Archive for the ‘internet/free speech’ Category

FLASH! Charles Johnson trolls for hits: Lobbies to be an MSNBC regular…

Posted: December 1, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news, personal
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You know as someone who got less hits all of last year as Robert Stacy managed in the month of November you might expect me to put up a “look at me” post to drive some traffic over here.

It’s a real measure of how far LGF as fallen to see him putting up a “Look at me” post. There was a time when he was one of the top 10 bloggers around. But when you have thrown almost everyone under the bus, censored comments and stifled dissent and attracted readers with all the friendliness of a Basil Faulty something has to be done.

A lot of this stems from his feud with Pam Geller but the breaking point was actually in April when Glen Beck hit him. The real bus throwing started around that time.

Ironically I wrote a post defending Johnson that week, and a quick follow up that didn’t take sides. I then discovered Robert Stacy’s Magnum Opus on the subject that prompted a long post of my own, my first comment , link and regular reading of his blog.

The turning point for me was was two fold, the Van Jones story and gave this warning:

one must always beware the specter of Sullivan’s syndrome that turned a once reasonable blogger into a Bush hating trig truther. Beck’s issues (and he HAS some) do not make the Obama administration in general or Van Jones in particular clean. A lot of Bush Derangement and Palin Derangement comes from the it

I accepted Charles Challenge to research Jones and found evidence that supported his position, it was also around that time that I got more into comments on LGF and discovered that like the Senate and amendments the real action at LGF is in comments. It was in comments that I had a personal dispute with Charles where I considered myself slandered and demanded satisfaction. After pressing the issue I got an acceptable response in comments and deleted the detailed post on the subject I had prepared. That really opened my eyes but since the response was acceptable I was ready to leave it there.

Then came the attack on the Tea Parties in general and Robert Stacy in particular.

to me the attack was cheap and came from nowhere. Robert Stacy being Robert Stacy did what was required, he fought back but more importantly people who knew him spoke up for him leading me to say this:

I don’t know Robert Stacy McCain personally, but after hearing his friends come to his defense, I sure would like to.

As I followed the fight in detail I investigated in the same way and concluded that Charles behavior dishonorable:

However there is another factor here, Robert Stacy McCain is the father of six. Those six carry his name and to some degree his reputation. He is fighting for their honor, his father honor and his great grandfather’s honor. He also as a father has to set the example for his children to stand up for themselves. If he lets this go without satisfaction he the example he will be setting will be terrible. As a father I see it and nod.

This is why as long as there is not an honorable resolution Robert Stacy will make sure in the words of Jeb Stuart whom he quoted “He will regret it but once, and that will be continuously.” It is not possible for him to do anything else, the consequences otherwise are too great and the longer it lingers the smaller the chances of an honorable solution will be..

All of this ended in my banning at LGF and others (Hi Peg), sudden LGF love from Andrew Sullivan and Firedoglake my single favorite post. Some brief defenses from Charles’ minions in my comments, and a long phone call from Robert Stacy which began a long distance friendship.

In the meantime LGF was last linked by Glenn Reynolds Aug 27, 2009 (on rathergate) and Charles last mentioned by name on April 16th 2009 (Beck v Johnson can’t we all just get along?). Robert Stacy’s Instalances? I count 11 Instalanches for him since Charles last one.

And here lies the REAL reason for today’s post by Charles…

Look at this page, you will see that Charles last instalanche was his 234th. Roll that number in your heads bloggers that is 233 more than me (are my posts that boring?) His first instalanche was April 22 2002. So in a 90 month period that is an avg of 2.6 instalanches a month or just under one instalanche every twelve days. Just to remind you here is what my one instalanche from last Feb did to my traffic:

instalance

Also consider that an instalanche means other blogs will pick up your posts in reference. Imaginable the cumulative effect of this happening every two weeks for 8 years. It is mind boggling!…

…and then it suddenly stops!

Now suddenly his blog has to stand on it’s own two feet, Charles is a good programmer and his blog design is in my opinion one of the best on the web but what good is that if you aren’t getting the traffic?

The left already hates you and doesn’t link, Glenn doesn’t link and neither does the right, even LGF watch hasn’t posted on him in over a month what do you do?. He choose Rule 4. Pick a fight but it can’t be just any fight, the right has left you and the left doesn’t trust you enough to link so to win the left over it is necessary to pick the Right Fight!

Plan A was to hit Sarah Palin via association, it took 5 days but Rachel Maddow picked up his attack obliquely. But it still didn’t do the trick, the hits didn’t keep coming so now comes plan B…

Pull an Ariana Huffington/David Brock: The left absolutely LOVES people who cross over. His post today is an attempt to get Dede Scozzafava attention. She has become the left’s favorite Republican. This is Charles play to get love from the lefty bloggers in general and maybe even MSNBC.

