A guy who doesn't know shit from Shinola talks to another guy who has both shit for brains & an agenda to craft an expert opinion about . . . me.

A photographic scorecard for this story:


This is Shinola.


This is Tim Steller of the Arizona Daily Star. (Tiny head evidently actual size.)


This is a self-posted Facebook image of ADL attack blimp Mark Pitcavage. He used to troll for names on the Internet to provide the FBI back in 90s.


This is Sparky, the Militia Watchdog, from back during the Clintonista Regime. Last seen almost a decade ago, rumor has it that Pitcavage sat on him and didn't notice for a week. Poor Sparky. He even looks sad, do you notice? Almost as if he knew his fate.

I assume y'all know what shit looks like, gentle readers, so I'll skip that illustration.

The headline: "The blogger who broke Fast and Furious prepares for US revolution."

The story, with my comments ad seriatim:

The Republic published a long, interesting story Sunday on Operation Fast and Furious, and it included interviews with Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea. These are the two pro-gun-rights bloggers who first opened the window on the disgraced ATF investigation in late December 2010.

As often happens when you break a story, the scoops have kept coming, and Vanderboegh in particular has become a go-to source for information on the Fast and Furious scandal. What newcomers to his Sipsey Street Irregulars blog may find surprising is the broader theme of the blog, which perhaps can be summarized as: The out-of-control federal government is poised to start a new American revolution among gun owners.

"A new American revolution"? Not my words. Long-time readers will recognize that the only "revolution" that I believe has been going on here is that of a Gramscian nature waged by domestic enemies of the Founders' Republic against that system of government and the rule of law. We are fighting for a restoration of that republic against the revolutionaries of collectivism. Had the sentence stated "civil war with the American armed citizenry" then it would have been accurate.

While Vanderboegh has done a good job exposing Fast and Furious in the last year, he remains what he was before: A man so convinced that the federal government has turned totalitarian that he has declared himself willing, even occasionally seeming eager, to engage in war against it. As with many gun-rights activists, he foresees the moment of truth as when the feds come to take Americans' guns — that's when the shooting war would begin.

"Eager"? Is there anyone here who has read my stuff who believes that I am "eager" for civil war? Or that I have ever seemed "eager"? What a lying sack of shit.

I've emailed Vanderboegh some questions about his views outside of the Fast and Furious case and am awaiting a response. I'll update when I get it.

I get a crapton of email a day, and I didn't recall this one, so I just went back and looked over my new and old email files and on a quick scan I can't find any such email. I delete far more emails than I read, but it would be very unlikely for me to delete one of Steller's unread, for I know who he is. With that caveat, I'm not willing to call him a liar on that. Perhaps he should re-send it. Or, he could have done due diligence and cast around to find other reporters for my phone number. He must not have been that curious about my responses to his questions. It is easier to write a story with its meme unchallenged.

Vanderboegh may have first come to the attention of Southern Arizona residents last year during the debate over health-care reform. On March 19, 2010 he posted this blog item, encouraging "all modern Sons of Liberty" to break windows at Democratic Party offices around the country. Two days later, the glass door at U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' Tucson office was smashed. It was one of about a half-dozen such incidents in the days after his call.

Vanderboegh was involved in the militia movement of the 1990s and appears to blame the U.S. government for the excesses that came out of that movement. Not only was the Waco disaster the government's fault, according to Vanderboegh, but the Oklahoma City bombing was as well. He calls it "The greatest crime ever perpetrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Actually, I was referring to PATCON, of which the OKC bombing was only a part, and no, I don't believe that the FBI blew up the building or even wanted the building to blow up. I think that it, unlike the Gunwalker Scandal, OKC and the Aryan Republican Army actually was a "sting gone bad." J.D. Cash believed that, and so do I. The language here is curious: "Vanderboegh was involved in the militia movement of the 1990s and appears to blame the U.S. government for the excesses that came out of that movement." He then refers to Waco and OKC. Uh, ascribing blame for Waco as "an excess that came out of the militia movement" when Waco actually pre-dated the constitutional militia movement and was the direct cause of its organizing is a bit bizarre to say the least. And as for the OKC bombing as a representation of "militia excesses" when McVeigh, to my knowledge, was thrown out of the only Michigan Militia meeting he ever attended, is part-and-parcel of what Professor Robert Churchill called "The Narrative of 1995." Perhaps Steller should read Churchill's book.

This was Vanderboegh's first claim to fame, says Mark Pitcavage of the Anti-Defamation League, who has been aware of Vanderboegh for 15 years.

"He became a big early proponent — and this is where he got his notoriety in the 1990s — of Oklahoma City conspiracy theories. 'Timothy McVeigh was a patsy. The government was actually involved.' He did a lot to popularize this," Pitcavage said.

Ah yes, Pitcavage. Mark Pitcavage used to troll the Internet and sell names of "militia threats," including mine, to the FBI. He ran a site called "The Militia Watchdog" and Sparky (as seen above) was his logo. We crossed swords many times, Spitcabbage and me. His FBI "confidential informant" file would make interesting reading. He parlayed this into a job with ADL as their "militia expert."

Here's an old militia joke from the 90s:

What is the difference, if any, between Mark Pitcavage and the Hindenburg?


This is Mark Pitcavage in his natural element.


This is the Hindenburg.

Answer: There are two. First, although both are gasbags and serve the commercial interests of a nascent collectivist tyranny, the Hindenburg was a dirigible whereas Pitcavage is a blimp. Second, Pitcavage has not yet spontaneously burst into flames.



Hope springs eternal.

Pitcavage's next description of me is hardly accurate, but it is all we who have followed his lying career over the years have come to expect from Sparky's erstwhile master.

"In the late 90s and early 2000s, the militia movement went into a tailspin. It was at that point that Mike jumped ship. In the mid-2000s, he became involved in the Minutemen."

The truth is the constitutional militia movement, as opposed to the "millennials" (again, see Churchill's "To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face"), didn't suffer any "tailspin," and I only stepped down as commander of 1ACR when it was obvious that I was too old, fat and infirm to lead troops. 1ACR, in its component parts under subordinate leaders, still exists, and as for "jumping ship," Pitcavage knows that that is a damn lie. Throughout the early 2000s I contributed in a hundred ways to the constitutional militia movement overall, picking up the description from a "main-stream" reporter as "The Grey Eminence" of the movement. When my old friend Bob Wright got involved in the Minutemen in 2005, I took elements of 1ACR and went out to help him in October of that year. I saw this, then and now, as simply an extension of the militia citizenship ideal.

