The Other McCain

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

Hmmm. #Zimmerman Jury Asks for Clarification on Manslaughter?

Posted on | July 13, 2013 | 33 Comments


There is no other way to interpret this: If a second-degree murder conviction were still under consideration, the jury would not be asking about the lesser offense of manslaughter. And the fact that the jury needed clarification — I don’t know what that means.

On the other hand, it may be that the jury is just asking questions, and we shouldn’t read too much into this. I’m willing to bet $100 Zimmerman won’t get a murder conviction, but I’d have bet that even before the prosecution finished. Now the question has got to be “reasonable doubt” on manslaughter. Here’s what CNN reports:

The six women deliberating George Zimmerman’s fate asked the court Saturday evening for clarification on the instructions regarding manslaughter, the judge said.
That couldn’t have even been a question a few days ago: Judge Debra Nelson ruled Thursday, over the defense’s vehement objection, to include manslaughter as an option for jurors, in addition to the second-degree murder charge. Their third option would be to find Zimmerman not guilty.
The question — which was read out in court, without the jurors present, shortly before 6 p.m. Saturday — was the first posed by the jury since late Friday afternoon, when jurors requested an inventory of evidence. After the question on the manslaughter charge, lawyers from both sides approached Nelson’s bench; their comments could not be heard.
The judge then said the court would recess for 30 minutes. Lawyers returned to the Sanford, Florida, courtroom shortly before 6:40 p.m., at which time the jury had deliberated for 13 hours total.
After some back-and-forth, and shortly before the judge announced that the jury had ordered dinner, prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed to a response to the jury’s question — basically asking for more detail. “The court cannot engage in general discussions but may be able to address a specific question regarding clarification of the instructions regarding manslaughter,” their joint response to the jury says. “If you have a specific question, please submit it.”

Anthony Branca at Legal Insurrection says this was such a “dirty prosecution” that there is no way a conviction will withstand appeal. And therefore, maybe kind of a win-win: Conviction on manslaughter, so no riots, and then sometime next year the verdict is overturned on appeal. Nobody’s going to riot about that.

BTW, the defense closing argument sucked. It just did. The prosecution was much more emotional in their closing arguments.

It’s an all-[woman jury and, y’know, feelings.

The jury ordered dinner and is apparently going to work late tonight.

 

Category: Uncategorized

L.A. Times Columnist @RobinAbcarian Watches CNN, Tells You How She Feels

Posted on | July 13, 2013 | 39 Comments

So there I was, doing my usual routine — sarcasm on that Twitter thing — and this woman I never heard of before decides to mock me.

Fine, whatever, so it’s Daily Troll Drill: Click on the profile and see what kind of troll has jumped into my timeline today.

Los Angeles Times columnist? What’s that gig pay, sweetheart?

And besides sleeping with your boss, how did you get that job?

OK, that was an unfair ad hominem. Probably the editor who made Robin Abcarian a columnist is a gay man, because it’s the L.A. Times, after all, and they’ve got quotas for everything there. And I’m sure Abcarian’s fans will explain that her job as an L.A. Times columnist is a consequence of her advanced skills in watching CNN:

Every time CNN’s courtroom camera lingered on the sad face of George Zimmerman today, I felt slightly sick. What a nauseating set of events he unleashed on that drizzly Florida night nearly 17 months ago. He may not be a murderer — only the jury of six women will make that judgment — but he certainly is a killer.
He has taken one life and ruined his own. The case has also ensnared his wife, who faces criminal charges for telling a judge at a bond hearing that they were broke when their accounts were fat with donations from supporters. (How ironic it would be if he were set free while she went to jail.)
Yet, as he sat there, listening to the closing argument of prosecutor Bernie de la Rondia, who pointed out the many holes in Zimmerman’s story about how he came to shoot Trayvon Martin, I felt a twinge of compassion for the guy, just a genuine sense of sadness that his disastrous judgment has left one family with a dead child and another with a son potentially facing years in prison. . . .

You can read the rest of that, if you’re really interested in how newspaper columnists feel while watching CNN.

In other recent must-reads, Robin Abcarian shared with L.A. Times readers her feelings about the Charles Saatchi-Nigella Lawson divorce, how she feels about Alec Baldwin and Paula Deen, how she feels about Wendy Davis and Texas abortion laws . . . kind of a theme, you might say.

Pity the underpaid and overworked L.A. Times news reporters who have to do things like pick up the phone and talk to sources and occasionally get in their cars and drive places where actual news is happening, while Robin Abcarian gets paid to write about her feelings about, y’know, whatever she has feelings about.

