Sadly, No!

Poor Mark Steyn is simply shocked and appalled that people would interpret his remarks as pro-genocide:

I see Andrew Sullivan has now elevated me from the pro-torture right to the pro-genocide right. Eat your heart out, Jonah and JPod! He’s based this on a quote from America Alone that a chap in The Calcutta Telegraph interpreted to mean that I supported Milosevic’s strategy of “culling� Muslims in Bosnia, and the usual hysterical lefties at The Huffington Post picked up on.

My book isn’t about what I want to happen but what I think will happen. Given Fascism, Communism and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, it’s not hard to foresee that the neo-nationalist resurgence already under way in parts of Europe will at some point take a violent form. That’s pretty much a given. Indeed, Ralph Peters and I have already argued about this: the difference between us, as I explain here , is that I think any descent into neo-Fascism will be ineffectual and therefore merely a temporary blip in the remorseless transformation of the Continent.

First things first: the thought of Steyn debating Ralph “Blood’n’Guts” Peters is about as funny as watching Dick Dastardly getting into a shouting match with Yosemite Sam. Which is to say, it’s really damn funny.

“Neo-fascism will only be a temporary blip, you miserable mut! Drat! And double drat!”

“Genocide?!! OOOOOOOOOO, I gotcher genocide right here, ya long-eared galoot!”

Second: Steyn really believes that the only two options facing Europe are a neo-Fascist takeover or an Islamic jihadi state. Wowsers. As Mark Kleiman writes:

Daniel Pipes (who ought to be Islamophobic enough to satisfy almost any taste) estimates the current Muslim population share in Europe at 5%; he says it might rise to 10% by 2020. Sound like a crisis to you?

Maybe Steyn, Lou Dobbs, and Mickey Kaus can work out a deal to send a few million undocumented Mexican immigrants to Europe. They speak a European language, and I’m sure they’d be happy to get EU passports instead of hiding from La Migra. A little easier than genocide, don’t you think?

Personally, I think it’s time for all Europe’s effete interleckshal-types to become militarized and start their own separtist nation of West Homostan. They’d roll over their Islamofascist and fasco-fascist oppressors with their armored Saabs and Volvos, while the grand Generalissimos Right Said Fred would restore order and rule over the continent with a leather fist.

Above: Meet the New Order.

But alas, because the Left is inherently weak, this brief period of homofascism would only be a temporary blip in the remorseless transformation of the continent into a crazy-white-guys-versus-crazy-Islamists warhole. Drat. And double drat.

P.S.- As Atrios notes, I’ve now made it two whole posts without dropping one F-bomb. Can I be invited to the Civlized Peoples’ Club now? Can I, can I?

Mark Kleiman notes the following quote by Sadly, No! favorite Mark Steyn:

Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can’t buck demography—except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out—as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ’em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia’s demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.

Kleiman then comments:

[L]et’s call it by its real name: Steyn is justifying genocide, both retrospectively in Bosnia and prospectively in the rest of Europe. […]

Is there any reason Mark Steyn should not now be treated as a pariah, and confer pariah status on whoever deals with him? Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. Or have we fallen so far that a call for genocide is all in a day’s work?

Basically, yes. There is a significant, but vocal, minority of people in this country who think any and all measures should be considered when fighting terrorists, no matter how destructive or evil.

Read the rest of this entry »

Check this out:

My peoples is oppressed! We’re officially less liked than gays, adulterers* and old people!

I had imagined that a lot of people might not be comfortable having an atheist in office, but I had no idea that it was a clear majority of American citizens. What gives? Why are we non-believers distrusted and disliked to such a large extent?

*Yeah, I know “married three times” doesn’t mean adultery per se. But I’m pretty daggone sure that the “married three times” question was aimed at gauging the public’s attitude toward one Rudy Giuliani.

Teh awesome:

Thanks to TBogg for the tip.

UPDATE: Some of the songs already aren’t working. Oh well. I’ll have to work on this later.

Shorter Janet M. LaRue:

The greatest threat faced by our troops in Iraq is pornography.

