Why Nobody Takes PARC Seriously Anymore

[Roger Bissell]

Isn't it more likely that getting rid of Perigo was a court power struggle: Rowlands was tired of the moralistic rampages by The Perigo and claque, and wanted his extremist diatribes off the list.

William, I think you're right about this. Rowlands has always struck me as a very classy person, both online and in person, and I think that he is just too fastidious to abide by the sleaziness of Perigo et al.

reb

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William,

The story I said about Rowlands paying Perigo wages is documented online. Nicely buried now, but it's there.

If you are interested, try running through posts say around September 2005 or so. You won't find much on RoR because of the deletions, but you should on Solo Passion archives. It's hell to find there without a proper search function, though. Maybe use the search function on RoR, see where a notice appears that the entry was deleted, then adapt the url for the corresponding Solo Passion entry. Doing this one by one can get tedious. I don't have time right now and this issue doesn't merit it, anyway.

Also, the return of the racist dude is what makes me smell money. I ain't talking about a lot of money, either. Perigo is never involved with a lot of money. Just chump change. He's a small time dude and always will be. Small time dudes, when they are grubby, are just as grubby about money as rich folks. Only the scale is different.

People try to pretend that Objectivism makes one more noble about money when they disagree, but in my experience so far, I will stick to the adage, "follow the money." (And I speak as an Objectivist.) From what I have seen, Objectivists are good at talking around the money part as if it is not important, pretending to be above all that (and talking the pro-capitalism talk), but I see decisions and attitudes identical with the rest of the world.

I'll take the bacon in these stories. Let them sell the sizzle to the rest of the world.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The story I said about Rowlands paying Perigo wages is documented online. Nicely buried now, but it's there.

Just for the record, I don't believe you'll see Perigo denying this. He'll call it half-truths and so forth and insinuate bullshit, but he was the one who announced it to the world back then. Now it's on record and someone eventually will be able to find it, so outright denial runs the risk of being called a liar and people proving it.

Being fired twice in such a short amount of time (first the gig he announced back then, then the dismantling of SoloHQ, presumably with loss of wages provided by Rowlands) is embarrassing, I know. If I were him, I would be embarrassed, too.

Michael

[Robert Campbell]

Well, here's where the Daily Linzes started

http://solohq.solopassion.com/Articles/Per...d_the_Wet.shtml

on October 3, 2005.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

For some reason, Scott DeSalvo (seen a while back uttering 7th grade playground bully threats), dropped this post into the middle of the still very active Tony Veitch thread

http://www.solopassion.com/node/4987#comment-55703

Anyone have any idea what he's rattling on about?

Robert Campbell

[Brant Gaede]

For some reason, Scott DeSalvo (seen a while back uttering 7th grade playground bully threats), dropped this post into the middle of the still very active Tony Veitch thread

http://www.solopassion.com/node/4987#comment-55703

Anyone have any idea what he's rattling on about?

You'll have to ask him. Maybe he likes Valliant because they're both lawyers. "Bunny Branden," BTW, is as funny as a piece of lead trying to be an airplane. This thread here was started in response to Valliant putting up whole chapters of his book, sans footnotes plus some editorial changes, for discussion on SOLOP. It must be noted, parenthetically, that those are therefore worthless for reference. Valliant, who may be having health issues, has yet to come back on line to continue those discussions there. As for bagging groceries, I myself won't do that job because the art of it requires large paper bags, not those crappy plastic things generally used nowadays. David Letterman would appreciate my position.

--Brant

[Daniel Barnes]

For some reason, Scott DeSalvo (seen a while back uttering 7th grade playground bully threats), dropped this post into the middle of the still very active Tony Veitch thread

http://www.solopassion.com/node/4987#comment-55703

Anyone have any idea what he's rattling on about?

Robert Campbell

Scott DeSalvo laid out the Legal 101 situation quite sensibly early on. This post isn't anywhere near as coherent. However in relation to PARC he does make the following remark:

"Someone might respond that the OL crowd is defending truth for its own sake."

Well, obviously! Why is this such an incredible idea? For example, Neil Parille's criticisms only seem "marginal" or "quibbles" if you're not paying attention. They are central to showing how fake and confused Valliant's arguments are.

