Sadly, No!

CNN sez:

State Department official in charge of diplomatic security resigns amid investigation into security contractors in Iraq.

This should be a good ‘un. Getcha ponies ready.

Dutch Intifada, Week 2

• A mentally ill Moroccan kid in Amsterdam did some crazy stuff and was shot by police, and the ensuing neighborhood-scale racial unrest means that I will sit on my white, hammy ass in Los Angeles, funded by wingnut welfare, and claim that the country of The Netherlands is under literal siege by The Forces Of The Global Muslim Conspiracy.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

Bonus LGF comments:

#4 tfc3rid 10/24/07 9:15:32 am

Amazing that this is not being covered…

#21 galloping granny 10/24/07 9:21:47 am

A friend is visiting from Europe who was in Amsterdam last Friday. I asked him about the ongoing car-b-ques and he did not know the first thing about them, even though he is from the UK and is in and out of Amsterdam a couple of times a month on business.

I think the Dutch authorities are keeping this VERY, very quiet.

#38 Golem Akbar 10/24/07 9:27:18 am

And to think, Holland was once the pinnacle of freedom for the whole world to see. It has sunk into a hellhole ripe for Islamofascist takeover.

the corner

Myths of the Jena 6 [Jonah Goldberg]

I found an article from somebody in Jena that proves that no one in a Jena is a racist. In fact, the white kids who hung the nooses got shot in the face and the black kids got pie and ice cream. Also, while I’m debunking myths, Matthew Shepherd wasn’t really gay.

10/24 08:53 AM

Get Over It [Mark Steyn]

The Nobel Prize should only be awarded to people that think that 9/11 was the worst thing that ever happened since the beginning of time!

10/24 08:26 AM

What I Woke Up Thinking This Morning … [K-Lo]

The best thing ever would be if Lynne Cheney were President, Dick Cheney were Secretary of Defense, Maureen Dowd had been disfigured in a tragic accident, and I was dating that dreamboat Mitt Romney.

10/24 05:27 AM

“Tonight We Dine In Virginia!” [Mark Hemingway]

This parody of “300” is teh funny, but be sure to stick yur fingers in teh ears cuz there is a real bad word near teh end.

10/24 12:45 AM

Wildfires And Environmental Obstructionism

Audio cue: ‘Lara’s Theme’ from Dr. Zhivago

• Deranged moonbats in the comments of a Kos diary and also in a remark on a radio show are blaming Bush for the California wildfires,* but it is the same sick, demented Left that is truly at fault, for opposing President Bush’s attempt to open national forests to logging operations, and [mumble mumble] these unforested areas in California, with the drought and the winds that despite the idiotic ravings of the spittle-flecked Left have nothing to do with so-called ‘global warming,’ showing once again that I am not a bad person! [sobbing]

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

* Or rather, for the National Guard being tied up in Iraq, but it looks better as “blam[ing] Bush” and “blam[ing] the wildfires on the Iraq War,” because nonsensical claims more accurately convey the inner badness of enemy life forms.

Above: Then again, sometimes it applies to paperbacks.

---

Sometimes you really can judge a book by its cover. Or more accurately, by the publisher-generated copy on the inside dust jacket. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to paperbacks.

But it does apply to the latest sticky mess of smarmy insubstantiality to be spun like candied Jesus floss from the saccharine loom of grinning, serial life-fucker-upper Joel Osteen. No doubt ‘Become a Better You’ has pride of place on many an intellectually thin suburban bookshelf. Next to the Bible and in front of the stash of gay porn vids, one imagines.

But it need not find its way, dear reader, into the Amazon algorithm for book pages you once glanced at to mock. I am here to spare you that embarrassment. Because, you see, the book in its entirety can be ridiculed with a brief study of the first few lines of copy on the aforementioned dust jacket:

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel!”

It would probably be too kind to suggest that ‘Become a Better You’ be retitled ‘The Demonstrably False, Insipidly Stated.’ That’s just one phrase that springs to mind upon reading the two sentences above, and really, it leaves out a strong sense of the core incoherence at the heart of that soul-draining arrangement of letters and words. Seriously, what in the living fuck does “God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel!” even mean?

Let’s break it down:

Assume that “you” is used in the all-inclusive sense to mean all of us. The whole of humanity. That may sound like an odd thing to do, but consider that supreme Christian egotists like Osteen tend to believe it’s their mission to convert every last person on Earth to their brand of God-bothering. You know it’s true.

