Tag: Sarah Palin

Tea Baggers Exposed Gaming the Digg System

Trish

digg

Here’s a story we doubt you’ll see reported on FOX News. AlterNet recently completed a year-long investigation into so-called “gaming the system” at the content aggregator, Digg. A Yahoo group calling itself the Digg Patriots (whose site has since been taken down) figured out how to rig Digg’s voting. If you don’t know, at Digg and many similar sites, you can vote for the stories you want to see featured prominently, or in this case, those you want “buried.” As AlterNet reported:

It’s easier to tell you what the group is against than what it’s for: Obama, progressives, diplomacy, health care reform, immigrants, science, the separation of church and state, acknowledgment of human-induced climate change, the government, pro-choice protections, public schools, and higher education. They also claim to believe Obama is a Muslim and a socialist, and that he was born in Kenya.

Literally thousands of stories have already been artificially removed from Digg due to this group. When a story is buried, it is removed from the upcoming section (where it is usually at for ~24 hours) and cannot reach the front page, so by doing this, this one group is removing the ability of the community as a whole to judge the merits or interest of these stories on their own (in essence: censoring content).

The immensity of the impact is commensurate with the reach of Digg. Again, according to Alternet:

It is ranked 50th among US websites by Alexa (117th in the world), by far the most influential social media site…Digg generates around 25 million page views per month, over one third of the page views of the NY Times. Front page stories regularly overwhelm and temporarily shut down websites in a process called the “Digg Effect.”

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Verbatim

Trish

While former half-term governor Palin is certainly an expert in not being vetted, we put our trust in the judgment of the American people who rejected not only the broken policies she and Republicans continue to call for, but also this very kind of childish politics she continues to engage in.

DNC Press Secretary Hari Sevugan, commenting on Sarah Palin’s statement that Pres. Obama is not up to the task of being president, despite 18 months of proof to the contrary. Even as Pres. Obama has pulled the country back from the brink of Republican-induced economic collapse, succeeded where the last eight presidents failed at starting genuine health care reform, reversed Bush policies on torture, murder, mutilation, and humiliation of individuals in the custody of officers or agents of the federal government, and signed a strategic arms treaty with Russia that reduces both of our nuclear arsenals by one-third (without even being able to see the Russian shore), Palin said, “Some of this though is a result of he not having much experience and then a complicit media and maybe some voters who chose to not to allow him to be vetted very closely.”

Verbatim

Trish

Bristol believes in redemption and forgiveness to a degree most of us struggle to put in practice in our daily lives.

Sarah and Todd Palin’s ghost-writers, in a statement on the announced re-betrothal of Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston. Bristol’s statement was slightly different: “We got engaged two weeks ago. It felt right, even though we don’t have the approval of our parents.”

Mr. President, Please Appoint Sarah Q. Palin Gulf Disaster Czar

Jon Ponder

See the rest of the conversation between the president and Sarah Q. here.
Art by Betty Cracker at Rumproast.com. Click the image to see the rest of the strip.
While regular Americans see the Gulf oil spill as a tragedy that is devastating the lives of people and animals as well as the economy, ecosystems and natural beauty along the shores of five states, Republicans see the disaster as just another opportunity to play political games and criticize the president.

The problem with putting Sarah Q. Palin in charge of anything is that “Quitter” is her middle name.

From day one, the Republicans’ approach to the crisis has resembled a mob of howler monkeys tossing poo at firemen trying to put out a fire at the zoo. Last week, Sarah Q. Palin, the GOP’s putative 2012 presidential nominee, piled on by flinging her poo at the president in the guise of offering advice via her Facebook page:

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CA Sen: Fiorina Leads Tom Campbell 38% – 23%, Campbell Campaign Goes Dark Six Days Before Vote, Tea Bagger Trails Fiorina By 22 Points

Jon Ponder

Carly Fiorina
Carly Fiorina
Support for Tea Party’s DeVore Nearly Doubled to 16% After Sarah Palin Endorsed Fiorina

With the California primary election in less than a week, the race to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer has taken a harrowing turn for Republicans. It appears that failed former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina now has an insurmountable lead over former Rep. Tom Campbell. The Campbell campaign reportedly ceased television advertising as of June 1.

In the 2000 U.S. Senate race, Campbell lost to incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein by 19 points, but Democrats considered him to be much more electable against Boxer this year than Fiorina, a self-financed political novice who was fired from Hewlett-Packard after a scandal that included allegations she wiretapped members of the HP board of directors.

Interestingly, in the month or so since right-wing celebrity Sarah Palin dissed the tea bagger candidate Chuck DeVore by giving her kiss-of-death endorsement to Fiorina, his polling has almost doubled, from 9 percent in early April to 16 percent now.

It’s hard to prove that Palin’s endorsement of Fiorina — whose gaffes as a McCain-Palin surrogate often dominated headlines in the 2008 campaign — has helped DeVore. It’s just as likely he’s gotten a bump among extreme right-wing voters from a web ad in which he compared himself to Jack Bauer, the lead character in the Fox terror-porn series “24.”
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Palin’s Note in Support of Haley is All About…Palin

Trish
Left, former Haley speechwriter and alleged lover Will Folks, right, the aggrieved candidate
Left, former Haley speechwriter and alleged lover Will Folks, right, the aggrieved candidate

Only Sarah Palin could take what should have been a note of encouragement and make it all about her. And how she’s been mistreated. And attacked. And lied about. And on and on and on.

