You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2008.
The Carpetbagger Report gets it exactly right. The far right has come completely unglued.
For the entire day yesterday, most of the far-right voices wanted to talk about nothing else but Obama’s shameful “lies.” The Republican National Committee issued a statement, arguing that Obama’s minor error “raise[s] questions about his judgment” and his “readiness to lead.” Unhinged conservative bloggers went completely around the bend — Red State said Obama’s remarks were “sickening” and “a bold faced lie.”
It’s as if Republicans woke up yesterday, ate a bowl of Crazy Flakes, and then went straight for their keyboards. (Regrettably, some of Clinton’s more rabid supporters joined the far-right on this one, though there’s no evidence that the campaign itself was pushing this story.)
The service of Obama’s great uncle was actually pretty amazing. He served in the 89th Infantry Division that liberated Ohrdruf in April 1945, a Subcamp of Buchenwald, which was the first camp liberated by Americans. Obama misstated the name of the camp. What difference does it make? Has the political world become so consumed with bile, and so overwhelmed with trivia, that this harmless error is evidence of something important?
Or, as the LAT’s Stuart Silverstein put it, “What’s worse, Obama’s apparent gaffe or the RNC pouncing on a Holocaust-related historical mistake for political advantage?”
If Obama’s uncle hadn’t served in the military, or hadn’t even left the country during World War II, I could see this being more embarrassing and newsworthy. Ronald Reagan, for example, boasted that he’d served in an Army unit that filmed recently liberated death camps. In reality, Reagan never left the U.S. during the war. Later, Reagan claimed to have seen secret military film of Nazi atrocities, though the film didn’t actually exist.
That’s controversial. Obama’s inconsequential error was utterly meaningless. That this became a huge deal to the Republican Attack Machine highlights just how far off the edge these poor schmoes have fallen.
Morons like Gateway Pundit’s lying sack o’ shit Jim Hoft, slimy lizard bitch Cao, and everyone’s favorite juvenile chickenhawk Justin Higgins flogged this non-story. The wingnuts jump on this kind of bandwagon for a reason: they are intellectually incapable of discussing the real issues that face America in this election year. They don’t even understand why discussing real issues is important.
Poor saps.
Amazing. Just when you think the wingnuts cannot top themselves for flagrant idiocy, they manage to do just that.
Any number of overwrought right-wing screech monkeys, among them Ace of Spades, Jim Hoft aka Gateway Pundit, and everyone’s favorite walking 404 error Big Dog, have been howling their outrage at the thought that former President Jimmy Carter revealed a few days ago that Israel has nuclear weapons. Oh, the horror!
Ace of Spades whines:
Israel has never publicly acknowledged its nuclear capabilities — including whether it even has nuclear weapons — but the former president, who has a fetish for screwing over Israel, can probably be considered a reliable source.
Jim Hoft aka Gateway Pundit mewls:
Let’s hope this man is not privy to any more national secrets.
And Big Dog huffs:
He has divulged one of Israel’s secrets. Carter told the world that Israel has nuclear weapons and then told everyone that the country has 150 of them. Carter disclosed a secret that has been held closely by other presidents as well as the Israeli government.
Of course, the correct response to all this wide-eyed bloviating is the usual: Point at the capering clowns and laugh.
It’s been common knowledge for years that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal:
The Nobel Foundation: “In the fall of 1986, a former Israeli nuclear technician, Mordechai Vanunu, disclosed illegally possessed evidence proving that Israel, by all meaningful definitions of the term, was indeed a nuclear weapons state, and a powerful one as well. Drawing on Vanunu’s photographs from the bomb factory underneath the small Dimona nuclear reactor, Western experts concluded that Israel at the time probably had acquired enough fissile material to produce more than 100 nuclear bombs and warheads. Today, Israel may possess as much as 150-200 nuclear weapons.”
USATODAY.com , April 2004: “Israel continues to make nuclear weapons, said Friedrich Steinhaeusler, a former IAEA nuclear safety expert who now is a physics professor at the University of Salzburg. The best estimates put the size of the Israeli arsenal at 150 nuclear weapons, Steinhaeusler said.”
And as for the claim that this was a secret jealously guarded by the United States and Israel? Well, not so much…
Read the rest of this entry »Charlie Stross asks what worthwhile projects we could have tackled in lieu of the Forever War…
So. What fun boondoggles could we have bought with either $523Bn (at the low end) or $6Tn (at the high end)?
