Right Wing Nut House

There were several excellent things about my appearance on C-Span’s Washington Journal this morning that I would like to share with all of you.

First and foremost, we got to see most of downtown Chicago thanks to that marvel of the internet, Mapquest. It appears that the site is run by people who are the absolute worst drivers in Christendom. They are above all speeders in that invariably, any time frame they give you to reach your destination is off by a ratio that involves the inverse square directly being proportionate to how fast you are driving. Hence, if they are off by 15 minutes in their calculations, you should add 30 MPH to your driving speed in order to achieve the miraculous driving time achieved by Mapquest calculations.

Secondly, their drivers are blind. One would ordinarily think this an actual detriment to driving but not our intrepid Mapquest employees. Hence, when they tell you to turn the wrong way down a one way street in order to reach your objective, it is easier to forgive them if you remember they can’t see this kind of insignificant detail due to their minor handicap.

It’s a very good thing that downtown Chicago is a loop because no matter where you drive, you always seem to end up back where you started - especially if you’re lost. We got to within about 4 blocks of the studio where the live feed was going to be broadcast and dang it, we just couldn’t get any closer. Good thing we made it downtown 35 minutes early (no traffic thank goodness) because we spent the next 30 of those minutes driving around looking for a way to get to the one way street that the studio was on. Oh well…we managed to hit all the high spots: We went past the Sears Tower and the Wrigley building. We even got a glimpse of Lake Michigan. All in all, a fascinating tour.

After that, the TV appearance was anticlimactic. Everyone was so nice. The C-Span host Steve Scully was a doll. He picked out this bit I wrote about Helen Thomas:

First of all, referring to Helen Thomas as “indomitable” is like calling a pig in a dress a prom queen. Thomas may be a lot of things – loud, obnoxious, disrespectful, kooky – but “indomitable” as a descriptive should be reserved for battleships, cancer survivors, and some race horses; not doddering old reporters who waddle around the press room talking about the glory days when Jack Kennedy prowled the White House looking for his next sexual conquest in the steno pool.

For a moment, I was worried he was going to pull an Oprah on me and Helen Thomas would magically appear on the C-Span set furrowing her already furrowed brow in my direction and clucking her disapproval. Thankfully, no such “gotchya” moment occurred. But I wonder now what the hell he wanted me to say? It’s a pretty good turn of a phrase if I do say so myself. And since they didn’t do it to my lefty foil, the lovely and talented Taylor Marsh, one must assume that either my snark is so much better than Marsh’s (not so; she can be just as loony as me when the opportunity presents itself) or, someone at C-Span was trying to make a point about conservatives (much more likely).

Good thing they didn’t pull up that old post I did calling John Kerry a traitorous lout. Now that would have been embarrassing (for Kerry).

All in all, a pleasant way to spend a Sunday morning. I got to see the city. I had a good time talking about issues I write about everyday. And I found out that Taylor Marsh was in the Miss America pageant as “Miss Missouri” not too many years ago. (Note to Republicans: Marsh is the kind of voter you are losing. She’s pro-defense, pro-gun, and from what I can gather, a JFK Democrat not a McGovernite. Can’t talk about a “permanent majority” unless voters like her even consider voting Republican once and a while).

I’ll put up a link to the show when C-Span has it.

Jill Carroll released a statement through her employer, the Christian Science Monitor, that proves, as Jim Gerghaty says, the efficacy of editors:

During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me they would let me go if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. I agreed.

Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not. The people who kidnapped me and murdered Alan Enwiya are criminals, at best. They robbed Alan of his life and devastated his family. They put me, my family and my friends–and all those around the world, who have prayed so fervently for my release–through a horrific experience. I was, and remain, deeply angry with the people who did this.

I also gave a TV interview to the Iraqi Islamic Party shortly after my release. The party had promised me the interview would never be aired on television, and broke their word. At any rate, fearing retribution from my captors, I did not speak freely. Out of fear I said I wasn’t threatened. In fact, I was threatened many times.

