Right Wing Nut House

On the surface, it looks like an important breakthrough in the diplomatic dance going on to stop the war between the Israelis and Hizbullah. The terrorists have apparently agreed to disarm and allow an international force into southern Lebanon:

Hezbollah politicians, while expressing reservations, have joined their critics in the government in agreeing to a peace package that includes strengthening an international force in south Lebanon and disarming the guerrillas, the government said.

The agreement — reached after a heated six-hour Cabinet meeting — was the first time that Hezbollah has signed onto a proposal for ending the crisis that includes the deploying of international forces.

Ah yes! Those all important “reservations.”

Hezbollah signed on to the joint proposal “in principle” on the understanding that more discussions will be held between it and other political factions after the U.N. Security Council decides on the composition and mandate of an international force on the border, according to Hezbollah and government officials. The radical Shiite Muslim movement would maintain its heavily armed militia in the south during the talks.

[snip]

After a prisoner exchange, “we will discuss between us Lebanese how to proceed toward a reinforced international presence along the border,” Hamadeh said. He acknowledged that disarming Hezbollah would have to be part of the discussion, saying: “We would discuss that as part of the system of national defense, but between us Lebanese.”

The proposal also demands a Security Council commitment to place the disputed Shebaa Farms area under U.N. supervision until Syria, Israel and Lebanon can work out a settlement on whose territory it should be. Ghaleb Abu-Zeinab of Hezbollah’s political bureau said this was key because the tiny pocket of orchards — where the Israeli and Lebanese borders meet the occupied Golan Heights — is the militia’s only territorial dispute with Israel.

With that issue settled, he suggested, Hezbollah could consider some form of disarmament and cooperation with the Lebanese army and international peacekeepers.

To sum up, Hizbullah will “discuss” the issue of disarming if:

1. Israel agrees to an immediate cease fire.

2. Israel agrees to a prisoner exchange involving terrorists who have murdered Israeli citizens including cold blooded killer Samir Qantar.

3, The UN internationalizes the Shebaa Farms and then hands the disputed territory to Lebanon.

4. The Lebanese government discusses “reinforcing the international presence” (UNIFIL) in the south while allowing Hizbullah back into positions they have abandoned during the war.

5. Pigs can fly.

Watch now as diplomats the world over praise Hizbullah’s “flexibility” when in reality, the terrorists want to return to a status quo ante-bellum; everything exactly as it was before the war with the bonus of the disputed Shebaa Farms falling into Hizbullah’s hands like a ripe plum. They will still have their guns going into “negotiations” with the Lebanese government to disarm - presumably the same negotiations that have been going on for more than a year. The big difference being that Nasty Nasrallah and his thugs will have garnered enormous prestige as a result of their standing toe to toe with Israel on the battlefield and besting them at the conference table.

Also, recall that Hizbullah has yet to abide by UN Resolution 1559 which called for their forces to pull back from the southern border as well as disarming. Why in God’s name should anyone with half a brain trust these brutes to abide by any agreement put into place following their latest aggression against Israel?

I disagree with Ed Morrissey’s take on this:

First, Hassan Nasrallah has retreated to the shelter of his patrons, first in Damascus and then rumored to be hiding in the Iranian embassy. Second, his admission of setbacks to his troops indicate that he was already in some serious trouble with his fellow terrorists. This new offer makes it appear that a leadership change has occurred in Hezbollah — and Nasrallah may wind up fleeing Lebanon altogether.

I don’t think that Nasrallah’s popularity depends very much on any gains or losses by the military wing of Hizbullah. The fact that they have stood up in open combat with the Israelis is, pathetically speaking, enough to make him a hero on the Arab street and raise his prestige even further amongst the Lebanese Shia population. And the Lebanese government, caught between an ascendant Hizbullah and the punishing attacks by the Israelis, have pretty much been forced to give Nasrallah a veto over any peace proposals anyway.

As Ed rightly points out, it is unlikely that the Israelis will accept the cease fire proposal anyway which means that Nasrallah has lost nothing domestically and gained enormously on the international stage as he will now be touted as something of a statesman. And in the end, unless something unforeseen occurs, Hizbullah will still have its guns, still be the most organized and effective fighting force in Lebanon, and still hold the upper hand over the government in any peace negotiations with Israel or the international community.

Well, it’s a start anyway.

President Bush and Prime Minister Blair have bowed to international pressure and called for a mutual cease fire between Israel and Hizbullah. I’m sure if both men had their druthers, they would have continued commiserating on the sidelines with the suffering of Lebanese civilians all the while urging the Israelis to move faster in their campaign to systematically take the terrorists apart. But the time has arrived where the law of diminishing returns for this strategy has been reached and at least the appearance of peace overtures be given.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced agreement today to seek a United Nations resolution next week that would send a multinational force to southern Lebanon and end hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Blair at the White House, Bush said he is sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice back to the Middle East from a conference in Malaysia to try to obtain agreement from the governments of Lebanon and Israel on the U.S.-British plan.

