The Other McCain

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

A New York Times Columnist Even Worse Than David Brooks and Paul Krugman?

Posted on | October 28, 2013 | 30 Comments

As impossible as it may seem, apparently it is true:

The New York Times earlier this month announced “an important expansion” of its opinion offerings, adding more than two dozen new contributors from around the world slated to write monthly columns.
Among them is Egyptian best-selling author Alaa Al-Aswany, quoted frequently in the English-language media and described as a “liberal” Egyptian voice . . .
According to Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Aswany is “among Egypt’s most prolific conspiracy theorists, and he often uses his very public platform to reinforce some of Egypt’s most popular bigotries,” The New Republic notes.
Because Aswany voices his more controversial opinions in Arabic, the Western press doesn’t notice.
For example, Aswany told Egyptian television that a “massive Zionist organization rules America,” thus “Obama is not able to go against Israel’s desires.”

More from Eric Trager in the New Republic:

In August, when Senator John McCain visited Egypt to encourage negotiations between the military and the Brotherhood, Aswany tweeted, “The Zionist John McCain, one of the biggest defenders of Israel, threatens Egypt if it does not release [Brotherhood leader] Shater immediately. The only explanation is that Brotherhood rule is in the interest of Israel.”

So yes, Aswany is worse than David Brooks and Paul Krugman.

But not worse than Tom Friedman. Nobody is worse than Friedman.

 

Category: New York Times

‘Seize This Opportunity to Cripple the Tea Party’s Political Power for Good’

Posted on | October 28, 2013 | 52 Comments

One of the things you learn is that if you ever sign up online for any liberal or Democrat operation — even as a reporter trying to get campaign information — your e-mail address will be sold and resold until eventually you’re on every liberal mailing list.

Which I don’t mind, actually, because it gives you a glimpse into what kind of messages are turning up in Democrat inboxes. Eight days before the gubernatorial election in Virginia, this is what was sent out by Democracy for America this morning:

Robert —
“Beat the snot out of them.” — former Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-OH
“If they refuse to fight for us, we must fight them.” — Erick Erickson, RedState
Those aren’t Republicans talking about what they are going to do to Democrats next year. Those are Republicans talking about what they want to do to each other — just as the GOP’s approval ratings implode in the aftermath of the government shutdown.
I assume you’ve heard the phrase, “strike while the iron is hot.” Well, if you want to hold the Tea Party accountable, irons don’t come much hotter than the upcoming election in the purple state of Virginia — in just one week. With voters livid about the government shutdown and Republicans embroiled in a civil war, progressives are in prime position to shock the political world in Virginia, setting the stage for Democrats taking back the House in 2014.
Do you want to seize this opportunity to cripple the Tea Party’s political power for good? Then join fellow DFA members to Call Out the Vote in Virginia.

Yes, I can volunteer to make calls from home into Virginia on Wednesday.
No, I can’t make calls but I can chip in $5 to support DFA’s Call Out The Vote program in Virginia — and in states all over the country in 2014.

DFA went into Virginia early, endorsing and supporting bold Democratic candidates across the state. The polls are extremely tight, and our Purple to Blue endorsed candidates have never been in a stronger position to win.
Our volunteers know that the frustration and fatigue with obstructionist Tea Party tactics is real. Not only is it reflected in the polls — it is reflected in the daily conversations DFA members are having with voters in Virginia. In recent Call Out The Vote phone banks to Virginia, I’ve spoken with several Democrats and independents who can’t wait to run out and cast a ballot for our endorsed candidates on November 5. And I’ve even spoken to Republicans for whom the government shutdown was the last straw.
This isn’t just about one state or one election. This is about seizing an opportunity to change the congressional campaign landscape for 2014. Can you volunteer to help Call Out the Vote in Virginia this week?
Yes, I can volunteer to make calls from home into Virginia on Wednesday.
No, I can’t make calls but I can chip in $5 to support DFA’s Call Out The Vote program in Virginia — and in states all over the country in 2014.
Thank you for helping us win,

Karli

Karli Wallace, Campaign Organizer
Democracy for America
P.S. As an added incentive, the top caller from each COTV shift will receive a signed copy of Howard Dean’s Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform. Click here to sign up now.

What this tells me is that “Tea Party” is a bogeyman phrase for liberals, the way “Halliburton” and “Religious Right” used to be.

As for Virginia, as incredible as it seems to say, the Old Dominion may actually be about to elect Terry McAuliffe governor.

