In The Mailbox, 03.03.14

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 1 Comment

OVER THE TRANSOM
First Street Journal: The Feminism I Support
Proof Positive: Chicago Fireman
Michelle Malkin: When Will America End The Cash-For-Visas Racket?
Twitchy: Has Laura Ingraham Discovered Kerry’s Secret Plan For Russia?
Susannah Breslin: What The Duke Porn Star Reveals About Privacy

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Power: Governor Jerry Brown Asks, “How Many People Can Get Stoned And Still Have A Great State?”
American Thinker: Dangerous Times – Putin Slaps Down Euro-American Fantasyland
Blackfive: On The Ukraine
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin – Yes, I Could See This From Alaska
Jammie Wearing Fools: Two Americas – DC Elite Have Escape Hatch From Obamacare
Joe For America: Drugged Up, Whored Out Screwups – 2014 Oscars Recap
JustOneMinute: The “Gravitas” Gap Continues To Widen
Pat Dollard: Jerusalem Post Columnist Tells Obama “You’re Not Scaring Us”
Protein Wisdom: Double Facepalm Moment From The White House
Shot In The Dark: DFL – “Peasants! Continue Rendering Tribute!”
The Jawa Report: Sandcrawler PSA – The A-10 Was Designed For Use Against Columns Of Soviet Tanks And APCs
The Lonely Conservative: Russia Takes Complete Control Of Crimean Peninsula, John Kerry Asks “What Reset?”
This Ain’t Hell: 6000 Russian Troops In The Crimea
Megan McArdle: Busted State Obamacare Sites Have Silver Lining

Category: Linkagery

Our Worthless Media

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 72 Comments

Ace highlighted this Saturday, but in case you missed it, here’s Walter Russell Mead at the Public Interest:

A Politico report calls it “a crisis that no one anticipated.” The Daily Beast, reporting on Friday’s US intelligence assessment that “Vladimir Putin’s military would not invade Ukraine,” quotes a Senate aide claiming that “no one really saw this kind of thing coming.”
Op-eds from all over the legacy press this week helped explained why. Through the rose tinted lenses of a media community deeply convinced that President Obama and his dovish team are the masters of foreign relations, nothing poor Putin did could possibly derail the stately progress of our genius president. . . . Headlines like “Why Russia Won’t Invade Ukraine,” “No, Russia Will Not Intervene in Ukraine,” and “5 Reasons for Everyone to Calm Down About Crimea” weren’t hard to find in our most eminent publications. . . .
American experts and academics assume that smart people everywhere must want the same things and reach the same conclusions about the way the world works.
How many times did foolishly confident American experts and officials come out with some variant of the phrase “We all share a common interest in a stable and prosperous Ukraine.” We may think that’s true, but Putin doesn’t.

One hates to wear out the Munich analogies by overuse, but this was in fact exactly the attitude of British supporters of appeasement in the 1930s: Reasonable civilized people simply cannot get it through their heads that there are people in the world who are neither reasonable nor civilized, and who can only be deterred by force.

The elites who run our government and the elites who run our media share the same kind of blindness, an acquired blindness that one can only obtain by attending the finest universities.

Category: Media Bias, Russia, Ukraine

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.04.14

Posted on | March 3, 2014 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

TOP NEWS
Russia Tightens Hold On Crimea With 16,000 Troops

“Steel” in his spine? Yeah, suuuure.

Russia Tells UN Yanukovych Asked For Intervention

Rumsfeld on Ukraine: It Is U.S. Weakness That Has Shaken The World

Blade Runner Trial Underway
Live broadcasts miss bizarre off-camera turns

Train Station Rampage Further Strains Ethnic Tensions In PRC
Authorities blame Uighur separatists for attack

POLITICS
Obama Budget Seeks To Unify Democrats Rather Than Compromise With Republicans

Paul Ryan is not surprised by the massive giveaways

$4 trillion budget likely dead on arrival

South Carolina Drops Effort To Enforce Immigration Law

Christian Alternative To Obamacare Growing Fast As Deadline Nears

All 50 Governors Oppose Administration’s Proposed National Guard Cuts

Supremes Refuse To Rule on City’s Illegal Immigration Ordinance

Gov. Kitzhaber Pessimistic About Cover Oregon Website

Tea Party Losing Steam In Primaries?

Is Petraeus Being Silenced By Ongoing Probe?

