This part deals with some of my online activities which were not done under my own name.
Sock Puppets
I’ve been banned or left in endless moderation on some birther web sites when I posted under my own name or as Dr. Conspiracy. I rarely used other identities, but there were a few exceptions.
Probably the first was “Malcolm” or “Malcolm Fredrickson.” I knew a fellow named “Malcolm” in college, and “Fredrickson” just sounded like a name of a white guy. Malcolm primarily appeared at Orly Taitz’s site, and posted low-key comments. My favorite was from 2012 posted here:
Frankly, I thought the LA Times article was pretty crummy. It was mostly warmed over stuff from the Associated Press. Fair and accurate reporting is more than finding two people to say the opposite thing, it involves finding the truth and then reporting it.
They say “Joe Arpaio embraced the widely debunked contention that President Obama was born outside the U.S.” Debunked by whom, how and when? I can go to somebody’s blog to get news as authoritative as that.
I wonder whose blog that would be? 😉 Note the double meaning. I also used one other sock puppet at Orly’s site, Carmen Montoya. She was a more supportive fan girl of Taitz. I used Carmen when I was traveling in Central and South America so that the IP address would appear to be that of an authentic person with a Latino surname.
While I have been free to post at Birther Report for quite a while, it was not always so. I did a lot of work untangling sock puppets at Birther Report (one birther posted at BR under as many as 100 sock puppets, using names such as “julio schwartz” at BR, “redd” at Repubx, “greg” at the Post & Email and “Judy” at Orly Taitz Esq.). There were many accusations that certain individuals were sock puppets at BR. No one suspected mine: “ZuluBravoTango” (a name with no significance except a vague military sound to it). After I got banned at BR in the Fall of 2015, I cranked my earlier experiment back up, and was stunned when Sharon Rondeau of the Post & Email made one of my comments the lead for a feature article! I couldn’t stop laughing.
Web sites
My first “front” web site is one I disclosed before: obots.org. To my knowledge, no one figured that out before I disclosed it here on this blog in February of 2012. Follow the preceding link for details on what Obot1 represented and why that site.
My second site, OARPA.net had no content to speak of. It was mainly done to play with paranoia among birthers as I dropped hints about OARPA on this blog. OARPA’s mission was:
OARPA (Obot Advanced Research Projects Administration) is the technical arm of the anti-birther movement, developing and employing advanced technical means to expose, disrupt and counter the subversive birther movement that threatens to drag American into an unending flame war on the Internet.
Sock puppet Montoya gets a shout out in this OARPA article.
The third is something that only a few people knew about: I am the author of the satirical Orly Taitz Super PAC web site. That is a site that I was very intentional about keeping anonymous. Orly even named it in a filing before the federal court in Mississippi! I hosted that site with a different company than hosts my other sites, and the domain registration was anonymous. I also used different CMS software than I use on my other sites. When I announced what I had done at a Fogbow meetup in Philadelphia, I could hear the gasps of surprise. That site exists today only on the Wayback Machine.
There are two other sites that I created, not anonymously. They are Gerbil Report™ (now departed) and Dr. Con’s Leftist Propaganda Blog. The former was sort of a spoof of Birther Report, and the latter was named for what BR commenter RamboIke liked to call this blog.
For further reading:
Rather than one massive article released on January 20, I thought I’d do a series and start it sooner. Frankly, I am still on the fence about publishing some of the material.
You are quite the character, Doc. XD
At Orly’s site I was able to post as “Annie Daynow.”
At Birther Report I got some posts through moderation as “Charlie Bunratty.”
A long time back, I wrote some site crawler software to catalog commenters on her site. The database got overwritten and I never reworked it, but I did capture a list of commenters that I published in 2013:
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2013/03/commenting-orly/
Zulo Bravo Tango (ZBT) actually is (or was) an obscure military communications operating signal. The military had hundreds of them, three-letter signals (sometimes followed by a number) beginning with the letter “Z.” They apparently date back to the days when Morse Code was the primary method of communications, as it allowed operators to send common instructions or requests with great brevity.
They continued to be used when teletype became the primary method of communications. If a ship or shore station received a garbled message, all they had to do was send a message saying “ZES-2” to the originating ship or station, and the garbled message would be re-transmitted.
