Last week we showed you how the FiredUp Missouri blog manipulates the media. Spokesman for the Carnahan campaign or the Missouri Democratic Party forward releases to the press, and when reporters write about the stories, FiredUp links to the reporter, pretending they are reading the news, rather than driving it.
Every political reporter in Missouri knows how this works. But let's not stop there. FiredUp also posts news from sources outside of Missouri - usually progressive blogs that write about Missouri news. In two more examples of how FiredUp Missouri is actually a press organ for Robin Carnahan's Senate campaign, I want to show you how stories attributed to outside sources are posted on the FiredUp blog prior to the alleged source writing the story.
First we have the League of Conservation Voter's ads that ran in April of 2009. The ads were uploaded to YouTube shortly after Mindy Mazur left America Votes to run Carnahan's campaign, and while Paula Hodges, formerly of the SecState was the political director for the Missouri chapter of America Votes.
FiredUpMissouri ran this post on April 20, 2009 at 8:39 a.m., announcing the LCV ad campaign. In the post, they claim they got the story from TPM, which is talking points memo.
They link the story with a (h/t to TPM) just under the YouTube video. H/T is a blog expression for hattip. It means you got the story from someone else, and are giving them credit with a tip of the hat.
There's just one problem.
Talking Points Memo didn't run the story until 9:55 a.m., which even if you give them an hour for being on the East Coast, is still posting after FiredUp. If FUM didn't get the story from TPMDC, who did they get it from? Heck, The LCV's own blog ActGreen didn't post the story until late in the day, 2:41 p.m., to be exact. How did FUM get early wind of the story? Are we supposed to believe that FiredUp can now predict the future?
While we're at it, let's take a look at which author was responsible. It's General Content, who we reported last year was none other than Jeff Mazur, Nixon aide and husband to Mindy Mazur. Did Jeff post information to the FiredUp blog because he had advance notice of the attack ads? It certainly seems so.
That's not the only time this happened.
On June 18, 2009, the General Content author ran another story where they give credit to another site prior to the other site posting. The post title is: New report: Clean Energy Economy will create 1.7 Million Jobs. The post time is 9:24 a.m. The post ends with via Think Progress, which means the General Content author got the post via the Think Progress link.
You already know how this ends.
The Think Progress link shows the post was made at 11:29 a.m. that day, once again far in advance of the post they claim they got the story from. And once again, we're talking about energy.
How exactly does this keep happening? Is FiredUp prescient? Do they have the all seeing Carnac the Magnificent working for them? Or could it be that FiredUp, specifically Jeff Mazur is being fed information from another source that helps direct the progressive narrative, and in being sloppy, jumps the gun on their posts?
However you look at it, we know this - the League of Conservation Voters, in coordination with several other allies, targeted Roy Blunt in 2009 with over $750,000 in ads focused on his Senate campaign. While Robin Carnahan is out pretending she's underfunded in this race, when you add in her third party coordinated attacks, she's wildly outspent Blunt.
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