Sibby Online

More lies from the left

I mentioned Chad Schuldt in my last post:

So, where on Schuldt’s web sites (he has more than one) does he disclose that he was an advisor to a Democrat’s campaign? Again, I am not saying he should.

Here is Schuldt’s response:

Steve Sibson is at it again. Now he wants me to add a disclaimer on my site.

Schuldt's’s lack of credibility is not so much due to his partisan nature, it is due to his lies. Papa Epp should invoke some personal accountability, but that is not the Democrats' nature.

MSM and SD Dems join to attack freedom

Jon Lauck has provided a response to the CBS News attack on bloggers. He was right to point out their effort to stifle bloggers with government regulation is troubling. I would like to provide my readers with insight based on research I have conducted that shows the South Dakota Democrats have sided with the mainstream media. In fact, I will show evidence that there is collaboration between the newly formed left South Dakota blogosphere run by Democrat operatives and South Dakota’s mainstream media as represented by KELO-TV and the Argus Leader. I will also show the hypocrisy of the South Dakota Democrat’s bloggers.

In November Todd Epp started a web site to counter the Dakota Blog Alliance. More than a week before Steve Hemmingsen published his blogger opera column, Epp provided a preview:

Former KELO-TV anchor and current KELO-TV new analyst (and Sioux Empire TV Icon) Steve Hemmingsen has "weighed in" in his soon to be published take on our efforts on this blog. Here is an excerpt from his advanced copy:

There’s no question that the blogs, which the Democrats wrote off but which are cheap to start, were an adjunct to the Thune victory. It was mostly TV commercials and Bush coattails, but in a close one everything is in play.

For their part, the Democrats might try a little honesty with their candidates.

Most of them including Senators Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson run under a "don’t ask, don’t tell" banner. You hardly ever hear them mention their party except at party functions. It’s probably good politics in an inherently Republican state, but it didn’t work this time. At least the right wing bloggers did keep reminding us that Daschle is a Democrat. Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth concedes to being a "Blue Dog" Democrat, of which there are only 30 in congress. They’re Democrats who think like Republicans on money matters, supposedly. I’m not clear on where the name came from, but there is a Blue Dog lake up there near one of her hometowns.

Much of what Steve says, myself and several of you have also been preaching. He also makes some interesting comments about the brilliant but diabolical Jon Lauck. (Jon, my friend, you know, to kid is to love!) Check KELOLAND's site for Steve's full posting.

Oh yes Mr. Epp, I am quite sure Hemmingsen and you had some fun with the "diabolical Jon Lauck". You two make quite a team as the Democrat's blog is promoted while Republican bloggers are attacked by a South Dakota media newsman, who is presented to the public as "objective". I proved last week that Hemmingsen's friendship with a fellow media guy (David Kranz) is more important than disclosure.

I still remember Epp's statement on Straight Talk just after the August 9 Argus Leader front-page report on bloggers. (Note Jon Lauck's relationship with the Thune campaign is fully disclosed) I remember he pointed Lauck and myself out as those who are just preaching to the choir. Let’s hear Epp support the obvious...no one should have mistaken the Dakota Blog Alliance as an objective news organization, but as partisan Republicans that provided what the Democrats’ mainstream media refused to disclose to South Dakota. Also, what we presented was mostly supported with links to back up information. What we showed was that Tom Daschle and the Argus Leader were the ones manipulating the people of South Dakota.

The post prior to the above Todd Epp post said, "Please welcome Ben Hanten of Yankton as one of our contributors!" Yesterday Ben Hanten said this on his web site regarding Jason Van Beek's response to the CBS News blogger attack column:

"These guys are f'n nuts."

Remember the David Kranz report on those that referred to Herseth as a witch? Kranz quoted Hanten (more evidence of media and Democrat collaboration):

"Larry Diedrich needs to be responsible for the company he keeps. Calling an opponent a witch is ridiculous and sad. South Dakotans have said numerous times that they don't like dirty politics. This is very dirty," said Ben Hanten, a pre-law student at USD and chairman of the Yankton County Democrats.

So where on Hanten’s web site does he provide a disclaimer that he is the "chairman of the Yankton County Democrats"? Now I am NOT saying he should, I am just pointed out the hypocrisy of a guy who is one of the main whiners about John Lauck and Jason Van Beek not having disclaimers for being consultants for John Thune.

Speaking of consultants, another one of Epp’s cohorts Chad Schuldt has a web site that has defended Steve Hemmingsen from my exposure of his lack of objectivity. An 11/10/2002 David Kranz column boasted about the terrific job the Tim Johnson campaign did in the 2002 election. Excerpt:

Johnson's campaign began proclaiming the conclusion a week ago. Last Saturday, Steve Hildebrand put it bluntly: "We're going to win."

