Leftdog revealed

People ask us, why do we care about an anonymous lefty blogger? What drives us to look deeper into this person's identity? We don't have an answer at the ready.

Certainly there are many like him around the leftosphere but there are few who are more secretive, more combative, more strident than leftdog. It certainly isn't the quality of his posts that catches our eye -- he possesses perhaps first-year university writing skills (duplicitousness? Come on). He is one of those guys that uses excessive bolding, exclamation points and ALL CAPS!!!!! to let you know just how darn outraged he is.

For example:

If I did not know better ......... I would say to you that we are witnessing the deliberate pillage of the American treasury by the outgoing Bush administration - giving Billion$ to its friends!!!

But that certainly doesn't explain why we would go out our way to create an anonymous blog (trust me, the irony isn't lost on us) and dig deeper into Leftdog's psyche -- and perhaps his true identity.

There are many things that drove us toward conducting a small investigation of leftdog. First off is his propensity to call other people (usually people who disagree with him) outright liars. It appears a gentle breeze can provoke leftdog into maelstrom of fibbery accusations. He even defines lying on his blog:

Identifying a Pathological Liar
They "construct" a reality around themselves. They don't value the truth, especially if they don't see it as hurting anyone. If you call them on a lie and they are backed into a corner, they will act very defensively and say ugly things (most likely but depends on personality), but they may eventually start to act like, "Well, what's the difference? You're making a big deal out of nothing!" (again, to refocus the conversation to your wrongdoing instead of theirs).

Don't you think hiding behind the veil of pseudonym and accusing other people of misrepresentations is a just little disingenuous in and of itself? The armchair psychologists among us surely see leftdog is likely "projecting" with his numerous accusations. Unlike leftdog, we won't define "projecting" for you.

A venomous anonymous blogger who repeatedly accuses people of lying and other mischief cries out for cummuppance. Maybe we'll dish some out on this blog in the coming days.

The Elizabeth May affair

What stuck out most for us is what we call the Elizabeth May affair. If you aren't a political blog regular you probably never heard of the incident, but leftdog will tell you all about it if you follow that last link. In fact, he is so proud of the event that he nominated himself for a "best post" blog award.

The long and short of it is Stephen Taylor, of bloggingtories fame produced a "gotcha video" where Green Party Leader Elizabeth May apparently says she believes all Canadians are stupid. As a strident NDPer who obviously felt threatened by May's fledgling greens, leftdog lept at the chance to post the youtube video on his blog. Long story short, someone from the Greens threatened to sue leftdog if he didn't take the video down. Leftdog adopted the martyr stance and the rest is history.

While obviously gleeing in the teapot tempest he created, he even played the "aw shucks I'm just a little old blogger" card.

Thanks Mike ... because I am basically a retired/self employed guy with not much cash, I can't afford lawyers and such ... so the video came down temporarily. I plan on putting it back up if (as I suspect) I am the ONLY one that the Green Party has threatened with expensive legal actions.

Good for him for creating a little blog controversy. But still, something didn't seem quite right.

His hatred for Ms. May and the Greens seemed almost...unhinged.

Leftog's challenge to Ms. May to "sue" him is pretty rich...considering he hides behind a pseudonym.

Then of course there was this:

Green Party Leader, Elizabeth May, was very kind to me in the aftermath and offered me an exclusive interview with her on her cross-Canada train tour. Unfortunately, I was unable to take her up on her offer.

So let's get this straight. A blogger who loves to refer to himself in the third person an calls himself a "citizen journalist" had a chance to meet with a national party leader for an exclusive chat. Pretty impressive.

But he couldn't find the time? Recall, this is a semi-retired individual who appears to live and die for blogging and he couldn't re-jig his schedule to meet with Elizabeth May?

What does this tell you? Tells us he really needs to keep his identity a secret. Who is this guy?

Frankly, if leftdog were just some guy on the street this wouldn't make for a very interesting post. Thankfully for us he isn't.

Before we tell you who leftdog is, let's tell you how we figured it out.

It all started with a tipoff from a new democrat friend that he had suspicions about who leftdog actually is. But politics in Saskatchewan are all about gossip and innuendo, so we couldn't go on that alone. We had to verify. Leftdog himself provided the missing link -- a picture of his front yard in Regina.

For Regina locals this neighbourhood has a distinct look. The 50s-era bungalows and mature trees look a lot like the modest neighbourhood of Rosemont.

Long story short, we looked up the "rumoured" real name of leftdog on Canada411 and visually verified it with this picture. Voila! (if you want to replicate the experiment you will have to do your own digging -- we're not posting his address here.

Leftdog Revealed

"Leftdog" is former Saskatchewan NDP Chief of Staff Jim Fodey. Jim Fodey resigned in disgrace in 2007 after it was alleged he lied to the public, the media and police about theft of public money that occurred under his watch in the early 90s. In fact, some people think the Jim Fodey/Glenn Hagel scandal helped take down the NDP in the last provincial election. We think it's a safe bet it was one of the last straws for the beleaguered "natural governing party" of Saskatchewan.

Johnston also said that, in 1992, Fodey told police there was no problem."

On Sept. 22, Fodey told the investigators from Regina Police Service over the telephone that the auditor was not concerned and that everything was in order," Johnston said.

On Saturday, the NDP caucus issued a terse news release saying it had accepted Fodey's resignation.

It said he stepped down because he had provided incomplete information to the public and to Hagel, the minister of Culture, Youth and Recreation who had been the NDP caucus chair in 1992.

