A Bubble Reputation
USA Today quotes studies which suggest that 70% of Barack Obama’s Twitter followers are fake. “A new Web tool has determined that 70% of Obama’s crowd includes “fake followers”. The New York Times describes how it’s done.
The practice is surprisingly easy. A Google search for “buy Twitter followers” turns up dozens of Web sites like USocial.net, InterTwitter.com, and FanMeNow.com that sell Twitter followers by the thousands (and often Facebook likes and YouTube views). At BuyTwitterFollow.com, for example, users simply enter their Twitter handle and credit card number and, with a few clicks, see the ranks of their followers swell in three to four days.
Will Mitchell, the founder of Clear Presence Media, a marketing company outside Tampa, Fla., said that he has bought more than a million followers for his clients, which include musicians, start-ups and a well-known actress he declined to identify.
“And it’s so cheap, too,” he said. In one instance, Mr. Mitchell said, he bought 250,000 for $2,500, or a penny each.
The NYT article lays out the worst case.
If accurate, the number of fake followers out there is surprising. According to the StatusPeople tool, 71 percent of Lady Gaga’s nearly 29 million followers are “fake” or “inactive.” So are 70 percent of President Obama’s nearly 19 million followers.
But TechCrunch is not so sure that the Presidents numbers are so grossly inflated. Their own estimates are that President Obama’s non-existent legions only comprise 31% of the total.
But it is probably unwelcome news in any case for the Obama campaign. Just recently the Guardian noted that “when it comes to sheer productivity, Obama’s massive staff – in June, it was 750 compared with Romney’s 87 – has maintained the president’s lead by dwarfing Romney’s postings on Twitter, out-blogging him on the Obama campaign website and matching Romney’s activities on Facebook.” Imagine their chagrin at learning that many of those enthusiastic supporters were no more real than a three dollar bill. The NYT reports that Twitter is cleaning up their act.
But Twitter is starting to clamp down. In April, it filed suit in federal court in San Francisco against five spammers, including those who create fake Twitter followers. (The case is pending.) That didn’t discourage Mr. Nainan, the comedian. He recently asked about “the theoretical maximum” Twitter followers he can purchase. “They said, ‘You could probably get over a million, a million and a half,’ ” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Why not? I can afford it.’ ”
The difference is that a comedian inhabits the land of fantasy and entertainment while a president is supposed to govern over reality. The discover that many of President Obama’s legion followers are fake seems strangely suited to the tenor of his administration, which abounds in imaginary objects. In late 2011 Obama told Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes that he could scarcely enumerate his accomplishments to that early date.
“The issue here is not going be a list of accomplishments,” he told the program’s Steve Kroft. “As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R. and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do.”
He was just part way through his first term and there he was, level with FDR and Honest Abe. Imagine what he coud do with a second? This self-assessment was widely seen by the blogosphere as proof of immodesty. “How,” they thundered, “could someone compare himself to Lincoln and Roosevelt on so thin a record”.
They did not notice what was really odd: the fact that Obama put Johnson, FDR and Lincoln on the same level of greatness — an assortment that is about as credible as putting Danny de Vito, Marlon Brando and Brad Pitt on the same level of handsomeness. In fact if three Presidents were placed in a multiple choice test under the heading, “which of these does not belong” on a high school test:
- Abraham Lincoln
- Frank Roosevelt
- Lyndon Johnson
which would you choose? Clearly Abraham Lincoln since he was the only one who was a Vampire Hunter.
Few remarked on the strangeness of the comparison at the time, but in retrospect it is all understandable, in view of President Obama’s judgment processes. Doubtless LBJ was a favorite of his Twitter followers and he had to give them their due. Marvels ever cease in modern electoral politics. It is a place where the dead vote, the nonexistent Tweet, most of our friends are on Facebook and all your base are belong to us.
Belmont Commenters
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
But the choice of LBJ is a datapoint, if accidentally. What was Johnson’s signature accomplishment? The massive expansion of welfare. And obama relates to that in a very strong fashion, which is telling of his plans for a second term (should it happen).
1. cjm
But FDR was the king of Socialism in America. Actually, it was a stupid question. A case could be made for any of the three. LBJ because he actually served in the Military during WW2, FDR because he was crippled, Abe because he was half black.
