I slipped up right out of the gate, registering ObamaConspiracy.org in my own name, and being outed by a commenter over at Orly Tatiz’s blog. Some like Ron Polarick took a lot more time and research before he could be tied to a real person. Various other birther pseudonyms have been identified from time to time and now it’s Butterdezillion’s turn.
BZ has been a dogged investigator of Hawaii vital records and a vexatious requester of documents, making an Internet career reading between the lines of documents from the State of Hawaii. Now we know her real name. It’s my policy not to “out” people because I think it has a chilling effect on free speech. However, I respect others, such as Patrick McKinnion, who think it a public service to shed light on the birthers, and it is Patrick who identifies BZ in the latest installment of his Dispatches from Birtherstan.
It’s really hard to stay anonymous on the Internet. You leave an IP address behind at every web site you visit. Email headers may reveal things you didn’t intend. Someone may paste the same text under two different names, or they may use the same photo on facebook that they used somewhere else, or even be recognized when attending an event.
One thing many overlook is “metadata” in documents. This is information not displayed as part of the document, but stored in the file nonetheless. I found the name of Orly Taitz’s dental practice in one of her documents. This is a mistake BZ made. She redacted her name on her web site, but not in the PDF document linked to on that page. With that, I found BZ’s facebook page in her real name, and from that I know what high school she attended and the names of her 4 children. A little digging might associate one of her 69 friends on facebook with another anonymous birther. Another click gives me her age, and another a 2-day-old newspaper article telling us about her support for the Nebraska “birther bill”.
My advice: be reasonable in what you say because it’s hard to stay anonymous.
Learn more:
For once I agree with you Doc C. If you are going to be publically [sic] involved in contraversial [sic] issues, don’t think you hide behind an alias. Your true identity will be revealed.
[Don’t be silly, my identity is not a secret. Doc.]
It doesn’t seem like knowing BZ’s real name will do much of anything, other than exposing her to harassing phone calls (she can just change her phone number to an unlisted one) or hate mail (but who really takes the trouble to write letters any more?). True, she might be embarrassed in her own community, but in a relatively small town, most people might already know or they may be in agreement with her. Of course I don’t know all the possibilities, never having had my true identity exposed (a few seconds in Google will tell you my real name but it’s a very common name). Perhaps, Doc, you could tell us what you’ve experienced as a result of having your identity exposed?
I got one critical email right after Orly published my email address along with my name. That’s it.
She claimed to be a public school teacher. If that turned out to be true (from the looks of things it wasn’t!), some of the things she has said online might have gotten her in some very hot water.
Part of her Facebook profile is public. She wrote this:
“I’m trained as a teacher but haven’t taught in a classroom setting since the kids were born.”
Since I ‘came out’ with my real identity a little over a year ago, I’ve never had cause to regret it (even when threatened by a birther – although I may have felt differently if I thought the threat was in any way credible…). Knowing that your words on the web are attached to your real identity makes you think before you post (most of the time) and it totally eliminates the fear of being outed. As for outing people involuntarily, I disapprove in general, but it really depends on what you are doing with your anonymity (if you’re outing others with it, then you’ve made yourself fair game, for instance). Also, anyone outing people from behind an anonymous identity is a coward and a bully in my opinion… (which obviously doesn’t apply to Patrick).
OMG!
Since we live under Obama’s tyranny, Butterdezillion should expect to be “disappeared” at any moment. We all know Obama will stop at nothing- that’s what the birthers tell us. It is a “tyranny”, isn’t it? What should she pack for the FEMA camps?
Oh my god, she home-schooled her poor kids, didn’t she?
You can imagine what she filled their heads with. Creation, ID, Obama is a communist, there’s a communist under everyone’s bed, Jews control everything.
Let’s just all be extremely relieved that no one else’s children have to suffer under her.
I’m thinking of that 4th grade teacher, who sent around e-mails screaming about Obama and his conspirators. She sent one to the WH, calling Obama “mud.”
I think she was from Missouri. Low standards, there. Missouri’s saving grace is Kansas City.