The Real Clear Politics poll average has McAuliffe leading Republican Ken Cuccinelli by nearly 10 points, and by 8 points (50-42) in the latest Quinnipiac survey. Why? It’s not Cuccinelli’s fault — he’s a good candidate who has run a good campaign. The problem is that Republicans seem so demoralized and apathetic after their defeat in 2012 that they couldn’t raise enough money to enable Cuccinelli to compete effectively with McAuliffe’s money machine.

Also, since 2010, the GOP has gradually backslid into a cautious, timid and unprincipled “Me Too” posture. If you’re for gay marriage and amnesty for illegal immigrants, you can vote Democrat, but if you’re against gay marriage and amnesty, Republicans won’t dare appeal for your vote by speaking out on these issues, because their consultants tell them your opinions are marginal and disreputable.

You can’t win if you’re afraid to fight. Nobody admires cowardice, and the GOP nowadays marches under the white flag of surrender.

 


Category: Democrats, Election, Tea Party, Virginia

‘Students for Pleasure’?

Posted on | October 28, 2013 | 30 Comments

Spencer Chretien describes some vignettes of campus life at the College of William & Mary, including this poster:

“Like oral sex?
Cuccinelli doesn’t.
He actually wants to make it a felony.
Vote Terry McCauliffe (sic) for Governor on Nov. 5th!
Don’t let Election Day go down without you.
#GetYourHeadInTheGame
Paid for by Students for Pleasure”

And I was like, “Students for Pleasure?”

When I was in college, they called themselves Delta Zetas.

These kids today . . .

 

Category: Education

Obvious Truths of the Obama Age

Posted on | October 28, 2013 | 13 Comments

Professor Glenn Reynolds, who knows a thing or two about effective Internet sites, discusses the HealthCare.gov debacle:

So the Obamacare website doesn’t work, and nobody knows when it’ll be fixed. Administration officials are pointing toward late November, but they’ve had more than three years to work on it. In about the same amount of time after John F. Kennedy’s “we choose to go to the moon” speech, we’d already put people into orbit and brought them safely to earth. It was obviously the signature effort of the Obama administration, but it was a flop. Forget launching to the moon; we can’t even launch a website now. What does that tell us?

It tells us that Obama was elected because a majority of voters are stupid, but we already knew that. Next question, Professor?

 

Category: Barack Obama, Health Care, Instapundit

CBS: ‘Hey, Benghazi Is a Real Scandal’

Posted on | October 28, 2013 | 51 Comments

Here’s the headline at Legal Insurrection:

60 Minutes confirms Benghazi is a
real scandal, and you’ve been lied to

No surprise to anyone who has actually paid attention, of course, but the Obama administration and its media sycophants have spent months issuing excuses and manufacturing distractions — “Squirrel!” — in an effort to delay disclosure of the whole cover-up.

What has happened is essentially a repeat of what happened with the Lewinsky scandal: First, the flat-out lie, then months of carefully shifting the narrative so that when the truth becomes known, the political impact of the revelation is negligible, because people have relegated the incident to the category of Something That Already Happened. If the full truth had been known at the outset, the political result would have been different, but Democrats can survive scandals that would destroy any Republican in similar circumstances, simply because the mainstream media are sympathetic to Democrats and are therefore eager to assist them in perpetrating falsehood.

 


Category: CBS, Libya

Sound The Collision Alarm! Yet Another Lefty Switcheroo Is CBDR!

Posted on | October 28, 2013 | 35 Comments

by Smitty

For those not ‘in the know’, CBDR means “Constant Bearing, Decreasing Range”. Say that on the bridge of a ship underway, and you have everyone’s attention.

Robert Reich over at the Huffington Compost: “The Democrat’s Version of Health Insurance Would Have Been Cheaper, Simpler, and More Popular (So Why Did We Enact the Republican Version and Why Are They So Upset?)”

In February 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon proposed, in essence, today’s Affordable Care Act. Under Nixon’s plan all but the smallest employers would provide insurance to their workers or pay a penalty, an expanded Medicaid-type program would insure the poor, and subsidies would be provided to low-income individuals and small employers. Sound familiar?