I would guess the answer they wanted was Abe because he was a (R) and the others were (D)_’s.
But your great great great great grandfathers (R) was not the (R) of today. Today’s issues hadn’t even been invented yet.
I have a question. Is buying a twitter friend ‘slavery”? For you legal beagles out there, can the spammer selling ‘friends’ be prosecuted under anti-slavery statues? Or is it plain and simple fraud?
Charlie don’t surf.
Obama also believes economy is about to turn a corner any day, and he wants to win so Romney won’t be able to take credit for effects of his policies. Apparently it hasn’t occurred to him that mere fact of a Romney win will probably add a point or two to GDP.
1. cjm
What was Johnson’s signature accomplishment?
I agree that the great society is johnson’s biggie. But judging by Dinesh D’Souza’s work–that’s not how Obama thinks. I’m going to see Dinesh D’Souza’s movie 2016. Here’s a good essay by Thomas Sowell on the movie. It begins. “Years, and sometimes decades, pass between my visits to movie theaters. But I drove 30 miles to see the movie “2016,” based on Dinesh D’Souza’s best-selling book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”
”
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/obama-369398-world-souza.html
Judging by Sowell’s comments I’d hazard another reason for the inclusion of Lyndon Johnson in Obama’s list.
In 1965 Lyndon Johnson also changed the immigration policies so as favor non white European immigration into the USA. That’s the key. The effect has been to slowly zone the founders out of the future of the USA. As well, the past.
Under these circumstances, as demographics change –you can use the government to loot the white people as they did in Zimbabwe and are now doing in South Africa. I think that’s the great exciting thing that Obama was looking to. That’s why Lyndon Johnson made the cut. He was seen as the direct line from Abraham Lincoln.
Yes, if people think that we have a non-anti-business government at the helm a lot of pent up demand is going to break. There is a lot of power to a bully pulpit and conversely, a bearish pulpit has its own effects. But there is a lot of ruin already built into the halls of big government and weeding it out has got to be lower on the list of Mitts priorities. I must say though that if Mitt can push through his energy independence policies in his first term he’d certainly have a head of steam going.
If Mitt wins against the wishes of the glitterati I am going to make a new years resolution to get hostile with every d!ck weed who berates him like they did with GWB. Being a jackass is not the sole domain of the left. Speaking of pent of demand, I am tired of being terrorized by communists.
How many of his Nobel Prizes are fake?
LBJ was frogged in as an officer and they flew him around a bit. His “service” was pretty much a farce. Bob Hope got closer to the action than he did.
“70% of Barack Obama’s Twitter followers are fake.”
Not only that, but they all live in the same trailer in New Mexico.
But they’ll still be able to vote. It’s about Fairness.
If I sent the antichrist, he’d look just like Obama…
toadold:
“[LBJ's] service’ was pretty much a farce. Bob Hope got closer to the action than he did.”
But – LBJ won the Silver Star!
(I know….)
Is it possible for our entire nation to go on a cruise and drink brain-erasers for 4-5 days, and then pretend none of the last four years ever happened? For the first time in my adult life (over the last four years) I’m ashamed of my country. Really. I question that a plurality of people, including many in my family and circle of friends, voted for this freakish, lying psychopath.
…that a plurality of people, including many in my family and circle of friends, voted for this freakish, lying psychopath.
And likely will again. It ain’t the Age of Idiocy for nothing.
0bama didn’t lie to Steve Kroft, every minute of every day since he won the election is an accomplishment, one of the greatest acts, greatest illusions! Except for the Ponzi scheme called Social Security 0bama has got to be the second greatest scam run on Americans.
May I note another implication other than the basic political one that Obama’s campaign, like him, is a lying sack of whatever. This software looks like it could be adapted to check out another obvious target. FACEBOOK.
Given that FACEBOOK’s owners are big Lefties, and that George Soros bought a big stake in it last quarter, according to the SEC; anything that hurts it is good [and incidentally hurts Jerry Brown out in California, as his budget projections were based in part on the assumption that California-based FACEBOOK's stock IPO price was a floor and not a ceiling, the difference being literally over a $Billion].
FACEBOOK’s financial structure is based on ad income and what they can datamine from their members/victims and sell. They have, like any Leftist structure, been all sizzle and no steak. Their cash flow is based on some really hinky projections, and their ad rates on some …. crackhead level optimism as to numbers.