Above: Created to suck seed.

---

So now we’re left with the statement that “God didn’t create any human being to be average.” The word ‘average’, of course, implies some sort of mathematical range. And the next sentence gives us a fixed point in that range that is above average, ‘to excel’.

Here’s where it gets tricky. The copy writer doesn’t give us a numerical value for ‘to excel’, so we’re just going to have to make one up for the sake of dragging this deconstruction of minutiae to truly absurd lengths. Let’s say that the range of possible human performance in the eyes of God goes from 0 — representing ‘total failure’ — to 100 — representing ‘Jesus’. At around 50 we find ‘average’ and at some other percentile, let’s say 83.764, we find ‘to excel’.

Now according to Osteen’s flack, God created us all to hit that magic 83.764 number. In His eyes it would really be the bee’s knees if all of us sinners managed to pull it off. But if we ever did it, if all of us actually clocked in at 83.764, then by the internal logic of mathematics, something that God also presumably created, WE WOULD BY DEFINITION ALL BE AVERAGE. If you added up all our God scores, then divided that number by the amount of people in the world, ‘average’ would equal 83.764.

But Osteen’s nameless leg-humper can’t possibly mean to say that “God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to be average!”

So maybe ‘to excel’ is just the floor on the scale of God-intended human goodliness. Maybe God only gives a shit that you hit 83.764, but He lets the real suck-ups shoot for like the 97.509th percentile (which would be where Joel Osteen would score, keeping in mind that we’d better keep a couple of positive integers between the Greatest Mortal Being the World Has Ever Known and Jesus, if only for form’s sake).

In this more nuanced interpretation, God just wants us to knock the cover off life to the tune of an 83.764 rating or above. And while there will still be an ‘average’ score on the God chart, let’s say 85.421, that potential pitfall is avoided by phrasing the copy a little differently:

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to score between 83.764 and 97.509, the acceptable range of ‘excelling’, just so long as you don’t hit 85.421 on the nose, because that would be average, so fuck you Christ killer! Godtotallyruleshellyeah!”

That gets rid of a lot of ambiguity in the marketing of Joel Osteen (and if I may be so bold, of God). But it’s a bit clunky. So alternately, instead of adding all that stuff, maybe we just make a few strategic cuts to the original copy:

“God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to[.] Excel[sior!]”

There ya go, Joel. First one’s free. Fire that snot-nosed kid who writes your jacket copy and have your people call my people.

Above: “Up your nose with a rubber hose,” or similar
contemporary expression.

---

Let’s check in with Farmer Giles of Ham:

How to Shut Up an Atheist if You Must
By Doug Giles

The atheist’s days of running circles around the Christian with their darling questions are drawing to a close. Yes, the fat lady just wrenched herself off her humongous backside, has cleared her throat and now is fixin’ to sing the finale on the atheist’s ability to have fun with their specious little fairy tales at the Christians’ expense.

That is if the Christian will buy, devour, commit to memory and stand up and challenge the pouty anti-God cabal with the atheist-slaying facts found in two new books from Regnery namely, What’s So Great about Christianity and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible.

Authors Dinesh D’Souza and Robert Hutchinson skillfully answer, once again, the atheist’s pet questions about the existence (or non-existence) of God and how Christianity has allegedly made the world suck. Suck, for you thick atheists, is a slang word which means to make or to be really, really crappy (kind of like how our culture becomes anytime you guys mess with it).

[…]

Lastly, comfortable and cocky atheists, you had better brace yourselves. Hundreds of thousands of Christians and authors are about to read these books and, as stated, systematically dismember your old and haggard arguments.

In addition, everywhere I go and speak — be it in conferences, on the radio, on television or in print — I’m going to encourage the tens of thousands of Christians I address that every time and everywhere they get crapped on by an atheist with unfounded arguments to open their mouths and slam dance them with facts found in these two new brilliant books from Regnery.

First of all, ‘slam dance them with facts’? Dude, an early 80’s Oingo Boingo concert called. It wants its thoroughly dated lingo back. Second of all, you are quite possibly the biggest tool ever. Is there an HTML tag for ‘snorts derisively’? Like, bracket-pshaw-close-bracket-A HREF=”youhavegottobefuckingkiddingme” dot-php-open-quote-WTF-OMFG-STFU-&cetera-&cetera-close-quote-bracket-backslash-pshaw-close-bracket? Or something?