As stabbed in the heart by none other than the Oldsmobile Admiral himself, Ted Kennedy, the Lyin’ of the Senate:

Nixon strongly believed that a national health insurance plan was crucial. In that 1974 State of the Union Address, he declared that “the time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high quality health care within the reach of every American”. Actually, this statement is not surprising considering Nixon’s personal history of poverty and family illness. (He lost two brothers to tuberculosis, the illnesses dealing a heavy blow to the family finances, and in fact proposed a national health insurance bill when he arrived in Congress in 1947.) Nixon sounds very much like Obama, when he said in 1974 that he did not want to see “other families of modest means…driven …to bankruptcy because of the inability to handle medical care problems of a catastrophic type”.
However, the “liberal” opposition, spearheaded by the lobbying of the then-powerful AFL-CIO and United Autowokers, proved too much for an administration spending significant energy on defending against the rising tide of the Watergate affair.
Kennedy did begin secret negotiations with the Nixon White House, but he fell prey to the pressures of the unions, as labor leaders wished for a single-payor system which they felt would be rather easily achieved once a Democrat was elected to the presidency in the face of the Watergate scandal. Many felt that Kennedy would be that Democrat, and therefore he had no business throwing a lifeline to the sinking Nixon administration.

But that’s old politics, and I only bring this up to show that Nixon was more Progressive than anything else, as well as help Reich make sure he doesn’t forget crucial details.

It’s also funny that, for a party that likes to pat itself on the back about being pragmatic, they totally blew the opportunity to get the capstone of FDR’s foul Second Bill of Rights in place while they could.

But the real, contemporary point here, Mr. Reich, is that ObamaCare IS a Democrat turd. How many Republican votes were for it? Zip, zero, nada, zilch. In either chamber of Congress.

The Democrats, and their little sycophants, own this. They were all prepared to bask in the glory, set up a permanent Democrat majority, and pulverize the Republican party. But ObamaCare is a river of lies, with headwaters in hell. It was falsely conceived, falsely legislated, falsely adjudicated, falsely reported, falsely coded, and, unexpectedly, enjoyed a false rollout. The nicest thing I have to say about ObamaCare is that albatross was an appropriate flavor choice:
But under no circumstances should the pure, 100% Democrat ownership of this debacle be allowed to slip from the public consciousness.

Category: Health Care

LIVE AT FIVE: 10.28.13

Posted on | October 28, 2013 | 10 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

TOP NEWS
Lou Reed, 1942-2013, RIP

Lou Reed playing in NYC, 2009

An outsider whose dark, lyrical visions made rock what it is.



Report: Obama Knew, Approved NSA Spying On Merkel
More fallout from the Snowden leaks


Explosions Kill Five At Narendra Modi Rally In Bihar
Six bombs, five dead and 83 wounded



POLITICS
NSA Denies Website Hacking, Blames System Error

Demonstrators march against NSA surveillance

Hacker group claims credit

One Year After Sandy, Hundreds Of Staten Island Homeowners Still Waiting To Rebuild, Return

Passions High As Hawaii Debates Gay Marriage

Bill Clinton Stumps For McAuliffe In Hampton

Cheney Criticizes Daughter’s Opponent In Senate Primary

Poll Shows DiBlasio Poised To Win by Historic Margin

Healthcare.gov Crashes Again, Verizon Subsidiary Blamed

GOP Groups Step Up Pressure On House To Pass Immigration Reform

Jindal Focusing On Upcoming Elections, Obamacare, Not White House Bid



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Prices Mixed In Cautious Asian Trade: NYMEX $97.71, Brent $107.20
Asian Markets Rebound, Following Wall Street Lead, Yen Softens
Aussie Markets Close At Five-Year High
Furloughed Federal Workers Must Repay Jobless Benefits
McDonald’s Squeezing Out Heinz Ketchup
Amazon Revenue Soars 24% In Third Quarter
Twitter Overtakes Facebook As Most Popular Social Network For Teens
LG Unveils Curved Smartphone In Race Against Samsung
Nokia Goes Big With Lumia Tablet, Smartphones
Comcast Offers HBO In Basic Cable Package
Firefox Plug-In Shows Who’s Tracking You



SPORTS
Gomes Blast Brings Boston The Win

The Bearded One is greeted by Ortiz and Pedroia after driving them in with his sixth-inning homer

4-2 victory over Cardinals evens World Series at two apiece; Red Sox could win it all in Fenway for the first time since 1918

Jeff Gordon Speeds To First Sprint Cup Win Of The Year

Rodgers Leads Packers Past Vikings In 44-31 Rout

Sharks Beat Sens 5-2

Manning Leads Broncos To Victory Over Redskins Despite Sprained Ankles

Oregon Edges FSU In BCS, Standings, Alabama Still #1 – ROLL TIDE!

