OK....follow me here.
www.gather.com is a website for people to write about and discuss various issues, including ones of a political nature. They advertise almost exclusively on FOX. We all know that FOX is the Republican/Bush broadcasting network in all but name only, but who was I to question Gather's choice of who to advertise with?
Back in late September, Gather advertised that they were having a contest for political writers who would cover the election, and at least 20 writers would be chosen, one from each side in ten states, with the possibility of choosing more writers, and adding more states to the coverage if there were enough interest. Now, with a prize at stake of some $500 dollars, there was plenty of interest on all sides of the issues in this election. With 50 states, it should have been no problem finding 100 of us who were willing to write on political issues regarding the 2006 fall election cycle.
Yet when Gather announced their choices, I noticed only sixteen writers were chosen, most of them with A) a Republican slant to their views, or B) a Libertarian/Conservative slant in their views. Many good liberal leaning Democratic voices on the site who applied were not chosen. It seemed odd at the time, but NOTHING I could put my finger on....UNTIL TODAY.
Today, doing my usual web searches looking for anything that might help my Democratic Choice here in the 19th Congressional District of NY, John Hall, I stumbled across the web site for a Republican Pac, http://www.mypartytoo.com/blog/ and started browsing around, and leaving some contrary views as I am prone to do.
Then I started studying the site, and found that Foley, Boehner, Sue Kelly, Shay, Kolbe and others are included in this group...interesting. Then I found something that BLEW ME AWAY. On the side bar, former New Jersey Governor Whitman (she writes the blog entries) has other recommended blogs listed. One of the blogs conveniently happens to be one of the chosen high profile writers here on Gather. You can verify this here: http://cayankee.blogs.com/
Sorry, but find it more than kismet that one of former New Jersey Governor Whitman's personal shrills just happens to get chosen to be a part of the Political Writing Contest here on Gather. Not sure what the mathmatical odds are, but you can bet the numbers are mind boggling, and it leaves me wondering who California Yankee really is, and what Gather is up to?
I am now thinking Gather might be a Republican site designed in a fashion to get around the election laws because it is a for profit organization who's primary purpose is NOT POLITICS. But, what if it is, what if Gather's hidden purpose is DATA MINING? What if this is one of the ways the Republican Party is getting the names, email addresses and phone numbers of voters? What if GATHER is a HUGE PART of the infamous Republican Get Out the VOTE machine?
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Comments: 25
I think Gather is expanding its reaches politically as everywhere else. Intersting comparisons you make, Porgie.
we can argue/exchange views on political and international news. i think that is positive. that's why i started the group.
i'm a republican, although a dissident republican. i don't have time to be subversive, lol, and don't have that inclination.
do the republicans want to organize and persuade? yes, they do. so do democrats. so do libertarians. so does most everyone that posts here.
so i'm fine with stuff.
hope we get more fox watchers. we're light on the conservatives, heavy on liberals on gather.
gather needs to grow. they need to attract new people to the website. i'd hate to see gather die because they couldn't attract new people.
Without a doubt. Is it any wonder that so few actually make any effort to become and stay informed?
"Hmmm. I do know that MPR has a controlling financial interest in Gather Inc. "
You do know that, since BushCo took over, even NPR has been infiltrated to carry a more rightwing agenda, right?
"and also that for many months a majority of the people here were considered to be very liberal. "
I tend to believe that the majority of the nation actually holds rather liberal views, and that there really are only a tiny handful of radical rightwing extremists, regardless of how loud they may be. Issue by issue, the majority of this nation leans rather convincingly democratic.
What if the Bush administration is " Gathering " information on those of us who are writing articles and posting comments in opposition to him ? Does this sound far fetched ? Consider the following.
My brother was a habitual blogger. He, like my self, often posted controversial comments. It wasn't very long until the FBI hacked his computer and started showing up at this house to harrass him. He died in a mysterious, unexplained and unsolved single car accident in 2002.
Just a thought.
BTW, I'm Republican, however many fellow Republicans feel the same way that I do.
George W. Bush = Adolph Hitler
Georgy W. Hitler is the " World's Most Dangerous Man "
I'm 46 years old, and never in my lifetime has our country been hated so much worldwide, and all of this since Adolph W. Bush took the oath. Do the math.
Just throwing out another conspiracy theory. Have to say I have seen/heard gather ads on several sources. Perhaps they advertised on Fox as they didn't want the site to have a totally liberal identity like Huffpost? A thought, that's all.
The Feds can hack our computers. The N.S.A. has keywords to look for certain words that we may post on our computer, or that we may say during our phone conversations, and all of this bounces off of satellites and the N.S.A. can intercept those " key words ".
Did you hear about the High School girl who posted " Kill *^*# " on " MySpace " ?
She was paid a visit by the Secret Service. Now just how the heck do you think that the Secret Service knew that she posted that ? hmmm
Anyway, Saint Joan's theory isn't bad.....I'm sure the gov. is more disturbed about blogging in general than about individual bloggers, at this point....
It must be frustrating for the gov. to know that while it has succeeded in muzzling the mainstream media, this blogging thing is continuing to reveal a great deal of "sensitive" info and is growing rapidly into a major source of uncontrolled information.
Look for more problems down the road and maybe legislated fees or other regulatory impositions....
Yes, I know about that. I was being facetious about the gather technical issues but nothing the guberment does in the way of spying and torture and killing people surprises me these days. I'm sure I'm in some sort of FBI file.
This article is hilarious.