Imagine yourself as a metro beat reporter hustling to get your story in for deadline. The city editor’s pacing back and forth impatiently and you’re writing as fast as you can, trying to double-check your facts and make sure the quotes are right and somewhere, in the back of your mind, you think about that lazy overpaid bitch Robin Abcarian, who gets paid to write silly thumbsuckers about what she watches on TV.

But you’re a professional journalist, see, so you brush that thought out of your mind, and hit your deadline. Another day, another dollar.

Circulation is in the toilet. Advertising revenue sucks.

Somehow, though, the managerial geniuses at the L.A. Times could probably explain why they must pay Robin Abcarian to emote regularly, lest Journalism As We Know It should come to an end.

Robin: Everybody at the L.A. Times hates you. Except that boss you may be sleeping with, and I’m not so sure about him, either.

 

Category: Journalism, Media Bias

Kook City, USA: Awaiting Verdict, Maybe Riots, as #Zimmerman Jury Deliberates

Posted on | July 13, 2013 | 41 Comments

Let’s be honest: The George Zimmerman trial is “news” because it’s what TV producers have decided is news. However, if you watch too much TV news, your brain has probably atrophied to the stage where you can’t make distinctions about what is more important:

A. This trial in Sanford, Florida, involving people you never met and never heard of until you saw it on the TV news;
or
B. Something that might actually matter to you.

TV-induced mental health issues aside, the outcome of the Zimmerman trial might make a difference in your life if the jury votes to acquit and there are riots. Other than that — and you might want to check Zimmerman Jury Watch at Legal Insurrection — this might be a good time to explain why you think this is important.

The shooting of Trayvon Martin was just local news, until a left-wing group decided this case could help them demonize the so-called “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida which, however, isn’t really relevant to the case (go figure). Then the Usual Suspects of racial ax-grinding (Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, et al.) got involved and President Obama’s political advisers decided he should get involved, too. So there was a press conference in which a reporter asked a pre-approved question, to which President Obama gave a scripted answer.

Somewhere along the way — and I haven’t checked the timeline — NBC News deliberately edited the recording of a 911 call to make it look like Zimmerman is a racist who was “profiling” Trayvon.

Madcap hijinks ensued.

And, if all you know is what you see on TV news, you might believe that Trayvon Martin is the only black teenager who got shot to death in America in 2012. (Hint: He wasn’t.) So now they’ve had around-the-clock national TV coverage of this trial in Sanford, Florida — a town you’ve probably never been to — involving people you’ve never met, and you’re glued to the TV, transfixed with anxiety, as you await the jury’s verdict. Because you’re mentally ill.

Your TV is making you crazy. Stop watching so goddamned much TV. And that’s really all I’ve got to say about it, for now.

 

Category: Crime, Florida

‘Protest,’ Riots, To-may-to, To-mah-to

Posted on | July 13, 2013 | 55 Comments

Jeff Quinton reports a story today with the headline, “Marxists to protest Zimmerman trial verdict in Baltimore.”  This “protest” will involve “activists,” says the Baltimore Sun, which reports that the “The Baltimore People’s Power Assembly” is organizing the riot looting peaceful demonstration, but evidently the Professional Journalist didn’t bother to ask, “Who is The Baltimore People’s Power Assembly”?

Readers will be shocked at the profound mystery irresponsible allegations easily discovered facts that Jeff reports about this outfit:

They have a “Solidarity Center” on North Charles Street just north of West North Avenue where they have some of their events. In fact one of these events this weekend is a birthday party for two activists:

Two very good reasons to party – Andre and Shauna’s birthdays! Andre Powell, who is a long time union and LGBTQ activist, Workers World Party organizer, and New Wave singer along with Shauna, a new Peoples Power Assembly

They are asking for donations at the party:

The Solidarity Center is suffering from the “summer lack of money blues” to pay its rent. As many of you know the Center has housed organizing for the Poor Peoples Campaign and many other campaigns. The Solidarity Center has opened its doors to a variety of different groups who have met and planned activities including Occupy Baltimore, SCLC, UPP, WWP, the Green Party and the families and victims of police violence.

Additionally, the only “Like” tha the Baltimore People’s Assembly makes on their page is the Facebook page of the Baltimore Worker’s World Party. The Baltimore WWP lists it’s physical address as the sam location as the People’s Assembly Solidarity Center.

It would seem that Jeff Quinton has uncovered vicious innuendo baseless rumors incontrovertible proof that the “Solidarity Center” and the “People’s Power Assembly” are basically fronts for the fringe Stalinist splinter group, the Workers World Party.

The WWP’s history of operating through front groups, organizing “coalition” protests under disposable names like “International  A.N.S.W.E.R.” is not exactly a secret, but for some reason these facts that Jeff Quinton was able to discover — through some arcane magic known only to him — are beyond the reach of Baltimore Sun reporters, and perhaps of no interest to Baltimore Sun readers.

