Category Archive

Oh dear. From WaPo:

Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].

Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.

He was reluctant to support it until his campaign-manager-who-is-also-a-lobbyist, his former staffers, and a six-figure bundler were hired?

What is it that John Ruberry, Juliana “Dan Proft” Johnson, and other conservative partisans keep saying about having the judgment to be president?

We know what Sen. Obama says about that mythical McCain judgment: McCain has lost his bearings. Hopefully Sen. McCain won’t get so worked up at having been caught red-handed in this land benefits deal that he hops off and calls the reporter a dirty name.
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Check out conservative strategist Dan “The Saddest Clown” Proft at about 2:50 into this Chicago Tonight interview with WTTW’s Carol Marin.

Ms. Marin had asked Mr. Proft and Chicago legal eagle and Daily Kos contributor Georgia Logothetis about the effect of the blogosphere in relation to traditional media. Ms. Logothetis stated that the left blogosphere had acted as a fact-checking foiling the traditional media’s meme that the Democratic presidential race was somehow close when, in fact, it was mathematically near impossible for Sen. Clinton to overtake Sen. Obama’s pledged delegate count.

Here’s Mr. Proft’s response to the notion that the blogosphere was playing the part of fact-checker to the traditional media’s meme that the Dem primary season was ‘a close race’:

I mean Barack Obama? Until last night, he hadn’t won a primary in about three months. Err, yeah. Since… since Super Tuesday.

He was trying to say that the media got it right because Clinton was indeed somehow “close”… But perhaps Mr. Proft needs his own fact checker.

Some facts…

Super Tuesday was February 5th, 2008.

This Chicago Tonight interview was May 7th, 2008.

Barack Obama won the delegate count in 13 primaries and caucuses in the three months since Super Tuesday.

What’s that? Thirteen wins?

“…Err, yeah. Since… since Super Tuesday.”

(You want to get uber-technical and point out that Mr. Proft said only that Obama hadn’t won a “primary”? Fine. It’s still a a fallacy since among those 13 states he won there were several primaries, including one right next door in Wisconsin a full two weeks after Super Tuesday.)

Either the man was lying or he’s a complete dunce.

Watch Mr. Proft for yourself:

Why did well-respected Chicago telejournalist Carol Marin not call him out?

Surely she knew about the primaries and caucuses in Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington state, the US Virgin Islands, Maine, Washington DC, Maryland, Virginia, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Vermont, Wyoming, and Mississippi…

And will Mr. Proft be asked back to Chicago Tonight … or any other self-respecting media outlet for that matter?

Only time will tell.

But one thing is for certain. No matter how poetic Mr. Proft’s spin and fibs, nobody’s “fearful” of such dim-wittedness.

PS Dan: the garden’s doing fine, thank you very much. How are your cats and sock puppets?

(h/t Illinois Review “Conservative vs Liberal on Chicago Tonight”)

Dan Proft Juliana Johnson Juliana Johnson posting for Dan Proft yet again published another asinine essay yesterday, this time pooh-poohing the Earth Hour campaign of all things.

Mr. Proft titles his screed, “Don’t Kid Yourself - 1 Hour Won’t Save World”.

Clearly, he’s ready to just throw up his arms and wimp out instead of putting up a good fight to actually ’save the world’. This attitude stems from the pat conserv-o-partisan answer to most of life’s most difficult tasks: life’s not fair so “don’t kid yourself” (or ‘…so why bother’).

Indeed, life isn’t fair and it is difficult at times. But why do we keep hearing from conservative partisans like Mr. Proft that we should stop working to make it more fair and to do what we can — large or small, together or individually — to improve things for all?

Earth Hour is the publicity stunt (yes, let’s name it what it is) which calls for turning off electric devices like lights and other useful but unnecessary items from 8-9pm on March 29. The intent is to raise awareness of just how much electricity we consume and engage regular joes like you and me in understanding that if we all do simple, little things the cumulative effect can be enormous.

Sometimes, to get a given organization’s point across, they engage in a public relations campaign (ie, “publicity stunt”). Even Mr. Proft’s friend John McCain does it — at home and abroad — as he campaigns for a third Bush term.

For whatever reason, Mr. Proft and his jolly partner Ms. Johnson appear to be quite crabby about this effort to raise awareness of just how easy it can be to combat global climate change in small ways. Mr. Proft even tosses mud directly on the very idea of “raising awareness”:

That’s why the explicit mission of these events is routinely the cleverly nebulous and unquantifiable raising of “awareness.”

Apparently Mr. Proft thinks folks are just supposed to use their ESP to know what things — small or large — can be done to protect Creation. Yes, things like going old school, pioneer-style for an hour actually can help and it’s easy to do. (Besides, aren’t conservatives supposedly really concerned about people watching TV? You’d think that an event such as Earth Hour which has the side benefit of encouraging family time would be praised by conservatives. You’d clearly be wrong as partisanship trumps logic for this con.)
But instead of actually offering some alternative ideas on saving whales and the like all Mr. Proft can do is give us some wails of his own. Through and through, his entire rant is chock full of ad hominems about people actually trying to get things done and fight the good fight against global climate change, pollution and other ills that affect us all. Mr. Proft’s whiney conclusion unwittingly reveals his partisan angst:

No one is for capricious destruction of the environment. Truly being “green,” however, demands more than annual self-esteem boosters.

