Monthly Archive

The recent dustup over the now-failed immigration bill was built, in large part, on the supposed desire of the conservatives to see that existing immigration laws are enforced. But it’s an absolute fallacy that the right wing in this country embraces a strict law-and-order stance. For evidence, you have only to check some of the wingnut blogs out there.

I’ve commented before on the ignorance and intellectual incompetence of the self-styled ‘Emperor’ Misha, proprietor of the blog ‘Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler’. He has provided new proof that wingnuts don’t really want law and order — they just want what they want, and to hell with any thought of doing it legally. In a post regarding the arrest of an Australian man for allegedly firing a shot through the front door of his home to scare off intruders, he says:

It’s a pity that he didn’t save a few rounds for the cops. That’s the only sure way to deal with Gestapo tyrants and their henchmen who are “only follovink orderz.” After a while, they get nervous from hauling the perforated bodies of their fellow goons back to the morgue.

What would we do without Andrew ‘Gribbit’ Richardson to show us the pasty, beady-eyed face of true intellectual cowardice?

Yesterday, Gribbit decided to vomit out a comment about the recent telephone confrontation between Elizabeth Edwards and the loathsome Ann Coulter. Go and view the video, or even better read the transcript, and then compare it to what Dipshit Richardson said.

Elizabeth Edwards called into Chris Matthews’ ‘Hardball’ program on MSNBC to ask Ann Coulter, who was Matthews’ guest, to stop criticizing her hubby… “Johnny’s feelings are hurt now I would like for you to stop criticizing him” was the message that she was trying to send.

Nope. Andykins is lying outright about what Elizabeth Edwards said. At no point did she ask Coulter to “stop criticizing” her husband. Read the rest of this entry »

I would have given my left nut to have had this when my kids were growing up…

The Control-a-Kid remote has all the functions you will need to help keep those little monsters under control. Functions like stop sulking or tantrums, eat greens to do homework and more. What is even better is that this remote does not use batteries, but is powered by positive thinking.

(Hat tip: Random Good Stuff)

Poor, poor Justin Higgins. It’s not enough that he has proclaimed that murder is patriotic, finds forgery humorous, and mindlessly repeats any wingnut lie about 9/11 he hears. No, he seems to have developed into a full-blown pathological liar.

Justin decided to apply his patented mix of ignorance and dishonesty to the controversial topic of embryonic stem cell research. George W. Bush recently vetoed a bill that would have permitted federal dollars to be used for embryonic stem cell research.

After I ridiculed Justin for declaring as worthless a line of research that has been underway for a mere nine years, he decided it was time to haul out the Big Lie:

Transplanting embryonic stem cells has resulted in cancer in a lot of folks…

‘Scuse me while I wipe the tears from my eyes. This is really hilarious stuff, a real knee-slapper! For “a lot of folks” to have contracted cancer from embryonic stem cell transplants, there would actually have to have been some human trials of embryonic stem cell transplants. Read the rest of this entry »

Over at NO QUARTER, Larry Johnson outlines a plan that might actually get us out of Iraq. That guarantees that it will never receive a hearing in Washington…

The current U.S. offensive will fail.  We will punch ourselves out on an enemy that is smart enough to retreat in the face of overwhelming force.  We will go house to house rousting able bodied men from their sleep and humiliating them in front of their wives.  We will detain some of these folks but eventually let them return home.  When they return home they will be fully prepared to support whatever insurgent group will help them reclaim the honor we took from them.

We have employed these insane tactics for four plus years.  And what have we achieved?  A steady increase in terrorist violence and insurgent attacks.  More U.S. soldiers have died in the last six months then in any six month period since the war began…

What should we do?  It is very simple.

1. Recognize that we are fighting a hydra-headed insurgency.  There are at least 20 different insurgent groups.  There is no single enemy.  Ironically, we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about “Al Qaeda”.  We deceive ourselves that Al Qaeda is the main enemy in Iraq.  It is not.

2.  Disengage from attacking the Iraqi people.  Immediately institute a moratorium on kicking in the doors of suspected weapons sites, etc.  Whatever value has been achieved by capturing small caches of weapons has been grossly overshadowed by the ill-will we have spawned among the various factions in Iraq.  If a house has to be invaded let the Iraqi police or soldiers do it.  Our boys and girls need to sit this one out.

