You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
That charming fount of reason and civility, “Emperor” Misha, is again demanding that someone be murdered for the heinous crime of offending his delicate sensibilities.
To which I say: Put up or shut up, you puling gutless wannabe.
If you are indeed convinced that unrestrained homicidal violence is The Solution To All That Ails Us, then you should be out there killing people right now. Go on. Go out and start being a role model for all those brave, murdering culture warriors you want to set loose on society. Kill, and keep killing.
You won’t, of course, and for one simple reason: You’re a coward, Misha. Loudmouth bullies who make an endless string of hysterical threats do so because that is all they can do. Such threats are the product of fear and insecurity, not bravery.
So Misha exhorts other to do what he lacks the stones to do himself. Such is the way of the feckless wimp. Misha is an endless source of entertainment for those who recognize him for what he is, but little else.
Thanks for the laugh, melvin.
Kit Lange (nee Jarrell), noted genocide advocate, is outraged — OUTRAGED!!!!!, I tell you — about the latest ad from the Democratic National Committee, which takes John McCain to task for his willingness to keep US soldiers in Iraq for 100 years…
The fact that Dems would even THINK of using the deaths of two American soldiers to further their defeatist political agenda makes me want to put THEM by a palm tree with an IED.
Of course it does. Kit is a murder worshipper — disagree with her, express an opinion she dislikes, think the wrong thoughts, and the first and only response that comes to her mind is murder.
The thing is, they’re gleeful about it.
Kit demonstrates her amazing telepathic abilities. Of course no one is ‘gleeful’ that soldiers are dying in Iraq. That’s why keeping them for 100 years is such an asinine idea.
They’re unapologetic. Do they not get that those soldiers are someone’s husband and father and brother and son?
Why should anyone apologize for pointing out the fact that husbands and fathers and brothers and sons are dying in Iraq — and would continue to do so for a century, under the policies of John McCain?
What kind of ghouls are these people?
I have a better question: What kind of ghoul calmly asserts that he is “fine” with sending Americans to die in an occupied country for 100 years?
UPDATE 05/01/08 10:58 AM EDT: Citing the faux furor over the alleged source of the video footage, The Carpetbagger Report asks:
The RNC is worried about footage from a Michael Moore movie, after the RNC used footage from al Qaeda?
Whose side are they on?
BBC NEWS: Two US soldiers dead in Baghdad:
Two American soldiers have been killed in separate attacks in Baghdad, according to the US military.
One died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb, while the other was killed by small arms fire.
The deaths bring to 46 the number of US troops killed in Iraq this month, making April the worst month for US casualties since September 2007.
The US military said both soldiers died in the north-west of the city on Tuesday night in separate attacks.
But of course, we can stay for another 100 years… no problem, right, John?
Dave Neiwert points out a very basic truth about the right-wing obsession with Jeremiah Wright and “God damn America”:
What’s obvious, in fact, is that the longtime right-wing “America, love it or leave it” style of patriotism has become part of the media’s standard narrative in the post-9/11 world. I think Al Franken had it right:
If you listen to a lot of conservatives, they’ll tell you that the difference between them and us is that conservatives love America and liberals hate America…. They don’t get it. We love America just as much as they do. But in a different Way. You see, they love America the way a 4-year-old loves her Mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups.
To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world.
In the new media universe, Mommy America would never ever hurt those poor black people. And if maybe she did once upon a time, well, she made up for it a long time ago and now things are all better. Bringing up evidence to the contrary just means you hate Mommy.
Which might explain why people like Wright get all contemptuous on their asses.
Ogre says he wants to change his pseudonym, and is pondering the alternatives.
I prefer the straightforward: How about Fabulist Liar?
Those who deny the existence of global warming make much of polls which allegedly show that scientists have grave doubts that the Earth’s climate is warming. Those who tout such polls rarely mention that the scientists being polled are, by and large, not climate scientists. One might as well ask a plumber whether he thinks that mole on your shoulder could be cancerous…
What happens when climate scientists are polled? The so-called “controversy” vanishes, that’s what…
In 1991 the Gallup organization conducted a telephone survey on global climate change among 400 scientists drawn from membership lists of the American Meteorological Association and the American Geophysical Union.
We repeated several of their questions verbatim, in order to measure changes in scientific opinion over time. On a variety of questions, opinion has consistently shifted toward increased belief in and concern about global warming. Among the changes:
- In 1991 only 60% of climate scientists believed that average global temperatures were up, compared to 97% today.
