Category: Daily Kos

Daily Kos Founder Markos Compares Arizona to ‘Apartheid South Africa’

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Organizers of Netroots Nation, the national left-wing blog conference that began as “Yearly Kos” in 2006, have decided that next year’s conference will be in Phoenix, Arizona. Marko Moulitsas Zuniga is angry:

Netroots Nation announced two days ago that Phoenix, Arizona would host its 2015 conference. I wish the conference the best, but it will unfortunately take place without Daily Kos’ attendance or assistance.
I made very clear in the wake of Arizona’s passage of SB 1070 that I would not be setting foot in the state, nor spending a dime in it until the law was revoked. The law, however gutted by the courts, remains on the books, as does systemic harassment of Latinos, so my pledge still stands. . . .
I doubt the conference would decide to host the event in, say, Apartheid South Africa, in order to “take the fight to the enemy”. If you think that analogy is absurd, it is, but only in terms of degree, not intent in the county that has consistently elected Sheriff Joe Arpaio since 1992. But if you want a less bombastic analogy, look to labor: Netroots Nation refuses to hold events in cities without union hotel and conference facilities. They’re not “taking the fight” to non-unionized locations because we, as a movement, stand for the right of people to organize and we don’t reward those places that deny those rights. It’s the right call. Also, would the conference have been happy to stay in Arizona had Gov. Jan Brewer signed the virulently anti-gay SB 1062 earlier this year? Hard to see that happening.
Latinos deserve that same kind of respect.

So, the conference is ditching its founder, because progressive bloggers don’t respect Latinos as much as gays, or something.

(Via Memeorandum.)

 

#FreeKate Lies Rejected by Daily Kos Staffer, and Other New Developments

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Generally speaking, people who care about facts are not liberals, so I was amazed when Donald Douglas pointed this out to me.

McCarter’s original story on Monday, May 20, began with a touching lament about Kaitlyn Hunt’s “young life” being “turned upside down and her future jeopardized simply because . . . she fell in love with a younger girl who has vindictive bigots for parents.”

Right: “She fell in love,” and fingered a 14-year-old in a toilet stall at school. Isn’t it so delightfully romantic?

If you’ve followed the story at all — and my Thursday article at The American Spectator has been widely cited — you know that this “vindictive bigots” angle is crucial to the narrative that the #FreeKate mob has been pushing. And if you saw Jana Eschbach’s WPEC-TV interview with Jim and Laurie Smith, parents of the 14-year-old girl, you know what an evil and dishonest smear that is.

Where did this smear come from? Directly from Kaitlyn’s mother, Kelley Hunt-Smith, who wrote May 17 on Facebook:

“[The younger girl’s parents] are bigoted, religious zeolites [sic] that see being gay as a sin and wrong, and they blame my daughter. . . .
“They are trying to send an innocent young girl to prison because they are full of hate and bigotry. These girls are teenagers in high school, who had ONE mutual consenting sexual experience.”

Lies, lies, lies.

Is it possible, I will dare to ask, that Kelley Hunt-Smith’s dishonesty is somehow related to her daughter’s problems? There seems to be some kind of dysfunctional family situation here. If Kaitlyn’s mom is a pathological liar, isn’t mental illness often hereditary?

The “Free Kate” Facebook community also seems to have been the source for other falsehoods, especially the lie that the sexual activities between Kaitlyn and the younger girl occurred when they were 17 and 15, rather than 18 and 14. Joan McCarter bought that false narrative hook, line and sinker:

[A]ccording to Hunt’s parents, Hunt was 17 when the relationship began, but the other girl’s parents waited until after she turned 18 to go to police.

Anyone can read the arrest affidavit in the case and see that Kaitlyn’s date of birth is Aug. 14, 1994, meaning she turned 18 before she began her senior year at high school year and before she met the younger girl, who was a 14-year-old freshman throughout the period when the two were sexually involved together. Kaitlyn was arrested Feb. 16, and the freshman girl didn’t turn 15 until April.

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos — who had originally posted a petition supporting Kaitlyn Hunt — removed that petition and corrected the story as soon as she learned the truth:

Thu May 23, 2013 at 10:29 AM PT: The public scrutiny of this case has brought to light problems with the initial reporting, and with the original story coming from the Hunt family. Previously, Hunt’s parents said that the younger girl was 15, and Hunt 17 when the relationship began. The release of the arrest warrant made clear, as subsequent news stories report, that the younger girl was 14 and Hunt was indeed 18 when the relationship began.
These corrections, and the initial dishonesty of Hunt’s parents, make this story much more problematic, and our original petition moot.

Wow! If only we could explain to McCarter that Keynesian economics doesn’t work and ObamaCare will bankrupt the county . . .

