Holy Mother! The aforementioned Mr. Russell Shaw is either a publicity glutton or a total nutcase.

Doesn’t this guy know when to shut up?

Not content with making a fool of himself on Friday with a post where he idly wonders if a terrorist attack in October wouldn’t unseat the Republicans and lead to “regime change” in 2008 for the Democrats, Shaw proves today that it wasn’t a fluke, that he is indeed a certifiable loon:

It strikes me as more than a little ironic that some self-regarded patriotic conservatives would somehow interpret my analytical, “what would happen if” I Hope And Pray We Don’t Get Hit Again BUT…post as a call for the enemies of America who hit us on 9/11/01 and cost the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent people to hit us again.

Not only because I wish for the death of no one, but because many of these same people are among the first to agree with Ann Coulter that for speaking out against the way the war on terror has been conducted since they lost their husbands, some of the 9/11 widows are “harpies.”

First of all, the only place on earth that Shaw’s article from yesterday would be considered “analytical” is in perhaps the third grade where the 10 year olds would have very little trouble picking it apart.

But Ann Coulter? Where in the wide, wide, world of sports did THAT come from. Not only is the Coulter thought left dangling like a lone strand of spaghetti at the end of a fork, but the fact is there was a massive backlash against Coulter in the conservative blogosphere for her tirade against the 9/11 widows. This is worse than “analytical.” This is incoherent.

To compare the way that some conservatives cheered Coulter on in her blaspheming the widows with the way they piled on Shaw is, well, nuts. If one were to give me a thousand choices for comparing the way conservatives have come down on Shaw for his idiocy yesterday, Coulter wouldn’t even be on the radar.

Besides, most conservatives pretty much ignored the premise of his article about his “almost wishing” for another massive terrorist strike in favor of tearing into his vision of a liberal Utopia if the Democrats are handed the reins of government by the voters. That and his notion that conservative policies are killing people deliberately. These go unmentioned in today’s installment of the Shaw Chronicles.

Unbelievably strange.

After pouting that he has been misunderstood, Shaw then compares the morality of a terrorist attack against civilians with losses in the Iraq War as evidence of conservative’s moral relavency.

Okay…do your own fisking of that. I think the premise fisks itself quite nicely.

This kind of hopeless stupidity (where sane people just kind of laugh and throw up their hands in resignation that nothing will ever get through to this guy) could simply be chalked up to someone who may have been dropped on his head as a child or the product of some horrible scientific experiment that went wrong. Except Shaw then proceeds to inform us that there are many forms of terrorism – and most of them are carried out by Republicans and conservatives against the American people:

But on the broader scale, some critics may fail to realize that for millions of Americans, terrorism is a frequent presence. Not the terrorism of a shoe-bomber, or of trumped up orange alerts based on intercepts of guys shouting “Jihad” in an Internet chat room, but the real psychological and economic terrorism often visited on Americans in the guise of:

The sight of two uniformed service members approaching your home, and the knowledge that your worst fears after not hearing from your son for two weeks are about to come horribly true;

The “please help us” screams from the victims of Hurricane Katrina- their plight unaddressed by an incompetent FEMA headed by an appointee of the same administration that is keeping us safe from terrorism;

The fourth call you have received this morning from the bill collector, who cares not that you have been put out of work by the greed of a multinational corporation who shipped your job overseas last year (and thanks in most part to the GOP, no longer have bankruptcy as an easily available option).

It’s all there, isn’t it? State sponsored terrorism courtesy of the Republicans.

I have dealt many times with this liberal compulsion to take the English language and bend it to their will by using or inventing words and then defining them not according to general usage or out of any desire to improve clarity but rather in order to appropriate their secondary value as emotional talismans to be stroked and fondled in order to elicit the appropriate response.

Using the word “terrorism” to describe government incompetence or the results of government policies is one such example. Equating what terrorists did on 9/11 with what Shaw considers FEMA incompetence is so far beyond the pale of rational discourse that it beggars belief. It would do no good to point out that you don’t rebuild a major American city that was 80% destroyed in one year even with a Bill Clinton led FEMA. Facts are irrelevant and indeed impediments in Shaw’s construct. What matters is using the word “terrorist” to elicit an emotional response regarding a host of government actions or inactions.

And the left accuses conservatives of fear mongering?

The litany of terrorist acts by the government and conservatives continues:

The need to wait two hours for three buses to take you to work because the price-gougers in the oil markets have made it too expensive to put gas in your car until you get paid again in two weeks;

The baby your niece will be forced to have after being impregnated by her no-good, meth-addled ex boyfriend because the only doctor who performed abortions within 200 miles has decided he doesn’t want to be terrorized by the “pro-lifers” anymore;

The moans from your cancer-ridden aunt in your upstairs guest bedroom- moans that the government won’t let you palliate with medical marijuana or even mercifully cease should she be at peace with her God about that option;

How can you respond rationally to irrationality? How can you debunk someone who thinks that marijuana is a pain killer? How can you explain to someone that anti-abortion protests are legal in the United States and that 76% of women need to travel less than 50 miles for an abortion (slightly farther than the average cancer patient needs to travel for treatment with rural areas skewing both numbers).

As for the vagaries of the oil markets or eeeeevil corporations sending jobs overseas (while 11 million have been created here at home), how can you explain capitalism to a nincompoop? Or explain that if you are getting calls from bill collectors because you have lost your job, you can still file for bankruptcy, that Shaw doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Shaw is an ignoramus. Any doubt erased here:

All of these events happen every day- as the consequence of policies promoted or sanctioned by the same government who is “keeping us safe against terrorism.” And while these events of our daily lives most often do not lead to sudden deaths as with terrorism, they can promote stress and slow death by 1,001 cuts. Cuts as a consequence of what it means to be poor and vulnerable in a nation ruled by the rich and powerful.

And sometimes, it is not only we humans who are victims of terrorism. The polar bear marooned on the ice floe due to global warming, the tiger who futilely scampers away from high-powered rifle fire at the game ranch owned by rich Republican contributors- well, they are victims of terrorism too.

I wish for a nation free of the fear of terrorism- not only the kind that visited our shores nearly five years ago to this day, but for a nation where the indignities of social, economic and environmental injustice strike terror in so many hearts and minds.

Stress = terrorism? Polar bears? Game ranches “owned by rich Republican contributors” victims of terrorism too?

Shaw forgot blades of grass on Republican controlled golf courses that take a beating because conservatives tend to wear spikes while liberals don’t.

Let me tell Mr. Shaw what I wish for: A nation free from myopic idiots like him who give rational thought a bad name. Any more “analytical” pieces like this one and his Friday post and Shaw just might achieve the coveted position of having his name turned into an internet verb.