When Greenwald has a post up criticizing Obama, because the emails start rolling in:
“By whoring for Obama, you were whoring for Bush. Smuck!”
Thanx for no thanx for the Bush-lite, ‘bamafanboy”
Hillary would have fixed everything! Speaking of unhinged Hillary supporters, I can’t be the only one who notices an odd resemblance between this “Sarah Palin Blog” and a pink blast from the past.
I figured you all needed an open thread, so here it is. BTW, does anyone know if there is a program that will convert email addresses like mine up to the right so the spammers can not get it? I want to put email addresses up for DougJ and Tim. F.
JenJen
May I refer you to that wonderful photoshop you posted the other day?
http://www.rumproast.com/images/uploads/harriet_segway_yell.jpg
I feel better already. :-)
As far as the email address, why don’t you just post your email as a graphic, for example, the way Atrios does? Readers who want to reach you are smart enough to fill in an email address themselves, and it prevents spam.
MissMissinMiss
Remove the @ and type the word "at" as well as remove the "." and type the word "dot".
Persia
I tend to be classy and just spell the email out in words– like doug j at balloon juice dot com. But I don’t know how much of a difference that actually makes.
wasabi gasp
The Email Encryptor Reborn!
Ryan S.
To fool automatic website email scanners you might change it to say something like jcole(AT)balloon(slash)juice(dot)com. people know what u mean but machines won’t also don’t make it a mailto link
edit- whut persia said.
Just Some Fuckhead
Can’t you just make the email addresses an image to prevent them from being scanned? I dunno, the kidz with their warez these days.
imasmart
Have them create gmail accounts for the blog.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Persia:
This also has the side benefit of making sure old people can’t email you.
Mike G
You could just put the email address in a jpeg image. People couldn’t click on it, though.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Any commonly used text-based technique can probably be decoded by spamming software anyway, and anything cutesy and unusual would be a mega pain in the ass.
I’d go for an image. Chuck at Gumbo Pages used to use a CGI form, but it was vulnerable to hacking, so he’s all image now, too.
MKremer
Create a .gif or .jpg image of the addresses (same size, font, background) instead of plain text or links. Would look almost identical to text, but auto spam scanning can’t pick anything up.
– or –
Make each address as a separate .gif image (each one the size of a single line), then create an animated .gif from them that cycles through the names every 6 to 9 seconds (2 or 3 seconds display of each).
anon
Perhaps this will help: http://scr.im/
Laertes
Who didn’t realize that at Noon on 1/20, Greenwald would instantly stop being a pain in George Bush’s ass and become a pain in Barack Obama’s ass?
Anyone who mistook him for a partisan fanboy was a fool. The man obviously is motivated by principles that go way beyond mere party identification.
The Golux
Check out the comments on Hillaryis44. I thought the wingnuts were delusional, but those folks make Michelle Bachmann come off like Mr. Rogers.
Andrew
@Mike G:
Regarding a .jpeg to display your e-mail address – wouldn’t it be fairly simple to make that clickable?
Not being a web programmer, but a ‘regular’ one, the first thing I would think of to defeat web crawling bots would be to break up the e-mail address into three or four string variables and reassemble them as needed. That way, there’d be nothing that resembles an e-mail address for a bot, but it would work just fine for humans.
michael
Why not get around the email problem and just use Disqus for comments, etc? That way you can track all conversations on & off this blog via user while not giving away your email addy (unless you wish to publish it).
But you probably won’t like it, seeing as how you’ve now been exposed as a anti-Change Change guy. Meh. ; )
gex
@Persia: That will do it. The scrapers look for the HTML mail to tag to scrape emails.
Other options would be DougJ@REMOVETHISFIRST_balloonjuice.com. or some such.
Fr33d0m
I don’t see this one mentioned so: Use an email form with Captcha. Just be sure you don’t use client side scripting like Javascript to handle your form. Otherwise email encryption (above).
gex
@Andrew: It’s the tag that would make that clickable that the scrapers use to get the email in the first place. So, no.