3.  Empower local sheiks and tribal chiefs to secure the roads and infrastructure in their area.  Pay them to keep the roads open and free of explosives.  Provide training and support to those tribes.  We do not have enough troops to secure the roads and infrastructure.  We would need at least 500,000 troops to accomplish that objective.  We do not have them and we do not have a plan (e.g., draft) in place to produce such numbers in the foreseeable future.  We need to stop bullshitting ourselves and work with the tools we have, not the tools we would like to have.

4.  Convene a regional peace conference.  We need Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria at the table.  We must negotiate our way out of Iraq while preserving our own interests in the region.   Like it or not we have created a majority Shia state in Iraq that will not willingly  relinquish power.  Yes they will be favorably disposed to Iran, at least for the near term.  But we can accomplish more through diplomacy in the region then thru military action.  Our current approach is tarnishing our reputation with each new report of an offensive to “root out” Al Qaeda.

5.  Deploy an international peace keeping force to Baghdad.  As long as U.S. troops are the face of the military action in Iraq, we foster the impression that we want the chaos.  Most folks in the Middle East still believe we are a superpower.  By definition nothing happens unless we want it to.  Therefore, the violence in Iraq is a deliberate choice of the U.S. superpower.   Otherwise, because we are a superpower, we would exert control over the insurgents and stop the violence.  For some strange reason the the Arabs and Persians don’t comprehend, we are allowing Iraq to fall into chaos and disorder.  If we did not want that outcome then we would do something different because we are a SUPERPOWER.

I know one thing for certain.  The approach I have outlined above will work far more effectively in helping the United States achieve tangible, positive results in Iraq then the madness and insanity of General Odierno and his strategy of punching the bag of jello known as the Iraqi insurgency.

You remember Crybaby Clay, don’t you? Yeah, he’s the twitching cretin who advocates genocide and insists that something published in 1998 can be a secret in 2006.

Well, he’s hauled his pasty ass over to his keyboard, wiped the Cheetos stains off his pudgy little fingers, and has graced us with yet another example of his special brand of idiocy. Commenting on a recent report [PDF] on the domination of right-wing programming in talk radio, Clay quotes from the report and then proves beyond all doubt that he does not understand what he has read:

“Along with other ideas, the report recommends that national radio ownership not be allowed to exceed 5 percent of the total number of AM and FM broadcast stations, and local ownership should not exceed more than 10 percent of the total commercial radio stations in a given market. “

Where are the percentages limiting liberal television news channels, liberal newspapers and liberal Talk Radio stations, (whoops. I forgot that they don’t have any)?

YO! IMBECILE! The “percentages limiting liberal television news channels, liberal newspapers and liberal Talk Radio stations” are right there in the quote, asswipe! The suggested limits are based on percentages owned by a specific entity (not ideology), and would apply to everyone equally.

I swear, it’s mental deficients like Clay who make it necessary to put warnings like “do not use orally” on toilet bowl cleaning brushes. I don’t mind that he posts this kind of blatant stupidity, of course — Clay and his sort have immense entertainment value.

President George W. Bush vetoes a bill that would have provided funding for stem cell research:

“Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical,” Mr. Bush said in a brief ceremony in the East Room of the White House. He called the United States “a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred.”

The Great War against Terrifying Brown People™ continues, with our brave soldiers fearlessly and deliberately targeting little children:

U.S. special operations forces were targeting the leader of al-Qaida in Afghanistan — one of the organization’s top commanders — when they launched an attack against a compound that killed seven children Sunday in Paktika province of eastern Afghanistan, U.S. officials tell NBC News.

According to several officials, and contrary to previous statements, the U.S. military knew there were children at the compound but considered the target of such high value it was worth the risk of potential collateral damage.

Discuss.

(Hat tip to FireDogLake)

Here we go again. Ric Ottaiano, who has been busted for his ridiculously transparent lies before, is back with another idiotic fabrication:

American Muslims were asked “Do you personally feel [suicide bombing] is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?” In response, 26% found it justified, while 9% refused to answer.

