I've been following your blog for quite some time now. I've always enjoyed your posts. And then this one came along. Where in the hell do you get off summarily posting on your blog that the current President of the United States is a crook? It's fine to not agree with his policies... debate is valuable. But just saying, out of the blue, that he is a crook is completely uncalled for and outrageous. It's unfounded comments like that that will propel him into winning the upcoming election because most intelligent people can see through rhetoric like that and there is a "I feel for him" attitude that grows out of these baseless attacks.

I'm removing your blog from my list of daily visits. I know you could care less, but I thought I would publicly display my disappointment over your need to bring politics into this especially since it is completely unrelated to your topic of expertise.

I just can't support or even take seriously anything you report from this point on.

Just sad... very sad.

Regards,
Dan Sherman

While I generally try to keep up with search engines and internet marketing, my main interest in the internet is improving the world through social policy reform.

Through advice I have given people over the internet people have told me that I restored their sanity by giving them better advice than their doctor was. I never took a single day of medical school.

This blog will primarily remain search engine focused, but I randomly will throw in my opinions. Some people will hate me for that.

I knew I would get posts telling me I am out to lunch for my opinions (as I have been told this before). I was fairly certain some people would stop reading my blog, and that is ok too. I was fairly certain I would lose money for expressing my opinions. That's ok too. I expressed my frustrations as I felt them, knowing the consequences of expressing my opinions.

If I spark one person to do research and that one person does not vote for Bush it will be worth me losing 100 loyal readers. I obviously could have spoke more eloquently though.

And while you may think the internet has nothing to do with politics I disagree. Nowhere else in the world could I learn enough in a year to have hundreds or thousands of people read what I write every day.

Will they all agree with me? nope.
Can I please everyone? nope.

Usually most of my personal posts are kept on another blog and sometimes I slide random stuff in here. Perhaps including my opinion of Bush was a bad call, but it is water under the bridge now (so long as he does not get "re" elected).

The internet and search engines have a lot more to do with politics than one might think. Why were casino ads removed from Overture and Google if search has nothing to do with politics?

Hi Aaron,

Unlike many liberals I know who profess tolerance yet can't stand to hear anything I say that might be positive about our current President (ironic, heh?) I ENCOURAGE political discussion and I love to debate the merits of policy... etc. I even don't mind it so much out of context such as political discussion on a SEO site. What I took issue with was your blatant accusation without so much as a link to backup your statement.

This is a major problem right now in trying to reconcile the differing camps in this country. Republicans would love nothing more than to debate issues but it's difficult when one side insists on working from emotion and we want to come at it from logic.

You saying what you said is like my saying "President Clinton is a killer." I may FEEL that he was this (lots of people dying around him that knew lots of stuff... etc) but it would be irresponsible of me to say this without at least any circumstantial proof.

So, in summary... if you had said, "I believe President Bush's policies are irresponsible and are leading us down a path of ... blah, blah." This is a responsible statement that leads to discussion. Blurting out that he is a criminal basically shuts down any discussion since it's obvious you aren't open to logical debate.

Do you see where I am here, Aaron? It's your blog and it's your business. I would never NOT do business with someone because they had a different political philosophy because I support intellectual honesty in all subject matter. However, I would drop whatever I was doing with them if they showed prejudice or stated things that were based in ignorance of the subject matter just to get my goad. It shows a disrespect for what might be opinions of my own that differ from yours.

Wouldn't your time be better spent trying to convey your opinion in a way that someone who is actually thinking of voting for Bush would give some thought to what you said? Your statement really only served to alienate people from your blog that were definitely voting for Bush anyway and those that were on the fence followed your link and saw only info about Nixon and scratched their head and wondered how that had anything to do with Bush and then just moved on.

And, yes, I came back... to see if you responded. :-)

Cheers!
Dan

The biggest benefit of the hyperlink is to point to a source. To put text in context without recreating the wheel.

The way I wrote that was probably more indicative of frustration than fact and was somewhat stupid. (I have since added a link and a sentence to suport my verbiage)

I can't expect others to play through that 1 hour game to read all the good stuff in there.

The game actually has a bunch of facts in there, but I did not want to point out all of the specific examples because I do not want to focus heavily on politics.

As far as you using the example "President Clinton is a killer." I would probably agree with that statement if I were a bit more informed about the exactness of political happenings in the world.

For example: our foreign aid to Turkey drastically rose in the mid to late 90s as they were slaughtering off their Kurdish population. That indirectly (or more probably directly) would make "Clinton a killer."

a few articles on that topic (covering the needless slaughter of Kurds in Turkey and Iraq):

• http://www.kurdistan.org/Washington/lostkurd.html
• http://www.diamandagalas.com/defixiones/StLouis0995.htm
• http://www.pressherald.com/news/state/040415kurds.shtml

I am not liberal. I am not associated with either political party. I think our political system is complete crap and in need of serious reform. The internet allows me to express that opinion. I am a member of the ACLU and will soon join EFF and help fund other worthy organizations :)