What An Embarrassment for His Mother

to have raised such a screwed-up twerp as this "pick-up artist" who couldn't get a woman if his life depended on it.

Not only has he embarrassed his mother for raising such an idiot, but he has virtually guaranteed he will NEVER be able to find a regular job or will be forced to change his name.

However, his face is rather memorable.

He has to realize there is a limit to free speech. Many countries do not tolerate the bullshit that he spews on his woman-hating blog. He also needs to know what "satire" is and not claim it after he gets into trouble:

This is the man at the center of a worldwide storm after advocating legalizing rape on private property - in a sweat-stained T-shirt at the door of his mother's house.

Daryush 'Roosh' Valizadeh, 36, the self-proclaimed 'King of Masculinity' called police after receiving death threats from around the world and canceled a series of 'tribal meetings' in 45 countries set for this weekend.

Valizadeh, who is at the center of public protests at home and in Canada, Australia and the UK, is on record as advocating women be banned from voting, describing a woman's value as dependent on her 'fertility and beauty', and stating that women with eating disorders make the best girlfriends.

I am guessing he is likely a head case. However, what is more scary than him is that he has a following of thousands of screwed-up guys who think women exist for their own pleasure and use.

Guys, women are not objects whose only purposes are for screwing and having babies.

The Nutroots Chronicles

This time it isn't the bloggers who have gone off the deep end; in this case it is a local government which is trying extort money out of bloggers, even if they make little or nothing on their blogs.

Unbelievable:

The city disagrees. Even though small-time bloggers aren't exactly raking in the dough, the city requires privilege licenses for any business engaged in any "activity for profit," says tax attorney Michael Mandale of Center City law firm Mandale Kaufmann. This applies "whether or not they earned a profit during the preceding year," he adds.

So even if your blog collects a handful of hits a day, as long as there's the potential for it to be lucrative — and, as Mandale points out, most hosting sites set aside space for bloggers to sell advertising — the city thinks you should cut it a check. According to Andrea Mannino of the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, in fact, simply choosing the option to make money from ads — regardless of how much or little money is actually generated — qualifies a blog as a business. The same rules apply to freelance writers. As former City Paper news editor Doron Taussig once lamented [Slant, "Taxed Out," April 28, 2005], the city considers freelancers — which both Bess and Barry are, in addition to their blog work — "businesses," and requires them to pay for a license and pay taxes on their profits, on top of their state and federal taxes.

Batshit crazy.

The Nutroots Chronicles: Chapter MMX

At least one allegedly "pro-Hillary" website has been outed, apparently.

Actually some of the so-called "pro-Hillary" sites I had no fucking use for, as they appeared to trash Democrats more than they did Republicans. These include sites like No Quarter, Hillaryis44, and the Confluence, the latter of which had moderators there who had accused me of being pro-Obama. I linked to all of these blogs at some point during the campaign, but I got sick of their one-note routines and brainless hero worship, which never rang true. Fuck them all, especially the Confluence, and the horse they rode in on.

This site mentioned by Joseph Cannon, though, was pretty obviously a GOP-type site. Nothing in it rang true. If I ever linked to this particular site, and I sure as hell am not going to search through 36,000 posts to find out, well, I don't remember doing it.

Meanwhile, I am just going to continue doing what I am doing and telling it like I think it is or should be.

The Nutroots Chronicles, Chapter 46,908

Another prominent blogger feels betrayed because Obama is exactly what people knowledgeable about him have always known. It's pretty sad when people have to take off the rose-colored glasses to see the truth Obama is nothing but a neoliberal and arguably not a Democrat, either:

It's an effective tactic to play on liberal guilt, arguing "don't you want to save all those poor people who are going to die?" But the fact remains that we the people handed this President and this Congress control of the White House, the US House of Representatives, and filibuster-proof control of the US Senate. We handed them a GOP that was in tatters, and a populace that desperately wanted change. And they blew it. They gave us weakness and cowardice and fear in return. The President went back on his promises from almost day one, and then stayed out of the entire debate until - well - he's still not really involved in the debate, other than to occasionally have his staff secretly try undercut his own campaign promises.

