Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty(rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
With the end of 2013 fast approaching, I have begun to wonder what the New Year holds for the country. It looks like the Affordable Care Act is finally getting its website to function properly and the sign ups are now being counted in the millions. Wall Street is still booming with the Dow Jones over 16,000, but yet unemployment is still too high and Congress is still trying to push austerity for the middle class and the poor, while doing everything in its power to prevent corporations and the wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes. The Citizen’s United decision opened the money floodgates and needs to be curbed. The military budget was spared in the recent Budget Deal, but yet unemployment benefits for millions have not been extended.
The gun lobby continues to prevent reasonable gun control legislation and needless scores of innocents continue to be slaughtered. Instead of closing the gun show loophole or mandating reasonable and effective universal background checks, Congress did nothing. Although there has been some recent movement from the Obama Administration to push Congress to allow the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the facility remains open after 12 years. With all of the bad news or non-action on many fronts, is it possible to have hope that 2014 will bring better news for all Americans?
I do have high hopes for the country in this New Year, but Congress and the rest of Washington will have to make some significant changes before the hopes can be realized. Ever since the Sandy Hook school shooting, the NRA has been pouring money into Washington in an attempt to stem the tide of public support for reasonable gun control legislation. It is obvious to me, that without a culture change in how Americans and government officials look at guns in this country, the mass shootings and needless killings that happened in 2013, will continue unabated.
Even though the killings are still rampant, one of my biggest hopes is that Congress will see past the NRA and corporate money and agree on universal background checks in 2014. I don’t have any evidence that my hope will come to fruition, but at some point, the killings will over take our Wild West mentality and people will come together to help relieve the problem. Maybe that will begin to happen in 2014.
Another of my hopes for 2014 is the closure of Guantanamo military prison. We have seen some movement on the part of Congress to agree with the Obama administration’s plans to close the facility. However, much has to be done and President Obama needs to use his bully pulpit to move the closure ahead, but President Obama’s actions to push for closure leave something to be desired.
“As a notable improvement, NDAA 2014 includes a provision that Obama called a “welcome step” toward fulfilling his longtime promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. The bill relaxes regulations that have held up the transfer of detainees out of the detention center.
The defense act also includes provisions aimed at intervening in the epidemic of sexual assault in the U.S. military. But, as the Washington Post noted, “it stops short of the broad reforms that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and other advocates have been calling for.”
While legislative movement on Gitmo’s closure is necessary, it is insufficient. As Amnesty International USA’s director Zeke Johnson commented, “[the president] should move forward with foreign transfers immediately and lobby Congress hard to end the ban on transfers to the U.S. mainland. Guantanamo must be closed by ensuring that each detainee is either fairly tried in U.S. federal court or released to a country that will respect his human rights.”
Meanwhile the troubling NDAA provision first signed into law in 2012, which permits the military to detain individuals indefinitely without trial, remains on the books for 2014. Efforts to quash or reform the provision (especially with regard to the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens) have failed and have been fiercely fought by the administration.” Salon
Hopefully, Congress will allow for detainees to be transferred or tried in a Federal court, as suggested by Amnesty International. We need to keep the Democrat’s feet to the fire.
My last hope for the New Year revolves around reforming the NSA. As we have seen and heard here and in the mass media, the NSA has turned the 4th Amendment into a mockery. The latest Federal court judge’s decision that the mass retention and collection of phone data is legal, is in conflict with another recent District Court decision and the Supreme Court may need to decide once and for all, just how far the NSA and other intelligence agencies can go.
It is amazing that in the judge’s decision, he stated that the 4th Amendment is not absolute. However, why is it that the 2nd Amendment seems to be absolute, but the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment must be subject to limitations? If the NSA is allowed to continue to collect all calls and all data, shouldn’t they at least have to pay a portion of my phone bill? It is my sincere hope that the NSA can be restrained in the New Year, but it may be a long fight.
I have listed just a few of my “hopes” for the New Year. I have some others, but I want to hear what your thoughts are for the New Year. What hopes do you have for 2014? Let us know what you are hoping for and why you are think it is important for the country. It doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you favor, because most of these issues should be non-partisan. It is not a Democratic or a Republican problem when scores of people are being murdered and killed by people who have no reason to own guns or could have been prevented from acquiring the deadly weapons.
