Saturday, May 26, 2012

Weirdness

(Update II: It's pretty clear now that Buzzfeed fucked me over royally. Buzzfeed poses as a hip, vaguely left-friendly site that appeals to the young. But as my follow-up story proves, Buzzfeed is really part of the Breitbart propaganda machine.)

(Update: Some people are coming here from Rosie Gray's piece on Buzzfeed. Alas, Gray didn't quite understand my point. Twice now, I've tried to submit a (polite) correction, but Buzzfeed either won't or can't publish it. If anyone's interested, I can display it in this space tomorrow.)

I didn't want to write about the latest Big Meme sweeping across rightwingerland, but a few words are necessary. Maybe more than a few.

In a couple of previous posts, I made fairly oblique reference to a weird subculture of bloggers -- on both the right and the left, though most of them are hyper-conservatives -- which arose out of Weinergate. Their obsession with that scandal soon went way beyond Weiner, and perhaps even beyond conventional left-right politics. A very personal twilight war broke out.

Frankly, I never could understand what this war was all about. But a few facts became clear:

1. These twilight warriors are obsessed with hacking and related matters. Some of them claim to have worked with Anonymous and LulzSec and allied organizations.

2. They use obvious sockpuppets. If you visit their microblogs, the self-astroturfing is evident.

3. They are forever claiming that the FBI and/or the cops are going to arrest their opponents very soon. (On what charge? God knows.) Both the left-wingers and the right-wingers make this claim.

4. The rage level runs white hot. This war goes beyond politics. It's personal.

5. Most of the right-wingers inhabit BreitbartWorld, where everyone reveres the underhanded tactics of James O'Keefe.

6. The most prominent of the left-wingers is a bizarre IT specialist named Neal Rauhauser, whom I believe to be the latest online incarnation of a fellow named John Dean, a.k.a. SluggoJD and a few other things. (Assumed identities play a huge role in these realms. In an earlier post, I discussed the reasons why I think the two are one and the same.) Dean, who claims to be a cyber-detective, is a fairly well-known -- though rarely well-liked -- figure throughout blogistan left. He used to be an occasional presence on this blog, although I always kept him at arm's length. Whatever the name or nick, he is not a man I trust. Or they are not men I trust. Whatever.

7. The twilight warriors often lose the ability to write comprehensibly. For example: I tried very hard to get a straight story out of Rauhauser, but he kept presuming that I was familiar with people and events about which I knew nothing.

It was best, I decided, to let these unhappy personages fight among themselves. Still, their rage-games threatened, one day, to take a more serious turn.

One of the Breitbarters calls himself "Patterico." His real name is no secret: He's John Frey, a prosecutor for the L.A. D.A.'s office. Frey initiated a multi-blog day of fury when he published a post alleging that he was set up by a phone hacker. If I understand the story correctly, the hacker called the police from what seemed to be Frey's number and claimed to be a man who had just shot his wife.

Serious business, that. Frey, quoting the late Breitbart, insists that this is a common left-wing tactic called "SWATting." (If it's a left-wing tactic, then why don't any lefties mention it?)

Although proof is lacking, Frey seems to think that the hacker is someone named Brett Kimberlin.

If you just now said "Brett who?" -- you are probably a liberal. Kimberlin is a huge effing deal on the right. After Barack Obama, he's the man conservatives love to hate -- so much so, they even have an entire blog devoted to Brett. Pretty soon, they'll be selling Brett merchandise.

The Breitbarters claim that Kimberlin is funded by Evil Soros and the Even More Evil Barbra Streisand. They also claim that Brett Kimberlin started Raw Story. (I doubt that.) Word has it that Glenn Beck is going to be on the Kimberlin case.

If you look at Memeorandum right now, it's all Kimberlin, all the time. (Update: It is no longer Kimberlin Day on Memeorandum, a news aggregation site which updates feed continually.)

Basically, Kimberlin is the new Saul Alinski: In right-wing mythology, liberals consider him il capo di tutti capi. Kimberlin is the alpha dog, the leader of the pack, the bomb-tossing Messiah of the Progs.