For another example, from my point of view as someone critical of Rand and yet with no interest in defending the Brandens, Valliant's book is like a handy compendium of everything that's wrong with the Objectivist movement; from its leaden writing and shameless apparatchik apple-polishing through to its supreme novelisation of the facts of reality and Valliant's apparent lack of acquaintance with basic intellectual standards. It's a deeply weird book, written by someone who has no clue as to just how weird it really is - which is in fact what makes it compelling to the outsider. Certainly the book has nothing to do with the search for "truth for its own sake." It's 180 degrees from that.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Robert,

DeSalvo is actually talking about a very rough moment in my life. He is another who sometimes drinks alcohol when he posts (as admitted in his own posts several times), so when he gets all thuggish and incoherent, I imagine he is posting under the influence.

In this case, booze or no booze, he is skirting on the verge of lack of professional ethics as a lawyer. But that is to be expected out of an ambulance chaser. (His line of work is to arrange settlements for accident victims, etc., see here. I have seen this particular field often referenced as the bottom-feeders of the legal profession.)

But I don't give a damn about who knows what about my life as proven by my various essays on my addictions, so here is the story.

When I arrived from Brazil, I stayed with my parents in Florida. This was a rather emotional time because I had been gone for 32 years. My parents got older and that really messed with my head.

I was working on a deal at the time with Brazilian bonds that involved the nephew of Lula (Brazil's President) and the cousin of the then Minister of Finance (Palocci), who are very good friends of mine. That's the reason I came back. Whoever works on deals like the kind I was doing knows that if you do not complete the thing, you have no income (unless you are a sleaze-ball who tries to promise people the moon to get into their pockets, which I refuse to do). Thus I had no income at the time other than a production budget. When things started delaying, I decided to stay with my folks for a while instead of going back. After all, 32 years is a long time.

Eventually that deal fell apart (and the Minister fell), but my father had a stroke, so I simply could not go back. To make matters worse, my production budget ran out. In the middle of this mess, I met Kat on SoloHQ and we wanted to get together. I couldn't leave Florida because I had to take care of my father. Since I had no income and all my contacts were in Brazil and even my USA driver's license needed renewal (so I couldn't legally drive at the time), I looked for a job nearby to help my folks with the extra expenses that the insurance didn't cover. The only thing I could find within walking distance was selling fish in a supermarket (WinDixie). I actually did some translating back then for my Brazilian clients, but transferring the money to the USA was too costly and complicated to be workable for the short-term issues I needed to resolve.

So I sold fish for about 3 months. I was sell-fish.

Kat wanted to come down to Florida at all costs, but she had a problem with getting her kids our of the state of Illinois because of a badly negotiated divorce settlement (joint custody) with her former husband. The state would only authorize the transfer of her children if she was provably going to a better financial position than what she was leaving. Obviously the wages of a part-time supermarket employee, which was all I could prove for USA income, were not acceptable, and she could not find a better job in Florida than what she had in Illinois.

It was at this point she consulted the ambulance chaser, Scott DeSalvo, imagining that since he posted on SoloHQ, worked in Chicago and said he was a lawyer, he would be a person of integrity who would be able to advise her about her options. She explained the situation to him. He didn't smell money, so he brushed her off (referred her to someone else).

During this time I was in a lot of email contact with Perigo. I told him about my job at the supermarket and we joked about it a bit. Then, when things started going sour, once in a while I started seeing references to "supermarket bag boy" and so forth whenever DeSalvo appeared and my name was insinuated, so I figured there was some email gossip going on.

Essentially Kat's consultation with this ambulance chaser (which I suggested at the time) was a mistake. He's a nut case (just look at his posts!), but he appears to be a competent ambulance chaser and can work the government and insurance laws. I didn't need that. (Actually, I later could have used a "personal injury lawyer" since I was in an accident on the job that required knee surgery, but I got along just fine without forking over the settlement to an attorney.)

In the present conflict, DeSalvo's just a small-time dude trying to me-too in on some juicy gossip.

Now I live with Kat and I work at Internet marketing. (And boy, from what I am learning, am I going to have some great things for selling Objectivist products!) I have done a lot of stuff under pseudonyms while I was cutting my teeth. I am now starting to appear under my own name. Google it and you will see some good stuff online already.

There.

The dirt's out.

What shame! What shame!

Michael

[Neil Parille]

I responded to Mr. DeSalvo over at SOLO.

