Sadly, No!

The always excellent Instaputz, scouting the usual glibertarian-transhumanist-gun nut wasteland down Knoxville way where the fascist nerds roam, notices a particularly fatuous (even by the august Perfesser Corncob’s standards, which is saying a lot) blurb and link to Pejman Yousefzadeh, and strikes.

A quick site search, some copypasta, and — voila! The result is one of those posts I absolutely love; it’s an internet archaeologist’s exploration into Ur-Wingnuttia, and we just don’t get enough of those. Instaputz shows the history of approving links from Reynolds to Yousefzadeh and in the process demonstrates that each wingnut’s not-so-unique brand of stupidity and/or insanity and/or moral degeneracy is, adjusted for events, almost perfectly static.

Each post is just as flamingly wingnutty as the one preceding it — all the way back to their Golden Era, the age in which they established their styles (Reynolds’s being pithy and passive-aggressive, Yousefzadeh’s pompous and priggish) and, along with a legion of other shut-ins, founded a cult dedicated to the worship of angelic neocon warriors whose For All Time battle against satanic islamofascists and demonic transnationalist progressives so neatly mirrored (surprise, surprise) their own warbloggers’ heroic struggle against the “idiotarian” menace. Like the old occultists used to say, “as above, so below.” Anyway, their Gods failed but the cult persists and their proselytizing goes on and on and on (for a transhumanist, the Perfesser sure isn’t much on personal evolution).

While Instaputz’s artifacts are impressive, I want MOAR! Despite a site migration to Roger El’s personal FAILproject, Reynolds’s archives are relatively orderly. Which means they’re too vast to scrounge through pleasurably; also, the Perfesser’s oeuvre is too well-known. I want to dig where others have not (lately, at least).

Yousefzadeh has been at it about as long as Reynolds but never became much more than a B-list blogger. He, like the Perfesser, wrote for Tech Central Station (remember that shithole? Last I heard, its longtime editor Nick Schulz bought it, whence it died, then moved on to edit AEI’s glossy new rag, and it too promptly died), but he was never as adept staying on the Wingnut Welfare gravytrain as the resourceful Perfesser. Yousefzadeh is currently the Token Brown Pundit for a site otherwise completely Red (state) and White (trash). Before that, he had his own site the url of which is now dead; before that, he had a blogspot account, which is where the real treasures are.

And what treasures! Digging more or less at random, look at the shit I found:

[Weapons] inspections [in Iraq] are not worth the paper the Ba’athist regime used to transmit their proposal. Needless to say, I am skeptical of the offer. So is Steven Den Beste. And for that matter, so is the White House.
posted by Pejman at 9/16/2002 10:56:00 PM

CLAUSEWITZ HE AIN’T Bill Clinton thinks that we ought to get Osama bin Laden before going after Saddam Hussein. Never mind that the two are not mutually exclusive. Never mind that bin Laden may already be dead. Never mind that if he is alive, making his death a prerequisite for any attack against Iraq gives Saddam Hussein even more of an incentive to support al Qaeda, as James Taranto points out today. In short, never mind basic facts. Bill Clinton wants you to take his advice. Any takers?
posted by Pejman at 9/06/2002 01:50:00 PM

OF TRANSNATIONALIST PROGRESSIVES Vegard Valberg has some thoughts on the “tranzies,” their ideology, their future, and their presence in the European Union.
posted by Pejman at 9/03/2002 09:39:00 AM

LILEKS SPEAKS . . . Correction: Lileks Fisks. And what a Fisking it is. Incidentally, any guesses as to whether Stephen Green has recovered from the joy of yet another favorable Lileks mention? It must be sort of like having da Vinci compliment one of your inventions.
posted by Pejman at 9/06/2002 03:04:00 PM

THE MYSTERY OF SCOTT RITTER Tony Adragna and Jane Galt have both indicated that Scott Ritter’s recent statements on Iraq should not be trusted, because Ritter has so dramatically changed his views without a scintilla of evidence or justification for that radical change. The Blogosphere wonders what the cause is for Ritter’s reversal of position. Well, here’s your chance to offer theories and hypotheses for why Ritter has changed his mind. Leave your Musings below, and let me know your opinion as to why Ritter now so fervently believes that Iraq is not a threat, and why he believes that war with Iraq should not be an option. Personally, I think that he has been blackmailed. I know that a number of bloggers feel the same way. I can’t imagine another reason that would have caused him to change his mind in so dramatic a fashion.
posted by Pejman at 9/09/2002 11:12:00 AM

