LIVE AT FIVE: 03.04.13

Since I raised questions about progressive blogger/consultant Jerome Armstrong’s role in MalaysiaGate, a few sources have started to supply helpful information and background. Frankly, I was shocked when former Raw Story editor Ron Brynaert — certainly no ally of the Right, nor previously a friend to me — started Tweeting to me his own research into Armstrong’s activities.

Credit where credit is due, however, so I must thank Brynaert for his finds, including a photo from Jerome Armstrong’s Photostream showing Armstrong, conservative Josh Trevino and two journalists (British and German, I believe) meeting with a former top Malaysian government official during a June 2008 visit to Malaysia. (If it’s been deleted, don’t worry: Screencapped it already)

Armstrong’s Twitter account has been silent since Thursday, and his MyDD.com site was offline last time I checked. Meanwhile, Brynaert pointed out, it appears that Armstrong tried to scrub from MyDD a July 2008 post he wrote called “Crazy Times in Malaysia.” Ah, but the cache is still online and, even if Jerome could find some way to delete the cache, too late — screencapped that, too.

My plan had been to do a whole new article about all this, but then the phone started ringing with sources wanting to discuss the story, so the full article will have to wait until tomorrow. However . . .

It appears that, while Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed focused her Friday article on the nearly $400,000 that was reported to the Justice Department by conservative blogger/consultant Josh Trevino (in compliance with the Foreign Agent Registration Act), Trevino’s slice of the Malaysia P.R. action may have been substantially less than half the pie.

In other words, Trevino appears to have been a subcontractor to consultant David All, who was in turn paid by the D.C.-based firm APCO Worldwide. A source familar with online consulting practices — but with no specific direct knowledge of David All’s operation — guessed that if Trevino got about $400,000, All’s contract with APCO Worldwide was probably worth at least $2 million.

“Money trickles down,” this source said.

And here’s the big thing: There is reason to believe that Jerome Armstrong was involved with David All’s Malaysia P.R. operation before Trevino was brought in. When I shared that information with my online consulting source, he immediately speculated that Armstrong’s cut of the action must have been larger than the amount paid to Trevino. “That’s just how this s–t works,” my source said, i.e., the second guy brought in on the deal would normally be paid more than the third guy in.

But that’s just speculation, and so far neither David All nor Jerome Armstrong have said anything about what they were paid in the Malaysia P.R. deal. The only reason we know the details of Josh Trevino’s involvement is that Trevino filed his F.A.R.A. compliance form with the Justice Department and, so far as I’ve been able to learn, neither All nor Armstrong have filed a F.A.R.A. report.

For background, here is Rosie Gray’s Friday article at BuzzFeed, and here is Ben Smith’s 2011 Politico article that named Jerome Armstrong as a participant. Nobody has yet accused anyone involved of breaking any law, so “MalaysiaGate” may not technically be what you would call a full-blown scandal. However, another source — not involved in the story, and not a consultant — said the ethical issues “give me the heeby-jeebies.”

Yeah, me, too. And if I had $389,724.70, maybe I could buy something to cure the heeby-jeebies.

Maybe “Vis Numar” can afford the cure, eh?

Category: Blogging

Crowdsourced Seminars For The Undereducated, @BobJanz Edition

Posted on | March 3, 2013 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

Truly a sweet troll:

I’d like to request everyone on Twitter tweet Bob Janz, name one of his fallacies and give him a URL to help claw his way back to knowledge.

.@bobjanz Imma fave your tweet, as I think it achieves an ignorance density of greater concentration than all of MSNBC. @darleenclick

— Smitty (@smitty_one_each) March 4, 2013

Category: Uncategorized

FMJRA 2.0: Shout

Posted on | March 3, 2013 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

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How Much Cash Did Jerome Armstrong Collect in the ‘MalaysiaGate’ Operation?

Posted on | March 3, 2013 | 24 Comments

Cashing in and Crashing the Gate: Markos Moulitsas
and Jerome Armstrong sign their book, April 2006

“At 1:11 AM, Monday March 21st, Bush signed into law an order that vacates the state of Florida from having jurisdiction over the case involving Terri Schiavo. Of course, Mercury is retrograde, so at first indication, it’s unlikely that this will stand. . . . In the chart, we find Jupiter exactly conjunct the MC, in Libra, and opposite Mercury in [Aries] at the IC, with both planets retrograde. Meanwhile Pluto is conjunct the ASC. . . .
“What’s notable about the Jupiter-Mercury oppositions of retrogrades in the law passed by Bush, is that they exactly T-square the Sun of the Republican Party and the USA chart. . . . The Republican Party does well when it deals with Neptunian issues . . . but when it comes to issues surrounding Pluto, the sexual and the bodily emerge from shadows, and they go toward excess.”
— “Vis Numar” (Jerome Armstrong), March 2005

The lefties at Daily Kos made a front-page story out of the news, reported Friday by Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed, that consultant/blogger Josh Trevino got nearly $400,000 from Malaysian interests to orchestrate what Trevino defended as “a fairly standard PR operation.”

