First Earl, now Doc. Farewell.
Mittens: Presidential or Pathetic?
Yesterday Mitt Romney officially sewed up the GOP nomination with a win in the Texas primary. However, the news focused on Donald Trump, with whom Mittens had scheduled a Las Vegas fundraiser.
I’m assuming most of the American people are not paying close enough attention to politics to take in the Mittens-Trump act. Trump is such a buffoon even Wolf Blitzer has had enough of him.
Do people still think of Trump as a businessman, or as an entertainer? I honestly don’t know.
Campaigning with The Donald seems to me like campaigning with J. Fred Muggs. Trump is the act; Mittens is just the straight man. Trump is still going on (and on) about birtherism, and Mittems is refusing to refute him. To me, it doesn’t make Mittens look presidential, just pathetic.
Brett Whozits Update: Rightie Blogger Arrested
Remember I was saying that Brett Kimberlin had filed a request for a peace order against a rightie blogger named Aaron Walker? And the hearing on the request was this morning? Well, RS McCain reports that after the hearing the judge had Walker arrested.
Entire rightie blogosphere to go batshit postal in 5 … 4… 3 … 2… 1 …
The judge became “increasingly hostile” to Walker in the course of the hearing, McCain says.
Just going by McCain’s account, this is all very screwy. According to McCain, Kimberlin’s beef was that Walker continued to blog about him after Walker had obtained an earlier peace order. I’m certainly no lawyer, but I question whether a court can order somebody not to blog about somebody else as long as the contents of the blog posts don’t constitute libel, and if you stick to documented facts you can probably argue it’s not libel.
In an update, McCain says that Kimberlin claims to have received death threats as a result of Walker’s posts. What was Kimberlin’s argument that alleged death threats were directly connected to Walker’s blogging? No way to know.
The peace order conditions I found online and blogged about yesterday suggest that a peace order only prohibits one party from contacting or harassing the other. The rightie blogosphere insists Kimberlin is trying to stop them from discussing his criminal past, which is already in the public record and has already been discussed in Time magazine and a book issued by a major publisher.
One suspects we’re not getting the whole story. One also suspects the judge, whom McCain names, is about to learn the meaning of “blogswarm.” I doubt this will help Walker much, though.
Update: A copy of the court order issued today. Apparently the recent blogswarm against Kimberlin was one factor that caused the judge to rule in Kimberlin’s favor.
Update: Some Gateway Pundit commenters are certain the judge was acting on orders of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy. Samples:
So now the judges rule according to what the government wants, not what the actual laws are.
Hello Banana Republic.
For good or ill, arresting someone who disagrees with this administration is now legal precedent. No longer does there need to be even a figleaf of someone being a suspected terrorist to be snatched and incarcerated without trial.
This is tyranny of the first water.
Good times. I still don’t know what Walker was arrested for, specifically, or if he was charged with something like violating a previous peace order. I suspect the latter, and I suspect he’s already out on bail by the time you read this. If so, that doesn’t exactly constitute a violation of habeas corpus.
I’m getting all information about this from right-wing blogs; I have no idea if Kimberlin or any associate of Kimberlin has posted his side of the story. Someday we may learn what’s being not said.
Republicans Don’t Do Health Care Reform
I hesitate to call any part of the Republican Party “pragmatic,” but apparently some of them have some sense that the entire American public might not see things the way they do.
So over the past several days I’ve seen news stories saying some congressional leaders want to keep some parts of Obamacare. The fix they are in is that some parts of the ACA are now in effect, and most of those parts have proved to be popular.
For example, 2.5 million young adults are now insured on their parents health care plan who couldn’t get insurance before. To date, the ACA has said Medicare recipients $3.5 billion on prescription drugs. Several hundred thousand seniors have taken advantage of the various free preventive care screenings now available to them. This summer $1.3 billion in rebate checks are going out to people who were overcharged for their insurance.
On top of that, if the Supremes strike down the ACA this summer, the Medicare system could be thrown into chaos, at least temporarily.
So, over the past few days I’ve seen several news stories saying that some congressional Republicans are planning to keep the “good” Obamacare bits. In particular, they want to keep the provision that allows children to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26; they want to eliminate the prescription drug doughnut hole; and they want to provide that insurance companies have to insure people with pre-existing conditions.