BZ is from Nebraska. Don’t be too harsh: Nebraska also produced Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett and Warren Buffet.
I feel bad for her children if that’s the case but I am at the same time happy that she hasn’t been teaching a crowd of children this brand of crazy for two years (you just know she’d at the minimum teach that to be president both of one’s parents have to be citizens).
Maybe when you hear a birther say that they were taught in school that 2 citizen-parents are required that is a dead giveaway that they were home-schooled.
Crete is southwest of Omaha and has a population of about 6,500. It has a large Latino population. She is a Pastor’s wife and belongs to my Lutheran Synod. You probably won’t find political content that is Birther on her Facebook page or in church would be muted. The synod has been fairly strict about political content in churches. My Pastor is especially good at keeping this out of our Sunday School discussions and shuts it down if it occurs. I can’t say what her husband is willing to tolerate. You can check that site if you want to. Also, she like my Pastor’s wife, is free to express herself privately.
Does Butterdezillion have a shady past? Is she from Moldova? Or is she simply a fan of Man United?
http://fuckyeahnouns.com/butterdezillion
Then raise the scarlet standard high!
Within its shade we live and die …
Of course, judging from this
http://fuckyeahnouns.com/paul%20pieniezny
I am Lucas Smith.
Interesting, Mary. Good to know that some churches keep politics off the pulpit. I remember in 2004 when some churches were actively encouraging their congregation to vote for Bush.
My view is that it’s a bad idea to have people’s names and other personal info on publicly accessible web pages, whether or not they’d like to be associated with their words — just to avoid coming to the attention of a John Hinckley type.
That may sound paranoid, but remember: just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
You sound like a birther, converting bias into narrative.
No, 99% of the time, birthers go for the full monty. I’m a realist.
Depending on the ages of her children, they may not understand many of her rants.
But they will still be assaulted with blame for everything being Obama’s: Their breakfast cereal isn’t available that week at the market- it’s Obama’s fault.
There’s no gas in the car to take you to your friend’s house?
Obama’s fault again.
When everything wrong in her house is due to Obama or liberals, the children grow up believing, as she does, that they’re slaves to some evil tyrant, subjects of persecution, have less freedoms and more things to fear.
It’s pretty much how terrorists are made.
They’re fed lies and exaggerations to the point they believe all would be well if only their perceived enemy(s) were gone and the people who support those enemies, punished.
The home schooling only intensifies the effect by cutting off socialization with other children and information.
Since only “elites” need math or English studies, those skills aren’t taught.
History and civics lessons are biased and inaccurate.
Cultural studies and tolerance aren’t taught at all.
Such children grow up unable to integrate themselves with the larger outside world.
They get into disagreements easily on the job and in relationships and handle problem-solving the same way they saw at home: by blaming someone (and often wrongly.)
So they move from job to job often, rarely developing any actual career.
Pretty much they’re destined to live in small towns with small minds performing small jobs for small pay.
Perhaps learning a trade, but more than likely just doing odd jobs.
Ironically, often later they’ll require social services or become criminals.
Thus they can actually become the slaves and subjects to the same authorities they were taught to fear when young.
Knowledge is freedom, so logically ignorance and hate can cause oppression and slavery.
Which is why conservatives relentlessly try to destroy public education. Nutter was elected mayor, because he campaigned his daughter went to public school, unlike all other candidates.
Doc, have you read any home schooling textbooks? I have one which calls liberalism “a failed ideology.”
Bachmann had the Founding Fathers abolishing slavery, and one of them lived until the Civil War. She also had the wrong state for the Revolutionary War spark. Her law degree is from Oral Roberts U, a 4th tier school. She does not believe in Evolution.
She is a home schooling enthusiast.
Anti-socialist Bachmann got $250K in federal farm subsidies
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) — so fond of accusing the Obama administration of foisting socialism on an unwilling America — has apparently been the recipient of about a quarter of million bucks in government handouts.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/1209/Antisocialist_Bachmann_got_250k_in_federal_farm_subsidies.html
We were talking about Butterdezillion, not Michelle Bachmann.
