A Letter By Arizona Rancher Ed Ashhurst

According to the Arizona Daily Star, Ed Ashurst's 53,000 acre ranch lies to the east of the ranch of Bob Krentz, who was killed on his ranch on March 27, 2010.

July 28th, 2010

By Ed Ashurst

Apache Arizona

I believe story telling to be an art form, certainly verbal record is the oldest form of recording history and recognized by historians worldwide. There is an old adage among those who love to tell a good tale, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." And yet there are times when the truth is even more fantastic than exaggeration. What I write here is the truth, plain and simple.

I reside on, and manage a large cattle ranch in the far southeastern corner of Arizona. I've been here for 13 years and in that time frame have become far too familiar with the illegal trafficking in human beings, marijuana and other illicit drugs. Some have called it "the wetback culture" or "America's border problem". Lately it's been taking steroids.

The recent murder of Robert Krentz by an illegal alien has received massive amounts of publicity worldwide. I live on the ranch bordering the Krentz ranch to the east and north. I can see the Krentz home looking out of my front door approximately 10 miles away. The day after Rob's death I was involved in tracking the outlaw into Mexico. I saw the outlaw's footprints where he crossed the border fence. I mention this to say I feel that I'm qualified to speak about current border issues.

My home has been broken into twice. My son's home has been broken into also and between us we have had between twenty and thirty thousand dollars worth of stuff stolen from us including two ranch pick-ups, a four wheeler, 9 firearms (including a loaded AK 47) cash, jewelry all of our credit cards, driver's license, etc. A guest house here on the ranch has been broken into so many times we quit counting... many times we haven't even called the Sheriff's dept. The Cochise County Sheriff's dept has no less than fifteen reports on file where I've called for assistance dealing with an outlaw illegal alien.

Several months ago, not long after Rob Krentz's death, Fox news (channel 10 in Phoenix AZ) contacted me and expressed interest in coming down and doing a news story about me and the problems myself and other ranchers in this area have had in recent months with illegal outlaws. To prepare for my interview with Fox, I asked for assistance from six other neighboring ranchers and businessmen. All of these men are prominent men in the community, tax payers, business owners and individuals who have the best of reputations. Together we made a map of the area which covered from the southeastern corner of AZ going west about 20 miles to the silver creek area, and going north about 30 miles to the area around the towns of Portal, AZ and Rodeo, N.M. On this map we made marks recording violations to United States law committed by illegal aliens. We did not use government statistics (we wouldn't know how to get them) but recorded incidents that we knew had happened first hand, many of which we had witnessed. We tried to record only the incidents that have happened in the last several years.

The sum total of what we recorded is this:

The arrest or capture of 40 illegal in one bunch - 40 (we didn't bother with the countless smaller groups)

Loads of Marijuana found and captured - 213

Dangerous encounters with illegal aliens - 132 (assault, burglaries, forced entries, etc.)

Dead illegal aliens found by civilians - 16

High speed vehicle chases between dope haulers and law enforcement - 14

Illegal aliens spotted with firearms - 12

Fires started by illegal aliens - 9

Over 1000, 000 acres burned with the cost to taxpayers of $ 40,000,000. One fire near Portal AZ in June of 2010 cost $10,000,000. to fight (forest Service estimate)

Outlandish incidents - 4

Example: One bachelor in the Portal area was burglarized around 100 times. He finally took all his valuables and put them in a steel vault and welded the door shut. He then moved out of his house into a shed hoping the illegal aliens would leave him alone. They did not and he finally abandoned his property. Another outlandish event was when outlaws stole a brand new Caterpillar motor grader on the Geronimo Trail east of Douglas, AZ and drove south through the border fence never to be seen again. The grader belonged to Cochise County Hwy Dept.

Financial losses to private sector - $100,000,000.00 (losses in real estate value, personal property, etc., losses in wildlife habitat - immeasurable)

Last but certainly not least, the murder of Rob Krentz, which is right in the center of our map.

Let me put this in perspective. The area I'm talking about is an area that covers approximately 17 or 18 townships with only 20 miles being adjacent to the US - Mexico Boundary. Within this area, there is a population of perhaps 600 people, 90% of which reside in Rodeo, N.M. or Portal, AZ, 30 miles or so north of Mexico. No less than 80% of the people in this area have been burglarized or otherwise molested by illegal aliens. This area is about half as big as the Diamond A ranch or Babbitt ranch in northern AZ, both of which I've been employed on.

I'm sorry to report that this, in my opinion, is the small part of the story. The Mexican-American border has taken a dramatic change for the worse in the last several years. Those of us who live here see it first hand. As early as February of 1999 Sheriff Larry Dever warned me and others at a town hall meeting at the Apache School that the Sinaloa Cartel was moving into the Douglas-Agua Prieta area (Rob Krentz was at this meeting). The cities of Nuevo Laredo, Coahila, Cuidad Juarez, Chihuahua, and other border towns south of Texas have been controlled by outlaws for years. There is virtually no law enforcement in those places. The law is the law of the jungle. Until the last two years it seemed that Agua Prieta and Nogales were safer places but that has dramatically changed in recent months.

I am personally acquainted with 2 Mexican men, that I know to be honest and trustworthy, who have been involved first hand with Mexican outlaw terrorist acts. One witnessed first hand an execution of several people in broad daylight in Juarez. Several weeks later his daughter witnessed an assassination in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua no less than fifteen feet from where she stood. The other man is a legal Mexican green card holder (who was employed by the Krentz family for years) whose nephew was murdered by cartel members in Sonora. At night people in Douglas are hearing machine gun fire from Agua Prieta south of the border fence.

The Sinaloa Cartel is now putting a stranglehold on Agua Prieta. No more than 2 months ago 8 armed Mexicans were confronted by 2, U.S. Border Patrol agents north of the International Boundary in southeast Cochise County disguised as Federalizes. They were in fact cartel employees armed with assault rifles and automatic pistols. Mexican people that know tell me the situation in Agua Prieta has deteriorated dramatically in recent months. The good people are told to look the other way "or else." Volumes could be written about this subject alone, but I will move on.

You could ask, "So what does this have to do with us living north of the border fence?" Plenty! The situation on the border isn't just about a few workers walking north. It has everything to do with big business. Billions of dollars are being made trafficking humans, drugs, and contraband across the International Boundary. The Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Chapo Guzman and others, is reaping huge profits doing business along the border. The average coyote charges $1500 - $2500 to guide an illegal alien north to find work; usually abandoning them a short distance north of the line. A young man willing to pack dope north can make more than a construction worker or a teacher in the U.S. and only work a day or two a week.

This is not all south of the line. I could take you and show you businesses where checks and credit cards are not accepted and where very few customers walk through the door, yet the owners live in the largest mansions in town and drive very expensive cars. Could there be some money laundering going on? There are only two industries of any significance in Douglas, AZ: law enforcement (Douglas has one of the largest Border Patrol stations in America), and the illegal trafficking of drugs, people, etc. across the border. These two industries feed on each other, and the powers that be seem happy with the situation. Crooked politicians look good to the public when they clean up drunk driving and prostitution, until you find they own bars and whore houses south of the line. These things have happened!

But this, in my opinion, is only the beginning. Chapo Guzman who heads up the Sinaloa Cartel is a multibillionaire. This guy and others like him may be cruel and sinister people but they are also very smart businessmen. They are reaping profits off of the largest tax free unregulated business on the planet. They have so much cash they are befuddled what to do with it all. But they are going to figure it out.

There are rumors that Guzman is financing modern, state of the art feedlots and packing houses in Mexico with plans to overtake America as the Western hemisphere's leading beef producer. This is probably only a small part of his plans. Mexico is a nation rich in natural recourses. Petroleum is abundant and the corrupt Mexican government is in control of all of it. Pemex is the only gas station in town. Pemex, because of the incompetent Mexican government, is broke. Chapo Guzman is at war with the Mexican government and has dreams (not unrealistic) of controlling the entire nation. Think of all of Mexico's natural resources in the control of Chapo Guzman! He already has the most profitable business in the world - selling Marijuana to your next door neighbor. Think what he could do with a tax free unregulated strangle hold on a nation of poor people begging to work for practically nothing.

Do you think that Chapo Guzman and others like him haven't thought of all of this? Do you think that Guzman isn't laughing all the way to the bank as he watches the evening news and hears how the American Government proclaims that the situation on the border is under control? What is going on in northern Mexico is capitalism in its rawest form. They have an untaxed unregulated business making huge profits and they have no plans of closing up shop any time soon. We here in the U.S. are overtaxed, overregulated and being smothered by increasingly intrusive government that makes it hard to do business in a successful manner. You don't have to be rocket scientist to figure this one out.

This has nothing to do with being Republican or Democrat or Latino or White. It has everything to do with being right or wrong. I came from a long line of Democrats. My great uncle was a U.S. Senator for several decades. My grandfather was an attorney, and a Superior Court Judge. I have a 1939 copy of a Time Magazine with his picture when he ran as a Democrat for Congress. The only time in history the U.S deficit was paid off was by a Democrat - Andrew Jackson. John Kennedy announced nearly 50 years ago that America could put a man on the moon and in less than a decade we did it.

I am now a registered Republican, but I'm not a Democrat hater. But, how can the president of the "can do" nation of Andrew Jackson's and JFK's party say we can't seal the border? We conquered Adolph Hitler in World War II, but can't seal the border? We put a man on the moon but can't seal a leaking oil well in less than 90 days? While this is going on we tax and regulate American business with a vengeance that stifles the free market system that has made our country great. While Janet Napolitano announces the border is safer than ever, Chapo Guzman and others pack billions of American dollars south to invest in a tax free market with one of the largest cheap labor force on the planet at his disposal!

I challenge you to come to Douglas, AZ and drive east on the Geronimo Trail, or northeast on US Hwy 80 to places on the map like Chiracahua and Apache. Or go to Rodeo and Hatchita, NM. Go and search out the 5 biggest cattle ranches in the Apache, AZ area and ask them what they think. Go to Hidalgo County, N.M. and ask the ranchers and cowboys there what they are seeing and hearing. Ask the people who we do business with what they think of our opinions. I challenge you to ask the prominent people in this area, who work hard and pay taxes if they agree with Barack Obama or Ed Ashurst when it comes to what is really going on near the U.S.-Mexican border. Unlike Obama and others I don't have to be surrounded by sycophants to make a statement. I purposefully left out the names of those who helped me with my map and the data I collected when preparing for the Fox interview.

In closing I challenge you to look around to see if what I say is the truth. This isn't about a few Mexicans wandering around looking for a job. This is about American civilization going into a time of tremendous change - a building has foundations and walls, maybe the foundation of our country is still strong, I don't know, but the walls have certainly fallen down and the keepers of the house are out to lunch.

When you have time, we think you will want to read this. Everyone living in AZ (and elsewhere) should know what is happening near our borders and near our homes.

According to the Arizona Daily Star, Ed Ashurst's 53,000 acre ranch lies to the east of the ranch of Bob Krentz, who was killed on his ranch on March 27, 2010.

July 28th, 2010

By Ed Ashurst

Apache Arizona

I believe story telling to be an art form, certainly verbal record is the oldest form of recording history and recognized by historians worldwide. There is an old adage among those who love to tell a good tale, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." And yet there are times when the truth is even more fantastic than exaggeration. What I write here is the truth, plain and simple.

I reside on, and manage a large cattle ranch in the far southeastern corner of Arizona. I've been here for 13 years and in that time frame have become far too familiar with the illegal trafficking in human beings, marijuana and other illicit drugs. Some have called it "the wetback culture" or "America's border problem". Lately it's been taking steroids.

The recent murder of Robert Krentz by an illegal alien has received massive amounts of publicity worldwide. I live on the ranch bordering the Krentz ranch to the east and north. I can see the Krentz home looking out of my front door approximately 10 miles away. The day after Rob's death I was involved in tracking the outlaw into Mexico. I saw the outlaw's footprints where he crossed the border fence. I mention this to say I feel that I'm qualified to speak about current border issues.

My home has been broken into twice. My son's home has been broken into also and between us we have had between twenty and thirty thousand dollars worth of stuff stolen from us including two ranch pick-ups, a four wheeler, 9 firearms (including a loaded AK 47) cash, jewelry all of our credit cards, driver's license, etc. A guest house here on the ranch has been broken into so many times we quit counting... many times we haven't even called the Sheriff's dept. The Cochise County Sheriff's dept has no less than fifteen reports on file where I've called for assistance dealing with an outlaw illegal alien.

Several months ago, not long after Rob Krentz's death, Fox news (channel 10 in Phoenix AZ) contacted me and expressed interest in coming down and doing a news story about me and the problems myself and other ranchers in this area have had in recent months with illegal outlaws. To prepare for my interview with Fox, I asked for assistance from six other neighboring ranchers and businessmen. All of these men are prominent men in the community, tax payers, business owners and individuals who have the best of reputations. Together we made a map of the area which covered from the southeastern corner of AZ going west about 20 miles to the silver creek area, and going north about 30 miles to the area around the towns of Portal, AZ and Rodeo, N.M. On this map we made marks recording violations to United States law committed by illegal aliens. We did not use government statistics (we wouldn't know how to get them) but recorded incidents that we knew had happened first hand, many of which we had witnessed. We tried to record only the incidents that have happened in the last several years.

The sum total of what we recorded is this:

The arrest or capture of 40 illegal in one bunch - 40 (we didn't bother with the countless smaller groups)

Loads of Marijuana found and captured - 213

Dangerous encounters with illegal aliens - 132 (assault, burglaries, forced entries, etc.)

Dead illegal aliens found by civilians - 16

High speed vehicle chases between dope haulers and law enforcement - 14

Illegal aliens spotted with firearms - 12

Fires started by illegal aliens - 9

Over 1000, 000 acres burned with the cost to taxpayers of $ 40,000,000. One fire near Portal AZ in June of 2010 cost $10,000,000. to fight (forest Service estimate)

Outlandish incidents - 4

Example: One bachelor in the Portal area was burglarized around 100 times. He finally took all his valuables and put them in a steel vault and welded the door shut. He then moved out of his house into a shed hoping the illegal aliens would leave him alone. They did not and he finally abandoned his property. Another outlandish event was when outlaws stole a brand new Caterpillar motor grader on the Geronimo Trail east of Douglas, AZ and drove south through the border fence never to be seen again. The grader belonged to Cochise County Hwy Dept.

Financial losses to private sector - $100,000,000.00 (losses in real estate value, personal property, etc., losses in wildlife habitat - immeasurable)

Last but certainly not least, the murder of Rob Krentz, which is right in the center of our map.

