Sadly, No!

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Above: Former labor secretary nominee

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It will be interesting to see if this idea manages to gain legs.

Gavin brought up the idea not too long ago that for the people who inhabit what passes for “the Right” nowadays, the concept, “argument in good faith” might as well be a text written in Minoan Linear A. Keep that in mind while we take a look at Linda Chavez’s argument here.

Destroying CIA Tapes Deserves a Thank You
By Linda Chavez

His name isn’t yet familiar to most Americans, but I expect it will be by the end of 2008: Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. He is the man, according to recent press reports, who ordered the destruction of interrogation tapes made by the CIA, which allegedly show the effects of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” used against terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. In the next few months, his name will likely be dragged through the mud, and he will be vilified as a rogue official engaged in a massive cover-up. I think he deserves a medal.

[emphasis added]

There. See what I mean? This isn’t about honest argumentation. This is about taking reality and standing it on its head. This is about being as verbally shocking as possible, in order to confuse and muddy the issue as much as possible. This is beyond even the Overton window; this is about shouting “nigger” in a crowded theater. People who cover up evidence of America violating international war crimes laws are actually good people, not bad people, because when America does things that would have gotten government officials brought before Nuremburg tribunals sixty years ago, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

According to information that has already leaked out about the investigations into the CIA tapes, Rodriguez, who was head of the agency’s clandestine operations at the time, made the decision to destroy the videos in November 2005. The tapes themselves were made in 2002, just months after the United States experienced the most devastating foreign attack against American civilians in our nation’s history.

Looking back, it’s very easy to condemn the extraordinary measures our government took to try to save lives in the wake of 9/11. And, of course, the media and members of Congress have perfect 20/20 hindsight, but the rest of us should show a little restraint when it comes to judging past decisions in light of contemporary misgivings.

A collective amnesia seems to have set in on what conditions were like in 2002 when those CIA interrogations took place. Most Americans fully expected that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were just the beginning of a terrorist war on American civilians. After all, we were being told by nearly everyone in a position to know that the question was not if we would suffer another major terrorist attack, but when.

There’s no collective amnesia here. As someone who lived close enough to the WTC to have spent several months of my professional life helping people deal with the aftermath, as someone who lost people she knew professionally (but thankfully, no one she was particularly close to) on that day, I can tell you that whatever fears I may have had of “a terrorist war” were officially over by September 12, 2001. And the only reason anyone was particularly worried about another terrorist attack is because dishonest, mendacious little shits were busy lying through their teeth and saying anything at all to advance their personal vision of American government — which is exactly what Chavez is doing here. Gotta give them points for consistency.
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Above: Alicia Colon

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Alicia Colon, the Mary Shelley of Staten Island, is gracing the pages of the New York Sun with her eloquent defense of Duane “Dog” Chapman and his penchant for using the n-word.

When the chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, Roy Innis, invited me to join him at a luncheon with Dog the Bounty Hunter, I was slightly puzzled.

Of course, Alicia was puzzled since Chapman’s well-known epithet wasn’t aimed at Hispanics, and so she doesn’t really have a dog in the race, so to speak, about whether Dog should be Imus-ed and welcomed back to the airwaves with open (white and wannabe white) arms. You might want to read the above sentence by Alicia again because it is the last thing she says in her column that makes a whit of sense.

When I arrived at CORE’s Broadway office, the entire staff was posing for photographs with Dog and his wife, Beth Chapman. None of the predominantly African-American staff members appeared reluctant to pose with the alleged racist, and that’s because Mr. Chapman isn’t one.

Well, actually, if you know anything about CORE, they might be posing with Dog precisely because he is a racist. A little background on CORE:

In January 2005 CORE organised two events as their Dr Martin Luther King celebrations. One of these was … [a] reception at the New York Hilton Hotel where they honored, amongst others, Green Revolution scientist, Norman Borlaug, and neo-conservative, Karl Rove, George W. Bush’s election strategist and the man who oversaw black voter disenfranchisment in Florida and Ohio in the 2004 presidential election.

Past CORE invitees to their King Day celebrations are reported to have included Austrian politician and Nazi-sympathizer Jorg Haider, and right-wing radio host Bob Grant, who once called Dr. King a ‘scumbag’.