Or so the Breitbarters would have people believe.

Meanwhile, actual liberals have little or no idea as to who the guy is.

I first got a whiff of the right's Brett-mania maybe four or five years ago, when I received a flurry of crankish emails accusing me of being involved in some sort of conspiracy with That Bastard Brett. (Why were these accusations directed at me? I had, and have, no idea.)

The name "Kimberlin" was puzzling, but it did ring a very distant bell. Then I recalled that, back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, a prisoner named Kimberlin made weird claims about Dan Quayle which became the basis for a series of Doonesbury comics. Something about selling pot. It was all very droll.

If you want a fuller story on Kimberlin, convicted for several bombings back in the '70s, you may want to go here. Author David Weigel seems to think that the conservative pile-up on Kimberlin is a manufactured mania, and I must agree that Kimberlin Hate Day does seem rather ginned-up and astroturfy.
Today, the right side of the blogosphere is trying out a fascinating crowd-source experiment. For months, a few conservative writers -- most of them using pen names -- have been in a pitched battle with a convicted felon-turned-activist named Brett Kimberlin. By any reasonable definition, Kimberlin is a public figure. Mark Singer, who was snookered by Kimberlin into writing a bogus New Yorker story, eventually turned on his source and made him the subject of a book. When Kimberlin resurfaced in the world of "black box voting" activism, conservative bloggers started to ask questions about him. Skip to May 2012. Blogger Patterico says he was the victim of a hoax that brought armed police officers to his home. The blogger "Aaron Worthing," identity exposed by a frivolous lawsuit, is counter-suing.

The goal of "Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day," as far as I can see it, is to make Kimberlin famous again.
Weigel was soon contacted by one Ron Brynaert, of whom we must now speak, although I had hoped not to. Brynaert also figures heavily in Frey's conspiracy theory. Although "Patterico" is not the clearest of writers, he seems to think that Evil Brett and Evil Ron are working together on some evil scheme funded by Evil Soros.

Before proceeding, please understand this: I don't know exactly what happened to Frey, and right now I have bigger fish to fry than to scrutinize every jot and tittle of his claims. (A couple of those fishes are downright Moby-sized.) In fact, I would have preferred to ignore this whole business.

But a couple of weeks ago, I had my own unsettling run-in with this Ron Brynaert character, who fancies himself to be the expert on Weinergate. He also loves to make wild, paranoid claims about everyone who ever had more than ten words to say about the matter. Brynaert has gone beyond left and right; he's off the map and zooming through the fourth dimension.

When Brynaert contacted me, I had forgotten that he had been an editor at Raw Story. He seemed miffed that I had temporarily misfiled his name in my memory.

He wanted to know why I thought Neal Rauhauser and "John Dean" were one and the same. I told him. Then he asked me again. I told him again. Then he asked me again, implying that I was hiding something...

Ron was defining himself as a truly strange person.

He sent me long, snarling, venom filled letters that didn't make much sense. (His surreal missive to Weigel gives a flavor of what to expect when Ron Brynaert puts you on his pen pal list.) I tried to be uncharacteristically nice, even when he insinuated that I was up to no good.

Brynaert's obvious psychological pain helped me to keep my composure. I politely told him that I couldn't really follow what he was going on about, but that he might do better if he stepped back and took some time off. The message was simple: "Time to chill, dude." Sweartagod, that was all.

That was enough.

Ron Brynaert became convinced that I was part of the Great Conspiracy Against Ron Brynaert. This, despite the fact that he originally wrote me; I had wanted nothing to do with the guy or with any of the "twilight warriors." According to Brynaert, other members of the Great Conspiracy Against Ron include the Breitbart crew, Neal Rauhauser, blogger Brad Friedman, Brett Kimberlin, maybe Glinda the Good Witch -- and, oh, hell, just everyone.

I normally keep private emails private, but that privacy policy goes bye-bye when a correspondent starts tossing threats. Here's Brynaert to yours truly:
You're definitely going to be contacted by NYPD detectives and lawyers from one of my sources who is prosecuting Rauhauser for harassment.