Let me put this in perspective. The area I'm talking about is an area that covers approximately 17 or 18 townships with only 20 miles being adjacent to the US - Mexico Boundary. Within this area, there is a population of perhaps 600 people, 90% of which reside in Rodeo, N.M. or Portal, AZ, 30 miles or so north of Mexico. No less than 80% of the people in this area have been burglarized or otherwise molested by illegal aliens. This area is about half as big as the Diamond A ranch or Babbitt ranch in northern AZ, both of which I've been employed on.

I'm sorry to report that this, in my opinion, is the small part of the story. The Mexican-American border has taken a dramatic change for the worse in the last several years. Those of us who live here see it first hand. As early as February of 1999 Sheriff Larry Dever warned me and others at a town hall meeting at the Apache School that the Sinaloa Cartel was moving into the Douglas-Agua Prieta area (Rob Krentz was at this meeting). The cities of Nuevo Laredo, Coahila, Cuidad Juarez, Chihuahua, and other border towns south of Texas have been controlled by outlaws for years. There is virtually no law enforcement in those places. The law is the law of the jungle. Until the last two years it seemed that Agua Prieta and Nogales were safer places but that has dramatically changed in recent months.

I am personally acquainted with 2 Mexican men, that I know to be honest and trustworthy, who have been involved first hand with Mexican outlaw terrorist acts. One witnessed first hand an execution of several people in broad daylight in Juarez. Several weeks later his daughter witnessed an assassination in Casas Grandes, Chihuahua no less than fifteen feet from where she stood. The other man is a legal Mexican green card holder (who was employed by the Krentz family for years) whose nephew was murdered by cartel members in Sonora. At night people in Douglas are hearing machine gun fire from Agua Prieta south of the border fence.

The Sinaloa Cartel is now putting a stranglehold on Agua Prieta. No more than 2 months ago 8 armed Mexicans were confronted by 2, U.S. Border Patrol agents north of the International Boundary in southeast Cochise County disguised as Federalizes. They were in fact cartel employees armed with assault rifles and automatic pistols. Mexican people that know tell me the situation in Agua Prieta has deteriorated dramatically in recent months. The good people are told to look the other way "or else." Volumes could be written about this subject alone, but I will move on.

You could ask, "So what does this have to do with us living north of the border fence?" Plenty! The situation on the border isn't just about a few workers walking north. It has everything to do with big business. Billions of dollars are being made trafficking humans, drugs, and contraband across the International Boundary. The Sinaloa Cartel, headed by Chapo Guzman and others, is reaping huge profits doing business along the border. The average coyote charges $1500 - $2500 to guide an illegal alien north to find work; usually abandoning them a short distance north of the line. A young man willing to pack dope north can make more than a construction worker or a teacher in the U.S. and only work a day or two a week.

This is not all south of the line. I could take you and show you businesses where checks and credit cards are not accepted and where very few customers walk through the door, yet the owners live in the largest mansions in town and drive very expensive cars. Could there be some money laundering going on? There are only two industries of any significance in Douglas, AZ: law enforcement (Douglas has one of the largest Border Patrol stations in America), and the illegal trafficking of drugs, people, etc. across the border. These two industries feed on each other, and the powers that be seem happy with the situation. Crooked politicians look good to the public when they clean up drunk driving and prostitution, until you find they own bars and whore houses south of the line. These things have happened!

But this, in my opinion, is only the beginning. Chapo Guzman who heads up the Sinaloa Cartel is a multibillionaire. This guy and others like him may be cruel and sinister people but they are also very smart businessmen. They are reaping profits off of the largest tax free unregulated business on the planet. They have so much cash they are befuddled what to do with it all. But they are going to figure it out.

There are rumors that Guzman is financing modern, state of the art feedlots and packing houses in Mexico with plans to overtake America as the Western hemisphere's leading beef producer. This is probably only a small part of his plans. Mexico is a nation rich in natural recourses. Petroleum is abundant and the corrupt Mexican government is in control of all of it. Pemex is the only gas station in town. Pemex, because of the incompetent Mexican government, is broke. Chapo Guzman is at war with the Mexican government and has dreams (not unrealistic) of controlling the entire nation. Think of all of Mexico's natural resources in the control of Chapo Guzman! He already has the most profitable business in the world - selling Marijuana to your next door neighbor. Think what he could do with a tax free unregulated strangle hold on a nation of poor people begging to work for practically nothing.

Do you think that Chapo Guzman and others like him haven't thought of all of this? Do you think that Guzman isn't laughing all the way to the bank as he watches the evening news and hears how the American Government proclaims that the situation on the border is under control? What is going on in northern Mexico is capitalism in its rawest form. They have an untaxed unregulated business making huge profits and they have no plans of closing up shop any time soon. We here in the U.S. are overtaxed, overregulated and being smothered by increasingly intrusive government that makes it hard to do business in a successful manner. You don't have to be rocket scientist to figure this one out.

This has nothing to do with being Republican or Democrat or Latino or White. It has everything to do with being right or wrong. I came from a long line of Democrats. My great uncle was a U.S. Senator for several decades. My grandfather was an attorney, and a Superior Court Judge. I have a 1939 copy of a Time Magazine with his picture when he ran as a Democrat for Congress. The only time in history the U.S deficit was paid off was by a Democrat - Andrew Jackson. John Kennedy announced nearly 50 years ago that America could put a man on the moon and in less than a decade we did it.

I am now a registered Republican, but I'm not a Democrat hater. But, how can the president of the "can do" nation of Andrew Jackson's and JFK's party say we can't seal the border? We conquered Adolph Hitler in World War II, but can't seal the border? We put a man on the moon but can't seal a leaking oil well in less than 90 days? While this is going on we tax and regulate American business with a vengeance that stifles the free market system that has made our country great. While Janet Napolitano announces the border is safer than ever, Chapo Guzman and others pack billions of American dollars south to invest in a tax free market with one of the largest cheap labor force on the planet at his disposal!

I challenge you to come to Douglas, AZ and drive east on the Geronimo Trail, or northeast on US Hwy 80 to places on the map like Chiracahua and Apache. Or go to Rodeo and Hatchita, NM. Go and search out the 5 biggest cattle ranches in the Apache, AZ area and ask them what they think. Go to Hidalgo County, N.M. and ask the ranchers and cowboys there what they are seeing and hearing. Ask the people who we do business with what they think of our opinions. I challenge you to ask the prominent people in this area, who work hard and pay taxes if they agree with Barack Obama or Ed Ashurst when it comes to what is really going on near the U.S.-Mexican border. Unlike Obama and others I don't have to be surrounded by sycophants to make a statement. I purposefully left out the names of those who helped me with my map and the data I collected when preparing for the Fox interview.

In closing I challenge you to look around to see if what I say is the truth. This isn't about a few Mexicans wandering around looking for a job. This is about American civilization going into a time of tremendous change - a building has foundations and walls, maybe the foundation of our country is still strong, I don't know, but the walls have certainly fallen down and the keepers of the house are out to lunch.

When you have time, we think you will want to read this. Everyone living in AZ (and elsewhere) should know what is happening near our borders and near our homes.

On Playing Soldier and the Real Thing

When we were kids, my brother and I were crazy about playing war. We didn’t play cowboys and Indians though, we thought that was for sissies. We played army. We thought of ourselves as hardcore soldiers. Our favorite TV shows were Combat and Hogan’s Heroes. My brother and I had plastic army helmets, the toy rifles, the canteens, and we used branches and twigs for camouflage. Mom would get upset if we used her green eye shadow and black mascara to paint our faces in camouflage.

Any rock or dirt clod was well suited for us to be used as an imaginary hand grenade. If we ran out of grenades we would simply pick up a “Potato Masher” grenade that had been thrown at us by a Gerry, to throw it back, before it exploded. By pulling on a handful of long grass, we were able to pull it up by the roots. If done right, the grass came out of the earth with a dirt clod on the end. This served as the “Potato Masher” grenade, that when thrown back at the Gerry machine gun nest we were about to overrun.

The hills behind our home became our battlefield. One day we would walk out our back gate into the hills, and we would find ourselves on Guadalcanal. The next day we were at Normandy. We saw many days of imaginary battle.

I was the youngest of all our friends and out of all the boys in my family. I wasn’t always happy with my role in some of our war games. My older brother, my cousin, and their friends always got to be the American soldiers. As the youngest, I always had to be a Jap or a Gerry. Then I would get captured and I was relegated to Jap, or Gerry POW status. This meant that I would not get to have a weapon, and that I would spend most of our play time tied to a tree, or a fence post. This was to prevent my escape.

One day I protested, and I demanded that I was to be an American G.I. I thought, that If I was an American, that I wouldn't have to be tied up. Moreover, I would get to have a weapon. The other boys agreed to my demand. So, I got to be an American POW. They were one step ahead of me. I spent all my time weaponless and tied up. I felt gypped. Today I look back upon those days fondly, even the times when the older boys picked on me.

We were just innocent schoolboys back then. We were unaware that there was so much turmoil and unrest on the social scene, back then. My Mom and my step-dad were able to shelter us from the nightly news reports of what was actually happening in the world. We did not know that a war was raging in a place we had never heard of. A place called Vietnam.

My step-dad complained about people called ‘Hippies’ who were always protesting about something. But we didn't really know what they protested. Dad said they hated our soldiers, that they were downright ugly and disrespectful of our soldiers. But, we didn't know why anyone would act like that towards soldiers.

As I would learn years later, the Zodiac killer was also prominent in the news. The Zodiac had caused the San Francisco Bay Area to become paralyzed with fear. The Black Panthers were also in the news reports of the day. Carrying assault weapons on the streets of Oakland as a political movement. There was so much unrest that we were unaware of.

The only thing we knew of the outside world was that Americans had recently walked on the moon. More missions were being planned for the Apollo space program. And we relished watching anything that had to do with NASA, and space exploration. The best part for us was that all of the astronauts in the Apollo program were also American soldiers!

We didn’t know, or understand much about Vietnam. As far as my brother and I were concerned, soldiers were to be looked up to. Soldiers were our heroes, and we were prideful that our nation had been victorious in WWII, a war which had ended just over two decades ago. To us, the Japanese and Germans were still the enemy, and when we played war with our friends, not one of us wanted to be a stinking Jap, or a lowdown Gerry. This is the way it was. In those days, we got to be kids, unburdened with the ugliness of the outside world.

In 1969 I was but a naive six year old boy. My older brother was eight. As we did every summer, we hopped a flight aboard the now defunct PSA airlines, from Oakland to Phoenix. My brother and I were going to see my dad. Our folks had divorced a few years earlier and my dad had us for two weeks over summer vacation.

As we were about to get onto the plane, my brother and I walked across the tarmac escorted by a stewardess. We always thought the stewardesses were pretty. The stewardess assisted us as we climbed the stairs to the plane, and as she showed us to our seats. She made sure that we were all buckled in. My brother got sit by the porthole, and I was in the middle seat. As we could looked out the porthole we could see Mom waiting for the plane to take off. Other people began boarding the plane. Some people settled in and smoked cigarettes while they waited for the no smoking light to come on. Others moved about the cabin to stow their belongings, then to take their seats.

I remember sitting impatiently on the plane as we waited to pull away from the gate. That was always exciting for us. My brother and I looked around impatiently as we waited. Looking up, I saw a soldier making his way down the aisle. My brother spied him too. Both our eyes were riveted on him. We immediately knew that the soldier had to be a general, or something. He had a chest full of colorful ribbons. To us, he appeared to be an old guy too. He was tall, and he was a Negro, just like Reggie Jackson was, of the Oakland A’s. We hadn’t seen too many Negroes in our time growing up in the suburbs. Now, a Negro, and a real soldier was making his way down the aisle towards us.

When the soldier reached our row of seats, he sat down, right next to us! We couldn't believe our good luck! A soldier was seated right next to my brother and me. We were dumbfounded. All of the sudden the two of us, formerly rambunctious, loud little boys, had became shy. We couldn’t even muster up the courage to look at the man. The only thing I could think of was that this man must have killed hundreds of Japs and Gerries in hand-to-hand combat, to get all those ribbons on his chest. My brother and I just didn't know what to do, or to say to him.

As the door closed and the engines revved up, the plane began to move. Looking out the porthole, Mom waved to us. We waved back. The plane taxied from the gate and soon was gaining speed as it moved down the runway and climbed into the sky.

Soon, the pretty stewardess came around with drinks. I remember I took a Coke. My brother did too. I also remember that my brother had a knack for cracking me up, at just the right moment, when I was taking a drink. Ultimately, Coca Cola would squirt out my nose. As usual, my brother once again pulled his stunt. I cracked up, and Coca Cola came streaming, and foaming out of my nose.

When I stopped sputtering and giggling, a large, strong and dark hand appeared in front of me with a napkin. I can remember that I sheepishly took the napkin from the man and I thanked him. I began to clean the Cola from my face, my shirt my clip-on bow tie, and from my jacket. Then, I glanced sideways and studied the soldier sitting next to me as I worked up some courage. Finally, I looked up at the man and asked, “Are you a real army man?”

“Yes, I am.” He said with a hint of a smile. "I am a corporal in the U.S. Amy." He said.

My brother asked, “Are all those ribbons and medals on your chest from killin’ Japs n’ Gerries?”

“No”, he said. “I got these from doing other things in the army. I never killed a Jap or a Gerry.” He went on, “Don’t you boys know it’s rude to ask a soldier if he’s killed someone in battle? Killing enemy soldiers is hurtful and troublesome to American soldiers. Those enemy soldiers have wives and little boys just like you.”

“We didn’t mean to say anything wrong, mister.” My brother replied.

The soldier answered back, “Of course not, son. I’m just pointing out some good manners for you to use later, when you see another soldier. All you need to do is to thank him for being brave and for doing his duty in protecting you and your country. That’s his job and he’s glad to do it for you. But, don’t ask him about the ugly things of war, like killing. That’s private and some soldiers feel sad that they had to do it, even when it was necessary. OK?” The soldier smiled at us.

My brother and I made chit-chat with the soldier for the rest of the flight. As we landed in Phoenix, and as the plane taxied to the gate, the soldier took two off two of the ribbons from his chest. He then reached over and he pinned one on my brother's lapel, and one on mine.

As the stewardess took us off the plane, before the rest of the passengers disembarked, we said goodbye to our new soldier friend. We puffed our chests out with pride. We had an honest for goodness medal, from an honest to goodness, real soldier, pinned on our chests!