But Alicia has more on why Dog’s not a racist:

Racists do not belong to churches where the pastor is a black man, nor do they have them as friends. Getting offended by the “n” word actually depends on who is saying it. President Clinton’s brother Roger was caught on police video saying that word repeatedly, yet blacks consider Bill Clinton the first black president.

I regret to inform you that simply by reading that paragraph you lost 20 I.Q. points. So sue me.

Later on at lunch in the Village, I heard the full details of that infamous call and asked Mr. Chapman why he didn’t say more about the extenuating circumstances when he was on the “Larry King Live” show. He explained that he wanted to take responsibility for uttering those hateful words and that he didn’t want to do anything that would hurt Tucker’s girlfriend.

Since you’ve already lost 20 I.Q. points reading these excerpts of Alicia’s column, you may not have noticed the utter preposterousness of this explanation that Dog, who called his son’s girlfriend a n!@#$r, “didn’t want to do anything that would hurt” her. This means, best I can tell, that Dog thought the girlfriend was a shiftless crack ho (the “extenuating circumstances” that made it okay to call her a n!@#$r) but that it would be unduly hurtful to let her know that was why he was calling her a n!@#$r. Or something like that. We all should exhibit such finely-tuned consideration for the sensitivities of others.

Oh, and guess who CORE is inviting to its next Martin Luther King day celebration?

Incidentally, CORE …will hold its Martin Luther King celebration on January 21 at the Sheraton Hotel. A guest of honor will be Senator McCain; Duane “Dog” Chapman will be another special guest. This one may be a sellout.

It will certainly be a sellout, but not quite in the sense that Alicia hopes.

Thanks to the always excellent uggabugga, we find out that Annie Jacobsen continues, inexeplicably, to be asked to write on the topic of planes and darkies:

Five crop-duster planes have crashed on the terror-plagued island of Mindanao in a short period of time. Annie Jacobsen says that while it may feel like Mindanao is half a world away, the islands plantations are linked to the international food supply chain. Is it time to start worrying about whats being sprayed on your bananas?

People! The plantations are linked to the international food supply chain — not a part of it though, linked to it.

Most people in the Untied [sic] States are familiar with the concept of the crop duster threat-that spray planes could be used to disperse chemical or biological agents into the food supply chain.

And what better way to disperse chemical or biological agents into the food supply chain than by blowing up crop dusters.

The world’s banana consumer would be wise to wonder, what’s being sprayed on my banana?

That reminds us of this banana:

A conservative friend, Stephen at Politburo Diktat, sends a targum:

A Silly Hack Rules

Wait until the Balloon Juicers and the SadlyNobodies get ahold of this one:

Oh Stephen, you hate us because we love you so well.

Above: Killing Joke — ‘The Wait’ (3:41)

Confederate Yankee has gone after The Politico.

This will end in oatmeal bowls bouncing athwart the kitchen floor, and tears.

Pluswards: I really don’t mean to seem cavalier or smug. If I can have an honest-moment now, I look at thousands of words of right-wing spew daily, beginning in the morning when I first check my feeds, and ending when the last press-releases thwonk onto the pavement in the evening. There are hundreds of items every day. And it does all, literally, drive you batshit, if you try to follow the main currents honestly and plain-mindedly.

As a small token of how bad and crazy it gets, I also follow this daily. It’s rarely new by the time I get to it. That’s how bad a person I, personally, am, if anyone is tallying such things in advance of the wedding that I’m cunningly announcing at this not-unforetokened moment (June 7th). . .and I’ve lost the thread here.

Um, I’m a bad person, but not in several ways. Yes. Because you see, after a point, you encounter the worst of it, and see that ‘the worst’ replicates willfully, every week, as well as most days (and more than half of the empirical hours). And as I’ve been sitting here in this computer-chair writing this, several new columns have been published, for instance, on Townhall.com. And each one is in whooping bad faith, and no sane person in the world has the time to refute them all.

I’m not complaining, and none of us are. I imagine our conservative friend, Stephen, reading this, but don’t imagine him as morally impressed by it.

