A Christmas letter

This is an e-mail I just sent to Bill O'Reilly. I'm not a "premium member" of his site, so I'm not sure he or anyone else will see it. (It's kind of like sending back a Publisher's Clearinghouse entry without subscribing to any magazines.) But I thought I would give it a try anyway.

Bill:

I'm an agnostic, but I love Christmas. For me it's about the traditions: the tree, the gifts, Christmas music. Obviously, there's a lot about Christmas that's secular and not religious.

I'm not the least bit offended when someone wishes me "Merry Christmas." So why should a devout Catholic or Protestant be offended when someone wishes them "Happy Holidays"? Is that really an insult?

What puzzles me the most is why you want to require retail establishments to celebrate your religious holiday. Seems to me Christmas for Christians should be a lot more about what happens in church and a lot less about what happens inside a Wal-Mart.

-Thomas More
Madison, WI

iTunes Music Store

I did the "podcast" post below simply as a test for a client who wants to start a podcast on his site. So I figured I had to learn how it all works for myself. And I must say, it's fascinating. I was even able to add the Utopia podcast to the Apple iTunes Music Store. (Search for "utopia" under podcasts, and it should come up. Or, Apple says this link will work.) That's cool. Who knows - I may even do a few podcasts, even though I can't stand the sound of my voice.

Good news and bad news

The good news is that a federal judge has ruled that teaching "Intelligent Design" in the Dover, PA schools is unconstitutional, and further, that ID is not science.

That's great.

The bad news is that we even have to endure a case like this. Why are we even questioning whether it's OK to torture prisoners, or secretly spy on U.S. citizens? Why is there a question about the definition of science in the year 2005? Why are we forced to cheer whenever basic common sense and the values we thought we shared are upheld? And why must we be disappointed so often when this doesn't happen?

Our society is completely upside-down. That's scarier than I can express. All I can think of is, what's next?

Bill, Bill, Bill

For those like me who greatly mourn the loss of Henry Quinn's wonderful site "Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly," why not try "The Anti-Bill O'Reilly Blog." It's a great resource for cataloging all the reasons to loathe Billy.

Utopia podcast: Inaugural Edition

This is a test of using Blogger for podcasting. The file linked here isn't actually a Utopia podcast, but that could come in the future. Just testing for now.

Utopia podcast - 12.19.05

Utopia logo

This is a test.

Chris Wallace, Fucker

I recently watched Chris Wallace interview his father, Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes," on "Fox News Sunday," the program Wallace Jr. anchors. It ended with a tearful father telling his son, "I love you and I'm proud of you."

Now NewsMax has only slightly more credibility than the guy yelling about aliens outside the Walgreens. But if Chris Wallace said anything even close to what's being reported, he earns Fucker of the Year without anyone else having to be nominated.

Great move, Chris. I didn't think I could loathe anyone more than your colleague Brit Hume. But you're almost there.

Bill O'Reilly loves Christmas

Listening to O'Reilly's latest salvo in his ginned-up "War on Christmas" coverage, I couldn't help wishing that the latest dildo Bill would use on himself while calling up female employees with x-rated come-ons would take the form of a very large and spiny Christmas tree. (Hey Bill - did you know that the Christmas tree is a pagan symbol?)

Bill's latest line is that "the secular forces will lose this war." That's a good trick. Create a "war" out of whole cloth, pontificate endlessly about "battles" that don't exist, and then declare "your side" the winner. Another blow struck against the secular humanist heathens! Hallelujah!

The thing is, this little trick has been going on for several years now. It's a winner for Fox, and a winner for O'Reilly. He gets to be the Holy Warrior, and even better, he "wins" every year! Guaranteed! It's brilliant. And it lets retail establishments like Sears and Target know the power of the religious right, and the slack-jawed yokels who hang on Bill's every strangled word.

To me, it comes down to this: if you need Target to affirm your faith, you've got some serious problems - problems that won't be solved by a Wal-Mart greeter wishing you "Merry Christmas."

We have nothing to fear but Fox News

"You know, Fox turned into a hardcore sex channel so gradually, I didn't even notice."
-Marge Simpson, The Simpsons, "Lisa's Wedding"

Watching John Kasich fill in for Bill O'Reilly on "The O'Reilly Factor" tonight, it struck me how much networks like Fox, and conservatives in general, simultaneously rail against the debasement of culture, while falling all over themselves to see who can be the biggest debaser.

O'Reilly's show in particular won't let a single child molestation case, illegal alien crime spree, or lurid murder case go without obsessive over-coverage. (I hear Greta Van Susteren is just going to give up and *move* to Aruba.) Watching Fox, it would be easy for space aliens to conclude that our society is composed completely of abusive clergy, murderous teens and Commies.

The reason is simple: fear. If they can whip up enough fear among the housedress-wearing masses tuned into Fox, they can sell anything to those quivering millions. An illegal alien is going to take your job! Hillary Clinton wants to take your hunting rifle! Muslims will kill you if you so much as step out of your own yard! Macy's wants to burn down your Christmas tree!

It's sick and transparent, but fear sells. Literally. Fear sold the Iraq war and the Bush re-election. And when you can move crap like that, you can sell anything.

Neocon translations

"Whether one agrees with going into Iraq or not and whether or not WMD was found isn't the point any longer. We need to complete the mission now that we started it; we cannot afford to leave it unfinished."

-Captain's Quarters

Translation:

"Finding out who bludgeoned your mother to death and left her corpse on the kitchen floor just isn't the point any longer. Listen, son, I know I'm holding a shovel. I know I have blood all over my clothes. And you did find me standing over your mother's lifeless body, screaming 'I'm so glad you're finally dead, YOU BITCH!' But the point right now is, you have to help me clean up this mess and hide the body before anyone finds out. You don't want your father going to jail, do you? Your mother's gone - no amount of finger-pointing is going to change that now. So grab that bottle of 409 and get to work. Now."

George Bush hates America

Last night, watching "The O'Reilly Factor," I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that Bill did re-broadcast his comments about San Francisco (see post below), but conveniently left out the part about calling for Al-Qaeda to bomb the Coit Tower. He played the entire quote, just without those last few crucial words. Hmmmm.

When the liberal guest from SF tried to call him on that editing job, O'Reilly shrugged his loofah-polished shoulders and said, "Hey, we can't play the whole thing. It's five minutes long."

This morning, I was thinking, I wonder what Malkin, Esmay et al. would say if their President dared the enemy to attack Americans. Could they justify that?

Then I remembered - that's just what Bush did.

"There are some who feel like that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on."

- President George W. Bush, 7/1/2003

Bill O'Reilly is a traitor

Hey, you know, if [in San Francisco] you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I'm not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, "Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead."

And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

-Bill O'Reilly, on "The Radio Factor," Nov. 8

Bill O'Reilly is a traitor to this country. Bill O'Reilly is a terrorist sympathizer. He should be imprisoned in Guantanamo without access to an attorney, tortured, and then, best case scenario, executed on national TV.

I'm serious.

Maybe we could get one of those cages to attach to his head so rats could eat his face. I'd pony up serious Pay-Per-View cash to see that.

Then, to defend himself, he said this:

Look, San Francisco is a beautiful city. It is now a disgraceful city. You can’t even walk around the city without seeing people doing appalling things in the streets.

This is a man who sexually harrassed his employees multiple times over the phone, describing the sex acts he would perform on them while using a vibrator on himself.

Fucker.