So there you have it folks. While leftdog was acting as an anonymous political attack dog, he was being paid a healthy salary courtesy of the taxpaying voters of Saskatchewan!

Bonus: He was paid $113,511 in severance for his troubles.

You know who is a real, bonafied liar? That's right. Read all about it (page 29).

Fun facts about Jim Fodey

Until around September 27, 2007 he was legally known as James Islam Muhammed Fodey. We came across this information doing a standard "James Fodey" google search. How do we know it's the same Jim Fodey we all know and dislike? Well, the birthday listed (July 19, 1952) in the Gazette is the same Jim Fodey lists on his classmates.com profile.


Funny that he legally changed his name to James Leo Fodey just months after the NDP caucus scandal broke. Perhaps he figured his legal name would be published in the ethics report that expose him as a liar and didn't want it widely known he, at one time, had converted to Islam.

Perhaps he was a big Cat Stevens fan? We'll never know. We do know it was all the rage to convert to Islam back in the hazy 60s and 70s. Maybe Fodey took the brown acid.

Leftdog -- The Internet Pastor

Well, since leftdog/fodey's career pretty much hit the crapper, I suppose he needed some form of income. And since, as we showed earlier, Fodey has a strong interest in religion and faith, it only makes sense for him to become a pastor and preach the good word.

That's why Fodey became an ordained Pastor for the Universal Life Church! The ULC is an internet-based Ministry. All you need to become an ordained pastor is the ability to fill out a form on the Internet. Believe it or not, in some places being a ULC Pastor allows you to perform marriages.

Maybe fodey needed the money? Who knows. We do know that Islam wasn't working out too well for him.

We wish leftdog well on his spiritual/internet pursuit!

How did Fodey/Leftdog deal with his personal scandal?
It was no doubt an interesting dilemma for Fodey. How should his alter ego "Leftdog" address what was the biggest story in town at the time? If you google "Leftdog" and "Fodey" you'll find a consistent message.

He chose to never defend Fodey (that would feel a little strange for anyone, we imagine) by name, but instead to attack the Saskatchewan Party for what he called "illegal possession of police documents."

Here's an example:

Yup .. the Saskies are flippin and floppin on this one.

Version 1) "We received the stolen police reports in March just before the Session of the Legislature.
Version 2) "We received the stolen police reports a year ago, but we don't get to our mail that fast so it sat on Mr. Down's desk until, hey ... what is this here? Wow - talk about hypocrites! Criminal code of Canada says possession of stolen property is a crime. Police reports!
Wow - this story is getting better all the time.

Whoever 'Downs' is, will we read about his resignation today?
Posted by: leftdog at May 9, 2007 8:58 AM

Not really surprising leftdog would take this approach. It's very amusing that leftdog pretends to not know who (Sask Party Chief of Staff) Reg Downs is. Fodey is actually VERY familiar with Downs as the two have worked in the same building, parked in the same parking lot for many years.

There are also numerous points where we believe Fodey used sockpuppets other than leftdog to deflect attention away from his own personal scandal. We can't say for sure, but we think this is Fodey posing as "Terry", who coincidentally reiterates Fodey's/Leftdog's Talking points (note the abuse of capitalization, over-the-top outrage, etc.):

SO THE SP is not telling the truth. Lets see some firings, public inqurys, lawsuits etc... Just some the stuff the SP asks for on a daily basis.
OH YEAH WE CANT BECAUSE THE BELOVED "GUITAR MUSEUM PRESIDENT AND BOOZE ORDERER" LEADER WILL NOT HAVE THE COURAGE TO DO IT!!!
From www.cjme.comTimes "Change"
Over Fraud Case... Again May 08, 2007

It turns out the Saskatchewan Party had the brown envelope, containing all the documents about the NDP caucus fraud a year earlier than we were first told.

This is the latest development, regarding a 15-year-old fraud case that has dominated the Saskatchewan political scene in recent weeks.

Opposition MLA's claimed they only found out about what was in the documents just before the start of the spring session of the Legislature. However, the party now says its chief-of-staff received the package a year earlier, but it was put aside without realizing what exactly was in it...

It was only after the SaskParty took a closer look several months later, did staff begin to work on the story.
Posted by: terry at May 8, 2007
6:10 PM

And here is, in our opinion, Leftdog again under a different name -- "Terry" mis-spelled as Terru" at 3:38 in the morning (after a couple of wobbly pops maybe?) making wild allegations against now-Saskparty Cabinet Minister Christine Tell. Note the caps-shouting and general outrage.

CHRISTINE TELL!!!! SP CANIDATE were the hell is she on all this. She
should be mad that some person in the RPS is handing over police
documents.
Were do her loyalties lie with The SASKATCHEWAN PARTY OR THE RPS.
I would like to know what she thinks about missing police documents at her place
of employment??
Maybe the RPS UNION can hire a ummmmmmmmmmmmmm a out of
province company (BC ad firm) to help out. Christine why does the RPS Union hire
BC Firm ad firm??? and oh yeah is it not your typical right wing firm.
Oh
yeah i forgot...I AM AS IMPORTANT AS PRINTING PRESS....Kate no you are not! I
think maybe to much paint fumes!!!! Posted by: TERRU at May 10, 2007 3:38 AM

UPDATE:

UPDATE: Since Leftdog got wind of this site, some of his posts have just disappeared! Fear not, we've got his entire site downloaded for posterity!