He has written about having sex with an underage girl, and claims he once threatened to kill a pregnant girlfriend unless she had an abortion. He claims to hate marijuana, but recommends heroin as the cure for suburban boredom. He mocks “Tea Baggers” and scorns “hippies.” His Russian newspaper was shuttered after a government crackdown, and he’s a regular on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Meet Mark Ames, the provocateur who created the Koch brothers conspiracy theory.

Long before John Podesta’s Center for American Progress began targeting the Koch brothers for their supposed role in the Tea Party, and two years before the Kochs were cast as the villains of public sector union protests in Wisconsin, Ames had already shaped the Koch brothers meme.

Ames and co-author Yasha Levine launched the conspiracy theory–and its twin themes of drug abuse and gay sex–with a blog post (now removed) at Playboy.com in February 2009, entitled: “Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High on Koch?” They published almost exactly the same article at their own site, exiledonline.com, as “Exposing the Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?”

Ames and Levine alleged that Santelli’s famous “rant heard around the world” that inspired the Tea Party movement “was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger” for an “anti-Obama campaign.” That campaign, they claimed, had been planned for months before the 2008 election, and funded by “the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups.”

Ames would later explain that he had been inspired to write about the Kochs by his experiences in post-Soviet Moscow, when he edited a sensational newspaper, the eXile–described last year by Vanity Fair as “arguably the most abusive, defamatory, un-evenhanded, and crassest publication in Russia” before it closed in 2008. (more…)

Bush Derangement Syndrome is rampant this week, triggered by the release of former President George W. Bush’s book Decision Points.  I’m almost waiting for George Soros to jump back onto CNN and compare the former President with the Nazi regime again.

Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch points out the comical hypocrisy going on over at the Huffington Post.  While several of the tabloid-like site’s contributors have been criticizing one thing or another about the book, one in particular is prattling on about what he dubs as plagiarism in Decision Points.  Let’s just say, if you’re going to snitch, at least make sure your own crib’s in order.  Dana reminds readers that Arianna Huffington is herself no stranger to plagiarism.

Besides, a closer look at the post reveals more about the post’s author, Ryan Grim, than it does anything else.  Grim seems barely able to temper his disdain for the former President as he inventories a barrage of so-called “for instances”, like this one. [emphasis Grim's]

(more…)

Public supported National Public Radio (NPR) posted a report on March 17 during its “All Things Considered” radio show that warns its listeners that “patriot groups” are dangerous and are apparently increasingly prone to attacking government officials and facilities. Oddly the two examples it uses to prove its case have no ties whatsoever to any “patriot groups.”

Headlined, “Hostility Against Federal Workers Troubles Officials,” NPR blames “patriot groups” on these attacks and worries that “anti-government hate groups” are on the “upsurge.” And what does NPR use to prove its case? Nothing but the say so the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center and a misconstruction of two recent attacks on government facilities by disturbed individuals.

NPR ominously begins its report with this: (more…)

Holland today is probably the worst country in Europe, a sinkhole of social pathologies that would make Berkeley blush.  And yet, at every step, the decisions the Dutch took to liberalize their formerly straitlaced Calvinist society seemed to make sense at the time, at least to some

Today, with crime rampant, social tensions brought on by enormous, apparently unassimilable migration from the Muslim world, and the collapse of its social cohesion and cultural self-confidence, the Netherlands is the Sick Man of Europe.

I originally wrote this story for the now-defunct Mirabella Magazine, to answer the editorial question: why are the Dutch so tolerant. “Tolerant” seemed like the right word at the time; today, nearly 18 years later, “suicidal” might be a better choice.

This is what I found.

The smoke is overpowering as I climb the steep stairs and enter the tiny second-floor room at a neighborhood joint called “Balou.” A group of young men are sitting at a handful of tables, talking, listening to loud rock music, looking out the window at the street below or watching a Detroit Pistons – Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game on the television perched mutely in the corner, each puffing away contentedly. The 25-year-old owner, Jerry, is standing behind the bar and gabbing affably to some of the regulars, displaying upon request a menu of the evening’s offerings. This might be anywhere, in any bar USA. Except it’s not.

Jerry shows me the menu. Compared with competing locals like “The Grasshopper” and “The Bull Dog,” it’s rather small. This is what it says: (more…)