Also, at least two false statements about me have been widely aired: That I refused to travel and cooperate with the US military and that I refused to discuss my captivity with US officials. Again, neither is true.

(HT: Michelle Malkin)

I will not name names nor link to bloggers who thought the worst of Miss Carroll. They and their readers know who they are and I trust they will be suitably chastised. And if they have an ounce of integrity, they will write a public apology.

But after the sack cloth has been worn and the ashes spread, it might be a good idea to step back and see what the hell is going on here.

The speed and ferocity with which people piled on Miss Carroll for not immediately disavowing her propaganda statement as well as her first statements to the press which seemed to give her brutal captors a pass reminded me of the jaw-dropping way the left pounced on the Administration in the immediate - and by immediate I mean that lefty bloggers were screaming “incompetence” less than 24 hours after hurricane winds had died down in New Orleans - aftermath of Katrina. The point isn’t to bash the left here but to highlight a problem with blogs that seems to be presenting itself with alarming regularity.

In people’s haste to be first, or different, or just plain ornery and contrary (all the better to get links and readers) a culture of “shoot first and ask questions later” has arisen in the blogosphere that quite frankly, is proving every bad thing that the MSM has been saying about blogs from the beginning. Many of us - including myself - have been guilty in the past of hitting that “Publish” button when perhaps it would have been prudent and proper to take a beat or two to think about what we just wrote and the impact it might have beyond the small little world we inhabit in this corner of Blogland.

Scalp hunting has become the national pastime of blogs. Both lefty and righty lodgepoles have some pretty impressive trophies hanging on them; Dan Rather, Mary Mapes (twice), Eason Jordon, Trent Lott, Ben Domenech, to name a few more noteworthy ones.

But is this what we are? Is this what we are becoming? Are we nothing more than a pack of digital yellow journalists writing pixelated scab sheets vying to see who we can lay low next? If this be the way to fame and fortune in the blogosphere, I truly fear that, like television, the last great technological breakthrough that promised to change the world, we will degenerate into a mindless, bottomless pit of muck and mudslinging, dragging down the culture and trivializing even the most important issues.

This is no idle concern that can be dismissed as the nature of the beast or the way of the world. This kind of thing has to be stopped, an admitted impossibility with 29 million blogs out there. Maybe it’s enough that we are aware of it and that people of good faith and good intentions will, in the end, marginalize the muckrakers and come out on top.

Don’t count on it.

Meanwhile, less than 24 hours after being released from a captivity in which she endured unspeakable fear and hardship for 87 long days, Jill Carroll was forced to come out and issue a press release stating the obvious; someone had a gun to her head threatening to kill her if she didn’t say nice things about the brutes who held her captive. The reason she was forced to issue the statement was largely a result of questions raised by the 24 hour news nets about her captivity - questions that originated on blogs. And in the ever more symbiotic relationship between the great, gaping maw that is cable news and the content rich medium of blogs that feeds the beast, questions raised if left unanswered fester like an open wound until an answer is forthcoming.

Jill Carroll was twice a victim - once of jihadist terrorists who kidnapped her and once of a culture that sought to exploit her tragedy to satisfy personal ambition and ego.

Shame on us all for allowing this to happen.

UPDATE

More Geraghty:

Permit me a Derbian moment of gloom. Carroll issues a coerced statement before she’s released, and some corners of the blogosphere erupt with a torrent of scathing hatred, declaring that Carroll “may as well just come right out and say she was a willing participant”, that she’s a “spoiled brat America-hater” and “she was anti-America when she went over there and I say the kidnapping was a put up deal from the get go.”

This is what we’ve got a blogosphere for? For these kind of (pardon my French) pissing contests? The citizenry around the globe has the greatest mass communications tool in the history of the world, and this is what it’s led to?

My question is what will the blogosphere look like 5 years from now? If things continue the way they are, we’ll be just another cog in the great mass communications bordeom killing machine, titillating and entertaining our readers with our own snarky takes on the dirt dished by the MSM while our blogs are festooned with ads for everything from cold cream to the latest super-absorbent manifestation of Depends.