However, silly as it seems, we’ll play along with your premise, which seems to be something along the lines of ‘Snappy Comebacks to Several Millennia of Profound Existential Thought.’ Here goes:

COMPLETE CANON OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY: Can God make a rock so heavy he can’t lift it?

DOUG GILES: That’s what she said! BWAHAHAHA!

COMPLETE CANON OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY: How do you reconcile the problem of natural evil with your declaration of an omni-benevolent God?

DOUG GILES: As if! There you go again! Where’s the beef? Slam dance! Could it be … SATAN?!?!? Ka-ching!

COMPLETE CANON OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY: Assuming an omnipotent and omniscient Creator, what prevents Him from setting up a few basic rules for natural selection (or indeed, for physical reality as we can measure it), then letting his creation play out across time without having to personally interfere with it?

DOUG GILES: I like big butts and I do not lie! Nanu-nanu! Ayyyyy!

COMPLETE CANON OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY: Why your God, Doug, when so many others are on offer from equally zealous advocates?

DOUG GILES: Eat my shorts! Cowabunga! Don’t have a cow, man! Watchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis? I’m lovin’ it! Well, exc-u-u-u-u-se me!

COMPLETE CANON OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY: Why would a loving God endow his creations with such limited capacity to understand the metaphysical and such robust tools for quantifying the physical … then turn and around and punish His subjects for all eternity should they judge rational conclusions based on the latter to be more useful to them than blind guesses about the former?

DOUG GILES: That’s a tasty burger! Go ahead, make my day! D’oh! I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not! Zing! Makin’ copies! De plane! De plane! Lighten up, Francis! Nap attack! Gilligan, drop those coconuts! Dyn-o-mite! Oh, my nose! Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! Sit on it! E.T. phone home! I. . .can. . .he-e-e-ear you! Greed is good! What we have here is a failure to communicate! Good grief! The doctor is. . .in! What am I, a clown to you? Zed’s dead, baby! Good mo-o-ornin’ Vietnam! Ho-o-o-gan! I know nussink! I hear nussink! Your pa-pers, pleeze! In my heart, I know I’m funny! Ain’t nothing like a piece of pussy, except maybe the Indy 500! Medic! May the Force be with you! Take my wife. . .please! Ha-ted it! Homey don’t play dat! Well, isn’t that special! Hey, Sal, how come they ain’t no brothas on the wall? Tastes great! Less filling! Leggo my Eggo! And I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids! John Wayne was a fag! Do you believe in miracles? Yo, Adrian! I. Will. Break. You. Who dat? Choppin’ broccoli! Wayne’s World! Wayne’s World! Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun! Dublin, Berkeley, San Lorenzo, Cupertino, San Jose! You’ll love it at Levitz!

COMPLETE CANON OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY: Okay, you win. God is great.

Sigh. Gregg Easterbrook is at it again.

For reasons only known to himself and the demonic entity he sold his soul to, Easterbrook gets paid by several prominent publications to write about a wide variety of topics — including science, national energy policy, statistical analysis, movies and football — despite the fact that he’s really, really goddamn stupid and is wrong about everything. It’s very depressing that one man can continue to get paid for essentially writing the Encyclopedia Wrongtancia, but that’s our major media for you. The stupider Easterbrook gets, the louder his editors seem to clap. Just check out this one:

Patriots at Colts on Nov. 4 is shaping up to be one of the most attractive and exciting NFL regular-season games ever staged. The pairing is fabulous; the teams are the league’s best; and there is a chance both will take the field undefeated. Plus, Patriots at Colts has a powerful, compelling narrative. Namely — Good vs. Evil.

The fact that I don’t even need to tell you which team represents Good and which stands for Evil says a lot about how low New England has sunk. You knew instantly which was which, didn’t you?

Well yes, but only because you’ve been positing bizarre conspiracy theories about the NFL working to cover up Bill Belichick’s vast web of illegal cheating-related program activities by hiding videotapes of him guffawing on the sideline during Super Bowl XXXIX because he secretly injected Donovan McNabb with 20 billion milligrams of Dr. Zzzzzzzzz’s coma-inducing sleep medicine in order to make him look like a lazy bum who was too tired to run a hurry-up offense in the fourth quarter of the biggest game of his life. These theories were so credible, by the way, that they earned you a very sharp rebuke from your own ombudsman. So yes, Mr. Credibility-Would-Be-My-Middle-Name-If-I-Weren’t-Full-of-Shit-About-Everything, we do know which team you consider to be “evil.” Please continue:

Argument for the Indianapolis Colts as paladins who carry the banner of that which is beneficent: Sportsmanship, honesty, modesty, devotion to community, embrace of traditional small-town life, belief in higher power, even love of laughter.