And in a way, I suppose this site, day by day, chronicles our failures as human beings. (As well as, not-unremarkedly, successes.) There’s simply too much, and we’re not enough. It’s shovel-funded and unremittent. But then, of course, we try every day — and what’s the latest howler? Well, maybe this.

Baha! Excelsior, yo!

Above: Erick Erickson

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Hi, I’m Erick Erickson, co-founder of RedState — formerly a major conservative blog, and now, via wingnut welfare, a subsidiary of Eagle Publishing (i.e., the right-wing bulk-sales scammers, Regnery). In this, the Christmas season, it is necessary for us each year to claim that ZOMG, there’s a war going on — a War On Christmas:

Okie Attorney General Bans Christmas. Seriously.

Drew Edmondson is the out of control Oklahoma Attorney General. Recently he rounded up conservative activists and threw them in jail for circulating petitions to get conservatives on the ballot.

Now, however, Drew Edmondson has done something even nuttier. He has issued an advisory opinion from the Attorney General’s Office directing universities in Oklahoma to refrain from using the word “Christmas.”

Mark Tapscott with the Washington Examiner has the details. Mark notes, “Edmondson’s issued an advisory opinion to officials at Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford advising them that the word “Christmas” should not be spoken by any employee of the state school, not written in any official holiday decorations.”

Attorney General Edmondson can be reached at [redacted]. Call and wish him a Merry Christmas and ask why he banned the word.

Above: Ed Morrissey

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Hi, I’m Ed “Cap’n Ed” Morrissey of the major conservative blog, Captain’s Quarters. Long appreciated as among the reasonable few of conservative bloggers, I am only occasionally daffy and in dispossession of my reason, such as when I get upset about something. In this, the Christmas season, the relative value of my less-nutsity has risen to laurel me as a solon of prudential forbearance among so-called ‘conservatives’ (who are actually radically woo-woo wacky all the way around the block, except definitely don’t quote me on this, heh-heh). Um. Quod erat demonstrandum:

Oklahoma Cancels Christmas (Update: No They Didn’t)

UPDATE: I’m putting this at the top because early callers to the AG’s office claims this isn’t true, and they are wishing people a Merry Christmas when greeting callers. So I called there myself, and spoke with Emily Lang, spokesperson for the AG. Ms Lang confirms that they are greeting callers with “Merry Christmas” as a means of refuting this story. AG Edmundson did not issue this order, she insists; they are checking with assistant AGs to see if the advisory ever existed at all. At any rate, the AG does not believe state workers should refrain from Christmas greetings.

Ms. Lang wants people to know that they have a Christmas tree in the office, and hopes everyone has a Merry Christmas.

And yes, I consider this sloppy work on my part. My apologies to readers and the Oklahoma AG’s office. Original post follows ….

Hrah! You thwarters of our plan will crushed under the pine-scented runners of our fell and deadly sleigh! Your stockings will hold dreidels and Halal beef jerky and a statuette of Lord Ganesh! Your gift is an Elmo Knows Your Name in which your name is. . .Mohammed, or current resident!

Foolish Morrissey, we will cause the death of Christmas in different ways. (!!1!!!!one1)

[Coming soon: Photos of the Christmas in the City party.]
[Hanx! Seeing The Forest.]

Update: Cap’n Ed adds:

The sad denizens of Sadly, No! have decided that they can’t take a retraction with any grace and have instead focused their keen political insight on my hair and my weight. How … impressive. It’s nice to see that the middle schools have let out early for Christmas.

We did not! What are you talking about, you only-intermittently-crazy conservative person?

Update II:

HTML Mencken said:

But since he’s already accused us of it, I guess we might as well oblige him?

Got a sammich ready, Gavin?

You know, it’s objectively amazing what one can find in the unused-picture archives. Ok, Ed:

Above: Fixing it

God, what do we ever do around here but help people with things?

Update III: Ed replies:

Well, that’s better than Mother Nature treated me.

Above: Um, where’s our retraction, dude?

Y’know, as interesting and insightful as Jonah’s book has been, I think it fails in the end because it doesn’t identify who the strong, charismatic leader of the Great Liberal Fascisti is. Oh sure, it devotes a whole chapter explaining why a Hillary Clinton presidency will bring us one step closer to totalitarianism, but I personally think she’s just a front for much darker forces at work behind the scenes.

