Now this really just seems to be a hallucination, but apparently it's a pandemic of a mass hallucination. So the CDC will be looking into it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is launching a study of Morgellons disease that may target South Texas where more than 100 people are suffering from the illness.
Cindy Casey suffers from Morgellons. Symptoms of the disease include lesions that leave scars, the sensation of bugs crawling under the skin, and fibers that pop out of the skin.

"Mostly black and white. Some of them were blue, and some of them were red. The whole area gets really sore and you feel some sort of crawling sensation around the lesion," Casey said.

Like others, Casey was diagnosed with delusional parasitosis — delusions of parasites. Most doctors do not recognize Morgellons as a disease.

However, one medical school is taking Morgellons very seriously. Most of the research on Morgellons is being done at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa. Doctors and scientists at OSU said this disease is real, and it's frightening.

"I am 100 percent convinced that Morgellons is a real disease pathology," said Dr. Randy Wymore, an assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology at OSU.

Weird ish happenin', Yo.

Thanks to SWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

Posted by: Ace at 02:09 PM | Comments (21)
Post contains 223 words, total size 2 kb.

Update: You may think this is boring, pathetic, creepy, and sad.

But it's also something else -- comedy gold.

One poster writes:

Wow. This is the bestest crazy ever. Are you sure this is free, Ace? It seems wrong to not be buying a ticket or something.

I mean, seriously, even if you're bored of the story, if you're a Conossieur of Crazy as I am, there are many fine vintages of batshit crazy to be sampled in the thread.

Update: Leopold's sock-puppets don't just harrass and annoy rightwing bloggers. They also annoy the KosKids.

Thanks to JackStraw.

....

For those of you worried that, having just wrapped up with Greenwald 24/7, now I'm into the Leopold thing 24/7, I'll tell you, I'm not very interested in this at all. I posted the background last night because I knew Seixon would be reporting someone making a threat to him on the phone, and wanted to provide context for that.

I intend to post on this as little as possible. Unlike with the Greenwald thing, which I considered to be deliciously embarrassing for someone forever sermonizing to the right about integrity and honesty, I think this story is just creepy and sad.

I have been dragged into this by someone who keeps spamming my site with personal information.

Let me say a few things:

I do not for one instant believe that an actual enemy of Jason Leopold is posting this crap. There is plenty of dirt on Leopold to get into without having to resort to cheap anti-semitic slurs; the fact that the supposed "hateful Leopold enemy" needs to post "Jew" and "kike" in every post suggests strongly, if not well-nigh conclusively, that this person, whoever it may be, is attempting to defend Leopold by posting over-the-top anti-semitic screeds and thereby cutlivating sympathy for Leopold.

Hey, "Leopold Enemy"? If you really want to post something harmful about Leopold, why not make fun of him for his "Sealed v. Sealed" fiasco? Or the long list of "scoops" he's had that no one else could verify? Or the fairly well-known reasons for his losing previous media jobs? Or the fact that he seems to have lied to a source about his identity on at least one occasion to get him to talk, as documented in the WaPo (if memory serves me)?

Why is it that you avoid posting actual derogatory information about him, cutting to the heart of his credibility, in favor of calling him a "Jew"?

Because you're not actually Leopold's enemy. You are someone posting in order to cultivate sympathy for Leopold, not actually reduce his already microscopic credibility any further.

It isn't necessarily Leopold. But it is someone who is acting in what he believes to be Leopold's interests.

The person posting Jason Leopold's "private information" has offered two different addresses, and two different phone numbers. I'm not interested enough to find out if either is genuine. But the fact that the "Leopold enemies" can't seem to decide where Leopold lives or what his phone number is seems sort of suggestive to me.

So, here's my policy: I have twice now deleted posts containing "personal information about Jason Leopold." This, I think, shows that I have no interest in having such information on my site.