Blair, appearing with Bush at the news conference, said a meeting at the United Nations is being moved forward to Monday to work on the “international stabilization force” for southern Lebanon.

Bush and Blair said their plan, which calls for the disarming of Hezbollah in accordance with a 2004 U.N. Security Council resolution, will ensure a durable peace, rather than a temporary cease-fire.

And the way the two men have carefully crafted their appeal, they are still giving Israel some time to further the destruction of Hizbullah - although it is apparent that there is also a clock at work now that will tick down to a point where Israel must stop.

Bush said the United States and Britain seek a new Security Council resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter, which deals with threats to international peace and provides for the use of military force under U.N. auspices. He said the resolution would set out “a clear framework for cessation of hostilities on an urgent basis” and would mandate the multinational force.

He declined to specify which countries should be included in the multinational force or who should lead it, saying these issues would be addressed at the meeting Monday. Bush also would not say whether Hezbollah’s agreement to accept the force should be a “precondition” for deploying it. But he noted that “Hezbollah is not a state,” and he said the key is to get the governments of Lebanon and Israel to agree to the force, which he said would “serve as a complement” to the Lebanese army and would “help the Lebanese army succeed.”

Bush said the approach he and Blair agreed upon would make possible “the end of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, the return of Israeli soldiers taken hostage by the terrorists, the suspension of Israel’s operations in Lebanon and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.”

All of this will take time to organize - especially the multinational force. My own estimate, based on Israel’s timetable for destroying Hizbullah, is 3-4 weeks. I can’t believe the President would have agreed to this move unless it allowed Israel the freedom to carry out their military plans to their completion.

And then there will be the insoluble problem of what countries will send troops that will make up the MNF. Unless Hizbullah agrees to give up its guns peaceably, the MNF will be engaged in combat and suffer casualties. There are only a handful of nations that would be willing to send its troops into harms way under an international command structure where the rules of engagement are bound to be extraordinarily restrictive.

No numbers were mentioned at the press conference for the MNF but if Hizbullah has at least 20,000 fighters, one would think that any UN force would have to at least be double that number in order to carry out the additional mandates planned under the cease fire proposal:

Bush said the top priorities of the U.S.-British plan for Lebanon are “providing immediate humanitarian relief, achieving an end to the violence, ensuring the return of displaced persons and assisting with reconstruction.” He added, “Our goal is to achieve a lasting peace, which requires that a free, democratic and independent Lebanese government be empowered to exercise full authority over its territory. We want a Lebanon free of militias and foreign interference, and a Lebanon that governs its own destiny” as called for in U.N. Security Council Resolutions.

“We agree that a multinational force must be dispatched to Lebanon quickly to augment a Lebanese army as it moves to the south of that country,” Bush said. He said the multinational force would “help speed delivery of humanitarian relief, facilitate the return of displaced persons, and support the Lebanese government as it asserts full sovereignty over its territory and guards its borders.”

That’s a heavy load for a group that will be expected to “augment” the Lebanese army. In reality, it will be the MNF that will do most of the heavy lifting in any combat situation with Hizbullah. The Lebanese army could not be counted on to fight the terrorists given their questionable loyalties as well as fitness for combat.

The real question is will Lebanese Prime Minister Siniora be able to get Hizbullah to accept any deal that involves their disarmament. Conventional wisdom says no, that Siniora is not in charge anyway. If that is the case, there is little any international force can do to make them give up their guns and the MNF would be operating in a combat zone.

Then there is the question if there would be any international force at all if Hizbullah refuses to disarm. If that happens, Israel would have little choice but to occupy their buffer zone in Lebanon and endure years of guerrilla attacks at the hands of Hizbullah terrorists. There just isn’t the international will to take on Hizbullah except in the United States and perhaps Great Britain. And it is doubtful that either of those two countries would contribute the numbers of men to an MNF that would make the force viable.

The key here is that Hizbullah would have to agree to give up there guns before there is a cease fire. I expect the UN to water down that part of the proposal since Hizbullah will not agree in advance to such a deal. This means that the US will probably be placed in a position of having to pressure Israel to accept a cease fire without that very important goal being reached. Will Olmert go along? He will probably have little choice.

The MNF won’t be there forever. And once they leave, a fully armed Hizbullah will be free to move back into the positions they had to abandon. So in the end, everyone will ask, “What was it we were fighting about?”

Evidently not satisfied with simply being made into an internet verb, noted child molesting humor mongerer and thorn in the side of human decency Deb Frisch is back - with a vengeance.

Employing poorly disguised sock puppets, Frisch (a woman defended by some on the left despite her unhinged attacks on Jeff Goldstein and his two year old son) commented at Ace’s site thusly:

Do you think Jeff sux Satchel’s dick or just plays with it?

Of course, she didn’t use her true name. But the IP address on the comment - as well as the IP address on similar comments made at Goldstein’ site - traces back to Eugene, Oregon where Frisch currently resides. The comments left at Jeff’s site are so sickening that I’ve decided not to publish them here. Patterico has a screenshot of them if you feel the need to see depravity in the flesh.

