You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Political Animals' category.
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…
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.
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.
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?
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…
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.
Not that there was any doubt, but Andrew “Gribbit the Dipshit” Richardson is indeed still a flaming cretin. He honestly believes that bowling prowess is some indicator of fitness for office.
In other news, the sun rose in the east this morning, and a bear shit in the woods…
Can it get any better than this?
The State Department has instructed all personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad not to leave reinforced structures due to incoming insurgent rocket fire that has killed two American government workers this week.
In a memo sent Thursday to embassy staff and obtained by The Associated Press, the department says employees are required to wear helmets, body armor and other protective gear if they must venture outside and strongly advises them to sleep in blast-resistant locations instead of the less secure trailers that most occupy.
“Due to the continuing threat of indirect fire in the International Zone, all personnel are advised to remain under hard cover at all times,” it says. “Personnel should only move outside of hard cover for essential reasons.”
“Essential outdoor movements should be sharply limited in duration,” the memo says, adding that personal protective equipment “is mandatory for all outside movements.”
(hat tip: Think Progress)
Who said this?
For the first time, I have seen Osama bin Laden and General (David) Petraeus in agreement…
Judy “HoosierArmyMom” Doucette apparently believes that lying is an acceptable practice. She does it so often.
Yesterday I asked Judy to explain why she allows her co-blogger “TA” to spew racist filth all over her blog. She has responded with a litany of untruths.
meatbrain, who spends his time going all over the web attacking women, teenagers, expressing his admiration for cop killing extremists, promoting marxism, attacking Christians and Conservatives with all manner of foul language is trying to create a “Smoke Screen” in his typical socialist, libtard way.
Judy: Kindly cite instance where I have “express[ed]... admiration for cop killing extremists” or “promot[ed] marxism”. You’re lying when you make those claims.
He has made many “anti-semantic” comments, spewed his defense of Hitler and fascism all over blogs and he wants to know why I don’t censure a “friend”.
Do you mean “anti-semitic”, Judy? If so, kindly cite the specific anti-semitic comments I have made. Cite my alleged “defense of Hitler and fascism”.
I have made no such comments. You’re lying again, little fool.
Well, TA is an adult, and not only that, he is an adult that has gone in harms way to defend this country and what it stands for. He’s not a socialist who plays “cheap shot attack games” and I can disagree with him and still allow him his free speech.
Yes, but do you in fact disagree with TA’s racist comments? You still haven’t said.
What’s wrong, has Obama embarrassed his supporters so much by giving his “pretty speech” that doesn’t match what he has said in his “book” and demonstates what a liar he is…
Excuse me, Judy, but we already know that you yourself lie to your readers.
meatbrain doesn’t like people who don’t want to see this country end up like China.
I dislike liars and racists. You’re a liar, Judy, and TA is a racist.
By your own behavior and continual ignorance and inability to communicate in a civilized and intelligent manner, you have no credibility with sane people.
Humorous. Do you really believe, Judy, that lying about about what I’ve said and permitting your blog to become an outlet for TA’s racist babblings lends you any credibility with sane people?
P.S. Posting obviously Photoshopped pictures to bolster a claim that someone is “stupid” doesn’t do much for the credibility of your blog, either. I’m just sayin’...
UPDATE 03/26/08 06:43 PM EDT: Judy has deleted TA’s racist tirade, and thus some links above will be broken. Of course, I took the precaution of making a mirror of the post.
UPDATE 03/26/08 6:48 PM EDT: TA rips the last fragment of credibility that he and Judy had into tiny bits, pisses on the pieces, and flushes them down the toilet. Nice going, imbecile.
Over at Judy “HoosierArmyMom” Doucette’s blog, her co-blogger “TA” is once again exhibiting the blatant racism for which he’s become justly notorious, referring to Barack Obama as a “Colored BOY” and a “Monkey”.
I wonder, Judy… are you:
- just as racist as TA, and therefore you don’t notice his racism?
- afraid to police his racist comments on your own blog?
- hoping to attract traffic from TA’s fellow racists?
Can you clear up the confusion, Judy?
UPDATE 03/26/08 06:39 AM EDT: In the comments, Pluto AI points out that the picture TA posted that purports to show Obama speaking into the wrong end of a phone handset is named “stupid-nigger.jpg” and that the image has been Photoshopped. Pluto is correct; the original image is seen here. The editor of the site that originally posted the Photoshopped image as much as admits that the photo is a fake (scroll down to comment #14).
