Dr. Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report has done yeoman’s work fighting the Jihad over the Internet (he is credited with interfering with Al Qaeda’s latest video).  In this post he sights a different target - the people and groups that spread smears about Sarah Palin -  Hope, Change, & Lies: Orchestrated “Grassroots” Smear Campaigns & the People that Run Them:

Our research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated rumors about Sarah Palin that were known to be false. These rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure.

It is also likely that the PR firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign. Namely:

• Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.

• The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.

• Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.

• Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.

• The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.

• This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod’s firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as “astroturfing.”

• David Axelrod is Barack Obama’s chief media strategist.

The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.

Read the whole thing, it is very detailed and he names names…

UPDATE:  Astroturf is a fake grass roots movement.  The term is applied when a Public Relations firm creates a fake grassroots group on behalf of a secretive client to professionally manipulate public opinion. According to Business Week, Obama Chief Strategist David Axelrod’s firm ASK is known as “the gold standard in Astroturf organizing. This is an emerging industry, and ASK has made a name for itself in shaping public opinion and manufacturing public support.”  Business Week describes a successful Astroturf campaign:

ASK’s relationship with ComEd goes back much further: The Chicago-based utility says ASK has been an adviser since at least 2002. ASK’s workload picked up in 2005, as the Exelon subsidiary was nearing the end of a 10-year rate freeze and preparing to ask state regulators for higher electricity prices. Based on ASK’s advice, ComEd formed Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity (CORE) to win support.

One TV commercial, penned by ASK, warned of a ComEd bankruptcy and blackouts without a rate hike: “A few years ago, California politicians seized control of electric rates. They held rates down, but the true cost of energy kept rising. Soon the electric company went bust; the lights went out. Consumers had to pay for the mess. Now, some people in Illinois are playing the same game.” CORE, which describes itself on its Web site as “a coalition of individuals, businesses and organizations,” was identified as the ad’s sponsor. After a complaint was filed with state regulators, ComEd acknowledged that it had bankrolled the entire $15 million effort.

Another example of a successful Astroturf campaign is the Orwellian ‘Hillary 1984′ viral video. Hillary ad traced to staffer of firm hired by Obama:

…the creator of the “Big Sister” YouTube ad attacking Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic staffer who worked for an Internet firm on contract with rival Barack Obama’s campaign…

De Vellis was employed, until Wednesday, when he was unmasked, by Blue State Digital, the Washington, D.C., firm whose founders include Joe Rospars. Rospars is the Obama campaign’s new media director and oversees the extensive Obama Web operation.

President Bill Clinton’s comment about “typical Chicago thug” politics was a complaint and a warning. This campaign will get ugly before it’s over and WE NEED TO STAND UP!

“If you don’t count pigs who know Mary Kay…”

Huntsville Times columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson follows this bon mot with a list of some “common sense” changes:

Make education laws universal in all 50 states. Make kids go to school, the way they used to. Instigate a strict, uniform set of rules for the ever-growing number of home-schooling parents. Currently, some states register and test home-schoolers. Others allow willy-nilly, anyone-can-teach-anything approach to educating youth. Decide, once and for all, if education is imperative…

Nationalize health care…

Disallow tax-exemption status for churches, a change that would get rid of more charlatans and television bandits than anything else you could do…

Reinstate the draft so that poor young people aren’t the only ones who stand to lose when politicians start stupid wars.

Those of you who still read The Huntsville Times know that this type of Leftie blather permeates The Times. For those who don’t read the Times any more, note that this column appeared not in the Editorial section, but in the ‘Life & Leisure’ section, beside ‘Hints from Heloise’ (you can’t make this stuff up).

Huntsville Times editor Kevin Wendt, in an introductory column, said “One concern many readers have already voiced to me is their feeling the opinion pages lean to the left.”

Kevin, it’s not just the “opinion pages”…  Just about every section of The Huntsville Times is rife with liberal twaddle, from the in-the-tank for Obama Associated Press “news” articles to the Life section.

Note that Johnson’s column was not available online from the Times, but I found the same column at the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

UPDATE: It should be no surprise that circulation of the Huntsville Times has been dropping even as Huntsville is growing:

The Huntsville Times’ circulation has fallen 1.5 percent during the same time (2006-2008), although it saw a 0.006 percent increase between 2007 and 2008.