It's not a success when you could have had an A, and instead get a D+, strive for a D+, and then have the nerve to say "look mom!" It's really getting tiring hearing Democrats suggest that because their bill does more than George Bush would have done, but otherwise they've gutted their most important campaign promises, we should suck it up and be happy. I voted for change, not pennies

Well, if you and the other cheerleaders in the nutroots hadn't bought into the media hype of the campaign, you'd have known the truth about him. Now it's too late, and yours truly is very afraid we are going to see a rerun of 1994 next year.

The Nutroots Chronicles

I didn't know I lived in Stalinist Russia and am not allowed to criticize Obama if I want to be considered a "progressive," let alone a "liberal" or a "Democrat," although one can argue with a straight face Obama is not at least two of the three.

While it is true Obama has been in office a mere ten months and perhaps one should cut him a tiny bit of slack, the fact is he is botching the opportunity to actually make real change in this country and appears to be employing the "business as usual" approach. Case in point: Not proposing a jobs program for the growing numbers of jobless immediately upon taking office. Instead, Wall Street received obscene amounts of money. Instead, months have been wasted on something considered a luxury for people like me who need work now, and that's health insurance reform.

Ditto for Congress. In fact, double, triple, and quadruple for those morons in both political parties.

The problem with Obama is with his priorities, and that stems from his lack of political and legislative experience upon taking office.

What frightens me is he may be a one-term president, and then we are REALLY going to be screwed.

The Nutroots Chronicles

This link, among others, has a video an interview with writer Eric Boehlert talking about the joys of blogging and its (dubious) impact on political discourse.

I for one am very upset at the recent newspaper/traditional media downsizings or even closures. For all of the hype, "alternative" media can't possibly give readers the quality of traditional media. They also don't have the manpower or the resources to make the traditional media obsolete. At best alternative media is a supplement to traditional media.

Yes, the nutroots have a lot to answer for its mindless support for Barack Obama last year. Now that Obama is president and the Kool Aid has worn off, more than a few of them are shocked--SHOCKED--Obama is not the "progressive messiah" he was made out to be last year. He is just another politician, a neoliberal, just as he always was for those who bothered to look behind the 24/7 hype. And more of these people are pissed off at him.

As for me, blogging is merely an outlet for expressing my opinion on many things, as well as having a permanent document on personal matters. I used to have journals, but this more or less replaces them.

Miscellaneous News

Unlike yours truly, if people actually read your blog, you can make a living on the lecture circuit, as P.Z. Myers realizes. The key is to know how to market yourself and write about things people want to hear.

I never expect to make anything out of this enterprise, and since the election there hasn't been a lot worth writing about of a national nature. I get too pissed off with all of the layoffs and stuff going on. More to the point, I am up in Oregon on "vacation," perhaps looking to move up here permanently, and that is my priority right now.
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There is no stay of execution for Medford's Oakdale Avenue's maple trees, unfortunately.
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Some Commentary

What in the hell happened to Josh Marshall, and why did he sully himself to the point of being such a liar and sellout?

Short answer: It's the promise of riches, stupid. All of the other one-time amateur bloggers (excepting Huffington, who already WAS a paid pundit) had visions of one day becoming part of the punditocracy themselves, and with it, fame and fortune. If that meant lying about politicians like Al Gore or John McCain or Sarah Palin to hit the big time, all the better.

It's not hard to understand. The love of money is the root of all evil, just as the lack of money is also.
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Just how did somebody as unqualified as Obama get as far as he has? It's a result of the "post-political culture" infecting this country like a virus.
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Speaking of pundits or whatever, why is it Time's Joe Klein got kicked off the McCain campaign plane, and not while it was in the air, unfortunately?
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The Cause of PUMA

While bloggers from sites like the Huffington Post and Daily Kos whine about PUMA, in truth they helped cause this anti-Obama movement.

And if Obama is nominated and goes down to almost certain defeat in November, the nutroots need share a large part of the blame for it. Not that they will, of course, but they should.

Miscellaneous.

