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In the pioneering text The Pathology of Mind, English psychiatrist Henry Maudsley wrote of the personality disorder that would eventually come to be called “psychopathy”:

Such a noxious product of degeneracy now and then presents itself: a creature of such antisocial bias, so destitute of moral sensibilities and their fit reactions, so imbued with vicious inclinations, that it is truly a moral imbecile whom no culture, gentle or severe, be it never so patient, will raise to the level of moral feeling and conduct…

Such a creature is the moral imbecile who blogs under the nom de hate “Big Dog”, who today outdoes himself by expressing the wish that human beings should suffer and die for their opinions of the US military. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s that smell? Oh, it’s just Big Dog’s usual ignorance of the facts stinking up the place again…

It is important to remember that the president does not put in the earmarks…

Those of us who pay attention to the real world know that Bush has, in fact, inserted earmarks into legislation sent to Congress...

But presidents, including Bush, play the earmark game, too. Bush stuffs his budget with billions for pet projects very much like the ones he attacks when they originate on Capitol Hill, according to taxpayer groups and members of Congress.

“The president directs 20 times as much spending to special projects than the congress does,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told The Examiner this week.

Democratic House and Senate appropriators point to page after page of specific projects requested by the president in the 2008 spending bills. The actual number, according to watchdog groups, is nearly impossible to tally, but Senate Democrats recently pointed to hundreds, including 580 worth $15.6 billion that Bush included in his appropriation request for military construction and veterans affairs.

The $31.6 billion energy and water spending bill also contains billions in direct spending on projects selected by the Bush administration….

Some presidential earmarks have obvious roots, such as $24 million for the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program. The president earmarked a billion dollars for the Reading First program, which was criticized by government auditors for steering contracts to favored companies. He also sought $8.9 million for the Points of Light foundation, a pet project started by his father, former President George H.W. Bush.

Big Dog’s spew would stink less if he’d take the time to educate himself. But we all know that ain’t gonna happen…

Q: What do you do when you are a wingnut “historian” and someone asks you a hard question about history?

A: Delete the question and pretend it was never asked.

Meet Michael Zak, self-proclaimed “historian” of the Republican Party and all-around gutless weasel. He likes to paint Democrats as racists, and portrays Republicans as being invariably the friends of minorities. In comments on a recent post at his blog, I challenged Zak to define the “Southern strategy” used by the Republican Party in years past. His answer was the very incarnation of dishonesty:

Prior to Richard Nixon’s 1960 campaign, Republican presidential candidates did not campaign much at all in the South. Nixon decided to campaign in every state, thereby including the southern ones.

Democrat myth-makers call the GOP’s decision to campaign throughout the country the “Southern strategy” and imply there was something sinister about a Republican candidate campaigning in the South.

This is a blatant lie, of course. The Republican “Southern strategy” was not quite so innocent as simply campaigning in the South:

In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to the focus of the Republican party on winning U.S. Presidential elections by securing the electoral votes of the U.S. Southern states, often by exploiting racial anxiety among white voters.

Although the phrase “Southern strategy” is often attributed to Richard Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips, he did not originate it, but merely popularized it. In an interview included in a 1970 New York Times article, he touched on its essence:

“From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that… but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

While Phillips was concerned with polarizing ethnic voting in general, and not just with winning the white South, this was by far the biggest prize yielded by his approach.

I called Zak on his lie, and challenged him again to provide the correct information. At this point, Zak decided that a factual discussion was waaaaaaay too scary — so he deleted the comments I’d made. Compare the comments section of the post today with the mirror.

Scratch a wingnut, find a coward. It’s an old, old story, but somehow comforting to know that milksops like Michael Zak will always — always — choose to run from an honest debate.

“My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.”

via hotlinks

Over at Respectful Insolence, Orac has asked the blogosphere to join him in making certain that a coward and bully who goes by the remarkable moniker of “Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi FRCAM(Dublin) FRIPH(UK) FACAM(USA) MICR(UK)” doesn’t get away with suppressing legitimate criticism of his medical quackery. Two articles about him on the Quackometer Blog have been removed under threat of legal action in the UK. Orac has asked that those in the blogosphere repost these articles as widely as possible. My own copies of the articles appear just past the jump. Check Orac’s site for the full story.