Huntsville needs a good newspaper, and deserves a better one.

FBI serves search warrant against UT student in Palin case reads the headline in the Tennessean.

The FBI is stepping up its investigation into the hacking of personal e-mail of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin by a University of Tennessee student.

A person who identified himself as a witness tells WBIR-Knoxville that agents with the FBI served a federal search warrant at the Fort Sanders residence of David Kernell early Sunday morning…

A separate law enforcement source confirmed to WBIR that a search warrant was served on Kernell’s apartment.

Where are the cameras? The news media seems to be treating Kernell just like they treated John Edwards…

From today’s Huntsville Times…

Lack of balance

As a long-time journalist and former journalism professor who moved back to my home town of Birmingham three years ago, I continue to be appalled at the lack of balance and fairness in your coverage of politics in this state.

You have consistently distorted issues on the news pages and the editorial pages in favor of Republicans and against Democrats.

Your reporting on the two-year college so-called “scandal” appears to be part of an organized plot on the part of the Republican Party to take over the Legislature by 2010.

Your coverage, both on the news and editorial pages, has shown absolutely no objectivity of any kind, and certainly not balance and fairness, towards former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. You have distorted the law and the politics in the case. You should be ashamed to call yourselves journalists.

If you have any real desire to serve your readers and live up to your First Amendment responsibilities as a free press, you should take a stand and ask that Congress live up to its constitutional oath and hold Karl Rove in contempt for failing to honor a congressional subpoena and testify under oath.

If he had nothing to do with manipulating justice in this state and country, as you seem to believe, then let’s have him put his right hand on a Bible and say that for the record. Anything short of that does a massive disservice to the people of this democratic republic. And for your role in that, you should all be ashamed.

Glynn R. Wilson,

Birmingham, 35215

Glynn Wilson is editor and publisher of the online Locust Fork News-Journal.

Actually, Glynn, we’re a constitutional republic. The Congo is, or at least claims to be, a democratic republic.  There is a difference.

From the Wikipedia entry for Republic:

[T]he phrase “People’s Democratic Republic” was often synonymous with Marxist dictatorships during the Cold War.

Constitutional republic - A constitutional republic is a state where the head of state and other officials are elected as representatives of the people and must govern according to existing constitutional law that limits the government’s power over citizens. In a constitutional republic, executive, legislative, and judicial powers are separated into distinct branches so that no individual or group has absolute power and the power of the majority of the population is checked by only allowing them to elect representatives. The fact that a constitution exists that limits the government’s power, makes the state constitutional. That the head(s) of state and other officials are chosen by election, rather than inheriting their positions, and that their decisions are subject to judicial review makes a state republican.

Democratic Republic - Tends to be used by countries who have a particular desire to emphasize their claim to be democratic; these are typically Communist states and/or ex-colonies. Examples include the German Democratic Republic (no longer in existence) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Glynn isn’t quite clear on what form of government we have.  Or maybe he’s just juxtaposing his own desires.

It seems like an ‘Army of Davids’ may have tracked down the person who ‘hacked’ into Sarah Palin’s email (he guessed her password security questions / answers). Michelle Malkin has been all over the story and Skirts, Not Pantsuits suggests that the ‘hacker’ may be the adult son of a Tennessee State Representative - Democrat.

I wonder how long it will take the FBI to catch up… Or at least tell us about it…

UPDATE: Wired reports on the story, says they’ve talked to the TN State Rep on the phone, who ”said he could not talk about the matter and would have no comment”.

UPDATE: The Tennessean reports:

State Rep. Mike Kernell confirmed Thursday that his son, a University of Tennessee-Knoxville student, is at the center of heated Internet discussion into the hacking of the personal e-mail of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Kernell, a Memphis Democrat, confirmed that it is his 20-year-old son, David, who is being widely named on Internet blogs and chatrooms in connection with an unfolding story about Palin’s hacked e-mail accounts.

UPDATE:  Terry Frank has posted screenshots of David Kernell’s Facebook, where Kernell describes his ‘Political Views’ as “Obamacrat”. Kernell is a ‘Member of’ groups like: “UT for Barack Obama”, “Support the Jena 6″, “Free the Jena Six”, and “The Fastest Way to a Girl’s Heart is Through Her Gay Best Friend” (OK, that one’s funny).

