Last day to vote. Michael Totten is at 43.3% with 16,272 votes, Cole is at 31.6% with 11,902 votes.

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Totten is now ahead 10,684 votes to Cole’s 7,146.

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It seems you can vote every 24 hours.

Go double Totten’s vote count.

Thanks for the tip, Juan Cole.

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@MataHarley:

In a more humorous note on Cole, he’s whining about Totten’s weblog lead on his “Informed Comment” site, accusing him of using the evil, underhanded Bush/Rove tactics

What a sniveling, petty snot.

From Martin Kramer’s Sandbox:

Yesterday, Cole called on his readers to turn out and vote for him. His pitch? “The ‘Middle East’ category is dominated by Neocons. Where are Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark), Helena Cobban, Angry Arab, Raed in the Middle, etc., etc. I think the initial nomination voting must have been orchestrated.” In other words: a neocon conspiracy! It’s even subverted the 2008 Weblog Awards!

So Cole, having raised the specter of the neocons, riled up his supporters, and his vote count rose considerably, putting him in the lead. But at that point, he must have realized that it was unseemly for him to have dismissed the procedures of an award he might even win. (Hey, with all those neocon blogs splitting the neocon vote, he could emerge on top! They’ve screwed up, like in Iraq!) No problem. Just cut out the offending passage, as though it never existed.I’m a collector of Cole’s retro-editing of blog posts. He’ll write something erroneous or outrageous, and then excise it from the record, without so much as a strikeout. In one instance, he made a crude insinuation against me, then deleted it. In another, he wrote that 9/11 was “in response to the Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp,” which he deleted when it turned out that, uh, Israel’s Jenin operation took place seven months after 9/11. He even once explained his “policy” on retro-editing—and then deleted that.

Anyway, below is Cole’s original blog post of yesterday, which I retrieved from the Google cache not long before it disappeared from there as well. The prospect that Cole might win this award, in the midst of his wildly biased and hate-filled blogging on Gaza, is one I find repulsive. That the award should go to someone who retro-doctors his blog is likewise repulsive.

Juan’s revision is absent of this:

It is very odd that the “Middle East” category is dominated by Neocons. Where are Marc Lynch (Abu Aardvark), Helena Cobban, Angry Arab, Raed in the Middle, etc., etc. I think the initial nomination voting must have been orchestrated. What is the comparative Technorati authroity ranking of these blogs? I don’t think it is a good idea to merge Middle East and Africa, either- Africa was really stiffed here.

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Yup… agree with Raymond in DC. Cole is, and has always been, an idiot. Hang, said idiot wrote the only difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists (the PC phrase for the terrorist enemy) was lipstick for heavens sake. Reality left the Cole household a long time ago. So no surprises there for me.

Yet I wonder if Cole will weigh in on the latest rocket attack into Israel, coming from Lebanon? One hit a nursing home’s kitchen, where the residents were eating breakfast. Now there’s a strategic military target… uh huh. And I’m unaware of Lebanon being the object of a blockade, or under Israeli occupation.

The Lebanese govt has condemned it (that oughta stop it…. snort), and Hezbollah isn’t taking credit. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Hamas friendlies assailing Israel on another front, trying to incite them into substantial response. They are hard at work on the anti-Israel PR war. But can Cole see this? Hang no…. the guy needs to replace the rose-colored specs with something more transparent.

In a more humorous note on Cole, he’s whining about Totten’s weblog lead on his “Informed Comment” site, accusing him of using the evil, underhanded Bush/Rove tactics he says they used on Kerry in 2004:

These tactics ot Totten remind me very much of what Bush and Rove did to John Kerry in 2004, when Kerry complained that Bush had allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape at Tora Bora. Bush trotted out some military weasels to deny it all and then indicted Kerry for lack of patriotism. And he mobilized his base, and he won.

So that’s how you do it.

1) You assassinate the character of your opponent.

2) You make his correct statements into a liability by propagandizing that they are false or unpatriotic. And

3) you mobilize a base of single-issue true believers that you can depend on to dominate the discourse because most people don’t care and are not invested.

Interesting that it’s a negative to respond to Kerry’s outright lie and slam against our military strategic leaders with actual military mouthpieces, telling it like it is. Instead, he calls fighting lies with truth, in essence, Rovian tactics.

But who is actually utilizing the tactics Cole writes about? Hummm…. what about that Obama campaign play book based on Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals? Oh yeah… let’s compare:

Juan Cole: You assassinate the character of your opponent.

Saul Alinsky’s Rule #5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.

It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

~~~

Juan Cole: You make his correct statements into a liability by propagandizing that they are false or unpatriotic.

Saul Alinsky: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and “frozen.” By this I mean that in a complex, interrelated, urban society, it becomes increasingly difficult to single out who is to blame for any particular evil. There is a constant, and somewhat legitimate, passing of the buck. The target is always trying to shift responsibility to get out of being the target.

~~~

Juan Cole: you mobilize a base of single-issue true believers that you can depend on to dominate the discourse because most people don’t care and are not invested.

Saul Alinsky intro on tactics: For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose. First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people’s organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power. Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then…conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does. Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place.

Well… at least Cole is well versed on such tactics. But apparently he didn’t learn them from Rove.

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Cole is an idiot. His presence is one reason I no longer support my alma mater ( U of Michigan). Did Cole consider that the World Trade Center was first hit in February, 1993 – THREE YEARS before the Qana tragedy? And you just knew he would try again or go for a similarly spectacular operation. If not with Atta then with someone else. There’s an army of offended, frustrated, outraged or humiliated Muslims out there looking for an excuse and an opportunity.

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By the same logic, then japanese and vietnamese terrorists should be killing millions of americans for the nuking of Nagasaki, Hiroshima and the bombing of Vietnam.

OK, let’s all start killing americans now. We can start with academics.

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It can also be said that Usama bin Laden (UBL) inspired a generation of young Americans (“Generation Kill”) to take up arms against idiot Muslin zealots who think it sport to kill non-combatants in their quest for sexual adequacy with the mythical 72 (re-virginating) virgins.
In the process, UBL made the US public more complacent to accept the Israeli operation in Gaza as the price to be paid when dealing with those who indescriminately fire rockets into civilian (non-combatant) areas.
This then goes to prove that UBL is responsible for the Israeli attack of Gaza.

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Well, I voted, and Totten’s blog is over double the votes of Cole’s

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Juan better get on the DNC crazy train soon because it’s leaving the station in support of ISRAEL, and his little search for scapegoat is leading him down the wrong path and away from militant Muslim extremism.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,477450,00.html

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