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Few people under 50 can grasp what the last seven years of the Vietnam war was like. It had cost over 21,000 American lives, far more than that in casualites and permanent disabilities, and generally tore America apart, socially, politcally, and spiritually. It was one of the most traumatic periods in our history, and in many respects, we are still reliving and resolving issues stemming from it. Modern conservatives still hang much of their pro-military rhetoric on the canard that "we didn't fight to win in Vietnam." Well now it seems that the conservative hero of that era, Richard Milhaus Nixon, on his way to the presidency, actually conspired to prolong the war to damage Democrats for their part in waging it, and allowing him to "win it."

Days before the 1968 election, the nation had been greeted with the news that the end of the war might be nearer than anyone thought possible during the so very nasty presidential campaign between Nixon and Hubert Humphrey (President Johnson, so politically damaged by the war, had decided not to run for another term). A deal had been struck between North and South Vietnam, a jubilant American people were told, and that peace was finally imminent.

But just days later, the nation's hopes were crushed as it was told that the deal had collapsed and the war would go on. The campaign momentum that had been shifting back toward Humphrey on the news of a peace deal, swung right back to Nixon. Tricky Dick went on to win the election, and the rest, was to become a very dark and ugly history that we are still paying for today. Rather than end the war, as Nixon promised during the campaign, he went on to expand it into Laos and Cambodia where still thousands more people died, while here at home, he set the tone and substance of the "imperial presidency" that many allege, not wrongly, we still endure today.

Old news for most of us; grim details of nearly a half-century gone by that many of those who prospered in the boom times that followed would probably rather forget. But others are far too damaged to ever forget. Whether you agreed with the war or not, you had to have been affected by it. I was in high school at the time, and it pretty much defined me, my clothing, my friends, teachers, school work, family life, and my later views and philosophies as they evolved. I still so clearly remember my mother's anguish as she anticipated my brother's pending draft number as it was about to be announced in the selective service lottery. My father, a WWII war hero who was awarded the Distiguished Flying Cross, sent his medals to Nixon to protest the war. The Vietnam war was everything and everywhere throughout the American existence. If you didn't live through those times, you can just take the Iraq war fiasco, and multiply it by 100. That was Vietnam.

And it still won't go away. Vietnam is the war that will never die. And now we learn that almost a third of it was prolonged because 1) Richard Nixon was a monumentally traitorous scumbag, and 2) Johnson lacked the courage to admit to the American people that his knowledge of just how big a scumbag Nixon had been was inhibited by the fact that the knowledge came via an illegal wiretap. How ironic that it would be Nixon's own wiretap efforts that would destroy him, but one still has to wonder how different the world might have been if Johnson could have admitted to one wrongdoing in order to reveal an even greater one. A wrongdoing that cost so many people their lives, ruined or reshaped their survivors, and probably permanently altered the trajectory and ultimate governability of the American experiment.

There is no outrage because outrage is now a tactic, not an emotion.

Today is the 10th year anniversary of the Iraq war. Seems like a pretty good time for bloggers and the media to remind us that it wasn't the first unnecessary, or unnecessarily long war, by hammering on this Nixon story hard.. Yet if not for Rachel @maddow (again), and perhaps a few Twitterers like me, the U.S. media would scarcely give this incendiary story more than a passing glance. We've become so accustomed to outrage being a tactic in our politics, or for link-baiting a blog site, or for driving a hashtag campaign, that all the genuine emotion has been sapped from the word, as well as its utility in shaping our national discourse. Who has the time or emotion for one more outrage? Especially one that is now 45 years old.

I do. And I really think that you should too.

Now prepare yourself

Because this story may and should upset you on many levels.

First, the basic outine:

LBJ Tapes Show Richard Nixon May Have Committed Treason By Sabotaging Vietnam Peace Talks

Next, the larger context and relevance…

Once again, courtesy of Rachel @maddow, whose team is just so damn good at that:

Rachel Maddow: History shows war a tool for political opportunists

A lot of noise is filling the Twittersphere about the "UniteBlue" idea. I've posed some questions, as have others, and @eileenLeft has alleged some skulduggery about @SayethSimon.

As usual, #p2 trolls, whacks and just people not particularly fair minded have jumped on any new criticism of anything they have decided to like as if someone just shot their pony through the nutsack. Such people don't serve progressive interests well, in my view, but others find them interesting and entertaining, so in the name of diversity, I ignore most of their incessant blithering and bleating. I am sure this post will be like chum in the water for the hatriots and acrimony trolls. But then, almost anything I say, write or tweet usually is. So there's that.

Anyway, as he should have, UniteBlue's founder Zach Green responded to some of this dust-up with some much needed clarification about UniteBlue. This was all good. Unfortunately, he also went on to mischaracterize some valid criticism, questions, and observations about connections to his past clients as "smears." They were not. At least none that I saw were. If discussing your lack of apparent lack transparency, or some of your past commercial clients is "smearing" you, you're just in the wrong line of work. I sincerely hope he will update his post and soften some of that criticism of his critics. That tone may play well to his membership faithful, but it won't to too many others, nor to future commercial or nonprofit clients. They can be very senstive about appearances.

What follows is my reply to Zach Green's post. I don't know if he'll post it, but from what I've seen of his character thus far, I think that he will.

Update: He never published this, nor did he publish the comments of most other critics. So net net, his post was a puff piece meant to bullshit everyone and make excuses for an unethical launch using other people's work. I was disappointed. I expected more.

Note: there are a few grammatical edits and typo edits made here that were not in the original comment.

Zach, thank you for finally making a public statement about this. And FAQ was long overdue, in my view. I don’t assume you are speaking directly to me in your post, but as you touch on many things I did in our tweet exchange, let me respond as if you had.

As I tweeted to you the other day, respectful responses to criticism and questions only make you and your projects stronger. I am adamant about fairness, and if things said about you and/or UniteBlue (UB) are untrue, I’ll be the first to help set the record straight. I have before, and I will again.

