Tag Archives: Roger AIles

Headlines Du Jour ► Thursday, January 9, 2014

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Good morning, Headliners. It’s time once again to take the pulse of the world and see what your neighbours will be talking about later today. So grab a cup of java, put your cell phone on vibrate only, and settle in with today’s Headlines Du Jour.

BEST HEADLINE DU JOUR:

Oklahoma man killed
stepfather with ‘atomic
wedgie,’ authorities say

LGBT NEWS:

Breaking: Utah Gov. Tells 1360 Legally Married
Same-Sex Couples Their Unions Are Invalid

FROM OUTER SPACE:

UFO Causes German Airport To Divert Flights

Fox Guest: Minimum Wage Is Just ‘Black Teenage Unemployment Act’

‘Gates of Hell’: Fox News
Pairs Ann Coulter with
Unfortunate Chyron

Colbert Calls Out Fox’s Hollow Climate Change Attack

TODAY’S COLD CASE:

Burglars Who Took On F.B.I. Abandon Shadows

GUNS, GUNS, GUNS:

Lawmaker fires handgun in Kentucky Capitol: ‘I am a gun owner… It happens’

I NEVER META-DATA I DIDN’T LIKE:

Graphs by MIT Students Show the Enormously Intrusive Nature of Metadata

MORE DISPATCHES FROM DETROIT, ‘MERKA’S FIRST THROWAWAY CITY:

16 Reasons to Go to Detroit Right Now

Detroit’s historic Brush Park may finally see a revival

Rebuilding Detroit’s first and last neighborhood

Nod to 1300 Lafayette

WHEN DO WE ADMIT THAT CAPITALISM HAS NOT WORKED?

Bring Back the WPA

Why we should give free money to everyone

TODAY IN FLORI-DUH NEWS:

Florida man bites neighbor’s
ear off over a cigarette

Toxic Tush Doc Oneal Morris to Begin
Prison Sentence (in the Male Population)

CLIMATE CHANGE, GLOBAL WARMING, & CHARLETANS

Linking Weather Extremes to Global Warming

Yes, It’s Cold — and Yes, Global
Warming Is Still Happening

RELIGION CORNER:

Pat Robertson: Global warming is a scam because there are no SUVs on Jupiter

America’s First ‘Pastafarian’
Official Sworn into Office

Pastafarian minister sworn into office

FREE THE WEED!!!

Fox News contributor Ben Carson: Marijuana causes flashbacks years after use

Chris Hayes: Bill O’Reilly Wrong On Pot Arrests

Jon Stewart blasts cable anchors panicking over legal pot: ‘You’re a f*cking idiot’

O’Reilly Fires Back at Jon Stewart, ‘Can’t Imagine’ Chinese Kids Being Addicted to Texting

Kevin Hart and Ice Cube Aggressively
Mock Nancy Grace’s Anti-Weed Comments

VIDEO DU JOUR:

Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of Not Now Silly, home of the
Steam-Powered Word-0-Matic, and your rest stop on the Information
Highway. Use our valuable bandwidth to post your news comments in
today’s open thread.

Headlines Du Jour ► Wednesday, January 8, 2014

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Guess what day it is? That’s right! It’s the anniversary of when the last person was executed for blasphemy in Britain. Meanwhile, I’ve grown suspicious of my headline collecting robot drones. They may be executed for exactly the very same reason. However, let’s not dwell on the unpleasant because it’s time for today’s Headlines Du Jour.

SO GLAD WE’RE LIVING IN A POST RACIAL SOCIETY:

Omaha police association labels video of
diapered black toddler ‘The Thug Cycle’

THE SORRY STATE OF TEE VEE NEWS:

“60 Minutes” gets it wrong again:
Cleantech hit job doesn’t check out

TODAY IN FOX “NEWS”

‘You’re Invisible, But I’ll Eat You Anyway.’ Secrets Of Snow-Diving Foxes

TODAY IN CLIMATE CHANGE:

Climate Change Deniers
Using Cold Weather as
Proof Exposed as Idiots
By Jon Stewart

FREE THE WEED!!!