Bonus points: someone* posted the following to youtube:

It’s a different kind of look alright. Now, maybe we’re just a bit slow but if being away from one’s spouse for months or years at a time is a problem, there is an obvious solution. If coming home isn’t possible, our list of weapons would not include items such as “no masturbation.”

Kevin Drum writes the following:

Atrios asks:

One does wonder why the 101st Fighting Keyboarders aren’t more upset by the fact that George Bush has fucked up their pet war.

OK, I know this is partly tongue in cheek. But as near as I can tell there are real answers:

1.) They don’t believe Bush has fucked up the war. They think that most of the bad news from Iraq is just an invention of the anti-military liberal media.

2.) To the extent that we are doing badly, they think it’s the fault of liberals who are undermining morale by criticizing the war.

3.) Following up on #2, their biggest complaint with Bush isn’t that the war is going badly, but that it isn’t broad enough and brutal enough. If only we’d take the gloves off and stop fighting like liberal pussies, we’d be doing OK.

Yes, this is delusional. But they don’t think it’s Bush who has screwed up their war, it’s liberals. There is nothing that will ever change their minds about this.

Uh-yawp.

The warbloggers have completely internalized their support for this war to the point where their very identities as human beings hinge on its success. They see the war as a symbol of what makes America, and by extension themselves, strong, noble and good. And since America can never be anything but strong, noble and good, any negative news about the war must by necesity come from an Internal Enemy Within that is jealous of America’s strength.

Arguing with these guys becomes extremely depressing after a while. It’s like trying to convince the average LaRouchie that the Queen of England does not, in fact, run the world crack trade. Sure, you occasionally get guys like John Cole who get deprogrammed, but most will be stuck this way for the rest of their lives. 9/11 permanently traumatized an entire generation of right-wing nerds, and nothing we say can change that.

Once again, Jon Swift shows why he’s my favorite conservative blogger:

Like O’Reilly and Beck, I live in constant fear that black people will want to be my friends. Just the other day, for example, I was walking down a desolate street late at night and noticed a group of young black men hanging out at the end of the street. I began to tremble. What if these young men try to befriend me? I thought. What if they ask me to go out with them and drink malt liquor, smoke Kool cigarettes and ride around in their pimp-mobile listening to rap music and picking up hos? No doubt the evening would end badly, with me complimenting them and causing offense. […]

But it’s not only black people you can’t compliment anymore. Women have also gotten very touchy lately, and not just about being touched. You can’t even say that women have nice legs or nice breasts anymore, even if it’s true. O’Reilly got sued just for telling one of his staff members she had “spectacular boobs.” Frankly, I don’t know what else to say to a woman so I usually don’t say anything at all.

Read the whole thing, peeps.

Victor Davis Hanson, everybody’s favorite William Tecumseh Sherman fetishist, gets all Iron Chef on Ahmadinejad’s ass:

Imagine that Iran is a hardboiled egg with a thin shell. We should tap it lightly wherever we can – until tiny fissures join and shatter the shell.

Tap it with the spoon of diplomacy or the butter knife of sanctions? Or perhaps the fork of Michael Ledeen’s tongue? We eagerly await your belaboring of the hardboiled egg metaphor. And your reconciling its use with the well-known fact that Leonidas was an over-easy man.

We can begin to do this by pushing international accords and doggedly ratcheting up the weak United Nations sanctions.

Sanctions? Shocking, sir. We have come to expect far more naked bloodlust from your wistful, syndicated remembrances of ruthlessness past.

We should start another fissure by prodding the European Union, presently Iran’s chief trading partner, to be more vocal and resolute in pressuring Iran. … Americans should continue to support Iranian dissidents. We need not encourage dissidents to go into the street, where they could be shot. Instead we can offer them media help and access to the West. Americans can highlight the plight of women, minorities and liberals in Iran – just the groups that so appeal to the elite Western left.

Your lucidity and restraint on this subject is becoming quite distressing, Mr. Hanson. We fear that Adam Yoshida has already added you to his list of people whose televised heads he pretends to crush between his thumb and forefinger.

And we should announce in advance that we don’t want any bases in Iran, that we don’t want its oil, and that we won’t send American infantry there. That would preempt the tired charges of imperialism and colonialism.

Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere! Classic, headspinningly passive-aggressive VDH. First, deny reality (in this case, positing that seven years into the Bush administration, anybody has any reason to trust what we say we’ll do), then finish up with some retroactive righteous indignation against that reality.

If you’ve followed his career, you’ll recognize that he’s quite brilliant at this sort of fudging of the is/ought dichotomy. Cutting through the crap, here’s what he says in the above graf:

– People think we’re assholes.
– We should say we’re not assholes.
– Then people won’t think we’re assholes anymore.

Oh, if only it were so easy. Moving on:

The United States also must stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan. The last thing Iran wants is a democratic and prosperous Middle East surrounding its borders.

Or, you know, maybe the last thing Iran wants is a pair of violent, chaotic hellholes surrounding its borders. Jesus H. Christ, man. Can we at least get Iraq’s suicide bombings and Afghanistan’s warlord raids down to a dull roar before we start smarming on about how much Evil!Iran fears those countries’ prosperity?

We should say nothing much about the presence of two or three U.S. carrier groups in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean. Iran will soon grasp on its own that the build-up of such forces might presage air strikes that the United States excels in – and not more ground fighting that the American public apparently won’t any longer stomach.

Way to go, VDH. Iran was completely in the dark about the fact that we have a navy until you opened your big, fat mouth. Now they’re fucking on to us. Ixnay on iego-Day arcia-Gay, capiche?

Oh, and love the little shout-out to Cheney at the end of that graf.

Let’s also keep our distance and moderate our rhetoric. There’s no reason to frighten average Iranians – who may share our antipathy to their country’s regime – or to make therapeutic pleas to talk with those leaders in bunkers whom we know are our enemies.

Ah, screw it. You’re going all reasonable on us again. We suggest you go over to Glenn Reynolds’ house and play ninjas with him before you write your next column.

A memo distributed to the Texas House of Representatives by Rep. Warren Chisum (R), on behalf of Ben Bridges (R) of the Georgia House of Representatives:

Actually, some comment is necessary. The links go to a site that decries the Jewish conspiracy to falsely claim that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Among other such things.

[Hanx! Burnt Orange Report]

Is there any dunce-level media analysis today from Stephen “Kid Dolomite” Spruiell, of the National Review’s Media Blog?

Oh. Hey, what’s this?

WaPo’s Priest on the Press and Military Secrecy

During a livechat today, the Washington Post’s Dana Priest took a question about whether the media would alert us to impending hostilities against Iran:

Portland, Ore.: In the runup to the Iraq war, the media was pretty good at telling us that the military was preparing for war. The administration said this was to face down Saddam Hussein and scare him into complying with U.N. inspections, but of course it was just to actually do the war. If the administration wants to go to war against Iran, will the press be able to judge the military “posture,” deployments, etc. and inform us again that we are preparing for another war? Or can the administration keep it more secret?

Dana Priest: They only thing they have a chance at keeping secret is some kind of air-only or small unit surgical strike. If involves many ground units, then that becomes much more problematic.

And indeed that’s true about judging posture and deployments, as we know from following the continuing US military buildup around Iran through sources such as this.

But apparently they aren’t covering this story at GameSpy, because Spruiell is all like, LOL u msm suxxors r stupid ;p

If the president launched a full-scale invasion of Iran, then yeah, I suppose it would be pretty hard to keep that out of the papers.

No, really: That’s the entire post. I swear I’m not leaving anything out. That’s his devastating rejoinder. He thinks he just got one up on Dana Priest. Really, you can go look.

Above: “Hi, I cover the media for a major conservative magazine.”

Honestly, it’s hard to make fun of Spruiell sometimes. It’s like you were just outside and saw a flying saucer go whistling overhead with “UFO” painted on it in big letters, and you whipped out your camera and took a picture of it.

And it’s like, okay, woohoo! I got a picture. But then it sinks in: An ordinary flying saucer, maybe someone will believe you. But who’d ever believe a photo of a flying saucer with “UFO” painted on it?

A LiveJournal-grade wingnut with a big “NRO” painted on him: It’s almost fiendishly clever.