As it stands now, this statement from you serves as a public record, and you have made numerous assertions that can and will be checked out by people much smarter than me. I assume they will check-out as you have represented them. In the meantime, permit me a few responses and comments to your words.

To begin with, regardless of how this all pans out, your rather cavalier response to questions like “Are you making money?" read as if such questions are of trivial consequence, a tone which just does not serve you well. If you were building a better word processor for progressives, no one would much care. But the buzz you are generating (and nurturing) about UB is much more aspirational in tone.

Both you and your more engaged members speak almost reverentially of UB as a nascent "movement" with clear political goals, objectives, and implications for Progressives. Goals and objectives which you admitted to me are not all that clearly articulated, nor yet presented anywhere coherently. A marketing-oriented “About” document on your site is not the best way to describe a serious idea aimed at social change. In fact, this FAQ, written as a defensive instrument, is the clearest discussion of the questions and issues that your project presents which I, or anyone else I have spoken with has yet seen.

When any commercial business aspires to be an instrument of social change, it gets into territory that it often didn’t initially prepare for. Only the naive or delusional would suggest that motives, money, credibility, and veracity are unimportant to a fledgling political project of the sort that UB purports to become. Not being prepared, nor having good answers for obvious questions can and has been a fatal mistake for many efforts of this sort. Change.org and other success stories were armed and ready for such questions from their very first press release and yet even they still run afoul of many people who feel deceived by the shifting ground on which their business model was based. UB does not have their backstory, players, or resources. It has to be even more careful.

Had it been me, I would have formed a non-profit, built a solid board of advisors, and fully disclosed that it had a favored-nations agreement with 140dev.com to use its technology. That’s just how it’s done in the major leagues, these days. Your project would then be at least partially accountable to people outside your immediate business interests.

So yes, UB should have been more careful about its launch posture, in my opinion, but what’s done is done—at least thus far. Even so, I think more discussion of what I see as unforced errors may be instructive here.

You repeat again in your FAQ that your boilerplate “privacy” document has some particular illuminative value that shines some light on your veracity and credibility with respect to your downstream ambitions. It does not. You admit it was acquired from the web, yet when I showed you what was in it, you didn’t even know it permitted precisely the use of email addresses which you implied that it did not. I asked you directly, not if you would ‘rent’ your email lists to anyone, but rather, whether you would send product or service mailings that were of interest to your clients (a very big distinction).

As I noted in my tweets to you, your privacy document clearly said you reserve the right to do just that. You have yet to clarify explicitly what you will and won’t do with your access to your members, either via the twitter API, or the emails and other information you are acquiring. You need to do that, and be much less evasive about such questions in the future or they can come back to haunt you.

As for your overall operational model, I wish you had reached out to more of the Twitter community 8 months ago. As a long standing member of the #p2 community, I have watched many ideas for community sites, filters and directories come and go. I have seen almost your exact model in several forms proposed, and expressed the same qualms about them that Karoli has in her blog post which I will cite here:

http://www.drumsnwhistles.com/2013/02/26/this-uniteblue-scuffle-is-twitters-fault-and-they-could-fix-it-if-they-felt-like-it/

Who is UniteBlue, many have a right to ask, to rule on who is and isn’t a “top progressive?” By itself, the idea is offensive to many, but as Karoli implicitly suggests, you also take on the role of arbiter of who is not one, and even who is not a progressive at all. It would probably take me about one day to embed a dozen or more conservative trolls into your “validated progressives list, and you would have absolutely no way to prevent it. You’ve already found many already, but they were just fails in your software, and not the work of professional false flag operatives,or other kinds of black-op thugs, goons, spies and trolls.

Since you provide absolutely no insight into your magical process for verification, I can only assume you would be fully prepared to explain why it failed so miserably once I—or someone else—proved that it did.

And what about your liability? What if one of your validated progressives turns out to be one of the many paid political operatives on the right that I, and my many Progressive friends have been battling with for years? They would skillfully plant disinformation or outright lies into your streams and it would be a daily struggle to discover, stop, or counteract them. As it stands now, they still have to work pretty hard to run such propaganda operations. Your “validated lists” would make it so simple, they’d take turns doing it daily. I haven’t checked, but I’d bet they already are.

The @uniteblueLOL account shows they are already well aware of you, and I will bet real money that a lot of them are already busy creating clever ways to game you and your membership. It’s what they do, and it’s why such focused identity groups (and avatar campaigns) like UB have been rejected time and time again by many others. It’s also why you will have a very hard time getting notable Progressives and celebrities to join you. They aren’t going to risk their cred by taking a flyer on yours, or your super-duper, deluxe progressive identification algorithms.

Now, as to your statements about @ConnectTheLeft and @SayethSimon, they are just not supported by any evidence, and are directly contradicted by her version of events; by several witnesses to CTL conference calls; by CTL team members, and by the massive public record called Topsy.com seaches.

Clearly, someone is lying, and I don’t think it is EileenLeft—or you. Eileen's well known passion, efforts, and trademarks for CTL would certainly seem to put the burden of evidence on Simon to show that it is she who is lying. There are virtually no meaningful facts to be found in his “statement of truth”. There are unsubstantiated claims; claims that seem to project everything Eileen’s team knew to be true about Simon, onto her. The record indicates otherwise, as far as I’ve been able to tell.

Other people are at work debunking his missive (which I assume will soon be posted here), so I won’t steal their thunder, but when all the smoke dissipates, Simon says little beyond providing a connnecttheleft.com receipt, which no one contests was his, a @connecttheleft Twitter account receipt and some assertions that team members will defend him (but he doesn’t name them). Perhaps he and Eileen should hash this out in a Google hangout to clear the air for good.We can all watch.

Simon’s posturing is not helped by the fact that I asked him several times in private if he did what Eileen had alleged. He took hours to not respond. A simple "no" would have sufficed. Instead, we got him claiming credit for something that thousands watched @eileenleft doing every day. His name has rarely if ever publicly came up in connection with CTL, beyond someone enthusiastically supporting it, as many did.