NASA have plans for a manned Mars expedition based on the Ares spacecraft they’re developing as a replacement for the Space Shuttle. Price estimates vary from $20Bn (presumably for a single round-trip) to $450Bn (presumably for a single round trip plus all the externalities, like developing the spacecraft and equipment and conducting a thorough prior reconnaissance using unmanned landers).
Either way, the direct costs of the Iraq war exceed the maximum cost estimate for a manned Mars expedition, infrastructure and all, by 20%. If we take $20Bn as the cost per mission and $450Bn as the cost to develop the technology to go there, the direct cost of the Iraq war would be sufficient to develop a gold-plated Mars expeditionary capability and send six crews of astronauts to Mars (and bring them back afterwards).
...
Finally, there’s all the other little stuff we could solve by pointing $513Bn at it, never mind $6000Bn. Eliminating childhood diseases in South-East Asia? Piffle — Bill and Melinda Gates are trying to do that out of their pocket lint. Build first-world grade housing in shiny new cities for 600 million Chinese peasants, nearly a tenth of the planetary population? Yes, this budget will cover that. What else?
Yes, I’m asking you: what would you do with the cost of the Iraq war (take your pick: $513Bn or $6000Bn) in your budget? Colonise Mars? Solve our carbon emission problem and fix global warming? House half a billion people? Or something else …?
(And what isn’t going to happen now, because we pissed it all away on the desert sands?)
Go read the whole thing, and throw in your two cents’ worth.
(hat tip: Boing Boing)
In the midst of today’s family gatherings and cookouts, take a moment to stop and remember those who have fought and died for this country. Our debt to them can never be repaid.
This is hilarious!
Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, liar extraordinaire, is making noises about someone else’s supposed “rank dishonesty”.
The man is among the most prolific liars in the wingnut blogosphere:
- ‘Midwest Jim’, you’re a lying jackass
- ‘Gateway Pundit’: Lying, lying, just flat out lying
- Gateway Pundit: Still a Lying Sack of Shit
- Jim Hoft: Still a Lying Asshat
- Lying Asswipe Jim Hoft Does It Again!
- BUSTED!!! Jim Hoft posts another deliberately misleading chart!
Jim Hoft wrote the book on being dishonest. There is no lie that Jim Hoft will not tell.
Here are some shining examples of the way our military has chosen to “defend our freedoms”:
On October 23, 2006 a U.S. soldier or marine peered through the telescopic sight of his M24 sniper rifle and trained it on the face of Nora, a five-year-old Iraqi girl. Her pretty face was close enough to kiss. Instead, he squeezed the trigger and sent a 7.62 round slamming into her skull. The medical report read, “Nora sustained an explosive bullet injury to her head that smashed the skull bones and ruptured her cerebral membrane.” Nora survived the sniper’s bullet.
During the battle for Falluja in 2004, U.S. snipers positioned themselves on rooftops covering the entrance to the only hospital still in operation, creating what locals called “sniper alley.” Iraqi men, women, and children seeking medical treatment were fired on. Ambulances delivering patients and supplies were fired on. Unlike Nora, many did not survive the sniper’s bullet.
On May 30, 2006 Nabiha Nisaif Jasiam and her cousin, Saliha Mohammed Hassen were shot from behind by a U.S. sniper as they drove to Samarra General hospital. Nabiha was about to deliver her third child. Neither survived the sniper’s bullet.
No U.S. president or general or lowly lieutenant acknowledged, much less apologized, for these illegal and immoral shootings. No sniper was held accountable.
The wounds we have inflicted on the Iraqi people and their society are deep and penetrating. It will require generations to repair that society. One can only hope that a future US will do all it can to make amends for the terrible damage we have done to the Iraqi people.
UPDATE 05/26/08 07:15 AM EDT: Certain wingnut blogs have suggested that no corroborating reports exist for the report that two women, one pregnant, were shot dead outside the Samarra hospital. Such claims are, of course, utter bullshit:
The most instructive thing about watching the wingnut blogs is the consistently poor reasoning skills on display. Read enough of the claptrap these bozos put out, and you get a comprehensive education on how not to construct an argument.