Political weblog comment of the week

"I wish we could make the right wing small enough to drown in a bathtub."

-commenter on John Cole's Balloon Juice site

War is peace, and freedom is slavery

The White House is trying to get news services to change their transcripts of the press conference where Scott McClellan is finally called on his lies about how Libby and Rove "were not involved" in the Plame fiasco.

Winston Smith, call your office.

Actual Democrats are pussies

Why can't any of them be as forthright as fake Democrat Matt Santos? Why can't they stand up for themselves and what they believe in? (Memo to Dems: you believe in good stuff. Trust me on this.)

Santos: I know you like to use that word, "liberal," as if it were a crime.

Vinick: I know Democrats think "liberal" is a bad word. So bad you had to change it. What do you call yourselves now? Progressives? Is that it?

Santos: It's true. Republicans have tried to turn "liberal" into a bad word. Well, liberals ended slavery in this country.

Vinick: A Republican president ended slavery.

Santos: Yes, a liberal Republican, Senator. What happened to them? They got run out of your party. What did liberals do that was so offensive to the liberal party? Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did conservatives do? They opposed every single one of those things. Every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, "liberal" -- as if it was something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from -- it won't work, Senator. Because I will pick up that label, and I will wear it as a badge of honor.

-from "The West Wing" live debate episode Sunday

Seeing all those Republicans praising Rosa Parks made me sick to my stomach. Conservatives are on the wrong side of history, again and again. I think it's about time we had the courage to point that out.

Anyone? Bueller?

If anyone's out there reading this, I'd love it if you'd leave a comment. Let me know if you've read the site before, why you read it, that sort of thing. Thanks.

Feingold '08!

Russ Feingold (D-WI) is making a lot of sense about Iraq. I wonder why more people aren't.

Definitions

A left-winger looks at half a glass of water and says it's half full. A right-winger looks at the same glass and wants to know who drank half their water.

-from a commenter at Queen of All Evil

35 percent, bitches

My question, as always, is who are these millions of people that make up Bush's 35 percent? After all, these are the people who would staunchly defend the President if he reached into Dakota Fanning's chest on live national TV and pulled out and ate her heart greedily, the bits of blood and muscle spattering the camera lens.

Dick Cheney? 19 percent.

Pundit show quote of the week

"This is unacceptable. This is America. And if you don't like America, find another place to live.....That said, we are respectful and tolerant of all religions and all people."

-Hillsborough County (FL) Commissioner Brian Blair on The O'Reilly Factor Thursday night. Blair was upset over the local school board's decision to cancel all school holidays based on religion after the board heard a request to honor a Muslim religious holiday on the school calendar.

O'Reilly went on to opine that it was "absurd" in a "Judeo-Christian country" like the U.S. that schools honor Muslim religious holidays.

I heart Patrick Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald made it clear, from the very start of his press conference, that Valerie Plame's status as a CIA officer was CLASSIFIED.

CLASSIFIED.

He also made it clear that Libby leaked the info to Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, and lied about it.

Clear enough, wingnut bastards? OK. Great.

CLASSIFIED.

And lying about it is a serious crime, not a "technicality."

"Truth is the engine of our justice system."
-Patrick Fitzgerald

Restoring honor, integrity and accountability to the White House

Yeah.

Bumper sticker for our times

Stolen from This Modern World.

Wrestling with a pig

On many political web sites I frequent, both liberal and conservative, I find time and time again liberals patiently explaining obvious truths to clueless/venal righties. Then they do it again. And again. These liberals are beginning to resemble friendly Labrador retrievers who will bring the tennis ball back indefinitely, until they finally collapse in exhaustion.

Some of the truths we have to explain over and over:

-Valerie Plame was a NOC.
-Bill Bennett and some random liberal crank are not the same thing.
-Saddam didn't try to get tons of uranium from Niger for his non-existent nuclear program.
-Protest and celebration are not the same thing.
-If perjury was a crime then, it's not a "technicality" now.
-The Flight 98 memorial is not a secret Muslim plot.

This game of Whack-a-Mole with patently obvious truths reflects badly on both sides. The right willingly believes as many falsehoods as necessary to keep their heads from exploding with cognitive dissonance (think "Scanners"). But even worse, the left takes the bait - again and again and again.

Stop taking the bait.

Campaigning for torture

Democratic Underground is right: Cheney is vulnerable, which is the only reason the Washington Post could see fit to write "Vice President for Torture."

The DU poster put it succinctly, and correctly: the man is a monster.

On a side note: it was odd last night to see the fictional female U.S. President Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis) dealing with one of those perfect hypotheticals that pro-torture people love throwing around: you have a suspect in custody with specific knowledge of imminent terrorist attacks, and no time for traditional police work. It's Dick Cheney's wet dream, frankly. And they played all the angles by having the President call for doing everything short of torture, while the evil Attorney General ordered torture behind the President's back. So they got the results of torture (the amazingly correct intel), while keeping the President's hands clean. Neat trick.

Blowjobs and broomsticks

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (wait for it.....R-Texas) believes that perjury (lying to a grand jury) is a "technicality."

Funny how Republicans spent the 90s screaming about the "rule of law" until they were blue in the face when it came to Bill Clinton, but when it's Dubya and his cronies, perjury is a "technicality." Nice.

To be fair, Bill Clinton lied about a blowjob, while Rove and Libby lied about exposing a covert CIA operative in time of war. Not the same thing at all!

The blowjob is worse, of course.

"Won't someone THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"
-Helen Lovejoy, The Simpsons

The bad news just keeps on coming

Cheney cabal hijacked U.S. foreign policy
I love the word "cabal."

Senators say Miers' answers "incomplete to insulting"
Harriet's making friends wherever she goes these days.

Bush whacked Rove on CIA leak
Was there any doubt the President knew all along what was happening? No.

Texas court issues warrant for DeLay
I admit my love for schadenfreude.

No quorum for Santorum
Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Because reprinting other people's comments is the only thing I have the strength for right now

In a comment thread on Balloon Juice about the Frontline report on U.S. use of torture in the Iraq war:

I just finished watching Frontline and all I can say is I am sure glad that we ignored the Geneva Convention because without doing so we never would have found those stockpiles of WMDs.

Oh.

Blog comment of the week (month? year?)

"You'd think after five years they'd start running out of ways to suck."
-Atrios commenter

You'd think so. But you'd be wrong.

President Toaster

The left-wing media is positively giddy over the prospect of multiple indictments on the Plame investigation, thought by many to be widening out into an investigation of the selling of the Iraq war by the Bush administration. But I confess I can't get excited about this. They've weaseled out of so much over the last five years, why should this be any different? And if they do get out of it, it'll just be another cudgel to beat their opponents over the head with. "Look at what those damn liberals did! Criminalization of politics!" etc. etc.

I'm in another of those periods where none of it seems to matter. Go ahead, put Jerry Falwell on the Supreme Court. Imprison Muslim Americans in concentration camps. Invade China. Elect a four-slice toaster to be President. At this point, I just don't care.

Tillman hearts Chomsky

Fascinating article from The Nation about attempted-right-wing-poster-boy Pat Tillman (hat tip: John Callender at lies.com):

Pat Tillman, Our Hero

The fact is that Tillman was so much more than a shill for the fever dreams of the New American Century crowd. His family deserved better. He deserved better.

We all deserve better.