Eileen’s story is that his only involvement was to rapidly squat on the connecttheleft.com URL, a fact he confirms in his letter, some fervent tweets, and a few drunken conference call rants about his legendary music industry accomplishments. I found this amusing, as to me, he claimed to have been an aspiring web designer. Music never came up. Ever. I don't know him well enough to know what is true and what isn't. But perhaps you do.

Regardless, whatever Simon said to you about CTL’s origins is in no way an indictment of you or UB. What he allegedly did, if true, as I believe it is based on evidence I have seen is simply disgusting. But you may have felt everything he represented was true, and bear no blame for believing what he claimed was true. Does admitting that muss UB’s hair a bit? Sure. But so what? A worthy project can overcome that. Just say you didn’t know, apologize for lending any credence to his smear, thank her for her contributions, and everyone moves on.

Finally, having seen many posts and postures, I don’t think either I, nor anyone else has been engaged in “smearing” you or your efforts. They have asked questions, discussed issues, questioned assumptions, and reacted to your tweets and various revelations about a very popular progressive alleging harm to her. That’s just the price anyone pays for conducting their business in the social sphere. It can all be resolved civily and in good faith through public exchanges like these.

As I have said, I don’t agree that UB, as currently constructed, is a very good idea. But progressives often disagree with each other and I am certainly not going to expend any time or bullets attacking you or UB over a difference of opinion. It may well morph into something I could enthusiastically embrace. I’d welcome that.

Regards,
Matt(a.k.a. Shoq)

You have probably heard by now, that the Republicans, under the leadership of the ethically-challenged Reince Priebus, are actively "investigating" a plan to subvert our democracy by rigging the Electoral College in their favor. In a nutshell, the idea is to allocate electoral votes in key battleground states by congressional district. This means that all those little rural red districts, which outnumber the far fewer blue districts (with all the big cities and people in them), would get far more votes.

Thus, had this rigged system been in place in 2012, Mitt Romney would have just been sworn in as our president. And if it's put in place for the 2016 election, there is no almost no way a Democrat could ever garner enough electoral votes to win the White House. It would be game over for Democrats, and likely the same for the progressive agenda that Barack Obamas has finally advanced after decades of inaction.

Unfortunately, Article II of the U.S, Constitution would let the Republicans do this, and get away with it, if they chose to do it. While legal challenges would surely result, the constitutional foundation of the ploy would probably be upheld by the Supreme Court.

We now know that once again, the pure evil @Alec_states is the organization behind the curtain that has been promoting this really bad idea, and have been slowly cultivating it for a long time. I am not exactly surprised.

As I see it, about the only way to stop them is a massive public outcry that rattles House members to their core, and makes them think the perception of election rigging would cost them their seats. Thus, they would pressure key votes in their respective state legislatures to back away from this vulgar manipulation of the process. Hopefully, Democrats will regain the House in the 2014 midterms, and some kind of legistlative action, short of a constitutional amendment, could create future obstacles to this national-level gerrymandering. But I don't have much hope of that. The best course is to make Republicans feel the pain, pre-emptively, and encourage them to seek the White House the old fashioned way: by winning elections fairly.

I won't waste more words trying to summarize this mess any further. It's best to read those bloggers and journalists following the matter day-by-day. Start here, with Maddow's first "wake up call" broadcast. Then read the key details of this plot from @crooksandliars/@Karoli, and a larger analysis by The Nation's John Nichols. Then proceed down the list of of all the other links below to fully understand the danger, and how few options we seem to have to prevent it. I will be updating this post as more information becomes available.

Please pass this post to friends so they'll have an easier time time grasping this pending crisis. If you have new references you think should be included, please use my contact link at the top of this blog.

The most important thing you can do is make noise about it. Let Republicans know there will be hell to pay for attempting this, beyond their first phase in Virginia, which is already poised to go foward (as discussed below). This is not the sort of thing we can easily undo later. We cannot wait until it's a forgone conclusion. We must act—and soon.

Explainers

The Early Wake Up Calls

Overviews

Detailed Analysis

REPUBLICAN ELECTORAL COLLEGE PLAN WOULD UNDERMINE DEMOCRACY (Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball New

Obstacles to Their Plan

Other Media About the Issue

Take Action

PETITION Speak out against the latest attempt by the Right to fix elections and drown out the voice of voters. – People For the American Way

A Cautionary Tale of Infiltration, Betrayal, and the Activist Community

by Melissa Brewer

I've been busy with worky stuff, so I didn't have time to blog Melissa's moving, informative, and maddening essay when it was first posted. I apologize to her for that. She wrote an important introduction and overview of the noisy Twitter conflagration that made her life a living hell, and has embroiled me and hundreds of other people for months. It is best read together with Matt Osborne's tidy little synopsis of this Ratfucking* of the stopRush effort and me.

Although they'd like everyone to think that what they did was just about me, what Heather E. Chase (@heatherEchase) and Imani Gandy (@angryblacklady) did had an impact on many people. Particularly affected by their selfish machinations were about 3000 #StopRush volunteers, but also several other women who have spent their lives fighting for women's rights. And their fight was much greater than building a small wiki project that died only a few months later when it's founder was able to leverage the attention she received into a paying contractor's job with a bona fide and well respected women's rights organization. Evidently, they made this acqui-hire before Chase and Gandy had admitted what they'd done to us. It might have made a difference in their decision.

Of course, many other people—even well branded bloggers—who never bothered to research any of the story before "defending their friends," were lured into that embarrassing trap based on their modest acquaintances, and these women’s shrieks of "conspiracy theory! conspiracy theory!" They have been quiet lately, probably due to the fact that their friends, the purported "victims," Chase and Gandy admitted doing exactly what we said they had done.

Melissa's story will explain a lot of things to you. I urge you to read it. Some highlights:

I’m writing this post today to tell you a story. It’s the story of a man who wanted to “infiltrate” a movement and manipulated many people so that he could “make his way” as the next Breitbart or James O’Keefe.