However, as soon as one of these stories comes out, another story comes out saying that other congressional leaders demand complete and unconditional repeal. No walkbacks. John Boehner seems to take both positions, on alternate days.
At TPM, Sahil Kapur writes that Republicans are being warned not to go wobbly on Obamacare.
FreedomWorks and Club for Growth, two powerful conservative interest groups that are fresh off of purging the Senate’s longest-serving Republican for insufficient fealty to the right, are flexing their muscles.
“The Club for Growth supports complete repeal of Obamacare. And complete doesn’t mean partial. It means complete,” said Barney Keller, a spokesman for the group. “We urge the so-called ‘tea party’ Republicans to keep their promises to voters and continue to fight for complete repeal as well.”
The “pragmatists,” relatively speaking, want to have a fallback position in case the ACA is entirely overturned and the benefits people had begun to enjoy from it dry up. They want to be able to say to voters that they can still have their 20-something children on their health care benefits and that the doughnut hole can still be closed.
As for insurance for pre-existing conditions, there is no way the private insurance industry can do that without the individual mandate, a complication that Republicans refuse to address. But the ideological purists don’t want to promise anything.
Dean Clancy, who leads health care advocacy for FreedomWorks, said the group “would be very concerned about bills to resurrect parts of Obamacare.”
He said Republicans should take no responsibility for the broken system that would result.
“It would be the height of folly for Republicans to say, OK, this is our problem now,” he said. “It’s not the Republicans’ fault if 25-year-old slackers suddenly are dropped from mom and dad’s health insurance policy. It’s not the Republicans’ fault if various other provisions of Obamacare are no longer on the books. … The American people need to have a chance to reflect on the fact that the Democrats basically rammed an unconstitutional bill down their throat.”
We could quibble about who is ramming what, and where.
A few days ago Jonathan Chait recalled that Republicans promised a comprehensive health care reform plan in 1993, when they defeated “Hillarycare.”
In 1993, Bill Clinton tried to reform health care, and it appeared a strong enough threat that Republicans devised their own plan in response. It was a great way to send the message “we have a plan, too.” When Clinton’s plan collapsed, he made feelers toward the GOP plan, but Republicans turned against it, promising instead to start over in the next Congress.
For the next sixteen years, Republicans did zero to advance the cause of comprehensive health-care reform.
I don’t remember them even talking about it, except to pooh-pooh people who complained about the health care system. We have the best health care system in the world, after all [/sarcasm].
In 2009, President Obama started working on health-care reform, and Republicans again insisted they really truly did want to reform the health-care system, just not in this particular way. Plan? TBD. Then they won control of the House and promised to immediately get to work on a replacement plan. Result: zero. Evidence of any progress toward said plan: zero.
Recently Rep. Paul Ryan told editors of the Washington Examiner that it would be a mistake for Republicans to offer any specific legislation before the November election. Instead, they should offer a “vision.” I take it “vision” is the new “bullshit.”
Back to Jonathan Chait:
In the same interview, Ryan says maybe Republicans will reform the deductibility of health insurance: “On tax treatment of health care, some of our folks really like deductions, others like the tax credit route.” That sounds like a possible first step. Except the Ryan budget already assumes that it will close trillions of dollars in tax deductions like that for employer-provided health care, and then it plows all that revenue back into lower tax rates. So, no money for tax credits or any other way to support health insurance.
The health care system is very complicated and made up of countless moving parts that have to work together. That’s why the ACA was so long and complicated. I think Republicans are not intelligent enough to come up with their own legislation, and I will believe that until they prove me wrong and come up with something. And at the rate they are going, I won’t live long enough to see that.
Memorial Day Madness
Today is set aside to remember with gratitude those who gave their lives to establish and maintain this great nation. Let us endeavor to be citizens worthy of their sacrifice. Some of us haven’t been, apparently.
Erick Erickson says he was SWATted, although this time cops checked with him first and didn’t call the SWAT team. I have come to understand there is some way a phone number can be hacked or “spoofed” to make it seem it is coming from a targeted person’s house.
