July 2006

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NEWS FLASH: Heidi is telepathic, also sees the future!

July 31, 2006 in Political Animals | 3 comments

Heidi at ‘Euphoric Reality’ demonstrates the moral barrenness of the radical right as she attempts to justify the deaths of dozens of civilians in the Qana airstrike:

Call me a cold-hearted bitch, but I feel nothing. Why? … Because the people are lying. Hezbollah is in and among the civilians of the area. The citizens know exactly who they are.

…

So, no. I really don’t feel bad. I possibly feel a twinge of sadness for those poor kids, who lost their lives because all the adults around them were Muslim morons, and no one could be bothered to safeguard their lives. But those poor kids never really had a chance in life anyway.
Let’s be real clear what Heidi is claiming here:

  1. She knows the villagers were liars. How does she know? She just does! And because they were liars, they deserved to die. Even the children.
  1. She knows the children’s lives would have been worthless. How does she know? She just does! She sees the future! Because one self-described cold-hearted bitch sitting safe in Texas has these amazing powers, she gets to decide that children half a world away deserved to die. Read the rest of this entry »

Ogre the hysterical liar

July 27, 2006 in Political Animals | 4 comments

The far-right hysteric who calls himself ‘Ogre’ is once again engaging in his favorite tactic: lying outright. Citing a story in the Columbus Dispatch, he claims that the group Equality Ohio “oppose[s] free speech”.

How does Ogre arrive at this conclusion? Hard to tell. The only part of the Equality Ohio statement he quotes is the phrase “We call on Blackwell to retract his statement and apologize for his remarks”. There’s nothing in that statement that supports Ogre’s accusation that the group is opposed to free speech. They have expressed their dismay at comments made by a candidate for governor in Ohio, and have called on him to apologize. That’s it.

There is only one possible conclusion: Ogre has deliberately chosen to lie. Pretending that Equality Ohio has said something that they didn’t say is, frankly, a tacit admission that he cannot argue this matter on its merits. Somehow, given his past antics, this doesn’t surprise anyone — but it certainly hasn’t enhanced his already nonexistent credibility. (Neither, of course, does his naked bigotry — but that, also, isn’t a surprise.)

Wednesday HodgePodge

July 26, 2006 in Life, the Universe, and Everything | No comments

  • Here (via Backup Brain) is a handy list of 50 Easy Questions to Ask Any Republican:
    6. When Dick Cheney and the oil company and energy executives met in private to plan America’s energy policy, how much of their goal was to benefit consumers?

    7. Do you believe in the President’s call for an Era of Personal Responsibility?

    8. Since Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, how personally responsible are they for conditions in America today?

    …

    16. Do you like the government collecting personal data on you without a warrant?

    17. How much money do you have in your bank account, stocks and investments?

    18. What’s your partner’s favorite sex position?

    19. If you have nothing to hide, why aren’t you answering?
  • Marc Cooper asks hard questions about the current conflagration in the Middle East… questions many on the right would prefer were left unasked, one suspects:
    Warfare is not about keeping score, or getting even. It’s about the lives and deaths of real people. And thought it’s a cliche, most of them are just like me and you. War should never be a question of what is justified. But rather what is the minimum amount of violence absolutely necessary to achieve whatever that “just” goal might be. Does Hezbollah have a right to camp out in Lebanon and hurl missiles at Israel? Of course not. Hezbollah must be rolled back and disarmed, but not by flattening Lebanon and enflaming the entire Arab world.

    Likewise, one might ask: Do Israelis have the right to continue occupying Palestinian territory that — frankly — just doesn’t belong to them? Does Israel have the right to continue an occupation that deprives Palestinians of their sovereignty, their dignity and their equal rights? Of course not. A two-state solution must be reached and the Israeli domination of the Palestinians must come to an end, but not by supporting Palestinian suicide bombers nor any other atrocity committed against the Israeli civilian population.

    I’m sorry to be so blunt, but only a fool — yes, a fool — would watch unperturbed as match after match is tossed into the sea of gasoline that is the Middle East. If Israel’s retaliation, which now includes wholesale bombardment of Lebanese cities driving hundreds of thousands from their homes, morphs into a wide, regional war will anyone be consoled ten years from now by standing on the smoking ruins and simply saying, “Oh well, you know, the Hezbollah are the ones who started it.”
  • Gotta love those Christians… they got rules for everything, even assaulting your own children (via BoingBoing):
    Parents are told that smacking can be a “10-to-15-minute process” and that if a child reacts angrily, such as by slamming doors or “pouting”, they should be smacked again.

