Sadly, No!

So I tried to escape the toxic levels of wingnuttery this evening by flipping through my roommate’s copy of Newsweek. Amazingly, I flipped to page 36 and found this:

The Truth About Torture

To get a full accounting of how U.S. interrogation methods were used, the president should give those accused of ‘war crimes’ a pass.

By Stuart Taylor Jr. | NEWSWEEK

Dark deeds have been conducted in the name of the United States government in recent years: the gruesome, late-night circus at Abu Ghraib, the beating to death of captives in Afghanistan, and the officially sanctioned waterboarding and brutalization of high-value Qaeda prisoners. Now demands are growing for senior administration officials to be held accountable and punished. Congressional liberals, human-rights groups and other activists are urging a criminal investigation into high-level “war crimes,” including the Bush administration’s approval of interrogation methods considered by many to be torture.

It’s a bad idea. In fact, President George W. Bush ought to pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution for interrogation methods approved by administration lawyers.

Question: why did we ever develop the Geneva Conventions in the first place? Why does the Constitution ban cruel and unusual punishment? Hell, for that matter, why did we ever sign the goddamn Magna Carta*? Because what Stuart Taylor, Jr. is telling us is that government officials should simply be able to break the fucking law. And not just the laws against lying about blowjobs under oath — we’re talking about laws against goddamn torture. We’re talking about laws that for years have prohibited the government from performing cruel and heinous acts on prisoners. This is important shit. But to Stuart Taylor? Pfffffft, yeah it’s bad, but so what? We’ll only learn the truth about this stuff if we just pardon everyone beforehand. Because fuck it, laws are only meant to be obeyed by the little people.

Read the rest of this entry »

Continuing with this odd Tuesday Cavalcade of Crazier-Than-Usual, it looks like ol’ Pam Atlas has gone all Frère-Jacques Neville-Chamberlain housebreaking-oui-oui-pad surrender-monkey on Afghanistan — meaning that she’s suddenly no longer in favor of the war there, since a certain Mr. Obama has suggested increasing the number of troops:

Obama: A Strategy of Crackpottery

Obama wants a full scale invasion of Afghanistan? I say give Karzai the guns. Obama wants to redeploy the troops from Iraq into Afghanistan. You want to talk quagmire? You want a bloody mess? Ask the Soviets. And there’s no oil there!

The last thing we should be doing is patching up the splits in Islam. We should be formenting the intercine hatreds because we don’t have the attention span and the wherewithal to eradicate Islamic supremacism.

Wow, how swiftly new positions can evolve when, you know, nothing you say ever has to make sense compared to anything else you’ve ever said.

This is a woman whose last big idea was to nuke the entire world in order to keep Iran from, um, potentially engaging in nuclear blackmail or something. Any gesture toward non-belligerence is by definition a positive one, even if it’s fueled by spite against our Maenad’s own Orpheus, Barry X. Pammy gets cookie!

But then wrenchingly, just as promised, she provides a strategy of crackpottery. For oh dear God, who is it that she cites at length but the wingnut Muslim-haters’ own Bob and Ray, Jamie (né Yakov) “Smirnov” Glazov and Abul “Coast-to-Coast” Kasem, with a new ding-fwee, yar-yar phony interview on how Islam is founded on human cannibalism:

[Glazov: Islam sounds] very much like communism. It starts off extinguishing the “class enemy” and then when there are no more external “enemies” to slaughter, the killing machine turns on itself. Terror takes on a life of its own and the killing machine devours its own children and then ultimately engages in suicide. This totalitarian impulse ultimately stems from a death wish.

Kasem: Precisely. And so the demise of Islam is inherent in the very seed of Islamic cannibalism. And so to understand why Islam, eventually, will self-destruct we must first learn a few lessons from the annals of Islamic history. Let me briefly paint the picture:

During the last few decades we have witnessed Islamic cannibalism right, front and center. The most recent event was the Iran-Iraq war, in which millions of Muslims were killed, not by the infidels (kafirs) but by Muslims. Undoubtedly, in not-too-distant a future, we are bound to witness many such events of Islamic cannibalism.

[Glazov]: Is Islamic cannibalism theologically rooted?

Kasem: Absolutely. The earliest example of Islamic cannibalism, after all, is found in the Qur’an itself — in verses 9:108-110. These verses refer to the gutting of a rival mosque on the instruction of Muhammad, when he was returning after his expedition to Tabuk, a resourceful town in the Syrian-Byzantine territory. This Islamic incursion story goes like this:

Proceeding further from Tabuk on his way to Medina, Muhammad halted at…

Their last sketch comedy appearance was here, with the premise that Islam regards non-Muslims as ‘worse than animals,’ fit only to be slaughtered in non-Halal abbatoir fashion. They seem to be rolling each one out as soon as they can formulate a new, uniquely awful blood libel.