"He rode that pony for a while. More recently, he dropped that and started his Sipsey Street Irregulars blog. He started the Three Percenter concept, which has caught on among anti-government extremists."

Pitcavage, whose personal relationship with ponies involves frightening them to death whenever he nears with the prospect that he might actually try to ride them, implies some sort serial inconstancy on my part as if it is notoriety I am seeking through a variety of failed enterprises. Nothing that I have done since 1993 is inconsistent with my own belief in the efficacy of the armed citizenry to deter tyranny and work toward that end -- with pen, or rifle, or, in the case of the Minuteman vigil in 2005, with seismic intrusion detector and night vision device.

Pitcavage also tips his hand with that old Brown Scare bromide "anti-government extremists." The advocates and lickspittles of the Federal Leviathan (of which class Pitcavage is surely one) always classify their opponents as "anti-government." I know of no one, save unthinking self-proclaimed anarchists (and there are thinking anarchists who are Threepers), who is actually "anti-government." Now I am anti-BIG government, anti-DANGEROUS government and anti-TYRANNICAL government. It is no accident that collectivist pukes like Pitcavage and Morris Dees seek legitimacy for their own vision of government and heap scorn on their opponents who do not share it through misuse of language. That is the oldest collectivist trick in the book. (Reference: "Arbeit Macht Frei.")

The Three Percenter idea derives from the fact (as Vanderboegh explains it) that at the time of the American Revolution, only three percent of the population fought against the king. Vanderboegh explains the present-day Three Percenters this way:

"We are committed to the restoration of the Founders' Republic, and are willing to fight, die and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic."

Most recently, Vanderboegh was in the news when four Georgia men were arrested and accused of plotting terrorist attacks against the federal government. A book Vanderboegh has written, titled Absolved, inspired the men, though Vanderboegh said he has never communicated with them. The U.S. News and World Report had this interesting story on the case.

Fair enough.

Why does all this background on Vanderboegh matter? Well, I enjoy reading his blog, and have found in my couple of months following the Fast and Furious story that he has often been first in putting out details of the scandal. (He also had an impressive scoop last week when he published what he said were portions of an original draft of a Newsweek story about a man who for years worked as an FBI informant among white supremacists.)

"What he said were. . ." Don't you just love the weasel words? Actually, I have been waiting for Newsweek to deny my article so I can print emails with their addresses on them in refutation. This squirrel of a "reporter," who lives in Arizona at Gunwalker Ground Zero, can't find a nut of his own in a forest of oak trees and then casts doubt on MY journalistic skills? Hey, you can doubt my ancestry, Steller, but don't doubt my footnotes.

But I read the blog just for new facts on Fast and Furious and as a measure of what is interesting gun-rights fundamentalists. I often find Vanderboegh's interpretation of the facts to stretch the limits of credibility and to derive from his view of himself as a rebel leader in the run-up to the next American revolution.

Sorry, I've run out of enough spittle to dignify that last bullshit with the contempt that it deserves.

But, hey, Steller, if you actually want to communicate with someone you write about like any other reporter, why don't you give it a try? I ain't going anywhere. And my exclusives will keep on coming, whether you like the source they came from or not.

Pitcavage on Oath Keepers and Threepers: ADL's Attack Blimp Strikes Again

"Anti-government" is as anti-government does.

Mark Pitcavage, resident gasbag at ADL.

I first introduced Mark Pitcavage, ADL's attack blimp, in this post back in March. Back in the 90s, I crossed electronic swords often with this puke, who used to get paid by the FBI for all the names of militia folk he could glean by trolling the Internet. Back then, this was his logo:



Now the attack blimp has delivered another pre-emptive prevarication strike on Threepers and Oath Keepers here.

Extremism

Oath Keepers and Three Percenters Part of Growing Anti-Government Movement

The Oath Keepers and Three Percenters, both part of an anti-government extremist movement that has grown since President Obama took office, promote the idea that the federal government is plotting to take away the rights of American citizens and must be resisted. The two groups are apparently trying to make inroads in the U.S. military.

From October 24-25, 2009, the Oath Keepers held their first national conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. About one hundred people reportedly attended the event. At the conference, a member of the group's board claimed that they had 2,000 dues-paying members but it's likely that the group is much smaller.

Formed in March 2009 and led by Stewart Rhodes, a Nevada lawyer, the Oath Keepers encourage members of the military and law enforcement to pledge not to follow certain hypothetical "orders" from the federal government. These "orders," including one "to put American citizens in detention camps," and another "to disarm the American people," echo longstanding conspiracy theories embraced by anti-government extremists, who claim that the U.S. government is creating a police state. The Oath Keepers try to appeal to military and law enforcement personnel by reminding them that they swore an oath to defend the Constitution "from all enemies, foreign and domestic," and suggesting that now is the time to live up to that oath by resisting an allegedly tyrannical government.

The Three Percenters, formed in late 2008, are a loosely organized movement centered around an obscure, and not particularly accurate, Revolutionary War "statistic" that claimed that only 3% of the American population during the Revolutionary War participated as combatants in the war. The group asserts that they are a modern counterpart to that mythical 3% of American Revolutionary-era patriots and also represent the three percent of the population of American gun owners "who will not disarm."

Recently, the Oath Keepers posted a picture to their Web site of what they claim is an active duty soldier in Iraq wearing the group's patch on his arm. In addition to the Oath Keepers' patch, the soldier is wearing patches for the Three Percenters; one patch that reads "three percent" and another with a version of the American flag with the Roman numeral III. At least one supporter has labeled this symbol the group's "battle flag."

Although Rhodes has written that the Oath Keepers patch was not made by the group and was not worn at their urging, he claims the patch as evidence of the spread of the group's message within the active duty military. Oath Keepers plan to put together care packages that include an official Oath Keepers patch and DVD to distribute to "tens of thousands" of active duty troops between November 11 (Veterans Day) and December 15, 2009 (Bill of Rights Day).

It is clear that these anti-government extremist groups are trying both to exploit and to fan the anti-government sentiment that has grown over President Obama's first year in office, as well as to support each other's efforts. Rhodes has written supportively of the Three Percenters, while at least two participants carried the Three Percenter flag at an Oath Keepers event at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., on September 12, 2009. That event was staged on the same day that an anti-government Tea Party rally in the city attracted tens of thousands of people, the largest to date of the protests held against the government and Obama since he took office.

Now as far as I'm concerned, "anti-government" is as anti-government does. Explain to me how Oath Keepers, an organization dedicated to preserving the Constitution is anti-government? Anti-tyrannical-government, maybe. Anti-collectivist, surely. It is Pitcavage and his ilk who are traitors to the Founders Republic.

