I almost wrote this post a couple weeks ago, after it had been pointed out that once-dominant righty blog (un)Sound Politics hadn’t seen a new post since mid-September, and only a handful of posts over the months prior. Now it appears to be totally offline:
Guess that makes me the last man standing.
Ironically, I owe a fair amount of my own blogging success to u(SP) frontman Stefan Sharkansky, who stupidly got into a pissing match with me immediately following the 2004 election and during the bitter, months-long contest over the gubernatorial results. It was u(SP) that dominated the local political blogosphere early on, but by casting me as the enemy Stefan helped elevate HA into the role of the state’s premier liberal blog. And as Stefan gradually revealed himself to be a little bit crazy and a lot bit wrong, it was HA that ultimately rose to a position of influence as u(SP)’s relevance steadily withered away.
Stefan stopped blogging long ago, but not before destroying u(SP)’s last shred of credibility. I’ll miss his online voter registration database. That was useful. But u(SP) hasn’t been much more than a nasty afterthought for years. So good riddance.
Are they all just hanging out at ShiftWA now, or is that part of the right-wing nutosphere truly dead?
On the disputed 2004 Governor’s election, HA and (u)SP were a near-perfect match: HA got almost everything right, and (u)SP got almost everything wrong. Then, after months of screaming about how King County (and only King County) needed “accountability” in its elections office, the (u)SP crowd simply refused to consider how they’d gotten everything wrong. They continued to insist that fraud had occurred, that more restrictions on (poor, non-white, liberal) voters were needed, that their hero Rossi had been robbed. Meanwhile, the political climate in Washington state became more liberal with every passing year. For example, when (u)SP started, a citizen of Washington state could be fired from his job, or evicted from her rented residence, just for being openly gay; in 2012, voters legalized gay marriage.
While I’m happy for the progressive changes which made (u)SP an afterthought, I am a little bit sad to see it finally die. It was our little local one-stop shop for right-wing conspiracy theories, reality-free speculation, bug-eyed hyperventilation, and laughably useless personal attacks. Even when postings dwindled to Jim Miller talking at himself and pudge’s risibly ineffectual bullying, they still brought us many unintentional laughs.
Are they all just hanging out at ShiftWA now, or is that part of the right-wing nutosphere truly dead?
SnitWAAAAH! shows some potential, but that site is very self-consciously slick and pseudo-professional. Part of (u)SP’s charm was their eager amateurism. Stefan truly believed that he actually knew more about local politics than did Joel Connelly, that he understood our laws better than did Judge Bridges. The (u)SP front-page posters, and their hopeless, hapless, hilarious “brain trust” or “peanut gallery” of like-minded commenters, constantly issued stentorian lectures, getting everything wrong and never learning anything — but all the while still earnestly believing in the value of their endless sand-box archeology.
R.I.P., (u)SP — we knew ye (too) well.
Stefan … who?
So it’s official? We’re calling the fucker dead?
Doc Zato
“Stefan truly believed that he actually knew more about local politics than…”
So the conservative who moved here from Palo Alto turned out to know less about the politics of the liberal City of Seattle than the liberal who moved here from Philly. Heh. It leads me to wonder what Emmet Watson would have to say about all this.
You’d think Stefan could have paid the host server rent for a while longer with the $225,000 he lifted from King County taxpayers while disguised as an open public records crusader. Maybe that waitress sued him for tortiously interfering with her employment … I sure hope so.
The loss of (un)SP is a loss to any number of prospective sociology and social psychology PhD candidates. It was not only filled with “wrong!”, but while it lasted the front pagers and the wingnut commenters steadfastly refused to accept any fact, especially when it was in front of their faces.
LOL good riddance to bad rubbish
“The loss of (un)SP is a loss to any number of prospective sociology and social psychology PhD candidates.”
No tears shed for them. They still have Puddy.
But remember, one of our great blogs, blatherwatch, has stopped. Blogging takes a serious amount of committment with little reward, so when a blog stops, it just means that the blogger has stopped blogging, it doesn’t mean the movement is dead.
The loss of (un)SP is a loss to any number of prospective sociology and social psychology PhD candidates.
Is it all cached somewhere? Future students of deeply and persistently irrational behavior deserve this rich archive of material.
You’d think Stefan could have paid the host server rent for a while longer with the $225,000 he lifted from King County taxpayers…
Once he’d grifted that scratch, there was really no need to continue hosting a redundant cross-posting site for pudge, Jim Miller, Nick Kerr, and the rest. (Then again, one of Stefan’s role models, Rabbi Lapin, paid for an entire vanity radio program, back in the glory days of KV-lie.) I’m guessing Stefan’s wife finally had the sense to stop throwing good money after bad.