Are you asserting that all home-schooling textbooks say that, and that all persons who home school believe that?
If not, then you cannot generalize.
I find your generalizations about home schooling intellectually offensive.
I remember a few years back, somebody came around our church distributing “voter guides” and they asked our pastor how many he wanted. He quoted some huge number, and when when he got them, he tossed them in the trash.
Speaking as someone with many years in the printing business, I like that line of thinking.
Trash or recycle bin? 😉
Homeschooling is legal in France, but supervised. For health reasons I myself was homeschooled for a year. We distinguish between “remote schooling” which is in effect a correspondence course taken at home from an accredited organization that follows the State curriculum, and family schooling which I think is closer to what you call “homeschooling”, where the parents are fully in charge. In the latter case, the families must register with the authorities and social services have the right to monitor the situation, pedagogically and otherwise. (Home schooling has unfortunately been used to hide child abuse.)
Haha, excellent! What would have been even better is if he was able to do it right in front of the guy. Churches are supposed to be in danger of losing their tax exempt status if they promote political candidates from the pulpit. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a single one that has yet. I guess it’s only if they promote a Democratic political candidate.
Homeschooling is illegal in Germany.
Her four children attend public schools where, by all appearances, they are doing very well in track and field, the robotics club, etc. Last year BDZ commented on how stretched she was for time between her oppositional research on birth certificate fraud in the State of Hawaii and sewing a dress for her eldest daughter for the high school homecoming dance. What was suffering due to her long nights at the computer, she complained, was the, um, how shall I put it? intimacy with her hubby — a disclosure of a personal nature that I certainly would not have volunteered on a public forum.
Of course, none of us knows what her kids are taught at home.
Our pastors may be related.
Of course not. I’m not qualified to comment on all home-schooling textbooks. However, home-schooling textbooks with a strong right-wing bias are ubiquitous. This is a typical publisher:
http://www.abeka.com/OurFoundation.aspx
Here are some quotes from Beka textbooks:
“The primary value of practicing liberals, therefore, is a liberty divorced from moral absolutes, which often becomes licentiousness.”
“Liberal economic policies and social programs brought the nation to the brink of economic and monetary collapse.”
“Secular humanism and philosophical liberalism have played a major role in the decline of American eduction.”
But there is no criticism of conservatism:
“Conservatism embraces the truths of the past and preserves and transmits them to each new generation so individuals can apply them to present problems.”
Do you know of any home-schooling textbooks which have a liberal/progressive bias?
Regardless of any of this, my own individual correspondence with her makes me feel sorry for, and fear for, anyone who is under her direct influence. If she hadn’t declared (repeatedly) that she was a schoolteacher, I would have dismissed her along with all the others like her.
Now it turns out she *is not* a school teacher, which makes her a *liar*, because she frequently used her status as a school teacher as a basis for appeals to authority when arguing against President Obama.
I am fairly sure that my ejection from Free Republic is correlated with my engagement of Buttersz.
For the record, since I seem to have started this, let me say that I support homeschooling in general, but in cases where the educators have shown themselves to me to not be qualified to fill the role, I object.
Say both your parents have the equivalent of a Masters’ in Education, and both are semi-retired and have the resources to devote to your home school… I’ll bet you could have other parents choosing to send their kids to your homeschool. The only homeschooling scenario that I ever encountered was similar to that, and the family had built a dedicated classroom with room for about 20 students, which was better equipped than some of the elementary schools I attended, and I’d estimate that they put in north of $50K/year into the enterprise. took it very seriously, and were well respected by their community. It wasn’t a matter of “home schooling” because of dislike for or distrust of the local schools; it was a “home school” that created an intentional alternative, and that was by any measure a suitable alternative.
There’s a big difference between that end of the spectrum and the other one that really bothers me — people who decide that they are going to home school their kids because they don’t actually want them to be educated, or even exposed to certain points of view.
As a homeschooling family I also have to object.
The morons who indoctrinate their children will do so no matter what. Homeschooling isn’t the problem… abject stupidity is.