AN EPIC MISMATCH IF I EVER SAW ONE Jane Galt counters the various arguments of antiwar protestors in her typically lucid and intelligent manner.
posted by Pejman at 9/23/2002 11:17:00 AM

ROLL CALL OF SHAME A reader has forwarded me Fareed Zakaria’s excellent column where he slices and dices European countries for the reluctance to support the United States in a war against Iraq. His last paragraph is a classic: If France and Russia seek a world in which nations act purely on the basis of interest and power, they will get it. In it, America will do just fine. As the president’s recent national security strategy document makes clear, it will remain the “hyperpower.” But as France and Russia might have noticed, they’re not very powerful anymore. They have seats on the U.N. Security Council only because they won the last great war 50 years ago. (I use the word “won” loosely when speaking of France.) Unless they act responsibly, they are now in danger of losing the next one. Truer words have not been said.
posted by Pejman at 9/24/2002 11:06:00 AM

BIZARRO-WORLD Greg Buete takes on Scott Ritter and the apologists for Saddam Hussein.
posted by Pejman at 9/24/2002 12:06:00 PM

BEHOLD THE UNWASHED MASSES And in this case, chances are that they really are unwashed. If this is all the antiwar Left has to offer by way of an argument, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see the Right succeeding as well as it does in the larger debate.
posted by Pejman at 9/28/2002 01:50:00 PM

MY TECH CENTRAL STATION COLUMN IS UP This week, I discuss the application of Clausewitzian principles to the current war on terrorism.
posted by Pejman at 8/02/2002 01:09:00 PM

WARBLOGGERWATCH: ARE YOU LISTENING? Steven Den Beste explains the fallacy of strawman arguments–specifically in reference to the definition of “the Bush Doctrine.”
posted by Pejman at 8/05/2002 03:02:00 PM

WARGAMING Steven Den Beste has an interesting essay relating strategy and war games to the conduct and prosecution of an actual war. It’s no surprise to see that his thinking is heavily influenced by Clausewitz (especially when he discusses the chaotic aspects of war).
posted by Pejman at 8/05/2002 09:22:00 PM

PLAYING THE STOCK MARKET James Glassman offers some tips.
posted by Pejman at 8/06/2002 10:56:00 AM

TAKE A CHILL PILL OpinionJournal argues that there should be some semblance of calm in discussing the issue of detainees in the war on terrorism. I agree–comparing the detainees to Argentina’s “disappeared,” as former Secretary of State Warren Christopher did, was classic rhetorical overkill and demagoguery.
posted by Pejman at 8/08/2002 01:10:00 PM

JUST CALL HIM “CLAUSEWITZ” Stephen Green has some salient points regarding war with Iraq, and the use of weapons of mass destruction.
posted by Pejman at 8/20/2002 01:09:00 PM

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Thanks to Libertarian Samizdata for this excellent quote about pacifists: They preach that if you see a man flogging a woman to death you must not hit him. –G.K. Chesterton
posted by Pejman at 8/29/2002 11:42:00 PM

IDIOT-BASHING Rottweiler doesw a magnificent job slicing, dicing, and annihilating the Idiotarian mascot Philip Shropshire, who writes for Warbloggerwatch, and who has his own link in my “Circle of the Treacherous.” [……] You’ll see on Rottweiler’s blog that Phil calls us Nazis, despite the fact that he revels in the karmic deaths of what he believed to be 6000 people. I have a strong suspicion that Adolf Hitler would have found more to admire in Phil’s barbarity, than in anything that the “warbloggers” may have ever posted. Of course, I don’t expect Phil to understand any of this. It’s pretty obvious from his writings and the level of his arguments that he possesses the intellectual firepower of a decapitated cockroach. Which qualifies him eminently for writing and administration duties at Warbloggerwatch, I guess.
posted by Pejman at 8/16/2002 08:04:00 PM

IRAQ WAR WATCH Bill Kristol’s slamming of critics of a war with Iraq is well worth a read.
posted by Pejman at 8/20/2002 02:43:00 PM

It all belongs in a museum’s basement; and the perps, had they any decency and were there any justice in the world, would be broken and scorned, on the alcoholic blackout route to an eventual demise via exposure or mattress fire. But nooooo: America is a great meritocracy after all, so these shameless dipshits are still active and taken seriously; indeed, many are taken even more seriously.

Updated beneath the fold:
Read the rest of this entry »

“Galldernit, I knew if I’d a just hunkered down in the stall I wouldn’t
have gotten hit with this egg.”