UPDATE 01/24/08 1:30 PM: I’m going to revise my text for accuracy here, and because I have noticed in several wingnut blogs the claim that the CPI report accuses the Bushies of lying. I have read the report on the CPI site (something I suspect many wingnuts have not done), and I can find no indication that this is the case. I will therefore follow suit, and update some of my comments in the original post.

This is humorous. Andrew ‘Gribbit the Dipshit’ Richardson, known mostly for being a lying moron who dreams of beating people up, has an overwrought post in which he claims that Democrats...

...have the ability to tug at the heart strings of otherwise rational thinking individuals and make them forget to use their own minds and believe whatever they wish you to believe…

Golly gee willikers. I wonder what he thinks of the recently published report from the Center for Public Integrity, which documents nearly a thousand lies falsehoods used by the Bush administration to make Americans believe what Bushco wished them to believe — that we were in imminent peril of a terrorist attack using weapons of mass destruction supplied by Iraq…

see the whole comic…

You know, I really don’t expect HoosierArmyMom or her kind to start talking about serious issues in this election. Still, there’s always that one-in-a-million chance…

Lizard bitch posts, lizard bitch lies:

Meatbrain has a commenter called “Dan” who apparently got Meatbrain into some trouble, because Meatbrain deleted an entire post devoted to Big Dog’s “lies”.

Nope. The post in question hasn’t been deleted. But one doesn’t expect honesty from Cao. One expects lie after lie after lie after lie… and Cao does not disappoint.

HoosierArmyMom says she “has a problem” with Barack Obama. Well, she’s half right — she has a problem, but it isn’t with Obama…

Other problems I have are, first of all, the fact that he wants to be President of this county but refuses to wear a flag lapel pin that all the other members of Congress wear. The flag is symbol of something bigger than us all. It is a symbol of what men have fought and sacrificed life and limb to protect… Our Country! Regardless of how anyone feels about any given war this country has been engaged in, there is not a more selfless act anyone can do than to “put it all on the line” to defend their home, hearth and brothers-at-arms. I have a problem with a man who would not want to follow in the tradition of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy , etc (in that the flag meant something to them) and feels offended about wearing a flag lapel pin. And then there is the fact that he has been photographed just standing with his arms at his sides during the National Anthem. The hand on the heart honors those who have paid for our freedom in blood, the fact that our heart is pumping and we have lived our lives in a free and prosperous nation, is a debt we owe to a lot of 18,19, 20, etc year olds who gave up their opportunity to have such a life on beaches like Omaha, Iwo Jima, etc., so I look at it as millions of us not yet born, got this terrific life because those selfless young men went out there and defended our democracy and way of life. That is worth more to me than a gesture like placing my hand over my heart, but there is no way to repay that debt, so the hand goes on the heart everytime. But not so with Obama. He can dance on TV with Ellen, but he can’t put his hand on his heart during our National Anthem.

See the problem? That’s right… HAM, like most of the extreme wingnut whackjobs, focuses wholly on symbolism, and foregoes any discussion of the substance of Obama’s positions. It is apparent that she has formed her opinion of Obama based solely on the baseless smears being circulated in the wingnutosphere. There’s no indication that she has given any serious consideration to his positions on the issues facing this country, nor any sign that she is even capable of doing so.

HoosierArmyMom is emblematic of an inability of much of the electorate to conduct rational debate of the problems facing this nation, an inability that pervades the entire political spectrum. So long as alleged adults insist on being distracted by trivial symbolism and ignore actual substance, this country will continue to get the political leadership it deserves, instead of the leadership it needs.

Keep in mind that according to the wingnuts, it’s only the “Demon-rats” who supposedly want the terrorists to win.

A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al Qaeda and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international troops in Afghanistan.

The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

A 42-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Missouri, accuses the Islamic American Relief Agency of paying Siljander $50,000 for the lobbying — money that turned out to be stolen from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Siljander, who served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, was appointed by President Reagan to serve as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations for one year in 1987.

Huh. How ‘bout them traitorous Republican apples?

Enthusiastic warpimp Justin Higgins celebrated his eighteenth birthday a few days ago. Justin is so gung-ho about the idea of war that he recommends war as a valuable educational tool.

Justin has stated more than once that he fully intends to enlist in the military and risk life and limb for the glorious Global War on Terrah:

December 2005:

“I’m only 16, and I will enlist at 18 if we are still conducting major combat operations.”