OK, maybe that would be too much worldview trauma, too soon. But you might be surprised how often a situation like this, where a liberal discovers she’s been misled by her fellow liberals, leads to the kind of second thoughts that slowly unravel a belief system. Remember, I was a lifelong Democrat and voted for Bill Clinton in ’92, only to learn too late what a shameless liar he was (and still is).

Anyway, now that the facts about Kaitlyn’s Jailbait Dildo Deviance are beginning to break through the wall of #FreeKate lies — and Kaitlyn has, probably unwisely, rejected the prosecution’s plea bargain offer — Momma Weirdo is having conniptions:

Liars hate the truth. Therefore tell the truth boldly, because there are few honors more rewarding than to be hated by liars.

UPDATE: Ann Althouse blogged about the story and some of the most interesting bits are her remarks in the comments:

Based on the video [i.e., the WPEC-TV interview with Jim and Laurie Smith, parents of the younger girl], it seems that kids at school are putting a lot of pressure on their daughter to reject her parents.
Now, the parents did report her girlfriend in to the police. They did this, they say, as a last resort after their daughter had already run away (without telling them). That was not a good strategy for getting their daughter back, as it’s alienated her further, so that she may feel that her entire social life depends on rejecting her parents.
So, do you think that was very savvy of the parents?
I don’t think so, but the question is what can they do once the other girl has shifted the rhetoric?
The younger girl’s parents made one drastic decision: to report behavior that is, under the law, a felony.
The accused girl got control of the narrative, with much support, making it about homophobia.
There’s really no way back for the younger girl’s parents. They can present their point of view and make it somewhat better, but they must regret going to the police.

What happened, Professor Althouse, was that Kaitlyn Hunt’s parents lied. And why should lying — “shift[ing] the rhetoric” to gain “control of the narrative,” as you say — be rewarded? It seems important to me that liars should never prevail in a situation like this, or else the rule of law will be subverted by dishonesty.

Then again, that seemed important to me when Bill Clinton lied about having sex with Monica Lewinsky, too.

As to the decision of the younger girl’s parents to report Kaitlyn Hunt to the police, both the arrest affidavit and the WPEC-TV interview suggest that this was the only remedy they had left, if their purpose was to protect their daughter against Hunt’s selfish predation.

From studying this story, a picture of Kaitlyn Hunt emerges that is far from flattering: She is reckless and arrogant, and feels entitled to do whatever she wants, without any criticism, any opposition or any consequences — the Veruca Salt Syndrome, as it were. Had she been willing to take “no” for an answer, had she been amenable to reason, had she thought twice of the potential consequences of continuing to pursue this 14-year-old even after repeated warnings from the parents, it never would have come to this.

Kaitlyn Hunt at all times had agency over her fate, and by her selfish impetuosity she has done dreadful damage to everyone involved here. To criticize the “drastic” action of the younger girl’s parents, or to suggest they “must regret” having gone to the police is to overlook their duty as citizens: Kaitlyn Hunt is a menace to the safety of the community. How many others has she victimized, exploited or corrupted? All this yammering about what a popular and successful student she was — is it true? Is it relevant?

She seems to be a dishonest, selfish, impudent whelp, and however “popular” she may have been, her attempt to evade responsibility by playing the victim — and enlisting a mob to pressure the prosecutor on her behalf — looks an awful lot like pathological narcissism.

The more I examine the arguments made in support of Kaitlyn Hunt, the more I’m of the opinion that she should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, if only to provide an example to any other young fool who might be tempted to emulate her.

Think of it this way: #FreeKate = “Occupy 14-Year-Old Vagina!”

Damn her, and damn her lying supporters, too.

 


When Liberals Tell the Truth

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It’s usually not pretty. Tim Graham at Newbusters catches a DKos diarist telling the truth about what liberals think of babies:

“Sasharusha” blogs “back to the whole fetus= parasite thing. That is how I see them. I don’t see them as cute and cuddly. I see them as terrifying and scary. I see pregnancy the same way. Here are some examples on how pregnancy is a parasitic relationship:”

Terrifying scary parasites! And as we all know, the fetus parasite has no rights, whereas liberals know that killing these terrifying creatures is the most important right guaranteed by the Constitution:

TV star Cybill Shepherd went on a radical feminist bender on Friday’s CBS This Morning, touting that there really is a “war on women” manifested by the “attack on Planned Parenthood.” . . .
The far left actress made her devotion to the pro-abortion cause clear, and hinted that pro-lifers were so extreme that they would try to kill her: “Abortion is our constitutional right. We should keep it legal. . . .”

That’s right, Cybill: A “woman’s right to choose” is guaranteed by the “Penumbras and Emanations” clause of the Right to Privacy Amendment.

Is the FBI Watching Barrett Brown? (And If They’re Not Already, Shouldn’t They?)