Another 15-20 years isn't so long

This week's "Top Ten Conservative Idiots" over at Democratic Underground is one of the best ever - each one is a gem. But this passage about Iraq stood out to me:

The truth is that Iraq is on the verge of tearing itself apart, with our soldiers trapped in the middle. In order to "catapult the propaganda," Bush has been tossing out the fantasy that "Right now there are over 80 army battalions fighting alongside coalition troops," with "over 30 Iraqi battalions in the lead."

There are about 500-600 soldiers in a battalion, so that's a minimum of 15,000 Iraqi soldiers ready to rock n' roll. Considering that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, that means we only have to train 135,000 more Iraqis (at a cost of $7 billion per month) to finish the job. It took us two years to train 15,000 so it should only take another, oh, 15-20 years or so to train the rest.

There's just one problem - when Bush says that there are 30-80 Iraqi battalions fighting in Iraq, he's talking out of his ass. Last week Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. general in Iraq, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there is actually only one self-sufficient Iraqi battalion.

One. It's taken us two years to train one self-sufficient battalion, comprising 500-600 soldiers, at a cost of $200 billion dollars and counting.

Coincidence? You decide.

President Bush: job approval at 37%. (yep.)

Tom DeLay: indicted (three times).

Karl Rove: on the cusp of indictment.

Harriet Miers: attacked by both right (Ann Coulter!) and left.

wait for it...

wait for it...

NYC subway terror alert!

And for those who think I'm just a pinko Commie baby-eating Chomsky-loving liberal conspiracy theorist, remember when Tom Ridge admitted that the administration pressured him into raising the threat level? Yeah.

Turtles all the way down

Dean Esmay, the avowed atheist who never met a hard-line Christian conservative he didn't like, links to an article by Michael Balter whose premise is neatly contained in the headline: Let 'intelligent design' and science rumble.

Hey, what a great idea. I think the next series of debates should be "Physics vs. Magic: Who's right?" Can physicists explain everything? Hell no. So the obvious alternative is magic. I'm not sure if it should be the magic of "Charmed" or "Bewitched" or even "The Craft" (if we're reaching), but that can be determined by a public opinion poll, or something.

I personally believe that angels cause "gravity" by pushing us all down away from Heaven until we're ready to go. Prove me wrong, Stephen Hawking! I dare ya!

The world we live in

If Bush nominated a fax machine for the Supreme Court, right-wing weblogs and pundits would be engaged in endless discussions of what the judicial philosophy of the Xerox 4250 would be.

On Fox News Sunday:

Brit Hume: We still don't know how the Xerox would rule on Roe v. Wade. But the fax machine has been in the Oval Office for some years, so we have to trust that President Bush knows how it would rule.

Juan Williams (incredulous): It's a FAX MACHINE!

Brit Hume: What's your point?

I'm sure I'll get tired of posting about Bennett eventually

Best deconstruction of Bennett's remarks I've read so far, from a commenter at Daily Kos:

There is no distortion that could make those remarks worse than they were. The idea that any context could make even hypothetically suggesting that total genocide would reduce the crime rate just shows the depth of his bigotry.

And in fact even taking the entire conversation into account makes it worse not better. Even if, as some have claimed, he was only extrapolating from the observation that crime-rate (official) is higher in the black population, the fact that he said he "knew" that removing all black people, even hypothetically, would result in a reduction in crime rate means that at bottom, he believes that blackness must be causal. [Emphasis mine. -TM] If he had been prepared to consider that, say inequality was causal, or poverty, or judicial racism were causal, he could not have said that he "knew" the crime rate would go down. Because there is absolutely no way of knowing. It is perfectly possible the crime rate would stay the same or go up. It depends on what is causing the crime rate. By saying he "knew" what would happen, he was assuming race was causal.

Ergo it was not just disgustingly racist, but simply racist. There is absolutely no defence.

Schadenfreude

Now Bill Bennett can concentrate on blackjack full-time:

Bennett feels the heat

And yes - I feel tremendous pleasure from this. I'm OK with that. Sort of like when Bill O'Reilly was caught leaving unwanted dirty-talk messages on an employee's phone, just when "The O'Reilly Factor for Kids" was coming out? Yeah, like that.

Justice Brownie

"In the White House that hero worshipped the president, [Bush's Supreme Court nominee Harriet] Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met."

-David Frum, National Review Online

"I'm disappointed, depressed and demoralized."

-Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard

"I am going to assume that this is a classic Bush head-fake gambit. If I'm wrong, I will spend the weekend banging my head against a concrete wall. This is the Supreme Court we're talking about! It's not a job for a political functionary!"

-John Podhoretz, The Corner on National Review (before the pick was announced this morning)

More Bennett analogues, because they're fun

Man at a party with friends and his wife:

Man: You know I bet if I punched my wife in the mouth that would get her to shut up. But that would be morally reprehensible to do, and I would never hit my wife.

Wife: I can’t believe that you would say that, I’m offended that you would talk openly about punching me in the face.

Friend: Well, Wife you didn’t listen to his WHOLE statement, he said it would be morally reprehensible. He was just stating a FACT, because he’s a big guy and if he did punch you in the mouth I bet that it would make you shut up. I can’t stand that everyone is so P.C., he was just making a truthful claim and again why can’t he just talk about PUNCHING you in the face, it’s in his right to make thought experiments.

If we killed all the vets returning from duty in Iraq, we would reduce the incidence of mental illness in this country. Of course that would be very hard to do and it would be morally reprehensible but we would have alot less nut jobs.

Both stolen from comments at Balloon Juice, where conservatives are falling all over themselves to figure out ways to support Bennett and his comments. Which says more than Bennett's quote ever did, if you ask me.

Ideas for Bill Bennett's next remark

"You know, there's a lot of filth coming out of Hollywood these days. And if your sole purpose was to clean up Hollywood, you could just abort every Jewish baby in this country. Of course it would be impossible and reprehensible to do such a thing - but Hollywood would be a better place."

"If all you wanted to do was lower the obesity rate in this country, there's a simple solution - shoot all the fat people. I mean, just round them up and shoot them in the head and dump their bodies in the ocean. But of course, that would be wrong."

UPDATE: The White House now calls Bennett's original remarks "not appropriate." To which Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) responded, "Not appropriate is wearing white shoes after Labor Day. These comments were reprehensible and racist." Yay to Sen. Lautenberg!

I'm beginning to take a fancy to it, too

Beautiful, bracing stuff over at Daily Kos:

Cries from the Lake of Fire

Hat tip: John Callender at lies.com

An excerpt:

I know you hate me, and anyone else who dares disturb the thin strands of alternate reality in which George W. Bush is an intellectual giant, Saddam really was responsible for 9/11, the economy is getting better by the minute, and we capture the most very important members of al Qaeda on a weekly basis.

But here's some advice. You'd better start hating me more. This is the world you forged and, unfortunately for you, I'm beginning to take a fancy for it. Welcome to the politics of your own party, finally sprouting from the ground on which you planted the seeds and shat upon them.

Amen, brother.

Quick quiz

Which is worse:

A) American soldiers torturing prisoners

B) Releasing photos of the abuse

Take your time with your answer. This one's important.

"The Death of Outrage," indeed

"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."

-Bill Bennett, America's self-appointed morality czar (and gambling addict), on the radio this week

"Our nation does not surrender to blackmail"

Boy the good news just keeps on coming this week:

Judge orders release of Abu Ghraib photos

That was some fraternity party, wasn't it, Rush?

One down, so many others to go

DeLay indicted, steps down.

Put a fork in him. Next?