(Whoever made that decision severely punked pudge, intentionally or not. He had cranked out three posts just before the life-support plug was pulled, and was still earnestly lecturing readers on how illegal votes were still being cast, and how a proposed gun control law would send your mom to jail for whatever. Publicly set up and humiliated by the very people he’d trusted most — that’s been pudge’s story since at least junior high school, I’d bet.)
You forgot to mention Sharkansky and you also were hired and fired by The Stranger, but that’s just more water under that bridge…
Unlike Goldy, no one wishes for him to go back to work at Slog, either.
… when a blog stops, it just means that the blogger has stopped blogging, it doesn’t mean the movement is dead.
blatherWatch originated in a time of concentrated corporate control of our news media, when places like KV-lie could and did try to dictate elections results to a voting populace in Seattle which had never consented to the likes of Mike Seigel or Rush Limbaugh having that much power. Blogs themselves helped to lessen the threats to democracy which corporate-supplied loudmouths like Seigel and Limbaugh presented.
On the other hand, (u)SP never had much reason to exist in the first place, and once our $225K had been grifted from us, the place was nothing more than a free entertainment site for liberal commenters.
12: True, but I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the resident conservative commentators on Slog is Sharkansky…
Liar
Remember when he called himself ‘The Shark’? What a dildo.
I figured out something interesting. The voter’s registration database deal appears to still be working. You just got to be able to access the main VRD page via cached google results and type in the name/address you are looking for. Other than the fact it is frozen in 2012, it seems to work fine.
#17 Could you provide a few more details about accessing the voter database? Google doesn’t show me anything anymore with a “soundpolitics” search.
I wonder how long it’s been gone. Kind of like a tree falling in the woods, nobody noticed.
Back in the day I was banned from Shark Blog when it was the prototype for (un)SP. Got into it a little heatedly with the psycho-phantic Bushies in comment threads and bang! Out of the blue I was banned.
Now Shark Blog is a platform for the all-Israel-all-the-time blatherings of the minnow’s dad, Ira, a retired PoliSci prof from Jerusalem. No comments taken. Must have taken a cue from Jim Miller.
It’s still going. Whatever…
No comments taken. Must have taken a cue from Jim Miller.
We should always recall that Miller fancied himself competent at media criticism, of all things. True to the (u)SP ethos of Stefan and pudge, Miller could dish out bitter, harsh, and intensely personal invective all day long, but couldn’t take much of it in return.
Even as reliably witless a dupe as KDS eventually complained that “Jim Miller refusing to accept comments while still posting” was a major reason readers were deserting (u)SP in its final years.
Pudge left HA when he got posting privileges at (un)SP. Gawd, does that mean he’ll be back? After all, nobody reads his stupid fucking personal blog.
Here’s my welcome back,
Fuck you and horse you road in on, you lying, narcissistic piece of shit.
“as reliably witless a dupe as KDS”
Too funny. KDS and Amused by Liberals, or as I call them, Stupe and Stupe Too. Both insisted that calling President Obama a “nappy-headed, jive-talking bongo” wasn’t fucking racist.
And then there’s Rags.
I see via WhoIs that the domain is still registers to Shark into 2015. It looks like he was hosting himself (dynamic DNS vice normal hosting service). His own usefulwork is still up. My guess is he shut down the server or it died. Maybe he realized the bulk of traffic was from spammers.
Interesting comment from above that Pudge was here on this blog prior to getting posting rights on un(SP). I hope he does come back somewhere after Jan 2017, so I can quiz him how his prediction on MLK in 2009 that Obama was going to take away his gun rights worked out.
Pudge’s own trajectory, from hard-right (but still reality-based) politico, all the way to full metal wingnut, seemed to coincide with his getting posting rights at (u)SP. For example, during the lawsuit over the 2004 Governor’s race, he alone of the (u)SP commentariat correctly predicted how Judge Bridges would rule.
Having the slightest bit of power, combined with the ever-decreasing success of the right wing in Washington state over the lifetime of (u)SP, seemed to tip him into his now-familiar role of frustrated bully and dishonest censor.
Whenever he’d fulminate over getting yet another predictable political defeat handed to him, I’d think, “people like him are the reason we have Consitutions with Bills of Rights.” Some folks just can’t handle power.
Hey Goldy, some troll on Publicola pointed out that the “masthead” just had Josh’s name on it. Did ECB leave?
Pudge was and is a steadfast patriot.
@27 – You’re a liar!
@27: Another county heard from!
@28: FALSE.
“frustrated bully and dishonest censor”
You’re too kind. I see Pudge as a gun-fondling, mind-deteriorating-beyond-fucked-up-with-narcissism, right-wing asswipe, utterly incapable of empathy or humor, who relishes silencing his opposition. Heh. What the fuck could go wrong with that?