It isn’t a partisan issue when the NSA is collecting almost all of our phone calls. Just where does the Fourth Amendment begin and end? I look forward to reading your hopes and the reasons why they are important to you and to the country.
Happy New Year to all and let’s hope that Congress and the President can make progress on my Hopes and on your Hopes.
**Mike Spindell 1, January 2, 2014 at 9:37 am **
MikeS, what DavidBF & Blouise said.
** davidbluefish 1, January 2, 2014 at 10:29 am **
** Blouise 1, January 2, 2014 at 12:11 pm **
MikeS,
I haven’t been up to posting the past few days so I’ve been avoiding doing so.
But I will here.
I’ve been on many msg bb over the years & have seen all sorts of crap pulled on others.
That’s a big reason I attempt not to follow some posters back down into the gutter they live in.
I seen in cases where posters were financially attacked by anothers that lead to criminal charges being filed/lawsuits.
A friend of mine has ran his own non profit website for about 10 years as a public service. (I don’t repost the link anywhere any more)
He would read & attempt to respond personal to every email.
He was already paying for an editor out of his pocket, but when the number of emails became so large & many of them hateful,vengeful he then hired a personal assistant to screen through the trash, largely ignored them & then to respond to the legitimate ones.
He’s your age Mike & doesn’t need to put up with crap from fools.
I can understand a person to stop posting or stop the much harder task of writing legitimate published articles.
Regardless of your, other GB’s & JT’s decison on what’s your/their personal best coarse of further action I just want to say thank all of you & I appreciate the positive works you guys have presented the public with here at JT’s blog.
nick,
Sock-puppets come and go. You haven’t been on this blog long enough to know that. If you want to use a sock-puppet, be it a friend or yourself, then certain measures have to be taken. Those measures are both time consuming, inconvenient, and require mobility and constant off-blog communications.
Some sock-puppeteers have even claimed that a stranger was using their ip sitting outside their house … the child-porn – driveby – unprotected – wyfy – excuse.
We’ve heard it all though there is a certain amount of creativity in the “poor-black-unsophisticated-friend-who-doesn’t-own-a-computer-plopping-down-at-mine-and-going-after-GBers”.
I hope he wasn’t also looking at porn. 😉
Blouise, Part of the problem here is the socioeconomic one of which I speak regularly. I associate w/ a diverse group of people. I see the elitists here show scorn and smugness toward those they feel don’t fit into their club. It was that fatal myopic, insular, mindset that led to the belief by Mike, and apparently you, that I was Confucius. It could NEVER be that a person doesn’t own a computer. It goes back to a famous quote from an upper NYC west sider claiming after Nixon won the 1968 election, “How could he have won the election, I don’t know anyone who voted for him.”
My proud blue collar routes has been continually mocked here. My having black friends has been called into question by some. Well, I have black, blue collar and upper middle class friends. I have white, and Hispanic blue collar and upper middle class friends. My adopted son is Hispanic. I have black friends come out to San Diego to visit. I am real, and so is Confucius. Is it lame for a friend want to defend his buddy? I see it here all the time.
Blouise, yes you do. Elaine, Swarthmoremom, Juliet, and yourself are a great bunch of strong women and the guys are not so bad either. 😉
Gene H:
Those same ideas are merely ones espoused by Aristotle, John Locke, Frederic Bastiat, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and others 100’s or years before Rand. I know, I have read them as well. Ayn Rand loved Thomas Jefferson and our founders and our founding documents, she loved the American ideal that was our founding principle.
So are you saying those men were sociopaths too and that political and economic freedom are sociopathic beliefs?
It sounds like it to me. I do hope you clarify your position.
annieofwi,
We suck you in don’t we? 😉
Mr. Stanley, NEVER have I investigated an GBer on this blog. Using this thread as an example. Mike accused my friend[believing it was me] of revealing something about apparently some other GBer driving a BMW? I actually glean this more from reading a follow-up comment from Bron. My friend was responding to a comment made by Elaine just a few comments previously! That should be obvious to anyone. The comment made by my friend about going to Denver is because the man loves the ganja. The vulgar comment about getting blown[what can I say, we had a prez who also loved oral sex] was the rough around the edges part of my friend. He makes me look like a choir boy. So, the allegation that this was some reference of personal info of some GBer is something I simply don’t understand. That makes 2 allegations on this thread so far in this discussion, totally false. I think they were caused by paranoia and derision, and show a pattern of this sort of thing. What say you Dr. Stanley, analyze that please. You can bill me if you wish.