I felt good about my involvement in StopRush. I was true to the boycott, too. In fact, because of StopRush, I’ve learned how to vote with my wallet in a number of ways. I’m a conscientious consumer. I have StopRush to thank for that.

As depressing as it’s going to sound, this story is also about hypocrisy in its very core form. While #TeamUterati “worked” to further “women’s rights” and decry slutshaming on a public level, none of the “TeamUterati” women seemed to think twice about aiding and abetting Jason Wade Taylor in his “war”. The women targeted in his ruse included… (emphasis mine).

If this story doesn't open your eyes to the dangers of bloggers acting as careerists, using any means necessary to promote themselves at the expense of other progressive causes and the broader public interest, nothing will.

I'd like to be able to say Melissa's post has led to better relationships between like-minded people on Twitter, particularly those who are more than sick of the drama these people continue to flog every day. Unfortunately, all it's done is bring her more strident and vitriolic attacks from those who are now so thoroughly invested in all these manifestations of Internet Disinhibition run amok.

*A Note About The Term “Ratfucking.”

Chase and Gandy and their supporters lamely try to deflect from the selfishness of their deed by saying that Matt Osborne and I have claimed that what they did was "political." Why? Because Osborne used the term "Ratfucker." This is a typical Breitbartian trick where you try to obfuscate the guts of a story by picking off tiny tangents that you hope the gullible will be distracted by. It was just more of the spinning and manipulation that these two cunning women have used since they first started denying that they did anything at all (most stridently argued to friends in private). They had been slowly backing away from their denials before finally admitting what they did—but only after we published hard evidence that proved it. They excused it all with still more cover-ups, unsupported assertions about my "bullying and abusing women," and of course, their ongoing use of other people to mask their duplicity. Along the way, they shamelessly encouraged their vicious supporters to attack mine (ironically, often women themselves).

But back to their tangent: Not only did the term "Ratfucker" long ago escape its Watergate-era boundaries and come to mean any dirty trick done for any kind of gain, but even at face value, it was appropriate Chase and Gandy were played by Jason Wade Taylor, a con-man who absolutely had a political agenda and used their greed and epic ethical fails to assist him. Their motives were never political, and no one ever said they were.

Rather, their motive was to raise funds to pay their salaries in a quick-and-dirty advocacy effort that designed to do just that. I know. I was there when it was formed. In those days, I spoke to Gandy nearly every day. Out of work, and out of money, her constant refrain (very closely paraphrased) was "I have just enough cushion to last until maybe October. I need to make this work or I will need to find a job."

Ratfucking me and StopRush, apparently, was part of "making this work."

Please read Melissa's story in its entirety. It's an important one with many lessons for social media activists.

Update No. 1

The always dishonest and complicit @MiltShook (a blogger of such stature, he writes his own reviews on Amazon), who continues to deny—and conceal—his major role in this drama, has been spouting off on Twitter about how "Shoq wrote Melissa's piece." This is typical of Shook, who makes straw assertions like these about me almost every day since I eviscerated a truly ridiculous undocumented hit piece he wrote about me on behalf of Chase, Gandy, Jessica, Padilla, and Himself.. Shook postures that he wants all this to stop, while tweeting almost hourly about me. A few examples. Had I written Melissa's essay (replete with tales of her rape and abuse), I would hardly have been as fuzzy about the perp's motives as she was. She gives them wiggle room. I don't. We already know and proved exactly what their motives were.

Today, Breitbart Blogger Lee @Stranahan claimed he got a threatening phone call from the infamous Jason Wade Taylor, aka Randy Hahn
Shortly thereafter, @HeatherEChase shows up on his radio show to say that yes, that was ABSOLUTELY JWT on that tape.
The problem is that a dysfunction monkey with a hearing disorder could tell that it wasn't him.
JWT has threatened me many times. No one loathes him more than I do. But I know what he sounds like, and this "caller" not only wasn't him, but he sounds an awful lot like the so called "Swatter" that Stranahan has made a career out of talking about.
Someone will soon put up a side-by-by side comparison of the the caller with JWT and you can judge for yourself. They are similar as Milk and Gatorade.
So many of us asked, in effect,"Why did professional liar Stranahan set this up? We know they both want JWT to go away, but why such a badly acted show like this, that is so easily debunked with the naked ear, let alone professional audio forensics?
Matt Osborne started blogging about the incident.
Well, it turns out, they talk often, Heather and Lee. Huh. The guy who defends James O'Okeefe. Alrighty then… but
Why is she FORCING people to believe this "threat" was by JWT, when it so clearly wasn't?
Because she's desperate to show that JWT is threatening her, when there has been no other evidence of that any of us have seen. Supposedly, she'd been working with the Houston Police to file charges against someone she has been speaking to regularly. I told Stranahan to press some today. He won't, because the penalties for false police reports are STEEP.
Heather told Lee (earlier on this show) that she expected ME to provide MY evidence to the houston police. (I never said I filed a report)
All of this is an ongoing Web of lies Chase has told to escape one simple reality. She was conned by JWT, as many were.
She felt he was a rich dude who would fund her projects with Angryblacklady. They were conned. Simple. No shame in that. We all were.
The problem is, they provided recordings and emails to him, then lied and said they never asked him for money. They did.
JWT has claimed that he has recordings of her proving that she did. He has already played 1.5 of them and promises more soon. It is essential to Chase's entire career (in her mind), and perhaps AngryBlackLady, that JWT (and me) be discredited. So she keeps pushing these yarns about everyone connected, hoping most people think she's "too nice" or "too woman" to do such a dastardly thing.
The smartest thing she could do is just admit it, apologize to Osborne, Me, Karoli, Vdaze, HoneybadgerLA, and Angryblacklady for her horrible bungling of everything she's touched (except wiki software, which she is good with) since last January.
JohnGcole (owner of Balloon-juice.com(a fine blog), befriended Chase after Angryblacklady introduced them,
Having no information to work with, Cole is simply defending someone he believes in, but has no evidence to exonerate. Admirable, but misguided.
Cole has made the unfortunate mistake of attacking me personally, and my cancer, to try and shut me up, He's admitted this in his stream.
Cole used to attack me routinely because I criticized his friend Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher. Apparently, John wants everyone to like his friends.
All of this is connected to an 11 month long drama that began on the woeful day that a woman named Heather E Chase conned her way into my life, and then proceeded to do her level best to destroy it, while freezing the StopRush effort in its tracks and disrupting the lives of dozens of people and some really good twitter communities.
I suspect when her real story is known, we will know that this is not new for her. She's a former video gamer, They can sometimes create real-life villains to battle, just like they used to do in virtual fantasyland.
So now do you get it?

