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Misha, Imbecile Emperor of Nothing At All™, four days ago:
Now that the sell-by date is about to be reached on masturbatory Moonbat fantasies about the Bu$Hitler being assassinated, they are, in increasing numbers, switching over to fantasizing about the Obamessiah being murdered. By a Republican Racist Fascist Militia-Type Gun Nut, we’re sure. We wouldn’t want to disturb the narrative, after all.
Moonbats all over the world are running an unofficial Dead Pool, tripping over their own genitals to see who can come up with the most dire predictions regarding the Most Holy God of Changeyness, He Who Shall Change the World’s, to them, obvious and imminent demise at the hand of mythical racists.
The musings of Hal Turner, racist radio asswipe (no linky love for him):
Ricin is easy to make from castor beans. Castor beans are legal to buy, can be gotten throughout the country or via the internet. Even more interesting is that the internet is full of “how-to” information explaining how to cook the husks of castor beans into this poison.
Since as little as 500 micrograms of ricin can kill an adult, I wonder if smearing some on a glove then shaking hands with. . . . . . Barak Obama or Hillary Clinton or John McCain. . . . would have some effect? Probably not. But I wonder if loading some in a straw equipped with a one-way valve at one end to protect the user, would allow ricin powder to be blown in the direction of a candidate for inhalation? HMMMMMMM.
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I bet there are folks out there, however, who might agree with me that the political choices we have this year warrant dramatic action to save our republic. After all, do we really want a mixed-race, mongrel negro, half-breed in the most powerful political office on the planet?
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Yes, I see good reason for the political candidates this year to be gotten rid of and from my viewpoint, ricin could be used by some nefarious person to accomplish that. It’s the type of weapon that Secret Service cannot protect anyone from. What are they gonna do, check everyone for straws as they enter a campaign venue? And once the poison is delivered, there is no treatment and no cure. Death is 100% guaranteed.
Tell us all about the “mythical” racists who are agitating for the assassination of Barack Obama, Maximum Moron Misha. Looks like the Real World has proven you an ignorant blowhard — again.
(hat tip: Jesus’ General)
Crooks and Liars draws our attention to Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, a book that details the results of a Gallup survey compiled from tens of thousands face-to-face interviews with the inhabitants of more than 35 predominantly Muslim nations. Among the more interesting results are the following:
- Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable.
- Large majorities of Muslims would guarantee free speech if it were up to them to write a new constitution AND they say religious leaders should have no direct role in drafting that constitution.
- Muslims around the world say that what they LEAST admire about the West is its perceived moral decay and breakdown of traditional values—the same answers that Americans themselves give when asked this question.
- When asked about their dreams for the future, Muslims say they want better jobs and security, not conflict and violence.
- Muslims say the most important thing Westerners can do to improve relations with their societies is to change their negative views toward Muslims and respect Islam.
Huh. How ‘bout that? Muslims are very much like non-Muslim Westerners. Of course, ignorance being the currency of the day, you’ll little or nothing about this from the wingnuts. They’re far too invested in fanning the flames of fear and hatred.
Remember, kids: Every single time Cao tells you something, look for the facts she is choosing to ignore. Ignorance — specifically, her own — is everything to Cao.
I’ll repeat that so it sinks in:
Ignorance — specifically, her own — is everything to Cao.
Cao has tried to connect Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan to Barack Obama via the crude and transparent ploy of posting a few fire-breathing quotes from Farrakhan and then mentioning Obama — as if Obama had anything to do with what Farrakhan has said over the years. Cao carefully avoids noting that Obama has denounced Farrakhan’s views on multiple occasions, most recently during the February 26 debate:
Read the rest of this entry »OBAMA: You know, I have been very clear in my denunciation of Minister Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments. I think that they are unacceptable and reprehensible. I did not solicit this support. He expressed pride in an African-American who seems to be bringing the country together. I obviously can’t censor him, but it is not support that I sought. And we’re not doing anything, I assure you, formally or informally with Minister Farrakhan.
I came across this article sometime last year and only rediscovered it recently. It’s a good question: How does fighting them over there save us from fighting them over here?
Would someone please explain the following to me? Bush and his Republican pals tell us that the reason they want to keep American troops in Iraq because they want to “fight the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here,” Where, exactly, is the logic in that statement? How does having American troops on the Middle-East prevent a terrorist attack in North America? ... I just don’t see how keeping American troops in Iraq makes it any less likely that terrorists will attack America. Don’t terrorists have plenty of ways to get into America without going through Iraq first? Indeed, if a terrorist wanted to attack America, how likely do you suppose it is that he would go to Iraq in the first place? Why not just go straight to the U.S.?
