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Over at the hilariously misnamed blog “In My Right Mind”, uber-cretin Clay has revealed that (as usual) he is quite happy to expose his utter lack of concern for the facts. Not only that, but he highlights just how persistently ignorant he chooses to be.

He has published what he no doubt believes is a clever little cartoon, blaming the “liberals” and the New York Times specifically for “tell[ing] the terrorists how we are tracking their financial transactions”. Clay is referring to an article published by the NYT on June 23, 2006 (ten months ago) that discussed the use of a database known as Swift to track the financial transactions of terrorists and terrorist suspects. The right-wing screechmonkeys shrieked and clutched their pearls and proclaimed loudly that the NYT had committed “treason” by revealing this super-duper-secret fact — despite the fact that the Bush administration had trumpeted for years their efforts to eavesdrop on the financial transactions of terrorists. The claim that this monitoring was a deep, dark secret tactic until the NYT published their report was quickly debunked when Victor Comras pointed out that:

...reports on US monitoring of SWIFT transactions have been out there for some time. The information was fairly well known by terrorism financing experts back in 2002.

I pointed out at the time how utterly without merit the claim of “treason” was. Nothing has changed since then — it’s still an incredibly stupid and dishonest accusation to make.

Poor, dumb Clay. He is either being deliberately dishonest by dredging up this ancient right-wing lie, or he really is so pathetically ignorant that he doesn’t know how quickly and thoroughly the accusations of “treason” were discredited. Either way, there is one and only one lesson that Clay’s latest droolings can teach us:

Our favorite Moron-American, Justin Higgins, still thinks that the rusty, unusable WMDs that were breathlessly announced by two Republican senators last summer are somehow proof that Iraq had functioning weapons of mass destruction at the time that the US invaded that country. That claim was debunked almost as soon as it was made — but Justin never met a fairy tale he couldn’t love.

And, he quotes with apparent approval a comment regarding Senate majority leader Harry Reid on another blog (“Rope. Tree. Dhimmicrat. Some assembly required”), demonstrating that he still agrees with the wingnut view that murder is an appropriate tool in political debate.

That’s our Justin — intellectually and morally bankrupt, and proud of it.

Moron-American Justin Higgins says:

They sure do. And as we have already seen, Justin Higgins is one of those liars. Be sure to bring lots of salt when you’re reading his crap.

The halfwit child Justin Higgins accuses Symantec of a “liberal attack” on a right-wing website called “Passionate America”, because Norton Internet Security lists the site as a “known phishing web page”:

Now, the liberal assault has moved to a technical front, as Norton internet security thinks Bill is a fraud.

Idiot Justin doesn’t understand, or chooses to ignore, the concept of the “false positive”. Jumping to conclusions on the basis of absolutely no evidence whatsoever is nothing new for Justin. Neither is making a very public ass of himself. It’s good to know that there is at least one talent this poor fool has mastered. God help him when he tries to make a living for himself, though. The real world does not suffer talentless fools gladly.

UPDATE 04/15/07 5:05 PM EDT: Justin has chosen to start lying about what I’ve said. Anyone surprised? I left several comments on his post, and he has altered one in another moronic attempt to discredit me. Here's the original comment.

Justin claims that this is all OK because he gives himself permission to lie about what other people say in their comments. Remember, folks, wingnuts like Justin Higgins claim to hold the moral high ground. It’s a safe bet that he’s never actually studied those Ten Commandments he’s always yammering about. One of them indicates that his god doesn’t really like liars.

UPDATE 04/15/07 7:06 PM EDT: Justin can’t stop lying: my original comment, the false version he has posted.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died the other day. Much has been written about him since, by people far more familiar with his works than I, so I will not bore you with my ignorant musings about him. But I will commend to you his essay entitled “Cold Turkey”, written in 2004. A few excerpts:

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

...

How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …

And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

...

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!

In a wonderful bit of serendipity, Steve Higgins of Omni Brain posted an image that perfectly captures the “thinking” of trolls like On Lawn, who recently left his verbal feces on this site:

(click for full-size image)

I urge On Lawn and his fellow nutcases to seriously consider donating their brains for the scientific study that Steve mentions. At least then, the organs would be put to some use.

Here is a frightening peek of the scenery that lies down the road that hatemongers like Cao, Kit Jarrell, Nedd Kareiva, Melanie Morgan, Jay Stephenson of ‘StopTheACLU’, and others want this country to take.

On Friday March 30, 2007 at around 3:00pm, Mr. Kuldip Singh Nag, a Sikh American who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Navy during the first Gulf War, was at his home in Joliet, IL when a local police officer noticed that a van parked on Mr. Nag’s private property had expired registration tags. Upon being confronted with this, Mr. Nag’s wife, Vera Kaur Nag, informed the officer that the van is parked on their driveway and was inoperable.

Mr. Nag then came outside to answer the officer’s questions regarding the van. The Joliet police officer then demanded that Mr. Nag park the van inside his garage and not on the driveway, to which Mr. Nag responded to the officer that it was not possible and that regardless, the van is parked on his private property and he has a right to park it on his driveway.