---

Sorry to go back to the Erick Erickson pellet bin so soon after Gavin, but the pellets are delicious, so sweet and so cold, and I have no impulse control. Now that we know that Governor Mark Sanford was on a booty-call in Buenos Aires, let’s see what Erick had to say about Sanford just yesterday:

First, we need to be clear on the facts — not the media speculation:

* Sanford did tell his staff and family where he was going.
* Because he was traveling without a security detail, it was in his best interests that no one knew he was gone.
* His political enemies — Republicans at that — ginned up the media story.
* When confronted by a pestering media, things went downhill.
* Again though, at all times there was no doubt that Sanford’s staff and family knew where he was.

Now, here is all you need to know about this whole entire story — the reaction from the erstwhile Republicans angry at Sanford for not being a fiscal squish and from the media all go back to their core belief that without Sanford manning the barricades of government at all times, the government will collapse and people will starve, die, and forget how to read and write.

That’s it.

Governor Sanford apologized again and again at his press conference to everybody he could think of, including, it would seem, Jon and Kate (plus 8), some guy named “Cubby,” Astor Piazzolla, Ed McMahon, Carrie Prejean, the Bible, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, his possibly-former mistress, his church, and every single employee of the National Park Service. The least that Erick could do now is apologize to his readers. Instead, Erick will probably claim that he knew all along where Sanford was but had been personally asked by Sanford’s security detail to repeat the hiking story to protect Sanford from being killed by Argentinian terrorists.

Above: American for Asperity turns pro.

---

Erick Erickson is a bin of pellets on the wall. When we’re hungry we go push a lever on it. It rewards us with pellets we eat. Pellets… [puts on sunglasses] Of laughter.

Erick Erickson, Human Events
Axelrod Astroturfs an Attack Against Palin
09/23/2008

The media love covering grassroots attacks on major political candidates. The attacks signal a large base of Americans disturbed by a particular candidate or issue. When those grassroots attacks are manufactured by public relations firms, they aren’t real: they’re astroturfed —

[pulls cardboard cutout of Erickson from behind the couch; tapes picture of sunglasses to it.]

— fake attacks designed to look like a grassroots movement.

Astroturfing. But the question, Alexx, is whether he’s protecting his turf… [puts on sunglasses] Or humecting in it.

Erick Erickson, RedState:
The RedState Gathering Gets Closer and Closer
06/23/2009

The RedState Gathering takes place in Atlanta, GA on August 1, 2009.

Atlanta. Or is that where… [puts on sunglasses] a Dead Late Blathering… [puts on sunglasses] fakes its case? [takes off one pair of sunglasses]

I’d like to thank American Majority and Americans for Prosperity for helping us out with it. Because of them, you guys get to come eat, drink, and visit on the cheap.

[takes off sunglasses, squints through collapsible telescope] Or should we say… [lowers telescope to show ring of shoe polish encircling eye] The chump? [periscope descends, MRI console rolls past, trace of light in sky is 1959 Corona spy satellite]

Mike Adams, Townhall.com:
Get Back in the Kitchen

• This will get the feminists: Woo, it’s a Swiftian world of way-out satire in which conservatives take offense and complain.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Seb adds – Bonus Shorter Mike:

Yes, sometimes my columns are sexist, but you lovely bitches and hoes should know I’m trying to correct this.

Brian “Sixth International” Faughnan, RedState:
NEWSFLASH: High Deficits Mean High Taxes

• It is only the Obama administration that fails to see the disaster of thirty years of Republican/Obama deficit spending. [Graph: Federal debt (%GNP) acting forward and backward in time upon top marginal tax rate, horizontally scaled over 95 years as though with a lofted middle finger swinging a pair of divested briefs (data source unknown.)]

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Jim Kouri, who we’re told is the fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, has one for the Amazing Wingnut Facts file:

As the number of Americans who remember the horror of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington almost eight years ago dwindles[.]

Was Meghan McCain not yet born in 2001?

ABOVE: One of these is Professor David Novak; the other two are serial killers.

Oh God, it’s another dreary Monday and yet another wingnut trots out yet another supposedly intellectual (and supposedly non-religious) defense of the complete evilness of teh gays getting married. Of course there are only two or three arguments that keep getting recycled by these folks. Every child, mother, father, blah, blart, aahroogah, aahroogah, kersplat. Marriages are only for babymaking. And if teh gay marriage is passed, my hairdresser will start barebacking my husband.

