-- News that shows you something...

Return to Alien View

Thumbs down!

...Watch Her Slither On Her Belly Like A Reptile?

Alerted by still another of the fellow outraged I'm compelled to suck down a few Dramamine and revisit Paul Kimball's obtuse and ploddingly boorish blog.  Puzzlingly, it becomes increasingly more apparent where Mr. Kimball might be coming from.  It's a departure point even a little embarrassing given Mr. Kimball's uneven lurch towards community acceptance and the critical respect which he seems to so crave.  His oppressive lurch becomes more uneven, still.   Could he be this juvenile himself or, worse, is this his considered assessment on the maturity of his audience and the gender of same? 

Now I'm an artist, a world traveler, and a poet not remotely prudish or twitchy about sexual matters.  I find the female form not only vastly underrated and largely misunderstood (by both sexes), but eminently appreciable on a multitude of levels.  Thin is not, remotely, in.  It's an unhealthy lie... except when it is not... then it is appreciable in it's own right.  I believe Kyle King may bear me out on this point.  Maybe not, forgetting he ~has~ impressed me with a certain maturity... he reports, "...keep the pictures coming..." 

Oh and sure, I can endure comedic digression as well as the next guy.  I can laugh at the joke, and even be the good-natured butt of same.  I can guffaw at the blue yarn. I can giggle with the likes of John Stewart or think "South Park" is the funniest thing on television, but I have to be somewhat taken aback or unsettled by the slyly slick-mouthed leer of Kimball's ongoing series regarding  "The 10 Sexiest Women in Sci-Fi History..." butt-hole to belly button with his pompous "10 Best in Ufology" and equally pretentious "10 Worst...," like they were part of the same ufological equation.  Are you taken aback, reader? 

Does anyone else see the strange dichotomy portrayed, the disrespect tendered (on a few different levels), the divergence indicated, or the deviation displayed?  Now it may be that I'm being overly harsh with regard to Mr. Kimball's intent and motivation regarding his... series... compelled as I am by his dodgy behavior to second-guess and over-analyze his reported explications and exhortations... but really.  Something just seems a little weird about it. 

Work with me... 

What does it do for the serious treatment of a serious subject? 

How does it improve our understanding of the difficult to understand? 

Why does it ape an old ethic of a thoroughly outmoded and largely discredited sexual past? 

Where does it include the sensibilities and mores of 21st Century women who are revolted or insulted by this schoolboy celebration of the clueless anorexic. 

When will Mr. Kimball join his fellows, male and female, in the present century and embrace the more efficacious mores of same?   

...Could it be a contrived device to appear more affable, jovial, and approachable?  Or is another kind of device to de-legitimize a serious attitude towards a serious subject already fraught with enough  sleeve-snickers  and  giggle factors  already.  

...Hard for me to tell, convinced as I am that he has an un-admitted agenda that he prosecutes with some stealthy diligence otherwise... 

Don't misunderstand reader, I would not pretend to tell Mr. Kimball what he should publish on his blog or pretend to dictate what his focus should be on same.  I can; however, report that it would never have occurred to me to marry these subjects remotely together in the same way of a manner similar to lathering melon-balls with drawn butter or slopping chilled KY jelly on your toast in the morning.  It just seemed off... needlessly distracting, and well... inappropriate is the best word for it. 

Maybe it's just me, but it seems some pretty with-it guys were dragged down this primrose path for a time providing demonstration that the big head won't think while the little head is being appealed to... and of what possible benefit could an appeal, any appeal to the "little head" be at this juncture and with regard to this subject?  How are we improved?  How are we gainfully enhanced?  How is progression facilitated?  How is elevation achieved? 

That said... enjoy Mr. Kimball's pre-1950's show... with apologies to the ladies, and paper-towels available on request for the lads?   

Uh... Real?

Larry King Reports:  UFOs... Real or Fake?


Wow!  A recent first!

...Prime time UFO reporting from a ~host~ of quality ufological proponents, while the opponents themselves are woefully under-represented, for a change... and badly at that... in a manner poorer and less competent than I have ~ever~ seen.

Shostak?  He was all discredited slogans, snappy dismissive quips, and faux-confident or indulgent smiles.  He wore a nice suit too.  Besides, he was still smoking slightly from his last debate with Stanton Friedman, and he visibly withered when King reported that Carl Sagan was something of a believer after all. Did you catch that, reader?

From the program:

HOPKINS: But at any rate, we agreed that all of this together constitutes an phenomenon and so... what I said to Dr. Sagan was: "Instead of  saying extraordinary claims demands extraordinary evidence... Shouldn't we be saying: an extraordinary phenomenon ~demands~ an extraordinary investigation"?

We're not getting an "investigation" here. What we're getting, unfortunately, are lots of arm chair theorists who sit away from the investigation process, who have actually never really gone out to examine the site, the physical marks... whatever it is... to do any medical work... but who have very glib explanations [ready] for each little piece of evidence that's brought up. ...But the accumulation of this evidence is overwhelming.

KING: I will confirm that, because I interviewed the late Dr. Sagan many times and he was, Seth [Shostak], open to the possibility of it and to more investigation of it.

SHOSTAK: I am as well. I am as well...

...Stop...

~When~, Dr. Shostak?  ~Where~, Dr. Shostak?  ~How~, Dr. Shostak? With regard to ~what~, Dr. Shostak?

 Outside of his own parochial boondoggle at the Silly Exercise To Investigate (SETI)... when has Dr. Shostak ~ever~ championed an increase in the aggregate ufological consciousness?   No, Dr. Shostak has only ever been a steadily smirking ~bulwark~ against same!

Dr. Susan Clancy, the only other skeptibunky in representation, was clearly, even pathetically, out of her depth! She blithely displayed an ~astonishing~ ignorance about the whole subject of UFOs, and even used that tired old canard of "sleep paralysis" as the leading contender for explaining alien abduction!  I was frankly embarrassed for her.

Additionally, her book on same was well pumped on the program.  Budd Hopkins', also on the program, did not so much as have his books mentioned~.

In the aggregate, the proponents for UFOs (...HOPKINS, MACCABEE, SWIATEK & SCHUESSLER, sounding more like a quality law firm...) acquitted themselves adequately enough I suppose... and the King program was no ~great~ disservice to greater ufology... but there was something missing, reader...

An old debate, surprisingly outdated, was dusted off yet again and tediously prosecuted... one more time.  Did you catch it?

The very title of the Larry King piece says it all in a concise impact statement.  Consider the title. "UFOs... Real or Fake"?

Real or fake...?

New conservative re-estimations of the Drake equation (that attempted rational stab at calculating the number of intelligent species in the universe?) puts the measurement probability for a plethora of off-world intelligences, I understand, so close to 100% that the difference cannot be easily measured.  This is to say that one has a ~much~ better chance of winning the Publisher's Clearing House lottery (approaching zero) than one does betting ~against~ extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in the universe...  

Yes.  We ourselves are proof, if you will, of the Drake equation's validity...

Additionally, an immutable law of the universe is that what ~can~ happen... ~happens~.  ~We~ "happened"... proving the certainty of that particular potentiality with equal assurance...  What happens once... happens again.  "Stuff happens", that is to say.

Frankly, pretending we are ~alone~ in all this boundless magnificence, forgetting that that is just ~ludicrous~... is naive and ignorant arrogance, I expect, at best.  At worst, it may be sophisticated and informed arrogance... knowing arrogance... conversant arrogance!

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?  Why, this debate has been going on since 1947 in a seemingly apparent attempt to preclude substantive progress on it!

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?  ...Are there not six levels of quality evidence very specifically indicative that UFOs are a reality? Almost (99.999999999%) certainly!  The huge volume of ~extant~ evidence is of a quality that cannot be forever ignored... even as Seth Shostak and Susan Clancy furiously try.

Yes, the quality ~anecdotal~ evidence, compounded with the vetted ~photographic~ evidence, and then added to the documented  historical~ evidence, gives every  indication that a ufological contention regarding that phenomena ~must~ be more real than not...

Moreover, when the preceding is framed by the serious ~artistic~ evidence, qualified by the available ~physical~ evidence, and then compellingly buttressed by any conclusively personal evidence (...if you have some... I do...), I can only be annoyingly astonished by the continued reluctance of ~some~ to face the highly strange music that just cannot be ~forever~ marginalized...  Aren't you?

Does the information available justify attention by the mainstream to perform a more in depth investigation of UFOs?  Absolutely"! ...Sagan and Shostak, hilariously, agree!

But no... these ooze forth, instead, periodically... to re-prosecute the skeptibunky case of yester-year! These furiously spin the ufological reality extant in their ~cowardly~ attempt to reduce the level of ufological debate once again to its tiresome starting point! Their goal, reader, is to re-achieve an old, outdated, and outrageously tedious level of pre-discussion...re-discussing the (...thoroughly discredited!) possibility... that UFOs are likely something safely prosaic and certainly ~other~ than evidence of some ~significant~ alternative (off-planet?) intelligence.  Yes.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?   Does the reader see how that suggestive statement brings the level of debate back to the decades old, and very tiresome, level of conceivable deniability.  In other words... That it is somehow still very, very possible, boys and girls... that UFOs... may not... exist at all!  ...Everybody draws a deeper, if fallaciously inaccurate, breath!

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?   "There is no 'proof', you know, even as there may be some evidence for a ufological reality..."  I paraphrase.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?   "Mind you, UFOs and aliens might exist, but no proof has been uncovered in over 50 years that this is so..."  I paraphrase.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"?   "~We~ are the only proof of intelligence in the whole of the universe..."  I paraphrase.

...Oh... so comforting, eh?