Since 2003 I don’t think I’ve ever been anything else than “Lupin” on line.
Lol.
I used some creative names at Orly’s blog none of which I can even recall now. Of course Orly moderates every comment so using “Reality Check” was a non starter. Some of my most memorable shows were ones where we followed Orly on primary election night as she came in a solid 7th out of 8 or something like that. She usually managed to beat one or two folks just on name recognition.
When the definitive book is written on the Birthers Orly will be the most fascinating character. She could be pretty smart but do some of the dumbest things. She had energy like no other Birther. She managed to alienate herself from most of the other Birthers. She and Berg ended up in an epic legal fight that is only now dying out. She put Arpaio and Zullo on the spot by sending them a subpoena that they completely ignored thus showing what frauds they were. .
Leigh King Fossett at Orly’s.
You should use that one at Sam Sewell’s The Steady Drip. 😆
I meant can’t recall..
Brilliant! And thank you for this much needed hysterical belly-laugh. Bless you, Doc.
Talk about deja vu, I swore I read this a couple years ago…
Except for maybe a few posts early on this site (NorthlandA, I think), I have always used Northland10. Even when I used a different name on a birther chat room, or two, it was still Northland10, just roughly translated to Ojibwe.
Lol.
Not quite as immediately relevant as Annie Daynow, but still good.
I liked the sock puppets at Taitz’s site that were somewhat obscure fictional characters. Recognizable to many, but innocuous sounding to someone not versed in American culture.
I’ve still got my Orly Taitz Super PAC bumper sticker from the Philly Fogbow Meetup in the spring of 2015.
Thanks for everything you’ve done Doc! There are a lot of really great people that I only know as a direct result of the time I spent posting here. Congratulations on the impending completion of this blog!
Did someone on this site call ME a liar?
Oh, well, it is all done in fun, right?
It’s confession, time, jack.
Whadaya got to confess?
Why would somebody do that Jacko, Helen, sandiegojoe, saynomorejoe, cavitekid, cub16?
Oh, I confess to a lot of things, doubt about the honesty of people who post, doubts about the world being able to work around the world, doubts about what I can do for the next years as I get even younger as I age
But, I do realize that changing the minds of people is very difficult especially when they are paid to have their opinions voiced.
I confess to ;not being able to violate the 10 commandments any more.
and I confess to believing that the schools are producing a bunch of un=educated persons who will do no good in the world.
And I confess that the human body politic is ugly and getting uglier..
I doubt the ability of people to make rational decisions
Now that was funny!
I always liked Helen, I’ll miss her when this site ends.
Many people; repeatedly. Because you lie, repeatedly.
The only person amused by your lies is you.
Like Corsi and Zullo?
Dang, another irony meter just went kablooey. A Birther really said that?
Ahh – The Orly Taitz Super PAC
Well remembered and enjoyed. All the exitment surrounding its discovery and the discussion who may stand behind it. A real FUD factor 🙂
Well done Doc!
Regards – Richard
Let’s see who’s gotten paid for their position regarding birtherism.
Jerome Corsi made a boatload of money through his book “Where’s the Birth Certificate?”
I think at one point he was planning to sell at least 100,000 copies? $17.46 per book on Amazon, that would be $1,746,000 gross if he reached that goal, which I really doubt he did. Still, he did sell a lot of copies.
Joseph Farah, his boss, had a share in the book profits, plus openly begged their large audience for masses of contributions, plus also received advertising revenues from all the clickthroughs on their dozens of articles.
(By the way: Notice how much advertising is on this site?)
Joe Arpaio raised I think $6 million to $7 million for his 2012 reelection campaign. Not all of that came from people who gave because he was a “hero” who was “investigating” the President’s birth certificate, but a substantial amount of it did.
Mike Zullo has made an undisclosed amount from contributions to the Cold Case Posse.
The Cold Case Posse was in turn willing to pay Dennis Montgomery large amounts of money, as well as any expert who would support the idea that the birth certificate was a fake. They were not willing to pay anyone who wouldn’t support that idea.
Orly Taitz achieved national name recognition for challenging the President’s eligibility.
Even minor birthers like Miki Booth have made money from stuff like speaking at conferences.
Notice anything in common in the list above?