- In 1991 only a minority (41%) of climate scientists agreed that then-current scientific evidence “substantiates the occurrence of human-induced warming,” compared to three out of four (74%) today.
- The proportion of those who see at least a 50-50 chance that global temperatures will rise two degrees Celsius has increased from 47% to 56% since 1991.
- The proportion of scientists who have a great deal of confidence in our understanding of the human-induced sources of global climate change rose from 22% in 1991 to 29% in 2007. Similarly, the proportion voicing confidence in our understanding of the archeological climate evidence rose from 20% to 32%.
- Despite these expressions of uncertainty, however, the proportion which rating the chances at 50-50 or better that the role of human behavior will be settled in the near future rose from 47% in 1991 to 69% in 2007.
The moral of the story: If you want to know what the experts in a field think, ask the experts in that field... not experts in some random mish-mash of other fields.
(hat tip: Deltoid)
A comment came in on yesterday’s post Pot, meet kettle, and I knew immediately that I had to promote to its very own post:
After reading through your blog, the best thing I can say is that your a sub-literete fool
Sometimes, the punch lines just write themselves…
Warner Todd Huston shares his latest amazing revelation: From a single post on “a tiny little blog”, he has deduced “how the left conducts a “debate””. Yes, folks: Warner reads one blog entry, and he knows instantly how an entire segment of the population conducts discussions. He claims that “It’s All About the Name Calling”.
Hmmmmm. If Warner Todd Huston can learn all this from one post, what can we learn from several of his own posts?
...Dobbs comes off far more as a ranting nut…
How Warner Todd Huston argues: It’s all about the name calling.
If a wingnut is trying to sell a favored point of view, facts are the first thing to get thrown in the dustbin. I present Amy Proctor as today’s textbook example.
In her post The Last Battleground In Iraq, Amy tries to sell the talking point that religion is essential to ending the internecine warfare in Iraq. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Amy quotes at length from a piece in the LA Times — and since it doesn’t make the point forcefully enough for Amy, she happily twists it until it does.
Read the rest of this entry »Does anybody realize that John McCain is talking crazy talk when he claims that al-Qaeda could take over Iraq?
This is what raw, blind, unreasoning terror does to someone: it robs them of all moral sense.
Kit Lange (nee Jarrell), who has proven herself a bigot and hatemonger, has posted Maupin’s Captors Are in U.S. Custody, in which she states of those who have been arrested for the murder of US soldier Matt Maupin…
They’re lucky we don’t treat prisoners the way they treated Matt… although I think we should.
Let’s be very clear on what Kit is saying here: she wants the US and its soldiers to behave just like those who killed Matt Maupin. Kit would no doubt label those people “terrorists”. Kit wants us to act just like the terrorists. In Kit’s case, and that of too many like her, the terrorists have already won — they have successfully terrorized her into giving up all pretense at being any better than the terrorists themselves.
If we give up the moral high ground and act like the terrorists, why are we any different than the terrorists? Why should we prevail?
Crooks and Liars points us to a post at democracyarsenal.org that summarizes a recent and damning GAO report. Put simply, the Bush Administration has no plan whatsoever to stop another attack by al Qaeda:
Here is the title of a report from the Government Accountability Office on combating terrorism released today:
The United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
That is not some line buried in the report. That is the title. Wow.
This GAO report may be the most damning condemnation of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism efforts. The report goes on to say that the Bush administration has failed to develop any plan to address the Al Qaeda threat. Worse, the report finds that Al Qaeda is now able to attack the United States and represents the “most serious” threat to this country.
The report’s opinion of the Bush administration efforts speaks for itself:
The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan…
Not only have we not met our goals but we have no plan to meet our goals:
No comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed, as stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (2003), called for by an independent commission (2004), and mandated by congressional legislation (2007). Furthermore, Congress created the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in 2004 specifically to develop comprehensive plans to combat terrorism. However, neither the National Security Council (NSC), NCTC, nor other executive branch departments have developed a comprehensive plan that includes all elements of national power — diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic, and law enforcement support — called for by the various national security strategies and Congress.
Firedoglake has a handy timeline of Bushco’s spectacular failure.
Can we please find some competent adults to run the country now?
