A Response to "Fooj" at Echo (http://js-kit.com/)

Over at a new blog area called Echo, I saw a comment linking to the Truth About Kos in this thread, and I wrote a long comment that exceeded the limit of 5,000 characters (because I included copious links).  Unable to post the following response there, I am posting it here and leaving a link in the comments at Echo.  I thank Fooj for posting the link to Truth About Kos, and for this comment:

[This user is an administrator] fooj
http://truth-about-kos.blogspot.com/2007/08/indictment-of-markos-ca-moulitsas-ziga.html

Born in Chicago...CIA training...

Very Interesting.

As the founder, chief researcher and editor of the Truth About Kos blog cited above, I defy and challenge anyone and everyone to show us a single instance in which Markos C. Alberto Moultisas Zúñiga (MAMZ) has publicly mentioned the name of a single member of his birth family.

In fact, everything we know that is actually true about MAMZ was first researched and published by Stu Piddy at MyLeftWing (with a link to MAMZ's audiotaped CIA related confession at the Commonwealth Club) and then intensively and extensively researched and published at the Truth About Kos blog.

In order to write "The Indictment of Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA by Justice and History (Updated with Additional Information and Counts) " referenced above, I read every single biography and autobiograpy of MAMZ on the Internet, and then I Googled his name and read every biographical reference. I could only find mainstream newspaper and online articles that were either written by MAMZ (in which he acknowledged his connections to the far right of the Republican Party), and other articles that were based entirely on MAMZ's self-serving statements about himself.

I realized that literally none of what he told major online magazines and media reporters was independently researched and confirmed. (One need only look at the articles MAMZ wrote for his college newspaper to see that they were explosive and yet were never reported upon, because the media was too lazy to attempt to confirm what they were told. If they had bothered to read the college newspaper articles he had written, they would certainly have found the one in which he vehemently opposed ALL gay participation in the US military. http://truth-about-kos.blogspot.com/2007/09/why-is-mamzs-homophobic-1993-essays.html

Aside from the two years that MAMZ admittedly spent at the CIA (2001-2003) while starting DailyKos (2002), all of the information about his obscenely wealthy Salvadoran oligarchy family and their right-wing political connections was discovered through an off-handed comment that MAMZ made in his online honeymoon album, (which was taken down from the Internet as soon as I used it as a source for most of the counts in "The Indictment . . . ").

Fortunately, I suspected that MAMZ might take the wedding album down and even get the copy of it scrubbed from Google cache, so I took screen shots of his honeymoon album and posted them at MyLeftWing as well as at The Truth About Kos.

In an unprecedented instance of MAMZ providing any information about his birth family that could be independently confirmed, MAMZ mentioned in his online honeymoon photo album that his honeymoon was spent at his "family business" hotel in El Salvador, called the Jaltepeque Suites Hotel. This reference is how I was able to discover who some of the members of his family are. (None of the people whose photographs appeared in the album were mentioned by name.)

However, by researching the Salvadoran incorporation documents of the Jaltepeque Suites Hotel and then Googling the name of the "family business"'s "manager" who coincidentally shares the last name "Zúñiga" with MAMZ, and then Googling the telephone number of that hotel, I was able to reveal not merely their website stating that they are the owners of the single longest beach property in El Salvador. I was also able to discover that the family had other businesses, one of which received a one million dollar loan gaurantee from the US Government's Overseas Private Investment Council (OPIC).

I believe the loan guarantee must be true, since it was mentioned in a press release by OPIC and stated that the beneficiary was Baja Salt, whose online website states that the owner is the same person who is the "manager" of MAMZ's family hotel, and who is a national tourism representative at the Salvadoran National Association for Private Enterprise (ANEP), which the CIA calls a right-wing "pressure group." It's all documented with copious links at the Truth About Kos.

Here is but a taste of what I discovered and published in the Indictment cited above and in subsequent posts at The Truth About Kos:

9). In fact, Mr. Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA’s family owns a sumptuous and “exclusive” resort hotel and tourism conglomerate in El Salvador called the "Club Joya del Pacífico" (Club Jewel of the Pacific) a unit of which is the (Jaltepeque Suites Hotel).


10). Demonstrating his connection to these, what MAMZ has called "family business" interests, Markos C.A. Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA invited his wife, friends and family to celebrate his honeymoon with him at the this Jaltepeque Suites Hotel after he was married in the year 2000. (For some reason, the original link no longer works. Fortunately, we have two screenshots from his wedding album, including their web addresses, to prove that the album was public before its significance was pointed out. And now it's gone.)
11). Markos C.A. Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA ZÚÑIGA's "family business" actually received five million dollars in foreign investments between 1997 and 2000, immediately before the period in which MAMZ states that he sought work at the CIA because he was "underemployed, unemployed." Audiotape of 2006 Speech to the Commonwealth Club.


12). Carlos Alberto Delgado Zúñiga, the “family” member listed in government records as “manager” of the Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA’s hotel is also president of the “Junta Directiva” of the CÁMARA SALVADOREÑA DE TURISMO (CASATUR), the national tourism board of El Salvador, according to El Salvador's "La Prensa" newspaper. He has aggregated power in El Salvador through participation in a series of interlocking tourism-related directorates and has used this power to facilitate the destruction of the Jaltepeque Estuary by his hotel conglomerate, Club Jewel of the Pacific, even though the Jaltepeque Estuary is universally recognized by international groups as an endangered habitat for imperiled marine life. VII. MACROPOLITICAS, CONVENIOS INTERNACIONALES Y LEGISLACIÓN QUE INCIDE EN LAS ÁREAS DE CONSERVACION (VII. Macropolitics, International Conventions and Legislation Regarding Conservation)

When you consider just the facts above, it is obvious that MAMZ has been bold-facedly lying about the nature of his family's polticis and political influence in El Salvador. He told one Salvadoran newspaper, "I didn't come from a wealthy or influential family", but anyone in El Salvador who operates a hotel that charges 140 dollars per night for a room is someone who is extremely wealthy, because the cost of renting a room for ONE NIGHT is equal to about a tenth of the YEARLY per capita income in El Salvador.

MAMZ is a liar and there is no way of getting around that fact. You can excuse it, rationalize it or minimize it, but you can't deny that MAMZ said he came as an immigrant from a humble family when, in fact, he was born in Chicago and his family is one of the most influential famileis in El Salvador, with one member even participating in drafting tourism laws that the "family business," that is really a unit of the family's mega-real estate complex called Club Joya del Pacífico. 

You don't have to believe me.  Just look at the website and compare the telephone numbers and personnel.

As far as President Obama, I agree that we haven't seen people who know state senator or US Senator or President Obama coming forth with information that hurts his image. I think that's because the people whom Obama has met have been impressed with him, and he has gone out of his way to make important and well-placed friends while not making enemies.


Even though the media reported on Obama's unpaid parking tickets from his time at Harvard Law School and, of course, the comments of Pastor Wright, I think there just wasn't enough dirt about him to fill a flower pot. Otherwise, the Clintons would certainly have used it against Obama at some point in the Democratic Presidential Primaries.

I think the media hasn't told us any dirt about Obama because there is none to tell, except the normal sausage-making commitments that a politician has to make in order to win the support of Wall Street, Blacks, gays and labor unions all at the same time.

Obama's mother was, indeed, an international foundation staffer, but the media has looked into her background, met her parents, published photographs of her, and yet no one has come forward with any information that contradicts what Obama said in his autobiography.