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni won the Kadima Party primary, which means that she will likely become the next Prime Minister of Israel, pending Ehud Olmert’s resignation (expected Sunday) and Kadima forming a Government (without a general election). Livni received 43% of the vote, beating out Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz (42%), Meir Sheetrit (8.5%), and Avi Dichter (6.5%).

Caroline Glick had this to say about Livni before the election:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni may not be a crook, but she is a fraud. And if polls are to be believed, Livni the fraud is just one fraudulent election away from becoming our next prime minister…

Unlike all the other party primaries that have been held over the years, this one is designed not as a preparatory step ahead of general elections to the Knesset. Rather, it is intended to replace general elections. The expressed goal of Livni and her three opponents - Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, Public Security Minister Avi Dichter and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit - is not to ready Kadima for elections, but to select a new prime minister who will form a governing coalition that will bar the public from electing its representatives until March 2010.

It should be noted that Glick is a former Likud Party official (the same party as former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu).  This part is interesting to me because of the ‘Vote Contractor’ angle (think ‘Community Organizer’ and ACORN):

Only 15 percent of Kadima’s members joined the party on their own initiative. According to analyses conducted over the past several months, these 15% are people who were swept up in the initial excitement when Kadima was formed by Ariel Sharon in 2005…

The other 85% of Kadima’s 70,000 members are people who were brought into the party by those nefarious standard-bearers of Israeli politics of recent years: the vote contractors.

Vote contractors are political bosses and paid political operatives who peddle their influence in various communities, labor unions and population sectors to persuade citizens to join specific parties as bloc voters.

In its brief political life span, Kadima’s membership rolls have been subject to multiple criminal investigations. In one case now under investigation, up to 1,000 people were signed up for the party without their knowledge. Vote contractors forged their signatures on membership forms and paid their membership fees.

 Seems like liberals use the same tactics all over the world. Saul Alinsky would be so proud.

 One of my favorite websites is ‘Sweetness & Light’, here is a post about ACORN and their history of undermining the US election system - ”to overwhelm, paralyze, and discredit the voting system through fraud, protests, propaganda and vexatious litigation.”

Who Wrote This (reminiscent of the dormant ‘Daily Dixie’):

When the aim of education is the absorption of facts, learning becomes exclusively and exhaustively selfish, and there is no obvious social motive for learning. The measure of success is always a competitive one—it is about comparing results and sorting people into winners and losers. People are turned against one another, and every difference becomes a potential deficit. Getting ahead of others is the primary goal in such places, and mutual assistance, which can be so natural, is severely restricted or banned.

Unlike Dan, I’ll go ahead and give you the answer: “respected” “mainstream” “distinguished professor” “school reform activist” William Ayers (also known as Marxist terrorist William Ayers, who is “friendly” with Barack Obama). Note that all those glowing descriptions of Ayers are from Obama’s ‘Fact Check’.

Who knew that learning “facts” is “selfish” and that “winners and losers” are unnatural?  I’ll go ahead and answer that too, Antonio Gramsci.  Gramsci is credited with the idea of “cultural hegemony“, which addressed the failure of socialism to ignite communist revolutions in capitalist states:

Gramsci therefore argued for a strategic distinction between a “war of position” and a “war of manoeuvre”. The war of position is a culture war in which anti-capitalist elements seek to gain a dominant voice in mass media, mass organizations, and educational institutions to heighten class consciousness, teach revolutionary analysis and theory, and inspire revolutionary organization. Following the success of the war of position, communist leaders would be empowered to begin the war of manoeuvre, the actual insurrection against capitalism, with mass support.

Understanding Gramsci helps explain the mess that is public education, the leftism extant in many institutions, and the bias of the media.