However, I do not actually believe this is Leopold's information, or, even if it is, it is actually being posted by an enemy of Leopold. I think it is being posted by someone with Leopold's interests close to his heart.

Ergo, I am not going to continue running around like a jackass redacting posts and rebuidling my site every time someone posts "Jason Leopold's personal information." I have tried to keep it off the site, but I simply do not have the goddamned time to keep up with this foolishness.

If Leopold or his defenders want to post purportedly private information about Leopold here and then run to ThinkProgress and claim, "Oh, look at what they're doing to poor Jason!," fine, go ahead. But this post serves notice that I tried to keep the information off. I cannot keep up with a persistant spammer.

Furthermore, as I banned the first IP putting up Seixon's personsal information, suddenly I'm getting IP's originating from all over the world (the last one apparently coming from Australia), suggesting the possibility of an anonymizer, or else a concerted effort by wide-ranging Leopold defenders to keep on with these transparent, shabby deceptions.

Whatever. I can't keep up with it.

If someone can tell me if an anonymizer works this way, or how Blackberry internet traffic is routed, please contact me, just to figure out if I can stop this, and to unpick a nit.

PS: The "distributed intelligence" of the Internet is ferocious.

RLW looked up the tax information on "Jason Leopold's address," as given in the last spam message.

Latest Sale Date 03/24/2005
Indicated Sale Price $1,048,750

[NOTE: Very minor details of the sale date and price have been altered, so as to prevent anyone from searching for the address with that information.]

Anyone out there believe that Jason Leopold, fearless Internet reporter for fairly minor-league blog TruthOut, just bought himself a million-dollar home last year?

Million dollar homes are not uncommon in California. But people deriving a paycheck from a minor-league website are usually not able to afford them.

Imagine trying to get a mortgage when you list your employer as "TruthOut."

Who?

"TruthOut. It's an, ummm, on-line company."

A blog?

"Oh no. Not a blog. A legitimate media company, TruthOut is."

What do they do?

"We manufacture, process, distribute, and sell Truth."

Oh. I see.

APPLICATION DENIED.

It's also a "singe-family residence," not apparently a multi-family dwelling (i.e, subdivided into apartments), so he must be renting it either alone or with a couple of buddies.

And I don't know what the rent might be on a million dollar home, but I'm still thinking it's beyond the means of a TruthOut reporter. I know nothing much about California, but this address and price range seem a little tony for an Internet Detective.

At any rate, apparently Leopold has two homes, one home in the Los Angeles area and a vacation home in the Los Angeles area as well (summers in one, winters in the other), so, hey, who knows, maybe he's figured out a way to make that Crazy Blog-Money for real.

Update: I am informed by passionate Leopold defenders, who apparently donate ten cents to UNICEF every time they use an exclamation point or unnecessarily capitalized letter, that Jason Leopold received a million dollar advance for a book on a niche subject by an unknown author, and furthermore, $750,000 for his screenplay.

$1 million advance on abook? That's, uhhh, gettin' up into Tom Clancy and Dan Brown territory, isn't it?

And $750,000 for a screenplay? That's not even how the screenplay payment system works. You get paid something like "$75,000 against $750,000," the $75,000 is what you actually get paid when you sign on the line which is dotted, the $750,000 is what you get if -- a big if -- the film actually goes into production. Furthermore, that's kinda high for a first time screenwriter. Not unheard of, but rather high. 40 against 400 or 50 against 500 seems a bit more credible.

And unless it's gone into production, it's that lower figure, not the bigger figure that follows.

I'd like to know the name of this screenplay, so I can search the DoneDeal archives and find out what the actual terms of the deal were.

Also, I'm told this:

I challenge any one of you jerk offs to provide evidence proving that this EXCELLENT investigative reporter's stories were not later proven to be true. I DARE YOU! GO AHEAD YOU FUCKS. And I am not talking about linking to articles in the WaPo or the NYT that relies on rumor and innuendo. Hard evidence. Try to dig it up. You won't find it cause it doesn't exist.