June 2007:

“I plan on enlisting you idiot. I’ve made that clear. I’m looking at ROTC, National Guard, Reserves, and yes, active duty military service in one of the branches.”

June 2007:

“I’m fully standing behind my previous statement that I’ll join the military at 18 should we still be conducting major combat operations. No waffling.”

But it seems that Justin may be conflicted about actually serving in the military he claims to support. He’s been careful to leave himself some escape hatches…

June 2007:

“I’m not enlisting under Hillary Clinton, or any other Democrat, case closed, because we wouldn’t remain in major military operations. If I’m enlisting, I’m serving the country, not sitting around.”

June 2007:

“I’d be out of High School 6 months before the election, and at that point, I’ll be watching to see if the frigid bitch who won’t use our military wins.”

So, the time has come. Will you enlist in the military, Justin, as you indicated you would? Or will you fall back on the weasel words you’ve used when you’ve been pressed on this point before, and decide that you really don’t want to put your life on the line for the war you’ve so enthusiastically promoted up till now?

A database issue arose last evening, and the solution has required a reload of the blog database from a backup taken Monday morning. As a result, all comments made between 14 January 2008 02:00 AM EST and 15 January 2008 09:45 AM EST (the latter time is approximate) have been lost. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Wordpress should have emailed me copies of the comments made during that period, so if you want copies of your lost comments, just drop me a line. Feel free to repost any comments that have gone missing.

The database issue seems to have been caused by a problematical URL in a comment. Until I can work out a way to protect against a recurrence, all comments will be held for moderation. Anything that hasn’t got a suspect URL or isn’t spam will be approved.

My, my. Big Dog just cannot seem to resist advertising his ignorance ... again:

Heterosexual men do not just get HIV and they do not transmit HIV.

Lookie there, guys! If you are heterosexual, you can’t contract AIDS, and you can’t spread it! Wonderful news!

Too bad it’s a complete lie…

AIDS has killed more than 300,000 Americans, and some 750,000 are currently infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In the first years of the epidemic, deaths were concentrated among gay and bisexual men. But over the past ten years, the incidence of the disease has surged among women – from 6 percent of reported cases in 1985 to 19 percent in 1995. In about half these cases the virus was contracted through heterosexual sex.

In 77 couples, the woman had been infected with HIV at enrollment, and in 97, the male had been the infected partner. The HIV-positive men and women had a median age of 29 and a median viral load of 12,476 copies per mL. By the end of the study, 27% of infected women and 18% of infected men had transmitted the virus to their partners.

The researchers estimate the odds of an HIV-postive male infecting a female partner in an unprotected sexual encounter is about 9 in 10,000.

It’s pretty hilarious, watching Big Dog shoot himself in the foot constantly in matters of fact. I’d encourage him to keep the ignorance coming, but it’s clear that he really doesn’t have any choice in the matter.

Babbling moron Big Dog says:

It does not matter how the Amendment has been applied the fact is our Constitution does not say if you were born here you are a citizen.

Alas, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution specifically states (in its very first sentence):

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Big Dog is lying. It’s just that simple. Too bad he chooses to lie about matters that are so very easy to check.

The delusional “Emperor” Misha has drawn his audience primarily by being a hatemongering, potty-mouth borderline psychotic. His oft-repeated demands that policemen, judges, and district attorneys be murdered for one or another alleged outrage have been documented here in the past.

A recent outburst of ignorance from Misha serves handily to illustrate his cluelessness and mendacity. He quotes an article in New Scientist comparing governmental surveillance and privacy safeguards around the world:

Political shifts in Congress that were expected to bolster personal protection had little effect. The Bush administration was specifically called out for tapping international phone calls and emails without a warrant for those with suspected links to terrorists.

And here is Misha’s ignorant rejoinder:

Good HEAVENS! We’re actually listening in to conversations of foreign nationals who have as their declared goal to murder as many of our civilians as possible? Why, it’s almost as if somebody, not too many years ago, flew four jetliners into the ground and various buildings, murdering 3,000 people in the process. How do we live with ourselves, violating the privacy rights of cave-dwelling savages in the Middle East like that?

The massive disregard for reality here is truly awe-inspiring. Misha handily ignores that fact that at the time Bush ordered the NSA wiretaps of communications to which US persons were a part be conducted without warrants, the FISA Act of 1978 required such warrants. Bush’s order was, therefore, in violation of the FISA Act. And the Bush administration has admitted this.