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One of those weird stories that just drops out of the sky: Regular readers will recall my occasional go-rounds with atheist blogger Barrett Brown, who first appeared on my radar amid the 2009 LGF blogwar and has since occasionally popped up from time to time. My status as a sometimes combatant with Brown resulted in me getting a tip that Brown has evidently become a public-relations agent for the hacker group “Anonymous,” which launched cyberattacks against critics of WikiLeaks.

Via his DailyKos account, Brown has posted a series of messages purporting to be press releases from “Anonymous.” One of Brown’s posts claimed that the hacker group successfully breached the computer systems of HBGary Federal after an official of that firm was quoted in a Feb. 5 Financial Times article warning that members of “Anonymous” had been identified and were vulnerable to prosecution.

Unfamiliar with (and not hitherto interested in) this aspect of the WikiLeaks controversy, I’m not sure what Brown’s trying to do. Some of what he has posted on behalf of “Anonymous” reads like demented satire. He may be joking, or perhaps just trying to insert his name into the middle of a story that interests him.

On the other hand, if he’s serious, he’s insane, because to make himself an online spokesman for “Anonymous” would almost certainly suffice as probable cause for a search warrant to determine how Brown is in contact with a group suspected of criminal activity online.

Maybe Barrett Brown’s computer activities are squeaky clean and perfectly legal, and he therefore feels entirely safe using his DailyKos diary to bait the Justice Department into launching an investigation of him. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but trying to elicit a search warrant that results in the FBI seizing your computer would seem rather an elaborate P.R. stunt, even for a self-dramatizing narcissist.

Mission Accomplished, Markos Moulitsas

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You can’t un-Tweet it, you see. Before the suspect had been identified, before his motive was known, you blamed Sarah Palin for an atrocious crime of which she was utterly innocent. The facts of your cruel defamation are chronicled precisely by Professor Willliam Jacobson:

As far as I can tell, Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress was the first person to spread the so-called Palin target map at 1:45 p.m.  The now infamous Markos Moulistas “mission accomplished, Sarah Palin” tweet did not take place until 2:19 p.m.  Yglesias’ tweet was retweeted a total of 271 times and the image of the map he posted 883 times as of this writing. . . .
The massacre had been hijacked for political purposes not based on facts, but on a desire for retribution against Palin specifically, and the Tea Parties and conservatives in general.  A point I have made time and again, is that there was and is no evidence that the shooter ever saw the Palin map. 
The Palin connection was a complete fabrication created in the minds of Messrs. Yglesias, Moulitsas, and countless others with an axe to grind.

“Now infamous,” what a lovely phrase! The stain of your disgrace could not be darker, Markos, for what can be more heinous than to bear false witness — yea, even blood libel! — against the innocent? Continue reading Mission Accomplished, Markos Moulitsas →

TwitterGate Update: Neal Rauhauser Switches Account to ‘Protected’ Status

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After my first post about TwitterGate, many of the “Beandogs” in Democratic campaign consultant Neal Rauhauser’s network were laughing as if it were all a big joke. Yesterday, I came back with a second post that connected the dots a bit more clearly — and highlighted Rauhauser’s status as a Daily Kos contributor.

In the comments of the second post this morning, Right Klik had linked numerous communications between Rauhauser and his “Beandogs,” both from his “StrandedWind” and “WingNutWatch” accounts.

In one of those Tweets, Rauhauser said, “my role is trainer, coordinator, develop methods, etc. If civil or criminal proceedings begin deposition is lawyer’s job.” In another key message, “Obamagician” — who had previously Tweeted that conservative blogger Greg Howard had “sexy, f***able children” — told Rauhauser, “Thx for you hard work.”

Such messages obviously lend credibility to the TwitterGate video’s suggestion that the “Beandogs” harassment against Howard and other conservatives on Twitter was carried out with Rauhauser’s knowledge, if not indeed as part of an orchestrated effort of which Rauhauser described himself as “coordinator.” And now look what we find:

Rauhauser has now switched his “StrandedWind” account to protected mode, and if you click on any of the messages from Rauhauser’s “WingNutWatch” account you get this:

Rauhauser deleted that account and protected the other, the kind of gesture a detective might say was indicative of “consciousness of guilt.”

The obvious question: If Rauhauser has nothing to hide, why is he hiding? Let me suggest an obvious answer: Rauhauser is becoming an embarrassment to his Democratic clients, especially Arizona 7th District Rep. Raul Grijalva.

Rauhauser had boasted of his relationship with Grijalva — who sent the consultant a “thank you” note — and like so many other previously “safe” Democratic incumbents this year, Grijalva is in the toughest re-election battle of his career. The Yuma Sun reported on Thursday’s debate:

Incumbent Democratic Congressmen Raul Grijalva admitted Thursday that it was a mistake to call for a boycott of Arizona after Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070.
“On my part it was a strategic mistake to call for the boycott,” he said. “I felt that it would have an impact on the leadership of this state … but the fact of the matter is that they’re not going to change their mind…”
One student, Lisa Griffin, informed the candidates that according the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Yuma currently has an unemployment rate of 30.2 percent and asked them what they plan to do to usher more industry into the area, thus creating more jobs. . . .