Take ‘Big Dog’ (who is affectionately known as Dogmeat round these parts) and his latest burbling. he appears to be trying to make some sort of point about the high cost of prescription drugs. But he finds a remarkable explanation for the problem:
For the first time in quite some time Democrats are getting more money from the drug companies than are Republicans. Barack Obama has received $639,124 from drug and medical device companies and that is the highest amount given to any of the three… Have we heard anyone suggest that Obama is the reason drug prices are high?
Well, no, we haven’t. Golly willikers, why do you suppose that is?
Maybe we should look at all the numbers involved. According to the Pharmaceutical Industry Profile 2006 released by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, total domestic sales of member companies was $164.2 billion (page 49, table 6). If we do the math, we find that Obama’s putative contribution to the price of prescription drugs was something like 639,124/164,200,000,000 = 0.00000386, or about .0004 percent. Oh yeah, the high cost of my blood pressure medication is definitely all Obama’s fault.
I should feel guilty about thinking rings around Dogmeat like this — it is so akin to taking candy from the proverbial baby. But this baby is so willfully, joyfully pig-ignorant that I just can’t work up any remorse.
Read the rest of this entry »BBC News: US strike ‘kills Iraqi civilians’
Eight civilians have been killed in an air strike by US military helicopters north of Baghdad, Iraqi police say.
Two children were among those who died in the attack on Wednesday evening near the town of Baiji, the police said.
Baiji’s police chief said the attack targeted a group of shepherds in a farming area. The US military said the incident was under investigation.
...
A local man, Ghafil Rashed, told Reuters that his brother and son had been killed in the attack: “The Americans raided our houses… People started fleeing with their children, then the aircraft started bombing people in a street along the farm.”
Baiji’s police chief, Col Mudher Qaisi, told Reuters news agency that the attack was a criminal act, and would make relations between Iraqi citizens and the US forces tense.
“This will negatively affect security improvements,” he said.
Gee, ya think?
This is what the wingnuts’ mantra of “protecting our freedoms” translates to in Iraq: killing shepherds and children.
PZ Myers points us to a simple, straightforward explanation of the inconvenient truth about ‘intelligent design’:
UPDATE 05/21/08 2:25 PM EDT: Über-crank C. David Parsons just tried to spam this post with an ad for his creationist tripe, Quest for Right. See PZ Myers for the skinny on that huge, steaming pile of poppycock.
I tell you, the wingnut blogs are the best entertainment value on teh intarwebs. That’s why I follow as many of them as I do.
The ever-hilarious, semi-literate troglodyte who goes by the easy-to-type moniker “TA” over at Hoosier Army Mom’s has vomited up another puddle of his all-too-tiresome mixture of idiocy and racism. He seems to think that the video he has posted is something terrifying:
Well, guess what, you Twinkle-toed Communist America-hating piece of shit … here’s what your little Spear-chucker rack-buddy has to say in his own words … words you and all of the other dumbass Democrappers don’t want America to hear!
Therefore, I’m posting this to remain here and I hope all INTELLIGENT RED-BLOODED AMERICANS email this hateful video all over America … as it clearly demonstrates he is hell-bent on destroying America; our Military; our Rights and Freedoms!!!
Oh yeah… you got your Random Capital Letters, your ALL CAPS WHICH MEAN HE MUST BE RIGHT, and your ever-popular string of exclamation points!!!!!!. TA’s little tantrum is a masterful example of the art of substituting typography for intelligent discourse.
Read the rest of this entry »You don’t get much sleazier than this:
Michelle Obama: A Bigger Mouth than a Hooker Short on Rent Money
Recall that Kit Lange is an advocate of genocide. Inexplicably, she still believes she has some kind of standing to criticize others.
How myopic is the world view of a wingnut? Try this on for size:
Do you suppose it’s coincidence that federal department of “traffic safety” is running a campaign about “click it or ticket” at the same time? I sure don’t. What a total damn load of crap and waste of money. Hold on, let me check my Constitution to see where The People gave the federal government the authority over seat belts. Yeah, I know, I’m dreaming. Only in my dreams does the Constitution actually mean anything.
Yes, folks. Only in the withered, blackened, so-called ‘soul’ of a wingnut like Ogre is it a bad idea to spend a paltry few million dollars to remind folks to do something that saves lives. Only in the blighted imagination of such a pathetic creature does a government action intended to ensure the safety of its citizens imply that the Constitution is meaningless.