I am a crime victim.  I was extorted for $20,000.

Do not write me again unless you want to help me.

I do not need to be menaced anymore.  Because of your bullshit blog post I have JDSluggo sending me nasty emails and smearing me just like he did years ago.

This is for real.  Not a blog war.  Not an ARG.

You should be ashamed of your self for the letters you sent me.

I'm so tired of you cowardly conspiracy theorists spreading fake news, smearing people and pretending you are sane.

You are a horrible man.  Like I need this when right wing smearers are threatening me and accusing me of crimes?

I warn you that this is not a joke...and you better never email me anything menacing or nasty again....nor allude to me on your blogs.

I'll be reporting the blackmail threat to the NYPD in the next few weeks and I will make sure detectives contact you...because this is a really shameful thing to write a scared crime victim.
Let me stress again: I had had absolutely no desire hear from this guy. Arguably, he harassed me. Maybe "harassed" is too strong a verb; "pester" gets closer to the mark. At any rate, readers know that my attention had switched ages ago from Weiner to very different matters; although I gave the twilight warriors the occasional wary glance, I wasn't really keeping track of their antics. (By the way, can anyone tell me what an ARG is?)

Of course, no detectives or lawyers have ever contacted me. Won't happen.

Still, this man's bizarre outburst was unnerving. So I asked around: Who IS Ron Brynaert?

The response was quick and clear: Ron Brynaert was once a promising writer and investigator, but he became completely unglued after he lost his job at Raw Story.

It is a sad but simple fact of life that one out of ten people go stark raving bonkers. After reading the letter above, you may come to your own conclusion as to whether Ron Brynaert is Dude #10.

Let's get back to Patterico/Frey. He rather scurrilously tries to tie Brynaert in with Brad Friedman. (I used to be on good terms with Brad, but I got peeved at him back in 2008. That was a bad year for a lot of people.) It's true that Brad allowed Brynaert to write one (1) post on his blog -- at a time before the man's psychological state had become clear. I'm sure Brad now regrets the whole thing.

Frey accuses Brynaert of working with Kimberlin, and so do many of the other twilight warriors. (He's called a Kimberlin "sycophant" here. I would apply only the first syllable of that word to Brynaert.) Oddly, in his ranting letters to me, Brynaert seemed to agree with the Breitbarters that Brett Kimberlin was the font of all evil.

Bottom line: It's ridiculous for Frey to scry conspiracy in the ravings of an individual who has so thoroughly lost sight of reality that he alienates everyone he bumps into.

Frey has accused Brad of stalking him, although Frey presents no evidence.

(It is true that Brad used to work with Kimberlin on something called the Velvet Revolution. I never pressed Brad about that business back when he and I were talking. In more general terms, I've let Brad know that some of his associates were very iffy, particularly the "controlled demolition" whackadoodles who would occasionally contribute to his otherwise fine blog. Also speaking in general terms, I should note that Kimberlin has been portrayed as a very persuasive con artist.)

Frey/Patterico's blog post includes a recording of the call that inaugurated the right's Let's Make Kimberlin Famous Day. I don't recognize the voice of the guy who called the police, but it's definitely not Rauhauser. (Yes, I've spoken with Neal/John/whomever on the phone, although I now regret doing so.)

Clearly, though, the impersonator is a very troubled individual. To my mind, the "schizy" quality of the guy's voice narrows down the list of chief suspects. You may be able to hazard a guess as to whom I consider a likely candidate.

There's one other possibility, of course.

This whole business -- the phone call, the SWAT meme, the inauguration of Let's Make Kimberlin Famous Day -- might be an O'Keefe-esque deception operation. Everyone knows that the Breitbarters love to pull crap like that. Who knows? Perhaps the fellow who called the cops on that night is the same guy who engineered the "Betty and Veronica" mind-screw directed against Tommy Christopher of Mediaite.