If he can manage to get himself on Maddow’s show he will have the attention he wants, it will not be the Instalanche but it will do.

This is all about ego and Charles need to feed it. Will it work, that depends on the if the left thinks he can be a useful idiot. At the moment he has the idiot part down pat but his support of Israel and the war on terror (proving his has not totally lost it yet) is going to be a sticking point, but maybe that will be their “big tent” move. Here’s how I think it will end…

.

I can hear the words from Charles now: “All right Mr. Reynolds I’m ready for my instalanche!”

Update: He got a link at Politico, that might be his “in” to morning joe. Will the plan work?

Meanwhile Ann Althouse (who still gets plenty of instalove) puts it in perspective:

Personally, I don’t need to go through the exercise of figuring out what happened to Johnson. I’ve avoided him all these years because he seemed too extreme and hateful. Now, he’s fired up about other people being extreme and hateful? And he’s fired up in a way that seems extreme and hateful? I do not need to go there. That was never my scene.

You don’t need to go there but he needs your link. This is trolling for an instalanche to start and MSNBC to finish.

Jules who is quoted by Ann expands on it:

I would have preferred a detailed description of the moment when all that inclusive thoughtful concern hit him like a silver bullet, when the switch flipped on the bright shining light on the road to Damascus, when … enveloped by its warm, mentally balanced, nurturing embrace … he started frothing about the hateful craziness. Also, how the crazy hating on his new side of the aisle fits into his new anti-hate/crazy world view. Not on offer in this brief crazy hate-a-thon. But it’s pretty obvious he bought this line that it is all about crazy hateful bigoted insurrection, which comes across ironically as crazy and hateful sounding.

Jules you aren’t getting it, it’s about the hits today that will be up and the gig tomorrow that he dreams of.

Update 2: Can we now safely say that HotAir’s move of Charles to their left channels slot was right? I still have a front page link to him myself, it is the “Rush Limbaugh, Honorary Lizardoid” link that goes to his Oct 20th 2006 post by that title. He has not pulled it yet or re-directed it. It will stay there to show we remember.

Update 3: Jules Crittenden links, thanks! I’ve always wondered if he was the newspaper guy standing next to me at the Boston Tea party talking about how he got out in time to another reporter.

Q: What do the “Global Warming” people have in common with some forms of Protestantism?

Posted: November 29, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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A: Apparently they also are making the argument that the salvation of Global Warming should be a question of faith and not works:

SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years.

They did keep what they refer to as “adjusted” data.

Let’s put this in a way our liberal friends can understand: Do you remember this iconic picture?

The woman above is Rose Mary Woods. She was President Nixon’s secretary who claims to have “accidentally” erased the 18 1/2 minute gap in the Watergate tapes. Lets pretend it is 1973 and All the Watergate tapes were erased and only “reconstructions” created by the Nixon White House were available. Would you have taken the Nixon White House’s word that the tapes were “accidentally” erased? Did you take Rose Mary Woods word? Is that credible?

In the letter of St. James he says the following:

So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead. James 2:17

In the same way, Science without data is “hypothesis” at best and “speculation” at worst.

If you still want to believe in this that’s up to you, far be it from me to tell you what religion you want to follow but don’t tell me it is “settled peer reviewed science”.

And Roger as far as your suggestion to postpone the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, not a chance! The people feeding at the Climate Change troth are going to try to push through one last big score while the gravy train still exists. Time is not on their side. That have to act NOW if they want our money.

How the MSM decides to cover this will be interesting.

Update: My friend Robert Stacy gives me the best blogging anniversary present there is: A top level link! He also touches on a pet peeve of mine:

This temptation to think that we are morally superior to our ancestors, you see, is the road to hell that Scientism paves.

The biggest problem with the baby boom generation is they never grew out of the teenage idea that they were smarter than their parents. That failure as much as the changes of the 60’s are the cause of a lot of the troubles we have today.

Oh as for transubstantiation the physics are identical to the physics of parting the Red Sea, Of Jonah and the Whale, the Feeding of the 5,000 and Peter’s healing of the cripple. Miracle of God. There is a long history of that kind of thing.

As a person who has been an eyewitness to at least one Miracle in person I’ve never understood why believing Christians have no problem believing all those other miracles but not Transubstantiation.

And herein lies what both Robert Stacy and I have over the climate guys. We disagree on this subject, passionately I suspect, but are not only unafraid to debate it publicly we will still be friends when our debate is done.

A person pushing real science or interested in truth doesn’t shut down debate. That was the biggest clue all along.

Update 2: In comments the discussion is Tradition tradition tradition…

Update 3: Gad-fry remembers Rose Mary Woods and comes up with his own 60’s connection.

Update 4: Democrat=Socialist has a good point:

If an employer can use computer forensics to find that Jenna Haze video you downloaded on the company laptop, couldn’t any diligent media outlet or United States DOJ (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) do the same?