The memory of my encounter with an American military man made a profound impact in my life. I had learned a valuable lesson from him. Over time, as I matured, I learned other lessons. I learned to always be grateful for the service to our country that these fine men and women provide to our nation. I learned what not to ask a soldier, so that I would never hurt their feelings. I learned war causes pain for our soldiers, for some of the tasks that they must undertake while fighting wars are not pleasant ones. I learned that war is an ugly affair. As ugly as war is, I learned that war is a necessary evil.

That day on the plane took place over 40 years ago. It has stuck with me ever since. Every so often I think of that soldier, and I wonder how his life may have turned out. I wonder if he remembers two little boys on a plane bound to Phoenix. I am sure that he would be happy to know that he made a positive impact in our lives. He taught us to appreciate soldiers and to understand the human side of a soldier, if just a little bit.

To him, and to all other soldiers who have served in war and in peace, I share another lesson taught to me by that soldier on the plane,

To always stop and thank a soldier for their service and sacrifices for our country.

I wish I knew who that man is today. I'd like to shake his hand and thank him for his service to our country.

Please pray for our soldiers.

(Repost) - Copyright 05/02/2005 & 08/272010. Use granted to all who identify this website

When we were kids, my brother and I were crazy about playing war. We didn’t play cowboys and Indians though, we thought that was for sissies. We played army. We thought of ourselves as hardcore soldiers. Our favorite TV shows were Combat and Hogan’s Heroes. My brother and I had plastic army helmets, the toy rifles, the canteens, and we used branches and twigs for camouflage. Mom would get upset if we used her green eye shadow and black mascara to paint our faces in camouflage.

Any rock or dirt clod was well suited for us to be used as an imaginary hand grenade. If we ran out of grenades we would simply pick up a “Potato Masher” grenade that had been thrown at us by a Gerry, to throw it back, before it exploded. By pulling on a handful of long grass, we were able to pull it up by the roots. If done right, the grass came out of the earth with a dirt clod on the end. This served as the “Potato Masher” grenade, that when thrown back at the Gerry machine gun nest we were about to overrun.

The hills behind our home became our battlefield. One day we would walk out our back gate into the hills, and we would find ourselves on Guadalcanal. The next day we were at Normandy. We saw many days of imaginary battle.

I was the youngest of all our friends and out of all the boys in my family. I wasn’t always happy with my role in some of our war games. My older brother, my cousin, and their friends always got to be the American soldiers. As the youngest, I always had to be a Jap or a Gerry. Then I would get captured and I was relegated to Jap, or Gerry POW status. This meant that I would not get to have a weapon, and that I would spend most of our play time tied to a tree, or a fence post. This was to prevent my escape.

One day I protested, and I demanded that I was to be an American G.I. I thought, that If I was an American, that I wouldn't have to be tied up. Moreover, I would get to have a weapon. The other boys agreed to my demand. So, I got to be an American POW. They were one step ahead of me. I spent all my time weaponless and tied up. I felt gypped. Today I look back upon those days fondly, even the times when the older boys picked on me.

We were just innocent schoolboys back then. We were unaware that there was so much turmoil and unrest on the social scene, back then. My Mom and my step-dad were able to shelter us from the nightly news reports of what was actually happening in the world. We did not know that a war was raging in a place we had never heard of. A place called Vietnam.

My step-dad complained about people called ‘Hippies’ who were always protesting about something. But we didn't really know what they protested. Dad said they hated our soldiers, that they were downright ugly and disrespectful of our soldiers. But, we didn't know why anyone would act like that towards soldiers.

As I would learn years later, the Zodiac killer was also prominent in the news. The Zodiac had caused the San Francisco Bay Area to become paralyzed with fear. The Black Panthers were also in the news reports of the day. Carrying assault weapons on the streets of Oakland as a political movement. There was so much unrest that we were unaware of.

The only thing we knew of the outside world was that Americans had recently walked on the moon. More missions were being planned for the Apollo space program. And we relished watching anything that had to do with NASA, and space exploration. The best part for us was that all of the astronauts in the Apollo program were also American soldiers!

We didn’t know, or understand much about Vietnam. As far as my brother and I were concerned, soldiers were to be looked up to. Soldiers were our heroes, and we were prideful that our nation had been victorious in WWII, a war which had ended just over two decades ago. To us, the Japanese and Germans were still the enemy, and when we played war with our friends, not one of us wanted to be a stinking Jap, or a lowdown Gerry. This is the way it was. In those days, we got to be kids, unburdened with the ugliness of the outside world.

In 1969 I was but a naive six year old boy. My older brother was eight. As we did every summer, we hopped a flight aboard the now defunct PSA airlines, from Oakland to Phoenix. My brother and I were going to see my dad. Our folks had divorced a few years earlier and my dad had us for two weeks over summer vacation.

As we were about to get onto the plane, my brother and I walked across the tarmac escorted by a stewardess. We always thought the stewardesses were pretty. The stewardess assisted us as we climbed the stairs to the plane, and as she showed us to our seats. She made sure that we were all buckled in. My brother got sit by the porthole, and I was in the middle seat. As we could looked out the porthole we could see Mom waiting for the plane to take off. Other people began boarding the plane. Some people settled in and smoked cigarettes while they waited for the no smoking light to come on. Others moved about the cabin to stow their belongings, then to take their seats.

I remember sitting impatiently on the plane as we waited to pull away from the gate. That was always exciting for us. My brother and I looked around impatiently as we waited. Looking up, I saw a soldier making his way down the aisle. My brother spied him too. Both our eyes were riveted on him. We immediately knew that the soldier had to be a general, or something. He had a chest full of colorful ribbons. To us, he appeared to be an old guy too. He was tall, and he was a Negro, just like Reggie Jackson was, of the Oakland A’s. We hadn’t seen too many Negroes in our time growing up in the suburbs. Now, a Negro, and a real soldier was making his way down the aisle towards us.

When the soldier reached our row of seats, he sat down, right next to us! We couldn't believe our good luck! A soldier was seated right next to my brother and me. We were dumbfounded. All of the sudden the two of us, formerly rambunctious, loud little boys, had became shy. We couldn’t even muster up the courage to look at the man. The only thing I could think of was that this man must have killed hundreds of Japs and Gerries in hand-to-hand combat, to get all those ribbons on his chest. My brother and I just didn't know what to do, or to say to him.

As the door closed and the engines revved up, the plane began to move. Looking out the porthole, Mom waved to us. We waved back. The plane taxied from the gate and soon was gaining speed as it moved down the runway and climbed into the sky.

Soon, the pretty stewardess came around with drinks. I remember I took a Coke. My brother did too. I also remember that my brother had a knack for cracking me up, at just the right moment, when I was taking a drink. Ultimately, Coca Cola would squirt out my nose. As usual, my brother once again pulled his stunt. I cracked up, and Coca Cola came streaming, and foaming out of my nose.

When I stopped sputtering and giggling, a large, strong and dark hand appeared in front of me with a napkin. I can remember that I sheepishly took the napkin from the man and I thanked him. I began to clean the Cola from my face, my shirt my clip-on bow tie, and from my jacket. Then, I glanced sideways and studied the soldier sitting next to me as I worked up some courage. Finally, I looked up at the man and asked, “Are you a real army man?”

“Yes, I am.” He said with a hint of a smile. "I am a corporal in the U.S. Amy." He said.

My brother asked, “Are all those ribbons and medals on your chest from killin’ Japs n’ Gerries?”

“No”, he said. “I got these from doing other things in the army. I never killed a Jap or a Gerry.” He went on, “Don’t you boys know it’s rude to ask a soldier if he’s killed someone in battle? Killing enemy soldiers is hurtful and troublesome to American soldiers. Those enemy soldiers have wives and little boys just like you.”

“We didn’t mean to say anything wrong, mister.” My brother replied.

The soldier answered back, “Of course not, son. I’m just pointing out some good manners for you to use later, when you see another soldier. All you need to do is to thank him for being brave and for doing his duty in protecting you and your country. That’s his job and he’s glad to do it for you. But, don’t ask him about the ugly things of war, like killing. That’s private and some soldiers feel sad that they had to do it, even when it was necessary. OK?” The soldier smiled at us.

My brother and I made chit-chat with the soldier for the rest of the flight. As we landed in Phoenix, and as the plane taxied to the gate, the soldier took two off two of the ribbons from his chest. He then reached over and he pinned one on my brother's lapel, and one on mine.

As the stewardess took us off the plane, before the rest of the passengers disembarked, we said goodbye to our new soldier friend. We puffed our chests out with pride. We had an honest for goodness medal, from an honest to goodness, real soldier, pinned on our chests!

The memory of my encounter with an American military man made a profound impact in my life. I had learned a valuable lesson from him. Over time, as I matured, I learned other lessons. I learned to always be grateful for the service to our country that these fine men and women provide to our nation. I learned what not to ask a soldier, so that I would never hurt their feelings. I learned war causes pain for our soldiers, for some of the tasks that they must undertake while fighting wars are not pleasant ones. I learned that war is an ugly affair. As ugly as war is, I learned that war is a necessary evil.

That day on the plane took place over 40 years ago. It has stuck with me ever since. Every so often I think of that soldier, and I wonder how his life may have turned out. I wonder if he remembers two little boys on a plane bound to Phoenix. I am sure that he would be happy to know that he made a positive impact in our lives. He taught us to appreciate soldiers and to understand the human side of a soldier, if just a little bit.

To him, and to all other soldiers who have served in war and in peace, I share another lesson taught to me by that soldier on the plane,

To always stop and thank a soldier for their service and sacrifices for our country.

I wish I knew who that man is today. I'd like to shake his hand and thank him for his service to our country.

Please pray for our soldiers.

(Repost) - Copyright 05/02/2005 & 08/272010. Use granted to all who identify this website

موقع, موقع, موقع

Anyone even remotely familiar with the workings of real estate knows it always boils down to the same old formula: Location, Location, Location. You want the curb appeal, you want the picket fence, you want the country view but the proximity of business.

But sometimes, as much as you want the location, the location doesn't want you. There are rules in place to make sure that you don't build a liquor store too close to a school, that you don't build a strip club too close to a church, and that you don't build a high-rise in the middle of a neighborhood of single-family dwellings. These rules are enforced by a special board of politicos called a Zoning Board, and it's their job to keep things as organized as possible by making things as difficult to change as possible.

Now, there's a certain bit of real estate in New York that has attracted quite a bit of attention lately -- the old location of the Burlington Coat Factory, destroyed when the wheel housing of a jet fell through it as said jet crashed into the side of one of the World Trade Center towers. It is here that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his partners wish to establish a mosque (which quickly became a "mosque and community center," then "community center and mosque") -- a center for Islamic worship, in the shadow of a still-fresh tragedy created in the name of Islam by a group of radical extremists. At its most basic, the proponents of the mosque should see the notion as extremely insensitive. And in another example of America continuing to accommodate in the name of its core values, notably freedom of speech and religious expression, the zoning commission gives every appearance of having allowed Rauf an easy skate in getting approval to construct on the location.

Contrast this with the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, destroyed in the fall of the Twin Towers. Nearly a decade after the events of September 11, 2001, the church is still looking to be rebuilt. But negotiations have been stymied, and the church and Port Authority have broken off negotiations after too many bureaucratic impasses. All to reconstruct a worship building that pre-dated the attacks.

It is still hopeful that the mosque will relocate, should its builders come to understand the feelings of non-Muslim Americans in and around New York. A very similar situation occurred in the late 1980s when the Catholic Church prepared to build a convent: on Auschwitz. As one can reasonably imagine, even after half a century the site so pivotal to the Holocaust remained raw in the memories of Jews worldwide. The controversy was just as heated as that surrounding the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. The idea that there would be a Catholic facility on the site so sacred to Jews was seen as extreme insensitivity on the part of the Church. And, eventually, the Vatican agreed, and the convent was moved.

Would that a similar accord might be reached today.

Anyone even remotely familiar with the workings of real estate knows it always boils down to the same old formula: Location, Location, Location. You want the curb appeal, you want the picket fence, you want the country view but the proximity of business.

But sometimes, as much as you want the location, the location doesn't want you. There are rules in place to make sure that you don't build a liquor store too close to a school, that you don't build a strip club too close to a church, and that you don't build a high-rise in the middle of a neighborhood of single-family dwellings. These rules are enforced by a special board of politicos called a Zoning Board, and it's their job to keep things as organized as possible by making things as difficult to change as possible.

Now, there's a certain bit of real estate in New York that has attracted quite a bit of attention lately -- the old location of the Burlington Coat Factory, destroyed when the wheel housing of a jet fell through it as said jet crashed into the side of one of the World Trade Center towers. It is here that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his partners wish to establish a mosque (which quickly became a "mosque and community center," then "community center and mosque") -- a center for Islamic worship, in the shadow of a still-fresh tragedy created in the name of Islam by a group of radical extremists. At its most basic, the proponents of the mosque should see the notion as extremely insensitive. And in another example of America continuing to accommodate in the name of its core values, notably freedom of speech and religious expression, the zoning commission gives every appearance of having allowed Rauf an easy skate in getting approval to construct on the location.

Contrast this with the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, destroyed in the fall of the Twin Towers. Nearly a decade after the events of September 11, 2001, the church is still looking to be rebuilt. But negotiations have been stymied, and the church and Port Authority have broken off negotiations after too many bureaucratic impasses. All to reconstruct a worship building that pre-dated the attacks.

It is still hopeful that the mosque will relocate, should its builders come to understand the feelings of non-Muslim Americans in and around New York. A very similar situation occurred in the late 1980s when the Catholic Church prepared to build a convent: on Auschwitz. As one can reasonably imagine, even after half a century the site so pivotal to the Holocaust remained raw in the memories of Jews worldwide. The controversy was just as heated as that surrounding the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. The idea that there would be a Catholic facility on the site so sacred to Jews was seen as extreme insensitivity on the part of the Church. And, eventually, the Vatican agreed, and the convent was moved.

Would that a similar accord might be reached today.

The Ant & The Grasshopper

This one is a little different ... 
Two Different Versions ... 
Two Different Morals 

OLD VERSION 
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

 

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

 MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving. 

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshoppernext to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.  How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? 

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.”

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for thegrasshopper's sake. 

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight. 

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back off  the grasshopper,and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. 

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having  nothing left to  pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government GreenCzar and given  to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading  friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is  in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't  maintain it.

The ant has  disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found  dead in a drug related incident.

The house, now abandoned, is taken over  by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous  and peaceful, neighborhood.
 

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it. 

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.

