Hey Larry Johnson!!
There also is the fact that the Obama campaign at one point circulated the lame story that Michelle was not using “whitey” as an epithet. Nope. She was saying, “Why’d he.” You don’t put out a story line like that if such a recording does not exist. At this point I don’t think it is going to be used.
The Obama campaign didn’t tell me to do it. I picked it up in a joke comment at MyDD and wrote it up as if it were real. I punk’d you, you fool. I explained how I ratfucked you and your credibility here. You, sir, should get a life.
I soiled my keyboard by activating your link.
Jeez, you’d thought Larry was long buried, rotted, turned into poisoned worm castings. In fact, not fit for composting.
He wasn’t worth a pinch of sh*t then, less so now.
this will cheer you up:
can you believe
the RNC spent $150,000 to dress Palin and her family?
Yikes they had to…. “It was a strategic decision”
Anyone recall McCain telling ‘That One’ he doesn’t know the difference between strategy and tactic?
Does Mrs. Joe-the-Plumber shop at Saks, Neiman Marcus or is it Target and Wal Mart?
Yeah, saw that on Keith. Where do I sign up? Sounds like a pretty sweet gig. A hundred and fifty grand to wander around talking like an idiot? Damn, I knew I should’ve run for the PTA.
It’s strategery.
This is very important.
Obama shares the wealth
“It’s a first,” reports Bloomberg
Smart, very.
Hmmmm. I make a special note…. PA is included. Philly did you read that? eh.
Come on! They HAD to get her some decent clothes! Did you see how she used to dress before she became the VP candidate?
And by the way, they didn’t just buy clothes for her, they hired an image consultant to put a city slicker look on her small town hick persona.
OMG.
Holy hell, that’s awesome.
here is my take on LJ
the progressive blogs failed to worship him properly
and his head exploded
That’s the most plausible explanation I have heard so far. He has always been quite egotistical, if not narcissistic.
I cautioned from the start that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend..! I can’t BELIEVE he still thinks there is such a video.
He knows precisely what I did to him, but what can he tell his audience?
david kurtz @ talking points memo had the best write-up on that gaffe:
Seems like two years ago he was a Richard Clarke type, very credible on the Bush politicization of the CIA, denouncing the stupid security tactics at airports, giving us the inside scoop on how Valerie Plame got screwed. Josh Marshall often linked to his posts.
But then, at some point in January, I read a Daily Kos diary by Larry Johnson telling us that this guy Raila Odinga in Kenya is actually Obama’s Muslim uncle/cousin, that he’s responsible for genocide, and that it will kill Obama in the general election. I don’t know when Larry went crazy, but that’s when I noticed it. Later I read reports that he was one of the first guys to push the “Obama is a Muslim” crap.
WTF happened to him? Does he just have a major beef against Obama? Is he racist? What’s up?
A combination of being a long-time nutjob (even before the Plame stuff) and a CIA operative who never quite let go of his roots.
Oh, and he’s definitely a racist. Simple answers to simple questions.
I don’t think Larry is racist.
I mentioned him to someone at work who seems to have some interesting connections, and who told me he is being handsomely paid to spew his daily poisonous cesspool gleanings. Somehow that does not ring true for me, but I really can’t come up with any other explanation that makes sense.
My own hypothesis is that he supported the Republicans all along, but just happened to oppose Bush because of Plame. In his own words:
At the start of the current election cycle, he found himself a (by now) closet Republican with credibility among Democrats. Perceiving that Obama would be the stronger opponent in the general election, he then put on a big show of supporting Hillary whilst attacking Obama in increasingly histronic ways, culminating with the gross fabrication about the tape; a last-ditch effort to derail the nomination.
When Obama won the primary, he stoked the anger of his readers by lying that Hillary was cheated out of a win. While blogs like TalkLeft scrambled to get behind Obama, he was a major factor in the PUMA business.
His next move was urging the PUMAs to bid farewell to the whole rationality thing, and actually back McCain. Given Johnson’s background, this last switch is not the action of a sincerely misguided man. Indeed it makes little sense if he’s not a genuine Republican, on the take from the right, or both.
