In Afghanistan a violent mob, apparently incited over the idea that someone half a world away burned an allegedly ‘holy’ book, attacked a UN outpost and killed twelve actual human beings.

Their excuse for violence is being taken completely at face value by many on the Left, even though burning books, or other items, in protest in America is constitutionally protected free expression.

Naturally, Marcy Wheeler is one of those idiots:

Wingnut Pastor’s Koran-Burning Gets UN Staffers Killed
By: emptywheel Friday April 1, 2011 8:32 am

See, Marcy, let me explain to you how this works, since you seem to be unfamiliar with free expression or the fundamental underlying nature of reality. I do something, legal and nonviolent, to express myself. Someone else, in a fit of idiot rage, responds to that legal activity with violence.

I am not to blame. I did nothing wrong. *They* are responsible for their actions. To take any other position is to claim that the violent respondent is incapable of functioning as an adult; it’s paternalistic, infantilizing and offensive.

In other words, it’s fairly standard stuff for Wheeler. Only this time she’s riding her hobby horse over dead bodies. Fun times.

All of these people, and the thousands of others in Madison, came there for a single purpose – one that they ultimately didn’t have the power to complete, but one which will sustain them through the long legal and electoral fights ahead. But by coming together, they became a part of something bigger than themselves. They kicked off a new alliance, made up of youth and labor, activists and non-activists, public workers and private workers, a great mass of people striving for basic rights and fairness. They have a clear mission and agenda, one that is expanding by the day. The reason this movement is built to last is that it’s not based on a person – it’s based on an idea. A principle. A belief in certain basic rights and fairness.

You can see the parallel to the community here at FDL. People from disparate backgrounds and experiences come together every day to discuss, agitate, educate, strategize or just offer up the ol’ one-finger salute. They’re here because of an idea, a principle, a value. And they want to be part of a greater community of like-minded people.

The spirit of Madison is on display here on a rolling basis. And everyone has a role to play, a way to engage more deeply in the community. By becoming a member of FDL you can get not only discounts on progressive events and activities, but ways to interact at a greater level with our writers and editors. More than anything, membership will foster ways to get involved. Just like I saw in Madison.

This is just sick. Raising money for an unrelated quasi-news infotainment site, one that, I might add, has often been wrong about facts on the ground (like when David Dayen announced the Capitol would be open a few weeks ago while the DOA kept it closed, illegally I might add), based off of the work we do here in Madison. I’m sorry, but this is beyond unacceptable behavior.

If people want to help out here in Madison there’s a lot they can do. Donate money to Ian’s Pizza on State so they can feed us. Donate to other organizations that bring us water and fresh fruit and vegetables (Willy Street Co-Op has been sending us stuff, for example). Donate to keep the ‘People’s Microphone’ going. Pack a bag and help us occupy the Capitol. I’m sorry, but whatever you think of FDL, and I think less of them by the day, they are not part of this. This is just opportunism at its most base and despicable.

The fact that adults willingly read this on a regular basis and mistake it for wit could be used to successfully condemn our entire species to eternal damnation, so it’s a good thing no such fate exists.

Basically, it boils down to this:

1) She will not admit she was unbelievably wrong about Toyota’s electronics in the wake of the NHTSA report, because:
A) Not a single auto expert works for the NHTSA
B) There are still lawsuits pending, however:
I) If the lawsuits are resolved in Toyota’s favor, they don’t count, because:
a) Marcy Wheeler talked to some disgruntled former Toyota service people in 2007, and
b) she can read Toyota’s corporate mind and just knows that they have secret chip problems, and
c) she isn’t providing any evidence for any of these assertions

Follow that? I know it’s pretty amazing. This is what always gets me about Marcy Wheeler’s ‘reporting’ and one of the things that drove me to abandon FDL, save for David Dayen’s work and a bit of the community blogging. Wheeler is free to make whatever fact-free, paranoid, borderline racist/nativist accusations she wants, so long as they’re against typical liberal bugaboos (corporations, Republicans, foreign companies). Sometimes they turn out to be true; just as often, they’re baseless. Her fans ignore the misses and exaggerate the hits, and thus, a star is born. About half of her posts actually take the form of her asking for indulgence as she ‘goes into the weeds’, aka, raves fantastically about her latest pet conspiracy theory.