That will depend on a couple of things, first to the tapes ACTUALLY still exist? They may not. Secondly it depends on how the data was wiped. If the assumption is that they wanted the data destroyed they would have certainly thought of this.

His suggestion is actually rather ironic considering this story, speak of the Nixon tapes and they are in the News again:

The US National Archives is bringing together investigators to search for scribbled secrets from the early days of the Watergate scandal as the chain of events began that destroyed Richard Nixon’s presidency.

The elusive goal is to discover what Nixon and an aide discussed during the infamous 18189-minute gap in a White House tape recording of a meeting held three days after burglars linked to the president’s re-election committee broke into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex, then an office building in Washington.

Serious Irony.

When it comes to the Sarah Palin book people get interesting…

Posted: November 27, 2009 by datechguy in amazon reviews, internet/free speech
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…to this I cite a comment left on my review:

Even your title indicates lack of understanding: “Normal.” What’s normal? Labeling the motives and stimuli of “liberals” and the “elite,” something you’re incapable of understanding? Rationalizing Sarah’s kids’ behavior, when you’d have slammed Obama if his kids approached the Palin kids’ behavior?

Commenting on PETA, as if that has anything to do with the book or Palin?

I’m not even convinced you read the screed. You could easily have written what you did whether you’d read it or not.

As to the screed’s sales, I’ve already commented here where those numbers are coming from. If you’re literate, look it up.

Apparently I haven’t read the book now, and “I’m rationalizing her kids behavior”. What is really amazing is this comes from a top 500 reviewer who apparently has earned respect at Amazon.

I had a funny thought and started to check the other 4 star reviews, he seems to be commenting on quite a few of them. I wonder why the need to go after people?

As I replied in the comments there, if it makes him happy then go for it, but it sounds like a case of Sullivan’s Syndrome to me. This goes to show it affects ordinary people (Look at his reviews, he seems at least as ordinary as I am) as well as pundits.

It brings to mind the School Superintendent in NH that was leading a group of about of a dozen vulgar screaming students outside the school where I saw her during the campaign. Long on angst and judgment but short on answers screaming at Palin, the bus and the thousands of average people in line waiting to see her.

For their own sake they’d better get over it, she could credibly run in any election from now till 2032 so this is going to be years and no politics is worth decades of worry and misery.

I’ve heard of burrying news on a weekend

Posted: November 27, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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…but the Gladney charges took the cake.

And the Post Dispatch’s headline is laughable:


Six charged in town hall disturbance

Town Hall disturbance. Town hall DISTURBANCE!

Let me remind you a bit of what I wrote IN AUGUST!

Yesterday Black conservatives protested in front of the St. Louis office of the NAACP to protest their non response to the attacks on Ken Gladney back on the 6th.

Mind you this is a man who was beaten and called a Nigger by a white man, there is some raw film too and the news and film was spread on the net that very day. Nothing.

The delightful Dana Loesch of Dump Dede fame noting the time taken and the incorrect information says this:

If only we had access to a network wherein we could share information, do research, and confirm articles in our stories …

Where is Kenneth Gladney and Kelly Owens’ suds summit? Oh, right. The police have to be perceived as the antagonist for that to work and the victims admin supporters, apparently.

Let me be blunt: If I as a person who had attended a tea party, a person who would gladly support Sarah Palin for higher office and who publicly shows agreement with the president’s political foes had done the same as these SEIU men I would be in jail now, my picture would be all over the news an commentators all over MSNBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, NBC, BET, UNIVISION et/al would be having long discourses on how Tea Parties and Sarah Palin drive people to racism. My black friends would disown me and I would be the subject of public and private scorn. All the country would all know my name and curse it.

The fact that a whole season has passed before we have reached this point is a national disgrace, John Hinderaker and Glenn Reynolds puts it succinctly:

JOHN HINDERAKER WONDERS why SEIU thugs enjoy more freedom of action than Navy SEALS. Because the SEIU thugs are advancing the goals of people in power?

But I flatter myself that my long explanation is pretty good too:

to an organization like the NAACP it doesn’t matter. Barak Obama is the first black president of the United States and the first black president (no matter who he would have been) can’t be allowed to fail for fear that Americans will consider a black man unqualified for the highest office in the land. And if Ken Gladney needs to be beaten, called a Nigger and put in his place to help prevent that failure so be it.

The problem is that they are looking at President Obama and what drives him backwards. He’s not a Black man who happened to be part of the Chicago Machine. He is a Chicago Machine Pol who happens to be black and THAT makes all the difference.

The tactics he uses and the items he supports are driven by that machine background. His race doesn’t mean squat, that’s why the Gladney story isn’t all over the news. If what happened to Gladney advances his goals, like a good machine pol he’s all for it.

It’s all about protecting their meal ticket in chief

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