Nope. Ottaiano is lying again. What does the Pew Research report [PDF] actually say?

In addition to being more concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism, Muslims in the U.S. are far less likely than Muslims in other parts of the world to accept suicide bombing as a justifiable tactic. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in the U.S. (78%) say that the use of suicide bombing against civilian targets to defend Islam from its enemies is never justified. In this regard, American Muslims are more opposed to suicide bombing than are Muslims in nine of the 10 other countries surveyed in 2006; opposition is somewhat greater among Muslims in Germany (83%).

Overall, 8% of Muslim Americans say suicide bombings against civilian targets tactics are often (1%) or sometimes (7%) justified in the defense of Islam. Muslims in France, Spain and Great Britain were twice as likely as Muslims in the U.S. to say suicide bombing can be often or sometimes justified, and acceptance of the tactic is far more widespread among Muslims in Nigeria, Jordan and Egypt.

Where does Ottaiano get the 26% figure?

About a quarter (26%) of younger U.S. Muslims say suicide bombing can at least rarely be justified, 17 percentage points higher than the proportion of Muslims ages 30 and older (9%) who share that view. The age gap is about as wide in Great Britain (18 percentage points) but somewhat narrower in Germany (12 points), France (11 points) and Spain (7 points).

Ottaiano has deliberately conflated the poll results for Muslims under 30 with the figure for all Muslims. It’s vitally important to bigots like Ric Ottaiano to do everything possible to demonize the scapegoats du jour, and he has no compunction about lying if it helps the cause. Read the rest of this entry »

There are many ways to be divine. Ian McDonald’s Hugo-nominated story “The Little Goddess” shows us one such way:

As the car took me across the waking city I tried to understand how it felt to be human. I had been a goddess so long I could hardly remember feeling any other way, but it seemed so little different that I began to suspect that you are divine because people say you are. The road climbed through green suburbs, winding now, growing narrower, busy with brightly decorated buses and trucks. The houses grew leaner and meaner, to roadside hovels and chai-stalls and then we were out of the city—the first time since I had arrived seven years before. I pressed my hands and face to the glass and looked down on Kathmandu beneath its shroud of ochre smog. The car joined the long line of traffic along the narrow, rough road that clung to the valley side. Above me, mountains dotted with goatherd shelters and stone shrines flying tattered prayer banners. Below me, rushing cream-brown water. Nearly there. I wondered how far behind me on this road were those other government cars, carrying the priests sent to seek out little girls bearing the thirty-two signs of perfection. Then the car rounded the bend in the valley and I was home, Shakya, its truck halts and gas station, the shops and the temple of Padma Narteswara, the dusty trees with white rings painted around their trunks and between them the stone wall and arch where the steps led down through the terraces to my house, and in that stone-framed rectangle of sky, my parents, standing there side by side, pressing closely, shyly, against each other as I had last seen them lingering in the courtyard of the Kumari Ghar.

And today we have more evidence that gung-ho “unabashed conservative” Justin Higgins never met a fabrication he couldn’t love with all his heart. He’s desperate to find a good reason for the war in Iraq, and so he burbles:

We can look back and remember that Mohammed Atta, the lead 9/11 hijacker, trained in Baghdad with direct oversight from Iraqi Intelligence forces. The justification for war continues stacking.

Huh. Silly me. I thought the thing to do was to determine the justification and then go to war, not go to war first and fill in the justification as an afterthought. Oh well. If you follow his link, you end up back at a post he made last October, and thence to an article published in Britain’s Telegraph in late 2003, claiming that “Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks against the US, was trained in Baghdad by Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist”.

There is one teeny-tiny problem, of course: The document on which the Telegraph story was based is almost certainly a forgery, and it places Atta in Baghdad at a time when the FBI knows he was actually in the US:

A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in the summer of 2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the United States when the trip presumably would have taken place, according to U.S. law enforcement officials and FBI documents…

The document, which according to Coughlin was supplied by Iraq’s interim government, doesn’t say exactly when Atta was supposed to have actually flown to Baghdad. But the memo is dated July 1, 2001, and Coughlin himself places the trip as the summer of 2001.