Now here is ADL's official bio on Pitcavage and here is the Wikipedia reference on him.

When you go to the ADL bio, be sure and note how many state and local law enforcement officers have been "trained" by this statist puke. SPLC does the same thing. Wonder where these goofy fusion center reports come from?

You will also notice from the Wikipedia entry that this police state puke is an avid military board gamer. He is no doubt a legend in his own mind.



Here he is in a recent Facebook photo:



We haven't seen Sparky the Anti-militia Watchdog lately. Rumor is Pitcavage sat on him a few years back and crushed the poor beast -- and the dead mutt is stuck to Pitcavage's ass and he still hasn't noticed.

"Sure, and isn't it the truth that we don't have to wonder what HE had fer breakfast?"

ADL Notices the Three Percent. We are officially pronounced an "anti-government conspiracy."

With a tip of the boonie hat to Brock for the link, so says the ADL: "Rage Grows in America: Anti‑Government Conspiracies. The Three Percenters."

Long-time readers may recall we have encountered the ADL's "militia expert" Mark Pitcavage before.



Back in the 90s, Mark Pitcavage trolled the internet snitching for the FBI, assisted, he said, by "Sparky, the anti-militia dog." Now he works for ADL, and Sparky hasn't been heard from in years. There are conflicting rumors as to his sad fate. One said that Pitcavage sat on him, smothering the poor beast. Other reports say that Pitcavage ate him one day when he was trapped in his apartment by his own paranoia.

Here is Pitcavage's latest.

The Three Percenters are a loosely organized movement that apparently formed in late 2008, centered around an obscure and not particularly accurate Revolutionary War “statistic” that suggested that only 3% of the American population during the Revolutionary War participated as combatants in the war (the actual figure was nearly twice that). Three Percenters claim that they are a modern counterpart to that mythical 3% of American Revolutionary-era patriots.

In the words of one Three Percenter:

“The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act…We will not obey any further circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked…We are committed to the restoration of the Founders’ Republic, and are willing to fight, die, and, if forced by any would-be oppressor, to kill in the defense of ourselves and the Constitution that we all took an oath to uphold against enemies foreign and domestic.”

The movement started on the Internet but eventually moved into the real world, with members designing a flag and military-style patches (some of which appear to have been applied to their uniforms by active duty soldiers). One of the active proponents of the Three Percenters is the Alabama-based Mike Vanderboegh, who in the past has been involved with the militia movement and the anti-immigration border vigilante movement.

To date, the movement is still small, but appears to be growing.

Typical collectivist propaganda. Just because we don't believe in THEIR vision of Federal Leviathan "government" that makes us "anti-government." Personally, I'm pro-government, if you mean a government that is small, safe, inexpensive and maintains ordered liberty and the rule of law without oppressing people.

But an "anti-government 'conspiracy'"? Hmmm. Sounds like they intend prison for the likes of us. Who are we "conspiring" against? If we are conspiring for any purpose it is to maintain what liberty we have left and to regain what has been lost over the last century.

And that, I think, puts us in the good company of other "conspirators" throughout history, starting with Sam Adams and his bunch of rowdy "anti-government" conspirators against King George III.

Latest Love Notes From the Limpdick Pink Swastika Set: Not That ADL, SPLC or MIAC Will Admit It.

Definition from the Online Slang Dictionary.

"Limpdick"

noun

A coward of either gender, as in, "Crash is a real limpdick."

Submitted by J. Rogers, Birmingham, AL, USA, Apr 12 1998.

Now I don't know "J. Rogers," but I thought of his definition when I pulled this out of my post office box.
Now THIS is "limpdick."

Thus do the neoNazis once again demonstrate that they fail to comprehend the difference between actual sex and hallucinatory masturbation.

I mean, if they were going to kill me, they would just do it, right? I am reminded of the moron Kluxer (or maybe it was an ATF agent -- same difference, right 'Good-O-Boy?') back in the 90s who called me up at midnight to threaten my life on a phone line that was under federal court-ordered wiretap. Only racist collectivists are this stupid.

Well, what can I say? The "I-can't-get-a-date-with-an-ugly-woman-so-I'm-going-to-be-an-excrement-for-brains-follower-of-a-dead-Austrian-male-prostitute-and-mass-murderer-who's-burning-brightly-in-Hell-at-the-moment" crowd sent me some love notes to my post office box, along with another neoNazi wet dream novel that describes, a la The Turner Diaries, what's going to happen to my kind when they take power. Among the other literature they sent me was a leaflet entitled:

"WHIGGER! ACT YOUR COLOR!" Uh, huh. You get the idea, so I'm not going to copy the text here. The leaflet ends, "Hail Victory! White Power!" They also sent me a helpful reference card in case I want to look up the latest posts on "Jewish Freemasonry" on the Internet. Hey, stop laughing, I'm not making this up.

"Nazis. I hate these guys." -- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Best biography of the Austrian male prostitute known as A. Hitler.

I assume they got my post office box off of the web site, so it is not like they didn't know who they were sending it to. (See my essay "Birmingham - Race and Armed Defense of Individual Liberty and the Republic" among others.)

Of course, my personal fight with the racist collectivists is a matter of Internet lore and documented record for the past 15 years. Only duplicitous idiots like the Missouri fusion center (MIAC -- see this recent post), the Southern Preposterous Lie Center and Mark "Sparky" Pitcavage ignored the street-level struggles of the constitutional militias against the racist and neoNazi terrorists in the 90s, and they did that because they had, and continue to have, money on the line.

Quick. Here's a militia joke from the Nineties.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MARK PITCAVAGE, SEEN HERE:



AND THE HINDENBURG, SEEN HERE?:



Answer: There are two. First, although both are gasbags and serve the commercial interests of a nascent collectivist tyranny, the Hindenburg was a dirigible whereas Pitcavage is a blimp. Second, Pitcavage has not yet spontaneously burst into flames.



We can always hope.

A victim of his own self-induced conflation, ADL's Mark Pitcavage crashes and burns.

A tip of the boonie hat and deep genuflection to Alvie D. Zane at The Cliffs of Insanity for discovering this image of the ADL's Mark Pitcavage, apparently taken just this afternoon outside ADL headquarters.

Oh, the horror! The horror!


"Anti-government extremists! Anti-government extremists! Anti-government . . . AAAAARGH! It burns us! It burns us!"

Trust my son to ask the question that gets to the cosmic truth about Mark Pitcavage.

Mark Pitcavage, ADL attack blimp.

Having read the post below, my son Matt writes from Germany this single line in response:

"How can you expect a guy who has not seen his penis since the Fonz was cool, to find truth in anything?"