The Associated Press tries to jealously guard its stories pilfered from other sources by attempting to crack down on bloggers pilfering from THEIR reports.

The AP wants to create guidelines for bloggers to use their reports without them going overboard.

Of course, AP goes around and looks at blogs for content for their news stories, but the bloggers aren't asking AP to acknowledge them.

You have to read the article; I am not going to post excerpts.
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The latest on the Iowa floods is here.
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One of the pit bulls rescued in the Vick case is now helping cancer patients:


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I Am Glad

somebody out there in the media called Michelle Marshall out on lying about her age, although any article about her should be taken with a huge grain of salt:

Michelle D. Marshall (still her legal name, according to Nevada voting records) was born in September 1954, in Columbia, Missouri. The Marshalls were conservative, churchgoing folks. Though she says she held onto a little bit of that outlook (she worked for her brother's unsuccessful congressional campaign in 1980, and even voted for Reagan that year because she preferred his stance on national security), she ultimately wanted something different for herself. "I wasn't willing to settle for the life most of the women I saw and knew were living," she wrote in a 2000 book called My Year in Smut: The Internet Escapades Inside Danni's Hard Drive (more on that title later). "I was willing to break every rule to create the life I wanted for myself."

I wouldn't call her the Hugh Hefner of politics but the Clifford Irving of the blogosphere. By the way, if you are doing a program from your home, there are no advertisers, nobody is paying you to do it, and it isn't heard over the airwaves, it is NOT a "radio show." Her show is a podcast, an updated version of "ham radio."

Marshall has delusions of grandeur, and as old as she is, it's probably too late for her to break into the business. Those who broke into the big time of talk radio spent years and years in preparation for it, often working as d.j.s, reporters, or even working behind the scenes before making it big on the air. Rush Limbaugh spent years in the business before becoming a faux right-winger. Bill O'Reilly was a legitimate journalist before going into tabloid journalism with Inside Edition and then hitting it big on Fox News and on radio. Marshall clearly doesn't want to do the work involved in actually making her dreams come true. She should have worked at a radio station years ago and worked her way up, even if it meant starting out as a receptionist. She wants to take what she thinks is the easy route to fame. Even if Marshall is not too old, she doesn't have the intellectual depth or the credibility to pull it off. Not only that, but her "popularity" has pretty much gone since she switched sides. What great timing, though, to get some publicity through mainstream publications like TNR and the Washington Post just as her "popularity" in the blogosphere was taking a nosedive. Besides, as the piece notes, she isn't making much of a profit from her "business"; she depends entirely on her husband, a gas company technician (I know it's appropriate for her to be married to one given the hot air she spews), to pay the bills. So she's got to do something to get herself noticed. To hell with earning money at a regular job not connected to sex work or entertainment; she's got to be NOTICED.

Media Follies.

Recently there was a media conference in Minneapolis held by the National Conference for Media Reform. Many prominent people from the media, including Dan Rather, Bill Moyers, Catherine Crier, and Phil Donahue, were there as well as many from the left-leaning media. The WSWS, always finding reasons to trash the Democratic Party (and the group trashes it far more than it does the Republican Party), took a dim view of the proceedings. However, there are some parts of this article, the first of two parts, that are worth reading.
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Journalists are training bloggers in the art of plagiarism, libel, and illegally procuring documents.

I am just kidding, of course, or maybe I'm not.
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Miscellaneous News [Updated].

Michelle Marshall, aka Taylor Marsh, is profiled in a Washington Post article.

She's pandering a bit too much to Obama supporters now in trying to broaden her audience, so I find her much less interesting to read or listen to. Not only that, but sometimes her opinions are downright dumb or silly.

It appears they have her age wrong:

She's 47, and said she still has the practicality of a childhood in Missouri and the thirst for fame from years in New York and Los Angeles. She moved to Las Vegas a little more than five years ago hoping she would succeed on the radio in a smaller market, but it didn't pan out.

I had read she was Miss Missouri in 1974 and had just turned 20 around the time of the Miss America pageant. No way was she 13 or 14 when she entered the beauty pageants. Miss America's rules state contestants must be between the ages of 17 and 24.