UPDATE 04/18/08 10:49 AM EDT: Oh, and that other war, the one that the wingnut ninnies keep telling us is protecting our freedoms? It’s going just swimmingly…
The National Defense Institute, identified by McClatchy as the Pentagon’s “premier educational institute,” came out with a sobering assessment (PDF) of the Iraq war yesterday:
“Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,” says the report’s opening line.
Amy Proctor is busy demonstrating her poor critical thinking skills. After whining piteously about “Sen. Carl Levin’s crude accusations during the Petraeus/Crocker hearings last week that Iraqis are satisfied to stand by and use American money while they hoard their own”, she quotes the following exchange from a CNN interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari:
BLITZER: Now, as you know, Foreign Minister, there are a lot of Americans, especially lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who feel they are being played for suckers right now, that the Iraqis have all this oil money, but the U.S. taxpayers are still paying the bills.
ZEBARI: Well, we appreciate very much what the U.S. is contributing to help the Iraqis to rebuild, reconstruct the country. But in fact, we are shouldering the main burden on looking after our people, and extending services, and carrying out reconstruction projects throughout the country.
And again, I would say, really, that the figures that Mr. Levin introduced, compared to what we have spent, differ widely. And I agree to a certain extent that there is some shortcomings in the management, in the administration, in the corruption level. But we are doing our best.
We are not standing by. This is our country. And we are spending on ourselves.
No actual numbers. No data at all. The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction estimates that recent Iraqi oil revenues may be as high as $60 billion. But all the Iraqi Foreign Minister has to do is mumble the equivalent of “nuh-UH”, and Amy believes him.
Gullible much, Amy? There’s some swampland in Florida I’d like to sell you…
The ever-entertaining Andrew “Gribbit the Dipshit” Richardson, in a recent post, claims that liberals are engaged in a “contradiction”:
So now the left wants to dictate to Iraq that they use their oil revenues to rebuild their nation.
Poor ignorant Dipshit is apparently unaware that this is exactly what BushCo promised us:
PAUL WOLFOWITZ: “And on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”[House Appropriations Committee, 3/27/03]
But when someone other than a Bushie suggests this, it is somehow wrongheaded. Hmmmm.
And, of course, he drags out the long-discredited myth that we invaded Iraq “to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of radical Islamic Terrorists”. We know now that this is not the case. Read the rest of this entry »
The fanatical warpimps keep chanting that we have to stay in Iraq until we achieve “victory”. Well, what is “victory”? What would “victory” in Iraq look like?
The warpimps can’t say. Neither, it turns out, can BushCo’s two most important operatives in Iraq:
Near the end of the afternoon, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee but a junior member of the foreign relations committee, finally got his turn to ask questions—and he homed in on one of the administration’s key conceptual failures.
Obama built up to his point with a series of questions. Our goal, he asked, isn’t to wipe out every member of al-Qaida in Iraq (an impossible feat), but rather to reduce AQI’s threat to manageable proportions, right? Petraeus agreed. And we’re not going to erase Iran’s influence in Iraq—they’re neighbors, after all. The goal is to make this relationship somewhat stable.
That being the case, Obama continued, what is the standard of success? What level of stability in Iraq would let us reduce our presence there to, say, 30,000 troops? What does a stable-enough Iraq look like? “If the definition of success is so high—no al-Qaida in Iraq, a highly effective Iraqi government … democracy, no Iranian influence—that portends … staying 30 to 70 years,” Obama said. What’s a more achievable definition? What’s a realistic goal, and what are we doing to get there? “I’m trying to get to an end point,” he said. “That’s what all of us are trying to do.”
This is what many critics and thoughtful supporters of the war have been trying to do for five years now. The Bush administration hasn’t addressed the issue. And, ultimately, neither did Petraeus or Crocker today.
The Bush cartel not only has no plan to achieve victory, they have no idea what victory actually would be.
And these are the people sending America’s best to die…
(hat tip: The Carpetbagger Report)
I’m bookmarking this here, so I can throw it in the face of the next mindless wingnut who repeats the meme that “Democrats are a bunch of crooks”: Our Great List of Scandalized Administration Officials.
Indicted / Convicted/ Pled Guilty
* Scooter Libby – Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff – resigned after being indicted for Obstruction of Justice, Perjury, and Making False Statements in connection with the investigation stemming from the leak of a CIA operative’s identity.
