Does blogging pay? If you're interested in quit-your-day-job dough, join the conservative side. The conservative machine pays right-wing bloggers to spew "oppo" data -- as occurred in the famous case of Senator John Thume of South Dakota, who paid bloggers $35,000 apiece to attack the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
The same tactics, it seems, are now working wonders in New Jersey. Blogs have instituted a coordinated attack on New Jersey Democratic Candidate for Governor Jon Corzine. The bloggers have accused him of having an affair with a staffer, who then had an abortion. The accusation -- which so far seems free of evidence -- has made the local news and the Drudge Report.
Call it mud-blogging.
Republican candidates can use this mechanism to smear opponents while keeping themselves protected from accusations of rumor-peddling.
Expect to see much more of this tactic. This is how the thugs plan to keep both houses of Congress in 2006.
Has anyone heard of a single incident of this sort of thing ocurring on the Democratic side of the aisle? Left-leaning bloggers have printed rumors, of course. Hell, I've done so, although I've tried to label them as such, and I try to offer corrections when necessary. But do we have an instance of a progressive blogger being paid to smear a political opponent?
I've never heard of such a thing.
7 comments:
Joe, your mention of John Thune sent me diving into my files where I dug up this item entitled,
"John Thune, Dan Nelson Automotive, and MetaBank"
"In just the last year, the bank has gone through a name change. Previously known in various incarnations as First Federal Savings, First Midwest Financial, and Security State Bank, the company changed the name of all of their banking divisions to MetaBank this year. The name change is significant because without being aware of it, you wouldn't make the connection between MetaBank being named as Dan Nelson Automotive's most significant creditor and the fact that South Dakota Senator John Thune sat on the board of First Federal Savings/First Midwest Financial/Security State Bank from January 27, 2003 until November 18, 2004. In fact, Thune sat on the Audit Committee for the institution. According to Personal Financial Disclosure Reports required by the Senate for candidates, Thune was in a fiduciary relationship with the institution by being paid $35,750 as a board member. Now all of this doesn't really mean a whole lot except for the fact that Thune and Dan Nelson, who owns 75% of Nelson Automotive, are closefriends."
More at http://tinyurl.com/7v455
how many internet police, web spies are lurking at Democratic Underground and Daily Kos?
-read a report where China employs more than 30,000 agents, 'intelligence' officers to guard against social awareness, activism, and stifle organization seeking the uplift of the masses or exposing and countering oppression. and try to ensure the web is usedfor consuming , selling marketing, business, HEY like some of the comments above.
-with the West's usage of the ' web' even more dominate, it would be silly not to think 'they'at least monitor and gatekeep and disrupt info and communication among the burdgeoning progressive evolution here.
-some examples, must be alot of linear thinkers at kos, after a thoughtful, diligent researched post it is likely to have someone JUMP on it often within 180 seconds of post time and 'tag' it, with some sort of ad-hominen, defamation, ridicule attack, and not even realize others have also prevented meaningful discussion, by referring to some timecube website or it say "hey this sounds like Dr.Bonner's soap label, or attack it for grammar or spelling.
when it is conventional thinking that got us into this mess, ya' know problems can't be solved at the same level of consciousness they were created...
-I think it is very subtle at DU, you have cliques, 'the Clarkies', the more than 1,000 posters, or groupthink dynamics steering towards some 'respectable' finger to the winds posturing, squelching authenticity, heart-based gnosis or spiritual activism, not aligned with self-censorship of careerism, defeatism or confusing and inhibiting the raising expectations and possibilities of quantum leaps, critical mass tipping points for Real paradigm change. destroying concentrated focus and subverting Intent & Clarity
-too much post-modernist malaise, it's all relative, there are no 'best' answers, no optimum Paths,
in effect getting people to spin their wheels, from one unresolved issue to the next, crisis upon crisis, endless pedantic waffling on the carousel of a repeat the 20th century holding pattern in a state of locked-in suspended animation!
-these dissent-barrier specialists are DeLayinG the Rennaissance.
- The candidates believing the assessment by the weapons-manufacturer-owned-media and their ridiculous polls, because they get coverage fall into trap of having to accept and be defined by it. Later finding out their dependence on orchestrated reality control and conventional wisdom, causes the rug to be pulled out from under them> as events, time and the fluidity of the new info-sharing environment made possible by real peoples participation with self-publishing, pushes the envelope to more accurate and genuine picture of actual portrayal of the environment, here on the ground in 2005.The truth, morality and validity of the progressive message is that powerful.
-we can GET OFF the carousel of pedantic waffling, machevellianistically finger to the windbag, corporate diversionary tactics from listening to tired, conventional political marketers of what will "sell" to the public.
Sunk costs in Least Common Denominator,cynical, UNdemocratic manipulation by buying votes and endorsements with dirty corporate money, AND contempt for the intuition and intelligence of the Public is really stifling growth, change, creativity and a NewDay Forward!
applicable inspired utterances (quotes)
-it is the job of 1/2 the populace to oppress the other 1/2~ from the sixties
-I can hire 1/2 of the workers to kill the other 1/2~ Jay Gould, early 20th century robber-barron
-it is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your ahead~ Sally Kempton
-the greatest tool in the hands of the oppressor is the controlled mind of the oppressed~ Stephen Biko
YOU WILL PAY TO KNOW WHAT YOU REALLY THINK~
J.R.'BoB' Dobb's...living avatar of 'slack!' on planet Earth.
There are TWO things going on *The Flowering of The Human Race and the fear of the flowering of the human race
Keep It Real
RES!ST the Privatization of Truth
paid to sell death?, shame on the misguided apartchicks, the men who would play god...they know not what they do.
Love ST!NG OPeration proSeeDs.....
Wow, these comments are getting really weird, Joe. You better get your lawnmower and cut the weeds.
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