The Other McCain

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

How @Elliott_Echols Won Twitter

Posted on | October 26, 2013 | 98 Comments

Ali Akbar called me Friday afternoon to tell me that the New York Times had mocked a young Republican operative:

Seven months after a report described the Republican Party’s image as “old and detached from pop culture,” it has hired Elliott Echols, 23, to serve as its first national youth director. . . .
Raffi Williams, the R.N.C. spokesman for youth media, said Mr. Echols was chosen because of his organizing and recruitment experience with College Republican groups. . . .
But hours after his announcement, the man who would be in charge of growing Republican support among the voting bloc most active on social media had fewer than 600 followers on Twitter. . . .

Ali decided to fix that problem. He went to work promoting Echols on Twitter, while also sending around e-mails urging others to join the crusade and demonstrate to the New York Times the effectiveness of conservative grassroots New Media activism on “Follow Friday.”

 

By 5 p.m. ET Friday, Elliot Echols had more than 1,500 Twitter followers. As of 9 a.m. ET today, Elliott had more than 2,500 followers.

Ashley Southall, the New York Times reporter who wrote that story?

Oh, she’s got 720 Twitter followers.

As a digital strategist, Ali likes to tell about the time a friend introduced him to someone at a conservative conference.

“This is Ali, he’s . . . He does . . . Ali, what do you do?”

This. He does this. #WINNING!

Ali is also being sued — along with 20 other defendants, including Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Erick Erickson, and Simon & Schuster — by convicted bomber-turned-progressive activist Brett Kimberlin. Maybe the New York Times would be interested in that story, eh?

 

BomberSuesBloggers.com

 


Category: Blogging, New York Times

The Going Gets Weird: Alabama Liberal Blogger Arrested on Contempt Charge

Posted on | October 26, 2013 | 52 Comments

Roger Shuler, Shelby County Jail inmate No. 288928

I reported this Friday at The American Spectator:

Alabama attorney/blogger Roger Shuler was arrested Thursday in Shelby County and held without bond, charged with two counts of contempt of court in a case that has sparked conspiracy theories pointing the finger of blame at Republican officials, including the son of former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley.
Capt. Ken Burchfield of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Friday that Shuler was being held in the county jail in Columbiana pending a hearing. Shuler was arrested “pursuant to a court order,” and was also charged with resisting arrest, Burchfield said. A jail mugshot showed Shuler, inmate No. 288928, with an apparent swollen bruise on his left eye.
Shuler is a liberal blogger who has been sued for defamation by Riley’s son Rob, by lobbyist Liberty Duke and by Republican lobbyist Jessica Garrison. At his Legal Schnauzer blog, Shuler has claimed that Rob Riley had an extramarital affair that led to Duke’s divorce. Schuler has also been sued by Garrison, a divorcee whom he accused of having a “long running affair” with Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange. . . .

You can read the whole thing. It has been reported elsewhere that Shuler was actually arrested Wednesday. The timing of Shuler’s arrest is relevant because I mentioned Thursday night that Shuler’s blog had been used in 2012 to spread the ridiculously false claim that Karl Rove was having a gay affair with Ali Akbar — a claim which originated with “a political operative on the left,” who I suspect to be Brett Kimberlin associate Neal Rauhauser. And, strange as it may seem, both Rauhauser and Bill Schmalfeldt tried Friday to claim that Schuler’s arrest had something to do with me. Ridiculous, right?

In fact, Shuler had refused to attend a court hearing on a contempt motion by the plaintiffs Riley and Duke, and had continued to publish a lot of conspiracy-theory crap about Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff (neither of whom have anything to do with this case), also alleging that the presiding judge was corrupt, et cetera.  It was kinda like the Barrett Brown case, without the YouTube meltdown.

Guess what? You can’t do that.

I mean, you can’t scoff at the court’s authority and denounce the judge as corrupt and not expect to get a contempt citation. You can’t do that even if you believe the court is violating your rights.

