Probably tells you everything you need to know about the tech nerd/glibertarian nexus:
The owner of the underground drug market Silk Road was a 29-year-old Libertarian engineer living in San Francisco raking in over $80 million in 2 years, according to the indictment revealed today.
[….]The most bizarre and spectacular allegation in the indictment is that Ulbricht solicited a murder-for-hire against a Silk Road user who was attempting to blackmail him. The user, FriendlyChemist, told Ulbricht—whose alleged online persona was “Dread Pirate Roberts,” or DPR, a reference to the film The Princess Bride—that he had obtained a list of thousands of Silk Road users and was going to release them unless DPR paid off his $500,000 debt to another user, RedandWhite. Instead of paying the debt, DPR contacted RedAndWhite and paid him $150,000 in Bitcoins to off Friendly Chemist.
“In my eyes, FriendlyChemist is a liability and I wouldn’t mind if he was executed,” DPR wrote. DPR even tried to bargain down FriendlyChemist, messaging: “Don’t want to be a pain here, but the price seems high. Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80K.”
Wait for it…..
He’s got a Facebook page full of beer pong pics and, of course, was a vocal supporter of Ron Paul, donating $200 to his campaign in 2007. “He doesn’t compromise his integrity as a politician and he fights quite diligently to restore the principles that our country was founded on,” Ulbricht told the Penn State student newspaper in 2008.
John Revolta
Hilarious
shelly
They’ve been watching too many episodes of ‘Breaking Bad.’
Baud
Free-DUMB!
Baud
I blame Obamacare.
jl
Whatever else you can say about it, completely unregulated glibertarian free markets produce fascinating phenomena.
Ash Can
…says the expert on integrity and principles.
Culture of Truth
Thus giving rise to Bill O’Reilly’s next best-seller, “Killing Friendly Chemist”
MikeJ
Willing to spend a fortune on one assassination yet he still won’t max out his political contribution.
Higgs Boson's Mate
OT: Barn burner speech on the Senate floor by Elizabeth Warren on Republican hostage taking.
rda909
Now this patriot knows how to use a bully pulpit, just like out-of-the-country patriots Snowden and his sidekick Glennda the Good Snitch. If only Obummer was more like this guy, then we’d have progressive utopia! Good god, Odronezzz is SUCH a Wall St stooge. You guys were so right!
pagodat
There’s also stuff in the FBI report about the guy’s love for the Mises Institute and Murray Rothbard. PDF at http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~nweaver/UlbrichtCriminalComplaint.pdf
Culture of Truth
If someone owes me $500,000, how does killing them for $150k help me?
dmsilev
Heh.
The Ars Technica story on the indictment has additional hilarity. I really liked this bit:
I’m pretty sure Rule One of running an anonymous clearinghouse for illegal drug purchases is “Don’t ask for help setting up the site using your real name”.
Sly
Hmmmm…. Nope. Still doesn’t ruin the movie for me.
Baud
@Culture of Truth:
Are you questioning the rationality of the free market?
raven
@Culture of Truth: Sends a message.
MikeJ
@Culture of Truth: If you’re not going to get the $500k, you can collect part of it.
dmsilev
@Culture of Truth: Presumably you use it as an example to the next guy not to get so far behind in payments.
Of course, since these were all hypothetically anonymous accounts, verification of the “I had him whacked” claim might be a tad problematic.
WereBear
The 500K was owed to someone else. The blackmailer wanted that debt settled by DPR; who decided an assassination would be cheaper.
Baud
I am somewhat disturbed by the number of commenters here who understand the logic behind having someone whacked.
Donut
Some of you can mock all you want, but there are people who frequent this blog who are not too far from taking similar steps.
fka AWS
The interesting part of it is that the FBI was apparently monitoring Silk Road for a while. Wonder how many people are going to be getting visits from Special Agent ____?
WereBear
@Baud: Between The Godfather I & II, Good Fellas, and The Sopranos… it’s like a series of seminars, really.
fka AWS
@Baud:
Like we don’t have access to Godfather movies, the Sopranos or Breaking Bad.
ETA: WereBear was quicker!
raven
@fka AWS: Or grew up in Chicago.
dmsilev
@Baud: Never mind the movies, the current GOP Congress should be all you need for inspiration.
Zam
What the fuck are bitcoins?
SiubhanDuinne
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I love that woman.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Zam:
They’re an artificial currency backed by the full faith and credit of libertarians.