John H. Farr
John, just go here:
http://javascript.about.com/library/blemail1.htm
Basic HTML or javascript cloaking, and that at least gives you a clickable email link. I hate that soandso(at)(dot)silly.com stuff. Anyway, I do this for clients all the time, even when they don’t ask for it.
There are other solutions, too — haven’t used the Email Encryptor — but you could start with the above. Javascript cloaking is better but might not work, depending on where & how you add the code in WordPress — try it and see. The HTML cloaking is the lowest level (most transparent to spam harvesters) but better than nothing, and you can get it to work with an image for the link if you want.
That said, now I’m interested in the Encryptor for my own needs. Thank you, wasabi gasp.
Andrew
@gex: Ah, I see. There’s no way to mailto: $1cat$2cat$3?
I should probably just look that up.
geg6
Anyone who thinks Glenzilla would be an Obama fanboy obviously doesn’t read much Greenwald. And in this particular instance, he’s exactly right. I’m a big Obama fan from 2004 and was thrilled when he decided to run. I registered voters for him, canvassed during the nomination and general, phone banked, went to rallies (and even met him twice), and cried while popping the champagne on Nov. 4.
But I’m as pissed as Glen and KO are about this.
But seriously. Hillary would have been no better on the memos or government spying. In fact, I believe she’d have been worse.
gbear
@gex:
I like that blog name than ‘Balloon Juice’.
Nikki
John, did all the emails you received contain spelling/grammatical errors or was it contained only to the ones you chose to print?
Rainy
Thank you, John. You should read some the hysterics over at Daily Kos. It almost like they didn’t expect this to happen. I mean he did vote for FISA. It shouldn’t be a surprise.
Bad Horse's Filly
Since I’m sure Laura W will show up eventually, I just need to say: they’ve arrived! Took forever. If no one hears from me in a while, it’s because I’ll be bouncing around. Carry on.
liberal
I voted for BO in the primaries and general, and gave him substantial cash in both.
Currently, I’m very unhappy about Geithner and the attempts to continue shoveling taxpayer money to Wall St.
OTOH, that doesn’t make me think Hillary would have been any better. I knew from the outset that BO wasn’t that liberal (in terms of his Senate record), so I’m not surprised. And much of the stench coming from his admin is from former Clinton-admin members, so it’s hard to think it’d be much different.
gbear
@gbear:
Umm, insert ‘better’ after the word ‘name’. I should know better than to ‘write’ and ‘send’ without the crucial ‘read’ step. Crap.
J. Michael Neal
[email protected]
Stoic
Yeah, you can do a screen capture of the email addy and save just that part as a .jpg or .png in any paint program and then link with…
Dunno if that code is going to render, but if it does, substitute brackets accordingly.
J. Michael Neal
Also, I’m leaving bright and squirrely tomorrow morning for the NCAA hockey tournament. If people make progress on a Twin Cities get together, just leave a comment on my blog, accessed through my name on this comment.
guest omen
@JenJen:
ha!
speaking of which, what happened to that cuckoo rothchilds woman? who burned with a hatred of thousands stars against obama. that must have drove her nuts to see europe go gaga over him.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Bad Horse’s Filly: I’m sure she’s out there farting around.
Punchy
Yes, but it’s only available on PCs, not the crappy-ass Apple Powerbooks.
Laura W
@Bad Horse’s Filly: Yay. I got mine two days ago. Posted to you in some open thread I don’t have a mind to go hunt down. Will try them out tomorrow. They do fit, which was a shock.
I will look forward to your review!
BethanyAnne
I like the jpeg idea. There is also filtering the email through spamcop.net, which I use. They are really really good. But! if you are going to use a CAPTCHA, you simply *have* to look at ASIRRA. You tell cats from dogs to prove you are human, and you can adopt any of the animals it presents to you. It’s like it was designed for this place. :-)
Ryan S.
