The Other McCain

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

Obligatory Seriousness About Commenting

Posted on | June 21, 2012 | 56 Comments

— by Wombat-socho

Moe Lane has already done me the enormous favor of outlining what my policy is on trolls, so this will be a mercifully short post. I just want to spotlight a few things that I am finding particularly banworthy in recent days, for the benefit of those Loyal Readers who want to make my job easier by pointing out idiots who drop by for the express purpose of fouling the premises:

  1. The old whine that Romney is no better than Obama. I am sick and tired of reading this BS.
  2. Stupid posts by people who don’t get why Stacy is posting like a madman about Brett Kimberlin and Neal Rauhauser. If you’re too dumb to figure out their significance after all that’s been written, GTFO.
  3. On a related topic, anyone encouraging vigilanteism or messing around with BK/NR a la Anonymous or 4chan is going to get banned. Period.
  4. [Reserved for future annoyances]

Thanks for your cooperation.

Category: Blogging, Moe Lane

Obama Has Learned Nothing

Posted on | June 21, 2012 | 40 Comments

“The slow-rising central horror of ‘Watergate’ is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, “Memo from the Sports Desk & Rude Notes from a Decompression Chamber in Miami,” Rolling Stone, Aug. 2, 1973 (collected in The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time)

“A third-rate gun-running operation?
“The claim from the left is that this is just a case of ‘criminalizing policy differences.’
“But that’s absurd. Does either wing of American politics support giving assault weapons to Mexican druglords?”
— Ace of Spades, June 21, 2012

Ace’s allusion to Watergate — famously dismissed at the time as a “third-rate burglary” — caught my eye, as my recent bedtime reading has included The Great Shark Hunt, and Thompson’s savage denunciations of Nixon were fresh in my mind.

Of course, Nixon wasn’t as bad as his left-wing enemies (like Thompson) thought he was, and neither is Obama as bad as his right-wing enemies think he is. But this is not a situation where finely calculated degrees of moral virtue are really relevant. Rather, what we are witnessing is the consequence of hubristic arrogance, and the failure to learn the lessons of history.

The president and his aides obviously knew the Watergate-era maxim about such scandals: “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.” But maybe they thought it did not apply to them.

Obama’s henchmen seem to have believed they could stonewall Congress and dishonestly deny knowledge of basic facts in the “Fast and Furious” scandal, and never have to face the music.

Once congressional committees start subpoenaing documents and questioning witnesses under oath, however, what would in other contexts be mere lies become potential crimes.

Partisan finger-pointing and P.R. spin can’t solve a problem like this. The fact that Bill Clinton was acquitted by the Senate after he was impeached in 1998 may be of some comfort to Obama, but on the other hand, Monica Lewinsky’s blowjobs didn’t kill two Americans and dozens of Mexicans. However, the pro-Obama media, after ignoring the Fast and Furious scandal for months, continues to play along with the administration and pretend that what’s going on here is mere political gamesmanship:

A Pointless Partisan Fight
— New York Times

Grayson: Fast and Furious ‘circus’
will backfire on Republicans
— Raw Story

Failure to take the scandal seriously, and then attempting to portray it as a partisan fight, is going to leave Obama’s media apologists looking foolish because, as Paul Meringoff says, those documents must be dynamite. Whatever happened to common sense in the news business, huh? Can’t all those overpaid network superstars put two and two together and see that, if Obama’s willing to assert executive privilege to keep Congress from getting the Fast and Furious documents, there must be some very serious stuff in those documents?

Attention NBC, ABC and CBS: Katie Pavlich wrote a book called, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up. Maybe you could try reading that, OK? And there’s another incipient scandal you might want to stop ignoring, too.

 

Category: Barack Obama, Corruption, Crime, Scandal

Recording: Leader of Anti-Limbaugh Effort Brags About Obama Campaign Ties

Posted on | June 21, 2012 | 43 Comments

The head of a boycott effort aimed at radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh boasted in a conference call of his ties to Organizing for American (OFA), President Obama’s re-election campaign.

“Randy, I can pick up the phone and call the director of OFA, can you?” Matt Edelstein said during the phone call, berating a Texas activist. “I can pick up the phone and call the … battleground state director of OFA. Can you? Can they? Okay, so I don’t care what somebody at OFA — some flunky level in Texas told you about OFA. I have extremely good relations with OFA.”