Then, Mr. Stanley you make a veiled allegation of “someone” hacking into “someone’s” email. I won’t be paranoid, but it would it not be paranoid or unreasonable to consider I am the first “someone”; that being the alleged hacker. FALSE! I haven’t a clue as to whom the alleged victim was/is. Talking about “thinly veiled”, Mr. Stanley. That could be the title of your comment.
Mike S.,
Yeah, you’re easy … but you are also right. Better to be easy and right than hard and wrong.
nick,
The Confucius is Laughing sock-puppet was so dam lame that I was actually embarrassed for you.
Everybody else,
In my opinion, the Guest Blogger program was a stroke of genius on JT’s part. Although none of the GBers are “common”, the introduction of the common man’s thoughts in article form has given a depth to this blog unrivaled by other legal blogs.
Accepting the invitation to be a guest blogger is a serious commitment. The preparation these people go through in constructing their columns is admirable. Nobody just dashes off a few thousand words and then goes out for a beer. They respect their host and their readers and are willing to be challenged on the opinions they hold and the stances they take.
However, any time an individual steps forward, stands up, publishes, or holds the microphone, they will encounter resentment from those who are envious of their ability to do so. The – “Just who do you think you are?!” – crowd. It comes with the territory.
Most of the time mean-spirited comments can be ignored. If it ain’t constructive criticism, it ain’t worth a cent. But there are times when such attacks should not be ignored. This is one of those times.
I leave it to the blog owner to determine what is in the best interests of his blog and his Guest Bloggers.
Bron,
First, who in Hell called you a child molester? In all the time I’ve known you, next to me, you’re one of the harshest people in your condemnation of child predators on this blog. If someone did that? I musta missed it, because we may disagree on most everything, but I’d have called B.S. on that. Was it in relation to child labor laws or something?
Second, yeah, you have been called a sociopath. In all fairness though, you do follow (though less strictly than you once did) the ethos of a demonstrable sociopath in Ayn Rand. Her ideas are inherently sociopathic. Being upset that people would get the impression you’re personally a sociopath from the espousal of sociopathic ideas is a lot like me getting upset if someone calls me a socialist because I speak in favor of democratic market socialism. If I thought the label was a pejorative I just couldn’t live with? Then I’d re-examine my position. Also, with only one or two exceptions, I don’t think there is anyone posting here against political freedom or economic freedom just so long as that economic freedom is not allowed to be exploitative or infringing upon the rights of others. The differences are in degrees permissible as in part defined by one’s understanding of human nature and in methodology.
Third, agreement is simply not required. Making your case is though. Which is something you’ve gotten better at over the years. Good job on that.
Fourth, libertarianism is not Libertarianism. The former has a pretty good case for much of it, maximizing liberty is a good thing. The latter is Objectivism pimping the laissez-faire which are both demonstrably bad ideas based in flawed assumptions/understanding of human nature as has been argued many times here over the years. The “-ism” isn’t the thing. The ideas behind it are the thing. Bad ideas? Yep. Most people are against what they consider a bad idea. They often attribute that bad idea to those who espouse it. That’s why in a marketplace of ideas, you make your case for what you consider a good idea and against what you consider a bad idea. That some ideas fare better than others under that kind of scrutiny? Is just the Tao of things. If people get an impression of you by your stands? That’s just how it is.
I’m not going to attempt to defend myself, because some of it may be true. I think that people who treat others abominably sometimes need some of their own bad medicine. I should say that people without serious pathology may learn, those with a lifetime of mistreatment of other’s may not learn anything at all because they are deeply entrenched in their inhumanity. I won’t be addressing Spinelli at all henceforth, I will ignore the many underhanded statements he directs toward myself, because as someone said, no one would understand his meaning, but the person he directs it to and then it would appear to all other’s but a few, that I was being aggressive and mean to him. I enjoy reading and commenting at the Turley blog and despite what initially brought me here I have found it to be filled with intelligent, thoughtful, and decent people.
lotta,
First, and foremost, take care of yourself. There are some nasty bugs out there this winter season and some slippery surfaces. Tex and I are being very careful as neither of us recover as quickly as we once did.