Hoo boy…
David Murfee Faulk, a former translator for the NSA, tells of the unreliable intelligence regarding Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction:
Faulk says that in May 2004 he found an extremely large text file containing grid coordinates for alleged chemical weapons sites in Iraq. Faulk showed it to his supervisor, who was surprised. But he was not surprised that the file existed, only that it had not been deleted. The supervisor said he had believed all such files had been deleted, and that there had been a great many of them. In fact, according to this supervisor, U.S. Special Forces had gone to the locations and found nothing.
That’s what usually happens, Faulk’s supervisor told him, when you get something from the Israelis. “Four out of five times it’s complete and total bullshit.”
I asked veteran Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst Ray McGovern what he made of this, and he said that there is “no such thing as a ‘friendly’ intelligence service. Reporting from liaison services always needs to be taken with utmost reserve. That goes in spades for what comes from the Israelis, the more so since they have unique, yes unique, access to the White House and Pentagon, and are thus able to circumvent the intelligence bureaucracy set up to vet and evaluate raw intelligence and prevent unverified and/or tendentious ‘intelligence’ from reaching senior officials, lest they be misled.”
You gotta love it when Misha the Moron marginalizes himself two days running:
Here’s the next issue that must not, EVER be talked about, presumably because it “distracts from the real issues”, whatever in the name of Socrates’ left nut those might be.
Yup, we got it straight from the asswad’s mouth: Misha does not know what the issues in this election are.
More than that, it’s a sure bet he hasn’t a snowball’s chance to ever figure out what the issues are. The intellectual infrastructure just isn’t there.
Does John McCain ride the ‘Straight Talk Express’? Not on your life…
The great thing about the wingnuts is that they are self-marginalizing. Take the megalomaniac ‘Emperor’ Misha — when he posts a headline like this:
...he ensures that no one takes him seriously except his tiny cadre of fellow lunatics. Add to that the parroting of long-discredited lies like “the [global] temperature hasn’t been rising at all since about 1998”, and Misha finishes the job of discrediting himself very neatly.
Yes, assclowns, I’m talking to you: Kit Lange, “TA”, Susan Duclos, Jim Hoft, Mike and Curt, and all you other ignorant wingnuts… there’s not a one of you who knows or understands history.
George W. Bush, speaking before the Israeli Knesset, made the following statement:
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.
First off: The act of talking to another state, even an enemy, is not ‘appeasement’. It’s called ‘diplomacy’. Any discussion of ‘appeasement’ in the context of Nazi Germany inevitably brings to mind the actions of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain did, indeed, employ appeasement in his dealings with Hitler — but not in the act of talking to Hitler. The actual act of appeasement was the signing of the Munich Agreement, which ceded part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. It’s a good bet that Bush and the yammering herd that adore him have no real grasp of this historical reality.
Read the rest of this entry »The laughably bombastic “Big Dog” demonstrates just how benighted he is:
The Democrats are up in arms over remarks that President Bush made while in Israel celebrating that country’s 60th anniversary. The President was speaking about terrorists, an appropriate subject given who surrounds Israel, when he made remarks that got the Democrat’s panties in a wad:
In his speech, Bush said: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.” The Crypt
Immediately the Democrats assumed that Bush was taking a veiled swipe at Obama who has advocated talking to terrorists. In fact, many people and countries have held this particular belief. France and Germany believed that talking was in order as did many Democrats as they moved to distance themselves from their vote to go to war. I would be remiss if I did not mention Jimmy Carter (who would be a more likely target) and his terrorist ties. But it was Obama, they say, who was attacked.
Well, they say that because that was the intent, jackwad:
Yes, of course, the Bush gang is completely innocent. Who, them? Travel to foreign soil to slander a U.S. political leader in the midst of a domestic presidential campaign? How could we have ever gotten such an idea in the first place?
Oh, right, I remember now — from White House officials who conceded this morning that this was precisely the point of Bush’s cheap and pathetic smear attempt. CNN’s Ed Henry reported, “White House aides are acknowledging that this was a reference to the fact that Sen. Obama and other Democrats have publicly said that it would be ok for the U.S. President to meet with leaders like the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.” And NBC’s John Yang also spoke with a White House official who said Obama was one of Bush’s intended targets.
Damn, Dogmeat. It’s a bitch when reality comes along and makes road kill out of your little fantasy world, isn’t it?