We’ve been told that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. How? The very nature of terrorism is that it strikes at unpredictable times in unpredictable places, at soft targets that are not specifically protected by military forces. Any sensible terrorist won’t gravitate towards a battlefield — he’ll attack an office building, a shopping mall, a sports stadium. He wants to maximize terror by maximizing civilian casualties. Iraq just isn’t the place to do that.
The war in Iraq hasn’t slowed terrorist attacks elsewhere… there have been hundreds of attacks worldwide since 9/11. So the claim that Iraq is somehow “central” to the “war on terror” just does not hold water.
Perhaps some of my friends on the right can explain this. How does putting American soldiers at risk in the middle of what is now a civil war in Iraq magically protect American civilians at home from terrorist attacks?
I noted a few days ago that Cao was repeating the “Obama has no accomplishments” meme because she is literally too stupid to find out what Obama’s accomplishments are. She’s worked hard since then to prove me right.
I provided Cao with links to several articles that list Obama’s accomplishments. Cao has thus far refused to read them. I challenged Cao to answer a question about just one of Obama’s accomplishments: the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, which established a searchable online database tracking the distribution of nearly $1 trillion in federal grants, contracts, earmarks and loans. Obama co-authored this bill with Republican Senator Tom Coburn. And that is just one of Obama’s many documented accomplishments.
Her response to this challenge? She confirmed — again — that she prefers ignorance to knowledge:
I don’t give a **** about the bill you’re talking about
As I’ve said many times in the past: Wingnuts of Cao’s stripe simply do not care about facts. They drink the Kool-Aid dispensed by the Mighty Wingnut Wurlitzer™, and actively cultivate their ignorance of reality. Cao and her ilk do not want and could not engage in an honest debate of the issues facing this country — that is why they persist in making arguments based upon lies and smears.
I’ve pointed out the racism at HoosierArmyMom’s blog before (and her practice of forging trackbacks in response to the racism being pointed out). Apparently, Mom and her co-blogger haven’t taken enough flak to learn their lesson.
Mom’s co-blogger “TA” says in a post today that…
Barack Obama is an absolute “Uncle Tom” in my book and should be deported immediately
And the very first comment, posted by “Admin” (who may be either “TA” or Mom herself) includes this gem:
The Feds need to throw his black ass out of Office and send him back to Kenya… I hear you can hunt big-ass elephants at this time of year, as you sit on the front porch chomping on watermelon and fried chicken.
Mom posts a comment right after that. Apparently, she’s perfectly happy to have this racist excrement smeared all over her blog.
As I said before: Scratch a rightie, find a racist.
Cao says she’s “still waiting” for a list of Obama’s legislative accomplishments. What she means is that she’s waiting to be spoon-fed a list because she’s too goddamn stupid to find them herself.
I’m always happy to help the cognitively impaired. It’s not hard to find Obama’s legislative accomplishments. Even a mere blogger, such as hilzoy, can do it. But apparently such research is beyond Cao’s abilities. So I guess she’ll have to rely on me to spoon-feed her the information.
And still more here, idiot lizard bitch.
It is so much fun shoving the facts up your nose, imbecile cow. I had fun doing the same to Justin Higgins. You moron wingnuts are an endless source of amusement.
Stay stupid, bitch. I know you’ll do as you’re told.
UPDATE 02/22/08 10:52 AM EST: Cao goes from stupidity to outright lying:
Now she’s officially a lying idiot lizard bitch.
UPDATE 02/23/08 10:39 AM EST: Jack and Jill Politics and Grassroots Mom have good posts regarding Obama’s legislative accomplishments — posts that Cao will never work up the courage to read.
Everyone’s favorite wingnut fabulist, Misha I, Emperor of Nothing at All, displays once again his Invincible Ignorance™ — this time, it’s about Barack Obama:
What we don’t expect to hear is news related to actual policy statements and/or tangible past achievements being brought up.
This is a common wingnut meme, and Misha is nothing if not a good little parrot. If you don’t know about Obama’s policy statements, it’s because you’re working extra hard to remain ignorant — and Misha surely values his ignorance. Obama’s positions and policy statements are really quite easy to find. But Misha, like so many of his ilk, prefers to pretend that his ignorance proves something about somebody else.
It doesn’t. All it proves is that Misha prefers to be ignorant, and is happy to advertise his ignorance.
Brilliant science fiction author John Scalzi is auctioning off a pre-publication manuscript of his new novel Zoe’s Tale to benefit the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust.
This is an exclusive and extremely rare version of this novel (only four other copies of this edition exist) and will be the only way for a member of the general public to read the novel prior to its official publication in August 2008. All money raised by this auction, minus eBay and PayPal fees, will go to the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust. The auction is currently taking place on eBay and will end on Feb-25-08 09:10:29 PST. Opening bid is $50.
Go. Bid. Now.