(As noted above, I'll be moderating comments very heavily, as per the posted rules. Go ahead and accuse me of censorship. I giveth not a rodent's buttocks.)

20 comments:

Bob Harrison said...

Fall has come early-- the nuts are falling from the trees.

Quilly_Mammoth said...

I don't think it is a Breitbart prank since the incident happened almost a year ago. But your other possibility is not one I had thought of previously. The whole Kimberlin-Rauhauser-Brynaert interaction is weird and I don't think anyone fully understands it. I don't.

And I think the "Betty and Veronica" hoax might be part of it thanks to you mentioning it. In the end it might just be five guys in a goat rope...or it might be something much more. But I don't think there will be any in between.

Anonymous said...

Just letting you know, both of these dudes are crazy. But I don't trust Frey or McCain either.

The whole thing smells of something stinky.

You're welcome.

-Patrick in Michigan

P.S. I am a former Democrat turned Right-libertarian who believes both damned parties suck.

Joseph Cannon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I remembered the prison story concerning Quayle, but not the Kimberlin name attached to it.

So he's the mastermind overlord of leftie psyops/ratf*cking? Who knew? LOL!

XI

Joseph Cannon said...

Quilly, "five guys on a goat rope" may well be all we're dealing with.

I think, though, that Kimberlin and Brynaert are convenient foils for the right.

Look at it this way. A lot of people are saying right now that the right has gone too crazy. Even some GOP politicians are getting annoyed by all the nuttiness.

As Bill Maher recently said, Obama really doesn't have much to run on beyond the perception that the other team has gone nuts. And that strategy is working. Personally, I can't stand Obama, but I sure as hell don't want the party of Beck and Bachmann to win.

So it behooves the Breitbarters to try to come up with a scenario in which they can paint liberals as being every bit as nuts as the nuttiest of the movement conservatives. That's why there's this huge focus on someone like Brett Kimberlin. He has a rotten criminal history -- but his skills as a con artist have convinced a few people to overlook his past.

So now the conservatives are painting Kimberlin as a massively effective liberal leader. They hope that Brett will be seen as equivalent to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

In reality, the vast majority of Democrats -- even the vast majority of progressive base -- have never even heard of Brett Kimberlin. He's Charlie Nobody.

Brynaert makes for even better copy, since the guy has so clearly gone off the deep end.

In other words: Kimberlin and Brynaert are straw men.

Joseph Cannon said...

Patrick, I hear what you say about Frey and McCain.

But there's one person named McCain I really like: Meghan. Oh, if only I were twenty years younger. And gifted with a fatter wallet and a tighter belt size. And...

Stranahan said...

There's a lot of stuff wrong in here but that's understandable. Do you want some examples of things that are incorrect that are easy to verify? Or should I not bother? Your blog. I'm cool either way.

Anonymous said...

Brynaert may be whacky but he is totally correct on the blackmail angle. Weiner was shut down because he was being blackmailed by a bunch of professional rightwing blackmailers colluding with assholes in the porn industry. No one talks about this. Sure Weiner said he sent the dick pictures. But he was under coercion from the blackmailers.

Regarding ARGs (Alternate Reality Games). Some think Rigorous Intuition is an ARG. There is a guy named "Socrates" who is also a bit of whacko that got himself tied up in this story. On his blog he laid out evidence that Rigorous Intution and ProgressiveIndependent were mindfucking lefties.

Progressive Independent at one point became a big fat Commie honeytrap that lured in lefties from DU under the pretense of being "progressive" and then pulled a switcheroo and converted to basically a big Communist lovefest, instantly gumming up all of the progressives who went there with a Commie funk. Some of the players at RI were also players at PI and DU.

It reeked of some type of COINTELPRO against Democratic voters.

Some of the Rigorous Intuition regulars and Progressive Independant regulars were all over Democratic Underground for awhile pushing Johnny Gosch madness coming from ex FBI disinfo turd Ted Gunderson and Operation Phoenix tool John DeCamp. Decamp is famous for his Franklin scandal book which promoted the belief that a Super Satanic child snatcher organization is run amok in the U.S.A. while TOTALLY IGNORING the Catholic priests at boystown that were the most likely suspects or collaborators in what was going on. Go over to RI and try to start a topic on that and you will find out just how "rigorous" that site really is.