Lots of people feel they get screwed over in court — ask any divorced man ordered to pay child support to his no-good two-timing ex-wife — but they are still required to cooperate in ordinary court proceedings. And it doesn’t matter if you are a journalist or a blogger and the case is about politics, you’re still obligated to respect the court, even though competent authorities advise you that the court’s orders are an unconstitutional “prior restraint” on free speech.

I say this with full knowledge that Brett Kimberlin, The World’s Worst Pro Se Litigant™, is trying to use both Maryland and federal courts in an attempt to shut me up. Even if you’re being sued by a creepy perjuring bomber, you still have to respect the court.

Or move to Vanuatu, which I still haven’t ruled out.

Anyway, I had nothing to do with the arrest of Roger Shuler, but I’m not going to be suing Bill Schmalfeldt for defamation, because there’s no need to sue a lying scumbag when you can just expose the lying scumbag, and then double-dog dare him to sue you.

The burden of proof is always on the plaintiff, see? Good luck to anyone seeking to prove Bill Schmalfeldt is not a lying scumbag and, as far as Rob Riley’s alleged affair is concerned . . .

No, I’d better not tell you what Karl Rove told me about that.

Shhhh. It’s a conspiracy.

 

Category: Alabama, Bill Schmalfeldt, Conspiracy Theories, Roger Shuler, The Kimberlin Files

Schocker: 26-Year-Old Guy Willing to Have Sex With Creepy Old Shep Smith

Posted on | October 25, 2013 | 68 Comments

Supposedly the point of this big Gawker “exclusive” is that Shep Smith — who works at the eee-evil Fox News — is gay. But that is certainly not surprising to anyone who’s ever seen the Drama Queen of Afternoon News in action. Here’s a headline I ran in May 2012:

Fox News Closet Case (Who’s Not Fooling
Anybody) Declares GOP Opponents of Gay
Marriage ‘On the Wrong Side of History’

So, no, it’s not “news” that Shep Smith is gay.

What is news is that a reasonably attractive 26-year-old guy named Giovanni “Gio” Graziano was willing to have intimate contact with that scrawny orange-skinned 49-year-old anchor-thing.

All together now: Eee-eww, gross!

It’s not necessarily homophobia to feel an overpowering sense of nausea at the mental image of Shep’s squealing paroxysms of erotic ecstasy while getting sodomized by his studly boy toy.

Our deepest sympathy to the Graziano family.

 

Category: Fox News, Gays

Police State: Feds Raid Investigative Reporter @AudreyHudson, Seize Notes

Posted on | October 25, 2013 | 133 Comments

As soon as I saw the headline, I called Audrey, whom I worked with for years at The Washington Times. Audrey said she was “terrified” when she learned that police who raided her home in August — believe it or not, they had a search warrant for a potato launcher her husband had bought online — had taken notes containing information about sources for some of her reporting on TSA scandals.

By the way, you can blame Audrey for my career as a blogger. The day in January 2008 it was announced that the Times had hired a new executive editor from our hated rival — passing over veteran newspaperman Fran Coombs as replacement for retiring Wes Pruden — Audrey and I went outside for a smoke break. “If I had wanted to work for a Postie, I’d have applied at the f–king Post,” she said, and I resolved at that very moment to resign, which I did the next day.

While I hesitate to suggest a political motive for the raid on Audrey’s house, Alex Pappas’ report at the Daily Caller raises suspicions:

A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed.
In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. . . .
At about 4:30 a.m. on Aug. 6, Hudson said officers dressed in full body armor presented a search warrant to enter the home she shares on the bay with her husband. She estimates that at least seven officers took part in the raid.
After the search began, Hudson said she was asked by an investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times over the last decade. The Coast Guard operates under the Department of Homeland Security. . . .

Read the whole thing by Alex Pappas. Discussing the story with me, Audrey praised Alex’s reporting — high praise, indeed.

UPDATE: Now a Memeorandum thread, with more commentary by Bryan Preston at PJ Tatler and Rick Moran at the American Thinker.