As I said yesterday, tomorrow morning there will be a hearing on a “peace order” request filed by the alleged perpetrator of an earlier SWAT, Brett Kimberlin. Note that the evidence against Mr. Kimberlin is way circumstantial. As explained here, some parts of the rightie blogosophere are being harassed by somebody, and they figure Kimberlin must be behind it because who else would be so pissed off at them?
I’ll pause for a while until you are done snickering.
Seriously, actual harassment, not to mention getting SWAT teams called to someone’s house, is very, very bad and not helping anybody, and if anyone reading this has done such a thing, shame on you. Don’t do it any more.
Regarding the peace order — as I said, it’s my understanding that Kimberlin is trying to get the peace order filed against a blogger named Aaron Walker (his blog). And I believe this is happening in Maryland. So I looked it up and learned that to qualify for a peace order, these conditions must be met:
- An act that causes serious bodily harm;
- An act that places you in fear of immediate serious bodily harm;
- Assault in any degree;
- Attempted or actual rape or sexual offense; (go to MD Statutes, and read sections 3-303 through 3-308 for the definitions);
- False imprisonment;
- Harassment (read the defintion at MD Statutes section 3-803);
- Stalking (read the definition at MD Statutes section 3-802);
- Trespass;
- Malicious destruction of property (read the definition at MD Statutes section 6-301).*
Here’s more information explaining the difference between a peace order and a protective order. And I’m pretty sure, based on this, that you can’t get a peace order filed on someone just because he has said nasty things about you on the Internet. So it will be interesting to see whether the court takes the request seriously or throws it out.
(Walker does tell his side of the story, sort of. He has published on his blog an account that goes on and on and on on and on and on on and on and on on and on and on on and on and on on and on and on on and on and on on and on and on on and on and on on and on and on without ever getting to a clear explanation as to what actually happened between him and Kimberlin. I wasted way too much time on it yesterday and only got a headache.)
Little Lulu is in her overwrought best, saying “Don’t let this insane story of online terrorism, which transcends politics, die. Silence is complicity. Et lux in tenebris lucet…”
Yes, but the question is, who are the insane online terrorists? Among other things, Lulu also says “Action alert: Ask Barbra Streisand to answer for funding the work of political terrorist Brett Kimberlin.” WTF?
The Streisand Foundation gives grants to non-profit groups that support environmental issues, women’s issues, civil liberties, civic engagement, education, and civil rights. Apparently the Streisand Foundation has given money to the Justice Through Music project, which allegedly was founded by Kimberlin. “Justice Through Music Project (“JTM”) is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization that uses famous musicians and bands to organize, educate and activate young people about the importance of civil rights, human rights and voting,” their website says. And based on this post, JTM might need a peace order, too.
The Right just loves these guilt-by-association games. They target someone as being “bad,” and then they try to seek out and defame anyone who can be connected to that person, directly or indirectly. Barbara Streisand is a perfect example. What does she have to answer for? Does the Right have any evidence that Streisand’s money was used for anything other than some probably innocuous do-gooder projects? I doubt it.
And R.S. McCain, who says he has had to go into hiding, spent a whole blog post on Kimberlin’s aunt because (1) she is Kimberlin’s aunt, and (2) she once gave $20,000 to the Threshold Foundation, dedicated to the environment and transcendental meditation, and Threshold in turn donated to Justice Through Music. Again, guilt by association. (She’s a witch! Burn her!)
Rightie bloggers claim Kimberlin is harassing them because they are exposing the truth about his criminal past. But the criminal past was not secret. It had been written up in Time magazine and in a book published by a major publisher. If there is any truth to these harassment claims, it’s more likely that someone is retaliating for being unjustly defamed.
If it’s true that Kimberlin or anyone else has been harassing right-wing bloggers, it’s wrong, and it should stop. But it’s really hard to empathize with people who whine about being bullied in the very same posts they are bullying others.
And if you want to see an example of people being targeted just for speaking their minds, go to Atlanta.
See also Cannonfire and Meghan McCain.
Speaking of Domestic Terrorism . . .