@Stoic:
The problem with that method is most email spider programs don’t look at the html output but rather the code itself and will pick up on the mailto statement itself so its best not use them. using a scripting language like perl. although it will most likely just be a matter of time before the spammers adjust
BethanyAnne
Whoops, link to ASIRRA
edit to say: weird, the first link came through, it just didn’t turn a different color like links usually do. hmmm
Punchy
OMFG.
That video may be one of the most unintentionally funny things I’ve ever had the oppy to watch.
JenJen
I would just like to inform everyone that the chyron on MSNBC now reads "POLARIZING PRESIDENT?" while the talking heads discuss, you know, why this President is polarizing.
Is it me, or didn’t this guy just rate a 66% job approval rating in a CBS News poll?
Laura W
@Punchy:
That’s because your NBFF is not rippedmodel68
Bad Horse's Filly
@Laura W: I’ve been wearing them around the house. It’s a beautiful day here, so I’m going to ride. Tomorrow is to be too windy to ride, so I may take them out in the real world and try them out. I’m still surprised how easy they are to balance and move on. I can’t believe you got yours first, sorry I missed the comment**! I’m commanded to bring them to work tomorrow. Eveyone wants to try them.
BTW, my box was twice that size, three cats worth (speaking of, they’re now under the bed wondering what the hell I’ve done now.)
** if anyone wants to know if stimulus packages work, I have to say they do. I’m working in the green technology industry and we are swamped with work as people take advantage of the rebates, tax credits, etc available to them now. I suppose it doesn’t hurt the President stopped by the state and stood on a roof filled with solar panels.
Xanthippas
Speaking of which that dope Gerson wrote a column today calling Obama the most polarizing President in American history. I guess to Gerson, you are polarizing if a broad swath of Americans approve of the job your doing but you are virulently opposed by a tiny minority of lunatic right-wingers and Republicans who have decided their path to power lies in opposing everything you propose.
Bad Horse's Filly
@Punchy: That’s because you haven’t seen me out on mine yet. That’s worth the price of admission! And LW is right, rippedmodel68 is a definite selling point (although if he gave himself that moniker, I’m guessing he’s also modeliq68)
BethanyAnne
@Bad Horse’s Filly: Well, now we know why myiq hasn’t been around here recently ;-)
NonyNony
@JenJen:
That’s the problem – he’s too popular with Democrats and Independents so he ends up being the "most polarizing President EVAR" because Republicans hate him as much as they hated Clinton.
Seriously, find the poll. Republicans hate Obama almost exactly at the same percentage that they hated Clinton. Independents and Democrats like Obama more than they liked Clinton. Therefore – OMG OBAMA IS TEH MOSTEST POLARIZING PRESIDENT EVARRR!!!! When the right doesn’t really hate him any more than they did Clinton.
Gods I hate the mathematically brain-dead media in this country. If you don’t fucking understand statistics find someone to explain it to you before you try to report on it. The ones doing it on purpose to spin an agenda I can understand – loathe and despise, but understand. It’s the clueless morons that think this is some kind of actual phenomenon beyond "Republicans hate Democrats more than Democrats hate Republicans" that I’d like to see kicked in the ass and forced to take a remedial statistics class. Or twelve.
Stoic
Ryan S.: Yeah, it’s been awhile since I had to do this. There’s prolly a javascript solution around if anyone wants to google for it.
Leszek Pawlowicz
For protected emails, a free WordPress plugin:
http://recaptcha.net/
NonyNony
@Xanthippas:
That’s not quite right. He said in "recent American history" which is basically reiterating the same fucking stupid poll everyone is talking about. And he’s an idiot because he’s stomping his foot that Obama hasn’t tried to reach out to moderate Republicans when he has, in fact, attempted MANY FUCKING TIMES to reach out to moderate Republicans and they keep smacking him in the fucking hand and saying "NO WANT" like fucking 2 year olds. They’ve decided that they need to play to the base to win elections instead of come to honest compromise – that’s ALL on the Republicans heads, and most people get that no matter how much fucking tools like Michael Fucking Gerson want to spin it otherwise.