Really, Judy, do you want your blog to become known for this sort of crude and ugly racism?
UPDATE 03/26/08 06:40 PM EDT: I guess Judy must have decided that TA’s racist crap was too much a threat to her credibility after all, because the post has been deleted. Some links above will therefore be broken. Of course, I took the precaution of making a mirror of the post.
How German Intelligence Helped Justify the US Invasion of Iraq:
The man’s codename is “Curveball.” And in an earlier life, he played a crucial role in the geo-politics at the beginning of this decade: He was the man who provided vital “evidence” that ultimately contributed to the invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies. But that role has since turned into his greatest problem: Everything he claimed to know about Iraq’s weapons program, all the proof he presented, was fabricated.
...
No matter what the inspectors asked about, they stumbled across a mixture of lies and half-truths told by Rafed. He hated America, Rafed had told a German intelligence agent. But posters of American pop groups hung in his room, which his mother had left undisturbed. Indeed, she explained, Rafed had wanted to emigrate to the US.
One of the central premises in the story Rafed told German intelligence officials was that he had worked in Saddam’s weapons program until 1998—the only way he could have learned about the alleged deadly accident which supposedly took place that year. Kay recalled that on this point, Rafed’s mother was almost embarrassed. To her knowledge, she said, her son Rafed had worked for the CEDC only until 1995. Even worse, his relatives told Kay that Rafed was no longer even in Iraq in 1998.
With the help of the family, Kay’s men — including a CIA operative of many years named “Jerry,” who had constantly defended “Curveball’s” reliability — now began a frantic search for old friends and superiors, for men such as Basil Latif and Hilal Freah.
Freah, 42, is a tall, heavyset man with a gray beard and penetrating eyes. It is a mild day at the beginning of December 2007 and Freah is sitting in the cigar lounge of Regency Palace Hotel in the Jordanian capital Amman. He wants nothing to eat and he orders nothing to drink. Five years after the start of the war, Hilal Freah only wants to talk. He knew the man who became “Curveball” better than almost anyone else. “Rafed, of all people,” he groans. “Everyone who knows him knows that he is a born fraud.”
Read the whole thing.
Shorter John J. Ray: As a former member of various Australian Nazi parties and a renowned academic racist, I have all the credibility I need to tell you what’s wrong with black preachers.
And, by way of Think Progress, this note from the AFP:
At least 97 percent of the deaths occurred after US President George W. Bush announced the end of “major combat” in Iraq on May 1, 2003, as the military became caught between a raging anti-American insurgency and brutal sectarian strife unleashed since the toppling of Saddam.
Despite the losses, Bush on the eve of the war’s fifth anniversary defended his decision to invade Iraq, vowing no retreat as he promised American soldiers would triumph despite the “high cost in lives and treasure.”
There are those, like lying jackwad Jimmy Hoft and the ever-supercilious AJ Strata, who believe that the number of dead Americans in Iraq simply doesn’t matter because they can name periods during which more than 4000 were killed. This is how the wingnut warpimps “honor” our soldiers — by trivializing their deaths.
Our good friend Cao is now promoting the popular wingnut meme that Democrats are somehow bad people because the Democrats of past eras were racist. She trots out a series of quotes collected by one Bruce Bartlett to “prove” her point.
As usual, the reality is far different than how Cao and her fellow fringers would have you believe. Steve Benen makes the point far better than I could:
In a WSJ op-ed earlier this week, Bartlett pointed to “the 200-year record of prominent Democrats” who were “openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and ‘Jim Crow’ laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.” The piece included dozens of ugly quotes on race from “prominent Democrats,” drawn from Bartlett’s new book, “Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past.”
According to promotional materials, “Wrong on Race” will “set the record straight” on the Democrats’ “hidden past,” which includes being the “party of the Ku Klux Klan” and the “disenfranchisement of black voters.”
Ironically, Bartlett’s criticism of the Bush White House’s economic policies elevated his stature as a credible political commentator. The premise of his upcoming book seems intent on throwing that standing away with an argument that is both cheap and silly.