So lets say someone does an analysis and finds that a) there are Obama levels of fraud as to numbers of real users, and b) that the proportion of the real users that are active and click on ads is even smaller than that ….
If 70% of their datamining revenue is based on false or outdated profiles, that source of income is gone. If the equivalent of circulation figures are that much smaller, the rate they can charge for ads plummets, AND any competent advertiser is going to be suing for refunds based on fraud.
I hope that either StatusPeople or a competitor are busily programming an adaptation as we speak.
Subotai Bahadur
My gut instinct is that Obama has no particular historical reason for choosing those three presidents — he just grabbed for three presidential names and came up with those. I don’t think of him as any kind of student of the presidency any more than he was named president of the Harvard Law Review based on his incisive legal analysis. He’s a fraud in everything he touches and lies as his default position. Why parse his choice of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Johnson as if there’s any substance there? If we could read his thoughts as he makes that comment they would not be “let’s see — which 3 presidents fundamentally redirected America?” They would be “what will impress the people who will view this interview?” Fraud. Bottom line. Don’t read any more into anything he says. F
Many of Lyndon’s achievements are important to the Left. Yes, they were bad for the country in the long run, but Medicaid and Medicare were the Mom and Dad of Obama’s ACA (Obamacare).
Lyndon, more than Carter and Clinton, was the template for the Democrats for the second half of the 20th Century. He stole an election in Texas in the 1940′s (per Robert Caro), was a phony officer in WWII per Toadold, set the stage for the entitlement disaster that is overtaking us now, and frankly was a disaster in much of his foreign policy. Failure upward. No wonder Obama identifies with him.
And of course the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed on his watch, after he spent a good deal of his time in the 50′s undermining people in his own party regarding Civil Rights legislation.
Lyndon Johnson. Of course he is a hero to Obama.
There is some vague comfort in the emerging news that the Obama campaign (and by extension, the man and his inner circle) are less than masters of the subtleties of internet manipulation. This suggests that their grasp is still exceeded by their reach, and perhaps they aren’t after all siphoning our brains through our computer screens as we diss’em on our blogs.
But we dare not assume that same credulity and savoir un-faire from the security apparatus President Urkle commands.
The treatment of U.S. Marine veteran Raub in Virginia is a clarion call. He seems to have been reported to the FBI as a dangerous person by leftward busybodies scanning his facebook or twitter accounts. Subsequently he was “taken into custody” by the government agents who came to question him.
Wonderful.
You have to wonder if there was ANY response he could have given to their questions that would have resulted in their polite apologies and walking back to their vehicles to go seek ACTUAL bad guys. Or had the decision to take him into custody already been made before they were ordered to visit him?
So far, the courage of a single sane judge is all that has prevented this man from disappearing into the minotaur’s labyrinth, denied habeas corpus by use of that SOVIET magical trick of a charge of a psychiatric disorder. Evidently, any number of parties in the chain have the authority to place a little bitty tick mark on his paperwork that can result in detaining someone snared like Raub precisely as long as they damn well WANT.
Jesus! Are there other instances of this abuse we haven’t noticed?
Look at the belligerent and increasingly Aggressive treatment of inoffensive citizens, stopped WITHOUT CAUSE and subjected to humiliatingly intrusive searches. How many have been arrested, detained, and FINED simply for objecting to these abuses, when there was no other fault discovered?
The Police state is here and now.
The only question is whether the incumbent power structure will allow for another peaceful transfer of government that has uniquely identified our nation for two and a half centuries.
Things are often dull here in the nursing home, except when my pleasingly plump sitter spends the evening with me. Engaged in idle conversation,
I said to my sitter
I hear you’re on Twitter
She smiled and said I come quite cheap
I’m on Facebook as well
It’s my name that I sell
And that’s how that I earn my keep
Now here’s how it works
There’s money and perks
For we who are willing to say
That we all follow you
And we read your stuff too
And do so at least twice a day
Now Obama can claim
That my very own name
Is on his big followers list
Now I don’t want to gloat
But when I go to vote
Obama will never be missed
OT,
Does wretchard have any thoughts on the passing of Robert Hughes? I met him once. Despite his theatrical Aussie Leftist irascibility he deflated many false gods and provided intellectual support for many critiques of modern culture that resonate with themes covered on the Belmont Club. He was arguably a more substantial character than the two dimensional Gore Vidal. “The Shock of the New” is still worth reading.