If he’d actually said what you quoted here, I’d be getting in my car to go bitch-slap the man with a copy of a history book opened up to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln – the man whose presidency was ACTUALLY the most polarizing in this country. Because nothing says "polarizing presidency" like having the country literally split in half and dive into war just because you won a fucking election.
guest omen
@JenJen:
i saw an earlier poll that said 20 % of republican voters supported the stim package. that’s pretty good, i thought, considering all the misleading noise kicked up about it.
Ryan S.
@NonyNony: Yeah but getting things right doesn’t make it controversial or sell add space…
Laura W
@Just Some Fuckhead: I’m guessin’ ya prolly don’t need a chastity escort as ya make yer way around in life. Amirite Fuckhead?
Chris Andersen
I’m a huge fan of Glenn Greenwald and I agree with him that the things he is seeing coming out of the Obama administration are disturbing. But I still can’t help feeling like Glenn is glossing over part of the story. I haven’t been able to figure out the source of this feeling until today when I read a diary over on DailyKOS (here) that explained how most of what we are seeing coming out of the DOJ is more a matter of lawyers fulfilling their obligation to "defend" their client (the government) with all their due abilities. It occurred to me, while reading this diary, that Greenwald is doing much the same thing, except he is arguing for the plaintiffs and, as a defacto lawyer for the plaintiffs, he is under no obligation to provide an exculpatory explanation for the actions of the Obama administration.
Greenwald’s columns read more like legal briefs than journalistic opinion pieces. They argue a position and back that position up with facts. But they make little to no effort to explain why it is the Obama administration is doing what it is doing other than to presume a nefarious motive. Furthermore, since Greenwald is not a journalist, he does not spend much time actually trying to get answers from administration officials as to why they are doing what they are doing.
Greenwald is making a case. The DOJ lawyers are also making a case. The judges will decide who prevails.
The Cat Who Would Be Tunch
In other belated news, I was catching up on my ‘Juicing’ today and I just saw the post about what you went through last week, John. Just want to say that I’m glad that everything turned out alright.
Every time Tunch misbehaves, you should tell him how lucky he is to have you. Shame that merciless kitteh into submission.
Bad Horse's Filly
@Laura W: The neighbors just saw me and almost bust a gut laughing. So it’s official, I am the funniest looking thing in the neighborhood.
Laura W
@Bad Horse’s Filly: We need a youtube video or it didn’t really happen.
guest omen
@Chris Andersen:
in the column before this one, even greenwald paradoxically stated that he doesn’t begrudge the obama admin taking time to review and weigh the evidence first.
wasabi gasp
About the email encryptor link I posted upthread: prior to hanging some fresh addresses in the wild, I researched some solutions and settled on the Email Encryptor (preincarnation.) It’s been a few years now (I’ve since been reborn) and, happily, the need to refresh myself on other/better options hasn’t reared its head as I’ve been 100% satisfied with its 100% effectiveness.
Elie
Sometimes I get wistful for the "good ol days" when we just had a clear enemy in the Bush administration and things were just so clear cut.
I guess in some circles I would be considered an Obamabot or apologist — although I don’t think of myself as that kind of loyal, I find myself defending him. But what I really want to do is less defend him — criticism and scrutiny are after all part of what we all want in a democracy, than put in a pitch for the process of doing big hard complex things on a broad national landscape.
We receive our information topically — as each issue arises we are pro or con. Not sure that we ever weigh competing and intertwined considerations about policy decisions particularly well — mainly because we may not have that information, or those interests.
Its been surprising to me how quickly we have jettisoned much confidence in the administration that we just elected about three months ago. Many tic off two to three or four "bad" decisions made from their perspective, and that does it.
I don’t recommend nor do I think it wise to stop all criticism or just assume everything that this administration does will work out in the end. However, I sometimes detect a "lets get the pitchforks" tone across the blogosphere. Juxtaposed with the right wing noise machine, you get a pretty crazy feeling that we are basically a tower of Babel with no real core belief in any process or system anymore — and that to me is as scary as anything …
The system of laws and governance that we had jumped out of an eight story window and we — I guess — are trying to piece it back together again, though we seem to have no respect or patience for the complexity of doing that.