Shorter Amy Proctor: PTSD does not deserve recognition as an injury. Come back when you’ve lost a limb.
Way to support the troops, kiddo…
For those of you who don’t know, [Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded] is a retrospective of the entire run of Whatever, all the way back to the hazy days of 1998, when the concept of blogging was so new they didn’t even have the word “blog” yet. We called them “online diaries.” We also had to type uphill in the snow, both ways. And we liked it.
We should have a January 20, 2009 countdown ticker at this blog, and I think we should have a national celebration when this criminal leaves office. I mean a truly national celebration, with fireworks, street parties, city proclamations, etc that would be televised all over the world. I want President Bush’s last day in office to be the most humiliating experience of his life — one where the American people show him how absolutely jubilant they are that he is no longer the leader of this country. We could call it “National Thank Fucking God Day” or something like that.
Yes, kids, it’s time once again to play “Just How Dishonest IS Jim Hoft?”
Hoft, the unrelentingly mendacious numbskull who posts as ‘Gateway Pundit’, has posted the following chart to illustrate another deceptive, misleading screed about how the economy is doing under Bush as compared to the Clinton years:
Two questions come immediately to mind:
- What’s with the funky scale on the vertical axis?
- Why a bar graph?
A commenter named bvw immediately caught out Jimmy doing his dishonest little chart dance:
That is one extremely dishonest graphic. It makes it look like the Bush years have half the reported unemployment of the Clinton years. How does it do so? Because the scale is so narrow. There’s no reason for such a tiny range EXCEPT to distort the message of the actual numbers. The actual numbers are just about equal. The reported numbers are SLIGHTLY less during the Bush years.
Exactly. Jimmy the Weasel manipulated the Y-axis to give the visual impression that unemployment was three times as great under Clinton as it was under Bush. In fact, the average for the Bush years is less than the average under Clinton by just two one-hundredths of one percent. Jimmy the Weasel chose to scale the Y-axis as he did in a deliberate and cynical attempt to hide that fact.
Read the rest of this entry »Yes, folks, that victim of recto-cranial inversion, “Big Dog”, really is so fucking stupid that he doesn’t know that “monkey” has long been used as a racial slur against blacks.
Misha puts Cheeto-stained fingers to keyboard, and farts out yet another laughable screech:
So tell us, greenies, just how smug and superior do you feel now, knowing that filling up your car with ethanol just ONCE uses enough grains to feed a family for a year? Knowing that your biofuel craze and idiotic, imbecilic, cretinous cult of Gaia and your actions are responsible for the deaths of thousands, deaths that are occurring right NOW?
How does it feel to be on the road to being directly responsible for even more deaths than Adolf Hitler?
Do you feel at all, fucknuggets?
You will. One day, a glorious day coming soon, you will.
That’s a promise.
No, Misha. That’s an empty threat. Every threat from you is an empty threat.
Why? Simple: you are a coward. You always have been, and always will be, a coward. Your kind yells and screams, but you never ever find the courage to physically attack anyone. Empty threats like this one are all you’ve got.
Gutless bullies are like that. And it is pathetically obvious that you, Misha, are the very archetype of the gutless bully.
UPDATE 05/12/08 2:59 PM EDT: Let me just point out here that Misha’s attempt to blame Al Gore for the “the deaths of thousands” is, as usual when discussing Misha’s babblings, a piece of unmitigated crap. Gore does not favor converting corn to ethanol:
Q. How about the other big, new contender, ethanol?
A. Cellulosic ethanol. Different from corn-based ethanol. I think it is going to be a huge new source of energy, particularly for the transportation sector. You’re going to see it all over the place. You’re going to see a lot more flex-fuel vehicles. You’re going to see new processes that utilize waste as the source of energy, so there’s no petroleum consumed in the process—that makes the energy balance uniformly positive, so you can regrow it and it does become, in a real sense, renewable. You may also begin to see a new generation of fuel cells that run on cellulosic ethanol, where you can grow your own electricity. I think it’s going to play a huge role.
Heh.
This is pretty much what I’ve been saying for some time, but Simon at Bloggasm has taken the time to quantify the phenomenon. Right-wing blogs by and large avoid discussing Obama in terms of policy, and hammer instead on trivia:
Approximately 77% of posts dealing with Barack Obama in four major conservative blogs focused on non-policy issues. The blogs I surveyed include michellemalkin.com, powerlineblog.com, redstate.com, and littlegreenfootballs.com.
