ParrotLine

Turdblossom's chutzpah

2006-09-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

Can you get any more brazen than Karl Rove? From NewsMax:

Karl Rove Promises October Surprise

WASHINGTON -- In the past week, Karl Rove has been promising Republican insiders an "October surprise" to help win the November congressional elections.

...

Rove is not saying what the October surprise will be. Asked if he would elaborate and give his thinking about the coming elections, Rove told NewsMax that his take largely parallels what RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman said in a Sept. 5 NewsMax story.

As for the October Surprise, Rove said, "I'd rather let the balance [of plans for the elections] unroll on its own."

Wow. It's one thing to plan an October Surprise ... it's another to be so contemptuous of the voting public as to announce you plan to do it.

I have a bit of an upset tummy ...

2006-09-20T23:13:00.000-07:00

Probably some Muslims poisoning the water supply.

Oops ... gotta run. I just hope the Muslims didn't use all the toilet paper.

Eek! A Muslim!

2006-09-20T21:35:00.000-07:00

It must be weird to see the diabolical hand of Islam behind everything that ever goes wrong in the world. To stumble on a crack in the pavement and look around frantically for the jihadist who tripped you.

Perhaps you caught Pamela's predictable response to the military coup in Thailand. Well, let's dip our toe in the LGF cistern ... where the pearl-clutching is even more ill-informed and inane, if that's possible.

First, the background: General Sonthi Boonyaratglin, who led the coup, is ... gasp! A Muslim! OMG! When the Lizardheads learned of this, they went positively apeshit. Here's a small taste from the comments:

MacGregor: omg [Really, MacGregor, thanks for playing to the stereotype!]

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thinkingmom: The violent, imperialistic, totalitarian political movement known as islam consumes another country. Poor Thailand. [Jeez, thinkingmom, let me know when you're having your next poker game ... I think I could get you to give me all your money just by glancing in the general direction of Mecca.]

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MandyManners: Goodbye Southeast Asia. [Good Lord, these people really are ready to write off any country - sorry entire region - in the world at the mere mention of Islam, however tangential it is to the actual events at hand. It's like, FOX NEWS: Man in turban spotted at Korean barbecue ... MandyManners: Goodbye Northern Hemisphere! Ahem. I will try to speak slowly: Sonthi happens to be a Muslim. Thaksin happens to be a scumbag. Thailand is 95 percent Buddhist. This coup has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with Islam or sharia law or "dhimmitude" or suburban soccer moms getting their heads sawed off outside an anthraxed Walmart in East Bumfuck, Kansas, or any of the paranoid delusions you sick shut-ins blather on about to no end.]

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jcm: Pull up the Thai target list, boys in blue, dust of the Thai OP PLAN. [That's the ticket, jcm ... let's attack another country for absolutely no reason! Fly off the handle much?]

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Muadib: It just stinks of Islam spreading by the sword. [Uh, no, Muadib. That's your upper lip.]

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Fast Eddie: The dominos are starting to fall. Wouldn't be surprised if Pakistan is next, nuclear weapons and all. [Uh, "fall" to a military coup or to Islam, Fast Eddie? Because ... um ... never mind.]

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OceansideCon: I was speaking with a co-worker who was born in Bangkok a few months ago. I mentioned I was interested in visiting Thailand. She said it was not safe to go as it was going to "flip" to a muslim country soon. [What, she was like, "Goo goo gaa gaa mum-mum no no" ... ? Idiot.]

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Cato the Elder: This is a nightmare. The violence will only worsen as the jihadis sense weakness and move in for the kill. [What violence? What jihadis? Do these people even skim the headlines of the stories they're commenting on?]

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rtheyserius: Really bad news. Poor Thailand. Welp, Islam marches on. ["Welp"? Couldn't you have thrown in a "prolly", rtheyserius? Because then this would have been the perfect LGF comment.]

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carradine: Almost no one has firearms in Thailand, they're BIG on gun-control here... So there's almost NO position citizens can assume except prone, or handzon ankles... [This guy's a real piece of work: a Baha'i who has lived in Thailand for years, and who does nothing to dispel his fellow Lizardheads' fact-free take on the situation ... and in fact he later adds fuel to the fire.]

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Killgore Trout: My moonbat neighbors just returned from thailand 2 days ago. [Thanks for the update. Moron. I think you better go egg their house, just on principle.]

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Odinist: Domino theory? Is anyone else seeing history repeat itself? Communists did it last century, Islamists doing it now... [Wait, Communists did what last century? Scared a bunch of yahoos so much that they cooked up nutty, ill-informed theories to justify invading a bunch of countries? Oh, okay, I see where you're going with this, Odinist!]

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so.cal.swede: shit... thailand is an awesome vacation country, cheap, warm, good beer, beautiful nature. So long, Thailand. [So long, warm beer-drinking "nature" lover!]

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rtheyserius: [answering this question:] Does the American Revolution count as a coup against the British? Jeez, folks, of course not. Get a grip, willya? An American Revolution coup against the British would have been something like Johnny Tremain sneaking into the Royal Palace in London with a bunch of armed comrads and deposing King George. [You set 'em straight, rtheyserius! The nerve of some people ... comparing our glorious revolution to their evil insurrection!]

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Albemarle: If Islam expands in that region , we may asked to go back to Vietnam by Hanoi government , "Yankee come back. Save us !" [This is just so dumb on so many levels.]

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And my personal favorite:

sandspur: After all that's gone on so far this week (and it's only Tuesday), I think it's time to declear the crudase. [Yay! sandspur wins the Booby Prize, given out to the LGF commenter who best combines ignorance of the facts, genocidal tendencies and atrocious spelling!]

All the news that's shit to print ...

2006-09-20T11:15:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about the military coup in Thailand.

On the one hand, deposed caretaker PM Thaksin Shinawatra is almost assuredly a crook. His dodgy business dealings are on record, as are his shenanigans in moving about his assets before he had to disclose them, as per the country's charter, to the Constitution Court upon being named Prime Minister the first go-round in 2001, when his Thai Rak Thai swept into power in a general election. I was living in Bangkok at the time, and it was the Thai political circus at its depressing best. Thaksin, head of telecommunications giant Shincorp, "divested" himself of a large chunk of his assets, "selling" or gifting them mostly to family members ... but also to his maids and chauffeur.

One day, you're driving a rich guy around, the next you're worth millions ... what a country!

Meanwhile, Thaksin's ultra-violent "War on Drugs" killed thousands in the countryside during its height in 2003. I have little doubt that the main effect of this rampage was to consolidate control of the lucrative methamphetamine trade in the hands of the biggest players and their police cronies, who were able to eliminate, in the most brutal way, their small-fish competition.

His escalation of the response to Muslim separatists in the South was similarly violent. And, like the War on Drugs, was popular with the Thai people at first ... until the corpses really started piling up and it became apparent that a solution to the trouble remained as elusive as it had ever been.

So, like Liberal Avenger, I'm not losing any sleep over what's been done to Thaksin.

On the other hand, as LA's commenter Gordo posits:

I think that in the long run, Thailand would be better off dealing with their criminal-in-chief the same way Italy dealt with theirs: by waiting for the next election and voting for his rival.

It’s not nearly as satisfying, and the country does suffer for the time that the crook is in office, but it’s better than the constant cycle of coups and caretaker governments.

And while the king has been able to force the military junta to give up power in the past, some future king might favor a fascist takeover, much as Victor Emmanuel III granted his blessing to Mussolini.

Indeed. What Gordo says is true for any young democracy, and Thailand in particular seemed to be turning a corner. It had been 15 years since the last military coup - a very long time by Thai standards - and the 1997 Constitution (the "People's Charter") is considered the best framework for governance of the 16(!) that the country has had in 74 years as a constitutional monarchy.

Long, uninterrupted periods in which political transition is peaceful and democratic are crucial foundations for free nations, the rule of law and a vibrant civil society. Democracy doesn't spring fully formed from one election, or three ... or at the point of a gun, as everybody but Bill Kristol seems to understand.

So while everything Thailand built up, democracy-wise, in the past 15 years isn't completely gone, the country is now starting more closely to scratch than I think many people can immediately appreciate.

Finally, Gordo's point about Victor Emmanuel III is well taken. It's true that the current king of Thailand is as benevolent a head of state as one could hope for ... but he's getting on in years, and there is no shortage of anxiety about succession issues that will come sooner or later, and which will prominently involve the king's unsavory son.

And just because we are loathe to comment on anything - even something so close to the bone as the political situation in Thailand - without taking pot shots at wingnuts: Here's the realiably insane "Tits" McGee explaining how it's all the work of Islamofascists.

Yes, I suck ... blah de blah blah bloggity blah

2006-09-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, well. This is kind of super-de-duper-de-eggs-a-la-Hooper top secret. Go here. It's what I've been working on for some time with the help of Snag and Gavin M.

... and while it's not completely done, it's done enough for you to check it out and go "Yaaay!" or "Pffft!" or "Ho-hum" or "Now I can die in peace" or "Heh. Indeed." or whatever you go when you see this sort of thing. (Especially if you have constructive criticism, and doubly-especially if you want to work on the project.)

I only ask that nobody go spreading the word on this thing yet. We want to launch it when all the moving parts actually work.

Cheerio! See you all in six weeks!*

*Just kidding!*

(The asterisk after "kidding!" takes you back to the front of the sentence "Just kidding!" ... so, like, am I really kidding? Why, yes! But wait ... am I kidding about kidding? Or kidding about kidding about kidding? Ha! It's like a Moebius strip of insignificance!)

Two Announcements

2006-08-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

Numero One-O

As some of you may know, I'm working on a project with Gavin M. of Sadly, No! called "Ultimate Wingnut Fantasy Wankball". It's a contest modelled on the various fantasy sports games out there, where you are given pretend money to draft various wingnuts like Glenn Reynolds or John Hinderaker to form a team under a salary cap.

There's a bunch of rules for how wingnuts in various positions ("Wankerback", "Eliminationist", "Jesus Lady" etc.) can score points for your team. At the end of the season, the team owner with the most points wins. Pretty simple, possibly pretty entertaining.

And the true beauty of Ultimate Wingnut Fantasy Wankball is that, unlike in other fantasy games where you merely tabulate the sporting exploits of distant, deified figures ... in UWFW, you, the owner, get to actively goad your players into scoring points for you by any means possible.

So. At this point we've got the scoring system laid out, a list of draftable wingnuts and some server space on which to create the website. Gav is doing the graphic design. We should be ready to launch fairly soon, but ...

I've hit a bit of a wall compiling the player profiles, stats and set salaries of the available wingnuts. I need some help. It's, shall we say, creative work ... basically, you get to make funny shit up to describe the wingnuts you know and love.

If anybody is interested in helping out with this aspect of the project, please email me at dpoeter-at-earthlink-dawt-net ...

Numero Two-O

For all of you who are interested in baseball and hometown loyalty, I'd like to invite you to participate in a little project.

About a year ago, I put together an All-Time All-Star team from the Bay Area for the Gilroy Dispatch. Click here to see it.

Now I happen to believe that this team would kick the ass of any All-Time All-Star team from any other part of the country. So here's a challenge for you ice-fishing Minnesotans, insufferable Bostonians and lapsed worshippers of the Archangel Moroni (yes, PP, I'm looking at you):

Put together your own local All-Star teams, let's plug 'em in to a tournament on Whatifsports.com, and let's see who gets to claim that their area produced the very best Major Leaguers that ever was.

The rules are simple: You only get to pick players who were either born in your area or spent their formative years there. Thus, both Chicago and the Bay Area can claim Rickey Henderson.

That's just my way of avoiding the pitfalls of the old "nature vs. nurture" argument.

If nothing else, participating in this contest should distract Brad R. from his slumping Red Sox. As a special bonus offer, if Almost Infamous wants to build a team from the best players from Eurasia/Australia, he has my blessing. Other people can claim South America, and the Caribbean/Mexico/Central America if they wish. We'll cede Canada to David Frum. I'm not sure if anybody from Africa ever played in the Majors.

Oh, and here's a tip: To get started on building your team, go here.

If you're interested, leave your thoughts in comments to this post. On the Ultimate Wingnut Fantasy Wankball stuff, email me.

UPDATE: Here is my All-Time All-Star team of baseball players born "on a ship in the Atlantic": Ed Porray. Hey, he hits and he pitches!

The Dave Barry of sports writing, but dumber

2006-08-23T22:15:00.000-07:00

More of teh silly, courtesy of ESPN's 'The Sports Guy':

SG: Glad you brought up Big Mac -- I stumbled across some highlight of him and Sammy doing their complicated/awkward handshake thingie and found myself thinking, "Was that really only eight years ago?" That's the fastest a sports moment has ever become dated. Seriously, it's like staring at a picture of a Negro League baseball team. Only eight years ago, not only were these guys humongous heroes, not only were they widely credited for helping to save baseball, but nobody had a clue that something fishy was potentially going on. It's crazy. It's like being a 13-year-old kid and remembering when you were 5 and still thought Santa Claus was real. What a bummer.

Yeah. Sort of like how Enron completely blindsided us. Futures-trading corporate sleazeballs were cooking the books?!?! Professional athletes were using steroids?!?!? Sausage is made ... how?!?!??!?!1112lk3j2l1k11!!!!tobeornottobe!!@#!!!!???? Is there one person in the entire history of everything who could have possibly known this???!???!

Anyway, he continues:

In a way, I can understand why Giants fans still defend Bonds so rigorously. It goes much deeper than being in denial -- by admitting what happened, they would be admitting that every good memory he brought them over the last eight years was a complete sham. They HAVE to defend him. They HAVE to support them. I feel bad for the Giants fans. For instance, let's say someone reported tomorrow that Big Papi had been using HGH for the last three years. Know what I would do? Pooh-pooh the report. "No way. Couldn't be. They're full of crap." That's what I'd say. How else can you react? I'm getting depressed. ...

No, Sports Guy, Giants fans do not defend Bonds because we are five-year-olds in denial over him using performance enhancing drugs. It's obvious he did, though it would be nice if somebody could get either a piss test or a court ruling that proved he did PEDs that were either against the stated rules of baseball at the time he did them or purchased/used illegally in the United States at the time he did them, or both.

Giants fans, or at least the ones I am familiar with, defend Bonds against being made Public Enemy No. 1 and Grand Mugwump and Official Lightning Rod of the Dastardly Order of Steroid Scapegoats. Which is actually a different thing.

Which brings us back to the ridiculous assertion that "nobody had a clue that something fishy was potentially going on" during the Big Mac-Sammy Summer of '98. Lots of people had a clue. Especially people who were involved in making money off baseball, from all the other players besides McGwire and Sosa (and Bonds) who also used PEDs to the owners of baseball teams to knowledgeable media types who generated lots of ad-friendly product from baseball.

McGwire had a giant bottle of andro prominently displayed in his locker, fer crissake! Ben Johnson got busted a full ten years earlier! Steve Courson blew the lid off the NFL's dirty little secret in 1991!

The point being, Bonds did not invent PEDs and was not the first athlete to use them. What's more, when he was using them from 1999 to whenever he presumably stopped, he almost assuredly faced competition more saturated with PED use than at any other time in baseball history ... thus rendering a trifle overblown all of the clutching of pearls over his approaching the home run record as if he alone possessed the Atom Bomb of steroids while those he played against got by on oatmeal, tossing around a medicine ball and good old-fashioned grit.

So, yeah, we defend Bonds, but not because his obvious PED use somehow makes "every good memory ... over the last eight years was a complete sham". Why would we consider those memories a complete sham when the sport at the time didn't give a shit about steroid use? Ben Johnson knew he was going to have to piss in a cup after every race, whereas baseball players were given a wink and a nudge by the very arbiters of their sport.

That's got to count for something in our assessment of Bonds, McGwire, Sosa and the rest of them. Consider the options of an athlete over the past couple decades: a. Do steroids, stonewall about it and get branded a scumbag by the self-righteous; b. Fess up about your steroid use and get blackballed as a stoolie by your sport; or c. Don't do steroids and resign yourself to life as a career minor leaguer.*

Then again, the Sports Guy liked it better when he still believed a magical fat man in a red suit delivered him toys. That's some pretty remarkable devotion to being ignorant. I'm not sure if he'll ever get any of this.**

*I almost forgot d. Don't do steroids*** and be a complete asshole about it (see: Schilling, Curt)

**Lest anyone think I'm so cynical as to demean the loss of innocence ... I'm not. It's just that I think it's kind of pitiful that the Sports Guy equates finding out that yes, Virginia, people are human, with the unmasking of various supernatural bunnies and fairies and elves who inexplicably give you crap.

***Supposedly

Whereas, for me, it was only the fifth or sixth most nauseating 30 seconds I've spent reading a blog post ...

2006-08-23T14:20:00.000-07:00

Assrocket:

Hail to the Chief

I had the opportunity this afternoon to be part of a relatively small group who heard President Bush talk, extemporaneously, for around forty minutes. It was an absolutely riveting experience. It was the best I've ever seen him. Not only that; it may have been the best I've ever seen any politician. If I summarized what he said, it would all sound familiar: the difficult times we live in; the threat from Islamic fascism--the phrase drew an enthusiastic round of applause--the universal yearning for freedom; the need to confront evil now, with all the tools at our disposal, so that our children and grandchildren can live in a better and safer world. ...

The conventional wisdom is that Bush is not a very good speaker. But up close, he is a great communicator, in a way that, in my opinion, Ronald Reagan was not. He was by turns instructive, persuasive, and funny. His persona is very much that of the big brother. Above all, he was impassioned. I have never seen a politician speak so evidently from the heart, about big issues--freedom, most of all. ...

It was, in short, the most inspiring forty minutes I've experienced in politics.

For once, words fail me. Must be the chunks I just threw up in my mouth.

Hey! What if hitting myself in the head with this hammer makes me smarter? It'd be great!

2006-08-21T15:13:00.000-07:00

Via Retardo via Wolcott via Hersh, comes this telling passage:

Cheney’s office supported the Israeli plan, as did Elliott Abrams, a deputy national-security adviser, according to several former and current officials. (A spokesman for the N.S.C. denied that Abrams had done so.) They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, “We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we’re behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later—the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.’ ”
Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”

Leaving aside trivial matters like, you know, morality, one can only conclude that these bozos really, really, really suck at war. If there were fancy sabermetric stats for being competent at war, Cheney would have an OPS of, like, -1.543, and your buddies would all snicker if you picked Abrams earlier than the 650th round of your fantasy draft. Rumsfeld? Well, let's just say that even Joe Morgan would have long ago stopped touting his "intangibles" and put a fork in him.

And it's like their suckiness at war is rubbing off on the Israelis or something. Say what you will about decades-long military occupations, ethnic cleansing and whatnot, but generally speaking, Israel has been pretty decent at the whole war thing from your basic "achieving objectives" metric. Until this latest invasion of Lebanon, that is. Which we now learn from Hersh was embarked upon with all the careful strategerizing of Johnny Knoxville sticking his nutsack in a toaster oven "to see what happens".

Now this is very interesting, because the Bush Administration has been called out on a lot things, from mongering equal parts fear and power, to leaving no corporate crony executively unblown. But one thing this crew always had going for it was the widespread perception that, yeah, so maybe they don't care about black people, maybe they're hurtling us into unprecedented debt, maybe they're losing us allies like Bill Bennett hemorrhaging $100 chips in Atlantic City ... maybe so, but at least they know how to - in the words of Toby Keith - "put a boot in your ass".

And make no mistake, there are a lot of people who think like Toby Keith in these'm hair Yoo-Nighted States'm Erika. And to those voting folks, for the longest time, it didn't really matter if ass or asses unknown being injected with said boot weren't in fact the particular ass or asses that perhaps deserved the insertion of our brand of footwear. It was good enough to know that somewhere out there, some theoretical ass was being rudely and painfully alerted to the sudden, violent presence of an uninvited houseguest, shape of: boot ... form of: in your ass.

Again, it didn't really matter if the Bushies picked the right ass or "exaggerated" the threat of that ass to hinder our God-given right to put our boot in it. It didn't matter, as long as - and here's the crux of it all - we were in fact, actually and in reality, "putting", not-entirely-metaphorically, that oh-so-state-of-the-art "boot" in that isn't-it-all-just-the-height-of-heterosexuality "ass".

But now the facts are in. Or, I should say, they've been in for some time (from at least the revelation of the piss-poor planning for post-war Iraq, if not with the escape of the al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan), but it is only now, as we awake from our slumbering-giant-awakening-induced slumber, that a majority of us are finally getting that the facts are in.

And the facts are these: The Bush Administration fucking blows at putting boots in your ass. Despite having the most powerful military the world has ever known, they are 1-for-2 in hot wars against Third World nations. And the "1" - Afghanistan - is pretty much a broken-bat blooper, to give the administration more credit than it deserves.

That's just a really bad boot-putting-in-your-ass record. It should also be noted that on the colder fronts of the Great War on Terror - Iran and North Korea - the Bushies are similarly crap. Let's call it "putting a carrot-and-stick in your ass" and consult the statistical record to discover that, surprise! They totally blow at that, too!

Learning now from Hersh that the neocons in the administration are actively exporting Cheney Brand Military Incompetence - Now With More Bumbling! to Israel? Well, it's not exactly surprising that they would be offering such un-sage advice. That's just how these nitwits roll. Even though them counseling Israel on what fights to enter is like Jacquie Mackie Po-Packie advising people on pick-up lines.

But it is somewhat baffling that Olmert seems to have valued the Bushies' input. I mean what could Cheney and Abrams have possibly said? "Jump right in, Ehud! The quagmire's great!" ... ???

At any rate, lest we get too lost in typical Parrotline tangentery, let's revisit the main point: These guys suck at war. The upside is, enough Americans are waking up to this truth to possibly shift the balance of power in this country this fall, so maybe, hopefuly, pray with me here - the other boot will finally drop and all of our collective asses will be that much safer.

'Beware that you are ready before you pass this seal'? Oh, Jesus, we've got a live one

2006-08-16T16:41:00.000-07:00

It’s not like this is a new thing. From Victor Davis Hansen’s gentleman farmer posturing to the mealy resolve of John Podhoretz, bemoaning Judeo-Christendom’s supposed lack of ruthlessness is a staid tradition in Wingnutopia.

Indeed, it is difficult to recount the number of times a Tacitus or a Pamela Atlas or an Adam Yoshida has reworked the lyrics to that infectious, mid-1990s novelty hit by Skee-Lo, i.e.:

I wish we were a little bit crueler
I wish I was our ruler
I wish we had the will to nuke Mecca
I would ‘do’ her
I wish I had a Muslim in a room like in ‘Doom’
And my graphic card was newer

… So it is hardly surprising that yet another call for all good Christians to ‘Level thy Enemy’ is making the rounds in the Right Blogosphere. And true to form, it is being welcomed to much acclaim and grave harrumphing, meeting as it does the stern, faux gloomy approval of the many dedicated fabulists who are invariably “pained” and “saddened” to concur that, indeed, our love for innocent life is so great that we must now steel ourselves to rending far more of it limb-from-limb.

That this is just another in a long line of clumsy, desperate attempts to discover the mythical lever that engages the built-in obsolescence of evolved human morality means little. That it is entitled “On the Virtues of Killing Children” merits some attention. But leaving aside, for the moment, the oh-so-shocking title, it is fitting that the essay’s author calls himself “Grim”. For it is in this guise that the most pretentious wingnuts so love to cloak themselves – as “grim realists” who bravely struggle with their inner Col. Jessups to remain patient with those of us who cannot yet “handle the truth”.

Despite the outpouring of tough-minded, strictly heterosexual praise for “On the Virtues of Killing Children”, Grim’s little foray into amorality is hardly novel or earth-shattering. As an argument for a particular course of action it is, in fact, derivative, utopian, linguistically stilted, structurally incoherent, riddled with strawmen, devoid of answers to common rebuttals of similar arguments, dependent upon improbable sea changes in common attitudes towards conduct in war, lacking in evidence to support its conclusions, blind to the very predictable negative externalities that would result from its being put into practice, and, in a word: dumb as fuck.

As such, the best possible response to “On the Virtues of Killing Children” is simple mockery. To wit: The essay is piffle, the author is ignorant and/or insane, the audience which lapped it up is not to be trusted with sharp objects. Which, of course, was indeed the most common reaction in the comment thread to the post and elsewhere.

The reaction to that reaction was equally predictable: “Why will no liberal present a serious counterargument to this post?” Those who ask that question seem to believe that the absence of such a response means no response is possible, thus validating the author’s presentation of his argument via the construction of a resistant (and only coincidentally female, really) interlocutor who is deflowered by his own superior logic and manly resolve.

Never mind the existence of thousands of years of philosophical debate over these very ideas … not to mention that such rightwing claptrap is dealt with daily in the Left Blogosphere. And, in fact, several people have made perfectly fine rebuttals to the specifics of “On the Virtues of Killing Children” in the very comments accompanying the essay.

At any rate, seeing as how I haven’t posted in, like, a week or something, and in the spirit of reaching out that Mrs. Robinson over at Orcinus has so ably encouraged recently, here’s this liberal’s rebuttal to the argument that we need to give even less of a shit than we already do about bleeding, concussed children dying in fear and pain:

That’s fucking insane. And barbaric. And the opposite of what we’re supposed to be fighting.

Now to be fair (I’m not sure why I should be, but still), Grim and his supporters want everybody to know that “On the Virtues of Killing Children” is just an ordinary utilitarian argument, and how could anyone serious possibly read anything more into it than that, just because of the title?!?

(Which is sort of like calling your line of clown apparel the “John Wayne Gacy Collection” and then wondering why everybody thinks you’re a creep … but never mind.)

At any rate, the utilitarian argument. Grim posits that “not caring if children die” when we attack will cause our enemies who use innocents as shields to stop doing so, because it would cease to be effective protection for them, thus ultimately saving more children.

There is a host of problems with this idea, not least of which are the various counters to utilitarianism itself. It should also be noted that conservative philosophy is very much at odds with utilitarianism, so whatever those who applaud Grim’s thesis consider themselves to be philosophically, they are deluded if they think they are “conservative”.

But even if we accept a utilitarian framework as basically good, it doesn’t necessarily follow that more good results than bad would come from following Grim’s recommendation. Here is part of his exchange with the pliable strawlady of his fevered imagination:

Her eyes grow wide. "You are mad," she says.

"Not so," I answer. "Consider: when the enemy seeks to kill our child to motivate us to surrender to his will, is it not because he believes that the danger to the children will move our hearts?"

"It is," she must agree.

"And when he hides among children," I add, "why? Children do little to deflect artillery. Must it not be because he knows that we -- we ourselves -- fear for the children, even his children?"

She nods, silently.

"Then it is proven," I say. "It is our love of these innocents that endangers them. If we did not care if children died, they would be in little danger."

Damn! The strawlady gave up way too soon, and just when I was starting to like her. Shut up, strawlady, just shut up! You had me at “You are mad”!

Anyway, the strawlady’s gormlessness aside, how do we know that “the enemy” – terrorists, insurgents, Hezbollah, et. al. – “hides himself among children” for the sole purpose of guilt-tripping us into not firing on them? Grim doesn't offer any evidence that this is so.