Let’s recap what we know about liberal fascists:

• Much like the Nazis, their ranks are teeming with homosexuals.

• Much like the Nazis, they enjoy bossing people around.

• And worst of all, liberal fascists just love lecturing others on the value of (shudder) exercise and nutrition. Just like THE NAZIS DID.

So to find Liberal Fascism’s Grand Führer, we must find someone who’s gay*, bossy and fitness-obsessed. And then it hit me:

EIN VOLK, EIN REICH, EIN SIMMONS!!!!

*And yeah, I know he says he’s not gay. But dude. Seriously. If you believe that, you probably also think that Roger Clemens pitched so well into his mid-40s solely because of hard work.

This passage is the lowest of the low. Jonah tries to show that Nazis were really gay rights activists at heart. Read at your own risk. [And plz forgive the weird inconsistencies at the bottom of the graphic… I had to combine pics of two separate pages…]

Ick.

Let’s take this line by line.

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We haven’t done one of these in a couple months…

Shorter Rich Galen: You can’t trust the Pee-Pee.

Shorter John McCaslin: Excelsior! Trent Lott bases his governing philosophy on the outlook of a town that most Americans have never heard of. [rimshot] 23 Skidoo!

Shorter Mary Grabar: Only filthy communists like Jane Fonda think that teenage girls are interested in dirty yucky sex.

Shorter Chuck Colson: Take it from me, a Watergate criminal: Our country is sadly lacking in moral fiber.

Shorter Bob Burney: Mormons should just come clean about how they are a crazy devil cult.

Shorter Mitt Romney: Thank you, President Bush! Can I have your job now?

Shorter Amanda Carpenter: Sure, the government is planning to build a thousand miles of fences along the Mexican border, but if it was really serious about protecting us from the dark people, it would build a thousand miles of DOUBLE fences.

Shorter Dick Morris: As a highly paid political analyst, I am predicting that Hillary Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, unless someone else does.

Shorter Larry Kudlow: Is the Fed doing enough to help the rich get richer?

Shorter Emmett Tyrell: I’m not going to abandon a fellow plutocrat just because he’s been convicted of a few measly counts of fraud.

Shorter Larry Elder: Attempts to correct the vast racial inequality that exists in America can have unintended consequences, so we shouldn’t even try.

Shorter Bob Novak: Hey, everybody, I’m not in jail yet!

Shorter Marvin Olasky: We should all set aside our petty politics and concentrate on doing what Jesus Christ, lord and savior of all who live, wants us to do.

Shorter George Will: Thinking of Hillary Clinton’s campaign puts me in mind of her husband, Bill Clinton, and all the awful things he did that we can never forget.

Shorter Donald Lambro: It’s ‘business as usual’ as I, a rich white man, deliver a lecture on how crooked Congressional Democrats are, and use bogus number-crunching to prove how millionaires pay too much in taxes.

Shorter William Rusher: Using this doomsday scenario I made up, you can see how you can only trust intelligence that tells you what you really want to hear.

Shorter Matt Towery: It’s not that I don’t hate John Edwards; it’s just that he makes Hillary and Obama look bad.

Shorter Clifford May: It’s okay when I say that America starts wars because of oil, because I’m a conservative.

Shorter Steven Chapman: I am pointedly not mentioning the United States in this column about how freedom is on the decline in a number of countries.

Shorter Victor Dufus Hanson: I would like to join my colleague George Will in reminding everyone that Bill Clinton was a bad man and we can never ever forget how much he ruined America.

Shorter Ken Blackwell: McCain-Huckabee ’08! No, really, I’m serious!

Shorter David R. Stokes: If Time magazine isn’t run by a bunch of commies, then why don’t they make JESUS their Man of the Year?

Shorter Doug MacKinnon: In an imaginary country I made up founded by crazy right-wing militiamen, you’re allowed to own guns, unlike in America.

Shorter Ross MacKenzie: Democrats want to spend your money on “news taxes” instead of “hostility to Islamofascism”.