The preceding, frankly, is what we must move beyond.  Yes... first we must get passed the level of the ~remotest~ denial in a discussion of UFOs, as the denial of UFOs can not have the ~remotest~ validity given the work, research, and tight explication of a ~host~ of quality ufologists and researchers... ~forgetting~ the obvious inability of a well funded opposition to discredit them!  We ~must~
admit (and otherwise cop to) the aforementioned and ponderous ~volume~ (Six levels!) of evidence that exists regarding the ufologial reality extant (...handily destroying or compromising every effort to make UFOs 'disappear' over many, many years...)!

We ~must~ demand government forthcoming-ness with regard to funded
and open investigations, investigations both international and cross-cultural in scope (...and generations of corporate scofflaws can pay for it!)!

We ~must~ face our well facilitated and crippling fear cultivated by those unwilling to cop to UFOs... (Shostak and Clancy et al) ...step forward to, and embrace, the future! Not step back to a pie-in-the-sky past that only existed in a skeptibunker's spotty imagination, cowardly intellectualism, and suspect politics anyway.

So, reader, high marks to Larry King for seriously broaching the subject in "prime time", but ~minimal~ approbations are in order for having the same desultory dialogue dispensed on "Larry King Live" as from Frank Scully and Long John Nebel in the justifiable ignorance of the 50s.

That ignorance, reader, is no longer, remotely, justifiable.
 

Soiled Coattails?

I am further outraged, insulted, and irritated with the ongoing exploits and activities of one Paul Kimball, ufology's oafish and elbow-throwing if self-involved nascent neo-commentator, and just when I'd thought I'd reached saturation on it, too!  What's going on here? 

Alerted by another of the outraged, I was compelled to go over and look at Kimball's blog for some of its more recent... ...I think one might, charitably, call them "entries"... at http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/...  ...keep your Dramamine handy...  

I try to avoid Kimball's blog, usually, for the same reason I try to avoid right-wing talk radio or most of what is found on the low end of the AM dial.  It is unpleasant, singularly, to me... blood-pressure raising... officious and authoritarian,  a miracle of contrived cant and convenient bias passing itself off as enlightened discourse... ...producing in many rational persons a feeling of distinct un-cleanliness requiring an immediate intellectual shower... or an episode of "Sponge-Bob Squarepants"... just to reassert some semblance of humanistic equilibrium...  To my mind,  and in the opinion of _this_ writer, Kimball establishes a new low. 

Kimball is not without talents, reader.  He's rather like a Philip Klass (...with fetal lamb pancreas injections?), and somewhat like Mr. Klass, he can put words together into a seemingly cogent sentence, has a sense of the "right-word-where", and is not without some intelligence, even if it is feral and predatory, imo.  That said, one can then look for unstated meaning "between the lines" of his 'contributions'... like you can with Mr. Klass ...look for tone, mien, or aspect in the explication, and do so with some small amount of confidence.   

Read what Mr. Kimball has to say about Stanton T. Friedman... vis a vis the recent Roswell Reunion (and Kimball's thinly veiled but derogatory takedown of same) ...Talk about the condemnation of the faintest praise! 

Is it entirely respectful, graciously appreciative of the personal benefits ~derived~ by 'chance' association with a connected in-law, or remotely supportive of Mr. Friedman's decades long _real_ contribution to an uncomfortable, albeit necessary, research effort?  No, No, and No. 

Is it at all appropriate at this juncture for Mr. Friedman to be in any way lampooned, lightheartedly ridiculed, or by any means parodied?  No, No, and No. 

Is it in anyone's best interest that Stanton Friedman, lately targeted egregiously by the corrupt mainstream (Peter Jennings, et al, but a hijacked mainstream for which Mr. Kimball would gleefully front), be degraded, derided, or in any way demeaned... even if it ~could~ be argued; however, erroneously... that Kimball was an insider and just poking a little good natured but respectful fun at the old man?  No, No, No... and on reflection, decidedly, No. 

The tone is not appropriate in any sense, manner, or excused indulgence.  Kimball explicates to his own benefit and to Mr. Friedman's reduction of same.  One might begin to get a sense of what face-stepping can really be about, how slyly it can be applied, and how easily character assassination can be slipped passed a reader's guileless sensibilities as a result of the carefully chosen word written with an easy, reassuring, and oh so disarming and confident smile...  The smile cracks to reveal the leer underneath. 

Lately I've opined about Kimball having to climb a pissant's stepladder to buff the shoe-tops of some bone of  Kimball's neo-conic contention... Dolan, Rense, and Connors the most recent...  Well, as it regards Stanton Friedman?  Kimball couldn't get there in a pissant's shuttle flight... indeed he soils Friedman's coattails as he has arrogantly ridden in on them.  WHO... ...must Mr. Kimball think he is?

A quick read of Kimball's blog entries regarding STF makes them almost antiseptic if a little condescending and inappropriately patronizing.  But really reader, who is Paul Kimball, irrisible elbow-thrower and bumptious nicky new-guy, to be condescending or patronizing to ANYONE in the field... but especially to Stanton Friedman!

Maybe Mr. Friedman can have a chuckle at his own expense.  Maybe Mr. Friedman can let Kimball's very stealthy disrespect ape water-drops (which is being charitable) off a duck's back.  Maybe Mr. Friedman can just consider the source and elect to move on to embrace the future...  ...But damn it, reader, it puts a knot in this writer's tail, and otherwise chaps this writer's ass... and no healing lotion or the contact of Mr. Kimball's healing lips to the source of  this writer's irritation will provide the required relief.  The arrogance, the pompousness (...eclipsing any this writer is accused to have...), the fester of egotism and conceit... astonishing!

Were it me, a man minus the gentility, propriety, and courtesy of Stanton Friedman?  Well, visions of literary head removal occur forthwith... don't they, and as to the neck remaining?  Throw up some quick-walls plus a suck-fan and a porta-potty (tm) readily presents itself. 

Mr. Kimball owes Stanton Friedman an apology, certainly, in my opinion... but I won't hold my breath for same.

In a recent public conversation between "R-cubed" and Paul Kimball, Kimball says:

"Er... I agree that Stan isn't a "nitwit," but if he puts forward views that are "nitwitty," and you have identified two, then...

Well, if you are what you eat...

Er... you see what I'm saying."

Oh... yes Mr. Kimball, you are quite clear... quite.


 

The Other Side Of The Truth?

The THIRD "Way"

The whole thing about Paul Kimball's "Third Way" approach to a 'new' ufology, and I'm seeing  it at work over at a third party list, is that the ufological fence-sitters really dig him. You would ask why.

Clearly, Kimball's  "Third Way" is "another way" to further over-complicate an already over-complicated issue with regard to UFOs.  There are more than enough "third ways" in abundance already, frankly.  

In addition to the "No WAY" and the "Extraterrestrial WAY" of Kimball's clichéd proposal there is already the Psycho-social WAY; there is the Extra-dimensional WAY; there is the Extra-temporal WAY; there is the Exo-political WAY; there is the Psychoactive WAY...  ...clearly there is an abundance, a plethora of WAYS.  

Another WAY is undoubtedly a "wrong" WAY... ...at a juncture already in uneasy tumult of *ways*, imo.  On reflection, this may be a part of the suspect design of Kimball's "way."

No, Kimball's "Third Way" is not readily seen as the two steps back and a step to the side I believe it really is.  It is seen, instead, as the very soul of rationality and good sense, and Kimball himself is seen as calmly intelligent and open-minded... feet firmly on the ground. But what ground.  Perhaps a ground that oily communicates what the listener wants to hear?

No, this is a smoke and mirrors illusion, I suspect... a song and dance.  A paternal kiss before the rape?  I believe Kimball uses this seeming rationality to justify right-wing sensibilities, provide support for a lugubrious and complacent homocentricism, and prop up, eventually I suspect, a dodgy personal belief system about "intelligent design" which dove-tails neatly into the comforting and reassuring homocentric paradigm mentioned earlier. The universe is designed to facilitate and nurture human beings?  What insipid and pompous arrogance to suspect that, and act like it... even it it were true (...which it is most likely not.).

Moreover, his unctuous comparison of a new "Third Way" ufology as successful in its way as Blair and Clinton's political success is as dangerous as it is ludicrous.  B & C co-opted Thatcher's and Reagan's egregious political philosophies for a successful new 'Demo/Republicanism' ripped off the Republican agenda for a *success* of sorts for the Democratic party.  This scurrilous "real-politic" maneuver smacks of everything I detest about Blair and Clinton, people who sell out their ideals for an illusion of success when it was not really a success at all, it is only becoming the opposition, really, as a kind of an opposition-lite.

Sure, you're in 'office', but you had to become what you detest to do it.  That's why Clinton can be called the best Republican President in the last 150 years (the real reason the right hates him)... but what was the price in Healthcare, Environment, Corporate Responsibility, Infrastructure, Global Collegiality and Education?  You don't overcome a philosophical enemy by becoming the philosophical enemy.  You may have 'won', true, but you are no 'success.'  You're 'side' still lost, really, get it?

Brilliance!  See -- in order to 'beat' Klass, Kurtz, and Randi... you become Klass, Kurtz, and Randi... isn't that... neat?  And when you become your enemy, you no longer have an enemy.  As we have all seen you no longer have friends either.  You're either a "suck-up" or a "betrayer."  There is no "third way."

Here's something else the innocent but intellectually abused fence-sitters love about Kimball: he puts them (humanity in the aggregate!) back in 'charge' of the ufological 'game'.  He couches his 'revelation' in new definitions, delineations, and denunciations in his "third way" which brings the level of debate back to the decades old, and very tedious level of 'plausible deniability'.  ...That it is still very, very possible, boys and girls... that UFOs... may not... exist at all!  Everybody feels better!

"There is no 'proof', you know, even as there may be some evidence for a ufological reality."  I paraphrase.

"Mind you, UFOs and aliens might exist, but no proof has been uncovered in over 50 years that this is so..." I paraphrase.

"We are the only *proof* of intelligence in the whole of the universe..."  I paraphrase.