The four blogs published a total of 311 posts in April prominently featuring Obama. Of those, 71 posts (23%) focused on policy issues. The remaining 240 posts (77%) focused on non-policy issues.
Policy issues the blogs covered include Obama’s views on Iraq, the economic slowdown, the housing crisis, the gas tax, immigration, and the war on terror.
Non-policy issues the blogs covered include Rev.Jeremiah Wright, Weathermen founder Bill Ayers, “bitter” comments about rural voters, his decision to wear a flag pin, and his alleged elitism.
The wingnuts don’t talk about policy because (A) they can’t — they don’t have the necessary chops to understand or even find Obama’s policy statements, and (B) they do not understand why doing so is important. They have so thoroughly bought into the politics of personal destruction that the right has employed lo these many years that the very idea of discussing policy is foreign to them.
(hat tip: shakesville)
Wheeee! When an ignorant liar like Ogre decides to make a fool of himself, he goes whole hog!
From a recent post:
And the Democrat Party motto:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” — H. L. Mencken
Three words, imbecile: WMDs in Iraq. That particular hobgoblin was constructed and deployed by a Republican administration — and over 4000 Americans, as well as countless Iraqis, have died as a result.
Stay stupid, jackwad.
In the midst of an acrimonious election season, it is important to step back and put all the shouting in perspective… to be fully aware of what we are, and what we are not.
More about the song.
Here’s a crystal-clear illustration of a widespread problem with the far-right wingnuts: fuzzy thinking. Citing a recent article in the New York Times,
Raven screeches:
Hillary? An ordinary average working class American? Hmm. I want her to come to work with me. And do what I do for, oh, say, 16 hours. At the hourly rate I earn. We’ll see how long she claims to be of my class… there is nothing she can do to improve my working conditions either. After all, nursing is nursing and it is what it IS.
How dare she even make such claims? What a lying sack of shit.
Now, go read that NYT article.
Read it carefully.
Is there any evidence in that article that Hillary Clinton has made any claim that she is “an ordinary average working class American”?
Nope. Not one scintilla.
Clinton is trying to resonate with ordinary average working class Americans, certainly. I daresay there hasn’t been a politician who has stood for election on the national stage in the past fifty years who hasn’t done that. There’s nothing unusual or deceptive about that.
But what evidence is there that Clinton actually made the claim that Raven accuses her of having made?
[ insert sound effect: crickets ]
That’s fuzzy thinking. That’s Raven.
Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit (better known round these parts as Jimmycrap Hoftwad) wants his readers to support military moms. Gee willikers, that’s a cause I can sure get behind. But what, exactly, does Jimmycrap wants?
Does he exhort his readers to contact their Congresscritters and urge that they open hearings into why soldiers are being electrocuted in Iraq? Some military moms might enjoy that kind of support — you know, the kind that works to get their kids home safely.
Does he insist that the US military stop covering up the rape and murder of female soldiers? I can imagine there might be more than a few military moms who’d really appreciate that sort of support.
Does he demand that his legion of loyal syncophants mount a letter-writing campaign to ‘straight talker’ John McCain, telling McCain reverse his stance and support a renewed and expanded GI bill? Golly, I bet a lot of military moms would be grateful for McCain’s support for educating their children.
Um, no. Jimmycrap thinks that supporting military moms means getting all excited about some silly-ass TV contest.
Yeah. Way to show some support for those military moms, Jimmycrap. Whoopee.
