I hear Saddam's not busy

"Clearly the Iraqi people are not embracing freedom, so imposing order through a military strongman might be the only way."

-Bill O'Reilly tonight, channeling Bill Maher in his call for installing a new military dictatorship in Iraq

Head-smacking quote of the day

"As much as I love the president and what he stands for, this "saving face" stubbornness is really not representative of conservative values. He must own up, change the tune, and come up with a new plan. It's a civil war, and it's all because we tried to give them democracy too quickly. A pro-USA dictator would have done the job and kept them from fighting."

-FreeRepublic commenter aristotleman, on Bush's inability to say the phrase "civil war" when talking about Iraq

Borat

It's official: no one has a sense of humor anymore.

It's a fucking funny movie, people. Get. over. yourselves.

Rats

One of my first posts on my old site dealt with the (then) new phenomenon of right-wingers calling them "government schools" instead of "public schools." I believe this was to evoke "government cheese" and the idea that people aren't too thrilled with government, even though they like things that are public.

These days I've been struck by how the crapweasels refer to it as the "Democrat Party" instead of the "Democratic Party." Is this because "democratic" is too positive a word? Is it because the word "democrat" ends in "rat"? I honestly don't know. But even the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage has noticed:

Democrat (n.), Democratic (adj.), for the party and its members. Do not use Democrat as a modifier (the Democrat Party), that construction is used by opponents to disparage the party.

Now that the right-wingers don't control every aspect of American society, expect this sort of crap to ramp up, along with fake outrage at everything even remotely liberal. Remember when Bill Clinton's haircut was a giant scandal? Multiply that by 1,000, and you might get close to how it's going to be for the next two years.

Be careful what you wish for, as they say - you might just get it.

Error! Error!

Well Dean Esmay, who has tried to masquerade as being pro-gay despite being an HIV denialist and never speaking of gay people without simultaneously crowing about "backlash" now reveals his true feelings: being gay is either a result of trauma or biological error.

Thanks, Dean. Love you too, man. I've wanted to compare you to one of the creatures from "The Island of Dr. Moreau" for a long time, but I've managed to hold off.

---------------------------

For reasons that are too embarrassing to recount here, I was going over my archives at my old site, and came upon this sample text for wimpy Democrats to use back in late 2003 when talking about marriage rights for gay people. Well now it's election time again, and I think I hit the nail on the head back then.

I think what's important here is to understand the difference between civil and religious marriage. Religious marriage is a sacrament, and I don't believe the government has any business telling any religion who they can and cannot marry. But civil marriage is a legal contract that's enforced by the state, and that confers rights on the citizens that enter into that contract. I believe Americans are a fundamentally fair people. And this is about fairness - allowing people who want to enter into committed relationships, relationships that strengthen the society, to get the rights conferred by civil marriage.

There's a lot of talk about civil unions these days - trying to create a system alongside civil marriage that would involve the same rights. But why create a new system, a new bureaucracy, to try to simulate something already in place? Is that fair? I don't think it is. "Separate but equal" didn't work in the civil rights era, and it doesn't work here. I know there are a lot of Americans who are uncomfortable with homosexuality. But that unease shouldn't be enough reason to deny basic rights to citizens of the United States of America.

See? That wasn't so difficult, now was it?