Stephen Colbert shreds
‘buzzkill’ David Brooks’s
argument against legal weed

RELIGION CORNER:

Man who thinks he’s Jesus… along with hundreds of young women who follow him across the world

VIDEO DU JOUR:

Headlines Du Jour is a leisure-time activity of Not Now Silly, home of the
Steam-Powered Word-0-Matic, and your rest stop on the Information
Highway. Use our valuable bandwidth to post your news comments in
today’s open thread.

Looking Back ► Unpacking The Writer At The New Year

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From time to time I peel back the curtains — AUNTY EM!!! AUNTY EM!!! — and reveal what goes on behind the scenes here at Not Now Silly. The first day of the new year seems an appropriate time to sum up the previous one, doncha think?

Since starting this blog I have published 420 posts, 207 of them in 2013. When I started this blog I swore I’d post something every day. Little did I know how hard that would be. This past year I took a few weeks off here and there to recharge my batteries, research some bigger articles, and go on a road trip for research.

A year ago I was still doing regular Fox “News” snark with my 3 weekly series, Fox “News” Spin Cycle, Judge Not, and Chow Mein and Bolling. However, I got bored of those. Not to mention that compiling and formatting them was very time consuming. Which is the biggest reason I dropped ’em. I found meatier things to research and write about.

Such as Trolleygate. My first post on that topic came on January 27, 2013, with An Introduction to Trolleygate. I first learned of this story through a secret source, my Coconut Grove Deep Throat, who has tipped me to several stories now. However, I would never have won their trust had it not been for all my previous writing on Coconut Grove, and more specifically West Grove. When I learned of Trolleygate I called it racism, straight up:


As much as Coconut Grove is used to being ignored by Miami City Hall — which ironically is in Coconut Grove — Black Coconut Grove is used to being ignored by everybody. […]

Meanwhile, Black Coconut Grove gets stuck with all the negatives of a diesel bus garage from a neighbouring city. Furthermore, while it gets the increased traffic and pollution, the residents will not even get what is normally a benefit of a bus garage: a bus stop. Having a bus stop might allow Black Grove to get on the bus and ride to Merrick Park, or Miracle Mile, or any of those other swank places, including any multimillion dollar project by developers named Astor. It reminds me of how Robert Moses, who built the Long Island Expressway, purposely built all the underpasses too low to allow for buses. That’s so the ‘great unwashed’ couldn’t go to his beaches at Fire Island and Jones Beach.

Skip ahead to November: None other than the U.S. Department of Transportation confirmed what I had been saying all along. According to the US DOT, the lack of public notice and input contravenes the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It has ordered Coral Gables, the city of Miami and Miami-Dade County to come up with a plan for retroactive consultation with the affected communities. I don’t know how that’s going to work, but those three entities are going to submit a plan.

Meanwhile, just to wrap Trolleygate up in a nice bow: Coral Gables is currently suing Astor Development to get out of the deal it struck that resulted in Trolleygate in the first place. The residents of West Grove, who lost their first round in court, are planning to appeal. With the US DOT now involved it’s become one of the most confusing series of intertwined lawsuits that you can imagine.

Miami taxpayers owe it all to [allegedly] corrupt Miami Commissioner Mark D. Sarnoff. Sarnoff seems to have skated away from all responsibility [so far] for sticking the city, county, and Coral Gables with this White Elephant that will never be a “government operated vehicle maintenance facility.” There’s still the Smoking Gun email that was discovered and people continue to investigate who was responsible for telling Astor Development to remove the word maintenance from its 2nd application to build this garage. Speculation says it leads directly to Sarnoff.

Bring on the depositions!!!

Another brag: As 2014 closed, Not Now Silly had its best month ever. The blog had 13,719 clicks in December, which is an average of 442.5 a day. That beats my previous record of 12,067 from August, 2013. I don’t know where all those people come from, but I wish they’d leave some comments. As you can see on the graph above, the monthly numbers go up and down, but I’m happy with the steady progression of onwards and upwards.