Boehner Snubbed By CPAC

THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Asian Crude Mixed As Traders Eye Ukraine Crisis: NYMEX $104.79, Brent $111.22
Gold Holds Near Four-Month High On Ukraine Crisis
Asian Stocks Mixed As Ukraine Tensions Continue
High Heating Bills Distort Spending Data
Buffett: Keystone Pipeline Would Be Good For Country
Wheat Retreats With Corn As Ukraine Shipments Avoid Disruption
Apple’s New Car System Turns Your Dashboard Into An iPhone Accessory
Kickstarter Surges Past $1 Billion Mark
Zynga Reboots Three Of Its Biggest Franchises For Mobile
Samsung Announces New ARM-Powered Chromebooks
OUYA Everywhere Is Bringing The Android Game Platform To Other Devices

SPORTS
LeBron James Tops 60 Points For First Time; Heat Burn Bobcats

Who was that masked man?

Sets personal and team record as Heat top Bobcats 124-107

Ruff Gets 600th NHL Coaching Win As Stars Down Sabres

Umpires Vindicated In First Tests Of MLB Instant Replay System

Timbermutts Outlast Nuggets, 132-128

#1 Lady Huskies Rout #3 Louisville 68-48

Blue Jackets Edge Maple Leafs 2-1

Detwiler And Roark Get Work As Nats Fall To Yankees 4-2

FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Leah Remini: I Left Co$ For My Daughter

“[My friends] didn’t care about doing the right thing. That showed me everything the Church taught me was a lie.”

Abandoned cult to protect daughter

Lady Gaga, Sharon Osbourne End Feud, Strangle Each Other At Elton John’s Oscar Viewing Party

Scarlett Johansson Pregnant, Expecting First Child

Ellen Flops In Long, Boring, Self-Involved Oscars Show

Backlash Against Kim Novak Snark On Twitter Is Immediate And Harsh

Most Tweeted About During Oscars? Jennifer Lawrence

50 Cent Backs Off Suggestion That Diddy, Rick Ross Are Gay Lovers

Taylor Swift Stalker Threatens To Kill Anyone That Comes Between Him And His “Bride”

Mary-Kate Olsen Shows Off Massive Engagement Ring

FOREIGNERS
Netanyahu Rallies U.S. Supporters After Obama Pushes For Compromise With Palestinians
Nepal Orders Climbers To Clean Up Garbage On Everest
Crimean Tatars Denounce Russian Incursion
India Puts All Rolls-Royce Deals On Hold Pending Bribery Probe
Emirates Jail Three Jihadis For Up To Seven Years
India Condemns Terrorist Attack In PRC
Venezuelan Opposition Maintains Protests Despite Carnival Season

BLOGS & STUFF
First Street Journal: Western Intellectuals And The Misunderstanding Of Power
Proof Positive: There’s Still A Bear In The Woods
Doug Powers: Kerry – “That Re-Set Thing With Russia Was A Long Time Ago”
Twitchy: The New Republic Admits Romney Was “Exactly Right” About Russia
American Power: What “Free Palestine” Really Means
American Thinker: Banning The American Flag And Reconquista
Blackfive: Kramer And Putin
Conservatives4Palin: Governor Palin’s Interview On Hannity
Don Surber: Daily Scoreboard, March 3
Jammie Wearing Fools: Iran Executes Two For Homosexuality, Iowahawk Wonders Why “U.S. Wedding Cake Activists” Silent
Joe For America: Muslim Barber Refuses to Cut Lesbian’s Hair – Whose Rights Trump Whose?
JustOneMinute: You Go To Peace With The President You Have
Pat Dollard: Code Pink Founder Jailed In Egypt – Her Jail Phone # Posted If You Want To Call
Protein Wisdom: Di Blasio Kicks 700 Kids Out Of High-Performing Charter Schools
Shot In The Dark: Palin 1, Obama 0
The Jawa Report: Surenos Gangbangers In…Syria?
The Lonely Conservative: Another Costly EPA Regulation Unleashed On The Economy
This Ain’t Hell: Ninth Circuit Says Not Safe For Students To Wear U.S. Flag T-Shirts On May 5
Megan McArdle: Can Lipitor Save Big Pharma?