    “Smacking is meant to drive the foolishness, the sinful manifestations, out of the child’s personality so that they do not become permanent fixtures,” [the ‘guide to smacking’] says.
    Cool. When I next encounter a foolish Christian, do I get to smack him around for 10 to 15 minutes… and beat him again when he dares to complain?
  • Why do the small minds on the Right assume an air of moral superiority when it is so blatantly clear that they are moral cripples? Our good friend Justin H at RightontheRight.com tells us that because UN observers were not able to stop Hezbollah from firing missiles at Israel, it is perfectly all right to kill the observers:
    If UNIFIL had done their job, this conflict would never have been allowed to escalate, and Hezbollah would of never been allowed to mass this type of force. You have to realize, that if Hezbollah wasn’t firing at UNIFIL (and they weren’t), UNIFIL must of not been a threat to Hezbollah. That means they weren’t doing their jobs. Bombing an observation post may not of been the most tactful thing, but hey, even Reagan bombed the French Embassy when we went into Libya. Sometimes a message has to get across…
    What Justin is advocating, of course, is homicide as a form of communication. Golly, what a great concept! That’s the kind of morally corrupt thinking that got us into the mess we’re in now.

Service that astonishes

July 25, 2006 in Internal Affairs | No comments

Hearken to me, all ye webmasters. I have a wondrous tale to tell.

Earlier today, ThinkingMeat.net went off the air for a while. Unbeknownst to me, the site had exceeded its bandwidth limit for the month. (Whoops!) I sent an email to my hosting company, TRKHosting.com, and it was answered promptly by Tom Koch, the proprietor. I’m used to that; I am firmly of the opinion that Tom has struck a deal with some dark power that enables him to answer emails almost before they are sent, and to go entirely without sleep.

What I was not expecting was that Tom would instantly increase my bandwidth limit to more than twice its original size! I thanked Tom most profusely and asked him what I owed him for this service. The answer: not a red cent. Tom informed me that “this change is permanent and won’t cost anything extra. As long as you stay a client that’s all I need”.

The only possible response, I think, is… “Holy crap!”. There is good service, there is great service, and there is service that astonishes. Tom Koch and TRKHosting have never once failed to deliver astonishing service, and I cannot recommend Tom’s firm highly enough for anyone who needs web hosting services. I’ve placed a link to Tom’s site in my sidebar, where it should have been long ago. Tom, you are a gentlemen, a scholar, and a true wonder. Thank you.

Has anyone seen Jay Stephenson’s integrity?

July 20, 2006 in Political Animals | 3 comments

The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘integrity’ as “soundness of moral principle; the character of uncorrupted virtue, esp. in relation to truth and fair dealing; uprightness, honesty, sincerity”. I’ve been looking for that quality in the recent actions of Jay “rope + tree + ACLU lawyer = pinata” Stephenson, and I’m damned if I can find it.

Jay has handed responsibility for monitoring the comments on his posts over to a character who calls himself ‘loboinok’. However, ‘lobo’ is apparently given free rein to delete comments based solely on his own whim. ‘lobo’ recently made the mistake of challenging me to demonstrate that the statement “all terrorists are Muslims” is false — and I did. This apparently angered ‘lobo’; how dare anyone use the facts against him? So he did what any small-minded bigot in his position would do — he deleted the comment in which I explained the facts to him, and set about trying to silence me. Read the rest of this entry »

Who’s entirely stupid?

July 18, 2006 in Political Animals | 6 comments

Look at the evidence, and decide for yourself.

Jay “rope + tree + ACLU lawyer = pinata” Stephenson claims that veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas "is entirely stupid" for questioning White House mouthpiece Tony Snow about a recent veto of a UN Security Council resolution.

Crooks and Liars has the transcript:

QUESTION: But wasn’t there a resolution?

SNOW: No.

QUESTION: At the U.N.?

SNOW: No. You know what you’ve done — I see — what happened was that there was conversation about, quote, a cease-fire that was picked up on some of the microphone when some colorful language made its way into the airwaves yesterday.(LAUGHTER)

And the president was continuing a conversation he had had earlier with Prime Minister Tony Blair about staging. Would we like a cease-fire? You bet. Absolutely. We would love to see a cease-fire. But the way you stage it is that you make sure that the people who started this fight, Hezbollah, take their responsibility.

QUESTION: There was no veto at the U.N.?

SNOW: No. There hasn’t been a resolution at the V.N. — the U.N., whatever it is. There haven’t been any…(LAUGHTER)

There hasn’t been.(LAUGHTER) I’ve been at (inaudible) in Germany too long. There has been no resolution at the U.N.
A straightforward enough exchange… except that Tony Snow was lying. There was indeed a resolution, and the US did veto it:
The United States used its veto power on Thursday to block a Security Council resolution that would accuse Israel of a “disproportionate use of force.”