Let me try this here “Google” doohickey. Oh, my — looky there:

The Workers World Party (WWP) is a Marxist-Leninist sect that was founded in 1959 by Sam Marcy. Marcy and his followers were members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) until 1958, when they split from SWP because, unlike that organization, they supported the presidential bid of the Progressive Party’s Henry A. Wallace in 1948, the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary, and the regime of Mao Zedong in China. . . .
Advocating socialist revolution and the abolition of private property in the United States, WWP is a staunch supporter of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il. . . . During the Cold War it always sided with the Communists, against America. In the 1960s, Marcy himself led demonstrations against the Vietnam War and called for the victory of the Vietcong. . . .
WWP was also a Cosponsoring Organization of the April 25, 2004 “March for Women’s Lives,” a Washington, D.C. rally advocating unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.

Nothing interesting or newsworthy — certainly, nothing controversial — about any of that stuff. Just your friendly neighborhood foreign dictator-supporting Marxist revolutionaries with offices in downtown Baltimore (2011 North Charles Street), who have announced:

PROTEST
If George Zimmerman is acquitted
SHOW YOUR OUTRAGE!
The immediate day after the verdict is announced gather at
McKelden Square, Light & Pratt Streets,
Downtown Baltimore 5 P.M. to 6:30 P.M.
Calling on all groups and individuals to join.”

Bolsheviks in Baltimore? No, that’s not “news” or anything  . . .

 

Category: Crime, Maryland, Quinton Report

Maniac Rights? ‘Democracy Now’ Whitewashes Barrett Brown’s Crimes

Posted on | July 13, 2013 | 40 Comments

Sept. 12: Barrett Brown rants on YouTube about his plan to ‘destroy’ an FBI agent

Donald Douglas at American Power called attention to an absurdly dishonest puff piece about Barrett Brown, the erstwhile “Anonymous” spokesman whose online meltdown in September 2012 resulted in his arrest for threatening FBI Special Agent Robert Smith.

You can click here to read the transcript of the broadcast, but the gist of it is this: Northwestern University philosophy professor Peter Ludlow seems to have bought into Barrett Brown’s idea that any random psychopath, simply by claiming to be engaged in journalism, can engage in criminal behavior, and that if the psychopath-“journalist” is then prosecuted for his crimes, well . . . “chilling effect.” Watch:

People might actually believe that dishonest one-sided propaganda if they knew nothing about the nature of Anonymous, or about Barrett Brown’s “journalism” career, or the allegedly sinister conspiracies that Brown claims he was investigating. Here’s just one short excerpt of Brown, after he was raided in March 2012 in connection with the “LulzSec” hacker cell, spinning his self-serving bullshit:

The warrants themselves refer to the information that they’re seeking as regarding Anonymous, of course, a few other things of that nature, and also two companies: HBGary and Endgame Systems. Both of these are intelligence contracting companies that Anonymous had a run-in with in February of 2011, during which a number of emails were taken from HBGary, in particular, which themselves revealed a number of conspiracies being perpetuated by those companies in conjunction with Justice Department and several other institutions, including Bank of America, against WikiLeaks and against several journalists.
The time since, I’ve spent a lot of time going over those emails, researching them, conducting other research, otherwise trying to expose a number of things that have been discovered by virtue of those emails from HBGary having been taken. I sincerely believe that my activities on that front contributed to me being raided the other day and will no doubt contribute to any further action that the FBI decides to take. I would just also note the Justice Department itself is very much intertwined with this issue, and has been for a while, and in no way can conduct a fair investigation against me, based on what I’ve revealed, what I’ve helped to sort of emphasize about them.

First: The hacking of HBGary’s e-mails was a crime, an act of terroristic vandalism and theft. What had happened was the head of the firm’s Internet security subsidiary had publicly boasted that he had information that was going to take down Anonymous. A cell of hackers known as “LulzSec” then broke into the HBGary’s server and also hacked the boastful executive’s e-mail account.

There was no “conspiracy” revealed by those e-mails. Instead, they showed the executive, Aaron Barr, suggesting various schemes he proposed for attacking Anonymous. If you will recall, Anonymous zoomed to prominence by its actions in defense of WikiLeaks. Everybody in business and in government was trying to find ways to defend against these online attacks, which had been aimed at a variety of entities — including Amazon, Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — viewed as “enemies.”

It was digital vigilanteism, a thug mob engaged in terroristic intimidation: “Do what we say, or else we will shut down your servers with a DDOS attack and maybe also hack your files.” You could compare Anonymous to the Mafia, the Hitler’s SA Brownshirts, the KKK or any other group that uses terror tactics to achieve its aims.