A recording of the conference call was obtained by Brooks Bayne, who reports that “Randy Hahn” is a Texas Democrat who joined Edelstein’s “Stop Rush” campaign as an “infiltrator.” The recording shows that Edelstein also said he has “extremely good relations with Van Jones,” a radical environmentalist who resigned as Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar” in September 2009 after he was exposed as having signed a petition that claimed the 9/11 terror attacks were “deliberately allowed” by the Bush administration.

The New York Times reported in March that the “Stop Rush” boycott effort was started by Angelo Carusone, who in 2009 organized a similar campaign against advertisers on Glenn Beck’s Fox News program. Beck played a key role in exposing Van Jones’s radical past.

Several Twitter users have identified Edelstein as using the @Shoq (“Shoq Value”) Twitter account, which attacked Professor William Jacobson in March, after Jacobson’s writings about the “Stop Rush” effort were cited by Limbaugh. Jacobson says the anti-Limbaugh boycott was coordinated with the controversial liberal group Media Matters for America (MMFA). Carusone is MMFA’s Director of Online Strategy.

During the conference call with other “Stop Rush” activists, Edelstein says “it’s making me crazy [that] Michelle Malkin is launching a new counterattack” against his group’s boycott effort. Edelstein also expressed concern about Dana Loesch and James O’Keefe, defended MSNBC contributor Krystal Ball, and worried that someone had discovered “one of my plant names that I use on the web to confuse the Right.”

Coincidentally, there may be a connection between the “Stop Rush” boycott and Brett Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser. In March, blogger Patrick Read showed Rauhauser’s history of interaction with Twitter accounts linked to Carusone and Edelstein.

 


Category: Barack Obama, Rush Limbaugh, Talk Radio, The Kimberlin Files

LIVE AT FIVE – 06.21.12

Posted on | June 21, 2012 | 2 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
CONTEMPTIBLE

Attorney General Eric Holder

House Oversight Committee votes to hold Attorney General Holder in contempt over “Fast & Furious” documents

Hamas Accepts Cease-Fire In Gaza
Egyptians broker end to three days of rocket attacks

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Buys 98% Of Lanai Island
Sale includes two resort hotels, solar energy farm, other developments



POLITICS
Religious Groups Unite Against Contraceptive Mandate

Mission Basilica in San Diego filled as people hear religious leaders speak out

Evangelical Christians, Lutherans and Jews stand together with Catholics on the eve of Fortnight For Freedom

Obama Campaign Spent More Than It Received In May


NC Senate Rejects Reparations For Victims Of Forced Sterilization Program

Southern Baptists Voice Opposition To Gay Marriage, Contraceptive Mandate

Romney’s Personal Touch Pays Off With Donors

Poll:  Former Governor Thompson Leads In WI Senate Primary



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Continues To Fall As US Inventories Continue To Grow; NYMEX $81.80, Brent $92.69
European Stocks To Open Lower As Fed Twists Again
Lawmakers Push For IPO Revamp In Wake Of Facebook Flap
Argentina Deploys Military Police To Break Truckers’ Strike
Gulf Oil & Gas Lease Sale Nets $1.7 Billion
Greece Faces Downgrade To Emerging-Market Status By Index Provider MSCI
Red Hat Plunges As Billings Miss, Guidance Weak
How Microsoft’s Surface Tablets Stack Up In A Crowded Market
HP, Intel: Tim To Take Microservers Seriously
Foxconn CEO Talks Up iPhone 5, Puts Down Galaxy S III
Dutch Court Orders Apple To Pay Damages To Samsung



SPORTS
Evgeni Malkin Wins Both NHL MVP Awards

Evgeni Malkin

Also claims Art Ross Trophy as league’s leading scorer

Conference Commissioners Endorse Four-Team Playoff For BCS

Hornets Deal Ariza, Okafor To Wizards For Lewis, Draft Pick

UConn, 9 Others Banned From 2013 NCAA Tourney For Poor Academic Progress

Weaver Comes Off DL, Shuts Out Giants As Angels Pound Out Four Homers in 6-o Win


Gee Takes Shutout Into 8th, Late O’s Rally Not Enough To Avoid Sweep By Mets

Magic Selects Thunder’s Hennigan As New GM

Helton’s Error Opens Door For Phillies 7-6 Win

Strasburg Plays Stopper Again As Nats End Four-Game Slump



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Confessions Of A Pop Princess