That's not a surprising proclamation from a campaign manager who is paid well to think positive.

The Mitchell native offered evidence from Chad Schuldt. As a teen-ager, Schuldt ran a baseball card store. Then he went through a phase with blue hair. He counts into double figures when listing Bob Dylan concerts he has attended.

Now this sports and music guy is a numbers wizard.

"It is mathematically impossible for Thune to win," he said.

Schuldt was so convincing that you started thinking he was either sure of himself or full of himself.

So, where on Schuldt’s web sites (he has more than one) does he disclose that he was an advisor to a Democrat’s campaign? Again, I am not saying he should. His partisan Democrat attitude is obvious. In both Hanten’s and Schuldt’s cases, a little research (Google works great) will provide readers of their blogs the truth about their partisan nature and David Kranz is only too happen to promote their propaganda. No need for government regulations. My point is the whiny Democrats are not practicing what they are preaching.

Now I predict these guys are going to counter my points with, "but we didn’t get paid". My argument is if they do start to receive compensation for their efforts, will they go from neutral to partisan? No…they are already partisan. Since I did not receive payment, is Sibby Online neutral? Of course not. If the mainstream media receives compensation for advertising services, can they remain neutral?

I believe their prime motivation is partisanship. They are only complaining about Lauck and Van Beek because they are Republicans. What’s sad is they are willing to destroy the First Amendment freedoms that we have found on the Internet today. They are siding with the CBS News notion that the Big Government should step in with regulations. That is not very liberal.

In addition, their fixation on the money reinforces their socialist’s nature. In fact I received this admission in a Jeremy Berg email:

A person would think that the liberal MSM would love the [r]evolution of the media-if only on principle. Although the point could be made that the new media is driven by capitalist/free market/supply-and-damand-what the consumer desires, the consumer gets- at its core, the new media is quasi-socialistic, in that all share in the creation and consumption of what is "news." At any rate, a highbred of social theory is plausible. But alas, the dynastic players in the MSM, the day later's of the daily's and their counterparts at the networks are showing a "conservative" bent. They see their information-consumption monopoly slipping away-where it is unacceptable, in their view, that an entity should control the marketplace of all goods but-they find it only too proper that they should maintain theirs...jb, Harrisburg

This barely coherent rant does provide us with some insight. Deep down inside the sub-conscious of the left, their problem with Lauck and Van Beek’s compensation is that they are not sharing it equally with other bloggers. The left is willing to invite Big Government to regulate and then transform the Internet into the same socialistic system that they are trying to transform America in general. I thank Jeremy for helping us learn that important revelation.

The South Dakota Democrats think they can gain back what they lost by emulating the Dakota Blog Alliance. The problem with their plan is that they don’t understand that the success of the Dakota Blog Alliance was not in our methods. Our successes is a result of our message, and the substance to that message. This was proven again yesterday. I received an email from a Sibby Online reader whose comment was deleted from Hanten’s web site. These guys cannot handle the truth.

Us so-called conservatives aim is to protect the system that provides us with the freedoms our Founding Fathers created . The left wants to destroy that system with what they misleadingly call progressive. There is nothing progressive about the lost of freedom. Let’s not allow the mainstream media, in concert with some partisan Democrat operatives, to take away the freedom we have enjoyed while living on today’s blogosphere. It's really sad to think the South Dakta Democrats will use the blogosphere, in concert with the mainstream media, to destroy the blogosphere. Just shows the parasitic nature of the far-left socialists who are destroying the Democrat Party hopefully before they destroy America’s freedom.

CBS News back on the firing line

While South Dakota's left blogosphere is piling on after the blog attack from CBS News, SDP has reported return fire from Atrios. Media Matters is asking for a correction with a letter to CBS News President Andrew Heyward that ends with this:

This article is journalism at its shoddiest -- both wrong in its facts and unclear in its meaning. Please post a correction to those inaccuracies.

Can't beat us join us

That seemed to be the message when Randell Beck first announced the creation of the Argus Leader blog. A Sibby Online reader noticed the blog is now "is no longer available".

CBS News still doesn't get it

Looks like CBS News is still in a state of denial over the Rathergate scandal. Jason at SDP has a post responding to a CBS News column that attacks his web site:

The two leading South Dakota blogs – websites full of informal analysis, opinions and links – were authored by paid advisers to Thune’s campaign.

The Sioux Falls Argus Leader and the National Journal first cited Federal Election Commission documents showing that Jon Lauck, of Daschle v Thune, and Jason Van Beek, of South Dakota Politics, were advisers to the Thune campaign.

So did they do anything wrong?:

No laws have apparently been broken. Case precedent on political speech as it pertains to blogs does not exist. But where journalists' careers may be broken on ethics violations, bloggers are writing in the Wild West of cyberspace. There remains no code of ethics, or even an employer, to enforce any standard.