That's doesn't mean that Obama's mother wasn't involved with the CIA, but anyone who wants to research what she did is welcomed to report back to all of us, I'm sure. I'd certainly like to know if she had more contacts than we've been told about.

Unlike Markos Moulitsas, who has never, ever named a single member of his birth family, we have met Obama's sister and learned about his father. President Obama's network is easy enough to follow through the friends he made at Harvard, at the University of Chicago, and in his private civil rights practice, as well as in his days as an organizer. And then he also had the network of his wife, who was well-connected in Illinois non-profit and public relations circles. President Obama ran for office four times, and there was ample opportunity to delve into his background, as the crap about his minister and that commie Smile leftist activist show. In fact, we know a lot about Obama, but no among the Republicans (who promised to tear the bark of Michael Dukakis) or the Democrats was able to find any real dirt on President Obama. Surely the Clintons tried and surely the Republicans did their opposition research.

The only thing they would not have used against Obama was if they discovered that his mother was CIA. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans would have spread that news and the media would have refused to report it. (Neither the Republicans not the Democrats have made an issue of Moulitsas' CIA contacts, even though mentioning those publicly acknowledged contacts would have the effect of driving a wedge between Moulitsas and half of his blog's participants as well as his supporters elsewhere. No political party or mainstream media outlet has addressed Markos Moulitsas' two years at the CIA, even though he has personally acknowledged on audiotape that he spent two years training with the CIA. And Democratic Party politicians still GO TO HIS ANNUAL MEETINGS!

Even though I was a long-time Clinton supporter who had always wanted Hillary to run for president, I voted for Senator Obama over Senator Clinton. Even though my skin is brown, like Senator Obama's I was notorious among Black bloggers and in the whitosphere for being a staunt Clinton supporter. However, when Hillary's campaign started telling people in Iowa that Obama was a Muslim, that annoyed me. When Clinton's New Hampshire campaign chairman announced that Obama had used cocaine AND that there were untold facts about him that would come out later (but that never were discovered), Clinton's campaign chairman rightly resigned. But his was the act of a surrogate for the campaign, following the orders of the Clinton campaign.

Then, Bill Clinton told voters that Obama had won South Carolina because Black presidential candidates always win South Carolina, like Jesse Jackson. That infuriated me and I decided that I couldn't support Clinton in 2008, in spite of all of the articles I had written at DailyKos (before I was banned) and elsewhere about the laudable things Bill and Hillary had done before 2008.

And then Clinton surrogate Erica Jong called Obama a "boy" at Huffington Post, while Geraldine Ferraro, another Clinton surrogate, opined that Obama had an advantage because his skin was brown.  After all of the above nonsense, I was ready to change sides and do everything in my power to prevent the Clintons from being rewarded for this attempt to color-arouse the electorate.

Had the Clintons succeeded, all Black candidates in the Democratic Party would have been subject to the same color-arousing tactics that the Clintons used in 2008.  It became more important to penalize Senator Hillary for her campaign tactics than it was to elect her president instead of Senator Obama.

I can even admit that I think wistfully that Hillary Clinton would have ended the war in Iraq somehow without expanding the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  If so, the US foreign policy for the Middle East would have been far more to my liking, with less deaths of US personnel and innocent civilians overseas.  I only wish that Hillary had run a campaign against Senator Obama instead of against the Black candidate for president.  Had she pretended not to notice the difference in color and sought to beat Obama based on her experience and the fact that she would bring peace more effectively than Obama has, I believe Hillary would have won the nomination.

However, as soon as Clinton began treating Obama like "the Black candidate," Blacks turned on Hillary in droves, which made it virtually impossible for her to win in places like South Carolina.  Many whites also turned against her, including Senator Ted Kennedy and most of his family, when Hillary referenced the assassination of John F. Kennedy as a rationale for not dropping her presidential candidacy, which was already all but dead.

When Blacks such as myself left Clinton, it was because she brought it upon herself.  She should have run the same campaign against Obama that she would have run against John Edwards, and then Hillary would have won the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

I would vote for Hillary in 2016 if she acknowledged and apologized for the fact that she treated Senator Obama like a Black man instead of like an American man.  She needs to admit that her surrogates thought they were helping her when everything her surrogates were saying was convincing Blacks to abandon Hillary's candidacy.

The Rehabilitation of Markos Moulitsas

I published the following article on July16, 2007, while beginning to research and publish the Truth About Kos blog one article and research path at a time.  Although something seemed inherently fishy about this "Kos" character, it took a month of additional research before I could discover and publish , on July 8, 2007, "the shocking facts" contained in the explosive  article entitled, "The Indictment of Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga by Justice and History."

The Indictment began as follows:

Having discovered that Markos Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA, founder of DailyKos) has a long history of participation in and support update the "Ïndictment,"of the Republican Party and, moreover, trained with the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2001, now research into the life and history of Markos Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑiGA has revealed and established the following facts and, therefore, justice and history now bring this twenty-four count indictment of Markos Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA [MAMZ]:

It was subsequently necessary to update the "The Indictment",  to include new sources, discoveries and citations, particularly as members of the blogging public, including Stu Piddy, read the transcript of MAMZ's speech to the Commonwealth Club and realized that if MAMZ's activities were as he said they were in the speech, then he must have trained and worked at the CIA for as much as two full years, between 2001 and 2003.  These discoveries all began with my gnawing desire to understand the man who said he was "Crashing the Gates" of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media in order to remake them in his own image.

I don`t think any of us expected to discover that he was doing so only after having been trained by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  However, since the biography that MAMZ offered the world made no sense, it became necessary to research and explain the truth to the blogging and general public, by driving over eight hundred thousand Google hits that would be impossible to ignore.  (Some of the hits at Google for "Kos" and "CIA" relate too MAMZ's own statements on other issues rather than his professional involvement with the CIA.)


The Rehabilitation of Markos Moulitsas


! ! ! !

Today, Markos Moulitsas, is the doctrinaire leftist publisher of the DailyKos “progressive” anti-war blog, railing against the moderation of candidates like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Harold Ford. But in the 1980’s, Mr. Moulitsas was an unabashed Reagan Democrat, even working as a campaign aid to George H.W. Bush in the 1992 Presidential election. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0601.wallace-wells.html http://francislholland.blogspot.com/2007/01/markos-was-republican-states...
Last year, in a piece Markos wrote for the Cato (libertarian) Institute, Markos acknowledged that the spent the 1980's as a Reagan Republican. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/10/02/markos-moulitsas/the-case-for-the...
http://francislholland.blogspot.com/2007/01/yes-progessive-markos-of-dai...
How did Markos achieve this stunning metamorphosis in just a few short years? Actually, nobody knows and Markos isn’t telling. He has told interviewers, improbably, that he last voted for the Republicans in 1992, because he suddenly realized that they didn’t support “states rights” as strongly as he would have liked. (See articles above.)
He said,
"We can fondly look back to a time [during the 1980's Reagan Administration] when Republicans spoke a good game on libertarian issues . . .[including] fealty to state rights . . ." The Case for the Libertarian Democrat (by Markos Moulitsas)
“States rights” is the right-wing proposition that the federal government lacks the Constitutional authority to oblige the states to integrate schools, oblige restaurants to serve Black patrons and mandate equal rights for the disabled. States rights was the clarion call of southern segregationists against integration of schools and restaurants.
Considering that, for Markos, part of the Republicans "speaking a good game" on libertarian issues consisted, in Markos’ words, of "fealty to states rights", clearly Markos is saying that he stopped supporting the Republicans because they stopped supporting states’ rights.
But, Markos' rejection of the Republicans today doesn’t make sense, because Republicans' dedication to states’ rights has not deminished. One would have thought that George H.W. Bush’s appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court would have satisfied Markos thirst for states rights jurisprudence on the US Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas is among the foremost proponents of states rights on the US Supreme Court. http://www.acsblog.org/equal-protection-and-due-process-in-clarence-thom...
E. J. Dion says,

What was once obvious is becoming painfully obvious again: The doctrine of states' rights, so often invoked as a principle, is almost always a pretext to deny the federal government authority to do things that conservatives dislike. These include expanding claims to individual rights, increasing protections for the environment and regulating business. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39141-2002Jun24?language=print...

