MANLINESS: The Baby And The Bathwater.
Archive for 2010
January 25, 2010
A BUNCH OF interesting food links.
READER BOB PLATT WRITES: “I found Ellie Light.” Heh. Looks like kind of a dim bulb . . . .
FREEMAN HUNT: “You want a big tent? It’s fiscal conservatism. The people are overwhelmingly in favor of it. You offer that, you follow through on it, and you get the Republicans, the moderates, and a sizable chunk of disaffected Democrats.”
THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS WEEKEND:
Good news and bad news in Haiti.
How much is that ghostie in the window?
Transparency! Justice Department Refuses to Release New Black Panther Party Documents Despite FOIA Request.
Transparency! (cont’d): Holder hasn’t revealed Justice Dept lawyers who defended Gitmo detainees.
Crony Capitalism, disguised as progressive reforms. It often is.
Glacier Scientist: I Knew Data Hadn’t Been Verified.
56% of Americans oppose stimulus program.
Message discipline breaks down. Plus, total protonic reversal.
Around the world, backlash against growing state intrusion.
TARGETED CYBERATTACKS on the rise.
ILLINOIS UNEMPLOYMENT Tops 11 Percent.
These are not the droids Green Jobs you were looking for.
AN UPDATE ON THE “ELLIE LIGHT” ASTROTURFING STORY: Patterico notes that we’ve actually seen two types of astroturfing:
Donald Trump Astroturfing: A letter published in multiple places from one person claiming to live in multiple cities. Ellie Light was the quintessential Donald Trump Astroturfer. In fact, her real estate holdings would put Trump to shame. She published the very same pro-Obama letter in 65 publications — including 31 states, and the District of Columbia. It also appeared in 3 national publications and a Yahoo link — and in 2 foreign publications, including a publication in Bangkok, Thailand.
And she claimed to live in almost all of these locations. Because that claim enhanced her ability to place her letters. So she claimed to live in Philadelphia, PA; and Daly City, California; and Mansfield, Ohio; and Waynesboro, Virginia; and Algoma, Wisconsin; and Bangor, Maine — and dozens of other places.
Who said Obama supporters were all downtrodden?
Mark Spivey appeared in several places as well. And Ellie Light and Mark Spivey claimed residence in almost every publication to which they sent their letters.
Not even Donald Trump can claim such extensive real estate holdings!
The conclusion is simple: Ellie Light and Mark Spivey are liars. They pretend to be from multiple places to enhance their credibility. In fact, they are from one location — and they are trying to pretend they are individuals from all over America.
But they aren’t. And that leads us to Category #2:
David Axelrod Astroturfing: Identical letters published in multiple places claiming to be from different people
You get suspicious when you see the same letter appearing in multiple locations with multiple names.
Plus, questions about whether this bogus letter-to-the-editor campaign has links to the White House. And questions about whether this was inspired by Cass Sunstein’s thinking.
UPDATE: Ellie Light responds. By email.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Don Surber emails: “As a person who has dealt with letters to the editor 20+ years, the fault is with my counterparts at other newspapers, not Ellie Light. They got burnt. The Cleveland Plain Dealer didn’t. It blew the whistle. And yes, I have been burnt in the past.” Well, she did lie about where she lived. Or else she’s got more houses than John McCain.
And reader Brian Gates emails:
From that Cleveland article on Ellie Light:
“I must give the Tea Partiers credit for even knowing who [Power] is,” Light’s e-mail said.On Wednesday, nobody had ever heard of her; today, she’s the most polite leftist working in the media.
From later in the article:
“Just because it is inconvenient for us in the news business to find out who people are doesnt mean it isn’t important anymore,” [University of Missouri journalism professor Tom] Rosenstiel said.Too bad that doesn’t apply to Presidential candidates too, or this whole thing may never have come up.
Heh. [LATER: First link was bad before. Fixed now. Sorry!]
OBAMA’S PET GOAT MOMENT? “Please let this be a photoshop!”
UPDATE: Matt Edens emails:
From a friend’s facebook update (he lives in Falls Church, it was his daughter’s school):
“His Q&A w/ 6th-graders just before this was behind closed doors. Seriously.”
Transparency!
MORE: Just so there’s no confusion, it was the talk with the schoolchildren that was behind closed doors, and the talk with the press afterward that used the teleprompters. More here. Not that this makes things look any better, but clarity is its own reward.
CHARLIE MARTIN: ClimateGate: The Wheels Come Off For The IPCC. “All in all, not a good week for the IPCC. Two major errors, both of them integrating inflammatory, un-reviewed results into what had been advertised as the most authoritative peer-reviewed summary of the state of climate science. This follows the collapse of Copenhagen, and the Climategate emails’ evidence of pressure to influence the results of climate science. All of them working in the same direction: to slant the evidence presented to the world toward the conclusion that AGW is a current crisis, a world cataclysm. Now, suddenly, those conclusions are hard to credit.The wheels have begun to come off.”
JILL DORSON: Why I Regret Voting for President Obama. Another “rube” self-identifies. . . . Kinda fits in with this post.
UPDATE: Reader Elaine Curtis-Quick emails:
Saw Jill Dorson’s post about regretting voting for Obama, and one thing that bothered me was all the Palin bashing. From a woman, no less.
Do you think the rubes, like Dorson, who come to realize their mistake in allowing themselves into being swept up in the hype of Obama will ever come to the further realization that their extreme hatred of Palin is as much a result of media propaganda as their love of Obama was?
Actually, I think a lot of disillusioned Obama voters will double down on the Palin-hatred, at least at first, as a way of signaling loyalty to the tribe despite their problems with Obama.
MORE GAY UNHAPPINESS WITH OBAMA: “Many wonder when their president will show the same kind of concern for the constitutional rights of gay American service members as he has for enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay.”
SIGNS OF THE TIMES: THE SECRET TO FORD’S SUCCESS. “There hasn’t been any negative reaction. A lot of customers that come in here, they’re tired of all the government bailouts. We’ve gotten calls from people encouraging us and telling us their next vehicle will definitely be a Ford.”
And reader Justin Binik-Thomas of the Cincinnati Tea Party emails:
I received this picture from a member of our West Chester Community Tea Party. This sign is hanging in the West Chester Community (a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio).
Please take note to the sign on the bottom as needed corrections have been made:
1. “Putting America to Work” has been corrected to “Putting America in Debt”
2. A ball and chain has been added to the American Worker (yellow diamond)
Heh.
“MYSTERY BIDDERS” at Treasury auctions. Let’s hope they’re gullible!