Politics

Mr. Hasselhoff, Tear Down That Wall

ABC News: [David] Hasselhoff enjoys cult status across Europe. This is most marked in Germany, where his 1989 album, Looking for Freedom, topped the charts for three months. Two years ago, Hasselhoff expressed disappointment that he was not recognized as having helped end the Cold War through his music. ... (read more)

Joe Trippi on Jerome Armstrong

In today's New York Post, former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi throws Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas under the bus: Some Dems suspect [Mark] Warner fears ditching Armstrong would spark rage from his ex-business partner, Markos Moulitsas-Zuniga of the Daily Kos Web site, who's had nice things to say about Warner so far. Armstrong and Kos are often touted as Internet wunderkinds in the 2004 Howard Dean campaign -- but Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi and top aide Kate O'Connor ... (read more)

Chris Bowers Fights Poverty on MyDD

A rant by Chris Bowers won't help counter the accusation that Daily Kos-affiliated bloggers select candidates and causes in exchange for financial support. In a post describing his struggles to make ends meet while he's publishing MyDD and building the "netroots," Bowers tells this to progressive donors and organizations: Find some way to support bloggers, or stop asking us to support you. I have been working on the problem of getting more money to bloggers for over a year now. The biggest ... (read more)

Warren Buffett Won't Spoil His Kids

Jacob Weisburg of Slate has written a nice fan letter to Warren Buffett for giving bajillions to charity, but he gets carried away at one point: There's a human and personal dimension to this as well: Buffett didn't want to cripple his own children by raising them to expect a free ride. As he pointed out in response to a question Monday, people at his country club who complain about the debilitating effects of welfare should recognize that they're creating a cycle of dependency by giving their ... (read more)

The Head of the Anglican Church

Times are tough these days for the Anglican Church. Not only are they considering a schism with their American churches to get the gay out, but this Reuters photo indicates that their leader, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a disembodied head. That guy scares the hell out of me. ... (read more)

Bloggers Don't Want Anyone to Name Names

Two of the best-known Daily Kos diarists, Redacted and Expunged, are uncomfortable with people knowing their real names. Redacted discourages the press from identifying him, as he told the Philadelphia Inquirer: ... the 47-year-old blogger who goes by the pen name [Redacted] gave an interview on the condition that I not write what I know about him, because the publicity could hurt his blogging or his job. Let's leave it at this: he works in corporate marketing in the Philadelphia area. He's ... (read more)

Bunker Mentality at Daily Kos

The liberal blogger ArchPundit scoffs at the notion that Daily Kos user diaries might be deleted for being critical of the site's founder: Go to Daily Kos, sign up for an account and see if Kos stops you from posting about all of this. He won't. The only time he's stopped stuff was a wild conspiracy theory around election time, libelous content or otherwise harmful material such as using another site's bandwidth. My server logs suggest otherwise. A Kos user posted a diary linked to Workbench's ... (read more)

Jerome Armstrong Pushed Second Stock

I've been trying to pin down MyDD founder Jerome Armstrong's stock-related activities in 2000, when the SEC alleges that he touted a Chinese Linux company called Bluepoint on Raging Bull without disclosing that he'd received $20,000 in stock from the company's management. Though Armstrong's message board postings related to Bluepoint are no longer available on Raging Bull, I found dozens of messages on the InvestorsHub site in which he promoted a related company before a merger, never revealing ... (read more)

Daily Kos Hid Business Partner's SEC Lawsuit

This story has been updated: Blogger Jerome Armstrong Settles Stock-Touting Suit with SEC In April 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed suit against Jerome Armstrong, the business partner of Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, for touting a Linux company called BluePoint when it first went public: On March 6, 2000 and after, Jerome Armstrong ("Armstrong") promoted BluePoint on the Raging Bull internet site, which carried hundreds of posts about BluePoint. ... Armstrong ... (read more)

Your Illegal Alien is My Undocumented Immigrant

I'm not a journalist, but I play one on the Drudge Retort. Because I have the good fortune to live in an age where any idiot can break the news, I've been writing headlines and making story selections for the past couple years for an audience that's hitting 80,000 daily pageviews, helping me rationalize why I dumped my comp sci major in college, earned a bachelor of arts in journalism from the University of North Texas and then became a programmer and computer book author anyway. (Just when I ... (read more)