According to Brian Reilly Zullo received a $10,000 check from the late Bill Wolf from New Jersey. He also by his own admission made $1500 in the first month or two from the sales of the “book” “A Question of Eligibility” on Amazon that Corsi wrote about the Cold Case Posse investigation. (Zullo said the checks were waiting for him when he returned from Hawaii.) t is still for sale for $8.99 so I assume he is still making money on it.
Since there are no financial records who knows where money donated to the Cold Case Posse went. It’s hard to tell how much the CCP paid Montgomery. I suspect the bulk of the money came from the MCSO and not the CCP since Montgomery was a paid Confidential Informant.
Yes in which Zullo then when pointed out that he profited then tried to claim he didn’t know about it for months and then claimed he gave it to his church. Carl Gallups on multiple occasions has claimed he’s Zullo’s pastor including on one of the more recent shows. So it sounds like Gallups was laundering money for the CCP.
So why do you violate the 9th all the time?
As you do not know my neighbors, why could you possibly believe I have born false witness against them?
Or, perhaps, in your zeal to be what you may not be, you have failed to understand the bible at all.
As a rabid red-neck Republican more power to the individual who can make money by writing a book that others will buy and benefit by.
Who knew that it was OK to lie about everyone but your neighbors!
Who cares if said book is full of lies; you certainly don’t.
They probably refer to you as “That f’ing waste of space.”
You apparently do not understand Luke 10:29-37. Your neighbors are not limited to those who live near you.
Amen! Hooray for capitalism. It works for rabid brown neck Democrats too.
Obama Could Earn Millions for a Post-Presidency Memoir
President Barack Obama could get $15 million for a post-presidency book—a sum that would match what publishers paid former President Bill Clinton for his 2004 memoir, My Life.
Though Obama hasn’t confirmed any plans after he leaves the White House, many expect he will write a presidential memoir that would prompt competitive bids from different publishing houses. Publishing executives speculate that he could get as much as $15 million for a book deal, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Obama has previously published two memoirs: Dreams From My Father in 1995 and The Audacity of Hope in 2006, each of which sold more than 3 million copies in print and e-books, according to the Journal. Obama also published a children’s book in 2010, titled Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters. He has one nonfiction book left on a contract with Crown Publishing Group, but it’s possible Obama could shop himself to a different publishing house and later fulfill his contract with a different nonfiction book.
http://fortune.com/2016/11/03/president-obama-memoirs-clinton/
I think you’ve failed to understand the Bible, which clearly teaches that your fellow man IS your neighbor.
Or perhaps you don’t understand the bible refers to your fellow man as your neighbor so again why do you continually violate the 9th commandment?
Trader runs around singing, “don’t you be my neighbor.”
First what Corsi wrote wasn’t really a book. When the superfluous pages like the copyright page, TOC, a and index were removed it was only 37 pages. You need to read Loren Collins’ review on Amazon.
“Instead, what this e-book offers up is a surprising amount of regurgitated material, and surprisingly little of even that. At just 53 pages (not including the cover, title and copyright pages, and table of contents), this e-book is nothing more than a financial rip-off.
The six pages of the appendix simply reprint the Sheriff’s Office’s news release. Six pages of the Introduction just reprint a WND story about the investigation’s press conference, much of which repeats content from the news release. The other 3 pages of the Introduction similarly reframe that same information. And don’t be fooled by “Chapter 5” in the Table of Contents; it’s only 1 page long, and it provides no new evidence of any sort.
Roughly 10 of the remaining 37 pages are practically cut-and-pasted from WorldNetDaily articles written by Jerome Corsi in summer 2011 or in his book “Where’s the Birth Certificate”, before the Cold Case Posse was even involved. If the Posse spoke to dozens of witnesses, examined hundreds of documents, and took numerous affidavits, then why is so much of their `report’ lifted *verbatim* from old Jerome Corsi articles? Why do sentences that once said “This second [anonymous] technical report concludes OCR software was…” NOW says “Arpaio’s investigators concluded OCR software was…” Are we to believe that Arpaio’s investigators came to the exact, word-for-word conclusion that Corsi’s anonymous analyst did?