The leftwing blogs are mostly tightly gated politically powerless communities in which lefties and rightwing disinfo mindfuckers can chew the cud together while achieving nothing.

Gates are good. You wouldn't want lefties wandering too far off the burger plantation into the truth of the hidden rightwing blackmail networks of which Breitfart and his porno friends were apparently a part of.

If the left were to unravel that, god forbid! They might actually find a way to bust up the machine that compromises Dems and makes them useless parrots of rightwing agendas. Can't have that.

ws

Anonymous said...

I don't think it's fair to say that the right is trying to paint Brett as a major figure on the left. I've read a lot of the coverage from the past few days, and I haven't read anything to that effect.

Everything I have read paints him as using a veneer of left-wing politics to fund personal attacks. The only reason they're trying to cover him on such a massive scale is so there will be too many targets for him to attack everyone. For the most part, the right-wing coverage seems to be genuinely intended to stop a dangerous individual, not to score political points against the left.

There are bad actors associated with every political cause, but this guy is completely indefensible.

Joseph Cannon said...

Hey, it's Lee Stranahan, the guy who claims to be a liberal yet works with the Breitbarters!

Don't bother trying to "correct" me, Lee. Not here. You go hang out with the Beck-heads whose company you seem to like. Feel free to include me in whatever conspiracy theory drives your audience of reactionary rage-aholics into orgasm.

I read your Huffington Post piece where you boo-hoo-hooed about the lefties who won't listen to what you have to say simply because you took Breitbart's money. You know what you remind me of? David Duke, complaining that people won't take his views on Israel seriously simply because there's an unfortunate photo floating around of him wearing a swastika. Gosh, why ARE people so damned judgmental over such silly little things?

You want my theory -- and it's just a theory, mind you -- as to who engineered the "Betty and Veronica" thing? I think it was aided, and perhaps masterminded, by a writer who pretended to be a "liberal" so he could get into Tommy Christopher's good graces. I think this spy did a psychological profile on Christopher to see if he would make for a good target, then kept in contact with him to see how the scam was working. And every step of the way Tommy thought this guy was helping him.

And then, after the whole scam fell apart, that same "liberal" spook-blogger conducted his own investigation of the affair. No doubt that investigation was every bit as rigorous as Nixon's investigation of Watergate.

That's what I think happened. Can't prove it, but if you want my gut suspicion, there it is.

I think you now have some idea as to the kind of credibility I would assign to you. Stick with the Breitbarters, dude; once you hooked up with them, you assured that you would be shunned by civilized people. FOREVER.

Now why don't you follow in the footsteps of your beloved funder and head out to a left-wing rally, where you can yell: "STOP RAPING PEOPLE! STOP RAPING THE PEOPLE!" for twenty minutes?

Joseph Cannon said...

ws: You're being ridiculous.

This is exactly the kind of conspiracy theorizing I can't stand. Look, I've nothing against speculation, but I try to be careful about labeling it as such. You, on the other hand, offer speculation dressed up as hard fact. Not the way to go about it.

"Weiner was shut down because he was being blackmailed by a bunch of professional rightwing blackmailers colluding with assholes in the porn industry. No one talks about this. Sure Weiner said he sent the dick pictures. But he was under coercion from the blackmailers."

I know more about he porn angle than you can guess, and I have yet to see any kind of comprehensible theory to be derived from that. Maybe one exists, but so far, I haven't seen it. You certainly haven't offered one.

Re-read what you've written. You're saying that the Breitbarters had access to a Weiner dick picture -- which is not in dispute. One or more of the women he was talking to was an obvious set-up. The Breitbart brigade (which operates much like an intelligence operation, complete with layers of plausible deniability) created a honeytrap.

But you are also implying that there was something WORSE that they had on Weiner which forced his hand.

Okay. What would that be?