John R. Bolton, the American ambassador, exercised the veto after failing in an effort to deny the resolution the nine votes needed for adoption.
The text of the vetoed resolution called upon Israel “to halt its military operations and its disproportionate use of force that endanger the Palestinian civilian population and to withdraw its forces to their original positions outside the Gaza Strip”. This doesn’t seem to me to be a particularly even-handed resolution — nothing is said about Hezbollah’s attacks on northern Israeli cities.

The point, however, is that Thomas was right — there was indeed a veto. Tony Snow was lying — there was indeed a resolution. Read the rest of this entry »

Real Ugly? Real Dishonest!

July 15, 2006 in Political Animals | 11 comments

Another right-wing blogger gets caught lying. The “Real Ugly American” pretends that a recent post by Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly explains "Why the Left is Ignoring the War". One problem: Drum never claims to be explaining “why the left is ignoring the war”. In fact, the very first sentence of Drum’s post states:

Matt Yglesias suggests that I address the topic of why the liberal blogosphere doesn’t write very much about Israel-related subjects.
(Emphasis mine.)

And lo and behold, Real Ugly is careful not to quote that first sentence — since doing so would clearly put the lie to the horseshit he’s trying to sell here. Drum isn’t discussing the question of whether left-wing blogs are discussing the current hot war in Lebanon. Drum does not even mention the war in his post. Read the rest of this entry »

Saturday Hodgepodge

July 15, 2006 in Life, the Universe, and Everything | No comments

  • Human Rights Watch has published the findings of its Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project:
    In order to collect and analyze allegations of abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, Iraq, and at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, and to assess what actions, if any, the U.S. government has taken in response to credible allegations, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First have jointly undertaken a Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project (DAA Project). The Project tracks abuse allegations and records investigations, disciplinary measures, or criminal prosecutions that are linked to them… Available evidence indicates that U.S. military and civilian agencies do not appear to have adequately investigated numerous cases of alleged torture and other mistreatment. Of the hundreds of allegations of abuse collected by the DAA Project, only about half appear to have been properly investigated. In numerous cases, military investigators appear to have closed investigations prematurely or to have delayed their resolution. In many cases, the military has simply failed to open investigations, even in cases where credible allegations have been made.
    via MetaFilter
  • Is it even mathematically possible that the NSA’s illegal wiretaps can be effective at catching terrorists? Not according to an analysis by Professor Floyd Rudmin:
    To know if mass surveillance will work, Bayes’ theorem requires three estimations:
    1. The base-rate for terrorists, i.e. what proportion of the population are terrorists;
    2. The accuracy rate, i.e., the probability that real terrorists will be identified by NSA;
    3. The misidentification rate, i.e., the probability that innocent citizens will be misidentified by NSA as terrorists.
    No matter how sophisticated and super-duper are NSA’s methods for identifying terrorists, no matter how big and fast are NSA’s computers, NSA’s accuracy rate will never be 100% and their misidentification rate will never be 0%. That fact, plus the extremely low base-rate for terrorists, means it is logically impossible for mass surveillance to be an effective way to find terrorists.
  • Charlotte Aldebron, at the tender age of 12, understood idolatry better than many adults when she wrote "What the American Flag Stands For":
    The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.

    School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.

    Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag’s real meaning remains.
    via Daily Kos

Less than sincere

July 10, 2006 in Political Animals | 26 comments

I received the following email today from Jay Stephenson at StoptheACLU.com:

Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:33:08 -0400
From: “John Stephenson” <stephensonmeister@gmail.com>
To: meatbrain@thinkingmeat.net
Subject: Invitation

I think you are complete ass. Your persistance is what impresses me. If you will accept, I would like to invite you to debate me on my radio show this Saturday. If it only resorts to name calling and lies from you, I won’t be interested. I want the debate to be civil. If you accept, let me know and I will give you the details on how.

Jay

Well, it’s so good to know I’ve made some impression on Jay. Unfortunately, it seems that no one has ever made any impression on Jay regarding the issuance of invitations. Read the rest of this entry »

Cao wants more hatred

July 9, 2006 in Political Animals | 2 comments

Over at Cao’s Blog, Cao has decided that it’s time to crank up the hatemongering machine. In her post Moral People Must Learn How to Hate, Cao republishes an article by a rabbi (!) advocating hatred. One can only marvel at the spectacle of a Jew praising an emotion that led to the attempted extermination of European Jewry in the last century. On the other hand, it doesn’t surprise anyone to find Cao swooning at the thought of more hatred in the world.

So I decided to give her some truly virulent hatred to chew on. Read the rest of this entry »

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