Glazov: Is Islam based on the worship and consumption of excrement?

Kasem: Why, certainly. And therein lies the berserk rage experienced by Muslims when physical exhaustion forces them to stop sodomizing animals. As we see in the Hadith, sexuality is a means not only toward the killing of infants, but also toward the production of Satanic and Nazi paraphernalia which can be smeared with…

No, parody is useless. What can you say against them that bloodthirsty howlers like Pam Atlas won’t just say in their praise? It’s too depressing; I quit.

Okay yeah, fine; it’s me again. I’m back. Speaking of ritualized cannibalism, PZ Myers is still battling an angry Internet mob for insulting a communion wafer.

The irony.

This Fits: Sen. Carl Levin, FireDogLake, Terrorists & Gitmo …Updated With Billboard

• Although Republicans have said for politically correct reasons that the following billboard ad is offensive…

• …I actually find it a very enlightening piece of commentary that exposes the Nazi Left’s tendency to coddle our enem…

YEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAARGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

OK, I can’t take it anymore. The layers of sheer insanity on display at all of these right-wing blogs is really getting me down, to the point where satirizing them becomes nothing more than a joyless, reflexive compulsion. It seems that every time I come up with some ridiculous new way to lampoon these crazy fools, they somehow manage to write something that make Hunter Thompson’s infamous mescaline-and-ether binges look positively tame. Life is horrible.

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

Gavin adds: Oh, we haven’t even checked on Don Surber lately. Don Surber, the conservative newspaper columnist whose blog is rated the #2 most informative news blog on the Internet according to a Carnegie-Mellon study. Don Surber, our Pericles of the Kanawha, our Chemical City Catullus.

I just typed that without knowing what we would find there, chez Surber.

Words eaten

Obama 2007: “The surge is not working.”
Obama 2008: Time to do some “purgery” on my Web site.

The late Johnny Carson loved those hoary movies where the usurper dethroned the king, only to have the king mount a comeback.

Carson noted that they always

“The king is dead!”

The new king would toast this, but as he would drink, a messenger would break in with the news: “The king lives!”

The usurper would then spray his mouthful of wine and gasp, “What?”

I thought of that over the weekend as Democratic Sen. Barack Obama tries to crawl back from his pronouncement in February 2007 that the Surge failed.

But of course, he always. And you would read this and gasp, “What?” The thing is with the.

Seriously though: Is there a lunar event taking place, or something like that? Solar flares? They’re ululating like coyotes out there.

California: Still Bakin’, Soon Shakin’

• Strange weather conditions are being caused by idol worshippers and homosexuals.

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

Sorry to post so much, but there’s just too much crazy for me to ignore today. Our next contestant is Ann Althouse:

Did you notice how the controversy about the New Yorker cover instantly eclipsed the Bernie Mac story?

Sunday morning, we were all talking about the offensively sexist jokes the comedian Bernie Mac told at a Barack Obama fund-raiser. Suddenly, this inflammatory New Yorker cover appears and everyone is distracted. The Bernie Mac material was Obama’s responsibility, and it offended women and those who are sensitive about sexual material. The New Yorker material was not attributable to Obama, was actually an attack on Obama’s opponents, and yet nevertheless gave Obama the opportunity to play the an outraged victim of a scurrilous attack.

Wasn’t that convenient?

So, yeah.

I’ve heard a lot of stupid conspiracy ideas in my life. I’ve heard about faked moon landings, 9/11 as an inside job and even a conspiracy to hide the Hollow Earth. But a major opinion journal conspiring with a presidential campaign to distract people from hearing a bad joke written by a has-been comedian? Yeah, that’s about the stupidest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, Ann. And of course, the Ole Perf gave this little jewel a patented “hehindeed.” How we’ve survived as long as we have as a species is a great and vast mystery that I will never understand.

Mitt Romney was a lousy governor, but he never, ever sounded this crazy until he started running for president:

Just last week the onetime Republican presidential hopeful said Obama “looks toward Europe for a lot of his inspiration” after the Illinois senator suggested Americans would benefit from knowing more languages.

“I think John McCain is going to make sure that America stays America,” Romney said in an interview on Fox News.

Romney doesn’t believe this stuff, you understand, but he’s definitely angling really hard to be St. BBQ’s official Crazy Land ambassador. It’s rather a sad way to go about your life, but that’s what extreme amounts of ambition mixed with precisely zero moral or ethical convictions can do to a man.

