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.

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* 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."