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The Yoda of 9/11

Continued from page 2

Published on August 09, 2007

Curley's blogging obsession predates Screw Loose Change and the 9/11 attacks. He started posting to Usenet.com in the mid-'90s, and his personal blog, http://brainster.blogspot.com, has been around since 2003, covering everything from politics and football to The Amazing Race. He also maintains a blog on Silver Age Comics (http://sacomics.blogspot.com), which is, as its front page states, "Mostly Dedicated to Comics Published from 1955-1970." All his faves are discussed on there — Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and the Spirit, a more obscure series that dates back to the '40s and was illustrated and written by comic legend Will Eisner.

As anyone can glean from his Brainster blog, Curley's a moderate Republican who supports John McCain in the GOP primary. And though he's voted mostly Republican in recent history, he did cast a ballot for Bill Clinton in '92 because, he says, he wanted to reward the Democrats for pulling the party toward the center. But he was adamantly opposed to Senator John Kerry's run versus George W. Bush in 2004 — so much so that he authored a blog during the election called Kerryhaters ( http://kerryhaters.blogspot.com/), featuring the catch phrase "We're not Fonda John."

On Kerryhaters, Curley received notoriety for pointing out discrepancies in statements from Kerry concerning the candidate's disputed claim that he spent "Christmas in Cambodia" as a Swift boat commander in Vietnam. (Never mind that Kerry actually served in Vietnam, unlike Chickenhawk George. But that's another story.) Conservative talk-show host and blogger Hugh Hewitt credited Kerryhaters for breaking the item. "We went from 600 visitors a day to, like, 1,000 visitors a day — almost overnight," brags Curley.

His next blogging brush with greatness saw Curley connecting with his eventual SLC blog partner Bennett, an MBA student and chief warrant officer in the Army National Guard who had his own blog, Chief Brief ( http://thechiefbrief.blogspot.com), covering political, economic, and other issues. In 2005, both Chief Brief and Brainster reported on mistakes made by liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in a piece on the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida.

"I posted on one part of it, and Pat posted on another part of it," says Bennett, 36, who's married with a kid and lives in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue. "The National Review picked it up eventually. Krugman had to run, like, three corrections on it. Anyway, that's how I found out about Pat's site [Brainster], because we both were involved in the same story. So I started posting some comments on his site. Basically, we started covering the same story. That's how we ended up talking."

Bennett served in Uzbekistan during Operation Enduring Freedom, the military response to 9/11 aimed at toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan. He shares with Curley a similar political philosophy — moderate Republican to Libertarian. The two had not met in person as of the writing of this story. They communicate mostly via e-mail, though they did speak via phone once while being interviewed about SLC for a radio show.

Bennett recalls that, in 2006, Loose Change was on both of their radar screens, and their mutual interest in debunking the lies of Loose Change was the seed from which SLC sprang.

"Pat started talking [online] about the movie Loose Change in relation to the movie United 93," remembers Bennett. "The truthers were out protesting it and such. They were all saying this Loose Change is the movie they should be showing instead of United 93. And Pat was criticizing that. So I made a comment that, actually, this is kind of an interesting subject. That some people should look into this. It would be a good subject to blog about. So I actually started a blog called Loose Change, Loose Screws. It was too cumbersome a title, so Pat came up with Screw Loose Change, which is a little more aggressive, but it kind of flows better."

Curley identified closely with the heroes of United 93, who, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, attempted to take back the flight from the Islamofascist hijackers, who then crashed the plane in an open field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Though all 44 onboard were killed upon impact, the passengers stopped the hijackers from reaching their target of either the White House or the Capitol. In the aftermath of 9/11, it was one tale from which the nation drew hope.

Originally from New Jersey, Curley discovered tangential connections between the lives of United 93's passengers and his own life. Todd Beamer, famous for his comment, "Let's roll," lived in the same town in New Jersey as Curley's sister. Jeremy Glick, "the judo guy" who helped lead the fight against the terrorists, had grown up in Upper Saddle River, near the towns of Allendale and Waldwick, where Curley was raised. He later learned that Glick was a comic book enthusiast, too, and that Glick's dad had worked with Curley's brother-in-law.

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