"Mass-staria." This just in from ABC News: SPLC Paranoia Explained! Also, Is Mark Potok a castrato? We report, you decide.

A castrato (Italian, plural: castrati) is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity. Castration before puberty . . . prevents a boy's larynx from being transformed by the normal physiological events of puberty. As a result, the vocal range of prepubescence (shared by both sexes) is largely retained, and the voice develops into adulthood in a unique way. . . This, combined with intensive training, gave them unrivalled lung-power and breath capacity. Operating through small, child-sized vocal cords, their voices were also extraordinarily flexible, and quite different from the equivalent adult female voice, as well as higher vocal ranges of the uncastrated adult male . . . Listening to the only surviving recordings of a castrato, one can hear that the lower part of the voice sounds like a "super-high" tenor, with a more falsetto-like upper register above that. Castrati were rarely referred to as such: in the eighteenth century, the euphemism musico (pl musici) was much more generally used, though it usually carried derogatory implications. -- Wikipedia.

"Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground!" "Il Musico." The Music Man, Mark Potok. "There's trouble, terrible, terrible trouble, right here in River City."

Meet Mark Potok. If Mussolini was "Il Duce," Potok is "Il Musico," the Music Man of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

You remember the original Music Man, don't you? Robert Preston played "Professor" Harold Hill in the 1962 musical film. Harold Hill, "The Music Man," is a con artist who swindles the famously stubborn natives of River City, into paying him to create a boy's marching band, including instruments, uniforms, and music instruction. Once he has their money, he intends to hop the next train out of town leaving them without their money or a band.

But how to convince the good citizens that they are in need of expensive instruments? Why, they got trouble, right there in River City, in the form of a pool hall. So effectively does The Music Man portray the evil of pool, and the potential salvation of their children by means of a marching band, that the townsfolk can't hand him their money fast enough. My favorite snippet from the song, "Ya Got Trouble":

One fine night, they leave the pool hall,
Headin' for the dance at the Arm'ry!
Libertine men and Scarlet women!
And Rag-time, shameless music
That'll grab your son and your daughter
With the arms of a jungle animal instink!
Mass-staria!
Friends, the idle brain is the devil's playground!

"Mass-staria." That is exactly what Mark Potok deals in. And for the same reason as "Professor" Harold Hill -- money. Or, at least, that is the standard reason given for such breath-taking public lying. There may be a more powerful reason than money, however. Sipsey Street will report, you decide.

Now here is the story based on Potok's "expert" opinion that has Rush Limbaugh's knickers in a twist, and rightfully so.

First we had Joe the Plumber, now we've got Bill the Gunner. This is the guy who is exercising both his First and Second Amendment rights, and thereby has all the collectivists wetting their beds in stark panic. "OOOH, Margeret, a dangerous man with a gun!" "Don't look at him Edgar, he might shoot you." Good man. The official caption that goes with the ABC story below: "William Kostnic wears a 9mm pistol as he stands outside a town hall meeting on health care held by President Barack Obama, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009, in Portsmouth, N.H."


Disclaimer: Warning! This story is an example of the dreaded brain disease, conflatus maximus. Credulous or weak minded people should not be exposed to its contents lest they become infected themselves. In mild cases, conflatus maximus has been known to cause extreme body swelling (for example, the horrible case of Mark Pitcavage, ADL), illogical toxicity and inability to reason. In severe cases, it can lead to cranial detonation.

Typical mild presentation of the logical disease conflatus maximus. Mark Pitcavage of the ADL in his natural habitat.

Fear for Obama's Safety Grows as Hate Groups Thrive on Racial Backlash

Violent Signs, Gun, Standoff Latest in Emerging Anger Towards the President

By BRIAN ROSS, ANNA SCHECTER and MEGAN CHUCHMACH

August 14, 2009

Experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges.

The Secret Service is investigating a Maryland man who held a sign reading "Death to Obama" and "Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids" outside a town hall meeting this week. And in New Hampshire, another man stood across the street from a Presidential town hall with his gun on full display.

Los Angeles police officers apprehended a man Thursday after a standoff with him inside a red Volkswagen Bug car in Westwood, CA – the latest disturbing case even though officials said the man had mental problems.

"I don't think these are simply people who are mentally ill or off their rocker," Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told ABC News of those behind the threats. "In a very real sense they represent a genuine reaction, a genuine backlash against Obama."

Experts say a sharp growth in so-called militia groups that helped spawn a wave of domestic terrorism in the 1990s – and are now using YouTube, rock music and the Internet to recruit members and spread hate and fear - shouldn't be ignored.

"It's certainly a scary time," said former FBI agent Brad Garrett, now an ABC News consultant. Garrett said the Secret Service "cannot afford to pass on anyone," and he believes "they really do fear that something could happen to [Obama]."

Garrett said statements like one recently made by controversial radio host Rush Limbaugh comparing a logo for the White House plan to a Nazi symbol "legitimizes people who are on the edge to go do something or say something."

"And if you go and take a look at this, you will find that the Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo," Limbaugh said.

Later, someone painted a swastika outside the office of Congressman David Scott of Georgia, one of Obama's supporters.

Secret Service Security Around Obama

While officials told ABC News that the President's daily threat matrix has yet to reflect a sharp increase in threats, White House officials privately admit deep concern and have told the Secret Service to keep security tight, even if Obama objects.

"I think the president has, in effect, triggered fears amongst fairly large numbers of white people in this country that they are somehow losing their country, that the battle is lost," Potok told ABC News. "The nation that their Christian white forefathers created has somehow been taken from them."

OK, I'm not going to bother deconstructing this morass of conflation, elision, illogic and hysteria. I'm going to leave that to the defamed. Hopefully, Rush Limbaugh and other defamed parties will sue the bastards, and put the "poverty" back in Southern Poverty Law Center.

No, forget facts, this is Music Man stuff. "Mass-staria!" Paranoia and horseshit presented as "expert" opinion (and gullibly repeated on state-run media) doesn't get this deep on its own. It is either motivated by lust for money and power, or, perhaps, ABC has provided us with a more logical explanation.

You see, when I went to their web site to download the above article, I noticed they had posted this one from last year as a "related" post, perhaps in a Freudian slip. I think it explains everything.

The three men involved in a supposed assassination plot against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama were allegedly on a methamphetamine binge. (ABC News Photo Illustration)

The Paranoia and Psychosis of Meth

Medical Experts Say the Supposed Admissions of an Obama Assassination Plot Fits Behavior Pattern of Users

By ANNA SCHECTER

August 28, 2008

One of the men investigated for allegedly threatening presidential candidate Barack Obama's life while on a methamphetamine binge, is scheduled to appear in federal court this afternoon on a charge of possessing the narcotic.