Category: Live at Five

Kevin Zeese, Neal Rauhauser and the ‘Occupy Infiltrator’ Frame-Up

Posted on | March 2, 2014 | 10 Comments

The first “SWATting” generally mentioned in connection with Brett Kimberlin involved a man who had never heard of Kimberlin at the time. Mike Stack of New Jersey was targeted in June 2011 because of his connection to exposing the “WeinerGate” scandal:

Neal Rauhauser’s involvement with Brett Kimberlin apparently began in 2011. In February [2012], Rauhauser published a bizarre eight-page document (“Andrew Breitbart’s ISR Cell?”) expressing the belief that he and Kimberlin were targets of a conspiracy involving Andrew Breitbart and many others, including Mike Stack, who played a key role in exposing Democrat Rep. Anthony Weiner’s online sexcapades.
Rauhauser is a fanatical “Weiner Truther,” believing in a conspiracy theory version of the WeinerGate scandal in which the congressman was the victim of a “set up” hoax perpetrated by Andrew Breitbart and/or shadowy Republican operatives. This left-wing tinfoil-hat stuff doesn’t really interest me, but it explains Rauhauser’s apparent obsession with Mike Stack . . .
What do “SWATting” victims Patterico and Mike Stack have in common, other than the fact that, as Patterico himself notes, Rauhauser hates their guts?

You can read the whole thing to refresh your memory. Because the federal RICO lawsuit (“Kimberlin v. the Universe, al.“) makes much of the claim that bloggers have accused — or “imputed” — Kimberlin of SWATting, it’s important to point out that my most in-depth article about this whole complex situation makes clear that Neal Rauhauser was a far more likely suspect. And, of course, it was Rauhauser’s status as Brett Kimberlin’s self-described “associate” that drew my attention to Kimberlin in the first place.

What about Kevin Zeese? In May 2012, on the letterhead of Kimberlin’s 501(c)4 group Velvet Revolution US, Zeese wrote a letter threatening legal action against Ali Akbar. In his lawsuit, Kimberlin doesn’t even mention his role with Velvet Revolution, just as he does not mention his associates Rauhauser and Zeese. This is interesting, because Rauhauser and Zeese were connected in a February 2012 episode in which Zeese and his partner Margaret Flowers wrongly accused Mike Stack of “infiltrating” Occupy protests:

A few days later we uncovered the second infiltrator, Michael Stack, when he was urging people on Freedom Plaza [in Washington, D.C.] to resist police with force. We later learned he was from the Leadership Institute which trains youth in right wing ideology and tactics. We were told he had also been at Occupy Wall Street provoking violence.

This was false. Mike Stack never set foot at either the “Occupy DC” or “Occupy Wall Street” protests, and Mike Stack never had anything to do with the Leadership Institute. Zeese and Flowers repeated this smear even after Mike Stack had already debunked it, and the acknowledged source of this smear was Neal Rauhauser.

Keep in mind: This happened in February 2012.

Three months before I had ever written a word about Brett Kimberlin, SWATting target Mike Stack was being smeared by Kimberlin’s associates Neal Rauhauser and Kevin Zeese. The only reason Stack had been targeted by Rauhauser was the same reason Rauhauser targeted Patrick Frey — i.e., both played a role in exposing the 2011 “WeinerGate” scandal. And pay close attention to what Rauhauser (“Stranded Wind”) did at Daily Kos:

By July 27, 2011, Rauhauser declared that Patterico “looks to be a pretty good candidate for the planner/operator behind Weinergate.”
Patterico had been one of Kimberlin’s prime targets since October 2010, and by late July 2011, Rauhauser was using his DailyKos diary to attack Patterico every other day. If you’ll read Rauhauser’s July 4 post, you’ll find that this isn’t exactly a coincidence:

Who has been in sight, frantically flogging explanations that don’t add up, is Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney John Patrick Frey . . .
And when someone forwarded me the complaint regarding Frey running a cyberstalking campaign in conjunction with South Easton, Massachusetts resident Seth L. Allen, well, maybe this whole situation is about to become much clearer. . . .

Three days later, on July 7, Rauhauser announces on DKos his plan to move from Illinois to Washington, D.C., for a job that would “provide for me more in a week than I make for a whole month at my part time day job here in Illinois.” And in October 2011, Rauhauser described himself as doing “protective service work” for a client who is “the head of a Washington D.C. NGO.”
This description fits Kimberlin, whose 501(c)3 Justice Through Music Project has collected about $1.8 million in contributions since its founding in 2005. In December 20, 2011, Seth Allen himself made that connection in a post titled, “Sadistic Cybersmearing and the Roots of Blogging Fascism.”