WereBear
@dmsilev: And we could negotiate a group rate. The free market-admiring Tea Party Caucus should appreciate that!
Keith G
@raven: Or went to a rough jr high.
rda909
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Yes, she’d make a great presidential candidate for 2016. I know, since like all the other online white progressives, I was a huge follower of her writings long, long before President Obama brought her to the national stage much like John Kerry did for him.
“We” all knew a great deal about Senator Warren before Obummer empowered and fought for her for years, and was a big part of her Senate campaign where she embraced Odronezzz (her ONE misstep, of course!) front and center of her campaign. Why does O-spyer hate “us” so?!?!
For real though, Senator Elizabeth Warren would be a great candidate for 2016.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven: LOL raven
Comrade Jake
I hope this reporting is all kinds of wrong, but I have my fears:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/360234/boehner-gop-grand-bargain-works-robert-costa
Essentially, Boehner is working on negotiating a “grand bargain” as part of passing the CR and agreeing to raise the debt ceiling.
Seanly
Now there’s a well-adjusted engineer! And another thread for us ‘neers to take over.
Zam
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: But aren’t they many of the same people who think we need to have our currency backed by the magical power of gold?
JPL
@Comrade Jake: Let me guess, it has something to do with ObamaCare and cutting taxes on the one percent.
Craigo
@Zam: Libertarian monopoly money.
rda909
@fka AWS: Wait. “monitoring”?!?! You mean…SPYING on them!?!?! Release the Snowdenwald on the FBI’s ass!! CAW!! CAW!!
fka AWS
@Zam: You’re expecting logical consistency from these people?
dmsilev
@Comrade Jake: From the GOP’s perspective, kind of makes sense. They (increasingly obviously) don’t have enough leverage with the shutdown to force the Senate and President Obama to gut Obamacare, so the “logical” next step is to find a bigger lever. Hence the debt ceiling.
Problem for them is that levers work in both directions. The pressure to pass a clean debt ceiling increase will grow exponentially over the next two weeks. After only a couple of days, there are already ~20 GOP Reps who claim they’d vote for a clean CR. Up the pressure with the prospect of a default, and I think they hit a critical mass where the herd moves in large enough numbers to buy some protection from the purity maniacs.
Zam
So this guy was trying to buy a hit on someone with fake money? What god damn delusional world do these people live in?
JPL
@Comrade Jake: It does sound like they are going to tank the economy. I have some options that need to be sold by next year. Maybe they’ll be worthless next year.
rda909
@Comrade Jake: Obummer to sell “us” out again, huh? Caving already?!? Man, you guys so have him pegged. What a disappointment he’s been. Sure, he’s the most liberal president in any of our lifetimes, but if he wasn’t so much like Bush, he’d the most liberal by eleventy!
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: Remember when they’s find a stiff a week in a trunk at O’Hare?
SatanicPanic
Fucking libertarians, giving nerds a bad name.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
God bless Ron Paul and his loyal cadre of druggies, murderers, anarchists and sociopaths.
John Revolta
I think they hit a critical mass where the herd moves in large enough numbers to buy some protection from the purity maniacs.
I can’t wait. The subsequent infighting will be epic. Popcorn futures are gonna go through the roof.
Felonius Monk
@Baud: Disturbed? But not surprised. Considering that there are about 80+ rethugs in the House who wouldn’t be missed if they miraculously all got whacked, I’m sure we all understand the logic.
Craigo
The consensus so far on the hit is that DPR was scammed. After the first dispute with FriendlyChemist, another user named redandwhite independently contacted DPR claiming that he was a vendor to whom FriendlyChemist owed money. After a bit of back and forth, he got $150,000 and DPR got a picture of a “dead” victim. However, Canadian authorities say there are no similar homicides or disappearances that match the location and timeframe.
FriendlyChemist and redandwhite were almost certainly the same person, and DPR is an idiot.
Chris
@rda909:
I’d rather see her continue to be a voice from the left than have to make all the compromises you need to run for a national office. We have few enough left wing voices as is.
TheMightyTrowel
OT from the airport on the way to LA:
Benen at Maddowblog: PPP poll says “27% of Republicans think a group of world bankers are slowly eliminating paper currency to force most banking online — only to cut the power grid so regular citizens can’t access money and are forced into worldwide slavery.”
A crazification of the crazification factor?