The 27 pages of `original’ material still manage to introduce no interesting information the reader hasn’t already seen. Most of it was included in the Posse’s YouTube videos, and the rest has appeared at WND. The only new and interesting reveal in any of this is when the book seems to admit that they reviewed a lot less microfilm than the Posse claimed in its press conference and news release. That’s the only thing I learned from the e-book: that certain statements in the Posse’s own news release shouldn’t be trusted, because they contradict the Posse’s own details of its investigation.”
Second, to the extent the “book” was the work product of the Cold Case Posse it belonged to the MCSO and not Corsi or Zullo. Profiting from the investigation was unethical.
My confessions:
I used to post at Orly’s using different aliases made up on the spot. Mostly I tried to slide in criticism of other posters/birthers. Often it succeeded.
I used to post at The Post and Email using two aliases (but I forgot what they were) until they went behind a paywall. I had some extended fights with well-known birthers like Jedi Pauly which were quite entertaining.
Back then, there were still “moderate” birthers who did not follow everyone down their private rabbit hole.
I used to post at BR under the alias “LogicalPatriot”, starting with some pro-birther posts to gain credibility, then adding more (and less thinly veiled) criticism as time went by. Ultimately, my fake “birtherism is real but you guys are believing the weirdest crap” stance was no longer welcome, proving to me how the once diverse birther crowd had reduced to 20 die-hard lunatics.
As long as we’re confessing, I guess I should come clean, too. I realize this will come as a bit of a shocker, but some of the commenters at Gerbil Report were actually sock puppets of mine. The cast of characters:
William the Gerbil (“I plan to use twice as many monkeys typing on twice as many keyboards, so with a little luck my rants will eventually resemble Standard Written English.”)
Reagan’s Gerbil (“You’ll see! A & Z Day is COMING! On A & Z Day the Great Zullo will rise out of the blog he thinks is most sincere and fly through the air with his bag of evidence for all the patriots! He’s gotta pick the Birther Report blog. He’s got to. I don’t see how a blog can be more sincere than that one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.”)
Ohhhgerbil (“I tried to be patient with [my Congressman’s staff] but I’m just so mad now. I addressed Obama’s ineligibility, his forged documents, how he is an illegal outer space alien, how his father is most likely Malcolm X, his involvement with 911 (as Osama’s brother. Duh) and Sandy Hook, and how DARPA is beaming disruptive thoughts into my brain. But those small-minded RINOs refused to take me seriously!! Can you believe it?”)
Gerbil Spooner (” ‘Because God says so, that’s why’ has no plausible retort.”)
Gerbiler1 (“Some people just don’t give a kit. But Cmdr Kerchner and myself, we give a kit! Make that 30,000 to 50,000 kits, to be exact. You may ask, are all these Sheriffs Kits making a difference? Well, as the saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. And this pudding tastes like kit.”)
@rickagerbil (“Col. Klink was known to breed lactose-intolerant agents that he could control simply by giving them milkshakes. Have you ever seen Obama drink a milkshake? Well, if you ever do, trust me, you’ll want to run for cover, because that’s his trigger to destroy America.”)
drgerbdrgerb (“You are obviously possessed by demons – most likely SATAN himself.”)
When I first posted at Birther Report as “Charles Bunratty” I came across as a fervent birther. I posted as a “two-citizen parent” birther and begged for anyone to help me out by providing the name of a textbook which taught the requirement. No one was able to, of course.
Eventually the owner grew suspicious of me because I kept asking for evidence of the nonsense that was being posted, and soon my posts weren’t getting past moderation.
Zulu Bravo Tango was an actual z-signal but not one I ever had need for:
ZBT
How do you count following text
group(s)…?
Text group(s)…should be counted as…group(s).
The Q & Z Signal Bible
http://www.angelfire.com/va3/navy_mars/ACP131.pdf
Zulu Bravo Tango was an actual z-signal but not one I ever had need for:
ZBT
How do you count following text
group(s)…?
Text group(s)…should be counted as…group(s).
ZFR My previous Transmission of the above text. It was a ZZS with the right spelling of my screen name.
In what capacity did you work with ACP 131? I was assigned to the Comm Center at Subic Bay and then was on an aircraft carrier for two years.
In 2024 I changed “Dr. Con’s Leftist Propaganda Blog” to “Dr. Conspiracy’s Liberal Propaganda Blog.” The original context is lost and I am not, nor have I ever been a leftist.