Lynndie England to head investigation into Abu Ghraib abuses

As if we needed further proof that Onion-style satirical humor is obsolete in our society: only after Tom Burka of "Opinions You Should Have" wrote the satirical headline "Mike Brown To Take Charge Of Congressional Investigation of FEMA" did he learn that his joke had basically come true.

I believe that the apex of The Onion was the 2001 headline heralding the inauguration of George W. Bush: "Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Finally Over." Since then, well, reality is just moving too fast for any satirist to keep up.

Fake Presidents

My friend David and I were talking about the premiere of "The West Wing" this week, and how much we enjoyed getting back to those characters we loved. (The scene between Donna and Josh was both heartbreaking and refreshingly real.) And now there's "Commander in Chief" starring Geena Davis starting tonight, where she plays the first female U.S. President.

"This is good," said David. "These days, we need all the fake Presidents we can get."

So true. So true.

"I want fake Sunday shows to start talking about what the fake Presidents are doing during the week," he said. "Bring on 'Capital Beat!'"

I support it.

Drinking again?

Dangers of a Drunk Dubya

What he said.

First good news I've heard in a long time

Odious gun nut whackjob Kim "John Fuckface Kerry" du Toit and his wife, the even more odious Connie "Dissent is treason" du Toit, have both completely shut down their web sites. From what I can gather, Kim got a new job, and was perhaps a skosh concerned that his wild-eyed rantings about killing all the ragheads and hanging liberals from telephone poles might cause some consternation with his new employer.

This after the du Toits admitted that their online business venture, DidToday, was just about scuttled when investors pulled out after discovering the couple's hateful, disgusting rantings.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving pair. I can only hope that their sites stay dead - there's enough filth on the internet as it is.

Cluelessness? Or something more deliberate?

A tale of crescents and cones.

The elephant in the room of the crapweasel right is their own screaming stupidity. One thinks it's a tree trunk, one thinks it's a rope, one thinks it's a spear, and one thinks it's a fan.

Bill O'Reilly thinks it's a falafel.

NOTE TO CRAPWEASELS: Did you know that New Orleans is known as the "Crescent City"? Let loose the dogs!

Good Democrat! Good!

For conservative Bush backers, Donna Brazile is a "good" Democrat, because she's unwilling to hold the President accountable for his massive failures surrounding Hurricane Katrina.

Joe Lieberman is a "better" Democrat, because he's willing to praise the President and get in bed with Republicans at the drop of a hat.

And Zell Miller is the "best" Democrat, because, well, he's clinically insane.

For La Shawn Barber

Lyrics to my new favorite song, "God's Song" by Randy Newman:

Cain slew Abel
Seth knew not why
If the children of Israel
were supposed to multiply
why must any
of the childen die?

So he asked the Lord
and the Lord said,

"Man means nothing
he means less to me
than the lowliest cactus flower
or the humblest yucca tree
He chases 'round this desert
'cause he thinks that's where I'll be
That's why I love mankind.

I recoil in horror
at the foulness of thee
at the squalor and the filth
and the misery
How we laugh up here in heaven
at the praise you offer me
That's why I love mankind."

Christians and the Jews
were havin' a jamboree
Buddhists and the Hindus
joined on satellite TV
They chose their four greatest priests
and they began to speak

They said, "Lord there's a plague upon the land
Lord, no man is free
The temples that we built to you
have tumbled into the sea
Lord, if you won't take care of us
Then please please let us be."

And the Lord said
And the Lord said

"I burn down your cities
How blind you must be
I take from you your children, and you say
How blessed are we!
Y'all must be crazy
to put your faith in me

That's why I love mankind.
You really need me!
That's why I love mankind."

This was so funny I almost peed my pants

Sorry, but this photo is freakin' hilarious. If you don't find this funny, you've lost your soul.

Call me Cassandra

I hate to say "I told you so."

But I told you so.

As Edward G. Robinson intoned so memorably in one of the greatest movies of all time, The Ten Commandments:

Where's your messiah now?

President Bush has got to be counting his lucky stars that the event that ripped away his last shred of credibility came in the form of a natural disaster, and not a terrorist attack. Imagine if those images of him eating cake with John McCain and playing the guitar were taken while people burned alive after a nuclear explosion. I wonder if he would be sleeping in the White House tonight.

Words mean things

"From my perspective, it is far, far too late to start bringing up questions about funding priorities now, except maybe in the sense of bringing them up if another war is proposed."
-Dean Esmay, Crapweasel-in-Chief, who previously described the war in Iraq as an "experiment"

I wasn't aware that democracies "proposed" wars, like they do, say, highway projects. But this is the world we live in now. George Orwell, call your office.

Drowning

Grover Norquist, the architect of the Bush tax cuts and general right-wing asshole, is famous for his remark about wanting to drown the federal government in the bathtub.

We're all in that bathtub, now.

Louisiana

Randy Newman sang this song from his "Good Old Boys" album at the outset of the benefit concert tonight for hurricane relief. It made me cry.

Louisiana 1927

What has happened down here is the wind have changed
Clouds roll in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

The river rose all day
The river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright
The river have busted through cleard down to Plaquemines
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame
what the river has done
To this poor crackers land."

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

Another funny one

How conservatives see liberals in America:

POLL: Which do you hate the most?

(a) Freedom
(b) America
(c) The troops
(d) Jesus
(e) Hate all equally.

(stolen from comments at Balloon Juice)

Freedom is on the march

"What's unusual for an event on the Mall is the combination of fences, required preregistration and the threat of arrest."

-The Washington Post, on the frankly obscene war rally planned for Sept. 11 in Washington. D.C.

Wouldn't Martin Luther King Jr. be proud!

UPDATE: Since I don't have the strength to write the kind of rip-roarin', over-the-top rant that this event deserves, I'll leave it in the capable hands of The Rude Pundit.

Rght-Wing Dictionary

The Blame Game
n.
Accountability.

"A quick observation: when people don't want to play the blame game - they're to blame."
-Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, 9/7/05

Because laughing is so much less painful than crying

Bush to Investigate Self
from Opinions You Should Have

The Do-It-Yourself Emergency Management Guide
from Fafblog!

Other suggestions? Let me know in the comments.

Hell Week

Being a die-hard Bush supporter (and let's face it - is there any other kind?) is much like joining a fraternity. You go through Hell Week (9/11), and after that, it's just too difficult to break away. You've already defended the frat when that pledge died of alcohol poisoning, and during that massive cheating scandal. Then there was the bonfire that burned down the dorm - I mean, who could have predicted that would happen? Nothing will shake your faith in your brothers - nothing. So when two girls are raped after a keg party, no matter how much evidence piles up against the frat President and his roommate, you deflect. And defend. And never admit so much as a speck of culpability for the Prez, or anyone in the fraternity. If you did, your whole world would crumble around your feet. And nothing - nothing - will make you turn against this organization you've staked so much on.

Which explains why, if President Bush slit their grandmother's throat on national television, people like Dean Esmay would clutch her gurgling body and declare, for the cameras, that she had it coming.

Another thought experiment

Your city is hit by a massive terrorist attack, nuclear or biological in nature. Thousands are dead and many thousands more are homeless. You won't be able to return to the home you and your family have known your whole life - for months, maybe years. President Bush spends the first two days after the attack playing guitar and having cake.

That's OK, right? Anything else would just be stupid symbolism. After all, what can *he* do, right?

Run that one up the flagpole.

