Yes, astrology. Jerome Armstrong, co-author of Crashing the Gate with Markos Moulisas used to be (and who know, maybe still is) a Looney Tunes astrologer. I’m not sure if this was before or after the SEC spanked him for touting garbage stocks.
Astrologer Jerome Armstrong notes that Ixion and Quaoar are following close in Pluto’s wake in early Sagittarius, and connects the rise of the political version of religious fundamentalism with the astronomical exploration of the Kuiper Belt in 1992…[The author wishes to acknowledge the help and inspiration provided by astrologer and author Jerome Armstrong of AstroWorld.mydd.com for information and links regarding Varuna and Trans-Neptunians which have been vital to the preparation of this article.]
Ooo-kay…
Right wing blogs are having a whooping good time with this. Liberal blogs are probably too embarrassed to say anything. Me, I wonder how much longer mainstream politicians like Mark Warner will permit themselves to be linked to Armstrong/Kos.
Are you sure this isn’t a deliberate hoax to smear Armstrong? I followed some of those links and found nothing. This link, for example, takes you to an article about astrology and refers to an astrologer named Jerome Armstrong. It claims that Armstrong posts at astroworld.mydd.com, which would make it the same Armstrong, but the actual link in the piece goes to http://www.astro.com which has no evidence of any Jerome Armstrong. And astroworld.mydd.com goes nowhere, simply to mydd.com (that doesn’t prove it wasn’t once a real “sub-site”, but it isn’t now).
I’m definitely not convinced. Putting any reliance on right-wing sites is treading on thin ice.
You may check my site, where an astrologer identifies him as “Jerome Armstrong of Portland,” which IS our Jerome’s hometown.
The posting, which you can trace, is signed by Jerome Armstrong with a MYDD.com addy.
Wikipedia identifies ‘our’ Jerome as an astrologer.
No hoax, guys.
The positions of local river rocks at the time of your birth are as meaningless
as the positions of planets for revealing anything about your life.
check out the Skeptic’s Dictionary entry
http://www.skepdic.com/astrology.html
CORRECTION!
http://www.skepdic./astrolgy.html
Follow the link to the Red State blog. Note the nifty picture of the “evidence,” which is a poorly airbrushed version of “Crashing the Gates” which Armstrong has just published with Markos Moulitsas. (You can go to the front page of the “Daily Kos” for a scan of “Crashing the Gates” and compare it to the “Crashing the Stars”). The airbrushing was so poor (perhaps deliberately) that you can still see the word “Gates” behind the word “Stars!” which has replaced it. Some conservatives were just having fun to see if some left-wing bloggers would swallow the bait.
Before posting this on Polizeros, I read several posts, followed all their links, then Googled “Jerome Armstrong astrologer” and read more.
I’m satisfied it’s not a hoax. Among other things, as pointed out above, Wikipedia lists him as an astrologer.
“He began the site MyDD around April 2001 to cover his main interests of politics, astrology and financial markets.”
(Will there be a battle of the Wikipedia edits? Stay tuned…)
Also, typing in astroworld.mydd.com and then going to astro.com is no doubt a redirect, a command on the server that rediects surfers to that url. You wouldn’t go to astro.com unless there was a redirect on the server.
This astrology article credits Armstrong at the astroworld.mydd.com subdomain.
The astrology article has a dummy url. Although it’s listed as astroworld.mydd.com, it actually points to http://www.astro.com, a Swiss site. (Take a look at the html.)
Like I said, it’s a redirect on the mydd server that’s doing it. You can not type in one URL then magically be taken to another URL unless a redirect on the first site is telling it where to go.
Here’s an example of a redirect, from a site I created.
type paparianforcongress.com
and you will go to
paparian4congress.com
There’s a redirect on the first site sending people to the second site.
No, it is NOT a redirect on the mydd.com server that’s doing it from the astrology article. The astrology articles gives the address astroworld.mydd.org, but if you look at its html code or put your cursor over the link, the link is actually http://www.astro.com, which as far as I can tell is completely unrelated to mydd.com.
Aside from some astrologer writing in 2003 about somebody named Jerome Alexander who’s an astrologer, any other independent source for the attribution? The web can be very handy, but it can also be extremely misleading.
I can’t believe people are citing Wikipedia as a source. Wikipedia is a useful source of information in general. But in the case of exposing a hoax, if that’s what this is, it’s useless. Who created the Wikipedia entry? For all we know it was the same right-wing blogger who is perpetrating the hoax.