If taken at face-value, Trevino’s statement would mean that it’s “fairly standard” for shady foreigners to funnel $36,000 to Ben Domenech and $24,700 to Brad Jackson for favorable coverage. And so “Hunter” at DKos chortles with delight:

Every time we think we begin to understand what it is the conservative movement is going on about, yet another thing happens to remind us that no, there really aren’t any principles there at all — it really is just an astroturf operation from top to bottom. Lobbyists paying lobbyists paying lobbyists, all the way down. We’re terrified of majority-Muslim countries, unless their governments are paying us not to be.
Just think — all it would have taken during this whole period of time is just one rich guy willing to pay these conservative bloggers to change their minds, and they could have spent the last four years praising Barack Obama as the greatest president who ever lived. We could probably have gotten it for no more than $10,000 a pop.

Certainly, the punchline opportunities are irresistible. But before the progressive Kossacks pile on the schadenfreude, they ought to recognize their own involvement in this operation. A commenter yesterday called attention to a 2011 article by Ben Smith at Politico:

The financial arrangements that the Malaysian story alleges between Trevino, another blogger, and a Malaysian party aren’t possible to pin down, but after I posted the item, a source forwarded some 2008 correspondence between Trevino and a group of American political bloggers, from Ezra Klein to Mary Katharine Ham offering them a free “once-in-a-lifetime” Malaysian junket, paid for, he said in an email at the time, by business interests associated with Malaysian politics; the trip fell apart before he could fulfill a promise to specify the sponsors, but he mentioned in a May, 2008 email that he was “running” Malaysia Matters, which he described as educational and neutral. . . .
The Malaysia Matters site is now effectively down, but an archived “about” page says it was “sponsored by individuals who share an interest in Malaysia, and were willing to help bring Malaysia Matters to fruition.”
“Those working on this project include David All, Jerome Armstrong and Joshua Treviño,” the page says. “The three of us gave birth to this blog, but there are also others who have agreed to contribute along the way. While we might not always agree politically, we all have various interests in Malaysia that are reflected in this blog.”

Wait, did he say “Jerome Armstrong”? Founder of the progressive blog MyDD, who in 2003 co-founded the political consulting firm Armstrong Zuniga with Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga? The same Jerome Armstrong who co-authored with Markos the 2006 book, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics?

Oh, yes, that Jerome Armstrong — the Internet hustler who once offered such various online services as financial advice and astrology readings as “Vis Numar” — was also part of of the “Malaysia Matters” dot-com triumvirate.

Are we to suppose that Jerome Armstrong participated in this pay-for-play project out of the goodness of his heart? Was Jerome Armstrong motivated by altruistic philanthropic concern for human rights on the Malay peninsula?

Give me a freaking break: Jerome cashed a check, too.

But while Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed has reported the sums paid to, and distributed by, Josh Trevino, down to the last penny — precisely $389,724.70 over three years — and made a big deal about Trevino’s belated compliance with the Foreign Agent Registration Act, what do we know about Jerome Armstrong’s piece of the Malaysian action?

Very damned little.

How much was Jerome Armstrong paid to pimp for the Malaysian regime? We don’t know. Why don’t we know how much Jerome Armstrong was paid? Because, unlike Josh Trevino, Jerome apparently hasn’t filed a report with the Justice Department about it.

Lefties who imagine that consultant/blogger types like Jerome Armstrong are motivated entirely by fervent devotion to the progressive cause should have been disabused of such naïveté long ago.

Back in 2006, a progressive blogger in Ohio reported how Markos Moulitsas had originally supported Paul Hackett in the Democrat primary for the Ohio Senate race. But the campaign of Sherrod Brown had hired Jerome Armstrong as a consultant, and within 48 hours, Markos changed his tune and suggested that Hackett “stand down” rather than have a contested Democratic primary.

Just a coincidence, right?

Jerome Armstrong pretty much pioneered pay-to-play progressive blogging, so his willingess to join forces with Republican consultants David All and Josh Trevino in promoting the interests of the Malaysian regime shouldn’t really surprise anyone. But we don’t know how much Armstrong was paid, nor do we know whether Armstrong subcontracted any of his pro-Malaysia flack-work to other bloggers, as Trevino did.

Perhaps reporter Rosie Gray can get some answers to those questions from noted astrology expert Vis Numar.

Vis Numar sees all!

UPDATE: Linked by Bill Quick at Daily Pundit, who has been blogging long enough to remember the “Vis Numar”/”JeromeGate” kerfuffle of 2006. Bill praises my reporting, but this story was a piece of cake once two things happened:

A commenter pointed out that Jerome Armstrong had been named as a “Malaysia Matters” participant; and
I suddenly remembered “Vis Numar.”

Back in 2006, I was blogging to promote Donkey Cons (the book I co-authored with Lynn Vincent) when the “JeromeGate” story was broken by Dan Riehl, and I blogged about it quite extensively.

Many conservative bloggers seem to have forgotten that era, when the progressive Netroots were insurgents fighting to overthrow the eeee-vil Bush/Cheney/Halliburton regime, but I remember it well, as it was my first opportunity to engage in blogging.