The depressingly ignorant Big Dog has decided to share his great political wisdom with the masses. This time, he’s arguing that politicians must never substitute their judgment for The Will Of The People:
Don’t question the judgment of your constituency, look who they voted into office.
This is the problem with politicians. They believe that being elected to office makes them smarter than everyone else and they they know what is best. How dare we peons tell them how we want them to vote? Remember when more than 80% of the country wanted the amnesty bill shot down they still voted for it and called us racists. They do not listen because they think they know more than we do or that they know what is best for us. The amazing thing is they won’t trust our judgment during their term until they run for office and then they trust us to put them back and they pander to us. Liberals act more liberal, conservatives act more conservative and when they go back they screw us.
Wayne Gilchrest of the 1st Congressional District in Maryland found out what happens when he votes his conscience and not the will of his constituents. He will be watching the general election from home this year. We need to vote all these people out of office. If they go against the majority of the people they represent then we need to get rid of them.
Anyone who says what Cleaver did should be out of office. The last thing I will ever need is a dim witted politician deciding for me. They can’t get their own stuff in order so I will be damned if I need them trying to get mine in order for me.
Apparently, any time a politician dares to think about an issue rather than blindly follow the current whims of the electorate, he is “screwing” the people who voted him into office. Big Dog doesn’t want people in office — he wants robots.
Okay, let’s pursue this logic: According to recent polls conducted by Pew, ABC News-Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal-NBC News [PDF], between 53% and 57% of Americans surveyed are in favor of a withdrawal from Iraq in the very near future. Big Dog’s prescription for well-behaved politicians would therefore demand that Bush begin withdrawing troops from Iraq. Who wants to bet that Big Dog sees the matter in this way?
Somehow, I suspect that Big Dog’s anger at politicians who use their own judgment extends only to those politicians who disagree with him. One does not expect logical consistency from a wingnut of Big Dog’s stripe.
Read the rest of this entry »Yup… it’s another dose of mindless eliminationist rhetoric from the Emperor of Nothing Whatsoever, “Misha”. He’s once again advocating the murder of journalists. He doesn’t seem to much care who gets murdered, either.
Two thoughts on this pathetic waste of oxygen:
- Misha is a textbook example of the laziness and intellectual emptiness of the far right. He is absolutely incapable of conducting an honest, fact-based discussion, and thus his spew is an almost unbroken stream of screechy demands that somebody somewhere be killed. Asimov was right: Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
- Misha is also descending into that favorite realm of the wingnut: pure fantasy. Blowhards of his type are almost invariable physical cowards who would be utterly unable to carry out any of their threats of violence in person. Yes, there are exceptions to that characterization; but Misha yammers so incessantly about hurting and killing people that it is pretty clear he is merely exposing the moral vacuum that is his soul, without the ability to actualize any of his fantasies.
The Emperor of Nothing Whatsoever will be a gutless moral cipher the rest of his life. Pity him.
UPDATE 02/14/08 11:23 AM EST: Misha pretends to be horrified by reports that hostages are being burned alive… and proposes that the practice be ended by burning people alive. Folks, you can’t find this kind of blatant, morally vacuous hypocrisy anywhere but among the wingnut right.
What’s the Harm? collects examples of folks who have been killed, injured, or who have suffered economic loss as a result of a lack of critical thinking:
Not all information is created equal. Some of it is correct. Some of it is incorrect. Some of it is carefully balanced. Some of it is heavily biased. Some of it is just plain crazy.
It is vital in the midst of this deluge that each of us be able to sort through all of this, keeping the useful information and discarding the rest. This requires the skill of critical thinking. Unfortunately, this is a skill that is often neglected in schools.
This site is designed to make a point about the danger of not thinking critically. Namely that you can easily be injured or killed by neglecting this important skill. We have collected the stories of over 120,000 people who have been injured or killed as a result of someone not thinking critically.
The site presents a frightening litany of catastrophes caused by uncritical belief in things like Scientology, homeopathy, and creationism. Read and be warned.
Our old friend Raven — who diagnosed a soldier with PTSD as a faker based solely on reading a newspaper article — has admitted that she cultivates her own ignorance:
I vaguely remember scanning some hyper headline about suicide rates being very high among US Soldiers and Marines… because it was a MSM hit piece, I didn’t read it.
Yup — nothing like actively avoiding the facts to make certain that the skies on her planet always stay just the right shade of pinky-orange. For Raven and her ilk, ignorance isn’t just a hobby; it’s a way of life.
UPDATE 02/14/08 10:29 AM EST: Raven WHINES AND COMPLAINS about the media, and is then stupid enough to accuse someone else of WHINING AND COMPLAINING. Hypocrisy, thy name is Raven.
Michael Zak, pseudo-”historian”, is afraid of a very simple question:
In the context of 20th century US politics, what is the “southern strategy”, what was it used for, and which party employed it?