Actually, yes, there are people in favor of “capricious destruction of the environment.” They just hope they don’t get caught and, more often than not, sluff off the bill and the consequences onto the rest of us when they do. Unfortunately for this particular conservative political strategist, these groups also tend to align themselves politically with Mr. Proft and his comrades.

And truly being “green” … well that takes both a raised level of awareness and direct action. And sometimes, as in events like Earth Hour or Clean the Parks Day, both.

(tip o’ the hat to Dan for the title reference)

A few weeks back I posted about a strange set of emails this blog had received from someone promoting Dan Proft’s work. Turned out those emails were coming from the same IP address as Mr. Proft’s office. That and a few other connections found in a quick Google search led me to wonder if this was a case of sockpuppetry or something else.

Even though others wondered if I was a weenie for removing it, at the time I thought it was the right thing to do because there was a possibility — however slight — that this person’s identity had been stolen (unwittingly or otherwise) and my post describing the strangeness was so much piling on.

Turns out it’s still happening.

My original post was published on Oct. 12th and my follow-up explaining why I removed it came on Oct. 15th.

As of Oct. 20th, Oct. 23rd and Oct. 30th … that same “person” is still found to be shilling for Mr. Proft at ilgopnet.com.

Imagine that.

You’d think if the person in question thought she was being “sandbagged” or had some question about what was going on in relation to her identity (or if Mr. Proft himself wanted to put a stop to what was being done, since they work in the same officespace) that it would’ve been ended by now.

Apparently the person in question was only concerned about being caught.

Sounds like a lot of the folks on the conservative side of the aisle these days.

In another of his attempts at mimicking the shock-jock mentality of Ann “say anything for a buck” Coulter, local conserv-o-partisan Dan Proft asks the intentionally leading question, “BET racist against black people?” He opens with the mellow and understated line:

If the Aryan Nation plotted to develop a media property designed to denigrate and destroy black culture, could they do a better job than Black Entertainment Television (BET)?

Pure brilliance, Mr. Proft. Pure. Brilliance. The entire sad attention-seeking commentary is apparently what Mr. Proft thinks passes for a reasonable comparison between the “Jena 6″ and the “Little Rock 9″, ostensibly in reaction to the occasion of two of the Jena 6 teens being feted during the BET Hip-Hop Awards.

The following passage is one example of Mr. Proft’s dismissive attempt to muddy the waters and dilute the import of trying to understand and confront the racial dichotomy that is found in Jena (and, by extension, is still happening throughout our nation even today):

In Little Rock in 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower intervened to protect the students, enforce desegregation, and uphold the principle that all are to be treated equally under the law.

In Jena in 2007, Al Sharpton intervened to do exactly the opposite, advocating essentially that the law may be disregarded if one has a racial grievance.

Actually, what Al Sharpton was doing was pointing out the very different treatment standards between white teens and black teens in the Jena judicial system and under the local District Attorney. The fact is Mychal Bell — the black teen painted as the “head” of the Jena 6 — has already served 10 months in jail as an adult. Rev. Sharpton has said that, yes, he should have been punished for his role in the fight but, no, not punished as an adult for the crime of attempted murder — and argues that this should be Mr. Bell’s argument in the court of law, not the court of public opinion. In Rev. Sharpton’s own words:

The response is very simple. Mychal Bell has done ten months in jail as an adult, that even the Louisiana courts are saying he should not have been tried with. I think that, one, no one ever said that we condone schoolyard fights, but that’s what it was. And the punishment should have been a schoolyard fight. Had these young men been dealt with in juvenile court in a regular proceeding for juveniles like any other juvenile, including the white student that pulled the gun, the shotgun at the school, and the white student that beat up, I believe it was young Mr. Bailey at the party, I don’t think there would have ever been an issue, local or national.

It’s too bad for Mr. Proft’s fictional little world that the Internet exists and any one of us can go and look up the facts to dispute his wild-eyed claims.

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I posted an entry about political consultant and pundit Dan Proft last Friday which I later pulled… I explained why in a comment elsewhere, but here’s that explanation again on its own if y’all wanna chat about it. I was asked why the post was removed and whether or not there were any petty threats involved. (As an aside, isn’t it a sad statement about the depths of conservative partisanship in our country that people even have to ask whether or not some threat came from conservatives?) … Here’s my reply, verbatim:

No threats involved, petty or otherwise. I removed the post of my own accord.

It was pointed out to me — not in so many words — that I was starting down the same path that has led the conserv-o-partisans to essentially stalk the family of 12-year-old Graeme Frost … and that’s not a path I wish to be on.

Hindsight’s 20/20 and even though all the information I provided in my post is available publicly on the Internet (and the message sent to the Illinois Reason blog was sent to the blog’s ‘letter to the editor’-type contact email) it would have been more ethical had I kept a bit more of the info private. Live and learn.