Since I was not a consultant for any candidate’s campaign, I have become a Lone Ranger "in the Wild West of cyberspace" by being ignored in these reports on South Dakota bloggers. So have all the other Dakota Blog Alliance sites not mentioned in the biased CBS News report. Common folk have a medium to freely express their political beliefs, and that is being viewed by the MSM elitists as being something terrible.

So now we have CBS News, Steve Hemmingsen of a CBS News affiliate KELO-TV, and a few South Dakota left-wing bloggers whining about bloggers who were compensated for providing services to a campaign without providing a disclaimer as they blogged. I don’t remember seeing any disclaimers by KELO-TV or any other mainstream media news outlet that informed us about the amount of compensation they received for providing campaigns advertising services as they reported (objectively?) the news. Also remember that those who received the advertising revenues were also pretending to be neutral while providing their "Ad Watch" segments. I am also sure the advertising revenues received by CBS News affiliate KELO-TV would dwarf the consulting fees received by the bloggers they are now attacking with false allegations.

Here is the false allegation contained in the above mentioned CBS News column via a quote from Kathleen Jamieson:

"People are pretty smart in assuming that if a blog is making a case on one side that it’s partisan. The problem is when a blog pretends to hold neutrality but is actually partisan."

Since when did SDP or DVT pretend to be neutral about the Senate race? It was the Argus Leader and now co-moderator of a KELO-TV/Argus Leader debate, Steve Hemmingsen, who are doing more than just pretending that David Kranz has been neutral. They are denying it without providing the evidence produced by us bloggers. As Jon Lauck and Jason Van Beek have been open and honest, the Argus Leader and KELO-TV have refused to inform their readers and viewers about David Kranz’s activities that reflect on his partisanship to the Democrat Party.

Ironically, it is the bloggers who are holding mainstream media organizations accountable when they fail to hold up to their own standards that are meant to mislead people into thinking they are getting "objective" reporting. I just did that with Steve Hemmingsen and I did not do so while being compensated by any politician. But hey…perhaps my partisan Republican attitude provided the motivation.

And just because we are more honest about our partisanship than the MSM elitists, we may get punished with regulations that will destroy the FIrst Amendment rights that I have for the first time been able to enjoy as I was able to more fully particiapate in the democratic process like never before. Big Government will do so by arguing that those who see my Dump Daschle T-shirt ad are too stupid to figure out which side I am on.

Let me end with what is proudly displayed at the top of SDP's web site:

"This is just a long internet blog. It is not an official mainstream media site." - KELO co-anchor Angela Kennecke (She reported this as "news" before the 2004 Election Day in reference to SDP)

UPDATE: Now compare the above CBS News column regarding the INternet to this June 4, 2003 CBS News column titled, "Howard Dean's Internet Love-In ". The tone was exactly the opposite when a Democrat makes good with the Internet. Hypocrsy? Absolutely! Biased? No doubt! Will they ever admit it? Never!

Another Update: Another DBA blogger Ryne McClaren reacts to the CBS News column.

The withering Mainstream Media

Via a Hugh Hewitt column, I found this William Bennett column on RealClearPolitics titled, "Wither The Mainstream Media?" This is a great column about how the New Media, bloggers in concert with talk radio, has become a force formidable enough to challenge a monopoly that we know as the Mainstream Media. Excerpt:

New Websites with different news and opinion sources emerged over the past few years, sites with names like Powerline, Littlegreenfootballs, HughHewitt.com, and The Corner. They are run by attorneys, professors, former attorneys, former professors, journalists, scholars, and smart, seemingly ordinary citizens, uncrowned by tenure committees, major networks, or print newspapers. And the Dan Rathers of the world had no idea what they were or what their power could do. Many elites are just now beginning to pay attention.

Bennett provides some idea of the impact we have had on the 2004 election:

After the election, many statistics emerged. Perhaps the most interesting do not have to do with the mere shifts in the Catholic, Jewish, Black, or Hispanic votes. But, rather, why those shifts took place. Those shifts took place in part because of these statistics from the Pew Research Center: 41% voters say they got at least some of their news about the 2004 election online. Further, 21% relied on the Internet for most of their election news, nearly double the number in 2000. Yes, people cared about something more than job losses (as Ohio, which may have lost more jobs than any other state in the last four years, proved)—but the information about the context of the job losses, as well as the "something more," came from places other than the mainstream media.