At this moment, the officer pulled out his pepper spray and attacked Mr. Nag. As Mr. Nag screamed in agony, the officer removed his baton and violently struck Mr. Nag numerous times until he fell to the ground. While the assault ensued, the officer was reported by both Mr. and Mrs. Nag as saying, “You f****** Arab! You f***** immigrant, go back to you f****** country before I kill you!”

Mr. Nag’s wife and six year-old child both witnessed the violent assault, which resulted in Mr. Nag immediately being admitted to the hospital where he stayed for five days due to complaints of intense pain and head trauma. Mr. Nag also received numerous bruises and a serious head injury which have caused him to go blind for several minutes at a time.

This is the kind of thing the bigots and racists I named above want to see more of in this country: naked, unrestrained race hatred. Sikhs are not Arabs, of course… but racists like this police officer do not stop to think about such fine distinctions. (Racists, in fact, do not stop to think at all.) The rhetoric being spread by the unhinged rightwingers who freely spread their venom on America’s airwaves and in print media encourages and condones acts of violence like this.

The recent flap over Don Imus’ on-air racist comments is a small but encouraging sign that the country has finally become sick of the constant diet of hatred. Let us hope that this revulsion spreads, and that the hatemongers reap the ostracism they so richly deserve.

(Hat tip: Boing Boing.)

I don’t know how I could have forgotten this anniversary, but better late than never. On April 5, 2006, Justin Higgins (aka “Real Teen”), and Kender promised to go out and start personally arresting illegal immigrants. I put up a scoreboard at the time, and invited them to send documentation of each of their arrests, so that they could be given proper credit for their brave deeds.

Strangely, we’ve heard nothing of their efforts in the year that’s gone by. How can this be? Surely they’ve been prowling the streets and alleyways of the barrios near them, looking for the Terrifying Brown People™ they swore to target. Surely by now they’ve each racked up dozens of captures.

So, guys, don’t hide your accomplishments under a bushel basket. Share your victories with us. Show us the lavish news coverage of your daring exploits. A breathless nation awaits the thrilling stories of your bravery and selflessness.

How many illegals did you each capture? Hmmm?

I have found a stellar example of the poor reasoning skills and blatant dishonesty exhibited by so many of the religious right. Her name is Renee Aste, and boy, does she have problems with the simple task of answering straightforward questions.

Renee is one of several contributors to the group blog “The Opine Editiorials”, whose contributors all agree that gay marriage is a bad, icky thing and therefore no one should do it. This bunch loves to throw around the term “neutered marriage”, as in “The agenda of neutered marriage has little to do with anything regarding creating family”. Their general (if [deliberately?] vague) argument is that legitimizing gay marriage will be bad for all marriages.

This, of course, gives rise to the simple question: If letting gays marry will somehow damage heterosexual marriages, what will that damage look like? I’ve tried more than once to get an answer to questions of that sort out of this crowd, and they have yet to provide one. The latest example prompted a spectacular meltdown from the aforementioned Renee Aste.

A few days ago, I issued a simple and straightforward challenge to ‘mjf’, one of Renee’s co-bloggers:

Show me an actual marriage that has been neutered.

Renee quickly answered that challenge, claiming that her own marriage had been neutered. (‘mjf’ never did answer my question.) Yikes… sounds like things are bad in Renee’s marriage. But what exactly does it mean for her marriage to be ‘neutered’? In the course of a long and rambling reply to my challenge, she made a few other claims as well. I did the logical thing: I challenged her to back up those claims with facts: Read the rest of this entry »

Look at the headline the lying jackass at ‘Gateway Pundit’ put on one of his posts today:

Gateway Pundit: Democrat Rangel: “Americans Don’t Care About Future of Mideast Nor Should They”

Do you see the quotation marks there? You do? So do I. “Gateway” is stating that Rangel spoke those words.

Now watch the same video that ‘Gateway’ put in his post:

Did you hear Rangel say those words? No? Neither did I.

‘Gateway Pundit’ lies to his readers. Again.

Check his profile: He claims to be 250 years old, and to be interested in “truth”. Two more lies.

UPDATE 04/06/07 7:33 PM EDT: A new post from ‘Gateway Pundit’ brings yet another lie:

Today’s statement by Pelosi is in direct conflict to yesterday’s remarks from her entourage:

“I don’t care what the administration says on this. You gotta do what you think is in the best interest of your country,” said Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, who was part of the delegation.

Of course, Frank Wolf was not part of Pelosi’s group. He visited Syria with an all-Republican delegation before Pelosi’s visit — and the right-wing noise machine is saying little or nothing about that visit. Nope, gotta keep that double standard in full force.

Please keep lying, Gateway. You’ll ensure me an endless supply of fun blog posts to write, exposing you for the mendacious worm you are.

UPDATE 04/07/07 8:44 AM EDT: Gateway’s idiocy (and that of the whole wingnut noise machine) on the topic of Pelosi’s trip to Syria is driven home by two recent items:

1. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) visited Damascus on Thursday and met with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem. He criticized the administration’s refusal to engage with Syria:

   Asked to comment on Bush’s criticism of the congressmen’s visits to Damascus, Issa said: ‘President Bush, is the head of state, but he hasn’t encouraged dialogue. That’s an important message to realize: we have tensions, but we have two functioning embassies.’