F 15,
Correct. BHO could have cited Jefferson Wilson and Cleveland without it meaning any more. The mention of LBJ is interesting only in that it shows how shallow the attachments of the Left are. LBJ was consciously trying to emulate FDR, possibly because of Daddy Issues. Despite the enactment of the Great Society his patriotism and sincere anti-communism, even if coupled with venality crudity and error, made him a hate object to the Left of Obama’s mother’s generation beyond anything experienced more recently by Bush or Cheney. LBJ was a political pro who played the game with bare knuckles. LBJ and Hizzoner Mayor Daley would both have run circles around the current crop of Chicago Way wannabes.
O.T.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/7/the-civil-war-of-2016/
All you revolutionaries that want to fight the US Army? Well the US Army wants to fight you too.
My Aunt, the retired advertising executive, asked me if I really thought there was a single person that would vote for a politician because they had more Facebook friends then another politician. I pointed out that having 3 sons that survived the 20 to 30 phase, I would put nothing past them.
I had less trouble out of them as teenagers then young adults.
Celer, Silens, Mortalis.
17 @Mad Fiddler
The Raub case is deeply, deeply disturbing to me, and the fact that it has received so little media play is even more suspicious. Yes, he is pretty far out in left-field with his views, so that will be used to poo-poo the whole thing. What I have been trying to determine (unsuccessfully so far) is whether NDAA played any part in this. It seems to fit the template. Anyone know?
Look at the belligerent and increasingly Aggressive treatment of inoffensive citizens, stopped WITHOUT CAUSE and subjected to humiliatingly intrusive searches. How many have been arrested, detained, and FINED simply for objecting to these abuses, when there was no other fault discovered?
Ah yes, “Contempt of Cop”. How dare you assert your God-given rights, you right-wing militia freak?
TSA, Dept. of Ed. SWAT, militarized police, DHS: It’s all conditioning, my friend.
The Police state is here and now.
Yes, the police state with the smiley face is here.
The mask has slipped almost completely off.
Given 0bama’s “You did not built it” slap in the face to small business and now this new inflated twitter followers debacle, I can say this exposes the petty, self-indulgent, power hungry, idiot who unfortunately occupies the highest office in the land.
Worse, birds of a feather tend to flock together. I believe everyone in 0bama circle from David Axelrod to the limo driver thinks that one lie is good but two is better. This probably extends to all statics that the 0bama Administration has control over.
The unemployment rate is probably grossly understated. The amount of actual government debt is probably understated. The inflation rate is probably understated. The war is probably going worse than stated. The number of White House “leaks” to boost 0bama’s polling numbers is probably understated. The actual polling numbers is probably skewed. And, the list could go on.
The damage that the 0bama Administration has done to this country is incalculable. Every time I hear him blither away in front of the cameras while facing the teleprompter left and then teleprompter right, makes me want to vomit.
0bama sucks raw!
Obama also believes economy is about to turn a corner any day…
Well, I kinda think it’s going to turn a corner someday soon too, but I don’t think I’m expecting the same corner or the same direction. All those debts are going to come due and it’ll be a fine hullabaloo when everybody has to deal with the fact there isn’t enough stash to pay ‘em all.
When that happens, and it will, the economy will turn all sorts of corners.
…a lot of ruin already built into the halls of big government and weeding it out …
I take hope from the fact he (Romney that is) was a turnaround guy, and turnaround guys need to be good at cleaning house, cause a company usually doesn’t need turning around if the folks already in place were the right ones for the job.
Plus, he’s already said he likes firing people, and there are a lot of FedGov folks that need firing.
It was a pleasant surprise to see the fake Twitter followers disclosed on USA Today. I wonder if some disclosure of this sort might trigger the preference cascade that Glenn Reynolds keeps mentioning. This cascade might not take the form of plummeting poll numbers –in fact it almost surely won’t– but it might cause former Obama enthusiasts to decide they just have better things to do on election day.