Aaron Barr was trying to win contracts for HBGary to provide security against such threats, and while pitching his services to prospective clients, Barr proposed a number of . . . uh, innovative approaches.

We could just say that some of the stuff Barr suggested was as shady as the stuff Anonymous was doing. Or we could quote this exchange from the Democracy Now broadcast:

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Ludlow, talk about what he had released. Talk about what he got from HBGary and how this links to Glenn Greenwald.
PETER LUDLOW: Sure. Well, what they uncovered was—I mean, it’s actually a little bit subtle, right? Because it begins with the Bank of America being concerned that WikiLeaks had information on it. Bank of America goes to the United States Department of Justice. The Department of Justice leads them to Hunton & Williams, the big law fix-it firm in the D.C. area, who in turn hooks them up with a group of private intelligence contractors that went under the umbrella Team Themis. And Team Themis had a number of proposals and projects that were exposed in all of this. They included running kind of a PSYOPs operation against the Chamber Watch, which is a group that sort of monitors the Chamber of Commerce, and it was an attempt to undermine it and Glenn Greenwald and other individuals. And, I mean, there were many, many plans that they had, many, many things, but some of the documents released showed that they were saying they were going to create fake documents, leak them to Greenwald, and then, when Greenwald eventually released them, they would expose it as a fraud and attempt to undermine him in that way. And they had a similar plan for Chamber Watch, as well.

Pay attention: “Team Themis had a number of proposals” — key word, proposals — which was all it was, because the ad-hoc consortium known as “Team Themis” never got a contract to do this stuff.

To characterize some of the things in Aaron Barr’s e-mails as “projects” or even “plans” is horribly misleading. Barr and his friends were brainstorming and Barr, coming from a military background, kept offering wild-ass ideas that sounded like spy-vs.-spy stuff: Devious “dirty tricks” operations and so forth.

Neither Bank of America nor any other client ever signed off on any of these “plans,” which as I say, weren’t really “plans” at all, but rather just stuff that Aaron Barr wrote in his e-mails. The e-mails sound scary when described as if they were something that somebody actually did — “projects” — or something intended to be done — “plans” — but what if everything you had ever merely proposed to do in an e-mail were published and presented to the world as if it were an actual event?

Would that be realistic? Would it be . . . “investigative journalism”?

See, this is where the whole phony career of Barrett Brown comes into focus: Barrett didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. Period.

Barrett Brown was never on the staff of any magazine or newspaper, never worked under the supervision of an experienced editor. That drug-addled son of a bitch never so much as covered a city council meeting or a zoning board hearing and yet — thanks to the Internet — he could sit at his laptop promoting himself as an expert on subjects that he simply was not qualified to discuss. And be taken seriously by other “journalists” who don’t have enough basic common sense to come in out of the rain.

God, I despise gullible fools like Amy Goodman.

Carefully parse this sentence from Barrett Brown’s interview:

[A] number of emails were taken from HBGary, in particular, which themselves revealed a number of conspiracies being perpetuated by those companies in conjunction with Justice Department and several other institutions, including Bank of America, against WikiLeaks and against several journalists.

Or, so says Barrett Brown. The e-mails “revealed a number of conspiracies being perpetuated by those companies,” says Barrett Brown, with the confidence of a natural-born bullshit artist.

There were “a number of conspiracies,” that number being zero.

But never mind that: Barrett Brown says he is a journalist and indeed such a journalist is he that the federal government framed him for a crime just to stop him from continuing his journalism.

How many articles did Barrett Brown publish about the HBGary e-mails, “Team Themis,” etc.? Who published these articles? What were the publication dates and word-counts of those articles?

Good luck with that research, Peter Ludlow and Amy Goodman — or anybody else who wants to try to compile the bibliography of Barrett Brown’s “investigative journalism” about HBGary and whatever “number of conspiracies” he says were being “perpetuated.”

You naive chumps — Barrett Brown scammed you. You suckers got played. Let’s re-read Brown’s description of his “journalism”:

I’ve spent a lot of time going over those emails, researching them, conducting other research, otherwise trying to expose a number of things that have been discovered by virtue of those emails from HBGary having been taken. I sincerely believe that my activities on that front contributed to me being raided the other day.

Barrett “spent a lot of time going over those emails,” you see. The HBGary hack was February 2011, the FBI raided him in March 2012, so for 13 months Barrett was “going over those emails” and producing what?

Please, Amy Goodman and Peter Ludlow, show me what Barrett Brown actually reported — you know, real “journalism,” published somewhere besides Pastebin documents — that made him such an Enemy of the State that the FBI raided him to shut him up?