This is really hiding in plain sight, isn't it?  What better person to signal the approaching death knell of ufology than one posing as an open-minded investigator and proponent within it?  Moreover, it plants the seed of increased doubt in the minds of the abused, betrayed, and otherwise distracted ufological hoi polloi... with regard to UFOs. Kimball orchestrates humanity back into an intellectual driver's seat of homocentricity and comforting denial... denial of that which the hoi polloi have never been... allowed... to understand to begin with, and in the first place, reader!  He allows the fence-sitter to reassert her beat-up and fearful sensibilities,  sensibilities previously gaining protective psychological calluses regarding UFOs in an increasingly unflinching look at them... ...back to an imagined Aristotelian centrality where those calluses can be made smooth again.  Two steps back.

Here's the step to the side.  It is as a result of Kimball's "new way", not a "third way", to be a "pelicanist', flatly -- which is to say... Kimball is a Post-pelicanist!  A skeptibunky of a different color.  A stealth "avian"!  Kimball is not remotely interested in a "Third Way" to be a UFO truthseeker... his way is only a  "New Way" to push UFOs back, imo. It is a "new way" to make UFOs go away, and that's a 'klasskurtxian' way.  Pure and  simple?  Hey -- it worked for Clinton and Blair!

Did it?  Did it really?

No, first we must get passed the level of the remotest denial in a discussion of UFOs, as the denial of UFOs can not have the remotest validity given the work, research, and tight explication  of a host of quality ufologists and researchers and the obvious inability of an opposition to discredit them!  We must admit to the huge volume (Six levels!) of evidence that exists regarding the ufologial reality extant (handily destroying every effort to make UFOs 'disappear' over many years)!  

We must demand government forthcoming-ness with regard to funded and open investigations, investigations both international and
cross-cultural in scope (and corporate scofflaws can pay for it!)!

We must face our well facilitated crippling fear cultivated by those unwilling to cop to UFOs... (Kimball et al) step to, and embrace, the future, and not step back to a past that only existed in Mr. Kimball's spotty imagination and dodgy politics anyway.

Kimball's "Third Way," is but a "new way" to lie to ourselves, reader.  It's self-facilitating feel-good fantasy regarding ones sense of self-importance regarding ones sense of cosmic supremacy.

It's the "Other Side of the Truth," which can only be... think about it... untruth. The truth is the truth as plain as a sun coming up in the morning, and there is no other side of that.  Only night remains... Don't make too much of the metaphor.

In this case it is more a tedious and tired continuance of a discredited and insentient prosecution... as that pertains to flawed and baseless homocentricities including other immature, un-brave, and unbalanced intellectual dodges, only.  It is a "wrong way" leading to a path with a negative inclination downward and away from the truth about UFOs, I suspect.  

It would seem as simple and as natural as a dose of common sense. We won't be facilitating truth by co-opting the best parts of an un-truth. We won't overcome an opposition by becoming the opposition... ...That approach or attitude has very nearly destroyed the Democratic Party in America, and hazards America itself I should think...

 It would do no less for Ufology.

No, Sir -- you did not. You cribbed back and tried to avoid the responsibility for being deliberately insulting, only. Moreover, the single thing you do make clear is your own self-fulfilling cant, obvious bias, and the beveled edge on your own pompous sensibilities. Sincerely, a man who won't stand up for the consequences of his own actions is snot on a door-knob, Sir, forgetting the only clarity you facilitate is the murk that you would only assume to be clarity. No points for cut and run duplicity.  Additionally, you bring a knife to a gunfight.

I suppose you can only imagine, then, how you must appear to me... mired in outdated conservatisms, filled with outmoded criticisms, and a little too impressed with your own fraying convictions... made irrationally jingoistic by same and so then guilty of what you would accuse.  He who would point and laugh is himself an object of, well... more pity than laughter.

You are of course entitled to your opinion, Sir, without regard to how reactionary, unthinking, and flawed that position might be. I suspect that it is rejectable, out of hand, and singularly unintelligent.  You are most likely not the person to speculate competently on the state or quality of my mental health... as I've reminded you before.

One man's "crankish ad hominem" is another man's impassioned critique on method, intent, and motivation, Sir. Moreover, the first refuge of a scoundrel, I've found, is to whine plaintively about personal attack only because immediate and inappropriate agreement with what was proffered... is not forthcoming. Kimball's philosophy (ordinarily I'd have just said Kimball) is a shill for inappropriate hero worship and right wing sociopathy, in my opinion, and he would have to climb the proverbial pissant's stepladder to butt-surf a shammi across Dolan's boot top. That's my opinion, and unlike the "Kimball" you support (with some suspect totality, I add) subject to change with new info. Oh, and you've yet to see "crankish" Sir.

I'd support your right to think so to the death, Sir, even if it is spotty thinking piled into the first abutment that it tried to navigate, its pompous reliance on complementary (if hideously ill applied) quotation, and your skewed interpretation of convenient "rationality". Kimball, in my opinion, is a talented and educated self-infatuation who is trying to make a name for himself in the UFO community by way of the express line and is characteristically unmindful of whose face he has to step on to accomplish same. I suspect he's going to pull back a nub here shortly... But that's just ~my~ take on it.

Have it your own way, Sir. I'm sure Pol Pot had a position he would have described as his side of the story, if you'll forgive this monstrous hyperbole, but I don't care to keep up with it. Would you?  Kimball's self-satisfied sociopathy, self-involved and over-canted conservatism, and his self-interested and egotistical bad manners... complicated by his character attacks and portentous consummation of self ... makes anything else he might have to say beyond moot, and of singular disinterest to me.  I suspect that particular disinterest will be a rising tide.

Do you hear what you're saying? Again, Do you hear what you're saying? Hey -- pardon my French/Canadian... but Kimball, forgetting the horse he's galloped in on, can bite my fat one. Dig?

The problem is not just "lists like that"... ...it is ~people~ who generate "lists like that". Yes, I suspect Kimball is one who provokes or even manufactures "lists like that" -- as a result, Kimball is on the only "list" that matters to me, my own. You see?

That's the larger problem between Rense and Kimball... I suspect...Rense is diametrically opposed to "lists like that"... in comparison and by way illustration, another hyperbole? It's Kimball that is the propagandizing Nazi in this little teapot tempest, not Rense, ironically enough.

Oh -- and "ufoology" is your own little projection and popular only with a dwindling population of insipient piss-wits.  It's ufology, Sir, and you do well to get it right.

I maintain that answers to criticisms were abundantly forthcoming, Sir. You just refused them as answers, and so invalidated them. That's not the same thing as the discourse that you would otherwise seem to champion. And, additionally, not very impressive in your own right, either.

http://www.rense.com/general62/cnn.htm

See? Right here... Flowery? OK...

...but a floweriness that reads to the period, a floweriness without a head up and locked where the sun doesn't shine... a floweriness with a degree of cautious consistency willing to stand for honored and honorable friends. I read the piece... then I read the appended commentary... Yes, Sir. This ~is~ a site where I'd have my "flowery musings" published! Really, Mr. A., is this the foot for which you would open your mouth, insert same , and then echo internationally?

...And I couldn't agree more.

All through history, ~you've~ been the guy who shot the piano player, killed the messenger, and beheaded the envoy, aren't you? Proud? What pompous idiocy. 

There are many more than that. Maybe you should take a lesson? Moreover, I'm a Jew booster who isn't even Jewish. Imagine that!

Yes -- courage, intellectual honesty, and outraged passion, too. You seem bereft of all but a snide smattering of the last one.

Moderate Democrat? ...Too little too late then... you might as well have voted for him. "Moderate" does not remotely counter the rabid fundamentalism of the current illegitimate administration, Sir. Along with Kimball, who really only appeals to the ideologue in you I suspect, you're plainly part of the problem only pretending a distracted interest in the solution. Be ashamed.

For my money it's you in your own self-described "looney land", Sir... a world of sneering smirks and faux-fidelity masquerading as faint progressivism and hardnosed objectivity...

Know what? You prop up your own crumbling sensibilities with mooky criticisms of those better than yourself, and all of that is to maintain an illusion of control you've cultivated in the disintegrating prerogatives of a world you thought you had dominion over, and so eschewed the stewardship which never really existed for you, anyway. You don't respect what should be respected, good and environment, and continue the fantasy of collegiality you won't honor if it diverges from where you think it ought to go. Frankly, you're a fraud (imo), and everything you think you know is a spun distortion of the way you only think it really is. That's what I suspect. Happy?

Me too... but I deal with it. You hide from it, and only think you're not.

Right -- Kimball wants his Dolan or his Rense... I'm looking forward to their first debate. Thing is? Kimball can't really talk to anybody who won't drink the kool-aid or defer to his incisive "genius". Flatly, Dolan would cut him to pieces.  Like Friedman did to McGaha... slice, dice, and parse, I suspect.

Yeah -- stop listening to Bill O'Rielly, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Weiner and read some Bill Moyers, Michael Parenti and Noam Chomsky. I'm a combat veteran, a retired Army officer, a certified school teacher, an intelligent (mature) patriot, and a former cub-scout ("...been to a world's fair, two rodeos, and a goat rope...son"!)... and I know that America is not entirely blameless in the current state of world affairs. When we point a finger anywhere in the world there are three fingers and a thumb pointing back at ~us~, boyo.

No thing is above criticism, Sir. Not Israel, not the US, not the Church, not you, not me, not Kimball. Enjoy this free society while it is still here to be enjoyed.

...Rather conveniently, then, and with some degree of satisfaction? I ~spit~ on the 'mainstream press'... as should you.
 

Don't bother... I suspect your mind is already made up. Continue to enjoy the rigid inflexibilities of your world view while you still can. I would aspire to the original, Sir, but do go ahead with the pursuits of the conflicted anti-hero worshiper.