This one is a little different ... 
Two Different Versions ... 
Two Different Morals 

OLD VERSION 
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

 

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE OLD STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

 MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving. 

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshoppernext to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.  How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? 

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, “We shall overcome.”

Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for thegrasshopper's sake. 

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight. 

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back off  the grasshopper,and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. 

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having  nothing left to  pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government GreenCzar and given  to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading  friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is  in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't  maintain it.

The ant has  disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.

The grasshopper is found  dead in a drug related incident.

The house, now abandoned, is taken over  by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous  and peaceful, neighborhood.
 

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it. 

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.

This Is Sheer Genius. . . Your Democratic Congress in Action.

In a bid to stem taxpayer losses for bad loans guaranteed by federal housing agencies Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) proposed that borrowers be required to make a 5% down payment in order to qualify.  His proposal was  rejected 57-42 on a party-line vote because, as Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) explained, "passage of such a requirement would restrict home ownership to only those who can afford it."

In a bid to stem taxpayer losses for bad loans guaranteed by federal housing agencies Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) proposed that borrowers be required to make a 5% down payment in order to qualify.  His proposal was  rejected 57-42 on a party-line vote because, as Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) explained, "passage of such a requirement would restrict home ownership to only those who can afford it."

Burning Man - Getting Freaky in the Desert

We at the RattPo believe in the old adage, “know thy enemy,” so we’ve broken open the piggy bank and purchased a ticket for our brave correspondent, Richard Waxer, to attend this years Burning Man event Aug 30-Sept 6, 2010.

For those of our readers who have no clue what this Burning Man is, we Salute You!

Click for larger image

What is Burning Man? It’s so far out there that we’ll use their own words to describe the event.


“Once a year, tens of thousands of people gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert (also known as "the playa") to create Black Rock City, a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression* (*We can't help but to think back to Onan for that last one), and self-reliance. They depart one week later, having left no trace whatsoever.”

And from their history page...

“There is, of course, the founding myth: the story of how Larry Harvey and his friend Jerry James burned a wooden man upon the beach in San Francisco on June 21, 1986. Many stories now embroider this initial act: accounts of Larry's broken heart, his vanished love affair, his allegiance to his father—a self-made man, a carpenter, and the original bearer of the famous hat he now wears. Myths, however, are important because they represent the first and founding form of things. They are the seeds out of which things grow.”

Still want more? The Burning Man website has more information for your perusal.


The official Burning Man website lists a 'Survival Guide', so we thought it only appropriate that we supply our humble correspondent with his own “Survival Kit.”

Dick’s survival kit will include the following items:

• (1) full body condom
• (1) snake bite kit
• (1) case 'Pit Putty 100% Organic Deodorant
• (3) cans EchoSmart Organic Insect Repellent
• (1) can Bactine First Aid Antiseptic/Pain Reliever.
• (1) bottle of Amoxicillin, a broad spectrum antibiotic
• (1) bottle VALTREX caplets for the treatment of Herpes
• (1) Divine Derriere Personal Anal Bleaching Kit
• (1) Lithium I.V. Drip Kit
• (4) Dental Dams
• (1) HazMat suit w/rebreather
• (1) can RID Step-3 Lice Control Spray
• (1) Geiger Counter w/spare batteries
• (1) Emergency use Fleet Enema Kit for impacted colon
• iPhone with $500 for apps and of course a RattPo app
• (1) Fifth of scotch (to help Dick cope through the first day)
• (1) set weave-in faux dreadlocks to enable Dick to better blend in with the 'unwashed' masses.
• (1) bottle Prozac
• (1) economy-size bottle Cherry Flavored© Pepto-Bismol

To better fit in at Burning Man, Dick is currently reading and studying the following:

Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals
Dreams from My Father : A Story of Race and Inheritance
The Audacity of Hope : Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Change We Can Believe in : Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise
Atlas Slouched - Al Franken
Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters - Nancy Pelosi

Dick has been watching the following moves on a loop:

Debbie Does Dishes
Sicko (Signed Copy)
An Inconvenient Truth (Signed Copy)
Ben Hur
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex *But Were Afraid To Ask

Grizzly Man - The Timothy Treadwell Story

We’re looking forward to Dick’s first report. Stay tuned.





NOTE: This is parody, you idiot. Don't believe everything you read on the interweb.

We at the RattPo believe in the old adage, “know thy enemy,” so we’ve broken open the piggy bank and purchased a ticket for our brave correspondent, Richard Waxer, to attend this years Burning Man event Aug 30-Sept 6, 2010.

For those of our readers who have no clue what this Burning Man is, we Salute You!

Click for larger image

What is Burning Man? It’s so far out there that we’ll use their own words to describe the event.


“Once a year, tens of thousands of people gather in Nevada's Black Rock Desert (also known as "the playa") to create Black Rock City, a temporary metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression* (*We can't help but to think back to Onan for that last one), and self-reliance. They depart one week later, having left no trace whatsoever.”

And from their history page...

“There is, of course, the founding myth: the story of how Larry Harvey and his friend Jerry James burned a wooden man upon the beach in San Francisco on June 21, 1986. Many stories now embroider this initial act: accounts of Larry's broken heart, his vanished love affair, his allegiance to his father—a self-made man, a carpenter, and the original bearer of the famous hat he now wears. Myths, however, are important because they represent the first and founding form of things. They are the seeds out of which things grow.”

Still want more? The Burning Man website has more information for your perusal.


The official Burning Man website lists a 'Survival Guide', so we thought it only appropriate that we supply our humble correspondent with his own “Survival Kit.”

Dick’s survival kit will include the following items:

• (1) full body condom
• (1) snake bite kit
• (1) case 'Pit Putty 100% Organic Deodorant
• (3) cans EchoSmart Organic Insect Repellent
• (1) can Bactine First Aid Antiseptic/Pain Reliever.
• (1) bottle of Amoxicillin, a broad spectrum antibiotic
• (1) bottle VALTREX caplets for the treatment of Herpes
• (1) Divine Derriere Personal Anal Bleaching Kit
• (1) Lithium I.V. Drip Kit
• (4) Dental Dams
• (1) HazMat suit w/rebreather
• (1) can RID Step-3 Lice Control Spray
• (1) Geiger Counter w/spare batteries
• (1) Emergency use Fleet Enema Kit for impacted colon
• iPhone with $500 for apps and of course a RattPo app
• (1) Fifth of scotch (to help Dick cope through the first day)
• (1) set weave-in faux dreadlocks to enable Dick to better blend in with the 'unwashed' masses.
• (1) bottle Prozac
• (1) economy-size bottle Cherry Flavored© Pepto-Bismol

To better fit in at Burning Man, Dick is currently reading and studying the following:

Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals
Dreams from My Father : A Story of Race and Inheritance
The Audacity of Hope : Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Change We Can Believe in : Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise
Atlas Slouched - Al Franken
Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters - Nancy Pelosi

Dick has been watching the following moves on a loop:

Debbie Does Dishes
Sicko (Signed Copy)
An Inconvenient Truth (Signed Copy)
Ben Hur
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex *But Were Afraid To Ask

Grizzly Man - The Timothy Treadwell Story

We’re looking forward to Dick’s first report. Stay tuned.





NOTE: This is parody, you idiot. Don't believe everything you read on the interweb.

The Winning Hand

Here's my latest creation. Usually I save these for my own site. But I did want to share it here. Which tired old card will the left use next? Burning Churches or Grandma Eats Dog Food?

Feel free to pass it on!

Here's my latest creation. Usually I save these for my own site. But I did want to share it here. Which tired old card will the left use next? Burning Churches or Grandma Eats Dog Food?

Feel free to pass it on!

Nancy Graham and The Greatest American Hero

"There she is Mrs. America!" Yes, Skeletor has crawled out of her dungeon to scare the good people of America again. Speaker Pelosi will you stop speaking for a minute and listen to the American people instead of trampling on them every opportunity you're given?

What more needs said? So instead of adding more to what we all know about her highness I thought I'd pull out some blasts from the past to put Pelosi in her place.

I give you the hideous mutation of left and right - The Nancy Graham! (Inspired by the Glenn Beck program. Glenn suggested that Nancy Pelosi and Lindsey Graham are the same person.)

Her she...he...it is!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DYoze_Otb0

As an added bonus here's The Greatest American Hero!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzzynO6OAag&feature=related

Look at him folks! Our hero at his best!

"There she is Mrs. America!" Yes, Skeletor has crawled out of her dungeon to scare the good people of America again. Speaker Pelosi will you stop speaking for a minute and listen to the American people instead of trampling on them every opportunity you're given?

What more needs said? So instead of adding more to what we all know about her highness I thought I'd pull out some blasts from the past to put Pelosi in her place.

I give you the hideous mutation of left and right - The Nancy Graham! (Inspired by the Glenn Beck program. Glenn suggested that Nancy Pelosi and Lindsey Graham are the same person.)

Her she...he...it is!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DYoze_Otb0

As an added bonus here's The Greatest American Hero!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzzynO6OAag&feature=related

Look at him folks! Our hero at his best!

"Those Voices Don't Speak for the Rest of Us"

President Ronald Reagan reminds us that the out-of-touch voices of the Democrat Party don't speak for all Americans.

President Ronald Reagan reminds us that the out-of-touch voices of the Democrat Party don't speak for all Americans.

Suzanna Gratia-Hupp: What the Second Amendment is REALLY For

Texas state representative, Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, whose parents were killed by an insane gunman while her gun was out in the car, gives very moving and bold testimony about the REAL reason that the second amendment was designed to protect our God-given right to keep and bear arms. On Wednesday, October 16, 1991, Hupp and her parents were having lunch at the Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen She had left her gun in her car to comply with Texas state law at the time, which forbade carrying a concealed weapon. When Geroge Nennard drove his truck into the cafeteria and opened fire on the patrons, Hupp instinctively reached into her purse for her weapon, but it was in her vehicle. Her father, Al Gratia, tried to rush Hennard and was shot in the chest. As the gunman reloaded, Hupp escaped through a broken window and believed that her mother, Ursula Gratia, was behind her. Hennard put a gun to her mother's head as she cradled her mortally wounded husband. Hupp's mother and father were killed along with twenty-one other persons. Hennard also wounded some twenty others. As a survivor of the Luby's Massacre, Hupp testified across the country in support of concealed-handgun laws. She said that had there been a second chance to prevent the slaughter, she would have violated the Texas law and carried the handgun inside her purse into the restaurant

Texas state representative, Suzanna Gratia-Hupp, whose parents were killed by an insane gunman while her gun was out in the car, gives very moving and bold testimony about the REAL reason that the second amendment was designed to protect our God-given right to keep and bear arms. On Wednesday, October 16, 1991, Hupp and her parents were having lunch at the Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen She had left her gun in her car to comply with Texas state law at the time, which forbade carrying a concealed weapon. When Geroge Nennard drove his truck into the cafeteria and opened fire on the patrons, Hupp instinctively reached into her purse for her weapon, but it was in her vehicle. Her father, Al Gratia, tried to rush Hennard and was shot in the chest. As the gunman reloaded, Hupp escaped through a broken window and believed that her mother, Ursula Gratia, was behind her. Hennard put a gun to her mother's head as she cradled her mortally wounded husband. Hupp's mother and father were killed along with twenty-one other persons. Hennard also wounded some twenty others. As a survivor of the Luby's Massacre, Hupp testified across the country in support of concealed-handgun laws. She said that had there been a second chance to prevent the slaughter, she would have violated the Texas law and carried the handgun inside her purse into the restaurant

Congressional Cha Ching

Wonder where your tax dollars are going? Take a look!

Rep. Bishop (GA)

Proposed Recipient: Southwest Georgia Regional Airport Improvement Program
Amount Requested: $100,000

Description: This project would address the design of a new commercial building, aircraft apron improvements, new building curb front, and new building terminal building site work and utilities - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $500,000
Cha Ching +$400,000


Rep. Bishop (GA)

Proposed Recipient: Leesburg North Bypass
Amount Requested: $100,000
Description: The program will fund the Leesburg North Bypass from US 19 to SR 195 as well as acquire the right-of-way - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $450,000
Cha Ching + $350,000


Rep. Ellison (MN)

Proposed Recipient: Lowry Avenue Bridge Replacement Phase II
Amount Requested: $487,000

Description: Funds are requested for the Phase II part of the Lowry Avenue bridge replacement project, the bridge spans the Mississippi River in Northeast Minneapolis - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $900,000
Cha Ching +$413,000


Rep. Fudge (OH)

Proposed Recipient: City of Shaker Heights. Warrensville/Van Aken Transit Oriented Development.
Amount Requested: $500,000.
Description: Improve popular intersection and provide intermodal transit center as a gateway to the East side of Cleveland. 250 jobs - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $550,000
Cha Ching +$50,000


Rep. Doyle (PA)

Proposed Recipient: Mount Washington Community Development Corporation -- Workforce and Trail Development in Pittsburgh’s Newest Regional Park
Amount Requested: $99,900
Description: Funding would go towards the trail development at the Grand View Scenic Byway Park, Pittsburgh’s newest Regional Park. The Park aims to provide a sustainable economic development tool for the region while restoring a healthy native ecosystem for the benefit of the people and environment of Western Pennsylvania. Because over 1 million people visit Mount Washington every year, the Park’s Master Trail Plan, creating 19 miles of trails, can play a significant economic development role - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $100,000
Cha Ching +$50,000


Rep. Rangel (NY)

Proposed Recipient: Positive Workforce
Amount Requested: $240,000

Description: A 4 story building in Harlem, NY City completely renovated that will provide over 10,000 square feet of space, for non-profit workforce development programs along with other multiple programs and services for the community. Estimated cost for this project is $1,450,000. Funding streams for the Positive Learning Center have been in-kind, equity/sponsor and private contributions - appropriation request, see pg 43.

Amount Received: $250,000
Cha Ching +$10,000


Rep. Olver (MA)

Proposed Recipient: New England Freight Rail Infrastructure Study
Description: This project would study what investments would have the greatest benefit to increasing the capacity of rail infrastructure that moves goods from the west across Massachusetts to access New England markets.
Amount Requested: $250,000
Note: Rep. Olver's office has since changed the amount, to 300,000 citing a ‘clerical error’ on their website - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $300,000
Cha Ching +$50,000


Total Requested: $1,776,900
Total Received: $3,050,000

Difference: CHA CHING +$1,273,100

Wonder where your tax dollars are going? Take a look!

