Life imitates Seinfeld a book we read:
Authorities in Palo Alto are searching for a person “with problemsâ€? after a school’s pet chicken was discovered stoned to death over the weekend, the San Jose Mercury News reported. […] “The person who did this has problems,” [Police Sgt. Sandra] Brown told The San Jose Mercury News.
Guess they ran out of Paris Hilton news.
Thanks for sending us this video, Marie. It’s a non-stop laugh-a-second cornucopia of wingnuttery:
[OK, the video was getting really annoying because it would start automatically every time you reloaded the page. It can still be seen in its entirety here.]
Do watch the whole thing. It’s a rant about how the Democrats, the teachers unions and art museums are all trying to make American kids into atheistic pussies*, and thus pave the way for a radical Islamic takeover.
*His word!
Shorter David B. Rivkin, Jr. and Lee A. Casey: The ACLU is suing American companies that are assisting our government’s torture policy. That’s bad.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
Ask anyone around the Sadly, No! offices: “What was so bad about the Nazis?” You’ll get your answer: “Gehfuckou’here, m’sleepin,'” followed by the sound of of an empty gin bottle whistling past your ear. But ask the question again after 2PM, and you’ll get a different answer: the Nazis were bad because they used violence, racism and propaganda to fuel the persecution of innocent minority groups for no other reason than their ethnic and religious status. Ask us if torture is wrong: We’ll say of course it is, under all circumstances, because the use of savagely inhumane treatment against other human beings is something that should be opposed even if it were effective, which it isn’t. Ask us why we hope to prevail against terrorism, and we’ll say, once we finish eating our brisket taco, because we believe that democracy, freedom and justice are values worth preserving — the very basis of our national identity, and to be defended fiercely against anyone who would take them away, whether an internal or external threat. We’re always saying high-minded shit like that.
Ask a lot of folks on the right what was so bad about the Nazis, though, and it seems pretty likely they’d say “They directed their tactics at the wrong people.” Ask if torture is wrong, and they’ll say “only if the other side uses it.” Ask why they hope to prevail against terrorism, and they’ll say “because we’re America, and they’re not.” It’s as simple as different names for sides with a lot of these people, which saves them all the messy trouble of deciding how far is too far, what threat is a legitimate threat, and whether it’s possible to err by adopting the methods of your enemies. (The answers, for those of you who haven’t been watching the G.O.P. debates, are “none too far”, “all of them” and “no”.)
Case in point: Crazy Pammy Oshry-Weingarten-Turnblad-Rebozo-Firefly over at Atlas Shrugs. As her latest spiced-rum-fueled blurtation indicates, she has no problem with infiltrating places of worship, spying on American citizens, terrorizing schoolchildren, criminalizing an entire religion, and generally behaving like Citizen Gestapo — just so long as it’s not her people who get targeted. For special bonus crazy-gravy, note that this project is being run by Dave Gaubatz, the professional crazy person who tromped around a couple of months ago claiming to have personally discovered WMDs in Iraq, only they got stoled by Syriranian terror killers and the President is too embarrassed to say anything about it. Super credible!
The only real difference between the Pam Oshrys of this world and the people they claim to despise is that they wear different hats. The most sophisticated principle they’re defending is “We’re the blue team and you’re the red team,’ and one day, they’re going to get confused about who they are, like Terry O’Quinn in The Stepfather, and beat the Constitution to death with a telephone.
Mr. Spades, having just wolfed down his morning cheeseburger, is pumped up and ready for war:
US Military: We Can Hit Iran
They’ve apparently accepted that military action may be necessary, and will support Bush should he
choose this routehave no option remaining except the military one.I don’t like the idea that we’d just be hitting the nuke sites. If you’re going to take a shot at the Shah, hit to kill. If we’re striking their nuke sites, we ought to also be hitting their mullahs, Ahamadinejad, and all the key genrals and Revolutionary Guard commanders that keep this psychopathic regime in power.
I imagine Mr. Spades typing this as he’s holding his Sgt. Slaughter G.I. Joe doll and using it to bash in the head of the wicked Cobra Commander.
“I’m comin’ to liberate yer wimin with nuk-you-lar weapons!” says Mr. Spades’ Slaughter. “Y’all have kept th’ bacon’n’playdoh hidden under burqas fer too long now! BAM, POW!”
Also, Mr. Spades, I think it should be noted that the Shah hasn’t been in power for, uh, quite some time now.