Your hypothesis presupposes that he supported Hillary knowing Obama would win. There is no evidence at all for that – quite the contrary, in fact. When he started his hysterical support for Hillary/demonization of Obama it was looking very much like Hillary was going to win, and she came pretty close to doing so. If this whole business were just a sneaky way to get another Republican president, what would he have done if Hillary HAD won? Furthermore, he was dissing Bush before the Valerie Plame business happened. In fact, I have never seen him be anything but negative about Bush.
Nope, that dog won’t hunt.
No, it doesn’t. Potential strength in the general does not imply victory in the primary.
That’s a better argument, but if she had won the primary, he might quit blogging for a while, perhaps citing work pressure at his Frank Carlucci-style ex snoop consultant day job.
In that case it wasn’t Plame, but perhaps he was miffed about not being hired by the administration, similarly to how Chris Hitchens allegedly got his Bill Clinton hate. There are many possibilities there.
I don’t know whether the hypothesis is true, but it accounts for the data relatively well, and the rival idea that he believes his own bullshit is implausible.
It still doesn’t explain the case of Susan Hu, though — but maybe nothing can.
Susan Hu’s just gone psychologically. I’m not sure where Johnson’s coming from, whether he’s doing spookwork or jus nuts.
Meh.
I’m too tired to argue more with you about this tonight, so I’ll just say that yes, Susan is the real mystery in all this.
He was an agent all along. He used people who didn’t know better.
AAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH! Why did you DO that to me, BooMan?! I innocently clicked on your link, and now I have to take a shower, disinfect my computer, and decontaminate the room!
I used to respect the man on intelligence issues.
Then he showed the rest of the package.
He’s like the evil bizzaro twisted version of the much, much more awesome Jeff Huber.
I can thank Larry for bringing me here. Otherwise, he can go lose himself in Sarah Palin’s beehive and never come out.
What is the benefit for this guy? He knows he is going to have no real reputation after all of this. I’ll have to assume he’s eying a regular fox news analysis seat or is scared of half-black people.
Let’s say Obama was a muslim and is now a christian.
SOTHEFUCKWHAT.
Even if he was a muslim plant, exactly what could he do?
Shoot nukes at Idaho? Can’t do that.. Wreck the economy? Too late. Ruin the government? Too late. Forceably convert the heathens? Exactly how.
In the end the whole of Larry’s audiovisual conspiracies have one common thread: they require ethnocentrism of their audience in order to have any weight.
In that sense, LJ is promoting racism.
My personal opinion is that Johnson (and Susan) were sure Clinton was going to win and really wanted her to win. Probably for personal reasons – I really doubt they were getting paid or anything like that. They invested so much of their personal credibility and emotion in that that when Obama started looking like a real contender, they kinda went nuts and crossed a bunch of lines.
Once they’d done that, it’s hard to walk it back. For some people, admitting you were wrong is really tough to do. Plus, they had gone so far into the darkness that making that 180 to being supporters just wouldn’t work.
I also think that Johnson has more sympathy for “establishment” folks – he’s a CIA guy through and through and his outspoken-ness is mostly due to the fact that Bush has been screwing over the CIA for a long time. Clinton was a known quantity – he had a rough idea of how she’d do things (i.e. look at ’92-’00). Obama’s a total outsider, so there’s no telling how he’s going to handle things once he has the reigns. That would have given Johnson a bit of a bias as well.
That’s pretty close to what I think too.
I feel you, but there is no denying the common threads of which scurrilous stories he chose to make up/discuss.
There is also the chance that he’s just a sad dupe.
Judging from the fast one his barber/toupee salesman has been pulling on him for so long, he may well just be the latter.
Sorry, but I’m just getting caught up on the story over here. Did look carefully at NQ during this debacle as well as other PUMA sites. Was trying to find out what the hell was going on because I was in a progressive mail group, one of whose members unsubscribed in a huff because the rest of the group all gradually (and individually) decided to support Obama while she became an ardent Hillary fan. She was rather naive and scattered — continued to e-mail me about her increasing involvement with PUMA’s and the whole thing sounded rather bizarre. Got so involved, she even did a regular webcast talk-show with someone named ‘Pagan Power” (would you believe it?) for a while, started her own blog, and it became her whole life.
Never did get things totally sorted out but wondered if Larry had been a Republican operative all along and that he was well paid for doing what he was doing. Don’t know his computer skills, but comparing his simple “business site” with NQ, it seemed NQ was a much more expensive and sophisticated multi-media site that looked professionally done – and like it had a regular “staff” that he’d accumulated from around the blogosphere – probably also paid.