Zak likes to reach back into 19th-century American history for examples of how Republicans are the friends and protectors of minorities. But he’s afraid to discuss the recent history of the Republican party — especially the southern strategy.
How do I know he’s afraid of the question? Every time I post the question to Zak’s site, he deletes it. It’s obviously waaaaaaaaay too scary for him.
Gotta wonder why. Mikey, what kind of “historian” doesn’t want to talk about history?
This absolutely brilliant T-shirt is guaranteed to get you lots of attention at the airport:
It says “I Am Not a Terrorist” in Arabic. Heh.
Big Dog, whose moral incompetence I have noted before, proves that he is unable to understand simple concepts — even his own. Referring to my recent criticisms of his eliminationist rhetoric, he says:
He has recently attacked me because I have no issue with the idea that some people should be deprived of life for what they do.
Wrong. Big Dog is distorting his own views here. Big Dog has advocated for the murder of people who merely think the wrong things — a fact which he promptly confirms:
First of all, I never said someone should be killed for disagreeing with me. I said they should be beaten to death if they felt it was OK to take my money and give it to someone else, a bit of a difference.
Big Dog lies in the first sentence, and then demonstrates in the very next sentence that he has, in fact, lied. He states outright that anyone who recognizes the need for taxation should be murdered. He wants people killed if they dare to disagree with him on this point.
Is here any doubt left that Big Dog follows no discernible moral code whatsoever?
Dogface Boy goes on to refer to some eliminationist remarks recently made by comic can commentator Bill Maher. To answer the mongrel: Yes, Maher does deserve to be condemned for these remarks. News flash, dogmeat: No matter what Bill Maher does or does not say, you have still proven that you’re a moral imbecile. And you’re going to do it again.
Juan Cole nails it:
The Bush administration consistently gives us Attorneys General who lie about what the law is. Ironically, the defense Mukasey suggests for telecom companies that illegally turned over consumer records to government officials who had no warrant to request them, is that they were “following orders.” I think there were some trials where that excuse was disallowed.
This is what blind abject terror does to a society: The United States imprisoned a man on charges made by unnamed accusers, failed to allow a single witness to speak in his defense, and simply held him in jail until he died.
Abdul Razzaq Hekmati was regarded here as a war hero, famous for his resistance to the Russian occupation in the 1980s and later for a daring prison break he organized for three opponents of the Taliban government in 1999.
But in 2003, Mr. Hekmati was arrested by American forces in southern Afghanistan when, senior Afghan officials here contend, he was falsely accused by his enemies of being a Taliban commander himself. For the next five years he was held at the American military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he died of cancer on Dec. 30.
The Bush administration has abandoned the concept of justice. Guantanamo is a national disgrace, and cannot be shut down a moment too soon.
Ed Brayton has an excellent post about a priori dismissal, a variant of our old friend the straw man argument.
Here’s what I think is really going on here: assuming an evil agenda is easier than engaging someone’s real position. It’s what Matt Nisbet would call a convenient cognitive shortcut. It makes the world so simple when you can just dismiss the person taking the position out of hand without having to engage the position itself. But sometimes the world just isn’t that simple; sometimes, frequently in fact, a clash of ideas really is a sincere dispute between people who both care about doing the right thing even if they disagree on what the right thing is.
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Such arguments are made as a means of a priori dismissal. They tend to cloud our judgment rather than aid in it. Once we’ve decided that the contrary position is not just wrong but evil, all serious thought about the subject ceases. So does all meaningful communication. Such shallow thinking is seductive precisely because it’s all too easy. Probably none of us are entirely immune to it; I know I’m not. But it’s something that rational people should make a concerted effort to avoid.
One sees a great deal of this from the wingnut extremists of the right, but it can be found coming from all parts of the political spectrum. Certainly I know that I am not guiltless in this regard. Ed is quite right: Anyone interested in rational discussion of the issues of the day should work very hard to avoid this fallacy.
Despite the assurances of warpimps like Widdle Jimmy Hoft, the “surge” has been disastrous for the Iraqi people and the soldiers of the US occupation force:
As of today, 37 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq. That is the same number of troops that died in May of 2003, when President Bush smiled in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner and declared that major combat operations in Iraq were over.
That’s two more than the number of deaths in May of 2005, when Vice-President Cheney insisted that the insurgency was in its “last throes.”
That’s six more than the number in March of 2006, when the President insisted that “Iraqis will continue to take more responsibility for their own security, and fewer U.S. forces will be needed to complete the mission.”
And that’s the same number as the number of American deaths in November of 2007, when, according to the President, the Iraqi government was supposed to “take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces.”
But… but… but… the surge is a success!
Read the rest of this entry »