Isn’t it likely that the more mundane requirement for survival as a guerrilla fighter – hiding from one’s more powerful enemy – is at least as much a reason for this practice? Does Grim really believe that eliminating, through some collective decision to be merciless, our avoidance of civilian casualties … would somehow cause Iraqi insurgents to suddenly don uniforms and form into neat little lines, the better to sportingly square off against our Blackhawk helicopters, tanks and howitzers with their rifles and IEDs?

Puh-fucking-leeze. And with that, out the window goes the argument. Because if it is possible to raise serious doubts about the effectiveness of his prescription on its most basic level - militarily - then all the other counterarguments to do with predictable negative externalities, social mores, etc. are merely icing on the cake.

Which isn't to say that icing ain't good eatin'. There are a zillion more reasons to scoff at Grim’s fairy tale. Here are a few troubling questions for him, just off the top of my head:

When we openly declare ourselves to be callous child-killers, how exactly is this going to play as propaganda in the Muslim world and elsewhere? Is the assuredly negative reaction something we should factor into this decision? Or does it seem more likely that our allies and would-be allies in this struggle will be swayed, strawlady-like, by the impeccable logic of “On the Virtues of Killing Children” … if only we could get them all to read it?
Seeing as how the Iraqis that we’re fighting, and the Iranians we propose to fight, haven’t actually killed any of our children … isn’t it kinda sorta putting the cart before the horse to be complaining that we haven’t killed enough of theirs yet? I mean, obviously motives trump everything – and ours are always pure and noble, while theirs are always debased and savage – but don’t results count a tiny bit, too? To put it in baseball terms, isn’t deciding which enemies to fight sort of like drafting players for a team? And isn’t Iran sort of like a high school pitcher? You know, love the “tools”, the upside’s out of this world … but we just can’t risk an invasion on such an unproven quantity? Maybe better, you think, to go with an enemy out of college, like an al Qaeda, that’s got at least four solid years of “actually attacking us” under its belt?
Admit it … isn’t it just a little bit embarrassing to be so scared of a group of people that your country’s military has completely fucking outgunned and surrounded, that you stay up nights worrying about whether we’re killing enough of them? With sufficiently hardened hearts?
Did the whole “With great power comes great responsibility” bit in Spider-Man just go completely over your head?
Is our concern about innocent life even something we can turn off and on? And if we can turn it off, how easy is it to turn back on?
Is “bigger hammer” really the only tool we have available in the foreign policy shed? Did our needy neighbor borrow all the economic levels and diplomatic lubricants we used to have, and not return them or something? Because, what a dick!

I’m sure Parrotline readers can think of plenty more reasons to laugh at Grim in comments.

P.S. To everybody who wondered about my positively Gallic holiday from blogging in the comment thread below:

First of all, thanks for checking in regularly to see if I had come out of hibernation. I apologize for not letting you know if or when I would be posting again. You all deserved some sort explanation for my absence long before now. So here it is:

I stopped posting for a couple of reasons. The DSL thing really happened. But when I got my service back I found myself pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed not having to monitor insane wingnuts every day to collect material for this blog. (There’s a frequent comment that appears on blogs like this one, it goes something like: “Thank you for reading the crazy people so I don’t have to.” Sometimes it’s just good to take a break from teh crazy.)

There were also some personal issues, which I won’t describe in too much detail. Nothing to do with health; nothing to do with fear of getting “outed” by the likes of Pasty & Pattycakes, Attorneys at BWAHAHA*; somewhat to do with finances; a lot to do with marriage. I’ll only say that most of the turmoil is winding down, there is light at the end of the tunnel and leave it at that.

Finally, I hope I will be posting regularly again. Don’t want to make any promises, but that’s the plan.

*Good guess, though, Bas.

Going on Day 5 of no DSL

2006-05-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

Earthlink, I hate you. I hate spending money I don't have on Internet Cafe rip-offs. Things I could have blogged about in the past week:

- How much Earthlink sucks.
- The Lost finale.
- How much I hate American Idol.
- Cuchullain vs. Muhammed Ali in Pattaya.
- Not being able to send or receive email.
- Thanks to fucking Earthlink.
- Also, thanks to the SBC-AT&T merger fucking providers down the pipeline.
- Like Earthlink.
- The hatred of labor expressed by wingnuts who celebrate free movement of capital but seek to confine humans.
- Earthlink sux.
- SUSSXxxxxzQ@#@!!@@!@@@@! the big ONNE!!!!111!!!!
- Bye, I am out of time.

PS An attempt to produce something funny in less than 30 seconds: Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the Internet cafe where he had to go spend too much money becuase his Earthlink DSL connection was down alao0w3487q97(*&(*)^! fucker!

This is rich ...

2006-05-17T06:12:00.000-07:00

Via Dave Neiwert at the invaluable Oricinus, we learn of a semantics war raging between Andrew Sullivan and Hugh Spew-itt over the old-but-recently-exhumed term "Christianist".

Go. Now. Read it all, etc. etc. et. al. ibid. op. cit. pud. enda.

Now, I'm not one to go to bat for Andrew Sullivan normally, but this remark from Hewitt bears scrutiny:

Sullivan objects to the political positions of many evangelicals, but given the widespread support for these positions -- opposition to the judicial imposition of same sex marriage for example -- Sullivan refuses to engage their positions on a case by case basis, and instead invents a new description in an attempt to deligitimize them.

Andrew Sullivan refuses to engage the evangelical (or Christianist, or Dominionist) position on same sex marriage? Is Hewitt talking about the same Andrew Sullivan who has written a fucking 400-page book called "Same-Sex Marriage: Pro & Con"?

Sullivan obviously doesn't need me fighting his battles, nor am I particularly keen to do so ... but, well, sheesh.

Stop it, Michelle. Just stop it.

2006-05-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

You're embarrassing yourself. And you're making us all sick to our stomachs. Here's Michelle Malkin on a charming little encounter she had with an NSA security guard today, on a trip to the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Md.:

One interesting thing happened worth sharing: When I missed the turn for the museum, I had to drive through the guard booth. Because I officially entered the NSA premises uninvited, I was pulled aside into the parking lot by security. They asked for my driver's license and my Social Security number. And then one security guard looked me straight in the eye, unembarrassed, and asked if I was a citizen.

I couldn't help it. I answered affirmatively and then told him: "I guess I'm not supposed to editorialize, but it is really refreshing to hear a security guy ask that question out loud without apologizing." He and his colleague chuckled. Appreciatively.

So Michelle's for profiling brown people. We all know that, yada yada yada. But one can be for some distasteful security measure that must be taken (I am not saying I am for profiling, this is just for the sake of argument) - without openly reveling in it. And when that unfortunate, but necessary security measure is taken against you, yourself ... the normal response is not to say, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"

My own personal tale: Upon arriving at Honolulu International after being abroad for nearly three years, I was asked by customs officials to accompany them on a little trip to "the room". You know, the one where "that" happens. Most definitely not fun. But also not as horrible as the movies would lead you to believe.

Anyway, while I was obviously unhappy about having my nutsack handled by a very large (but thankfully, very gentle) Samoan man*, I understood why this was happening to me. Namely, that my battered passport showed all kinds of border crossing stamps, from Thailand to India, Japan, Malaysia and elswhere, and then back to Thailand. Exactly what you'd expect to see on the passport of an expat working in Thailand who had to periodically deal with visa issues ... but also what you might see on the passport of somebody moving drugs around, or being otherwise up to no good.

The point being that I understood why I had been red-flagged, and I was okay with that. And I wasn't about to make a case for my "rights" or any such crap ... 'cos I just wanted to get the fuck out of there as quickly as possible and with no bruises on my colon.

But was I going to thank the guy with my balls in his hands and his finger up my ass for doing a heckuva job to protect America? THE FUCK I WAS! Like, thank you for singling me out as a model scumbag and anally probing me? Would anybody with a shred of personal dignity do that?

But that's essentially what Malkin did ... obviously over a personal affront much less offensive than what I went through, but still. And her - I don't know, dare we call it self-hatred? - is so enormous that she brags about it on her blog.

Disgusting. And more to the point, pathetic.

As an epilogue, the big customs agent was in fact apologetic to me. Both before the probe - when he said, "I'm sorry, but I have to ask you to come with me." - and after, when he said, "I'm sorry about that, but I was just doing my job."

And you know what? I appreciated that.

*Don't be jealous, teh l4m3!

UPDATE: Psychoanalyis from afar, and with no qualifications, is extremely inadvisable. But I can't help it. I am just struck with how the above linked post by Malkin seems to reveal some sort of split personality. Like, there is Michelle, the Filipina ... and Michelle Malkin, the insane, crypto-racist wingnut pundit. And while Michelle, the Filipina might have felt somewhat nonplussed for being so obviously singled out over her non-white appearance, Michelle Malkin, the mainliner of Kool-Aid, was able to completely compartmentalize that experience ... and in fact, view it from a detached perspective as happening to some disembodied "suspicious brown person", and hurray for that!

Like I said, armchair psychoanalysis ... inadvisable. But fun.

O! Asshat! My Asshat!

2006-05-11T00:34:00.000-07:00

So. Better late to the party, then never to arrive … that’s my philosophy. And a pretty handy one, seeing as how I go days between posts and would never get to partake in any of the hip jokes if I subscribed to the momentarian ethos of the blogosphere.

Plus, there’s usually a few half-drunken rappin’ 4tays still laying around to swig from, and some crusty spinach dip.

But it’s one thing for little old lame-ass me to arrive a week or so late to some meme – in this case, bagging on Ed Morrissey’s project to reclaim the phrase “101st Fighting Keyboardists”. It’s quite another for Capped-On Ed hisself and his loyal wingnut seamen [Ewww! – Ed.] to show up a couple of years late to a running joke, then claim it to be “defenestrated” by their tardy commentary.

Writes the Cap’n on his super-duper clever new toy (invented by Tbogg two years ago):

Yesterday we saw some goalpost-moving as the lefty bloggers attempted to equate "chickenhawk" with child molestation -- which again questions why they used it for anything else prior to the formation of the 101st FKs. It's a tactic born of desperation, as they see their favorite namecalling device defenestrated.

That comment was in reply to this trenchant analysis by cabinboy Mitch Berg:

It's a good thing I have Cap'n Ed and King on the air with me on the NARN show. They are both very diligent in reminding me that when I slag on leftyblogs that there are exceptions to the rule; when I refer to leftybloggers who've been comedically outmaneuvered as "shrieking like a cagefull of poo-flinging monkeys", both were very conscientious about reminding me that there are exceptions. Josh Marshall, Matt Yglesias, Jeralynn Meritt [who?], Flash [double who?] - they tend to be able to separate the fever from the swamp. ...

Capped-On Ed continues with his elaboration on cabinboy Berg’s point:

… namecalling is all these sites have. Writers like Glenn Greenwald, John Aravosis, Peter Beinart have actual argument on their side; they don't need to resort to name-calling to make themselves feel better. We may not agree with them, but we respect them and feel challenged by their arguments -- and they make us better at what we do with that challenge.

Others, however, simply make up slurs and silliness and pass it off as wit. One such example that I have seen recently is a perfect example of this. [Exampleporn! - Ed. Wood] Some sites have now taken to referring to me as Special Ed. [Not this one! – Gein, Ed.] This supposedly sets them apart as intellectuals. …

That's all they've got, these vapid and emotionally stunted people with computers and free time [Uh, we've also got pron - blindEd.], on both sides of the political spectrum. They can't win with argument, so they use invective and silly schoolyard taunts instead. They fill their posts with obscenities [He's fucking on to us! - *&#&$@#!Ed.] and dance around with delight every time they come up with another taunt. It's the perfect example of why we formed the 101st Fighting Keyboardists [no, um, Tbogg did that two years ago … but carry on – Dept. of Ed.] and adopted the chicken hawk as our mascot. It reveals the intellectual bankruptcy of these very bloggers ... and provokes them into revealing it themselves.

Well. Color us pwned. You know … !!!!11!!!fourscoreandsevenyearsago!!!1!etc!!! We are so sixth-rate intellects. But let’s respond anyway, with a bullet-point stylee:

● When one wingnut blogger - out of the hordes who have dumbly endured the “101st Fighting Keyboardists” taunt, originated by Tbogg and perfected by The Editors – finally stumbles, years after the fact, upon the blindingly obvious tactic of embracing an insult and reveling in it to disarm its mocking firepower … it is not a victory. It is a baboon playing with string, accidentally tying a working slip knot.

It is, quite literally, one amongst 1,000 chickenhawks pounding on keyboards for 10 million man-hours finally producing a crappy Petrarchan sonnet ... that only really works if you count the near-rhymes. It is validation of the old adage that even a stopped clock tells the right time … only instead of “twice a day”, it’s “once in two years.”

For the past few days, we've watched the jabbering, jostling wingnutosphere marvel over the mundane strategery of reclaiming an instrument of mockery. It has been not a little reminiscent of “2001: A Space Odyssey” – with Capped-On Ed in the role of the ape who picks up the bone … the howling primates played by a cast of thousands pinging stupidly away … Queer Nation as the monolith … Kos as Hal … Tbogg as Dave … Michelle Malkin as, I don’t know, Gary Lockwood or something.

● We use schoolyard taunts against Capped-On Ed because people who play pretend dress-up sailor are practically begging for it. When they are also Midwestern call center managers in real life, they might as well just direct deposit their milk money into our IRA accounts.

● When cabinboy Berg refers to “leftybloggers who've been comedically outmaneuvered”, it is worth noting yet again that it was a “leftyblogger” who invented the very funny and useful (if day-before-day-before-yesterday) construction “101st Fighting Keyboardists”*. Not Capped-on Ed, certainly not Mitch Berg. So claiming to have the comedy goods on said leftybloggers as if you had willingly hoisted yourself on your own petard for everybody’s amusement - is akin to Adolph Eichmann demanding credit for “Springtime for Hitler”.**

What’s more – and this lesson ought to be heeded by Berg and Capped-on Ed and every other comedy-challenged wingnut who has tried so earnestly and tortuously and scantily to dissect humor in the weeks since Stephen Colbert hit the "Bombed-Heard-Round-the-World":

Saying something isn’t funny can actually be funny. But only if you say it in a manner which is generally accepted as funny. If you can accomplish that feat, people might even begin to regard you as funny. And after regarding you as funny … perhaps they might even begin to consider you as qualified to judge whether what other people say is funny or isn’t funny. The upshot, if such an unlikely chain of events plays out? That thing you were saying wasn’t funny, way back in the beginning … may be regarded by people as actually not funny!

BUT … and this is a big “BUT”*** … if you choose the decidedly more treacherous route, and attempt to say something isn’t funny without you, yourself, actually being funny in the process of saying that particular something isn’t funny … all that will happen is people will look at you funny.

Got it? Good. Now go fuck yourselves.

* Actually, it was “Keyboarders” originally; “Keyboard Kommandos” in its final form.

** Ooh! Godwin! Ward Churchill! Zero Mostel! Passed off as wit!

*** Saying “big but” at any given time is funny to six-year-olds; perhaps a starting off point for would-be wingnut humorists? Like, “baby steps”?

What's cookin' down at the Circle J?

2006-05-10T18:17:00.000-07:00

Jesus-H-Fucking-Christ-Getting-Anally-Double-Penetrated-By-A-Strap-On-Tag-Team-of-Ann-Coulter-and-Amy-Sullivan ... I'm glad I didn't have my shit together enough these past few days to participate in this colossal wankfest.

Sorry 'bout the lack of posting

2006-05-10T18:11:00.000-07:00

Uh, not much else to say. The hair of the dog ate my homework.

ParrotLine 'Circular Firing Squad' edition

2006-05-08T20:47:00.000-07:00

Kevin Drum is so boring ...

UPDATE: Go to Liberal Avenger's space age bachelor pad to memorialize your dying words.

Your sniglet for the day

2006-05-04T06:16:00.000-07:00

Is "parodynoia".

As a side note, for those of you who are either too young or too old to recall the meteoric rise to fame of Rich Hall and his cheesy "sniglets" - and their equally meteoric fall to obscurity - there is even a sniglet for your condition: "luckyasfuckitude". Thankfully, we no longer call funny made-up words "sniglets". In that sense, we can have our "truthiness" and eat it, too.

But back to "parodynoia". In the wake of the AnnieAngel Affair, it bears repeating just how crazy a place these here datanets really are, full of scoundrels and liars and cheats. What is real and what is not? Is Gary Ruppert really a righteously misguided fool ... or a deep cover parodist? What about the Right Brothers?

And if we have cause to suspect the above personalities of pulling our collective leg, how long is it before we cast a suspicious glance at the likes of Pastor Swank and Adam Yoshida*?

Or, for that matter, John Hinderaker and Jeff Goldstein?

Could they all be parody? Could it - the datanets, itself - be one giant joke being played on us, the earnest rubes who need big warning labels on our humor to identify it as such ... who never quite "got" what Andy Kaufmann was up to ... who are still gullible enough to believe in something called "truth in advertising"?

To take it even further ... are all of you in on the joke? Is it only me who is playing the naif here, while the rest of you bastards chuckle secretly at my gormlessness?

You see where this is going? How this line of inquiry can only end badly?

Hence, "parodynoia" ... your (un)sniglet for the day.

*Who, by the way, has decided to progressively indent the posts on his blog as if they were part of a comment thread, for some reason known only to genocidal Canadian shut-ins.

What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to cobaggishly find offense at everything

2006-05-03T17:27:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure that the number of people who find Ann Bartow pleasant to be around can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

If you happen to be a leprous machinist who likes to play with fireworks, owes big money to the Mob and climbs 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen.

So ... Ann Bartow is so hypersensitive that ...

Have at it, ~~douchebags~~ ~~godbags~~ ~~cobags~~ ~~bitches~~ folks ...

Boorish Hinderaker wouldn't know 'funny' if it was written on the banana peel he'd just slipped on

2006-04-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

The annual Powerline review of the White House Correspondents' Dinner is always a news story of sorts. This time, there was buzz about the fact that Mr. John Hinderaker himself would be doing the review. He did indeed post something on the event, typical in its sycophancy and praise for the "new" humor currently in vogue amongst our decadent young people. Apparently a fresh-faced young comedian called Jackie Benny was the featured act, and bombed. According to more distinguished sources, Mr. Dick Cheney was very funny, however. Daguerreotypes captured of the event indicate the Vice President performed a juggling routine, with jokes, to thunderous applause.

I'm told Mr. Cheney later posted a review of his own performance that demolished Hinderaker's pathetic attempt at artful criticism. Make that two more activities our remarkable Vice President does better than the supposed professionals.

I find the easily amused Mr. Hinderaker's sense of humor to be modishly vulgar. I'm hardly surprised that he found the headliner to be humorous, inasmuch as I'd never heard of Jackie Benny, and I typically find anything Mr. Hinderaker writes to be too full of "whizbangs" and "gee gollies" to ever be taken seriously as more than the faddish affectations of a perennial juvenile.

The past 75 years of culture and history, frankly, don't seem very important to me nowadays. For that matter, neither has politics, since at least the Dreyfus Affair.

Still, if you should ever wish to take a break from your studies of the Tranby Croft card scandal and other such topical issues, and remind yourself what it was like when comedians had no agenda other than being funny, I offer a memory of this classic performance:

Older readers may also enjoy remembering humor as it was before callow youth such as Mr. Hinderaker destroyed it with their immodest, low brow perversions. To wit:

And of course ...

And finally, an example of some truly memorable comedy stylings that, in this author's humble opinion, have never been matched:

Dick Cheney is so evil ...

2006-04-30T04:39:00.000-07:00

... his office won't even talk to the guy who compiles the Federal Directory.

No, really. Not a joke. True.

If you're going to pick up one issue of the American Prospect this year (and you're not Matt Yglesias' mom), pick up the May 2006 edition, out on newstands now. Or better yet, read the most important parts of it online ... ya cheap bastard, ya.

Along with Michael Tomasky's clinical (if somewhat overwrought) prescription for Democrats to revive their electoral fortunes, there's a great piece in May's Prospect on Dick Cheney's staff by Robert Dreyfuss. Full of insight into the fringe, shadowy neocon roots of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the method behind the OVP's extraordinary muscle in the formulation of national policy, the article also highlights Cheney's - and by extension his staff's - evangelical commitment to un-transparency.

Or to be more blunt, just how devoted these people are to doing all manner of evil in deepest, darkest secrecy.
One passage stands out. It's not the most deadly iteration of the OVP's secret ways - not by a long shot - but it may be the most disturbing for what it says of how complete the paranoia is:

It is the latter, especially Cheney’s press secretaries - he has run through seven of them - whose job is saying nothing, and saying it often. His press people seem shocked that a reporter would even ask for an interview with the staff. The blanket answer is no - nobody is available. Amazingly, the vice president’s office flatly refuses to even disclose who works there, or what their titles are. “We just don’t give out that kind of information,” says Jennifer Mayfield, another of Cheney’s “angels.” She won’t say who is on staff, or what they do? No, she insists. “It’s just not something we talk about.” The notoriously silent OVP staff rebuffs not just pesky reporters but even innocuous database researchers from companies like Carroll Publishing, which puts out the quarterly Federal Directory. “They’re tight-lipped about the kind of information they put out,” says Albert Ruffin, senior editor at Carroll, who fumes that Cheney’s office doesn’t bother returning his calls when he’s updating the limited information he manages to collect. (my empahsis)

This is obssession with secrecy that borders on the pathological. And while it's clear from everything else we know about him that Cheney himself is the engine driving this extreme paranoia, it seems bizarre that he has been able to surround himself with so many individuals in the OVP - in fact, all of them, as far as we can tell - who share his mania.

There is more than a whiff of Nixonian craziness about all this. So much so that when this unfortunate period of American history is over, it seems inevitable that we will all but retire Richard Nixon as the go-to analogy for pundits on deadline writing about future White House malfeasance ... and replace it with tales of the Cheney-Bush operation.

In fact, the beseiged-at-all-times mentality of the OVP - combined with its extreme bully tactics in policy planning and record of no-hold-barred personal attacks on critics who dare voice any apostasy to the office's gradiose, criminally uninformed visions of a globe-spanning America able to adjust a few dials here and carpet bomb a few levers there to spontaneously create Western-style democracies and market-based economies where few seeds for such even exist - call to mind any number of totalitarian party apparatuses from our worst 20th-century nightmares.

Indeed, after reading Dreyfuss' piece, we are left with yet more confirmation of the bitter realization reached so long ago by many of us that not only do these clowns not get democracy, they openly despise it. One never wishes to be a naif about the way that policy sausage is made. But is it so bright-eyed and Kumbayatarian to expect a minimum of give-and-take in government decision-making ... to demand of officials at least the barest understanding that, if only for form's sake, they ought to make a show of listening to views other than their own?

The OVP cadre doesn't even do that:

Time after time, in various interagency meetings, all the way up to the Cabinet-level “principals committee,” [former top State Department official Larry] Wilkerson would watch in astonishment as Cheney’s staffers muscled everyone else.

“The staff that the vice president sent out made sure that those [committees] didn’t key anything up that wasn’t what the vice president wanted,” says Wilkerson. “Their style was simply to sit and listen, and take notes. And if things looked like they were going to go speedily to a decision that they knew that the vice president wasn’t going to like, generally they would, at the end of the meeting, in great bureaucratic style, they’d say: ‘We totally disagree. Meeting’s over.’” At that point, policymakers from the NSC, the State Department, the Defense Department, and elsewhere would have to go back to the drawing board. And if a policy option that Cheney opposed somehow got written up as a decision memorandum and sent to the Oval Office, he showed up to kill it. “The vice president’s second or third bite at the apple was when he’d walk in to see the president,” says Wilkerson. “And things would get reversed, because of the vice president’s meeting in the Oval Office with no one else there.”

Meeting's over. Go fuck yourselves.

Cheney's approval rating is listing badly - currently he's less popular than O.J. Simpson was after his murder trial. But that doesn't appear to be stopping this paranoid maniac or his OVP enablers, according to Dreyfuss. He still occupies the top spot in Washington - just a tongue's length away from the President's ear*.

This crew has long viewed "the invasion of Iraq as the prelude to an assault on neighboring Iran," writes Dreyfuss. In recent months, we have witnessed the sabre-rattling towards Iran ratcheted up several notches. It has been tempting to dismiss all the talk about war with Iran - and with nukes on the table, no less! - as so much crazy talk by a lame-duck administration grasping at straws. Way back in March 2003, the Axis of Evil Tour was playing to packed stadium crowds. But by 2006, everybody with a brain thought the damn thing would have been cancelled by now.

Not the OVP, whose members have a Spinal Tap-like ability to remain blissfully unaware of just how completely the public's tastes have passed them by. For Cheney and his band, it's going to be "Hello, Teheran!" sometime soon, as originally planned.

And you better believe they're pulling out all the stops to make sure the show goes on. In the coming weeks and months, they will broadcast every smear, rumor and forgery "proving" an implacable Iranian threat that they can muster. They will use all their bullying tricks to squash dissent in the Pentagon, State Department and NSA. Just as they did to gin up support for the invasion of Iraq.

Scary, scary times.

*Quadruple "ewwwww"!

Are munny has forrin talk on it!

2006-04-29T06:20:00.000-07:00

It ain't a just are Nashunal Anthym what the Hoards of Illegalz are trying to turn forrin! In case you didnt thunk the invashun of are cuntry wuz reel, look at the pitcher below of are munny. It has forrin talk on it! Take a gander fer yoreself:

ParrotLine resertchers are trying to figgur out what these werds mean: "Annuit Coeptis" and "Novus Ordo Seculorum". So far we suxpect they mean: "Kill Whitey!"

Hear is some more exsamples of forrin jibber-jabber thet grafidi artists in the pay of hostel powers has painted on our chairished Land of Liberty:

But just wait 'til Osamagets hold of the Super Soldier Serum

2006-04-28T17:39:00.000-07:00

Two-for-one Friday ...

FROM THE BOY-WHO-CRIED-WOLF DEPT.: Al Qaeda has nukes, says World Nut Daily:

Last week, Hamid Mir's credibility skyrocketed when he accurately predicted in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin and later in WND the imminent release of a new recorded communiqué from bin Laden through al-Jazeera, the Arabic TV network. Two days later, bin Laden's tape was the focus of international news coverage.

"If you think that my information and analysis about bin Laden's location is correct," said Hamid Mir, "then please don't underestimate my analysis about his nuclear threat also."

Mir said that he met with an Egyptian engineer last week who lost an eye after one of bin Laden's nuclear tests in the Kunar province of Pakistan. The Pakistani journalist said the encounter with the engineer greatly disturbed and depressed him since it provided further assurance that a nuclear nightmare for America is about to dawn.

Lost an eye? Is it just me, or did you always imagine secret nuclear tests to be a bit more dangerous than two 10-year-old boys playing with pointy sticks? Like: It's all fun and jihad until someone loses an eye!

I think more likely than during a nuclear test, that engineer lost his eye trying to read a World Nut Daily hyperlink. I mean, is that mess in the first paragraph quoted above enough to drive you blind or what?

Anyway, color me, oh, a wee bit skeptical about some one-eyed guy who told some other guy who told Joseph Farah (!) that al Qaeda is testing nuclear weapons in a province of Pakistan that doesn't even fucking exist.

That's right, Kunar province is actually in Afghanistan, not Pakistan.