Three words: Bull. Fucking. Shit.

If all I ever did all day long was “going over e-mails” that wouldn’t make me a journalist. Hell, I wouldn’t even be a blogger.

You could call Barrett Brown a lot of things. Adrian Chen of Gawker called him a “famewhore” after Brown announced in November 2011 that he and Gregg Housh had signed a “six-figure” deal for a book about Anonymous. What happened to that book deal? Somebody should ask Gregg Housh if he and Barrett ever delivered so much as a draft chapter to the publisher. And what about Dan Conaway, the big deal New York literary agent who scored that deal? Has anybody asked Dan Conaway how far along Barrett and Gregg were on their “six-figure” manuscript before his client Barrett Brown went berserk and got busted by the feds?

See, these are common-sense questions that a reporter would ask about a story like this, if he were actually interested in the truth, rather than doing publicity or propaganda, which is what Peter Ludlow and Amy Goodman are providing for Barrett Brown: Accept his story about himself at face-value, without bothering to check his story to see if it matches up to the actual facts.

Having cursorily checked the facts, I find that in 2007, Barrett Brown co-authored an anti-creationism book, Flock of Dodos, with a Texas A&M sociology professor, and the blurb says:

Barrett Brown has written for several national magazines including National Lampoon, Cracked, Jest, Wired, Playboy and for nerve.com.

Perhaps someone could provide a listing of the articles that Barrett contributed to those humor magazines. A search of the archives at Nerve.com yields exactly one result for Barrett Brown, a 2003 column of Internet sex news compiled with Sarah Harrison.

My point is that it might be helpful, in understanding him as a journalist, to study Barrett Brown’s work history prior to his bursting upon the scene as the face of Anonymous in February 2011.

Because from my own knowledge of Brown’s career, whatever his skills as a famewhore/spokesman, I can’t really see anything that would particularly qualify him to do anything else with those HBGary e-mails other than, well, “going over those emails, researching them, conducting other research, otherwise trying to expose a number of things that have been discovered.”

Spinning his wheels, wasting his time, and publishing . . . what?

Between February 2011 and his September 2012 arrest, what did Barrett Brown actually publish? Maybe I missed some journalism important enough to merit his arrest by the FBI because, as everybody knows, this is what the FBI does: They arrest investigative journalists who are Getting Too Close to the Truth.

No, I don’t believe that. And you don’t believe it, either.

You’d have to be as thick-headed as a Northwestern University philosophy professor to believe something that preposterous. But right there it is, the headline at Democracy Now:

Jailed Journalist Barrett Brown Faces 105 Years
For Reporting on Hacked Private Intelligence Firms

If you’re the kind of person who believes everything you read on the Internet, that settles it, right? Whatever you do, don’t try “Reporting on Hacked Private Intelligence Firms,” or else the feds will kick down your door and send you to prison, too.

Hell, folks, I’m scared to death even to link that headline.

Journalist Barrett Brown spent his 300th day behind bars this week on a range of charges filed after he used information obtained by the hacker group Anonymous to report on the operations of private intelligence firms. Brown faces 17 charges ranging from threatening an FBI agent to credit card fraud for posting a link online to a document that contained stolen credit card data. But according to his supporters, Brown is being unfairly targeted for daring to investigate the highly secretive world of private intelligence and military contractors.

Oh, damn. Now I’ve quoted the story! Is that a SWAT team outside my door? Do I hear the sound of hob-nailed jackboots of the fascist Surveillance State goose-stepping down my street?

“But according to his supporters . . .”

That’s an interesting sentence, isn’t it? Democracy Now didn’t talk to anyone who isn’t a Barrett Brown supporter, we must suppose, because Democacy Now thinks everyone should be a Barrett Brown supporter, and what they are doing is advocacy, not journalism. Here are a few sentences maybe Amy Goodman should read:

Brown wasn’t arrested for “reporting,” and his saga seems more properly understood as a morality tale about unsupervised amateurs who impudently imagine they can achieve fame and fortune by producing an ersatz imitation of actual journalism. . . .
What one usually finds among practitioners of Cargo Cult Journalism is a grandiose posture of contempt for the unglamorous toil of the workaday reporter. Many people who have never covered a county commission meeting, a high-school basketball tournament or a Fourth of July parade — such local tedium is beneath their notice — seem to harbor Walter Mitty fantasies of gaining worldwide journalistic significance. The Internet is a medium that permits these would-be Seymour Hersh types to catapult past the minor leagues of journalism where real reporters learn their craft. . . . Thinking himself a sort of one-man Woodward and Bernstein who would heroically expose the Hidden Secrets of the Surveillance State, Brown instead exposed himself as a blundering amateur who got himself in so far over his head that he couldn’t handle the catastrophic result.