That’s not all. According to Patterico, the IP address is eerily similar to one used by Deb Frisch herself in comments left at Aces, Goldstein’s, and Patterico’s websites in the past.

Patterico sums up the evidence:

Frisch previously left comments on my site, Ace’s site, and Jeff’s site using a slightly different Qwest IP address that traced back to Eugene, Oregon. That previous Frisch IP address was Qwest IP address 71.34.252.228, which also traces to Eugene, Oregon.

I long ago deleted the content of comment she left on my site, under the moniker “WW” (”Word Warrior”); it’s still linked here. I preserved the original text in a Notepad file.

Ace confirms that Frisch previously posted comments under her own name on his site, under that same Qwest IP address. And Jeff tells me she had previously used two Qwest IP’s on his site. One was the same as was left on my site: 71.34.252.228. The other was 71.32.126.27. That is also a Qwest IP address that traces to Eugene, Oregon, the city where Frisch lives.

In the meantime, Jeff Goldstein has felt compelled to stop posting until he can resolve his problems - “once and for all” - either through the legal system or, my recommendation, by using law enforcement if indeed any laws have been broken.

Couple this with the ongoing drama involving Seixon, Larry Johnson, Jason Leopold, and God knows who else and you have an extraordinarily disturbing picture. And I would say to my friends on the sane left who I know visit here from time to time and are kind enough to disagree with me rationally that the time has come for larger lefty blogs to stand up and be placed in the decency column by using some of that vitriol they hurl at the right and at the President with such practiced ease and send some of it in the direction of the guttersnipes, the bullies, and the dirty necked galoots who are making the internet a sewer and a place of dread.

I don’t like the direction that the blogosphere is going at all. All the great hopes for this new communications medium engendered in the lead up to and following the 2004 election are being subsumed in an avalanche of filth and threats that have gone far beyond bad jokes, inappropriate humor, or simple flame wars. It is no longer enough to “fisk” a post by a rival blogger. Now you must destroy the blogger himself, lay him low with withering personal invective of a kind that borders on threats to his person or even more disturbing, to his family.

I mentioned in my Seixon post that these tactics are a kind of hardball politics not seen on the internet before but not unfamiliar to those who have been involved in politics on the national level. Whispering campaigns of a vile nature carried out against opponents, the call in the middle of the night, siccing friendly reporters on rivals by rumormongering, digging up dirt on people’s personal lives, even veiled threats have all been part of The Big Game in Washington for decades. Somehow, you would think that the citizen journalists who inhabit the blogosphere could have immunized themselves from that kind of nastiness.

Alas, the stakes are considered so high by most that the old saw “The ends justifies the means” becomes a battle cry for those who seek the brass ring of power and the prestige that comes to those invited into the outer rings of the Councils of State. It is the politics of Court transmogrified to 20th century America. It is a game played for keeps. The victims are those who see politics as something less than life or death. And in that kind of contest, those most determined to prevail generally do.

Unless the blogosphere as one rises up in righteous anger and condemns without equivocation, without qualification, and without regard to ideology or party affiliation those who seek to sully this medium with the poisonous tactics of bullying, or threatening, or crossing over from the virtual world into the physical world in order to carry out vendettas against opponents, we will become a sideshow, a gaggle of carping, sniping, irrelevancies who deserved to be laughed at rather than taken seriously for our ideas or beliefs.

It’s not to late to take a stand. And I urge everyone that reads this to take that stand with me.

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

This morning, we’ll examine the Israeli attack on the UN outpost in Lebanon and how that story developed over the last 48 hours from an unprovoked aggression by the IDF to Hizbullah’s using the UN as a shield to conduct combat operations. We’ll also look at Hizbullah’s miscalculations that may end up costing the organization dearly.

And we’ll have the radio version of the Carnival of the Clueless! Don’t miss it.

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Ah Chicago! That toddling town!

As in “infantile:”

After months of fevered lobbying and bitter debate, the Chicago City Council passed a groundbreaking ordinance yesterday requiring “big box” stores, like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2010, along with at least $3 an hour worth of benefits.

The ordinance, imposing the requirement on stores that occupy more than 90,000 square feet and are part of companies grossing more than $1 billion annually, would be the first in the country to single out large retailers for wage rules.

What in the wide, wide, world of sports could my hometown City Council be thinking of? When I wrote about this issue a couple of months ago, Wal-Mart was undecided about whether or not it would go through with its plans to open several more stores within the city limits, thus creating thousands of new jobs for Chicagoans - a city with an announced unemployment rate of 6.1% but with tens of thousands more not receiving benefits and thus, not counted.

Well, Wal-Mart has made up its mind:

In an interview at Wal-Mart’s Chicago office last week, Lewis said if the city council approved the bill, Wal-Mart would “put more time and effort in the suburbs,” in particular focusing on those close to the city in order to draw shoppers across city lines.

“It would stand to reason that we would ring Chicago with Supercenters,” Lewis said.

