Taking a break

My outrage meter is broken. Six years in the red will do that. I just can't dedicate any more energy right now to the insanity that surrounds us.

Based on past experience, I'll probably be back at some point. Maybe not.

Editing

"Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence."

So begins Ann Coulter's latest column on how the Libby prosecution is (surprise!) a terrible miscarriage of justice, and how Bush just must absolutely pardon Libby, now.

Ann, sweetie, let me just suggest a minor edit to your lead paragraph:

"Lewis Libby Bill Clinton has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence."

There. Much better - and more accurate!

Resonance

Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley is the third high-ranking military official forced out because of the scandalous treatment of veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. Could this finally be a tipping point, where patriotic Americans begin to realize that conservatives don't care at all about the troops, no matter how much accusatory finger-pointing or heart-tugging country songs stomp through our war-infested culture?

No wait. What was I thinking? Of course, the answer is "no." The line is a dot, people.

What goes around

Unhinged eliminationist gun-obsessed perv Kim du Toit has decided that he's shutting down comments on his site, because he's tired of a few stray attacks on him and his wife, the vivacious, bombastic universal scold Connie du Toit. Up to now, his flying monkeys have pretty much toed the line, probably because they are too busy stroking their highly-polished shotguns to challenge him on anything. Well, those happy days are gone.

I must admit that one of my sharpest incidents of schadenfreude was when I learned that Kim and Connie's homeschooling database business, Did Today, collapsed because investors were horrified with the du Toits' combined online output. Who knew that years of calling for the violent death of your political enemies would have such negative consequences?

And so the withdrawal continues, as they homeschool their children and retreat into their fantasy of the 1950s America that never existed in the first place.

Go with God, you two.

Dirty Sanchez

So did you hear the one about the military guy who was the toast of the right, after speaking out about being called names on the Columbia University campus by the college's "radical anti-military students"?

Yeah - turns out his previous career was in show business. He was a star - of gay porn.

And guess what? Matt "Rod Majors" Sanchez had his picture taken at CPAC with Ann Coulter, just as she was making the "faggot" comment about John Edwards. He was at CPAC to accept the Jeanne Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award.

You can't make this stuff up, people.

Of course, the crapweasels are rallying around him. Because let's face it: he may be a (self-denying ex-porn-star ex-manwhore) faggot, but he's *their* faggot. It's also sad and tragic that Sanchez has pledged his undying support to a movement that doesn't think he should have been allowed into the military in the first place.

My favorite part of his whining display of victimhood on Salon was his contention that lefty blogs were "prying into his private life." Personally, I think if your naked ass is displayed on video racks in every porn shop in the U.S., your "film career" isn't part of your "private life."

Libby, Libby, Libby goes to Prison, Prison, Prison

Of course, he won't. He'll get a pardon, sometime between Election Day 2008 and Inauguration Day 2009. But it's just too pleasurable not to write that headline.

Coulter apologia

In surveying the right-wing crapweasel web sites, as I do more often than I should for the sake of my blood pressure and overall sanity, I've come across a broad spectrum of defenses of Ann Coulter's "faggot" remark. I hereby record them for posterity - paraphrased, but with the basic meaning intact.

1. Ann wasn't calling Edwards a faggot - she was referring to Isaiah Washington from "Grey's Anatomy."
2. Ann didn't call Edwards a faggot - in fact, she specifically *declined* to call him a faggot.
3. Ann was using the word in the "schoolyard taunt" sort of way - not to mean "gay." (This came not only from her defenders, but from Ann herself on "Hannity" last night)
4. I thought being gay was great, according to liberals. Is there something wrong with being gay, now?
5. Gays call each other "faggot" all the time. What's the big deal?
   
6. Faggot actually means: bundle of sticks, female prostitute, old woman, bassoon (!) etc. etc. ad infinitum.
7. The comment didn't have anything to do with Edwards - it was all about media hysteria over language.
8. It was a joke!
9. There were a lot worse things Ann could have called Edwards, but she didn't.
10. Why are liberals trying to take away Ann Coulter's freedom of speech? Liberal Nazis.
11. Apparently to liberals, it's OK to say vicious things about Christians, but you can't sneeze in the direction of a gay.
12. Ann was taken out of context (again).
13. I hate liberals and their manufactured outrage.
14. Ann was making a good point. Who wants the Breck Girl as Commander-in-Chief?
    

UPDATE: Best weblog comment of the week, from Hot Air:

I'd just like to add that liberals don't love to bash Christians, just people who call themselves Christians right after calling someone else a faggot.

Ich bin ein Faggot

Memo to Ann Coulter:

When Michelle Malkin denounces you for being over the top, you've got a problem. Seriously.

Still, though, please keep it up. Ramp it up if possible. Say every single hateful, racist, bigoted thing that your slavering followers are thinking but dare not say. Cap it off with another performance at CPAC 2008 - maybe you can call Barack Obama a half-breed nigger terrorist-lover or something. (Just an idea - feel free to steal it.) Because the Democrats are going to need all the help they can get to take back the White House next year.

Godspeed, Ann.

UPDATE: Shorter "Hot Air" comment section:

Calling someone a "faggot" is no big deal. When I was growing up, we called each other "faggots" all the time, and it didn't have anything to do with whether anyone was homosexual - or, as we have to say now, "gay." Damn fags and their euphemisms. Go Ann!

Everything's hunky-dory

When I heard the news story today about the explosion in Ramadi, I laughed. Which makes me a bad person. But when the U.S. government tries to minimize the reports of a truck bomb killing 18 children on a soccer field by saying, no, we set off the explosion ourselves, and it just wounded 30 people - we're down the rabbit hole.

Further down.