So much for citizen-journalists…

UPDATE II

Ed Morrissey links here and makes a point that everyone - including me - seems to forget:

Finally, for those who blamed her for being in Iraq in the first place, let me remind you that we have continually harped on the media for being balcony reporters — for not getting outside of the Green Zone and trying to get the true stories of Iraq. Well, that’s what Jill Carroll tried to do, and she got unlucky enough to get kidnapped for her efforts. We need reporters to take those kind of chances, and we should have been more supportive of her all along. Now that she’s home, let’s hope we remember that with the next reporter unfortunate enough to find themselves the victim of violence and not victimize them a second time when they cooperate enough to be set free.

If you haven’t read this gut wrenching column by David Ignatius on how hard it is to cover the situation in Iraq, please do so. It reinforces what Ed was saying.

And Don Surber has chastised me in the comments for not linking to the bloggers who jumped on Jill Carroll so soon after her release.

As I explained to Mr. Surber in an email, I did not link because I did not want to start the petty back-and-forth between bloggers who criticize one another known as a “Blog War.” They’re silly. They’re a waste of time. And I had no intention of getting embroiled in one.

Anybody wanna buy a blog? Cheap?

My blog on Blogshares began the day worth a cool $4,568 per share. Someone must have started some kind of rumor because as of this moment, it is worth exactly $302.78 per share.

Jesus, now I know how Kenny Lay feels.

In an effort to buck up the price, I can let it be known that prospects for this site look very promising indeed. I have it on good authority that this blog is, in fact, undervalued considerably and if I were you, I’d head on over to Blogshares and buy, buy, buy!

I promise to donate 1/3 of my profits to the Scooter Libby Revenge Fund and the Vice President Cheney Sharpshooter School. The rest, I will of course plow back into this blog trying to earn your trust which has obviously faltered.

Invest now…or I’ll call my friend Jack Bauer and he will make this the worst day of your life if you don’t.

Due to the onset of information overload along with unhealthy feelings of homicide toward liberals, I am taking today off to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

It didn’t help that I had to wrestle with government forms most of the morning trying to get Sue’s residency situation ironed out. Several times in the last few days, she has informed me that she wished she could go back and live under Communist oppression - at least those guys had a good idea of what bureaucracy really was. Our immigration paper pushers are apparently amateurs compared to what they could accomplish forms-wise in the old Soviet bloc.

At any rate, I will self-identify with Faramir, the misunderstood son, and see the cave trolls as liberals - both seem to share about the same level of intelligence. And I will be back bright and early tomorrow with more scintillating commentary and uproarious dismemberment of the the left.

Ken McCracken at WILLisms hosts a Pundit Roundtable every Sunday where he asks several bloggers to comment on the same question.

I’ve participated a couple of times and found it enjoyable. Ken’s questions are always topical and elicit a variety of responses, all well thought out and interesting.

This week’s question was especially thought provoking:

Now that the Dubai ports deal has fallen through, and with all the rancor these days over pork, immigration, policy failures such as Social Security reform, and a backlash over the Iraq War, is the Republican party cracking up as some have suggested?

What does Karl Rove need to do?

Here’s my response:

The ports deal will be seen in retrospect as an hysterical interlude and not much more. The ineptness demonstrated by the White House in handling first, the vetting of the transaction and then the backlash against it was troubling but hardly a reason to think that it had any broad implications for the Republican party.

As for what Rove can do about it, I daresay the Evil One is less engaged on matters of Republican unity these days except as it relates to legacy building by the President. In that, I fully expect Rove to work dutifully to help get out the vote in ‘06 and perhaps even try and swing the ‘08 Republican nomination to someone who would build upon Bush’s legacy. I have no idea who that would be but I’m pretty sure it won’t be anyone named McCain.

By the way, if you aren’t a daily reader of Willisms, you’re missing out on one of the finest political sites around. Will and Ken blog on some of the real nuts and bolts stuff that makes politics so fascinating. And make sure to check out Ken’s weekly post on Social Security reform every Thursday.