Cacti
@rda909:
I hear her name bandied about on dem blogs, but I’ve seen nothing from her thus far that suggests she has the political chops to make a run at the White House. She ran a fairly uneven Senate campaign, and ended up winning her seat by 7.5 points, in a state with a Cook PVI of +10 for Democrats.
cathyx
@rda909: Keep trying, I’m sure you’ll get a bite one of these times.
Ripley
Oh great, now where do I get my weed?
fka AWS
@Cacti:
As a first-time candidate against an incumbent. I don’t see her running as anything other than a VP slot, but you need to be fair with the numbers there.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Job creation right there. Any why is murder for hire illegal; only because the statest control freaks passed a law saying so.
beltane
Were the drugs involved in this drug market actually real? My 16 year old son recently expressed a wish that our town be incorporated into Minecraft so he could dismantle it and replace it with an improved version. Maybe he thought it needed an underground drug market or something.
rda909
@Cacti: It was her first campaign…ever…and she won easily over an incumbent. I agree, she was a little stumbly at the beginning, but by the end, she was fantastic. Extremely quick learner. After seeing her speech at the Dem Convention last year, I think she’d win the presidential election easily in 2016.
shelly
Almost makes you nostalgic for Lyndon LaRouche.
Bubblegum Tate
@beltane:
Definitely real, and allegedly of fairly high quality.
weaselone
@Cacti:
You need to factor in the incumbency and misogyny effects, both of which are quite strong in Massachusetts.
SatanicPanic
@TheMightyTrowel: I’d hate to meet the guy in the center of that set of Russian dolls.
beltane
@TheMightyTrowel
This is similar in many ways to absolute zero. You can get closer and closer to the pure essence of wingnut but its ultimate nature will always lie just out of reach.
Chris
@TheMightyTrowel:
Someone needs to tell them about the even crazier conspiracy theory in which a group of world bankers slowly infiltrate the government in order to shut down all the services its provide so that regular citizens no longer have a safety net and are forced into worldwide slavery…
… no, wait, that one’s real!
muddy
@beltane: It’s a different kind of game, but this is bizarre – Impotent Rage – The Liberal Hero.
Ash Can
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
What could possibly go wrong?
rda909
@cathyx: A lack of bites is all I need to know. Even though there’s a .000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance some low-level NSA goon might accidentally read an email of mine, I’m going to soldier-on and go watch a baseball game anyway, so I won’t be able to take my medicine from some oppressed online white progressive. By the way, can someone here loan me some guac for my chips as I watch this game on my fat ass? Man, this being oppressed business is rough. Damn, Obummer is such a jerk!!! I hate him!! (Go Indians)
Suffern ACE
@Ash Can: I don’t know. Duplicity and fear that your neighbor might be a witch were high in the list of early values.
Omnes Omnibus
@TheMightyTrowel:
It’s fractal.
Redshirt
This blog is on fire again, and it’s all because of Doug.
And the downfall of America.
gogol's wife
@Redshirt:
Yes, Doug’s doing great. That Faye Dunaway clip alone has been giving my husband comedy fodder the whole evening.
ericblair
@SatanicPanic:
Yeah, it’s fractal down to the last four guys, and one of them is Loon Zero. There may be some sort of inverted Schwarzschild radius of insanity around him where it’s impossible for facts to penetrate, and the crazy radiation may make it hazardous to approach him. Somebody else can do the legwork in finding this guy, because I have better and saner things to do.
Hungry Joe
I’m guessing that “Me and Paul” is a shout out to Dizzy Dean?
Redshirt
I wonder how much money Ulbricht will get to keep. Cuz if you told me “5 years of Jail = 25 million” I’d say “Sign me up!”.
aimai
@Comrade Jake: Yeah, this is flying around Kos too–you do realize that Boehner et al simply lurch from one unkeepable promise to another that they are making to their own caucus. They can’t explain why they keep getting their glasses broken and their pants wedgied by Obama so they just keep assuring each other that any minute their strategies will work and they will get one of their demands fulfilled There is nothing new here: they are lying to themselves to feel better about things. Every time Obama and Reid kick them in the teeth Boehner goes back to his caucus and assures them that he has everything under control and Obama is going to give him a grand bargain, or cancel obamcare, or something.
dmsilev
@efgoldman: Oh, I know. But if the “claims” number keeps growing, eventually there will be safety in numbers and they might actually put their money where their mouth is.