And the Patriots? They hate small towns, God and laughter. Yes, those Patriots are so goddamn evil that they never laugh, and when they do it’s only because they’re mocking pathetic Dolphins defensive backs who tried to double-cover Randy Moss and wound up falling to the ground. Which, to be honest, is extremely funny. To me, at least.

The Colts are the defending champions, so they obviously play well on the field. Yet after winning the Super Bowl, they have remained humble and appealing.

Right, which must be why Peyton Manning has decided to pollute my TV screen by doing about a gazillion-kajillion new ads. Whoring yourself out to corporate America is the greatest small-town value of them all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Michelle has found a new target in her endless crusade against Geraldo Rivera and people who remind her of Geraldo Rivera (those who, unlike herself but much like Neil Gabler, haven’t been fired from Fox News):

Crapweasel Of The Day
By Michelle Malkin
October 22, 2007 09:21 PM

Update: John Gibson calls out Neal Gabler as a “lowlife” and a “coward.” For starters.

***
It looks like it’s a new trend now: Fox News liberals threatening and wishing ill on Fox News conservatives.

And Fox News liberals getting away with it.

Except nothing like that happened, and as usual, Michelle is running around in angry, arm-flappy circles finding things to shriek about:

Left-wing hater Neal Gabler tries to do his best Geraldo Rivera imitation by joking about Bill Kristol getting killed in Iraq.

Watch the video. Watch everyone titter. Watch as no one comes to Kristol’s defense. Watch as no one immediately condemns Gabler’s crude, vulgar, hateful, ignorant rhetoric.

It’s also demented, horrifying, trashy, mendacious, and/or any other adjective meaning ‘bad’ that you might care to plug in.

WAITRESS: How are we doing over here?

MICHELLE MALKIN: This unhinged, vile, and disingenuous hamburger is ignorant and hateful.

JESSE MALKIN: She means she’d like more ketchup.

MICHELLE MALKIN: Shocking is the ice tea in its flagrantly maniacal and spittle-flecked rabidness.

JESSE MALKIN: We’d like a refill.

WAITRESS: Um, I’ll have to make another batch of, uh, ‘spittle-flecked rabidness.’

MICHELLE MALKIN: Aha, who’s coarsening the debate now, crapweasel?

Below is the video that is so shocking in its unbelievableness:

Partial transcript:

I love so many critics of the press in Iraq, you know, can criticize the press, can criticize Lara Logan, and Richard Engel, and others who actually have their boots on the ground there. But I would like to see some of them like Bill Kristol go there, without a bodyguard, walk down the street. If he does so, I will make him this promise: I will attend his funeral.

This is unacceptable because conservatives never do stupid things and get themselves killed.

What a damned shame.

Again, I ask: Who’s coarsening the debate?

Who?

Golly, we can’t imagine.

Here’s Kristol’s essay on his recent trip to Iraq.

In which, traveling with ‘surge’ architect Fred Kagan and his wife, Weekly Standard ‘surge’ columnist Kimberley Kagan, he walked McCain-style through a hyper-secured area on Haifa Street, protected by the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division.

Above: Malkin strolls freely down a Baghdad street without a bodyguard
Read the rest of this entry »

Above: “T.E. Lawrence, Billy Hayes, and Charles Johnson.”

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Someone put a nickel in Roger L. Simon this week! He just can’t seem to shut up, no matter how little sense he makes:

I don’t like to make predictions – most importantly, because I am lousy at it and have a terrible track record. If you were to see my stock portfolio or a printout of my (infrequent, thankfully) results in Vegas you would know what I mean.

Or how about when you predicted that your “new media venture,” which consisted mostly of right-wing dingbats who could barely string a sentence together, was going to totally revolutionize news reporting, only it turned out to be a total laughingstock that couldn’t turn a profit or retain the services of its most drunken Long Islander? What a hilarious boner that was!

I also had to eat crow on my own blog a few years ago, having made some (again, thankfully) now-forgotten predictions.

Oh, don’t worry, Rog. There’s always plenty of people here on the internet to remind you of your biggest mistakes.

So, with my head ducking appropriately, here goes The Big Prediction – or more exactly, predictions: The US will win the War in Iraq, and Hillary Clinton will be elected our next President.