-NEIL

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Neil,

Notice that regardless of what the issue is with that bunch of clowns, they always try to fabricate an OL entity or movement as if there were such an entity or movement, and themselves as the victim. Either that or "smearing Ayn Rand." Those are the two rebuttals to everything that you may post, irrespective of facts. The tribal drums have pushed them totally beyond reason on certain issues.

OL is merely a discussion forum where intelligent people appear because they want to.

Sure, I have a beef with Perigo. He viciously attacked several people I love and perverts Objectivism beyond recognition. He was either fooling everyone or bullying them into being quiet, so I pulled the covers off. I ain't afraid of two-bit bullies. Valliant, also attacking peoiple I love, tried to fool everyone under a massive amount of gobbledygook and I pulled the covers off that, too. But I post my stuff under my own name and do not ask anyone to endorse it. Of course I had help, but people did so because they showed up and wanted to. They actually agreed with me and this issue did not go beyond that.

Unlike the policy and practice of Perigo (of which I have ample proof), I do not wage email campaigns to get people to post here, nor try to get them to post ideas the way I want them to. People come and go as they please.

The inability to imagine the actual nature of a website like OL is symptomatic of tribal thinking. And this is the branding issue I have right now.

Objectivism is a philosophy of individualism, not tribalism.

Those boneheads don't even see it. They mouth it but they can't live it.

OL might have its defects, but its greatest virtue is that this is a place where individuals can (and are encouraged to) express themselves according to their best independent thinking, within certain bounds of civility.

I don't believe many of the posters on Siberia Passion who chime in the tribal war dance make this error because they are bad. I just think they cannot imagine their own lives as an individual and they need badly to belong to a tribe. (Also, tribal war drums are seductive to the young. Don't I know...) So they think all people are tribal in the manner they are and the issue is one tribe against another.

The real issue is the same old thing Rand fought all her life: collectivism versus individualism.

Pretty soon all this crap is going to be over anyway. Lots of creative things are getting ready to pop (at least within a few months) and there just won't be time left over for intellectual hygiene. That's why I am doing it now.

Michael

[Neil Parille]

Michael,

I should note (although it isn't earth-shattering) that I know virtually nothing about any disputes you have had with Mr. Perigo or any disputes between Mrs. Branden and Mr. Perigo. As I recall, I approached you with my first PARC essay, asking if you would be interested in posting it.

My initial debates with Mr. Valliant were in fact reasonably friendly.

-NEIL

____

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

As I recall, I approached you with my first PARC essay, asking if you would be interested in posting it.

My initial debates with Mr. Valliant were in fact reasonably friendly.

Neil,

Point 1. That's exactly how it happened. It was a delightful surprise.

Point 2. I believe it would have stayed friendly, too, if you had not exposed Valliant's errors and crap in an irrefutable manner.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

(Don't mind me. Just gossiping. Hell, all standards have flown out the window by now anyway... )

There seems to be a misunderstanding about my quip.

Someone quoted the presiding cockroach at O-Lying as saying all standards have gone out the window there ... and he never said a truer word.

So let me break it down.

Objectivism is a body of thought that is extremely useful. You can use it to structure your life in such a manner that you produce marvelous works. I normally try to devote my time to producing, not bickering.

For instance, I am working most of my waking hours at Internet marketing right now. I want to write, but I see where this is leading and I know great things await. I also see a powerful chance to produce and sell products that reflect the souls of people who opt to live in a rational universe. This has not been done to a large extent in the Objectivist world. Not on the scale that is available on the Internet. I am at the starting point, right after the study time. I am starting to make it happen with information products, and I shall soon make it happen with Objectivist ones.

Then I come across grubby little jerks like Lindsay Perigo and see that he is going to get a free ride off of my own work while bashing me and my values, just like he does with the Brandens. My customers are going to look at him, listen to that pile of horseshit he lays down on folks while posturing as an Objectivist leader, and think that there is something similar between him and me because of the words "Objectivism" and "Ayn Rand."

I also look at the level of gossiping and pettiness this sad creature makes of his life instead of producing something of lasting value, and I have to deal with putting a distance between that and what I am doing. This means opening the window to the public view—and getting something decisive on record—about a whole lot of garbage that would best be left rotting somewhere.

