TwoPuttTommy On Your Radio – Tonight!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be sitting next to Host Mark Heaney tonight on “The Mark Heaney Show” from 6 to 7 pm on AM-950 KTNF – “The Voice Of Minnesota.”

I’m not sure what all we’ll be talking and taking listener calls about; however, I am sure at some point we’ll be talking about “CommentGate” – the GOP Smear of GOP State Rep. Laura Brod – link here for Brian Falldin’s round-up of CommentGate. DustyTrice.com has a good wrap-up, too, and I’ve written about CommentGate here, “Who’s IP Is It?” and here, “…a Republican staffer in the capital…” and here, “Does Andy Gildea Still Work In Rep. Marty Seifert’s Capitol Office?” and again today here, “Another Piece In The CommentGate Puzzle”.

It is indeed a sordid tale of the GOPer’s dirty politicking, but then again: you simply cannot spell “dirty politicking” without “GOP.”

So at 6:00 pm tune in the ol’ radio to 950 on the am dial, or listen via your computer.

(crossposted from MnProgressiveProject)

Another Piece In The CommentGate Puzzle

On June 4th – over at Michael Brodkorb’s “Minnesota Democrats Exposed” – I noticed a reprehensible smear of GOP State Representative Laura Brod. While the comment making the smear, by an anonymous poster named “J” was taken down, subsequent comments acknowledging the smear were not – and I captured those comments on a screen shot. Now, regular readers here know I’ve taken shots at Laura Brod before, from nominating Laura Brod as Hypocrite Of The Month to her asinine voter fraud comments to, most recently, a complete debunking of a Canadian health care comment she twitted.

Those posts I made concerning Laura Brod are NOT about her or her private life – they are about her political activities and shots like I took are completely within the realm of acceptable politics: she ripped Al Franken while ignoring ol’ Smokescreen’s indefensible inaction during The Abramoff Scandal; she alleges voter fraud without making her case; and she made a claim about Canadian health care that simply wasn’t true.

Fair game, each and every one of ’em. The smear campaign targeting Laura Brod? Completely unacceptable.

And it’s interesting to note that the smear campaign targeting Laura Brod, according to rightwing blogger Andy Aplikowski, was orchestrated not only from within the GOP, but at the highest levels within the GOP. Here’s what Andy Aplikowski posted:

The alleged culprits of the attack are Seifert supporters with speculation of the ringleader being the candidate himself. (ChangeWeMust.org)

Last Monday, August 10th, blogger Brian Falldin, who broke and is covering this story, posted the following breaking news:

MINNEAPOLIS (CWM) — We’ve received an e-mail confirmation from Residual Forces author Andy Aplikowski that Andy Gildea was the Republican Staffer referred to in his accusatory article. (CWM.org)

Tuesday, I confirmed Andy Gildea was on GOP Rep. Marty Seifert’s staff when this smear campaign was being orchestrated; Andy Gildea left Rep. Siefert’s staff when Seifert stepped down as Minority Leader. Andy Gildea is now employed as a Research Consultant by the GOP House Caucus.

Stay tuned as this CommentGate story of dirty GOP politics (are there any other?) continues….

(crossposted from MnProgressiveProject)

Does Andy Gildea Still Work In Rep. Marty Seifert's Capitol Office?

Brian Falldin reports that Andy Gildea currently works for the House GOP Caucus, and as recently as October 9th, 2008, Andy Gildea was one of GOP Rep. Seifert’s assistants. Does Andy Gildea still work in GOP Rep. Marty Siefter’s Capital office?

A phone call and email have not been returned.

Stay tuned!

(crossposted from MnProgressiveProject)

Hypocrisy, Thy Party Is GOP

Eric Cantor, R=Hypocrite, was on Fox News yesterday, trying – TRYING – to make the argument that after being elected on a “Family Values” platform, getting caught in, say, an “unFamily Values affair” doesn’t much matter in today’s GreedOverPrinciples Party. Let’s watch!

(h/t to CrooksAndLiars.com)

What makes this performance by Eric Cantor, R=Hypocrite, even more hypocritical, is the smear campaign directed at GOPer Laura Brod – allegedly masterminded by high-level state GOPers.

Transcript of Cantor’s We-a Not-a Culpa and a couple of thoughts:

WALLACE: Finally, when you’ve got Republican leaders like Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina or Nevada Senator John Ensign admitting to extramarital affairs and staying in office, questionable use of either private funds or state money, in the case of Sanford, doesn’t the GOP, with all its talk of family values, risk looking like a bunch of hypocrites?

CANTOR: Look, I mean, is anyone happy to see all that have happened? No. I mean, it’s not good. But listen. We have our thoughts with their families and they themselves.