A truly unique and valuable resource. Bookmark it.

One thing I’ve discovered about bloggers is that many if not most of them have a fondness for language. Some of the most inventive invective and ribald retorts can be found on blogs of both sides of the political spectrum. This is why we read them. Blogs are entertainment for the mind as well as nourishment for the soul and to deny that the interesting turn of a phrase or juxtaposition of metaphors doesn’t gladden the heart and cause the spirit to soar is to deny the reason most of us read in the first place.

But that same talent and inspiration can also be used in ways that degrade and debilitate the meaning of words themselves while at the same time, revealing the scribbler to be ignorant of the facility of language and oblivious to specific definitions that have come about as a result of more than 300 years of modern English language usage.

It is said that language can be an inexact medium of communication. This is true insofar as many people misuse words both deliberately and in ignorance. As for the former, there has been a movement afoot for more than 30 years that sees definitional language as a form of tyranny, that words themselves are binders that tie the user to an archaic pre-modern set of concepts wedded to the idea of white, Anglo-Saxon, male dominance. These post-modernists decided to pull the rug out from underneath the New Critics by claiming that instead of concentrating on text (or the language itself) to glean meaning from the written word, one should instead throw context to the four winds and substitute referential formulations that are anti-subjective hence, free of the biases inherent in a language created and maintained by white males.

As for the latter reason - ignorance - I quote that great American philosopher Forrest Gump who wisely said “Stupid is as stupid does.”

This tug of war over language and its meanings is not some exercise in academic obscurantism. It is of vital necessity because those who seek to free language from some imagined tyranny have instead made it infinitely more difficult to communicate. They having succeeded in grafting some of their ideas about meanings onto the tree of general usage. The damage this has done to political discourse in this country has been superficial so far but threatens to make debate on any number of issues impossible because important concepts are being defined in entirely different ways by people of different ideological stripes.

To wit: Recently several writers have accused me of being a “racist.” The context is unimportant except to note that they are accusing me with this nauseating epithet not because of any comments about someone from a different race. Indeed, this is the crux of my argument because I am being accused of being a racist against a group from my own race - the Arabs.

The online American Heritage Dictionary defines “racism” and “racist” thusly:

rac·ism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (rszm)
n.
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.

racist adj. & n.

The races of man are in a constant state of flux but even today, we see three highly delineated groupings of human beings based largely on color but also on other factors. For instance:

Caucasoids. 1,000 million people with variable skin colour; white-dark brown. Hair variable, never woolly, body hair often thick. Lips tend to be thin. Three subdivisions exist, the Nordic, the Mediterranean and the Alpine.

The Nordic group are often tall, blonde and narrow headed - Scandinavia, Baltic, Germany, France, Britain The Mediterranean group (Southern France, Spain, Italy and oddly, Wales Egyptians, Semites, Persians, Afghans and some Indians. Lighter in body build, dark and narrow headed. The Alpine group extends from the Mediterranean to Asia. Broad headed, square jaws, olive skin, brown hair.

In other words, Arabs (belonging mostly to the “Semite” subgroup but also could be “Egyptian” and a small group of Indo-European peoples who reside in areas of Afghanistan) are more closely related to the French than they are any of the Negroid populations further south in Africa or Mongoloids to the east. To say that I am a racist because I hate the Arabs is like saying I’m a racist because I hate Italians.

But don’t try and tell this to the purveyors of political double-talk - not when there are points to be made by using the term “racist” in order to delegitimize your opponent’s arguments. It has now become second nature to the racialists (people who traffic in the use of race and issues of race to illegitimately take a superior moral position in argument) to bandy about the epithet in public discourse doing damage to both discursive conversation and the general sensibilities of the public with regard to the use of language.

This usage does not impress me nor does it faze me - no more than any other imbecilic argument made by people who are generally uninformed about other things. It does however gall me that the English language is being hijacked by a bunch of what R. Emmett Tyrell referred to as “dirty necked galoots.” And that is where my name calling critics have gotten my goat.