F @ 15: I don’t think of him as any kind of student of the presidency any more than he was named president of the Harvard Law Review based on his incisive legal analysis. He’s a fraud in everything he touches and lies as his default position.”
Far be it from me to say anything nice about Obumble, but the question is — is he a fraud? Or is it really the rest of us who are the problem?
Consider the presidency of the Harvard Law Review. From the few Harvard lawyers I have met, probably about 75% of Obambi’s classmates considered that they should have been president of the Law Review; and probably about 25% of them would actually have done a stellar job if appointed. So why did the prize go to the below-average guy who claimed to be from Kenya (or Indonesia)?
Based on the Soetero we all have seen, it was not his erudition, quick wit, glib tongue, deep perception, or ability to think on his feet. Those qualities are not evident in the man, and they would have been absent in the student too. Barry did not defraud anyone at Harvard into giving him that plum; rather, some key people at Harvard kidded themselves that giving it to the foreign exchange student would demonstrate their moral superiority. And others at Harvard went along, because the human animal has a great proclivity to go along.
Blame Darwin! Thousands of generations of the importance of group solidarity to individual survival (& breeding success) in a nasty bloody natural world have left us very susceptible to peer pressure. The deep desire to be part of the in-group is one of our great human strengths. It may also prove to be the human race’s Achilles heel.
16. David
You missed one of those quiet acts which has historical consequences many years/lives later. It was under Johnson that the Congress and the Executive rewrote the accounting practices that moved Social Security into the general revenue pot to exploit for all those Great Society programs. He cooked the books. There had been some pilfering prior, but that act was the means to wholesale looting and the endless ‘spend, spend, spend!’.
Stoi @ 20
That scenario is so out in left field. Darlington? The Army? Hell, the NASCAR fans would run them out of town!
Here’s the sad truth about all the crimes both openly committed and those not seen is when Mitt takes office they all get swept under the carpet, the really sad fact is BH0 team knows this and is counting on it!
“…that 70% of Obama’s crowd includes “fake followers””.
How about ’100% of Obama’s crowd includes “fake followers”‘ or seven out of ten of Obama’s crowd are “fake followers”? See, if “70%… includes”, then there are less than 70%.
Obama is all fluff, no substance. Obama is a creation of fakers.
Question: How many of his “supporters” are fake?
At the opposite end of the spectrum:
Mostly OT,
Don’t spend any time on facebook, but happened to check back a whole week in my e-mail and spotted an update from our son that shocked me, left me in tears, and engulfed in gratitude that this very very busy young man still remembers the most important person in his life…
William updated his status:
“Anniversary…
A day that commemorates or celebrates a past event. Do precious memories truly mean more to us on one specific day rather than on all the other moments in our lives?
Generally I think not, however, 6 months ago on this day I lost my mother, my friend, my role model, and even my boss.
It seems like only yesterday that I saw her sweet caring smile look upon me, and yet it seems like an eternity since I was last held in her arms.
These feelings know no specific moment, they just are.
So what is 6 months?
6 months ago the Earth was on the opposite end of our Universe and I kissed my mother goodbye for the last time… 185,911,775 miles away from where I am today…
I have never felt so far from her.
I love you Mom!”
Everything about Obama is fake. Obama is the Potemkin prez.
All hype, corrosive substance.
USA Today quotes studies which suggest that 70% of Barack Obama’s Twitter followers are fake.
If any number is associated with Obambus, it will turn out to be fake.
Here’s how Obambus “saves money”:
This week, we found out that, thanks to the health care law we passed, nearly 5.4 million seniors with Medicare have saved over $4.1 billion on prescription drugs. That’s an average of more than $700 per person.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/25/weekly-address-preserving-and-strengthening-medicare
SAVES MONEY!
Attention the Romney campaign – target acquired.
Of course the problem is that even if it doesn’t “save money” it may be a benefit that voters like, it will require some fairly careful rhetorical styling to balance those issues. I think Romney may have to say, “We like this benefit but it COSTS MONEY!” It’s only straight talk, for Ghu’s sake, but I think straight talk is exactly the right way to send Obambus home.
That is touching Doug. My mother is still with me but has Alzheimer’s and I am afraid that each passing day is another step closer to the last… I pray for her and already miss her so I try to make the best of every day. We are all millions of miles from home. God speed.