Rep. Bishop (GA)

Proposed Recipient: Southwest Georgia Regional Airport Improvement Program
Amount Requested: $100,000

Description: This project would address the design of a new commercial building, aircraft apron improvements, new building curb front, and new building terminal building site work and utilities - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $500,000
Cha Ching +$400,000


Rep. Bishop (GA)

Proposed Recipient: Leesburg North Bypass
Amount Requested: $100,000
Description: The program will fund the Leesburg North Bypass from US 19 to SR 195 as well as acquire the right-of-way - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $450,000
Cha Ching + $350,000


Rep. Ellison (MN)

Proposed Recipient: Lowry Avenue Bridge Replacement Phase II
Amount Requested: $487,000

Description: Funds are requested for the Phase II part of the Lowry Avenue bridge replacement project, the bridge spans the Mississippi River in Northeast Minneapolis - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $900,000
Cha Ching +$413,000


Rep. Fudge (OH)

Proposed Recipient: City of Shaker Heights. Warrensville/Van Aken Transit Oriented Development.
Amount Requested: $500,000.
Description: Improve popular intersection and provide intermodal transit center as a gateway to the East side of Cleveland. 250 jobs - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $550,000
Cha Ching +$50,000


Rep. Doyle (PA)

Proposed Recipient: Mount Washington Community Development Corporation -- Workforce and Trail Development in Pittsburgh’s Newest Regional Park
Amount Requested: $99,900
Description: Funding would go towards the trail development at the Grand View Scenic Byway Park, Pittsburgh’s newest Regional Park. The Park aims to provide a sustainable economic development tool for the region while restoring a healthy native ecosystem for the benefit of the people and environment of Western Pennsylvania. Because over 1 million people visit Mount Washington every year, the Park’s Master Trail Plan, creating 19 miles of trails, can play a significant economic development role - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $100,000
Cha Ching +$50,000


Rep. Rangel (NY)

Proposed Recipient: Positive Workforce
Amount Requested: $240,000

Description: A 4 story building in Harlem, NY City completely renovated that will provide over 10,000 square feet of space, for non-profit workforce development programs along with other multiple programs and services for the community. Estimated cost for this project is $1,450,000. Funding streams for the Positive Learning Center have been in-kind, equity/sponsor and private contributions - appropriation request, see pg 43.

Amount Received: $250,000
Cha Ching +$10,000


Rep. Olver (MA)

Proposed Recipient: New England Freight Rail Infrastructure Study
Description: This project would study what investments would have the greatest benefit to increasing the capacity of rail infrastructure that moves goods from the west across Massachusetts to access New England markets.
Amount Requested: $250,000
Note: Rep. Olver's office has since changed the amount, to 300,000 citing a ‘clerical error’ on their website - appropriation request.

Amount Received: $300,000
Cha Ching +$50,000


Total Requested: $1,776,900
Total Received: $3,050,000

Difference: CHA CHING +$1,273,100

A Response to the Article Published Thursday Regarding the Digg Patriots Group

In response to the article published yesterday regarding the Digg Patriots group, the Digg Patriots user group has been accused of censoring liberal stories and gaming Digg. Is it not odd that with all that alleged censoring, the front page of Digg is and has always been dominated by liberal news, from liberal sites, submitted by liberal Digg users. A group of conservatives and libertarians came together in a Yahoo group roughly a year and a half ago to keep in touch with each other and share Digg submissions, comments, opinions and fellowship after Digg removed the shout system which allowed much of the same within the site itself.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that since Digg added the Political News and Political Opinion categories to the site, the membership is decidedly Democratic. The addition of these categories prior to the 2008 election completely changed the tone of Digg forever. No longer was Digg known as a tech site. The front page would soon be populated with story after story bashing Republican and Conservative politicians or pundits and submissions glorifying left-leaning politicians. Conservatives had no chance of being heard, much less getting Conservative submissions to the front page of Digg. Those submissions were systematically buried in the same fashion in which the Digg Patriots group is being accused. Comments made by right-leaning members under liberal or progressive submissions were buried into oblivion.

In very popular stories regarding Democrats, comments made by Conservatives were buried into double and even triple digit negative numbers. 

Not only is the general membership of Digg overwhelming left-leaning, but the site administrators often make decisions that seem to favor Liberals over Conservatives. Most users are certainly going to come down on one side of the aisle at some point. Our group did not exist to stifle all left-leaning content on Digg and accusing the group of censorship is hardly justified.

A quick look at all the top political news and opinion stories over the last year and half proves how inacurrate that claim is. Looking through the first 10 pages of submissions that became popular under the Political News category over that last year, there is only 1 submission out of the 150 that has a conservative bias, which is the news story about Scott Brown winning his Senate race.

On any given day on Digg, left-based submissions made popular outnumber right-based submissions easily by a factor of 20:1. And look at the content of those popular left-leaning submissions.

How many are attacks on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc? If we were truly censoring submissions, we did a pretty crappy job of it.

In addition, most conservative comments are met with replies that are nothing more than childish personal attacks. Though not all, most liberals commenting on Digg are more likely to label a conservative with one of their many catchy tags such as "freeper", "birther", "racist" or simply make vulgar or obscene insults. There is no debating or arguing with such behavior. How many of you reading this right now are guilty of making such comments or voting up those comments? How many times have we seen the Glenn Beck rape meme posted? What value does that add to Digg?

Did we vote down left-leaning stories or vote up conservative submissions? Yes. However, that vote up or down was still a personal choice of each individual user and done with only a single vote up or down. No one ever used any form of scripts or any other aid to promote or bury a story on Digg, unlike several power users who were previously banned for exactly that reason. 

In fact, what we have been doing is hardly different than anyone else using any other form of communication to promote a submission or even attempt to bury it. Groups of Digg users exist on Twitter or Twitter-clones, Facebook and many other social media sites that do the exact same thing. Anyone on Digg who has ever asked anyone else to digg or bury a story at any time in the past is just as guilty or innocent as anyone in Digg Patriots. We received nothing for this, other than personal satisfaction.

If you look at submissions of left-leaning Digg users it is a daily occurence for the same story to be submitted ad nauseum. With hot stories, it's not unusual to see the exact same story or slight variations submitted dozens of times in the same day. Even the story about Digg Patriots has been submitted no less than a dozen times in the last 24 hours, 3 alone are exact duplicates from DailyKos. Without a doubt, this is one of our biggest issues with Liberal Digg submissions.

No one was trying to censor actual news or even opinions, but we certainly targeted submissions that were known or obvious duplicates or pieces that we deemed were inacurrate or were from sources that had questionable credibility. We also have pointed out to Digg admins numerous sites that are regularly submitted seeking donations or who copy content from other sites.

I personally find it ironic that so many Democratic and Liberal Digg users are so quick to judge and condemn this group, as these are typically the same people who are the first to go into fits of rage regarding due process. In addition, I also find it ironic that these same Digg users calling for our heads have yet to condemn the invasion of privacy, possibly criminal in nature used to access our personal and private emails, which is how 95% of this information was exchanged between Digg Patriot users. These are the same Digg users who were frothing at the mouth in response to the passing of The Patriot Act under the Bush administration and who have had little criticism of Obama for not only voting for the Patriot Act as a Senator, but continuing the policies under his presidency. 

 

As individuals, we have an expectation of privacy to exchange correspondence, thoughts, concerns, or simple greetings with our friends. It now appears as though our privacy was breeched days, weeks, maybe even months ago. It has even come to our attention that attempts were allegedly made by the author of the piece and his hit squad to goad DP members into confrontations in order to elicit certain responses. How would you feel to find out that someone was spying on you with the intent to collect and distibute your personal correspondence at their discretion for their own personal gain?

Most if not all Digg users have certainly been aware of the constant attacks made on various Conservative/Libertarian Digg users lately, namely Capt Carrot and ThePartyStar, both who were on the Digg Patriots member list. The attacks on ThePartyStar are the most vile and hateful of any I have witnessed on the internet. For nearly two months we have seen new accounts created where the user friends many of the same Digg users, most on the Digg Patriots list and then launches a series of personal, profane and sexual-assault based attacks on Digg user ThePartyStar. This has happened several dozen times in the last few weeks and only seems to have subsided now that Digg has closed new membership. Since it was mentioned in the article about our group that we were allegedly targeting these people who were creating these accounts and attacking ThePartyStar, a group we labeled as the NoBros, it seems odd that the author of this piece is essentially siding with those attackers. It leads me to suspect someone associated with the author is perhaps behind those attacks. The comments made toward ThePartyStar were graphic and heinous. I cannot imagine anyone attempting to defend those who perpetrated these acts.

In regards to the continuing attacks on Digg user Capt Carrot (RJ Carter), this seems to be related to an ongoing issue he has dealt with personally for years in which he is attempting to uncover and confront child predators and pedophiles on the internet. This is apparently something that Mr. Carter was involved with long before his affiliation with our group and none of us had any dealing with the matter. Based only on what RJ has told us, the people he is confronting will stoop to the lowest levels and stop at nothing in their attempt to discredit him and paint him as the wrongdoer. It would not surprise me to find out that those attacking Mr. Carter also had a hand in illegally obtaining access to our personal information.

So who is behind the attack on the Digg Patriot group? The author of the piece on Alternet and also a duplicate submission on pubrecord.org is none other than Digg user Novenator who goes by the pen name OleOle Olson. Mr. Olson is a writer/contributor/co-owner of the site NewsJunkiePost.com Mr. Olson chose to attack us and single us out as our members often confronted and debated with him.

I doubt that anyone is shocked by this revelation as there is possibly no one on Digg who is more of a progressive advocate or radical. His submissions are almost always divisive, political opinion pieces. Apparently Mr. Olson took exception to us continually pointing out his hypocrisy on Digg as he often commented about reporting conservatives for "hijacking" submissions by editorializing the title or description, as he was either guilty of exactly the same thing or had a history of digging liberal or progressive articles in which the submitter had also done the same thing. In addition, as he had attacked various users who had submitted articles or sites that requested donations, we found that his site, newsjunkiepost was also guilty of the same thing that he claimed was a violation of Digg ToS policies.

We also believe Digg user Anamoly100 to have a hand in these attacks as the site she runs and regularly submits from, freakoutnation.com, is also guilty of these alleged Digg ToS violations, not to mention consistently submitting, digging and promoting known duplicates her site published in order to generate web traffic. It doesn't take much to deduce that these people are not only writing and submitting pieces from their own site in order to promote their personal and political agendas, they are doing it for profit, another violation of Digg's policies that we have continued to point out.

So as you see, the Digg Patriot group, in an effort to help Digg police their own policies, we are now being singled out and attacked because Mr. Olson may be financially taking a hit due to lost ad revenue on his site. This has less to do with censorship, than it does with his personal vendetta against Digg Patriots for constantly admonishing his less than ethical behavior. Novenator is guilty of exactly the same things he has accused the Digg Patriots of, which is organized digging and burying. I'm certain that the Digg administrators and many Digg users are also aware of his behavior which is why he is not being taken seriously.

During last nights show on Social Blade, Digg user MrBabyMan mentioned that Novenator had approached him in the past to submit this hit piece, but he refused to do so due to the lack of credibility and believability of the submission and the author. This obviously took courage and understanding on the part of MrBabyMan as the article published an alleged list in which he was mentioned as a  Digg power user whose politics at times seemed to favor the Democrats based solely on his submissions made prior to the 2008 election. I would like to offer an apology to Andy (aka MrBabyMan) that he was involved in this in any way. I hope Andy understands that many of us on the Digg Patriots list are either mutual friends with him on Digg and/or regularly Digg and promote his submissions. There is no one else in all of social media with as much savvy and who has enjoyed as much success as MrBabyMan. Did I personally bury submissions from MrBabyMan that I didn't agree with politically? Absolutely. That's why Digg has a bury feature. I would expect him and any of those who disagreed with my politics to do the same with any of my submissions or comments, which I am certain happens frequently. That does not take away from the fact that even though his name was mentioned as a Digg power user with tendencies to submit articles partial to Democrats, many on the DP list are loyal to MrBabyMan as this screenshot shows.

Is it considered to be "gaming Digg" to email a small group of friends and ask them to vote up or down a submission? As it has been pointed out many times since yesterday, is this not exaclty what Digg asked for when they did away with the shout feature? Is this not the very same thing that other users do every single day on Twitter, Facebook and via other means? It seems more than anything, that Novenator and the others behind this attack are trampling our civil rights and attempting to deny us the right to assemble and the right to free speech because our views do not agree with his. If the group were assembled in a single room and discussed digging, burying and various user actitivities, would it still be a violation of Digg ToS. If it were done via phone, would that also be a Digg violation? If it's done at a location that has nothing to do with Digg, why would Digg care or intervene? According to those on the Social Blade show last night, it is apparently common knowledge that other "bury brigades" exist and have existed. If Digg has the ability to investigate the Digg Patriots group for these alleged violations, there is little doubt that they can investigate others on Digg for the same, but as I and apparently many others agree, no one in the Digg Patriots group did anything wrong, except piss off  a few very liberal, sensitive Digg users who are exacting their revenge. It's really quite sad  and pathetic that someone would go to such extreme lengths to attack this group due to political  differences. One thing is for certain, this is controversial, and controversy creates interest, which leads to press and much more exposure for Digg, and business is good at Digg.

Many Digg users in the Digg Patriots group are very successful "Diggers" who are loyal to Digg and have generated tremendous traffic for the site. Our group has constantly reported bad behavior, SPAM submissions and comments and other violations of  Digg rules. Digg Patriots is nothing more than a small group of ordinary people who came together because we all connected on Digg and had common interests. Our group welcomed people of any race, gender, age, nationality, religion or sexual preference, and the group was comprised of exactly that. The common thread was conservatism or libertarianism. At any given time, there were probably never more than 10 active members. Most people listed as members rarely if ever had any involvement or participation in any way.

If Digg is so skewed to the left, why stay if our views conflicted with the majority? It would have been much easier to simply leave such a hostile environment, but we all enjoy Digg and  its' members. Many of us even have quite a few friends on Digg with opposing political views; Many of whom we have civilized discussions and debates with. There are however others, such as those who wish to attack us, for which there is never common ground and rarely if ever civil debate.

It is for that reason, we have been targeted and violated. This is no Watergate scandal. This is much ado about nothing. This amounts to nothing more than a silly confrontation of people with vastly different political views, taken completely out of context and blown way out of proportion. As is the case with most controversy on Digg, mob rules and sheep follow, which accounts for the incredible number of diggs and comments the original submissions received. What amazes me more is that this insignificant story has received so much attention, yet the JournOlist story that was uncovered recently and proved there was a concerted effort by the media to show favoritism to Obama during the presidential campaign, never saw the light of day. I wonder who was responsible for censoring those stories from Digg?