Bennett also address the point many mainstream media elites, such as Steve Hemmingsen and Randell Beck, have complained about bloggers:

Does the Internet have its share of problems? Of course. The first question asked of Internet pioneer Matt Drudge when he spoke at the National Press Club in 1998 was, "[H]ow does it advance the cause of democracy and of social good to report unfounded allegations?" He detailed several then-current failures in reporting by the mainstream media, failures that led to reporters being fired, and libel judgments being paid. It is six years later and the Internet has grown, gossip and unfounded allegations have grown with it—but the growth of "unfounded allegations" is at least as much a problem for the mainstream media as it is for the Internet. The lesson is an age-old one that has come back to the fore: citizens need to do their homework.

For those that do their homework, their reward is empowerment as they move their research to talk radio:

Empowered, the people are changing talk radio. Speaking as a host of a three-hour talk show, it is evident that the public, which is checking assertions of fact as they are being made, is not sitting back and merely absorbing pontification. On talk radio, the lecture is fading, and it is being replaced by the interactive national seminar, where callers inform the host and audience as much as the host is informing listeners.

This new media makes news, national priorities, and fact-checking a much more democratic thing, giving all consumers of news—all citizens—a new birthright to their democracy and to their citizenship. It empowers all of us with the ability to find the truth of a story or a claim, to make judgments rather than have judgments made for us. I do not know if the mainstream media will adapt to their new competition but it is my hope that they at least understand who their new competition is.

This column was a great find…read the whole thing.

Democrats, the party of the offended

Dennis Prager has a column that makes this point:

With the acknowledgment that there are many individual exceptions, a major defining characteristic of modern-day liberalism is the ease with which liberals take offense personally and/or on behalf of others.

Liberals regularly portray as offended women, African Americans, Jews, American Indians, gays and every other group liberals declare a minority, i.e., any group that votes Democrat – no group that votes Republican, such as Mormons, Cuban Americans and Vietnamese Americans, is considered a "minority." All other groups are constantly warned that almost anything they say that is not patronizing of those groups is offensive (and therefore subject to litigation).

He then gives further contrast to conservatives:

It is most unlikely that conservative men or women speak that way – saying, "I am offended" – when they hear liberal speakers.

For one thing, conservatives are so used to being labeled as stupid, bigoted, ignorant, racist, homophobic, sexist, insensitive and intolerant that it is almost impossible to offend them. Moreover, the culture does not allow them to feel offended, since they are not an officially designated minority.

For another, liberal positions are far more emotion-based than reason-based.

So now for the hard hitting conclusion:

Part of America remains the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. An almost equally large part is now the Land of the Easily Offended and the Home of the Hypersensitive. Which land we become is a big part of the second American civil war we are fighting.

Linda Daschle to lobby the Senate

The Hill reports that Linda Daschle will lobby the Senate. The report contains an admission that she has not worked for South Dakota:

She is unlikely to deal with Thune, she said, as she has "not worked South Dakota issues in the past" and doesn’t know if she will in the future.

Read the whole thing.

More media propaganda

The Yankton Press & Dakotan has an Op-ed titled, "S.D. Lawmakers Unite":

Last Thursday, South Dakota's three Washington lawmakers gathered together for the first time publicly since the November election to discuss looming issues and to pledge cooperation in working for the state.

The words uttered in North Sioux City by Sen. Tim Johnson, Sen-elect John Thune and Rep. Stephanie Herseth weren't surprising.

What was important, however, was the effort to humanize our representatives after the recent contentious election. It was a show a unity that was really needed.

This was said toward the end:

On the other hand, the people of this state must also hold them to their vows of unity. We all want out lawmakers conferring with one another and working for us. Let's see if that happens.

So where were you last week when Johnson knocked the idea of Larry Diedrich becoming Secretary of Ag? Steve Hemmingsen thinks only bloggers are capable of misleading. This piece is so far removed from reality that believing in the existence of space aliens would make more sense.

First of all Tim Johnson proved that his show of unity was just that…a show. Johnson did not support the nomination of Larry Diedrich for Secretary of Ag. This is not the first time a Democrat says one thing in South Dakota and does another in Washington DC. And this is not the first time the mainstream media does not point this out and instead repeat the Democrats’ propaganda without challenge.

But for once, the left and right blogosphere agree on something. We should not expect anything form the do-nothing Tim Johnson. South Dakota is totaly in the hands of John Thune. But Johnson will be the first to take credit when Republicans do something positive for South Dakota...even if he works to obstruct it and votes against it.

Breaking News!

A Neo-con alien sent me the above photo saying they have abducted Steve Hemmingsen. They seem to be having some trouble deprogramming Hemmingsen and that he is the toughest nut they have had to crack in a long time. It appears years of working for the liberal mainstream media have taken a strong hold on Hemmingsen.

None the less, they are confident that soon he will be returned a changed man. They predict that he will refuse to participate in the 2006 KELO-TV/Argus Leader election year debates unless David Kranz is dropped. (grin)