For example,

In the ground-breaking 2000 case, United States v. Morrison, the Supreme Court was presented with a constitutional challenge to 42 U.S.C. 13981, the provision of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 (VAWA) that gives victims of gender-motivated violence a private right of action against their assailants. In a 5-4 decision, the Court struck down the law, holding that the Commerce Clause did not provide Congress with the authority to enact the civil remedy portion of VAWA, since the provision was found not to be a regulation of activity that "substantially affected" interstate commerce; and secondly, because the enforcement clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not provide Congress with authority to enact the provision . . .
With Thomas and four other justices declining to extend the enforcement clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to enact VAWA, "the unfortunate consequence of a series of political decisions harking back to Reconstruction" occurred, said Jack Balkin, a law professor at Yale. The 14th Amendment is arguably the natural home of civil rights legislation, as it guarantees equal citizenship, and it gives Congress power to enforce equality rights. Balkin elaborates, "We should recognize what the framers of the 14th Amendment intended: Congress has an independent power and obligation to promote and protect equal citizenship and civil rights." Therefore, if Congress believes that a law is necessary and proper to promote equal citizenship, it should have the power to pass it "without using the fiction that inequality affects interstate commerce."
. . . The effects of Morrison have undermined civil rights generally and women's safety issues in particular. "The Rehnquist Court's ruling in U.S. v. Morrison is a setback for women's rights and a triumph for those that seek to roll back 30 years of federal civil rights law under the guise of states' rights," said Kathy Rodgers. "The Court has slammed shut the courthouse door, wished women good luck, and sent us back to the states for justice." http://www.acsblog.org/equal-protection-and-due-process-in-clarence-thom...

With Clarence Thomas appointed to the US Supreme Court to uphold states’ rights, it hardly seems logical that Markos would have abandoned the Republicans who had done so much to revive “states rights” in the post Civil Rights era, particularly with the appoint of Clarence Thomas, the foremost advocate of states’ rights.
And therein lies the mystery of Markos. Why is he a Democrat at all, if he still supports states’ rights? http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/10/02/markos-moulitsas/the-case-for-the...

Visitor Asks, "Is Markos Moulitsas Openly Gay?"

For instance, US Senator Larry Craig opposed gay rights at every turn before being caught by police soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom.  It is in this context that we should read the letter below in which MAMZ opposed any and all gay participation in the Armed Forces.

"Is Markos Moulitsas openly gay," one visitor to the Truth About Kos asked, as recorded by the blog's Site Meter. As part of researching and editing "The Indictment of Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA by Justice and History [now](Updated with Additional Information and Counts)," I read virtually every biographical article I could find on the Internet about Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga (MAMZ) back in 2007.   At that time, I found no indication that MAMZ had openly acknowledged being gay at any time.

More than anything else, a letter that MAMZ wrote and published at his college newspaper has indelibly connected the name "Markos C. A. Moulitsas Zúñiga" with homosexuality in the minds of the blogging and reading public.  Initially, the public wanted to know whether MAMZ was gay.  Now, some of the public (that pays any attention to him) apparently has concluded that MAMZ is gay and they have moved on to the question of whether he is openly gay.

In researching "The Indictment of Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas ZÚÑIGA by Justice and History (Updated with Additional Information and Counts)," I, of course, read virtually every biological article that the mainstream newspapers and blogs had written, which articles were typically based exclusively on interviews with MAMZ himself.

I then began my own independent research and quickly found astounding facts, sources and issues that MAMZ had left out of those mainstream media interviews, including the articles and a letter to the editor that MAMZ had written when he was a student and participant in the Northern Illinois University's "Northern Star" student newspaper.

Among other strange opinions (for one who now claims to be a liberal), I discovered a letter to the editor, written by MAMZ in 1993, in which he expressed serious concerns about heterosexuality and homosexuality in the context of his experiences in the US Army.  MAMZ said he vehemently opposed ALL participation by homosexuals in the US Armed Forces, saying, "There is something inherently uncomfortable about it."



In response to my research and the public reaction to the letter itself, MAMZ was forced to acknowledge at his DailyKos blog that that he had been "an idiot" for espousing the conservative beliefs that he admitted to having held at least until he voted for Republican President George H. W. Bush in 1992.  He acknowledged he had been "an idiot" when he opposed gay rights, and when MAMZ supported Republican President Ronald Reagan, and when MAMZ was a Republican precinct captain for Republican Representative Henry Hyde, who led the House impeachment hearings against President Bill Clinton.  (Rep. Hyde was also a vehement anti-abortion activist in the Congress.).  See "Kos Acknowledges Truth About Kos." 




With the discovery that MAMZ had been the 1980's and 1990's equivalent of a US Army Hitler Youth, it was nonetheless the letter expressing such angst about the hurt masculinity of those such as himself who spent time with naked gays that has caused so many people suspect that MAMZ himself is gay.  Most people understand by now that there is a connection between publicly vehemently hating gays and privately loving and desiring them.  "Is Markos Moulitsas (DailyKos) a Closeted Gay Homophobe Blogger?"

One study,using electronic penis engorgement sensors, showed that the men who most vehemently oppose homosexuals and homosexuality are also men who show the most penis engorgement while viewing men engaged in explicit homosexual sex acts. For instance, US Senator Larry Craig opposed gay rights at every turn before being caught by police soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom.

In other words, the more a person hates and/or fears gays and publicly oppose gay rights, the more the public should investigate that person's own sexuality to determine whether his/her professed attitude toward gays is merely a way of distracting attention from his own homosexuality and, some say effeminate behavior, by targeting others for being gay.



Ex Idaho Senator Larry Craig Opposed Gay Rights, 
Sought Sex with Men in Airport Bathroom.

It is in this context that we should read the letter in which MAMZ opposed any and all gay participation in the Armed Forces.  I quote the entire letter below so that members of the public who are asking, "Is Markos Moulitsas openly gay?" can find this letter in Google searches and decide for themselves whether his position on gay rights (when he was 22 years old and  he was trained by the CIA before he announced that he was a progressive) is relevant to questions about MAMZ's own sexuality.

Military right

Publish Date:  01/25/1993
By MARKOS C.A. MOULITSAS

It’s truly disturbing how much ado has been made over Bill Clinton’s campaign promise to lift the ban on homosexuals from the U.S. military. It’s ironic how it has taken a president who has never served in the military to make a promise that affects the military in such a negative manner. Those who have served in the military, such as myself, understand the demands and pressures of military life are incompatible with allowing integration with homosexuals.

I’m neither socially conservative or prejudiced, and neither is liberal columnist Mike Royko, Gen. Colin Powell, and influential liberal Democrats Sam Nunn and Les Aspin, all who’ve come out against lifting the ban. Under military circumstances, as much has to be done as possible to focus the unit’s mission and keep disciplinary problems to a minimum.