In essence, part of my time is spent dealing with garbage like Lindsay Perigo to protect my future assets than producing works of lasting value. That is what I meant by all standards have flown out the window. I don't like devoting my production time and resources to garbage. Just because I said this in a good-natured manner of a quip, that does not alter my essential meaning.

Perigo would do well to understand my meaning when he puts my words in his mouth. I doubt he would find that meaning as clever as the fantasy in his skull.

(btw - Notice that he still ain't denying that business about receiving wages from Rowlands. He can't because it's on record. All he do is try to cover it up with bluster and hope people pretend it never happened.)

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I was going to make another entry on the latest example of cognitive (integration) breakdown from placing the normative before the cognitive as given in the following quote:

I've no intention of being drawn into the Campbellian suckhole where bad-faith Rand-diminishers pick away at every conjunction and every preposition in an attempt to play "Gotcha!" over some such numbingly, genuinely trivial matter as James's error over the last Rand/Babs meeting. We have important—nay, urgent—things like the battle for reason and freedom to obsess over. In that battle, I for one worship Rand as heroic and inspirational.

The normative before cognitive thing honks here.

But this is also argument by repetition. Just repeat something from before, put some English on it (like saying that pointing out Valliant's errors is playing "Gotcha!" and mind-numbing while blanking out that these are overwhelmingly the main characteristics of PARC). After all, people forget. So if you do that enough, maybe all the bad stuff goes away.

Well, this was another fly to swat (imagine this irrational jerk fighting for reason of all things!). Ho hum. And then a light bulb went off in my head.

I just saw an enormous tactic of cowardice at work. Here's how it goes:

1. A sanctimonious phony (like Perigo) viciously attacks someone over personal matters, but houses it in terms of Objectivist principles and totally misrepresents the attacked person's words. (I am thinking of Barbara or Robert, but there are many people this could apply to.)

2. The person attacked responds, answering the principles and the misrepresentation since they are far more important than a personal issue.

3. The sanctimonious phony (like Perigo) proclaims that he is defending Ayn Rand and that the attacked person's real agenda is to attack her. He goads the attacked person in this direction.

4. According to the psychological principle of consistency used in advertising (if a person does one thing, he is likely to do it again if induced), since the attacked person responded to the misrepresentation, etc., he responds again in a similar manner (he performs consistent behavior). He now answers trying to clarify his disagreements with Rand while trying to point out that his motivation is not to attack her. But the very fact that he tries to justify this is held up as proof that he actually is attacking Rand.

Now here's the cowardice. This person forgets he was attacked by a sanctimonious phony (like Perigo). So the sanctimonious phony (like Perigo), instead of receiving the response and engaging it like a real man, deflects the issue to Ayn Rand and lets her take the lumps and clean up his mess. The sanctimonious phony (like Perigo) pretends—from that point on—that he never attacked the person he attacked.

He uses the very idol he claims to worship as a skirt hem to run to and hide under after he attacks someone.

Here is the proper response in such a mind game when a sanctimonious phony (like Perigo) accuses you that you are attacking Rand.

"What, me? Attack Rand?... Oh no... I'm not attacking Ayn Rand. I'm attacking YOU, you worthless little coward!"

Yep. That sounds hell of a lot better and it cuts out the BS.

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

MSK; I applaud your willingness to go through Perigo's CRAP. I think I would I just hired a hit man and consider it money well spent.

[Brant Gaede]

The gentleman is essentially complaining that Campbell is doing what Valiant did creating a distraction from the big, important issues without complaining about Valiant who has patently corrupted the matter for over three years now. Valiant's central thesis has always been that the Brandens have opened Rand (and Objectivism) up to effective misrepresentation by critics with a contra-Objectivism agenda. Now those folk only have to point to PARC for more material--and not just Rand's journals, but disciples who obsess over the moral perfection of their hero to the extent of idolization. Throw in some Leonard Peikoff foreign policy, war-mongering "I am absolutely not concerned with 'innocents'" foam-at-the-mouth wild-eyed hysteria while he stands on the (founder of) "Ayn Rand Institute" platform (would anyone pay any attention to him otherwise?) and Objectivism becomes "It is to laugh" all-but-gone sinking ship.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Chris, I know you were speaking metaphorically, but you are effectively equating yourself and OL with Scott deSalvo and SOLOP.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just saw an enormous tactic of cowardice at work. Here's how it goes:

1. A sanctimonious phony (like Perigo) viciously attacks someone over personal matters, but houses it in terms of Objectivist principles and totally misrepresents the attacked person's words. (I am thinking of Barbara or Robert, but there are many people this could apply to.)