Redundant

According to the right-wing media on TV, radio and on the web, the President isn't responsible for anything that happens in Iraq. And now with the hurricane, we learn that nothing here at home, even disaster planning by his shiny new Department of Homeland Security (I get a little shiver every time I hear that name), is his responsibility. What do we want him to do, build a levee or something? I mean, a giant multi-state disaster has nothing to do with the federal government, right? Nope.

So according to this, the President has no responsibilities. He's done the impossible - made himself redundant, as they say in Britain. So I guess he can just go back to Crawford permanently and not bother us any further.

Whew. I feel better already!

UPDATE: Steve Gilliard has some great righteous anger to share. (Personally I loved the "live-action Chauncey Gardiner" line, which is spot-on.)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: From a wire story on tragically-unqualified FEMA head Michael Brown...

In Mobile, Ala., on Friday, Bush said the response to Katrina was unsatisfactory. But he had nothing but praise for his FEMA director. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said.

Hooray for the Accountability Administration!

Infinity

"A lot of the people -- a lot of the people who stayed wanted to do this destruction. They figured it out. And that's -- I'm not surprised."

-Bill O'Reilly last night, explaining that "a lot" of the people who remained in New Orleans did so because they were looking forward to looting

To Bill O'Reilly, John Gibson, Bill Whittle, and all the right-wing crapweasels who want to make this tragic story about the looting instead of about how thousands of people lay drowned in their ruined homes, and thousands more are stranded; to those who want to place the blame on the poor of New Orleans instead of the people who were supposed to save them:

Fuck you. Fuck you very much. Double-fuck you. Fuck you times infinity.

Thought experiment for right-wingers

It's 1993. Your city, and huge areas around it in several states, has been destroyed by [insert geographically appropriate natural disaster here]. Thousands are dead, hundreds of thousands are homeless, and your city is gone.

Bill Clinton is in Vail skiing with Robert Redford, and only returns to Washington after being shamed by members of his own party. He surveys the damage on the way back to D.C. by tipping the wing of Air Force One slightly. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is on vacation in Boston, shopping and going to the theater. Speaker of the House Tom Foley gets on TV to say that maybe your city isn't worth rebuilding. When Clinton gets back to Washington, he's interviewed by Jane Pauley, and he says that, well, no one could have anticipated this disaster - even though it's common for the area, and he recently cut funding that could have helped. Clinton's FEMA director gets interviewed on the morning shows, and insists that "everything is fine," despite constant images and reports of the devastation and massive refugee movements.

Your reaction?

BONUS QUESTION: Remember your outrage - OUTRAGE - when Bill Clinton got his $200 haircut on Air Force One? Yeah.

Oh my freakin' god

Condi goes shoe shopping.

Wow. Just wow. Funny how it took this story to make my anger explode, where it was just simmering before.

And I'll echo Gawker, and say: Angry Lady, whoever you are, I love you.

Job performance review

Apparently we need to add something else to the list of things that President George W. Bush cannot be held accountable for*: inadequate federal disaster planning, and not leaving his Crawford ranch during one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

*(9/11, response to 9/11, gas prices, the economy, job losses, corporate scandals, planning for the war in Iraq, selling the war in Iraq, intelligence gathering in his administration, violence in Iraq, war profiteering in Iraq, unprepared military in Iraq, $9 billion lost in Iraq, U.S. treatment of WOT prisoners, world opinion of the U.S., treasonous actions of his staff, the federal deficit, federal spending overall, environmental damage from corporate greed, the health insurance crisis, etc.)

Remind me - exactly what *is* the President responsible for?

UPDATE: August Pollak on the partisanship of the Weather Channel. And from This Modern World, New Orleans as a casualty.

Fatty Fatty Boombalatty

Funny stuff over at Poor Man Institute about Michael Moore's stay at a fat farm. Great parodies of LGF-level screaming about Moore's fatness.

Quote of the Week

"Iraq, it turns out, is the one branch of American government that the Republicans don't control."

-Maureen Dowd, The New York Times

Hitting the nail on the head

Eugene Volokh thinks he's got it figured out: gay people do try to "convert" straight people to their sinful ways. Not that this "hypothesis" deserves comment, cogent or otherwise. But one commenter gets to the heart of the matter thus:

Let’s face it. The only people actively trying to “convert” people to their brand of sexuality are HETEROSEXUALS. The whole ex-gay movement is a conversion movement. Of course it doesn’t work, but that’s another matter altogether.

Amen. When you start seeing commercials on TV and ads in magazines that promise to "deliver you from the hell of heterosexuality," that interview proto-gays as they smile creepily and tentatively touch their new same-sex partners while basking in the soft glow of their recently-installed track lighting, then we'll talk, OK?

Dean Esmay's next great idea

"Fire" the White House press corps.

Translation? Expel all press from anywhere near the President. If the President wants to say something to the people, he can issue a non-filtered press release. No questions will be allowed, ever. The President can talk to us (or not) as he pleases. Any so-called "questions" can be asked and answered at the ballot box, thank you very much.

Personally, I don't think Dean goes far enough. Why do we need "journalists" anyway? They're just liberal puke "filters," and we don't need that. If we need perspective or analysis, or information of any kind, wise bloggers like Dean (and Michelle Malkin and La Shawn Barber) will happily step into the breach and educate us. Hooray! Democracy wins!

Loyalty

"If you defend a President for sitting there for even one second after he's told America is under attack, you are loyal to a person more than you are to the truth, to a principle, or to your country."

-Bill Maher, "I'm Swiss"

More fun with the psycho right wing

Here are some choice comments from Little Green Footballs denizens about Cindy Sheehan's mother's stroke:

"adios, cindy. and stay the hell and gone...
dear God, its not enough that we have to put up with the illegals coming over the border like crap through a goose, we will let just any freaking body into Texas now"

"I'm glad the Texas Ditch Bitch had to leave.
The question is....Who will the left dredge up next?"

"Idealogy has driven people so mad that I am hoping Sheehan's mom does not die, not because she is a human being, but because somebody might use her as their ventriloquist dummy for their cause."

"Not trying to be mean or funny, but - any chance the stress her escapades have put her mother under, caused the stroke? Just saying....."

"I attacked Bush and all I got was a divorce, a mom with a stroke, and this stupid t-shirt!"

"1. The handlers were looking for an excuse to bail, and found it, or
2. This attention addict won't be able to resist the limelight, and will soon be back."

"It's too bad Rachelle Corey is not available to stand in for her while she's gone. Of course when her mom actually sees her and realizes that Cindy is that nutcase she's been seeing on TV, she'll probably have another stroke."

These people are sick, sad fucks.

Quote of the Year

Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I’m delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.

-The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989)

Thanks to The Poor Man Cafe. (While you're there, don't miss Keyboard Kommando Komix. Good stuff.)

"People. They're the worst."

I'm really tired right now and I hate people. Everyone who comes through my field of vision just pisses the hell out of me right now. Ever have that feeling?

Exploitation

For all of those who believe Cindy Sheehan is exploiting her dead son, an image:

Random Cindy Sheehan thought

If you push a guy into a shark tank and the sharks eat him, who is more responsible for his death - you, or the sharks?

(sort of my riff on this)

Latest on Cindy Sheehan

Mrs. du Toit: "a brood mare"
Dean Esmay: (wait for it) "fascist propagandist"
RedState.org: "left wing media whore"

When these vile fuckers get going, there's nothing they won't say. There's no one they won't savage in their psychotic need to support this war and the President who got us there. They are a sick, sad bunch, and if I thought they could feel anything, I would pity them.