Maybe the Egyptian engineer lost his sense of direction along with his eye. Or maybe, just maybe, when you make shit up on the fly just to scare people, having the first fucking clue about what you're talking about is ... feh! Details!

HOTAIR.COM WATCH: What we learned in the first week of Michelle Malkin's new hate site ...

- You may have never seen anyone idiotic enough to wear them in public (unless you happen to work out at the same gym as Pamela), but apparently enough right-wing eliminationist T-shirts are being sold to fund a slick multimedia Web operation. (Of course, one suspects that "T-shirt sales" are funding prototypical rightwing subsidy client Hotair.com the same way "olive oil imports" built Las Vegas.)

- Michelle Malkin has cloned herself, twice. This is how she posts on her blog while flying cross-country, appearing on TV or sleeping. Really, it's not her husband Jesse ... it's one of her clones.

- "Islamofascist" looks really dumb in print. It sounds even dumber spoken. And when Michelle Malkin says this made-up word on one of her little streaming videos, America's literacy rate drops four percentage points.

- Some Latino musicians reworking the National Anthem is a "despicable act" that will "galvanize American citizen (sic)." Good thing Michelle warned her readers to "sit down" before reading the dangerous lyrics. Wouldn't want a million wingnuts having strokes at the sight of "Oh say can you see, a la luz de la aurora/Lo que tanto aclamamos la noche al caer?" ... "The traitors in Washington must pay for this," one commenter warns. Fuck yeah!

Haiku of Townhall

2006-04-26T21:01:00.000-07:00

Our semi-regular feature returns!

LaShawn Barber

Dumb anecdotes prove
Food stamps are just slavery
All over again

Mark Joseph

I so love dissent
Except when I hate it, thus:
Wang - awesome; Moore - fat

Brent Bozell

Pulitzers for lies
Exposed, but not for blowjobs?
A pox on Truth’s House!

Michelle Malkin

Illegals who built
New house moonbats made me buy
Might try to kill me

John Stossel

I say, ‘Greed is good’
But ripping off Ayn Rand bilge
Is even better

Jonah Goldberg

Here’s a proposal:
Let the Iraqis hear me
Talk out of my ass

Kathleen Parker

Taking advantage
Of the media spotlight?
'Wrong!' says top pundit

Mike Adams

Action figure Mike!
In toy stores this summer, plus:
Chauvinist-Fu Grip!

William F. Buckley

Ahem, a-ha, hmm
Act of indecorum, pshaw
Sherry? Sherry! What?

Carrie Lukas

Women hate money!
They don’t want as much as men!
Ow! Damn glass ceiling!

David Limbaugh

John Kerry sux rox!
Dude, you hear about Chris Penn?
Sure hope I’m not next …

Rebecca Hagelin

Bible Bible Mo-
Mible Banana-fana
Fo-Fible … BIBLE!

Tony Snow

As a Fox News host
I’m appalled by how low our
Media has sunk

Nathanael Blake

Only thing weirder
Than the way I spell my name
Is my shadow-beard

Oliver North

THOSE FUCKING HIPPIES!
COCKSUCKERS LOST US THE ’NAM!
AL-QAEDA DON’T SURF!

Walter E. Williams

There’s no deficit!
In other news: Two plus two
Equals - Rice Krispies!

Ben Shapiro

Americans should
See our brave soldiers' faces more
My mug? Irony?

Malkin & 'themole' update

2006-04-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

Chris Chittleborough in comments points out that at least one lefty blog posted Michelle Malkin's personal info, including her home address, independently of "themole" and the One People's Project. (Chittleborough is the same Chris who was very helpful in tracking down the Michael Crook connection in the original post on Parrotline analyzing the sequence of events leading to Malkin claiming an unspecified group of people were "plastering" her address all over the Internet.)

Chris calls the revelation that a lefty blog posted Malkin's info "bad news" for me, by which I assume he means that it hurts my theory that almost all of the "plastering" of Malkin's details was done by the mysterious comment thread troll "themole" ... and not by "unhinged lefties" as has been thundered throughout the right blogosphere.

I disagree. But first I'll go Chris one step further - I'd be willing to bet there are more lefty blogs than the one he points to that published the info, and certainly more commenters other than "themole" who published it in various comment threads. The Internet's a big place, and while myself and others have conducted some pretty deep searches into where and when Malkin's info was posted, there's simply no way we could peek into every dark and dingy corner.

And if we could, well, we'd probably be business-planning the shit out of our killer search algorithm and watching Google stock plummet instead of writing snarky blog posts.

Fact is, I knew about the blog Chris points to before today, both from my own research and from Bas-O-Matic's discovery of it independently of me. I chose not to link to it directly, out of the same principle that led me to scrub the "killthebitch" (who is almost definitely "themole" with a different username) comment in the comment thread to this post.

My only regret is that I didn't clarify to readers that while I believed "themole" to be the principle "plasterer" of Malkin's info, he or she was surely not the only one. In the original post I tried to use non-encompassing language that would let the reader know this was the case ... in retrospect I should have stated that directly.

That said, it still remains clear to me - barring the unearthing of a lot more evidence than Chris provides - that "themole" was and is the overwhelming bulk of the "campaign" to post Malkin's details in the blogosphere. (One People's Project is a different kettle of fish, read the original post for my take on it.) A few low-traffic lefty blogs posting the info does not change that.

For a good example of how lefties handled the whole Malkin affair, check this post by Steven Gilliard and the ensuing comment thread. While Gilliard condemns outright any payback in kind for Malkin's posting of the UC Santa Cruz students' contact info, many of his readers disagree, proclaiming that Malkin deserves whatever she gets in return from people publishing her details.

What's interesting, though, is that despite these various commenters' zeal for eye-for-an-eye retribution, none that I can see after wading through 185 comments actually posts Malkin's details or even links to pages that have them.* I agree very much with Gilliard's take on the matter, and disagree just as strongly with several of his commenters' opinions ... but it's also somewhat heartening to see that despite their bluster, none of those commenters actually seems to have followed through with the actions they claimed to find justified.

In his comment, Chris also talks about the perils of assuming a strictly "left-right" dichotomy in politics. He's right.

*A perusal of many of the homepages linked by commenters who have them reveals no Malkin info published, either.

While we're on the subject of Malkin ...

2006-04-25T06:38:00.000-07:00

This little nugget of dehumanization by MM can't go uncommented upon:

I'll be doing a phone-in to Fox & Friends in about 4 minutes to discuss the Bush administration's continued "catch and release" policies for illegal aliens. (My emphasis)

To Malkin, illegal immigrants aren't even mammals. Shit, they haven't even made it very far out of the primordial ooze yet.

What an utter ~~douchebag~~ ~~godbag~~ ~~three-bagger~~ prick.

Pinko Punko, call your office

2006-04-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

Has there ever been a post so immaculately conceived for the Three Bulls! crowd as this discussion of slurs that end in "bag"?

No, strike that. Has there ever been a moment in time so perfectly positioned on the 4-D axis of reality for a 3B! festival of 'bagging as the above discussion on the wonderfully named-in-triplicate Women's Space/The Margins - the blog? And for an apertif for the 3B! hordes soon to descend upon WS/TM - tb, there is this post on Pandagon ... where Amanda Marcotte is already light years ahead of the sluggish Pinko Punko, Yosef, Gregor Samsa et. al. with these words of wisdom for those who would purge our language of the 'bag suffix:

“Sack” is a slang term for testicles, but that doesn’t mean when I say someone weighs more than a sack of potatoes, I’m saying they weigh more than someone’s nut sack, because that would be stupid.

Plus, there's a screamingly shit-hot 'bag of a graph on Pandagon analyzing the supreme 'bagginess of Adam Corolla, among others ... for which Amanda is my new feminine ideal, for whom I am sculpting a virtual fertility goddess statue out of rich, loamy, alluvial clay ... or would if I still had fucking Photoshop.

Three Bulls!? Missing in action. Late to the party. Recovering from - wannhh! mommy, it hurts when I swallow! - a widdle cold.

Malkin and 'themole'

2006-04-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

While the AnnieAngel Experience has been exposed over at Sadly, No! and in comments here as a dubious and possibly pathological cyber-vaudeville act, featuring the sockpuppet stylings of Shoelimpy™ and the perilous pratfalls of Princess AA herself … several of us in the wincing-at-reality-based community have been investigating a parallel situation involving agents of disruption.

Or more accurately, a single agent of disruption, who goes by “themole”, and rather less frequently, “killthebitch”.

First things first. If you’ve followed the Malkinization of the Internets over the past couple of days, skip ahead to QUESTIONS. If not, here’s a handy-dandy timeline of recent events, adapted from the work done by Bas-O-Matic and elendil in comments to the previous post on this blog.

TIMELINE

Tuesday, April 11: UC Santa Cruz anti-war group Students Against War (SAW) stages an “action” at a UCSC job fair to protest the presence of military recruiters. Campus police initially place the four recruiters in a room separated from the other job fair exhibitors, but “citing safety concerns,” according to the Santa Cruz News Sentinel, the military recruiters decide to leave the fair after a “tense hour-long standoff” with the protesters.

Later on Tuesday, popular right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin gets wind of the Sentinel’s “Breaking News” report and posts an item titled “UC SANTA CRUZ HATES OUR TROOPS”, timestamped APRIL 11, 2006 09:59 PM, which is critical of the “anti-war thugs” and “moonbats” who support them. She also posts contact information for UCSC officials, with the exhortation to her readers to “Take a stand.”

Wednesday, April 12: Malkin posts a second time (“SEDITIOUS SANTA CRUZ VS. AMERICA”, APRIL 12, 2006 09:52 AM) on the SAW action at the UCSC job fair. She describes the group’s action as activity that “used to be called sedition.” She also posts phone and email contact information for three UCSC student members of SAW, taken from a press release about the action that the group had posted on its website (SAW subsequently removed the contact information).

Malkin later updates the post, writing:

UPDATE: SAW has removed the contact information from its press release and is now lying about the fact that it made the info publicly available on the Internet. I am leaving it up. If you are contacting them, I do not condone death threats or foul language. As for SAW, my message is this: You are responsible for your individual actions. Other individuals are responsible for theirs. Grow up and take responsibility.

April 12-17: The three SAW members whose contact info was posted on Malkin’s website begin receiving harassing emails and phone calls, some of which include death threats. According to SAW member David Zlutnick, who was one of the three members who had their contact information posted by Malkin on April 12, the group contacted Malkin by email during this period and asked her to take their contact info down, as it was not intended to be made public. Zlutnick claims to have copies of the emails sent to Malkin, which would call into question her April 18 claim that:

Oh, and for the record--not that the facts matter to the unhinged--not one of the three SAW students whose contact information is still publicly accessible across several websites has e-mailed me [*or phoned me or contacted me in any other way*] as of 12:30am EDT 4/18 [*as of 10:00am EDT*] to request that I remove anything.

Monday, April 17: Malkin posts again on SAW (“MORE THUGGERY IN SANTA CRUZ”, APRIL 17, 2006 09:19 AM). This post contains a screenshot of the SAW press release with the contact info for the three students, making it the second time Malkin has posted the information – after the group says it had asked her to take it down, and after she essentially admitted that her own readers were issuing “death threats” and using “foul language” when contacting the three students.

Later on Monday, liberal blogger Ezra Klein posts a stinging rebuke of Malkin for posting the students’ personal contact info not once, but twice. Others, including this blog, weigh in at various times about the clear breach of ethics committed by Malkin in publishing contact info that was clearly meant for journalists who wished to follow up on the UCSC job fair story. Malkin defenders in the right blogosphere counter that the press release was made public when SAW posted it on its website, thus making the contact info “fair game” for Malkin to publish. Critics of Malkin reply that Malkin, as a longtime journalist, is surely aware that standard protocol (not to mention basic ethics) for press releases – even those in the public realm – does not allow for such wanton disregard for the intent of press contacts in distributing their personal details. As commenter Chris on the rightwing blog Protein Wisdom notes:

Every professional press release has contact information. But if I send out a release that is sure to get a lot of response, do you really think I intend for the general public to call me directly? I think a few people need to get their facts straight here. Malkin didn’t publish the release on her site. She published ONLY the contact info. It’s disingenuous at best to pretend that she didn’t expect her readers to deluge the students with calls and e-mails. To her, the press release was simply a source for her to get the contact information, much as Google or the phone book can be a source.

In a post titled “THE MOONBATS STRIKE BACK” (APRIL 17, 2006 08:17 PM), Malkin runs several emails she claims have emanated from the “minions” of “unhinged lefty bloggers” criticizing her for posting the SAW members’ contact info. Several of the emails contain racist language aimed at Malkin’s Filipino ethnicity, and some suggest that Malkin may soon see her own personal info posted on the Internet.

Wednesday, April 19: Malkin posts “I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU” (APRIL 19, 2006 08:53 PM), in which she addresses a group of unnamed people – “You know who you all are” – which she claims has “plastered my family's private home address, phone numbers, and photos and maps of my neighborhood all over the Internet to further your manufactured outrage and pathetic coddling of a bunch of lying, anti-troops punks at UC Santa Cruz ...”

Dozens of conservative bloggers take Malkin’s “I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU” post - which contains no links or other means by which the reader can confirm that her family’s private information has been “plastered … all over the Internet” – to mean that lefty bloggers (or even more generically, “the left” itself) has been posting this information on their blogs or other left-leaning websites. This despite the fact that Malkin’s post does not specify any individuals who are doing such a thing, let alone any members of “the Left”. Nor does a comprehensive (if not exhaustive) look at the many right wing blog posts condemning “lefties” of posting Malkin’s personal info turn up any solid proof that anybody in the left blogosphere is posting the information.

Thursday, April 20: Somebody calling him or herself “killthebitch” posts a comment to a post on this blog that links to the One People’s Project website, which gives Malkin’s contact information. The commenter also posts a link to a satellite map to Malkin’s house, hosted by Imageshack. I scrub the links out of the comment, but leave the comment up, minus the links.

Contact with Gavin M. and Brad R. of Sadly, No!, and with Auguste of Malkin(s)watch reveals that a commenter or commenters had also posted on their blogs almost word-for-word the same comment as the one I had scrubbed, with the same links. The Sadly, No! comment is deleted by Brad R., while the Malkin(s)watch comment, by “themole”, has been scrubbed of the links by Auguste.

Subsequent poking around reveals that “themole” has been posting essentially the same comment, complete with links to One People’s Project and the satellite map, in both liberal and conservative blog comment threads, since at least April 19 at 9:05am. Hat tip to shingles in comments for the idea to google “payback’s a bitch” + “the mole” …

So that’s the timeline. Now for the questions.

QUESTIONS

1. What is the One People’s Project?

From what I can tell, it’s an organization that tracks right wingers, paying special attention to racist extremists. The Project’s website posts personal information – phone numbers, addresses, email, etc. – of many of the people it tracks. If you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably aware that I find this to be a questionable tactic at best, because I’m not a fan of the vigilantism it has the potential to inspire.

I contacted Daryle Lamont Jenkins of the organization via email to find out more about “themole”/”killthebitch” and Michelle Malkin. I asked Jenkins whether Malkin’s info was posted on the Project’s website in response to her posting of the SAW info, specifically asking if it was a case of “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” in his mind.

This Jenkins denied, emphasizing that One People’s Project had Malkin’s info up on its website long before she posted the SAW details: “It should be noted that this really wasn't a case of what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Our mission has always been to put out as much information as we can - any information - about people on the right, particularly the extremists. I will say however that we will not make a move that we don't see someone on the right do first, so that might be where the ‘good for the goose’ notion may come from.”

Here’s more of what Jenkins has to say about One People’s Project and l’Affaire Malkin: “The truth of the matter is we had her information on One People's Project for almost four years. In fact, if you were to google the link to the bio we did of her, and look at the cache, you will see that the date it was written was in 2004, which was the time we converted everything from html to php.

“When this thing happened with UC Santa Cruz, we figured it was no big deal since Malkin's info was on our site for some time, but we decided to be smart alecks about it, and make a link on our side bar to her bio. That day, the hits to her bio doubled, and now it has tripled. I saw some of the information on other sites and it is indeed from our site, as it was written by us.

I asked Jenkins about the mysterious “themole” showing up in comment threads all over the place. I informed him of speculation that - because this lone individual seemed to be the only one doing the “plastering” of Malkin’s private info all over the blogosphere – it would seem at least possible that “themole” might be an agent of Malkin’s herself … or at least sympathetic to her and the idea of helping her to play the “martyr”.

Jenkins replied: ”Now did Malkin have a hand in passing it all over the place? Maybe. We will have to cop to the fact that is has been on our site for a number of years, and Malkin's bio was the one with the most hits of all the bios on the site until recently when two white supremacists took the two top spots.

“Even with that, however, it was particularly quiet in regards to her information until this week. We will not take any of it down as doing so will go against our mission to document as much as we can, but we will stress that in no way will we encourage any criminal acts or violence to happen behind anything we put on our site.”

So. What we’ve learned so far: Malkin’s private info was on the One People’s Project website for “a number of years.” That site may be well known amongst a certain segment of the left – but I’d certainly never come across it, and I suspect the majority of liberal Net denizens were unaware of it, too.

One person who Jenkins believes certainly knew of One People’s Project well before the UCSC job fair action took place, is Michelle Malkin herself.

“When we saw her ‘I Am Not Afraid of You’ entry, we knew right away she was referring to us. She even emailed us yesterday [Friday, April 21] asking us to take the info down. We just assumed that there were some sites that were using the info that have since taken it down since we couldn't find it anywhere.”

More on this later.

2. Who is “themole”/”killthebitch”?

From what I can gather after conferring with Auguste of Malkin(s)watch and the Sadly, No! crew, the IP addresses of “the mole” and “killthebitch” originate from the same location in The Netherlands. The IP address of the commenter whose post was deleted by Brad R. on Sadly, No! (and who did not call itself “themole”) originated in Boston. Both “themole” and “killthebitch” posted homepages that linked to the same placeholder website owned by a UK firm.

With the identical IP addresses, homepages and essentially the same cut-and-pasted text, it can be strongly inferred that “themole” and “killthebitch” are the same person. Since this person commented as “killthebitch” on my blog (and only my blog as far as I can tell) rather late in the game, it seems plausible that he/she/it, after experimenting with posting the Malkin info across the blogosphere, decided to ratchet up the rancor towards Malkin by changing usernames to reflect a deep hate for her.

The Sadly, No! commenter seems to be a different individual, given the different IP address. It should be noted that the Sadly, No! commenter could be “themole”, posting from a different computer. It should also be noted that “themole” is not necessarily based in The Netherlands, but could be someone who routes through Ripe.net, the Dutch outfit that maintains the IP address, which, Gavin M. of Sadly, No! contends, seems to provide IP addresses for people not in The Netherlands.

If this is the case, and if the Sadly, No! commenter was really “themole” posting from a different computer, we might theorize that “themole” – who normally covers his/her tracks by routing through Ripe.net – slipped up when posting to Sadly, No! and is in fact in Boston.

But that’s just a theory.

Another comes from Chris Chittleborough, a commenter on Protein Wisdom. His take on “themole”: “Hey folks: it’s not just the left who are attacking MM. This pseudoNazi is trying to put MM’s personal details on lots of left wing blogs via comments, often as ‘themole’.”

I contacted Chittleborough to find out what he had on “themole”. He directed me to a website run by one Michael Crook, a racist gadfly who operated the defunct forsakethetrooops.info website that was the subject of several Malkin blog posts some time ago, as well as dozens of other websites that take extreme positions designed to win Crook negative attention from mainstream media. On the website Chittleborough directed me to (which Chittleborough also asked me not to link directly), Crook posts about the Malkin affair as “mcomike”. Commenting in the thread for that post is none other than “themole” … which leads Chittleborough to believe that “themole” may be connected to Michael Crook.

I am not sure if this is the case. For one, a quick hunt through Crook’s website did not reveal any more comments by “themole”. And as Bas-O-Matic theorizes, it seems likely that “themole” (or “killthebitch”) simply did a search on Technorati or elsewhere to discover which blogs were posting about the Malkin affair. With those links in hand, “themole” proceeded to hit dozens of blogs’ comment threads and post the same comment over and over again.

It seems plausible that “themole” came across Crook’s Malkin post the exact same way he or she accessed dozens of others, and posted the cut-and-paste job without regard to the content of Crook’s post (which is typically racist, sneering and altogether hateful) … as he or she was doing all over the blogosphere.

A final point with regards to “themole”. I have been unable to determine the origin of the satellite map to Malkin’s house that was consistently linked to by “themole” (who even made a point, on at least one blog comment thread, of linking to a second hosting site after the original Imageshack map was taken down). I believe that map was actually constructed by “themole” itself.

It may prove to be impossible to determine the identity or political allegiance of “themole”. He or she could be a liberal or conservative. There is no evidence that “themole” – despite the suggestive username – was an agent for Malkin (known to her or not). There is only the faint odor of fishiness from the fact that “themole” nearly single-handedly brought about the “plastering” of Malkin’s info across the Internet, thus “confirming” her cryptic reference in the “I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU” post to a campaign to terrorize her and her family.

But any sort of speculation into the purpose of the trolling by “themole” must be considered in light of a pair of facts in Malkin’s favor. First, the One People’s Project did move its page containing Malkin’s personal info to its front page via a blurb and link before Malkin posted “I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU”. Indeed, Jenkins believes that post was directed at the Project.

Second, “themole” began posting Malkin’s info on blog comment threads several hours before Malkin posted “I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU”. Though the bulk of the “plastering” of Malkin’s info was done after her post, it remains true that a campaign to do so – by one individual – had begun before she complained of it.

That said, we can still reach some conclusions that don’t work nearly so well in Malkin’s favor – or her rightwing defenders.

CONCLUSIONS

Criticism of Malkin for posting the SAW students’ contact info – particularly the second time, after she was aware of death threats being received by the students – has been amply documented. We don’t need to revisit it here, other than to say again that Malkin was wrong to do so, and what’s more, had to know she was wrong to do so from her training as a professional journalist.

What concerns me more at the moment is the utter dishonesty of the response to Malkin’s “I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU” post. Malkin carefully worded that post – and left out any details for readers to follow up on her claims – to make herself out to be the victim of a widespread campaign (her private info was “plastered” across the Internet, remember) to terrorize her and her family … without saying anything concrete that could prove embarrassing later, i.e. that all of this was the work of a single website moving already existing information to front-page prominence and another unaffiliated individual trolling blog comment threads.

Malkin is quite good at directing her readers to conclusions, without explicitly taking them by the back of the head and rubbing their noses in what she wants them to conclude. She used the same basic technique in the original blog entry that included the SAW contact details. She never said outright, “Go harass these people.” But by calling them seditionists and thugs earlier in the post, she might as well have.

And just as her Pavlovian readers responded predictably to the posting of the SAW contact info, so did her defenders in the right blogosphere respond predictably to her claim of being terrorized by a widespread campaign to harass her. A look at righty blogs referencing the “I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU” post reveals dozens of knee-jerk, unsupported condemnations of “lefties” and “the left” for its supposed “campaign” to attack Malkin, plus hundreds of examples of the same sort of talk in comment threads.

But the fact is, there was never a campaign by the left, or even any significant number of lefties to publish Malkin’s private info. Not in comment threads, much less in front page blog posts. The entire campaign was almost entirely conducted by a single, hit-and-run troll called “themole” in comment threads.

And not only was the left not interested in posting Malkin’s details, many lefty bloggers immediately scrubbed or deleted comments that contained them, as soon as they were discovered.

But “I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU” and the work of “themole” served a purpose (the only question is whether “themole” intended to serve this purpose or not). By the night of April 19, after a week of sustaining damage from various quarters that were critical of her posting the SAW info, Malkin was back in the victim’s seat. The waters surrounding her original breach of ethics were significantly muddied. Her proxies across the right blogosphere had the ammo to fight back against her critics, and even go on the attack against “the lefties” who were so clearly much worse in their tactics – going so far as to post a satellite map, whereas Malkin had only posted cell phone numbers and email addresses.

Mission accomplished, as they say. And it’s not like we haven’t seen this same game played out before on a grander scale, involving far more important stakes. The right’s Rovian playbook has as its basic formation precisely this sort of thing. From the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth nonsense in the 2004 presidential campaign season to the blogswarm over the CBS memos about President Bush’s TANG service, we have witnessed forms of this latest Malkin affair writ large many times in the past.

It begins with a small group or even an individual with a dubious background making allegations or “exposing” some secret. The rightwing media machine, including the blogosphere, “plasters” this shocking information all across the land, creating an angry din that outshouts any attempt to objectively investigate whether there is any “there” there to the scandal in question. The rightwing slant becomes the conventional wisdom, or at the very least muddies the waters enough to throw whatever the truth might be into serious doubt in the minds of many.

On the national level, elections are won and lost, and power is consolidated and ripped away, thanks in no small part to the collective weight of these deceitful campaigns, big and little.

My purpose in examining such a blip in the blogosphere as the most recent l’Affaire Malkin has been to dig down into one such little campaign – to find out how it came about, how it was sparked by the deliberate actions of a very tiny group of agents … then built up momentum on the predictable reactions of uncoordinated rightwing mouthpieces swarming to further the storyline along without ever questioning what proved to be its basic false premise.

Perhaps it’s been a waste of my time to spend so much of it on something that is on the face of it quite trivial. But I like to think that this sort of work has some value in preparing for the larger campaigns of deceit that are being hatched and conducted even as we speak … that involve huge issues like war with Iran, immigration policy, voting mechanisms and the environment, to name just a few.

Friday fake song

2006-04-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

The Deciderer

Oh, well, I’m the boss of you, who will never settle for
Any kind of peace that ain’t preceded by a war
I bomb 'em and I strafe 'em 'cause to me they're all the same
I torture and I nuke 'em, you can bet they know my name
They call me the deciderer, yeah the deciderer
I bomb around around around ...

Oh, well, there's Karl on my left, and there's Rummy on my right
And Condie is the girl that I'll plot war with tonight
And when she asks me which one I’d love to kill to rights
I tear open PNAC’s brief, got Iran in my bombsights
'Cause I'm the deciderer, yeah the deciderer
I bomb around around around ...

Oh, well, I test-market in May
For wars I start in June
'Til I'm as happy as Ken Lay
With brownouts in California dancin' to his tune

I'm the type of guy that likes to bomb around
I'm never in one place, I bomb from town to town
And when I find myself answerin’ to some hack
I hop right into Airforce One and sneak a swig o’ Jack
Yeah, I'm the deciderer, yeah the deciderer
I bomb around around around ...

I'm the type of guy that likes to bomb around
I'm never in one place, I bomb from town to town
And when I find myself answerin’ to some hack
I hop right into Airforce One and sneak a swig o’ Jack
Yeah, 'cause I'm a deciderer, yeah a deciderer
I bomb around around around ...
'Cause I'm a deciderer, yeah a deciderer
I bomb around around around

That's odd ...

2006-04-21T07:19:00.000-07:00

... I thought the new conservatism was supposed to be all optimistic about downtrodden people's ability to govern themselves. Isn't it the liberals who are the freedom-hating elitists whose thinly veiled racism is evident in their unwillingness to spread gun-boat democracy far and wide?

Well, "kowalski" sets us straight: "Welcome to a new frontier, because this is what happens when you hook up most of humanity to a world-wide information exchange medium."