So to all who wish to call me a racist, I would consider it a favor if instead you substituted the more accurate pejorative “bigot.”

At least then, I’ll understand what you’re talking about.

UPDATE

Kender has similar thoughts and complaints.

Due to some internet connectivity issues (the fault of Comcast), I am not going to post anything original today.

I would like some comments on whether or not you think we should close the Guantanamo Detention Center in light of both the UN report and the recent National Journal cover story on who is really being held there.

Probably Monday, I’ll let everyone know what I think - if you haven’t guessed already.

Meanwhile, enjoy some oldies but goodies from the archives:

Al Gore in Sweden

Your own Personal Disaster Relief Associate

What does a snowstorm in Chicago have to do with Katrina?

“Race, Class, and Baloney in the Big Easy”

Star Trek’s “Scotty’s” death on the anniversary of the moon landing

I swore I wasn’t going to publish any of the Mohammed cartoons on this website, mostly out of respect for the religion itself but also because I didn’t really see the need.

If one were to examine every word I’ve written about the Cartoon Jihad, they would find an uncompromising support for freedom of speech. I never criticized anyone’s right to publish them. And where I originally believed that as a matter of empathizing with people who experienced pain at the thought of the prophet being mocked, I have since been enlightened as the so-called moderates shamelessly began to use the controversy for their own ends by using publicity surrounding the violence as a way to draw attention to their own concerns.

But I still had no intention of publishing these cartoons. Until today.

There is a group of Muslim hackers who have declared war on websites that have dared show the offending cartoons. They have attacked more than 1800 Danish websites alone, defacing them with their barely literate scrawl.

And now…they’re coming after us.

One of the on-line leaders in the movement to show solidarity with the Danes and other newspapers around the world who have dared to show the cartoons has been Michelle Malkin. Last Tuesday Mrs. Malkin was subjected to a foreign based denial of service attack. And last night, her hosting company passed along some disturbing news:

Last night, my hosting service notified me that it is receiving ongoing threats from individuals vowing to take down this site–and others along with it–which will presumably continue until I take down the cartoons. For now, we are on guard and continuing with business as usual. But you should know there’s something much wider and deeper going on.

Go to Michelle’s site and read up on the effort of these cyber jihadists and ask yourself; Can I afford to sit on the sidelines any longer? There is a time and a place for everything. This is a time for outright defiance. It is a time for solidarity not just with Malkin but with every blogger, right or left, and every website that publishes these cartoons. This has gone way beyond any kind of cultural sensitivity issue or respect for the belief of others. It is now our beliefs that are under attack and we simply must defend them.

So I proudly join those who feature these cartoons on their websites. A little late to the party perhaps. But I promise not to be a wallflower.

I will be upgrading my Wordpress platform this afternoon and the site may experience some downtime.

In addition, I will be completing my indoctrination into the Pajamas Media super secret blog club and will soon have the mind control ads directly on my website. Please make sure you have your tin foil hat securely on your head whenever you visit as I wouldn’t want to see you corrupted like me.

Now, excuse me while I count all that Pajamas Media money…

UPDATE

Almost done. Still waiting on PJ Media to send the ads from hell to place on the sidebars. And we still have to tweak a thing or two in the guts but how do you like it?

The font is a little bigger which is good for us old folks whose eyes are failing them. And, joy of joys, several issues that had been plaguing this site for months have been addressed:

1. Those who use Netscape 7.0 and above should now have no problem seeing the blog.

2. Comments and Trackbacks should now have no problem going through whatsoever. I’d be interested to know if your comment has been denied in the past and now shows up so give it a try and let me know.

3. The archives are still an issue but we’ll be addressing that.

4. Comments on the changes are welcome.

I don’t ordinarily write about criticism leveled at me by another blogger. That way lies madness - not to mention idiotic flame wars that solve nothing and get enormously tiresome after a while. Besides, given the amount of flack thrown my way by liberal bloggers just for the name of this site, I’d be at it until next Christmas. Somehow, they all think they’re being original thinkers when they say something profound like “Duhhhhh Rightwing Nuthouse…How appropriate heheheheh…” Now if they could only learn to close their mouths and breathe through their noses, that would be an intellectual triumph for which they could write home to their mothers about.