It’s called “The Kook Who Knew Too Much” and — unlike anything Amy Goodman would ever say about Barrett Brown — it has the merit of being the brutal and ugly truth. Y’know, journalism? But let’s watch that 13-minute Barrett Brown meltdown again, just for laughs:

About a week before his epic meltdown, Barrett sent me an e-mail threatening to sue me for libel. He hasn’t sued me yet, but who knows? Maybe he will still be pissed at me in 105 years.

UPDATE: Perhaps it is not sufficiently clear to Peter Ludlow why criminal hacking is not what journalists do for living.

See what I mean? Anonymous had enemies — Amazon, Bank of America, PayPal, HBGary, etc. — and those enemies got hacked. We might add that Glenn Greenwald had enemies — the United States government — and so Edward Snowden took a thumb drive full of classified documents out of the NSA. Therefore criminals get to decide what we get to know or don’t know by their choice of enemies?

And the only real journalists are those like Barrett Brown and Glenn Greenwald who have criminal accomplices with the cunning to obtain information by breaking the law? Like I said: If these hackers get hold of Obama’s e-mails for Sept. 11, 2012 — well, that would be a crime worthy of a Pulitzer Prize, because the White House Press Office sure isn’t being very helpful with this Benghazi thing.

News flash: America already hates journalists. Do you think America will love us more if we were accomplices of thieves and traitors?

 

Category: Barrett Brown, Conspiracy Theories

Deranged Cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt Inspires Epic ‘Downfall’ Parody Video

Posted on | July 12, 2013 | 63 Comments

Bill Schmalfeldt: Even crazier than he looks and he looks pretty damned crazy.

If you don’t know the backstory on this epic saga, a brief summary may be necessary: Deranged cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt is a troll so obnoxious he got banned from Daily Kos for a genuinely disgusting rant about anal rape. He got banned from the Examiner for being a serial violator of . . . well, just about everything, really.

How to describe his history of online failures? The Internet is to Bill Schmalfeldt what Acme Rocket Skates are to Wile E. Coyote.

Did I mention that he once blogged as “Brain-Damaged Troll“?

No matter how many times he fails — and he always fails — Bill Schmalfeldt can’t seem to figure out that he is responsible for his own failures, and instead externalizes blame onto scapegoats. He enjoys threatening and bullying people, taking sadistic pleasure in describing the terrible things that will happen to his enemies.

For example, in 2011, Schmalfeldt decided to launch a scorched-earth war of annihilation against a Facebook group that was supporting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker against the Democrat/union-backed recall petition campaign. Schmalfeldt was going to expose these Evil Republican Facebookers, you see, because in Schmalfeldt’s demented imagination, they were some kind of criminal conspiracy. And also, I think, some of them may have mocked him as a fat old ridiculous douchebag. (See? They’re evil!) Schmalfeldt once threatened a guy for “liking” a Facebook page that ridiculed Schmalfeldt:

“By 5 pm today, October 25, Eastern Time, you will write me at [e-mail address] and tell me everything you  know about relationship with the whole Knot group.”

The pro-Walker blog Knot My Wisconsin recounts another typical threat by Schmalfeldt — “I’ll sue you into poverty!”

So by June 2012, when Schmalfeldt started cyberstalking Aaron Walker, his characteristic methods were already well-established. Over the course of several months, Bill expanded his range of targets to include others on Brett Kimberlin’s Enemies List, and did such heinous things to Lee Stranahan that in February Stranahan flew to Maryland and filed criminal harassment charges against him.

Blogger John Hoge assisted Stranahan in that effort, and Schmalfeldt then began cyberstalking Hoge with such lunatic vehemence that Hoge filed his own complaints against Schmalfeldt. Finally, in June, a Maryland court granted Hoge a peace order against Schmalfeldt.

At times, Brett Kimberlin himself appeared in court to support Schmalfeldt, lending credence to the suspicion that Bill wasn’t doing this just because he’s a wacko nutjob — although he certainly is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs — but that Bill was being paid to do so on behalf of Kimberlin, the notorious bomber-turned-progressive activist. This is mere suspicion, of course: You can’t prove Kimberlin pays Internet trolls to harass his enemies, but some people suspect so.

OK, so now Kimberlin’s world is falling apart, and meanwhile he’s got this maniac henchperson (paid or volunteer) making an embarrassing nuisance of himself online. Schmalfeldt is now charged with having violated the Maryland peace order.

And meanwhile, in an underground bunker in Berlin . . .

 

If you don’t get all the inside jokes, ask John Hoge on Twitter.