There has never been a requirement that wiretaps of communications conducted entirely outside the US be authorized by court order. But the Bush administration was required to get court orders for eavesdropping on communications that took place in whole or in part within the US, and this they failed to do. The attacks of 9/11, and the nationalities of those who carried out those attacks, does not change the fact that even the US President is required to abide by the law of the land.

Part of the foundation of the American civilization is respect for, and adherence to, the rule of law. We allow gibbering demagogues like Misha to encourage us to ignore this fact at our peril.

Juan Cole points out the murderous effects of the US occupation of Iraq:

A new World Health Organization study estimates the excess numbers of civilians killed in violence in Iraq from April 2003 through June 2006 at between 101,000 and 224,000. They settled on 151,000 or so as the most likely number. This number is an estimate of how many people died of violence beyond what you would have expected from the 2001-2002 baseline. Violent deaths increased 17 times over once the Bush administration invaded the country.

...

One of the arguments warmongers gave for overthrowing Saddam Hussein was that his regime was responsible for the violent deaths of some 300,000 civilians between 1968 and 2003. That estimate now appears exaggerated, since the number of bodies in mass graves has not borne it out. But what is tragic is that in 4 1/2 short years, a foreign military occupation has unleashed killing on a scale achieved by the murderous Saddam Hussein regime only over decades. Bush did not kill all those people directly, of course, but he did indirectly cause them to be killed, since these are excess deaths beyond what you would have expected if there had been no invasion and occupation.

The human cost of Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq will never be fully counted. Nor will the warpimps of this country ever take responsibility for their part in transforming this nation into the amoral pandemonium of hatred, belligerence, and irresponsibility that it has become.

I only just noticed this fascinating little juxtaposition. In her recent bowel movement, Cao shat out the following:

My design is copyrighted just as Raven’s is. tsk tsk! I even put up a post about Meatbrain copying my pages and hosting them on his server, and he took them down, although he couldn’t help but put up a post crying and squealing about it. Poor little piggy.

It is interesting that someone who is so much better than everyone else and so ‘intelligent’ would remove those saved pages from the server; why would you remove them, Terry? Could it be because your hosting company agrees – when you mirror our sites you are indeed violating the copyright?

Cao is oh so very very concerned about copyright violation. Here is a section of a screen shot of the graphic header on Cao’s site:

That’s a Photoshopped image of actress Linda Hamilton, taken from the movie Terminator 2.

Who do you suppose owns the copyright on that image? Do you really think it would be Cao?

Hmmmmm?

Interesting…

UPDATE 01/09/08 7:48 AM EST: Cao is still pretending she doesn’t understand the issue.

Hey stupid lizard bitch: Who owns the copyright to the Linda Hamilton image on your “Hard-Nosed Cao” theme?

Can you show proof that you have the copyright owner’s permission to use that image on your site?

These are simple questions. No wonder you are afraid to answer them.

Here is the latest ignorant burble from the Cowster...

Terrorism didn’t hit Amerikka until 9/11 and it happened to be people yelling ‘allah akbar’.

Herewith, a selection of terrorist incidents that took place in America (note the correct spelling, bovine one) prior to 09/11/2001 (source: Wikipedia)...

