{"id":9841,"date":"2010-04-06T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=9841"},"modified":"2011-09-01T07:59:44","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:59:44","slug":"the-endless-chain-of-what-ifs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=9841","title":{"rendered":"The Endless Chain Of What-Ifs"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the big political “stories” last week was the “threat” letter sent to thirty-odd US state governors, including Governor Pawlenty.<\/p>\n

The City Pages’ <\/em>“Blotter”\u00a0 caught part of the “story’s” big problem<\/a>;<\/p>\n

[The putative senders’] agenda: “The Restore America Plan is a bold achievable strategy for behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of government without controversy, violence or civil war.”<\/p>\n

The letter’s message: Resign in three days, or we’re coming to get you.<\/p>\n

Big whoop, Pawlenty told the AP.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And as much as I’ve bagged on the sloppy, trite, meaningless nature of most of the post-Steve-Perry City Pages <\/em>existence, it’s here that they do a bit of due diligence that most of the rest of the Twin Cities media would have done well to emulate; they did some checking – or, to be accurate, they quoted some people who had some some checking:<\/p>\n

And maybe with good reason. Mother Jones magazine traced the group’s Web site owner via a readily-available Internet domain search engine:<\/p>\n

Turns out goftr.com and guardiansofthefreerepublics.com are registered to one Clive Boustred of Soquel, California–a British-educated former South African soldier with an apparent knack for “anti-terrorist warfare,” computer consulting, and conspiracy theorizing. The sites–and the “group”–appear not to have existed before he registered them, about two months ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, “Guardians of the Free Republic” are no more a “movement” than, say, “Citizens for a Supine<\/span> “Safer” Minnesota”.<\/p>\n

So kudos to the City Pages<\/em>; they didn’t buy the hype.<\/p>\n

Which is more than we can say for much of the media.\u00a0 I tuned into National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” last Friday.\u00a0 And <\/em>Saturday.\u00a0 They carried the story with breathless credulity, noting that an FBI agent had noted that the “real threat” wasn’t so much from GotFR, but from\u00a0 people who “might” be inspired to copy them, or follow through on the “Threat”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, according to a chunk of the media and Barack Obama’s government, the opposition to President Obama is loaded with people who’d just loooove to start tossing governors from office without waiting for elections.<\/p>\n

Which is, again, the meme we were talking about last week; the Administration, media and left’s (pardon the rare and difficult triple-redundancy) are trying to portray all <\/em>dissent from Obama as teetering on the edge of extralegal depravity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the big political “stories” last week was the “threat” letter sent to thirty-odd US state governors, including Governor Pawlenty. The City Pages’ “Blotter”\u00a0 caught part of the “story’s” big problem; [The putative senders’] agenda: “The Restore America Plan is a bold achievable strategy for behind-the-scenes peaceful reconstruction of the de jure institutions of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144,79],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-9841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governor","category-slander-files","tag-pawlenty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9841"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9866,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9841\/revisions\/9866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}