2. The person attacked responds, answering the principles and the misrepresentation since they are far more important than a personal issue.

3. The sanctimonious phony (like Perigo) proclaims that he is defending Ayn Rand and that the attacked person's real agenda is to attack her. He goads the attacked person in this direction.

4. According to the psychological principle of consistency used in advertising (if a person does one thing, he is likely to do it again if induced), since the attacked person responded to the misrepresentation, etc., he responds again in a similar manner (he performs consistent behavior). He now answers trying to clarify his disagreements with Rand while trying to point out that his motivation is not to attack her. But the very fact that he tries to justify this is held up as proof that he actually is attacking Rand.

Now here's the cowardice. This person forgets he was attacked by a sanctimonious phony (like Perigo). So the sanctimonious phony (like Perigo), instead of receiving the response and engaging it like a real man, deflects the issue to Ayn Rand and lets her take the lumps and clean up his mess. The sanctimonious phony (like Perigo) pretends—from that point on—that he never attacked the person he attacked.

He uses the very idol he claims to worship as a skirt hem to run to and hide under after he attacks someone.

Here is the proper response in such a mind game when a sanctimonious phony (like Perigo) accuses you that you are attacking Rand.

"What, me? Attack Rand?... Oh no... I'm not attacking Ayn Rand. I'm attacking YOU, you worthless little coward!"

When I wrote that, I did not expect a blatantly good example to happen in such a short time as now, but here it is:

Now, "rails and rages" actually means, "points out awkward facts I'd rather evade, such as Babs's penchant for lying and smearing." In her last mini-bio of me, Babs kinda abandoned her normal subtle "stiletto" approach because she was so utterly desperate to get me dumped from the TAS speakers' line-up that any old blatant calumny would do. Campbell was equally desperate, and uttered no protest at the depths to which she stooped. Evidently he doesn't like to be reminded of either fact.

All things being equal, though, "stiletto" is Babs's preferred modus operandi, which makes her a much more effective Rand-diminisher than Nathaniel.

Calling Barbara a bitch and so forth is not pointing out anything. It is cussing her and Perigo does it a lot. People who cuss a lot "rail and rage" and do not point out facts. That's reality.

Now to the other part. The part that deals with my observation above. This excerpt from Perigo reminds me of a stuck little piggy squealing and running under the skirt hems of Ayn Rand for protection. (The rest of his post is a great example of this, too, but this excerpt will do for illustration.)

Perigo initially attacked Barbara because she would not trash her friend Jim Peron and join in his (Perigo's) campaign to smear Peron as a pedophile. It had nothing to do with Rand and everything to do with New Zealand libertarian politics. Then Barbara had tacitly endorsed Perigo as an Objectivist leader up to that point, but with this smear campaign and the drinking thing and the infantile temper tantrums, it was obvious she removed that endorsement. Point again: nothing to do with Rand.

She would not endorse him as an Objectivist leader, so she became Enemy No. 1 to him. I think he hates her even more than he hates traditional Rand villains like Kant. (I can't imagine him hating anyone on his own for a good reason, which is why he needs instruction from Rand for that. However, I can imagine him hating on his own, but without good reason. He likes to hate and that's what he does. His history proves that.)

Notice that Perigo attributes any attack against himself as a scramble for power, but attributes an attack against Rand as having some kind of metaphysical and psychological importance. And it needs to be done with stealth. (whisper whisper sneak sneak...) This is his cowardice. He will not fight his own intellectual battles, but will try to use Rand to smear someone else after he has attacked that person for reasons not pertaining to her.

Well, here's a reality check again. Imagining Barbara or Robert as "desperate" with respect to anything pertaining to this worthless little coward brings a smile of amusement to my face. He's an irritation, like a fly that keeps buzzing around, but he is definitely not material to cause desperation to real-life producers. You need to be important for that.

(The only reason he was able to blindside Peron is because he used the government.)

Barbara never did attack Rand, anyway. I'm tired of hearing this same old orthodox-worn lie. She wrote in Passion what she saw. And what she saw bothers some people a lot. They want Rand to be different than that and they were not there to see for themselves. So Barbara's report bothers them. They want A to not be A (or AR to not be AR).