One need not have a doctorate in American history to know that the nation’s two major political parties have shifted significantly for the better part of nearly two centuries. The Democratic Party, in the first half of the 20th century, was home to two competing constituencies — southern whites with abhorrent views on race, and African Americans in the north, who sought to advance the cause of civil rights. The party struggled, ultimately siding with a progressive, inclusive agenda. Racists left the party, and joined the GOP.
Read the rest of this entry »
At Shakespeare’s Sister, Jeff Fecke demonstrates brilliantly that Jeremiah Wright, whatever his flaws, was exhorting his flock not to hate, but to think about what purpose is served by the endless cycle of violence that America helps perpetuate:
You can disagree with Wrights timing, or his phrasing. But you cant disagree with his facts. The land I sit on as I write this was stolen from the Lakota. America has unquestionably killed innocent civilians in war, and while the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Dresden may have been necessary to prevent even more horrific destruction, our actions there were not morally clean. Slavery and Jim Crow are a stain on our nations soul. And we have only added to this litany in the six-and-a-half years since these words were spoken. How many Iraqi civilians have died because our nations leaders refused to engage in self-examination, refused to question their desire for vengeance? How many enemies have we made in our rush to strike out against someone — anyone — to make whole our country?
Wright’s sermon that September Sunday was a challenge to his congregation, one that more of us should have engaged. It is easy to look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and think that if only one side or the other could just stop killing, it could stop the whole cycle of killing and revenge killing and revenge killing and revenge killing and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. It is easy to look at others and see the motes in their eyes. It is far harder to look at the planks in our own eyes, our own country’s failures, our own mistakes, our own part in the cycle of violence.
Awwwwwwwwww… poor widdle Justin’s delicate sensibilities were shocked —SHOCKED!, I tell you — when I told his anonymous buddy to "fuck off". Here is Justin’s squeal of protest:
From: “Justin Higgins” <right@rightontheright.com>
To: <meatbrain@thinkingmeat.net>
Subject: Your last comment
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:00:05 -0400Your last comment surpassed the profanity threshold I could handle from
you. Consider your posting priveledges revoked indefinately. It was
absolutely hilarious to watch you crumble and degrade when faced with
your own tactics. You’re not welcome on my site.
But, as is frequently the case, Justin is lying. His profanity threshold wasn’t surpassed at all. How can we tell? Well, maybe the fact that Justin lets his friends tell others to “fuck off” with nary a peep of protest has something to do with it…
Either contribute to the discussion or FUCK OFF.
Justin’s little hissy fit has nothing whatsoever to do with profanity, and everything to do with finding an excuse —ANY excuse — to silence someone who has committed the unforgivable crime of exposing Justin’s lies. I’ve been hammering Justin hard lately, on his site and on this blog, and he’s been desperate to silence me. Guess what, little fool: You’ve failed again!
Justin Higgins is a liar and a hypocrite. The fun part is that he actively and eagerly participates in exposing himself as such.
Justin Higgins, lying warpimp extraordinaire, pretends to post The Truth About Compact Fluorescents. As usual, whenever Justin takes to his keyboard, the manure is spread thick.
The prevailing wingnut meme is that compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) are bad bad bad bad bad because they contain mercury, and when the bulbs are broken, the mercury will leach out and poison the air and water. But as with all of the pernicious crap that comes out of the Mighty Wingnut Wurlitzer™, this one is a grain of fact wrapped in a ton of excrement.
PZ Myers traces this garbage back to junk science promoter and industry shill Steve Milloy, and includes a handy dandy graph that demonstrates that, by using CFLs, mercury emissions into the environment are in fact reduced:
Read the rest of this entry »So it’s not nice stuff, but no signs of panic from the EPA. They actually go out of their way to tell you that, dangerous as mercury in CFLs is, if you’re serious about reducing mercury waste in the environment, they’re still better than incandescent lights.
Those coal-fired power plants (they’re building another big one over in the Dakotas that we aren’t too happy about) pump out mercury, too. If we weren’t sucking up as much power, we’d produce less mercury. Sounds like a good deal to me.
Milloy is silent on coal-fired power plants, of course.
Andrew “Gribbit the Dipshit” Richardson:
Sorry for all the cliches.
Don’t apologize, Dipshit. If it weren’t for cliches, you wouldn’t be capable of any thought at all.
There are plenty of things for which one could criticize Obama. That his pastor says things rational people find silly only puts him on par with 90 percent of the rest of Congress.
