It's long, but well worth the read.

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/05/rally-for-rush

Excerpts:

... Now we'll talk Carbonite. And about Mr. McLaughlin of Sleep Number. And two of the co-founders of Legal Zoom.

Carbonite's statement was especially and curiously unctuous, its withdrawal of sponsorship coming as it did after Rush's apology. Here is Carbonite's CEO David Friend:

No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show.

Friend added:

We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse.

Now. Carbonite really deserves some special attention.

David Friend is making his attack on Rush sound like he's one upset Dad with a couple of nice young daughters. And oh, yes, he wants a "more civilized public discourse."

Is that all there is to Mr. Friend? Quite aside that he gives a pass to Sandra Fluke for her obnoxiously intolerant behavior when it comes to the free speech of others, is there anything else going on here?

Yes. Of course.

Take a look here at this link to Bloomberg/Business Week which profiles Mr. Friend and affirms him as "General Partner" of an investment group called "Orchid Partners" in Boston, Massachusetts. And Orchid Partners? Yes indeed, they are the venture capital firm behind… Carbonite.

Where Mr. Friend is listed as "Co-Founder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President."

So?

So when you cross check Mr. David Friend of Orchid Partners in Boston with the Federal Election Commission, one finds -- ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh shocker!……… that a Mr. David Friend of Orchid Partners in Boston has been a contributor to… ready? Here's the list of just where David Friend spends his political money:

MoveOn.org, America Coming Together and Democracy for America, all three listed here as George Soros funded groups, the latter set up by Howard Dean. Texans for Truth also drew Mr. Friend's support. This group, according to Wikipedia, was set up by MoveOn.org spin-off Drive Democracy.org in 2004. Why? To… wait for it… challenge then-President Bush's service in the Texas National Guard. The precise same stunt for which CBS fired Dan Rather after documents were discovered to have been forged. The Bush-Cheney campaign said of Texans for Truth that it was "a smear group launching baseless attacks on behalf of John Kerry's campaign that will be rejected by the American people." They were. But that didn't quench Mr. Friend's affection for either the smear campaign or supporting leftist candidates such as Howard Dean, and John Kerry.

And get a load of this. Take a look right here at Ed "Laura Ingraham is a slut" Schultz's site for his radio show. Who is listed as a Schultz sponsor? That's right: Carbonite. Like Rush Limbaugh, Ed Schultz apologized. The difference? If Rush uses the word "slut" to illustrate the absurdity of the left-wing Sandra Fluke's views -- David Friend is outraged. But when Ed Schultz refers in hostile fashion out of the blue to conservative and Catholic Laura Ingraham as a "slut" -- hey, no big deal for Carbonite.

In other words, to put it politely, Mr. Friend's woe-is-me I'm-withdrawing-my-company's sponsorship-from-Rush Limbaugh-because of-my-lovely-daughters is as close to certifiable BS as one can imagine. Mr. Friend, one can only suspect, placed Carbonite's ads with Rush Limbaugh because he knew it would make him money -- which he obviously then funneled to MoveOn and the rest. Meanwhile, he keeps advertising on the Ed Slut Show… sorry… Ed Schultz Show. His daughters? His daughters? What a deeply cynical man.

Not to mention Friend's chutzpah calling for a "more civilized public discourse" when he is busy contributing to MoveOn.org, the self-same group that put together this charming video comparing George W. Bush to Hitler. Not to mention MoveOn's "Bush Lied" routine. This is pathetic.

And oh yes, Mr. Friend isn't the only Rush-drop out whose leftist connections are suspect in this episode. Sleep Number's CEO Bill McLaughlin, Sleep Number being a product of a company called Select Comforter? That appears to be the same "William McLaughlin" who identified himself to the FEC as being with Select Comforter of Minneapolis -- when he contributed to the same Soros-funded "America Coming Together" as Mr. Friend.

And how about two of the four guys running Legal Zoom? Mr. Brian Liu is recorded as giving tens of thousands of dollars to two Obama campaign outlets, including the Obama Victory Fund 2012. Brian Lee gives his bucks to the Democratic National Committee Services Corporation. Did I mention Mark Templeton of Citrix gave Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign $2,300?

...