Ideally, though we elected the Obama administration to do a big part of it, presumably we should contribute or have some idea of what would need to be done and how hard and uncertain the outcome would be – and that maybe the repair would leave it less than what it was. Not necessarily it appears.
To make a health care analogy that I have used before, when you have massive trauma, the various traumas are A"triaged" or prioritized to treat those with the most impact on ultimate survival. Tackling some very serious problems is sometimes delayed, literally, wrapped in gauze for the moment and monitored for how its holding up periodically. The trauma team jumps on the issues prioritized initially. Sometimes, things happen and priorities shift as things that were thought to be waitable actually become too critical to ignore. Sometimes some problems are just left alone to resolve after another condition is treated first that present a key dependency for fixing the delayed issue. It is complicated and many times results in saving the patient but not as he/she was before. Sometimes you don’t know whether many of the fixes will work and you just have to WAIT and WATCH and SUPPORT the patient and try to see what the body can work out as well.
Though I realize that the analogy here is very imperfect, the one core characteristic of both situations that I am more and more alarmed about in our current political and policy discourse, is an inability to see anything but a given narrow issue with very little understanding of interconnecting and dependent issues. We seem to need to see all the way to the end of a policy decision as though it was a clean smooth tunnel rather than a network of many connecting and overlapping realities and consequences – and interests. Since we can’t know these, apparently we just pretend that they aren’t there, thus simplifying these huge issues into the well demarcated issue of the day that we CAN understand and have an opinion. We vote up or down based on that narrow point of view.
What troubles me is that much of what we need to do to save what is left of this country is hard, long term and requires US to have faith and belief that we can make the necessary change — that through our efforts and values, we, not just Obama who is in the end, a transient figure, have the patience and persistence to do what is necessary — not just throw up our hands with – "Gosh, I knew that they were assholes all along!". Saying something like that and the emotion that comes with it just makes people want to run away rather than engage to solve our long term. complex and multi dimensional situation.
We can’t save the jumper one problem at a time and we can’t know the breadth of how he/she will survive and at what cost. We have to have the integrity and character however, to stick with it rather than walk away from it saying, he/she was going to die anyway, in fact, was dead once before he/she hit the ground. We’ve seen this many times before and they always die. This team saves only a small number of jumpers, so why try? Besides, we know the team doesnt really want to save the jumper anyway…
Many think of this period as a test for Obama and this administration. Sadly (or happily whatever the case turns out to be), it is more of a test for US. Do we have the patience and the integrity to do the hard long thing? Can we find a way to stick together? Do we have a vision of our values that allow for diversity of opinion but comes together as a community. How do we balance pragmatism with idealism?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Laura W: You volunteering?
guest omen
@Chris Andersen:
chris, have you noticed the odd synchronicity of these three?
Sometimes the order of the group grope changes, but it generally works something like it did with the Dodd story: Jane Hamsher posts a screed. Glenn Greenwald provides a slightly more academic version of it. Hamsher links back to Greenwald as the supposed ratifying authority. Then the Open Left boys repeat the story (their first headline was White House Throws Chris Dodd Under Bus to Protect Geithner and Summers), demand answers to rhetorical and loaded questions. And David Sirota predictably goes batshit road rage crazy making an activist call for the head of Tim Geithner on a stick. (The only player missing from this dance is Paul Krugman, who had the good luck to have his Monday Times column come out before he could jump on the three-wheeled bandwagon before another wheel fell off.) Repeat, rinse, pout. Repeat, rinse… pout.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/repeat-rinse-pout
Comrade Darkness
"hillaryis44.org"
Whoa Nelly! Guess I never peeked in there before.
I would willingly submit myself to a weekend-long Sarah Palin for Eternal Queen of Alaska party before I would remain in a room with the hillary is 44 crowd for fifteen minutes. At least the former would be sane.