Onward.

This response was submitted by an anonymous contributor. -Editor

In response to the article published yesterday regarding the Digg Patriots group, the Digg Patriots user group has been accused of censoring liberal stories and gaming Digg. Is it not odd that with all that alleged censoring, the front page of Digg is and has always been dominated by liberal news, from liberal sites, submitted by liberal Digg users. A group of conservatives and libertarians came together in a Yahoo group roughly a year and a half ago to keep in touch with each other and share Digg submissions, comments, opinions and fellowship after Digg removed the shout system which allowed much of the same within the site itself.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that since Digg added the Political News and Political Opinion categories to the site, the membership is decidedly Democratic. The addition of these categories prior to the 2008 election completely changed the tone of Digg forever. No longer was Digg known as a tech site. The front page would soon be populated with story after story bashing Republican and Conservative politicians or pundits and submissions glorifying left-leaning politicians. Conservatives had no chance of being heard, much less getting Conservative submissions to the front page of Digg. Those submissions were systematically buried in the same fashion in which the Digg Patriots group is being accused. Comments made by right-leaning members under liberal or progressive submissions were buried into oblivion.

In very popular stories regarding Democrats, comments made by Conservatives were buried into double and even triple digit negative numbers. 

Not only is the general membership of Digg overwhelming left-leaning, but the site administrators often make decisions that seem to favor Liberals over Conservatives. Most users are certainly going to come down on one side of the aisle at some point. Our group did not exist to stifle all left-leaning content on Digg and accusing the group of censorship is hardly justified.

A quick look at all the top political news and opinion stories over the last year and half proves how inacurrate that claim is. Looking through the first 10 pages of submissions that became popular under the Political News category over that last year, there is only 1 submission out of the 150 that has a conservative bias, which is the news story about Scott Brown winning his Senate race.

On any given day on Digg, left-based submissions made popular outnumber right-based submissions easily by a factor of 20:1. And look at the content of those popular left-leaning submissions.

How many are attacks on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc? If we were truly censoring submissions, we did a pretty crappy job of it.

In addition, most conservative comments are met with replies that are nothing more than childish personal attacks. Though not all, most liberals commenting on Digg are more likely to label a conservative with one of their many catchy tags such as "freeper", "birther", "racist" or simply make vulgar or obscene insults. There is no debating or arguing with such behavior. How many of you reading this right now are guilty of making such comments or voting up those comments? How many times have we seen the Glenn Beck rape meme posted? What value does that add to Digg?

Did we vote down left-leaning stories or vote up conservative submissions? Yes. However, that vote up or down was still a personal choice of each individual user and done with only a single vote up or down. No one ever used any form of scripts or any other aid to promote or bury a story on Digg, unlike several power users who were previously banned for exactly that reason. 

In fact, what we have been doing is hardly different than anyone else using any other form of communication to promote a submission or even attempt to bury it. Groups of Digg users exist on Twitter or Twitter-clones, Facebook and many other social media sites that do the exact same thing. Anyone on Digg who has ever asked anyone else to digg or bury a story at any time in the past is just as guilty or innocent as anyone in Digg Patriots. We received nothing for this, other than personal satisfaction.

If you look at submissions of left-leaning Digg users it is a daily occurence for the same story to be submitted ad nauseum. With hot stories, it's not unusual to see the exact same story or slight variations submitted dozens of times in the same day. Even the story about Digg Patriots has been submitted no less than a dozen times in the last 24 hours, 3 alone are exact duplicates from DailyKos. Without a doubt, this is one of our biggest issues with Liberal Digg submissions.

No one was trying to censor actual news or even opinions, but we certainly targeted submissions that were known or obvious duplicates or pieces that we deemed were inacurrate or were from sources that had questionable credibility. We also have pointed out to Digg admins numerous sites that are regularly submitted seeking donations or who copy content from other sites.

I personally find it ironic that so many Democratic and Liberal Digg users are so quick to judge and condemn this group, as these are typically the same people who are the first to go into fits of rage regarding due process. In addition, I also find it ironic that these same Digg users calling for our heads have yet to condemn the invasion of privacy, possibly criminal in nature used to access our personal and private emails, which is how 95% of this information was exchanged between Digg Patriot users. These are the same Digg users who were frothing at the mouth in response to the passing of The Patriot Act under the Bush administration and who have had little criticism of Obama for not only voting for the Patriot Act as a Senator, but continuing the policies under his presidency. 

 

As individuals, we have an expectation of privacy to exchange correspondence, thoughts, concerns, or simple greetings with our friends. It now appears as though our privacy was breeched days, weeks, maybe even months ago. It has even come to our attention that attempts were allegedly made by the author of the piece and his hit squad to goad DP members into confrontations in order to elicit certain responses. How would you feel to find out that someone was spying on you with the intent to collect and distibute your personal correspondence at their discretion for their own personal gain?

Most if not all Digg users have certainly been aware of the constant attacks made on various Conservative/Libertarian Digg users lately, namely Capt Carrot and ThePartyStar, both who were on the Digg Patriots member list. The attacks on ThePartyStar are the most vile and hateful of any I have witnessed on the internet. For nearly two months we have seen new accounts created where the user friends many of the same Digg users, most on the Digg Patriots list and then launches a series of personal, profane and sexual-assault based attacks on Digg user ThePartyStar. This has happened several dozen times in the last few weeks and only seems to have subsided now that Digg has closed new membership. Since it was mentioned in the article about our group that we were allegedly targeting these people who were creating these accounts and attacking ThePartyStar, a group we labeled as the NoBros, it seems odd that the author of this piece is essentially siding with those attackers. It leads me to suspect someone associated with the author is perhaps behind those attacks. The comments made toward ThePartyStar were graphic and heinous. I cannot imagine anyone attempting to defend those who perpetrated these acts.

In regards to the continuing attacks on Digg user Capt Carrot (RJ Carter), this seems to be related to an ongoing issue he has dealt with personally for years in which he is attempting to uncover and confront child predators and pedophiles on the internet. This is apparently something that Mr. Carter was involved with long before his affiliation with our group and none of us had any dealing with the matter. Based only on what RJ has told us, the people he is confronting will stoop to the lowest levels and stop at nothing in their attempt to discredit him and paint him as the wrongdoer. It would not surprise me to find out that those attacking Mr. Carter also had a hand in illegally obtaining access to our personal information.

So who is behind the attack on the Digg Patriot group? The author of the piece on Alternet and also a duplicate submission on pubrecord.org is none other than Digg user Novenator who goes by the pen name OleOle Olson. Mr. Olson is a writer/contributor/co-owner of the site NewsJunkiePost.com Mr. Olson chose to attack us and single us out as our members often confronted and debated with him.

I doubt that anyone is shocked by this revelation as there is possibly no one on Digg who is more of a progressive advocate or radical. His submissions are almost always divisive, political opinion pieces. Apparently Mr. Olson took exception to us continually pointing out his hypocrisy on Digg as he often commented about reporting conservatives for "hijacking" submissions by editorializing the title or description, as he was either guilty of exactly the same thing or had a history of digging liberal or progressive articles in which the submitter had also done the same thing. In addition, as he had attacked various users who had submitted articles or sites that requested donations, we found that his site, newsjunkiepost was also guilty of the same thing that he claimed was a violation of Digg ToS policies.

We also believe Digg user Anamoly100 to have a hand in these attacks as the site she runs and regularly submits from, freakoutnation.com, is also guilty of these alleged Digg ToS violations, not to mention consistently submitting, digging and promoting known duplicates her site published in order to generate web traffic. It doesn't take much to deduce that these people are not only writing and submitting pieces from their own site in order to promote their personal and political agendas, they are doing it for profit, another violation of Digg's policies that we have continued to point out.

So as you see, the Digg Patriot group, in an effort to help Digg police their own policies, we are now being singled out and attacked because Mr. Olson may be financially taking a hit due to lost ad revenue on his site. This has less to do with censorship, than it does with his personal vendetta against Digg Patriots for constantly admonishing his less than ethical behavior. Novenator is guilty of exactly the same things he has accused the Digg Patriots of, which is organized digging and burying. I'm certain that the Digg administrators and many Digg users are also aware of his behavior which is why he is not being taken seriously.

During last nights show on Social Blade, Digg user MrBabyMan mentioned that Novenator had approached him in the past to submit this hit piece, but he refused to do so due to the lack of credibility and believability of the submission and the author. This obviously took courage and understanding on the part of MrBabyMan as the article published an alleged list in which he was mentioned as a  Digg power user whose politics at times seemed to favor the Democrats based solely on his submissions made prior to the 2008 election. I would like to offer an apology to Andy (aka MrBabyMan) that he was involved in this in any way. I hope Andy understands that many of us on the Digg Patriots list are either mutual friends with him on Digg and/or regularly Digg and promote his submissions. There is no one else in all of social media with as much savvy and who has enjoyed as much success as MrBabyMan. Did I personally bury submissions from MrBabyMan that I didn't agree with politically? Absolutely. That's why Digg has a bury feature. I would expect him and any of those who disagreed with my politics to do the same with any of my submissions or comments, which I am certain happens frequently. That does not take away from the fact that even though his name was mentioned as a Digg power user with tendencies to submit articles partial to Democrats, many on the DP list are loyal to MrBabyMan as this screenshot shows.

Is it considered to be "gaming Digg" to email a small group of friends and ask them to vote up or down a submission? As it has been pointed out many times since yesterday, is this not exaclty what Digg asked for when they did away with the shout feature? Is this not the very same thing that other users do every single day on Twitter, Facebook and via other means? It seems more than anything, that Novenator and the others behind this attack are trampling our civil rights and attempting to deny us the right to assemble and the right to free speech because our views do not agree with his. If the group were assembled in a single room and discussed digging, burying and various user actitivities, would it still be a violation of Digg ToS. If it were done via phone, would that also be a Digg violation? If it's done at a location that has nothing to do with Digg, why would Digg care or intervene? According to those on the Social Blade show last night, it is apparently common knowledge that other "bury brigades" exist and have existed. If Digg has the ability to investigate the Digg Patriots group for these alleged violations, there is little doubt that they can investigate others on Digg for the same, but as I and apparently many others agree, no one in the Digg Patriots group did anything wrong, except piss off  a few very liberal, sensitive Digg users who are exacting their revenge. It's really quite sad  and pathetic that someone would go to such extreme lengths to attack this group due to political  differences. One thing is for certain, this is controversial, and controversy creates interest, which leads to press and much more exposure for Digg, and business is good at Digg.

Many Digg users in the Digg Patriots group are very successful "Diggers" who are loyal to Digg and have generated tremendous traffic for the site. Our group has constantly reported bad behavior, SPAM submissions and comments and other violations of  Digg rules. Digg Patriots is nothing more than a small group of ordinary people who came together because we all connected on Digg and had common interests. Our group welcomed people of any race, gender, age, nationality, religion or sexual preference, and the group was comprised of exactly that. The common thread was conservatism or libertarianism. At any given time, there were probably never more than 10 active members. Most people listed as members rarely if ever had any involvement or participation in any way.

If Digg is so skewed to the left, why stay if our views conflicted with the majority? It would have been much easier to simply leave such a hostile environment, but we all enjoy Digg and  its' members. Many of us even have quite a few friends on Digg with opposing political views; Many of whom we have civilized discussions and debates with. There are however others, such as those who wish to attack us, for which there is never common ground and rarely if ever civil debate.

It is for that reason, we have been targeted and violated. This is no Watergate scandal. This is much ado about nothing. This amounts to nothing more than a silly confrontation of people with vastly different political views, taken completely out of context and blown way out of proportion. As is the case with most controversy on Digg, mob rules and sheep follow, which accounts for the incredible number of diggs and comments the original submissions received. What amazes me more is that this insignificant story has received so much attention, yet the JournOlist story that was uncovered recently and proved there was a concerted effort by the media to show favoritism to Obama during the presidential campaign, never saw the light of day. I wonder who was responsible for censoring those stories from Digg?

Onward.

This response was submitted by an anonymous contributor. -Editor

Digg is in danger of fading away!

In light of recent events that have rocked the popular social media site Digg.com and the modifications that are proposed with the roll out of Digg 4.0, I have some serious concerns regarding its future.  As a result of the title and introduction to this post, some of you may believe that I have a political agenda to my post, but here the purpose is to demonstrate how this will gravely affect the interests of all Digg users.

The nearing release of Digg 4.0 seems to be unleashing a great deal of angst between Digg users, and one sign of this is the recent scandal involving an alleged bury brigade that has been denominated "Digg Patriots".  The Digg Patriots scandal broke out into the open when Ole Ole Olson, a contributor to Alternet, posted a bunch of screenshots from a hacked Yahoo Groups account and viciously attacked Digg's Conservatives and Libertarians for allegedly gaming the the system and "ruining Digg for independent progressive bloggers".

The Digg Post That Started the Fire

In this very post, other blog articles, worldwide news articles, and user comments, the proposed format of Digg 4.0 is erroneously seen as a panacea to the perceived epidemic of "Digg gaming".  The reasons cited include mainly the ability of a publisher to automatically submit its news stories, the removal of the bury button, and the default personalization of a user's front page to only display the content that is popular to his friends.  

A Peek At How Digg Will Become a Glorified Twitter-style RSS Feed of Publishers

The average digger of all political persuasions may ask me, "Why is this a bad thing?  This will take power away from power users and make Digg very difficult to "game"?".  Well the answer is rather simple in the fact that it not only takes the ability away from the user to decide which stories should be submitted, it actually has the dual effect of promoting article spamming and an echo chamber effect.

As Digg currently stands, just about any user has a good shot at making the front page, regardless of political affiliation or interests by effectively identifying and connecting with mutual friends who have the same interests and submitting content that catches the user's eye.  Under this system, a wide variety of articles do hit the front page and independent news sites of all stripes have had success in generating traffic and readership, as well as mainstream media outlets.  That my friends is what made Digg such a success and a vehicle for actually promoting news stories and articles that may have never gotten a wide audience without it.

Well if that is what attracts you to Digg, prepare for a format that will preserve the influence of the power diggers while at the same time reducing the potential influence of the average digger on what gets submitted and noticed.  For one, all of the power users already have established a wide following, and they will still have their influence in the new twitter-like format.  Moreover, the defaulting of a user's front page to that which is popular amongst his friends will reduce the exposure to novel ideas and news stories to most Diggers, thus reducing the educational aspect of Digg.