If you’ll follow that Seth Allen link, you’ll notice Rauhauser invoking “an annoyed FBI agent who will confirm the back story” of what Rauhauser called “a credible death threat” by Allen against Rauhauser’s self-described “client,” Brett Kimberlin. And, as Allen said, Kimberlin in December 2011 was “attempting to have [Allen] imprisoned for contempt of court.”

So here you have Neal Rauhauser and Kevin Zeese, both known associates of Kimberlin, involved in the smearing of Mike Stack, while Rauhauser was separately involved in the harassment of Seth Allen and Patrick Frey. Yet Kimberlin’s federal lawsuit says nothing about Rauhauser or Zeese, nor does Kimberlin’s lawsuit mention Velvet Revolution US, the organization that brought him to the attention of the bloggers he’s suing in federal court for allegedly “creating false narratives” about Kimberlin. But by omitting the involvement of Rauhauser, Zeese and Velvet Revolution from his version of events, it is Kimberlin who is creating a “false narrative.”

Quod erat demonstrandum.

RECENTLY:

March 1: Flashback: Kevin Zeese’s May 2012 Lawsuit Threat Against Ali Akbar
March 1: Why Would Brett Kimberlin Threaten to Sue the American Spectator?
Feb. 28: Federal Judge Issues Devastating Opinion in Brett Kimberlin Copyright Case
Feb. 28: Kimberlin Attacks @AceOfSpadesHQ’s Lawyer, Cites ‘Breitbart Unmasked’
Feb. 22: Bad to Worse for Brett Kimberlin
Feb. 21: Brett Kimberlin’s ‘Evidence’

Category: The Kimberlin Files

FMJRA 2.1: Technical Ecstasy

Posted on | March 2, 2014 | 7 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Major thanks to Smitty for putting on his Programming Wizard hat and converting what had been a brutal three-hour slog with Excel and HTML into a relatively pleasant experience.

LGBT Activist Declares: ‘We Need to Start Making Their Lives a Living Hell’

Good-Bye, and Good Riddance: @PiersMorgan Canned at CNN

Heh: @DaveWeigel Dismantles @PiersMorgan, But Good

LIVE AT FIVE: 02.24.14

If Porn Is Not Shameful, Why Doesn’t Miriam Weeks Use Her Real Name?

“Special Snowflake” @Belle_Knox and Make-Believe Feminist ‘Empowerment’

Rule 5 Monday: A Double-Stuffed Presidential Collection

Arguing With Psychotics

“Fairness” and Feminism

In The Mailbox, 02.28.14

Bad to Worse for Brett Kimberlin

No Means No, and So Does Yes

Posted on | March 1, 2014 | 98 Comments

Canadian columnist @RobynUrback reports on the latest development from the country that gave us “Slut Walk”:

On Wednesday evening at McGill University in Montreal, a group of students and community activists assembled to discuss when “yes” doesn’t actually mean yes. The Forum on Consent, which was also open to the public, featured several panel participants who spoke to the question of what we understand as “consent.” The theme was similar to a campaign launched by a Nova Scotia coalition earlier this month — the More Than Yes campaign — which contended that “sexual consent is more than just a yes.” According to that campaign, and echoed by the forum participants at McGill on Wednesday, real consent “must be loud and clear. Sex without enthusiastic consent is not sex at all. It’s sexual assault or rape.” . . .
Rape culture was one of the concepts discussed by the Forum on Consent panel, which contended that deniers of the phenomenon simply aren’t looking beyond the obvious. It’s a fair point. But it’s also impossible to claim that there is some sort of systemic, expanding mechanism of sexual assault denial, especially when we have no real means to measure its occurrence. . . .
And so, the suggestion that “yes” might actually mean “no” — or at the very least, isn’t a complete yes — further complicates any attempt to really evaluate what’s going on.

What’s going on, ma’am, is that the perpetually aggrieved need something to be angry about, and if they can stop those pesky “facts” from cluttering up the arguments, it’s easier to pretend women are under siege by agents of the oppressive patriarchy.

If there aren’t enough actual rapes to justify all this feminist yammering about “rape culture,” the activists will simply re-define rape until they get enough rape to suit them. This blog post, for example, may be considered a form of rape, because every feminist reading it knows that I’m thinking about her vagina — without her consent!