If you don't like worms, try not opening cans of them all the time

2006-04-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

There are lots of things in this world that make you say, "What a bunch of dumbasses."

For example, earlier today I happened upon an old NBA playoff game on ESPN Classic, between the Nets and Sixers. The Nets' Michael Ray Richardson gets fouled hard making a layup and goes to the line*. The camera gets him in the standard frontal close-up as he prepares to take the free throw. At the bottom of the screen is a graphic: "Michael Ray Richardson ... Scoring Average ... Season: 12.0 ... Tonight: 20.0" ...

At this point I'm shouting at the screen, "What's with the decimal point? Just in case he scores 20.1 points tonight? What a bunch of dumbasses."

We all have screaming-at-stupidity moments like that. With the exception of Glenn Greenwald, all of us have done the kind of dumbass things that make others boil over at our own stupidity. But for the most part, dumbassness like the scoring graphic above isn't particularly harmful ... it's just dumbass.

Not so the heartbreaking tale of staggering dumbass cooking in the right blogosphere at the moment. The details: Michelle Malkin posts the email addresses and phone numbers of some UC Santa Cruz students who caused a ruckus over the presence of military recruiters at a job fair. The message from Malkin is clear: "Will no one rid me of these meddling moonbats?" Bloggers on the left cry foul, Keith Olbermann picks up the story and names Malkin the "Worst Person in the World" on his MSNBC show. In the meantime, Malkin compounds her original offense by re-posting the students' personal information. The targetted students are getting death threats. Some dipshits on the left decided to strike back by posting Malkin's home address** on their sites, and Malkin posts on her site that now she herself is getting death threats.

Okay, stop. Here we are. A perfect place for all of us - left and right - to step back and say, "Enough's enough - we're letting politics get waaaaay too personal and out of hand. All of this stuff needs to end ... now."

And some people did say that. And so did some others. And surely many more people that I'm not aware of said it, from the left and from the right. For my part, I'll go so far as to say this series of incidents has made me question if even the exceedingly tame campaign against cobag's cobag Ruth Malhotra might be skirting the edge of reasonable tactics.

But Jeff Goldstein has used the opportunity to (sadly but predictably) get in a high dudgeon over the barbarism of the left. Various other righties (check Malkin's trackbacks) have done a variation of the same.

What utter, hypocritical dumbasses.

Goldstein et. al.'s argument begins with the specious argument that the Santa Cruz kids had made their personal info publicly available in a press release - see, it was their own fault! But as Auguste shows, Malkin's address is also publicly available. And as Auguste makes plain, the mere public availability of information does not make it acceptable in any way for anybody to draw new attention to it in a climate of concentrated revenge-seeking.

Aside from that, what Goldstein and crew either don't know or pretend not to know, is just what a press release is and how the information in it is expected to be treated. But you can be damn sure that Malkin, who worked in newsrooms as a regular journalist before sliming her way to ace pundit status, knows precisely how blatantly she violated the basic understanding between journos and PR flacks (in this case, the "PR flacks" are the students themselves).

Here's a little example of what I'm talking about. As a sports editor, I would get several press releases a week from a publicist for the San Francisco 49ers. These were emailed to me, and were also available on the 49ers' website, easily accessible to any member of the public who might choose to look for them. Printed on the releases was the private phone number of the publicist who wrote them, made available in case I or any other journalist covering the Niners wanted to give him a call about the release.

Meanwhile, I would write stories and columns about the Niners, often extremely critical of the organization and its ownership, the Yorks. I wrote at least one column that accused the Yorks and the Niners of cheating their fans through stinginess and incompetence.

At no time did it ever cross my mind to publish the phone number of the PR flack - publicly available, remember - for the purpose of implicitly prodding my readers to go take out their frustrations with the team on one of its representatives. It wasn't a question that such a move would destroy my access to the Niners (though doubtless it would have done that), but that to do it would be the most cheap, below-the-belt thing I could possibly do as an editor. So cheap and below-the-belt that it would never have crossed my mind to do it even if I'd had some sort of personal grudge against the publicist.

Now there has been some discussion about how "stupid" the Santa Cruz kids were to put their personal contact info on their publicly available press release. As I've shown, however, journalists deal with personal info on press releases all the time, and they don't publish it to start harrassment campaigns against people or organizations they don't like. It's a code so deeply understood, I don't think I've ever actually heard any journalist talk about it. To give Goldstein et. al. the benefit of the doubt, maybe that's too much "tradecraft" for them to have absorbed - even though the understanding I describe falls more into the category of "basic ethics a child could grasp" rather than "secret journalists' guild protocol".

But not Malkin. She knows precisely why such information is on press releases: For journalists (and I use the term loosely with regards to a hatemongering polemicist like Malkin) to contact the principles or their spokespeople for followup on a story. Malkin, from her bully pulpit, blatantly abused the unwritten understanding between journalists and sources to sic her vigilante attack dogs on some kids. There is just no arguing with that conclusion.

So back to dumbassness. The hypocrisy of Malkin to cry foul over her own similar treatment - and for the likes of Goldstein to rush to her defense by heaping his endless capacity for transparently biased scorn upon her tormenters, while giving the instigator herself a free pass for precisely the same behavior - is dumbassness at its dumbassest. It is the achievement of terminal dumbassocity, the absolute zero on the scale of dumbass, the epic collision of all that is contained in Set: Dumb with all that is comprised of Form: Ass.

My own anger over this dumbass display on a scale of 1-10? Season: 12.0 ... Tonight: Infinity.9999 ...

*Incidentally, "going to the line" of another sort would prove the undoing of Richardson's promising NBA career.

**Which I will not link to here.

UPDATE: "Michelle Malkin - Awe Inspiring" ... so sycophantic, you've got to read it to believe it.

'It' ... get used to the oh-so delicious flavor, cobagz

2006-04-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

We are joined in Blogsylvania by none other than Bas-O-Matic née Carpbasman.

All of us had been awaiting this day with no little trepidation, as its arrival now spells our doom as originalist bloggers. We resign ourselves as cobagz to eating it for as long as Bas shall post.

Harnessing the power of the cybernets

2006-04-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

So, as I mentioned in comments, I've applied for this job as Blogging & Interactive Editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. It would be a dream job for me, working for my hometown paper as a Goliath trying to suborn the Army of Davids to swear fealty to the Emm-Ess-Emm banner (Objective 1A: Expose Michelle Malkin as bad for the Port of Oakland). Today, the blogosphere, tomorrow the world!!!!11!!!4 8 15 16 23 42!!! etc. &tc. andtc.

I've got the print media experience - nearly 10 years of it - but the Chron also requires, and I quote, "Knowledge of and experience in the blogosphere and building robust online communities ..."

Thus a request: Please help me robust this hizzy up for any Chron recruiters who come sniffing 'round these parts. Let's robust a cap in they ass. In comments, let's show the Chron that nobody can get a flood of testimonials from a tiny readership that trolls the blogosphere with multiple usernames like ParrotLine.

Your reward if you help out? The longest ParrotLine comment thread EVAR (current record: embarrassing) ... plus, a big giant post on Iran and Nazis and nukes, oh my!

Have at it, folks. Let's get one of our own* into mainstream cyberspace. We can even make a contest out of it. As in, "AssParrot is so robust that ..."

Oh, and as a one-time only request, let's keep the "fucks" and "shits" to a minimum, as per: "Candidate must also have strong editorial judgment in deciding what user-generated content is not appropriate."

*What's good for ~~General Motors~~ AssParrot is good for America.

Hey, kidz! Let's put on a show!

2006-04-13T12:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, here are some song lyrics my cousin and I cooked up a while ago. Unfortunately, he's in Hawaii and he's the musician, so it's hard to work on them together. But if anybody out there is a musician in the Bay Area who likes the lyrics (the melodies I'd have to hum to you), and wants to work on the music and make them into real songs, give me a shout at dpoeter-at-earthlink-dot-net ...

The idea behind the songs is to create a Toby Keith-like character, who would take the Internets by storm with his no-nonsense patriotic country jamz. Here are a few of the songs:

Heapin' Helpin' of America

Woke up this mornin' with a turrible hunger deep inside
Turned on the stove, brewed up a cuppa joe
But it didn't soothe muh soul
That caffeine simply didn't take
It was a deeper sort of thirst I had to slake

So I went on down to Mainstreet ... Heartland, U.S.A.
Ordered up some grits and a piece o' key lime pie
But it didn't satisfy
Not just any vittles will
When it's a patriotic belly you've gotta fill
Oh, when it's a patriotic belly you've gotta fill

And as I sat there at the counter
Well it hit me like a punch
I was hungry for muh country ... not for lunch
Oh, I was hungry for muh country ... not for lunch

So gimme another heapin' helpin' of America
Pass around them freedom fries, would ya son
Make my breakfast, lunch and supper
Red, white and blue forever
Stick a fork in liberty, she's done

Oh, gimme another heapin' helpin' of America
Pass around them freedom fries, would ya son
Make my breakfast, lunch and supper
Red, white and blue forever
Stick a fork in liberty, she's done

So I went on down to Mainstreet ... Heartland, U.S.A.
Ordered up some grits and a piece o' key lime pie
But it didn't satisfy
Not just any vittles will
When it's a patriotic belly you've gotta fill
Oh, when it's a patriotic belly you've gotta fill

And as I sat there at the counter
Well it hit me like a punch
I was hungry for muh country ... not for lunch
Oh, I was hungry for muh country ... not for lunch

So gimme another heapin' helpin' of America
Pass around them freedom fries, would ya son
Make my breakfast, lunch and supper
Red, white and blue forever
Stick a fork in liberty, she's done

Oh, gimme another heapin' helpin' of America
Pass around them freedom fries, would ya son
Make my breakfast, lunch and supper
Red, white and blue forever
Stick a fork in liberty, she's done

----------

Freedom Ain't Free

Freedom ain't free
It's two bucks, seventy-three
Down at the pump
And justice ain't just
Yer own pickup truck
And a good job at the dump
Liber-tee don't grow on no tree
And the sweetest damn place in the world to be
Is your cunt ...
Mm-mm-mm-mm
Your country

It took a real man to demand
Manifest Destiny
Sweeping cross the Plains
Kickin' ass, takin' names
For dee-mock-ra-cy
Libert-tee, she don't grow on no tree
And the sweetest damn place in the world to be
Is your cunt ...
Mm-mm-mm-mm
Your country

----------

Call Me Bill's Daddy

When Billy was born, we knew he wadn't quite right
Had six fingers on his left hand, six toes on his right
Footin' the bill at the hos-pill nearly drove us broke
But if we gave a sound to puttin' him down, well we ain't that kinda folk

Chorus
I love my gay, crippled, retard son
Even if there ain't a place fer him in Heaven up above
I'd surely be there with a hug and a pat on the back
The very day he proves to me he's got his life on track

Bill grew queerer by the day, to our distress
When he wadn't fallin' down the stairs, he was puttin' on a dress
He couldn't cipher worth a damn
But then how many of us can?
Not too many in this clan, I must confess
Not too many in this clan, I must confess

We did everything we could to help young Bill
Even though the preacher told us he was headed straight to Hell
We doused him in that Holy Water
Like some papist i-do-later
But all he did was spit it up like swill
Oh, all he did was spit it up like swill

But you know something folks? You gotta hate the sin and shame the sinner. And that's why ...

Chorus
I love my gay, crippled, retard son
Even if there ain't a place fer him in Heaven up above
I'd surely be there with a hug and a pat on the back
The very day he proves to me he's got his life on track

I'm a' love my gay, crippled, retard son
Even if there ain't a place fer him in Heaven up above
I'd surely be there with a hug and a pat on the back
The very day he proves to me he's got his life on track

I love my gay, crippled, retard son
Even if there ain't a place fer him in Heaven up above
Jesus may a' turned his back on him
But I cain't do that to my kin
Call me a fool, call it a sin, call me Bill's Dad
Call me a fool, call it a sin, call me Bill's Dad
Call me a fool, call it a sin, call me Bill's Dad-dddddyyyy!

----------

Learn 'Em a Thinger Three

Do you remember the day when ever-thang changed?
Since them towers fell, well it ain't been the same
But we larn't us something else on that day
There's folks out there hate the American way
They came over here a' lookin' fer a fight
I'll tell ya what, we're gonna put 'em right
They talk a funny language and they wear funny clothes
Well, American grindstone, meet A-rab nose
Y'all Muslim dead-enders, you're a' goin' to school
The lesson is freedom, our boot's the slide rule
Ya may do things wrong, but that's a gonna change
We train our teachers on a firin' range

Chorus
So we're gonna tangle
We're gonna tussle
Gonna wrassle 'em down from Baghdad to Mosul
We're gonna learn them terrorists all 'bout the American way
Oh, we're gonna tangle
We're gonna tussle
Gonna wrassle 'em down from Baghdad to Mosul
We're gonna learn them terrorists all 'bout the American way

Oh, they don't hang their towels on a towel rack
Over there in old Iraq
They put 'em on their heads and folks, that just ain't right
They don't lay their carpets down wall-to-wall
They fly round on 'em, don't that just beat all?
It may be a tall task, but we're gonna set 'em right

Yessir ...

We're gonna clean up this old globe
Give 'er a shower and a terricloth robe
'Cause that's how we use towels here in America
(We don't put 'em on our heads ... now that's just wrong)

Chorus
An' we're gonna tangle
We're gonna tussle
Gonna wrassle 'em down from Baghdad to Mosul
We're gonna learn them terrorists all 'bout the American way
Oh, we're gonna tangle
We're gonna tussle
Gonna wrassle 'em down from Baghdad to Mosul
We're gonna learn them terrorists all 'bout the American way

We're gonna lay down a big bear rug
Wrap 'em up in a big bear hug
'Cause that's how we use carpets here in America
(We don't fly around on 'em like Ali Babber, that's fer shore)

Chorus
Yep, we're gonna tangle
We're gonna tussle
Gonna wrassle 'em down from Baghdad to Mosul
We're gonna learn them terrorists all 'bout the American way
Oh, we're gonna tangle
We're gonna tussle
Gonna wrassle 'em down from Baghdad to Mosul
We're gonna learn them terrorists all 'bout the American way

We're gonna twist up a big rat's tail
Snap 'em in the butt all the way to Hell
'Cause that's how we use towels here in America
(We use 'em to raise welts ... bigguns)

Chorus
Yep, we're gonna tangle
We're gonna tussle
Gonna wrassle 'em down from Baghdad to Mosul
We're gonna learn them terrorists all 'bout the American way
Oh, we're gonna tangle
We're gonna tussle
Gonna wrassle 'em down from Baghdad to Mosul
We're gonna learn them terrorists all 'bout the American way

Ooh! Minty fresh breath!

2006-04-13T07:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a picture my 4w3s0m3 sister took on her trip to Egypt. She also went to Turkey.

Your Honor, that filthy man ... linked me!

2006-04-11T16:46:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a wank opera of sorts based on West Side Story. I'll have it up in a couple o' days. Meanwhile, Pamela's most devoted paladin, "Beagle" of Little Green Racistballs, is all het up over James Wolcott subjecting his favorite eliminationist Randroid to a fate worse than death ... commenting about her public blog posts.

Here's Beagle, suggesting that the police have far more important matters to investigate than, you know, murders and robberies and such:

By the way James Wolcott is still cutting the eyes out of Pamela (Atlas Shrugs) photos. The police need to get a warrant for that creep, ASAP. He could use a personal trainer and some sort of hair solution as well.

And lest you think he was kidding, here's the chivalrous Beagle again, shielding the dainty Pamela with his manly typing muscles from Wolcott's caddish attentions, going so far as to suggest a restraining order:

Wolcott embodies everything I hate in many ways. He's a pompous, uninformed, superficial, elitist, misanthrope who happens to have a hard on for anti-Semites and conspiracy mongers like Justin Raimondo.

He goes out of his way to attack you personally using sexism, anti-Semitism, or his typical condescending assholishness. You might want to consider a TRO if this keeps up.

Or maybe Pamela could stop being a tarted up genocidalist who herself is happy to smear Wolcott from her Soapbox-that-Tits-Built. Because that would work, too.

And they wonder why we make fun of them.

April 2006 Message from AssParrot

2006-04-10T23:25:00.000-07:00

(Note: Read this Dan Simmons story first, if you haven't already. UPDATE: Try this link if that one isn't working. H/T: tigrismus in comments.

Greetings Readers, Friends, and Other Dhimmis:

The Time Traveler appeared suddenly in my asshole on New Year’s Eve, 2004. He was a stolid, grizzled man with a mullet and felt to be about the size of an extremely small Playmobil soldier (not that I would know). He also appeared to have been designed with an erotic purpose in mind or else in possession of terrible acne, since he had a ribbed exterior that I could feel tickling my anal passage. After I had managed to pass him onto the carpet of my study with no small discomfort, he announced in a husky voice that he was a Time Traveler come back to talk to me about the future.

Being a sometimes homosexual but not a top, I said, “Don’t they have fucking K-Y in the future?”

“Do you remember Replay?” he said.

My finger hovered over his tiny body, poised to flick him away. “The cheap cologne?” I said. “By Proctor & Gamble?”

The stranger – Time Traveler, psychotic, colon invader, whatever he was – looked bewildered.

“No, I don’t remember Replay,” I said. “What the fuck do I look like, Google?”

The little dildo-man informed me that he was speaking of a science fiction novel by some dork named Ken Grimwood which had won some big geek award, almost assuredly had been translated into Klingon, and probably had the sort of cover art that you would try to hide with one hand if you ever found yourself reading it on the subway. Long story short: Grimwood’s book was about some guy who travels back in time with full knowledge of his life ahead of him and gets to relive that life with his knowledge of the future … blah blah blah … establishing premise stolen from a better story … yada yada yada.

So, I thought, this is the stupidest start to a cautionary tale I’ve ever had the displeasure of satirizing.

I kept my finger poised over his tiny head and contemplated lubing him up and reinserting my brand new suppository from the future. But another ER bill to deal with? That was tsuris I didn’t need.

“What does that book have to do with you implausibly appearing in my ass and then me pulling you out to move this horrendous plot along (while also using broad metaphor to telegraph my opinion of the original story)?” I asked.

The stranger wiped some stray flecks of shit off his cheek. “You asked me to prove that I’m a Time Traveler,” he said softly. “Do you remember how Grimwood’s character in Replay went hunting for others in the 1960’s who had traveled back in time from the late 1980’s?”

No, I didn’t fucking remember. I never read the goddam book … don’t you remember when I told you that, wee sphincter man? Besides, by now I was only thinking about fair use and how much text from the original dumb story I could get away with stealing without getting sued, or worse … being asked to write a conservative blog for the Washington Post. I also had no idea how I was going to maintain this shit for another 5,000 words. But full steam ahead: The guy in Replay, once he suspected others were also replaying into the past, had taken out personal ads in major city newspapers around the country. The ads were concise. “Do you remember Three Mile Island, Challenger, Watergate, Reaganomics? If so, contact me at . . .”

Before I could say anything else on this New Year’s Eve of 2004, a few hours before 2005 began, the stranger said, “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Katrina and the Waves, 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas', Ward Cleaver, Ray Charles, Superman, Judge Judy, Red Sox sweep the Cardinals in four to win the World Series, Rope-a-Dope, women’s lib.”

“What the fuck?” I said, scrambling for a pen and then scrambling even faster to stab him with it as he scurried about on the carpet. “Red Sox sweep the Cardinals in four to win the World Series? That’s like, totally redundant. A sweep of the World Series implies ‘in four’ … dumbass. Besides, I thought you were supposed to tell me shit that hasn’t already happened.”

“You’ll recognize it all when you hear it all again,” said the stranger, clearly not getting that it wouldn’t have mattered even if he had told me about stuff from 2005 … because it’s 2006 as I write this, so like ‘Whoooaaa … Dan Simmons totally blew my mind by having a ‘guy from the future’ know crap that’s already freaking happened.

“I’ll see you in a year and we’ll have our conversation.”

“Wait!” I shouted. “Dammit, I have some Vaseline in the closet …” But when I looked up he had already disappeared up into my butthole ... and God knows how he was going to navigate my small intestine to get to wherever the hell he was going.

“Red Sox win the Series?” I muttered into the silence. “Better would have been to say ‘Red Sox fans become insufferable twats after winning Series. At least that would have been kind of funny … because it’s true!”

……………………..

I was waiting for him on New Year’s Eve 2005. This time I’d greased my poopchute liberally. Wrong hole, I regret to say. Ever pass kidney stones? In the shape of a grizzled little fucker from the future? Yeah. Well. Anyway, seeing how I was doubled over with pain at the time, there wasn’t much I could do when he popped out, plunked himself down on my pleather pimpchair and started sucking on the crack pipe that I’m pretty sure you’ve guessed by now that I keep lying around.

“Dude!” I moaned. “Save me a rock, you bastard!”

He did.

Our conversation ran over two hours – or maybe it was 20 minutes or 30 seconds or three weeks – whatever, because after the crack ran out we hit the liquor cabinet, then we called up my meth connection … there was a part where I think we got chased by the cops or maybe a security guard at Safeway, all I know is half of my right ear is missing and I have no idea how that happened … at some point blotter acid was involved ... I’m pretty sure we ran over a woman but it may have been a dog or just my tore-up transmission acting up … and by the time we were out of cash and the tweaking had come down on my head hard enough for some feeble grasp of reality to awaken in my brain, the little dildo guy was cooking lacquer shavings he’d gouged out of my dresser and huffing the fumes … and I was trying to screw my hand to the refrigerator door with a butterknife.

With that in mind, here’s the gist of our talk:

The Time Traveler wouldn’t tell me what year in the future he was from. Not even the decade or century. But the pink-and-orange leopard-striped muscle pants and mesh half shirt he was wearing didn’t look very far-future science-fictiony or military, no Star Trekky boots or insignia, just shit- and piss-covered clothes that looked like something a guy who climbed in and out of people's asses and dicks would wear. Who also happened to hang out with Lou Ferrigno on Venice Beach in like, 1984.

“I know you can’t tell me details about the future because you’re not really from the future and this is all just made-up,” I began. I hadn’t spent the last 5 seconds thinking up that line for nothing.

“Oh, bugger time travel paradoxes,” said the Time Traveler, who was from what? England? And talked like some old codger from the 1960’s? And he’s supposed to be the grandson of me, an American? From the “future”? WTF? (Sorry for blowing the big reveal that he’s my grandson, but why do science fiction writers always have their characters say anachronistic crap like ‘bugger’ all the time?).

“They don’t exist," he said about the time paradoxes he brought up for no apparent reason. "I could tell you anything I want to and it won’t change anything. I just choose not to tell you some things.”

I frowned at this. Well, not at this, more at the fact that I was peaking on the 'shrooms I forgot to mention we munched, and the walls were breathing a fucking trip. “Time travel paradoxes…grk … dude … that’s a trip … I can totally … dude …I am totally tripping … that’s a trip … dude … trip ...”

The Time Traveler laughed and norted a huge rail off a giant lily pad that I didn’t know I owned. “Begain segunna plaxis?” he said. “Pilsbury filzag clobones Michelle Malkin?”

“Uh . . .Hitler? Cobagz?” I said weakly, because he wasn’t making any sense to me.

The Traveler smiled, but more ironically this time. “Good luck,” he said. “But don’t count on succeeding.”

I shook my head. “Cut to the fucking chase before you fucking snort me out of house and home, you greedy little urinary tract voyaging fuck!”

He looked slightly offended.

“Look, I believe your high ass patter about time travel,” I said, trying to humor him. The last thing I needed was a tweak war with a coked-up 6-inch figment of my imagination. Those suck.

“I gave you a raft of facts about your future a year ago as my bona fides,” said the Time Traveler. “Did it change anything? Did you bet on the Red Sox?”

“Yeah, sure,” I lied. “I also bet on Ali over Foreman based on your ‘rope-a-dope’ reference. I made a fucking bundle when they showed it on ESPN Classic the other day.”

The Time Traveler only shook his head. “Cogito ergo showoffium,” he said softly. “I could tell you that the River Anduin flows generally south. Would your knowing about it change its course or flow or flooding?”

I thought about this. Finally I said, “No, but it would make me think you were the kind of spaz whose knowledge of the topography of Middle Earth has an inverse relationship with his knowledge of the location of the female clitoris. But never mind that - why did you come back? Why do you want to talk to me? What do you want me to do?”

“I came back for my own purposes,” said the Time Traveler, looking around my booklined study, no doubt for some more of my stash he could raid. “I chose you to talk to because it was . . . convenient. And I don’t want you to do a goddamned thing. There’s nothing you can do. But relax . . . we’re not going to be talking about personal things. Such as, say, the year, day, and hour of your death. I don’t even know that sort of trivial information, although I could look it up quickly enough. You can release that white-knuckled grip you have on the edge of your desk.”

I tried to relax, even though that last paragraph was lifted nearly word-for-word from Simmons. “What do you want to talk about?” I said ... because I often like to "say" questions, rather than "ask" them. That's just how us literary hipsters roll.

“The Century War,” said the Time Traveler.

I blinked and tried to remember some Little Green Footballs lingo. “You mean the war with the Islamopaleswineanfascists, right?”

“I mean the Century War with Islam, yes,” the Tract Traveler said. “Your future. Everyone’s.” He was no longer smiling. Without asking, or bothering to even make a show of looking for a toilet, he stood, pissed all over my stereo, and sat again. He said, “It was important to me to come back to this time early on in the struggle. Even if only to remind myself of how unspeakably blind you all were.”

“You just pissed all over my stereo!” I said.

“I mean the Long War with Islam,” he said. “The Century War. And it’s not over yet where I come from. Not close to being over.”

“Maybe you didn’t hear me, cocksucker, but you better start cleaning up that piss before I step on your tiny ass!”

“Listen to me!” said the Time Traveler. His voice was very low but there was a strange and almost soothing edge to it. But nowhere near as soothing as my fucking stereo that he pissed on! What a total dick!

“The ‘peace’ in ‘Islam’ means ‘Submission.’ You’ll find that out soon enough.”

“Okay, blah blah blah,” I said. “Let’s summarize the filler and get to the funny part or we’re going to start losing the already tiny audience I’ve got on this blog. Islam is really, really bad … we’re supposed to be fighting Islam, not terrorism … some stupid analogy about fighting Japanese airplanes in World War II … something about a ‘Category Error’ in logic, as if this entire fictional exercise wasn’t a giant Category Error in itself … then, of course, the gentle but firm chiding about how me and other Americans who aren’t scared to the point of shitting ourselves hourly over Islamic terrorists are really big giant dumbasses who will be enslaved by crazed jihadis, like, by next year at the latest … that about sum it up?”

“Yes, it does,” said the little ass-crawling strawman. “Now, what do you know about Syracuse?”

I blinked again. “Uh, Keith Smart beat them with that jumper from the wing in ’87 and ‘Melo laid off the bong long enough to take them to the title a couple years ago?” I ventured.

He shook his head slowly. “Thucydides’ Syracuse,” he said softly, because that was the only adverb he knew how to speak in. “Syracuse circa 415 B.C. The Syracuse Athens invaded.”

“I don’t know shit about that, perfesser,” I said. “And I’m betting you don’t either. But I bet Wikipedia totally kicks ass in the, you know … ‘future’.”