He's not sure about that internal combustion engine, either, frankly

Dean Esmay, everyone's favorite insane rageaholic contrarian, has now decided that he hates the interstate highway system.

You can't make this stuff up, people.

Stay at Dean's a while, and he'll also tell you about how HIV doesn't cause AIDS. And how women beat men as much as men beat women. And how Michael Moore is a fascist. And how he knows that Michael Schiavo murdered his wife on the night she collapsed.

I look forward to the day that he declares fluoridation is an attempt to steal our precious bodily fluids.

Keep it up, bitches

Hey Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, et. al.:

Please keep up your attacks on Cindy Sheehan. Savage her. Pull out all the stops. Burn her in effigy, if possible. Make Photoshopped posters with her wearing an Osama beard. (E-mail me, I've got a ton of other suggestions.)

Because the more you attack a mother who lost her son in the War on Iraq, the more you expose yourself as the hateful, anti-American bitches that you are. And even more importantly, as the Rude Pundit noted, the more you attack her, the more powerful she becomes as a symbol of this monstrous failed experiment.

With love and hugs,
Thomas More.

Quote of the Day

From a random Little Green Footballs commenter, about the outrage over the "We Love 9/11!" rally planned by the Department of Defense for this Sept. 11:

"Why can't we celebrate anything good that has ever happened?"

Not. Making. This. Up.

Security blanket

There are some things that are just too terrible to contemplate. We don't want to think that our fellow citizens could be capable of the things they are so clearly capable of. We don't want to know that our neighbor could beat his wife, or that our parish priest molested a child.

But these things happen. And we need to face up to them.

Until recently, I've been unwilling to acknowledge the love that right-wingers have for 9/11. It's an almost fetishistic obsession that allows them to indulge in all their worst impulses:

• foreigners are evil, especially if they don't look like me;
• everyone is against me;
• no one understands me;
• violence solves most problems;
• all my detractors are liars and traitors;
• my country is the only power that matters; and
  
• I am the most powerful person in the world, and no one can tell me what to do.

They cling to the tragedy of 9/11 like Linus with his blanket. And no wonder - no question can't be answered with "9/11 changed everything."

As I said, I don't like facing up to this. It's not fun. But then the horrifying Mrs. du Toit steps in and reminds me. (She said she was going to stop writing her weblog; tragically, she went back on that promise.)

Face it: the right loves 9/11. It validates them. It warms them. It shields them.

And that's the truth.

UPDATE: The Department of Defense (headed up by Donald "the weapons are in the area around Tikrit, and north, south, east and west somewhat" Rumsfeld) has announced plans to stage a massive rally, parade and (I'm not making this up) country music concert to "celebrate" 9/11 this year. This would be funny if it wasn't so sick and wrong. AMERICA! FUCK YEAH!

UPDATE II: Clint Black, who will be headlining the "A! FY!" Concert on 9/11 this year (sponsored, as I've said, by the DoD), will no doubt be performing his song "I Raq and Roll" (again, I'm not making this up), which includes lines like:

If they won't show us their weapons
We might have to show them ours

and

It might be a smart bomb - they find stupid people too
If you stand with the likes of Saddam
One just might find you

Toby Keith, call your office.

Hate sites

Some excerpts from Little Green Footballs' "discussion" of the death of anchorman Peter Jennings:

"These guys are no more deserving of condolances than a suicide bomber. The media is the enemy. This is something to jubilate."

"The victims of evil are insulted again and again when we fail to vilify what ought be vilified."

"Do you pine over Goebbals? ... Do you feel pity when a bug that stings you gets squished? You feel pity for Peter Jennings. Shame on you."

"It's been a good week so far for ending the careers of Jew-hating journalists."

"Hell has another occupant."

"A dead arrogant antsemitic Canadian born WASP prick with shit for brains!"

"Being an atheist I don't believe in the place but were I a god-monger I'd wish him to rot in hell."

BONUS: Karen of "The View From My Chair" is upset that news of Jennings' passing interrupted the climactic moments of her "Law and Order" rerun. Words fail me.

Humours in harmony

Great stuff as usual from Tom Burka at "Opinions You Should Have."

How far have we come?

A commenter on my "Edumacation" post says we've come a long way in the 80 years since the Scopes Monkey Trial, where John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in the public schools.

I don't think we've come very far at all. If anything, in the United States right now we've circled around to the beginning again. I believe that the likelihood of another Scopes Trial, with the same outcome, is more likely today than it has been in decades.

Here's a thought experiment: imagine that in 1962, at the height of the space race, that President Kennedy publicly advocated teaching creationism (as it was called then, in a less PR-saturated age) in the public schools alongside evolution.

I wonder how that would have gone over with the mainstream media and the public?

Just leave

One of the most common witticisms uttered by the crapweasel right wing against people who protested Bush's war in Iraq was, "Hey commie - if you don't like it here, why don't you just go to Iraq!"

Here's my take on that idea:

Hey Michelle Malkin - you want to live in a country where immigrants are imprisoned? Better find somewhere else to live.

Hey Rick Santorum - want to live somewhere where gay people's lives are against the law? Get the hell out of my country.

Hey La Shawn Barber and Rush Limbaugh - you want to live in a country where torture is state-sponsored? Grab your passport, and don't let the door hit you in the ass.

Hey Bill O'Reilly - want religion taught in public school science classes? Find a country more to your liking, please. Lots to choose from out there.

Hey Dean Esmay and Connie du Toit - think dissent is treason? Just leave.

Just leave. Because with these profoundly un-American ideals, you don't belong here.

UPDATE: A special shout-out to the utterly loathsome Kim du Toit, who wants to hang and/or shoot anyone to the left of Tom Tancredo. Kim, please haul your gun-obsessed ass to the border ASAP. You're not welcome here.

Relativism run amok

When it comes to a host of topics, from abortion to child rearing, the crapweasels believe there is one and only one "correct" viewpoint. Anything else stinks of "relativism," one of the most popular boogeymen used by the right wing.

Is every family equally valid? Is every sexual orientation equally valid? Every religion? No, scream the crapweasels. NO!

So it's funny that when it comes to evolution and creationism, suddenly teachers have the "responsibility to let students know about all sides of the 'debate'." Suddenly, relativism is their bestest friend.

Americablog says it well.

UPDATE: On Tuesday night, Bill O'Reilly said that teaching kids science in science class is "fascism." Dean Esmay, call your office. (Hat tip: Rude Pundit)

Blog quote of the week

From La Shawn Barber:

I’ve been asked by several people where I stand on the Condi-for-president meme. I wouldn’t vote for Condoleezza Rice for president of the United States. First, I don’t think women generally have the sensibilities to run the country. Before you jump all over me, it’s important that you know I don’t care what you think. You’re reading this blog, so you obviously care what I think, so there it is.

Now there's a potent stew of misogyny and hubris. And don't get her started on "the ungodly" or why her fundamentalist Christian beliefs are absolutely not in conflict with her enthusiastic support of state-sponsored torture.

Charming lady, really.

The Edumacation President

In one of those news stories that can't help but wake me up briefly from my outrage overload, President Bush yesterday explicitly advocated teaching "intelligent design" in schools alongside that most evil of secular humanist inventions, evolution.

Fucker.

Wonkette has the Quote of the Day:

"Teaching [intelligent design] as 'alternative' to evolution is a little like teaching 'magic' as an alternative to physics."

Which reminds me of one of my favorite science stories. Bertrand Russell once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy.