This is also the year I broke the lid off a Watergate story hidden in plain sight all these years. It began with my post Aunty Em Ericann’s Bun Fight With James Rosen of Fox “News” and continued with a review of Rosen’s book in Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka? To be BOTH “fair and balanced,” I also told the other side of the story with James Rosen Responds To Me, Sort Of and with the follow-up Serial Liar James Rosen Responds To Me Again. Long story short: I have rejected his explanations until he produces some evidence. My theory is on the table. He has yet to disprove it.

Another media bun fight I kept alive was versus the Coconut Grove Grapevine. I’m finally willing to admit that some of my feelings is sheer jealousy. Tom Falco gets advertising dollars for producing his reviews, event listings, and promotional bumph. While I have some Google averts here — AND CLICKING ON THEM WILL BE A GOOD THING! GO AHEAD — they produce pennies per post and my storage fees for the pics are higher than that. However, the other part of my frustration with the Grapevine is that it has a very large readership. Falco could be writing and/or researching and/or publishing news of importance to the people of Coconut Grove instead.

Mark Koldys during happier times

Sadly, I’m still fighting The Johnny Dollar Wars, a feud I never started and only kept alive by The Flying Monkey Squad.

Believe me, I would have ended it with Johnny Dollar Has Proven Himself To Be A Very Dangerous Person, posted 20 months ago. However, for reasons that only a psychiatrist and powerful psychotropic drugs would be able to determine, Mark Koldys and Ashley Graham (@JohnnyDollar01 and @Grayhammy on Twitter) have continued to cyber-bully me long after it made any real sense.

Dr Keith Ablow, whose motto is NORMAL OR NUTS, would have a field day with these wackos because they are still carry on this crazy
cyber conflict more than 3 years after they began it.

They latched onto me merely because I was a writer at NewsHounds — the motto of which is WE WATCH FOX SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO — and I refused to slink away like all the others they’ve cyber-bullied over the years.

Johnny Dollar’s site has a motto, too: CABLE NEWS TRUTH. I’m strill trying to get someone to explain what part of my alternative lifestyle came under that bullshit rubric.

I have a motto as well: READ THE TRUTH ABOUT JOHNNY DOLLAR. My last three J$ posts are, I believe, the ones that best sum up these crazy MoFos. If you’re going to read them, read them in this order: The Smoking Gun ► UPDATED! followed by Does Fox “News” Support Johnny Dollar? with Anatomy of a Cyber-Feud bringing up the rear.

To make a long story somewhat shorter: Nearly every day Mark Koldys and Ashley Graham spend hours on Twitter smearing me with lies and half-truths or having cute little circle jerks all about me.  The time they devote to it is legendary. Meanwhile, once a month I dash off a post about their mendacity that makes me laugh and, hopefully, entertains my readers. It seems to be working.

A moment in time: The All Time Top Ten with J$ at #8
with a bullet, and another J$ post bubbling under at 307 hits.

I’m building my reputation off Johnny Dollar’s back, one click at a
time, and it feels great. The first Mark Koldys post has recently
entered my All Time Top Ten and is moving up fast. [Check the current
All Time Top Tell in the column on the right.] The next highest is
bubbling under at 307 clicks. I’m content to continue writing about
Johnny Dollar, especially if it keeps getting those kinds of numbers.
The more people who read about Johnny Dollar the better, as far as I am
concerned.

You might have thought that some logic would have penetrated. You’d think they would have figured out by now whose brand is being tarnished by this silly Cyber War they started. Not Now Silly, as a brand new Rest Stop on the Information Highway™, had nowhere to go but up. J$’s reputation had nowhere to go but down. You really would think they’d stop already.

Last but not least: When I launched the serialization of my book Farce au Pain, I never anticipated how much work it would be to format the chapters in a way that pleased the eye and my exacting standards, especially within the limitations of the Blogger platform.

I thought I’d manage to post a chapter every month, but now it’s looking like every 45-60 days for me to get it all right. Here’s the way I figure it, to look at the glass as half full: If you are willing to wait that long for the next exciting episode after the cliffhanger, then I’m doing my job as a writer. If not, then I’m not sure it would have mattered had I posed the whole thing at once. But, we’ll never know, will we?