You 'know', huh? LOL! I'm not remotely interested in fulfilling your narrow little requirements for credibility, Sir. And would not be in any way impressed or gratified if I had them. People who would drink the kool-aid are ~singularly~ unimpressive to me. I am decidedly unwounded by your estimation... such as it is. Whiney, credulous in its own right, and pointedly (if pointlessly) insulting.

And I think you let a person piss on your leg and accept it when they tell you that it's raining. Your posts, to me, seem to be an injudicious whine, only.  Moreover, I'm not improved by the assessment of a conflicted churl, even if you are.

You should speak only for yourself more. Your presumptions are as bad as your sense of fairness... but slightly better than your impertinent manners.

Yeah -- yeah... sure -- sure. [Yawn.] You, on the other hand, like the taste of the kool-aid, eh?  You'd suggest *what* for a quality news source, Brit Hume... Rushie?  Simple Scotty?

No -- ~you~ read it. It means 'something' to you. All I see is one guy stepping on another guy's face for personal advantage and the advancement of the prosecution of a canted agenda. I'd rather watch O'Really or listen to Limbaugh.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about here, do you. You don't know details, haven't talked to the principals, haven't seen what's gone before. But like a piqued infant you'll whine at me your shallow spotty conjectures, explicate your tediously contrived  convictions, and blather your personally revolting fables... the first is embarrassing, the second is boring, and the third is just pathetic. Who has time. eh? You apparently.

I suggest we refrain from the aggregate communicational intercourse in the future... wouldn't you agree? For my part, you've made your position... such as it is, abundantly clear... I've nothing further to say to you...

Nes't ce pas?

You squeezed this out with malice aforethought, A. As a consequence, I'm not all that interested in carrying on further conversation with you in any forum, Sir, as it cuts to much into my Rense boosting and my unending search for archaic words.

Suffice to say I know where you're coming, have spoken in defense of same... and the best we can seem to hope for is agreed disagreement. Now sincerely, piss-off... you made your case. I think it's crap. I made my case. You think it's crap. Your insults and innuendos are as tedious as your anxious sensibilities... Sir... actually beneath concern, consideration and contempt.

There you have it.

Microcosm not Macrocosm?

They Fail...

Roswell is revisited, yet again. Et tu Brute'?

I think what I find most personally offensive about the Roswell 'tree' being shaken further is the fallaciously stretched and unjust satisfactions of the ardent skeptibunky/pelicanist/post-pelicanist types. Their smiling satisfaction, such as it is forecast and already demonstrates itself to be, is wholly undeserved.

It's revolting that these same Klasskurtzian ideologues might draw a deeper more self-satisfied breath for any reason, but as a result of alleged "E?H" disqualifications for Roswell, or that Roswell might (at last!) be shown to have a prosaic (even if horrific) explanation... is simply intolerable.

To spin you up, reader, a respected researcher Nick Redfern will suggest same in his upcoming book. Moreover, Redfern can be heard on Jeff's program just a few nights ago... (21 June 2005).

Back at the ranch, I resent, further, that the aforementioned persons would even falsely perceive a little more hydrogen in their otherwise disintegrating balloon, a balloon of abject ufological denialism of the first wash. Plainly, I take exception, finally, that they feel even ~remotely~ validated in the continuing prosecution of their senseless negativity regarding what is otherwise the ufologically obvious.

Verily, they must facilitate to avoid the freaking point ...once again! To what end, one is compelled to wonder.

And, they only prop up their cloyingly dismissive ufological insouciance while they blithely continue their reversing back-step to sooth cotton candy paradigms... paradigms where they are the masters of all that we survey; that they are the dominators of same; that they are a jewel in some deity's inviolate crown... No, no, and no.

These are attitudes easily washed away in the first tidal wave, buried in the wave's causing earthquake, or obliterated with the first surprise asteroid strike. They fail.

Why does a Roswell redux upset me... and maybe you? Because it's a waste of everybody's time, I believe. It will be used to qualify a retreat from the inevitable. It uses conveniently applied logic to eradicate logic, intimates fallacy for more plausible reality... uses a metaphorical ufological democracy to hinder that self-same democracy. Justice is not served.

Listening closely, one can begin to hear the faux-victory chanters wheeze their tiny little sighs of sophistic satisfaction as they return, renewed, to the role of "foul beast" lurching off to CSICOPia to be reborn. On popular UFO lists noted 'skeptic' John Harney was one of the first emboldened to that pompous lurching. John Rimmer follows the very next day in his usual, knowingly lugubrious, manner. Others quickly to natter in?

Can you hear them smirk as they distorted; do you sense them sneer as they cherry-pick; Can you perceive in your mind's eye their snickers as they fraudulently lecture their unbrave retro-isms? Oh yes, these intellectual cowards smell a new validation for their tedious progression hating paradigms. They rejoice! Mr. Harney and Mr. Rimmer are only a beginning. They will fail.

This is said with all admiration for and appropriate respect to Mr. Redfern, who has gone some distance, ufologically, without disgrace on that paranormal path, a path fraught with all manner of opportunity for said disgrace. His arrows have flown with a minimal divergence from true, it would seem, and those arrows stick in the target with an efficacious tenacity which seems wholly justified. Whatever he has to say on the subject is worth having a look at... however he shakes it down. That's more than fair, and I believe Mr. Redfern aspires to same.

The truth about Roswell is, of course, paramount; however... only if it is the truth and not the current denialist's ufological sex-toy for the "R-Cubed" individuals alluded to above. The truth has no agenda. That's the province of a lie, even if just one of omission.

The "Cubers" first instinct, remember, is to use the resultant flap to discredit this ufological microcosm of Roswell... but as a fallacious mechanism to destroy even unrelated ufological macrocosms elsewhere! That's the quick and dirty on their devise.

They're not remotely interested in the truth! Their only interest is to keep the status-quo rewarding them as turgidly vital as they can... for as long as they can... and accomplish same in any manner that they have to. It's what they do. Inevitably, they fail. Over an over again, they fail. UFOs refuse to go away.

As has been pointed out, Roswell... despite all the high strangeness surrounding it (...and perhaps even because of same!)... ...is just not that important in the grand ufological design, good reader! It follows, then, that one can safely refrain from discounting the whole of that grand ufological design as a result of any one aspect of that design... especially Roswell, ~most~ especially Roswell given what may be the ultimate truth about Roswell... as repugnantly repellant and off topic as that subject's likely to be... ...it won't matter... sincerely!

...Real truths have a way of leading to other real truths. I'm ecstatic finding them myself however they might make themselves available to me, because of exactly that. I'll take them as I find them and find them acceptable, or not... however uncomfortable they are. Reality is preferable in the long-run even as the phony-baloney one is missed for a time...

That was the theme of those Matrix movies wasn't it? Those movies struck an enduring chord for some freaking reason.

Returning to track, has it ever occurred to the reader that Roswell has been cultivated for ~years~ as a device to keep the "credulity line" regarding UFOs as indistinct as possible? See, if 'indisputable' evidence is uncovered that Roswell was nothing more than monkeys flying footballs, or disabled Japanese children in dangerous high altitude balloon tests... (good ...God!)... it shall not diminish a pool of data and evidence regarding UFOs that remains six levels deep, is thousands of years long, and has collected such an evidential weight and girth of reality changing propensity that its debated actuality becomes wholly and obscenely ludicrous... ...and, I suspect, a psychotic exercise of less than sane illegitimate power-holders in the confines of a lunatic asylum they have taken over, furiously pointing out and away from themselves the examples of the madness that they themselves are most afflicted by, frankly. I digress.

A prosaic Roswell does not make UFOs go away, by any measurable means, reader-sitting-on-the-fense-wrongly-believing-that-there- remains-a-plausible-deniability-with-regard-to-...True UFOs... there is none. UFOs are, indeed, real. Of this there is no rational doubt. There are hosts of quality citation for that statement, reader.

Moreover, this is forgetting that a well respected and honorable Mr. Redfern may yet be found in arrears! Yea and verily, if Stanton Friedman can be proclaimed to have Roswell wrong (and that jury might very likely hang after it was out for years) then no less can be meted out to Mr. Redfern as the days and months spin on out. Nes't ce pas? Paramount in all our minds is the truth, isn't it?

Well, no, frankly. Noted ufologist Jerry Clark recently points out that the behaviors and methods of a contingent of the ufological community diverges considerably from that!

Is anyone with a degree of open-mindedness remotely surprised?

Indeed, the first salvo of response from this "R - Cubed" contingent are only the predicted snickers, smirks, and sneers of obligatory partisanship. "Wait and See" is largely abandoned in a rush to agree with each other and score the first points in the game of pressure seal refurbishment that they would play. They fail.

Their seals continue to pop around them like condoms apparently sent to third world countries. They know this to be true even as they don't accept it or remotely acknowledge it.

Their cabin pressures dwindle regardless. They begin to gasp for breath. Their status quo betrays them at last. Their retreating paradigms are a momentary aberration of their own hubris, and the gods they manufacture to do their bidding —which only serve them in the short run— then fail. Even as these would deign to drag the rest of us into self-centered complacency, intellectual cowardice, moral injustice, and blighted sensibility, they fail.

Contrarily, we'd do well to agitate for truth, reader, despite its inconvenience; however uncomfortable it might be; embrace it in relieved acceptance. UFOs remain real, realer that we'd want them to be, perhaps, but preferable to any antithesis so far provided because the antithesis themselves are so occluded, so contrived, and so intellectually lacking. They fail.

Soon they will make 'the' straw-breaking failure, and the slide to truth will become inexorable. This latest Roswell redux, as off topic as it appears to be, could be just the thing to get that slide started. Truth is grease. Any truth. I remain optimistic.

The summer remains the wild ufological ride I predicted it to be, no credit to me. I just have eyes to see, ears with which to hear, and an internet to whisper it in ~your~ ear, if you let me.

Buyer Beware?