I mentioned a couple of days ago that obstetric-gyncological clinics in the Atlanta area were being burglarized and set on fire. Arsonists have hit abortion clinics as well as practices that don’t do abortion.
Now some of the obstetricians are saying they fear they are being targeted because they publicly opposed Georgia’s “fetal pain” bill.
“You hate to point fingers, but when you start to see a pattern I think it’s a little more worrisome,” said Dr. Richard Zane, whose Atlanta Women’s Health Group office in Sandy Springs was burglarized March 4.
Act 631, signed by Gov. Nathan Deal earlier this month, reduces the time period for when an elective abortion can occur from about 26 weeks to 20 weeks. Some doctors said restricting medical exceptions to abortions between 20 and 26 weeks would prevent them from treating mothers who are having difficult pregnancies.
The crimes began shortly after the January legislative session started. …
… The three physicians who were victims of burglaries and of Sunday’s fire in Lilburn do not perform abortions. However, they had all visited the Georgia Capitol this session to discuss the impact of the legislation on pregnant women and their unborn children, said Dr. David Byck, president of the Georgia Obstetrical and Gynecological Society.
The arsonists have been breaking into doctors’ offices and stealing computers before setting their fires. So far no one has been hurt. However, one fire was set during office hours while the clinic (which does do abortions) was full of staff and patients. Everyone was evacuated safely, but clearly the arsonists aren’t being careful not to kill someone.
The offices of the Georgia Obstetrical and Gynecological Society were burglarized the night before a Senate committee was to discuss amending the bill to continue to keep private the names of physicians who have to report abortions to the state.
The intruders bypassed three laptops and appeared to make a beeline for two laptop computers in the executive directors office which stored the names and addresses of doctors.
Like that’s a coincidence? The ATF and FBI are investigating, and so far they are not saying for certain that the clinics are being targeted by anti-reproduction rights terrorists. If it turns out that they are, I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the shriekers on the Right to condemn the arsonists, though.
Kimberlin Update
I learned from R.S. McCain — blogging from an undisclosed location, I assume — that there will be a court hearing Tuesday regarding a peace order requested by Brett Kimberlin (background) against one of the rightie bloggers he allegedly has been terrorizing. I take it a “peace order” is something like a restraining order.
The part of McCain’s post that jumped out at me was the claim that Kimberlin’s alleged attempts at terrorism were intended “to suppress the truth about his violent criminal past.” This is the same criminal past prominently discussed in a 2007 Time magazine article.
In the belly of the voting-reform movement is a man who personifies this paradoxical lack of credibility in the service of a credible cause. Brett Kimberlin was convicted in 1981 of a series of bombings in Indiana. By his own account, he dealt “many, many tons” of marijuana in the 1970s. Most famously, he is the man who from his prison cell alleged that as a law student Dan Quayle bought marijuana from him. Quayle repeatedly denied the charge, and it was never substantiated. In e-mails and Web postings from Kimberlin’s two organizations, Justice Through Music and Velvet Revolution, he intersperses occasionally useful pieces of information about the problems of e-voting with a hefty portion of bunk, repeatedly asserting as fact things that are not true. Kimberlin, in short, is an unlikely candidate to affect an important issue of public policy.
So the criminal record wasn’t exactly hidden.
Time goes on to say that Kimberlin had been instrumental in the movement to stop Diebold electronic voting machines from being used in elections, and that Brad Friedman (of BradBlog) and Kimberlin had co-founded a “netroots voting-reform website VelvetRevolution.us.”
Kimberlin may very well be as unhinged and dangerous as the righties are making him out to be. Or not. I don’t know the man at all. I haven’t seen anyone on the left blogosphere speak up for him, including Brad Friedman. This suggests that either he isn’t that well known in blogging circles (again, I don’t recall I’d ever heard of him) or that those who know him think he may be guilty as accused.
However, I noticed that commenters have been calling out Friedman’s alleged ties to Kimberlin for several years. For example, this is from 2008:
Search engine for Brett Kimberlin. Why no story on him, Brad? You don’t want your readers to know you are partners with a bomber and admitted drug dealer? He even had his own little tinfoil 15 minutes of fame when he said he used to deal pot to Dan Quayle.