Grijalva called for an economic boycott of his own state at a time when unemployment in parts of his own district is over 30%! Now imagine the horror of Grijalva’s staff when they saw this video exposing what their consultant Rauhauser had been up to since August:

When I first linked that video Thursday, it had gotten 288 views; as of this morning, it had nearly 5,000 views. If you Google “Grijalva” and “Rauhauser,” you see that this was becoming a big enough story that other journalists might be starting to ask questions. (Hey, Kossacks: You’re not the only ones who know how to use Google.)

Congratulations to Greg Howard, Patrick Read and others who helped compile the “Twittergate” research. That video dossier may not have connected all the dots, but if you show people enough dots, sooner or later the pattern becomes clear enough that only a blind man can miss it.

I’m leaving for Boston this afternoon to do some more shoe-leather campaign reporting. Please hit the tip jar.

UPDATE: The “besieged” Democrats now have their own Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE II: Linked by Dan Collins at Piece of Work in Progress.

UPDATE III: To understand just how desperate Democrats have become, check out Professor Donald Douglas’s post about how the Left used a “Nazi” smear against an Ohio Republican for his participation in a WWII historical re-enactment group.

UPDATE IV: Why is the Left getting so desperate? Even progressive poll analyst Nate Silver is now projecting that Republicans will gain 50 House seats Nov. 2. Small wonder that Democrats are trying to pull the Jedi mind-trick on the Rauhauser scandal.

PREVIOUSLY:

VIDEO: Conservatives ‘Humping the Leg’ of Violent Extremism, Markos Says

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The Blaze features this video of Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga at a book event last month:

Markos describes “right-wing extremists and an uprising of violence from those groups in the wake of Obama’s election.”

Of course, no such “uprising” has been documented. Markos is referring to the now-infamous April 2009 Department of Homeland Security report. The DHS was shown to have based its report on seriously flawed information provided by left-wing propagandists who count every state chapter of the Constitution Party as a dangerous “Patriot” group. 

Such reports would suggest, for example, that Rhode Island is a hotbed of neo-Nazi extremism, and these absurd exaggerations tend to discredit those who “would paint a box of Wheaties as an extremist threat if [they] thought that would help it raise money,” as Jesse Walker of Reason magazine said.

So the premise that Markos uses to set up his subsequent statement is false. And then, he says “the right wing went crazy. They went nuts.”

Brilliant, see? An agency of the federal government issues a report smearing millions of honest law-abiding citizens and, if you complain, you’re “nuts.” Continue reading VIDEO: Conservatives ‘Humping the Leg’ of Violent Extremism, Markos Says →

Markos Wants Some Cheese

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To go with that whine:

In case you were wondering why you haven’t seen me on MSNBC recently, it seems that Joe Scarborough, he of the lowest rated morning show in cableland, has blackballed me. And Phil Griffin, the alleged president of MSNBC, is going along with it.

(Via Memeorandum.) Did Moulitsas ever mock MSNBC’s ratings before he got “blackballed”? I doubt it. So his opinions of TV networks are evidently based on whether they book him or not. He explains his alleged victimhood by quoting his Twitter to Scarborough about “a certain dead intern” — a reference to former Scarborough aide Lori Klausutis, about whom Kos had blogged in 2005. Kos quotes an e-mail from MSNBC’s Griffin:

Yes, after I became aware of the ugly cheap shot you took at Joe on Twitter, I asked the teams to take a break from booking you on our shows for a while. I found the comments to be in poor taste, and utterly uncalled for in a civil discourse. . . .
I just don’t know how one could reasonably expect to be welcomed onto our network while publicly antagonizing one of our hosts at the same time.

The key word there is “reasonably.” Exactly how reasonable is it for Markos Moulitsas to incite a war with MSNBC over a Twitter fight with Joe Scarborough in which Kos insinuated that the death of Lori Klausutis was a “scandal” for Scarborough?

BTW, I often watch “Morning Joe,” and Da Tech Guy is a huge fan of the show. And I’m not saying that because I want to get booked on the show, as all the stuff I’ve written about Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews would forestall any such prospect under the Phil Griffin Rule.

Strangely enough, although Rachel Maddow is as hard-left as Olbermann — and once invoked me in a cheap smear on Sarah Palin — I actually don’t mind watching Maddow so much. And my reasons are purely superficial: She’s got a nice smile. Bad politics, but good teeth.

The moral of the story: If you want to be on TV, think before you Tweet.