 

Category: Corruption, Crime, Journalism

Celebrities Are the New Proletariat

Posted on | October 25, 2013 | 57 Comments

Russell Brand has international fame and a net worth of $15 million, and also used to bang Katy Perry. Nevertheless, in his own mind, he is one of the downtrodden toilers struggling to overthrow the greedy oppressive parasitical regime of bourgeois capitalism:

“A socialist egalitarian system based on the massive redistribution of wealth, heavy taxation of corporations and massive responsibility for energy companies and any companies exploiting the environment. I think the very concept of profit should be hugely reduced.”

 

Spare me these pseudo-Bolshevik ravings from movie-star Marxists. Go read Friedrich Hayek’s “The Intellectuals and Socialism.”

 

Category: Celebrities

Joan Walsh Thinks It’s All About Her

Posted on | October 25, 2013 | 80 Comments

“Bitter partisanship has left this woman a hulking, steaming pile of radioactive filth. She just hates. No amount of Obama/Democrat failure will shake her from what is, for all intents and purposes, a psychotic obsession with the ‘evil’ right.”
— Donald Douglas, American Power

Sometimes it’s just your turn as scapegoat, and the best you can do in your hour of shame is to maintain your personal dignity.

Alas, nothing in Joan Walsh’s experience of marching lockstep in the liberal herd prepared her for the sudden and severe beatdown she got after Ezra Klein, leader of the “Juicebox Mafia,” decided to take a shot at her on Twitter. Walsh had gotten out of step with the “smart” liberal take on the ObamaCare roll-out debacle, and Klein’s tweet on Tuesday was the signal that started a dogpile reaction.

“And then all hell broke loose,” Walsh writes in a long, solipsistic whine of a column at Salon.com, that failed fossil of the 1990s Dot Com Bubble which has been losing $2 million a year forever.

Did I ever mention how much Andrew Breitbart despised Joan Walsh? Because he did, you know. Her name was always an epithet to Andrew.

Donald Douglas at American Power shares that loathing: “Wretched Joan Walsh Whines About How Everybody Hates Joan Walsh.”

Walsh’s reaction to her sudden ignominy among liberals is instructive for several reasons, including what it tells us about the herd instinct of liberal pundits. There is a creepy Soviet-style conformity at times: “Here is the Party line. This is all the truth you need.”

Joan Walsh is like one of those old Bolsheviks who, after decades of service to the cause of the Revolution, suddenly found themselves arrested and hauled before one of Stalin’s show-trial courts, accused of Crimes Against the People’s Republic: “Saboteur! Trotskyist!”

Public humiliation is the renegade’s reward, and there is a deep irony in Joan Walsh’s scapegoat moment, in that she has always been so compliantly eager to please her comrades. You got the idea at times she wanted to be Homecoming Queen of Liberal High School.

A pathetic craving for popularity is a weakness, and when Klein’s quick jab punctured Walsh’s balloon with shocking suddenness, she inevitably collapsed into self-pity, inviting others to join her, invoking the ritual totems of identity-politics tribalism:

You’re derided as a purveyor of “agitprop” (thanks, Andrew Sullivan) and you’re an “Obamabot” . . .
Oh, and if you’re a woman? You’re also a cunt, a bitch, a hag; you’re old, fat and ugly, with bad teeth, chicken arms, 12 cats and a big unrequited crush on Ezra Klein. . . .
The reaction to Klein’s mildly aggrieved tweet about it set off a shitstorm. Lots of people found it easy to misrepresent what I’d written. There was a little bit of dudebro-ism afoot, as I watched my young white male blogger friends high-fiving one another for their intellectual courage and honesty, as contrasted with my venal hackdom. . . .

There is much, much more in the same vein, but the way Saint Joan climbs up on her cross, declaring that she is being crucified by her “young white male blogger friends,” is the key point: Walsh thought her service to The Sacred Cause had earned her “friends,” when in fact those younger pundits were merely political allies, each selfishly pursuing their own paths of ascent on the ziggurat of ambition. If it served their interests to praise Joan Walsh, she would bask in the glow of admiration. But once it served their interests to shun her, then all her past glories were instantly forgotten: “Saboteur! Trotskyist!”

