A Modest Set of Questions to the Usual Suspects

1. How's your love life?


2. Are you currently employed? (trust funds don't count Craig!)


3. If you are currently employed, are you "self-employed?"


4. If you are currently "self-employed," does that count?


5. How many hours a day do you spend blogging? (This one's multiple choice)
A. 4-8 Hours
B. 8-12 Hours
C. 12-16 Hours
D. 16-20 Hours

6. How many hours a day do you think about your blog?

7. How many hours a day do you read your blog statistics?

8. Do you believe you are a journalist?

9. Do you ever say to yourself:
"Darn that Joe Moore, Foiled Again!" or "I'll get you next time Joe Moore!"

10. Do you hate Rogers Park?

11. If no, why do you shit so close to where you eat?

12. Do you thinly disguise your racism by complaining about crime and gangs, or do you not bother to disguise it at all?

13. If elected, would you support Don Gordon's final solution?

14. Do you really believe Joe Moore is part of "the machine"

15. Are you registered to vote in the ward? Are you registered to vote at all?

A Taste of Your Own Medicine

With no expectation of even moderate success, I started this blog to shed light on some of the negativity and nastiness going on in this particular blog neighborhood. I don't pretend to be a saint, or even without an agenda, but I would like to give some of the very opinionated people who seem to take themselves very seriously a taste of their own medicine. So quite modestly, let us begin this humble exercise.

I will pose a series of questions, some serious, some not so much. I doubt any of the bloggers have the balls to answer my queries, but it's worth a shot. To be clear, I'm talking about a limited number of blogs, so let's take a moment to lay out the usual suspects:

Craig Gernhardt - http://morsehellhole.blogspot.com/
Toni Duncan - http://howardwatchers.blogspot.com/
Tom Westgard - http://morosehellhole.blogspot.com/
Tom Mannis - http://rogersparkbench.blogspot.com/

And yes, my spelling will be sloppy, and my grammar won't be perfect. Deal with it.

Welcome to the 49th Ward TruthSquad

Negative attack blogs are playing a role in elections today. Here in beautiful Rogers Park, a couple of nasty people with way too much time on their hands have set to work to systematically set out to frame the debate surrounding the re-election of Alderman Joe Moore, a progressive with a prove record of accomplishment and distinction.

Many of these blogs are anonymous, and many of them thrive on misinformation, deceptive practices, slander, and out right lies.

Many of these blogs assume to publish truth, or behave as though they are journalistic entities, although they aren't bound by traditional journalistic principals such as fact checking, or balance.

Some Blogs allow comments, while others selectively delete comments that the blog author doesn't agree with.

The one thing that most of these negative blogs share, is a willingness to engage in the politics of destruction. Taking a page from the Karl Rove school of politics, and the "Fair and Balanced," school of journalism, these blogs have had a significant, and unfortunate consequence: turning the aldermanic campaign in the 49th Ward into a nasty race that has the net effect of turning people away from the political process.