Well said Lotta and OS.
Stick around Mike!
lottakatz:
Just to be clear I am not a bigot nor a racist. And I dont disrespect women either, seeing as how a woman developed the particular philosophy I like, that would be rather contradictory wouldnt it?
I have been called all manor of vile things from child molester to sociopath just because I think political and economic freedom are a good thing.
If you dont like what I say, scroll over it as you say.
Personally I would say most of the people who post on this blog are bigots, you go jolly well apoplectic when anyone has an idea that is different from yours. Since skin color, economic status, sexual orientation, etc. arent known, it is the only way you have of discriminating and most of you do it so well against those of us who are libertarian or near that area in the philosophical spectrum.
Mike Spindell, I am reposting this comment of Frank M. from yesterday. I hope you continue contributing to this blog.
frankmascagniiii
1, January 1, 2014 at 11:26 am
Happy New Year! Thanks for the great articles and posts. A little food for thought as we enter the new year:
From Mother Teresa:
People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.
Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.
Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten.
Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.
Tis’ true.
I do argue for sport. It’s a big puzzle. Joy!
And “idiota” is a word in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.
lottakatz,
What lottakatz said. I agree with about 99.4% of what she said. It would have been 100% but I don’t think I ever agree with anyone 100%.
This continuing battle with disruptive trollish and passive-aggressive behavior has gone on long enough. I make my living analyzing written content, and there is enough psychopathology on the part of some users to fill a book. At least three or four users here would have been banned from any other blog on the Internet long before now. You know who you are. Baiting and trying to suck people into confrontations is not only counterproductive, but is driving valued users away. If one person’s “free speech” is so toxic it drives other voices away, the “free speech” thing is not working. In the time I have been participating on this blog, I have seen trolls and disruptive come and go. Some have been so silly as to be entertaining, like the self-admitted neo-Confederate Brent Waller. Or the braggart who was the apologist for Sarah Palin’s lack of knowledge of history. Then there is the guy who shows up spamming any comment thread about global warming or environmental concerns with machine-gun like postings that come from the Club for Growth and ALEC playbooks, deliberately designed to disrupt any reasonable discussion of the issues.
On the other hand, we have not seen the likes of Nick before, who baits everyone who disagrees with him, and makes oblique and thinly veiled references to personal information he could have only gleaned if he had done investigations or background checks on other users, some of which could have only come if email accounts had been compromised. Nick plays a divide and conquer game, and does his damnedest to make this the Nick Blog, instead of Dr. Turley’s.
Bron is a special case, in that he actually seems to believe the stuff he espouses about the philosophy of Ayn Rand. I have not made up my mind about David. A guy with at least two university degrees surely is not as dense at understanding plain English as he presents himself, but I read Eric Hoffer’s True Believer years ago, and David certainly fits that pattern well.
I agree with LK that Mike let Nick bait him into intemperate responding. Gene is a special case, in that he has one of the most analytical minds of anyone I know. He literally doesn’t care, and just enjoys the joust; that is, until management at his internet provider calls him to let him know his account is under attack by a hacker and has been compromised. At that point the game changes. Folks may think that is an amusing “gotcha” until a couple of unsmiling gentlemen in dark suits show up on your doorstep. I have worked on several cases that involved similar scenarios recently, and it was not amusing at all after that initial visit.
In short, what LK said.
It had been my intention to remove myself from the blog entirely until my usual Saturday posting, to give myself time to think through what is going on here and to re-examine my own behavior. However, Lottakatz’s three comments were so perfectly pointed as to cause me to go back on this New Year’s resolution and to respond to what was so well expressed. Like Otteray Scribe I too must say that I agree with almost all you’ve written and most especially this:
“Mike, You fall for his crap every time, what is wrong with you (rhetorical question)?, you actually did what he planned and if this poor schmucks name is whatever you revealed it to be that was wrong and you know it.”