At the end of the lecture, a little old lady from the audience came up to Russell. "What you have told us is rubbish," she said. "Everyone knows that the world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."

Russell chuckled at this and asked the woman, "Then ma'am, what is the tortoise standing on?"

"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down."

Hate Hillary. Love Condi.

It's somewhat comical to me when I see these right-wingers tripping all over themselves to say how Condoleezza Rice would make a great President of the United States.

Here was a woman who was epically unqualified for her original job in the Bush II White House - a Sovietologist in the era of Islamic terrorism. As National Security Advisor, she presided over the greatest attack on U.S. national security in history - a massive failure on every level. (Out of 100 national security meetings the administration held before 9/11, only two were about terrorism.)

After 9/11, she became a major player in selling the Iraq War. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," she said about the Iraqi nuclear program, which at the time existed as doodles on a cocktail napkin.

She has never held any elective office whatsoever.

Hey! Sounds like a great candidate for Leader of the Free World!

It's been a joke going around liberal circles that the way this administration awards failure, Karl Rove is going to be the next Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. With Condi, that concept becomes reality.

UPDATE: While I was writing this post, Dean Esmay was writing this.

The way-back machine

February 24, 2001: "Saddam Hussein has not developed any significant capacity with respect to weapons of mass destruction," says Secretary of State Colin Powell. "He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

July 29, 2001: "We are able to keep [Saddam's] arms from him," NSC advisor Rice tells the media. "His military forces have not been rebuilt."

Yeah.

Why even Jon Stewart disappoints me sometimes

Unlike Stewart's earlier (well-deserved) dismantling of Bernard "100 People I Hate! Nyah!" Goldberg, Stewart was so sweet to Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum, I thought the two of them were going to go on a date after the taping. As others have said, Santorum is vulnerable in his district in 2006, and he got better than a free ride from Stewart. That's damaging.

Stewart has shown that he can take the most intractable crapweasels and turn them inside out without raising his voice. Why he didn't do it with Santorum, who spreads some of the most hateful rhetoric in the U.S. Senate, is a mystery.

Redefining the undefined

I always chuckle when I hear Christian right and other anti-gay types start in with the "They're trying to redefine marriage!" yelling, often while clutching a dictionary to their heaving breasts.

Because gay people like me can't exactly redefine something that hasn't been defined in the first place - at least, not the way they think it is.

The plain fact is, two people with opposite sex organs can saunter into a Justice of the Peace and create a legal civil marriage in this country with blood tests and signatures. That's it. Nothing - nothing - else is required.

Not love. Not a promise to procreate. Not shared living quarters. Not shared philosophies, about child-rearing or anything else. Not fidelity, of any kind. They don't even have to know each other. One penis and one vagina? You're in.

So I would suggest that if all these things are so important, if all these things are so crucial to the survival of the society, these people should start requiring them of their straight brethren. Physician, heal thyself, as they say. Because right now, straight people are disrespecting their favorite institution much worse than any gay person is able to.

Sugar candy

Great stuff from insane old man Paul Harvey:

“Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving smallpox infected blankets to Native Americans. Yes, that was biological warfare! And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous. And, yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. And so it goes with most nation-states, which, feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded, and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry and up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.”

No surprise that the Freepers are lining up to celebrate Harvey's ode to nukes, slavery and genocide. LaShawn Barber, Kim du Toit and Dean Esmay will no doubt be close behind.

America - FUCK YEAH!

Suck this, Karl

Interesting little graphic (near the bottom of the link) showing the terrorism rates from 1995-2004. Hint: the low point was the year 2000. Interesting.

http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/1002

Nothing left

Maybe this is just my instantaneous mental and emotional state. But it occurs to me that talking about politics in American society today has become both meaningless and pointless. There's just nothing left to say. Everyone's shouting and no one's listening, and the train rolls on. There's no middle ground, no understanding, no point. Everything that's worth saying has been shouted so many times we're hoarse. Any concept of "society" is dead, shouted down as Commie Fascist Terror-Loving Socialism.

I'm just tired of pissing into the wind.

Confused

Why did we invade Iraq again? I just can't remember.

And think about it - isn't it just a bit upsetting that we still can't agree why we started a war? Isn't it a tiny bit discomfiting that if you ask 10 people my initial question, you'll probably get 10 different answers?

No? You're fine? OK. Forget I mentioned it. Happy Fourth of July.

Right-wing crapweasel translations

RWC:

"9/11 changed everything."

Reality-based-community translation:

"We can use 9/11 any time, in any context, to allow us to change the rules of government and society on a dime. Everything means what we say it means, nothing more or less, until we change our minds and it means something else, and has always meant that forever."

Why I love Jon Stewart, Part Infinity

"That's so true. You never hear about all the cars that *don't* blow up."

-Stewart on "The Daily Show" tonight, lampooning the Pentagon spokesman's blaming of public opinion turning on the Iraq war on too much coverage of the incessant car bombings over there.

It's on, bitch

Hey Karl Rove:

Are you sure you want to talk about the conservative response to 9/11, compared to the liberal response? You sure? OK. Let's go, baby.

It was a conservative President who sat in a classroom reading to children about a pet goat while the country was suffering its worst attack ever.

It was a conservative administration whose first response to the savagery of 9/11 was to hustle the family members of the attack's ringleader out of the country by any means necessary.

It was a conservative administration whose advice to the shell-shocked and grieving populace was simply: go shopping.

It was a conservative administration that thought the best way to find perpetrators was to announce, weeks before it happened, that they were going to bomb the country where they thought the terrorists might be.

It was a conservative Secretary 0f Defense who told the administration's top terror analyst, "There aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. Let's bomb Iraq."

It was a conservative administration that tried everything possible to block an investigation into what happened on 9/11.

It was a conservative administration that assembled a firestorm of ginned-up "intelligence" to justify a pre-emptive war against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.

It was a conservative administration that both praised and promoted those most closely responsible for the greatest intelligence failures in the history of the United States. Go team!

It was a conservative government that decided they could wage war on the cheap, denying soldiers the equipment they need in the field, and denying veterans the health care they deserve when they come home.

It was a conservative administration who blacked out passages from the (eventual) 9/11 report dealing with the country where most of the 9/11 attackers came from: Saudi Arabia.

It is a conservative President who can't catch the perpetrator of 9/11 after nearly four years, and in fact "doesn't spend that much time on him" at this point.

It's a conservative Congress that wants to renege on $125 million in aid to injured and sick Ground Zero workers.

It is conservatives who use the dead bodies of those who perished on 9/11 as a cudgel with which to beat their political enemies.

So Karl, in the immortal words of Vice President Dick Cheney: Go fuck yourself.

Mobius strip

"The flag, when it is in such condition that it is no longer a fitting emblem for display, should be destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning."

-U.S. Flag Code

Overheated - and ready to blow

In the spirit of all the overheated hyperbolic rhetoric being slung around these days*, I thought I would indulge in a little of it myself.

George W. Bush is like that serial killer that's just daring the movie detective to catch him. He leaves clues about his crimes everywhere, in places he knows the detective will find them. He calls the detective from easily-traced phone lines, and writes notes in his own blood reading "Catch me...IF YOU CAN!" He clearly has a subconscious need to be caught.

But in this particular case, the detective is distracted by Katie Holmes' engagement and some missing girl in Aruba, and can't exactly be bothered with a serial killer trying to get his attention. It's just not all that important.