• 1863: Morgan’s Raid led by John Hunt Morgan
• 1868: The Ku Klux Klan in Georgia engage in many acts including whipping of black women and assassination of Republican Party members.
• 1886: Bomb at Haymarket Square, Chicago during a labor rally kills twelve people.
• 1910: A bomb at the Los Angeles Times newspaper building in Los Angeles, California, United States, killed 21 workers.
• 1915: Frank Holt, (a.k.a. Erich Muenter) a German professor exploded a bomb in the reception room of the U.S. Senate. The next morning he tried to assassinate J.P. Morgan, Jr., son of the financier whose company served as Great Britain’s principal U.S. purchasing agent for munitions and other war supplies to try and stop the United States entry into World War I against Germany.
• 1920: Wall Street Bombing kills 38 people and wounds 300 others.
• 1927: The Ku Klux Klan launch a wave of political terror in Alabama.
• 1933: A Boeing 247 is destroyed in midflight by a nitroglycerin bomb. All seven people aboard are killed. This incident is the first proven case of air sabotage in the history of aviation.
• 1940 – 1956: George Metesky, “the Mad Bomber” placed over 30 bombs in New York City in public places such as Grand Central Station and The Paramount Theater injuring ten during this period in protest of the local electric utility. He also sent many threatening letters.
• 1950s: During this and the next decade The Ku Klux Klan re-emerges. Some of the tactics used are lynching, cross burning and assassination.
• 1950: Puerto Rican nationalists fail to assassinate U.S. President Harry S. Truman.
• 1955: Lynching of Emmett Louis Till in Mississippi.
• 1958: Bombing of the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple, Atlanta, Georgia suspicion done by white racists.
• 1963: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. A member of the Ku Klux Klan bombed a Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls aged 11-14.
• 1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated while riding in an open vehicle in Texas.
• 1965: The Ku Klux Klan murders Viola Liuzzo, a Southern-raised white mother of five who was visiting the South from her home in Detroit to attend a civil rights march. At the time of her murder Liuzzo was transporting Civil Rights Marchers.
• 1965: The Monumental Plot – New York Police thwart an attempt to dynamite the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell, and the Washington Monument by three members of the pro Castro Black Liberation Front and a Quebec Separatist.
• 1970: the Army Mathematics Research Center on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus was blown up resulting in one death.
• 1974: A bomb set off by the Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN in East Harlem, New York permanently disables a police officer. The officer lost an eye as a result of this act.
• 1977: Three buildings in Washington, DC are seized by members of the militant African-American Muslim Hanafi sect and over 100 hostages taken. One bystander is shot and killed, and Washington city councilman Marion Barry is shot in the chest. After a two-day standoff all hostages are released from the District Building (city hall), B’nai B’rith headquarters, and the Islamic Center.
• 1980: A bomb destroys most of the exhibits in the Statue of Liberty story room. No one is arrested, but Croatian separatists are suspected.
• 1983: U.S. Senate bombing. A time bomb consisting of several sticks of dynamite explodes at the United States Senate in response to the U.S. invasion of Grenada. No one was injured, a group known as the Armed Resistance Unit claims responsibility.
• 1990: Assassination of Meir Kahane head of Israel’s Koch party and founder of the American vigilante group the Jewish Defense League in a Manhattan, New York hotel lobby by early elements of Al Queda.
• 1993, February 26: World Trade Center bombing bombing kills six and injures over 1000 people, by coalition of five groups: Jamaat Al-Fuqra’/Gamaat Islamiya/Hamas/Islamic Jihad/National Islamic Front
• 1995: Oklahoma City bombing kills 168 people, 19 of them children; the most deadly act of domestic terrorism in the United States to date.
• 1995: An Amtrak Sunset Limited train is derailed by anti-government saboteurs near Palo Verde, Arizona. One person is killed and 78 are injured.
• 1996: Centennial Olympic Park bombing, killing one and wounding 111.
• 1998: The anti-abortion Army of God bombs a health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama killing a police officer and injuring a worker at the clinic.
  

I’ve not included every US terrorist incident listed in Wikipedia, and have edited out a number of irrelevant links; feel free to consult the original Wikipedia page for details. But there can be no doubt that terrorism, much of it homegrown, has a long history in the United States, and predates by more than a century the attacks of 09/11/2001.

The motivation for Cao’s ignorant claim is, of course, the by-now-familiar wingnut meme of HATE MUSLIMS! HATE MUSLIMS! HATE MUSLIMS! HATE MUSLIMS! HATE MUSLIMS! Alas for Cao, history puts the lie to her clumsy attempt to proselytize for religious bigotry.

UPDATE 01/05/08 10:02 PM EST: Cao has, quite naturally, responded with her usual mix of hysteria and thrashing, factless denial:

So true to his socialist ideology which aligns itself with Bin Ladenist Al Qaeda terrorists like Jose Padilla, Bisson’s lookalike posts a cut and paste from Wikipedia – the international music-hall joke for inaccuracy, which shows a list of terrorist acts around the globe.

Two simple questions for the Cowster:

1. Why are you unable to cite any specific inaccuracies in the list of pre-9/11 terrorist acts provided by Wikipedia?
2. Given that it is now clear that a multitude of terrorist acts occurred on US soil before 9/11, can you explain why you chose to lie to your readers and claim that “Terrorism didn’t hit Amerikka until 9/11”?