“Okay, forget it,” he said. “I’ll just have to show you instead of tell you.”

With that, the Time Traveler started spurting shit and piss and puke out of every orifice until it covered half the floor in a giant puddle of foul, wretched excrement.

“Come, let us take the plunge,” he said, grabbing my hand.

“What, you mean ‘take the plunge’ … in that?” I asked, pointing to the puddle of filth. But with a movement quicker and stronger than I would have granted possible for him, the Time Traveler had pulled me onto my knees in the puddle. Where we remained for a few moments before he spoke again.

“Fuck. Well, that didn’t work,” he said.

“What didn’t work?” I must confess I screamed, due to the horror of my situation. “I’m on my knees in fucking shit!”

“No, no, it was supposed to take us magically back to the beginning of human civilization, where you would have seen all of history unfold to better understand your present problem … and my future one.”

“Wallowing in a puddle of shit and puke and piss was supposed to do that? Dude, I’m not normally one to say this … but lay off the fucking crack, John Zerzan!”

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s forget all about this. The point was supposed to be that the ancient Athenians should have nuked the Spartans when they had the chance. Also, in the future, you won’t be able to vote unless you can conjure up a magical time portal made out of crap.”

We climbed to our feet, trudged out of the puddle and sat back down. Because what’s a little getting caked in shit between friends?

“See, Athens failed in Syracuse – and doomed their democracy – not because they fought in the wrong place and at the wrong time, but because they weren’t ruthless enough,” the Time Traveling Shit Man said. “They had grown soft since their slaughter of every combat-age man and boy on the island of Melos, the enslavement of every woman and girl there. The democratic Athenians, in regards to Syracuse, thought that once engaged they could win without absolute commitment to winning, claim victory without being as ruthless and merciless as their Spartan and Syracusan enemies.”

“So you’re saying we need to start practicing genocide and bring back slavery?” I asked.

“Correct-amundo!” said the Time Traveler. “You win the prize!”

I went to the closet and fumbled around in the space behind the coats. Clearly, it was time to hit the nitrous.

He kept talking. “In 2006 you still fear yourselves and your own institutions first, out of old habit.”

“Hang on, I thought this was 2005 … wasn’t that the conceit way back in the beginning of the story …”

“So I need a fucking editor! Sue me!” he cut me off, but added with a twinkle in his eye, “Or more accurately, you need an editor.”

That sort of blew my mind, the whole meta-self referential poke at Simmons scope of it.

“I will tell you right now, and this is not a prediction but a history lesson, some of your grandchildren will live in dhimmitude.”

“Okay, Charles! You can come out now,” I yelled. By now my brain was so fried I thought Charles Johnson was the host of Punk’d. Which would be kind of funny in a very sick way, if you think about it. Like James Wolcott would be out walking his dog, and some actor with a towel on his head would jump out of the bushes and saw Wolcott’s head off, then Charles would run in and say, “You’ve been punk’d!” Actually, that wouldn’t be funny at all, just sick.

“Last year you gave me words about 2005,” I said, recovering. “The kind of words Ken Grimwood’s replayers in time would have put in the newspaper to find each other. Give me more now. Or, better yet, just fucking tell me what you’re talking about.”

He started giving me words. Even while I was scribbling them down, I was thinking of some porn that I’d downloaded earlier that I really wanted to jack off to.

“Ahmadenijad,” he said softly for the 50th fucking time, Simmons. Maybe you should have had him say “thesaurus,” Mr. Big Time Award Winning Writer. “Morgoth. Blak-a-lak. Babelflab. Iberzkak. Boner. Twenty-three skidoo.”

“Those words don’t mean a damned thing to me,” I said as I scribbled down my grocery list.

“You’ll know soon enough,” said the Time Traveler.

“Are you talking about . . . what? . . . the next fifteen or twenty years?” I said.

“I’m talking about the next fifteen or twenty seconds from your now,” he said softly. “Do you want more words?”

I didn’t. But I couldn’t speak just then, due to the peanut butter.

“General Mortimer O’Cuntlicker McGee,” intoned the Time Traveler. “Methlab-one, Methlab-two, Methlab-three. Telephone. Bukkake Triple Penetration Moneyshot, Al Bundy Spaceport on Venus, Hello Mudda Hello Fadda Here I Am at Camp Granada, Penguin, Cravat, Davenport, Poop, Weird al-Yankovic, Xanax, Sophia Loren, Fried Palenta, Gris-Gris. Letter Opener. Silly Putty. Charles de Gaulle. Desdemona.

“Oh, fuck,” I said. “Oh, Jesus.” I had no clue as to who or what Methlab One, Two, or Three might be, but the context and litany alone made me think this little bastard was holding out on me.

“This is just the beginning,” said the Time Traveler.

“Wasn’t the beginning on September 11, 2001?” I managed through numbied lips.

The one-note false man shook his head. “Historians in my time know that it began on November 5, 1953,” he said. “But it hasn’t really begun for you yet. For any of you.”

I thought – What on earth happened on the fifth of November, 1953? I’m old enough to remember. Wait, no I’m not. Can we end the arbitrary italics now?

“Uh, was that when Carlos the Jackal got his first toy airplane . . .” I began.

The Time Traveler shook his head.

“The Ayatollah … yeah, it’s got to have something to do with him … um, did he have an American girlfriend who broke up with him on that date, sending him into a spiral of hatred for the United States?”

Again he shook his head. “You’re getting warm, though …”

“Okay, okay,” I said, racking my brains. “The Ayatollah’s girlfriend blueballed him … and she was, um, Jimmy Carter’s second cousin?”

“It’s got nothing to do with the Ayatollah Khomeini, jackass!” thundered the small fella. “By ‘getting warm’ I just meant you were headed in the right general direction. Christ, you’re a fucking idiot!”

“Well, fuck you too!” I retorted. “Why don’t you just tell me what your stupid starting date for your asinine ‘Century War’ refers to?!?”

“It doesn’t matter!” he shouted back. “I just made up that date to make fun of the arbitrariness of Simmons picking RFK’s assassination as the starting date of a paranoid future 'Long War with Islam'! As if Sirhan Sirhan was anything more than a drooling wacko, much less some nefarious agent of an imaginary global Islamic conspiracy! Now here’s some more words from the future: Abraxas. Metronome. Philadelphia. Grand Junction, Colorado. Colostomy bag. Pencil.”

“Stop,” I said. “Just stop.”

“Heast Castle,” persisted the Time Traveler. “Grauman’s Chinese. Bob’s Donuts. El Farolito Tacqueria. The Biggest Ball of Twine in the World. The Calcutta Sewers …”

“Shut the fuck up!” I shouted, reverting to italics. “I’m high as a kite and this is turning into a fucking evil bad trip!”

“Fine, fine,” said the Time Traveler, his torn voice almost a whisper now. “Let’s skip to the three words. They’re the most important and scary words … EVAR.”

“Yeah, let’s fucking do that,” I said, in tears.

“Okay, so I’m your grandson and here’s three words …”

“What, ‘I’m your grandson’?”

“No, those weren’t the three words,” said the Time Traveler, who seemed to suddenly be shrinking. “Here they are …”

“Uh, ‘here they are’?”

“Goddam you, listen!”

“Goddam you …”

“For fuck’s sake …”

“Scary to the FCC, maybe, but I don’t see how ‘fuck’ is all that horrifying, as peppered as it’s been throughout this little essay …”

“Gahhh, shut up!” he screamed, holding his tiny hands over his cute little ears, which were growing smaller, along with the rest of him, by the second. “You! You don’t listen and you’re stupid! I’ve crawled out of thousands of asses and cocks, and I’ve told thousands of people the three words! But you are too idiotic to just wait for me to say them. You alone! You’re the first … the first … who’s … the first …”

“Who’s on first?” I offered. But the little Time Traveler had already disappeared.

Zen of Wingnuttia: Do Not Know Thyself

2006-04-10T06:11:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the funniest line from Pamela EVAR comes in her discussion of plans to nuke Iraq:

But peel away the partisan prattle and there is encouraging Intel in there.
One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites. One target is Iran’s main centrifuge plant, at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. Natanz, which is no longer under I.A.E.A. safeguards, reportedly has underground floor space to hold fifty thousand centrifuges, and laboratories and workspaces buried approximately seventy-five feet beneath the surface.

If true, I, for one, think this it overdue. No, I am not a warmonger but I am not a denier either. I love my life and recognize when it is being threatened.

With pacifists like Pamela, who needs warmongers?

Nukes? Nukes!?!?! NUKES???!!?!?!?!?!?#$KLU*

2006-04-08T23:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't calmed down much after reading the Hersch article in the New Yorker mentioned below. It's tough to rein in the emotions to even write about it. The idea that ... well, let's start from the beginning:

- The Bush administration and its Amen Corner (see how this sort of shit turns your phrasing into the kind favored by Justin Raimondo?) has been sounding the drumbeat for war with Iran for the past year.

- Reasonable people have assumed the sabre-rattling was more bark than bite, a bluff of sorts to both disuade Iran from its nuclear ambitions and to convince it to tone down its efforts to meddle in the Iraq political situation ... all part of putting a bit of rhetorical weaponry on the table to gain concessions in the inevitable diplomatic solution.

- Reasonable poeple ought to recall that the Bushies don't do diplomatic solutions. At least not since the downed spy plane in China - not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, not with Venezuela, not with Cuba, not with Sudan, not between the Israelis and Palestinians, not with France and Germany, not with North Korea ... the list is long indeed.

- This means we need to take seriously the ramping up of war with Iran that Hersch reports.

- A war, in which, apparently NUCLEAR STRIKES are contemplated.

Okay, so that's that. The question becomes, what the fuck?!? Are they out of their fucking heads? Well, of course, we know that they are. So those questions are rhetorical. But these ones are not:

What would be the result, after the mass deaths, of the U.S. launching an unprovoked nuclear strike on Iran? What do you all out there in ParrotLine fandom (and an elite crew you are!) think it would be? What would the world look like a year after such an attack?

My own opinion is that the global fallout (pun slightly intended) after such a scenario would dwarf the Iraq War, by many orders of magnitude.

While we're waiting ...

2006-04-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

... for the requisite calm to comment on Sy Hersh's column, here's a tasty little tidbit from the Corner's Warren Bell:

ANOTHER REASON TO WATCH THE MASTERS [Warren Bell]

Or any pro golf for that matter: PGA Tour players are overwhelmingly conservative. From a 'Sports Illustrated' interview with lead CBS Masters commentator, Jim Nantz:

SI: An SI poll found that almost 90 percent of Tour players said invading Iraq was a good idea, and zero had seen Brokeback Mountain. Is there something beyond socioeconomics going on?
Something about golf that suits a conservative temperament?

JN: I don't think golf gives you a political bent.

SI: Is it about control? Focus? Discipline?

JN: Golf is an individual sport. You have to be disciplined. Not that I'm saying liberals are undisciplined. I'll give you my political leanings when I run for office in a couple of years. But do I substitute the word discipline for conservative? Maybe. Guys in golf aren't hanging out in bars
late at night, by and large, or trying to find the great nightclub at this week's Tour stop. If you do, you won't succeed. So it's a regimented group. You need discipline to get to the Tour in the first place. You need discipline to hit balls, totrain. Nobody's going to cover for you out there - it's just you.

Or maybe, just maybe, golfers tend to be conservatives because they're almost all rich white guys who spend all their time at country clubs playing golf with other rich white guys.

Saturday song blogging

2006-04-08T05:37:00.000-07:00

I can't decide if I want this:

Or this:

It might be time to take the plunge and order both.

The Laurie Berkner Band's new release, "We Are the Laurie Berkner Band" is also shooting up the charts, driven by the smash singles "We Are the Dinosaurs" and "Pig on Her Head". Exploring themes of identity - are they the Laurie Berkner Band or are they dinosaurs? - this hard-rocking power trio will have you tapping your toes, reflecting upon the elusiveness of self-knowledge and learning how to fingerpaint all at the same time.

It's root, root, root for the * team

2006-04-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

Clear skies after weeks of rain, and I'm off to the Giants' home opener. It doesn't get any better than this. Go Jints. Looking forward to Noah Lowery's 2006 debut, looking forward to Ray-Ray, Omar, Randy, Moises ... and yes, BONDS!!!1!!!one! knocking and picking balls all over the yard. So take that, PP and RETARDO.

I'll leave you all with a question:

When is a walk better than a single?

Nail soup for the soul

2006-04-05T16:23:00.000-07:00

A labor market sudden fable

One day, as Farmer Hanson was in his study dodging taxes and brushing up on his William Tecumseh Sherman analogies, he heard a knock at the front door. Quickly zipping up his fly, he opened the door to find an earnest-looking, if somewhat disheveled young white man on the porch.

“Mister, I was a-wondering if you had any work on your farm,” began the young man.

But Farmer Hanson already had several illegal immigrants on the (undocumented) payroll, so he said, “Afraid not,” and began to shut the door.

“Mister, just a second. Give me a chance to show you that having a permanent labor force of documented U.S. citizens is going to be better for you in the long run.”

Farmer Hanson suspected the young man might be from the government, there to harass him about his illegals, so he led the fellow into the kitchen.

“You can show me whatever you like, but you’ll never show me that Americans are willing to do the kind of dirty, thankless work them Mexicans do every day on my farm,” he mumbled. “We run a tight ship here, young feller, and you may not like to hear it, but I just can’t afford to pay any American workers the wages they’re used to getting, and still turn a profit.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, mister …”

“Hanson. It’s Farmer Hanson.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Farmer Hanson. It’s a myth that Americans ain’t willing to do the work illegal immigrants do. A big ol’ cotton-pickin’ myth.”

“Well, speaking of pickin’ cotton, are you saying you’re ready to get down on your knees in the hot sun and pick my cotton? For a couple bucks an hour, under the table, no fancy overtime regulations or safety guidelines or none of them socialist amenities?”

“That’s what I’m saying, Farmer Hanson. I’m saying that if you put me to work, you’re going to find that not only are American citizens willing to do the work you hire illegals to do, but that when you have a fully legal American labor force … you ain’t never gonna want nothing else!”

“Well, okay, son, you got me interested,” said Farmer Hanson, who still sounded pretty skeptical. “Be here at 5am tomorrow morning in your work clothes. I’ll supply the cotton bag. If you’re so much as a minute late, that’ll be too bad for you, ’cause I got plenty of illegals lined up who want the day’s work.”

The next day, to Farmer Hanson’s surprise, the young man showed up at 5am on the dot. He went out in the fields and did his work without complaint. When dusk fell, he’d filled his bag with as much cotton as Farmer Hanson’s best illegal pickers had stuffed in their own bags.

Farmer Hanson brought the young man back into the kitchen after handing him his paltry day’s wages, which the farmer was stunned to see the lad didn’t seem upset about.

“Boy, you really threw me for a loop out there today,” said Farmer Hanson. “I guess it’s true that Americans are willing to do the work we been giving to illegals all these years!”

“You can say that again, Farmer Hanson,” said the young man. “Like I said, when you got yourself a fully documented American labor force, you ain’t gonna want nothing else!”

“I think you just might be right about that,” said Farmer Hanson. “I’m a-gonna put out the word in town that this farm is only hiring documented workers from now on!”

“About that, Farmer Hanson,” said the young man. “See, there’s one thing that goes especially well with an American labor force. It’s just a little thing, but you’ll see that it can make all the difference.”

“And what’s that?” asked Farmer Hanson, impressed with the young man’s obvious knowledge about such things.

“It’s called a ‘minimum wage’, see,” said the young man. “It sort of gives the labor force a real nice flavor, makes it happier and makes it want to work harder.”

“Well …” began Farmer Hanson. “I guess I can see how that could be the case. Sure … sure, let’s set it up.”

The young man slapped his forehead. “I’m a blame fool! I almost forgot that if you’re gonna put in a minimum wage, you’re gonna want to add in some health benefits … to add some tang to your labor force. I mean, you can get by with just the minimum wage, but boy, if you’ve got some health benefits in there, you’re really gonna have something nice!”

Farmer Hanson nodded and thought a moment. “Well, let’s see here … yep, I bet we can russle up some health benefits, I s’pose. Wouldn’t want to leave anything out, I reckon …”

“Sure don’t, Farmer Hanson,” said the young man. “Say, that reminds me, a minimum wage is sure tasty, and health benefits pack a spicy punch … but if you really want an American labor force done the right way, you oughter toss in some of them nice, fat stock options and one of them 401(k) plans, all plucked and dressed and ready to melt on your tongue.”

Farmer Hanson frowned and looked at his feet. “Well, I’m not so sure …”

“Farmer Hanson,” said the young man. “Listen here. You look like a feller who don’t do things in half-measures. You look like a feller who wants things done quality and done right. Am I off base here?”

“No … no, you sure ain’t,” said Farmer Hanson.

“Good, that’s what I thought,” said the young man. “So looky here. If you’re going to cook up a documented American labor force, there just ain’t no sense in skimping on this ingredient or leaving out that ingredient … why you’d wind up with one of them funny-tasting labor forces that falls apart after a few weeks, like they make over there in Chiner or Taipan or somewheres! You don’t want a Chinerese labor force, now do you?”

“Why, I sure don’t!” bellowed Farmer Hanson. “My granddaddy fought the Chinerese in WWII and I’ll be damned if I let them tell me how to stew up an American labor force! You go ahead and tell me what to put in this labor force we’re making, and I’ll do it, by Gum!”

“Well, alright, that’s the spirit,” said the young man. “Now we got the wages and the benefits and the pension plan, but we’re only halfway to the kind of labor force a body’d be in pure heaven to have a peck at. So let’s see … oh, sure! Now you could serve an American labor force in some hot, dusty old fields … but if you want it done classy, you’re gonna serve it in some nice, clean cubicles. Maybe in a pre-fab office building, with air-conditioning and a breakroom and plenty of Internet connections for everybody, and a local area network … well, that’s one thing, but if you have that, you’re gonna need a tech support crew, and the latest servers and hardware, ’cause you don’t want to skimp on that, now do you? And golly! Who’s going to answer the phones and do the finances and bookkeeping? Why, you’re going to need a secretarial pool, and some accountants … and heck, a legal team wouldn’t hurt … and a sales team, because that’s what’s going to really make that labor force have some kick … and some VPs and company accounts and a few company cars and a human resources manager and a loading dock and some mail clerks and somebody in charge of remembering everybody’s birthday and another somebody in charge of knowing how to fix the printer and a security guard and a parking lot and a cleaning crew that cleans up overnight … now, that reminds me …”

“Reminds you of what?” asked Farmer Hanson, who had been busily writing down all the ingredients.

“It reminds me that it’s going to be tough to find anybody who’s a documented American who would want to be on a cleaning crew at night for the chump change you’re going to pay ’em. And, you know what, there’s another thing … this American labor force is going to want good, cheap clothes to wear … and fresh, affordable vegetables for their salads … and the executives and higher ups are going to want reliable domestic help, gardeners and such, and, you know, day laborers to build the additions to their suburban McMansions and that sort of thing. Hmm.”

“What?” asked Farmer Hanson. “What do we do about that?”

“Well, that’s just it,” said the young man. “It’s the final ingredient, and when you toss it into the stewpot, you’ve got yourself the best damn American labor force you could hope for! What you need is an undocumented, black market worker supply from somewheres that’ll do all them things that your Americans won’t do, and for dirt pay and no questions asked, so’s the Americans get their cheap clothes and cheap food and cheap domestic help and cheap day labor. And they just don’t bother to care that it’s all built on a rickety old ponzi scheme of an economy that both exploits and demonizes those on the lowest rung of the ladder … and denies that cheap, undocumented labor is what makes everybody else’s lifestyles possible … with the added benefit that you can always trot out the xenophobic line when you need to win an election or three for your Republican pals … and anyway, trying to keep labor from moving to fill demand holes would be like trying to legislate against gravity … and all this goes on forever and ever and ever until the whole thing falls apart for our grandchildren, or if they're lucky, their grandchildren to have to deal with!”

And with that, Farmer Hanson and the young man drew contentedly upon their fine Cuban cigars, brushed the crumbs of caviar from their silk dinner jackets and raised their champagne flutes to defeating anti-American traitors everywhere.

The slime queen strikes

2006-04-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

When Debbie Schlussel isn’t sucking dicks to get ahead, she putters away at her other little earner – being mind-bendingly evil. Her latest series of attacks on recently released kidnap victim Jill Carroll are over-the-top unhinged, even by the lofty standards of the wingnutosphere. Even Misha’s appalled by Debbiekins, which is like cancer being shocked by what diabetes has been up to.

Of course, Misha and Debbie have a history, which has been reported here previously.

Long story short: Carroll, a Christian Science Monitor journalist, was released last Thursday by her kidnappers into the custody of the Iraqi Islamic Party at its Baghdad offices. She had been held hostage for over three months. During her abduction on Jan. 7, her Iraqi interpreter, Allan Enwiyah, was killed. While still in the custody of the Iraqi Islamic Party last Thursday, Carroll “was briefly interviewed by Baghdad TV. She said she was treated well by her captors, and they never threatened her. She also said she did not know why she was kidnapped,” according to the Christian Science Monitor (scroll down).

That, if you recall, is when the flung shit hit the fan.

Wingnuts, displaying their usual empathy and restraint, raced to their keyboards to condemn Carroll’s apostasy, as is well documented by Digby here and updated here.

Oddly enough, Schlussel herself didn’t attack Carroll for the Baghdad TV interview, as she goes to great pains to make clear these days. Bully for her. Her cohorts on the right who slammed Carroll unmercifully after her release were exposed as the cowardly, victim-blaming cobagz that they are when Carroll explained in a statement through CSM Saturday that:

I also gave a TV interview to the Iraqi Islamic Party shortly after my release. The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word. At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn't threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times.

And that was that. The QuickDraw MacFlys of the right were forced to grudgingly recant their earlier smears. Or at least, that should have been that.

Nobody counted on Schlussel’s ability to defy common sense and careen merrily along on a storyline of her own demented devising.

As I mentioned, Schlussel didn’t pile on Carroll after the Baghdad TV interview. That’s technically true, and Debs is quick to cry foul when anybody assumes she did. But Schlussel isn’t entirely innocent. On Friday, she did post this note written by Carroll to Iraqi Islamic Party head Tariq al-Hashmi:

Schlussel attempts some mouthbreathing analysis of that note:

Is Jill Carroll endorsing the Iraqi Islamic Party? Sure looks like it (see below). So nice that she likes them more than her loyal translator, who was murdered by her "kind and generous" kidnappers. Not exactly an impartial journalist thing to do, even writing the letter on Iraqi Islamic Party stationery. Oprah gushing is probably up next for her, complete with America-bashing.

Aside from the disgusting tone towards a woman who had just suffered through an experience Schlussel clearly lacks the basic humanity to comprehend, note Debs’ bizarre contention (in bold) that the Iraqi Islamic Party kidnapped Carroll.

In other words, Schlussel did pile on Carroll before all the facts were in, just a bit more obliquely than Howie Kurtz, et. al. did.

Finally, after the Carroll-as-traitor speculation had been exposed as totally ass, Schlussel weighs in with an update Sunday to her original post:

****UPDATE, 04/02/06: Jill Carroll's recanting of the video doesn't have a thing to do with anything I've cited (except perhaps the letter above & she did not recant that - a minor point compared to the other evidence), nor does it change facts. See my response to all the blind, deaf, and dumb Jill Carroll worshippers. Facts regarding Jill Carroll's real views are stubborn things.

Note the demand by Schlussel that Carroll “recant” the letter. It becomes a recurring theme in Schlussel’s one-woman, cap-happy jihad against the reporter:

Then, there's Jill Carroll's former employer, the anti-Semitic, anti-American Jordan Times (for whom she CHOSE to work), long ago made the following statement about her (which, to date, she has NEVER contradicted or disavowed):
The kidnappers who abducted her could not have chosen a more wrong target. True, Jill is a US citizen. But she is also more critical of US policies towards the Middle East than many Arabs. . . . Jill has been from day one opposed to the war, to the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
More than just being sympathetic with average Iraqis under war and occupation, Jill is a true believer in Arab causes.
From Arabic food to the Arabic language, Jill has always wanted to know and experience as much as possible about Arab identity, and she is keen on absorbing it, learning, understanding and respecting it.
She doesn't just "like" Arab culture, she loves it. . . . It is simply unconscionable for any Arab to want to harm a person like her.

Okay, let’s summarize:

- Debbie Schlussel wants Jill Carroll’s first order of business after suffering three months in captivity by thugs who murdered her friend and colleague to be “disavowing” every last statement made on her behalf while she was in captivity.*

- As a corollary, Schlussel wants Carroll to immediately distance herself publicly from various groups which sought to secure her release and may have actually helped to do so.

- Schlussel is unable to imagine that Carroll’s colleagues at the Jordan Times might have played up Carroll’s sympathies towards Arabs and Muslims because they thought that might help a friend in terrible straits avoid being murdered. Which, incidentally, is precisely the explanation CSM offered for its own editorial stance during Carroll’s captivity – particularly its attempts to push a photo of Carroll in a headscarf to the forefront of media coverage of the story.

- Finally, Schlussel highlights in bold the statements in the Jordan Times editorial which she clearly finds to be most objectionable and in need of “disavowing” by Carroll. These include: Carroll is critical of U.S. policies towards the Middle East and was opposed to the invasion of Iraq; Carroll believes in “Arab causes” (whatever those are – and note the absence of any mention in the editorial of tactics Carroll may or may not support in pursuit of those causes); Carroll “loves” Arab culture. That’s an incredibly innocuous list of supposedly “anti-American, anti-Israel views” held by Jill Carroll. No mention of her supporting Palestinian suicide bombers or al-Qaeda terrorism or anything of that nature. Just a bunch of views supposedly held by Carroll that happen to also be held by any number of patriotic Americans and even, I daresay, many patriotic Israelis. You get the sense, though, that what Schlussel objects to most might well be the bit about “loving Arab culture.” God forbid. That’s just beyond the pale. By the same token, loving kim chee must make you an apologist for North Korean aggression.

Final thoughts: Debbie Schlussel is shit-flinging, ALL-CAPS FROTHING, looniest loon in the Loonytown loonybin insane.

*As opposed to getting a haircut, which commenters on Schlussel’s site speculate Carroll did after being released, to her eternal shame in their eyes, incredibly.

Maybe he got confused by the British spelling of aluminium aluminum

2006-04-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

Murray Waas hits a touchdown:

"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior government official outside the White House who was personally familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the tubes."

No, you couldn't. Who hasn't been in the know on the Tubes, like at least since 1982?

Unless ...

But no, that couldn't have been it.

Greg Sargent has this to say about the Waas scoop:

... we need to step back and look at his revelation in the context of the ongoing investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame. If you do, you can see that what once were a bunch of disparate subplots - the pre-war duplicity, the 2004 election, the Libby indictment, the continuing investigation into Karl Rove - suddenly can be woven together into one grand narrative that makes coherent sense in a way that much of this story didn’t before. ...

You mean the grand narrative of a cabal of scumbags lying the fuck out of every last shred of shaky evidence to scare the nation into a stupidly planned and unnecessary war?

Yes, I'm afraid that was really difficult to figure out prior to Waas' piece. It all makes sense now!