Let's not even get into Ted Gunderson and the Franklin stuff. That way madness lies. And it has nothing to do with anything I wrote about.

Joseph Cannon said...

Anonymous -- and next time, DO try to use a nick, okay? -- I can't agree.

"Everything I have read paints him as using a veneer of left-wing politics to fund personal attacks. The only reason they're trying to cover him on such a massive scale is so there will be too many targets for him to attack everyone."

Oh, come off it. I can't tell you how much commentary I saw trying to paint Kimberlin as a typical or representative liberal. The right is painting him as a liberal icon, a leader.

If you actually looked at those blogs and the resultant commentary, you would have seen about a zillion examples of what I'm talking about. Use Google and you'll see: Kimberlin as the "founder" of Raw Story, Kimberlin as the creature of Evil Streisand...

This is all classic straw man guff.

The main reason I wrote this post was because Patterico was trying to paint Kimberlin and Brynaert as being somehow "in it" together. Well, one of the things that was clear from Brynaert's bizarre and rambling letters to me was that he hated Kimberlin. I don't even know why he brought Kimberlin up, since I had never written about the guy and had no interest in him until the right decided to inaugurate Let's Make Kimberlin Famous Day.

(And I still don't see what Kimberlin has to do with the Weiner thing.)

The point is, I think, indisputable: The Breitbarters are trying to create a conspiracy theory around two guys who are actually marginal characters. One is an ex-con who talks a good line of BS and who once roped in a writer for the New Yorker. The other is a once-gifted journalist who seems to have lost his reason, and who is viewed by pity by those few lefty bloggers who know who he is. And neither of those two fringe-dwellers seems to have much regard for the other.

Pretending that Kimberlin and Brynaert are important or representative of any larger group is inane.

I mean, anyone who believes THAT would also believe that Dubya's grandfather practiced black magic...!

Joseph Cannon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joseph Cannon said...

I'm going to add a couple of other things.

1. The only evidence that "SWAT" is a real thing comes from Breitbart. As though those insidious (and imaginary) left-wing ratfuckers would take Breitbart into their confidence...!

2. As a thought experiment, try to reverse the polarities. Let's say a prominent left-wing blogger -- Brad Friedman will do, I guess -- was the one who claimed to have been "SWATted."

Let's say that this lefty blogger posted a recording exactly similar to the one Patterico posted. On this recording, you can hear someone using an allegedly hacked phone to report a fake crime to the cops.

How would the right react?

You know damned well how the Breitbarters would react: They would all shout "Reichstag Fire!"

Every one of them would insist that the lefty blogger had staged the incident himself to create sympathy -- to cast himself in what I call the "false underdog" position.

Yet if I were even to suggest that Petterico might be up to such a trick, I would be damned as a conspiracy theorist. Y'see, on the right, conspiracy theory is fine -- but only when right-wingers do it.

Anonymous said...

Joe, we should be able to agree that Breitbart and his crew run a machine that blackmails Democrats and Democratic institutions in order to render them powerless. When I use the phrase blackmail I use it in the follow way:

"In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met."

The "demand" from the right is : DO NOTHING. GO AWAY SO WE CAN MAKE THE USA MORE RIGHTWING. OR ELSE.

It is the same gig the FBI was running when they ignored Russian spies from 2001 to 2010 who were trying to get into Dems pants.

The Lee Stranahan guy is case in point. A "lefty" who just happens to be partnering up with Breitbart's lefty blackmailers. Lee Stranahan is the boxer in the ring being paid to throw the fight.

I do understand that part of the reason lefties are pulling punches is because they truly do understand the power of this reichwing machine that we are up against.

The subject of rightwing blackmail is apparently one of those areas where the left has been threatened to pull punches and throw the fight. Because Blackmail is THE key to why Dems are useless yet no one talks about it.