UPDATE 01/09/08 7:35 AM EST: Cao has been kind enough to provide further evidence that she lied when she claimed that “Terrorism didn’t hit Amerikka until 9/11”. She has posted a list of terrorist acts carried out by ecoterrorists between 1984 and 2002. Most or all of the attacks in her list took place in the United States. We can therefore see that Cao’s claim that terrorism did not hit America until 9/11 is quite false.

P.S. to Cao: Who owns the actual copyright on this graphic in your post? Can you provide proof that you have the copyright owner’s permission to use his content on your blog? Just wondering…

From GrrlScientist comes word that the National Academy of Sciences has revised Science, Evolution, and Creationism, and the book is available as a free PDF download. Click the button at the left edge of the page labeled “Sign In to Download Free PDFs”.

Golly gee… who’da thunk that anything would come before “supporting the troops” for the Bush crime syndicate?

While Bush vetoed the defense bill to protect the Iraqi government from liability, the Times notes that “[a]mong the people expected to seek a financial claim against Iraq were former U.S. servicemen held as prisoners of war during Desert Storm in 1991.” The bill Bush vetoed upgrades military health care and provides a 3.5 percent pay raise for service members.

Already, the Iraqi government is “thanking” Bush for preserving “the immunity of Iraq.” Bush, who repeatedly touts his support for the troops, is casting their interests aside in order protect his friends in the Iraqi government.

UPDATE 01/03/08 7:59 PM EST: Here’s a challenge to the jackasses in the comments below, and to Big Dog: Show me a post on this blog in which I have taken a statement made by someone else, of the form X tells Y, and accused the author of that statement of claiming that X actually said Y.

Until the pygmies can do that, their accusations against me are worthless. Their attempts to hold me to a standard that I don’t hold anyone else to are laughable.

It’s especially hilarious in Big Dog’s case… he’s demanding that I prove a claim I never made (that Bush actually said the words “stuff it”), yet he is utterly terrified by the simple questions of fact that I asked him yesterday, and refuses to answer them.

What Kender, Raven, and Big Dog have proven tonight is that it is much much more important for them to “get” me with an invented accusation, than it is to actually consider the effects that Bush’s veto has had on the troops. So much for their concern for the troops…

In Death and Underachievement: A Guide to Happiness in Work, Ryan Norbauer has some interesting thoughts on the endless, Sisyphean struggle for achievement, achievement, and more achievement…

And all the facts point to a universe that is utterly indifferent to your body-mass index, your latest promotion, or how well-organized your reference filing system is. You neighbors may pretend to care — and then proceed to think of you with acrimonious covetousness or jealousy — but, as the Copernican principle reminds us, in the long run your neighbors are just like you: a speck, on a speck, on a speck. (Listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s interview in the last part of this Radiolab segment to have this concept dizzyingly driven home.) But even if we were to abandon all reason and evidence and assume the human race enjoys some sort of privileged status in the affairs of the universe, we need only remember that each of us is one among 6.6 billion people (give or take), and that even if you were to attain a level of accomplishment that (let’s face it) you could never even dream of approaching — say, becoming prime minister of Canada — the vast majority of people now and ever living will never even have heard of you…

If we are to accept achievement as the vehicle to guide us through life, we must at least admit to ourselves that it’s a ferris wheel we’re riding and not a bullet train. I’m ready to make that admission. I say fuck this ride; let’s go eat cotton candy.

Reading Norbauer’s essay put me in mind of a quote that I’d always thought was from Ralph Waldo Emerson. To my surprise, it’s actually from a work by Bessie Anderson Stanley:

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

While failing utterly to answer some simple questions I asked him yesterday, Big Dog drooled the following:

The fact that i ignore you in no way means I lack an answer…

I’d like to point out a couple aspects of Big Dog’s idiocy to him:

1. You’re lying when you claim you are ignoring me. The fact that you devoted an entire comment to evading the simple questions you were asked is proof of your mendacity in this regard.
2. You do, in fact, lack any answers to the questions I asked you yesterday. Again, you spent a great deal of effort evading those questions. You evaded the questions because you cannot answer them.

Carry on, lying mongrel.

The last time I challenged “Big Dog” to support his claims with facts, he chose to lie about the question I’d asked. Let’s see if he’ll fall back on his usual mendacity this time…

Voting Democrat is Bad for Your Health

Everyone of the Democrats wants some kind of universal health care that is paid for by taxpayers. They want ever person in this country covered (citizen or not) and they want to ensure that the government has its grubby little hands in the mix from beginning to end. What they want is to be able to make all the decisions for you. Over weight? You don’t get treated. Smoker, no treatment for you. Eat meat, you can’t be treated. Drink alcohol, too bad, so sad.