I hope your objection isn’t aimed at me. I don’t object to homeschooling. I object to Buttderdezillion, and I totally acknowledge that my objection is 100% because I don’t like her, and based entirely on my brief interaction with her, I deem her unfit to be any kind of school teacher.
That opinion is 100% my own, and I’m quite satisfied with it. I’m actually very glad she is not really a teacher (although the misrepresentation that she was would completely destroy any credibility if she had any to begin with).
Not related, but I once had a history textbook in a fairly well respected Catholic school that devoted an entire chapter to praising Benito Mussolini. It lavished praise on his accomplishments. It discussed his leadership during WWII in vague terms. It didn’t describe the end. This outraged my parents so much that they pulled me out of the school and refused to pay tuition. My mother was shocked (and let everyone know, loudly) that this had escaped the notice of other parents.
Anyway, my point is homeschoolers and public schools have no monopoly on dangerous bias in elementary education.
No kidding. I spent two hideous years in a Virginia school system where the science education was, to say the least, dreadful, and the Civil War was referred to as “The War Between the States.” By the time we got back to Pittsburgh the damage had been done, which is why I didn’t become a paleontologist the way I’d always dreamed of.
That’s better than the “War of Northern Aggression.” There is an imposing monument on the grounds of the Texas state capitol in Austin that is inscribed:
DIED
FOR STATES RIGHTS
GUARANTEED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION
THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH, ANIMATED BY THE SPIRIT OF 1776, TO PRESERVE THEIR RIGHTS, WITHDREW FROM THE FEDERAL COMPACT IN 1861. THE NORTH RESORTED TO COERCION.
THE SOUTH, AGAINST OVERWHELMING NUMBERS AND RESOURCES,
FOUGHT UNTIL EXHAUSTED.
DURING THE WAR THERE WERE TWENTY TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY SEVEN ENGAGEMENTS.
IN EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TWO OF THESE, AT LEAST ONE REGIMENT TOOK PART.
NUMBER OF MEN ENLISTED:
CONFEDERATE ARMIES 600,000; FEDERAL ARMIES 2,859,132
LOSSES FROM ALL CAUSES:
CONFEDERATE, 437,000; FEDERAL, 485,216
Read more: http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/North_America/United_States_of_America/Texas/Austin-875823/General_Tips-Austin-Capitol-BR-1.html#ixzz1Gaabmd7W
I remember my 9th grade “science” text discussing AM radio. It’s commenting about the much higher frequency of the carrier and audio waves and says “A condenser does this.” to describe how the audio is extracted, implying that the waves are squeezed down to be able to be heard. Fortunately, I knew better and laughed and laughed and laughed. (Yes, I knew about resonant circuits at that age)
When it comes to “outing” people, I try to strike a middle ground.
My readers will note that when it comes to things like email, addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, etc., I will redact any and all information of that type. It’s also one of the few things (that, attacks on someone’s family, and spamming) that will cause me to delete a comment.
However, when someone’s public name gets outed, then I’ll comment on it. Sharon Meroni comes to mind. So does Ron Polland. I also try to match up names to aliases as well. (Carl Swensson aka “PixelPatriot” comes to mind)
It’s a careful line, and I always try to make sure the information I use is publically available when I do go that route.
That’s fair enough. However, the issue with home schooling is that some states allow it with little or no oversight. In Butterdezillion’s state, Nebraska, parents are not required to do anything except annually “affirm under oath that a program of sequential instruction in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and health is being provided.” Any parents can be home teachers, regardless of their education and experience. Home schooled students in Nebraska do not have to take state tests and there is no visitation by anyone from the state.
http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/Nebraska.pdf
Eight states have no regulations whatsoever regarding home schooling.
http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp
I had abysmally poor public school instruction in physics and chemistry. Some of us actually hired an outside chemist to tutor us. However, biology, math, psychology and English were good.
Oh, and our civics class was memorable. The teacher was active in local politics and told us exactly how the local machine worked. That was not in the text book.