Worrying about whether the known homosexual sleeping next to you is watching as you change your underwear may seem trivial as you read this, but to the soldier who’s short-tempered after three weeks in the field and four hours of daily sleep, it becomes a matter of great importance to his pride and sensibilities.

And in any case, there aren’t many people who would change clothes in a group of co-workers if members of the opposite sex were in the same room watching. There is something inherently uncomfortable about it. Such fears would go a long way in disrupting efficiency and morale in a unit.

MARKOS C.A. MOULITSAS


Undecided Freshman

I have stated before that, with MAMZ ostensibly "Crashing the Gates" of the Democratic Party, it should be of far greater concern to progressives and Democrats that MAMZ has acknowledged, on an audiotape, (see Transcript) that he was training to be a "secret agent" in "clandestine services" at the US CIA during 2002, when he started the supposedly "leftist," "liberal," "progressive" DailyKos blog.  This one fact brings into question all that MAMZ has said about himself and politics since then and before then, and also leads us to question the motivation of his letter publicly professing his "inherently uncomfortable" relationship with gays.

To this day, MAMZ has wrapped himself in the trappings of marriage and fatherhood, as did Senator Larry Craig, but MAMZ has not publicly and directly stated that he gay or that he is not gay.  He has said, however, that joining the US Army was something he did, or was glad he did, in order to remove doubts about his manhood.

But basic training was the best thing to ever happen to me. They say they break you down in basic training so they can rebuild you into a real man.  "The Soldier in Me," Markos Moulitsas Zúñiga, The American Prospect, April 16, 2006.

Particularly with MAMZ saying, "There's a reason most vets running for office this year are running as Democrats," readers perceive his ambition for public office and/or power.  Each day people Google MAMZ to find out, "Is Markos Moulitsas openly gay," and then they come to the Truth About Kos blog.

MAMZ claims that he was unmanly when he joined the army, but then he got a "rebuild" and came out a "real man.'  In light of his letter to the editor, the public wants to understand what "rebuild" MAMZ got while living in the military's all-male dormitories, and whether the experience really changed MAMZ in the ways he claims it did.  His letter to the editor shows that Army basic training really did not resolve all of his issues in this regard.

CIA-Trained DailyKos Owner "Admits Slip-Up on Calling Turkey an Arab Country"

According to Politifact.Com blogger Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga, (MAMZ) who acknowledges having been trained by the CIA for two years in Washington, nonetheless stated incorrectly in a television talking heads appearance that Turkey was an Arab country. Politifact says:

During the June 6, 2010, edition of ABC's This Week, Markos Moulitsas, who publishes the liberal blog Daily Kos, joined a roundtable discussion that touched on Israel's decision earlier this month to send commandos to board a flotilla carrying aid and activists in defiance of an Israeli blockade of Gaza. The commandos clashed with some of those on board, and the raid ended with nine people dead.

During the interview, Politifact says that MAMZ said:

I mean, the fact is whether Israel had the right to do what it did or not, they handled it so poorly that they basically alienated much of the world. They alienated an important Arab ally in Turkey, and they put the United States in a really difficult position.

MAMZ knows how to talk like a liberal/leftist/progressive, (as he well should after admittedly training with the CIA for two years), even though his personal and family history and trail of lies about his own background prove that he is nothing more than a CIA-trained impostor of a liberal. 

What this case shows, if nothing else, is that Moulitsas Zúñiga has convinced some of the media to refer to him using only his father's last name, which removes him from the contentious discussion of why the family businesses on his mother's Zúñiga side of the family, including Carlos Eduardo Delgado Zúñiga received a one million dollar loan guarantee from the United States Government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) (see OPIC press release referring to the Baja Salt Group) Moulitsas Zúniga himself claimed to be a poor  immigrant. 

("Yo no tengo dinero.  Yo no vengo de una familia rico o poderos. Era inmigrante nos Estados Unidos . . ." )  [I don't have money.  I do not come from a rich or powerful family.  I was an imigrant in the United States.]

Moulitsas desires to distance himself from the international activities of his mother's side of the family, in El Salvador, because one prominent member of that side of the family has been associated with a pro-business group that the CIA calls a right-wing pressure group, associated with death squads.



It is certain understandable why MAMZ would like to disassociate himself from the Salvadoran oligarchy side of his family, given all of the above and the degree to which it disproves much of what MAMZ has said about himself.  However, in this case, failing to also use the Latin-American "Zúñiga" last name in reference to the son has the effect of making it harder to study and become astounded by the enormous wealth and shocking associations of his mother's Zúñiga side of the family.



What Politifact should have pointed out is the strange tendency of the media to call DailyKos a liberal blog, even though its owner admits that he was in training at the CIA when he started the blog, and he has a long history of Republican Party affiliation, voting and campaign work. He admittedly voted for the election of George H.W. Bush against Bill Clinton in 1992 and then ridiculed President Bill Clinton in 1993 for his efforts to open the US military to service by openly gay persons.

Blackosphere &. Whitosphere: Silence is Never Golden

by francislholland, Thu Feb 15, 2007 at 01:56:00 PM EST

Also discussed at: http://field-negro.blogspot.com/

Cross-posted at www.francislholland.blogspot.com

Also see this article and the self-described white Jewish official and white community responses to this article at MyDD, where this article was first published, and where African-American attorney Francis L. Holland was subsequently banned from participation.

Matt Stoller of MyDD opened a compelling dialogue a few days ago by asking whether it was necessary for Blacks and whites (and I would add women and other sociological minorities) to frequent the same blogs in order for the Democratic Party to maximize Party chances for electoral success.
Matt said,

Now first I'm going to address this community about our culture.  Most MyDD readers are comfortable within what I call 'Jewish political culture', which is a very individualistic, progressive style of argumentative discourse . . .  There are lots of other cultures out there, and lots of other ways of thinking about the world.  These represent themselves online, but they don't necessarily represent themselves here.  Does it matter that they don't?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/2/12/1237 12/293#commenttop

Because the phrase "divide and conquer" is such a fundamental part of our political parlance,  it ought not be necessary to argue, as I do, that a political party whose communication is divided by a color line will necessarily be less successful than a party that communicates across lines of color. So, the short to Matt's question is, "Yes, blog apartheid within the Democratic Party does reduce Democrats' chances for electoral success.

If in 2008 Black people and Latinos fail to vote in sufficient numbers for the Democratic presidential candidate to win Florida and Ohio, then whites will hypothesize endlessly about the "cultural" reasons for Blacks failure to vote.  Whites may not ever consider that they simply exercised their majority power within the Party to nominate a candidate whom Blacks and Latinos really did not like very much.  Although Black people always vote reliably and overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party, our turnout and, therefore, the election results often depend upon the degree of Blacks enthusiasm for the candidate chosen by the Party.

If the Party chooses a candidate whom we do not like, Black activists within the Party find it all the more difficult to mobilize Black voters.  So, when you hear Black voters say that a proposed candidate is "just another white [man]", this ought, logically, to give you pause.If Blacks cannot express our opinions to whites about the proposed Democratic candidates by participating at Democratic blogs, then where can we express to white Democrats what we think and feel about the proposed candidates?

It's true that we can clam up and wait to express ourselves in the voting booths during primary elections, but if - out of simple ignorance of our wishes, the white majority of Democrats nominates a candidate for whom Blacks simply have no enthusiasm, then the next best way to express ourselves is by letting your candidate die in the fires of white Democrats' electoral hubris when the final election arises.