 

 

Category: Bill Schmalfeldt, The Kimberlin Files

Texas Democrat Party Aborting Itself to Oblivion: No Life, No Future, No Hope UPDATE: Hope, Change, Feces, Urine

Posted on | July 12, 2013 | 135 Comments

Last week, we learned Planned Parenthood offered to hire protesters for their “pro-choice” campaign in Texas. Evidently, they’re an equal opportunity employer and hire the mentally ill:

This is what hopeless political failure looks like, people. Democrats in Texas have been losing so long that, in an insane and futile bid for relevance, they desperately seized hold of the losing side of a divisive issue. Polls show 2-to-1 support for the pro-life (Republican) position. Only evil hate-filled weirdos like Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood are in favor of Gosnell-style late-term abortions.

FACT: Republicans hold 95 of the 150 seats in the Texas state House of Representatives and 19 of 31 seats in the state Senate. Twenty-four of the state’s 36 U.S. Representatives are Republican. No Democrat has held a U.S. Senate seat from Texas since 1995 and the last Democratic governor of Texas was Ann Richards — Cecile Richards’ mother — who lost to a guy named George W. Bush in 1994.

Hey, you stay classy, Texas Democrats!

UPDATE: Donald Douglas has compiled even more “You stay classy, Texas Democrats” episodes, including . . . civility!

Katie Pavlich reports from Austin:

If you’re thinking the Occupy movement must be making a comeback through pro-abortion rallies, you’re not wrong. Many of the same people involved in the Occupy movement are based in Austin and deeply connected to radical, far Left movements.

She links to a Texas Tribune report about bricks being confiscated. This reminds me of an ancient proverb:

Quem Deus Vult Perdere, Prius Dementat.

“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make Democrats.”

More of a paraphrase than a translation, really . . .

UPDATE II: Because liberals are all about civility:

Officers said in the course of their inspections, they discovered “one jar suspected to contain urine, 18 jars suspected to contain feces, and three bottles suspected to contain paint.”

The fundamental logic is flawless, really. If you believe that it is a good thing to kill innocent babies because of “choice” or “equality” or some other political abstraction, then how can you say any mere tactic — e.g., throwing urine and feces at those who disagree — is wrong or unethical? This is what the radical slogan “By Any Means Necessary” is about. And when you organize a political movement devoted to murder, perversion and confiscation of private property (the core Democrat issues of abortion, sodomy and socialism), quite naturally you will attract hateful hearts and deranged minds to your cause.

Republicans are the party of Faith, Freedom and Patriotism, and should speak out to shame Demo0crats for the foul monsters they are.

Hat-tip: Ace of Spades.

 

Category: Abortion, Democrats, Planned Parenthood, Texas

Satanic Media Ties McDonnell Millstone Around Ken Cuccinelli’s Republican Neck

Posted on | July 12, 2013 | 44 Comments

Entirely predictable news:

As Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell faces an ever-growing investigation into gifts he accepted in office, the Republican who hopes to replace him this fall, state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, is doing what he can to keep his distance.
“What we’ve all been seeing has been very painful for Virginia, and it’s been completely inconsistent with Virginia’s very reserved traditions,” said Cuccinelli of the scandal engrossing his fellow Republican in an email to TIME. “Right now there are two investigations running, one of which began with my referral, and we need to let those play out; however, all of this emphasizes the need for clearer and faster disclosures that cover the whole family, as well as a cap on the size and types of gifts.”
Terry McAuliffe, Cuccinelli’s Democratic opponent, has been trying to find ways to make the McDonnell mess stick to Cuccinelli, asking him to endorse an outright ban of any gift over $100 to all Virginia elected officials and their immediate family. “Cuccinelli’s repeated refusal to support a gift ban reflects a tenure that has embarrassed Virginia and hurt the reputation of the Office of the Attorney General,” says the press secretary for McAuliffe, Josh Schwerin. “There are ongoing investigations that will provide concrete facts and evidence so that Virginians know exactly what happened.”

The headline at Politico:

Bob McDonnell’s stunning fall from grace 

Some commenters have chastised me as an MSM-believing RINO sellout for saying that the Corrupt Governor is doomed and should resign. But this is not a matter of opinion.

This ain’t my first time at the rodeo, buckaroos.

Two months after I arrived in Washington as an assistant national editor, the Lewinsky scandal broke, and I subsequently co-wrote the book on Democrat Party corruption, so there’s a bit of experience and authority talking when I tell you how this scandal is going to play out.

If Bob McDonnell had resigned Monday, there was about a 50-50 chance Cuccinelli could somehow change the subject between now and November and pull out a narrow win over McAuliffe. Every day that McDonnell remains in office, those odds diminish.

This is fact, not opinion.