2. Rep. Dave Hobson (R-OH), who accompanied Pelosi to Syria, noted that the complaints from the Bush administration ring a bit hollow:

   Hobson also frowned upon complaints from Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, about the trip. He said the administration knew about the trip in advance and provided the delegation with a jet.
   
   “As far as I know, they never said a word to anybody until we were in the air,” Hobson said.

Oops. Big, big oops. ‘Gateway Pundit’ and the rest of the screech monkeys look like complete, irredeemable tools. Again.

(Hat tip to ilgreven for these two items.)

Think Moderate has a well-documented post noting that in his press conference on Tuesday, President Bush lied to the American people about the origins of the “surge”.

Think about this for a moment. The President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, chose to deliberately lie about his command decisions. And as a result of his decisions, more American troops are sent to Iraq to die in a conflict for which there can be no military solution. That’s not my claim — that’s the claim of General David Petraeus, the current commander of US forces in Iraq.

Bush lies. Troops die. It really is as simple as that.

Today’s Sinfest speaks to me…

(click for full size image)

Over at Right on the Right, teenage bullshit artist Justin Higgins joins the winger lemmings in whining about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wearing a scarf while visiting a mosque in Syria.

But… oh, my, what’s this? Why, it’s Laura Bush wearing a scarf while visiting a mosque…

The moron that calls itself “Glib Fortuna” excoriates Speaker of the House Pelosi for visiting Syria. Of course, he doesn’t bother to inform his readers that a delegation of Republican congresscritters were in Syria just three days ago.

Selective ignorance is the stock-in-trade of slimeballs like Fortuna. Luckily, it’s easy to expose this dishonest imbecile for what he is.

UPDATE 04/04/07 08:23 AM: Of course, the gutless assclown deleted the trackback I left on the post. God forbid anyone be allowed to disagree with the great Glib Fortuna! Then he updates his post, claiming that

...the [Republican] delegation that preceded Pelosi’s to Syria was there to represent American interests and to issue warnings to a terrorist-supporting enemy

Really? Was Glib at the meetings between the Republican delegation and Syrian officials? Does he know what warnings were issued?

Of course not. This lying fool is making shit up as he goes.

He also claims that

Pelosi was there to represent one political party and to OPPOSE the president.

Again, how does he know this? He doesn’t. He’s pulling this crap out of thin air.

Notice that Fortuna completely ignores what Bush said yesterday:

We have made it clear to high-ranking officials, whether they be Republicans or Democrats, that going to Syria sends mixed signals — signals in the region and, of course, mixed signals to President Assad. And by that, I mean, photo opportunities and/or meetings with President Assad lead the Assad government to believe they’re part of the mainstream of the international community…

In other words, sending any Congressional delegations to Syria is a bad, bad idea… yet three Republicans go to Syria, and we hear nary a peep of protest from the White House. And Fortuna parrots the propaganda, like the good little lemming that he is.

And the fact remains: Fortuna did not mention the Republican delegation at all before I pointed their trip out. I would be willing to bet that he didn’t even know about the Republican delegation’s trip until I pointed it out to him. But as we all know, ignorance has never stopped Glib Fortuna from making a very public jackass of himself.

UPDATE 04/04/07 09:59 AM: Cao, reliably, pulls the same idiotic trick that Fortuna tried. These wingers sure know how to march in lockstep, don’t they?

UPDATE 04/06/07 12:17 PM: Glenn Greenwald reminds us that Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich went to China almost exactly ten years ago to conduct his own personal diplomatic mission — and was lauded by right-wing commentators for doing so.

Hypocrisy, pure unalloyed hypocrisy. Is there anything that the right-wingers of this country do any better?

UPDATE 04/06/07 12:21 PM: Predictably, Glib’s idiocy spawns some eliminationist rhetoric. Wingnuts love to screech that someone has to die for doing whatever they don’t like:

I hope people descend on Pelosi and Reid like a mob of villagers with pitchforks.

Via Juan Cole, we learn just what a tremendous success the “surge” has been in Iraq:

For all those journalists and politicians who keep insisting that there are new “glimmers” of “hope” in Iraq because of the new security plan started 6 weeks ago, here is a sobering statistic from the Iraqi government…

Iraqis killed in February: 1806 (64.5/day)
Iraqis killed in March: 2078 (67/day)
That is a 15% increase!

Of course, the real numbers are much higher than these government statistics suggest, since passive information gathering on casualties only catches a fraction.

So, someone please explain this to me: we send more troops to Iraq to increase security, and Iraqi deaths increase. How, exactly, is that a good sign?

And how is sending more of America’s best and brightest into the meatgrinder that is the Iraqi civil war, only to bring them home maimed or in body bags (3243 dead, 24,314 wounded), going to improve anything?

The US is engaged now in a war of choice: Bush chose to invade Iraq, and he has chosen to do nothing to bring the war to an end. The war was sold to the American people with lies and distortions, and the far right has kept up an endless barrage of lies and distortions ever since. Someone explain to me why any Americans should be dying in such a war.