PurpleGirl
@WereBear: Or any number of police procedural shows — Law & Order, NYPD Blue, Criminal Minds, Kojak, on and on, etc.
Hal
What a cheepo. 80 million bucks and you can’t just pay the 150,000 or donate more than 200 bucks?
Poopyman
Semi OT, but a FB friend forwarded:
Craigo
@Redshirt: None. Asset seizure.
Redshirt
@Craigo: That’ll pay a few government bills.
Hey! I’ve got an idea how to fund the country!
Seize all the assets.
Hungry Joe
Boehner is starting to remind me of Wallace: “Don’t worry, Gromit — everything’s under control!”
Substitute scotch for cheese, and there you go.
Suffern ACE
@Comrade Jake: we will default then. Obama offered the grand bargain last time. He does not offer long term agreements over short term crises so that congress can go back and reneg two months later.
There will be negotiations on entitlement and tax reform this year, but not for a two month reprieve in Tea antics.
Comrade Jake
@aimai: Right. Another way to look at it is that Boehner getting everyone to agree on the hostage demands is probably a necessary first step.
dmsilev
@aimai: They really have shown no ability to plan this thing through. Every plan seems to begin and end with “this time the Senate will cave, really they will” and it’s very clear that every time they’re proven wrong they have to scramble around for an idea of what to do next.
I’m reminded of the theory which Josh Marshall dubbed the “bitch-slap approach to politics”. Right now, the Democrats are making the Republicans look like weak blundering fools. I wonder what this will do long-term to the perception of the GOP.
Mnemosyne
@raven:
True story: G went to high school with the daughter of one of the Spilotro brothers. He didn’t know her well, but the whole “they found his remains buried in a shallow grave” thing kind of took the shine off the idea of being a gangster if he had had any ideas in that direction.
Hill Dweller
@Suffern ACE: Dems need to keep pointing out the Republicans refused(18 times) to participate in a budget conference with the Senate all fiscal year, because a budget can’t be filibustered. It would essentially be a negotiation with Senate Dems, the WH, and the House. That wasn’t enough leverage for the wingnuts, so they decided to use the threat of a shutdown and default to extort policy concessions they couldn’t get during the normal budget process.
Poopyman
@dmsilev:
They don’t need any help from Democrats. Which is a good thing, because the quaint ideas about civility still seem to cling to most Dems in DC.
Cacti
@Suffern ACE:
This.
The Senate already compromised by sending back a CR that continues operating the government at sequestration levels. The House got most of what they wanted and decided to start shooting hostages anyway.
dmsilev
@Poopyman: The Democrats, or at least the leadership, have been decidedly uncivil to the GOP for the last week or so at least. Witness, for example, Reid leaking those emails from Boehner about healthcare subsidies for Congressional staffers. A real asshole move in some sense, but one that Boehner couldn’t really complain much about without looking even more like a hypocrite.
MikeJ
@Cacti:
When you ask for a helicopter and get a bus, you shoot somebody.
Belafon
@Comrade Jake: So what if Boehner’s working on it.
@rda909: I missed the part where Obama had any part in this. This is Boehner trying to save face. His “Grand Bargain” will probably consist of defunding the ACA.
And “Obummer” is being childish.
Belafon
OT: Thought you guys might enjoy this (DailyKos link): Restaurants in DC are offering discounts to furloughed staffers, and charging either full price or sometimes more for Congresspeople.
Phil Perspective
@aimai: Except that Obama has been aiming for a “Grand Bargain” since 2006. And from Digby:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/hmmm-gop-grand-bargain-whats-that.html
That quote from the Snuffleupagus interview is only 2 weeks ago.
Hill Dweller
Ugh. Maddow is out tonight. Kornacki is hosting.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@aimai: “We got 95% of what we wanted.”
raven
@Mnemosyne: Steinmetz huh? I have a lot of friends that wert to Sullivan and Mather. Nortside.
Belafon
@Chris: The people who think she should run for office perpetuate the myth that the presidency is the only place that has power in DC. By doing so, they get easily disappointed when the president can’t do what they are expecting, and they allow Congress to weasel out of doing it’s job.
Warren is far better where she is. Her temperament is better suited being on a committee grilling some poor idiot and proposing legislation to change things from inside the senate.
Belafon
@Phil Perspective: And we’ll all have to go back to dealing with Obama’s grand bargain when the CR is passed and the debt ceiling is fixed. But both he and Reid have said that they will not bargain until the government is running again, paying its bills.
roc
(Source) This is clearly a man who knows a thing or two about sticking to your principles.