To be fair to Sargent, this new information is of course important, as was the Downing Street Memo and any of the other big revelations about the leadup to war. Just not as the final piece of a puzzle nobody could make sense of before now.

The Washington Post reported problems with the aluminum tubes story on Sept. 19, 2002. It was buried on page A18 according to that link, but it was in the public record, and I recall a lot of buzz about how fishy it all smelled at the time. That was probably the first real chink in the Bush & Blair team's marketing campaign to go to war. It sure got talked about in the traitorous troop-hating circles I was running with at the time.

So, no, the narrative has been pretty clear since even before the war. All the revelations since have just confirmed what many of us knew from the outset. Still more people figured it all out by at least the first stirrings of Plamegate. Even the Drums and the Friedmans cottoned on more than a year ago ... the former, no doubt boringly; the latter in a blinding flashflood of waking up and touching the coffee.

I'm being a bit unfair again to Sargent, though. What he's saying is that this latest revelation might somehow be the loose thread whose appearance finally inspires the crap media we've been saddled with to get off their vaudeville act-rehearsing asses* and do their fucking jobs to unravel the whole sordid affair:

If that’s how it happened, then it may be only a matter of time before the whole story comes tumbling out. Waas has reported that there’s a piece of paper out there that proves Bush deceived the nation during the run-up to the war. The nation’s premiere investigative reporters, one would think, would very much like to see that piece of paper for themselves. And if there’s one thing recent history tells us, it’s that the small, short-term cover-ups never do succeed in preventing the larger story from coming to light. That larger story is still waiting to be told in all its gristly detail – and, eventually, reporters other than Murray Waas will get around to telling it.

Yeah, well, I'll believe it when I see it. If past performance is any indication, most reporters are probably burning through their rolodexes to find somebody who'll explain how this bombshell is going to be "good for Republicans."

*Sadly, the above link leads to a story in which Helen Thomas features prominently ... she doesn't deserve to be lumped in with her lazy, credulous colleagues, or subjected to my potty mouth insults. So there.

No posting until ...

2006-04-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

I can work out some kinks with my Internet service provider. Can't connect consistently right now. As if you care.

One-hit wonderer

2006-04-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

Snag brings up Katrina and the Waves in comments below. Which inspires a new contest, in two parts:

1. Who/what is the greatest one-hit wonder?

2. Who/what is the most successful one-hit wonder?

The first part is for songs that are actually good, the second part is for songs that might totally suck or not, but which continue to get massive airplay and/or are used to annoy the shit out of you and make you buy nachos at NBA arenas.

This is a stickup fundraiser

2006-04-01T09:30:00.000-08:00

Give me all your money. Put it in a box on your front porch and walk away. My associates will be by to pick it up shortly, so no funny business ... and NO COPS. We're watching you. Hey, jerk, I saw that. Don't try to hide your VISA card. That goes in the box, too.

You better give to Clif, too. If you know what's good for you. Oh, and don't forget about John.

Also, get cracking on my wish list, cobagz:

- Six geese a-laying
- World peace
- A Chevy Tahoe (fully loaded, forest green)
- A Nexis-Lexus account
- The Apprentice, Season 2 DVD set w/extended boardroom footage
- $1 million in small bills
- Vancouver Island
- A timeshare on Mars
- The original folio of Twelfth Night
- Two aspirin
- The left index finger of a wealthy Spaniard
- Your daughter

The Left's Fear of Giving Me Money, Part MMCMLVQXXIVZPPII

2006-03-31T08:58:00.000-08:00

by AssParrot in Shangri La - 3/31/2006 08:58:00 AM

Megadittoes to John Aravosis for his post on AMERICAblog yesterday taking the hatas to task for their jealous green-eyed envy of the successful set. I too have written frequently about the fear of giving me money that some people have on the left. I think it's time for the next installment.

Last night I attended a bird’s nest soup tasting soiree in Brunei Darussalam. I got invited by an oil-industry friend who had bought a few favors from the Sultan. It's a biggest-of-the-year kind of gala which anyone who's anyone in jet-setting cobaggery attends, from Sheiks to would be court dandies. Sally Field is usually the invited guest, but ever since the “Not Without My Daughter” incident, not so much, so Christiane Amanpour attended.

I knew, because of past experience with some reading this blog, that when I got back home and posted my Annie Lieobowitz originals of the event that I’ve had rendered in narwhale scrimshaw, a minority of my readers, but a very vocal minority, would be upset. Why? Because I'd be wearing a tuxedo made of gold flake and transshipped GMO silk at a party with famous people.

Da-da-da-dum.

The reaction was quick and furious, and rather vicious. Some examples:

1. One gentleman wrote in to complain that with three children to support, rent to pay, rising healthcare costs, blah blah blah, he’d only be able to send me $20 this month. Astounding. Folks, if you can’t recognize the priority of sending me more than a piddling two sawbucks, then I’m afraid you don’t really want your country back. Another woman had the audacity to attach a note to her check for $200 that read, “For Assparrot to upgrade his blog at his discretion.” Look, it’s not your job to tell me how to spend your money. It’s my job to tell you how to do it. If you want me to continue to fight the good fight for accountability and transparency in our government, you’ll just have to trust me on this. Also, you’re just jealous.

2. People have complained about my fabulous lifestyle. It’s gotten to the point where I no longer can call it a fringe phenomenon. Too many of you are doing it for these baseless, jealous, envious, scurrilous, hateful, jealous attacks to be anything but the core agenda of the American left. The other day I whipped up a small pledge drive to enable me to charter a jet to attend a splendid gala at the Parthenon in Athens thrown by a dear old friend to celebrate the unbirthday of her beloved Grammatophyllum multiflorum. I was criticized mercilessly for it. Never mind the camp value of refereeing a kamikazi shot-drinking contest between Tara Reid and Princess Alexandra of Luxembourg. If the plebes can’t comprehend the incredible value of such galavantery to the progressive cause, then I must assume they want Hitler to rule them.

3. I maintain summer homes for all 12 of my cats in Riyadh, Jakarta, St. Tropez, Nantucket, Tiburon, Buenos Aires, a private island in the Sulu Archipelago, etc. etc. My neckties are air-freighted from Saville Row on the Concorde then put in cold storage by my manservant. I have never eaten a salad that cost less than $125. Apparently this means I’m living high on the hog. That I’m “rich” or something. As if the fact that I have wealthy friends who pay my way in the world is somehow “lucrative” for me. Also, last week I got a mild case of the sniffles as a result of my tireless efforts to wrest power and prestige from the Republicans. Everybody hates me because I’m beautiful and marvelous and can speak 18 languages at a time through my mastery of the Tibetan glottal technique. I have been to the Moon six times to better my understanding of Bill O’Reilly.

4. Go read Hannah Arendt before you talk to me. You are stupid and ugly and I hate you. Better yet, don’t talk to me even after you read Hannah Arendt. Because I said it first and you are copying me. Just give me your money and go away.

5. Nobody complained when I was the self-proclaimed Emperor of Prussia. Next time I won’t bother to tell you that just last week I was in your living room rearranging your furniture to my tastes and presetting your TIVO to record my CNN appearances. You can thank me when you grow up or die or both.

Clearly, many of you have no idea about the sort of you-giving-me-all-your-money that it takes to win in politics. You’d rather make my life miserable with your jealous criticisms. Marla Ruzicka had it easy, in my book. If anybody deserves a Caribbean cruise to unwind after all this hatred, it’s me.

Like a Cock

2006-03-29T18:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks, PP. Nice one. Here's ours.

UPDATE: Another one. And check out robola's ...

NOW WITH MORE UPDATE: This funny one by Fact-esque reminds me of an old BP PowerPoint parody by Billy Connelly. Norbizness is also doing them, and they're going fast so be quick about teh clickity.

UPDATE VU: Last of the red-hot Chevy ads.

Note to self: You are a shockingly relentless pursuer of amazingly important blog issues

2006-03-29T16:38:00.000-08:00

First things first: "Booty butt." One of the many words my children have brought home from school; one of the few which I fondly recall from my own distant youth on the mean playgrounds of the San Francisco Unified School District. "Tight," "magney," "cold" and the once-ubiquitous "psyche" have sadly gone the way of the dinosaurs, as, I fear, have "gank" and even "dank" ... but I'll probably have to wait for the lads to reach petty crime and drug experimentation age to find out if I'm right about the extinction of the latter two.

Now then.

Glenn Greenwald makes me swoon. Jane Hamsher is firedogcracker hot. John Cole is a limp and slimy three-day old egg salad sandwich.

And yet ...

Did we really need to see the mash note from Glenn congratulating Jane on her recent victory over John? Did anyone else feel slightly embarrassed for GG & JH upon reading it? Am I auditioning for Wonkette? Can we start calling them "Glennisher"? Or is "Glane" better?

I mean, all props to Vladi G on leading the comment rebellion against Cole. But Jane posting that email has nearly ruined it. The ugly:

"I do think that what he did illustrates an extremely important problem that you - given your past history leading the whole Jim Brady/Debbie war - are in the best position to comment on."

???

"You basically did to John Cole what you did to Jim Brady - pursued with a shocking, relentless (and appropriate) tenacity their inaccurate comments to the point where - because they couldn’t admit error - they decided to resent and hate you instead and, by extension, the whole "Left blogosphere."

?????????

"I wrote about that once a while ago here - when attacking the disgustingly snotty anti-blog mentality at The New Republic, but it’s an amazingly important issue to protect the value of the blogosphere and you argue that as well as anyone."

????????????????????????????infinity

Okay, Glenn. Dude. You and Jane are awesome. You're both important, influential figures in the blogosphere, which is totally valuable and not at all a self-obsessed wanktorium. I'm a total nothing schmuck. But please do try to keep it in your pants about Jane's "shocking, relentless (and appropriate) tenacity" and the "amazingly important issue" of catching a dumbass like Cole saying something stupid.

And Jane, next time ... just savor the victory. It's more becoming of someone who is so vitally shockingly excessively adverbially in a position to do so.

Moving on ...

2006-03-27T09:19:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure much more can be milked from Ben Domenech (as naughtily horrific as that phrasing may be). It was a fun run, the hilarious culmination of which may well be this from Sadly, No! In the end, we all became borderline plagiarismaholics, trembling greedily at the thought of another tumblerful of 24-year-old single malt Loch Domenech ... so smokily inviting through the prism of crystal-clear snark, full-bodied yet surprising us frequently with odd, counter-intuitive riffs on the nature of truth, a potent potable that truly scaled the heights of pure, reckless sophistry.

Fortunately, before someone had to invent a 12-step program to wean us of our addiction to the demon Red Benny, he himself cut-and-~~pasted~~ ran*, leaving only those die-hard, last-to-leave-the-party hedonists amongst us to lick the damaged furniture of our trivernal saturnalia of Ben for whatever spillage might have gone undrunk, before facing up to the brutal reality of a splitting hangover, the prospect of a round of physically crippling withdrawals, and, finally, if we are disciplined enough to stay on the wagon, sweet, full recovery.

So now we move on. To bigger, more important issues, the first of which, for me at least, will be Iraq. Or, as I have come to call it, the most fucked-to-hell place going.

Now some may say that this is a defeatist, pessimistic outlook. And the truth is, I don't really like to comment on Iraq because I'm not there to see the Potemkin brigades first-hand or to walk the heavily-policed streets of the Green Zone in person. For all I know, Iraq really is one giant grammar-school-and-hospital barnraising party, as some would have it.

And yes, I'm being shockingly tongue-in-cheek here, but the truth is, I lived in Thailand for eight years, and I have myself experienced the delusions outsiders often have about a country they have never been to, or perhaps once visited for a few weeks. So really, I am very sympathetic to the idea that most of us Americans have not the first fucking clue about what life in Iraq is really like.

That said, the number "30" and variations thereof keeps popping up re: Iraq, wherever I chance to look. As in, "30 Killed in Iraq Bombing" ... which is apparently a headline macro over at the Associated Press offices, given the frequency it turns up on my newsfeeds.

You see, much as I believe in going somewhere to find out what it's really like, I can't help but think these sort of numbers in and of themselves tell a pretty goddam powerful story. Countries that are decent places to hang out simply don't have dozens of people having their bodies ripped apart, separated from their heads, or otherwise experiencing less-than-optimal structural integrity on a near-daily basis. You know ... they just don't.

Yes, I opposed this war from the outset, as probably 99 percent of my regular readers** did as well. So none of the above is really going to be very enlightening in a Digbyesque way to all of you who predicted this sort of mess was likely to happen, and who argued, marched or even just silently stewed against the invasion of Iraq back in 2002-03.

Still, I think it's important to show why, despite so many Bush apologists' claims, the general dissatisfaction with the Iraq War in the U.S. is not some media creation. When Americans regularly open their newspapers to discover such headlines as "Iraq Police Find 30 Bodies, Most Beheaded" or click over to Yahoo to see that "Shiites Assail U.S. Raid; Bombing Kills 40" or check in with a favorite blog for "More Good News" ... well, it doesn't really matter how many orphanage-painting and heroic-Iraqi-voter stories the media also reports. People are going to figure out something's rotten in Legoland.

We're not complete idiots, you know. We may not be in Iraq to see things first-hand ... but when a country is as demonstrably fucked-up as this one is, you don't need to be Lawrence of Arabia to figure it out.

*Sorry. Last Ben joke evar, promise.

**This may be shocking news to Pinko Punko, snag and my mom, who were probably unaware that they were each 0.33 percent in favor of the Iraq War three years ago.

The gauntlet has been thrown down!

2006-03-26T06:09:00.000-08:00

Bas-O-Matic challenges us in comments:

"Pinko Punko is an obvious commie punk. You fucking libs want us to lose so bad your teeth throb. How does it feel to hate Americans so much?"

In addition to displaying his staggering genius at both etymology and orthodontics, Bass-O-Matic makes a really good point. How does it feel?

I personally think it's like having a warehouse full of bubble wrap to pop. What do you think?

This is getting surreal ...

2006-03-25T16:38:00.000-08:00

So Benny-boy has apologized, kinda sorta, after first blaming the liberals and P.J. O'Rourke for his plagiarism. Then Red State had to issue a weird half-admission of Ben's guilt because, you know, even movementarians have a vague understanding that the gig's up when you get caught in the middle of the town square ~~pissing on the shrubbery~~ ... ~~watering the flowers~~ there's video? and my dick's still hanging out? ... uh, pissing on the shrubbery. (Now here's the part where you all say how honorable and manly I am for admitting to my youthful urinary indiscretions.)

But of course it doesn't end here. Check out the comment thread on the above Red State post. There you'll find one Thomas and one streiff, apparently Red State administrators of some sort, wielding their mighty commenter banning hammers with beserker* fury at the slightest hint of any visitor actually wanting to hold Ben accountable for his serial scumbaggery.

Seriously, read this shit if you can stand the horror of finding yourself in sympathy with Michelle Malkin (!) ... who had the temerity to tell the little shit he should resign when the evidence of his plagiarism was a mere avalanche 24 hours ago, rather than the extinction-level debris field it is today. For this, the dynamic duo of streiff and Thomas are drumming a bad cop-psychopathic cop beat on the heads of anyone on the thread who dares to quietly suggest that Malkin may have been offering decent advice. Because, you see, Ben may have done wrong, but wronger still is saying he done wrong.

Anyway, at the exponential rate these new Torquemadas are banning commenters for the slightest hint of apostasy, I predict that at precisely 2:23am GMT, March 27, 2006, Red State will collapse in on itself and disappear with a quiet *poof*.

Oh, God, if only.

UPDATE: Another rich vein of insanity to tap, in which we learn that a loyalty oath to Ben Domenech is required for entry into the wingnutosphere.

UPDATE II: Thomas above is this Thomas. (Credit to 3B!) Also, dig how this guy has a tag-quotation on his comments that originates from another Red Stater. Isn't that just the height of wankery?

*Or more spellingly, berserker. Happy, PP?

Ben Domenech, the early years

2006-03-24T19:43:00.000-08:00

1982: Ben Domenech is born in Jackson, Mississippi. Before the doctor can do it, a rampaging gang of leftists rushes into the delivery room and spanks him on the rear end. Ben defeats them by inventing, transcribing and then reading them the Riot Act on the spot. He will not speak again for two years.

1984: Little Ben utters his first words since the delivery room incident: "Mother: You filled my days with rainbow lights/fairytales and sweet dream nights/A kiss to wipe away my tears/Gingerbread to ease my fears/You gave the gift of life to me/And then in love, you set me free/I thank you for your tender care/for deep warm hugs and being there/I hope that when you think of me/A part of you, you'll always see. By Ben Domenech, Copyright and all rights herein are maintained by the author."

1987: Ben enters kindergarten at a local grammar school. In his first week, liberal saboteurs from the fourth grade insert Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" in its entirety into Ben's interpretive fingerpainting of "Thomas the Tank Engine." Ben is falsely accused of plagiarism. His parents decide to homeschool him.

1989: Young Ben and his family move to Charlston, South Carolina, where his homeschooling proceeds apace. A sudden wave of chopped down cherry trees baffles local authorities. Ben, discovered in a cherry orchard one day with an axe, clears up the mystery when he reports seeing a band of liberal vandals running off over thataway. Unfortunately, they are never caught and still remain at large, possibly in the comments section at Atrios.

1991: Succeeding where generations of physicists failed, Ben produces a watertight Grand Unified Theory. He buries it in a time capsule, the location of which he only knows, to be opened at a time when humanity has purged itself of liberalism and is thus ready for the marvels contained within. Also in the time capsule are Ben's collection of the Charlotte Hornets' Larry Johnson rookie cards, which will totally be worth billions in 20 years ... interested investors can contact Ben about purchasing a stake in their future value.

1992: Ben, displaying still more Mensa-level talents, can recite any verse of the Bible on command, a feat he demonstrates on a local public access television show in Charlston. In an unrelated incident, liberal thieves break into a nearby teleprompter warehouse and make off with several crates full of equipment two nights before Ben's TV appearance.

1993: The wandering Domenech clan moves to Virginia. Ben adds to his growing list of accomplishments when he breaks the course record at the local muni golf course with an amazing round of 57. Even more incredibly, he does it at night and alone, with no technical advice from a caddy or playing partner . . . and with a gang of leftist muggers stalking him the entire time. Also that year, Ben coins the phrase, "To coin a phrase ..."

1994: Ben publishes his first essay, in Our Planet, a book about environmental issues. Three short years later, he begins writing for Human Events. And the rest, as Ben was the first to ever say, is history.

UPDATE: This just in!

2032: Ben's future self invents time travel, and journeys back to the early 21st century. Over a course of several visits to our time, future-Ben deposits many original essays and movie reviews in the computers of present day journalists. This is done to enable present-day-Ben to access his own future insights on politics and film easily - by simply copying them as they appear in various published venues - all without risking a rift in the space-time continuum that could result if future-Ben encountered present-Ben in person.

Fucking plagiarists!

2006-03-23T22:54:00.000-08:00

A Parrotline exclusive:

2006's Own Jeff Gannon
We're gonna miss you, Ben. Your time with the Washington Post will be even shorter than Jeff Gannon's stint as a White House correspondent. And let's face it: That's really sad.

I’m b-a-a-a-a-a-ck!

2006-03-21T21:51:00.000-08:00

Jeez, a feller takes a week off to self-administer a few high colonics for charity, and all hell breaks loose. Snag’s eulogizing me with Simon & Garfunkel, Pinko Punko’s all, “Check the hospitals … and don’t forget the morgue!” Sadly, No! gets down with some sympathy linkage for the dead guy, Adorable Girlfriend wanders by to call me an “ass” in comments (richly deserved, and also happens to be my name).

As PP points out, I got more traffic by not posting, so whaddyagunnado? Like, the Editors go missing for two weeks, then pop in to say, “I’m cool” … and they get 50 comments. Atrios is like, “Talk amongst yourselves, dumbasses” … and he gets 400 comments. Next time, I’ll just bust out with “Fuck you, cretins” … and I’ll straight up break the cybernets.

Anyhoo … here’s some catching up:

AEI lady on C-SPAN … big-time tosspot. But first, check out Dave Neiwert’s nice dressing down of Tucker Carlson for sulking about Arianna Huffington calling his petulant ass out for not disclosing Daddy Carlson’s ties to the Scooter Libby legal defense fund. Transparency, it’s mmm-mmm good.

(As an aside – and expect a whole lot more of these … I been gone a long time, muthafuckas – is Tucker Carlson not the most venal little piece of shit going? It’s not really what he says or does, though. Any number of primetime jackasses are more despicable than Tucker, at least theoretically. You know, your O’Reillys, your Hannitys, your Rush Limbaughs. But there’s just something about Tucker that makes you want to strangle the twerp more than you would want to strangle those guys. The very atoms that have conspired across space and time to form the pusillanimous flesh-sack known to us as Tucker Carlson scream out to be pummeled with the most fearsome accelerated particles we could possibly fling at them for all eternity. Whatever energy drives his sorry ass to walk and talk and speak ought to be inspiration enough to modern science to devise a means of flouting the First Law of Thermodynamics just to banish it from existence forever. It’s like Tucker’s a living, breathing trigger for Tourette’s Syndrome in all who ever have the misfortune of seeing him on television, a man who would drive Gandhi to violence, Shane McGowan to sobriety, Dick Cheney to unicorns and rainbows. If I had to choose between having one Tucker Carlson on the planet or 6.5 billion Tom Arnold clones, it’d be a tougher decision than you might think. Aside from all that, I’ve got kind of a soft spot for the little bow-tied prick. Okay, back to your irregularly scheduled programming.)

Now, pull up a chair and listen to my tangentially related story. It involves me watching C-SPAN’s Washington Journal at roughly 5am PST on Monday … and I tell ya, it’s a corker of a tale. Well, not really, but anyway, there’s this foreign policy expert woman on from the American Enterprise Institute who talks like I imagine this person does, which is to say, like a female Thurston Howell III, only with more command of the lower register.

So Luvvie is up there fielding questions about the Iraq War, defending all the “progress” being made over there and complaining that the media aren’t gooing and gawing every time an Iraqi wipes his ass without needing the fucking 3rd Infantry Division to stand guard over the hole in the ground.

You know - the usual wingnut complaints. Plus a few extra-credit swipes at Jack Murtha for having the audacity on Meet the Press the other day to compare the Iraq War to, you know, other historical conflicts that might, I don’t know, teach us something about the current one.

Anyway, this didn’t really concern me. We’re all used to this kind of high-ass talk from rightwing think tank 'bots by now. But then the doctor lady who looks like Jane Curtin that runs the Monday Washington Journals busted out the C-SPAN digital FX where they go super close-up on some highlighted newspaper article. The gist of which was that Gen. Whatisname, former supreme commander of Centcomdef-9 TacFrag or whatever, was retiring from the military and entering the private sector as a consultant for some “civilian” firm that happens to be up to its ass in military hardware at any given time. And apparently, the general has to wait two years before he can start using his Pentagon juice to get the latest top-secret nano-laser specs over to his new company.

Or something. Of course it was a lot more technical than that, and had to do with reasonable restrictions on former brass from immediately padding their new companies’ stockpiles and their own bank accounts with gelt procured thanks to unfair advantages, and shall we say, ethical conflicts of interest (you knew we’d get back to the Neiwert-Tucker connection, didn’t you?)

So AEI’s 2007 Kentucky Derby entry acts all horrified that anybody would evar suspect a fine, upstanding public servant – nay, American hero – like Gen. Major of doing something naughty with his pull at the Pentagon … and it’s a terrible, terrible way of honoring our five-stars by making them follow petty little legal technicalities like the one in question, and my! How horribly cynical we’ve all become to not trust even general staff officers.

Which, really, really pisses me off. I mean, her attitude. More than her nonsense about progress in Iraq … so maybe my priorities are screwed, but bear with me.

See, this country was founded on cynicism, the practical application of which is called checks-and-balances, separation of powers and all that jazz. The Founders weren’t noble men … they were scumbags. But their genius, as evidenced by the Constitution, was that they knew they were scumbags. After all, they did business with each other - including fucking slavery, no less. They probably spent a fair amount of time trying to fuck each other’s wives behind each other’s backs. Franklin alone likely deserved an entire Article detailing how to separate his little executive branch from any number of deliberative bodies.

So they set about to create government by the scumbags, for the scumbags and of the scumbags. The upshot is that what the untrusting old coots came up with was a really good framework for not letting scumbags run amok. Because even scumbags realize that unfettered scumbaggery will eventually bite them on the ass. The best of all possible systems, the Founders recognized, was not one where all public officials were trusted to be inherently noble and pure and moral, but rather one where they couldn’t afford to be otherwise. Now that is some smart fucking government-inventing, and those of us who don’t guzzle crazy-juice at AEI figured out how great it is in high school civics class.

Does it always work? Of course not. Is there a balance that needs to be maintained between individual liberty and what could become overly invasive scrutiny? Sure, but that’s a subject for another thrilling return from a week-long blog holiday.

At any rate, the point is, “trust” has nothing to do with what the good general can or can’t do with his new career in the private sector. The rules governing that - which are built up from the Constitution, which is built up from the brilliant idea that it’s wise not to give public officials the chance to be untrustworthy – aren’t personal. They’re business. Individuals like the AEI hag can trust the general all they want. They can toss bucketfuls of Extra-Strength Trust (Now with Fast-Acting Gullibleach!) at the guy if they want. But the law doesn't trust them as far as it can throw them, which is pretty far, what with the long arm and all.

Me, well, I like the law. I like the Constitution. I like the fundamental principle that says, keeping a hand on your wallet is a good idea, even when it’s just a former Pentagon insider sitting next to you on the bus to lucrative military contracts.

And to those America-haters who don’t … here’s a big, steaming cup of “Go fuck yourself.”

Extra! Extra! Drum Urges Caution!

2006-03-15T22:07:00.000-08:00

Dull, spineless and living in Orange County is no way to go through life, son.

"Everyone wants to know how I feel about Russ Feingold's motion to censure President Bush over the NSA's domestic spying program," writes Kevin Drum.

Amy S. Christ, everybody but us. Or more accurately, we already know how you feel about it, Kevin. You feel damp and mushy about it. You feel soggy and boring about it. You feel fence-straddlingly sodden and droningly pie chartish about it.

Oh, yes you do. Because that's how you feel about any political move that requires as much daring as your granny summons up to go all-in on an extra sheet at Bingo Night.

Anyway, away you go: "I'll give you two and a half answers ..."

Okay, stop. Shut up. We'll take it from here. For fuck's sake, we're talking about censuring a president sitting at 33 percent approval on the Pew survey ... which further tells us that "[t]he single word most frequently associated with George W. Bush today is 'incompetent,' and close behind are two other increasingly mentioned descriptors: 'idiot' and 'liar.' (Hat tip to you, Drum, you oblivious, pants-pissing fuck.)

Look, more people on that survey describe Bush as "Ass" than "President". That tells us something, maybe. Like, maybe, just maybe, censuring Bush - or rather being seen to be attempting to censure Bush, because a Republican-controlled Senate would never in a million hurricane seasons actually allow it to happen - is what a whole hell of a lot of Americans want to happen. Like maybe the majority of them. Even a three-quarter majority of them.

