Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

People are apparently interested in what’s going on at Whidbey Island

Monday, April 29th, 2013

“cult busted on whidbey island”

A search phrase that popped up in the stats page.  It doesn’t take a genius to know what set of entries this will lead one to on my blog, but I do wonder… some news here?

And looking up Whidbey Island in google news, I see this… with its typical suspicion and speculation about “Satanic Cults”.

Orange lights, flying saucers, cows killed by cults or aliens, we have it all here on South Whidbey and thanks to the Internet, the whole world knows about us.

A veritable Twin Peaks.  It’s a case where this place was just gnabbed by the public at large, pick a random point on the map and designate it as a place you can claim such horrors.

Otherwise I land on…  the “Chocolate Flower Farm”, described here as “The most amazing cult out there”, though I see no evidence of such a thing.

Of course, then we get this…

I used to live on whidbey island for several years and i must say, there was a problem with witchcraft there.

Hm… Boo?

Surely this term isn’t swerving into the world of Hate Groups of vintage history — you don’t usually look up “cult” to find White Aryan “Martyrs”.

So… who knows?

As for other big events of Whidbey Island… I would go ahead and take this line about a “Local Figure in the National News” —

Island County Commissioner John Dean, a Camano Island resident, said the high-profile case has shattered a lot of residents’ sense that they live in a place that’s “stuck in the 1950s” and there’s no need to lock doors.

And so goes the End of Innocence:

A local farmer who runs a produce stand on the “honor system” says theft has become such a problem that she’s been forced to close the popular business.

Not sure if I should really be all that sad a business like that is going away — seems to be false sentimentality here that I have to force myself toward.  I refuse to implant false nostalgia and fret over the lessons of “human nature” too much.

politics on the comics page

Saturday, April 27th, 2013

ziggyredactedstrip

 

Hm.  Ziggy is taking on some heavy issues of Government secrecy.  Speaking out on behalf of Bradley Manning.  If he continues on this path, and such hard hitting themes, I expect that’s what Tom Wilson’s gravesite will look like.

muttscomicfil

 

Mutts, on the other hand, is going the way of the tv show The West Wing, which served for Democrats during the Bush Administration as a model of a more ideal presidential administration.  In this case, this is the liberal fantasy of how a Senate Filibuster should work  instead of forcing a 60 vote threshold on all votes– what we should see is Mitch Mcconnell sending out his troops to bark and bark and bark and put in the effort when stifling the 60 vote tally.

The next Mutts episode features a reference to The Big Lebowski.  The next Ziggy is a mouse joke.

time to quit mocking the elvis impersonator, and tentatively start mocking some other guy

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

In certain respects, I kind of just want to take all the Kevin Curtis asides — my comment in the sort of “Boston Marathon bombers are more like Columbine than al Qaeda” mode was that he is “more like the man who shot James Garfield than the man who shot Abraham Lincoln —

and just burn them.

The Man’s Innocent.  He’s been dragged through some mud here, and whatever his mental state is it does not include sending ricin to President Obama and Senator Roger Wicker.  So, blah de blah to “Elvis Has Left the Building”, and at the end of it I don’t even know if my seconding of such a sentiment is a joke:

Maybe he will get some gigs out of this. After all, embedded in all the articles about his alleged crimes came the ringing endorsement from Sen. Roger Wicker, who hired him as a Elvis impersonator one time and commented that “he was very entertaining.” If his interviews so far are any indication, that’s surely true.

An interesting twist here, for the partisan grabber gotchers.  This suspect was a Democrat (if a very flaky one.)  The new suspect is a Republican — by the name of Everett Dutschke.  And here the politics gets a little curious.

Dutschke has also run unsuccessfully for the Mississippi legislature, and at one point, according to the AP, he threatened to sue Curtis for claiming to be a member of Mensa. Meanwhile—how did I get this far without mentioning this part?—Curtis claims to have uncovered a “secret shadow government” that exists to conceal an “illegal organ harvesting market.” In 2011 he issued an appeal to former Reason reporter Radley Balko to protect him from the conspiracy.

So… was the Elvis Impersonator framed… by this Dutschke guy who I guess has a vendetta against Curtis, Obama, Wicker, and — we may note –that the third person that ricin was sent to… was the “mother of the person who defeated Dutschke” in his  race for state legislature.    [Margin of defeat … 71.03 percent to 28.57 percent.)

And, I don’t know… Please don’t do this.