But remember that that isn't the worst of what is to come down the pipes folks!  Once publishers are able to automatically submit their content to Digg, there will be the additional issue of the "Digg Power Publisher" that will rise up on the scene and give an additional advantage to the large and established blogs and media sites.  Therefore, the people who believe that these changes are going to give an added voice to the "community" in its decision of which blogs to benefit and direct traffic to, they are sadly mistaken.

The final nail in the coffin of the Digg we knew, the Digg that offered a voice for just about every user who got to know how it works, is the removal of the bury button.   The bury button is used by diggers to remove articles that they find to be in poor content, slant, or taste, and has been a point of contention by diggers from all points of view.  However, by removing this button and replacing it with a report button, the decision to remove an article will be taken away from diggers and be placed in the direct hands of Digg staff.   This, in fact, will remove a very important aspect that made Digg a user-moderated site.

Once large components of user moderation on Digg pass by the wayside, a large number of Diggers will most likely see the site as a glorified Twitter or RSS feed and go elsewhere.  This in the end would have a negative effect on all independent bloggers and reduce the overall power of Digg to bring good backpage news to the forefront.  Therefore, the changes will not just simply "make the site harder to game", and it will just be a detriment to the ability of the average digger in having his voice heard without having a large social network or MSM popularity.

The common response to my conclusion may very well be that I am just blindly criticizing the changes and that "something must be done about those Digg abusers".  Well, I ran across a very thoughtful article that discusses the "Digg Censorship Scandal" and offers a solution that would definitely benefit content submitters of all kinds.  

Joe Porter proposes that Digg's algorithm be altered to detect stories in all categories that have large amounts of Diggs and buries and promote them to the front page at random.  This solution would actually help protect all users from organized bury brigades and still allow for articles that are poorly submitted or obviously spammy to be buried.

Here is a snippet of his solution:

"Digg, you have come up with a great algorithm to determine which articles go popular and which ones don’t. No one has cracked it and no one should. Suggestion: make the “bury” action a part of the algorithm. If it’s an article that is getting a lot of diggs AND also a lot of buries, maybe it would be great front page topic of discussion. This would prevent a mass group from doing a mass bury because then it could actually HELP the Digg submission in some instances. Obviously, if a submission has no diggs and has an abundance of buries, then this could be determined as a spam submission and then let it be buried away off the site."

Link to Joe Porter's Article that Plants Solution to Bury Controversy

Fellow diggers, I hope that we can all send a unified message to Digg and encourage them to save the Digg that we all know and help heal the nasty rift that has developed between several factions on the website.  I recognize that a lot of the anger involves the desire of people to be heard and to benefit monetarily (AdSense) and socially from the added traffic and influence that Digg can provide.   But, if we don't stop accusing each other of foul play and demanding that Digg put a stop to our perceived problems on the site, we will all lose Digg.

In light of recent events that have rocked the popular social media site Digg.com and the modifications that are proposed with the roll out of Digg 4.0, I have some serious concerns regarding its future.  As a result of the title and introduction to this post, some of you may believe that I have a political agenda to my post, but here the purpose is to demonstrate how this will gravely affect the interests of all Digg users.

The nearing release of Digg 4.0 seems to be unleashing a great deal of angst between Digg users, and one sign of this is the recent scandal involving an alleged bury brigade that has been denominated "Digg Patriots".  The Digg Patriots scandal broke out into the open when Ole Ole Olson, a contributor to Alternet, posted a bunch of screenshots from a hacked Yahoo Groups account and viciously attacked Digg's Conservatives and Libertarians for allegedly gaming the the system and "ruining Digg for independent progressive bloggers".

The Digg Post That Started the Fire

In this very post, other blog articles, worldwide news articles, and user comments, the proposed format of Digg 4.0 is erroneously seen as a panacea to the perceived epidemic of "Digg gaming".  The reasons cited include mainly the ability of a publisher to automatically submit its news stories, the removal of the bury button, and the default personalization of a user's front page to only display the content that is popular to his friends.  

A Peek At How Digg Will Become a Glorified Twitter-style RSS Feed of Publishers

The average digger of all political persuasions may ask me, "Why is this a bad thing?  This will take power away from power users and make Digg very difficult to "game"?".  Well the answer is rather simple in the fact that it not only takes the ability away from the user to decide which stories should be submitted, it actually has the dual effect of promoting article spamming and an echo chamber effect.

As Digg currently stands, just about any user has a good shot at making the front page, regardless of political affiliation or interests by effectively identifying and connecting with mutual friends who have the same interests and submitting content that catches the user's eye.  Under this system, a wide variety of articles do hit the front page and independent news sites of all stripes have had success in generating traffic and readership, as well as mainstream media outlets.  That my friends is what made Digg such a success and a vehicle for actually promoting news stories and articles that may have never gotten a wide audience without it.

Well if that is what attracts you to Digg, prepare for a format that will preserve the influence of the power diggers while at the same time reducing the potential influence of the average digger on what gets submitted and noticed.  For one, all of the power users already have established a wide following, and they will still have their influence in the new twitter-like format.  Moreover, the defaulting of a user's front page to that which is popular amongst his friends will reduce the exposure to novel ideas and news stories to most Diggers, thus reducing the educational aspect of Digg.

But remember that that isn't the worst of what is to come down the pipes folks!  Once publishers are able to automatically submit their content to Digg, there will be the additional issue of the "Digg Power Publisher" that will rise up on the scene and give an additional advantage to the large and established blogs and media sites.  Therefore, the people who believe that these changes are going to give an added voice to the "community" in its decision of which blogs to benefit and direct traffic to, they are sadly mistaken.

The final nail in the coffin of the Digg we knew, the Digg that offered a voice for just about every user who got to know how it works, is the removal of the bury button.   The bury button is used by diggers to remove articles that they find to be in poor content, slant, or taste, and has been a point of contention by diggers from all points of view.  However, by removing this button and replacing it with a report button, the decision to remove an article will be taken away from diggers and be placed in the direct hands of Digg staff.   This, in fact, will remove a very important aspect that made Digg a user-moderated site.

Once large components of user moderation on Digg pass by the wayside, a large number of Diggers will most likely see the site as a glorified Twitter or RSS feed and go elsewhere.  This in the end would have a negative effect on all independent bloggers and reduce the overall power of Digg to bring good backpage news to the forefront.  Therefore, the changes will not just simply "make the site harder to game", and it will just be a detriment to the ability of the average digger in having his voice heard without having a large social network or MSM popularity.

The common response to my conclusion may very well be that I am just blindly criticizing the changes and that "something must be done about those Digg abusers".  Well, I ran across a very thoughtful article that discusses the "Digg Censorship Scandal" and offers a solution that would definitely benefit content submitters of all kinds.  

Joe Porter proposes that Digg's algorithm be altered to detect stories in all categories that have large amounts of Diggs and buries and promote them to the front page at random.  This solution would actually help protect all users from organized bury brigades and still allow for articles that are poorly submitted or obviously spammy to be buried.

Here is a snippet of his solution:

"Digg, you have come up with a great algorithm to determine which articles go popular and which ones don’t. No one has cracked it and no one should. Suggestion: make the “bury” action a part of the algorithm. If it’s an article that is getting a lot of diggs AND also a lot of buries, maybe it would be great front page topic of discussion. This would prevent a mass group from doing a mass bury because then it could actually HELP the Digg submission in some instances. Obviously, if a submission has no diggs and has an abundance of buries, then this could be determined as a spam submission and then let it be buried away off the site."

Link to Joe Porter's Article that Plants Solution to Bury Controversy

Fellow diggers, I hope that we can all send a unified message to Digg and encourage them to save the Digg that we all know and help heal the nasty rift that has developed between several factions on the website.  I recognize that a lot of the anger involves the desire of people to be heard and to benefit monetarily (AdSense) and socially from the added traffic and influence that Digg can provide.   But, if we don't stop accusing each other of foul play and demanding that Digg put a stop to our perceived problems on the site, we will all lose Digg.

Greetings from the Badger Den!

Well it seems like a perfect fit - rats and badgers! Why not?

I'm an old friend to the grand blog master here at Rattington Post and have been asked to contribute here. I didn't have to think twice. I'm pleased to be a part of Rattington and look forward to the partnership.

Hopefully the readers here will enjoy my stuff and also visit my site: www.badgerbenson.com and also give my show a whirl on BlogTalkRadio - www.blogtalkradio.com/badger-benson I try to do a show each Friday at 2 PM Central. We'll be featuring the Rattington Post on the show from time to time.

A little background about myself - In my 30's, living in a smalltown outside of Omaha, Nebraska (Ben Nelson sends you all his love. You can forward your hate and I'll make sure he gets it. Note - Nebraska don't like him either, especially me!) I've been married for a year now. We have no small badgers or rats running around yet. I'm actually a Nebraska transplant from rural Iowa. (You may also forward all hate mail to Senator Harkin to me, I'll do my best to get it to him.) I've always been a farmboy. From an early age I've been interested in history and politics. At age two I was held by Ronald Reagan during a campaign stop. There's a sidestory to that where he was invited to the family farm, but unable to attend - which led to the meeting, and a nice letter addressed to my parents. At age 14 I began exploring the early concept that was the Internet, (get your head out of the gutter!) it was through the Prodigy service I was able to find a contact that works with Rush Limbaugh. I didn't believe the guy. The next day was my birthday and Rush wished me a happy birthday over the national airwaves, referrring to me as a "courageous young warrior". Well the warrior is all grown up now, but still in the fight. Aside from my rural routes and brushes with fame I've spent time in numerous fields - seed corn production, both UPS and FedEx, Pella Windows, time in both radio and television, and also my own business as a wedding videographer.

Today I'm just having a good time annoying liberals with my blog posts, piffy Facebook status messages, email alerts to friends and family, cartoons, short videos, blog posts, and Internet radio program.

Thanks for the invite to be a part of the Rattington Post. It's going to be a lot of fun!

Well it seems like a perfect fit - rats and badgers! Why not?

I'm an old friend to the grand blog master here at Rattington Post and have been asked to contribute here. I didn't have to think twice. I'm pleased to be a part of Rattington and look forward to the partnership.

Hopefully the readers here will enjoy my stuff and also visit my site: www.badgerbenson.com and also give my show a whirl on BlogTalkRadio - www.blogtalkradio.com/badger-benson I try to do a show each Friday at 2 PM Central. We'll be featuring the Rattington Post on the show from time to time.

A little background about myself - In my 30's, living in a smalltown outside of Omaha, Nebraska (Ben Nelson sends you all his love. You can forward your hate and I'll make sure he gets it. Note - Nebraska don't like him either, especially me!) I've been married for a year now. We have no small badgers or rats running around yet. I'm actually a Nebraska transplant from rural Iowa. (You may also forward all hate mail to Senator Harkin to me, I'll do my best to get it to him.) I've always been a farmboy. From an early age I've been interested in history and politics. At age two I was held by Ronald Reagan during a campaign stop. There's a sidestory to that where he was invited to the family farm, but unable to attend - which led to the meeting, and a nice letter addressed to my parents. At age 14 I began exploring the early concept that was the Internet, (get your head out of the gutter!) it was through the Prodigy service I was able to find a contact that works with Rush Limbaugh. I didn't believe the guy. The next day was my birthday and Rush wished me a happy birthday over the national airwaves, referrring to me as a "courageous young warrior". Well the warrior is all grown up now, but still in the fight. Aside from my rural routes and brushes with fame I've spent time in numerous fields - seed corn production, both UPS and FedEx, Pella Windows, time in both radio and television, and also my own business as a wedding videographer.

Today I'm just having a good time annoying liberals with my blog posts, piffy Facebook status messages, email alerts to friends and family, cartoons, short videos, blog posts, and Internet radio program.

Thanks for the invite to be a part of the Rattington Post. It's going to be a lot of fun!

Five Common Digg Trolls

Digg is a high traffic website that according to Alexa ranked 116th globally and 50th in the United States based on traffic.  Digg is a high visibility website. It is expected that trolls would be attracted to such a widely viewed forum in order to wreak some havoc.  Well, I began studying the different trolling tactics on Digg...The stories you are about to read are true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

1.  The Brute Force Troll

The Brute Force Troll resorts to viciously attacking a user or pasting highly objectionable content in the comments section in order to utterly disrupt a discussion, badger a user, or make a name for himself.  Such trolls are very adept at ban evasion and often work in teams to saturate highly-visible front page articles with their invective monologues.   Thankfully, Digg has not fallen victim to too many types of these trolls, and Digg staff usually brings things under control in a reasonable amount of time.

Examples:

The Onetimer Troll-   The Onetimer Troll was a particular species of a Brute Force Troll that started off having many believe that a former user, Onetimer, had been killed by being drowned in his own bathtub.   Subsequently, Digg was barraged with racist and antisemitic tirades with graphic and sexual threats that even came to include Kevin Rose.   

Even though there has been general speculation and a consensus that The Onetimer Troll was none other than the banned user Onetimer trying to garner sympathy, there hasn't been any hard proof to establish this.  However, we can all just be thankful that Digg took appropriate action, and we no longer have to deal with this psychopath. 

Digg Story That Discusses the Onetimer Troll

The PS Troll-  The PS Troll is Digg's most recent Brute Force Troll, and was mainly attributed to the No crowd, another group of trolls we will discuss later on in this article.  PST started viciously attacking the Digg power user ThePartyStar with sexist epithets and political slander that came to include threats of rape.  So far all evidence points to a team effort.

His first attack occurred on this Digg submission, as you can see by the replies to the first comment. NoClone/ThePartystar Troll then sent Digg on a two-week odyssey of sick and twisted comments.   

First Evidence of the NoClone/Partystar Troll

You can see his postings in their full glory by viewing these Ubervu caches.  Just scroll through the comments until you find "TheLegionOfNo" or other similar names.

Ubervu Cache 1

Ubervu Cache 2

Ubervu Cache 3

Ubervu Cache 4

2. The Clone Troll

NoLibrarians
NoCFL
NoGoldSurge
NoPaul2012
NoLasagna
NoLiberties
NoRand2010
TheLegionofNo
NoTeaParty
NoPaultards
NoSharronAngle
NoPeterSchiff
NoDipsticks
StatistOne
StatistTwo

Do any of these guys look familiar to you?  Well you are not alone in suspecting foul play!  We have thoroughly researched and documented this band of ne'er-do-wells who troll and prey on any Digg sub that would ever suggest that the government has too much power.  

 Although a few of these accounts are actually unique individuals, such as NoLasagna and NoLibrarians, the vast majority of these pricks are thought to be the same person due to their propensity of using identical sentence structures and jargon.  Moreover, they can usually be spotted by their overuse of the word "son" and the branding of anybody who disagrees with them as immature losers.