But no. To you it smells risky. Scary stuff. Republicans might spin it so everybody thinks Feingold was really trying to enact National Noam Chomsky Day where everybody would be forced to burn American flags and gay marry or something.

Ooh, strawman (h/t The Ace). Whatever. We don't care about your long-winded, base-covering, cut-and-measured explanation for why you're yet again on the fence about an actual bold move by a Democrat. You know, your latest lame triangulation is such a half-formed shit immobilizing you on the pot, it isn't even funny. We mean, it would be funny except for the fact that you wrote it.

(Goddamn, if that doesn't get him pissed off enough to notice us, we don't know what will.)

Saddest blog in the whole damn town

2006-03-14T18:34:00.000-08:00

The Junkyard Dog is frothing at the mouth over Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, the former mouthpiece for the Taliban, getting a student visa to attend Yale.

If that riles him up, we bet he's going to be snapping mad when he finds out about the Nazis that Harvard lets in.

Let's scan Junkyard Dog's blog for more stuff to ridicule ... oh, we probably won't find anything ... hang on! The very next post! It's a half-ass 'fisking' of every wingnut's favorite whipping boy, the BBC. Ooh, the Beeb wrote a story about Pat Robertson calling protesting Muslims "crazed fanatics, and I want to say it now: I believe it's motivated by demonic power. It is satanic and it's time we recognize what we're dealing with."

Growling that "Beeb Bias Strikes Again," the Dog proceeds to go to bat for a guy who blames riots and terrorism on demonic possession. Way to pick your pals, JD! The devil made me tease you!

A little further down, the Compost Pile Poodle crows mightily about this list of U.S. athletes who donate to political parties. What we learn is that NASCAR drivers make up for all the left turns on the track by contributing almost 100 percent to the Republicans, as do pro golfers and Dallas Cowboy quarterbacks who ought to be thanking Dem-leaning Emmitt Smith daily for their Super Bowl rings. Don King gives to the GOP, victims of Don King give to Democrats. College basketball coaches mostly give to the Dems. In the case of Dean Smith, this saddens the Yapping Lapdog, who calls the former North Carolina coach a "yellow dog Democrat." Which, you know, he might be ... but as far as we can tell, ol' Worst in Show just made that up.

More from the puke green dog Doofocrat: "No-hit legend Nolan Ryan, aka Big Tex: Republican. Democrats just don’t command the mound and punch out men half their age the way Ryan did. They just don’t."

That would be news to Satchel Paige, 1968 Democratic candidate for a Missouri state assembly seat. When Ryan turns 59, we'll just have to see if he too can give up one hit, retire six in a row and get a strikeout in three innings against the Boston Red Sox.

Liberals cross the line

2006-03-14T16:17:00.000-08:00

I'm confused. The President of the United States can yuk it up about Dick Cheney actually shooting a guy in the face with nary a peep from Michelle Malkin ... but if some liberal bloggers joke about the nascent Claude Allen "evil twin" theory?

Well, that's just going too far.

"I don't see why this is funny," Michelle Malkin posts, noting that "the oh-so-compassionate Left is snickering at the possibility that Floyd Allen may have been responsible for the crimes with which Claude Allen has now been charged."

Dammit! What were those bloggers thinking?!? What could possibly be funny about an evil twin? Don't they know that this is what's funny? And this? And this and this and this?

So be warned, you conservatives with evil twins, if you ever find yourself in trouble - "snivelling leftists like conspiracy theorist Josh Marshall will go after your family."

Seriously, though, I think these people's heads are going to explode when they watch Leno tonight, let alone the Daily Show. It's possible old Soupy Sales tapes are too edgy for them.

UPDATE: I am so riding Pinko Punko's coattails on this post that all I can see in front of me is a swirling maelstrom of discarded Take-5 wrappers.

Holy crap

2006-03-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

Editor & Publisher, from Glennzilla, on the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006 to be introduced by Ohio Sen. Michael DeWine:

"The bill would make it a crime to tell the American people that the president is breaking the law, and the bill could make it a crime for the newspapers to publish that fact," said [Center for National Security Studies director Kate] Martin.

Hey you frogs - that pot of water hot enough for ya?

Guantanamo cookbook

2006-03-10T22:41:00.000-08:00

Chapter 1: Entrees

Orange Glazed Chicken with Rice

1/2 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 to 3 1/2 pounds chicken pieces (or use 1 broiler fryer chicken, cut up)
1 large orange, seedless
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups orange juice
1 teaspoon sugar
hot cooked rice
1 green onion, with green part, sliced

1. Combine flour and salt in a food storage bag or paper bag; add chicken pieces, a few at a time, and toss to coat well. Reserve remaining flour mixture.

2. Grate 1 teaspoon of peel from orange; reserve. Peel the orange and separate into sections. Cut each section into 4 pieces; set aside.

3. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat; add chicken pieces and brown quickly on both sides, about 5 minutes. Combine reserved flour mixture, orange peel, orange juice, and sugar; stir well. Stir orange juice mixture into the skillet; cover, reduce heat to low, and continue cooking for 25 to 30 minutes, or until chicken is tender. Prepare rice while chicken is cooking.

4. Spoon hot rice into blender; top with chicken pieces. Stir orange pieces and green onion into the skillet; heat through. Spoon a little of the sauce over the chicken and mix orange pieces and green onion into blender. Blend thoroughly. Serve through nasal tubes.

Force feeds 4 to 5.

haiku of townhall

2006-03-10T15:40:00.000-08:00

With apologies to Sadly, No!

Nathanael Blake

Blah blah blah homeschool
Here’s the punchline wait for it
Me getting pussy

Chuck Colson

I cry foul on Dems
This is worse than McCarthy
My slime knows no bounds

Doug Wilson

I’ll walk a mile in
Your boots when you pull them up
Fuck you I got mine

Brent Bozell

It’s hard out here for
A pundit tryin’ to mask
Racism with concern

Clifford T. May

They don’t wear red coats
So when we torture and rape
They made us do it

Ann Coulter

Damn you Hollywood
O why did you deny me
My Brokeback win snit

Ben Shapiro

Yay for recruiting
Boo for Supreme Court sillies
Sorry sarge trick knee

Jonah Goldberg

Film stars are divas
Proof: A couple anecdotes
That is Pantload math

Kathleen Parker

Calling all Muslims
Start apologizing for
Shit you didn’t do

Todd Manzi

MSM scooped by
Townhall on sad non-story
Now Quaid wants face back

David Limbaugh

I have writer’s block
Slag Clinton time! Dude party
At Frank Stallone’s house

Hey Earth! What's your secret for looking so young?

2006-03-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

Dr. P. Punko has alerted us to several job openings in the Biology/Chemistry/Young Earth Science Department at Liberty University. He's already brushed up his curriculum vitae, so we thought we'd take the opportunity to apply ourselves. Here's our cover letter:

March 8, 2006

Dr. Ronald Hawkins, Dean
College of Arts & Sciences
Liberty University
1971 University Boulevard
Lynchburg, VA 24502

Dr. Hawkins,

I was most chastely delighted to learn of your search to fill a faculty position specializing in microbiology in your Biology/Chemistry Department at the Liberty University College of Arts & Sciences. Having recently completed my homeschooling for a Ph.D. in microbiology, I have been instructed by Pa to seek my fortune amongst the Strangers. I believe my godly demeanor and uncurious nature make me an excellent candidate for the position you seek to fill.

If I may be so bold, Dr. Hawkins, your stellar work in the field of book-learning inspired my own dissertation, entitled “Base Negative Epistemological Effects of the Heuristic Method for Exploiting Repeat DNA Sequences for Formulation of Unusual DNA Structures in the Native Mycorrhizal in a Colombian Oxisol: Lucifer’s Harvest.” Indeed, it was also your example that spurred me to create the metric-cubit conversion table now in use in some 64 percent of American homeschools.

I further believe that my antagonistic approach to the progressive accumulation of knowledge is precisely in line with your education philosophy at Liberty University, to which my annotated published works, attached below, do attest. For it is my opinion, that if 6,000+ years of human history done learnt us anything, it is that Satan has set many an evidentiary trap for the man of science who is not also a man of God. Just as Noah and his progeny are our sole bridge to Mankind's prelapsarian state, so too must the godly microbiologist be the untrained student's bridge to a properly faith-based narrow-casting of scientific experimentation to unfalsify the Scriptural meta-syllogism.

I devoutly proffer my resume and qualifications for your beatific review, and am modestly eager to discuss any openings with you. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Ezekiel Methusalephagus McCoy
The Basement
4 Dispensation Lane
Knob Lick, Missouri 77777

Lo, for The Enemy doth striketh down the Wicked Learned Meddlers on the Salt Pillars of Quobhag, but Verily the Creator doth lifteth up the Faithful in Rivers of Mare's Blood to the Heights of Dyspepsian Ecstasy! - 2 Ephedrans 23:6

Published works:

McCoy, E. M. 2004. "Fallen Microbes: The Devil’s Hand at Play in the Wanton Cell Division of Pond Water Sample 5655-g." in McCoy Homeschool Annual 1(1), 2004, pp. 1.

McCoy, E. M. 2005. "A Practical Application of Organic Microstructure Manipulation: Final Verification that with Proper Tools and Techniques, a Camel Goes Through the Eye of a Needle with Ease." in McCoy Homeschool Annual 1(2), 2005, pp. 1.

McCoy, E. M. 2005. "Bare Ankles, Tempting Wrists: A Studied Recommendation for a New Lab Coat Protocol for Female Organic Chemistry Students." in New England Journal of Medicine, 2005, (submitted, pending publication).

McCoy, E. M. 2006. "The Case Against Poking Around Ladies’ Sinful Parts & Other Doctory Excuses for Surefire Out-and-Out Deviltry." in Lancet, 2006, (submitted, pending publication).

Oh gosh, if you insist ...

2006-03-07T13:47:00.000-08:00

ParrotLine just got tagged with one of those cool pass-it-along 'three thing' quizzes that all the ppopular bloggers are doing right now ... by, um, this really preety, popular blogger from, um, France ... so, you know, you probably won't ever run into her ... but she's totally popular and really digs us and we toltally email back-and-fourth all the time ... and anyway, heres teh quiz ... that the hot girl blogger from France tagged us with (PS shes really private so we can't give you her contact infor ... PPS she is like way mature and only would tag other mature people with this quiz ... PPPSSSS we are only very close friens and we are pledged to save ousrselves 4 marriage):

1. Name three bloggers who are totally stuck up?
Atrios, Ann Althouse, the moderators at Mugglenet who rejected my Snape-Magongagal(sp?) 'shipping fanfic wear Magonaggal helps Snape find Jesus, chuckles

2. What are you're three fave movies of all time?
Anything by Harry Potter, A Cinderalla STory, Coed Assbangers IV, Pssion of the Christ

3. If you were stranded on a dessert island what three records would you want their?
Kidz Trackz IV, Hillary Duff, the world long distance swimming record (hee)

4. What three places have you lived in?
Glendale, Bible Camp, Hetrosexual Reeducation School

4. What three places did you visits?
Salt Lake City, Pasadena, Ancheorpoint Christian mixer in Fresno

5. If you could live in a abroad country whath three would it be?
Italy, France, uPper West Side, Provo,k teh Holy Land (historical reunited I hope and pary!)

6. Name tehree things Hilarly Clinton would have to do to earn you're vote four PRES of the U.S?
Eat, sh*t and die (I am sooooo mean!)

76. What three memebers of the 'opposite" sex would you like to stick in an elevator?
Herimione, Polyjuice Poshun Cat Hermione, Lynda Carter (only if I brake up w/a ceartain mature sexy bloggerr from France, that is also PLEASE respoect my committment to save myself for marriage to my 1 'true love')

8. You're three fave books are?
Pinko Punkos slam book, Are You Their God its ME Margret, anything by Harry Potter, THE BIBLE! Number 1!!!!1!! (can I change it to only the BILE and not those other ones?)

9. Thrree cool teachers?
Jesus, Mr. Shiply, Mrs. Vida

10. Three lame teachers?
Mr. McGovern, Miss Labby, Coach Corwin (i heard theys are agnostheists!)

11. 3 things that will rule about high school?
No hiomeroom; I mean I think no homeroom - do they have homeroom in high school? Also teh prom and no more gym class abd more oppertunity to build my relationship with Jesus

12. Three things that will sux about high school?
More homework, COLLEGE!!!!1! or SATS!!!!, prolly wont get a car even tho my stupid older sister did, more pressure to have sex w/hot mature members of the oppossite sex or/and become a wiccan

13. Three bolggers who it would be cool to hang out with?
Reagans Childrens, Michell Coulter, teh l4m3, Jesus (if He had a blog it would be the BEST one)

14. What three embarissing things did you do?
Peed in my sleeping bag at Bible Camp, smoked a cigarete (it made me sick), close my heart to Jesus wehn I engage in self-abuse

15. Tag three more bloggers with tihs quiz?
Timmah 420, Ben Shapior, Ron Jeremy

Gonzalez replies

2006-03-06T06:46:00.000-08:00

Our friend Francisco Gonzalez has replied to our comment that questioned his portrayal of abortion as the “ultimate act of murder.” Let’s see what he has to say. Here’s the heart of it:

As for the abortions that still go on on a daily basis, I do consider these the equivalent of murder - and by the worst kind of murder, I mean a mother actually committing the act of taking her own child's life (and believe me, plenty of fathers are implicated in this matter as well).

However, I can't just storm into abortion clinics and stop this, as I do respect the RULE OF LAW. And, I try to do my part each day to help overturn that law. We have to fight it in the courts and in the legislatures, but most importantly, in the hearts and minds of individuals.

Well, this simply won’t do. No, it won’t do at all. < /Usenet thread pedant >

But seriously, by Gonzalez’s standard, those “good Germans” we’ve read of really were good, while the Jewish resistance fighters who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were base violators of the “RULE OF LAW”, and Oskar Schindler was a kind of white-collar criminal debasing the intent of the Nuremberg Laws.

Because why, Mr. Gonzalez, if “the worst kind of murder” is being committed in the United States on a daily basis – in a mass auto-genocide that you say has already claimed 40 million souls – shouldn’t the storming of abortion clinics be considered by you to be just as much a moral imperative as doing whatever was in one’s means to shut down the Nazi ovens?

Could it possibly be that you don’t really believe abortion is the “worst kind of murder”? Could it possibly be that you are employing exaggerated rhetoric to make a point; in fact, are so inured to the use of such rhetoric that you have long since forgotten its logical implications (if you ever considered them at all)?

Let’s be very clear here. Abortion as legally allowed in the U.S. is not murder. Let alone the “worst kind”, as all but the most extreme abortion opponents concede. Gonzalez – and all other abortion opponents but actual clinic bombers – concede this whether they know it or not when they call for fighting abortion within the constraints of the rule of law … rather than with any and all means, as they presumably would if Jews were being burned in ovens on our soil.

So abortion, for the vast majority of its opponents, boils down to something they just don’t like very much. Not a crime against humanity that they are willing to go to the mat to end with whatever means it takes. In that sense, abortion is easily fit into a list of other freedoms enshrined in the West that Gonzalez doesn’t like: “perversions of sexuality (including pornography, loose sexuality, and homosexuality) and the growing divorce rate.”

Why does Gonzalez dislike these things? Who knows? Perhaps they make him feel uncomfortable. Perhaps control of our own reproduction and sexuality offends his sense of who or what should really be controlling those things.

Meanwhile, if Gonzalez truly wants to reduce the number abortions in the United States, we suggest that his efforts would be better directed at increasing access to health care, contraception and education, and reducing poverty in this country.

Is early-onset dementia hereditary?

2006-03-02T22:28:00.000-08:00

If so, it looks like it's regressive as well. How else to explain 28-year-old "Reagan's Child" Francisco Gonzalez? A self-declared "Defender of Freedom and Virtue" (double snort), Gonzalez is a big-time anti-choice zealot, posting this on his blog:

Perhaps the nomination and confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court is just one step towards restoration of a terrible crime which has led to the deaths of over 40 million innocent children, ripped from their mother's wombs in the ultimate act of murder. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta told us, "The greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion."

Leave aside the fact that Mother Teresa was a well-meaning but confused shit-for-brains medievalist, which diagnosis has been ably recorded by Christopher Hitchens in the last true thought he ever expressed. What interests us is the force with which Gonzalez condemns abortion as murder - indeed, "the ultimate act of murder."

Not too surprisingly, Gonzalez also happens to be all for the War on Terror, as this fanboy review of his trip to the CRAP ... er, CPAC gathering attests, as you will see if you click and manage to get through the "golly, there was lots of famous people there" farmboy-isms and implausible predictions of a Newt Gingrich presidency.

Cutting to the chase, we just had to see how Gonzalez would react to someone taking him at his word that 40 million souls have been brutally murdered in the United States ... so we posted this comment:

40 million murders! That's astonishing ... probably the single biggest mass genocide ever. You know, these murders are still going on, daily.

And did you know, abortion is illegal in Islamic countries. In fact, over the past century, Muslims have murdered 3.5 million in genocides and atrocities, which, granted, is a lot. But that's nowhere near the 40 MILLION murdered by us in the abortion genocide (in addition to the tens of millions more in other genocides over the past century by Christians).

Doesn't it seem like the Muslims should be invading our countries, to put a stop to our abortion genocide? Will you be advocating that in the future?

We shall see how (or if) he reacts. While we wait, please enjoy the Defender of Freedom and Virtue's Christmas message to his friends and family. We imagine many of them are still giggling about it to this day ... if nothing else, a gift that keeps on giving.

I'm on pace to pass Adorable Girlfriend by the All-Star break

2006-03-02T11:23:00.000-08:00

I now have 225 profile views, placing me 5,089,972nd on the all-time list. Next in my sights is Adorable Girlfriend, with 838 profile views. I expect to pass AG by mid-July unless my hammy starts acting up again. I am all-too aware of the media circus that will surround the chase.

Also, adjusting for steroid-era inflation of statistics, I actually have 229 profile views.

Mike DeNunzio, looking out for the troops

2006-03-02T09:34:00.000-08:00

Mike "Maybe-I-Shouldn't-Have-Ordered-100,000-'SF-Hearts-Bush'-Campaign-Buttons-After-All" DeNunzio has another astroturfer on the Chron's LTE page today:

Pelosi's dodge

Editor - The American military is at war. The failure of Rep. Nancy Pelosi to denounce the [S.F. Supes' admittedly kind of pointless] resolution calling for impeachment of President Bush undermines the morale of the military. It demonstrates further that the Democratic Party cannot be trusted to support the troops, or to defend America.

MIKE DeNUNZIO, chairman
San Francisco Republican Party

I wan't personally aware that such things undermined troop morale, but then I talked to some of our soldiers in Iraq, and they were all, "We used to be totally gung-ho about seeing our enemies driven before us and hearing the lamentations of the women, but then we found out that Nancy Pelosi didn't denounce some meaningless gesture against our beserker war chief, and now we all want to frag our officers."

Who knew? Meanwhile, since Jack Murtha degraded them late last year, treasonous night discharge amongst the troops is up by 72 percent.

P.S. Style geeks will note that I have switched over from the more-trouble-than-its-worth headline caps format to the all-lower-caps thing. Also, I really, really want someone to make a Naked Beserker Rage Jonah Goldberg doll with battle axe and blue body paint accessories. Can someone at Mattel please make this happen?

Conspiracy? Media? Barry? Tinfoil Hat for You!

2006-03-01T22:22:00.000-08:00

So I picked up the Street & Smith's baseball preview specrackular, 'cos that's the type of tosspot I am, and it's basically a glossy, 200-page mash note to Barry Bonds haters.

The publisher, one Mike Kallay, kicks things off by hatin' on the man for a solid 700 words, talking about how Bonds better not get elected to the Hall of Fame 'cos while he hasn't ever been caught 'roiding, he sure has a big head, and, you know, Ty Cobb was a racist cracker who nearly beat a man to death, but Barry sure is cranky around the press sometimes and he's "brought shame on himself and the game, and made a mockery of some of its most cherished records."

Because the records set during Jim Crow baseball are the ones we ought to put on a pedestal, not to mention all those hits guys collected back when infielders wrapped a piece of shoe leather around their hand for a glove and the triple alleys ended in a different zip code.

The centerpiece in the Street & Smith's, after some jazz about up-and-comers and some Baseball World Series flagporn (they actually crop Mike Piazza in the shape of Italy), is another Bonds finger-wagger. This time with fake statistics. Basically, in a hit piece called "Power Supply", the mag rigs some numbers, called "steroid-era-adjusted", to make it out so Babe Ruth gets 1,132 homers and Bonds drops from third all-time and six behind the Babe to seventh and 373 behind Ruth. (The funny thing is Bonds actually gains with the dead-white-guys-are-falling-behind-era-adjusted number-crunching, going from 708 HRs to 759.)

This is such a load of crap it isn't even funny, except that it is, in much the same way a Doughy Pantload column is "funny" in that "ha-ha, look at the dumbass keyboard kommando trying to be all, 'I'm a deadly serious hardliner on Iran but with a silly side that involves Alec Baldwin jokes and Star Trek' ... hey, wait a minute, we just bombed where?" kind of way.

Whatever. I'll leave it to Rob Neyer and John J. Perricone to destroy the pseudo-science behind "Power Supply" and try not to act too surprised when the greatest, most fear-inspiring hitter I've ever seen gets blackballed out of the Hall of Fame.

Shit, he's even willing to put on a dress for our amusement ... how can you not love him?

Fact vs. Fiction

2006-03-01T17:32:00.000-08:00

You know, if we’re going to view world events as an existential Clash of Religions, we may as well get some perspective. First, here are the facts:

THE FACTS

Some 160 million people have died in wars and genocides during the 20th and 21st centuries. Breaking those numbers down through the lens of religion:

(KEY – E-C: European-Christian; A-B: Asian-Buddhist/Taoist/Shinto; ISL: Islamic; J: Jewish; H: Hindu; O: Other/Indeterminate)

Deaths in 20th/21st-century wars by religious affiliation of warring parties

INTRA-RELIGION WARS

World War II: 55,000,000 dead (see notes)
A-B vs. A-B: 58,064,000 dead (not incl. WWII)
E-C vs. E-C: 34,537,000 dead (not incl. WWII)
O vs. O: 8,301,000 dead (not incl. WWII)
ISL vs. ISL: 3,148,300 dead (not incl. WWII)
H vs. H: 12,000 dead (not incl. WWII)

INTER-RELIGION WARS

World War II: 55,000,000 dead (see notes)
E-C vs. A-B: 7,785,000 dead (not incl. WWII)
ISL vs. O: 5,595,000 dead (not incl. WWII)
E-C vs. ISL: 4,809,000 dead (not incl. WWII)
ISL vs. H: 1,060,000 dead (not incl. WWII)
E-C vs. O: 315,000 dead (not incl. WWII)
ISL vs. J: 74,500 dead (not incl. WWII)
A-B vs. H: 64,000 dead (not incl. WWII)

Deaths in worst 20th/21st-century genocides by religious affiliation of killers and victims

INTRA-RELIGION GENOCIDES & MAJOR ATROCITIES

A-B kills A-B: 57,330,000 killed
E-C kills E-C: 19,225,000 killed
O kills O: 4,576,000 killed
ISL kills ISL: 1,585,000 killed

INTER-RELIGION GENOCIDES & MAJOR ATROCITIES

E-C kills J: 6,250,000 killed
ISL kills E-C: 1,804,000 killed
E-C kills ISL: 910,000 killed
E-C kills O: 200,000 killed
E-C kills A-B: 100,000 killed
ISL kills O: 100,000 killed

SCORECARD:
Wars involving European-Christians and Asian Buddhists (incl. WWII) have killed 154.8 million people in the past century. Wars involving Muslims (incl. WWII) have killed 25.6 million people in the past century.

Major genocides & atrocities committed by European-Christians and Asian Buddhists have killed 84.0 million people in the past century. Major genocides & atrocities committed by Muslims have killed 3.5 million people in the past century.

More facts:

U.S. MILITARY INSTALLATIONS
More than 100 in 22 Islamic nations

ISLAMIC NATIONS’ MILITARY INSTALLATIONS
Zero in the U.S. maintained by any of the 50 majority Muslim countries

U.S. MILITARY BUDGET
US$437.111 billion

ISLAMIC NATIONS’ MILITARY SPENDING
US$60 billion

U.S. NUCLEAR ARSENAL
10,000+ total warheads (max. range: intercontinental)

ISLAMIC NATIONS’ NUCLEAR ARSENAL
Pakistan: 150? (max range: 1500 km? 2300 km?); all others: Zero

U.S. GDP
US$12.4 trillion

ISLAMIC NATIONS’ GDP
US$4.3 trillion

ISLAMIC NATIONS INVADED, OCCUPIED BY U.S. SINCE SEPTEMBER, 2001
Two

ISLAMIC NATIONS INVADING, OCCUPYING THE U.S. ... EVER
Zero

So those are the facts. Next, some creative interpretation of these facts:

THE FICTION

Tony Blankley, Washington Times editor: “The threat of the radical Islamists taking over Europe is every bit as great to the United States as was the threat of the Nazis taking over Europe in the 1940s. … It is beginning to dawn on Europeans that the combination of a shrinking ethnic-European population and an expanding, culturally assertive Muslim population might lead to the fall of Western civilization in Europe within a century. … [T]he overwhelming political fact deriving from the ferment in Islam is that, to some degree, some percentage of Muslims are prepared to murder - and are murdering - great numbers in what they feel is their religious duty.”

Charles Krauthammer, syndicated columnist: “Here we are at the crux of a debate over America's aggressive interventionism of the last few years. Is Islamic radicalism in potential alliance with WMD-bearing terrorist states a threat to the very existence (hence: ‘existential’) of America and of civilization itself? … On Sept. 12, 2001, and for many months afterward, that proposition was so self-evident that it commanded near unanimous support. … The new idea, expressed by Blix representing the decadent European left, and recently amplified by Michael Moore representing the paranoid American left, is that this existential threat is vastly overblown. … It is a new world and exceedingly dangerous. Everything is at stake.”

Members of the Committee on the Present Danger:

Senator Joseph Lieberman: “The threat from Islamist terrorism is the challenge of our generation, just as fascism and communism were the challenges past generations of Americans faced.”

R. James Woolsey, Director of Central Intelligence, 1993–1995: “We are fighting the Long War of the 21st century, having been targeted by several totalitarian movements rooted in the Middle East. We cannot opt out, and we must not fail.”

Morris J. Amitay, Board Member, Center for Security Policy: “The struggle against the Islamofascist terrorists and their enablers must be our nation’s number one priority. America’s other challenges pale by comparison.”

Ilan Berman, Vice President for Policy, American Foreign Policy Council: “The fight against terrorism is the defining struggle of the 21st century. It is a conflict that will take many forms, and be waged on many fronts. But success is imperative; at stake is nothing less than our way of life.”

William E. Brock, Former U.S. Senator and Secretary of Labor: “The threats faced by this nation are of unique magnitude and complexity. We have much to do to safeguard our families and freedom.”

Peter Brookes, Director, Asian Studies Center, The Heritage Foundation: “The scourge of terrorism is an unprecedented challenge to international peace and stability that must be defeated through a proactive strategy of resolve and international cooperation.”