Just when you think the GOP can’t get any crazier …

Understand, this man may well be cleared in the end… though his reaction to hearing of the charges dropped did reek of the “oh, shit”… nevermind, a few days ago I’d have suspected the damned Elvis Impersonator… In the meantime, as we wait for things to play out, I do enjoy the Current Digital Age where the news media provides url link fills of tangentially connected data — see here:

has turned its focus to J. Everett Dutschke, a Tupelo, Miss., taekwondo instructor [Link], blues band frontman [Link] and failed political candidate, according to the local Clarion-Ledger [link] newspaper.

[VIDEO: Watch the Elvis, Johnny Cash Impersonations of the Accused Ricin Mailer]

Followed in this story by youtube video where he uses the phrase “don’t hardly know him”… Southern dialect, I suppose…

And No, I don’t know that the supposed motive  makes sense…

Curtis’s attorneys suggested in court that their client may have been framed by Dutschke because he is a rival, according to the Clarion-Ledger. Both men do martial arts, are politically active and are local music celebrities, though Dutschke’s group describes itself on Facebook as “rock with tons of lasers,” while Curtis mostly sticks to impersonations of 50 rock ‘n’ roll icons including Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Elvis.

Rock with tons of lasers?

And what does his twitter page reveal?  Fan of Glenn Beck.  You know… maybe I will go ahead and go with the partisan angling.  What I’m looking for is details of the political race he was running, and all I see so far is

Brandon Presley, Mississippi’s northern district public service commissioner and a distant cousin of Elvis Presley, attended the 2007 political rally in Verona. He told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he remembers Dutschke giving a “militant” speech with personal and professional attacks Steve Holland.
Presley, also a Democrat, said he doesn’t recall details of the speech — just the tone of it, and the crowd’s reaction.

“I just remember everybody’s jaw dropping,” Presley said.
Dutschke, who ran as a Republican, said his speech included sharp criticism of Steve Holland’s record in public office.
Steve Holland said earlier this week that his mother made Dutschke get down on his knees at the 2007 rally and apologize. On Wednesday, he said he was mistaken about her telling Dutschke to kneel.
“She just got up and said ‘Sir, you will apologize,” Steve Holland said.
Dutschke said Steve Holland exaggerated the incident. Presley said he remembers Sadie Holland chastising Dutschke.

And looking about for more… his youtube videos from the campaign have been “privatized”.   That Figures.

I think Hal of 2001 fame is messing with us again.

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

Point:  The message ‘Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and Barack Obama is injured,’ was tweeted from the Associated Press news agency, causing panic to some of their near 2 million followers. […]

In a graph capturing traders’ apparent panic, the DOW Jones Industrial average took a straight dive plunging from about 14,700 to around 14,570 before gradually shooting back up in a three-minute roller coaster. 
Some traders blamed automatic electronic trading for the sharp fall and recovery and not human reaction to the report.
‘No human believed the story. Only the computers react to something that serious disseminated in such a way. I bought some stock well and did not sell into it. Humans win,’ Rick Fier, director of equity trading at Conifer Securities LLC in New York, overseeing $8 billion in assets, told Bloomberg.

Counterpoint:  On the one hand, it illustrated the efficiency of the markets, said Henry Hu, a law professor at the University of Texas and former top Securities and Exchange Commission official.

Just so long as you step away from the computer and override it, or is the theory that “things will work themselves out”.  (Ie:  market recovered pretty quickly from this glitch, right?)

Economists agree: we’re in the situation of a bunch of different metaphors

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

I like the fact that the BBC dredged up this “Cat in tree” photo to illustrate the metaphor of … the global economy being like a cat stuck in a tree.

catintree  It makes me wonder what other stock images, easily grabbed by looking the phrases up on google, that they could pull out.

 

Imagine the headline that things are like …

The current global economy is like…

We’re Up a Creek Without A Paddle!

boatwithoutapaddle  OR MAYBE… What we’re seeing is all a DOG AND PONY SHOW.  dogandponyshow

Or… Everything’s Gone to Pot.

potleaf

Well, those will be the next BBC articles on the topic of the global economy, I presume.

The Syrian Electronic Army hearts larouche.

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

Curiouser and Curiouser.

cbs-hack1

There’s an update to this Big Story behind this hack job at CBS News sites.

On Saturday, supporters of conspiracy-loving, eight-time presidential candidate, and U.S. Labor Party inventor Lyndon LaRouche somehow commandeered the Twitter feeds of 60 Minutes and 48 Hours, leaving behind a message reading, “Exclusive: Terror is striking the #USA and #Obama is Shamelessly in Bed with Al-Qaeda,” along with a link to a blog post on LaRouchePAC.com expressing that same idea. No comment from Alex Jones on whether this tactic is more effective than keeping your thoughts to your own Twitter.