You might think she would learn a valuable lesson from this experience, but if Joan Walsh were capable of learning lessons from experience, she would not be a liberal, would she?

 


Category: Intellectuals, Journalism

LIVE AT FIVE: 10.25.13

Posted on | October 25, 2013 | 8 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Contractors Expect Work Of Fixing Healthcare.Gov To Take Weeks

Not coders helping to fix the problem.

Up to five MILLION lines of code may have to be rewritten for site to work properly
Will “tech surge” throw good money after bad?

Euros Furious Over NSA Snooping
France, Germany call for talks

How Serious Is The US/Saudi Rift?
Conflicting messages from senior princes confuse situation



POLITICS
Cuccinelli Hits McAuliffe Hard In Final Va. Governor Debate

The really bad news is that the puppy isn’t for real, either.

Calls Democrat a liar and an empty suit

Gansler Admits He Should Have Checked Drinking At Teen Party

 Rep. Scalise: Obamacare Website Was Set Up To Fail By HHS

Sen. Sessions Questions Vague NEH Grants

Former Speaker Tom Foley Dies, 84

Rep. Lance: Sebelius Refusing To Testify On ObamaCare Problems

Retired Marine Blasts Proposed Unisex Uniform Changes As “Appalling”

ObamaCare Lawsuits Could Reach Supreme Court



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Prices Fluctuate On The Way To Biggest Weekly Drop Since June: NYMEX $97.37, Brent $107.24
Twitter Sets Cautious Valuation For IPO
Jobless Claims Stay High, Manufacturing Slows
Southwest Airlines Profit Up On Higher Prices, Cheaper Fuel
US Mortgages Fall To Four-Month Low
ROK Economy Expands 3.3% In Third Quarter, Highest In Almost Two Years
Brisk Sales To Businesses At Microsoft; Devices Lag
Cover: An Android-Only Screen Lock That Shows You Apps When You Need Them
Vine Adds Video Editing, Mid-Session Saves for Six-Second Spielbergs
Pew: Reading News On Facebook Largely Incidental
Microsoft Exec Slags Apple’s Free iWork Software



SPORTS
Cardinals Take Game Two Of World Series

Cards answer Ortiz homer with three-run seventh

St. Louis evens series with 4-2 win


Panthers 31, Buccaneers 13; Tampa Bay Now 0-7

Bruins Outlast Sharks


Rams Attempt To Lure Brett Favre Out Of Retirement

Capitals 4, Oilers 1

Canucks Edge Devils 3-2 In Shootout

Habs Stomp Ducks 4-1

WaPo’s Kilgore Claims Matt Williams Front-Runner For Nats Manager



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Lindsay Lohan – I’m Not Wining, Just Dining

Not reaching for the bottle

Says pic is an optical illusion


Lawrence Kasdan, JJ Abrams Assume Screenwriting Duties For Star Wars VII

Pauly D Calls Daughter “A Blessing”, Wants Full Custody


Morena Baccarin, It’s A Boy!

NBC to Reboot “Murder, She Wrote” With Octavia Spencer Starring

Katharine McPhee Separated From Husband Months Ago, Embarrassed By Director Affair Scandal

Kylie Jenner Throws World-Class Tantrum At LA Hotel

“High School Musical” Cast To Reunite After Five Years For Charity

Sean Hayes Blames NBC For His Show’s Lousy Ratings

Alec Baldwin Complains Movies Have Become Boring, Obsessed With Spider-Man



FOREIGNERS
Court Rejects Bo Xilai Appeal, Upholds Life Sentence
One Dead, 40 Hurt In Mexican Candy Factory Explosion
Secret Memos Show Pakistan Endorsed US Drone Strikes
Ukraine Boxer Klitschko To Challenge Yanukovich For Presidency
India PM Singh Calls For Quick Resolution To Border Dispute
Saudi Arabia Warns Women Against Defying Driving Ban
Head Of DC Russian Cultural Center Under Investigation As Possible Spy



