed bandit? With a liberal feel-good lounge … a waiting room?
Not their best day, Mark Warner's and Sherrod Brown's names figure high up, in the first few grafs…
The planets align… if there used to be a dollar sign at the collective mid-heaven for the boyos… well, time to update the celestial projections. I would say…
Have a coupe de champagne. That is Irish crystal, from the 20s. The champagne is Veuve Clicquot, orange lable.
Kos from late yesterday. Keeping it short. Probably wise… and safe to assume that Warner and Sherrod are getting more calls. hmmm for some odd reason, I just flashed on scenes from Ishtar. Not sure why that happened. Maybe thoughts of the desert. Or a boatload of money down the drain…. How fast did the ice sculptures melt?
Every day a new day… what will this one bring? Rising stars? Falling stars? Some are seeing stars in a new way. A word of advice – and I have done this for years – a safe summer sojourn in the desert is to go to Palm Springs for the sales at Sak's. Really stellar.
And, you know what you are getting.
BBB: Boys push back. Links and whatever else… Updates and a Whupdate. 24 June 2006
Posted by marisacat in Big Box Blogs, DC Politics.7 comments
Well, how old are the Zengerle pieces in The Plank? Mid week? Earlier?… due to Fog of Blog Wars, I must check… (Zengerle's first piece appeared the 21st).
In the mean time, some links to the push back. The fake phrase. Or was it used elsewhere. But still, Zengerle is on the spot here. Where did he get that phrase *AND* where did Gilliard use it, if he did, since he does not fully refute the phrase – or something similar. To be clear, neither Greenwald nor Mike Stark are refuting the email extracts that Zengerle quoted.
To refresh, here is the phrase at issue:
I dont see how this can be ignored. We should all write in defense of this once we know the facts. Jerome?
Feeling clear on this?
Read the whole of the Gilliard post, the convoluted, stern! refutation… and see what you think.
A snip:
Only problem: I have no record of sending such an e-mail to the Townhouse list, Kos, Armstrong, who did not participate in any of the discussions, or anyone else. I didn't send any e-mail with that phrase at all. There's a similar phrase sent to Hubris Sonic a month before on an entirely different topic, and the Greenwald e-mail
To be fair, I told Glenn I disagreed with the characterization of it being false, because I may have express some kind of sentiment close to that. The issue to me is not that Zengerle created it out of whole cloth, but if he got it from a source that he was too lazy and sloppy to confirm it with me. Let me be clear, I didn't deny writing the e-mail. I said that I had no record of writing such an e-mail with that phrase, to the list on that day.
I told Zengerle the same thing and that he needs to provide the provenance of the e-mail so I can confirm or deny it. If it turns out I didn't write those words, I'm going to write Franklin Foer, the editor of the New Republic and demand a retraction and an apology.
Greenwald (previous MCat post has a couple comments from his piece extracted), Gilliard lui-meme and — I hear Hunter has a piece up over at BlogSon, Daily Kos. Found it, it is meta meta meta. Everything and a navel to contemplate TOO!
I am still calling for meta-morphosis!
His piece responds to this from Peretz.
A MESSAGE FROM TNR'S LIEBERMAN-LOVING NEOCON OWNER:
Forgive me. But I never read Daily Kos until today. Well, now that I've read it, the first thought that came to me is how illiterate Kos is, just plain illiterate. There has been other not-with-a-pick-axe-but-with-a-bludgeon left-wing journalism in the English speaking world, the American PM, for example, or the British Tribune. If you look them up (they must be some place on the Web), you'll see how elegant surgical argument can be. OK, that's not what the Daily Kos is. Daily Kos is actually a rant, Kos's own rant and then his comrades.
And his rant against us, well, borders on a nut case's.
I am calling Blog Swarm, Blog War and TNR as mag stand in for Greater MSM. And I think everyone needs crisis management and media lessons, lessons that don't include hair gel.
And really, in the big world, who cares. The real political story is what is happening slightly off stage. A part of that is Warner, the earnest and very nervous Southern White Male, ''Dem in a Red State'' pol – dragging Mudcat Saunders with him for "color commentary", and when he decides to, just how loudly he cashiers the West Coast Astrologer. That is the real story – or a part of it…
Til we hear of that one, snips from Greater, but ever lesser, Blog World for weekend amusement.
Here is a snip from the Hunter (made it to the Rec List, call mother!) close:
In short, Peretz writes two paragraphs of personal attack blasting the shabby illiteracy of personal attacks, ignores the issues raised as to his magazine's own "reporting", and considers himself smugly vindicated.
Perhaps he is. And perhaps that demonstrates, as much as anything, the tattered shreds of that old and once-proud banner, one that many of us will no longer pretend at propping into relevance.
Well snap! honey. Take that. Zowie Pow! Marty is shaking. His is also briefer. Hunter reminds of weeks of his pieces on IBM Selectrics, circa 1972. Or whatever it was. The RW still got Rather, they'd only been gunning for him for decades…. Leftischer Blogs (but they are not Left, we all know that – nor do they wish to be "left out") ''got'' Bob Domenech. Oh well, not to worry!, before that they "got" Gannon, nee Guckert. Big Whup. Some thought it would be "Watergate again!". Anything here sound like Fitzmas?? … and "Fitzmas" was a froth-built, 2005 edition Dem Party diversion to energise the base – as Roberts and Alito ascended to the court – it is separate from the real issues in the war, the lying to go to war – and the retaliatory outing of a NOC whose area of expertise was WMD. And some, I do believe, saw a movie in that one. And still did at opening comments at Spasm in the Desert.