This all suggests to me there was nothing hidden about Kimberlin’s criminal record. After Kimberlin was paroled in 1994 and until the current accusations against him there’s no indication I could find that he was doing anything illegal, which begs the question why it was so all-fired important to stir up hysteria about Kimberlin in 2012.
And the answer is that he got involved in leftie political movements and organizations, which means he can be connected by association to all kinds of people on the Left who hadn’t done anything wrong.
Essentially Breitbart et al. were waging a defamation campaign against anyone who could be tied to Kimberlin, directly or indirectly, through any leftie organization he was associated with. This is right out of Joe McCarthy’s old playbook and a blatantly unethical thing to do. It doesn’t justify violent retribution, but it certainly isn’t blameless.
Two other names that keep coming up in the word-salad ravings are Ron Brynaert and Neal Rauhauser. Google their names and you get page after page of right-wing blog posts accusing these two of terrorism and attempted murder (example). Otherwise, I have no idea who these guys are and what the evidence is against them. [Update: It appears that last November Rauhauser was promoting the Occupy movement.] They may indeed be very dangerous guys, or they may have done nothing more than speak up for Kimberlin. It’s a mystery to me.
But this all begs the question why these alleged terrorists’ victims are not the ones seeking restraining orders against Kimberlin et al. instead of the other way around, and why the criminal justice system isn’t being otherwise called upon to investigate and prosecute the alleged perpetrators and protect the allegedly innocent. Lynch mobs, even virtual ones, make me queasy.
A Terrifying Glimpse Into the Rightie Brain
If you’ve been monitoring the rightie blogs today, you’d notice they’re all raging about some guy named Brett Kimberlin. Some of them have been going on about Brett Kimberlin for the past few days, and for the life of me I couldn’t make out why they were so enraged about Brett Kimberlin. One blog post after another was just a weird word salad mingling George Soros, Barbara Streisand, Bill Ayers, Mumia Abu-Jamal, world Marxism, various progressive organizations, and the left generally, to this guy Brett Kimberlin.
Here’s one example, picked up from Steve M —
Read all of the incredible, sick-making story — which includes some perfectly typical and disgusting bile spewed by some of the violence-supporting left-wing animals who think things like this are just peachy — and gird your loins. Because it’s going to come down to shooting with these vermin eventually, if we’re to retain any rights at all. Patterico wouldn’t like me saying that, I’m sure; I don’t much like having to say it myself. But it’s a mere acknowledgment of current reality: we are in a cold war with neo-Marxists who are trying to steal our country, have already done enormous and probably permanent damage to it, and will stop at nothing –absolutely nothing — to see to it that our voices are silenced. That war must inevitably go hot, unless we’re willing to surrender to them.
This is fairly typical. The right blogosphere is screaming its head off about someone trying to silence them and how they’re going to have to shoot it out with us, i.e., anyone who isn’t them, and Barbara Streisand. And oh yeah, Brett Kimberlin. And no, I’d never heard of Brett Kimberlin either. I waded through one right-wing blog after another and never got a clear idea what Brett Kimberlin did that set them off.
John Cole, from a couple of days ago:
I’m so far removed from the online wingnut community that I no longer speak their language or know all the code words, so when I tried to read Captain Ed, all I could make out was that some jackass was threatening people. Given who we are dealing with here, I am sure this is all the fault of Obama, Holder, Jimmy Carter, Rosie O’Donnell, every Democrat in the country, and George Soros, but has anyone been following this and know what exactly is going on?
I was relieved to know that I wasn’t the only one who was confused.
From this article, I take it Kimberlin was convicted of a series of bombings in the 1970s. While in prison he gained some notoriety when he claimed to have sold pot to Dan Quayle. He was paroled in 1994. Since then apparently he has associated with some liberal causes, although I’m not sure how or which ones. (Here’s a 2007 Time magazine article about Kimberlin’s opposition to electronic voting.) His primary association these days was with an organization called Justice Through Music.
But then Andrew Breitbart found out that this guy convicted of bombings had connections to liberal activism, and tweeted:
The article linked above continues,
Stacy McCain began to dig into the Justice Through Music Project looking into donations, donors, its tax exempt status, etc…
He even wrote a detailed article about why members of the Left would associate with a convicted felon and even donate money to Mr. Kimberlin’s organization and named some names.
