Tête-à-Tête-Tête

Well, here’s the scoop. I live in Chattanooga, and know quite a lot about this firm. Judging by the size of their team, it’s pretty common knowledge that 99.9% of their revenue comes from the RNC. Your post’s assumption that they serve a ton of customers is a joke. They have a few commercial clients here in town and over-subscribe the bandwidth that the mighty Republicans buy to make a little dough. It is no secret that if they ever lost that account that they would “lock the doors” overnight. I’d say that they would do what ever they were told to keep the RNC happy customers.

Thanks for posting this, smijer, and thanks for the information, Neal. If you find or think of anything more, keep us posted!

Things heat up a little for GWB43.com. See also here.

Well, well, well. Hadn’t realized Bush and Rove dropped into Chattanooga on Feb 22. Rove had a COPTIX brochure under his arm; COPTIX is apparently/allegedly related to SmarTech somehow, haven’t tracked it all down yet, but CorrenteWire has stuff.

Anything in the local papers or blogs whether this Bush trip to Chattanooga was a “sudden decision” or not?

His trip - not sure how long scheduled, but the local media got word of it only about two days before it happened. Apparently they had been talking to one of the hospitals he visited for a good while beforehand to set everything up.

Coptix? I don’t see much about where they figure into the whole deal. I’ve met a couple of people from there, nice people one & all. I can’t speak for them, though… I know at least one of them is a Democratic Party (official?). Best of my knowledge, Coptix is a straight-up organization… At one point their servers hosted Chattablogs.

btw, not sure if they still host chattablogs.. the reason I said “at one point” because I haven’t kept track in a while, and I don’t know if that is still the case.

Well, as you’ve doubtless learned by now, the Coptix crew isn’t quite as straight-up as they seemed — they (or at least Josiah Roe and David Gidcumb) perpetrated a hoaxed-up photo on a lot of people, me included. And whether there’s a Democrat among them or not, that’s liable to make the “why was Rove in Chattanooga?” question go away now.

Best as I can tell — as a non-IT person — Coptix isn’t all that connected to Smartech, except that they may share some server equipment somehow. At any rate some of the gwb43.com IT snooping more knowledgeable people have done led back to Coptix as well as Smartech.

Re timing: I hunted through the Chattanooga Times Free Press and came up with local police and the governor knowing about the trip about 2 weeks in advance. That seems like not a lot of lead time, and a fairly hurriedly arranged trip to me.

I’ve written all of this up — including the hoax development — here: Bush’s sudden February visit to Chattanooga — UPDATED. [Comment re Coptix "one and all" deleted.]

Well, a comedic hoax and viral marketing. I’ll be damned. Actually, I can’t say I’m surprised, except that they managed to pull it off successfully and get national attention to their trademark.

I know it bothers you to get hoaxed, but try not to be too upset. It was a pretty harmless thing, really. They weren’t trying to memory hole anything, or participate in a cover-up - it was just a marketing prank.

I’m imagining that a lot of people are feeling like the mayor of Boston right now, and it’s natural to want to lash out at the merry pranksters that took advantage of you. I think best thing is to take it on the chin, laugh as goodnaturedly as possible and go on.

By the way I read your update there at NR - don’t be discouraged from pursuing the SmarTech angle if you think there is something there. I personally don’t know. I still doubt there is much to the Coptix angle - and if their shenanigans somehow played to the advantage of Rove, et. al., I’m sure it was accidental. But this development doesn’t say anything about the SmarTech side of the story, if there is one there.

By the way, I can’t say I personally know Josiah Roe, but I have met him and corresponded with him some. I will say I like him, but I will also say that I would have said something about it if he had done something really out of line - something more out of line, say, than the Boston Lite-Brite caper. I haven’t met the other Coptix Hoaxter. I have one close friend who is at Coptix, that’s the Democrat - but she likely didn’t have anything to do with this at all, apart from chuckling about it.

“don’t be discouraged from pursuing the SmarTech angle if you think there is something there”

Why not? I can’t pursue anything 500 miles away. And when I asked you pointblank “…Karl Rove spotted there last week?”, it apparently didn’t occur to you to mention Bush’s visit 3 weeks earlier. Now I read a defense of a couple of liars who admire Rove and Bush and tried to turn a serious issue into a joke.

It’s not the issue, or me, or even them I’m discouraged about, smijer.

Last I talked to Josiah, he did admire Bush - terrible error in judgment in my book, but it doesn’t make him the devil. And he’s not a liar. A prank - a practical joke - isn’t a lie. It isn’t right for you to call him that when you don’t know him. The other fellow? I don’t know him either, but I’m going to have to see evidence that he is a liar before I will call him one.

And, I’m sorry - I *admire* the quality in people that allows them to joke about serious matters.

You’ve done as good a job as anyone keeping track of the Tennessee angle from 500 miles away. What hasn’t stopped you before shouldn’t stop you now. And neither should the fact that I laugh about a practical joke.

I’m sorry I did not remember to mention Bush’s February visit when you asked about SmarTech. It was a half-day trip through town to talk about health-care for God’s sake, and it happened before Attorney-Gate even got on the national news media radar (about a week before). I don’t see why any business that they had at the time with SmarTech (or Coptix for that matter) would have to be carried out in person with the President and Karl Rove, instead of over a phone call with an underling. Maybe there was a reason, and maybe it did happen that way. Maybe there will emerge evidence to that effect. Maybe you will be able to shed more light on that question and on other pertinent questions.

Look, I’m sorry you & others got punked by a joke. I know it isn’t as much fun when you get the ass end of the joke. I’m just saying, keep up the work you do, and please keep your sense of humor about you the best you can.