It looks more than a bit like apophenia, honestly. She sees elaborate conspiracies everywhere. In the Bush era, this was slightly more likely to turn up ‘results’, simply because they engaged in so many conspiracies at once.

That’s not praiseworthy for Wheeler, however; it’s just a sad commentary on the Bush government.

Anyway, when I confronted her about her Toyota fixation from last year, now conveniently forgotten, she engaged in the delusional self-justification I described above for a bit.

Image of Twitter conversation up on Flickr. Roughly arranged in chronological order; timestamps are visible anyway.

NASA engineers studied Toyota’s (TM) electronic throttle for 10 months and found “no electronic flaws” that could have made the vehicles accelerate out of control, a report that came out today says. Toyota cheered the review, saying it “should further reinforce confidence in the safety of Toyota and Lexus vehicles.”

NASA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) put Toyota’s cars and trucks through the wringer. They examined 280,000 lines of code for flaws, bombarded vehicles with electromagnetic radiation, as well as testing the cars’ mechanical components.

“NASA found no evidence that a malfunction in electronics caused large unintended accelerations,” said Michael Kirsch, Principal Engineer at the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC).

To be precise; yes, Toyota sold some floor mats that an idiot could let get so tangled up around his/her feet that the brake pedal physically cannot depress to the floor. And yes, they had some pedals that themselves were slightly sticky, and wouldn’t bounce back from being pressed as fast as they should. Neither problem causes, from the car’s perspective, ‘unintended’ acceleration; in the first case, driver error leads to a floorboard too cluttered to depress a brake pedal, and in the second, you *did* intend to accelerate, the pedal didn’t press itself, it just doesn’t unpress fast enough afterward.

About this time last year, the media was awash in literally hysterical reporting about this ‘Unintended Acceleration’ problem. Mainstream outlets like ABC and NBC would report as fact the allegations of paid anti-Toyota hired guns like a Professor who rigged cars to do what he wanted by rewiring them, then claimed it was relevant to cars on the road, or obvious frauds who faked incidents to try and cash in via lawsuits.

At the same time, and to the lefty blogosphere’s eternal shame, people like Marcy Wheeler of Fire Dog Lake were engaged in outright scaremongering, if not race-baiting, against Toyota, alleging fantastic conspiracy theories (completely without evidence, as it turns out, since there was no evidence to be had, per NASA testing):

Witness David W Gilbert, an engineering professor at Southern Illinois University, was able to show that there are some errors in Toyota’s ETCS that do not generate an error code. As a result, in such a case, the car would never enter into failsafe mode.

Now Gilbert immediately informed Toyota of his finding–my best guess is he did so last November. But his finding was not among the things that Exponent tested, starting in December. However, when Toyota learned that Gilbert was testifying (those evil tricksy Democrats added him at the last minute) Exponent did middle of the night tests Monday night and managed to replicate his finding.

Mind you, Toyota consistently misrepresented what Gilbert had found. At first, Lentz said Toyota had not replicated his error, and only later admitted they not only had, but he knew about it. Then they claimed, both politely to the Committee and more rudely to Republicans, that he had hacked into their ECTS and therefore broken it. They consistently avoided discussing the evidence there is a dangerous error in their ECTS error system.

I find this bit really telling. Toyota got this information last year some time. They deliberately did not have their whitewash firm replicate it–though when they learned Gilbert could present his findings in a public forum, they were able to replicate the problem almost as quickly as Gilbert did (three and a half hours). Once again, this is evidence that Toyota has a number of things they are deliberately not looking for.