Wow! Two bold predictions there — that we’ll win a war in which we can’t even define who our enemies are, and that the opposition front-runner will defeat the party of the least popular president since Nixon. You wanna dig that hole a little deeper, Rog?

Read the rest of this entry »

Above: ‘Wingnut face mullet’ often a clinical danger sign

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Read both of the following passages, and decide which one was generated by the offspring of one of the most well-known American political philosophers, and which was generated by a person with an untreated mental illness.

Passage 1:

Plaintiff [redacted for the homework], appearing pro se, filed a complaint in December 1992 alleging a bizarre conspiracy involving the defendants to enslave and oppress certain segments of our society. Plaintiff contends she is a cyborg, and that she received most of the information which forms the basis for her complaint, through “proteus”, which I read to be some silent, telepathic form of communication. See complaint, at 1, and Affidavit accompanying November 1993 Order to Show Cause, at P g. She asserts that the defendants are involved in the “Iron Mountain Plan”, which provides for the reinstitutionalization of slavery and “bloodsports” (which she identifies as death-hunting [n1] and witch-hunting), and the oppression of political dissidents, herself included. Plaintiff’s complaint alleges a number of personal indignities visited upon her by defendants: “strafing of my dormitory room by planes and helicopters, the electronic bugging of my student rooms and apartments, deliberate noise harassment, blasting of loud rock music with lyrics designed for witch-hunts (music about social pariahs) . . . students following me around to prevent me from studying, whispering campaigns and social ostrification . . .” Complaint, at 1-2. Plaintiff also makes the following allegations against the defendants. Former President Jimmy Carter was the secret head of the Ku Klux Klan; Bill Clinton is the biological son of Jimmy Carter; President Clinton and Ross Perot have made fortunes in the death-hunting industry, and are responsible for the murder of at least 10 million black women in concentration camps, their bodies sold for meat and their skin turned into leather products. The defendants are also responsible for breeding farms, which turn out 2,000 black girls a year, who are then sold for recreational murder or as human pets. Additionally, the defendants utilize weather control and earthquake technology to threaten other countries that object to the Iron Mountain plan.

Passage 2:

A person facing directly into the giant central crescent of what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace will be facing 1.8° north of Mecca. Defenders of the crescent have used the inexactness of its Mecca orientation to dismiss concern.

•Patrick White, Vice President of Families of Flight 93, argues that the giant crescent cannot be seen as a tribute to Islam because the inexactness of its Mecca orientation would be “disrespectful to Islam.”

•Both major Pittsburgh newspapers are denying that there is any such thing as the direction to Mecca.

•The internal investigation conducted by the Park Service denies that there is any such thing as almost:

…mihrab orientation either points to Mecca or it does not … [it] cannot be off by “some” degrees.

All of this willful blindness about the simple orientation of the crescent structure has been effective in keeping public inquiry from reaching a second startling fact: that the crescent design also contains a hidden exact Mecca orientation, corresponding to architect Paul Murdoch’s own description of how the crescent structure should be interpreted.

What points not quite exactly at Mecca is the physical Crescent of Embrace structure (every particle of which remains completely intact in the Bowl of Embrace redesign). Connect the most obtruding tips of the physical crescent, form the perpendicular bisector to this line (the bisector of the crescent), and it points 1.8° north of Mecca:…

At the end of the Entry Portal Walkway [in the Crescent of Embrace] (marking the thematic or “true” upper crescent tip, according to Murdoch’s own description), sits a large glass block, inscribed with LAFD Captain Stephen J. Ruda’s dedication: “A common field one day. A field of honor forever.”

This will be the 44th inscribed translucent block emplaced along the flight path, matching the number of passengers, crew, AND terrorists. 40 will be inscribed with the names of the 40 heroes (despite Tom Burnett’s demand that Tom Jr.’s name not be used). Three three more will be built into a separate section of Memorial Wall that is centered on the bisector of the giant crescent (the exact position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag). These three blocks will be inscribed with the 9/11 date. Thus the date goes to the Islamic star. The date goes to the terrorists.

By having the 44th glass block mark the thematic “true” upper crescent tip, and by having that thematic crescent tip create a hidden exact Mecca orientation for the giant crescent, Murdoch is able to tie his Islamic and his terrorist memorializing design features together into a perfect bin Ladenist embrace.

Answers below the fold. No peeking, and no talking to the other students. Remember, there will be no grading on a curve!
Read the rest of this entry »