BLOGS & STUFF
Blackmailers Don’t Shoot: Jerry Brown, Union Buster
Michelle Malkin: Cruz-bashing Obamacare Cheerleader Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) Now Pushing Waivers For Ski Resorts
Twitchy: “Not Quite The Way They Sold It” Kirsten Powers’ Insurance Premiums Skyrocket
Todd Starnes: Army Halts Training Program That Labeled Christians As Extremists (h/t Sarah Palin on Facebook)
American Power: Wretched Joan Walsh Whines About How Everyone Hates Joan Walsh
American Thinker: Virginia Farmer Starts Property Rights Legal Revolution
The Necropolitan Sentinel: Obamacare Watch – More On Public Employees And Obamacare
Don Surber: Daily Scorecard, October 24
Jammie Wearing Fools: MN Democrat Tells Obama To Man Up, Start Firing People Over Obamacare Fiasco
Pat Dollard: Harry Reid Claims Every American Is “Willing To Pay More Taxes”
Protein Wisdom: Meanwhile, The DOJ’s War On School Vouchers Continues
Shot In The Dark: Watching The Astroturf Grow
The Jawa Report: Soldiers Being Told That TEA Party Is Threat To Nation
The Lonely Conservative: Obamacare Call Center Operator Fired For Talking To Sean Hannity
Megan McArdle: Obamacare Fiasco Isn’t A Single-Payer Conspiracy


Category: Live at Five

Bill Schmalfeldt’s Dishonest Denials (and Where the Trail of Evidence Leads)

Posted on | October 24, 2013 | 59 Comments

“Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. . . . He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don’t listen to him. Remember that — do not listen.”
— The Exorcist (1973)

For reasons I still don’t understand, Ali Akbar decided to permit Bill Schmalfeldt to degrade himself as a “guest” on Ali’s podcast today. If you listened to it, you know that Bill proved conclusively (as if it were not already proven) what a twisted deranged freak he is.

Check Out Current Events Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with Ali A Akbar on BlogTalkRadio

Every time Ali referred to one of Schmalfeldt’s grossly obscene smears, Schmalfeldt would begin cackling with insane glee, evidently enjoying some kind of sadistic pleasure at his own perversity. Although I called in for a couple of segments, I did not enjoy it, preferring to avoid direct contact with such evil. At one point, Schmalfeldt was challenged about his repeated false claims that I still live in Maryland and dishonestly denied having made such claims.

“[W]e have no REAL proof that McCain ever moved ANYWHERE, that he STILL lives at his nice litle house . . . in Hagerstown, Maryland . . .”
— Bill Schmalfeldt, Nov. 23, 2012

“There is a large fraud being perpetrated on conservative Internet users. . . . [Robert Stacy McCain] raised money for this ‘flight from Maryland’ on his blog. If he did this and did not actually flee the state as he said, he raised money under false pretenses which is a felony under Maryland laws.”
— Bill Schmalfeldt, Nov. 25, 2012

Those are just two examples among scores — perhaps hundreds — of times Schmalfeldt has made this false accusation, and this is a motif with him: Accuse people of crime based upon his own baseless speculations, and then proceed to harass the target of his lies, claiming this is an “investigation,” demanding “proof” his lie is wrong.

“Tell the bomber where you live, Stacy! And while we’re
at it, let’s talk about your wife and children . . .”

Freak.

Anyway, while Ali Akbar said he plans to use the audio of Schmafeldt’s demented ravings as evidence in future legal action, I was uncomfortable with the cruelty of permitting this mentally ill man to further embarrass himself. At one point, Ali asked Schmalfeldt about his bizarre claim that Ali had a sexual affair with Karl Rove. And as might be expected, Schmalfeldt managed simultaneously to deny having made the accusation, while also suggesting it was true.