The jolly joes over at Powerline (Time Magazine’s once and future 2004 Blog of the Year) bring us a jesty jape that is guaranteed to tickle your funny bone:

Rejected New Yorker covers

Georgetown students seem to have discovered the rejected New Yorker covers that further illuminate the New Yorker’s projection of alleged right-wing fears of Obama.

But no, it’s too subtle. It would’ve been better if the chaps at Georgetown had given Obama googly eyes, a Frankenstein scar on his cheek (one of those ones that are like, ‘+++++’), and a comedy Snidely Whiplash mustache, just to show they weren’t fooling around. It could even have approached gold, as satire, had they put a banner on the top saying, “WARNING: SATIRE!!!”

Also a comic art drawing of a laughing jester as a watermark — a laughing evil jester. And a big notice at the bottom saying “COPYRIGHT! DO NOT STEAL!!!” Ha ha! Oh mercy, that would’ve been MAD LULZ right there, and also nobody would steal it. No no, wait, then they could put it on YouTube with a funny song playing behind it. BLA-HA-HAA! Oh god, I can’t take it. Laugh laugh hiccup wheeze.

No wait, what about a biplane flying across the top towing a banner that says “Obama Bin Lyin'” and maybe something with a dog and a fire hydrant, except instead of a fire hydrant he’s peeing on some word like ‘dhimmitude’ or ‘sharia.’ Except it’s actually Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, and he’s actually wearing a Darth Vader mask. Ha ha! Wait, okay, there’s a chart on the wall that says “Obama’s election prospects,” and the line goes jaggily up and down and then suddenly plummets until — wait, wait, wait for it — the last part is written on pieces of notebook paper taped to the wall. Because it’s just that low!

Or no, wait, how about a web comic about talking squirrels who are — no, get this — radioactive, and either from hell or on crack, and it’s called Radioactive Squirrels From Hell or On Crack. It’ll be like a squirrel comic on steroids.

Or, okay, running with the insight that Obama is an eager and doctrinaire Chinese communist of the old-fashioned postwar Maoist variety — which is totally like, maybe he is; how do we even know? — what about those Chinese letters that look like Chinese except they’re regular English letters, and you could do like a big banner on top, right under or over the “WARNING: SATIRE!!!” that was like, “Fakee outee.” HA HA HA HA!!! In Chinese letters; oh, you should totally do that. That would like get people so mad.

But alas, you can’t have everything. Powerline themselves take the funny cake today with the construction, “the New Yorker’s projection of alleged right-wing fears of Obama.”

Punchlines: ‘projection’ and ‘alleged.’ Because here’s what Powerline has been spreading.

Oh shit:

Bush to address economy in press conference

President Bush will hold a news conference Tuesday, his first full-blown meeting with reporters at the White House since April 29, and he’ll start with remarks about the economy.

The president will explain steps the administration has taken to help stabilize the housing and financial markets, White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters Tuesday morning in announcing the news conference.

This is gonna get ugly. Track the Dow here if you want to witness the impending carnage.

UPDATE: I bet he spends like two minutes addressing the housing market and spends the rest of the time attacking Democrats for not supporting offshore drilling. I also think there’s a good shot that he’ll pick his nose, and a better-than-average shot that he will eat it. Thoughts?

UPDATE II: PFFFFFFFFFT:

General Motors Corp. said Tuesday it will suspend its dividend, sell off $4 billion to $7 billion worth of assets and cut 20% worth of salaried cash costs in an overall plan to save billions of dollars.

“We need to take some very tough actions to ensure our survival and success,” said Chief Executive Rick Wagoner, in a press conference, referring to the current market conditions as an “unprecedently difficult time.” […]

“Our plan is not just a plan to survive; it’s a plan to win,” said Wagoner, noting that raised cash could aid the company in shifting from trucks and SUVs to more fuel efficient cars.

Yeah, you guys are only a few years late to that particular party, but best of luck with it.

To quote The Man Hisself: Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

UPDATE III: Yep, he’s already stamping his feet about offshore drilling. What a goddamn lying asshole.

UPDATE IV: Jesus Christ, now he’s touting 1% economic growth as evidence that our economy is super-tuff! Could he be a suckier president? I mean, I think he’d drastically improve if he started hitting the sauce again.

UPDATE V: “IF THA’ DEMACRATS’D HAVE THEIR WAY, DAS WHAT THEY’D DO, THEY’D RAISE TAXES!!!11!!” Just go away, Bush. Never, ever come back.