Shakezula
Big Dave Diode is all growed up.
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Just curious; were you able to type that without breaking into loud roars of laughter?
scav
@Hungry Joe: NO.
Wallace is likable and inventive.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Shakezula:
I was laughing. When this stuff comes to me I’m just as surprised as the people with whom I share.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven: In my graduating class at OPRFHS (class of ’60) the girl who was voted “most beautiful” in the yearbook mock elections was the daughter of OPRF’s most notorious mob boss.
Coincidence? I think not.
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: My best friends dad was a “truck dispatcher”. One day the feds came to the house, went into the attic and found a bunch of industrial diamonds. Dad was gone “fishing” in Canada for a while.
Jay C
Two (semi-) relevant observations on this thread:
1) Highly amusing to see that that House Republicans’ notion of how to “resolve” the present budget crisis is to try to fund the Government piece-by-piece: with (one presumes) the ultimate outcome being that “everything but Obamacare” gets the bucks, and thus their fetish gets “resolved”. Does NO ONE on the GOP side of the aisle realize that this lame scheme just WON’T F*CKI*NG WORK!!! ? Or are they just going to cling to the self-righteous “Obama won’t negotiate” gibbering right to the end?
2.) IIJM, or is there something definitely NOT RITE about a supposed Online Honcho ready to “spend” “$150,000” or so (in Bitcoins) to off somebody: but balks at having to cough up more than $200 in real cash for a real contribution?
Snarki, child of Loki
online persona -was “Dread Pirate Roberts,” or DPR, a reference to the film The Princess Bride
@Sly:”Hmmmm…. Nope. Still doesn’t ruin the movie for me.”
The dude was using the WRONG name! He was clearly a Rodent of Unusual Size.
Peter
I would love to see a President Warren, but not in 2016, I think. 2020 maybe.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven: Yeah, there was a similar thing with Tony “Big Tuna”Accardo except he and his wife had gone to Florida and left my classmate and her sister to deal with the Feds.
Suffern ACE
@Cacti: it’s like we amuse ourselves when the president called out Paul Ryan in front of the cameras at the White House in 2011 over the tone but not the substance of what he was a saying.
rda909
@Belafon: I don’t get disappointed when a president can’t act as a dictator. I understand that’s how it’s supposed to work, and that’s why I can look at President Obama’s amazing accomplishments and feel happy about them and for the future.
I’ve noticed this before, where so many of the “bully pulpit” so-called liberals go on and on how President Obama should be more angry and aggressive, yet at the same time suggest Elizabeth Warren should just continue being a Senator despite her being a “fighter”…just because, that’s why. Are you afraid once she starts making the inevitable compromises, your hero worship of her will take a hit? It’s easier to keep her in a place where in your minds she can continue to be “fighter” rather than someone who actually, you know, has to pass things with a bunch of insane Republicans and might disappoint you from time to time?
I’m guessing those who suggest Senator Warren shouldn’t run for 2016 say that for themselves more than anybody, since they don’t want the bubble they’ve up built around her to be popped and they’ll haz a sad. They’d rather just keep her in the Senate to maintain the emotional attachment they have to her story. Senator Warren can win the nomination and the general in 2016, and she would be one of the best presidents ever, so I think America needs her, no matter how much she might compromise for incremental changes.
Liberty60
@dmsilev: Whats especially hilarious is seeing the wingnut blogs whine and snivel over how ruthless and tough the Dems are being.
Given how big a man crush they have in tough guys like Putin, thats gotta sting.
Redshirt
President Vizzini – it’s inconceivable!
Doug Milhous J
@Hungry Joe:
Willie Nelson
Citizen_X
“Never match wits with a Paultard, when death is on the line! Aha ha, hahahahaha haaaaa!” Thunk.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Doug Milhous J:
Damn. You beat me to it.
The Raven on the Hill
Told ya.
TerryC
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: We @Enhanced Voting Techniques: “Any why is murder for hire illegal; only because the statest control freaks passed a law saying so.” I think we share FB friends. “Statest” is all over my timeline lately.
Flukebucket
I have been reading everything I can find on Bitcoins and still I cannot get it through my thick ass bone head how they work. I think I understand that they only work with people who believe in them but what if I want something from a person who does not believe in them?
it is just too fucked up for me to think about anymore.