This is why, when Blacks and whites and Latinos support is needed to elect Democrats, an "I'll see you in court" approach to selecting candidates does not benefit the Democratic Party.  "I'll see you in court!" is something people say AFTER making an attempt to communicate with each other in an open and civil fashion.  To the extent that this attitude dominates the Democratic Party, the Republican Party will be the chief beneficiary.

Whites increasingly communicates amongst each other about candidates at whitosphere blogs, just as we Blacks do at our Blackosphere blogs.  If our blogs are not the place for for us also to communicate across color lines, aware of and determined to bridge our differences for the sake of the common good, then where, by God, in segregated America, will this communication occur?  If whites choose or permit themselves to communicate at blogs that are segregated, it can only be because they do not really value Black and Latino political participation in all it most obvious potential forms.  If so, then such whites do not deserve our participation and they can go to . . . to the polls doubting whether Blacks and Latinos will participate in the necessary numbers.

I am not the only Black who feels this way as a result of the de facto blogger apartheid practiced at prominent "progressive" whitosphere blogs.


With some trepidation, because I have not cleared it with him, I am going to quote something that I read at the Field Negro website.  The Black blogger comments on my use at MyDD of the terms "whitosphere" and "blogger apartheid", and on original graphic I prepared to capture the objective demographic truth of Blacks' experience at white "progressive blogs", that DailyKos is 2.5% Black while MyDD is 1.5% black according to internal polls at these blogs.  http://www.mydd.com/admin/story/2007/2/9 /12568/75943 The Black blogger somewhat angrily disagrees with my assertion that more Black and white interaction in the blogosphere is necessary and desirable:

Mr. Holland seems to be screaming for more black inclusion in the Whitosphere, and more black links to sites like Daily Kos and My DD etc. This is where my man and I tend to part company. I personally could give a f**k whether My DD or Daily Kos, or any of the other so called white progressive blogs link me or even include me in their discussion. Honestly, their issues aren't my issues. I know they have very strong political beliefs and are tied to the democratic party and it's leaders, but not me, and this is going to surprise some people. But I would just as soon vote for a republican over a democrat if I thought he had my people's best interest at heart. So I really don't give a f--k which party a particular politician belongs to. The reason I happen to despise most republicans is that they just happen to be the most f - - - d up when it comes to matters of race. But don't get it twisted, some democrats are f -- - d up too. And I will never walk lock step with any one party. NEVER!

This is what separates me from the Daily Kos My DD crowd, and what I think ultimately might separate me from people who are crying for inclusion.Call me a separatist, but I am more proud to be linked to sites like Skeptical Brotha, Freeslave, and Mirror On America than to the more popular progressive white sites like Kos, My DD, and their ilk. And for the record, I have links to white sites on my blog as well. -My man konagod and the aforementioned My DD comes to mind- so I guess I am not such a separatist after all.

I am glad Mr. Holland raised this subject, it needed to be addressed. My position on this is pretty clear, but I understand the opposite school of thought: We should try to learn about each other, and from a political standpoint, it benefits the democratic party to get a feed back from it's most reliable constituents. But you can't force inclusion on people, I don't care how progressive they claim to be. We have given up on the republicans, because we realize that they have given up on us. Maybe we should take that position with the democrats as well.  http://field-negro.blogspot.com/ 

If nothing else is clear from that quote, it ought to be clear that blogger apartheid is making Black bloggers angry at white progressives.  They have all of the tools to blog, and they do so independently, but they have been marginalized in the whitosphere.

Blogger apartheid divides the Democratic blogosphere, and those who willfully engage in behavior that divides their own Party ought not be surprised when they find their Party conquered at the polls.  Blacks are angry at white unwillingness to engage in open communication on a level playing field within the whitosphere.
For example, a blog that does not have 20% links to the Blackosphere does not represent a Party where delegates to the Democratic National Convention are 20% black.

A blog with less than 20%-30% Black and Latino links insults necessary players and is engaging in <strong<negative</strong> communication and foreclosure of intraparty communication.  This can and will have consequences at the polls.  It ought to be clear that lack of communication does not pose merely a "threat" of negative consequences.  It is in itself a negative that cannot help but manifest itself in everything the Democratic Party says and does.

When whitosphere blogs ignore the First Amendment to the US Constitution and implement blog rules in which white members decide what Blacks will be permitted to say, then whites eviscerate the Constitutional protections for free speech on which minority/majority communication depends.  Just as between whites, if Blacks cannot say things that whites don't like in the context of a political discussion, then there's no point in us communicating with whites at all.

Yet the whitosphere lacks the fundamental Constitutional guarantees that make open discussion possible in a pluralistic society.  As in Apartheid South Africa, Blacks (and others) can be permanently banned from expressing themselves in the whitosphere if we say things that whites really don't like.  As you can see from the above quote from the Field Negro site, most of what Blacks most need to say is things that whites least want to hear.  While some at MyDD chide me for using the term "whitosphere", other Blacks immediately adopt the term and my graphic because it expresses their own experience with white "progressives" management of the principal progressive whitosphere blogs.

Yet, literally ignoring Black opinion can only have negative consequences.  Consider for example the case of white progressive's love for John Edwards and Al Gore.  The 2000 election should have taught us that every vote will be needed in 2008, since Al Gore was cheated out of electoral victory in Florida by less than 700 votes.  In 2008, can the Democratic Party afford to nominate a white male candidate whom (unlike Bill Clinton) Blacks simply don't like, while passing over highly qualified candidates for whom Blacks and Latinos are genuinely enthusiastic?  Of course, Blacks supported Gore overwhelmingly but, to the degree that additional Black votes would have helped, more of an effort was needed to give them a reason to vote.  More coordination was needed to assure that Blacks could vote and that our votes would be counted.

Without discussing the issue at all with Blacks, Latinos and women, it would be easy for white men in isolation to believe that John Edwards' "two America's" dichotomy captures our sense of disenfranchisement and will play well with Black and Latinos.  Yet the opposite is true and the polls are telling us that.  If there were more Blacks and Latinos in the whitosphere, whites would realize that the John Edwards "two Americas" appeal, far from appealing, leaves us cold and resentful.

Most of white America  mistakenly believes that Blacks are the principal beneficiaries of programs designed to end poverty, which is why Ronald Reagan was able to mobilize white anger against welfare programs in the 1980's.  A Democratic candidate who founds his electoral appeal on his desire to help the poor necessarily will alienate some of those voters who fled the Democratic Party to support Ronald Reagan.

So, if forces in the Democratic Party want to make a poverty-based appeal now, they had better make sure that at least the poor within the Democratic Party are in support of those anti-poverty ideas.  Some whitosphere progressives insist that John Edwards can help to alleviate the "two Americas" division of America, but I steadfastly insist that supporting John Edwards perpetuates the status quo.  And this is one example of where white "progressives" really need to listen to what Black people are saying.

Supporting John Edwards Perpetuates the Status Quo

You can't end the monarchy by supporting the king, and you can't end the political, economic and social disenfranchisement of women and Blacks ("the poor") by electing another wealthy white male as President of the United States.

If you think about it, the most fundamental aspect of the status quo throughout American history has been the literal and figurative disenfranchisement of Black voters and women. They could not hold electoral office and they never have held the highest office in the land because white men ALWAYS have arrogated that office unto themselves, sometimes with the complicity of white women.