Democrats go on and on about what the next crew of Dems will do when elected, but totally ignore the fact that if Reichwing organizations are snooping around in the emails or phone calls of those leftwing politicians, they are toast because there is always something embarrassing someone has done or said at some point in the past that will piss off the American public and demand that person step down. Many have a Rezko, Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers less that six degrees of separation from them. The FBI and Able Danger are compiling the connections and plan on stringing you up with it. I'm not saying that they have worse dirt on Wiener. But why wouldn't Weiner just fess up to the dick picture and just hope they leave him alone at that point.

Let me get to the point... the USA as a nation has been thoroughly compromised by fascists and extremists. We might as well admit to this now. Australian Rupert Murdoch is digging around in your Myspace page, Russian-Israelis and spooky Virginians are digging around in your Google and Facebook accounts. Germans, Ukrainians, Polish and Iranian emigrant dudes are digging around in your Ebay and Paypal accounts. Ssssshhhh... let me tell you a politically incorrect secret... a lot of these guys seem to be from countries with leadership the CIA is opposed to... you all know how the CIA loves them some exiles to help in their dirty work. How many wars now has the U.S.A. been tricked into with the help of political exiles? (Search Aziz Al-Taee, Curveball, Nayirah, Iraq)

A power vacuum on the left is incrementally placing more and more extremists in power in America and rubberstamping fascist policies that would have been outright labeled fascist 30 years ago in less pussified times. (no offense to women, pussified as in cowardly baby kitten)

Where is the effort by Democrats to stop the complete militarization of the USA? Doesn't exist. Fuck, you can't even get Obama to come out unequivocally on gay marriage at a time when he has absolutely no threat from the nutty Republican candidates. Dems rubberstamp every goddamn thing the fascists want. Another war? You got it. No prosecutions on Bush and Cheney? Done. Slap on the wrist for Wall Street? Ok. More power for intelligence agencies to spy on you? Easy. More dollars for Defense in weak a economy? Sure. Drones over American skies? ok. Weaponized drones over American skies? We'll see what we can do.

webslinger

Lea said...

This tempest in a teapot is hilarious.

The Breitbarters are trying to create a conspiracy theory around two guys who are actually marginal characters.

EVERYONE involved in this thing--present company excluded, Joseph--is MARGINAL. But this Weinergate/Kimberlin imbroglio gives each and every one of them--Brynaert/Kimberlin/Worthing/Stranahan/Nagy/Rauhauser and on and on and on-- the feeling that they're important.

All they do all day is tweet furiously at one another and post tl;dr blogposts and threaten to sue each other (Aaron Worthing's $66 million lawsuit--you have got to be kidding me--against Brynaert would be particularly hilarious if it wasn't so transparently STOOPID).

What are they achieving? Not a damn thing, on either side, but stroking their own narcissism and playing victim.

Keep living in the real world, Joseph, and calling it like you see it. (But: OMG. Meghan Cain?? Really?)

Joseph Cannon said...

Lea, I'm happy being marginal. If a writer represents a larger group or ideology, then he has to become responsible. I like to be free.

Anyone who tries to sue Ron Brynaert for millions of dollars has to be far nuttier than Ron himself is.

As for Meghan...well, Lea, I have my weaknesses. You have just discovered a couple of them. I'm very, very ashamed.

Ash said...

What a strange, hilarious spin you are putting on this Kimberlin thing! The people who have teamed up to defend the first amendment rights of a blogger by exercising their rights, *those* people are crazy. Uh-huh. If the shoe was on the other foot, you'd call them heroes. Hell, you're a blogger too, you should be joining them.

After being on the wrong side with Weinergate, you'd think you'd be a bit more careful. Now that there has been another "SWATing" incident, meaning another sheriff department can corroborate that it happened, are you still going to act confident that they're making it up? What if the police investigation concludes that it's real, what then?

After Weinergate, you should be more careful. They were right before.

Anonymous said...

Joe, please stop pulling me into all this crazy stuff. I am not Neal whatshisname. And Ron Brynart sent me the same crazy emails, I did nothing to him. Brad has the emails. And Brad knows I'm just a normal guy here. Just ask Brad.

Please, just ask Brad. And please stop libeling me.

John Dean
SluggoJD