@27 What makes pudge a patriot? Typing words on a computer keyboard? Talk is cheap. I don’t remember meeting him in Vietnam. My “patriot” cred comes getting shot at in a U.S. military uniform (voluntarily; I wasn’t drafted). But that wasn’t enough to keep me from being banned by that sanctimonious little shit.
I remember when the little Pudgster would march down main street on Arbor Day dressed in his Cub Scout uniform, clutching a little flag on a stick and saluting all and sundry.
What a kid!
@ 18 I guess I’m wrong, it doesn’t work anymore. Damn.
it’s baaaaaack…
(ugly) Things like that don’t stay gone for long..
@34 Well good. We need a trash basket to keep the trash in.
I come to bury unSound Politics, not to praise it…
But yes, it has been more of a nasty afterthought and a testament to the impotence of the conservative movement in Washington for months, if not years. Although trying to knock down pudge was amusing, it was pretty much entertainment by shooting fish in a barrel. Slow, dumb fish.
My last significant and probably the most amusing experience was just a few months ago, though. One of the officers of the 47th District Republicans was shooting off his damn fool mouth about how the state legislature would turn solidly Republican because… well… he just wanted it. When I questioned that and offered to place a friendly wager with real money that it wouldn’t happen, he backed off pretty quickly and said that he’d try to get me arrested for gambling. I did not realize that he was completely lacking in any kind of character or resolve to defend his opinions.
@21: True to the (u)SP ethos of Stefan and pudge, Miller could dish out bitter, harsh, and intensely personal invective all day long, but couldn’t take much of it in return.
Jim Miller’s inane rants were an affront to any level of intelligence, and his posts showed him to be a complete tool. At least pudge expended some amount of thought… Jim’s writings were worthless and weirdly patronizing towards the reader for no good reason whatsoever.
@ #1
Boy isn’t that ShiftWa site all fancy chancy? Barely a comment. I wonder how long that thing will stay up?
@32 sounds like a pedophile to me.
Looks like it’s back up again…
“Looks like it’s back up again…”
Having risen from the grave, it’s now the Zombie (un)SP.
Jim’s writings were worthless and weirdly patronizing towards the reader for no good reason whatsoever.
That was one of his most amusing traits! He started many posts with some variant of, “readers who may be unfamiliar with…” and then name Patty Murray, or some other entity in local politics -as if someone reading a blog dedicated to local politics would not know something that elementary and obvious. I believe Carl once commented that Jim Miller seemed to have the lowest opinion of Jim Miller’s readers.
When I questioned that and offered to place a friendly wager with real money that it wouldn’t happen, he backed off pretty quickly and said that he’d try to get me arrested for gambling.
The naked fear with which they regarded any hint of accountability really spoke volumes, didn’t it? That was one of my favorite aspects of the site: poundingly strident pronouncements of “facts” that both maker and reader knew to be nonsense, followed by some nasty reaction when anyone would question those “facts.” (Pudge in particular seemed to hold the unshakeable belief that his opinions carried the weight of fact, and if he just stated his opinions loudly enough — and censored any questioning of them — they would magically become fact, and we’d thus have to argue on his terms. No failure of this gambit ever convinced him to quit it.)
Boy isn’t that ShiftWa site all fancy chancy? Barely a comment. I wonder how long that thing will stay up?
Until the Bros. Koch tire of it? I assume all the whining there about out-of-state labor money means the site is financed from outside Washington state. Conservatives always accuse the rest of us of their own misdeeds.
it’s baaaaaack…
As Soundpolitics.org, yes. (Although I prefer “Zombie(u)SP.”)
Breaking news! Stefan posts on (un)SP! His post says:
“Back online. Sorry for the outage, due to technical difficulties which have now (hopefully) been resolved.”
Meaning if his check for the electric bill clears the bank …
In any event, SP is back. Well, can’t say that I agree with much of what the Sound Politics believe in. Too far to the right for me. It’s another source of reading, however, just like HA.
@43 “It’s another source of reading, however, just like HA.”
Albeit much less entertaining.
They’re going on about the pre-school Propositions on the Seattle ballot. As we liberals have long noted, nowhere does the (u)SP gap between ambition and ability reliably deliver such hilarious results as when the brain trust there grapples with the topic of education.
@45 Funny how they can’t find anything else to talk about right before an election; and, with the election now only a week away, what’s even stranger is they haven’t found anything at all to talk about for five days now.
Pudge already pounded out two posts opposing I-594, with no one but the brain trust there agreeing with his take on the Initiative; perhaps he’ll try again?
@47 If he does, he’s wasting his time, it’s a lost cause. The polls I saw gave I-594 a 2:1 margin, and that was before last week’s shooting.
Then those polls are FALSE! Un-skew them immediately, or be revealed as a LIAR!!!1!
Also, no criminal has ever used a gun. Guns are only used by totally patriotic manly manly men-men to defend liberty in a way that does not involve ever being part of any so-called “well-regulated militia.”