Raison d'être

Listen.

We are looking at a scary uptick in American conspiracism. I'm deeply concerned for the safety of public officials, police and judges. There have been numerous conspiracy-related murders in this country since the election of Obama.

• 3 cops were ambushed and killed by a conspiracist in Pittsburgh. He thought they were going to take his guns.
• 9-year old and her father were gunned down when militiamen stormed the Flores home in Arizona. The mother lived. Here's the 9/11 call:

• The shooter at the Holocaust museum had conspiracist literature in his car when he shot and killed a guard. Not insignificantly, van Brunn was once imprisoned for attempting to arrest members of the Fed.
• Scott Roeder, who killed the only full-service OB/GYN provider in Kansas, was a member of the Freemen Militia, another conspiracist group.

The recent coincidence of two reprehensible acts compel me to set up this website. I was not surprised when Howse put on the quack Vitamin-D merchant Mayer Eisenstein on his radio show. Eisenstein's company, which raises fears about the most successful public health program in history (childhood vaccination) and advocates home-birthing, lost one of the largest wrongful death suits involving a newborn ($30 million). Par for the course. At best, Howse does not do his homework. What got me was when a fellow blogger informed me that he had had correspondence with Howse, had mentioned the concerns surrounding Eisenstein's record. This blogger said:

I posted on the Howse site with the salient points on Eisenstein, including your links and I closed with a bible verse. I have had success with posting there before, debunking idiotic junk about the ark and modern seagoing vessels.

Brannon wrote me back a very nice short note, stating he had been advised of that and thanking me. But he didn't allow the comment on the site.

This is where I call foul. A responsible person would say, "I made a mistake." It's even manly in some cultures. I have never, ever once heard Howse say he was wrong. Not once. And this is a big one. Howse and Eisenstein were claimed that there was some sort of conspiracy to somehow kill or injure people with a flu vaccine. Howse has a damned responsibility, if he is to have any claim at all to honor, dignity or decency, to issue a big damned retraction and a right grovelling apology for waiting so long to retract this stuff.

The final straw was the apparent lynching of a Federal census worker. A law enforcement source reported to the AP that the body had the word "fed" scrawled on him. Howse, a few months ago, actually suggested, and it is baffling even to repeat this so much later, that GPS data gathered during the census would be used by the UN to target Americans. Seriously. This is the type of irresponsible statement that gets people killed, and if it is determined that the worker was killed because of his job, I hold irrational fear-mongers partly responsible. Those who use public airwaves to broadcast hate are every bit as responsible as King Henry II, when he asked aloud regarding Thomas a Beckett, "Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?"

Tomorrow, my first real post on this site will go up. At this site, I will try my darnedest to follow the example of Robert Lancaster, whose site "StopSylvia" is devoted to examining the claims of psychic Sylvia Browne. I will cross post with Happy Jihad's House of Pancakes from time to time, I'm sure. That is my main website. This one is specifically to collect all of the posts there that relate to the extraordinary claims that issue from Howse and his site. This is not a departure from what I have been doing, only a more visible and focused critique. It is the same stuff and no skin off my rosy nose to cross post it.

HJ