The facts of the silly episode remain:
- Someone who works in the same office space as Mr. Proft wrote a ‘letter to the editor’ to Illinois Reason (sent to illinoisreason@gmail.com as noted in the About page).

- The IP address on that email message was the same as Mr. Proft’s — though the person who sent it claims to not be employed by him or his company.

- This message encouraged IR to reiterate Mr. Proft’s political commentary on the IR blog and promoted that commentary in general.

- That person’s email address is also publicly available throughout the blogosphere, and is also directly intertwined with Mr. Proft’s political commentary at various blogs as a Google search proved (ie, the email address was listed as the provider of his commentary).

The only question, and one that may never be answered, is whether this person was promoting Mr. Proft’s commentary without his knowledge; Mr. Proft was using this person’s email address for these purposes without their knowledge; or the two actually were in cahoots with each other in an asinine attempt to promote Mr. Proft’s commentary through classic sockpuppetry.

Because that is an open question, I removed the post since at least one of those alternatives involves someone’s email address (and thus privacy) being used without their knowledge.

PS: I wouldn’t call Mr. Proft a “snake”. He’s more like a two-bit Ann Coulter wannabe whose political commentary is boringly regurgitated tripe which seems to be mindlessly culled from other con/partisan talking points.

…And now Dan Proft has also joined the conservative bandwagon and called Gen. Petraeus a “traitor”, just like other con partisans from Hugh Hewitt to Pete Hegseth. Go figure.

Again, like those he’s echoing, Mr. Proft is complaining that his fellow Americans (ie, MoveOn.org) are exercising their freedom of speech while simultaneously fibbing by putting words in their collective mouth.

MoveOn.org never called Gen. Petraeus a traitor.

Dan Proft did.

MoveOn.org never compared Gen. Petraeus to infamous turncoats such as Benedict Arnold, Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames.

Dan Proft did.

Why is Dan Proft calling the commander in charge in Iraq a traitor and comparing him to the likes of Benedict Arnold? MoveOn.org certainly didn’t do that while they pointed out the many facts which Gen. Petraeus and his political patrons at the White House are ignoring as they betray the truth before us all.

Could Mr. Proft be doing this because he wants to cover up the fact that Gen. Petraeus is using Enron-style accounting methods to make a surge “success” suddenly appear, despite the fact every independent indicator (whether Iraqi or American) is indicating violence has either not generally improved or has actually gotten worse in some areas? (Instead car bombs are no longer being counted and people who are shot from the front are also not counted in death tallies. You have to actually be shot in the back of the head before the conservatives in charge of such number-crunching count your death as “sectarian violence”. It’s bizarre the lengths that Gen. Westmoreland the conservatives will go to to cook the books and ignore the reality right there in front of them.)

Could it be because Mr. Proft wants to cover up the fact that the surge has actually failed at its one goal, as stated by our Commander in Chief, which was to provide the Iraqi politicians “breathing space” to come to political resolutions and quell factional discontent? (Instead the Iraqi Parliament took August off while our honorable troops sweated through the grime, with many offering the ultimate sacrifice to give those Iraqi Parliamentarians “breathing space” at their vacation villas.)

Could it be because Mr. Proft doesn’t comprehend the utter disconnect between Gen. Petraeus’ “rosy scenario” dog and pony shows indicating we’re supposedly ‘winning’ and his dire prediction that our troops may have stay in Iraq for as long as a decade? (Instead, Mr. Proft apparently wants us to believe, as so many of that dwindling minority do, that we have to stay in Iraq indefinitely because … well … well, because … actually, they have no valid reason for staying in Iraq since every excuse they’ve used has proven to be wrong and hollow. But because we’re “winning” according to their shiny fuzzy-math numbers, they tell ya we must stay til we just can’t “win” no more.)

Could it be because Mr. Proft, as partisans are wont to do, would like to take political advantage of the false gesture made by claiming we can reduce our surge forces back to pre-surge levels due to the (Enron-style) “success”… even though those surge forces need to return home anyway because their 15-month deployments will be ending? (Oops, Karl Rove beat Mr. Proft to that one.)

Could it be because Mr. Proft is more worried about a friggin’ newspaper ad than bringing our brave soldiers and Marines home and finding the actual diabolical mastermind behind the Sept. 11th attacks and many other attacks globally before and since? (Of course, we already know Pres. Bush considers Osama bin Forgotten to be out of sight, out of mind. Then again, Iraq never had anything to do with 9/11 in the first place.)

Could it be because Mr. Proft is a partisan blowhard who (in his own words) is “more interested in defending a position than engaging in a quest for a solution? (On that point his knee-jerk reaction is clearly to point one finger at his arch-nemesis … the Left … while pointing several more fingers back at himself. Then again, Mr. Proft likely doesn’t agree with these rational solutions proposed by Republicans or the Pentagon anyway since they echo solutions promoted by [gasp] the Left…)

We report. He distorts. You decide.

Why ‘LS continues to air his malarkey is beyond all rationality, but apparently there’s a buck to be made in the fantasy role-playing biz, eh.