Ah. We can't link to articles refuting Leopold's unverified stories in little rightwing rags the Washington Post and New York Times; we need real sources. Not these little-known basement-printed newsletters that rely on "rumor and innuendo." (Actually, they do do that of course; but I'm having trouble grokking the idea I'm supposed to take Jason Leopold's word over the Washington Post.

Anyway, I'm also told his wife is a "producer," which is pretty meaningless in Hollywood. Anyone in Hollywood who is not more specifically a writer or actor or director is a producer. That last meal you had at In and Out Burger? Probably served to you by a "producer."

My friend's a producer, for crying out loud. Working on a film about, well, I don't know what the hell it is. I don't know if he knows either.

Means nothing.

I don't know any details of Leopold's life, but I'm just trying to bring a little reality to those imagining he's a Master of the Universe based on Leopold's self-reporting of his various and sundry mighty accomplishments.

Ahem Update: Now, I frown on sock-puppets of course, but I'll make a Big Funny exception here. "Delilah" adds to "samson's" listings of Jason Leopold's wondrous accomplishments.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:48 PM | Comments (339)
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Hm.

This word "creative" you keep using. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Posted by: Ace at 12:16 PM | Comments (27)
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Not only do their flags fly side by side, but they share telephone lines and water supplies.

And LGF catches this:

It was also reported that Hezbollah fired from the vicinity of four UN positions at Alma ash Shab, Tibnin, Brashit, and At Tiri. All UNIFIL positions remain occupied and maintained by the troops.

Gee, I wonder how those silly Israelis could ever have mistaken a UN "peacekeeper" position for a Hezbollah rocket shelter.

The United Nations

We shall beat swords into ploughshares, and then beat those ploughshares into rockets, with which we can kill Israelis. We could just go from the swords directly to the rockets, but we have a by-law demanding "ploughshares" must be involved at some point of the process.

Related: Full invasion inevitable.

"They really cannot be destroyed from the air," said Maj. Michael Oren of the Israeli Defense Forces. "There's really no alternative but to send in ground forces."

You know, defenders of Israel make the same point, until you get annoyed by it. They say, "Well, we had to occupy that territory because it was being used to attack us."

And sometimes in the past, and even sometimes now, I think, "Well, that's slightly convenient, isn't it?"

But it's not convenient. It's the truth. Anyone who has doubts about Israel's "land-grab" after its various wars can see the same thing unfolding for the nth time.

They keep on attacking, and attacking, and killing, and starting wars they cannot win, until at last they are occupied so they cannot attack nor kill anymore, and then they start whining about being victims of Zionist aggression.

Posted by: Ace at 11:33 AM | Comments (26)
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Maybe Monty Burns had the right idea.

Posted by: Ace at 11:28 AM | Comments (12)
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.

Because just makin' ice is such a hassle.

Actually, it is a hassle.

Now that I think about it, this shows the brilliance and can-do spirit of America, not its decline.

Thank you, Aqua Ice. You have made me proud to be an American.

And thanks to Warden for the tip.

Posted by: Ace at 11:23 AM | Comments (40)
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I'm not going to out you. But I don't have a Blackberry (hell, I barely have a computer at this point), and I need to see what sort of IP return comes from someone posting from a Blackberry.

Please post and say "from my Blackberry," if you can.

Thanks.

Or... If you just know, tell me: do Blackberrys operate from just one set or block of IP addresses, with all Blackberry Internet traffic using those addresses?

America, Please: Someone posted from a Canadian Blackberry, and I thank you.

But can I get an American Blackberry user to post? Preferably far from Canada.

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (28)
Post contains 122 words, total size 1 kb.

The IP of the person claiming to be "Seixon," is 69.108.82.125. I don't think I have to worry about "outing" the IP since it's from a sock-puppet attempting to harm Seixon in a nasty way, or, who knows, it's from someone else trying to make it appear as if Seixon is under attack.