* Lester Crawford – Commissioner, FDA – resigned after only two months on the job. Pled guilty to conflict of interest and making false statements.
* Brian Doyle – Deputy Press Secretary, DHS – Resigned in wake of child sex scandal. Pled no contest to 32 criminal counts.
* Claude Allen – Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy- resigned, pled guilty to shoplifting from Target stores.
* David Safavian – former head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget – convicted of lying to ethics officials and Senate investigators about his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
* Larry Franklin – intelligence officer, Defense – resigned, pled guilty to passing secrets to Israel.
* Roger Stillwell – desk officer, Interior Department – pled guilty to failing to report Redskins tickets and free dinners from Jack Abramoff.
And the list just goes on and on and on…
Bruce Schneier explains the difference between The Feeling and Reality of Security:
Viewed from the perspective of economics, security is a trade-off. There’s no such thing as absolute security, and any security you get has some cost: in money, in convenience, in capabilities, in insecurities somewhere else, whatever. Every time someone makes a decision about security—computer security, community security, national security—he makes a trade-off.
...
So, as a successful species on the planet, you’d expect that human beings would be really good at making security trade-offs. Yet, at the same time, we can be hopelessly bad at it. We spend more money on terrorism than the data warrants. We fear flying and choose to drive instead. Why?
The short answer is that people make most trade-offs based on the feeling of security and not the reality.
...
Our brains are much better optimized for the security trade-offs endemic to living in small family groups in the East African highlands in 100,000 B.C. than to those endemic to living in 2008 New York.
If we make security trade-offs based on the feeling of security rather than the reality, we choose security that makes us feel more secure over security that actually makes us more secure.
And here, I think, we have the crux of the obsessive, uncritical support for the war in Iraq among so many of the extremist right: they want the war to continue because it makes them feel secure. Not, of course, because it actually makes any American more secure. The facts of the matter do not enter into the trade-off calculations that are made in the brain of the pro-war fanatic. A good example of this is the popular right-wing meme that “We’re fighting them in Iraq… so we don’t have to fight them here at home”. Anyone who examines the list of terrorist attacks since 2003 can see that there’s been no abatement in terrorist incidents around the world since the war in Iraq began. In fact, from the recent significant uptick in IED attacks worldwide, we can infer that the war has been a laboratory in which terrorists have been perfecting their techniques, which they then export beyond Iraq’s borders.
But the far right warpimps are blind to such realities. For them, all that matters is that Brown People Who Talk Funny are being attacked somewhere. That makes them feel safe, and that’s all they care about.
Meanwhile, we pour blood and treasure into the bottomless sinkhole that is Iraq. And there’s no evidence that we are any more secure for it.
How Petraeus Will Make His Case:
The recent violence in Basra shows how tenuous what passes for peace in Iraq really is. And William Odom, a retired three-star Army general, has spelled out just how shaky that alliance with the Sunnis is. “Our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty,” Odom told the Senate Foreign Relations committee last Wednesday. He cited one estimate that the U.S. military is paying a local strongman $250,000 a day to keep the peace in a 36-square mile swath of the country. “Remember, we do not own these people, we rent them — and they can break the lease at any moment.”
So, despite the tentative calm, the situation in Iraq is actually getting worse, Odom said. It has led to a proliferation of militias loyal to local warlords, who, in turn, are loyal to various political leaders. “This can hardly be called military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation,” he added. “To call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications.”
(hat tip: Firedoglake)
Over at American and Proud, ‘Bushwhack’ is another wingnut loudmouth who is afraid to conduct a rational discussion. He has confirmed this in an email to me:
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2008 17:01:57 -0700
From: Bushwack <bushwackca@gmail.com>
To: meatbrain@thinkingmeat.net
Subject: CommentHey Dickhead, Look, your dumbass comments will never be seen on my blog, you
are not only an ignorant fuck, you are a worthless piece of shit that I
would personally like to meet up with one day and slap the fuck out of. You
need to keep your cum receptacle shut, or maybe you and your boyfriend
should take up another hobby.Any and all comments or emails from you go straight to spam, or the shit
head box… you have very little company in that box, most folks I disagree
with I continue to have dialog with, you on the other hand are a coward, and
a liar, and I don’t discuss important world views with liars or cowards.In conclusion:
Fuck off and die.
Notice that, being too stupid to discuss anything, he makes the traditional (and traditionally empty) threat of violence — the mark of the truly incompetent. Perhaps the most amusing part of this is his delusion that he has at any time discussed “important world views”.