It is at this point that Stacy McCain felt he needed to go into hiding.
As we said earlier… nobody knows exactly why and this fact should raise suspicions amongst the level headed.
Mr. McCain appears to be keeping a tight lip about it all. Were I a Liberal I’d scream “cover-up†or “frame job.â€
However, since I am not an ideologue I will only say there is more unknown than known about Mr. McCain’s actions and that something is going on regarding Mr. Kimberlin’s desire to remain as anonymous as is possible for somebody convicted of setting off bombs, saying he sold pot to a Vice President, and having had a book written about him.
We will keep you posted.
And, might I add, Barbara Streisand has a lot to answer for.
Anyway, allegedly Kimberlin retaliated, although it’s not clear to me how, and RS McCain felt compelled to take his family and go into hiding. I picked up from Steve M that blogger Patterico claims Kimberlin SWATted him — “you spoof a phone number, call as the person you’re targeting, say you just killed someone at your house, then the SWAT team shows up and maybe arrests the target … or opens fire. Patterico says it happened to him (and he was taken into custody) last year.”
Now, that’s a terrible thing, and one would think it’s something law enforcement ought to vigorously investigate and prosecute. Rightie bloggers are talking about other incidents of harassment, although it’s not clear to me exactly what they are. But, as Steve M. says, if Kimberlin is behind this he deserves to be denounced for it, as well as prosecuted.
But the weird thing is that rightie blogger after rightie blogger isn’t discussing what Kimberlin allegedly did to Patterico or McCain. They are calling for jihad on the entire Left. Everyone who has expressed even a mildly progressive opinion over the past 150 years is behind the Vast Conspiracy to silence the Right through intimidation (which, of course, bears no resemblance to what Breitbart and others were trying to do to Justice Through Music. [/sarcasm].) And so post after post rants hysterically about George Soros, Barbara Streisand, Bill Ayers, Mumia Abu-Jamal, world Marxism, various progressive organizations, and the left generally. Oh, and Brett Kimberlin.
I sincerely hope everybody stays safe, and that eventually they will calm down enough to string coherent sentences together.
Arsonists Target Atlanta OB-GYN Clinics
Someone may be making the war on women literal. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that there have been a series of burglaries and arsons in the Atlanta area targeting abortion clinics and OB-GYN practices that don’t do abortion. In other words, they’re going after any clinic or practice that deals exclusively with women’s reproductive health care.
The latest arson was the most brazen one, occurring during business hours Wednesday morning at Alpha Group GYN, which provides abortion services and counseling, on Powers Ferry Road in Marietta.
Another suspicious fire on Sunday occurred at the Atlanta Gynecology and Obstetrics Gwinnett office in Lilburn, which also was the site of a burglary on Jan. 26. The thieves stole a desktop computer.
Two other burglaries at obstetrics and gynecology offices occurred in March in Sandy Springs and unincorporated Suwanee. Most of the clinics do not perform abortions.
The FBI has begun an investigation.
The Phantom Spending Binge
Rex Nutting at WSJ Market Watch wrote that under President Obama, federal spending has increased at its slowest rate since, well, a long time.
Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.
Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.
See chart:
Yesterday I ran into a wingnut who could not be made to understand the chart represented rates of increase in spending, not dollars spent. Ann Coulter seems to have had problems grasping what the chart says, also. And James Pethokoukis, a hack who “in AUGUST OF 2008, was denying that we were in a recession. He then, a few months later in October 2008, was forced to admit we were in recession (since the economy had crashed and the DOW had dropped 5,000 point), decided that the reason the economy tanked and the DOW dropped was because investors were afraid that Obama was leading in the polls,” took issue with it also. Pethokoukis compared spending as rates of GNP between Bush and Obama without noting that the economy contracted in 2008. Note that many of the comments to Pethokoukis’s article are better than the article.
Yesterday Jay Carney cited the Nutting argue when he lectured newsies on Air Force One to stop repeating right-wing talking points without verifying if they are true. I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for anything to change. See also Joan Walsh.