Wikipedia has an article about the Miss Missouri contest winners. Marshall is listed as winning the contest in 1974. You can find her name here as well. This site has her down as a "delegate" to the Miss America pageant for 1975. Marshall is either 53 (or possibly 52) or 54 now, not 47. She hasn't seen 47 for quite some time, regardless.

By the way, a Google search wasn't even necessary. Her "about" section in her blog reveals the truth for all the world to see.

Next to a picture of her as Miss Missouri of 1974 she writes:

Okay, this one is pretty obvious. Miss America Pageant, circa September 1974, one of the last years Bert Parks did the pageant. This is the parade down the Atlantic City boardwalk. One very vivid memory I have was walking outside the Chalfonte-Hadden Hotel, now long gone, and seeing N.O.W. outside, picketing us beauty pageant babes. One gal came up to me, in front of a throng of press (who called me "Mizzou"), and asked me how I could humiliate myself by parading on stage in a bathing suit. A 19-year old chickadee, with more attitude than pageant law allowed, I simply said, "You want to pay for my college tuition?" Then off I went in my limo.

And underneath some more pageant pictures from the "talent section" of the Miss Missouri and Miss America contests:

These pictures are from rehearsals at the Miss Missouri Pageant, as well as me performing on talent night at the Miss America Pageant, the day I turned 20. I did a song and dance to "If They Could See Me Now," from "Sweet Charity." By the way, I was one of a handful of girls that showed up with short hair at the pageant. Back then, big hair was king. I bucked that trend and many others.

She was born in either 1954 or 1955, not six or seven years later.

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Not That

it matters to me, but some bloggers who have state political emphasis are pissed off at the way the DNC has given credentials to or excluded bloggers.

Not that I'd ever get it. I am not an asskisser of anybody.

Speaking of bloggers, they are--not surprisingly--ignoring Clinton.

More Campaign Nuttiness

as the Obama campaign is said to have hired 400 bloggers to try and intimidate everybody else to fall in line.

As if they really need to hire them; the major of the "progressive" and "liberal" bloggers are in his pocket.

They can forget about yours truly. I never bought his bullshit Kumbaya Politics in the first place.

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Did Mike Huckabee EVER fuck it up today. The remark was beyond reprehensible.
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If the Bloggers

had had an ounce of brains, they would have seen through Obama right away, just as I did.

Now they feel betrayed by the bullshit he spewed.

Liberal bloggers are expressing outrage over Barack Obama's appearance this weekend on Fox News, accusing the Democratic presidential front-runner of kowtowing to the network's conservative viewers, and throwing his online supporters to the wolves.
Obama_fox

Obama broke a self-imposed embargo on the Rupert Murdoch-owned network that lasted for more than two years when he sat for an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace on Sunday.

Frankly Fox has more integrity than the likes of MSNBC. That's making a right-handed compliment, by the way.

Miscellaneous News.

A former Reno man is trying to make a name for himself by filing what appears to be a bogus complaint against the singer Sting.

The man is more an object of pity than of scorn.
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After the near-tragedy that befell student Victoria Lindsay a few weeks ago, why in the world would somebody else try the same thing on another student?
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Is a bill of rights for bloggers needed?
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If You

are truly bored with this blog, there are many other blogs to relieve the boredom. Some of them are in the right-wing blogosphere, as this piece notes.

I don't mean they are necessarily good blogs, but at least they are entertaining enough to either get you laughing out loud or getting your blood pressure up.

Campaign Follies.

It sounds as if an Obama blogger, or a blogger who is on the official Obama campaign blog, got caught in a vicious slap at Hillary Clinton's black supporters.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

So

have the Obamabot blogs taken a nosedive in readership because of their incessant trashing of Hillary Clinton? There apparently is evidence of something like that happening.

Kos, Talking Points Memo, Huffington Post, and several other of the major blogs/message boards have turned into shitholes as a result of their Obamabattery. It was never like this in 2004, even with the seeming cultishness of the Mouthzilla supporters. They were never this far gone, and never were they that gullible to the GOP/media spin with Obama.

More "analysis" is here.