Visceral

This image was prominently displayed in a comment thread on FreeRepublic about the President's State of the Union speech.

Words fail me.

Very bad day

If you're President Bush, and the day before your State of the Union speech, with your approval ratings at an all-time low and still sinking, and the former Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John Warner, publicly comes out against your "surge" plan in Iraq...

...you must be having a Very Bad Day.

Andy Griffith Hates America

(from August Pollak by way of Oliver Willis)

Feingold 4 Ever

From Glenn Greenwald, who has been covering the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the warrantless wiretapping by the Bush administration:

Feingold began by pointing out that the administration, including Gonzales, has many times accused opponents of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" -- meaning those who insisted that eavesdropping take place within the law, within the FISA framework -- of "opposing eavesdropping on terrorists" (I can find 20 examples in 5 minutes of that).

Feingold's first question - "do you know of any one in the country who opposed eavesdropping on terrorists?"

Gonzales: Sure - if you look at blogs today, there is a lot of concern about all types of eavesdropping, who don't want us eavesdropping at all.

Feingold: Do you know anyone in government who ever took that position?

Gonzales: No, but that is not what I said.

Feingold: It is a disgrace and disservice to your office and the President to have accused people on this Committee of opposing eavesdropping on terrorists.

Gonzales: I didn't have you in mind or anyone on the Committee when I referred to people who oppose eavesdropping on terrorists. Perish the thought.

Feingold: Oh, well it's nice that you didn't have us "in your mind" when making those accusations, but given that you and the President were running around the country accusing people of opposing eavesdropping on terrorists in the middle of an election, the fact that you didn't have Congressional Democrats in "mind" isn't significant. Your intent was to make people think that anyone who opposed the "TSP" did not want to eavesdrop on terrorists, even though that was false. No Democrats oppose eavesdropping on terrorists.

Gonzales: I wasn't referring to Democrats.


So, apparently, all those speeches Bush officials and their supporters have spent the last year giving accusing people of opposing eavesdropping on terrorists, and all the television commercials making the same accusations throughout the months leading up to the election, were not about Democrats at all, but were about random bloggers who are against all eavesdropping. Where? Maybe on Smirking Chimp and Democratic Underground. That is who they meant when they were talking about opposing eavesdropping on Osama bin Laden. They didn't mean Democrats in Congress. The entire campaign and all of those accusations were directed only to the bloggers who don't want them eavesdropping at all.

I confess to finding that exchange deeply revolting though satisfying at the same time. Can't they just all yield all of their time to Feingold?

Damn I wish that man was running for President.

Sex sex sex

Unintentionally hilarious FreeRepublic quote of the week, on a thread denouncing the idea of ending "don't ask, don't tell":

"I am amazed at the 24/7 obsession that these people have with sexual activity."

Mind you, this is a site that has a permanent category called "Homosexualagenda."

Memo to all the gay-hating troglodytes on FreeRepublic:

I'm not the one defining myself by my sexuality. I'm not the one obsessed with sex. I'm not the one calling people names based on who they love.

You are.

Mind-blowingly stupid right wing media moment of the week

Bill O'Reilly's latest fascination is having a "body language expert" on each week to "analyze" newsmakers and give us "insights." Insights like that Rosie O'Donnell really doesn't like Donald Trump - not one bit.

Tonight, she was asked to watch video of (wait for it) Saddam's execution.

She proclaimed that just before the hanging Saddam "experienced anxiety."

Anti-gay Freeper jaw-dropper of the week

"We are going in the wrong direction. We should extend the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy to the civilian sector as well."

-during a discussion of lifting the ban on gays serving in the U.S. military

Just wondering

Gerald Ford seems to be being praised mainly for his wonderful decision to pardon Richard "I am not a crook!" Nixon at the close of Watergate.

I wonder, though, if Nixon had been tried and convicted, whether we might have been spared imperial presidencies such as that of George W. Bush. Maybe these men might not have thought that they were above the law, that they were invincible.

Maybe.

Death porn

The crapweasel right-wing weblogs are masturbating furiously over Saddam's hanging. Sort of reminds me of how furiously they masturbated when we killed Saddam's sons.

The question is, who has to die next to satisfy their itch?

UPDATE: I guess I'm not the only person with this take on things. Funny, if sad.

Bonus Freeper rant on Mary Cheney

Far from being a "fine mom," Mary Cheney is behaving on the level of an animal being bred for its offspring, so she and her partner in delusion can selfishly continue playing "pretend family."