If you define the status quo as "the continuing disenfranchisement of those who historically were denied the right to vote and hold elective office", it becomes clear that the election of John Edwards to the Presidency - another white male in a string of 43 consecutive white males - would constitute the clearest possible reaffirmation of the status quo. Once again, women and Black candidates would be passed over with the effect of perpetuating the 43-term exclusively white male monopoly of the US Presidency.

Perpetuating the status quo and perpetuating the social, economic and political disenfranchisement of Blacks and women.  Much more so than the majority white male blogosphere, women, Blacks and Latinos agree that ending the white male monopoly of the presidency is a fundamental goals in 2008.

So, electing Edwards to challenge the status quo is like supporting a king to challenge the monarchy or integrating an all-white male club by adding more all-white male club members.
It is possible that electing yet another white man to the Presidency will end the poverty of the historically disenfranchised, with John Edwards serving as a "pass through" for those who have historically been disincluded legally and by custom. But this is a very convoluted way of achieving what could be achieved much more directly by electing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Of course, ending disenfranchisement is not the only goal of the Presidency, but it is John Edwards' raison d' être, which is why electing Hillary and Barack is the best way to achieve the goal that John Edwards espouses. http://francislholland.blogspot.com/2007 /02/supporting-edwards-perpetuates-statu s.html
Whites who insist on supporting John Edwards ought not imagine that Edwards' anti-poverty appeals will bring out the votes of Blacks, Latinos or disenfranchised women.

We do not want or need John Edwards to act as a pass through for our participation in the democratic system.  We want to participate directly, ourselves, for the first time in American history, on the Democratic ticket itself.  And that is why the "two Americas" appeals falls flat when coming from wealthy white male John Edwards.

It's no secret that Blacks and Latinos overwhelmingly favor Hillary Clinton and, to a lesser degree right now, Barack Obama.  Women, too, are the majority of the Democratic Party and polls show that they favor the liberal Democratic woman in the presidential race by a significant margin.
As Ebony Magazine reported in May 1993,

IT'S the hottest story to come out of Washington since Bill Clinton broke the 12-year Republican lock on the White House. For the first time in history, four African-Americans--Ron Brown, Mike Espy, Jesse Brown and Hazel O'Leary--will hold seats in the president's cabinet. That's the largest number of Black cabinet officials ever. Just how significant are these appointments? Never before has a president appointed so many Blacks to the highest ranks of the executive branch. In fact, with the exception of Jimmy Carter, since Lyndon Johnson became the first president to appoint an African-American to his cabinet in 1966, the number of Black cabinet officials in any administration has never exceeded one. One. But it isn't just the unparalleled increase in number that makes Clinton's selections so historic. Never before has a Black American headed any of these departments: not Commerce, not Agriculture, not Energy, not Veterans Affairs. What's more, with the appointment of Clifton Wharton Jr. as the No. 2 man at the State Department, Black America has achieved yet another historic first. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_n7_v48/ai_13698296

In the cozy cacoon of the primarily male and overwhelmingly white blogosphere, it is possible to imagine that only white males' opinions will count, because they will decide through progressive machinations whom the Democratic presidential candidate will be, overwhelm our objections in the primaries, and then the rest of us will accept their hegemonic judgment in November 2008.

This is not going to happen.I appeal to the whitosphere to listen now and commit yourselves to sharing every instrument of the Party, facilitation communication, coordination and unity by openly inviting and accepting all members of the party into every organ of the whitosphere, regardless of gender, skin, color, ethnicity, religion, national origin and sexual orientation.  I appeal to you to look to the founding documents of our nation - including the US the Constitution and the Bill of Rights - for guidance in terms of how to maintain the integrity of a assemblage that has to meet the needs of diverse people, fundamentally by providing everyone an inalienable right to speak their peace.

The "banning" of people for legitimate but disfavored political speech has come to an end in South Africa. "Banning" - a political tool used for so long to silence the disenfranchised Black majority under the South Africa apartheid system - should never have been revived at American "progressive" whitosphere blogs; Among people who depend upon each others' active and engaged participation, "silence is never golden".  http://field-negro.blogspot.com/

The Iraq War and the impending Iran war represent victories of a white man determined not to speak with those brown people with whom he disagrees even though the alternative is to resolve through open war the disagreements which he refuses to resolve through open discussion.  It is ironic, but not surprising, that the same white male "progressives" who oppose Bush's war in Iraq should prefer his communication style in the blogosphere of America.

It will not be easy for whites and Blacks to overcome resentments and resistances to collaborate with one another through blogs.  No one can force white "progressives" to assume the challenges of diversity within the whitosphere, just as no one can force Blacks, Latinos and women to enthusiastically support white male progressives' candidates at the polls.

Cross-posted at www.francislholland.blogspot.com.
francislholland@yahoo.com

Tikun Olam Banned at Daily Kos for Questioning Kos-Armando Conflicts of Interest

By the Tikun Olam blog, July 30, 2006:  "They finally did it. The folks at Daily Kos have sunk so low it’s downright embarrassing. You see, I published a post here and at Dkos a month ago or so saying that Kos and all political bloggers should maintain higher standards of disclosure in their blogs. They should inform their readers of any financial or other type of material relationship (including political advertising) with political campaigns. Man, were the Kossites hoppin’ mad. There was a tempest in a teapot that was even picked up by the right blog world to posit the ridiculous notion that my treatment signaled the demise of DKos as a political force.

Then I wrote a post questioning how Armando dealt with his own potential conflicts of interest in both his professional life as a lawyer and political blogger."

Read the full post, if you like.

Banning in the Whitosphere and the 9-11 Cone of Silence

Cross-posted at "Free Speech Zone" blog.
 


When I follow my site meter at Truth About Kos and I discover that people are looking for information about blog participants banned at DailyKos, I realize something fundamental: Like soccer games distract Latin Americans from the fact that they barely have anything to eat and their kids can't get educated, the whole banning discussion between 2006 and 2008 distracted whitosphere bloggers and me from the fact that we were headed into a depression where ten percent of Americans and half of Black teenagers wouldn't have a job.

To his credit, there was a guy over at Dailywhitosphere who wrote almost daily about the signs that the US economy was about to go into a nosedive, but the soap opera of who would be banned and when and how distracted, just the way undercover federal agents in the Panther Party sowed distrust within the ranks until it was impossible to know whom to trust.

I feel the same distrust in the blogosphere right now, and I must admit that it includes some afrosphere participants. I am convinced that we have been infiltrated so that our discussions will be primarily about each other rather than about using computer interconnectedness as a powerful political tool.

I would go so far as to say that many blogs have been created by Government agents and/or assets to prevent the precise kind of increasing mobilization and radicalization that would have occurred in the absence of these blogs and if we were not infiltrated. Look at DailyKos and MyDD, for example.

DailyKos was opened in 2002 with a rule that participants could not and must not discuss the most important political and economic event of the decade: the professional demolition-style destruction of three enormous building in Manhattan, with a Government cover story became more incredible the more one studied the actual videos.

So, DailyKos opens less than a year later, and it's most known in the blogosphere for its insistence that we must not discuss what was obviously a conspiracy involving many different parties in a "false flag" covert action that can only be described as treason, unless you can accept the utter destruction of three commercial buildings, the destruction of three passenger jets and deaths of thousands of people as a day in the life of the Federal Government.

The primary blogs of the whitosphere were not created as a place for leftists to discuss reality; they were created to divide intelligent leftists from those who might otherwise listen to cogent arguments, watch first-hand films, and conclude the that president of the United States and/or the vice-president were so determined to take military neck-hold on America's foreign and domestic policy that the CIA permitted and encouraged the destruction of buildings so that voters and political activists would become more supine in the face of a massive tragedy that leftists were not allowed to discuss.


