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It turns out that Jerome “Only Metaphorically A Manwhore” Armstrong is not just a shill, but is actually a previously convicted shill, which has caused blogs (rightwing ones anyway) to get into an alleged “tizzy” over this “shocking” fact (that he was a quite up front and honest paid for hack of the democratic party is beside the point, rightwing blogs are easily shocked, like old women and herds of buffalo)

Now to add a twist to this little tale, Kos has donned the scary skin tight rubber suit of ToolMan by, first of all, switching on the Tool Signal to warn other tools in a secret bloggy cabal he’s apparently been running, telling each attendant tool to keep schtum about this armstrong business lest the rightwing is mean to one of Them (via), and then attempting, by the looks of things, to drape himself in the symbolic flag of, I fuck you not, “the progressive movement” as a way to get more people to keep the mystery in the left wing blogosphere (which Dawn Eden assures me is important).

This, from the man who declared that he was a democrat, not a liberal, in response to the marginal and very cheaty loss in 2004, and while all progressives are liberal, not all liberals are progressive, and a man who has routinely shown and stated out loud that electoral wins are more important to him and his politics than policy wins (because he’s a huge egomaniacal dork, basically) certainly does not get the right to start gibbering on about how attacks on him and his are attacks on progressive politics.

I’m sooo sorry kos, but progressives will gladly sell you out, fuck you over and urinate on you from on high if they’ve got any common sense what so ever, and you want to know why that is? Because it’s what you’ve said you’re willing to do, and what you’ve said you’re willing to encourage the dems to do as well, to us progressive types, you know, the “single issues” voters and “woman’s studies majors” you’ve so eloquently told to fuck off when you don’t think you need us, and sucked up to when you do.

You’ve made quite clear, time and time again that you’re much happier being a part of the problem rather than a solution, and that is why nothing, except of course the mutilated corpses of neo-centrist bastards being hung from rooftops by meathooks (I should probably put that on my amazon wishlist at some point), would make me happier to see you and armstrong drop out of the political arena because of one of the, no doubt plural, acts of fucked up self centredness from your past that you’ve engaged in.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should be attacked without merit, or attacked without some solid evidence being uncovered about what ever nasty skeletons you’ve accumulated in your illustrious careers as amoral tools, and the thing is, a shadey shares con (that he’s already dealt with by the sound of it) from the 90’s is, again, somewhat less illegal, somewhat less wrong in fact, than Gannon being a current male prostitute and a pre-poked canape at Republican party parties and conferences.

And I know, I know, let’s not get morally relative here, and I won’t, messing about with stock value is a bad thing. Doing so in a way that exploits the upper middle class’ primary weakness, their utter and complete idiocy when it comes to making an easy buck, on an internet message board, is so wrong!

Not wrong like marital rape of course, which isn’t that wrong at all if the victim doesn’t struggle, or the torture of the mentally ill who, let’s face it, deserve to be a bit tortured if it is neccesary to protect this nation from terrorism the mentally ill person gives the guards and councilors (who, like all torturers, are the real victims) any trouble or doesn’t bother to respond well to treatment (the little ingrates).

Or wrong like the torture of foriegn people who aren’t insane, but who were going around being poor and woggy in a country that had the gall to be invaded by america, until they’re either dead or horribly mutilated or become insane (and are, presumably, much more legally open to torture). Giving the Okay to putting innocent people into positions that lead to a victim suffering mind destroying agony from the constant and unending muscle strain and damage being done to their bodies (or “stress positions” as the military calls them), is not a bad thing. Kinda like giving the A-Okay to corporal “punishment” being administered because the torturers find a victim saying “oh god” in arabic everytime they’re hit amusing, to the point that beatings get administered so frequently that it leads to a victim dying, or for that matter, giving the okay to repeatedly drowning, electrocuting, attacking with dogs, forcing people to live for years on end with a hood on their head in a pool of their own bodily fluids, solids and noxious fumes associated with such things (all for having done absolutely nothing wrong remember) is, of course, not wrong like what armstrong did. don’t you know what horrors have been perpetrated by Armstrong (who’s still not a prostitute as far as I’m aware).

It’s of course, even less wrong to outsource torture to other countries of course, and nothing says “not wrong” quite like outsourcing it to the same monsters who even terrorist organizations and HAMAS’ outsource their political torture work to (that’s the torture of people who aren’t homosexuals of course, homos of course receive more immediate attention from the local goons with a quick back room torture session and street execution), like Syria or our “friends” Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

We know that none of that’s wrong, unlike stock market con games. Because Right Wing news media told us so, or has been conspicuously silent about such things becuase they’re not worthy of comment, that’s why.

Of course, all sarcasm and attempted wit aside for a second, the fact that scamming several thousand dollars out of stupid assholes is something that I wish I had been doing back in the mid 90’s (not because I was, as Kos calls Armstrong, “a poor grad student at the time”, I wasn’t a grad student, but because screwing over people rich enough to dabble in the stock market would have deeply amused me) doesn’t make it okay, it certainly doesn’t make doing so for a company from the People’s Republic of China (you know the PRC, home to torture, prison abuse, forced abortions, political repression, mass murder etc… etc… and make no mistake, thanks to those post-mao and remarkably neo-conservative style economic reforms, support for chinese business is support for the PRC’s regime and all its evils) okay, not by a long stretch.

