Lying bastards

Some recently received comments:

I was not going tothe Dinner untill I noticed that Jacobs has the Union label on his signs. I thought both canidates for Senate would be smart enough to do this. Then I noticed the kid Rumler had his signs made by www.makeasign orsomething like that. They are a non union outfit. This realy swayed my vote. Maybe this is how they get signs out in DC but this town is still a union town. Mike you win my vote.

-- Comment left by "Anonymous" on "Spaghetti-palooza" post 3/03/2006 04:52:32 PM

My understanding is that Jacobs will run comercials showing Rumlers yard signs are non union and ask the question if Rumler is anti-union. It will be interesting to see how Rumler will handle this. Should make for interesting politics. Maybe Rumler will come out for right to work.

--Comment left on "Paul Rumler Discussion" 3/03/2006 05:13:24 PM

I am a union member and the fact that Rumlers campaign signs come from a non union shop in Iowa is an outrage for a canidate for State Senate in the QC.

--Comment left by "Anonymous" on "Spaghetti-palooza" post 3/03/2006 06:47:50 PM:

I was going to vote for Paul Rumler until I got out of my car and looked at one of Rummler's small red campaign sign. To my amazement there was no union bug on the sign. What kind of politican doesn't use a union printer for his or her campaign material?

Why would Rumler use a non-union sign shop located in Iowa to print his fancy red campaign signs? Doesn't he support the union shops in his District? What gives?

--Comment left by "UNIONMAN" on "Paul Rumler Discussion" 3/04/2006 11:01:23 AM

I didn't post the above comments previously because by now I can spot the efforts of these partisan slime attacks a mile away. They are reprinted exactly verbatim as they were sent, mistakes included.

While out and about today, I passed a couple "fancy red" Rumler signs, one large, and one standard size, and it occurred to me to stop and actually see if these charges were true.

As the pictures prove, they're not. Contrary to the accusations, Rumler's signs were printed by a union shop. It's right there to see.

So I wrote a blistering post blasting these people who so often leave comments here which are untrue and merely invented tales designed to smear whoever the enemy of the moment happens to be, usually Rumler or Boland or myself. I let them have it with both barrels. I was sick to death of the lies, B.S., and made up smears and this was the straw that broke the camel's back.

If you've read the blog for any length of time, you've likely seen these sorts of phony smears from this crowd many times. Though I've had to start screening them out, I still get several a day on average, and of course, I then get goofy attacks suggesting it's unfair to not allow them to use my blog as a bathroom wall for them to scrawl their lies and gutter tactics.

I had assumed that since the first two Rumler signs I happened to check, signs which have been up since shortly after Rumler's announcement, were printed by a union printer, that they all must be. I thought this was proof that these people were flat-out lying, and I said so in no uncertain terms.

But soon after I posted it, a commenter wrote in to say that they must have been in error, as they had indeed seen a Rumler sign which did not include the union "bug", the little oval logo thing which indicates it's been printed by a union shop.

They sounded sincere, and so I invited them to send in a picture of such a sign to verify it. Or better yet, I said, tell me the location of one so I can verify it myself.

They, or someone else, then obliged by sending in the picture below.

The picture looks legit as far as I can tell, and indicates that there are at least some Rumler signs out there without the union bug.

So now it appeared as if both sides of the issue had made the same mistake of assuming, based on a few yard signs, that all the rest must be the same. Of course this is a logical conclusion, since why would some be union and some not?

But those who wrote in saying Rumler signs weren't union made not only assumed that because a few signs didn't have the union bug that none of them did, they also took this and stretched it into the suggestion that Rumler must be anti-union. And not only that, but suggesting that Jacobs has actually gone as far as spending money on producing an attack ad against Rumler for not having union printed yard signs. Of course, this wouldn't be the first time they'd tried to intimidate their opponents with some completely made up threat. It's one of their favorite things to do.

So I had to dial back my attacks, admitting that as weird as it seemed, there was now evidence that Rumler signs were both union AND non-union.

Immediately, a few commenters were gloating and attacking me for being proven wrong (even though they were just as wrong).

** THE PLOT THICKENS**

It didn't take long after that for an alert commenter (God bless 'em) to point out something I'd missed.

ALL of Rumler's signs are printed by the same company. The same company that printed the signs I saw with the union label also printed the ones without it. How likely is it that the company was non-union one day and then union the next?? Obviously, all of Rumler's signs, union bug or not, were printed by a union shop.

As they said, it's pretty clear that the company simply ran off a batch and neglected to put the union bug on them, then corrected the mistake in the other print runs.

As a matter of fact, shortly afterwards, another sharp commenter sent in proof that this was indeed the case, and not only that, but that the company had made efforts to correct their mistake by supplying the Rumler campaign with stickers containing the missing union bug so people could fix the signs.



Evidently the campaign had then distributed these stickers to property owners who had the misprinted signs.

This suggests that the supposedly "non-union" sign in the picture above was simply one where the property owner never got around to putting on the correction sticker.

The person who sent in the picture of their sticker said it was very cold out when it arrived, so they didn't put the sticker on right away and it got lost in the shuffle. When they read about the controversy here, it prompted them to dig it up and send along the picture along with an explanation.

I've written the Rumler campaign for their side of things and am awaiting a reply.

So the screw turns again in the saga of the all-powerful union bug and the people who gleefully tried valiantly to start a smear campaign where there apparently was nothing to smear.

Those who were so quick to gloat over their "proof" of the supposedly "non-union" sign have now been made to look foolish.

The bottom line at this point?

Rumler's signs were always union made. Every one of them. The company simply messed up and forgot to include the union "bug" on one of the print runs. They subsequently printed and sent out stickers intended to correct the mistake. These didn't get put on all of the misprinted signs for one reason or another.

Jacobs hacks came along as always, looking for a way to create some manufactured outrage and found one of the uncorrected signs. AHA!, cried Smearman and Boy Blunder, rubbing their thighs in glee, it's off to the blogs and elsewhere to spin this oh-so-damaging image! To the Smearmobile!! (cue Smearman theme)

So they sent in a few phony baloney comments spinning this fact for all it was worth, smearing Rumler as some anti-labor nut, slipping in some crack about D.C., included the obligatory "outrage" over this heinous crime, pretended to be a voter who was now switching votes because of it, as well as a supposed "union man", even stating 5 times the novel idea and bald-faced lie that the union shop that printed the signs is "non union." (One particularly dim-witted commenter actually went a step further, saying that this union printing company is "anti-union")

The comments above are but one small example of the relentless smear attempts and pure B.S. these people have peddled here nearly non-stop since Jacobs was appointed. I truly don't think they know how to do anything else.

They found perhaps one sign without a union bug and, not being capable of putting one and one together to figure out on their own that the signs were indeed union made, and without bothering to find out the facts, they immediately launched a smear campaign, complete with a planned or threatened attack ad run. Swell folks.

I'm sure they're yanking that supposed attack ad back so hard it's got whiplash. I sincerely regret that the timing of this wasn't such that it was able to run first, that is IF in fact it was anything other than a typically empty threat from this crowd. Then they could have been exposed to an even wider audience as the sleaze merchants they are.