So . . . as we end this exciting episode of Unpacking The Writer, we have a brand new year to look forward to. Here’s to all the political muckraking, fights, and feuds to come in 2014!!!

Serial Liar James Rosen Responds To Me Again

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It looks like James Rosen, who wrote a book filled with words, has trouble understanding his own words.  Never fear. I’m here to help.

Rosen, for those smart enough to avoid watching Fox “News,” is the mendacious channel’s Chief Washington Correspondent. However, Rosen also wrote a doorstopper of a book about John Mitchell — Richard Nixon’s Attorney General and, later, head of the Committee to Re-elect the President (aptly shortened to CREeP). The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate can charitably be called Revisionist History, but more accurately it’s filled with lies, half-truths, and shaded language. To make a long story short, according to Rosen, John Mitchell was innocent of all Watergate crimes — even those for which he was convicted —  because he was out for a pack of cigarettes when they happened, or something.

My bun fight with James Rosen began in February of 2012, back when we were all so young and innocent. It flared into life when Rosen rudely jumped into a Twitter conversation I was having with Watergate whistle-blower John W. Dean. While I promised Rosen I would read his book, and did so almost immediately, it took me a year to finally review it for Not Now Silly because, quite frankly, it wasn’t much of a priority. That post, Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka?, has risen to become the #5 All Time post at Not Now Silly. However, more importantly, in it I made the claim that Fox “News” Chief Roger Ailes was Rosen’s secret source quoted on Page 61.

Six months later, when Rosen found himself embroiled in a federal probe of Top Secret links and possible espionage, I returned to the topic of The Strong Man, Roger Ailes and Anna Channault in a post that asked the musical question: James Rosen: Blundering Biographer or Enemy of the State? Hilarity ensued.

Despite having blocked me blocked me a year and a half earlier, Rosen finally woke up and responded a mere 5 days later. He did so in a tweet that is a classic example of attacking the messenger because you don’t like the message:

Which prompted my next Watergate-related blog post, James Rosen Responds To Me, Sort Of, in which I call Rosen’s tweet a non-denial denial because I know a non-denial denial when I read one. To be charitable again: Maybe Rosen doesn’t know a non-denial denial when he writes one.

Then yesterday — totally out of the blue — I got a new tweet from James Rosen after I promoted all my Watergate posts in a tweet. (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so “out of the blue.”)

The thing of it is this: Yes, Rosen’s tweet is finally a declarative denial. However, Rosen did not “told [me] before,” despite what he may think the words he used meant. With tweets limited to 140 characters, Rosen spent more than half of it making fun of my beard, which surely pleased Johnny Dollar and The Flying Monkey Squad. Better he should have used some of that Twitter real estate to have made an actual denial.

I called it a non-denial denial because it denied nothing. So, no. You didn’t done told me before, James.

This is how my copy of The Strong Man looked when I was done

The bigger thing of it is this, James: I didn’t believe your book while I was reading it. “I have told you before” how I dropped a sticky note on every question I wanted to ask you. When I was done my copy of The Strong Man was filled with enough sticky notes to supply an Office Depot, and all fall under the general rubric of “bullshit.” For that matter, James, I don’t believe your Fox “News” reports when I see them, nor are you the Beatles expert you hold yourself out to be.

So, I think it’s a legitimate question to ask: Why should I believe your little tweet, especially as it contradicts your previous tweet?

However, as we head in to the Holiday Season, I just want to get this contretemps behind us and go back to those halcyon days of yore, when you and I were happily exchanging Beatles’ trivia, without a dark cloud on our horizon. Consequently, help me understand how the lie on Page 61 of your book came to be printed. We can achieve détente if you answer the following questions:

1). Who is the secret source on Page 61, the source promised anonymity according to the book’s end notes? [While you may have promised anonymity, I don’t feel you need be bound to a deal that protects someone who fed you a falsehood.]
2). Did you, or did you not, not recognize that the quote was factually incorrect when you printed it?
3). Did you, or did you not, understand when you printed this false information that it went to the topic of whether Richard Nixon committed treason?
4). Why is Roger Ailes, your current boss and an intimate of Nixon and
Mitchell — and, more importantly, the re-election campaign’s behind-the-scenes media man — not mentioned or quoted in The Strong Man whatsoever?
5). What about all my other sticky notes? [See pic above.] Care to discuss them? The Anna Channault Affair is just one pile of bovine manure in a book filled with cow patties.