The problem with this, say U.S. law enforcement officials, is that the FBI has compiled a highly detailed time line for Atta’s movements throughout the spring and summer of 2001 based on a mountain of documentary evidence, including airline records, ATM withdrawals and hotel receipts. Those records show Atta crisscrossing the United States during this period—making only one overseas trip, an 11-day visit to Spain that didn’t begin until six days after the date of the Iraqi memo.

One FBI document, labeled “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” states that during the summer of 2001, Atta “conducted extensive travel” that included visits in Florida, Boston, New York, New Jersey and Las Vegas. Indeed, this and other FBI documents show that during the last few days in June—when the presumed Iraq trip would appear to have occurred—almost all of Atta’s movements are accounted for: On June 27, 2001, Atta flew from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., to Boston. On the morning of June 28, he traveled from Boston to San Francisco (flying first class) where he switched planes and landed in Las Vegas that afternoon at 2:41 p.m. That afternoon, he rented a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo rental-car office, set up an account at an Internet café called the Cyber Zone and checked into the EconoLodge motel on Las Vegas Boulevard, a cheap motel in a neighborhood of seedy strip joints that is located barely two blocks from the local FBI office.

The FBI records show Atta logged onto his Cyber Zone Internet account five times over the next two days and then checked out of the EconoLodge at 3:30 a.m. on the morning of July 1. He then returned his rental car and boarded a flight to Denver at 5:59 a.m., landing in Boston later that day. A week later, on July 7, Atta boarded a flight from Boston to Zurich—the first leg on his trip to Spain. He returned to the United States on July 19, 2001.

It’s bad form amongst the wingnuts to let the facts get in the way of a good, juicy lie. Justin is just doing his part to uphold the proud traditions of invincible ignorance and blatant dishonesty for which he and his kind are so justly renowned.

Hoo boy. As the first entry in his “ROTR Summer”, our little “unabashed conservative” Justin Higgins has plopped out a post entitled “A Lesson For The Save Darfur Movement”. Let’s take a look at this masterpiece of fuzzy thinking and fact-free sloganeering…

During their fighting, hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died, many at the hands of the Janjaweed, and millions have been displaced. That’s the short version, and the version many are being sold on.

“Sold on” implies that there’s something “wrong” with this version of the Darfur story. What, exactly, is wrong, Justin? It looks very much like you used the phrase “sold on” to insinuate that this capsule description is somehow incorrect without actually having to say what is incorrect.

The first thing you need to know is who is selling the watered down and factually inaccurate version of what’s happening in Darfur. Let me introduce you to the group leading the charge, Amnesty International.

Justin claims that Amnesty International is “selling [a] watered down and factually inaccurate version of what’s happening in Darfur”. But he never bothers to explain what is “watered down and factually inaccurate” about their account. Are we supposed to just take your unsupported word for this, Justin? Why, might I ask, should anyone do such a thing? Read the rest of this entry »

John Scalzi reminds us that today is the last day to donate to the “Drag Scalzi’s Ass to the Creation Museum” project, and he ups the ante with a betting pool. Donate now to get in on the fun!

UPDATE 06/17/07 9:30 AM EDT: The final tally: $5,118.36. w00t! Scalzi’s going! Can’t wait for the report…

Following the example set today by Ed Brayton, I reproduce here Mildred Loving’s statement [PDF] upon the fortieth anniversary of the Loving v Virginia decision:

Loving for All

By Mildred Loving

Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement

When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn’t to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

We didn’t get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn’t allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn’t that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the “crime” of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: “”Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.” He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn’t have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men,” a “basic civil right.”

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the “wrong kind of person” for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Justin Higgins, a practicing chickenhawk,is going to give us his “action plan” for the Mideast tomorrow. Yowza. Who wants to bet it includes the killing of a lot of Terrifying Brown People™ by someone other than Justin Higgins?

UPDATE 06/18/07 7:51 AM EDT: Justin says “It’s coming”. We’ll see…

Justing Higgins has published a big list that carefully explains what an “unabashed conservative” does. It’s all very impressive, but he left one item out.

On January 12th, 2008, his eighteenth birthday, does Justin “Unabashed Conservative” Higgins plan to enlist in the military and personally fight the war that he has supported so vehemently?