Katy Perry

The Hollywood Reporter interview

Sheet For Brains: Punchy Alec Under Cover

Wynonna Judd Gets Married

NBC Prepares To Replace “Today”‘s Ann Curry

Jim Carrey Moves On From “Dumber” Sequel

Justin Bieber Accidentally Gives Irreplaceable MuchMusic Award To Fan

“Unforgettable” Returns To CBS With 13 Episodes In Summer 2013

Famed Sports Artist LeRoy Neiman Dies, 91



FOREIGNERS
Officials Delay Announcing Results Of Egyptian Presidential Election
Green Economy: India Slams Developed Nations
Assange Short-Changes Celebrity Mates
Samaras New Greek PM As Coalition Comes Together
Pakistan’s Ruling Party Confirms Choice For New PM
Hamas: We’ll Stop Shooting If Israel Stops Shooting Back
Indonesian Court To Rule On Bali Bombing Suspect
Pope Urges End To Attacks On Christians In Nigeria, Urges All Sides To Avoid Reprisals
Uruguay Aims To Legalize Marijuana
PRC’s “Blood Alliance” With Norks No Longer What It Was



BLOGS & STUFF
Gateway Pundit: Pelosi Claims She Could Have Arrested Karl Rove “On Any Given Day”
Mark Levin: Executive Privilege And How The House Should Move Forward Legally
Power Line: Those Fast & Furious Documents Must Be Dynamite
Right Wing News: Administration Backs Off Claim That Bush’s AG Knew About Gunwalking
Weasel Zippers: Family Of Slain Border Patrol Agent Rips Obama For “Compounding Tragedy” With Executive Privilege Assertion
Gateway Pundit: Two More Democrats Skipping National Convention
NRO Corner: Why Unions Are Going Extinct
Atlas Shrugs: Military Instructor Suspended Over Islam Course

Category: Live at Five

House Committee Approves Contempt Charge, Obama Invokes Executive Privilege, Katie Pavlich Sells More Books

Posted on | June 20, 2012 | 33 Comments

OK, I haven’t seen that last item in the headlines yet, but you’ve got to hand it to Katie: Today was a very good day to be the author of a book entitled, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and the Shameless Cover-Up.

Meanwhile, via Memeorandum, the other important headlines:

Panel votes to cite Holder for contempt
— CNN

President Obama uses executive privilege
on Fast and Furious
— Politico

House Panel Votes To Hold Holder in Contempt
— Wall Street Journal

Fast and Furious scandal: Obama invokes
executive privilege; House panel moves
forward with Holder contempt vote
— Washington Post

Boehner: Privilege claim implies
White House cover-up
— Politico

Executive Privilege and how
the House should move forward legally
— Mark Levin

Nancy Pelosi Slams Contempt Vote: ‘I Could Have
Arrested Karl Rove … But We Didn’t’
— Huffington Post

So that’s the big news for everybody except Katie Pavlich, for whom the big news is, “You’re gonna sell a metric buttload of books today.”

 

Category: Barack Obama, Corruption, Eric Holder

MSNBC: The ‘C’ Is for ‘Crazy’

Posted on | June 20, 2012 | 16 Comments

Of the half-million or so viewers who regularly watch MSNBC, I’m sure at least 100,000 are like me: Conservatives tuning in just to laugh at the zany derangement of liberal idiots. Benny Johnson and Erica Ritz of The Blaze describe one typical MSNBCer’s lunatic rant:

According to MSNBC Host Melissa Harris-Perry
•9/11 vaulted America into a “nationalist fervor” that was similar to “having post-traumatic stress disorder”
•Makes racial joke about African-American men wearing NYPD hats
•9/11 provided an opportunity for a new “racial enemy” in America
•America “identifies who we are…through our notions of whiteness and of the racial enemies that are the non-whites”
• 9/11 gave America a chance to shift its racial hate from “Reagan‘s ’welfare Queen’“ to ”imagine” our enemy as ”somehow Muslim, or Arab, or Sikh, or something else.”
•Americans an ability to “stomach a kind of horrific racial violence in the name of national security”
•Those that are “activating terrorism against us” are “imagined racial enemies”

Read the whole crazy thing.