Just send a tweet, James. Otherwise, you’re as full of shit as your book.

James Rosen Responds To Me, Sort Of

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James Rosen: brown hair, brown eyes, brown nose

The Resident Fox “News” Historical Revisionist™ has taken time out of his busy-making-up-shit-life to attack me.*

You may remember James Rosen, from such exciting Not Now Silly episodes as Aunty Em Ericann’s Bun Fight With James Rosen of Fox “News”, or the post Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka? not to mention the more recent James Rosen: Blundering Biographer or Enemy of the State? 

Rosen, in case you don’t know, is the Chief Washington Correspondent for the so-called news network. He wrote a laughable book on John Mitchell and Watergate called The Strong Man, in which it seems he exonerates Mitchell for just about everything he was ever accused of, including those things he went to jail for.

Ironically, I heard from James Rosen today. I say “ironically” because — in a wonderful bit of synchronicity — today is the 39th anniversary of the resignation of President Richard Nixon, which I’ve documented in my post Watergate ► The End of the End, a bookend to my earlier post Watergate ► The Beginning of the End.

And, what did Rosen have to say in defense of his magnum opus?

How’s about that?!?!?! It’s a non-denial denial, almost like it came directly from the Nixon White House. Note he doesn’t deny my theory, that Roger Ailes, his current boss and Nixon intimate, is the secret source for the disinformation on Page 61 of The Strong Man. Also note that he attacks my beard, a favourite target of Johnny Dollar’s Flying Monkey Squad. Why does it feel like they put him up to it?

Yes, it’s the rich, thin-skinned, circle of life.

All my previous posts on Watergate can be found here.

* TO BE FAIR: I attacked James Rosen and his joke of a book first.

Did Roger Ailes Dupe James Rosen, Or Did Rosen Dupe ‘Merka?

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My remaindered copy of The Strong Man

Five years ago James Rosen, Fox “News” Chief Washington Correspondent, published a book on Watergate with a gigantic lie in it (surrounded by all kinds of smaller falsehoods). This lie continued the cover up of Richard Nixon’s treason during the 1968 presidential campaign.

Rosen is unjustifiably proud of his revisionist history called “The Strong Man,” which purports to tell the truth about John Mitchell, Richard Nixon’s Attorney General and, later, head of CREeP, the unfortunately accurate acronym for the Committee to ReElect the President.

Back in May I told the HIGH-LARRY-US story of my electronic bun fight with Rosen, but only hinted at The Big Lie. Even though I promised a full book review, I got bored with poking Rosen with a stick and let the topic die. However, it needs to be asked: Why did Rosen include this massive lie in his book when the truth was already known?

To understand this story one must go deeply into the Watergate Weeds. While most people use the term “Watergate” to refer only to the break-in at DNC headquarters that brought Nixon down, there was a whole litany of wrongdoing that falls under the rubric of Watergate, including this story. It goes back to the 1968 presidential election. President Johnson had already decided he would not run for office and Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic candidate. Meanwhile, LBJ had been pushing all parties involved to come to the Paris Peace talks in an effort to end the war in Vietnam.

An early picture of Anna Chennault,
nicknamed “The Dragon Lady”
by the Nixon White House.

Nixon didn’t get the nickname Tricky Dickie for nothing. Using a woman named Anna Chennault, a member of the so-called China Lobby, Nixon went around President Johnson to the South Vietnamese leader to scuttle the peace talks. She carried word from Nixon who said, in essence, if you don’t go to the Paris Peace Talks you’ll get a better deal from Nixon when he’s elected.