LK you’re right, I have fallen for Nick’s crap every time and what’s wrong with me is not only should I have known better, but that for the most part in life I’m usually smarter. However, despite Nick’s bombast about me revealing his friend’s name I did no such thing and a reading of the thread proves it. What I did do was reveal that “Confucius is Watching” was a “sockpuppet” of Nick’s. I knew this because both IP addresses were identical. This was to let Nick know that I knew. I wrote:
“Some yahoo named schultz is crapping on the ether.”
Certainly this was done as a non-sequitur and reveals nothing about the person, or about their E Mail address, except to the person it was aimed at: Nick. As you can see by the definition of “yahoo” it had a meaning that far outdated the IP provider and my use of it was in the spirit of that meaning especially if you know who it was addressed to and the further parody was the excremental reference. It was a specific play on words that was addressed to a specific person and would be incoherent to any other reader, except that Nick went further and “outed” his own sockpuppet in his attempt to ensnare me.
yahoo (jəˈhuː) n, pl –hoos: a crude, brutish, or obscenely coarse person[ from the name of a race of brutish creatures resembling men in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726)]
My aim in doing this was to inform Nick that I was aware of the fact that both he and his sockpuppet shared the same IP address. The reason I know this is because all guest bloggers who go in to remove trapped E Mails see the IP addresses as a matter of course, since that is the way WordPress is set up. Nick, caught in the act realized that he needed to account for the same IP address and then made up a completely improbable story about a “friend” in order to cover his mistake. Did he plan that as a way of catching me, or Gene, in something, perhaps?
What it wasn’t was his claim that I broke anonymous confidentiality, because as you may well remember regulars using sockpuppets has also been revealed in the past via a program developed by Dr. Kevin Kesseler (Slartibartfast) and that resulted to a large part in cutting down that practice.
Back to me, however, LK you are right I am an ass for letting someone like Nick bait me. I’m embarrassed by it and it was stupid on my part. Let me explain my choices, without justifying them, so the reasons I’ve acted the way I have are at least transparent, though not excusable because they were so ineptly handled by me.
1. As OS said: “On the other hand, we have not seen the likes of Nick before, who baits everyone who disagrees with him, and makes oblique and thinly veiled references to personal information he could have only gleaned if he had done investigations or background checks on other users, some of which could have only come if email accounts had been compromised. Nick plays a divide and conquer game, and does his damnedest to make this the Nick Blog, instead of Dr. Turley’s”. I’ve found Nick’s behavior to be quite frustrating in a way unique up to now on this blog. This is not a political thing, Nick’s “politics” are quite opaque and I differentiate him from commenters like Bron, Hskiprob and DavidM because they actually try to defend their positions and do so in some depth. Nick is not interested in depth, his main motive seems to be disruption, attacks and self-glorification. That he led last year in comments has much to do with a barrage of one line comments, most of which are veiled attacks on others. Mixed in with them are occasional longer comments about things unrelated to the thread on which he is posting, but which are attempts to self glorify by impressing us with his experiences.
2. Nick’s pattern was set early on in his sojourn here. Gene and I saw it and we both responded protectively (for the blog) by methods that had worked before in dealing with thread disruptive people. As you said though Nick is a different breed of disruptor.
3. I am protective of the other Guest Bloggers and this is especially true of Gene and OS, who have become cyber friends of mine off blog and of Elaine, who I have great respect and kinship for. Gene and I though tend to be more bombastic than OS and so we have been Nick’s main objects of attack. However, he has also taken off after Elaine incessantly and I think it is because Nick has a “thing” about strong, confident women. I’ve covered Elaine’s back, not because she needs me to defend her given her considerable skills, but because his attacks against her are despicable attempts at bullying. Interestingly, Nick has been obsequious in “courting” the other Guest Bloggers as a strategy of trying to drive a wedge between the “team” and he could well be succeeding.