Via Steve Young, comic Rick Overton paints a very sharp picture of the right’s Wright meme:
“The Right Wing Smear Machine is loud and shiny, like an American hot rod. Made to be noticed, and coveted by morons. Designed by bitter, morally weak people FOR bitter, morally weak people. It gives them infantile and easy targets to deflect their own shortcomings onto. Why should we believe one single word from an entity that is wrong about everything else? Only a dull witted coward would think that Howard Dean’s scream is why he should not be President. The same applies to the treatment they give any high profile threat. The other kind of assassination, by a thousand paper cuts. There’s a reason they call a think-tank the ‘Skunk-works’. These are not humans in that room, regardless of how clever they are. The corporate media is an enemy to the human species. A cancer to man. They take the lowest form of us and lower them even more, making them into something not unlike the Orcs in LORD OF THE RINGS. A biped that cannot be reasoned with. Incapable of being taught, they can only be trained like a dog. An attack dog. But fox (No CAPS for them, they have lost the right to it) and the others are part of the machine that crushes good. It eats honesty and shits out vicious lies in it’s place. It hates love and loves hate. It is our TV and radio. It is funded by killers. They believe the worst news first. I pity them for the day when they see what they have helped to make so. I can almost forgive a conservative for buying this garbage, but for a Democrat, a Liberal, a Progressive to buy the corporate line is to me, inexcusable. I have nothing but contempt for their betrayal. One side is not supposed to know, but the other is. Of the two groups, only one is the traitor – the morally lazy ‘Progressive.’ The other is the Enemy Combatant, in full uniform. Bottom line – Some people want Hillary, simply to put McCain in office. Others want her because they’re female as well (Hey, I’m bald, but I don’t want McCain in office). These are adolescent reasons for putting someone at the wheel of a nation. It says that we file our lax standards for our leadership under the convenient heading of ‘Pragmatism.’ I hate this process and what the Cancervatives have done to it with the Digressive’s help – (A classic bully and weakling scenario). We are social abuse victims, raped by our symbolic parents. The memory of it is slowly coming back to us. Too slowly for my taste.”
Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the winning plaintiff in the landmark case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, is being tried before a military commission in Guantanamo Bay. Ben Wizner describes a recent exchange between Hamdan and Judge Allred:
Hamdan had once again stated that he intended to leave the court and to instruct his attorneys not to proceed in his absence. The judge pleaded with Hamdan to reconsider:
“Mr. Hamdan, I think you should have great faith in American law, because you have already been to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said to the President of the United States, ‘You cannot do that to Mr. Hamdan.’ Your name is printed in our law books. You won against the United States.”
The judge was correct, of course — it is indeed extraordinary that our system allows an imprisoned Yemeni with a fourth-grade education to take on the president and Secretary of Defense — and prevail. But, Hamdan wanted to know, to what end? Years later, he was back at square one. “We went to the Supreme Court and the Court made a decision. Then the government went to Congress and they changed the law. Why? Just for my case?” Hamdan had earlier made the same point more colorfully: “If you ask me what is the color of this paper, I say white. You say black. I say white. You say black. I say, okay, it’s black — and you say white. This is the American government.”
Hamdan is correct. The US government is conducting these trials with the intent of getting convictions in any way possible, because acquittals would be embarrassing. The concept that American justice should above all fair seems to have eluded the Bush administration and its lackeys.
This country may never be able to shed the burden of shame that has been laid upon it in the last seven years.
(hat tip: Firedoglake)
Five years ago today, George W. Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, dressed up like a fighter pilot, and proclaimed “Mission Accomplished”. Juan Cole compares Bush’s fantasy with the cold realities...
Here are some memorable phrases from Bush’s mendacious speech half a decade ago:
’ . . . major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. . .
And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country. . .
In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty and for the peace of the world. . .
Because of you our nation is more secure. . . [Note that he is trying to attribute to the poor enlisted men his policies.] . . .
In the images of fallen statues we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. . . [The statue was pulled down by the US military and the whole thing was staged before a tiny Iraqi crowd, the small size of which media close-ups disguised.] . . .
In defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. . . [The US has probably directly killed about 200,000 Iraqis and destroyed the city of Fallujah as well as damaging and repeatedly bombing others. Bush’s fascist attempt to reconfigure warfare as a humanitarian gesture is the biggest lie of all] . . .
Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. [Foreign military occupation is not generally considered ‘liberty’ by most people.] . . .
We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. [The sites were being investigated before the war, and nothing was being found, so Bush pulled out the inspectors and went to war. Nothing ever was found.] . . .
Our coalition will stay until our work is done and then we will leave and we will leave behind a free Iraq. [When will that be exactly?] . . .
In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban . . . [ Maybe not so much; this ‘mission accomplished’ passage has not been sufficiently criticized] . . .
The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of Al Qaida and cut off a source of terrorist funding. [There was no operational connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. None. And the US occupation of Iraq gave al-Qaeda a new lease on life ] . . .
We are committed to freedom in Afghanistan, Iraq and in a peaceful Palestine. . . [90% of the world fell down laughing at that point in the speech; only gullible, self-righteous Americans could even think about taking this snow job seriously] . . .
‘
The “mission accomplished” banner was the least of it.