Tharin Robert Gartrell is currently in custody, along with two other men who face meth-related and illegal possession of firearms charges.

The arrest of the three men has focused renewed attention on the paranoia and psychosis that go along with abuse of the drug which is widely used across the country.

Medical experts say their supposed admissions about an assassination plot fit into the expected pattern of erratic behavior from meth users.

Gartrell, Shawn Robert Adolf, and Nathan Johnson expressed strongly racist views and spoke about killing the Democratic presidential nominee while using meth, according to U.S. Atty. Troy Eid. The talk, Eid said, does not meet the legal standard for filing charges for threatening a presidential candidate.

Doctors who study the effects of meth on the brain say the men would not likely have been able to carry out their alleged threats because meth make its user virtually incapable of completing any task besides getting more of the drug.

"There's no way they could have gotten their act together to do anything because they are so paranoid, their thinking is so altered that they start things and they can't finish them," said Dr. Richard Rawson, a professor at the UCLA School of Medicine who specializes in the study of methamphetamines and their affect on the brain.

"But," he said, "It is scary to have the words methamphetamine, guns, and Democratic National Convention all in the same sentence."

Rawson said the scales have tipped to where "hard core" addicts are using more and more meth while the number of new users is declining.

"There is this corps of more severely addicted people and they're not the dabblers. They're heavy users and they get more meth psychosis, paranoia, and judgment impairment," said Rawson. "It's more like heroin addiction."

Part of the reason for this trend stems from recent laws that restrict the amount of pseudo-ephedrine, a key ingredient in meth manufacturing, that an individual can purchase at one time.

The effect has been that it is more difficult for people to get the ingredients to make meth at home or in their vehicles: "We've seen a decline in homemade meth because of this law."

A mobile methamphetamine lab was found in the vehicle of one of the men arrested. Rawson said that some highly addicted people will get around the new laws by doing something they called "smurfing," where they go from one drug store to another and buy the maximum legal amount of pseudo-ephedrine off the shelf in order to have enough of the ingredient to "cook" the drug.

Though the new laws have helped to reduce the number of new meth users, they don't necessarily translate into a smaller quantity of the drug overall in the United States.

Rawson says that Mexican cartels have moved in to supply the meth markets that are already well established.

The result, he said, is higher priced meth that is more potent and more addictive.

OK, what could be clearer? Don't get it yet? Look, ABC is state-run media, just like Pravda in the Soviet Union. Back then, the juxtaposition of stories on the front page always meant something. If they put a story about CIA spies next to an innocuous one about a member of the Presidium visiting Africa, you just knew that next year, whatever else happened, that guy was NOT going to have his dacha by the lake anymore.

Likewise, as the empire crumbled, disaffected typesetters or editors could put stories next to each other that, taken together, presented information damaging to the regime.

So, what is ABC, or one of its employees, trying to tell us here?

MARK POTOK AND HIS BUDDIES AT SPLC ARE ALL CRANKHEADS!

Nothing could be plainer! What else can explain such deep-seated paranoia? SPLC has been jumping at illusory boogeymen for years, seeing "racist terrorists" where there were none, exaggerating their prowess and danger when there were, claiming that their natural enemies, such as those of us in the constitutional militia movement, were supposedly their friends. I mean, real nutjobbery.

Who indeed would say such outlandish, easily disprovable things without apparent embarrassment merely for money? No, friends, this is not ordinary, if venal, conflation purveyance. THIS is drug-fueled paranoia.

It fits. Think. Why else would SPLC demand open borders and slander the Minutemen as "nativists"? Why to maintain their supply from Mexico.

It is as plain as the lack of baritone in Mark Potok's girlish, tremulous voice: He's both a crankhead AND a castrato.

Q.E.D.

Mike Vanderboegh, Conflation Detective, First Class.

"Elementary, my dear Watson!"

"Pro-militia clique"? Jersey City Police Officers Get In Trouble For Wearing Threeper Patches.

Sometimes it's better to wear your Threeper patch on your heart, not your uniform -- Jersey City police brass identify a pro-militia clique in the department and say they’ve been stopped

A clique of officers who calls themselves “Three-Percenters” in the Jersey City Police Department’s Emergency Services Unit sprouted about two years ago, officials have told The Jersey Journal.

“They were separating themselves from the others in the unit and we put a stop to it immediately,” Jersey City Police Deputy Chief Peter Nalbach said.

The deputy chief said there were officers who were disciplined over the matter.

Three-percenters are an “anti-government extremist” movement that has grown since President Barack Obama took office, according to the Anti Defamation League, a nonprofit that combats what it believes to be anti-Semitism and bigotry.

Mark Pitcavage, the ADL's "militia expert."

The three-percent movement promotes the idea that the federal government is plotting to take away the rights of American citizens and must be resisted, the ADL says on its website.

Pitcavage in his natural state. Back in the 90s, he used to have a pet called "Sparky the Militia Watchdog." Rumor has it that one day Pitcavage sat on him and didn't notice that the poor dead creature was stuck to his ass for three and a half weeks.

The three-percenters apparently get their name from the notion that 3 percent of American colonists took up arms against the British crown during the Revolutionary War, according to the Three Percenter’s Club on Facebook, which has more than 17,500 followers.

“The (three-percenter) honors and is sworn to uphold and enforce the Constitution of the United States of America... (Three-percenters) are soldiers who have sworn to defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic,” the groups says on its “About” page.

Followers sometimes call themselves “Oath Keepers” and associate with self-described pro-militia “patriot” groups that support gun rights and “engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing,” including the idea that the Sept. 11, 2011, terrorist attacks were perpetrated by the federal government, according to the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

MBV Note: What horseshit. Oath Keepers may be Threepers and Threepers are certainly oath keepers but they are two distinct groups -- one an organization, the other a movement without membership lists or dues. And quoting the Southern Preposterous Lie Center claiming we're 9/11 Truthers is just more conflation and smearing. I, for one, am NOT a Truther. As for other "groundless conspiracy theorizing" I have had little experience, unless you count Fast and Furious. It ain't a theory if it's a real conspiracy.

It was not clear if the disciplined officers belonged to any particular three-percent group.

An anonymous letter sent to The Jersey Journal says that some ESU officers wore a patch saying “ONE OF THE 3 %” and the letter includes a picture of a patch. The letter also says some official ESU patches were altered by adding “3%” to them. The letter also includes a picture of such a patch.