To bring this home, consider this from a “News” article in the UAH Exponent:

…you could always try red: the Socialist Party of America has also announced their nominees. Far from hazy images of Cuba or the former Soviet Union (both of which were communist, not socialist), the party’s Statement of Principles asserts that “The Socialist Party strives to establish a radical democracy that places people’s lives under their own control—a non-racist, classless, feminist socialist society … where working people own and control the means of production and distribution through democratically-controlled public agencies…

It’s obvious to most people that facts weren’t important to that reporter…  It’s interesting to me that communism has such a bad reputation among today’s socialists that they feel compelled to rebrand their beliefs.  Anybody here think that communism isn’t a form of socialism? Anybody here think that people like Gramsci and Ayers have impacted US education?

Some other Socialist…

http://www.leninimports.com/nuremberg_party_rallies_gallery_9.jpg

I have the honor of being mentioned, albeit indirectly and inaccurately, on the world renowned Locust Fork blog.  This is a great day indeed!  I hope my server can handle the expected deluge of traffic as his many readers find their way to my blog (Wilson didn’t link directly, but I know his highly intelligent readers must be proficient with Google).

Meanwhile, there are other Alabama bloggers who are still relying on the Newhouse press view of the world who still can’t get their heads around the FACT that the Bush White House, including disgraced former political aide Karl Rove, manipulated justice for political reasons - even in little old Alabama.

One of the biggest dumbasses of them all has now even questioned the sanity of Roger Shuler, who was fired from his job of 19 years at UAB for blogging about the conflict of interest and incompetence of U.S. Attorney Alice Martin and the Siegelman case.

One of these bloggers, an Auburn engineer, likes to think he is some kind of an authority on blogging. Along with his little friend GOP girl - better known as Flip by her former colleagues at Auburn where she failed to get tenure and doesn’t even teach anymore - they pollute the discussion of substantive issues in this state and waste bandwidth in their attempt to be somebody, even as they mostly blog under anonymous identities and hide from real information.

In the true tradition of the First Amendment, bloggers such as Roger Shuler and myself are trying to get good information out to the good people of Alabama - as well as inform people around the country and the world - about a series of serious injustices that are taking place here.

They would rather call people crazy and attack the credibility of credentialed journalists than to do the heavy reading to find out what’s really going on in the world outside the Heart of Dixie.

I must say, being called a dumbass by the likes of Glynn Wilson warms my heart.

Glynn “Gooddamn you Christian Republicans” Wilson is an interesting study (my apologies for the coarse language).  He runs a left wing propaganda site under the rouse of being Alabama’s most credentialed journalist.  He infrequently ventures forth into the world beyond his doorstep to condemn virtually all Alabama blogs as being anonymously operated (usually incorrectly, I might add).  He has even been observed doing this through comments left under a false name (see the comments in the Daily Dixie link below).  A true paragon of integrity!

Wilson is best known for giving us Jill Simpson, the woman who claims to be Karl Rove’s personal spy.  That should tell you a great deal about his credibility.

To comment directly on Wilson’s post, though:

• I do not know, much less am I friends with, a GOP girl or Flip.
• Dan at Daily Dixie is the Alabama blogger who authored the post about Roger Shuler.
• I don’t consider myself to be any kind of an “authority on blogging.”  I’ve been over this before.  One might have thought that Wilson’s well honed investigative journalist skills would have been able to realize that.
• I am an Auburn engineering graduate, though how that is germane to the conversation is a bit unclear.
• Wilson specified that two people, me and this GOP girl, pollute the discussion of substantive issues.  Maybe, that is a personal opinion.  I have my own thoughts on Wilson’s “work.”  He goes on to say in the same sentence, referring only to me and another person, that “they mostly blog under anonymous identities.”  Not true.  “They” implies both people when only only two people are the subject of the sentence.  I have always blogged under my real name.  Any comments I leave elsewhere always include a link back to my site.  In other words it is the exact opposite of anonymous.

Update: After I pointed out a typo in one of his posts (he suggested some individuals were on the political “doll” instead of “dole”) Glynn deleted my comment and banned me from his site.  What a shame!  It’s kind of like being banned in Red China.

From Iowa:

Four peace activists were arrested on Friday as they attempted to make a “citizens arrest” of Karl Rove, who was one of President George W. Bush’s top aides before leaving the administration last year.

“It should be Karl Rove in that van. War Criminal!” one of a dozen protestors shouted as the four were put into a police van outside a Des Moines country club where Rove spoke at a private state Republican party fundraiser.

Their dementia knows no bounds.  A citizens arrest!  How silly.