http://www.alternet.org/media/how-fox-news-created-new-culture-idiots

I've said for quite a few years now that Fox News was making the douchebags and assholes among us into a mainstream demographic. And while a brilliant essay on so many levels, I will always cherish it for this brief synopsis of the social psychotic named Roger Ailes, who is single-handedly taking down America for his own amusement and enrichment.. Not for nothing does this scumbag travel in a 9-person security cocoon.

It is not just Fox News commentators but Fox News itself that has the appropriate, in-your-face, I’m-entitled-to-do-this,especially-because-you-dislike-it vibe. Which should not be surprising from a tightly controlled outfit in which everything flows from a single source, chairman Roger Ailes. Ailes has personal flaws that do not necessarily make one an asshole but that clearly shape the coverage, including his paranoia and his extreme politics. We find more telling evidence by considering the man in a happy moment, a victory lap. In an event celebrating Fox News’s success, Ailes said of the competing networks’ talent, as though sharing in the agony of their defeat: “Shows, stars, I mean it’s sad, you know? . . . I called and asked them all to move to the second floor wherever they were working. Because when they jump, I don’t want it to hurt.” By which he meant that he wouldn’t mind at all if his competitors not only lost the contest but felt humiliated enough to kill themselves. He meant of course to gloat but also to show his contempt. He meant to broadcast his contempt and to have a laugh about his being in a position to advertise it.

The comment was at least poor sportsmanship. A longtime practitioner of blood sport media politics, Ailes has emerged as its undisputed heavyweight champion. Politics is indeed a rough sport, but there are still boundaries that while crossed are nevertheless there, or sort of there. It is possible to have a minimal sense of respect among fellow sportsmen, seen as equals off the playing field, and even to display grace in both victory and defeat. Ailes’s comment suggests that he makes little effort at this, even as he does make an effort to draw attention to the fact that he cares not. He keeps it personal, on and off the court.

Ailes is a poor sport but not in a set contest fairly won. His main victory was to redefine the whole sport itself — that is to say, to redefine news. While American TV journalism has always walked a fine line between informing the public and satisfying media capitalism’s demands for viewers, ratings, and ad dollars, the line was more or less there, and it represented respect for what some regard as the fourth branch of government and a democratic society that depends on real news. Ailes obliterates that line with his “orchestra pit theory,” which he puts as follows: “If you have two guys on a stage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?” The implication of course being that TV can and should cover the sensation rather than the substance, that it should move still further away from professional journalism and toward infotainment in a pure ratings contest. Fox News has changed the game and won, with an ever-thinner pretext of service. (It has very little actual news gathering and reporting staff; it freely crosses its own purported division between reporting and editorializing; and it now boosts for and even instigates protest movements and financially backs specific political candidates.) For its loyalty and attunement to its fans, it has been richly rewarded with outsized profits and unprecedented political influence.

If we ask why Ailes fought so long and so hard for all this, however, the answer is not simply the ample rewards. His victory lap comment also suggests fundamental contempt. It suggests contempt not just for his competitors but for a society of people who have always counted on news with a lot of information shaped by a good-faith attempt at impartial presentation. Our fundamental need in a democratic society, for each of us to make up our own mind, now goes unmet by the whole media environment. It reflects not the minds of equals deliberating together about what together to do but the tenor and voice of a single asshole’s mind.

Read it all at Alternet

Please see VERY Important Updates below

Early Wednesday morning (9/26/2012), Darshann Simon, aka @honeybadgerLA, the friend and legal associate of @angryblacklady, and brief (but obviously disastrous) romantic connection of mine, decided to blow up my telephone 15 times about 36 hours after OsborneInk's first Shoq's Twitter Brigade Burn Notice.

Darshann used her home phone and cell phone to make these calls. I don't know why. Perhaps she figured one was blocked. In fact, I was just not answering her. She also left several voice mails, the longest being 48 seconds.

Anything Darshann needs to say to me can be said by email.

And all of this because a man she thought she fell in love with after barely 3 weeks was a bit squirmy about "treating her like a queen," rather than just treating her well.

By the choices these smear-mongers have made, this entire story, and all of their roles in it will be locked in Internet amber for generations. That's a shame. But they made this choice. If they choose to retract their nasty lies one day, I might choose to remove all of this documented evidence of them. Might.

Update #1

I had erroneously reported there were 17 calls, when in fact, it was merely 15. Sorry! Also, I removed some extraneous verbiage from my earlier post about Darshann's family members, and those related to these other smear-mongers seeing all this someday. Obviously, they will anyway, so there's no point in wasting words saying it.

Update #2

A member of my family received this, shortly after I posted this item around 3:00am EST last night. This morning, a family member forwards me this letter which they received from Darshann this morning:

Anyone who has followed this absurd and calculated drama, and this woman's daily and public role in it can only be stunned by the venality and stupifying revisionism this letter demonstrates. All I and others have done here and elsewhere has been to carefully document what she and her friends have been doing to me (and their possible motives) since August 6th, 2012 on Twitter.

Notice there is no mention of my "abusing her," or "threatening her or her daughter," or any of the other massive conflagrations about Jessica (vdaze) and @angryblacklady she has been engaging in. Nothing. Nada. Zip. She tries to create the impression that she is the victim and not the victimizer, even though the evidence that contradicts that narrative is now all over Twitter and the Internet. If you search for mentions of her by me, you will find at most two instances of tweets on Twitter since August 6th. This one, and this one. Both responses to things said by she or others in her group. Everything else has been documentation of their contrived and crumbling storyline.