It is thought that this band of merry trolls was behind ThePartyStar Affair, being evidenced by the fact that several of the NoClones who weren't posting such nasty diatribes were banned at the same time.  Due to such evidence, The Rattington Post recommends that anybody who runs across a NoClone bury and ignore his comments without even responding.

NoClones After ThePartystar Affair

NoClones Welcoming NoTeaParty to His "Legion of No"

3. The Sly Name-Calling Troll

The writer of this column recognizes that certain degrees of trolling add spice to the Internet experience, but like the other two examples of trolls that have been given, I believe that it is necessary to be vigilant of those who go out of their way to personally attack users and sully the Digg experience.  Having said this, now it is time to start detailing some of the insidious but more garden varieties of trolls, beginning with The Sly Name-Calling Troll.

The Sly Name-Calling Troll is one who will stir up a heated discussion to then later have supposed justification for directly insulting a fellow digger with at heinous epithet and then backpedal and try to justify it after being called out and reported.  Sadly, this breed of troll is much more difficult to have banned than the first two categories already covered.

Examples: 

RaceBaiter- Racebaiter's normal claim to fame is tracing friends of friends of a user on Digg and then accusing that person of being a White Supremacist just because there are numerous 2nd degree relationships on Digg.  This is kind of like saying that just because your cousin is a racist that you have to be, and most of us don't disown our family over a few harsh opinions.

But, this is not the worst of his antics!  Below is a link to a prime example of when Racebaiter called one of our female diggers a "twat".

Racebaiter Gets Frustrated and Calls Quirkopatra a Twat

"God you are such a mouthy twat. Do you have problems with people running out the door directly after sex? I would imagine so."

DrunkTroll- This individual is normally a rather intelligent poster, albeit on an equivocated and authoritarian side of the political spectrum.  However, he morphs himself into SuperTroll whenever he decides to drink while digging.   Just recently he told Dilberto to kill himself, an offense that DrunkTroll had been banned for previously.  After being reported, he wasn't banned, but they simply deleted his comment.

DrunkTroll Has Comment Removed For Telling Dilberto to Kill Himself

4. The Copypasta Troll

Perhaps all of our readers are highly familiar with this sort of troll, but it doesn't lesson their annoyance.  This troll copies and pastes a canned answer to many Digg subs and comments.

Example:

BongPuffer- The staff at The Rattington Post has agreed that posting examples of Digg's copy pasta trolls is a difficult task because normally their comments are deleted in a short period of time.   However, we have a perfect example of a subtle copy pasta troll that only attacks a certain source, Fox News, rather than actually debating the issue at hand.  Granted, I am not a big fan of any mainstream media outlet, Fox News included, but they all do report events, and one can easily verify or debunk the content.  To just say, "This is crap because it came from over there!" is very immature and is considered standard troll bait on Digg.

"Buried for Fox News. Please submit credible sources.

http://www.newshounds.us/
http://www.outfoxed.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel#Crit ..."

Buried for Fox News 1

Buried for Fox News 2

Buried for Fox News 3

Buried for Fox News 4

Buried for Fox News 5

Buried for Fox News 6

Buried for Fox News 7

Buried for Fox News 8

Buried for Fox News 9

Well, I think you get the general idea! ;-)

5. The Good cop/bad cop Troll

The Good cop/bad cop Troll is one of the hardest to detect, due to the fact that it involves one user with two Digg accounts.  The two accounts are comprised of his principle account that actively participates in Digg discussions and often even submits articles that make the front page and another account that contributes very little to Digg and attacks users and submissions.  Normally it is a necessity that the "good account" be the principle Digg user, because nobody wants to have their well-connected and successful Digg account banned.

 Example: 

Giovanny and Navarro- It has taken some time to hunt and track down this troll, but after a while the pattern becomes obvious.  On any sub that is in any way critical of authoritarianism, both are often seen posting in concert.  

Giovanny, the bad cop, will go in and post diatribes about how Digg is supposedly being gamed and that the post is spam.   In addition to this, anybody who disagrees with him is assumed to be a "Freeper".  Never mind that I myself have never partaken in a Free Republic discussion.  This twerp will even brag self-righteously that he only has a limited number of mutual friends on Digg and that he makes the front page by way of "community approval".  But, of course he doesn't mind having mutual friends on Digg who have 100s of mutual contacts, which brings us to his Dr. Jekyll half!

The good cop in this case is Navarro, a friendlier version of the same troll, and he often comes in to try to sound moderate and conciliatory after Giovanny has done his damage.  Also note that Giovanny complains about people who use large numbers of mutual friends to make the front page, but his Siamese twin, Navarro, has a large network of diggers and frequently makes the front page.  Below we have some documentation of this.

Self-righteous Remark About Not "Spamming

Example of Bitching About Standard and Accepted Digg Friending Practices

Note the "one right after another" technique on this one.  Navarro starts off with a calm post, and his Mr. Hyde half follows up with a hateful diatribe.

Giovarro Makes His Good cop/bad cop Routine Way Too Obvious

Amazingly, soon after getting ripped into by Giovanny for having a healthy list of Digg mutual friends, as seen by the first link on this list, Smooth Navarro kindly "cautions" a fellow Digg user about the company he keeps on Digg.

Good Cop Tries to Make Good With Dilberto After Bad Cop Rips Him on First Link

Disclaimer:  This article is meant to be nothing more than a parody of some of the shenanigans that occur on a regular basis in Digg's comment sections.  The designator of the title "troll" should not be construed to imply that the users are bad people in real life.  The author of this article does take care to not sully the actual identities of the mentioned users and has no intention of harassing or intimidating them. Where appropriate, the Digg trolls mentioned have had their names altered in the text in order not to directly jab at them, but the reader is free to check the links I have provided to verify and check out some of the trolling tactics that have been mentioned. If there is a troll that you would like to report, please don't hesitate in contacting the poster.

Digg is a high traffic website that according to Alexa ranked 116th globally and 50th in the United States based on traffic.  Digg is a high visibility website. It is expected that trolls would be attracted to such a widely viewed forum in order to wreak some havoc.  Well, I began studying the different trolling tactics on Digg...The stories you are about to read are true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

1.  The Brute Force Troll

The Brute Force Troll resorts to viciously attacking a user or pasting highly objectionable content in the comments section in order to utterly disrupt a discussion, badger a user, or make a name for himself.  Such trolls are very adept at ban evasion and often work in teams to saturate highly-visible front page articles with their invective monologues.   Thankfully, Digg has not fallen victim to too many types of these trolls, and Digg staff usually brings things under control in a reasonable amount of time.

Examples:

The Onetimer Troll-   The Onetimer Troll was a particular species of a Brute Force Troll that started off having many believe that a former user, Onetimer, had been killed by being drowned in his own bathtub.   Subsequently, Digg was barraged with racist and antisemitic tirades with graphic and sexual threats that even came to include Kevin Rose.   

Even though there has been general speculation and a consensus that The Onetimer Troll was none other than the banned user Onetimer trying to garner sympathy, there hasn't been any hard proof to establish this.  However, we can all just be thankful that Digg took appropriate action, and we no longer have to deal with this psychopath. 

Digg Story That Discusses the Onetimer Troll

The PS Troll-  The PS Troll is Digg's most recent Brute Force Troll, and was mainly attributed to the No crowd, another group of trolls we will discuss later on in this article.  PST started viciously attacking the Digg power user ThePartyStar with sexist epithets and political slander that came to include threats of rape.  So far all evidence points to a team effort.

His first attack occurred on this Digg submission, as you can see by the replies to the first comment. NoClone/ThePartystar Troll then sent Digg on a two-week odyssey of sick and twisted comments.   

First Evidence of the NoClone/Partystar Troll

You can see his postings in their full glory by viewing these Ubervu caches.  Just scroll through the comments until you find "TheLegionOfNo" or other similar names.

Ubervu Cache 1

Ubervu Cache 2

Ubervu Cache 3

Ubervu Cache 4

2. The Clone Troll

NoLibrarians
NoCFL
NoGoldSurge
NoPaul2012
NoLasagna
NoLiberties
NoRand2010
TheLegionofNo
NoTeaParty
NoPaultards
NoSharronAngle
NoPeterSchiff
NoDipsticks
StatistOne
StatistTwo

Do any of these guys look familiar to you?  Well you are not alone in suspecting foul play!  We have thoroughly researched and documented this band of ne'er-do-wells who troll and prey on any Digg sub that would ever suggest that the government has too much power.  

 Although a few of these accounts are actually unique individuals, such as NoLasagna and NoLibrarians, the vast majority of these pricks are thought to be the same person due to their propensity of using identical sentence structures and jargon.  Moreover, they can usually be spotted by their overuse of the word "son" and the branding of anybody who disagrees with them as immature losers.

It is thought that this band of merry trolls was behind ThePartyStar Affair, being evidenced by the fact that several of the NoClones who weren't posting such nasty diatribes were banned at the same time.  Due to such evidence, The Rattington Post recommends that anybody who runs across a NoClone bury and ignore his comments without even responding.

NoClones After ThePartystar Affair

NoClones Welcoming NoTeaParty to His "Legion of No"

3. The Sly Name-Calling Troll

The writer of this column recognizes that certain degrees of trolling add spice to the Internet experience, but like the other two examples of trolls that have been given, I believe that it is necessary to be vigilant of those who go out of their way to personally attack users and sully the Digg experience.  Having said this, now it is time to start detailing some of the insidious but more garden varieties of trolls, beginning with The Sly Name-Calling Troll.

The Sly Name-Calling Troll is one who will stir up a heated discussion to then later have supposed justification for directly insulting a fellow digger with at heinous epithet and then backpedal and try to justify it after being called out and reported.  Sadly, this breed of troll is much more difficult to have banned than the first two categories already covered.

Examples: 

RaceBaiter- Racebaiter's normal claim to fame is tracing friends of friends of a user on Digg and then accusing that person of being a White Supremacist just because there are numerous 2nd degree relationships on Digg.  This is kind of like saying that just because your cousin is a racist that you have to be, and most of us don't disown our family over a few harsh opinions.

But, this is not the worst of his antics!  Below is a link to a prime example of when Racebaiter called one of our female diggers a "twat".

Racebaiter Gets Frustrated and Calls Quirkopatra a Twat

"God you are such a mouthy twat. Do you have problems with people running out the door directly after sex? I would imagine so."

DrunkTroll- This individual is normally a rather intelligent poster, albeit on an equivocated and authoritarian side of the political spectrum.  However, he morphs himself into SuperTroll whenever he decides to drink while digging.   Just recently he told Dilberto to kill himself, an offense that DrunkTroll had been banned for previously.  After being reported, he wasn't banned, but they simply deleted his comment.

DrunkTroll Has Comment Removed For Telling Dilberto to Kill Himself

4. The Copypasta Troll

Perhaps all of our readers are highly familiar with this sort of troll, but it doesn't lesson their annoyance.  This troll copies and pastes a canned answer to many Digg subs and comments.

Example:

BongPuffer- The staff at The Rattington Post has agreed that posting examples of Digg's copy pasta trolls is a difficult task because normally their comments are deleted in a short period of time.   However, we have a perfect example of a subtle copy pasta troll that only attacks a certain source, Fox News, rather than actually debating the issue at hand.  Granted, I am not a big fan of any mainstream media outlet, Fox News included, but they all do report events, and one can easily verify or debunk the content.  To just say, "This is crap because it came from over there!" is very immature and is considered standard troll bait on Digg.

"Buried for Fox News. Please submit credible sources.

http://www.newshounds.us/
http://www.outfoxed.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel#Crit ..."

Buried for Fox News 1

Buried for Fox News 2

Buried for Fox News 3

Buried for Fox News 4

Buried for Fox News 5

Buried for Fox News 6

Buried for Fox News 7

Buried for Fox News 8

Buried for Fox News 9

Well, I think you get the general idea! ;-)

5. The Good cop/bad cop Troll

The Good cop/bad cop Troll is one of the hardest to detect, due to the fact that it involves one user with two Digg accounts.  The two accounts are comprised of his principle account that actively participates in Digg discussions and often even submits articles that make the front page and another account that contributes very little to Digg and attacks users and submissions.  Normally it is a necessity that the "good account" be the principle Digg user, because nobody wants to have their well-connected and successful Digg account banned.

 Example: 

Giovanny and Navarro- It has taken some time to hunt and track down this troll, but after a while the pattern becomes obvious.  On any sub that is in any way critical of authoritarianism, both are often seen posting in concert.  

Giovanny, the bad cop, will go in and post diatribes about how Digg is supposedly being gamed and that the post is spam.   In addition to this, anybody who disagrees with him is assumed to be a "Freeper".  Never mind that I myself have never partaken in a Free Republic discussion.  This twerp will even brag self-righteously that he only has a limited number of mutual friends on Digg and that he makes the front page by way of "community approval".  But, of course he doesn't mind having mutual friends on Digg who have 100s of mutual contacts, which brings us to his Dr. Jekyll half!

The good cop in this case is Navarro, a friendlier version of the same troll, and he often comes in to try to sound moderate and conciliatory after Giovanny has done his damage.  Also note that Giovanny complains about people who use large numbers of mutual friends to make the front page, but his Siamese twin, Navarro, has a large network of diggers and frequently makes the front page.  Below we have some documentation of this.

Self-righteous Remark About Not "Spamming

Example of Bitching About Standard and Accepted Digg Friending Practices

Note the "one right after another" technique on this one.  Navarro starts off with a calm post, and his Mr. Hyde half follows up with a hateful diatribe.

Giovarro Makes His Good cop/bad cop Routine Way Too Obvious

Amazingly, soon after getting ripped into by Giovanny for having a healthy list of Digg mutual friends, as seen by the first link on this list, Smooth Navarro kindly "cautions" a fellow Digg user about the company he keeps on Digg.

Good Cop Tries to Make Good With Dilberto After Bad Cop Rips Him on First Link

Disclaimer:  This article is meant to be nothing more than a parody of some of the shenanigans that occur on a regular basis in Digg's comment sections.  The designator of the title "troll" should not be construed to imply that the users are bad people in real life.  The author of this article does take care to not sully the actual identities of the mentioned users and has no intention of harassing or intimidating them. Where appropriate, the Digg trolls mentioned have had their names altered in the text in order not to directly jab at them, but the reader is free to check the links I have provided to verify and check out some of the trolling tactics that have been mentioned. If there is a troll that you would like to report, please don't hesitate in contacting the poster.