There are regressive barbarians at the gates. These hide among us
like 'sheep' in 'wolves' clothing... that's right.

These suspiciously parochial little bloggers are employing an
interesting if dismaying mechanism in their self-styled and
mal-employed ufological blogs.  They are excising, rewriting,
editing, or otherwise changing their very histories and making it up
as they go along... just like the corrupted mainstream they would
pretend to 'replace'.

Like nascent new media literary hit teams, a vocal minority of these
'blogs' ooze forth to prosecute the skeptibunky case of yester-year,
furiously spinning the ufological reality extant in a cowardly
attempt to reduce the level of its debate once again.  Their goal is
to re-achieve an old, outdated, and tediously outrageous level of
discussion re-discussing the discredited possibility... that UFOs are
likely something safely prosaic and certainly other than evidence
of some significant alternative (off-planet?) intelligence.

In pursuit of this ignoble, complacent, and self-involved activity
these bloggers perform their willful distortions, employ disingenuous
techniques, and their regard for fundamental ethics apes the
seriously compromised, at best.  As these referenced bloggers would
pretend to describe the cutting edge of your previously mentioned
ufological reality, reader, it might be useful to the fence-sitter to
have this behavior highlighted from time to time for a different
point of view...

I'm one of the minor players lately 'targeted' so the reader can see
what awaits them when they refuse to fall in line with even a
reasonable sounding authoritarianism or "group" think.  I'm just the
guy lately in the way... on their way to you, reader... when you
question their "conventional wisdom", express your own thinking, or
protest your own grievance if wronged by them.

What follows is an example of a rational grievance made upon a rather
clear-cut example of personal character assassination on one of these
blogs, subsequently excised from the blog later... even as the
protested smear remained. In the traditional manner I am accused of
affecting?  I would demand satisfaction, Sir and Madam.  Remember,
reader, this is not private mail, it is from a very public blog, just
excised or edited away ... for some reason...

Arrrr, me hearties...
_________________________

"R" Cubed writes:

"Alfred Lehmberg, the mad poet of ufology, is incensed by UFO blogs,
especially those by 'young turks' as he calls those who take views
diametric from the UFO canon."

I respond:

As could be predicted you've missed the barn's broad side by the
obligatory parsec.  My concern with "young turks" is drawn from the
suspect consternation they must generate prosecuting their identity's
decidedly flaccid 'superiority', or just how furiously industrious
they're willing to be, how many more worthy faces they're willing to
step on, in trying to push their pathetic little nuts away from a
parent tree.

Secondly - in this "nut-pushing" exercise one detects the stench of
the tactics used in the denialist's camp, unfortunately.  That is to
say there seems to be an inordinate amount of reactionary (and
contrived) debunkery. There are character attacks on the more
progressive opposition.  Regressive nit-picking is prosecuted to
obfuscate the reality these same "young turks" would pretend to admit
to - but must seem to erode at every turn, regardless... UFOs are
real.

Lastly - the spirit and intent of the appellation "mad" as used above
shall not add up to an 'endearment' you'll pretend later, or even an
affectation that is remotely positive. You insinuate mad-'ness',
Sirs!

You indicate pathology, dangerous (or ignorable) psychosis... the
third triad in the "M" cubed trilogy: Misinformed, Misinforming...
and Mentally ill? That last is suggested to busily facilitate the
first two... so you neatly have your oppositional snake eating its
tail.  Shame on you.

Hardly new behaviors, or even very skillfully applied... klass-less
to klass-lite, actually.

Forget that your psychological supposition is a thin film of hammered
fecal matter, that you're not remotely competent to make the
psychotic call you intimate (all you capering lieutenants... even in
an artistic sense), and that all of this occurs anyway because your
motives are every bit of some suspect duplicity cultivated for the
purposes which seem entirely too clear to a practiced observer of
same. You don't shoot straight, Sirs, collectively or apart.

I perceive you as fatuous post-pelicanists... intellectual cowards of
a devolved 'feather'... reflexively craven denialists. Unbrave
negativists.

Verily, that's the root sum of the opposition against you at this
point. You're a coven of bottom fanners, in the end, and the only use
you can ever really have is to sharpen the blades of an opposition
you must detest, collectively, because they refuse to congratulate
you on the production of your insipid ufological intransigence and
conflicted negativity.

______________________________________________
In the following, their insipidly sneering and belligerent response
to the above is interspaced with my, once published, comments... to
save time... "R" Cubed is in quotes:
______________________________________________

"Maybe we meant "mad' in the sense of "angry" because you are one
hot-headed, stupid dude."

Lehmberg:  Stupid, my young friend, is bluster instead of appropriate
attention, attacks before understanding, and arrogant pride in the
place of minimal experience.  As to "hot headed"?  Well, honey-bumps,
that's the prepubescent pot calling the kettle black.  Oh... and on
the subject of "we": that's just a few whining mice in an over-starched shirt

pocket.  ...No need to be so filled with yourself.  You don't remotely earn it.

"Even EBK, during your last call to SDI, asked what the hell you were
talking about."

Lehmberg:  Yes -- he did.  It remains I was able to tell him, and
that I have an on-going invitation as a contributor to that
program... which is a little like saying, "Hi, I'm Chevy Chase... and
you're not."  Oh and by the way... wasn't UpDates "too lame to listen
to"?  ...You are a maze of childish infidelities and foolish
inconsistencies, aren't you?

"You think we're not being paid attention to? You, sir, are not even
on the map with the UFO community, accept for a few drunks and one
crazed experiencer."

Lehmberg:  Stunning pomposity! I think you're an amusing flavor of
the moment, provoke interest because you irritate (somewhat) the big
guns, and some people are amused by your intransigent and insentient
bottom fanning.  As to me, and as I have said before, the only map I
have to be on is my own.  A few Drunks (?) and one "crazed
experiencer" (?) are
abundance enough.  Sincerely. [g].

"No one reads your dreck. It's grammatical errant, and spellings are
atrocious."

Lehmberg:  There are enough reading me to satisfy me, young Sir; it
remains that there won't be enough reading you to satisfy you, and,
as regards that paucity?  ...Not for too much longer, either, I
suspect.  Oh -- and didn't you mean "grammatically" above?

"You, sir, are ill-educated."

Lehmberg:  Rofl!  Was that supposed to hurt?  But, educated enough...
enough to graduate Summa from an accredited university and then  run
tight effortless little circles around you at any rate... but that's
more indictment than comparison.  Your reactions speak louder than
your 'words' (such as they've been), which have been juvenilely
drawn, badly considered, and very inappropriately and pompously
expressed, not to put too fine a point on it.  This likely accounts
for Mr. Reynolds heavy editing of you, don't you think?

"You use the language as a club, refusing its nuances and meanings as
if you are really nuts."

Lehmberg:  ...Which really rather dovetails into my contention that
you used the expression "mad" just the way I said you did, doesn't
it?  This is forgetting, of course, that your preceding sentence was
actually pretty senseless.  Nes't ce pas?

"Don't ask UpDaters what they think of you. Otherwise you'd have to
go off and kill yourself, you're so out of the UFO loop."

Lehmberg:  May be... but not because ~you~ put me there, little
buddy.  Whatever I am to 'ufology'...(and, outside of keenly
interested, I really don't know myself) it won't be "R" cubed
excluding ~or~ including me.  Suffice to say that I'm far from
'suicide', remarkably unconcerned what others (post-pelicanists like
yourself?) think of me, and, apparently, unlike you, comfortable
enough in my own skin to continue to contribute in the way that I
would continue to contribute, regardless of the pathetically porcine
and gerrymandered 'assessments' of persons such as yourself... but
thanks.  I'll shove a peacock feather in me bum and prance the
fandango on this stage if it suits me.  My sincerity sustains me.
[g].

"Take it easy. I don't give a care what you think or say."

Lehmberg:  Now -- if that was entirely true you wouldn't be reading
this ~now~, would you.  Busted!

"That Rich likes you baffles all the rest of us at the RRRGroup."

Lehmberg:  Assuming this to be true, which seems really rather
doubtful, you might have taken a lesson.  Oh, and I suspect that much
of the rest of you at "R" cubed are, actually, (if you are a
representative sample?) pretty easily baffled, but that's just me.

Lehmberg:  I trust that enough of the words were spelled correctly
and the grammar was sufficiently adequate for you to draw ~some~
meaning from it?  Rofl!

______________________________________________
A few hours later I thought it necessary to append the
following, also later excised, to the "R" Cubed blog:
______________________________________________

Oh -- and as long as I'm thinking about it... I've got another
conceptual bone to pick with you guys, might as well get into it
now... I mean you poke a guy with a stick and you've got to expect to
pull back a nub once in a while, eh...?

It's what has bothered me from the beginning of your little "R" cubed
group of capering bridge-trolls stealthily campaigning its fraud of
anti-ufologicalism... ...to wit!  ...As that is what I think you
are about... speaking only for myself, now...

It was the reason, on reflection, I passed on Mr. Reynolds early
invitation to be a regular here at the "R" cubed blog... even as I
encouraged him after he was roundly and deservedly 'mooked' over at
UFO UpDates for not getting peer qualification regarding his
incessant gnawing at adequately vetted ufological supports.  Loyalty
must have a corrupted definition in the corporate milieu...

He never got it.  He thought he should be congratulated for what he
was taking for his own 'original' thinking, when what it really was
was a thoughtless regurgitation of canted bias from a host of
pelicanists and klasskurtxians gone before him.  Wages of the Nicky
Newguy.

"R" Cubed is flawed, flatly.  It is flawed because it is cloaked in a
mantle of irresponsibility, insincerity, and retro-gradation. Here's
how that works.

"R" Cubed has assumed an insidious corporate ethic that limits
individual responsibility, in your group, the same way a corporation
limits its responsibility.  Nobody is guilty when everybody is!  No
one is singled out for 'jail' time. No one is fined.  No one is held
'responsible'.