Chiefs Hold On To Beat Browns, Remain Unbeaten

Dalton, Bengals Humiliate Jets 49-9

Patriots Rally In Second Half, Top Dolphins 27-17

Ducks Edge Blue Jackets 4-3

Report: Nationals To Hire Matt Williams As Manager



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Christina Ricci Marries Fiance James Heerdegen

All the Wednesday Addams fanboys heartbroken ;_;

All the details on the wedding

Olivia Wilde, Jason Sudeikis Expecting First Child

Marcia Wallace, Star Of “Bob Newhart Show” And “The Simpsons”, Dead At 70

Julianne Hough Goes Blackface For Halloween

David Beckham, Son Escape Injury In Auto Accident

“Sons Of Anarchy ” Actress Maggie Siff Pregnant


Liam Gallagher’s Baby Mama Fighting For Full Custody

Doutzen Kroes Feels Guilty About Being A Sexy Model

Boy George Snubs Fans Before Club Set

Rumors Abound After Huma-Wintour Lunch

Matt Harvey And GF Looking For A Home

The Unthinkable Happens: Leopard Skin Now Classy

Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell Don Lederhosen For Halloween Party



FOREIGNERS
66 Dead In Day of Carnage As 11 Car Bombs Rip Iraq
Three Killed, Many Injured As SUV Hits Tienanmen Square Crowd, Bursts Into Flames
Rocket Fired From Gaza Intecepted By Iron Dome
England, Wales Set For “Worst Storm In Years”
Chicoms Put Anti-Corruption Activists On Trial
Twenty Wedding Guests Killed By Roadside Bomb In Afghanistan
Fernandez’ Allies Thumped In Argentine Mid-Terms



BLOGS & STUFF
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Feminism, Marxism, and Permanent Revolution
Chicks On The Right: Helpful Tips From Kathleen Sebelius On The Obamacare Website
American Power: Leftist Media Mounts Coordinated Attack On Obama’s Claim To “Greater, More Competent Government”
American Thinker: Tying The Knot Under ObamaCare
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – Say, Where Is The Money Coming From?
Don Surber: St. Crispin’s Day Daily Scoreboard
Jammie Wearing Fools: Obama’s War On Women – ObamaCare Takes Away Womens’ Health Care Choices
JustOneMinute: Noonan On Obamacare
Pat Dollard: Unmarked Military Gunboats Patrolling Louisiana Canals?
Protein Wisdom: “More People In Three States Have Had Their Insurance Cancelled Under Obamacare Than Have Filed An Exchange Account In All 50”
Shot In The Dark: Watching The Astroturf Grow – Nuts And Bolts And More Nuts
The Jawa Report: Nigeria Slaughters Boko Haram
The Lonely Conservative: Democrats Want Smokers To Die Quickly
Megan McArdle: The Great Pension-Bonus Giveaway Fiasco


Category: Live at Five

Roger Shuler: Another Kook Succumbs to ‘Investigative Blogger Syndrome’

Posted on | October 27, 2013 | 64 Comments

Portrait of a Kook: Roger Shuler

“Shuler has not shown that any clearly established right has been violated. His only alleged evidence is a recorded phone call that he says supports the notion that he was terminated because of the political content of his blog. However, Shuler’s own transcript of the phone call shows only that his time spent researching content for his blog during working hours was a factor — and an ‘insignificant’ one, at that — in his termination. There is no evidence to suggest that the political content of his blog was a factor at all. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the UAB defendants on this claim.”
— 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, July 3, 2012

“There is not a grain of truth to warrant the horrible defamation published by you regarding our client. Each has no factual basis. Your outrageous, despicable conduct will be addressed in another forum: the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama.”
— Bill Baxley to Roger Shuler, Aug. 16, 2013

Before I get around to explaining what kind of lunatic Roger Shuler is, let’s stipulate a few hypothetical possibilities: Maybe Rob Riley had an affair with Liberty Duke, maybe Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange had an affair with Jessica Medeiros Garrison, maybe U.S. Circuit Court Judge William Pryor once posed nude back in the 1980s.

Any one or all of those accusations made by Roger Shuler might be true, without changing the conclusion that Roger Shuler is a kook.

Alabama Blogger Jailed, Apparently For
Not Obeying Order to Stop Publishing
Certain Information about Politician
— Reason, Oct. 25, 2013

That headline bothers me, and not merely because there are too many disgruntled kooks like Roger Shuler filling up the Internet with terabytes of lunacy, harassing and smearing innocent people.