I recall many a shrieked for, begged for, cry for battle from the boys (and the girls), they wanted to, oh, go to battle against or with MSM, with TNR, with the DLC (til they did not)… I am remembering the piece that Kos lui-meme FPed – but did not write, in February of 2005, for a ''DNCer in the know" and thus posted an anonymous hit piece on Donna Brazile. He says he apologised to her… but the apology needed to be FPed at Dkos. That I do not recall.
Boys wanted rumbles badly — I'm a Jet all the way til my last dying day!… they begged and begged for it. So, be happy. Sing a song. Call your mothers. You can now wear long pants. Or push-up bras. Enjoy.
Days of our Lives. Sands in the Hourglass. As the Blogs Squirm.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
UPDATE, 9:25 am, PT
Sean Paul at Agonist says Zengerle must burn his sources or …
He either needs to a.) apologize for lying about what Steve Gilliard did not write or b.) burn the sources that sent him the fictitious email. I can personally vouch for Steve that he did not write said email and that I did not receive any email from him that even remotely resembled the one Zengerle cites. It's really quite simple: 'fess up, Zengerle.
Think I am going with Punk Ass, from the comments:
Armstrong Still Not A Male Prostitute, Technically
That Kos is even giving the story time of day is fucking diabolical, considering the only interesting thing about the whole armstrong thingie is not that Armstrong actually shilled stocks for cash, the interesting thing is that
A) It wasn’t a huge fucking shock (”Major democratic party blogger used to be a con man for big business” should be a scandal of some kind, if you think about it, but isn’t because it’s armstrong, who is an already proudly out member of the paid-for-dem-hack community), and of course B) That Kos apparently thinks that there is nothing wrong with doing this, like Armstrong is being called on smoking pot in college or something actually minor, this man lied to trusting internet denizens so that they’d basically pump money into his bank account.
This puts him on the same level as nigerian scam artists (so if armstrong ever starts a fundraiser to get a trapped Kossack astronaut down from a secret Democratic Party manned satellite, don’t believe him).
Jedmunds at Pandagon on what I am now calling:
The Condo Owners Association List.
BTW, I recall one expostion that stated upwards of 300 were on that list. hmmm I can guess some. But a listing would be interesting. And there was media, oh, sympathetic media bien sur! on it… as well.
Well, somebody broke ranks. The Democratic Elections Process Blog – Adjuncts, Cohorts Too! – Army of America, breaking apart… 😉
Iocaste of Lawyers Guns and Money enters. Jerome and legal issues … tho iocaste wonder if anyone cares. This is an Iocaste comment, outside the body of the main text..
Well, it really is illegal, what he did. And it really is payola, in the sense of being paid to promote something, except that as I understand it, at the time he hadn't set himself up as a promoter in the same way he promotes candidates today. He was just some guy who posted about stocks and you could believe him or not.
Blodget was a closer case legally, because he didn't come within the text of the statute. But 1/1000th as bad would be overstating the gravity of Armstrong's conduct. The analysts — Grubman, Meeker, Blodget — these were people who were viewed as having significant authority and the voice to reach millions of people. The damage they did was far, far more severe.
Greenwald updates with an extended comment to his thread.
[Addenda: I am sorry: Greenwald's must be called a WHUPDATE. I suggest people read the posting Iocaste of Lawyers Guns and Money made, the cool measured tone – and the narrow focus.. The lack of fevered defense. And then read the Greenwald entry. And the thread.
It is my guess, an educated one however, that some of the tied-in blogs — sorry to prick the Hindenberg here: but it is not a Movement, it is a Democratic party booster society with a certain type of mega-phone and tied, quite closely, to political campaigns for specific candidates — that some of the tied-in blogs, are considering what they are involved in. How simple or how complex it may be. I will leave it at that, except to add that I have received an interesting email. Looking it over and may post some of it ….
BTW, it is Marisacat on plain old vanilla AOL.]
AND the thread comments that follow are very interesting. Koserei are out in force. I see a trusty, a minion of a former (but they never leave) front pager. The standard slam is that if one questions Kos, one is aiding the Republicans. The movement is all! AND: All evil comes from Rove – or Lieberman, I suppose in some editions of the gospels… And as Kos and others gained influence, dark forces massed to take them down. Well Ben Nelson dials Dobson (wapo, March 27) I suppose Kos could be calling the La Hayes.
The godamedest funniest that is being pushed, is that MSM misunderstands that Kos and Jerome are not the "The Blogs" and by this critical misunderstanding, they make them the story and thus miss the greatness of the movement.
Koserei are on something a LOT stronger than Kool Aid. Check them for online purchases of bomb shelters and bunkers. Stop them at the gates if they try to fly to a banana republic haven in Guyana. For Kos to escape the controversy that refuses to understand ''he is not the story'' (oh yeah, look away, over there…) and is forced to off shore his Blog Kingdom.
Or this is just the summer season. Have a g and t.
Breakthru. Self-Whupdate. Now, I've been good (relativism is all!)… I have not linked to any of the salacious (but really very delicious) writings, caches being found, snips being shared and so on… on Jerome the Astrologer. But Mike Krempasky, Very Much the Red Operative and one of the RedState boys that [suppposed] Blue Boys (mix too many colors, get a mud color, you know) got to know rather well… MK's entry at RedState should not be missed (actually several posts there are good, as in bad! and they link to Riehl and others …).
And then there is this comment. How do they pick candidates? Star gazing?
Other than that, for a break and a change I put on RAI, for Italian news. But scandalo. Then Zambia, but, more scandals of government patronage and nepotism.
Have a negroni. Tall, chilled but no ice, a little light on the gin, big slice of blood orange.
Marisacat 