'Typical of Brock's operation'
"It's good that they are now being honest by [this new statement regarding Soros]," said John Carlisle, director of policy for the conservative National Legal and Policy Center. "Clearly MMA worked very closely with Soros-funded groups. There is definitely a Soros connection there."
Carlisle told Cybercast News Service , "While there is no evidence Soros gave directly to Brock and Media Matters, clearly Soros-funded groups have been instrumental in getting MMA started."
David Horowitz is familiar with the practice of changing one's political ideology, but in Horowitz' case, he was a 1960s radical who became a conservative author. Horowitz charged that Media Matters' original claim that it had taken no money from Soros or groups affiliated with Soros was "a lie."
"This is typical of Brock's operation," Horowitz told Cybercast News Service . "They split hairs to present an untruth."
Media Matters can no longer deny its Soros affiliation because "once you have the names (of donors), once you know that Peter Lewis is involved, you can't deny it," said Horowitz, who as a conservative, co-founded the Los Angeles-based Center for the Study of the Popular Culture and Front Page Mag.com, a news and commentary website.
Horowitz said he is not surprised that Brock's group altered its statement after being questioned about donations. "[Brock is] a guy who turned on his friends. He was a sleazy gossip sort of writer when he was on the right, and he's a sleazy gossip writer on the left, and an unscrupulous one on both sides," Horowitz said.
'Progressive causes'
In Monday's e-mail statement, Aman wrote that the group receives "funding from grants and individual donors." Some of those donors, she added, "are regular contributors to progressive causes ..."
Among the individuals that Aman mentioned was Peter Lewis, the chairman of the Cleveland based insurance company Progressive Corporation and a close confidant of Soros. Lewis and Soros are so interlinked that Lewis' son Jonathan told Jane Mayer of The New Yorker in October 2004 that his father and Soros were "like a married couple."
According to Carlisle of the NLPC, "Peter Lewis works very closely with Soros. When Soros works with other groups, they match each other's giving." Soros and Lewis "are pretty much comrades in arms when it comes to left wing giving," Carlisle added, noting that both men played a critical role in the funding of MoveOn.org, a liberal group that posted on its website last year TV commercials comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler.
A Cybercast News Service examination of Brock's financial records and public documents showed that the heavily funded Soros liberal think tank, The Center for American Progress, (CAP) was instrumental in getting Brock's media group off the ground.
Former Clinton administration chief of staff John Podesta, the current president of (CAP), also confirmed to the New York Sun that his group provided office space and logistical assistance to Brock in 2004.
Soros has reportedly given $3 million to CAP and its senior vice president, Morton H. Halperin, is also the director of Soros's Open Society Institute.
Brock's critics point to his efforts at rising to the personal defense of Soros as further evidence of a link between the two men. In December 2004, Brock issued one of numerous challenges to Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, host of "The O'Reilly Factor" to a television debate to defend attacks on Soros.
In the December 16th letter to O'Reilly, Brock wrote "In May of this year, I asked that you allow me to come on the 'O'Reilly Factor' to discuss your attacks on philanthropist George Soros ... Despite my offer to discuss Soros, you still did not invite me on ..."
MMA has also defended Soros' criticism of the U.S. invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime. In a Sept. 30, 2004 Internet posting, an MMA headline read in part: "Evidence supports Soros's claim that Iraq war is a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda."
"Nobody can utter a word about Soros without [Brock] pounding on him," Horowitz said, adding that MMA is "a hit site that is set up to attack all the enemies of the Soros network.
"There is a shadow party that has taken control of the Democratic Party and David Brock is their rapid response team. That is all it's about," Horowitz said.
JJ -- remember that nifty quote I dug up on Joe Strupp? It was about a book he wrote. And how the problem to date for liberals has been operating from fringe-to-center. When what they needed to do was operate from center-to-fringe. Soros is fringe (now recasting himself as "center"). He's got lots of money to do this. Plus, I haven't yet gotten into my stack to peruse and analyze the Lackoff (hehehe) book on "semantics". But I will. I'm already seeing evidence of the newer Humpty-Dumpty language spilling on out through cyber.
Discover the Network
http://discoverthenetwork.com/tm/TM-1VER/index.asp?keyword=Soros
Shadow Party links:
http://discoverthenetwork.com/tm/TM-1VER/index.asp?keyword=Shadow%20Party