Late Wednesday in a written statement issued after the Chicago vote, Lewis added, “Our preference is to serve the people of Chicago in their communities and we will do what we can to keep up with significant consumer demand from city residents.” The official statement didn’t address whether Wal-Mart would carry through with threats to avoid opening stores within the city limits.

And to that, I’ll add a great big “duh.”

The backers of this measure are made up of the usual suspects; big labor, social activists groups like ACORN, and others who have what amounts to a kindergarteners understanding of economics:

“At the heart of this ordinance is equality and fairness,” Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon said in a statement. “Today’s vote sends a message that our elected officials and community members alike are not interested in the creation of low-paying jobs that fail to provide a living wage or adequate health-care benefits for working families.

“The choice between no job and a low-paying job is a choice between bad and worse,” Gannon said.

Mr. Gannon, sitting in his plush office in the Prudential Building downtown, obviously hasn’t talked to very many poor, unemployed people recently. If he had, he would know that his last statement about the choice between “no job and a low-paying job” is a crock of unadulterated crap. It also reveals a stupidity that is beyond belief. Better, Mr. Gannon supposes, that we just keep the unemployed on the dole rather than give them the hope and dignity that a job - any job - can give.

In addition, most of the jobs available at these “big box” retail stores are entry level jobs offered to those with few if any job skills. In the suburbs, these include teenagers, young dropouts, and college graduates who majored in philosophy or comparative lit.

In the city - especially this city with its dysfunctional public schools and blighted neighborhoods - it includes most of the unemployed as well as those who are unemployable. The measure passed by the Council has undermined the very nature of the “entry level” job opportunity for these people. The profit margin of retail stores is low to begin with. One of the only ways to hold down costs and make the store profitable is to keep entry level wages low since these positions suffer from the most turnover.

And the reason for that turnover is not necessarily low wages and benefits. It has much more to do with the failure of the employee to demonstrate even minimal job skills by being constantly late or not showing up for work at all as well as poor job performance. A retailer like Wal Mart will have a turnover of up to 60% after 90 days for these reasons alone. This doesn’t include things like employee theft, leaving for another job, or illness. There’s also the fact that the entry level employee has to be trained at a cost in productivity and time which adds considerably to the cost of a new hire.

The difference between $7.50 and $10.00 per hour is insignificant. Employees who stay on in entry level positions (and thus become eligible for regular raises in salary as well as benefits) overwhelmingly cite how they are treated by superiors as well as their enjoyment in working with people they get along with as reasons for staying on. Salary has little to do with a new hire sticking it out long enough to start earning a decent wage.

Also not addressed is that the scale has gone up for managers as well. In short, the entire salary structure for the store has been skewed. Does the store then raise the prices of its items to offset the rise in salaries? Not if it wants to stay in business very long. There are plenty of non-big box stores not subject to the whims of a bunch of economic ignoramuses sitting on the City Council who will be able to sell exactly the same products at a lower price.

Just how ignorant are the Council members who voted for this measure?

But some of the aldermen who voted in favor asserted that big retail firms, despite threats otherwise, will continue to locate in Chicago because of the growth that it offers and its fertile market.

“There is a buck to be made, a lot of bucks,” asserted Ald. Joe Moore (49th), the ordinance’s sponsor. “If they are to continue to remain profitable, they must expand.

Huh? You bet they’ll expand. They’ll expand right out of the city limits and into the near suburbs where they’re not treated like some factory manager in the old Soviet Union forced to run his plant according to what a bunch of idiots in the Politburo thought was proper.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the perplexed and bewildered President of the local retail association:

As union leaders and other proponents claimed victory, the Illinois Retail Merchants Association was poised to go to court, if necessary, to seek to have the measure declared unconstitutional.

“I’m not as disappointed as the thousands of job seekers who would have had an opportunity for employment,” said David Vite, the association’s president. “There are, as it stands, thousands of jobs that are going to be lost.”

And the Chamber of Commerce weighs in:

Gerald Roper, president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, put it in more dire terms.

“I think that the aldermen who voted in support of this helped put the sign up, really big, that development in Chicago is dead,” he said. “There is no sense of coming to this city because there is no predictability … And it is a sad day.”

Indeed. And the Chamber is ready to play a little hardball:

We are going to take a look at those aldermen who have decided they don’t want development in their particular wards, and we will make sure when we bring in retailers and other companies we go to the wards that have supported development,” Roper said. Two of the council members in good standing with the chamber because of their opposition to the measure are Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th) and Ald. Emma Mitts (37th), who represent impoverished wards on the West Side.

Is it just me or do the celebrations of the proponents of this measure ring hollow when Aldermen representing two of the poorest neighborhoods in the city begged their fellows not to pass this measure?

So much for “equality and fairness.”

UPDATE

I’m starting to feel picked on by the state. Every move I make is watched. Every conversation I have is taped. Every time I go to the bathroom, I feel the omnipresent and watchful eyes of the government making sure I flush and wash my hands.

Or…I’m a nut!

See Howie? See Howie smile. See Howie grin. See Howie be nice.