Corporations are really a blight on this planet, you know that?  I
digress.

In this 'corporate' way you can tell untruths and make distortions,
reporting same in a public forum... and then take the position that
it was an 'error' and that it was being taken care of internally...
("awww... it was just one of the kids feeling a little exuberant,
Alfred," you said, and I paraphrase, while advising me "privately"
that I had a "reputation for abandoning (betraying!) my friends" and
that I was a bully too quick to anger, according to the massive
E-mail you were getting on the subject of an errant "Alfred
Lehmberg"... a ludicrous, and insidiously manipulating  report Mr.
Reynolds).  ...Seems something less than sincere...

You failed, frankly.  You only pissed me off.  I'm not the only one,
am I.

Lately, you stealthily raise the subject of my very sanity... now
there's a piece of work.  Good show!

Your group is a negativist octopus of corporate insincerity then (I
mean, you must all ~know~ you don't really know what the hell you're
talking about...) that would pretend to single out the "bully" in
their hijacked community (me!) like they thought they could make the
call... when it becomes plain the opposite must be true!  Sometimes,
boys, it is the bully itself who would pretend to point the
faux-bully out! I think you're busted right here!

What's your function over here but the prosecution of your meager
anti-ufological cases like a small school of intellectually pubescent
piranhas, a tiny school of bullies whining when they get fried up
occasionally and moaning about how nasty everything had gotten when
they themselves are the genesis or provenance of every bit of that
nastiness.

Sincerely, Errol Bruce-Knapp knew full well, I suspect, what I was
talking about the last time I was on the show, he just refrained from
getting into it.

...It was ~this~ subject good Sirs, and I'm not done prosecuting it
by a long shot.

You are a disservice, I believe, to aggregate truth-seeking. I'm
compelled to say so, and point a hard finger of my own.

You are not, I suspect, what you pretend to be... that is: a balanced
activity of centrist rationality and intrepid cognition.  I suspect
you are the bald antithesis of that.  Indeed, pathetic nut-pushers,
retro-thinkers, and impertinent face- steppers.  I'm being kind, but
there is your retrograde.

Consequences...

Created by you, et al, I am your philosophical enemy, now, as it
happens (Good work!), and will be on the look-out for your
inconsistencies, infidelities, and general incongruities. I will
report same, as it suits me.

Please keep an eye for mine.
I'm improved with the activity;
You, on the other, looser hand,
Are hulled below the water line.

...Grammar adequate?  ...Spelling acceptable?   ..."Mad" enough for
you?

Wait...

Gullible genius or rapacious fathead?

Jeff Rense Attacked, A Redux!


I am personally affronted, lately, by the exceptionally noisome conceits of eager proponents for a suspect and particularly odious ...~group-think~... and from erstwhile persons who would pretend to do good, ostensibly, too.  These are the worse kind, eh reader?

These persons contrive to compel me, once again, to defend the honor, intelligence, reputation, activities, intentions and contributions of Jeff Rense at Rense.com and the Jeff Rense Program... against altogether scurrilous attacks from mal-informed reactionaries and
their capering lieutenants. These would provoke me into a ~seeming~ defense of racism, intolerance, and bigotry when nothing could be further from the truth.  It's what they do...

This latest contrived or suspiciously generated teapot tempest is the broad side of the barn knowingly missed by an intentional parsec, friend and reader.  Your best interests are not taken to heart. Selfish ideologues indulge themselves at your expense.  Your freedom
~further~ erodes.  Persons who "know better" would shove cotton balls into your ears, restrict information you want to decide about yourself... relieve you of the "burden" of manipulating your own cotton, making your own decisions... living your own life.  Taking your own responsibility...  Enjoying informed consent regarding what goes on around ~you~...

Less than perspicacious persons provoked to beat this periodic and previously defeated, if insistent, drum: That Jeff Rense facilitates all the more popular fringe interests only to provide a "gateway" for his real agenda which is... (wait for it...) ...Jew extermination,  homosexual persecution and eradication, and other
culturally imposed hot-button abominations of singular atrocity straining credulity... great suffering ZOT, reader!

Ironically, as it seems to invariably happen, these aforementioned persons (these Rensewatchers!) end up actually facilitating the more real enemy (themselves) by ignoring or distracting from that which ultimately threatens the very freedoms these same persons would
pretend to champion... (!) ...cogent warnings regarding our eroding freedoms one will frequently read ~only~ as a result of the exhausting effort provided by an increasingly rare breed of persons... like Jeff Rense, as it happens.  That's an irony you can't cut with a dull knife, reader.

Among those dwindling freedoms just mentioned insinuates a creeping theocracy, unrestricted corporatism, bald tyranny, blooming fascism,
an unsettling Zionism, cultural down-dumbing, technological intrusion, illegitimate government, useless education, cultivated fear, and refined loathing... and nurtured hatred, reader, did I mention the nurtured hatred?

Did Rense create any of these things, foster them, allow them to happen un-chronicled?  Did he refuse to publish dissent, conflicting views, and a diverse commentary.  No, no, no... no, no, and no. Rense's only crime is that he would dare to kick over the rock these things would hide under.  Rense doesn't buy in to the stories he
reports... he exposes them.  Try to see the difference.  In effect, he gives you a taste of cow pox, so you don't get smallpox.  Do you get the drift, reader?  Better the devil you know... ignorance of the devil has never been a defense against him...

Anyway...

Lately there is one of the more  gifted of the aforementioned... duplicitously occluded (imo... you know, the persons who think there is free speech even as they won't allow it to the others they  despise) ...who has weighed in like an avenging stalwart to discredit one of the last few ideologically unfettered  alternative news services remaining on the planet... our Jeff Rense site.  Some mention should be made.

Consequently, I would be remiss in not protesting the appearance of this latest portentous preposterousness in as much as it came about only ~after~ this person had availed himself, fully, of the much appreciated service that Rense could provide for him as a popular platform to shill his later self-discredited video-wares, two rather
neatly done (actually) documentaries about ufological subjects... et al.

Moreover, now we are to believe that this Canadian Mountie, "scientific historian," erudite scholar, barrister, ufological bon-vivant, and ultra-informed raconteur/filmmaker/literary genius had no idea (McCauley Culkin slaps hands to face!) with regard to
what our Mr. Rense was "all about."  Sakes and little sputniks!

Rense must be one insidious scion of perfidy to have taken in, so readily, a "double barreled" lawman, "supremely educated" film-man, and "erudite" historian... but it all sounds a little too convenient to this writer.  Too much sound and fury, shock and awe, and pomp and circumstance to be truly genuine in my estimation. There is another agenda, is my suspicion...

He didn't check on one of the most visible web-sites existing on the freaking net for content before he appeared on it?  Please!  I suspect that socio-political fortunes changed for this newly offended individual (...one who would impose to think for ~you~, reader,
remember...) is all.  Different goals were perceived, perhaps? Different advantages ascertained... mayhap?

This person is now filled with the fires of politely rational outrage and... ever so much... "personal regret" (Crocodile tears streaming!) regarding his appearance on the Rense program (...and his sales largely made anyway...).  To expiate his sin (and throwing a klieg on
himself in the bargain) he has produced one of those charming little attack blogs popping up with such insistent frequency all over the net... to piss all over Jeff Rense's leg with bloated and imbalanced citations, incendiary graphics, and insentient commiseration about
the evil that Jeff Rense does.  All in an attempt, presumably, I would imagine, to unsettle Rense's advertisers, discourage his named guests, and destroy his reputation.  ...Remove him from the history
that Rense has been told by a more genuine historian he ~will~ be a part of?

Paul Kimball's blog "Rensewatch" at
http://www.rensewatch.blogspot.com/  is the charming little activity in question.  It is a largely uncommented collection of odious ground we have all been over before, reader, but that Mr. Kimball must prosecute, I think, in an attempt to elbow his way where his limited vision and shallow conjectures have no business, in this writer's
opinion, with regard to UFOs... like he, of needs, positions himself to be some kind of ufological Sean Hannity as he unwinds his schtick in the shared time stream.  More heat than light; more derisive than
incisive; more negative than positive; it is an ad hominum
masquerading as an explication, a hack-job masquerading as a study, and a smear masquerading as concerned opinion, imo.  An ardent if graceful neocon, I speculate, he practices the methods of that ilk to perfidious perfection; it seems so to me.

I won't waste time defending Jeff in a line by line dismissal of Mr. Kimball's noxious, tediously obvious, and self-aggrandizing writing style.  I have abundant confidence, myself, that if Jeff Rense was remotely the kind of person that Kimball would make him out to be:
a nut-case facilitator, an anti-Semite, or a homophobe ... Rense would not publish ~me~ or give ~me~ an occasional spot on his international stage because I am (or at least aspire to be) the very ~antithesis~ of those things.

No, Jeff Rense cannot be so easily dismissed as Mr. Kimball would have it.  He is not what Kimball intimates.  He is something altogether different.  Whatever it is it's been efficaciously genuine for almost a decade and should be awarded some kind of endangered species status... similar critters are assuming a mal-adaptation of
"political correctness" and falling into line.  Safe, but worthless with regard to relevancy.

That was worthless, reader.  Worth-less.

"Everything's OK folks, go back into your homes and tune up "Survivor", all's there is to talk about is Michael Jackson, soiled blue dresses, and the Runaway Bride so you won't miss anything... really.  UFOs?  Well they can't really get here from there, can they... and it seems folks involved are either misleading, the misled, or the mentally ill... go pop some corn and watch a few commercials... drop a Zoloft... suck a Nexium"

As to our Mr. Rense?  I have to weigh him with regard to his mainstream opposition (forgetting the occasional bloviated blogger) which is, on balance, something less than forthright, decidedly short on relevance, bereft of integrity, lacking in courage, and a perversion of principled journalistic responsibility and ethics (to
put a ~real~ good point on it).

