What have you got against a pseudonym?
As far as being a so-called ‘lib-Dem’: you’re crazy.
I know you directed that comment at iowahawk and it is one aspect of his comment that I am not convinced of. But Weiner did spend a considerable part of his life in Academia (at Berkeley!) and amongst the North Beach regulars. He developed into a 'conservative' after about age 48.
Most people's political views are pretty well fixed by the time they are that age.
Yes, because we all know only a real conservative would donate money to Moonbeam Brown's campaign.
From SFweekly.com
“It’s a neat trick for a once mild-mannered botanist and North Beach hipster who counted none other than Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the late Allen Ginsberg among his pals when he was still using his real name: Michael Weiner.
Few things about Savage’s pre-radio past could have presaged his rise as perhaps the far right’s most vocal on-air ambassador. Not his adulation of Ginsberg. Not the fact that he once trolled the streets of Greenwich Village and, later, North Beach, in a beret. Or that the staunch anti-abortionist’s first wife had two abortions during their marriage. And certainly not the fact that he was once Timothy Leary’s gatekeeper at the LSD experimenter’s farm.”