HOWARD DEAN CALLS FOR AN END TO DIVISIVENESS

Down with divisiveness was the message Wednesday delivered by Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean as he told a group of Florida business leaders that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing American apart

GOOD BOY, HOWIE! GOOD BOY

Now see Howie. Howie is mad. Howie is mean. Howie is a two faced lying weasel. Can you say “two faced lying weasel?”

I knew that you could.

HOWARD DEAN COMPARES KATHERINE HARRIS TO STALIN

Democrat leader Howard Dean called the Iraqi prime minister an “anti-Semite” during an address before party loyalists on Wednesday, drawing a swift rebuke from Republicans. The Democratic National Committee chairman also called Republican Senate candidate Katherine Harris a “crook” and compared her to Stalin.

Dean also used the Florida appearance to criticize President Bush, calling him “the most divisive president probably in our history” as he complained that Republican policies of deceit and finger-pointing are tearing the country apart.

“He’s always talking about those people. It’s always somebody else’s fault. It’s the gays’ fault. It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s the liberals’ fault. It’s the Democrats’ fault. It’s Hollywood people,” Dean said. “Americans are sick of that. Even if you win elections doing that, you drag down our country.”

BAD BOY, HOWIE! BAD BOY!

Howie says our President blames gays for our troubles. Howie is a two-faced lying weasel. Howie knows our President never blamed gays for our troubles. Not once. Not ever. Howie is fibbing.

BAD BOY, HOWIE! BAD BOY!

Howie says our President blames immigrants for our troubles. Howie is a two-faced lying weasel. Howie knows our President never blamed immigrants for our troubles. Not once. Not ever. Howie is fibbing. Our President loves immigrants. Can you say “Bush is in the pocket of the Chamber of Commerce when it comes to immigration reform?”

That’s okay. That was a hard one. Can you say “Bush is carrying water for big business interests who need the cheap labor illegals provide?”

Never mind children.

BAD BOY, HOWIE. BAD BOY! BAD BOY, GEORGE, BAD BOY!

Howie is unhinged. Howie is losing it. Howie can talk out of both sides of his mouth and get away with it. Why is that, children? That’s right. Because the reporters working for the big big newspapers and big big TV networks let him get away with it. Can you say “bias” and “double standard?”

I knew that you could.

BAD REPORTERS! BAD, BAD, BAD!

Okay children. That’s all for today. Tomorrow we’ll learn all about the war in Iraq. Can you say “Retreat and defeat?”

I knew that you could.

BAD DEMOCRATS! BAD, BAD, BAD!

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

This morning, we’ll look at the fierce battle for Bint Jubayl fought between the IDF and Hizbullah. We’ll also look at Iraq and the security situation facing our troops. In the second hour, we’ll take a peek at the 2006 congressional elections and what the prospects for each party will be.

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I almost feel like starting with the old saw “Once upon a time” except there’s nothing remotely amusing about what I’m going to write about. The facts in this matter are so outrageous, so bizarre that if they weren’t true, the story would almost certainly be considered for inclusion in Aesop or Kipling’s Just So Stories.

What is happening in the blogosphere today is the ugliest, most frightening display of political hardball I can ever remember. And the target is not some big time politician, bureaucrat, or reporter. The target doesn’t even reside in this country.

The target is a blogger who runs a small, well-written site. He goes by the nom de blog Seixon. He lives in Norway. And he is under attack from some of the left’s most hateful and spiteful mouthbreathers over his defense of one of his commenters who himself got into trouble for (to use one of the left’s favorite phrases) “speaking truth to power.”

The story is a convoluted one best told by Sexion himself. Here’s the short version, condensed quite nicely. You need to read that post in order to understand what else has been happening in the 24 hours since Seixon began to tell his story.

Ace has the super short version:

Long story short: AnonymousArmy is a poster on DailyKos. He objected to Leopold’s claim of proof of the “Rove indictment,” and pointed out stuff like, oh, the docket number he kept citing as being on the indictment wasn’t even assigned until several days after Leopold claims to have seen it.

Or have been told it existed by someone who’d seen it. Whatever the hell his claim was.

AnonymousArmy, as I understand it, believed the left was putting too much faith in the claims of Joe Wilson and his pimp Larry Johnson.

Leopold began harrassing AnonymousArmy, and escalating that harrassment, and, of course, escalating that harrassment via sock-puppets.

Some of these sock-puppets were exposed, and the story was picked up by Seixon, who also began getting abused by sock-puppets.

The players on the left are both familiar and unfamiliar. Jason Leopold, the left-wing fantasist that every decent liberal in the blogosphere no longer holds in any regard whatsoever. And Larry Johnson, former CIA and State Department Counter-Terrorism official, frequent guest on cable talk shows, defender of Valerie Plame, and an internet bully.

A bully? Well, the thinly veiled threats against Sexion’s well being are among the sleaziest things I’ve ever seen posted on a blog:

Perhaps most haunting was the email I received from Larry Johnson last night. He claimed I defamed him and called him a liar. I did not defame him and he did lie to me when he said that he had answered my questions when he had in fact not done so. This was not part of the story I wrote yesterday, calling him a liar for that, I simply stated the fact that he declined to answer a set of yes/no questions I posed to him, as he responded that he had already answered them, which was false.

