June 2008

Kos:

[Conservatives] do live in a state of fear, and what’s more, they want everyone else to join them hiding under their bed, in their pool of urine.

A new book describes a field of study that we desperately need to pay attention to in this era of carefully cultivated ignorance:

What don’t we know, and why don’t we know it? What keeps ignorance alive, or allows it to be used as a political instrument? Agnotology — the study of ignorance — provides a new theoretical perspective to broaden traditional questions about “how we know” to ask: Why don’t we know what we don’t know? The essays assembled in Agnotology show that ignorance is often more than just an absence of knowledge; it can also be the outcome of cultural and political struggles. Ignorance has a history and a political geography, but there are also things people don’t want you to know (“Doubt is our product” is the tobacco industry slogan). Individual chapters treat examples from the realms of global climate change, military secrecy, female orgasm, environmental denialism, Native American paleontology, theoretical archaeology, racial ignorance, and more. The goal of this volume is to better understand how and why various forms of knowing do not come to be, or have disappeared, or have become invisible.

It is clear that a massive research program into the causes and cures of ignorance would yield absolutely astounding benefits for the human race. Perhaps we should mount an effort on the scale of the Apollo spaceflight program — and I make that suggestion only half in jest.

(hat tip: Uncertain Principles)

There are constants in the world. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Puppies are warm and fuzzy. Bees make honey. The swallows return to San Juan Capistrano every year.

And right-wing extremists will lie, more often than not.

The wingnut that styles himself “Big Dog” has provided further proof of this axiom. I commented yesterday on his lust for murder, and in so doing, sent a trackback to his post. It consisted of the following statement from my own post:

Moral cretin Big Dog is another faux-”Christian” who slavers over the thought of committing murder…

This mirror of Big Dog’s post at the time I sent the trackback shows how it appeared just after the trackback was posted. Big Dog, of course, can’t tolerate anyone telling the truth about his lack of moral intelligence, so he has altered the trackback (check this mirror, and see the update below):

Big Dog is a ”Christian” who I have a man crush on

Let’s leave aside for the moment the fact that, in choosing the lie he did, Big Dog chose to allude to his own latent homosexuality. What we have here is a classic instance of a right-wing extremist who is unable to conduct a rational discussion of his own views, and knows it. He has no compunction about lying, deliberately and with malice aforethought.

I thank Big Dog for his successful effort to prove, yet again, that a wingnut can be counted on to lie when it finds itself outclassed in a debate.

UPDATE 06/27/08 6:42 AM EDT: Gee, here’s a surprise… gutless halfwit Big Dog realized he’d been caught lying, so he has deleted the altered trackback and restored my original. Of course, that doesn’t erase the fact that he did lie, as shown in this mirror.

Darksyde writes in The Grand Unified Theory of Conservatism: Idiocracy:

At some point in the near future history of this great nation, “Republican” or “Conservative” might just become a generic insult synonymous with dipshit precisely because dangerously stupid has become the premier conservative governing philosophy: Shut up, don’t open emails, don’t read analyst reports, dismiss empirical evidence in favor of wishful thinking, keep your heads in the sand, and don’t strain your faith-based noggins worrying about stuff like some silly report back in August 2001 that might say Bin Laden determined to strike in the US until it’s too late.

Nothing, I think, could raise the level of political discourse in the United States than the marginalization of the extremist right. Alas, it’s not likely to happen any time soon.

Well, here’s a surprise… over at Cathouse Chat, the faux-”Christian” Cat still wants to commit murder. Commenting on today’s Supreme Court ruling regarding the death penalty, Cat screeches:

Rope. Tree. Justices.

Some assembly required.

Boy, there’s nothing that gets a good “Christian” woman’s heart going all a-pittypat quicker than fantasizing about taking the lives of other people. Keep in mind that this is the same degenerate headcase that wants to commit nuclear mass murder.

This is one of the truly delicious benefits of the blogging phenomenon. Anyone can set up a blog — and thus there is nothing stopping a religiowhacko like Cat from exposing just what kind of moral vacuum she chooses to live in.

UPDATE 06/25/08 6:44 PM EDT: John Cole nails it:

Some days the only reasonable explanation for the apparent bloodlust from some of these folks is that they really just like death.

UPDATE 06/25/08 9:24 PM EDT: Oh, lookie… Moral cretin Big Dog is another faux-”Christian” who slavers over the thought of committing murder:

I think if a person who rapes a child (in a state that had the death penalty for the offense) is released and rapes another child, the members of the court who allowed it should be hanged in front of the Supreme Court building.