…

The advanced brake override system

I still can’t figure out why Toyota is ignoring all this–what is either so expensive or so damaging that they don’t want to admit to the real problem. But there’s a hint in the way they’re dealing with the brake override systems. As Lentz described, all new models will be fitted out with what–per Sean Kane–is an absolutely critical feature for Toyota given its problems with unintended acceleration. And they will retroactively put that feature onto seven of their models.

As it turned out, they weren’t ‘ignoring’ or hiding anything. There was nothing to hide, nothing to ignore, and Gilbert’s incredibly obvious hackery had no real world implications.

Toyota was right, and Marcy Wheeler and the many hysterical and conflicted American-car pushers/boosters in Congress eager to demagogue the issue were wrong. Period. Absolutely, categorically, unambiguously wrong.

I was right, on the other hand, and tried to warn her in particular off the evidence-free scaremongering; needless to say, that didn’t work out.

Now watch them ignore these findings.

I mean, just look at this utterly delusional garbage:

Even though I have a strong background in science and firmly believe in the scientific method and the scientific tradition, I am a professional astrologer. Yup. Don’t ask me why it works; it just does, and I have studied and used the ancient art to good effect throughout my life. I make no apology for my interest, so if you hate astrology, please scroll on by.

‘professional astrologist’, haha, what a great euphemism for ‘con man or idiot’.

He later clarifies that he considers himself a professional but doesn’t charge in the comments. Which is… an odd definition of professional, but hey, that word has no business within a mile of astrology. Or any other form of religious hokum, for that matter.

I mean, seriously:

You will likely feel like you’re making a fresh start emotionally as the New Moon (16 degrees 5 minutes in Capricorn), which symbolizes your emotional self, is separating from the Sun (13 degrees 53 minutes in Capricorn), which is your source of creative energy. The only potential problem is that you may have trouble choosing in which direction to go, as the ideas and possibilities are likely to seem somewhat overwhelming. Fortunately, however, the Moon and Sun tend to be grounded and practical in Capricorn.

*snort* hahahaha… oh priceless. Seriously priceless. The relative position of the Moon and the Sun to an IMAGINARY SHAPE IN THE SKY will affect your brain. Somehow.

It’s maaaaaaaaaaagic.

Rayne pops up in comments there defending both the author’s smug dismissal of reality and critics based in reality. Funny how I couldn’t get a response from her for weeks, hell, months on FDL’s misuse of my content, but she can appear as if by magic when some asshat clown starts telling people that imaginary mystical forces will change their brain chemistry or alter their fate. Somehow.

I can’t get so much as an answer on my intellectual property, let alone a response to documented moderator abuse, but astrology needs defending? Quick, someone flick the Rayne-signal.

Priceless.

Next up, an FDL community blog series on why you should skip vaccinating your kids in favor of blood-letting.

I mean, is there ANY limit to what people can post there?

So long as they don’t personally annoy an anonymous moderator, I mean.

Still no word from FDL. I sent multiple emails, and nothing was done and no answer given. Man, I’m glad I got out when I did; imagine running a money making website that way, where complaints sent to the official contact email don’t even get responses, let alone action! Oy.

I mean, I slack off here, but it’s just a personal blog. At the ZRC we pride ourselves on always, ALWAYS getting to any official requests, aka sales, within 1 day. Period. Literally rain or snow, sleet or hail. If the post office is open and the roads are passable, by the dark gods of weather you WILL get your package shipped within 1 business day. Period.

So I know a little bit of what I speak here, when I say that this is bizarrely lazy user service. Bizarrely. I can only imagine that the official contact page has an outdated email; it didn’t get bounced, so the account is still active, just being ignored?

Like that makes it better, I know.

*shrug*

Anyway, next week I’ll find some other place to blog. Honestly, I left Dkos over people being stupid, but at least there nobody screwed with my content.