Shorter Hugh Hewitt: I have a bigger man-crush on Mitt Romney than Kathryn Jean Lopez does.

It is done! I’ve raised enough $ through y’all’s good graces to make a huge jackass out of myself at CPAC in February! I can’t thank you folks enough — hopefully, my dispatches from inside the Chee-To-stained belly of the beast will go a ways to pay back your generosity. There’s also enough extra to add to the Sadly, No! Widows and Orphans fund, but if you haven’t donated and you’re still feeling eleemosynary, keep that mayonnaise spreadin’, yo! Click below or use the Amazon link to your right: it’s the season of giving, and you can still help Baby Gavin get a copy of “Hateful Photoshopping for Toddlers”, Baby Seb get a subscription to Organic Fascist Weekly, Baby HTML a new tube of fist-shaking ointment, Baby Travis a DVD of Hot Conservative Asian Trampoline Tramps, Baby Bradrocket some experimental brain surgery that will remove the parts that were cauterized by reading Jonah Goldberg’s new book, Baby Jillian a 2008 Leon Trotsky swimsuit calendar, Baby Clif a dream date with Ace of Spades, and Baby D. Aristophanes a combination shoe buffer/suicide booth. Thanks again for your incredble generosity.

Above: “Open the pod bay doors, Jonah…”

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With Jonah Goldberg sucking so much dumb out of the atmosphere, we’re worried as to whether there’s still enough dumb for Blogs For Victory (formerly Blogs For Bush).

Let’s go check their vital signs!

Reid To Effectively Shutdown FEC?

Senate Democrats, lead by Harry Reid, are trying to strong-arm President Bush by refusing to clear a slate of appointees to the Federal Election Commission.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) just announced that the Senate will not clear four new appointees for the Federal Election Commission, meaning the panel that acts as a watchdog on political campaigns cannot function during the critical election-year period.

Reid is blaming the White House for refusing to withdraw to allow a majority vote on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the commission.

Ah, so what they mean is that it’s about Hans von Spakovsky, the hyper-partisan Republican voting-suppression operative, previously to be found at the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales, where he was responsible for sabotaging the Civil Rights Division.

Apparently Bush wants him on the panel that will oversee the 2008 elections, for some reason.

Republicans want von Spakovsky approved as part of a slate of four FEC nominees or they will refuse to consider any of the nominees.

Ah, so what they mean is that it’s actually Republicans who are refusing to clear the slate of appointees.

Von Spakovsky was recess appointed by President Bush to the FEC, but his term expires at the end of the year. Democrats have refused to allow his nomination to move forward, arguing that his actions while at the Justice Department disqualified him for the post. Bush, though has not backed down, and the matter has been at an impasse for the last four months.

Ah, so what they mean is that Bush has been doing the strong-arming.

Now, with the Senate moving toward adjournment until mid-January, Reid signalled that Democrats will not move any FEC nominations if they include von Spakovsky, meaning the commission will only have two of its required six members. Reid said he offered the GOP a straight majority vote on all the FEC nominees, including von Spakovsky, but the White House refused to accept that offer.

Ah, so what they mean is that Reid just “offered the GOP a straight majority vote on all the FEC nominees, including von Spakovsky, but the White House refused to accept that offer.”

How convenient that the FEC could be effectively shutdown during a presidential election year. Is this merely a case of Democrats trying to flex their muscles and appease their extreme liberal base, or is it also a way to protect Democrat candidates in an election year?

Is it also part of the plot to install Hillary as dictator? Or is it part of that plot and the plot to surrender America to Mexlamohomofascist terrorists, not to mention the conspiracy to cripple industry via the hoax of so-called “global warming?” …Perhaps only time will tell.

Funny isn’t it, just the other day Harry Reid was complaining about Republican obstruction…

Hardy ho and also ha. The fact that the Republicans have an openly-announced, unremitting policy of total obstructionism is just one of those odd coincidences that so often occur in politics. It’s totally unlike the situation a couple of years ago, when Blogs For Bush was howling for the elimination of the filibuster.

Breathe well, gentlemen! Breathe well!

* There aren’t enough good puns on Matt Margolis’s name.