We have fake leaders, why not fake followers? Jim Traficant left his entire district without real representation for 17 years. He was too busy acting “bad” (for whatever weird reason) and never did a real day in jail for it.
It’s not simply that these people need teleprompters or have hidden agendas. They are literally trained actors who have taken over everything in our world.
2 @ stoicheion: Why do you say Lincoln was half black?
Its the rock star effect. There have been, (and still are), a lot of people swooning over Obama – almost cultish. Actor Kal Penn (House MD) left his acting job on a wildly successful show to become Barack Obama’s associate director of public engagement in April 2009. In June 2010 he resigned his position and returned to acting. I can only assume that the glow had faded.
Obama hasn’t done jack and his faithful are waking up to that fact. Obama’s ability to whip up an orgasmic frenzy of support amongst the young seems to have waned. He plays to nearly empty venues sometimes.
America has had it’s thrill with electing a hip, suave, black man. But it is pretty clear that we need more than a front man to address the nation’s woes. Obama’s been a good front man, we’ve enjoyed him, and many have proven they’re not racist by voting for him. OK, so we’re not racist, but now the question is are we idiots?
Obama in 2012? Seriously? – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4nvhAZ0vr0
2. Stocheion
Lincoln half black?
37. Don Rodrigo
The half black Lincoln thing comes from a 2008 article in a British satirical online publication, The Daily Squib, that was launched on April’s Fool day 2007. In old fashioned English a squib is a brief satirical or witty piece of writing or speech, like a lampoon.
In 2008 they published a spoof article claiming that Obama had been endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan to avoid Hilary being elected.
Nothing that the daily Squib says should be taken seriously. Treat like you would The Onion.
Don’t forget that the President has created more jobs than Ronald Reagan. Spokesman Stephanie Cutter said:
The number is a nonsense. The question is which is worse: that Cutter wants us to believe it or that she sincerely believes it herself.
“The question is which is worse: that Cutter wants us to believe it or that she sincerely believes it herself.”
She is either a liar or is delusional. That means she represents her boss perfectly.
“How many of his Nobel Prizes are fake?”
How many Nobel prizes are real?
Lincoln was born in Illinois, right? He was born in Illinois because Illinois was a “free state”. That meant blacks were allowed to own property. They were not allowed to own property in Kentucky. Abe’s dad twice lost title to ‘his’ farm because he was judged black in a court of law. So he moved to Illinois were it was legal for him to own land;
http://www.squidoo.com/FiveBlackPresidentsoftheUSA
Like everything else, the definition of black has changed over time. That is one reason why I find the issue of race so trivial. If it was important, society would be able to agree on exactly what it is.
Going by the 1% rule, there were at least 5 “black” Presidents BEFORE 0bama. A couple of them bragged about it. One bragged that his grandfather was 1/2 black 1/2 Indian and the best fist fighter in New York state. That would make him 1/4th. There is a technical term for that. I don’t remember it.
Richard, when the numbers are bad, you make up new numbers.
The base will believe anything. His opponents won’t believe anything. So might as well go for it. Besides the votes don’t matter. It is who counts the votes that is crucial.
I didn’t have the heart to tell this guy it was 70% fake;
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/08/22/Jake-Tapper-Im-Spartacus-Inspire-Others
”There is a technical term for that. I don’t remember it.”
It may be quadroon or sambo, not sure.
Slightly OT: I’m half into The Roots Of Obama’s Rage by D’Souza. I delayed because the title seemed cheesy. The book is a masterpiece and clarifies virtually everything about O. All Clubbers should read it.
Seems some enterprising reporter should be digging into who paid what to whom for inflating these numbers. “Who wrote the check?” and “Who authorized it?” And pull on the same thread to look for equivalent in all related services (including polling). (including getting these firms to leak their customer lists, $ and number of fakes).
If any taxpayers dollars went into producing this “propaganda” (and can’t prove it didn’t leak back to U.S. citizens – i.e. was produced with delivery limited to, say, Iraqis or Afghans) then various IGs can go party on their heads – consider the grief they gave Mr. Rumsfeld’s DoD (justified) efforts in this arena. Right, what’s fair for Lady Gaga is out of bounds for most government work.
Granted, we’ll need a new administration and AG to ever get the facts out.