Either way-- I don't see any need to protect privacy. Lawyer-client privilege doesn't extend to conspiring to commit criminal acts, and blogger-poster privilege is similarly restricted. You can't post someone's personal information in a post and then claim a right to privacy on your IP.

Better geeks than I have teased more information out of the IP address. Originally I just found it was from "SBC Internet Services," but rw and Sue Donhim tip me that the "Seixon" email traces to Irvine. California:

Address lookup

canonical name adsl-69-108-82-125.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net.

aliases

addresses 69.108.82.125

Benjamin reminds me where I've seen that locale mentioned before:

I emailed Leopold again, confronting him with the fact that he had lied about not sending emails to AnonymousArmy as harrison shepard, that the office address he prints in his emails seems to be occupied by Steve Ellis & Company, and that his IP address routes to the Irvine, CA area and not Beverly Hills where he claims to live.

Does it prove it's Leopold? I don't know. It is far likelier that Jason Leopold has random fans in Irvine, California, than that Glenn Greenwald has random fans in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

And yet... still not all that likely, is it? Especially given that Leopold has been known to post Seixon's personal information all over the place.

Update: But neither is it really unlikely. The "John Thomas Dean" character, whom Seixon seems to think is a different dude, posts from Santa Ana, Ca., only ten miles from Irvine.

And yes, it could be someone else, too. If Leopold has one defender going around sock-puppeting for him, he could have more than one.

Thanks to Enlightened for pointing that out.

The Other Post, the One From "AnonymousArmy" Outing Leopold's Information:

The thing about the Glenn Greenwald story is that at no point in the entire deal did a single fact turn up that tended to exonerate Greenwald. Quite the opposite. You become more convinced your theory is true when every bit of new evidence you get suggests you were right the first time, and nothing at all turns up to cast doubt on the initial hypothesis.

That is not, sadly, the case with the "AnonymousArmy" post.

Right now I am contacting people about this to get comment, etc. I'm holding off on it because maybe I jumped the gun in assuming things about that post. And I don't want to jump the gun twice. Jumping the gun once is irresponsible; jumping it a second time is unforgivable.

But I have to put up a big, big caution flag on this one.

I don't know what's going on with that post at this point. I need someone to explain it to me.

I will say this: It does not appear to originate from Jason Leopold.

I don't know where Jason Leopold is at the moment, but the IP does not suggest it's him. (At least on what little I know, which is very little.)

But, from the result I get, it does not appear to come from Leopold.

Note: The IP address here also does not trace back to Norway, in case anyone's wondering about that possibility.

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (62)
Post contains 600 words, total size 4 kb.

And then here's the thing:

Upon having the bonds returned to him, the owner gave the homeless guy... one hundred bucks.

Gee, thanks, pal.

However, people in the community were upset by the ingrate owner:

So they took action: A Belleville man sent him eight trash bags full of bottle returns and a bowl of coins. Three people pledged a combined $2,500. By the end of the day, two businessmen had given Moore $1,200, a shopping spree at a men's clothing store and a lead on a job.

The best part of the day?

"Seeing and knowing people care, and they're willing to help a total stranger," said Moore, 59, who plans to use the money to find an apartment.

Homeless for the first time, Moore found 31 bonds in a bag of clothes in a Detroit trash bin while searching for empty bottles to return for deposit money. He took the bonds to his counselors at Neighborhood Service Organization, which provides a daily breakfast to the homeless. Workers at the nonprofit group helped him track down the family of the bonds' owner, Ernest Lehto, who died two years ago.

I like the guy who sent him bags of bottle-returns. Hey, it's somethin', I guess.

Thanks to Robert.

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (25)
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I haven't read this whole thing yet, or even the good parts, but if the normally reserved Instapundit is calling Matthews a lunatic, pretty much, then it must be rather bad.

Posted by: Ace at 08:39 AM | Comments (57)
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