Finally, the letter includes a patch with the image of a skull and says ESU officers wore the skull patch and Three-Percenters patches while on patrol.

Nalbach confirmed that officers were wearing a patch and said “It was removed because we don’t allow unofficial patches.”

The letter also includes an image of a Three-Percenters flag and said it was hung in the ESU gym. Nalbach said he was not aware of a flag.

Poll: Do you agree with Jersey City's actions in dealing with a clique of "Three Percenters"?

SPLC's Missouri Moles Get Their Private Parts Caught in Factual Wringer: MIAC Report Withdrawn.

How "Cold Fusion" Takes Place: SPLC Stooges Write a "Militia Intelligence Report." (Sorry, we couldn't show private parts, this is a family-friendly blog.)

As Right Side News reported, the MIAC report is the latest example of the radical polarization of law enforcement through the open sewer of lies and half-truths flowing from the Southern Preposterous Lie Center and the ADL's fact-challenged balloon man, Mark Pitcavage. Only this time they got caught. One wonders just what the Missouri "fusion center" is fusing.

Here's the story.

Highway Patrol chief retracts militia report; will change review process for MIAC reports

JEFFERSON CITY | The Missouri State Highway Patrol on Wednesday retracted a controversial report on militia activity and will change how such reports are reviewed before being distributed to law enforcement agencies.

The announcement followed a press conference in which Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder suggested putting the director of public safety on administrative leave and investigating how the report was produced.

The controversy revolves around a report prepared last month by the Missouri Information Analysis Center, a so-called “fusion center” for local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to collaborate on domestic security issues.

The report concerns militia movements in Missouri and across the United States and describes how they have evolved over the last several years.

It suggests that domestic militias often subscribe to radical ideologies rooted in Christian views and opposition to immigration, abortion or federal taxes. The report also says it is “not uncommon” for militia members to support third-party political candidates and names former presidential candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin specifically.

The eight-page report is labeled “unclassified” but “law enforcement sensitive” and includes numerous editing and design errors, including a misspelling of President Barack Obama’s name.

On Wednesday afternoon, Highway Patrol Superintendent Col. James F. Keathley released a memo saying the report did not meet the patrol’s standard for quality and would not have been released if it had been seen by top officials.

“For that reason,” Keathley wrote, “I have ordered the MIAC to permanently cease distribution of the militia report.”

The memo says the report was compiled by an employee of the information analysis center and reviewed only by the center director before being sent to law-enforcement agencies across the state.

In the future, Keathley wrote, reports from the center will be reviewed by leaders of the Highway Patrol and the Department of Public Safety. The patrol will also open an investigation into the origin of the militia report.

Conservatives in Missouri and nationally have criticized the report for lumping people with conservative political persuasions in with domestic terrorists and potentially opening them to harassment from law enforcement.

The controversy has been aired on blogs, cable news programs and conservative radio.
In an earlier response, the center had released a statement reaffirming its “regard for the Constitutions of the United States and Missouri” and expressing regret that “any citizens or groups were unintentionally offended by the content of the document.”

And earlier this week, Department of Public Safety Director John M. Britt retracted the portions of the report that noted third party and Republican presidential candidates by name. Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat elected last year, has publicly defended the report as well.

Republicans said the earlier statements did not go far enough, and on Wednesday morning Kinder criticized the report for suggesting that only issues championed by conservatives motivate domestic terrorists.

The report “slanders” opponents of abortion and critics of illegal immigration, he said.

“Under the guidance of the present director, who apparently must think it is Nixon’s secret service, the Department of Public Safety has taken on the new and sinister role of political profiling,” Kinder said.

Also troubling Kinder said, the report makes no mention of Islamic terrorists or those who might subscribe to ideologies associated with liberals, such as environmental radicals.

“Let’s be very clear: There are extremists and ultra extremists in every group mentioned above,” Kinder said, referring to anti-abortion and border security activists. “But not just in these groups.”

Kinder said Britt should be suspended and that the state legislature should investigate how the report was prepared.

To reach Jason Noble, call 573-634-3565 or send e-mail to jnoble@kcstar.com.

To recap, these are Missouri mules:



These are Missouri Moles:

Colonel James F. Keathley, Superintendent, Missouri Department of Public Safety

Democrat Governor Jay Nixon

(Subordinate SPLC moles could not be shown because they are publicity shy.)

I miss Sparky the Militia Dog. Too bad Mark Pitcavage sat on him and didn't notice Sparky's carcass was stuck to his ass for a week and a half.

Apparent Extremist Threatens Police Officers and a City Employee

The likes on his Face­book page include eight dif­fer­ent mili­tias and he is part of the “Three Per­centers for Con­sti­tu­tional Troops and Law Enforce­ment” Face­book group, which har­bors anti-government extrem­ist beliefs. For­mer mili­tia move­ment adher­ent Mike Van­der­boegh of Pin­son, Alabama, cre­ated the Three Per­cent con­cept in 2008, based on the belief that only three per­cent of Amer­i­cans will not dis­arm dur­ing a future rev­o­lu­tion against the alleged tyranny of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment.

Nothing succeeds like success. Mrs. Vanderboegh's wayward son makes the collectivist Mother Jones.

Meet the Former Militiaman Behind the Fast and Furious Scandal. Pretty funny. Of course they wouldn't use the headline "Meet the Ex-Communist behind the Fast and Furious Scandal." The quotes are more or less correct, although the PC MJ apparently choked on the term "gun queer" by which Second Amendment activists are known inside the ATF. "Barrel sucker," though was okay, apparently. My point was that prior to being brought together by the various ATF scandals, both sides had looked at the other as cartoon characters, not as people. We still disagreed philosophically, but could find common ground on the truth and the antiseptic qualities of sunlight in the federal bureaucracy.

The author sat behind me at the hearing, and admitted she'd never read Hayek's Road to Serfdom. "Try it," I urged, "you'll never go back to the dark side." She just smiled.

Among other things, I take issue with this paragraph:

After the 1993 ATF-led siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, ended in the deaths of 76 people, including 20 children, Vanderboegh joined the militia movement in Alabama. During that time, he wrote "Strategy and Tactics for a Militia Civil War," a document that, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "discussed the utility of 'snipers using violence carefully targeted'" at war criminals, secret policemen, and militia watchdogs who'd been keeping tabs on him. Later, Vanderboegh became an anti-immigration crusader. In 2005, the SPLC included Vanderboegh in a report on the then-burgeoning nativist movement, noting his involvement in Minutemen patrol groups that attempted to police the southern border.