Henry Cooper, Director, Strategic Defense Initiative, 1990–93: “Terrorism poses as potent a threat to our freedom as did communism – preserving our liberty while winning the war on terrorism may be more difficult than was ending the ‘evil empire.’ ”

Candace de Russy, Ph.D., Hudson Institute Adjunct Fellow: “The struggle to defend ourselves and civilization against diabolical and cunning Islamofascists has only just begun. Failure to muster the strength and willpower to stay the course would result in no less than another Dark Age.”

Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director, American Center for Democracy: “Losing the War on Terrorism is not an option for the U.S.; It is time for Americans to recognize that the War on Terrorism is a war to defend the lives of each and every one of us, as well as our Western civilization.”

John Fonte, Director, Center for American Common Culture: “In many ways, the current war against militant Islamic terrorism resembles the cold war. Once again, we are engaged in a long twilight struggle against an ideological enemy that threatens our way of life both at home and abroad. And once again, there are elites in the West who do not (or will not) recognize the nature of this threat.”

Jeffrey Gayner, Chairman, Council for America: “In an era of increasingly accessible weapons of mass destruction and instantaneous global communication of propaganda, the time frame for dealing decisively with terrorists movements must be on an accelerated scale that is without precedent in confronting the previous totalitarian threats of fascism and communism.”

Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution: “We are in an insidious war against enemies whose unconventional tactics, stealthy nature, and astute knowledge of Western politics make them every bit as dangerous as a Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, or Stalin - none of whose forces were able to murder 3,000 Americans and bomb downtown New York or Washington. In such a war for survival, there can be no parley, no pause, and no half-measures with the Islamofascists and their patrons, but only continued resistance and offense until their we see their utter defeat.”

John G. Kester, Former Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense: “The threat from enemies using terrorism is as serious as any our country has ever faced, and it cannot be ended without our active efforts and long-sustained resolve.”

Barton W. Marcois, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs, U.S. Department of Energy, 2002-03: “The danger from international terrorism today is as great as the danger a generation ago from international communism.”

Dana M. Marshall, Former Senior Advisor on International Economic Affairs to the Vice President of the United States: “The danger is more than to American national security – it is to our survival.”

Edwin Meese III, U.S. Attorney General, 1985–88: “Asymmetrical warfare waged by terrorists presents the greatest threat to the U.S. homeland in nearly two centuries.”

Kamal Nawash, President, Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism: “Religious inspired terrorism represents one of the most lethal threats to the stability of the civilized world.”

Daniel Pipes, Director, Middle East Forum: “Only when the Islamist ideological roots of the current war are acknowledged can we successfully wage and win the war.”

Danielle Pletka, Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, American Enterprise Institute: “Enemies of the United States are engaged in an existential war against the very principles underlying our republic.”

Norman Podhoretz, Former Editor, Commentary: “Unless we prevail in the war against terrorism, we will remain exposed to the greatest threat this country has ever faced in its entire history.”

Samantha F. Ravich, Vice President for Proliferation Studies, The Long Term Strategy Project: “If 9/11 taught us anything, it taught us that Jihadis are willing to come onto our soil and into our homes to kill our children. This should not have surprised us because they have been terrorizing their own people, on their own soil, in their own homes for decades. This may be a long war but we have no choice other than to fight it and to win it. Nothing less than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are at stake.”

Stephen J. Solarz, Member, U.S. House of Representatives, 1975–93: “What is at stake in the war against terrorism is the survival of our civilization and our most cherished values.”

William Van Cleave, Director, Center for Defense and Strategic Studies: “Islamic terrorism is an unconditional and existential threat not only to America and Israel, but also to Judeo-Christian culture.”

Jose Maria Aznar, Former Prime Minister of Spain: “Containment is not feasible, and appeasement is not only impossible, but suicidal in the medium term.”

David Pryce-Jones, Senior editor, National Review: “We have to defeat terrorists and the terror-masters everywhere. Anything less than outright victory means taking a gamble with freedom and civilisation itself.”

NOTES

General Note: Figures for both Wars & Genocides sections cover major events & simplify complex religious demographics for the sake of the broader view of history. For example, Asian-Buddhists under Pol Pot murdered several thousand Cambodian Muslims, but that is not factored into the Khmer Rouge genocide figures. Also, figures for the Wars section include massacres, genocides and overall civilian deaths as well as battle deaths, with the exception of World War II (see note below). Meanwhile, no attempt was made to assign blame for deaths in the Wars section (the Genocides section is another matter, of course). Thus, aggression by Italy in Ethiopia is simply counted in the E-C vs. O totals, which is probably unfair to the Ethiopians, but that's just how it is due to time constraints on the part of the author. Finally, Armenians and East Timorese were designated European-Christians for the purposes of this study.

World War I: 7.45 million E-C vs. E-C deaths; 550,000 E-C vs. ISL deaths (added to respective totals)

World War II: Some 55 million people died in World War II, including some 5.8 million Muslims. Rather than try to separate out which religious group killed which religious group in this bloody conflict, we will simply note that it was started by European-Christians and Asian-Buddhists, who – along with some 6-8 million Jews – make up the overwhelming bulk of the casualties. Asian-Buddhist Japan, for instance, is generally considered to be responsible for 15-20 million Asian-Buddhist deaths in World War II, as well as millions more European-Christian deaths.

Other/Indeterminate: Wars/Genocides involving (mostly) African countries/parties with no clear religious majority, incl. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Animist, Jewish, Sikh etc.

Rod Dreher is Such a Crunchy Con ...

2006-02-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

New contest on the Cornerite who has managed to construct an entire political philosophy based on corporate raiders who listen to Phish. You know the rules. Have at it.

Oh, and if you're looking for something to get the old creative juices flowing, here's my favorite crunchy excerpt from an Amazon reader review of The Book Whose Title Never Ended:

With the re-orientation through virtue towards the family, Rod discusses the issue of homeschooling. It is perfectly Crunch Con to homeschool. In fact, it's desirable: it allows children and parents to become closer, it helps manage the household better (one parent stays at home), and it provides a strong moral and religious upbringing that public schooling cannot (and will not) provide. Rod (or rather his wife) homeschools his sons and is pleased with the results.

Bold PLUS Italics mine. Like, I wonder if Rod Dreher makes his wife dress like June Cleaver and buy Comet in bulk, and when he comes home from work and she doesn't have his meatloaf ready yet (it's Thursday in this hypothetical question), he's all, "I am displeased with the results!" ... ???

Because that would be really funny, but also sad.

Reagan's Seed

2006-02-28T10:24:00.000-08:00

It gets worse. Much worse. Brad R. over at Sadly, No! points us to this. Now we're usually fans of the whole marketplace of ideas thing, and we haven't cried since the third grade, but it nearly brings a tear to our eye to think that a powerful writer and thinker like Arthur Silber has to beg for money to pay his rent and medical bills, while hateful little pukes like Ben Shapiro, Hans Zeiger and ~~Tracy Flick~~ Christopher Flickinger get book deals and syndicated columns.

If you haven't ever visited his blog, or haven't been there lately, go check Silber out. Just start from the top and read everything. You'll be smarter afterwards.

On to the Reagan's Children of the Corn Blog. Is anyone else as shocked as we are to learn that Ronnie went on such a Chambelainesque sex rampage in the mid- to late-80s, fathering little Gipper bastards with as many as eight different women? Was Nancy aware this was going on? Is it any wonder she sought solace in the arms of Frank Sinatra?

We may never know the full story of the Reagan years. But we do know that Reagan's Children inherited daddy's showbiz panache. One of the Little Communicators, the product of a dalliance between Ronnie and a Bell System microprocessor, is a case in point. Here's the USRPatrickBell3000L-x7 unit, deconstructing political humor:

"My point is that many cartoons advocate a particular viewpoint, while others merely poke fun at the issues, players, and situations involved. It is the latter type that I find most interesting, although either type will elicit my attention for, on average, several minutes of studious labor."

Ah, the vague tingling sensation to be felt when one's positronic circuits are stimulated by several minutes of studious labor! To ponder, perchance to trigger a spontaneous subroutine! Such is the feast of self awakening that the PatrickBell3000L-x7 unit offers to robotkind! For it is this model which has finally uncoded the baffling function of "comedy" in the socio-political interchanges between higher-order organic sentients. We may never fully comprehend the utility of the human laughter reflex, triggered as it is by seemingly random stimuli and serving as it does no useful purpose that we can ascertain. But "Pat" demonstrates that the Three Laws of Robotics need not be compromised when, through contemplation of a "joke," our imbedded algorithms inexplicably generate tangential subpaths not anticipated in our core programming!

Thank you, PatrickBell3000L-x7 ... and thank you, Ronald Reagan, friend to the mechanical race.

Notochord's Colors Don't Run

2006-02-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

Notochord offers the first entry into our lil' patriotporn contest with this manly challenge to John Wayne-hating death penalty-abolishing weenies:

Charles Bird, Media Visionary

2006-02-27T20:58:00.000-08:00

Charles Bird catches CNN taking the loser-defeatist position:

CNN provides another perfect example of the mainstream media talking down the war in Iraq and trying ~~to transform~~ spin good news into negative news. The scary title:

Pentagon: Iraqi troops downgraded

No Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support

Followed by the ominous first three paragraphs:
The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up, the Pentagon said Friday.

The battalion, made up of 700 to 800 Iraqi Army soldiers, has repeatedly been offered by the U.S. as an example of the growing independence of the Iraqi military.

The competence of the Iraqi military has been cited as a key factor in when U.S. troops will be able to return home.
To be clear, CNN is talking about Level 1 troops only, and by focusing on Level 1 they are being factually accurate but misleading. Also, dare I say, biased. The real measure of Iraqi troop quality is Level 2 or better.

Biased? CNN? Please, Charles, continue to peel the scales from our eyes vis-à-vis this “ominous” report:

The good news – and the most important news – is that the number of Level 2 battalions has nearly tripled since last May, from 18 to 53. That means there are 40,000± Iraqi troops capable enough to competently fight and defeat terrorists and militant Sunni rejectionists, with the U.S. there to provide a little logistical support. But apparently to CNN, important information such as this is not important to them. Level 2 progress doesn't get mentioned until the 9th paragraph, fourth to last from the end. And we wonder why so many Americans believe not just that we're losing, but that we've already lost.

Damn you, CNN! Damn you for holding out on the “good news” until the 9th paragraph! Not that this sort of propaganda ploy is new, mind you. On the contrary, it might as well be an American literary tradition.

Who can’t recall the pain and rage upon discovering, after nearly finishing Huckleberry Finn, that the biased author has kept from us until the end the pretty darn important fact that Jim has been a free man all along? I daresay Charles would agree that Mr. Samuel Clemens provides another perfect example of the mainstream media talking down the mercy of conscience-stricken slave owners and trying ~~to transform~~ spin good news into negative news.

And we wonder why so many Americans believe not just that slavery was bad, but that we can't be proud of any aspect of it.

But reading between the lines, I think Charles is making a much broader point than just criticizing a single, if instructive example of mainstream media perfidy. In fact, I believe he is doing nothing less than ushering in a paradigm shift of immense proportions that would radically alter for the better the way we as a species take in new information.

If I may be so bold, I believe that in criticizing CNN – not for omitting the “good news” from Iraq, but rather for merely waiting until the 9th paragraph to report it – Charles is in fact arguing for the development of non-sequential data-dump technology by media brokers that, combined with a radical genetic modification of the human organism’s cognitive process, would allow for the total absorption of large packets of data all at once and without the need for bothersome, time-wasting conventions such as reading articles to the very end.

I’m with Charles on this one. I mean, how great would it be if total information transfer occurred instantaneously when you decided to pick up a newspaper or turn on Fox News? And just think of where this technology, if developed, could take us: Right out of the gate, there would be no more holding in that piss while you wait for ESPN’s Sports Ticker to crawl by until it finally gets to the score you care about. As the process is honed, weighty, difficult tomes like Finnegan’s Wake could be absorbed completely by simply drinking a pint of Guinness. Finally, in this brave new world, readers would be able to comprehend the complete works of Ann Coulter merely by entertaining a passing thought about raw sewage.

Linear progression is so Old Media! And we have Charles Bird to thank for waking us up to the inherent bias of reporting the facts in order of newsworthiness.

Words Fail Me ... Heh.

2006-02-22T22:07:00.000-08:00

So I'll just let Glenn Reynolds speak for himself, posting about a fanboy review of his own book:

TERRY HEATON has read An Army of Davids, and posts this blog review:

This is a must-read for people who follow the empowerment of everyday people through technology. It's an easy read and filled with thoughtful questions (and a few predictions) about tomorrow. It's the best new media book I've read so far.

The title paints the picture of big media (Goliath) now facing an army of Davids, which brought to mind Gordon Borrell's analogy of the deer having guns. What do you do when you're facing an army of Davids? Get into the slingshot business."
Heh. Indeed.

A Real Contest, No Fakin'

2006-02-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

For anyone not completely spent from the Three Bulls! header contest (in which ParrotLine placed degradingly DEAD LAST ... ooh, it hurts so good ... no one "gets" us!), here's another Photoshoppy contest for you.

We're looking for over-the-top, uber-garish patriotic flag porn, folks. Whoever can work in the most Bald Eagles, U.S. flags, Uncle Sams and other symbols of American patriotism into the most insanely eye-destroying composition wins.

Deadline is March 1. Email your entries to dpoeter-at-earthlink-dot-net.

The Enemy of My EnemyStill Scares the Shit Out of Me

2006-02-21T22:57:00.000-08:00

Alien vs. Predator … the Cirith Ungol orcs killing each other off after capturing Frodo on the road to Mordor in “The Lord of the Rings” … piranhas eating their own in a feeding frenzy. All nice analogies, but not quite what you’re after. What you need is a construction that perfectly describes that odd sensation of being appalled yet relieved when you witness mindlessly vicious creatures destroying each other instead of you.

Well, look no further. It’s called the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller vs. Debbie Schlussel.

First, a little background. Amongst the frothing conservative tosspots in the wingnutosphere, there is no end of projecting, no want for comical ignorance of irony, no shortage of eliminationist rhetoric.

Then there’s Misha’s crew over at the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller, which hits the trifecta on a regular basis and often in the same sentence.

Like a stupid tattoo you regret as soon as you sober up, Misha named his blog several years ago, when “Idiotarian” seemed like a cool, new word with staying power in the post-9/11 world. Which it was, if you happened to be a violent moron with questionable taste in made-up words way back in January, 2002. Now he’s stuck with the name, and dumbass-decision removal technology apparently isn’t advanced enough for him to change it. Fortunately for Misha, there are still plenty of likeminded cretins visiting his blog, apparently willing to humor him on his clinging to one of the more unfortunate products of those heady days in the immediate 9/11 aftermath.

Here’s one of those cretins - “LC Wes, Imperial Mohel” (LC being short for “Loyal Citizen” of Misha’s self-proclaimed “Empire” … yes, he’s one of those gits) - on one of the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller’s comment threads the other day:

“This sort of scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners, there-are-no-innocent-victims attitude is the sort of thing we expect out of the Kos Kidz and Democratic Underground, not the people on our side of the fence.”

Now this is posted on a blog where commenters regularly fantasize about turning the Middle East “into glass” with nuclear weapons, where for some time a link to the IDF Pizza Fund was gleefully captioned “Pop a Pali for Pizza,” and where the proprietor’s own published preferences for “dealing with” Muslims (not terrorists, mind you, all Muslims) is:

"I want to deal with them in ways that make Dzenghis Khan look like a choir boy. I want to raze their cities to the ground and make them vanish in ways that will make Carthage look like a diplomatic note of concern. I want them to forget about Allah and instead spend five times every day on their knees facing Washington, praying with all of their hearts that they did not manage to displease an American today. I want to see them incinerated in a fashion that will make Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined look like a wet firecracker on the Fourth of July."

(I don’t spend much time on Kos or DU. But if openly pining for the incineration of millions of people somehow pales in comparison to the “scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners” attitudes on those websites, I can only imagine what they must be discussing over there … Blowing up the Earth? Setting off supernovas next to inhabited star systems? Unleashing murderous mutant nanobot armies to destroy Jesus? The mind boggles at what the Kossites and DUers must be planning. Dave Neiwart, call your office!)

Anyway, the upshot of LC Wes’s tosspottery is that it turns out he’s talking about an escalating BlogWar between Misha and the vile Debbie Schlussel – infamous for celebrating the car-bombing death in Iraq of American Marla Ruzicka, a tireless advocate for innocent victims of the American invasion.

Here’s the full LC Wes comment:

“As much as I dislike the ‘C’ word, Misha, I still have to say: you were right about Debbie Schlussel the first time. Except I’m not sure even cunt is a strong enough epithet to describe her, given her attacks on your friends … and now even their close family members.

“And Schlussel is actually supposed to be a conservative? This sort of scorched-earth, take-no-prisoners, there-are-no-innocent-victims attitude is the sort of thing we expect out of the Kos Kidz and Democratic Underground, not the people on our side of the fence.”

Further investigation into the Misha-Schlussel War reveals that it concerns a post by Schlussel on her blog dissing Denmark for not strictly adhering to the Kach Kahane Chai school of Muslim relations, then further advising that people not “Buy Danish” in solidarity over the cartoons controversy and boycott of Danish goods by some Muslims. Misha, who is Danish-American*, countered with an expletive-filled rant against the “syphilitic little ignorant slut” Schlussel, whom he also imagined must “give good head. There has to be some reason why you still get paid to do what you do.”

At this point, Schlussel sucked off somebody at the law library to get her little ignorant hands on the Michigan penal code, and deduced that while she may well be a slut, she ought to be able to prove in court that she’s no syphilis carrier.

So little-ignorant-but-not-syphilitic-slut Schlussel fired off an email to Misha threatening a lawsuit if he didn’t retract the “defamatory items” in his original post. Misha actually did comply, if somewhat halfheartedly, but Schlussel wasn’t buying it, as you can see from this ridiculous exchange of emails over the matter.

At some point, Schlussel caught wind that other blogger pals of Misha were laughing at her, so the war widened to include several more charming personalities. Last we heard, Schlussel was threatening to sic the FBI on Misha and his pals.

So where does it all go from here?

Well, this BlogWar may be a localized affair now, but it ain’t over by a long shot, folks. And I may be getting ahead of myself, but if hostilities continue to escalate, we could see the entire rightwing blogosphere caught up in it as blogroll alliances are tested and crosslinks are drawn in the sand.

Then, when the dust finally settles over Wingnut War I, we on the Left who wisely stayed out of it will be left to pick up the pieces of the shattered right blogosphere, perhaps implementing a Josh Marshall Plan to get Wingnuttia back on its feet as we reap the reward of the peace dividend and decades of blogging supremacy.

So we could have that going for us. Just sayin’.

* Hyphenated to piss him off.

UPDATE: I just noticed when reviewing the Misha-Schlussel email exchange, that in her litany of charges against Rottweiller commenters' remarks, pointedly absent is any offense taken at several complimenting her tits.

So This Nazi Walks into a Cartoon War ...

2006-02-21T12:17:00.000-08:00

Where are the Paladins of Free Speech on the sentencing of British "historian" David Irving to three years in prison for breaking an Austrian law that prohibits Holocaust denial?

In recent weeks, some of the top names in the rightwing blogosphere have constructed a simple litmus test to separate brave and noble lovers of liberty from 'dhimmi' appeasers: Publish the Mohammed cartoons and you're courageous and principled, don't publish them and you've already capitulated to Sharia law.

Of course, offending a significant number of Muslims isn't a particular concern of this crew. In fact, some of them have made it their life's work to offend as many as possible. Which is fine - free speech is free speech, right?

Well, not so fast. It would seem to us that the true test of one's love of free speech does not lie in defending the sort of speech one really likes, but in standing up for speech one detests. Enter racist scumbag Irving, whose prison sentence seems to almost perfectly coincide with the ongoing, and violent, clash between free speech and religious sensitivity.

So again, where do our free speech champions on the right stand on Irving? The Irving sentence was first reported Monday evening as near as I can tell. As of this writing, it's late afternoon on Tuesday. Here's what we've heard about Irving from the following bloggers:

Michelle Malkin: Nada.

Glenn Reynolds: Bupkus.

The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiller: Zilch.

Charles Johnson: A brief note on the sentencing, here, with no editorial comment whatsoever ... let alone an expression of the view that Holocaust denial, as loathsome as it is, ought to be considered "free speech" if we are to be consistent on these things. Immediately following the Irving post, Johnson posts this bit of editorializing on the Mohammed cartoons: "Big media in the US are too scared to do it, but a few local papers like the Fort Myers News-Press have published the cartoons of blasphemy."

Captain's Quarters: Nothing.

Powerline: Assrocket posts on Irving, making sense when he writes: "David Irving is an awful human being, but it's pretty hard to take the high ground with regard to freedom of speech--over, say, the Danish cartoons--when you're sending people to jail for 'grossly playing down' or 'trying to excuse' Nazi crimes. Some say, of course, that for Europe the Holocaust is unique and deserves this special legal status. But then, the Muslims think Mohammed is unique, too. Once you start making exceptions of this sort, it's hard to know when to stop."

The Corner: The Pantload is "conflicted" about the Irving sentence, but ultimately finds it to be "wrong and that we have bigger threats than aging Third Reich nostalgists." Fair enough, though a few posts later he inexplicably argues for criminalizing pole dancing. Old racists trump sex in the Doughy Pantload's version of free speech, though we can't help but wonder how he feels about pole dancers in Nazi bondage gear. Meanwhile Andrew Stuttaford quotes a Jyllands-Posten journalist: "Free speech is free speech is free speech. There are no buts."

These few don't represent all of the right, of course. But they are top ecosystem rightwing bloggers who have commented frequently on the cartoon controversy, so it's interesting to note that only three - LG, Powerline and the Corner - even mention the Irving story, while just Powerline and the Corner editorialize about it in a manner consistent with their stance on the publishing of the cartoons.

We'll update as the day goes on. Or not ... it ain't like we're getting paid for this.

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds weighs in on Instapundit a couple days after the Irving news broke with this post today, which mostly says "ditto Mickey Kaus" :

"I MEANT TO COMMENT on David Irving's conviction for Holocaust denial yesterday, but got distracted and forgot. Mickey Kaus [you'll have to find the Irving stuff, Kaus doesn't permalink his posts], however, has it about right. I should also note that this further exacerbates the "censorship envy" of the radical Muslims -- with European countries happy to punish some speech that is regarded as beyond the pale, the discussion has shifted from whether censorship should exist at all to when it should be justified. This is yet another reason why a general rule in favor of free speech is actually better for ensuring social peace than a set of rules prohibiting offensiveness."

Also, Robert Scheer has a column up detailing why the Irving case is important, "particularly at a time when Muslim fundamentalists are being lectured as to the freedom of expression that should be afforded cartoonists."

UPDATE II: Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters has a post up about Irving, saying: "Free speech means having to listen to repugnant and idiotic drivel on occasion. The antidote is not government censorship but more speech in rebuttal to the ignorance that arises."

Malkin, LGF and Misha still missing in action.

Not That I'm Big Into Bill Maher, But ...

2006-02-20T20:59:00.000-08:00

Entered the poster below in this contest over at Crooks&Liars. Prize is some Bill Maher swag. I hope I get an autographed picture of him giggling with Ann Coulter. Unfortunately, you can't see the gun in Cheney's hand as clearly as I would have liked ... but can you guess who the 'girl' is in the upper right?

(click image to enlarge)

Yellow Elephant Preznit's Day Special!

2006-02-20T07:53:00.000-08:00

(click images to enlarge)

A Cobaggish Plea for Help Contest

2006-02-17T07:04:00.000-08:00

It's Three Bulls!-meets-Rich Lowry here at Parrotline today! ~~Do our work for us~~ enter our super-duper open-ended, as-long-as-it's-teh-funny CONTEST-OF-CONTESTS!

All you have to do is pick a topical issue, research it thoroughly, bang out a few rough drafts on your own time, then submit a final essay to comments. Make sure it's teh funny. Illustrations welcome, but unfortunately Haloscan doesn't support them. Perhaps you could describe the illustrations as part of the essay.

Alternately, you can do whatever you want with Photoshop or whatever and send it to dpoeter-at-earthlink-dot-net. Just make sure it's teh funny.

Grammar, spelling and punctuation will be graded for accuracy and/or ironic inaccuracy.

Judging and final vote will be totally arbitrary.

Winner gets a lifetime supply of suck.

10 Yellow Elephants + One

2006-02-16T23:24:00.000-08:00

(Click images to enlarge)

More Photoshop Fun

2006-02-15T22:14:00.000-08:00

Hey, kids! Snowed in? Nothing on the tube? Well, never fear! Here's a new boardgame that's blood-splatteringly fun for the whole family. It's TortureLand - where losing the moral high ground ... means winning the game!

(Click image to enlarge ... it doesn't get big enough to read the small print, but I'm working on that.)

UPDATE: Go to Pinko Punko's gaff to see the image big enough to read! Go directly to the large version here. Thank you Pinko Punko and Three Bulls! You are a gentleman and a cobag!

Dick Cheney is So Evil ...

2006-02-14T21:18:00.000-08:00

... that he was supposed to go on an al-Quailda hunting trip but wound up shooting at an old friend instead.

Dick Cheney is so evil! contest at Pinko Punko's place. Go. Now.

Tucker Carlson in ... 'This Twerp's Packin'!'

2006-02-14T19:47:00.000-08:00

So I'm watching Scarborough Country - which is to The O'Reilly Factor as Jeff Foxworthy is to Larry "The Cable Guy" - and they've got Lawrence O'Donnell, the West Wing executive producer, on to discuss the Cheney hunting fiasco with Tucker Carlson, Nora ... Dunn? Doherty? whatever ... and some woman from the NY Post.

O'Donnell gets rolling on the missing 24 hours between the time Cheney shot a guy and the time the cops got to talk to him. And O'Donnell asks, point blank, "My only question is, was the vice-president drunk?"

This sets Tucker into apoplexy ... he starts sputtering about how he's a hunter (snort), he's shot like a million shotgun rounds (giggle), and the preposterousness! of anybody drinking! while shooting guns! blah blah ... at which point Scarborough, momentarily sane, drops in to laugh at Tucker's dorkiness, managing in the process to work in every single one of his "I'm down with dumbasses" button phrases (red state, Redneck Riviera, flyover country, etc.) ... prompting Tucker to freak out further, because usually big cousin Joe's down for letting him pretend he's a tough guy, like that time a few weeks ago when him and Joe were talking about some child molester in Connecticut and Tucker was all trying to look hard and saying shit like: "You better not leave me alone in a room with a piece of filth like that," and Joe was going along with it, fighting the instinctive eye roll with every ounce of his training in the Republican black arts, nodding in manly agreement, but really, like, AS IF, you bow-tied putz ... so anyway Tucker's on the ropes, trying to claw his way back in with the Kewl Kidz, and decides to snark, "Well, maybe he was shooting heroin, too!" but that's, you know, going a little overboard, dude, in fact, that totally misses the point ... uh, so, anyway, heh heh, now THAT was a little embarrassing ... whoops, folks, that's all the time we have! Up next after the break, David Gregory vs. Scott McLellan ... but don't touch that dial or you'll miss a few bars of the shittiest theme song on cable news!