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

Category: Feminism

Flashback: Kevin Zeese’s May 2012 Lawsuit Threat Against Ali Akbar

Posted on | March 1, 2014 | 10 Comments

One curious fact about Brett Kimberlin’s state and federal lawsuits is that in neither complaint does Kimberlin so much as mention Velvet Revolution US, the 501(c)4 group he formed with Brad Friedman. Nevertheless, it was the activities of Velvet Revolution US — specifically its July 2010 demand for prosecution of James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles — that first made Kimberlin an object of interest to conservative bloggers. (See Mandy Nagy’s 3,600-word October 2010 article for background.) On May 31, 2012, Velvet Underground lawyer Kevin Zeese sent this letter:

Velvet Revolution May 2012 Lawsuit Threat vs. Akbar

There are a couple things worth noticing here:

The letter was written two days after the May 29 Maryland court hearing at which Kimberlin had Aaron Walker arrested on criminal charges, an event that catapulted this story into the stratosphere. See Ken White at Popehat, “Forgetting Brandenburg And The Rule of Law: Brett Kimberlin Censorship-Through-Lawfare Update.”
The letter was sent not only to Ali Akbar, but also to Republican donor Foster Friess, who had helped sponsor Blog Bash at CPAC 2012. One might interpret that inclusion as an effort to intimidate a contributor to the National Bloggers Club.

No lawsuit was ever filed by Velvet Revolution US. It’s been more than 21 months since Zeese sent that letter, so one may speculate why Velvet Revolution lost interest in pursuing legal action, just as one may speculate about Kimberlin’s curious omission of Velvet Revolution from his lawsuits both in Maryland (Kimberlin v. Walker, et al.) and in federal court, where John Hoge has dubbed the RICO conspiracy case Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al.

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Why Would Brett Kimberlin Threaten to Sue the American Spectator?

Posted on | March 1, 2014 | 8 Comments

For publishing the truth:

Perhaps the most shocking element of Kimberlin’s 1978 bombing spree was that authorities believed it was an attempt to distract police investigating the murder of a 65-year-old grandmother, Julia Scyphers.
As [Joe] Gelarden reported in a 1981 [Indianapolis Star] article, Scyphers had become concerned about her daughter Sandra Barton’s involvement with Kimberlin, who had shown a “strange affection” for Sandra’s young daughter Debbie. The girl was 10 years old when 20-year-old Kimberlin met her in 1974, and Sandra permitted Debbie to accompany Kimberlin on vacation trips to Disney World, Mexico, and Hawaii. According to [Mark] Singer’s [1996] book [Citizen K], Kimberlin’s acquaintances recalled him introducing the preteen as “my girlfriend,” and the girl’s mother told a co-worker that Kimberlin was “grooming” Debbie to be his wife. Kimberlin’s interest in the little girl alarmed her grandmother. In the summer of 1978, Julia Scyphers arranged to have the girl and her older sister leave their mother’s home and move in with her, and when Kimberlin was unable to see his “girlfriend,” he reportedly threatened suicide. A few weeks later, Scyphers was shot dead in what investigators suspected was a murder-for-hire, and one of Kimberlin’s associates in the drug trade was identified as the shooter by Scyphers’ husband. But Fred Scyphers, the only eyewitness to the crime, died of a stroke shortly thereafter, and prosecutors dropped the murder case, which remains unresolved to this day.
Kimberlin was ultimately convicted in the bombing spree, yet has never admitted his guilt, instead claiming that he was framed by a “corrupt government.” . . .

You can (still) read the whole thing.

Category: American Spectator, The Kimberlin Files

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The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

In The Mailbox, 03.03.14

Our Worthless Media

LIVE AT FIVE: 03.04.14

Kevin Zeese, Neal Rauhauser and the ‘Occupy Infiltrator’ Frame-Up

FMJRA 2.1: Technical Ecstasy

Republican Party Staring Victory Right In The Face, Wetting Itself

Because @kmcdonovgh Knows You’re a Victim of Heteronormative Patriarchy

The World’s Youngest Blogger: Is BHO A Reference To Dilbert’s Colleague Wally?

FMJRA 2.0: Washington’s Birthday Hangover Edition

Nickel-and-Dime Ukraine Scandal: Foreigners Bought Bloggers Cheap

LIVE AT FIVE: 02.26.14

And Satan Said, ‘Abra Cadaver’, And Lo: Harry Reid Did Clutter The Senate

No Means No, and So Does Yes

Flashback: Kevin Zeese’s May 2012 Lawsuit Threat Against Ali Akbar

Why Would Brett Kimberlin Threaten to Sue the American Spectator?

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