I don’t know exactly what it is about this particular moonbat’s criticism that set me off. Maybe it was the sheer idiocy of it. Maybe it was the double blind partisan hackery for which this particular blogger is justly famous. Or maybe that I’m getting a thin skin in my old age and all the criticism I’ve gotten from conservatives lately has led to something building up inside me until I just can’t hold it in any longer and I just have to explode into a righteous rant of unreasoning fury.

Last evening, I wrote a pretty straightforward analysis of the NSA hearings as I saw them. I didn’t indulge myself much in the way of partisanship. In fact, I wrote that most of the Democratic Senators asked some tough questions that Gonzalez had a hard time addressing. I also wrote that Gonzalez gave a good account of himself, especially in his opening statement. In short, aside from some penetrating political analysis about where the Dems scored and the fact that there’s trouble down the road for the White House if the Committee calls some Department of Justice dissenters whose concerns about the program were addressed by former AG Ashcroft when the program was just getting started, my piece probably wasn’t much different than what you’d find on just about any other serious conservative’s website.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that this lickspittle lefty of a blogger took that post and blatantly misrepresented both the tone and thrust of it:

Truly, this controversy is less about security than it is about faith. I offer this example from Right Wing Nut House [emphasis added]:

AG Gonzalez acquitted himself well but was at a huge disadvantage. Because of the secrecy of the program, he was unable to reveal details that could have buttressed his case that the Administration’s warrantless interception of American citizen’s communications was inherently legal based on both exceptions to the FISA statute and the authority granted by the President by Congress when that body authorized the use of military force after 9/11.

Such a beautifully pure faith makes one want to weep. If only it weren’t so misplaced.

First of all, it’s clear Mr. Maha never read the post. Or if he did, he chose to deliberately misrepresent what I wrote. But what is really telling is that he, along with all but a handful of lefty bloggers have decided without knowing more than the surface details of how the NSA intercept program actually works that the President has broken the “law” and should be impeached.

This is, on its face, idiocy. And I would say exactly the same thing of righty bloggers who make the opposite claim - that there’s no doubt that the program was legal and constitutional. To say that the intercept program does or does not violate FISA or that it absolutely falls under or absolutely doesn’t fall under the President’s legitimate exercise of his power under Article II of the Constitution is equally batty. No one knows. And the reason, Mr. Maha, that no one knows is because of its secrecy! To call that self-evident fact “faith” is to reveal not only a towering, deliberate ignorance on your part but a casual kind of stupidity one would expect to see from a 15 year old whose linear thinking is dominated by thoughts of ice cream and sex.

It doesn’t seem to enter into the heads of lefties like Maha that there is even a controversy over whether or not the law has been violated. Instead of a classic argument involving the separation of powers with a concomitant subtle exercise in critical thinking, what we get from blowhards like Maha is “neener neener neener” and other deep thoughts.

I would love to see this controversy treated seriously by both sides. But since the Democrats seem hell bent on trying to make political hay out of it (a losing proposition I might add), it seems pretty clear that nothing will be resolved and no great questions of Presidential vs. Congressional power answered. This is what serious people are talking about Mr. Maha. And as long as anal retentive lefties like you continue to run around with blinders on, no one - certainly not the American people - are going to take you seriously. There’s a reason you lose election, after election, after election. It’s because it’s impossible to give a party power where a sizable portion of it - yourself included - is so hell bent for leather on “getting” the President that you look like escapees from an institution for the criminally insane rather than rational members of the “reality based community” you are always bragging about belonging to.

–end rant–

UPDATE

Just found out that “Mr.” Maha is actually a woman. At least I think it is. Anyway, let this be a lesson to you. To paraphrase Bill Murray when talking to the groundhog while making his getaway in the stolen truck “Don’t write angry…”