Not sure about his motive in supporting Hillary initially although it occurred to me that the GOP wanted Hillary to win because, with all her baggage, she’d be easier to take down. After she lost, the mission changed.
Figured they’d decided to take advantage of all the grieving, angry Democratic women (and a few men), whip then into an even greater frenzy, then use psyops to convert them into GOP bots who would recruit others to build a movement that would make a real dent in the election. There were related groups across the country (including here in Ohio) that also looked funded — sort of astroturfing on what they hoped was a grand scale. It seemed where it fell apart was that most of the Hillary voters came to their senses with time and switched to Obama, and there were few new recruits. The core PUMA group became almost a cult with Johnson and Murphy as leaders rather than a functional political group.
The blog seems to have continued primarily as part of the right-wing Wurlitzer, churning out sleaze about Obama. Don’t know much about Larry except for his posting during the Plame affair in the old days. Didn’t know his party (if he really has one). Got the sense he’s kind of opportunistic and egomaniacal – maybe willing to sell his talents to the highest bidder. Would be interested to know if this take makes sense to anyone (or why it doesn’t).
It’s pretty much what I suggested here.
It’s unproven, but a real possibility among others.
In any case, NQ is comedy gold for those of us who are misanthropes with a taste for the grotesque and bizarre. Anyone else is better off just ignoring it altogether.
Have to say I fall into the second group now. Visiting the site was fascinating when I was trying to sort things out but the unmitigated nastiness and bizarre claims wore me out and put me in a bad mood. It will be interesting to see what happens if Obama is elected. Will the site disappear or will it be maintained to carry on an underground war against the new administration? Might be interesting to check periodically to see what the minority lines of attack will be.
That’s just too complicated to be plausible, and it does not fit with my experience and observation as someone who was a daily regular on the site, and in regular private communication with both Larry and Susan. Sorry, I think it’s a great deal simpler than that.
Would be interested to know, given your own experience with the site (and Larry and Susan), why you think this is too complicated and doesn’t fit. I was familiar with his posts here and at Kos and his own blog during Plamegate. To get from that state to where they are now is an impressive leap. The viciousness of his site now, the pushing of Republican talking points, the sleazy and irrational sliming of Obama and his support of the whole PUMA infrastructure (with implicit attempt to push McCain) is difficult to understand. Can’t say much for Larry’s character but I don’t think he’s dumb. If you know what transpired between his two phases that could explain the leap, I’d really like to know. Thanks.
Jeez, you gotta stop sending me over there.. Since I am not there often, it’s always striking how things change.
Now, NQ is just one giant shitstorm of disinformation.
Although I gotta admit, a lot of it is damn funny, albeit unintentionally.
Commenters on NQ are saying that Obama was mentored by a child-seducer/rapist between ages 2-9. It actually sounds potentially true. Obama describes him as a father figure in his book (or at least a guy who shares the same name). But instead of having any concern for a 2 year old being exposed to a bad and potentially abusive influence, they are actually trying to link this guy from Obama’s early childhood to Ayres and Wright.
(Is anyone who mentored Obama not a radical?!!?)
And then they complain about the tone of Obama’s campaign.
It won’t be long before the child molester story finds its way onto the main page, trust me. The attempt to connect Obama with Saddam (via someone Obama knows who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who was in the same room with Saddam once) started in the comment section, and quickly got onto the main page. And my recollection is that the Ayers story started the same way, though I could be misremembering that.
It used to be an interesting community there with intelligent, thoughtful people who were knowledgeable in areas I was unfamiliar with. I had some very interesting and enlightening conversations there with people I respected, and I would like to think that I opened a few minds there too.
After the full extent of the madness became clear it used to make me sad to go there, then it made me angry. Now it makes me feel slightly sick and a bit dirty. What a shame.
clearly booman’s finest hour. it deserves a koufax or webby category of its own.
I’ll second that…sheer genius.
My favorite excuse is the McCain campaign will not approve of releasing the video tape. In 2000, 2004, I just remember opponents thinking W was an idiot and not some sinister person out to get America. This is beyond sickness.
Call me paranoid, but my theory is that Larry’s been running a psyop (literally) against Obama since about July of 2007. It’s just hasn’t worked out very well. But that’s why he won’t let go of it, he’s on contract.