Of course, Kos’ attacks on TNR are interesting, not because he says anything new or actually interesting about TNR, kos basically gives the “left wing moonbat” stereotype a good brush down before he prances about in it (and when I’m saying your rant makes you come across like a deranged nutcase, you know things are bad). No, what’s interesting about the rant against TNR is that it seems very much like a way to obfuscate the very very interesting thing he mentions in passing at the very start of the post:

People talk about the need for the left to work together and have a unified message in the face of a unified conservative noise machine. So a google group was created called “Townhouse”, and it included many bloggers and other representatives of the netroots as well as a large number of partisan journalists and grassroots groups. It allowed us to discuss policy, issues, tactics and coordinate as much as you can ever get a bunch of liberals to coordinate.

There was one big rule for this list, an important cog in the growing Vast Left Wing Conspiracy — everything discussed was off the record.

Now the thing that occurs to me is, WHY ON EARTH DO YOU NEED TO DO THIS THING IN SECRET!? Come on Kos, even you must be able to figure out that that was going to come back to bite you in the ass at some point, you’re coordinating and holding discussion with a group of left wing and democratic party supporting journalists, bloggers and activists via this mailing list, and you’ve sworn them to secrecy? Why on earth would you do that? Hell-fucking-lo Kos, did you not realize that a “new people-powered movement”, has to, you know, NOT involve an exclusive and secretive group of media peeps holding closed discussion that could effect the wider movement? Did you not understand that a freaking mystic oligarchy is probably not the best way to organize support for the democratic party? Are you not aware that you have justified any rightwinger who now calls you a “stalinist”? You’ve made a crazy right wing insult accurate for god’s sake, even Bill “I invented Gitmo for HIV+ Haitians” Clinton hasn’t done that.

Oh, and of course, to try to get out of any responsibility or sense of wrong doing for doing this shit, he starts talking about progressives, and the left wing, because when you’re covered in shit, you’ve just gotta hug the people you’ve most routinely screwed over so that we all end up covered in shit too, and you no longer stand out because you’re covered in shit. Yeah Kos, make everyone else look bad by association, thanks a fucking load. Oh and framing it like you’re the first person to come along and try to organize us disorganized progressives (even though the people you’re referring to are probably not actually progressive) is masterful, Autofellatio is always an impressive act to watch.

That Kos is even giving the story time of day is fucking diabolical, considering the only interesting thing about the whole armstrong thingie is not that Armstrong actually shilled stocks for cash, the interesting thing is that A) It wasn’t a huge fucking shock (”Major democratic party blogger used to be a con man for big business” should be a scandal of some kind, if you think about it, but isn’t because it’s armstrong, who is an already proudly out member of the paid-for-dem-hack community), and of course B) That Kos apparently thinks that there is nothing wrong with doing this, like Armstrong is being called on smoking pot in college or something actually minor, this man lied to trusting internet denizens so that they’d basically pump money into his bank account. This puts him on the same level as nigerian scam artists (so if armstrong ever starts a fundraiser to get a trapped Kossack astronaut down from a secret Democratic Party manned satellite, don’t believe him).

For someone connected with a major money funnel for the Democratic Party, that should be a fucking huge thing, and Kos should be either flipping out and making assurance to the dem supporters that everything is kosher with Dkos fund raising activities (think about it, DKos raised a few million during ‘04 for kerry, who exactly would realise if a few thousand here and there was diverted from a future campaign? A thought that wasn’t really thinkable until it turns out that we’re dealing with someone who was making a killing as a paid for liar in ‘03) or saying absolutely nothing until the case is over and armstrong can defend himself.

What did Kos actually do though? Pretends it isn’t a big deal, makes it into a big deal, states that armstrong cannot make a comment because the case is ongoing, poo-poos and flings insults left and right as though he’s john snow or something, and fianlly gets outraged that someone in his little E-masonic lodge leaked an email. This is a man who’s acting so much like a repug who’s covering for something that one cannot help but wonder if something else is really going on. Which of course is really fucking helped by an inexplicable seKret Kossian Kabal leaking all over the show.

I personally think it’s sad that he can’t summon up the common sense to not look like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar, even though he’s only really tangentially connected to the whole affair, but as Kos said:

Sad, perhaps. But this is apparently the price one pays for crashing the gate.

Heh.

And yes, I might have attacked the various wanky little papers that are actually trying to make out that the Armstronggate, or whatever it’s gonna get called, (armstrongpalooza sounds interesting, armstronggate is just ugly, which I suppose fits it perfectly), is a huge deal, which it isn’t neccesarily, but to be fair, the idea that rightwing wank mags are written and edited by wankers who run wanky little stories is so ridiculously “dog bites man” that it’s not really worth comment. When Armstrong turns out to actually, literally, be a manwhore, like Guckert actually was/is/will always be, then I’ll give a flying crap you assholes, not before.