I’ve written so much here because I am also forwarding it to Jonathan and the other Guest Bloggers and because this may well be the last of my commenting here, or elsewhere on the blog. My blog this weekend may well be my last one here. If Nick is allowed to continue then I am positive that the Turley blog will have taken a turn that I don’t want to deal with. In my dotage I’ve found a sense of purpose writing here, but allowing one commenter to continually break the rather few rules we have and to actually cyber stalk, thus intimidate those who question him is unacceptable. Some, perhaps even Jonathan and some GB’s may think the absence of me and perhaps Gene will clear the air here. I seriously doubt it, but then as you’ve implied I’ve been an ass for being baited, so what do I know?
Airing of Grievances part III
An equally unpleasant but morally more corrupting dynamic is at play with David and Skip only it centers around bigotry of every configuration. Religion based with David and politically based with Skip (and Bron). Here’s what troubles me. More than troubles me. There have been remarks made (by Mike S) that David has credibility because he is predictable and basically clear/well spoken. Bron has been ‘rehabilitated’ by Gene and others as having ‘evolved’ for lack of a better word, because he is no longer so combative and irrational.
Good for him and those that like their “fill-in-the-blank minority and women are inferior and the country should recognize that and treat them as the excess baggage and threat to civilized society that they are” in a pretty package. All you have to do is read the title of an article and you know they (or which ones) will show up and exactly what they will be posting, and how they will manipulate the conversation to evade every question and have the entire thread turn into one directed and choreographed by their vile philosophy.
May well be paid trolls or graduates of the Stormfront U. school of debate. I don’t know. I do know it’s not unusual to hear the kind of flat out racist, sexist, anti-handicapped, class-based dog-whistle statements entirely appropriate for Rush Limbaugh or Red State commenter’s on Turlyblawg. Civil in form and presentation but anti-social and un-American nonetheless. Thread after thread morphed into venues for ideas and positions that were banished -as too pre-intellectual to take seriously, even 10 years ago. It becomes their thread, always, no matter what the subject of the article started as.
Now it’s devolved over the last few days into a bunch of whining 8 year olds threatening to ‘tell the teacher’, the concept of personal information distorted beyond all recognition, and usurious grade school intrigue involving ‘unsophisticated’ dupes as part of the blagging experience.
I must say, the high point of this thread is your (Nick) last comment to Mike S.: “Hopefully, you can summon from somewhere, an ounce of respect for my friend …”. Maybe you should have done that months ago before you turned the poor “unsophisticated” guy, who thought you were his friend, into a meat-puppet for your own amusement.
As I say frequently, It’s the Professor’s house.
If it were mine, I’d clean it. Though in fact I’m just going to bed, probably for a while, I’m injured (though clear header) and spend most time on Turlyblawg reading, not commenting. I need some down time. By all means, continue the provocation, bigotry and threadjacking guys, carry on.
Airing of grievances part II
Mike, You fall for his crap every time, what is wrong with you (rhetorical question)?, you actually did what he planned and if this poor schmucks name is whatever you revealed it to be that was wrong and you know it.
Nick knows how to push Elaine’s buttons and does it whenever possible. Get her going and she’ll argue with you ’till dawn -she don’t back down. Discussing someones presumed economic circumstances, dragging the hoped for well-being (sincerely offered on a ‘safe’ thread) for her young grandchild, denigrating that she draws a pension as a teacher with pejoratives and implying that she is so mentally weak as a female that she requires male assistance is sorta’ despicable. Perfectly despicable in fact.
So now we have Mike and Elaine arguing with you and joining Annie in her vengeance crusade. The thread is in shambles and it’s all about Nick. Again.
Annie? Annie stalked Nick from another blawg entirely and introduced herself by discussing how Nick was a dick elsewhere and got banned, throwing that thread into disarray and embroiling blawg posters here in irrelevant business from elsewhere. She received a very mild admonishment that we don’t play that way here.
Thereafter it’s about 50% commenting by Annie and 50% non-sequitur snipes at Nick. (Seems like it to me, admittedly subjective but it’s disruptive to the flow of comments so I could be wrong.) Also, making periodic threats that Nick is making veiled comments that relate to prior conflicts from another blawg and he will be or should be reported to the Professor. Yeah, comments that are so veiled that they are entirely opaque to others. Nick responds or makes similar non-sequitur postings elsewhere to Annie.
So people are now talking to each other about Nick and the thread is Nicks, again. As night follows day.