Ryan S.
@Comrade Darkness: They’re wingnuts disguised as dems don’t be fooled…. as if.
Paul L.
Doctor Cole?
Nice to see Joe’s wife is a big condescending @$$ as her husband.
guest omen
@Ryan S.:
they’re not all wingnuts. formerly anti-bush larry johnson’s "no quarter" is populated by liberals. makethemaccountable is without a doubt progressive. they and other puma sites have totally bought into the batshit birther conspiracy, "palin is a goddess" worship and every other rightwing anti-obama screed there is.
Cris
With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good.
Tim in SF
Here’s the way I’ve displayed my email for years. I have yet to get a single piece of spam on it:
http://hisnameistimmy.com/contact.html
(click the link and see).
That might not work for your site, though. Another thing I use frequently is called the email address encoder (google it – the first link). Using this site, I can put in the email address,
mailto:[email protected] and the site spits out code that the browser can read but which harvesters seem to miss. Wrap that code in an href tag and it will work just fine for being a clickable link. I’ve been using this one for years also and the harvesters can’t seem to find it.
gwangung
Not as condescending an ass as someone who’d deny a title to someone who had earned it.
Typical jealousy.
Micheline
@Chris Andersen: An attorney is required to look at both sides of the issue.
Paula
Ummm, I hesitate to piss on the messenger given the importance of the message itself, but that post by GG evinces basically ALL of what I find so problematic about him as a commentator.
If you look back maybe a couple of months, he had a post up about Obama and liberals and their inability to criticize him; how certain bloggers and organizations (unnamed in the post) had been afraid to write anything critical because they were afraid their readership/membership would fall given his popularity.
Now, I don’t know who the hell he was reading, but I was reading criticisms of Obama’s faith-based office, his cabinet appointments, etc., along with the ongoing criticisms of his economic appointees and plans and his DOJ policies from the usual suspects: Tapped, Digby, ObWi, etc.
Also, I’m no defender of Olbermann, cuz that entire MSNBC cabal Including Maddow tends to rub me the wrong way, but he (and obv Maddow) made Obama’s policies towards Bush admin crimes a priority in a few stories and at least one special comment right before the inauguration.
So to see GG literally pat the heads of other bloggers and pundits like they are "finally" seeing the light is condescending and kind of presumptive on his part to take on the attitude like he’s been the "only" one willing to criticize him. I’d rather he call them lackeys like he usually does. But given that many other bloggers — both Obama-boosting and not, have followed Obama’s DOJ, this self-congratulation posing as praise for others just annoys the fuck outta me. /end of rant
Robin
Is a "smuck" the same thing as a "moran"?
asiangrrlMN
@gwangung:
Yeah, that. And considering that doctor CAME from doctorate originally, well, I think DOCTOR Jill Biden has the right to use her title if she damn well wants. She earned it. Both my parents have doctorates, and they use their titles in their professional capacities. It’s standard protocol, especially for women who tend to be around asshole men who want to deprive them of their due respect.
/rant.
KRK
@Micheline: Anyone who briefs the other side’s arguments is a lousy attorney.
@Paula: Rant away, sister!
Michael D.
How about “Email to ASCII?”
http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html
Michael D.
I don’t understand all this “state secrets” stuff – just like I don’t quite understand what’s going on in the economy. But I’m going to say this anyway, and then I am going to duck!
Is it possible that there are actually some legitimate state secrets that are being protected and maybe we were wrong to criticize the Bush administration for using it as a defense?
I don’t want to defend Obama where it’s not warranted. Believe me, I don’t. With Bush, I could believe that invoking the so-called “state secrets” privilege was bogus and criminal. With Obama, I don’t – at least not so much.
It might be my rose-colored glasses, however.
KevinD
@Michael D.: The point Glenn G. has been making is that if there are legitimate state secrets to be protected, the can be individually redacted or otherwise kept from view during a trial, but there’s a big problem with the government saying that these cases should just be thrown out without a hearing in the interest of “national security”.