Jeff Goldstein gets all concern trollish regarding the Jesus’ General-Brittney Gilbert-Ghost of Adolph Rupp-Scott Kaufman dustup (go here for as good a take as any on that regrettable situation):
I find it at once touching and sad that Kaufman is maintaining that this attempt at getting him canned merely for challenging the officially-sanctioned narrative is something of an unrepresentative gambit — that it is an individual vs individual scenario that doesn’t speak to larger problems within the progressive movement — even as he’s witnessed firsthand how pernicious is a world view that privileges the incorrect decoding of a particular interpretive community over the (since established) intent of the utterer, and then gives that interpretive community permission to ascribe to the original utterer the product of the community’s own (often cynically self-interested) interpretive intent.
Ooh … it’s high-falutin’ Pasty. Gettin’ down with the deconstructionalamism. “A world view that privileges the incorrect decoding of a particular interpretive community …” Man, that kind of patter plus a corduroy coat with elbow patches would get you laid at any one of the Seven Sister schools circa 1973.
But here’s the real point, jackass. You and your cohorts are for torture. We occasionally act like assholes. To be precise, an indvidual — Ghost of Adolph Rupp — is acting like an asshole. Without “official sanction” from the progressive movement, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
A Star Chamber of Katrina vanden Heuvel, Kos, Michael Moore, Tinky Winky and Rosie O’Donnell did not compose the “narrative” and then order the attack on Scott Kaufman. An individual did that, and it’s not part of a “larger problem” … it’s one guy being a dick.
The “larger problems” in our “movement” are that we sometimes get all het up about stupid shit. The larger problems in yours are that you are a bunch of psychopathic, emotional cyphers whose black hearts lust for ever increasing gouts of blood to fill the petulant, quivering emptiness that resides in your persons where a soul should be.
But as Clarke’s essay spells out (however tentatively), the problem is far more widespread than Kaufman would like to admit — and indeed, for my part, I’ve come it see it as systemic, following naturally from an interpretive paradigm that of necessity culminates in competing narratives vying for established “truthâ€? based entirely on the power and tenacity of an advocacy group’s insistence.
What does this even mean? Skreak English, retard.
I could be wrong, of course. But I long for the days when someone would argue how this is so, rather than labeling my thinking “hate speech� and hoping that the mere accusation does enough to scare me off.
Scare you off? You want to pre-emptively attack Iran. You’re fucking nuts. We want to marginalize you to the point that the dustbin of history wrinkles its mixed-metaphorical nose at the thought of being asked to house the remaining artifactual motes of your brief but extinction-level usurpation of basic morality.
Michael Ledeen unleashes another jewel:
Lieberman for Secretary of State
On Face the Nation, he just called for military strikes against terrorist training camps inside Iran, echoing, ahem, myself lo these several years. […]
Meanwhile, the appeasers over at the State Department, from the spokesman to the secretary herself, are reassuring the world that we’re going to continue our conversations, regardless of the current hostage crisis. Ambassador Crocker tries to cover up our nakedness, saying we’d only consider another round of talks when the Iraqi Government issues a formal invitation. But they will. How could they not? They watch our tv, they know about the September deadline, they’ve seen this administration has no stomach for fighting, above all against journalists and Democrats. They expect us to leave. They expect the Iranians to stay. And who can say they are wrong?
It is safe to assume two things:
a.) Joe Lieberman is one of the most insane figures in American politics. He’s vastly more insane than many Republicans, even.
b.) Michael Ledeen will never stop being a reliable geyser of comedy.
And say, did you guys know that the only thing needed to win wars is willpower? Me neither. But hey, that’s why we’re not neocons. You know, because we’re sane. And stuff.
The Ace of Base is all indignant that some guy who gets paid to put together a newspaper made a decision Ace disagreed with and the editor later regretted. To make matters worse, the poor sap can’t even offer a satisfying explanation:
[A] New York Time editor admits he tanked the JFK bomb-plot story because he “questioned the timing” of it. As Allah asks — and as we always ask of these morons — what precisely was Bush attempting to distract away from? From… nothing?
Maybe Ace shoulda axed ol’ Allahpundit, who may have accidentally answered his own question:
Was [the weekend editor] also mindful of the fact that this bombshell dropped before noon on Saturday, the graveyard of the news cycle, and that there was absolutely nothing burning up the front page (except Bush’s own beloved amnesty bill) that it would have or could have distracted from?
Speaking of the amnesty bill, that was pretty unpopular, no? Even less so than the president, in general? And uncovering a terrorist plot is always a good thing for a guy who’s hitched his wagon to the stampeding fear of people such as Ace and Allahpundit, so there are some fairly obvious benefits to rolling out the sensationalized details of an allegedly existential threat that was stopped just in the nick of time. But Ace overthinks the editor’s rationale, anyway:
Do they imagine Bush can order up a massive bust on a particular involving the NYPD, FBI, and other law enforcement investigations to suit his political needs without a single person leaking the fact he ordered it? And ordered all LEO’s to lie about it? And ordered it all to take place on a certain day or at least within a certain time period?