The fact that Ali Akbar was one of the subjects of Shuler’s smears is certainly highly relevant to my interest, but maybe you don’t like Ali and maybe you don’t give a damn about me, either. My job is to explain to you why this particular kook — a demented inhabitant of the paranoid fringe — is typical of a general problem that affects you, even if you’re not a Republican who has been smeared by this kook.

In 2008, Shuler got “dooced,” i.e., fired from his job because of his unauthorized blogging. This happens to people. Maybe it’s wrong that it happens, but it is not social injustice, and it’s certainly not grounds to claim that you’re the victim of a corrupt political conspiracy, even if your plight gains sympathetic coverage from your allies.

Alabama US Attorney denies any involvement
in university editor’s termination
— Raw Story, July 11, 2008

U. of Alabama at Birmingham Editor Says
He Was Fired Over His Political Blog
— Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2008

OK, so you got fired for blogging, and you’ve got allies celebrating you as a martyr for First Amendment rights. But when push comes to shove — when you sue your former employer and are required to show actual evidence of your victimhood — you lose.

Because you are a loser.

Then you decide to double down on losing.

See, here’s the thing: Winners take responsibility for their failures.

This is not pleasant or agreeable. Nobody likes to admit to themselves that they screwed up, nor does anyone relish the moment when they look at their latest screw-up and recognize that it bears a strong resemblance to their previous screw-ups, so that there is an actual pattern to their failures, indicative of an intrinsic personality flaw from which they can never really hope to escape.

“Wherever you go, there you are,” as the old saying has it, and yet we all know people who never learn that lesson. They go through life repeating the same pattern of failure, and always externalize the blame, in order to protect their damaged egos from shame.

But why bring up Bill Schmalfeldt at this point? Well, it seems that (a) Schmalfeldt helped peddle the ridiculous Ali Akbar-Karl Rove gay affair libel that Roger Shuler promoted last year, (b) that Schmalfeldt is now promoting the “First Amendment martyr” narrative about Shuler’s arrest on contempt charges last week, and (c) there is a striking resemblance between the modus operandi of Schmalfeldt and Shuler.

Ali Akbar examines how these two kooks operate, claiming that they can do any damned thing they want to do, because journalism.

Shuler is not a journalist, he’s an ax-grinder, a guy who has a personal grievance that he disguises as a political crusade which, however sane it might have seemed when he began it, has turned into the ideé fixe of an obsessed fanatic. Roger Shuler has become a kook.

“Corrupt + Republican + Karl + Rove” — let the reader count how many posts by Shuler’s Legal Schnauzer blog have contained that particular combination of words. It’s a lot, including one on Sept. 14, 2008, with this provocative headline:

The Palin Doctrine: Lie, Steal, Cheat, Threaten

Scarcely two weeks had passed since Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain’s running mate, and Shuler denounced Palin as the epitome of corrupt evil of which he himself claimed to be a victim:

So there you have it, the Palin Doctrine: Lie, Steal, Cheat, Threaten. It’s a fascinating and evolving story on the national stage. But as I sit here in Shelby County, Alabama, and ponder what I’ve witnessed for the past eight years, I can’t help but think, “Despite what the pundits say, there is nothing fresh and new about Sarah Palin. If you have lived in Karl Rove’s Alabama, this kind of chicanery is old news.”

Perhaps the pattern is self-evident without my having to elaborate too much: Choose some pre-demonized political scapegoat, attribute to them malevolent action and malicious motive, compare them to those whom you allege have victimized you, and then use your own accusations as a pretext to justify further accusations against them.

Now, all you need to do is to add the magic ingredient: Describe what you are doing as “investigative journalism,” include a lot of noise about “corruption” that your more gullible readers can accept as an explanation of why these doers of foul deeds are getting away with it, and dismiss as irrelevant any facts or logic to the contrary.

You have now succumbed to Investigative Blogger Syndrome.

The most famous example of this paranoid kook motif is Barrett Brown, the former Anonymous spokesman who flipped out in September 2012, uploaded a bizarre YouTube rant about his plans to “destroy” an FBI agent, and is now in federal custody in Texas.

Here’s how I described Barrett Brown’s stock in trade:

Like the rituals of certain South Pacific islanders, the Cargo Cult Journalist hopes that his simulacrum of what he ignorantly imitates will magically bring the same result as the real thing. Cargo Cult Journalism is the kind of stuff we once encountered in smudgy mimeographed newsletters, “underground” newspaper tabloids, cheaply printed pamphlets and self-published books by crackpots who warn about conspiracies involving the Bavarian Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission and/or the Military-Industrial Complex. In the digital age, however, many people have trouble distinguishing between this kook-fringe imitation of “reporting” and genuine journalism, a distinction blurred by the increasingly shabby quality of product issued by respectable organs of the mainstream media.