Although I admit that I haven't read the blog 9-11 False Flag blog, the banner of the blog summarizes what I believe about 9-11, particularly after viewing videos of the buildings imploding as well as the spontaneous expressions of disbelief among first responders: "The Bush Regine Engineered 9-11." I prefer to see the proposition described this way, ("The Bush Regine Engineered 9-11.") because I am not even convinced that the President knew fully what would happen on 9-11.

There were battles within the Administration of who would control the Armed Forces and intelligence apparatus in the Bush Administrations and what the scope of their authority would be. The events of 9-11 resolved that question of authority completely, with Dick Cheney and his lieutenants in charge of the military response to 9-11 as well as the propaganda that would justify the military response, because 9-11 in and of itself would not have been enough to convince the nation that Cheney should be allowed to do as he pleased in domestic suppression of dissent and undertakings of foreign wars.

An argument had to be made that the destruction of the towers in combination with the ongoing threat meant that Dick Cheney should be in control of the response to domestic terrorism and foreign terrorism, with terrorism coming to signify whatever Dick Cheney wanted it to signify. The whitosphere has been an active if covert participant in this propaganda of compelled omission. And who better to ride herd than the man who was born on September 11th, 1971 and was trained at the CIA beginning in 2001; Markos C[?] Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga (MAMZ).

Some Participants at Free Speech Zone Are Simply Idiotic!

So far, I have not been banned from posting at the whitosphere's Free Speech Zone (FSZ).  However, I have had a number of sadistic comments submitted after my posts at FSZ about issues very personal to me. I find FSZ to be far too much like Dailywhitosphere (which ought to be no surprise me or anyone else, because (I have heard somewhere) it was started by people from DailyKos).  Certainly a lot of screennames I saw at DailyKos are also present at FSZ.

There are far too many people at FSZ whom I first met at DailyKos (because they visited my posts to make idiotic and facially nasty comments).  They have not changed.  Rather than discuss the issues at hand, they make personal attacks, in an attempt to derail the discussion of the subject matter.

Although I still enjoy updating the Truth About Kos blog, when some new facet of the truth comes across my desktop, I've realized the futility of arguing with idiots and haven't the patience for it.  It's true that the more that people hate me and post negative comments, the more other people are drawn to my ideas to see what all the fuss is about.  And so CIA-trained haters (if that's what they are) can actually be quite useful to determined writer with information to which he seeks to bring attention.

For instance, any link posted at DailyWhitosphere and leading to the Truth About Kos is bound to draw forty (or less) MAMZ minions, to the comment or post, which minions defend MAMZ's participation in the CIA, defend his letter opposing ALL gay service in the military, and insist that MAMZ cannot be gay because he is married, like ex-Senator Larry Craig.

"Why would you have your wife hauled out before the media when you're sitting there explaining your latest indiscretion? Because a picture is worth 1,000 words," Cathy Allen, spokeswoman for the American Association of Political Consultants, told ABCNEWS.com.


"If you see a guy standing next to his wife, it offers some explanation that he might be telling the truth. It means 'how can he be gay? He's got a wife.' … Usually, there is an assumption that if your wife can forgive you, then the world can forgive you," she said.  ABCNews

One again, the only reason I have to believe that MAMZ might be gay is the letter he wrote in 1993 to his school newspaper.  I don't care if MAMZ is gay, except to the extent that it will tell us whether he is a homophobic homosexual hypocrite or not.

This post really is not about MAMZ, but it's about his direct and indirect associates at FSZ.  I just don't have the patience to argue silliness with people who couldn't care less about substance.  In the bible it warns that if you argue in public with idiots, passersby may be confused about which of the arguers is the idiot.

For this reason, and much to the pleasure of the people who make the most idiotic comments, I don't think I'll cross-post at FSZ anymore, and if I do I will refrain from reading the comments (positive and negative).  It's just too much of a waste of my time when I've found other more fruitful writing projects that are far less trying.

There was a day when an author published a book and then lived or emotionally died, perhaps, based on the literary commentary.  I confess that I have yet to read the book about President Obama's election campaign, because some (white-skinned) reviewer commented negatively on it.  Now reviews are immediate from a much larger audience, but the effect is the same:  A bunch of 98% white people, many of whom may be blogging professionally for the federal government, tell you whether they believe your post is meaningful or not.

Before I waste my time on that, I think I'll call El Salvador and ask as many people as necessary to tell me the exact familial relationship between Markos C[arlos?] Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga (MAMZ) and Eduardo Carlos Alberto Delgado Zúñiga.  At least doing the latter would be research time well-spent, while arguing with idiots is something any idiot can do.

FBI FOIA Request about DailyKos Unavailing

Out of curiosity, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request about DailyKos with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I am beginning to think that the term "main file records" means a lot more than it appears to say facially. If there is nothing among "main file records," I would certainly also be interested in information that was contained in a non-main file record.



I have a feeling that looking into "main file records" but not others is somehow like looking for waves in the sand but not in the water. 'We were unable to find any engine troubles whatsoever in the trunk of your car.'



Marcus Baram at Huffington Post encountered a similarly odd response to his request for FBI records about J.D. Salinger. J.D. Salinger Didn't Have An FBI File?

The Huffington Post recently received a disappointing reply to a FOIA request for any files or records on Salinger, who died at the end of January. According to the FBI, the bureau was unable to identify "responsive main file records" under the name Jerome David Salinger. (Salinger's name may still pop up in other files kept by the bureau and a request for cross-references is still pending.)

I don't know, but I have a suspicion that "main file records" are defined so narrowly that even the unibomber would have no "main file records" but he might have reams of 'derivative file records(?), or something of the sort. Anyway, here's how the Justice Department responded to my request about DailyKos. One would think that a crash-the-gates leftist advocacy and money bundling group would have at least one document in its "main record files."

This is the FBI's response:



Maybe I'll file an appeal, requesting FBI records about DailyKos that are not in the main records files, but that are in cross-reference files or others interesting places.

Francis L. Holland imagines:

Dear Atty. Holland: Although there are sixty-eight thousand hits for "CIA" + "Moulitsas" in Google, there is not a single reference to that person FBI "main file records." 

In fact, our records contain no information at all on the existence of a blog called "DailyKos" or a man named "Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga."  It is possible that we are denying records because he is a CIA agent and that is one of the circumstances under which always deny having any information, as a national security exception to FOIA principles.  You can't have MAMZ's FBI records and "You do not have permission to view this diary."

Have a nice day.

MAMZ, DailyKos Financially Supported Homosex-Addict Ex-Rep Eric Massa

The difference between being a homosexual and being a homosex-addict is playing itself out in the political ruin of ex-representative Eric Massa. The issue is also embarrassing one of his best-known whitosphere supporters, Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga (known to many as "MAMZ," the owner of the DailyKos blog).

As the Washington Post reports:

Massa's decline from first-term Democratic congressman to former lawmaker embroiled in an alleged sex scandal occurred in just 14 months. Democrats had celebrated his arrival after he seized a Republican-held seat, but that ended shortly after House ethics investigators began pressing his employees to explain what exact terms he used with them and the specific circumstances in which he touched them. WaPost

MAMZ and his supporters have often expressed the belief that being an military veteran (like Massa and MAMZ) inoculates candidates against charges of lack of patriotism, lack of military "strength" and lack of manliness. Massa is a twenty-year veteran of the US Navy.