If she, or anyone else had any evidence of "harassment of any kind by me, at any time, at any place, it has not been shown to anyone publicly, nor, to my knowledge, have any charges been filed. If anyone should be doing that, it's me (and it may come to that). The woman is simply lying on Twitter, and now lying in emails to my family. And remember, this woman is an attorney—an officer of the court.

Below are just a few of her many tweets you can sample over the past month. Still not seen enough? You can see so many others by her, as well as her campaign co-horts, @vdaze and @angryblacklady, here in this document (scroll down to see more of Darshann Padilla).

Update #2 (and Summary)

Since August 6th, 2012, I have been savagely attacked on Twitter by a clique of people who have lied,libeled, manipulated and concealed agendas and events in order to assassinate my character, both on twitter and in real life, mostly to cover up a very bad thing they did that compromised the #StopRush effort, and exposed personal information about its volunteers to allies of Rush Limbaugh.

This clique was led by Imani Gandi (@angryblacklady), and her associates, co-bloggers and associates, including @heatherEchase Darshann Simon Padilla (@honeneybadgerLA), Jessica Delahunty (@vdaze), @miltShook, Andrew Wienick (@dvnix), @allenbrauer, @thescottfinley, @jc_christian, @theXclass, @gottaLaff, @jennjinx, @tllanes, @themanknownasX, @quadcitypat, and many others with a direct or indirect connection to Gandy and her agenda. Most of them all have different versions of this saga and their reason for being involved, because Gandy, Chase and Delahunty have told them different versions over the many months that this saga has unfolded, and more and more evidence amassed against them. Many of these same players have axes to grind with me going back many years, mostly because of an equally ridiculous whisper campaign against me conducted by a blogger named Gottalaff and her friend, a disgraced journalist named Jason Leopold and their allies. Despite their once defending me against the Gottalaff-led attacks, Gandy, Chase and Delahunty enlisted them early on in their own attack on me under the old saw that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

While there are many documents below (and elsewhere) that describe different aspects of this drama that has plagued me and my friends since August of 2012, all you really need to read are these posts to understand most of it.

The Streisand Effect: Synopsis of a Twitter Drama

How TeamUterati Founders Fell for a Right Wing Con Artist (by Osborne Ink) — the main work that explains the real motive behind most of this madness.

An FAQ about the Twitter Brigade and Their Attacks On Shoq (under construction).

Update #1

Well, it's taken well over 6 weeks for this complete story to emerge. I am so grateful for the long hours so many have spent helping to piece together a timeline and trail of evidence spanning hundreds of people and thousands of emails, messages, and tweets. Evidence counts. As more of it mounted, people started stepping up and telling what they knew. Some perhaps, with a hope of mitigating any liabilities they may have, but others because they felt it was the right thing to do. If you've never known of this story, please read the four links (in order) immediately below. Then if you really want to know the whole grizzly backstory about how and why a "Twitter Brigade" of people smeared me viciously for 8 weeks, you'll find all the key links (in order of importance) further on down the page in the original post.

Jason Wade Taylor – The Con Hits Just Keep On Coming (by @karoli) — a small intro with important observations
How TeamUterati Founders Fell for a Right Wing Con Artist (by Osborne Ink) — the main work that explains the real motive behind most of this madness.
FALLOUT: Attempted Recruitment of Krystal Ball (by @karoli)
Look! It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! Oh wait… It’s Just Milt Shook (by @shoq) — This disgusting character elected to do this hit piece knowing full well he was lying and obfuscating for the others.

How can you know most of what is reported here is true? By the simple fact that two key players are both attorneys, officers of the court, who know the process of discovery, the power of their own statements, and the trail of evidence that they've left behind. They know that what is reported here did in fact happen, and if you pay attention, you will not see them actually denying it. Blowing a lot of angry smoke to distract and deflect the damage it will do to their reputations, sure, but not denying it. They know that making still more false or misleading statements will only compound their problems if this goes much further.

Why didn't we say all this weeks ago? Because there was no way we could tell the story without the facts, the subplots, and the compilation and distillation of the hard evidence. We all have jobs. It takes time. So I had to just eat a heaping crap sandwich every day for all these weeks, being savaged by friends and foes alike, while we methodically unraveled the real story for any thinking person to see.

There is a morality tale to tell here, but I am loathe to spend any more time on this until after the November election. There is much more to say and do. And it will be said and done. If for no other reason than to restore the reputations of people who have been harmed. But it will also be to help insulate future progressive efforts against similar con men, and the stupidity that greed can bring to worthy progressive efforts when ambitious people cross over lines of decency. I will probably never get an apology from any of them, nor from many formerly mutual friends whom they misled by pretending they were motivated solely by the need to "stand up for women" and to an "abusive bully" who left an angry message on his girlfriend's answering machine last January. Am I sorry I ever had such an outburst? Of course. But reasonable people always knew it was hardly the kind of offense to justify such a massive, two month hate campaign against me enjoined by hundreds of people. Their instincts were correct.

How their friends will reconcile such a vulgar deception, done for such selfish reasons is ultimately their business. I just want them to know that I don't hold grudges. Well, not for very long, anyway. We all make mistakes, and we all want to believe our friends are being decent and honorable with us. No one likes being conned or used. But it happens. Lots of stuff happens. All we can do is learn, grow, and move on. Some will also choose to forgive. That's usually been my choice.

"Who can't relate to the idea of leaving one chapter behind and moving on to the next?" - Mike Shinoda

Original Post

New: A chance for shoq's army of accusers to Bring Their Evidence against him!

I promised friends, family, co-workers and supporters the facts about a months' long campaign to assassinate my character by a small clique with overlapping agendas. They've never had a shred of evidence beyond a single angry voice mail I left a cyber-girlfriend 8 months ago. They have kept their many relationships to, and histories with me, as well as their ulterior motives, deeply concealed below the radar of noise generated on Twitter since they kicked off their smear campaign on August 6th.