Quoting SPLC on anything related to the militia and the truth is like consulting Carrie Nation on the various flavors of sipping whiskey -- it gets lost in the dialectic. The Brown Scare folks of SPLC and ADL make a big deal of "Strategy and Tactics for a Militia Civil War," a very early piece of mine but the fact is it had nothing in it that was personal from my point of view about "militia watchdogs" (here we see the clumsy hand of Mark Pitcavage, now of ADL, who back before he sat on Sparky the Militia Watchdog was providing names of "dangerous" militiafolk he gleaned from the 'Net to the FBI). The whole point even mentioning such regime assholes was to warn them that they were aligning themselves with a losing side of history and would be held accountable in the event of more federal attacks -- sort of a "useful dire warning" on the order of a "Bridge Out Ahead" road sign. A worse slander in the article is that committed against Larry Pratt, again quoting SPLC, characterizing him as an anti-Semite and supporter of death squads. Bullshit, but often repeated Brown Scare bullshit it is.

And I wouldn't say I was an "anti-immigration crusader." In truth, I hardly did anything at all to help the Minutemen, compared to what I should have done. In October 2005 I helped Bob Wright with one border vigil by leading a small recon contingent at Hachita, NM. Others of my 1ACR "boys" helped out later that month. I also helped organize some protests here in Alabama. That, plus the couple of essays I wrote at the time, does not a "crusader" make. I viewed it at the time as simply what one citizen should do to support the rule of law. Sort of natural, like breathing.

The part I liked was this:

Vanderboegh is now working on other big scoops. In late November, Newsweek/Daily Beast published a story about a man who worked as a paid FBI informant in the 1990s, going undercover among neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. But Vanderboegh says Newsweek didn’t run the full story, which he says included damning information about an FBI operation in the 1990s called PATCON (for Patriot Conspiracy) that allegedly involved giving weapons, explosives, and money to neo-Nazis as a way of infiltrating their networks.

Vanderboegh snagged an unedited copy of the Newsweek story and posted it on his blog under the title, "Hiding mass murder behind 'national security.' What Newsweak & the FBI didn't want you to know about PATCON and the OKC Bombing." Vanderboegh claims that the FBI had a role in repressing parts of the Newsweek story, and he's confident PATCON is going to be the next big scandal. (Asked whether the FBI pressured the magazine to cut references to PATCON, Newsweek spokesman Andrew Kirk said, "Of course not." He wouldn't comment on how Vanderboegh might have gotten the story.)

It would be easy to dismiss Vanderboegh's obsession about this latest FBI "scandal" as the healthy imagination of a conspiracy theorist with too much time on his hands. But then there's Fast and Furious.

Hey, doubt my ancestry if you wish, but doubt doubt my footnotes or my sources. I also told her how ironic it was that "the left" was now in the position of defending the FBI because it was now "their FBI". "Don't you remember COINTELPRO?" I asked. But hey, at least they spelled my name right.

"'Patriots' are ready to defend their right to keep guns"

Mark Pitcavage, ADL's "militia expert."

Fear of the federal government’s interference with Second Amendment rights and suspicion that elected officials are ignoring the “will of the people” have provoked a resurgence of self-described patriots across the country who say they are preparing to defend themselves and their rights.

What passes for "intelligence" in the New York State Police. Nice to know I'm popular amongst the Southern Preposterous Lie Center-indoctrinated bully boys of Cuomo's Political Police.

"Who hath measured the ground?" New York State Police channel pencil neck prevaricator Potok.

Leaked Counter Terrorism Bulletin Warns Police of Impending ‘Far-Right Violence’ (Pay attention to the "authoritative" notes.)

UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY. New York State Counter Terrorism Bulletin CTB 14-07

Recent Spike in Violence Targeting Law Enforcement 12 June 2014

Michael Brian Vanderboegh, a longtime militia member and founder of the III Percent Patriot Movement which was supported by Jerad and Amanda Miller, travelled to NYS at least once in 2013 to speak to the Liberty Oath Keepers meeting in Monticello, NY.18 The III Percent Patriots are a militia group comprised primarily of gun rights extremists who believe in the need to use violence against the government to prevent what they believe to be an impending seizure of all private firearms. The name derives from “an obscure, and not particularly accurate, Revolutionary War ‘statistic’ that claimed that only 3% of the American population during the Revolutionary War participated as combatants in the war.”19 The Oath Keepers is an organization composed of current and former military and law enforcement personnel who take a pledge to “not obey unconstitutional orders such as orders to disarm the American people, to conduct warrantless searches, or to detain Americans as enemy combatants.”20 There have been multiple observed instances of overlapping membership in the Oath Keepers and the III Percent Patriots, and the Oath Keepers’ founder has spoken supportively of the III Percent Patriot Movement.21

Not to mention consulting the human blimp Mark Pitcavage of ADL, who got his start in "counterterrorism" in the 90s selling names of militia supporters he culled off the Internet to the FBI.

18 http://www.splcenter.org/get%20informed/intelligence%20files/profiles/Michael%20Brian%20Vanderboegh

19 http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/domestic-extremism-terrorism/c/oath-keepers-and-three.html

20 http://oathkeepers.org/oath/about/

21 http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/domestic-extremism-terrorism/c/oath-keepers-and-three.html

Ah, to be the favorite target of the pimp and the blimp. Well, as Kurt Hofmann says, it is better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable.

Tributes

If this past week has shown me anything, it is the dictum of it being better to be despised by the despicable than admired by the admirable actually may be false.  Well, perhaps at least it should come with a caveat that being admired by the admirable is an awesome thing to behold.  The outpouring of support from those that knew Mike and those that he affected has been overwhelming to say the very least.  I was unable to fly in for the funeral but I understand that there was a good many III% folks that showed up.  This is quite astonishing given the very short notice of the event.  Ken Lane over at Knuckledraggin gives us a short synopsis of the event.

Online and around the blogopheres support has continued to pour in.  Some from unlikely sources.

The Kansas City Star reporter, Judy Thomas, had contacted Mike months ago, (if memory serves it was around April), to produce a news story of his life and publish it upon his death.  This article was vetted and sanctioned by Mike, warts and all.  I was initially incredulous to the adding of SPLC semi-pro B.S. artist Mark Pitcavage as a source, but in a certain point of view it was appropriate if you want to look at Mike's life in the full spectrum.  The Old Man was good with it, so I am good with it.

David Codrea was, quite appropriately, the first blog to publish the notification of Mike's death: Freedom Movement Loses Important Voice with Passing of Mike Vanderboegh

In the article, David outlines some of Mikes accomplishments and his career in the Patriot Movement.  As a very close friend and associate, he was able to interact with Mike in a way that I could not.