The most important lesson I learned early was, “No blog is an island.” Blogging is fundamentally a collaborative effort, and if you are not aggregating — linking your readers to other bloggers and news sources — you aren’t really part of the community.

The hat-tip courtesy and the ethos of CWCID (“Credit where credit is due”) are absolutely essential to making the blogosphere a more valuable resource than traditional media.

Too many of bloggers, I fear, have either forgotten what can now, in 2013, be called the Old School team spirit of blogging as collaboration, or in the case of newcomes to the ‘sphere, never realized that such a spirit once existed. This isn’t about some kind of gooey feel-good altruism. It’s really a matter of understanding the (perhaps counter-intuitive) insight that generosity is more successful than selfishness.

The customer-service attitude — “How can I help you, sir?” — is simply good business. In the news business (and bloggers are certainly now part of that business) anyone who tries to hog up all the credit will eventually come to grief.

Excuse the unsolicited lecture, but to be praised for “reporting” — when all I was really doing was aggregating, after a tip from a commenter — seemed to require it. And I promise to try to keep my “thank you” speech short if I’m honored with an “investigative blogging” award at CPAC Blog Bash March 14, although there are a lot of people due hat-tips for their contributions there, too.

Category: Blogging

Wrong Litmus Test

Posted on | March 3, 2013 | 16 Comments

by Smitty

Sorry, Mickey:

You’d think the rule that should govern pundits is “if it’s a deal within the bounds of reason, and a net plus for the country, it’s good. If not, it’s not.”

No. It’s still “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. Not buying any squishy re-phrasings with ambiguous, who/whom “net plus for the country” verbiage. Liberty. It’s what we want for breakfast, and these Progressives can just get plowed for all I care.

via Instapundit

Category: Uncategorized

Is Progress A Bonfire?

Posted on | March 3, 2013 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

Ace blogged about this latest stage of bovine spongiform in-search-of-emphathy:

Feeling anxious about your labia? Just stick a cellphone camera between your legs, post the photo to the Internet, and invite strangers to discuss what you’re working with. That’s the theory behind the Large Labia Project, a submission-based Tumblr that encourages women to air their insecurities (and their vaginal selfies) in the spirit of “labia pride.”
Here’s how it works: Take a photo of your vagina. Share your feelings. (“Hey! I’m so self-conscious and feel insecure about showing my labia.”) Then shoot it over to 24-year-old moderator Emma, who will invariably heap praise on your submission.

Niedermeyer’s Dead Horse pointed out a similar site for boobies. I like to troll Ace’s posts as #OccupyResoluteDesk, and offered the following:

All right. The first one of you mungheads that submits my picture is totally going to the gulag.

The rest of the comments are predictable Ace fare. Read if you dare.

But step back and admire societal decay for a moment. By ‘decay’, I mean the trashing of the traditional objects such as family, women, and men begetting children that are born in liberty and raised to adulthood, so that they can marry, and society perpetuates. While paying only lip service to the labia site, and without waxing too evangelical about the topic, lest a man get lost in a sinkhole of bad subtextual humor, the more important question is: how do we laugh these people into growing up?

I’ll contend that the people out to degrade people by coaxing them into displaying their privates in public are related to the ones who foment academic inquisitions: “First and foremost, never assume that historical accuracy is any defense.” Now, wait just a godforsaken minute. Have we reached such a state of decay, of inversion, in the name of Progress that our academic and cultural leaders are actively retarding the growth of individuals?

It’s as though, in the quest for power over individuals that all notions of liberty, of classical liberal discourse, of rationality itself, are increasingly used as fuel to keep people in an infantile, state-dependent cocoon. Coaxing women to paste pictures of their naughty bits is seemingly part of an indoctrination process. Could there be some. . .abortion waiting in the wings? Maybe, maybe not.

And my point here is not to engage in fear mongering about what the Godless Commies are trying to do to our Precious Bodily Fluids. Quite the contrary. My hope is that people would step back away from the situation, take a breath, consider the historical trend here, and set about rejecting the silly, ahistorical, irrational course we’re on. We have to reject it personally, at the ballot box, and in dialog with neighbors to mature out of the rut.

Tell the girlfriend “You’d be twice as lovely with half the plaster.” Teach daughters that modesty is the most powerful form of feminine allure. When she’s old enough, support her academic interests in going to a school with actual education, not indoctrination. Also, that motherhood is a noble and vital profession, and to ignore the diabolical lies of the feminazis. These Progressives have burned our culture down to ash in their quest for power, and our task is to rise from those ashes, phoenix-like. Let us show that our cultural traditions, while not invulnerable to Commie assault, can outlast it.

via Insty and Insty

Category: Culture

Who Upset Wombat?

Posted on | March 3, 2013 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

via Ace

Category: humor

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LIVE AT FIVE: 03.04.13

‘MalaysiaGate’ Update: Still More Questions Than Answers (So Far)

Crowdsourced Seminars For The Undereducated, @BobJanz Edition

FMJRA 2.0: Shout

How Much Cash Did Jerome Armstrong Collect in the ‘MalaysiaGate’ Operation?

Wrong Litmus Test

Is Progress A Bonfire?

Who Upset Wombat?

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