Category: MSNBC

‘Persona Management’ for Wackjobs: Rauhauser’s Methods of Deception

Posted on | June 20, 2012 | 58 Comments

“I’ve been all over Patterico for the last several weeks, as he looks to be a pretty good candidate for the planner/operator behind Weinergate, but the other players have been getting attention, too.”
— Neal Rauhauser (aka, “Stranded Wind”), July 27, 2011

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Brett Kimberlin became a “client” of Neal Rauhauser in 2011. Rauhauser has described his specialty as “solving problems in the social media work space for political campaigns and causes,” and Kimberlin had distinct “problems in the social media work space,” namely how to stop bloggers from writing about Kimberlin’s criminal past.

Kimberlin had sued Seth Allen, threatened to sue Patrick “Patterico” Frey and, I am told, engaged in various forms of harassment against Mandy “Liberty Chick” Nagy, whose October 2010 article about Kimberlin was unimpeachably factual.

Clearly unable to “win” his fight against truth by suing for libel, and evidently fearful that widespread exposure of his vicious criminal history would hinder fundraising for his two non-profits (Justice Through Music Project and Velvet Revolution), Kimberlin seems to have seen a need for someone with Neal Rauhauser’s skills.

Exactly when Kimberlin put Rauhauser on his payroll, we don’t know. Amid his obsessive Daily Kos blogging about the WeinerGate scandal — which Rauhauser portrayed as a hoax perpetrated by Andrew Breitbart and other shadowy right-wing conspirators — Rauhauser declared (under his alias “Stranded Wind”) on July 4, 2011, “someone forwarded me the complaint [made by Kimberlin] regarding Frey running a cyberstalking campaign in conjunction with South Easton, Massachusetts resident Seth L. Allen.”

Rauhauser announced plans to move to Washington, D.C., area on July 7, 2011. Rauhauser represented himself as an agent of Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution in a September 2011 e-mail to organizers of “Occupy Boston.” And as previously explained: “In a comment posted at a progressive blog in October 2011, Rauhauser described being contacted by a ‘very big dog from the Anonymous pen’ who agreed to assist Velvet Revolution in an apparent plan to attack enemies of Rauhauser and Kimberlin.” Rauhauser accompanied Kimberlin to the May 29 hearing in Maryland at which Aaron Walker was arrested.

What has Rauhauser been doing online for the past year? What services does he perform for Kimberlin or whatever other clients are paying him? The archive of material Rauhauser attempted to “scrub” from the Internet offers important clues, including one Scribd.com document from earlier this year entitled, “Persona Management Methods: Secure & Portable Persona Management Version 3.0.” The full document is nearly 2,000 words; the following excerpts are about 1,000 words. I urge readers to examine this very carefully:

The internet is becoming increasingly dangerous for everyone, and in particular there are targeted attacks aimed at activists and organizers. If you are running a specific persona for any reason, say interacting with a specific social media community, it’s probably best that you compartmentalize it from your other activities by encapsulating it in a purpose built virtual machine. . . .
We keep a copy of TAILS, a hardened, read-only version of Linux in which all applications are configured to use TOR, for truly radioactive environments. Coupling a TOR only virtualized OS with a host OS running a VPN is proof against a variety of ills in the world today, and the subject of another write up of ours entitled Double Secret Internet.
The whole idea is to encapsulate an online persona in a safe environment. The VM is the container for the personality, but what if your laptop is stolen, or if you’re arrested and questioned? We run http://truecrypt.comsoftware to make encrypted file containers. Our first test involved creating a 4 gig space, binding it to drive W:, and installing Windows in a VM there. The persona in the VM is now perfectly safe if the machine is lost or stolen, so long as a strong password is used. . . .
The most basic means of IP address concealment is to install The Onion Router (TOR) and the bundle of tools that come with it. . . .
We tested Hotspot Shield in our initial build and it seems to work fine, but it requires that you recall you need to start it, and only protects browser traffic. . . . If everyone who uses this settles on the same service that means banning a handful of IP addresses functionally shuts everyone out. We probably need to figure out how to provide our own endpoints using a rotating set of VPS in other countries, but that’s a job for the infrastructure people. . . .
This cannot be stressed strongly enough: we have only protected against the following threats. Disclosure due to loss/theft/seizure of host computer
Disclosure due to spearfish or other compromise of browser
Disclosure of IP address due to log examination or subterfuge
Monitoring of traffic by your ISP or a compromised machine on your network
You might face a loss or theft, you could run into a technically advanced opponent, but it is almost certain that if you try to approach a venue where you are already known by an existing name or pseudonym that you will get “made” in short order.
You have habits that include:
The time(s) of day you are active
The language you speak
The situational knowledge you have when interacting with a certain group
The software you prefer to use
Quirks of spelling, punctuation, and other subtle hints as to identity
Whatever objective you have in approaching the venue
The following are some failure modes we’ve personally experienced over the years:
Used a pet phrase from a persona in a venue we frequented — instant outing
Used bit.ly link shortened from a known account via Twitter — instant outing
Disclosed specific software preferred during conversation, not a full outing but it brought scrutiny that made the effort fail eventually
Use of phone number that had a single obscure Google hit — instant outing.
We often feel we’re being clever in constructing a persona but we generally fail miserably due to time constraints. We’re always goal oriented when in character and that is an instant tell to those with situational awareness. If you don’t have time to “be” someone else and remain in character your results will be limited. . . .
Web Brain – powerful mind map facilities, no sense of timeline, team functions permit easy sharing. Contents are discoverable if you use the web sync, stick to BrainZips in encrypted containers for safety. . . .
Maltego –Open source intelligence collection platform, heavy on data visualization, mostly for Twitter-centric things. . . .
Sentinel Visualizer — industrial strength social network analysis/data visualization with temporal and geospatial analysis. . . .
The whole concept of persona management was getting a lot of attention during 2009 when I was still active with Project Vigilant. There were a bunch of half baked solutions going around, really expensive things that I felt would only serve to train smart opponents as they watched their less swift peers fall for the subterfuge. Fast forward to 2012 and now the internet is so toxic I’ve corralled my actual social media presence in a couple of VMs to stick a wrench in the constant profiling and intrusion attempts, and those VMs live on a machine that doesn’t touch anything important.
There is a lot of drag as I move stuff back and forth, certainly, but I’m not keen on uninvited visitors. More and more Twitter and Facebook serve only as channels for introduction and venues for public theater. Anything of consequence has vanished into OTR encrypted chat, or SILC servers, and new contacts have to run the gauntlet of my quizzing those who introduce them, then getting them on the phone so there is a voice and a callable number to go with. A sloppy social network only betrays maybe 25% of what is important to an intruder lacking subpoena power. . . .
Commit to trying to run a persona for a while if for no other reason than to understand what will and won’t work; your situational awareness will be dramatically enhanced. Stick to it until it becomes second nature and you can simply disappear when needed, or protect your friends from unwanted attention with a fog of disinformation. You have the natural rights of free speech, free association, and free assembly. There are many private entities, from the lone obsessive stalker to the largest corporate entity that will interfere in all three of these fundamental human rights. You commit a courageous, moral act when you do these things we suggest, leaving those who do not respect you pounding their keyboards and crying with frustration.

Clearly this suggests that Rauhauser is employing at least one deceptive false “persona” for secretive purposes which anyone with common sense would suspect might be criminal in nature. The mystery of what exactly Rauhauser has been doing online that would require such elaborate protections for his “persona” should not, however, lead to unsubstantiated speculation. But you rather doubt Neal was merely haunting Web forums as a blog troll, eh? Read more

Category: The Kimberlin Files

Slathering S.A.L.V.E On Your Kindle

Posted on | June 20, 2012 | 14 Comments

by Smitty

Now it can be purchased!
While neither a dessert topping nor a floor wax, S.A.L.V.E. promises to deliver a “Wut?” from uncultured audiences everywhere!

  • Could the Secretary of State really be the President’s mother? (OediPOTUS Wrecks)
  • Could co-bloggers sustain a Samuel Beckett riff while sending up Obama’s stimulus program? (Waiting for O-Dough)
  • Can you make a post-apocalytpic road trip in an obscure Sean Connery vehicle? (Czar d’Oz)
  • Do infamous forgeries and pulp horror mix? (The Protocols of the Elders of CTHULHU)

Yesterday’s announcement of CreateSpace availability got some fine linkage:

So, if I’ve done you favors, wire yourself a copy, blog it and flog it. If I’ve done you not-favors, blog it anyway and call me everything but a U.S. citizen.

Available for Kindle or in hard copy from CreateSpace.

HABU: Hook A Bruthuh Up!

 

Category: Farce, humor
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