-------
* My current favorite outrageous hyperbole comes from, big surprise, that crapweasel right-wing torture apologist Dean Esmay, who has decided on absolutely no evidence that Michael Schiavo killed his wife, calling him both "O.J." and "a lowlife piece of human excrement." Look in the mirror, dude.

My new favorite weblog writer

Rudepundit.

Bracing and fantastic.

In a nutshell

Downing Street Memo:
"The sky is blue. Everyone knows the sky is blue, and we talked about it."

Bush and Blair:
"The sky is absolutely not blue. That's just a patently false statement."

American media and public:
"Eh. Who really cares what color the sky is, anyway?"

Sophie's Choice

For right-wing crapweasels, the Newsweek story must have presented an excruciating Sophie's Choice:

Which do I hate more: those evil Muslims, or the American media?

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Fox-News-drunk crapweasels chose the media. Newsweek was "Traitor of the Week," and its staff should be fired and then shot, and the building dynamited, burned down and then razed. Dan Rather's face hovered before them, like the Emperor's hologram in "Star Wars." The bloodlust was so thick that they didn't take the time to fantasize about what should happen to the towelheaded rioters, who made such a fuss over a book.

Hopes

Now that Terri Schiavo is gone, I can only hope that all the people who kept this bloody fight going will one day have the entire country passing judgment on their private medical and family matters. I can only hope that talk radio, TV psychics and thousands of weblog writers will make pronouncements about what's best for their family. I can only hope that Congress will step in, so it can control the outcome. I can only hope that people like Dean Esmay - 10 pounds of shit in a five-pound bag - who willingly spread falsehoods about this case will have an endless litany of protestors screaming in his ear that he is a murdering sadist Christian-hater, and that Tom DeLay will take to the floor of Congress to declare that he is "a man of questionable morals." I can only hope that all the people who used this family's grief as a bludgeon will be personally lectured over the public airwaves by Rush Limbaugh.

I can only hope that as they sit at the bedside of someone they love, they will have Randall Terry in the hallway, conducting a live interview on CNN.

I can hope, can't I?

Now it's clear

The Terri Schiavo case has proven to me, without a shadow of a doubt, that the rule of law means nothing to the crapweasel right wing in this country. All that matters is their agenda. A dozen courts have already ruled in Michael Schiavo's favor, but that means nothing to these people, who are lining up to use Terri Schiavo's body as a human shield against their blood enemies.

More: And go he should, if he were the devil himself, until he broke the law.
Roper: So now you'd give the devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get to the devil?
Roper: Yes! I'd cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the devil benefit of law - for my own safety's sake.

-Man for All Seasons

Questions

I have some questions for those who think the government should step in and require that Terry Schiavo's feeding tube be re-inserted.

• If you were in a persistent vegetative state, would you want to live 15, 20, 30 more years?
• If your spouse told you unequivocally that they would not want to be kept alive under such circumstances, how would you feel about spending 10 years in court to carry out their wishes?
  
• Do you really want the state to have that much control over your family's medical decisions?
• Did you know that when he was governor of Texas, George W. Bush signed a law that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes?

Common sense about Jeff Gannon

How many billions of pixels have been wasted on mindless, irrelevant drivel about Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert? How many stars are in the sky? Here's some common sense.

-Guckert used an alias to conceal his gay escort past/present, not because it was "easier to pronounce."
-Guckert got a day pass to the White House press room for *two years.*
-He got a day pass rather than the permanent "hard pass" because he didn't want to submit to the background check.
-He was in the White House before "Talon News" even existed. Someone vouched for him. Who?
-Guckert's escort ads were up on the internet throughout the time he was a "reporter." His "personal life" was not "violated."

Furthermore, crossing into pundit territory, he was a gay male prostitute in Washington (imagine the client list!) while spreading the administration's anti-gay rhetoric through a fake news organization mostly in the business of transcribing White House press releases. As far as I'm concerned, he richly deserves everything he gets.

Validation

You know, it's true: gay people don't need the state to validate their relationships with civil marriage.

I wonder why straight couples need that so much.

Predictable

The right has become so predictable in its reactions to the steady stream of crap coming out of the White House, that I thought I'd try a little experiment - predict what some people would say to the following story in the Commie baby-killing MSM:

White House staff holds ritual puppy slaughter

WASHINGTON, D.C. - President Bush and high-ranking administration officials cut the throats of 12 labrador puppies on the White House's South Lawn Sunday, marking the first of what the President said will become an annual "sacrifice to Baal."

and the reactions...

Ann Coulter
"If only Michael Moore and Howard Dean were puppies."

Rush Limbaugh
"I'm sure welfare mothers in Detroit are cooking and eating puppies right now. But you don't hear Dan Rather crying about that, now do you?"

Bill O'Reilly
"If it's gonna help the troops, then I think the folks will be for it. And they don't need the Hollywood media telling them what they should think about this."

Dean Esmay
"Michael Moore, that fat Holocaust-denying hatemonger bastard, has more blood on his hands than anyone in this administration. And I'll spit in the face of anyone who says differently."

Scott McClellan
"I knew nothing about this."

Dick Cheney
"After 9/11, everything changed. And believe me, not doing the sacrifice would have been worse than the alternative. The American people want us to keep them safe, and that's exactly what we were doing."

Random Free Republic commenter
"Hey, if it takes cutting the throats of a few puppies to win the War on Terror, I say 'BRING IT ON,' baby! Maybe they'll do some of those filthy gays next."

La Shawn Barber
"If we're not careful, we're going to politically-correct ourselves into another 9/11. I was talking to my good friend Michelle Malkin the other day, and she and I agree - a few puppies is a small price to pay. (Watch for me on CNN tomorrow at 2!)"

Matt Drudge
"PUPPIES OWNED BY HUSSEIN BROTHERS.... DEVELOPING"

Adam Yoshida
"If our leaders can't kill a few puppies without shedding tears, how are they going to muster up the courage to kill all those Muslims with nuclear bombs? This is a good start, if nothing else."

Kim du Toit
"A real man would've shot 'em."

Fun with Fox "News"

So I'm watching Fox "News" the other night. And they break in with a field report on the Pope's illness. There's the field reporter, clearly standing out in front of the Rome hospital where the leader of millions of Catholics around the world is gravely ill inside.

And he ends up his piece with the line, "So there are a lot of reporters out here on a *very cold night.*"

Yeah. It's all about you, Bunky.

Then, they were teasing an interview with Katherine Jackson, mother of Jacko, currently on trial for child molestation. So they show a clip of an ultra-coiffed blonde interviewer, who leans into the camera conspiratorily and intones, "How. much. do. you.... love. your. son.?!"

Fox "News" should be shut down on humanitarian grounds. As Mrs. Lovejoy would say, "Won't someone think of the children?!"

Chew on this

If Oprah Winfrey ran for President in 2008, she'd probably win in a landslide.

What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?

Watching Michael Medved waxing poetic about Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" on Bill O'Reilly last night (following guest Ann Coulter - a crapweasel trifecta all in the same hour), I wondered:

What if Gibson had made a movie about Jesus Cruz, a poor L.A. gangbanger, who is graphically tortured for two hours by a rival gang and then horribly killed? Would Medved be "overwhelmed by its lyrical sweep and devastating immediacy"? Would church groups across the country have organized bus trips to buy out theaters showing it? Would Gibson be hailed as courageous in his moral crusade to make the movie, despite major studios' unwillingness to show two hours of closeup torture?