UPDATE 06/26/08 11:52 AM EDT: It is impossible to overstate the moral depravity of a wingnut. Now Big Dog wants enact revenge by murdering children:

…I honestly believe that if a judge makes a ruling that allows a criminal back on the street then the next time the criminal strikes it should happen to the judge’s family… Like all these judges that keep letting child molesters out of jail and the next time the molester strikes he kills a kid. That should be the judge’s kid, not yours or mine, so the judge is made to pay for his decision.

Why, pray tell, do we allow such people things to participate in a civilized society?

In a lengthy and excellent post, Ernest Partridge examines the use of reason and fallacy in political discourse…

I submit that the right is much more inclined than the left to utilize fallacies. That’s a bold and unsubstantiated claim. Perhaps I should now proceed to write the book that will support this claim. It will take at least that much space to accomplish the task.

But much better than that, why don’t you examine the arguments on the right and the left to see for yourself whether or not I am right?

And while you are at it, ask yourself: (1) Which side is more willing to own up to its past positions, predictions, and assurances? (2) Which side examines the broader field of source material? (3) Which side looks for the most relevant information, even if that information is absent from the corporate media? (4) Which side is more tolerant of dissent, both within and outside of its ranks? (5) Which side uses the more cogent arguments? And (6) which side relies less on fallacious reasoning?

Well worth taking the time to read it all — and then follow up on the resources Mr. Partridge lists at the end of the article.

The wingnuts who claim that a reduction in violence in Iraq means that the “surge” is a smashing success will be putting their collective fingers in their collective ears, and singing LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA as loud as they can. Reality just smacked them in the face like a flaccid trout:

Government Study Criticizes Bush Administration’s Measures of Progress in Iraq

Beyond the declines in overall violence in Iraq, several crucial measures the Bush administration uses to demonstrate economic, political and security progress are either incorrect or far more mixed than the administration has acknowledged, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office.

Over all, the report says, the American plan for a stable Iraq lacks a strategic framework that meshes with the administration’s goals, is falling out of touch with the realities on the ground and contains serious flaws in its operational guidelines.

Read the rest of this entry »

Big Dog posts, Big Dog lies…

I can’t speak for him but any person who wishes we get attackd again should be sent to Gitmo, oh wait, the SCOTUS said we had to release people from there.

Um, no. The Supreme Court has not issued a ruling that requires any detainee to be released from Guantanamo. What the Court did rule is that detainees have the right to challenge their detention. But of course, Dogmeat has never let little things like facts stand in the way of a good rant.

Notice, too, that in the tiny, cramped space that is Big Dog’s “mind”, merely holding an opinion is a crime deserving of imprisonment. This is no surprise, of course… Big Dog has also informed the world, in all seriousness, that anyone who disagrees with him deserves to die.

Expect more lies and distortions from Big Dog. It is, after all, the one thing he knows how to do.

Ogre posts, Ogre lies … about the Ohio teacher who decided to brand his students’ arms with crosses:

Once again, we have yet another example in America of someone being fired for the crime of being Christian. Don’t believe the crap about “branding crosses,” that’s just totally made up crap. Look at the picture. You really have to WANT to see a cross to see a cross there. And no one was ever injured. Nope, sorry, they weren’t.

Ogre is lying about the picture. The cross is clearly visible.

Furthermore, John Freshwater tacitly admitted to branding his students — when he lied to investigators regarding what he was burning into students’ arms:

Freshwater told investigators the marks were X’s, not crosses.

Ogre’s claim that no children were harmed when John Freshwater assaulted them with a 50,000 volt device is sheer lunacy — but one expects a lunatic like Ogre to lie. That’s all he knows.

Big Dog posts, Big Dog lies:

Keep in mind that the Republican Party has engaged [Obama] very little so far. He has been in an extended primary and all the racist attacks came from Democrats.

Well, no. At Firedoglake, David Neiwert dissects the latest dog-whistle ad from Republican slime merchant Floyd Brown, of “Willie Horton” fame:

It’s also been striking how often the narrative veers into a discussion of Rev. Wright and Obama’s judgment, which is ostensibly the ad’s chief storyline. But anyone watching it can see that there’s a larger, underlying theme: the ad is all about associating Obama with black criminality and supposedly lax liberal policies to “blame” for it. It’s all about scaring white suburbanites while giving them the cover of hand-wringing about his “judgment.”

Well, that’s Floyd Brown for you. It is simply the Willie Horton campaign updated with the special edge of targeting a black candidate. And stirring the racial pot and widening the cultural divide is what Brown is all about.

Expect more lies and distortions from Big Dog. It is, after all, the one thing he knows how to do.