My opinion and your opinion are equally irrelevant as to the real consequences of what the media are calling the “GiftGate” scandal.

You can say, “Well, the media are biased, this is unfair, ‘reasonable doubt,’ ‘presumption of innocence,’ Democrat hypocrisy” or whatever. Yadda, yadda, yadda — it just doesn’t matter.

Try to focus your attention on the cold, cynical calculus of this political situation. Because based on years of direct observation and experience, I can tell you what is actually happening — or will soon happen — behind the scenes of this story.

People are doing polls. Private polls. Polls commissioned by the Republican Governors Association, the Virginia GOP and the Cuccinelli gubernatorial campaign. And on the basis of those private surveys, they’re trying to figure out what impact this mess is likely to have on the November election. With 99.44% accuracy, I can predict the results: Things don’t look too good for Ken right now.

OK, so now the consultants, the “message” team and the other heavyweights involved in this campaign — including RGA people — have to figure out, “How do we fix this ugly mess?” Simple answer:

Corrupt Governor Resigns in Disgrace;
Cuccinelli Calls for New Reforms
GOP candidate vows to ‘clean up this mess’

That might work, or it might not. Like I say, if McDonnell had resigned Monday, it was just 50-50 Cuccinelli could squeak through.

Just briefly to explain the electoral reality: The key for GOP victory in Virginia is a strong turnout in the Shenandoah Valley and the rural Southside (below Richmond), which means a lot of blue-collar voters and Christian conservatives. If you think people like that don’t have a problem with the governor’s wife getting a Manhattan shopping spree (including a $10,000 Oscar de la Renta leather jacket), you obviously don’t know a damned thing about practical politics.

Never mind the other relevant fact that everybody already knows: Democrat Terry McAuliffe is a venal dishonest swine.

It’s not like any Christian would ever vote for McAuliffe, whose endorsement by Satan remains unofficial only because Satan doesn’t do official endorsements. The real problem is that a scandal-plagued Corrupt Republican is poison for grassroots Christian conservative voter enthusiasm, and the Satanic Media Establishment is going to make sure that this story stays at the top of Page One until Election Day.

Some things are beyond changing, so you change what you can. McDonnell’s resignation is the only card the GOP can play now if they want to change the narrative of this story, which otherwise ends with the headline: SATAN WINS; McAULIFFE ELECTED.

What we can therefore expect — mark my words — is a lot of news stories quoting anonymous “senior officials” and “sources close to the Cuccinelli campaign” more or less saying it’s about time for McDonnell to deliver his “Spend More Time With My Family” speech.

Good-bye, Bob. Nice knowin’ ya.

That’s how this story will end. Fact, not opinion.

One other thing to think about: Suppose that you are the Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney charged with investigating McDonnell. Your boss is Eric Holder. Maybe you’d like a nicer job — say, an appointment as a judge on the Court of Appeals — and so you want to make the boss happy. Also, you’re a Democrat, and a real Team Player, or otherwise you never would have gotten this U.S. Attorney gig.

If you are this U.S. Attorney, have you already started presenting this case to a federal grand jury? If not, how soon do you present it, in order to announce an indictment in mid- to late October?

Good-bye, Bob. Nice knowin’ ya. Enjoy your $6,500 watch.

UPDATE: A liberal Richmond-based blog Wednesday:

This story first broke on Saturday, July 6, 2013 when Republican blogger Willie Deutsch told his shocked readers that Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell was negotiating a resignation. It being the weekend, I was unable to confirm this story immediately. I now have multiple sources from within Richmond’s legal community confirming that an investigation of the connections between Bob McDonnell, Maureen McDonnell, Star Scientific,Inc., and Star Scientific’s CEO Jonnie Williams has turned up sufficient evidence to present a case to a federal grand jury this week. The McDonnells have apparently seen the writing on the wall and are now trying to avoid a felony conviction in exchange for a quick and clean exit from Virginia’s Governor’s Mansion.

Which may be true or not, I don’t know. There is talk that McDonnell’s Republican lawyers have more or less threatened to blackball any bloggers on the Right who reported the resignation rumors, and I don’t know if Willie Deutsch’s sources were right, nor can I vouch for this liberal blogger claiming to have confirmed Deutsch’s report. But if Brett Kimberlin can’t scare me off a story, you can bet good money I ain’t afraid of anybody’s Republican lawyers.

Please sue me, you swindling pettifoggers.

UPDATE II: Pity the Governor of Virginia, fourth highest-paid governor in the nation, forced to make ends meet on $175,000 a year.

Wait, what’s that sound? Yes, I’m pretty sure it’s “My Heart Bleeds for You” being played on The World’s Smallest Violin.

 

Category: Corruption, Virginia
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