No, @Shoq didn't "abuse" a bunch of women. This nonsensical gossip derives from a 3 year old, very tired narrative co-created by @gottaLaff and @nicoleSandler who have been running a vendetta against me for years (because I once hurt Gottalaff's feelings). Recently, this stupid, fact-free narrative has been given new life by @angryblacklady (ABL), @heatherEchase (HEC), @vdaze, @miltshook, @dvnix and a clique of other people with very mixed agendas, not the least of which is their own self-promotion. They rely on assist from people like @tymlee, @jennyjinx, @nadiaArtist, and @ttlanes and other @gottalaff supporters who have obessively tweeted about me for years (just search their names on Twitter). Since everyone loves gossip, these memes gain and hold traction easily.

This latest chapter is all about a plan by at least two key people (and possibly more) who wanted to use all this pent up 'abuser" rhetoric to bury me with an avalanche of lies, half-truths, inuendo and gossip, hoping I would just disappear. That way, they hoped, I could never reveal certain embarassing or damaging things that I knew about them, their past, and their activities. They've assumed most are too naive, lazy or trusting to actually probe what was true and what wasn't. Now, with just a few facts shown below, their stories, narratives and agendas are melting away under a spotlight that they've brought upon themselves. As a result, people disgusted by what they are doing to me and my reputation, purely for their own self-interest, are starting to come forward and explain what they've done—and why. And they are getting very nervous.

If you have supported these people in the past, I strongly urge that you stop, or you risk personal or professional embarassment later as still more facts are released. I am sorry for their board and advisory members, and other innocents who never signed-on for this drama, borne of their paranoia—and a concealed motive that will be divulged shortly. Unlike their viscious smears and Milt Shook's transparent smoke screens, accurate and responsible narratives take time.

There is no shame in being conned by people you trusted. I hope those fooled by this fraud will have the courage to admit that they judged me with scant evidence, and return to my stream where we can all focus on what matters.

Below are key posts I would like my friends to read, especially the one **marked**.

The @Shoq Twitter Brigade Burn Notice by @osborneInk — First major debunking of some of my attackers' many false narratives
- UPDATE1: FBI to Investigate @Shoq for Breaking Up With @vdaze?
- Will the FBI Now Investigate @Shoq and @OsborneInk’s “Harassment” of @AngryBlackLady?
- NEW ** How TeamUterati Founders Fell for a Right Wing Con Artist by @OsborneInk **
- Jason Wade Taylor – The Con Hits Just Keep On Coming (by @karoli) — a small intro with important observations
- FALLOUT: Attempted Recruitment of Krystal Ball
Look! It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! Oh wait… It’s Just Milt Shook (by @shoq)
Someone Seems To Be Blowing Up @Shoq’s Phone (and emailing his family)
Shoq speaks-up on “Randy Hahn’s” radio show to address charges of abuse and bullying
Twitter As A Character Assassination Tool by @rmuse — Blogger's overview of the entire drama
Every single has a flip side by @karoli — Discussion of how enormous the bully campaign is, and its early true origins.
Sometimes You @Gottalaff Until You Can's Anymore (by @shoq) — the true beginnings of the "Shoq the abuser" narratives. Always nonnsense.
Shoq Value Exposed: Smear Exhibits Index — A growing list of exhibits and SAMPLES of daily attacks.
Important: A chance for shoq's army of accusers to Bring Their Evidence against him!

There are plenty of examples of these attacks in the Smear Index above, but a few examples are posted herein below.

Thank you, to all who have believed in me and stood by me through this bizarre and destructive ordeal no matter how many bottles and bricks were thrown your way. Anyone who spoke up in my defense has been treated with a bitter ruthlessness that few have ever witnessed on Twitter. I am deeply grateful and honored to those of you who braved that onslaught, and proud to call you my friends.

And a special thanks to the hard work of some bloggers and other supporters who have helped me compile the facts and tell the story. And finally, and monumental thanks to those who stood up for me despite the relentless bullying you brought upon yourselves. I am forever in your debt.

Shoq, aka Matt

After you've read the facts, please read on

I think the evidence presented above speaks for itself.

Unlike the hundreds of people attacking me with every charge imaginable, who have no evidence of any kind but for a loud and abusive message I left on an ex-romantc interest's voicemail (which I apologized for many weeks ago, publicly). Reasonable people can decide for themselves what has really gone on here, and who has really been "abused" more:

The woman (@vdaze) — who had to listen to an angry voice mail last January… and not sends totally unrelated politically-based activities information to the FBI, or
Shoq — who has been had his character malciously and wilfully assassinated by a mob of cooperating band of women and men who have conducted a massive smear campaign against him all over Twitter, damaging his reputation, relationships, friendships, and business interests.
Shoq's Friends and Supporters —who have been relentlessly bullied and harassed until many of them have no choice but to unfollow me (in some cases, after following me for 5 years).

After they decide, they are free to follow or unfollow me as their conscience dictates. I am hoping many whose minds get changed will reach out to some of the hundreds of other people who were poisoned by this coordinated yarn spinning, and ask them to follow me again so we can all use Twitter for more productive things.

It ain't over until it's over

I had been hoping this drama would have ended over 2 months ago when it started, but that wasn't in my attacker's plans. What was postured as an organic "speaking out" by a an "abuse victim," was actually anything but that. Most have seen me trying to keep this all off Twitter, while oblivious to how much the real attackers only pretended to (we rarely see who we don't follow). I am hoping the documents above will change that perception. As long as these attacks continue, will we debunk them and the people behind them. And with a lot more detail than they will be comfortable with.

Don't judge me or this drama by what YOU see on Twitter

You only see what your timeline sees (those you follow). You don't see this:

What gets addressed to specific names, e.g. "@barackObama — @shoq is a vicious bully and should be fired as a supporter. http://j.mp/somelink"
Such addressees can get messages about me all day long but unless you follow them, you will never see them. This is a favorite tactic of these Twitter bullies.
Protected Tweets — When bullies protect their timeline so only their followers can see their tweets (and they don't show up in searches). Another popular tactic.
Direct Messages — sent to hundreds of people every day, to anyone they can get to follow them so they can direct them to one attack website or another.
Phone calls — between the core group coordinated this campaign, but which are obvious, or indicated or reported in various ways.