In as much as there is a "FoxSnooze," a hijacked mainstream, and ...conveniently principled... bloggers, unrestrained, I thank your god of choice that there ~is~ a Mr. Rense.  Better the devil you know about, Good Reader, than the one about which you never heard.  Rense, for my money, is quite a bit better than much of what is purported to be his pompous and ethically superior, and is just the remedy required, good reader, to buffer a hijacked mainstream many seem to begin to recognize.

Now, I'd like to put out the call, and insist to Mr. Rense that he allow it, humility notwitstanding.  If you're a Jew who "gets it", comment so!  If you're gay and see past a  prejudice that is not really there and perceive the ultimate good that Jeff Rense does, append your outrage to the end of this open letter, now.  If you're a truth seeker, appreciate getting ALL the news (Even the stuff that makes you reach for the Maalox), and realize that Jeff Rense is a rare breed we'll all sorely ~miss~ when gone... make your affirmation here, please.  I think that most of us can agree that Jeff Rense is worth saving.  I'm confident that he is; I suspect that you are
confident too.

I've seen us all come to Jeff's defense before.  Yes, it's time to tell another one of them to step off, yet again.  It's what ~we~ do.

Until next time, then.

R.M. Dolan's Work Spuriously Attacked

From Paul Kimball's public Blog at http://redstarfilms.blogspot.com/
regarding Kimball's pan of Rich M. Dolan's "UFOs and the National
Security State"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Richard Dolan is listed as one of Fate magazine's "Top 100"Ufologists
of 2005

(see http://www.fatemag.com/2005_UFOSpecial_Top100.html),

which makes
sense, as one can hardly attend a UFO-related conference these days
without seeing Dolan's name on the speakers list.

Lehmberg:  It may make a damn sight better sense than you allow.  Mr. Dolan has made a substantive contribution to a contentious study that you have failed to remotely match, Mr. Kimball.  Your too airy dismissal that one can't swing a dead cat in ufology without hitting Mr. Dolan is more complement than you can allow. Is it true that those who won't do and haven't can only watch and comment on those who can do and have?

Kimball:  He has, in just a couple of years, appeared in a number of
documentaries (including two of mine), been interviewed on radio and
television, and written a number of articles for various publications
about the UFO phenomenon.

Lehmberg:  Right!  Highly consulted, and by your own admission, oddly, too.  But the reader should be put on notice that these left handed complements (left handed because you employ the right-wing tactic of insulting the foundation of otherwise honorable accomplishments... like the neo-cons did with John Kerry and his Purple Hearts?) are well recognized men of straw, lightly fashioned now to be easily demolished later.  Better the reader should be directed to the contempt you hold for Fate magazine, other documentary makers, conference producers, ufologists and ufology itself.

Kimball:  It is hard to argue with his inclusion on the Fate list,
especially as said list includes Dr. Steven Greer, which is the
equivalent of putting Benedict Arnold on a list of famous American
military leaders, or, in keeping with this week's Star Wars theme,
including Darth Vader on a list of famous Jedi Knights.

Lehmberg:  Poorly slung, and so much insentient, monkey paffle.  You intimate that this is an unclever thing and that the rational wouldn't remotely consider it, when it would be irrational and partisan (no surprise here!) to keep Arnold and Vader off their respective lists.  What are you trying to sell here?  Scientifically, be it good, bad, or ugly or however you would contrive to spin it, Sir -- and I stand what ~I've~ communicated about Dr. Greer... he's a name on the list, and deserves to be there.  As does Mr. Dolan, in spades, and for more efficacious reasons.

Kimball:  To what does Dolan owe this relatively newfound status
within the UFO research field? His credentials as a historian of the
UFO phenomenon, and, in particular, his 2000 book, UFOs and the
National Security State: Chronology of a Cover-Up 1941 - 1973
(Charlottesville, Virginia: Hampton Roads Publishing, Inc., 2002),
which was revised in 2002 (the edition to which I am referring).

Lehmberg:  At this point I take a moment to remind the reader that you take pains to avoid talking about Dr. Vallee's contribution to the new edition of "UFOs and the National Security State," employing the less than honorable debating technique of avoiding facts that won't support your agenda?

Kimball:  His training as a historian is solid -

Lehmberg:  That's absolutely  right and should not be downgraded later to facilitate a crap-wash of canted conjecture masquerading as balanced discourse...

Kimball:  ...he has an undergraduate degree in history from Alfred
University, a small liberal arts college in New York, and a Masters
degree in history from the University of Rochester, where he also
lives and works.

Lehmberg:  ...but like a deacon waving a very faint incense you do exactly that.  I think it's about this point where I'm supposed to ask you if you have no shame.

Kimball:  However, historians are ultimately judged not by their
academic credentials (although these are, as I have argued elsewhere,
an important first step), but by what they do with their training
(ie. the research and writing they undertake).

Lehmberg:  Har!  Sounds like the very soul of sage thinking, a portrait of even-handedness, and the very model of critical rationality... until one remembers that it is only your very personal appeal to an authority you've constructed for your own purposes...
and that it ~might~ be that you won't be the best, most non-partisan, person to pronounce on the literary quality of Dolan's book or even anything written by a baldly (and inappropriately) maligned Jim Marrs.

Kimball:  So - how does Dolan rate as a historian, as judged by UFOs
and the National Security State?  Not very highly, alas.

Lehmberg:  Har!  ...Because ~you~ say so?  Because ~you~ have so intoned?  Because you used the word "alas" (...Like the evil Emperor in Episode IV ) smirking a sarcastic sympathy you in no way feel?

Kimball:  Every historian, at some point or another, will speculate
about something. History is never so tidy as to offer easy answers to
all of one's questions. For example, in the area in which I
specialised while taking Legal History at law school (the Nuremberg
War Crimes Trials), the question of how much Albert Speer actually
knew about the Holocaust remains open to debate, sixty years later,
despite the fact that Speer wrote extensively on the War and his role
in the Nazi regime, and despite the fact that there a number of
excellent biographies about Speer (my answer was that he knew exactly
what was going on, and should have been hanged in 1946, instead of
being sentenced to 20 years at Spandau).

Lehmberg:  You try to introduce apples for oranges here and turn up the kliegs on your own immaterial accomplishments as you do so.  I suspect this corrosive review was a pompous mechanism to do just that, only.  Your law degree, as it turns out, will be the same kind of red herring you bemoan elsewhere regarding the credibility of ufological whistle-blowers based on their military service... being a barrister, Mr. Kimball, will not, all by itself, improve your quality as a ufological commentator.  Would that it could, eh?

Kimball:  The key, however, is to make sure your speculation is
grounded in evidence - that you can offer something to back it up
beyond just saying "well, it could have happened." A historian might
not be able to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt, but he
should be able to show that it was more likely than not that a
certain thing happened.

Lehmberg:  Still -- it does seem to be true that your are, largely, the only person to say that Dolan is essentially guilty of this academic infidelity as you lay it out.  Less biased commentators with more gravitas, experience, and balance are not this offended by
Dolan's professional behavior... Could it be that this is only a devise to expand your own ufological reputation at the thoughtless expense of your ufological betters?

Kimball:  With this in mind, an objective read of UFOs and the
National Security State, on which Dolan's reputation in the UFO field
as a serious researcher is largely based, shows it to be nothing more
than conspiracy theory masquerading as a serious historical study.

Lehmberg:  Some opinions ~are~ like anal pores, it seems.  I would suggest that your reading is entirely subjective, Sir.

Kimball:  Take, for example, Dolan's conclusions about the death of
Captain Edward Ruppelt, which can be found at pp. 236 - 237. Dolan
writes:

"We are to believe that his 'exposure' to the Contactees prompted him publicly to insult Keyhoe, a man whom Ruppelt knew despised the Contactees. The key lies in Ruppelt's 'continuing association' with Blue Book and air force personnel. No doubt, that was a crucial factor. In the context of Ruppelt's recent stance toward the air force on UFOs, his rapid and total conversion, and his death at such a young age, matters ought to look suspicious, particularly in light of the capabilities that existed within the American national security apparatus by this time. Whether he was actually killed, or whether he died from the stress brought on by what he had gone through (the belief of [Frank] Edwards and Keyhoe), there seems little reason to doubt that Ruppelt was coerced." [emphasis in original]

Kimball:  Little reason to doubt?

Lehmberg:  Of course, unless your political naiveté matches your historical one.  We are not entirely blameless, Sir, with regard to closed institutions, duplicitous governments, and ubiquitous agencies without accountability.  The hat of western civilization is not
entirely white, Mr. Kimball.  You're smart even if you are obtuse, so I can only wonder why you would pretend such stunned incredulity... that assassination, character or otherwise, might not be a stealthy tool of these aforementioned governments, institutions, or agencies. That said... maybe you're not keeping up with ~current~ events. White hats appear to be a thing of the past.  An internet seems to show more and more that most hats are decidedly dark.  Still -- even at the best?  Doubt seems rational.  Dolan's explication shows he might even be conservative in his non-irrational speculations.

Kimball:  The fact is that Ruppelt died of his second heart attack,
showing that he already had significant health problems. Heart
disease is not confined to senior citizens; it can, and in this case
clearly did, strike men and women still in the prime of life (a
subject I know something about, having been put on cholesterol and
blood pressure medication in my mid 30s). Also, Dolan rejects, with
no foundation, the testimony of the person who perhaps knew Ruppelt
best - his wife, who told researchers that his change of mind had
nothing to do with pressure from the government.

Lehmberg:  ...Another straw man, Mr. Kimball.  Another attempted silk purse from a sows ear.  You took the least likely, if still plausible, case and bounteously used it to discredit the very rational idea.  It remains entirely "possible," that Dolan's assessment may be as conservative as I have suggested before:

http://www.rense.com/general62/list.htm
http://www.rense.com/general62/lest.htm

Kimball:  Most important, Dolan's speculation indicates that he is
unaware of Brad Sparks' extensive research into Ruppelt. I asked Brad
(who is also on the Fate Top 100 list, and deservedly so) to comment
on Ruppelt.

