August 2008

The brain-damaged mutt just can’t stop lying:

Is Pelosi aware that we could have oil flowing in 1-3 years (not 10)…

Nope. Absolutely false. The Bush Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) has looked at the consequences of allowing the drilling moratorium to expire, and they have determined that…

access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017.

There is no credible information that indicates that production could begin in as little as three years. That is pure fantasy.

Stop lying, Dogshit. You’re simply too stupid to do it well.

Please read the following excerpt from a recent Washington Post article:

PICKING UP our dusty copy of Joe Biden’s autobiography the other day, we were struck by two points that underscore Mr. Biden’s value to Barack Obama as his running mate. The first was the degree to which the young Biden’s message, as a 29-year-old Senate candidate in 1972, anticipated the themes struck by Mr. Obama more than three decades later. “We must have public officials who will stand up and tell the people exactly what they think,” Mr. Biden said in announcing his candidacy.

Normal people would read that and understand that in that last sentence, the word “they” refers to “public officials”. Of course, Raven is not a normal person. Raven is a lying wingnut who is always willing to twist someone else’s words in the service of her blind hatred of honest discussion:

I don’t need anyone telling me what I think. I’m my own person, and sorry Sir Slimepit Joe, you have no right to tell me what to think.

Yes, that’s right — she actually expects us to believe that Biden was saying that public officials should tell the people what to think. Raven doesn’t even try to hide her gross dishonesty any more.

Everybody’s favorite screeching wingnut Cao posted this hot news at 7:16 AM EDT this morning:

Supposedly Obama is going to notify people via TEXT MESSAGE regarding his veep choice some time today.

This, of course, is yet another demonstration of Cao’s uncanny ability to lag well behind the real world. The text message to which she refers was transmitted by the Obama campaign shortly after 3 AM this morning.

Cao reminds me of the character of “Ed” on the Jack Benny Program. Ed was the fellow who guarded the money in Jack’s vault, and he didn’t get out much…

Another situation which elicited a great deal of response from the audience was Jack’s underground vault; it became a running gag that was used for years. The trip down to the vault was always accompanied by footsteps, chains rattling, iron doors clanging, and whistles sounding the alarm. There was a man who guarded Benny’s strong box and every time Benny wanted to enter the man would say, “Who goes there?” Benny would reply, “It’s me, Ed.” One time the guard asked, “What’s new?” “The war’s over,” Jack answered. Then Ed responded, “Oh, good… Who won? The North or the South?” The audience loved it.

And we love Cao, for, like Ed, she can always be counted on to provide the comic relief.

Pamela Troy offers a few thoughts on debating the far right, especially its religious fanatics:

Back in my Bible Belt days, I occasionally met evangelical Christians who approached argument in much the same way these folks do. Usually it was some sheltered soul who had heard about unbelievers in Sunday school, but rarely actually interacted with them. The person would initiate a conversation, usually beginning with the question “are you saved?” and then, as the discussion went on, evince baffled dismay that the “unsaved” person did not stop arguing, fall to his or her knees, and convert like they do Jack Chick tracts.

The concept of defending a point they had made was alien to them. They had marched eagerly forward with what they considered unassailable arguments, and were outraged at the rudeness of people who refused to treat those arguments as unassailable. Sure, they expected a little resistance. But oh, the gross unfairness of someone listening, arguing and worse, asking them to expand on their points and clarify them! That was just intolerable! It was insulting! It was harassment, that’s what it was! By the end of the conversation, the evangelical had usually forgotten who had begun the discussion and was hurrying off to the comfort of fellow Born Agains with a tale of being the victim of an unprovoked verbal attack by an unbeliever.

I’m interested in ideas. If someone initiates a discussion on a subject that interests me, I will continue that conversation so long as I find it interesting.

There seem, however, to be quite a few people online who don’t like debate. They like the idea of debate, but they don’t really understand what intelligent debate entails – which is, listening, citing facts, and most important, asking questions, and answering questions.

Pamela describes precisely the sort of behavior that the godfreaks of the far right indulge in all too often — I have in mind Cao (more than once), Renee, and Kat, in particular. Reason and inquiry is anathema to that sort; only narrow, dogmatic belief is allowed in their cramped little worlds.

Poor gullible Amy Proctor has been taken in by yet another wingnut attack on Barack Obama:

Did you know that Barack Obama’s campaign chartered 757 North American aircraft underwent a makeover in July? The Obama campaign thought it would be a good idea to take off the American flag from the tail of the plane, a fixture on North American airplanes, and replace it with his his signature “O” logo.