I will still not be speaking about this on Twitter

I've had a few notable lapses since I promised to exit all this, but mostly I have tried to keep my word and focus on this election.

It's easy for partisan players to bitch and moan about how easy it is to "just ignore it," but until you've been attacked by a few hundred people (and thousands of their friends) in unison, each and every day for months, no matter what you do or say, well… I respectfuly ask that you:

Read the documents above and get some kind of clue about what this all about, and the extent of this campain, and then…
Please stand-down and try not to comment and appear aligned with these people because you really have no concept of what has really transpired and look ridiculous to those of us who do. Moreover, you will be connected with their smear, which may have unintended consequences as the names of anyone that does becomes set in Internet concrete for eternity.

The Short list of attackers

The complete list will be continually updated on the Shoqvalueexposed: Smear Exhibits Page. Searching a site like topsy.com for any of these names and "@Shoq or @vdaze" will show you just how active all of these accounts have been during this epic smear campaign. When these people speak to you, please know their agenda concerning me.

The Nucleus group

These are the people who have organized this campaign, or have been central to perpetuating it daily

@vdaze, @angryBlackLady, @honeybadgerLA, @vdaze, @heatherEchase,
@jennyjinx, @shopaholic_918, @semishark, @luthorCEO

The Point People

These people engage in the attacks almost daily, for whatever neurotic or obsessive motives compel them

@gottalaff, @tymlee, @nadiaArtist , @jasonleopold, @tllanes, @cody_k, @wendylefty, @tosfm, @iboudreau, @brandibax
@TheXClass, @themanknowasx, @jc_christian, @DudeImAnEgg, @raine1967, @lyssophobe

The Echo Chamber

Followers, sychophants and trolls who RT and/or echo the Nucleus and Point people almost daily (or hourly)

@DailyDriveler
More listed on the: Smear Exhibits Page

The Conversative Bloggers

The right wing extremists who have plenty of political reasons to perpetuate this pointl

A Few Attack Examples

Warning: Many of these tweets are Not Safe For Work (NSFW)

@vdaze’s “Dysfunctional C**t” Tweets — the first “meltdown” of August 6th, 2012, hours after an email exhange with shoq (vacationing in Canada at the time) discussing how they could fix their relationship. Shoq heard about a rant, but never actually saw the tweets until weeks later.
@vdaze Retweeted — While she protects her Twitter stream, she cannot prevent (nor did she really want to) a huge number of her tweets escaping into the wild. These represent only a small percentage of what her private feed had actually been seeing on a daily basis week after week after week.
Collection of tweets — These are just a sampling over a few days of time, showing the tweets of the three antagonists who both originated and promoted an ongoing smear campaign consisting of tweets, direct messages and blog posts from August 6th thru late September of 2012 (and continuing). The tweets are explained in various narratives below under “Related Posts”
DudeImAndEgg has been pimping and promoting any anti-shoq narratives since April 2011, as can be seen in 1300 consecutive tweets from 4/7/ 2011 until 9/27/2012
#AbusiveFuck Tweets — (18 pages of them) — wherein key players engage in repetitive hashtag attacks for days.
@angryblacklady Tweets — over only a 24 Hour Period on 9/21/2010, 7 weeks after drama began
@AngryBlackLady Tweets Mentioning Shoq — over 6 week period. All parties involved have deleted many tweets, but they are captured in various forms.
@honeybadgerLA Tweets — Again, many key tweets deleted, but captured elsewhere.Far more listed on the: Smear Exhibits Page

This is a BFD

For years, my baseline rant has been how the American Left has to get more imaginative and start to build a true Progressive Infrastructure that can bring new social action tools that can assist us in taking back America from this radical conservatism and plutocracy run amok that has shredded so many social gains we had made in the 20th century. (The actual URL of my StopRush.net project is stoprush.socialactiontools.com)

And now comes this vital and exciting project (and tool) from the workersvoice.org (in concert with partners like the AFLCIO). It is just the sort of project I've been talking about. And a really splendid one that needs everyone's participation and support. And it's easy for anyone to play

It's only one small step for progess, but it's one giant step for progressivism at the local level. And I think it's going to inspire many others to come. (More below the video)

Listen… It's Not Rocket Science

Repurpose is an important precedent for where we can go. If the Left can finally start working together and sharing resources in novel and well-resourced ways, a massive information and networking platform can come together that changes everything. (Full disclosure: That premise has been the essense of a technology project and software I have been working on for many years.)

We've always had the votes, the creativity, and the imagination. It's time the Left also had the organization, the social media platform, and the money. Change doesn't just happen. It took the right 40 years to seize the local playing field of our politics. These kinds of efforts can help to seize it right back.

Please be sure you make everyone you know watch this video and visit the http://repurpose.workersvoice.org/ website.

For more updates on this exciting project, follow my friend @nekaro on Twitter

There is no outrage because outrage is now a tactic, not an emotion.

Now prepare yourself

First, the basic outine:

Next, the larger context and relevance…

Related

Related

Explainers

The Early Wake Up Calls

Overviews

Detailed Analysis

Obstacles to Their Plan

Other Media About the Issue

Take Action

See Also

*A Note About The Term “Ratfucking.”

Update No. 1

Related

Related

Related

Update #1

Update #2

Update #2 (and Summary)

Update #1

Original Post

After you've read the facts, please read on

It ain't over until it's over

Don't judge me or this drama by what YOU see on Twitter

You only see what your timeline sees (those you follow). You don't see this:

I will still not be speaking about this on Twitter

The Short list of attackers

The Nucleus group

The Point People

The Echo Chamber

The Conversative Bloggers

A Few Attack Examples

This is a BFD

Listen… It's Not Rocket Science

Related