Today, our newest entrant in the contest to find some new “intellectual” argument against gay marriage — the winner gets a full-body erotic massage from Maggie Gallagher — is Professor David Novak. Novak is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto which is, in itself, something of a joke given that the college’s most popular philosophy course is titled: “Did Aristotle Say ‘A-bowt’ or ‘A-boot’?”

So what does Professor (and Rabbi) Novak bring to the table? Latin, I tell you, Latin.

Novak starts off larding the baby-making argument with pseudo-intellectual trappings such as talking about the “telos” of marriage and dropping references to Aristotle and Plato.¹ But then he has to bother himself with the all-too-predictable riposte: If marriage is for baby-making, how come Grandma can remarry after Grandpa keels over watching “Sluts of Stockholm VII” in the basement?

One objection is that if marriage’s sole public reason is procreation (and being responsible for those whom a couple has procreated), then why hasn’t marriage been “limited . . . to the fertile, or even of an age to be fertile”? But I would answer that objection by citing the old legal principle: de minimis non curat lex, which could be translated (freely) as: The law is only made for what usually obtains.

De minimis non curat lex. That is pretty much the equivalent of interrupting an argument by shouting “Veni. Vidi. Vici” and then running laps around the faculty lounge pumping your fists in the air and yelling “I won! I won!!”

But let’s go back to Novak’s argument, leaving aside the little magical Latinate abracadabra he employs to try to sound smart. Novak says that since most people getting married are potential baby-factories, then it matters not that a few people, e.g., Grandma and and her new 80-year old husband, are not so fertile, if by not so fertile you mean as barren as the Sahara after a wind storm. Well, wait just one damn minute here. Doesn’t that turn around and bite Novak in suus amplus puga?² At best, gay marriages are going to be just a fraction of “opposite” (tee, hee) marriages, so don’t we get to sashay up to Professor Novak, say “de minimis non curat lex, the groom may now kiss the groom,” and be done with it?

Sorry, Professor Novak, but I don’t see a steamy session with Maggie Gallagher in your immediate future. Maybe you’ll do better next time. Just leave the Latin in Black’s Law Dictionary.

Mithridate Ombud, NewsBusters:
NY Times Can Keep A Secret After All

• Baa-haa, the irony: First Bill Keller of the New York Times gived all the secret US battle plan to the terrorists, but now we are find The Times do its job by suppressing the news!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE: Meghan in her office

---

Meghan Tiffney Britney Amber Dawn Heather McCain was on Bill Maher’s Real Time last night once again demonstrating the utter lunacy of giving tube time and blogging space to the semi-retarded offspring of politicians or political celebrities (cf. Jonah “DoughBlob LoadPants” Goldberg). Painted up like Tammy Faye and stuffed into black ensemble of some sort, Meghan was all, like, totally disgusted, you know, by, like, David Letterman’s joke and that he was like all gross and oatmealy smelling and stuff, for example. Apparently Meghan has never heard about her daddy’s infamous joke about Chelsea Clinton.

The best moment, however, was this* one:

Paul Begala: Ronald Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter everyday for eight years.

Meghan McCain: You know, I wasn’t born yet, so I don’t know about that.**

Paul Begala: You know, I wasn’t born during the French Revolution, but I know about that.

Meghan McCain: Well, apparently you know everything.

Ooooh, snap, Meghan. Now if you had only called Begala “Mr. Braniac” it would have been a total win.

UPDATE:The video of the interchange is so much better than the transcript:

Longer Greg Hengler:

ABOVE: Greg Hengler (No photoshoppery involved)

Greg Hengler, Clown Hall Blog
Sen Boxer Instructs Brigadier General Not to Call Her ‘Ma’am’

• “Would Boxer respond with the same tone and inflection if she were responding to, say, a spokesman from Planned Parenthood?” No, of course she wouldn’t! She’d say, there’s no need for you to call me Ma’am or even Senator, just call me yo “beyotch.” And what if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called her “ma’am”? Well, she’d be in a burqa, on her knees, kissing his feet, saying he needn’t call her anything at all, that he could just point in her direction and say “you, there, foul sewer-rat!” In fact, the only reason that Boxer made the Brigadier General say “Senator” instead of “Ma’am” was to spit on his valiant military service, to denigrate his manhood, to snip off his testes and wave them in the air hooting and shrieking like a lesbian Amazon warrior before slicing them into morsels, deep frying them and serving them with a remoulade sauce on a silver platter to Perez Hilton, Osama Bin Laden, Hugo Chavez and Cindy Sheehan. Respond to my post, libs.