Mr. Codrea observed:

"It’s also true he could at times be impulsive in his response to perceived injustices. There are more affronts to liberty and wrongs to right than any of us could hope to even hear about, let alone do anything about. When one came across Mike’s transom, he was on it like a pit bull, even if already overburdened – and that tendency was something he would not ease up on until the weakness of the flesh stripped him of any choice – and even then he would do what he could to defy."

Another longtime friend, Herschel Smith from the Captains Blog had a very poignant and touching viewpoint in "Remembering Mike Vanderboegh"

"I’ve heard it said that such-and-such a man had “redeeming qualities.” Hogwash. Men don’t have redeeming qualities. Men are themselves redeemed, or they are lost. The God-man Christ Jesus saves men or they perish without Christ but with all of the punishments due to them, and all men are under judgment."

"That’s the sweet thing about Mike. He knew this, and he believed it. Mike didn’t do a single thing to redeem himself, but he trusted Christ and the vicarious atonement for his very life. That means that it was a life well-lived. Everything else is wasted."

"But if man cannot redeem himself, that doesn’t mean he cannot redeem what’s around him by taking dominion of the world for God’s glory. Mike did exactly that, and today he is in heaven with his Lord. I don’t believe in the phrase “rest in peace” (and Isaiah 57:2 isn’t discussing ethereal floating of one’s spirit for eternity). I also don’t believe that man’s body cools to ambient temperature and that’s the end. Mike didn’t believe that either." 

III% news aggregation point, and another longtime friend, WRSA, had some excellent comments.  Thank you all for that incredible grassroots tribute.

On Facebook, I could not appropriately begin to describe the level of support the family has received from that community.  I am humbled that Mike's message of the III percent and teachings had been so pervasive.  What an honor it is to continue to push the reach of the message further than it ever has been before.  I am very proud that the social media referrals have effectively eclipsed and even doubled my Google site referrals.  It is only through the high engagement of the supporters there that this has been possible.

Sharyl Attkisson, fellow conspirator of the Fast and Furious scandal, had this to say in her post "Fast and Furious blogger Vanderboegh passes away"

"In my early interactions with Vanderboegh, he was patient and rightly skeptical. To him, I was the liberal, know-nothing press. He had terse dealings with other reporters. (He told one national reporter to f-off when the reporter “asked for the names and phone numbers of all my sources so he could contact them”). I knew little of guns and gun laws, and was not working from a pro-gun rights position, as he was. I saw it as a story of government misdeeds and corruption. He came to see my point of view and thought there was value in helping out. He encouraged ATF agents to speak to me and provide information. Some of those relationships continue today."

"So today, a nod to Vanderboegh and a moment to recognize his role in stopping a deadly practice that the government first denied, then later acknowledged. The gunwalking is responsible for many deaths, the government still won’t disclose how many, but surely many other deaths were prevented by the story being exposed and the practice being stopped."

Another tribute that came quite unexpectedly was that of Sebastian, NRA apologist, at the Pagunblog (formerly of "Snowflakes in Hell").  From a cursory internet search, the last public discussion was in 2015 in a Sipsey post defending Texas Open Carry. 

His article, simply titled "Mike Vanderboegh Dies" was as magnanimous as it was simple.  

"I had come to appreciate that regardless of whatever disagreements I may have had with Mike Vanderboegh strategically, he was quite a powerful public speaker and organizer (organizing gun owners is herding cats on a good day), in the way I could never hope to match. His work with David Codrea to break open Fast and Furious turned out to be top notch citizen journalism, despite a lot of initial skepticism. It was fine enough work that others in the media lined up to take credit and cash in."

"I will always think of him any time I put on my big Russian hat to go shovel the driveway."

Much to my surprise and delight, the best and most well known of the Mike Vanderboegh tribute articles came from his long time sparring partners, the Southern Poverty Law Center.  There is something to be said for having your enemies write your eulogy.

It starts out with a dramatic, salacious, bold sub-headline:

"Michael Brian Vanderboegh, who rose from the 1990s militia ranks to become the angry, vocal co-founder of the extremist, pro-gun III Percent movement, using an Internet blog to promote his antigovernment views, has died." 

I am positively bumfuzzled as to whom this other co-founder person or persons could be.  I am also left wondering after their candidate loses the election, how quickly they will go from "you must support your president and government" back to demanding that "dissent is patriotic".  They are nothing if not dependable in their hypocrisy.

On a whole, the article is filled with a laundry list of striking back at the empire.  One of which is an amusing anecdote of when he sent a plastic skull to self-proclaimed "militia expert" Mark Potok.  If I was told about this, perhaps I had forgotten it, but it did illustrate the creative lengths that the Old Man went to consistently jab at his enemies.  He was a master at riding straight up to the line and going an inch over to see what they would do.  Every time he did, they did nothing but howl loudly from their keyboards. A lesson could be learned here.

I found it curious that Kerodin did get an honorable mention of a couple of lines.  For all of the chest pounding and the division that was made between those two, if Kerodin is ever mentioned at all in future, it will always be as a minor footnote to the much better man.  

Several other "left" leaning articles seemed to parrot the SPLC language at least in part.

ABC, Yahoo, and AL.com, quite the lazy journalists, simply played the good parrot and re-posted the SPLC article.  Boring, but the AL.com comments are pretty good.  ABC got his age wrong but gets points for at least spelling the name right.  You have to just see the silver lining with some people.

Idavox (whatever that is) said quite simply Mike Vanderboegh, Rot in Hell!.  Oh my.  Dread indeed.  Mike would be proud for that indictment.  Despised by the despicable and such.

As for me?  I find that where I thought I had reached acceptance, I am struggling a bit now that the man is gone and his funeral complete.  After such a long illness that took him down below 75 pounds and robbed him of even the ability to speak, I can see that it was a mercy.  He needed to transition and the family needed to move on.  I still find it difficult that I cannot pick up the phone, as I did so infrequently, and talk for a bit.

While I cannot lift up the phone, my father left me with an incredible network of experts and allies that, combined, has been everything and more that I could need.  Other than this blog, that has been the best thing that I could have been heir to.  I am incredibly grateful that he thought that I was capable to take the mantle of this blog on and help grow the movement that he fought so hard to create.  I will continue to endeavor to let neither you nor he down.

The life of the dead is placed in the memories of the living. - Cicero

Edit:  I was not familiar with the piece that was run in the American Thinker until I started looking at the blog stats.  For some reason that was not coming up the Google queries.  The tribute is a very honest look at the man and well worth the look.