Thanks so much for the entertainment, moron.
This is how Republicans think:
Congressional efforts to take care of sick Ground Zero workers hit a snag Tuesday when a powerful Republican insisted it’s New York’s problem alone.
California Rep. Darrell Issa, in refusing to send more money New York’s way, insisted the planes that struck the twin towers weren’t weapons.
“It simply was an aircraft, residue of two aircraft, and residue from the materials used to build this building,” Issa said during a hearing into whether a new 9/11 victims’ compensation fund should be launched.
An astounded Michael Cardozo, Mayor Bloomberg’s corporation counsel, who was testifying before the panel said: “This was an attack, I believe, on the United States of America.”
“It was located at Ground Zero, but it was an attack on America,” Cardozo repeated.
Why would anyone be astounded at a Republican acting like a jackass? Happens all the time…
BBC: ‘No Sun link’ to climate change:
Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun’s activity.
The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate “sceptics”, that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature.
The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.
But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.
Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none.
This will not, of course, stop the denialists from recycling their hoary lies. But facts simply don’t matter to their kind.
Also worth noting is this very pithy statement of fact from Mark Hoofnagle:
The goal of denialists is not to propose an alternative theory that is explanatory and useful, but to create controversy and doubt where it does not exist.
It’s all very good and well for them to sit around in the comfort of their air-conditioned houses, lounging in their La-Z-Boys while hammering away furiously on their keyboards, and they have a RIGHT to do so, that’s what we sheepdogs exist to protect, but it DOES get sort of depressing when our efforts, past and present, get maligned constantly by the same ignorant fools who wouldn’t be living their lives of leisure the way they are right now if it hadn’t been for us.
I must have missed something. It is beyond obvious that sitting around in the comfort of its air-conditioned house, lounging in its La-Z-Boy while hammering away furiously on its keyboard is all that “Emperor” Misha does.
And the idea that a psychopathic serial liar like Misha is capable of contributing anything to the defense of this country is beyond ludicrous. It verges on the obscene.
Keep fantasizing that you’re a Brave Defender Of The Realm, little coward. That delusion is, of course, the entire basis of your entertainment value.
And this little gem from Misha, in the comments to its above-mentioned post, is proceleiss:
...I’ve spoken to a number of credible experts in my life, (I’m not a complete stranger to the subject myself either), and all seem to agree that “torture”, as you call it, is indeed highly effective if it isn’t done by rank amateurs and butchers.
Oh really? Name those “experts”, asswipe. Your unsupported word alone is worthless. Even a pathological liar like you should know that.
Andrew “Gribbit the Dipshit” Richardson and lizard bitch Cao are hooting over an April Fool’s prank that fellow wingnut John Bambenek supposedly pulled at the popular site Daily Kos.
I’m not certain what the big deal is. We’ve known for some time that Bambenek is an accomplished liar. Of course, it’s not surprising that liars like Dipshit and the lizard bitch would admire the work of a fellow liar.
Lying asshat Jimmy Hoft has a conniption fit:
When the Left and Barack Obama insist that screaming “God Damn America” in a church, from a pulpit, is acceptable speech—When the Left and Barack Obama insist that a preacher screaming and writing racist anti-Semitic and anti-American thoughts is acceptable you have to scream back—
“NO!! NO IT ISN’T!!”
G-Damning the United States to hell from a pulpit is not acceptable!!
...Ever!
Two points:
- Obama has not said that “racist anti-Semitic and anti-American thoughts” are acceptable. That formulation belongs entirely to Jimmy Hoft. In short, Jimmy is lying again.
- All speech in America is acceptable (save for the ‘yelling fire in a theater’ variety). That’s the meaning of free speech. But ‘free speech’ as a concept is lost on hysterical wingnuts of the Jimmy Hoft variety.
Stay stupid, Jimbo. We both know you don’t really have a choice.
BBC: Iraqi death toll climbs sharply:
The number of Iraqis killed in March rose by 50% compared to the figure for February, according to official counts.
One thousand and eighty-two Iraqis, 925 of them civilians, were killed last month, up from 721 in February.
...
A large majority of those killed in March were civilians. Fifty-four were Iraqi soldiers and 103 were policemen.
Yup… the surge has been a glowing success. Just ask those dead Iraqis.