So, MAMZ and many participants at his DailyKos blog rallied to strongly support and contribute financially to the now completely discredited ex-Rep. Eric Massa. They were so convinced by Massa's portfolio that MAMZ and DailyKos participants bundled money for Massa in both his unsuccessful 2006 campaign and again in 2008, according to MAMZ himself:

. . . it made sense to pool our communities in order to maximize what we could raise for individual candidates.

And on that front, we were effective. In 2006, we raised $1.54 million for 18 candidates . . . Several others came so close, that they're back this year to finish the job, such as Darcy Burner, Eric Massa, Gary Trauner and Dan Seals. Introducing the Orange To Blue list bykos, Wed Jun 11, 2008 at 01:00:19 PM PDT

MAMZ's support for Massa through two election cycles warns us

(1) against MAMZ's political judgment because even his winning candidates can turn out to be sour disappointments and unimaginably embarrassing, and

(2) his part in this episode tells us something crucially important about MAMZ's relationship to his own sexuality.

Ironically, MAMZ once wrote that, in general, soldiers like homosex-addict Massa were precisely the kind of soldiers that MAMZ himself was desperately afraid of when MAMZ was in the US Army, "serving courageously" in Germany during the first Gulf War.

As a veteran, MAMZ wrote:

Worrying about whether the known homosexual sleeping next to you is watching as you change your underwear may seem trivial as you read this, but to the soldier who's short-tempered after three weeks in the field and four hours of daily sleep, it becomes a matter of great importance to his pride and sensibilities. Truth About Kos cites letter from Northern Illinois University "Northern Star" archives.

For some reason, supporting the sexually abusive Massa never aroused MAMZ's "sensibilities" in 2006 through 2008. (I don't care if MAMZ is gay, except to the extent that the above letter shows him to be a homosexual homophobic hypocrite who fights gay rights as a political posture while sharing gay's sexual preference in the private sanctum of his own closet. MAMZ invites doubts about his sexuality, even by signing his letter to the editor, "Marcos C. A. Moulitsas: Undecided Freshman."

In spite of being married, as is MAMZ, and in spite of having a long 20-year military career--Massa turns out to be just the type of sex-crazed homosexual who MAMZ says he so feared. Although some comments say that MAMZ can't be gay, in spite of the indications to the contrary in his letter, the Massa case reminds us that even married men can be gay.

francislholland :: MAMZ, DailyKos Financially Supported Homosex-Addict Ex-Rep Eric Massa It seems to me that Massa, in addition to being homosexual, as many people are, also is a homosex-addict and lust addict, who could not and would not contain his overtly sexually abusive behavior before it led to the loss of his seat in the US House of Representatives, embarrassing all who supported him.

Was Eric Massa an unacknowledged homosex-addict during his twenty years in the US Navy? I don't know the answer to that question, although I suspect readers will have stiff opinions on the subject. Even during his Navy service, the New York Daily News reports that:

former shipmates emerged last week with stories that Massa tried to grope, "snorkel" and ogle those of lesser rank.

The NY DailyNews even reports that the Massa case is undercutting the move toward freely gay service in the military. Yet, the Massa implosion is no more an argument against gays in the military than the rapes of women in the military is an argument for an all-female military. It's true that an all-female military would reduce heterosexual rapes and remarks, but the disadvantages of such a proposition are obviously too high--and too broadly discriminatory--for the proposition to be seriously considered.

MAMZ opposed gays in the military and then supported a gay Congressional candidate who was known to make inappropriate sexual advances. Once again, I don't think CIA-trained MAMZ is the right man to choose the candidates of the Democratic Party.

MAMZ, DailyKos Financially Supported Homosex-Addict Ex-Rep Erica Massa

The difference between being a homosexual and being a homosex-addict is playing itself out in the political ruin of ex-representative Eric Massa. The issue is also embarrassing one of his best-known whitosphere supporters, Markos C. Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga (known to many as "MAMZ," the owner of the DailyKos blog).

As the Washington Post reports:

Massa's decline from first-term Democratic congressman to former lawmaker embroiled in an alleged sex scandal occurred in just 14 months. Democrats had celebrated his arrival after he seized a Republican-held seat, but that ended shortly after House ethics investigators began pressing his employees to explain what exact terms he used with them and the specific circumstances in which he touched them. WaPost

MAMZ and his supporters have often expressed the belief that being an military veteran (like Massa and MAMZ) inoculates candidates against charges of lack of patriotism, lack of military "strength" and lack of manliness. Massa is a twenty-year veteran of the US Navy.

So, MAMZ and many participants at his DailyKos blog rallied to strongly support and contribute financially to the now completely discredited ex-Rep. Eric Massa. They were so convinced by Massa's portfolio that MAMZ and DailyKos participants bundled money for Massa in both his unsuccessful 2006 campaign and again in 2008, according to MAMZ himself:

. . . it made sense to pool our communities in order to maximize what we could raise for individual candidates.

And on that front, we were effective. In 2006, we raised $1.54 million for 18 candidates . . . Several others came so close, that they're back this year to finish the job, such as Darcy Burner, Eric Massa, Gary Trauner and Dan Seals.

Introducing the Orange To Blue list

by kos,

Wed Jun 11, 2008 at 01:00:19 PM PDT

MAMZ's support for Massa through two election cycles warns us (1) against MAMZ's political judgment because even his winning candidates turn out to be sour disappointments, and (2) tells us something crucially important about MAMZ's relationship to his own sexuality.

Ironically, MAMZ once wrote that, in general, soldiers like homosex-addict Massa were precisely the kind that MAMZ himself was desperately afraid of encountering when MAMZ was in the US Army, serving courageously in Germany during the first Gulf War.

As a veteran, MAMZ wrote:

Worrying about whether the known homosexual sleeping next to you is watching as you change your underwear may seem trivial as you read this, but to the soldier who's short-tempered after three weeks in the field and four hours of daily sleep, it becomes a matter of great importance to his pride and sensibilities. Truth About Kos cites letter from Northern Illinois University "Northern Star" archives.

For some reason, supporting the sexually abusive Massa never aroused MAMZ's "sensibilities" in 2006 through 2008. In spite of being married, as is MAMZ, and in spite of having a long 20-year military career--Massa turns out to be just the type of sex-crazed homosexual who MAMZ says he so feared.

It seems to me that Massa, in addition to being homosexual, as many people are, also is a homosex-addict and lust addict, who could not and would not contain his overtly sexually abusive behavior before it led to the loss of his seat in the US House of Representatives, embarrassing all who supported him.

Was Eric Massa an unacknowledged homosex-addict during his twenty years in the US Navy? I don't know the answer to that question, although I suspect readers will have stiff opinions on the subject. Even during his Navy service, the New York Daily News reports that:

former shipmates emerged last week with stories that Massa tried to grope, "snorkel" and ogle those of lesser rank.

The NY DailyNews even reports that the Massa case is undercutting the move toward freely gay service in the military. Yet, the Massa implosion is no more an argument against gays in the military than the rapes of women in the military is an argument for an all-female military. It's true that an all-female military would reduce heterosexual rapes and remarks, but the disadvantages of such a proposition are obviously too high--and too broadly discriminatory--for the proposition to be seriously considered.

MAMZ opposed gays in the military and then supported a gay Congressional candidate who was known to make inappropriate sexual advances. Once again, I don't think CIA-trained MAMZ is the right man to choose the candidates of the Democratic Party.