He claims to be fighting an “information war” while he sits at home. Uh huh. The truth is probably far more venal…

I’ve found that an occasional message of hope and inspiration is good for one’s soul. To wit: I give you ‘Unwritten’...
 

John Scalzi bows to the voice of the people, and tells us that “All Right, Fine, I Will Go to The Creation Museum… IF…

...AND ONLY IF I receive at least $250 in donations via PayPal by 11:59pm NEXT FRIDAY, June 15, 2007. ALL the proceeds (minus PayPal’s processing bite) will then be donated to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an organization which for sixty years has striven to keep the chunky peanut butter of religion out of the dusky chocolate of good government.

I will most definitely be donating to this noble effort. Nothing would please me more than to see John Scalzi’s unique brand of snark applied to the idiocy of the Creation Museum. Get thee over there and make a donation today!

I have, of course, pointed out before that Cao of Caosblog.com is a lying, clueless hack. Once again she proves her willingness to promulgate one of the favorite fantasies of the far right wingnuts: that the mainstream media (what they call ‘the MSM’) doesn’t cover terrorist plots. Today’s lie is:

...the media has buried the news reports of the plot to blow up JFK that emerged within the past few days.

Hmm. How does that stand up to a cursory examination of reality?

• ABC News: Feds Claim to Bust NY Airport Terror Plot: ABC News
• Houston Chronicle: 3 arrested in JFK Airport terror plot
• CBS News: 4 Charged In JFK Airport Terror Plot
• Los Angeles Times: Alleged plot: A potential threat seen in America’s backyard
• Boston Globe: US charges 4 men in plot to blow up JFK airport
• New York Times: 4 Men Accused of Plot to Blow Up Kennedy Airport Terminals

...and over 2200 more stories as of 11:32 AM EDT this morning.

The fantasy world that fabulists like Cao inhabit is rife with an array of enemies poised to deny them the news of terrorism, death, and destruction that they crave. Unfortunately, out here in the real world, we hear about these things all the time. Too bad Cao and her ilk prefer to spew their lies, rather than conduct an honest discussion about the dangers faced by this country.

Remember Andrew “I DO NOT LIE” Richardson, aka Gribbit? He’s still around, and still as stupid and dishonest as ever. He provides further proof of this today, in a StopTheACLU post entitled “Proof That Romero Loves Terrorists More Than America”.

Referring to the lawsuit that was recently filed by the ACLU on behalf of three individuals who were kidnapped by the CIA and shipped to countries where they were tortured, Gribbit states that:

The CIA transports suspects back to their country of origin. If that country, under its laws, uses methods which some people consider torture, that is beyond our control once they’ve been repatriated.

Um, no. As the article makes very clear, the CIA does not necessarily ”[transport] suspects back to their country of origin”:

Mohamed, an Ethiopian national, was transported to Morocco, where he spent 18 months in prison in what the suit asserted included torture by the intelligence services of the North African kingdom. In 2004, he was taken by the CIA to a secret U.S. detention facility in Kabul, Afghanistan, and then to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he remains.

[emphasis mine]

Gribbit invents this claim that “CIA transports suspects back to their country of origin” out of whole cloth. The article he cites directly contradicts this claim, but that’s okay. Like most wingnuts, Gribbit prefers his own feeble lies to the facts.

The ease with which Gribbit accepts torture as a technique is sickening, and serves to demonstrate the moral incompetence of wingers of this sort. Eschewing the use of torture used to distinguish Western countries (the putative “good guys”) from the rest of the world. No more. Gribbit and his kind have allowed their moral sense to be strangled by their own fear.

US troops in Iraq are busy winning the hearts and minds of the people:

Violinist Mohammed Qassim recently had a prized 19th century violin smashed up in a raid on his house by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. “The whole apartment was in a complete mess,” said Mr. Qassim, who purchased the violin in Czechoslovakia 25 years ago. Although the instrument is beyond repair, Mr. Qassim still keeps the splintered remnants of his treasured violin inside its case.

Yup. Mission accomplished, indeed.

The Nietzsche Family Circus randomly picks a Family Circus cartoon and a quote from the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The very first one I got was dead on:

From the mouths of dead philosophers…