Barbara did attack Perigo, though. That she did. And she did it well. She beat that worthless little coward to a pulp at his own game. Out in public. (And he was pumping the email machine backstage, too.) She trounced him man-to-man.

This, I admit, had metaphysical and psychological importance. There was no scramble for power. The reasons run much deeper. The metaphysical part is that Barbara adheres to reporting what she observes, with A being A and all that, and the psychological part is that she rejects the world-view of a power-seeking immature bully. Calling that world view "Objectivism" turns her stomach. She speaks for herself, of course, but I know her well enough to say these things and know I am right.

I normally feel sad and irritated with Perigo and his vicious little kindergarten rants. But this time he gave me a pretty good laugh because he proved me right without even being aware of it. On top of being a jerk, he's a dummy.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I don't think Linz hates Barbara, Michael. He hates and despises you. He just used/uses Barbara to leverage himself up, positive and negative. Like a coin he flipped her over. Not really being a man of ideas it doesn't get him very far. (BTW, how did he use the government against Jim Peron?)

--Brant

[Robert Campbell]

Brant,

I agree with Michael on this one.

Lindsay Perigo does genuinely hate Barbara Branden.

Not because she "diminished" Ayn Rand. Until 2005, he never had a problem with her presentation of Rand.

He hates Barbara Branden because she diminished him.

That's what changed in 2005.

By contrast, he doesn't hate Nathaniel Branden, though from time to time he will puff himself up into a weak simulacrum of loathing.

Mr. Perigo and Dr. Branden have had few encounters, and Nathaniel has not personally insulted or diminished him.

The reason I kept asking Mr. Perigo about Ayn Rand's moral perfection is precisely because he does not believe in it, even though it's what his pal Jim Valliant's book is really about.

My follow-up question about who Mr. Perigo rails and rages against, and who he doesn't, has prompted a much more informative answer.

Robert Campbell

PS. Mr. Perigo may have thought that denouncing Barbara Branden would raise his profile and make him a major authority in Rand-land. His attempt failed. He didn't get with the Ayn Rand Institute when he had a chance to, he made a futile grab at The Atlas Society out of desperation (he thought he could afford to snub TAS two years earlier), and he can't keep up his guru act on his own. Another bloviation or two that explode in his face, along the lines of his recent blast on Tony Veitch, and he will alienate what remains of his following back home.

[Dragonfly]

I agree with Robert. Perigo is a man scorned.

[Brant Gaede]

You and Michael may be right about this, Robert, but that wouldn't gainsay the fact that Perigo feeds off Barbara and her animadversions upon his person. If Michael and OL were to vaporize he'd go out and celebrate. Not so with Barbara. Barbara must have known that her taking him to task last winter to keep him out of TAS function this summer would on some level invigorate him, but not as much as the sanction of a TAS appearance with its aura of respectibility. Barbara literally threw herself in front of that at great cost to herself; she would fight that to the death. She helped pull TAS chestnuts out of the fire. That Will Thomas was so out of it to invite Perigo in the first place--TAS must be Internet purblind--caused me to lose almost all respect for it, obviously an opinion of mine that Barbara and some others don't hold. The price that Barbara had to pay, of course, is having Perigo call her names, call her a "Rand diminisher," and use her person as a soapbox to keep SOLOP going. He does the same thing with Ayn Rand, of course, but with praise. Criticism or praise, it all works for him. The point is the stature of the object of that. Grab them and hold on tight. Note how little he is into actual ideas. It's mostly public posturing.

--Brant

Edited July 24, 2008 by Brant Gaede

[Chris Grieb]

Chris, I know you were speaking metaphorically, but you are effectively equating yourself and OL with Scott deSalvo and SOLOP.

--Brant

Brant; I was not and I think you know it.

[Brant Gaede]

Chris, I know you were speaking metaphorically, but you are effectively equating yourself and OL with Scott deSalvo and SOLOP.

--Brant

Brant; I was not and I think you know it.

I didn't know it. I assume you're referring to "metaphorically."

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

It is no longer a productive use of my time to post to non-financial Web sites. There are issues I no longer want to be wrapped up in to no good effect. We are on the cusp of a giant, world-wide recession and I have to deal with that as it impacts my personal situation.

--Brant