On the subject of urls, http://astroworld.mydd.com takes you to http://mydd.com. That proves absolutely nothing. Try typing “http://politicsinthezeros.mydd.com” or “http://imafraud.mydd.com” or anything else. It all goes to mydd.com itself, because the server is set up to capture *.mydd.com as simply mydd.com.
I still haven’t seen any serious proof of this claim.
As for this claim by “The Commissar”: “You may check my site, where an astrologer identifies him as “Jerome Armstrong of Portland,†which IS our Jerome’s hometown.” — are you kidding me? “An astrologer”? Who? This doesn’t pass the laugh test as serious proof. And who is “The Commissar” anyway? The website is replete with references to “Lefties.” That hardly gives him or her credibility in my eyes; as far as I can see this is a right-wing site obsessed with Kos.
The articles on astro are from 2003 by an apparently well-known astrologer with a large site and hundreds of articles.
You’re right, the link isn’t a redirect, my error. If you’re saying this one article was hacked by the Right, that Wikipedia, as well as other ancedotal evidence has to be wrong, I say there’e enough smoke that looking for the fire is warranted.
The posts, via Rogers Cadenhead, address much more serious questions, and he’s not right-wing, more of a liberal, and started the Drudge ReTort.
The 2003 article may well be by a well-known astrologer, but there’s nothing to suggest that the Jerome Armstrong mentioned in that article is the same Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.com. The fact that Wikipedia picked it up (which is what I bet happened, since the article was written less than a year ago by some programmer who probably Googled Jerome Armstrong) simply shows the weakness of using the Web as a primary source as though it were as thoroughly vetted as an encylopedia. All that tells me is that using the Web as a primary resources without being very, VERY cautious is dangerous and can lead you down the wrong path, all of which should be news of the last decade.
I’m still looking for the smoke, much less the fire. The citation is a right-wing blog that has already alterned the cover of Armstrong’s book (probably infringing the copyright, but who knows these days). There’s also a Jerome Armstrong listed under IMDB as the screenwriter for “Volcano.” Same guy? Beat me; there’s no way of knowing short of further investigation. Googling “Jerome Armstrong” gives half a million hits. Bet they aren’t all the same guy! You’re evidence is thin at best. If I were allocating money to investigate further, I’d want something a whole lot more substantial than a coincidental name identity, a Wikipedia article, and a right-wing joke.
If the other questions are that much more serious–maybe they are; maybe they aren’t; at the time Armstrong is alleged to have touted stocks I knew plenty of people on the left who were saying the market would boom forever, that EnRon had discovered a new energy model, etc. for me to be really judgmental about people who look foolish in retrospect–why even bring it up?
Great post, Bob. I’m covering the same angle at my blog.
Sheesh. Joe Hartley is in serious denial mode.
How about this from MYDD (yesterday):
“Another Update [2006-6-25 14:13:39 by Jerome Armstrong]: Oh yea, on the astrological stuff. I have done the new age type things over the yearsâ€â€Âlife’s never boring that way. Down that line, I dabbled with planets and predictions in the most abstract manner, as one of several different predictive mathematical disciplines, when coming out of finances and into politics during my early blogging days (nobody is surprised that remembers the early 2001 days here), and since then have completely tapered out of it over time. So yea, the cons got me on this one being a little out of the ordinary… It has nothing to do with what I consult with in online political strategy. But hey, like JP Morgan once said, “millionaires don’t use astrology, billionaires do!†I hope to see those wingnuts that are obsessed with every little thing I do at the next bikram yoga or vipassana meditation session in DC– but fair warning that I believe we evolved from monkeys!”
No … wait … Karl Rove has hacked into MYDD and posted this pretending to be Jerome Armstrong.
Astrology is one of the best pseudo-sciences around!
Astronomists are engaging in a discussion of what constitutes a planet. If something as small as Pluto counts (and modern astrology has had to re-work the assumptions of ancient astrology which knew of far fewer planets), then other objects recently discovered in the solar system may also qualify as planets. Which would require astrologists once again to re-calculate the effect of the planets on human personality.
Meanwhile, having been ex-communicated by astrology for disbelief and having my sign taken away, I’ve had to live my life solely according to free will. Its been tough, but I prefer it be being controlled by rocks and collections of gases orbiting the sun.
Before posting this on Polizeros, I read several posts, followed all their links, then Googled “Jerome Armstrong astrologer†and read more.
I’m satisfied it’s not a hoax. Among other things, as pointed out above, Wikipedia lists him as an astrologer.