Lehmberg:  "...Deservedly so..."?  Why pussy-foot?  Just ~say~ you think Dolan has no place on the list.

Here is his reply (edited slightly for brevity):"Dolan claims Ruppelt's

pro-UFO phase was from 1954 to 1957 and then
he went "sour." The first thing I was shocked at when I got hold of
Ruppelt's private papers in 1979, including his extensive 1955 notes
and draft manuscript for his 1956 book, was how virulently ANTI-UFO
Ruppelt was in his private thoughts written in his own hand in this
purportedly pro-UFO period of 1954-7, and remarks meant to be seen by
no one except his ghostwriter / co-author, Long Beach newspaper
reporter Jim Phelan. Ruppelt sounded just like Donald Menzel, whom he
intensely disliked. On one paper Ruppelt in handwriting wrote "kook"
in the margin to describe Keyhoe. As I understand it, it was Phelan
who edited Ruppelt's book into appearing to be pro-UFO by deleting
his more negative comments and putting a spin on other comments, thus
turning it into a popular bestseller. If you read very, very
carefully in his book where Ruppelt quotes himself arguing with other
AF officers, you will see his anti-UFO hostility or skepticism come
through. That was his real viewpoint without the spin. His private
papers go on and on about various incidents where IFO's supposedly
fooled him and others and how this just proves there is nothing to
UFO's - and this is entirely separate from his acid commentary on
contactees, whom he reveled in when he could easily have just ignored
them all. No one was holding a gun to Ruppelt's head to go attend the
Giant Rock contactee conference in the desert. This propensity to
indulge in contactee hoakum is very much like Edward Condon, who
wasted a lot of time entertaining himself with contactees and kooks.
The contactees didn't "sour" Ruppelt - he sought them out. When
Ruppelt was Chief of BB, when strong unexplained UFO cases occurred,
he would be forced to take a more neutral position, less anti-UFO and
very occasionally but only TEMPORARILY slightly pro-UFO. Just as soon
as the case was behind him and the pressure was off, Ruppelt
reflexively returned to his hardened anti-UFO posture. Same thing
with the 1957 UFO flap. Ruppelt was grudgingly forced into a slightly
more favorable public and private position under the weight of the
unexplained UFO incidents and even tried to posture himself as
offering to return to the AF to head up BB again - his personal
ambition was always of greater importance to him than the actual
outcome of the UFO investigation. For example, he was most upset when
the Eisenhower military budget cuts ruined his plan to quadruple the
size of BB, a plan the CIA Robertson Panel approved of, after it was
too late to do anything about it in any case. He was also upset when
his personal authority at BB was undercut and obstructed by his
coverup boss, Col Donald Bower. That's the unvarnished truth, whether
the UFO enthusiast amateur likes to hear it or not."

Lehmberg:  With all respect to Mr. Sparks, other researchers have come to divergent conclusions... one such is "...Summer of Saucers -- 1952" by M.D. Hall and Wendy Connors, a book liberally dosed with Ruppelt's private writings.  Regarding the three chapters unsatisfactorily cobbled to the end of Ruppelt's landmark book "The Report...," H&C write, -- "In those pages Ruppelt's objective and open minded attitudes on UFOs, which had so characterized his 1956 book, changed drastically.  For instance, in the concluding sentence of his earlier manuscript he flatly stated, "Maybe Earth is being
visited by interplanetary spaceships.  Only time will tell.  Perhaps that was just an [editor's] touch, but by 1959 when he was composing the additional chapters, Ruppelt appeared to become more doubtful of extraterrestrial origin.  [He wrote,] 'No responsible scientist will argue with the fact other solar systems may be inhabited, and that some day we may meet those people.  But it hasn't happened yet and until that day comes we are stuck with our space age myth -- the UFO.'"

Moreover, Mr. Kimball -- if one reads "very... very carefully" in Ruppelt's book there are all sorts of veiled references to events which prove to be discomfortingly contentious, for some, to this day.  For instance, he writes, "Other assorted historians point out that normally the UFOs are peaceful, Goreman and Mantel just got too inquisitive, 'they' just weren't ready to be observed closely. If the air Force hadn't slapped down the security lid these writers might not have reached this conclusion.  There have been other and more lurid 'duels with death'."  

What would you make of that, Mr. Kimball.  This seems contrary to you, Sir, and more a support for Frank Feschino's "pitched battle with UFOs" conjectures.  It remains that your table is far from cleared.

Kimball:  It gets worse, however. Not satisfied with speculating
about Ruppelt's untimely demise, Dolan turns his attention, at the
end of the book, to the sad death of Dr. James McDonald. McDonald,
one of the most important figures in the history of ufology, shot
himself in June, 1971. As Dolan notes, most UFO researchers agree
that he committed suicide, a conclusion that makes eminent sense when
one considers that this was McDonald's second attempt at killing
himself - the first came a couple of months earlier, when McDonald
succeeded only in blinding himself, which happens more often than one
might suspect when a person tries to shoot themselves in the head
(for example, immediately after the July, 1944, coup attempt against
Hitler, General Ludwig Beck, one of the coup leaders, and a man of
undoubted courage who knew how to handle a gun, tried to shoot
himself in the head, but only wounded himself - a sergeant had to
deliver the coup de grace).

Lehmberg:  Anne Druffle, "In Firestorm" is not entirely convinced that your prosaic explanation vis a vis McDonald is remotely locked up and relates these troubling inconsistencies in her book.  It remains that the jury is far from in on the subject, and your perhaps naive (perhaps something else?) conjectures are, at best, premature. At worst?

Kimball:  This explanation, however, is not enough for Dolan, who
writes, at pp. 381 - 382:

"Let us look at the other possibility. We know that many intelligence
agencies were skilled in 'creating suicides.' But, one might ask,
wasn't McDonald's mental condition already deteriorating? Jerome
Clark stated that McDonald was ready to 'crack' in the aftermath of
the SST [PK note - House Committee on Appropriations hearings
regarding the supersonic transport, where McDonald, an eminent
scientist, was ridiculed for his work and views on the UFO
phenomenon]. But what caused this? Embarrassment at the SST hearings?
His marriage [PK note - which was in trouble]. Perhaps, one supposes,
but both of these explanations feel flimsy. Without exception, those
who knew McDonald described him as possessing great integrity and
courage. Was he really the type of person to commit suicide?"

Kimball:  To Dolan, the answer seems to be "no," despite all the
evidence that indicates "yes."

Lehmberg:  ...And you, in turn, patently (and perhaps conveniently?) oblivious to all the evidence that indicates "no." ...And about which both Dolan and Druffel have written clearly, competently, and compellingly... They didn't suck it up out of their thumbs... as I suspect ~you~ must.

Kimball:  He goes on to speculate how the U.S. government could have
done this, by using electromagnetic technology to alter his mood,
without, again, offering any evidence whatsoever that this was done.
Then, he reaches his conclusion:

"Thus, we ask, could McDonald have been the victim of a program using
technology such as described above? The answer is yes. Whether or not
he was may never be answered. No one is in a position to state
whether McDonald's suicide was real or not. Both scenarios are
possible."

Kimball:  Let me be blunt - with reasoning like that, Dolan would
have flunked any history course I ever attended. The fact that
something is "possible" does not make it worthy of consideration.
Virtually anything is "possible." The question that the historian
must ask is whether, based on the evidence, it is probable.

Lehmberg:  Let me be blunt.  Dolan is far from having to leap your your errantly tedious hurdles, Mr. Kimball, and I suspect did well enough in college, performing adequately to superbly in those courses you proclaim, inexplicably, that he would have failed.  Yourconjecture won't hold much water given that he's already satisfied the requirements for a an MS in History, that you'd airily refuse, now, to award him.  That's just ludicrous.

Kimball:  In the case of Dolan's speculation about both Ruppelt and
McDonald (two of the most egregious examples in his book, but not the
only ones by a long shot), he betrays his training as a historian in
favour of Jim Marr-esque conspiracy theory. He even acknowledges the
difference, sort of, as he begins the speculation about McDonald:

"The reader who has made it this far, and through several unproven
conspiracy theories will, it is hoped, endure one more?"

Kimball:  This is a line that has no place in a serious historical study.

Lehmberg:  Feh!  Why?  Because ~you~ say so?  I think your idea of a "serious" study is one that compliments your conjectured fantasies and supports your narrow world view.  There's a lot more going on than is dreamt of in your two-color, nicky new-guy, and obtuse ufological philosophy, Mr. Kimball.

Kimball:  That Dolan is considered one of the Top 100 ufologists is
not surprising, given where modern ufology seems to be headed (and
that's a shame, especially when researchers like Manitoba's Chris
Rutkowski didn't make the list). But don't confuse him with an
objective historian, at least where the UFO phenomenon is concerned.
He isn't.

Lehmberg:  Har!  Still, he's a parsec from you while you're still scraping his dust from an old two-barreled carburetor.  It remains that he has produced a definitive work on the subject... with Volume II on the way... while you snap at his well armored anklets like an errant puppy clamoring for an attention you neither deserve or have remotelycoming to you.  Dolan's book remains a landmark study in ufology and is light-years above the easy dismissal you heap on it here. Moreover, I suspect that Dolan's being 'right' is not the bone of contention  here as much as that he is philosophically 'left'.  And what's up with that.

Is Paul Kimball, tedious pedantic, canted bloviator, and rampant narcissist... presently elbowing his biased way around the periphery of ufology like a rapacious net-weasel... is he to be the future of ufology?  Not on my watch.  The "liberal stench" in ufology he has alluded to is his own top lip.

Read on.