Which is…  your identity of your supporters of “US Labor Party inventor”… The Syrian Electronic Army.

The Syrian Electronic Army, a group of pro-regime hackers, reportedly took over the Twitter account of CBS’ 60 Minutes as well as other CBS brands yesterday, saying the U.S. is ‘in bed’ with terrorists.

This is the second Twitter take-over in the last week for the SEA, which often attacks publications for their coverage of the situation in Syria. The group took responsibility for the hack on its website and in a YouTube video, according to AllThingsD, which shows screenshots of the 60 minutes Twitter as well as new SEA Twitter and Facebook accounts (the social media giants continue to take down SEA accounts.)

The statement on it’s website reads, “The Syrian Electronic Army hacked today several Twitter accounts of CBS-American Network and published thought it the truth.”

In this weekend’s hack, the SEA tweeted fake headlines that accused the U.S. government of helping terrorists with money and weapons of mass destruction. It then linked to a number of websites. What these websites contained — and whether they were malicious — is unknown, though they reportedly serve malware.

Also worth noting the “CBS News Denver” site… global research dot ca crap.

In the comments sections of the news sites that have picked this story up… we get a lot of jabs and snarks.  Also I note that Alex Jones seems to get top billing quite a bit — meaning Lyndon Larouche is now just an Alex Jones underling.

Wait til he starts Instagraming artsy pictures of his lunch.
That guy is still around?
Here I thought Lyndon LaRouche existed solely for two brilliant golden-age The Simpsons jokes. Didn’t know he still had supporters.

Yeah, do not worry – I have never heard of him either

Alex Jones dominates the dicussion section here.

For the most part, after this initial burst, the larouche connection is dropped out of the coverage.  We see it in the (Glenn Beck Media) Blaze coverage that reposts the tweet message sans larouche.  (And what a loopy amusement the comments section is here.)  And after that,  It is lost in the ensuing flood of twitter messages.

In Cardtable Deployment News…  yes, with the Boston Marathon attacks.  Aiming for this viscarel response.
Also on Monday, at the Willits Post Office, a pair of Larouchies showed up with their trademark placard depicting Obama with a Hitler moustache, and describing Obama as a Nazi. This stuff can make a guy nostalgic for the sedition laws.
…………………….
Update on the Syrian Electronic Army’s current cyber war:

Following a hack attack, the Associated Press’ verified Twitter account posted “an erroneous tweet” claiming that two explosions occurred in the White House and that President Barack Obama is injured. Moments later, the @AP Twitter account — with nearly 2 million followers — was suspended.
Immediately following the false tweet, the Dow Industrial Average lost about 140 points. These losses were immediately recovered. […]

A wire statement issued later explained that the mid-day tweet “came after hackers made repeated attempts to steal the passwords of AP journalists.” A group called the Syrian Electronic Army claimed credit for the hack. The group’s original Twitter account is currently suspended, but on Tuesday afternoon, an alternate “official” account was live.
Social media accounts associated with CBS News programs “60 Minutes” and “48 Hours” were compromised on Saturday. The same group, known for its pro-Assad politics, took credit for that attack too, as well as earlier attacks on the Twitter accounts of NPR and the BBC. The group is not to be confused with the hacking collective known as Anonymous — in fact, they have previously clashed online.

We’ll just have to watch and see if they post more Larouche created Syrian Government Propaganda in their next Media Hack Attack.

Interestingly this headline, inserted into the hack items:

Tech bloggers posted screenshots of fake posts that appeared under the CBS accounts, including one from @48Hours that read, “General Dempsey calls for #Obama’s arrest under new anti-terror laws #48hours.”

That reminds me of a headline recently seen at the alex jones sites.  The news sites all say the link directed one to malware infestation.  A bottom line on this last one:

Apparently hacking obscure, but relevant, social media accounts wasn’t enough for the SEA. Although it’s hard to see how tweeting false claims about explosions at the White House will make anyone more likely to see things their way.
See too lobbing out links to 8 time presidential candidate and conspiracy mongerer…

a couple of items of small amusement.

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

A “David Icke” auto-matron has dumped a few spam comments, the url for which directing to some website unrelated to anything David Icke would be interested in or is associated with.  (Ie:  no lizard figures are associated with the website being attempted link-dropped.)

But, here’s a message relayed out of spam.  Do with this “Bilderberg information” what you must.

In other items… I see from the stat page that people want to know Chris Christie’s Skull and Bones status.  This is apparently speculation that came out of the subtle movement of his tie.  The nickname you’ll hear out of Bush’s mouth does not derive from any Yale fraternity, a university he never attended.