A Freeper's head explodes when George W. Bush says Mary Cheney will be a "fine mom." Instead, clearly, she's closer to an animal that can still play "pretend family." Sort of like a mentally-ill horse with a Play-Doh set.

Mirror, mirror

La Shawn Barber, everyone's favorite black conservative evangelical blogger, has always taken her self-absorption to spectacular levels. Most of her posts are about her. Not her opinions, or her analysis of the issues, but *her* - her wonderful success, what accolades she's receiving, the famous people she hobnobs with, and the tribulations of being such a famous online figure. I sometimes wonder how the woman types, since she spends so much time patting herself on the back. Images on her site are 90 percent of, you guessed it, her face.

Well, she's outdone even herself this time.

Mind you, she's still interesting to read, because a wacky opinion or two does manage to sneak in now and again. Like her enthusiastic support for the torture at Abu Ghraib. Or how she said she was absolutely sure there was no intelligent life on other planets, because only Earth is mentioned in the Bible. I hate to break it to you, La Shawn, but God doesn't mention microwave ovens or the Nintendo Wii in the Bible either - does that mean they don't exist?

Wait - I take it back about the Nintendo Wii. I'm beginning to think its existence is just a cruel joke, probably by some godless heathens. When will they learn?

Happy Winter Solstice, everyone.

Just a thought

Why do people who natter on endlessly about the "gay agenda" so often use a variation of the phrase, "having it crammed down my throat"?

Draw your own conclusions.

Bonus video: Ray Comfort enjoys a banana.
(Thanks to Lisa, who I hope will write her own weblog one day.)

Freepers weigh in on Mary Cheney's pregnancy

The selfishness in this is demanding to experience motherhood and having a child, just because she can. there are plenty of children worthy of adoption that she could raise and devote her life to. just because one is capable of bearing a child doesn't mean one SHOULD, and especially if the lifestyle she has chosen doesn't encompass bearing a child as a consequence thereof. yes, it is extremely selfish of her.

OK. So you're in favor of gay people adopting?

As far as I know, both Cheney and her husband/wife/roommate/partner/whatever are working women. So unless one of them is planning on giving up their career, this child will be raised, in effect, without either a true mother or father. But of course, children of the "elite" have always been abandoned by their parents and raised by nannies. That's why so many of them are so incredibly screwed up to begin with.

Hmm. So the real problem is that Mary Cheney is rich, is that right? When will you right-wingers stop hating the rich?

It looks like FReepers are now going pro-gay. Or is it just selectively pro-gay because it's Dick Cheyney's daughter? 'It's ok when this person does it, but no one else can.' Despicable. No wonder conservatives are losing. We can't even be consistent in our message.

Yes - you need to be more consistently anti-gay. Good luck with that!

As a matter of fact, a lesbian couple that I know had a baby through artificial insemination and then when the child was ready to enter school, the mother realized that she didn't want to be a lesbian anymore because it would make life too difficult for the child. She's now married to a man.

Whew! Glad everything worked out.

But when you consider that Mary Cheny has an agenda. One that includes gay marriages, gays adopting children, special rights for gays, then on to abortion rights, abandoning the WOD, Cutting and Running, and even going panty-less in limo's...

Well the point is that Mary Cheney's baby DOES affect us all.

Wait, I'm confused. Mary Cheney wants us all to skip underwear and ride in limos?

The fact that Cheney had a lesbian daughter to begin with should have disqualified him from being on a conservative Republican ticket. Its not like he just found out in 2001. The idiots in charge of Bush's campaign are to blame for this even coming up.

If only. If only.

Quotes on the Iraq Study Group

"They formed a study group. That's great - but the test was three years ago."
-Jon Stewart, last night on The Daily Show

"In all my time in Washington I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority. Self-congratulatory. Full of itself. Horrible."
-Gambling addict and moral scold Bill Bennett, on National Review Online's "The Corner" weblog

Memo to Bill Bennett: Look in the mirror, dude.

This is not my beautiful house!

First, the Democrats take the House and the Senate.

Then, Rumsfeld is out.

Then, John Bolton is gone from the U.N.

Then, Secretary of Defense nominee Robert Gates says we are not winning in Iraq.

And now, Mary Cheney is pregnant.

When did we enter this beautiful alternate universe? I never want to leave.

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?