Now, I’d often heard this weird accusation mentioned in jest, but as it was obviously untrue, never bothered to see where it came from. And where it started was with an Alabama lawyer named Dana Jill Simpson, who made the claim in a letter she wrote on June 26, 2012. In that letter, Simpson said she got her information when she was “contacted by a political operative on the left.”

Hmmm.

So “a political operative on the left” dreamed up this Akbar-Rove smear, sent it to a lawyer in Alabama, who then repeated it in a letter to Bob Bauer, the top lawyer for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign (!), and from there it metastasized into a delusional rant on a blog called “Legal Schnauzer,” which got multiple comments by Schmalfeldt (as “Liberal Grouch”) and the ubiquitous Matt Osborne:

Matt Osborne said…
While I’m not about to go and say this report of a gay tryst is true, what IS definitely true is that Rove has been deeply connected to the National Bloggers Club since it started. Brett Kimberlin, the man they first tried to frame for their fake SWAT calls, embarrassed the hell out of Rove with one of his “merry prankster” performances back in 2004. I would not be surprised to find out that Rove has been using them for all manner of Nixonian ratfuckery. Anyone who’s been reading my blog lately knows I have been tangling with them over a hoax they tried to pull on me and other people in the #stoprush movement. There is no upper limit to their criminality, IMO, and Rove’s involvement shows that.
June 27, 2012 at 5:34 PM

This claim “that Rove has been deeply connected to the National Bloggers Club since it started” is just a flat-out lie. But because Bill Schmalfeldt is crazy, he can’t distinguish between reality and fantasy, between truth and lie. Therefore, in Schmalfeldt’s warped mind, Osborne’s assertion of a Rove connection to the National Bloggers Club became a “fact,” which Schmalfeldt subsequently undertook to “investigate,” and from there, as they say, hilarity ensued.

OK, so who is Dana Jill Simpson? A gadfly conspiracy theorist who, among other things, made unsubstantiated accusations that Karl Rove conspired against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. She also co-authored a recent classic of paranoid kookery, “Black Hat Versus White Hat: The Other Side Of The Snowden/Hastings/Barret Brown Cases.” (Really gives me confidence in somebody’s work when there is a misspelled name in the headline.) Now, ask yourself: Who was the “political operative on the left” who got this kooky lady interested in the bogus Rove-Akbar sex smear?

Hi, Neal.

Somewhere off on the lunatic fringe, Neal Rauhauser is always trolling for gullible kooks like this Jill Simpson who will help publicize his conspiracy theories. And the fact that the Rove-Akbar smear got turned into an actual series of articles at Legal Schnauzer (one of the few places where anyone takes Jill Simpson seriously) tells you just how gullible some people are. And then you have weirdos like Bill Schmalfeldt and Matt Osborne, whose desperate quest for relevance inspires them to repeat stuff they know to be false — e.g., that I didn’t leave Maryland — simply because they know such lies will be applauded by the small circle of kooks who admire Brett Kimberlin.

“Facts don’t matter, that’s the perception of the situation, and the world is going to act on that basis.”
— Neal Rauhauser (“Gaped Crusader”), Nov. 26, 2011

See, Neal Rauhauser understands that many people are either indifferent to truth or too stupid to know truth from lies. Neal knows that if he can generate enough “smoke” of suspicion around one of his targets, intellectually lazy people (i.e., most people) will jump to the conclusion that “where there’s smoke, there must be fire.” And these people who assist Neal in his games — among them Matt Osborne and Bill Schmalfeldt and, evidently, Jill Simpson — either (a) enjoy helping disseminate falsehoods, or (b) don’t understand the game.

They lie gleefully, because they have no conscience.

They have no decency and they have no shame. Selah.




 

UPDATE: John Hoge replies to Matt Osborne:

I have been to Stacy McCain’s house. It is not in Maryland. Period.

But in Osborne’s depraved mind, this just proves the “conspiracy,” see?

 

Category: Bill Schmalfeldt, The Kimberlin Files
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