There are reputable people who want you to believe Barrett Brown is a First Amendment hero and a political prisoner. Democrat Underground claims Shuler is a “political prisoner,” too. Did any of these people say a word of complaint when Brett Kimberlin had Aaron Worthing arrested last year? No, of course, they did not. And, in point of fact, Roger Shuler celebrated Kimberlin as a hero:

 In a delicious example of “turnabout is fair play,” Kimberlin has used right wingers’ tactics against them — causing the recent arrest of one thug, the outing of another as a criminal, and the transmission of a notice to others that they face possible legal action…
Key bloggers have written anonymously, but Kimberlin was able to determine their identities and bring legal action against them.

The man whom Shuler called a “thug,” Yale Law alumnus Aaron Walker, offers an erudite discussion of Shuler’s legal predicament:

No, Mr. Shuler, you were plainly playing cheerleader to an anti-freedom-of-expression thug. The most charitable interpretation is that you were such a partisan hack on this that you refused to see how you were cheerleading a clear violation of my First Amendment rights, that you were engaged in willful ignorance and cheering on a precedent that might be used against you in the future.
So part of me feels it is just deserts when I learned that recently you were ordered not to blog about something, that you were found to be in contempt of that order, that you were arrested as a result and when you allegedly resisted arrest, you were beaten to some degree because of it. I admit that part of me chuckled, reading back over your old post praising what Kimberlin had done to me.
But even Brett Kimberlin’s bootlickers have rights.

Roger Shuler, Shelby County Jail inmate No. 288928

Let’s pause to ask: Is there a moral equivalence between the reporting that I and others have done about Brett Kimberlin and the kind of Investigative Blogger Syndrome act that has landed Roger Shuler in the Shelby County Jail as Inmate No. 288928?

It’s a fair question, and there have been many times in the past 17 months that I’ve stopped, stepped back and asked myself whether I’ve gone down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. But the list of people who’ve endured the same pattern of harassment is long enough that, even if I were not a defendant in the federal RICO suit Kimberlin v. the Universe, et al., the story would still be newsworthy.

Crazy as hell, yes, but still newsworthy:

Like Kimberlin’s past acts of anti-free-speech thuggery, his tactics serve to remind people of the very facts he seeks to bury.
With the filing of this lawsuit, more people will learn that Brett Kimberlin was convicted for setting off numerous bombs, one of which blew off a man’s leg. More people will learn of his dishonest machinations to avoid paying a wrongful death judgment to the widow of the man whose leg Kimberlin blew off — a Vietnam veteran who survived the war, but could not survive the pain of the wounds Kimberlin inflicted. More people will learn that, when he set off those bombs in Speedway, police suspected him of complicity in the murder of a grandmother of a young preteen girl, with whom Kimberlin had had a relationship that many people (including the grandmother) considered inappropriate. . . .
Kimberlin’s actions are not rational — but then, “rational” is not a word you would typically use to describe a violent criminal sentenced to 50 years in prison for maiming a man with a bomb. . . .

And here’s the key difference: I didn’t pick a pre-demonized scapegoat. I didn’t claim that the story I’m covering proves corruption by Eric Holder or President Obama or some other conspiratorial combination of Democrats. Trust me when I say that there are plenty of people who can’t figure out why Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser hasn’t been arrested yet. And well do I recall some people last year telling me, “Stacy, you’ve got to show how this is connected to Obama.”

Except I can’t, and don’t pretend I can. To this day, most people have never heard of Brett Kimberlin and, even if it were demonstrated that there was a secret deal whereby the Justice Department agreed to look the other way while Kimberlin funded an elaborate scheme to destroy Andrew Breitbart and cripple conservative New Media, I seriously doubt this would ever be noticed by the New York Times.

No, I have no delusions of grandeur or fantasies of heroic vindication, which is what motivates ax-grinding kooks like Roger Shuler.

Maybe these differences are rather nuanced. Maybe this whole thing is too “meta” for most people to care about. But I’m not in the Shelby County Jail, and Roger Shuler is — because he’s a kook.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

 

BomberSuesBloggers.com

 

Category: Barrett Brown, Bill Schmalfeldt, Blogging, Conspiracy Theories, Journalism, Roger Shuler
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