Johnson laced the email, to a personal account of mine which I do not usually give out and which is not available through Google, with personal details about my family and me. Just like Leopold had done, Johnson repeated my mother’s name, my parents’ address, and even my birth month and year. Obviously Johnson thought this would freak me out and scare me into retracting everything. He concluded the email with:

I am willing to accept a written apology and move on. If you refuse to retract your statements about me I am prepared to ratchet this up several levels. I have not spent the last twenty years working with the U.S. military and the intelligence community to accept this kind of nonsense from a wet-nosed 24 year old coward, who is an armchair warrior but does not have the courage to enlist in the military when his country is at war.

Is that a threat, Mr. Johnson? After I responded, he fired back with this:

I know where you are living. You forget that I do work for the European Union and friends in Interpol. I’ve offered you a mature way to deal with this situation. You’re obviously too immature and inexperienced to recognize the offer for what it is. Too bad.

Seixon asks “Is Larry Johnson using his law enforcement contacts to dig up information on me to intimidate me into retracting uncomfortable facts about his involvement with peddling false allegations against a commenter at my blog?”

In addition, some commenter named John Dean who had been defending Leopold actually called Seixon’s parents at their home:

Mr. Dean called my parents home in the United States (I live in Norway). He passed himself off as someone doing research for an article, got my father to confirm some things, and also divulged that he had researched my mother and father’s activities to do with a “liberal” cause.

On June 26th and June 27th, personal details about me were disclosed at Think Progress where I had been commenting frequently for the past few weeks. Think Progress management declined to remove the comments, citing the fact that the details could be found on the Internet, although this still violated their Terms of Use.

The story gets nuttier and even more bizarre with the addition of several sock puppets who have been making the rounds of the blogosphere posting on anyone’s site who comes to Seixon’s defense. I personally do not have the information to ascertain exactly who these sock puppets really are. But Sexion does.

In addition to sock puppets, there are falsified portions of emails used to “prove” Seixon’s “threats” and, most disturbing of all, there was this:

At approximately 7:00 AM Central European Time I received a phone call from a blocked number. The person on the phone told me I had written naughty things on my blog, and then laughed when I asked them who they were.

“You’re a dead man.”

This is what the person on the line told me right before hanging up.

The sock puppets have also made an appearance on Ace’s site, using both Seixon and Leopold/Johnson target Anonymousarmy’s names to post outrageous comments smearing the two out of control leftists:

Whoever is sock-puppeting for Leopold just happens to share Leopold’s obsessiveness in searching for references to his name on Technorati. (Have you heard this story before?)

As readers of this site know, someone calling himself “Seixon” posted all of the real Seixon’s personal information in a post. And then, tonight, someone attempting to discredit AnonymousArmy posted as “AnonymousArmy” and posted this hateful screed about “Jason Jew Leopold,” outing his personal information (supposedly) with a big helping of extremely crude, KKK-level Jew-hatred.

A nasty post. But one cannot help but suspect the post was designed to aid Jason Leopold, not hurt him, by discrediting an enemy, and drawing sympathy for Leopold’s supposedly thuggish treatment by his critics.

Death threats, sock puppets, falsifying emails, more subtle threats, publishing personal information, calling one’s family - I’ve never heard or seen anything like it.

These are tactics honed during the Clinton years and were used to terrify potential witnesses in the Paula Jones case. Journalists knew about these women who were receiving phone calls in the middle of the night, whose families were being contacted, and who many reported were being followed. Jennifer Flowers had her place broken into several times. Kathleen Willey reported all kinds of harassment and veiled threats.

Journalists knew - and never reported it. They didn’t want to receive the same “treatment” from the minions of the most powerful man on earth.

In the case of Seixon, he has aroused the fury of people whose house of cards in the Plame Affair is in danger of crashing down around them. It is now clear to any fair minded observer who has been following the investigation of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that while there was definitely White House pushback against Wilson for his lies about his trip to Niger, there was never any intent for “revenge” against his campaign to discredit the President of the United States nor was their a deliberate effort to out Valerie Plame who, after all, was not a covert agent in any way, shape, or form.

In Seixon’s case, he has come up against practitioners of a special kind of sleaze - the kind that is common inside the beltway but never before seen in the blogosphere. It is a campaign of whispering, of innuendo, of threats, of casual utterances made to chill the bones. It is hardball politics of the worst sort and the cockroaches who are practicing it should have as much light shone upon them as is possible. Hence the reason for this post.

I urge you to drop by Seixons blog and show him your support by leaving him a comment. I think if I were him right about now, I’d feel awfully alone. I’m sure he’d appreciate a word from everyone.

And to the trolls, the sock puppets, the leftist lickspittles who grub around in the muck and the filth, bottom feeding with the rest of the scavengers and eaters of carrion …

Get stuffed.