Gosh, poor Sarah. I mean, poor Nikki. Whichever.

If you missed it, Rep. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) is running for governor of her state, which is looking for one, what with the term-limited Gov. Mark Sanford off in Argentina pursuing affairs. So the last thing South Carolina needs is a governor who has affairs, right? Well, one Will Folks, a former Haley speech writer and now a conservative blogger, says he had “an inappropriate physical relationship” with his boss in 2007.

Haley is the tea bagger favorite in the race, and as such, has drawn the endorsement of former partial term Gov. Sarah Palin, who came to South Carolina to campaign for her. Now whoever writes Palin’s Facebook notes has posted an aggrieved statement ostensibly in support of Haley but basically all about Sarah.

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Idaho Primary Results Confirm Palin’s Poor Judgment, Tea Party Disarray

Jon Ponder

Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho)
Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho)
A week after the tea party favorite lost the special election in Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district to a Democrat — and six days after Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, a tea party favorite, imploded his campaign by coming out against the Civil Rights Act, results from Idaho’s primary yesterday produced yet another tea bagger snafu.

In the Republican race, Raul Labrador defeated the establishment favorite, Vaughn Ward, by 10 points, 48 percent to 38 percent. Ward, a Republican National Committee “Young Guns” top recruit, had been endorsed by Sarah Palin, who even did a drive-by campaign stop on his behalf.

Labrador was endorsed by a tea party group in Boise but couldn’t get the nod from Tea Party Express, the national astroturf organizer operated by the Republican consulting group, Russo Marsh + Rogers. In a truly remarkable move, TPE — the organization that staged the recent corporate-funded tea-party bus rallies — endorsed Rep. Walt Minnick, the incumbent Democrat, who ran unopposed. Minnick was the only Democrat to receive an endorsement from the collective tea party hive this year.

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Maniac Predicts Palin Will Declare on Reagan’s 100th Birthday

Buck Banks

Conservatives4Palin

The wingnuts over at Conservatives4Palin.com (there’s no Liberals4Palin.com, I checked) believe that Sarah Palin will announce she’s running for president of the United States Feb. 6, 2011.

Because that’s the 100th anniversary of the nativity of Ronald Reagan, the Jesus of Conservatism, silly.

The brains behind this prediction belong to Kevin DuJan, founder and editor of HillBuzz.org, who attended two recent speeches by Palin in Illinois, and provided some “analysis” that is nothing if not trenchant. But first, we should qualify DuJan as an analyst with this excerpt from his analysis:

Todd’s there, in a sharp suit with colorful tie, standing behind dark, heavy curtains. He’s off to the side, out of the way backstage, watching his wife fire up the awesome on all cylinders before enthusiastic crowds hanging on her every word. There’s a twinkle in his husky blue eyes and the first twitch of a smile on a crisply-goateed impish face straining desperately to remain serious, surrounded as he is by burly men in suits with ear pieces, cell phones, iPads, and itineraries aplenty. Though the Palins are very much in the national big time now, and will be for the rest of their lives, Todd’s seemingly still very much “just Todd” — a regular, huntin’, fishin’, snowmachinin’, g’-droppin’, dude from Wasilla, married to an incredible woman he still can’t believe he was lucky enough to sweep off her feet. That smile’s a “I can’t believe we’re doing this” smile, married perfectly to a “What did I ever do to deserve a woman as awesome as this?” grin. It’s a match as natural, easy-going, and honest as the Palins themselves.

Bit gushy, ain’t it. What are “husky blue eyes?” And I never thought of Todd Palin as having an “impish face.” He just looks like another none-too-bright shit-kicker to me.

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If Tea Baggers Were Black…

Trish

WhiteSlaveSmSometimes it’s hard to improve on the original, and Eric Effron’s editorial in a recent issue of The Week is such a case. What if, Effron asked, tea baggers were black?

It’s a provocative thought experiment: “Imagine,” writes author and self-described anti-racism activist Tim Wise, “if the Tea Party were black.” In reality, of course, the Tea Party is virtually all white, but for the sake of this exercise, imagine that members of Congress in March had been surrounded by thousands of angry African-Americans, yelling insults at white, Southern politicians and talking about “revolution” and “taking the country back.” Or, imagine that the hundreds of gun-rights activists who recently descended on the nation’s capital, many armed with AK-47s and handguns, were black. Would admirers of the Tea Party view such protesters as patriotic Americans entitled to voice their heartfelt opinions, or as a dangerous mob that the police and the FBI should closely watch? And what if there were a black Glenn Beck, with millions of devoted followers, calling for a public uprising against a tyrannical U.S. government? Would he be seen as an entertainer—or as a threat to public safety? “To ask any of these questions,” Wise concludes, “is to answer them.”

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