UPDATE VI: He’s angrily referring to his “magic wand” again.

One of the minor Acelings over at Ace of Spades HQ, one Dave in Texas, has become informed that this week’s infamous New Yorker cover is “satire to show how bigoted and ignorant the red-staters are,” and is moved to correct the notion that right-wingers are bigoted and ignorant:

…The New Yorker sucks canal water. It’s a pimp-rag read by snooty snoots and the effete.

ABOVE: Mr. Yankee, our Balzac of Buncombe County

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We’ve also noticed the degree to which jazz music has been infiltrated by high-hat British snobs like Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Next thing you know, the hoity-toity rooty-toots will be. . .well, if you don’t wish to be jolly, then definitely don’t click this link.

But here’s ol’ Confederate Yankee again, explaining the class struggle in which The Heartland (™) has been consumed since exactly the cover date of March 29, 1976, when a certain Saul Steinberg watercolor changed the American landscape forever and for all time:

[The Obama cover] is tasteless and offensive, but then, much of the content of the New Yorker falls into that category if you live outside the neo-Copernican worldview of a magazine that sees Manhattan as the center of the universe.

And by ‘tasteless and offensive’ he means not just the centerfolds, not just the Dykes of Dalton spread or the fatefully wah-hoo Butts of Barnard series that saw so many bright young women disinherited without a penny, but the articles too. It has articles, right? No, yes — articles. About arugula, and things like that.

What are the odds, do you think, that Confederate Yankee has ever picked up a single ding-dang issue of The New Yorker in his entire dang-dong life?

Those of us outside of that self-involved hemorrhage of land between the Hudson and East Rivers are simply part of a bitter and clingy “not us” to the magazine’s erudite familiars.

Indeed, they should change the name of the magazine to something which reflects its urban parochialism.

But then, Pam Atlas lacks even his degree of self-knowledge:

The New Yorker is calling their latest cover “satire”. I call it wonderful.

Obama is not laughing I hear. Why not? En the gonif brent a hitel.¹ 🙂

[…] I say blow it up and make campaign posters out it. It rocks!

Ol’ Pam’s commenters help to twist it into the full Möbius:

This will be turned around by them saying it was a right-wing attack. Well, I think it perfectly captures these two black racist, Muslim-terrorist-loving, America-hating assholes.

New Yorker Magazine at the Newstand: $6.95
AK-47 on the Black Market: $800
American Flag burning in the Fire Place supplied by Presidential Advisor William Ayers : FREE!
Obama’s Native Costume from his hometown Souk: 17.5 Dinars

When the New Yorker’s attempt at “Satire” backfires because it turns out to be 100% TRUE: PRICELESS!

Looks like the “joke’s” on them!

Some may call the New Yorker’s cover “satire.” Some may call it “wonderful.” I just call it the plain, ol’ TRUTH!

As for Ms. Obama, methinks the lady (we use the word loosely!) will protest too much!

Somewhere on the Internet is the perfect self-congratulatory blar-har post saying that the New Yorker cover is not funny because conservatives would never fall for such fat-handed and tone-deaf satire — that the cover’s ludicrous broadness only further underscores the elitist liberal bias against conservatives that is so sadly rife in our lib-lib-liberal media. It is not necessary to find it, because we know it is there.

Update: Oh wait.

Obama was right: Another hateful, bigoted attack from … the New Yorker?
posted at 7:52 pm on July 13, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

[…]

One side in this cycle certainly seems obsessed by identity politics, but so far it isn’t the Republicans. […]

The New Yorker is attacking conservatives, but Obama’s the one taking offense (and for good reason). Obama warned that the Republicans would obsess over his ethnicity, but so far only the mainstream Left has made it an issue.

Oh, okay. Guess that’s that, then.

¹ Yiddish expression, lit.: “On the thief, the hat burns.”

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho: Spank your child, go to jail for a year

“Because I love you, I must spank you.”

Bonus:

[We] made sure the parent who administered the discipline was the parent who comforted them after the spanking was over (we held them in a loving embrace after a spanking, dried their tears, and enjoyed the way they melted into our arms before they run off to resume play).

Unrelated but added for extra credit, from Sher Zieve:

Fox News has now joined its comrades and the previously “fair and balanced” network seems to have taken a decidedly leftist slant.

To sum up: spanking is good, especially when followed by some passive aggressive love. Add some loony at the end:

Your candidate [Obama] is still a Marxist and will again openly become one after he is President of the United States.

Yes, Barack Obama will openly “become” a Marxist once elected to the White House.