Last on the list is the newly added Pro-Flowers. Their contact info is here. And yes, you got it. Founded by a now Democratic congressman, Jared Polis, the company is currently owned by Provide Commerce, itself owned by Liberty Media. Provide Commerce's CEO William Strauss is a contributor to the Pro-Flowers founder, the Democrat Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado.

Now, let's understand a few things here. Let's pull back the curtain and see what's really going on.

Remember the recent spate of stories on Media Matters from Tucker Carlson's The Daily Caller?

The first one found here.

To summarize, the Daily Caller discovered the leftist Media Matters, along with other leftist groups, had engaged in an intense behind the scenes campaign to fire Don Imus, at one point employing some fifty people in the effort, while Media Matters head David Brock "personally called the heads of various liberal activist groups to coordinate a message. By the end of the week, Imus was fired."

Writes the DC:

Media Matters soon became more sophisticated in its campaigns against non-liberal cable news anchors. Lou Dobbs, then of CNN, was a frequent target.

"As part of the Drop Dobbs campaign," explains one internal memo prepared for fundraising, "Media Matters produced and was prepared to run an advertisement against Ford Motor Company on Spanish Language stations in Houston, San Antonio, and other cities targeting its top selling product, pick-up trucks, in its top truck buying markets."

Ford pulled its advertising from Dobbs's program before the television ad aired, but Media Matters kept up its efforts, working primarily with Alex Nogales of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and with the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other self-described civil rights groups.

In November of 2009, Dobbs left CNN. "We got him fired," says one staffer flatly.

Certainly Media Matters deserves a lot of credit for the work they did," Nogales said in an interview. "They're very effective."

Glenn Beck, the former Fox News Channel host, drew the ire of a wide spectrum of liberal groups while his program aired nationally. But according to several people who watched the process from the inside, it was Media Matters that orchestrated much of the opposition to Beck.

"We called it 'fingerprint coverage,'" explains one former staffer, "where you know it was the result of your work." As an example, he cites the left-wing group Color of Change, co-founded by the controversial former White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones, which received much of the credit for pressuring advertisers to drop their sponsorship of Beck's show. But in fact, he says, Media Matters developed the campaign that cowed Beck's sponsors.

Do you get the picture? The American Left -- whether it pops up in the form of Media Matters, Color of Change, MoveOn.org, Texans for Truth or other groups -- is determined to shut off conservative dissent from their agenda by whatever means necessary. Fueled in part by money like that they received from David Friend of Carbonite. To do this they are quite specifically going after conservative talk radio hosts and television commentators one by one by one. The fact that David Friend of MoveOn.org/Carbonite is there to stick it to Rush is all the better. The fact that Ed Schulz called Laura Ingraham a slut is one big no-big-deal to Sandra Fluke herself when she wants air time on with Mr. Ed. Why should David Friend care if Ms. Fluke doesn't? So, Carbonite continues as Mr. Ed's sponsor, sluts be damned.

As noted earlier, what began with Don Imus, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck has just hit Pat Buchanan.

Now, they want Rush's scalp. So all these companies are bleating about angry customers demanding they stop sponsoring Rush? Mr. Friend of Carbonite has the gall to lay off his decision on his daughters when he's a card carrying leftist who gives the slut business the brush-off when it's Ed Schultz?? Are these people (other than Carbonite, whose CEO manifestly appears to have an agenda) really that professionally incompetent as a company that they don't understand what the Daily Caller story was saying?

Are they really, seriously that clueless when there is a very detailed story out there X-raying in graphic detail just how this anti-free speech game is played? Fifty people assigned just to get Don Imus alone? The head of Media Matters personally calling "the heads of various liberal activist groups to coordinate a message" to fire Imus -- having the job done within a week? What don't these sponsors understand when a left-wing radical activist crows that "we" got Lou Dobbs fired? What don't they understand about "fingerprint coverage" designed to fire prominent conservatives?

Are these sponsors really that stupid that they aren't aware they are being played for suckers by leftist radicals? Or, in fact, like David Friend and Carbonite, are they shadowy, behind-the-scenes participants?

Remainder of article @ http://spectator.org/archives/2012/03/05/rally-for-rush