UPDATE

Patterico is also disturbed:

Christ on a popsicle stick.

a troubled young reporter with a history of drug addiction whose aggressive disregard for the rules ended up embroiling me in a bizarre escapade and raised serious questions about journalistic ethics.

The Anchoress is also troubled, seeing it as I do; unprecedented:

That, along with a few other cases of blog sock-puppetry and other things has more than made the case for me that certain parties within the blogosphere are beginning to whirrrr out of control. And that’s cause for concern, for several reasons, but mostly because when blogs become discredited, the whole “blogging community” suffers for it, and because, frankly - if this stuff doesn’t stop, someone is going to get hurt.

Too many people are beginning to fall into an “I have a blog and I’m not afraid to use it,” mentality, and that thought is morphing into an “I know where you live and where your children sleep” mentality.

She assures us that there are probably right wingers doing this kind of “off-blog” stuff but frankly, what makes the Seixon case so disturbing is the prominence of the leftists carrying it out. And I can’t see any righties of comparable standing doing the same thing.

UPDATE II 7/27

Goodnight, Larry. It was nice but I’m very happy you have to leave now. Your 6 year run as “terrorism expert” (after writing in the NYT two months before 9/11 of the “declining terrorist threat”) is over. Any news outlet that touches you with a 10 foot pole now should be called out as a facilitator of bullies.

Maybe you could join Dan Rather on Mark Cubans HDTV network?

Join me this morning from 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM Central Time for The Rick Moran Show on Wideawakes Radio.

Today we’ll have a look at war news plus an update on the security situation in Iraq. Then, in the 8:00 AM central time hour we’ll have our Blog of the Week blogger Romeocat to discuss her post on young Jay Cherrix, who is fighting the state of Virginia to treat his cancer according to his own lights. It’s a compelling story and I’m sure you won’t want to miss it.

Then during the 8:30 AM hour, I’ll be joined by Clarice Feldman, a Washington D.C. attorney and fellow contributor at The American Thinker. We’ll discuss the media, intelligence leaks, and a little of the Plame Game.

To access the stream, click on the “Listen Live” button in the left sidebar.

NOTE: If you’re having trouble accessing the stream, try using Firefox and/or closing some programs.

New York Times best selling author and famous sock puppet Glenn Greenwald has done us all another favor. In the past, The Great Waldo has given us the benefit of his wit and wisdom regarding all manner of conservative sinfulness, most notably that the right has transgressed by failing to recognize the god-like thunderbolts of truth and logic that sputter and spark from his tireless (and tiresome) pen on a daily basis.

Forgive us, your Puppetress! We are not worthy. And may I suggest that the brown sock matches your eyes and skin tones quite nicely while the blue one makes your hand look rather limp and unattractive?

What has Waldo in a hysterics today is that someone dared try to debunk one of the left’s made up terms that insults, smears, and savages conservatives. Like redefining “racism” to include ethnic groups that are not of another race and are in fact, scientifically speaking, as white as the driven snow (Hispanics, Arabs, and anyone else who wants to piggyback on top of the grievance culture of the left), Waldo is in a snit because Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe wrote an article revealing the “chickenhawk” charge made by the left against people who disagree with their anti-war worldview has nothing whatsoever to do with debating the issues. Rather, by using the term, liberals have every intent of shutting off discussion while at the same time, gleefully savaging their political opponents by creating a narrative that places them in an ascendant moral position.

Goldstein has called out the left on this tactic many times, most recently here:

And controlling the narrative—first by bending it to fit your will, then by repeating it until it becomes provisional “truth”—is at the heart of a progressive “activism” that, let’s face it, has failed to win people over using an unrigged marketplace of ideas.

Indeed, it is now impossible to have a discussion about racism in America without including Hispanics as a separate “race” and a victim of white oppression despite the fact that there is not now nor has there ever been such a unique racial anthropological designation for Hispanics. It is simply part and parcel of the left’s desire to stand truth on its head whenever they feel it necessary to gain an advantage in dialogue and has nothing to do with reality, science, the ordering of an individual’s genes, or the correct usage of the English language. It is bogus. It is disgusting. And it must stop.

Similarly, Waldo attempts to redefine the word “chickenhawk” in order to dismiss Jacoby’s argument without even addressing its major point; that the use of the term is a slur and is used to shut people up. Here’s Jacoby:

“Chicken hawk” isn’t an argument. It is a slur — a dishonest and incoherent slur. It is dishonest because those who invoke it don’t really mean what they imply — that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force. After all, US foreign policy would be more hawkish, not less, if decisions about war and peace were left up to members of the armed forces. Soldiers tend to be politically conservative, hard-nosed about national security, and confident that American arms make the world safer and freer. On the question of Iraq — stay-the-course or bring-the-troops-home? — I would be willing to trust their judgment. Would Cindy Sheehan and Howard Dean?

The cry of “chicken hawk” is dishonest for another reason: It is never aimed at those who oppose military action. But there is no difference, in terms of the background and judgment required, between deciding to go to war and deciding not to. If only those who served in uniform during wartime have the moral standing and experience to back a war, then only they have the moral standing and experience to oppose a war. Those who mock the views of “chicken hawks” ought to be just as dismissive of “chicken doves.”