Is there such a thing as flagophobia? Or maybe it’s egomania.

This is yet another variation on the threadbare ‘Obama hates America” meme that is all the rage among the mouthbreathers these days. In fact, there is a flag on Obama’s plane:

So, no “flagophobia” there. And as far as “egomania” is concerned, take a gander at the tail of McCain’s campaign plane:

Um, where’s the flag, Amy?

Confirmed liar Jim Hoft feels like it’s time once again to frighten the ninnies who frequent his little shitpile of a blog, so he trots out a thinly veiled ‘ooooooo-scary-scary-black-savage’ scare:

Obama’s younger brother George was discovered in Kenya living in a hut.

He says last year during elections 6 people were hacked to death in his neighborhood.

Hoftwad does not state just what we are to conclude about Barack Obama from this story, but he doesn’t have to. The sound of the dog whistle is loud and clear.

You gotta wonder when Hoft is going to go whole hog and start decorating his stories with a Photoshopped picture of Obama with a bone through his nose. You know that’s what he wants to do.

Here’s still further proof that the whole “drill now” meme is a huge, putrid hoax on the part of the Republicans:

(all emphasis mine)

Republicans Say Any Drilling Bill Must Move Through Committee

House Republicans said Monday they would refuse to consider any energy bill that came straight to the floor from the Democratic leadership’s offices, rather than working its way through committee markups — a process that can take weeks or months.

We just want it to run through regular order,” said Peter Hoekstra , R-Mich., at one of the daily news conferences the GOP has been holding since the start of the August recess.

Anything negotiated behind closed doors and brought directly to the chamber floor will be out of the question, Hoekstra said.

Republicans want the House to vote on legislation that would end a decades-long ban on energy drilling on the east and west coasts. Pelosi has rejected that idea, but recently signaled that she might move legislation to open up smaller areas to drilling.

Republicans said they should have the chance to amend such a bill during the markup process. Debating a measure in the Energy and Commerce Committee could be lengthy, forcing the chamber to stay in session in the weeks leading up to the elections. Republicans said they would be willing to stay as long as necessary.

An energy package that would expand offshore drilling will come to the House floor in September, but it will be bundled with provisions that Republicans oppose, aides to Pelosi confirmed.

Republicans said she is finally feeling pressure from constituents tired of higher gas prices and from members of her own party vulnerable in this year’s election.

But Democratic aides say the package being discussed by staff likely only would open up a handful of southeastern coastal states — Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia — to drilling.

The “drill now” meme has almost nothing do with actually improving the energy economy of the United States. It has everything to do with delivering the goods to the Republicans’ oil company patrons, and with cynical political maneuvering in an election year.

(hat tip Climate Progress)

The Carpetbagger Report points out that despite his recent TV smear against Barack Obama, it is in fact John McCain who will raise taxes on the American middle class:

In their Wall Street Journal piece yesterday, Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee, economic policy advisors for Obama, highlighted the policy detail McCain prefers to downplay.

…Sen. McCain’s plan does include one new proposal that would result in higher taxes on the middle class. As even Sen. McCain’s advisers have acknowledged, his health-care plan would impose a $3.6 trillion tax increase over 10 years on workers.

Sen. McCain’s plan will count the health care you get from your employer as if it were taxable cash income. Even after accounting for Sen. McCain’s proposed health-care tax credits, this plan would eventually leave tens of millions of middle-class families paying higher taxes. In addition, as the Congressional Budget Office has shown, this kind of plan would push people into higher tax brackets and increase the taxes people pay as their compensation rises, raising marginal tax rates by even more than if we let the entire Bush tax-cut plan expire tomorrow.

Got that? McCain’s hollow healthcare plan is bad enough, but the fine print includes a possible tax increase on tens of millions of people in the middle class.

Remember this, and use it, when some troglodyte wingnut tries to tell you that it is Obama who will hit you in the pocketbook. It ain’t… that distinction goes to ‘Maverick” McCain.

Tell me how a moral cretin like “Emperor” Misha deserves anything but contempt:

…we bring you this wonderful heartwarming story of joy which is only marred by the absence of a death count…

Misha and his fellow slugs are death worshipers — period, end of story.

Raven again demonstrates that she is a bottomless pit of ignorance. Referring to Barack Obama, she says:

They want substance. They want details. They want to know what he really means when he speaks his chant-like rhetoric… Will Obama be able to deliver??

Obama’s detailed policy proposals have been available on his website for some time. But knowing that would threaten Raven’s ability to continue to make such jaw-droppingly ignorant statements — and that is a privilege she is just not willing to give up.