1. Which Democratic proposal for universal health care stipulates that overweight patients will not be treated?
   
2. Which Democratic proposal for universal health care stipulates that smokers will not be treated?
   
3. Which Democratic proposal for universal health care stipulates that patients who eat meat will not be treated?
   
4. Which Democratic proposal for universal health care stipulates that patients who drink alcohol will not be treated?
   

Run away now, lying cur.

UPDATE 01/03/07 10:33 AM EST: As expected, Big Dog is incapable of supporting his claims with facts.

Just for the record, I never said any candidate said you would not be treated if you did bad things. I said the government wants its grubby hands in the mix. Then I indicated what would not be covered based upon what is not covered in other countries that have socialized medicine.

Big Dog again chooses to deliberately misrepresent what I asked. Look at the questions above: the word “candidate” does not appear. I asked him to back up his claims regarding Democratic proposals for universal health care. And he cannot do that.

“What is not covered in other countries that have socialized medicine” is irrelevant. Big Dog specifically accused Democrats in this country of making proposals that limited who would be covered. He’s lying, and he knows it. That is why he runs away from simple, straightforward questions about his claims.

UPDATE 01/03/07 1:37 PM EST: Big Dog continues his evasion of four simple questions. He was lying about the Democratic proposals for universal health coverage, and he knows it.

Heh…

(Hat tip: Pharyngula)

The title of this post is wishful thinking. It’s clear that there is no way in hell that anyone could ever set Cao straight. But it is always fun to poke her with the facts and watch her squeal.

So let’ s have look at her latest bucket of offal:

Lately I’ve been thinking about Kathryn Cramer, Terry Bisson and his alter ego, Thinking Meat, and this other fellow at Millard Fillmore’s bathtub; they are all so self-involved. They’re very similar to the commies who came swooping in from the Frog Blog back when I first started blogging.

Note carefully: Anyone who disagrees with Cao in any way whatsoever is a “commie”. One wonders if Cao ever learned what the term “Communist” really means. When she uses it, it is essentially a content-free all-purpose epithet… like “duh”.

So for them to imagine that they’re really bothering me in any way is just a testament to their stupidity.

Get this: None of the people she names bothers Cao in the least. That’s why she devotes post after post after post to whining about the terrible “commies” who dare to disagree with her. Riiiiiiiiiiiight…

It seems to me that none of these people work…

It seems blazingly obvious that Cao doesn’t have the slightest idea what any of her critics do for a living, and the accusation that those who disagree with her are unemployed is a pathetically transparent personal attack. Cao makes personal attacks because she is utterly incapable of answering the criticisms made against her.

Meatbrain has this weird affliction; he tries to make it a ‘gotcha’ and he ’saves pages’ as if we even care. It’s an implied threat, as though he’s going to pursue a person for writing something, and keeps the pages on his own server.

No, idiot. I keep the pages because you and your ilk like to change your posts when you get caught being stupid or dishonest. For instance, you got caught admiring Nazi propaganda when it was rewritten to denigrate Muslims. When you were called on your obvious bigotry, you changed your words ex post facto to try and cover your hateful ass.

That, if I’m not mistaken, is against the TOS with his hosting company.

You’ve already given the entire world permission to copy and redistribute your work. Stop whining, dimwitted crybaby.

I am limited on time, and refuse to allow moonbats to dictate what I spend my time on with their diarrhea of the keyboards…

Too late. You just did. Again.

John Aravosis points out the painfully obvious:

A new intercept purportedly shows Al Qaeda admitting they were behind Bhutto’s killing. If this is true, and let’s face it, I wouldn’t put it past the Pakistani government to start pointing fingers elsewhere, then Bush needs to explain to the American people why he’s been ignoring Al Qaeda since 2003? Invading Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and in fact, Bush closed the CIA shop in charge of searching for Osama in 2003. Bush also moved lots of military assets from Afghanistan to Iraq, assets that were looking for Al Qaeda and Osama. Bush has ignored Al Qaeda – uh, the folks who killed 3000 Americans, remember them? – since 2003 and no one has held him accountable. What’s worse, we’ve let him (and Giuliani and others) crow about how Democrats are the ones who don’t understand the threat from Al Qaeda.