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Sunday, December 28, 2008
Who Is Stephen Spoonamore?His name pops up a lot on the conspiracy theory websites regarding Mike Connell's death. For example, nutty professor Mark Crispin Miller: That is a highly censored version of the deposition, leaving out such details as Connell’s early willingness to talk; his quick reversal after Karl Rove threatened him (threats that came up in his deposition, in a section that’s now sealed); the fact that he was pointedly stonewalling on Nov. 3; and the affidavits of Stephen Spoonamore, who knew Connell well, and had worked with him, and formally attested Connell’s eyebrow-deep involvement in the “vote fraud” in Ohio (among other places), and Connell’s close working relationship with Karl Rove. He's frequently described as a Republican: First, Steven Spoonamore is a Republican and a expert in electronic data security and digital network architecture. And the nutty professor again: MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Stephen Spoonamore is a conservative Republican, a former McCain supporter and a very prominent expert at the detection of computer fraud. He’s the star witness in the Ohio lawsuit, right, in which Connell was involved. He has done extensive work of this kind, involving computer security, and had therefore worked with Connell, knew Connell personally and knew a lot of the people who were involved in the sort of cyber-security end of the Bush operation. Well, let's see if Stephen Spoonamore is a conservative Republican, shall we? And the first place to check is Open Secrets, which maintains lists of donors to political candidates. And what do we see, but that Stephen Spoonamore donated $1,750 to Howard Dean in 2003. Ah, one of those conservative Republicans. He did donate $500 to John Sweeney (R) in 2004. I will continue to dig into this in the next few days. But as with everything the Connell conspiracy theorists come up with, there's a lot that they appear to be lying about. Labels: MIke Connell, Stephen Spoonamore
Saturday, December 27, 2008
More Mike Connell Conspiracy TheorizingIt took years for the 9-11 Truthers to get to the stage where the idiot Left is on the Mike Connell plane crash. Get Mark Crispin Miller on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now: AMY GOODMAN: Now, he had asked the Attorney General Mukasey for protective custody, because of threats to him and his wife?
MARK CRISPIN MILLER: He reported threats to his lawyer, Cliff Arnebeck.... When dealing with 9-11 Truth books and documentaries, we've developed a little metric called TTFLOM, which stands for Time To First Lie Or Mistake, and that's gotta be some sort of a record. Goodman is wrong when she says that Mike Connell asked Mukasey for protective custody, and Miller is wrong when he says that Arnebeck was Connell's lawyer. In fact, Arnebeck is the fruitcake lawyer who was bringing a lawsuit claiming that Bush did not win Ohio in 2004. Arnebeck had subpoenaed Connell in the case and then claimed in a letter that "sources" had told him that Rove had threatened Connell and his wife. Obviously if Arnebeck represented Connell he would have simply said that his client had told him that he'd received threats. But Miller gets even nuttier: MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Well, that’s a good question. We can’t ask him, unfortunately. I mean, this is kind of a grisly thought, but, I mean, I think we should be asking where the body is? We’re told that a trooper on the scene immediately identified Connell. But then we read elsewhere that there was nothing left but debris and that the fireball was enormous. So maybe he wasn’t on the plane. I mean, who knows, when you’re dealing with people as deep as these? Good lord, what a nut! Labels: Mark Crispin Miller, MIke Connell
Monday, December 22, 2008
More on the Connell DeathWell, the fruitloops are off to the races. Larisa writes at OpEd News: White House consultant who rigged 2004 election dies suspiciously So much for her not being a conspiracy nutbar. One of the commenters over there chips in with this bit of fruitcakery: The list of the conveniently dead and 'suicided' of those who threaten the fascist empire grows by the day.
Someone really should do a thorough project absent any partisan politics of just how many people who have met their premature demise over the last few decades. They have, it was called the Clinton Death List and it was nutty. I'm sure there's a Bush Death List out there as well. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman check in with their usual caution: Michael Connell, the crucial techno- lynch pin in the theft of the 2004 election, and much more, is dead at the age of 45. His unnatural, suspicious death raises serious questions about the corruption of the American electoral process that now may never be answered. Unnatural? And note that this detail raises some suspicions about Larissa the Loon's claim that he was a "source" for her: Connell recently wrote the following in his New Media Communications newsletter, regarding Barack Obama's election: "In our 230 year history, our democracy has suffered worse fates. It's just that none come to mind right now." Anybody who wrote that would not likely be furnishing information to Raw Story, which is a fruitcake lefty site. Fitrakis is still harping on the idiotic exit polls: At 12:20 am on the night of the 2004 election exit polls and initial vote counts showed John Kerry the clear winner of Ohio's presidential campaign. The Buckeye State's 20 electoral votes would have given Kerry the presidency.
But from then until around 2am, the flow of information mysteriously ceased. After that, the vote count shifted dramatically to George W. Bush, ultimately giving him a second term. In the end there was a 6.7 percent diversion---in Bush's favor---between highly professional, nationally funded exit polls and the final official vote count as tabulated by Blackwell and Connell. Never mind that the exit pollsters themselves admitted they got it wrong. Like all conspiracy loons, Fitrakis overemphasizes the unlikeliness of the crash: An accomplished pilot, flying in unremarkable weather... But the Akron Beacon Journal gets an expert opinion: Charles Starkey, a former Navy pilot and director of safety for a Cleveland-area private jet company, said Friday night's cloud cover and misty, cold conditions presented challenges for even the most experienced pilots.
In a 30-minute time frame around the crash, the weather deteriorated quickly as visibility around the airport diminished from nine miles to a little over one mile with a low ceiling.
In such cases, pilots typically are forced to rely on the plane's instruments rather than their own vision, which can contribute to crashes, Starkey said. There are reports of the usual "warnings": Without getting into specific details, 19 Action News reporter Blake Renault reported Sunday evening that 45-year-old Republican operative and experienced pilot had been warned not to fly his plane in the days before the crash.
"Connell...was apparently told by a close friend not to fly his plane because his plane might be sabotaged," Renault said. "And twice in the last two months Connell, who is an experienced pilot, cancelled two flights because of suspicious problems with his plane." The "close friend" goes unnamed, of course. Let me add here my sympathies to the Connell family. He sounds like a fine man and he leaves behind a wife and four children, and does not deserve to be maligned by conspiracy nutters after his death as the man "who rigged [the] 2004 election". Labels: Bob Fitrakis, Conspiracy Kooks, Larisa Alexandrovna, MIke Connell
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