The broad outline of this treason has been known for decades (but more proof keeps coming to light). That’s why it was so puzzling that Rosen, in his laughable rewriting of history, would write:

James Rosen, historical revisionist

“A source close to the [Anna Chennault] affair–who demanded anonymity–strongly challenged the veracity of the prime witness.”

The demand for anonymity is backed up by end note 66 on page 514, which reads: “E-mails from [a confidential source] to the author, January 21, 2003, 6:16 p.m.; and Wednesday January 22, 2003, 3:25 p.m.”

Here’s the full quote from the book [Pages 61, 62]:

A source close to the affair — who demanded anonymity — strongly challenged the veracity of the prime witness. “Simply do not trust what Anna Chennault says about this incident,” said the source, a senior policy adviser to Nixon and other GOP politicians in later years. “She manufactured the incident, then magnified her self-importance.”

She caused untold problems with her perpetual self-promotion and, actually, self-aggrandizement, because she was only interested in the money. I do not put it in the realm of fantasy that she was paid by the SVs [South Vietnamese]; she had them bamboozled, believing she was an authentic and important “channel” to the campaign. John Mitchell . . . did not have the bullocks to kiss her off, a tough and persistent woman who could grind you down. . . . . Anna thought of herself as a puppet master. She had no assignment, no tasks, and was an over-the-transom type that can never be suppressed in a campaign.

Yet the Chennault affair continued to haunt Nixon’s presidency. His infamous orders to burglarize the Brookings Institution, issued in the summer of 1971 following publication of the Pentagon Papers and never carried out, stemmed from the president’s concern that the Washington think tank possessed documents related to “the bombing halt” — a euphemism for Nixon’s and Mitchell’s own back-channel machinations to counter it.

Keep in mind that James Rosen challenged me to read his book for myself and not “let @JohnWDean (x-felon) bully” me about it being revisionist history. Rosen’s mistake is that I know almost as much about Watergate as I do about Beatles trivia. The minute I came to that passage on Page 61 I knew that he was hoodwinking his readers. The broad outline of the Anna Chennault story has been known for decades, but the actual proof has only come in drips and drabs over the years. However, by the time Rosen wrote “The Strong Man” it was generally acknowledged that Chennault was telling the truth and Rosen’s secret source was lying through his teeth.

Corpulent liar Roger Ailes [right]
with his evil overlord Rupert Murdock

As soon as I read that passage I started to think, “Who the hell is still around that would still want to cover up Nixon’s treason? Who’s left? The only people who would want to cover it up are all dead.”

Then suddenly it struck me. There is still one person who needs to cover it up. Just to confirm my hypothesis I jumped to the index to look for “Ailes, Roger.” Well, whaddaya know about that? Roger Ailes, Nixon’s media man and John Mitchell’s behind-the-scenes right-hand media man in the ’72 reelection campaign, is NOT mentioned anywhere in the index. Nor does his name ever come up in the 498 pages of the book.

There is no doubt in my mind that Roger Ailes is the “senior policy adviser to Nixon and other GOP politicians in later years” who Rosen so blithely quotes calling Anna Chennault a liar. And, if I knew that the passage was a lie when I was reading it, why didn’t James Rosen know it was a lie when he was writing it? Did James Rosen help cover up his boss’ treason? Because, make no mistake, covering up treason is a treasonous act in and of itself. Therfore, James Rosen, if he knew the truth — but printed the lie — has also commited treason.

When I started asking Rosen uncomfortable questions on Twitter as I was reading his book, he very quickly blocked me. He claimed he did it because I wrote negatively about him for NewsHounds, which, if true, just shows he’s as thin-skinned as Bully Boy Bolling. However, I have always believed it was because he knew I wasn’t buying the bullshit he was selling in his book. Over the last 10 months, since I first wrote about my bun fight with Rosen, I have left many phone messages at Fox “News” for him. All I want to do is clear up the mystery of who is his secret source on Page 61 of The Strong Man. Rosen never returns my calls.

There’s only one conclusion I can come to: James Rosen is a treasonous coward who is covering up for his treasonous boss Roger Ailes. Now, go ahead and sue me. I double-dog dare you.