However, look. The party is not just about personalities. It’s about ideas. It’s about our ability to go out and prove that yes, we can lead this country again. So we have got a plan. We are talking about the solutions that actually can address some of the problems that working people in this country are facing, and we’re going to do that over the course of the next 16 months.

WALLACE: But if you’re going to talk the talk, why not walk the walk and say, “You know what? They should step down?”

CANTOR: Well, listen. I mean, again, I say in the instance of the people in South Carolina and Nevada, it is up to them, and those are the elected individuals by those states.

And again, it’s not about, necessarily, these personalities. The direction of this country — and the challenges that we face are enormous. And we ought to be talking about how to go about creating jobs again. We ought to be talking about the things that matter most to people in this country.

WALLACE: Congressman Cantor, we want to thank you. Thanks for coming in today and please come back, sir.

Everybody catch that? Let’s do that again:

We ought to be talking about the things that matter most to people in this country.

Two Points:

One – if the situation were reversed, does anyone really think that Cantor would be saying the same thing about a Democrat that got caught with the proverbial pants around the ankles? and…

Two – while Cantor, a national high-level GOPer is defending Sanford and Ensign at the national level, it’s allegedly state high-level GOPers trashing Laura Brod at the state level.

Hypocrisy, Thy Party Is GOP.

(crossposted from MnProgressiveProject)

"…a Republican staffer in the Capital…"

That’s part of a line in a blogpost Andy Aplikowski made, and promptly deleted on June 30th, 2009.

Here’s the whole line:

Yes, that’s right, it appears that a Republican staffer in the Capital is trying to tank some of the condender’s on Seifert’s behalf. (emphasis NOT added)

The subject of Andy’s blogpost was the smear campaign against Laura Brod; Andy made allegations that the smear was coming from within the MN GOP. Specifically, Andy wrote:

The alleged culprits of the attack are Seifert supporters with speculation of the ringleader being the candidate himself.

Marty Seifert has denied personal and/or staff involvement as documented by Brian Falldin here and Political Muse here.

It’s important to note in Marty Seifert’s written response to Brian Falldin, Marty Seifert wrote:

I would ask anyone in question that allegedly has done this to open up to a lie detector test, open up cell and computer records and come clean.

One person that could come clean – and probably very easily – is GOP State Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb, owner of a blog where one of the smears appeared, on June 4th. This was discussed yesterday, here.

So far, GOP State Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb hasn’t stepped forward to aide Rep. Seifert in locating the culprit by handing over easily located IP records. This makes me wonder if it is possible that Andy Aplikowski could be refering to GOP Senate Caucus Communications Director Michael Brodkorb when he says a “…Republican staffer in the Capital”?

More importantly, after making such serious allegations, why is Andy Aplikowski now aiding in the cover-up by not stepping forward to clear the air? Does his silence indicate that he simply made it all up or does he still have information that he isn’t sharing?

Stay tuned!

(crossposted from MnProgressiveProject)

Whose IP Is It?

That’s “IP” as in “Internet Protocol” – and here’s why it’s important: on June 4th, at 6:32 pm, the following message was posted on GOP State Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb’s personal blog:

J Says:
June 4th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Aside from her tax issue which will be huge, Brod will have to answer for her personal behavior if she runs. She’s – ahem – played the field. A lot.(MinnesotaDemocratsExposed)

At the time, I didn’t think a lot of it; it seems to be there’s some exceedingly vile stuff posted over at GOP State Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb’s personal blog. However, blogger Brian Falldin of Change We Must Fight For began noticing a pattern; a pattern on right-wing blogs of posts smearing Laura Brod.

Right-wing blogger Andy Aplikowski tried to take the high road and wrote about this smear campaign in a post that was almost immediately deleted. Among other things, Andy alleges “…a Republican staffer in the capital…” is involved in this smear campaign. Andy explained why he deleted that post here; it’s important to note that Andy did NOT retract his allegations. In a nutshell, Andy found that exposing problems in the GreedOverPrinciples party isn’t a lot of fun, if you’re a rightwinger.

Brian Falldin sent some questions to GOP Gubenatorial Candidate Marty Seifert, who was identified by name in Andy’s deleted post. The Q ‘n A is here.

Here’s what I found interesting, in Marty Seifert’s response:

I would ask anyone in question that allegedly has done this to open up to a lie detector test, open up cell and computer records and come clean.

Well, that should be a real easy one for GOP State Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb. All he has to do is go back to June 4th, 2009 at 6:32 pm in his personal blog’s records, and find out who “J” is – by using the IP Address “J” used to post.

Stay tuned!

(crossposted from MnProgressiveProject)