In any case, the whole premise of the “chicken hawk” attack — that military experience is a prerequisite for making sound pronouncements on foreign policy — is illogical and ahistorical.

It should be noted that not all agree with Jacoby’s contention that military service makes one more hawkish. In fact, McQ at Q & O makes a good case that military service actually makes one more dovish. But putting that aside, instead of addressing the meat of Jacoby’s argument, Greenwald once again raises the bar by redefining the term and restructuring the chickenhawk narrative so that it can be applied in as broad a manner as is possible:

That is simply not what “chicken hawk” means, and it is less than forthright of Jacoby to mis-define the concept in order to argue against it. Although there is no formal definition for it, the “chicken hawk” criticism is not typically made against someone who merely (a) advocates a war but (b) will not fight in that war and/or has never fought in any war (although, admittedly, there are those who mis-use the term that way). After all, the vast majority of Americans in both political parties meet that definition. The war in Afghanistan was supported by roughly 90% of Americans, as was the first Persian Gulf War, even though only a tiny fraction of war supporters would actually fight in those wars which they advocated.

Something more than mere support for a war without fighting in it is required to earn the “chicken hawk” label. Chicken-hawkism is the belief that advocating a war from afar is a sign of personal courage and strength, and that opposing a war from afar is a sign of personal cowardice and weakness. A “chicken hawk” is someone who not merely advocates a war, but believes that their advocacy is proof of the courage which those who will actually fight the war in combat require.

That last part of Waldo’s “definition” - “Chicken-hawkism is the belief that advocating a war from afar is a sign of personal courage and strength, and that opposing a war from afar is a sign of personal cowardice and weakness” - is a brand spanking new addition to the word’s meaning. And it was appended to the original meaning by none other than the Great Waldo Sock Puppet himself (or one of his many admirers).

How do we know? This is a cached version of the Wikpedia page defining the term “chickenhawk” from just two days ago (7/23):

Chickenhawk (also chicken hawk and chicken-hawk) is a political epithet used in United States to criticize a politician, bureaucrat, or commentator who strongly supports a war or other military action, but has never personally been in a war, especially (but not always) if that person is perceived to have actively avoided military service when of draft age. The term is a deliberate insult, meant to indicate that the person in question is cowardly or hypocritical for personally avoiding combat in the past while advocating that others go to war in the present. Often, the implication is that the person in question lacks the experience, judgment, or moral standing to make decisions about going to war.

Here is the Wikpedia definition as seen today - after more than 50 revisions to the entry in the last 24 hours:

Chickenhawk (also chicken hawk and chicken-hawk) is a political epithet used in United States to criticize a politician, bureaucrat, or commentator who strongly supports a war or other military action, but has never personally been in a war, especially (but not always) if that person is perceived to have actively avoided military service when of draft age. Many proponents of the term insist on an additional requirement: Chickenhawks believe that their support for a war (or other military action) is an indication of their personal courage and that those who disagree are appeasers and/or cowards. This important point is rarely acknowledged by the term’s opponents when its use is criticized.

(Emphasis mine)

Could the reason the point is “rarely acknowledged by the term’s opponents when its use is criticized” have to do with the fact that Mr. Sock Puppet redefined the term only just today for his own purposes of argument? Give us some time, Waldo! Another day at least before we acknowledge your blindingly brilliant addition to the nomenclature of the word.

Even if Waldo or one of his minions did not rush to alter the Wikpedia definition to reflect his revised, made up definition, the point still stands; when losing an argument, the left invariably tries to change the parameters of the narrative rather than attempt to win on the merits or on logic. They view language with a fluidity that lacks the proper respect for and understanding of the importance of commonality of usage - that we all must use the same reference points when talking with each other. Otherwise, we talk past each other rather than with one another.

One of my commenters “GawainsGhost” - a much smarter and more credentialed man than I - puts the abuse of language by the left in perspective:

But the larger point is that deconstruction best serves the purposes of leftist academics, which are to teach that a poem or text says what they want it to say. This is why other academic fads, like Marxist theory, feminist theory and new historicism, are so prevalent in today’s academy. Deconstruction allows a Marxist or a feminist or a new historicist to take any poem or text and claim that it supports whatever ideology they advocate, even and especially if that ideology did not exist anywhere at the time the text was composed and has absolutely nothing to do with the intention of the author. (Incidentally, the best book on this subject, if you’re interested in pursuing it, is John M. Ellis’s Against Deconstruction, Princeton UP 1989.)

When there is no truth and words have no meaning, any text, or any event for that matter, can be turned around and made to say or mean the exact opposite of what it actually says or means.

Turning truth and reality upside down. Travelling to a place where black is white, up is down, and intent doesn’t matter as much as forcing it to fit into a new, interpretive paradigm that bears no resemblance to any sense or significance allowed by the author.

Welcome to Waldo’s World.