Reverend Jeremiah Wright departed the Obama campaign barely two days ago, and already the wingnuts are lying about it:
Geraldine Ferraro is the latest casualty in the ongoing race war, which, oddly enough, has only white casualties.
This was published on March 16 on Publius’ Forum, and the day before at RightBias.com. (Never was a wingnut site more aptly named.) Wright’s association with the Obama campaign was terminated on Friday, March 14. Wright is therefore a black casualty in Morgan’s alleged “ongoing race war”.
Nancy Morgan should explain why she is lying to her readers.
For lizard bitch Cao, who’s too fucking stupid to find this...
Public awareness of the number of American military fatalities in Iraq has declined sharply since last August. Today, just 28% of adults are able to say that approximately 4,000 Americans have died in the Iraq war. As of March 10, the Department of Defense had confirmed the deaths of 3,974 U.S. military personnel in Iraq.
In August 2007, 54% correctly identified the fatality level at that time (about 3,500 deaths). In previous polls going back to the spring of 2004, about half of respondents could correctly estimate the number of U.S. fatalities around the time of the survey.
In the current poll, more respondents underestimated than overestimated the number of fatalities. A plurality of 35% said that there have been about 3,000 troop deaths, and another 11% said there have been 2,000 deaths.
(hat tip: The Huffington Post)
Over at Shakesville, Jeff Fecke hit’s the nail on the head about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Barack Obama’s church who has the wingnut’s panties in such a collective twist:
Wright has spoken out passionately and angrily about racism. He has done so blindly at times. But is Wright racist against white people?
The question itself contains the answer.
Nobody with any understanding of history would say that racism has not been a problem in America. Nobody with any understanding of the present would say racism is not still a problem in America. And nobody with any decency would think that problematic racism was directed at white people.
...
[Wright] has, in short, known an America where African-Americans were not just second-class citizens, but subhuman. He has watched that America change from one that kept black men from voting to one that incarcerated them over petty drug charges. He has eyes, and he can read, and he knows that African-American families were given a disproportionate number of sub-prime loans even when equally qualified as white borrowers. He knows that African-American families are still mired in poverty. He knows that when David Paterson takes the oath of office on Monday, he’ll be only the third African-American governor since reconstruction—and that the second, Deval Patrick, was sworn in just over a year ago. He knows that Barack Obama is only the third African-American to serve in the U.S. Senate since reconstruction, and that he’s in the seat that was vacated when the second, Carol Moseley Braun, lost her reelection bid in 1998.
And when he talks, as Obama paraphrases him in Dreams of My Father, of “his world, a world where cruise ships throw away more food in a day than most residents of Port-au-Prince see in a year, where white folks’ greed runs a world in need, apartheid in one hemisphere, apathy in another hemisphere,” tell me, is that an inaccurate representation of the world twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Today?
...
It is not racist for an African-American to call out white people for our privilege, any more than it’s “misandrist” to call out men for our privilege. And even when anger is included in that call, it is not proof of hatred. Jeremiah Wright reacted to the racism he saw in America by speaking out against it, by appealing to people to work to serve their fellow men and women. That is not hatred, not any kind that I know.
Bingo. Go read the whole thing.
Yes, kiddies, Our Grand And Benevolent Leader™’s Magificent Victorious Surge© has been an Unqualified Rousing Success®!
The number of Iraqis killed daily has nearly doubled, from an average of 20 in January to 39 in the first two weeks of March. The total death count of Iraqis is now well over 1 million, a staggering number. But sadly a number that too few people are aware of, as a recent Pew study suggest. In fact, only 28% of those surveyed knew that our own American casualties is just under 4,000, while nearly half believed it to be 3,000 or fewer.
Spread the word! Sound the horns! Dance in the streets!
UPDATE 03/16/08 1:53 PM EDT: The link above to a news story regarding the recent Pew study has gone dead since this was posted. Try this Washington Post story on the same study in its stead.
The ticking time bomb scenario is hogwash. Torturing terrorism suspects hands the jihadis a recruiting tool on a silver platter. Even the worst of the worst can be convinced to cooperate with patience and empathy. Retired FBI interrogator Jack Cloonan talks of his work and the squandering of this country’s moral capital:
(hat tip: BoingBoing)