Whoa, whoa, whoa — easy there, Ace m’boy. I think all the guy’s saying is that the press release could have been timed for maximum impact, which is sort of like the whole point of public relations. And the reporters soon learned that some of the more melodramatic claims made in the government’s press release turned out to be a bit less incredible than advertised, which is sort of like the whole point of journalism. The weekend editor then examined that available information, weighed it against some other information, and made a decision in time to get all the newspapers printed and distributed and dropped off in my front yard before I walked out Sunday morning in my underwear to pick it up.
Sounds to me like a whole bunch of people got a lot of work done while I was busy losing my pants.
For what it’s worth, I happen to disagree with the editor’s decision, but I can understand why — oh my god, dude, Ace is still muttering to himself in the other room:
These are the people who assert you should trust their very professional, finely-honed sense of “news judgment.” People who believe that large-scale arrests are ordered to occur on a specific day in order to “distract from” biweekly trivialities.
Shhhh. Let’s just let ourselves out the side door and stop by later. I’m sure he’ll be here.
Fred Thompson flack and Townhall blogger David Mertens has accomplished all that is possible with the form:
Fred Thompson will run
Keep your babies, and your guns
Terrorists, you’re doneConservatives Know
Thompson is the man to beat
Go America!For Law and Order
Inalienable rights
And Federalism!
I simply can’t compete with perfection. I quit.
Shorter Ole Perfesser: I can and will shamelessly blame liberals for everything bad everywhere in the world.
In his latest column — link here for Times $elect subscribers — Paul Krugman complains about the cult of “authenticity” in politics, and how it makes people like John Edwards come across as phonies. FDR was a rich guy who cared about the poor, he says, so why can’t John Edwards be?
Well, John Edwards is no FDR. But the answer to Krugman’s complaint is found in the post 1960s political zeitgeist. Back before identity politics, and the notion that “the personal is political,” the idea of a rich guy representing poor people was entirely plausible. He could be rich, but still have ideas about poverty, and care about them. But now that we have identity politics and the like, that’s impossible: If only a woman can represent women, only a black person can represent blacks, etc. — Barbara Boxer even suggested that Condi Rice couldn’t understand mothers because she was childless — then obviously only a poor person can represent poor people. And since there are no poor people in American political office, poor people perforce go unrepresented. Thus, the “progressive” causes of identity politics and personalization mean that the progressives’ key clients can’t get “authentic” representation. This is probably bad for the country, but it’s certainly a bed that the progressives have made for themselves.
But, but, but, Perfesser! The whole point of Krugman’s excellent and super-awesome column is that:
a.) Republicans such as Fred Thompson and George W. Bush go out of their way to make themselves look like salt-of-the-earth blue-collar types.
-and-
b.) That our pathetic and stupid “press corps” all too often takes the bait.
Our “press corps” mostly shuns doing stories on policy and issues, preferring to instead pen fluffy “personality” pieces on how much “fun” or “likable” or “genuine” candidates are. Just look at this lovely piece by your pal DoughBob LoadPants, who comes out and says (and I happen to agree with him on in part) that American voters are dumb as rocks:
Interestingly, the GOP has a significant likability advantage (and disadvantages almost everywhere else). John McCain may be unpopular with much of the Republican base, but Americans would love to go to the pub with him. Rudy Giuliani, too, seems like a good guy with whom to watch a baseball game at the bar. The super-polished Mitt Romney’s a tougher call, and Duncan Hunter would be a pain because he’d keep asking the immigration status of the busboys.
But the GOP front-runners (save perhaps Newt Gingrich) all have the advantage over Hillary. She may have star power, but you get the sense that most Americans would like to have their picture taken with her and then drink alone. With the exception of Sen. Christopher Dodd, I’d guess all of the Democratic wannabes are more likable than Clinton, too. Sexism probably is part of the equation, but not as much as Clinton’s defenders will claim. There’s room for perceptions to change as we get to know the candidates (though we already know Hillary pretty well).
Please don’t be scandalized by all of this. It’s just something to think about. For the record, I think everyone should vote based on principle. But principles are for a person; they’re less helpful when it comes to predicting people.
If voters actually choose candidates based on how much they’d like to watch a baseball game with- and from conversations I’ve had with many voters, I have no doubt that this is the case- then they are utter, irredeemable morons.
However, I think much of the problem is the that people simply aren’t given the information they need to make intelligent decisions, which is largely the fault of our celebrity “press corps” who more and more resemble New York Post gossip columnists than smart people who give the public essential information. The embarrassing national dumbness of our celebrity press corps hasn’t gotten any better over the years. And if the early coverage of Fred “I’m-a-genuine-good-ol’-boy” Thompson is any indication, it could get a whole lot worse.