Hullabaloo’s Tristero is a a truly deep thinker. He thinks such deep thoughts that if he thought any deeper, his mind would disappear down a black hole. This would be improvement in the quality of his cognitive output in that at least it’s a given that not even light can escape the gravity well of a singularity – a boon for supporters of rational thought everywhere.

Despite this, Mr.Tristero has, in fact, hit the nail on the head with this post where he idly wonders about those conservative lawmakers who are abortion foes and anti-gay marriage advocates by day but by night, are sex perverts. Or maybe he hit his noggin on a nail thus causing his head to explode, popped like a helium filled balloon. The only problem is, such a happenstance presupposes that there is anything at all in his head in the first place. And I am loathe to draw conclusions from facts not in evidence.

To prove his case, he uses as an example a human turd out of South Dakota, a legislator caught abusing children in a particularly vile manner. His conclusion?

But this scandal brings up loads of questions, (like how he could live with himself as probably the most obvious). But the most puzzling of all is how he could persistently seek legislative office (and he tried for the Senate but failed) and not only that but go out of his way to sponsor this legislation, given his propensities.

And I think it may be fair to raise a more general question, whether an obsessive concern with regulating abortion and defining marriage has more than just a casual association with sexual perversion. By “obsessive concern,” I’m not talking about some decent schnook who’s been fed christianist propaganda,. I’m talking about someone who, like Klaudt, gets all proactive about it, deliberately trying to legislate morality, trying to build a career on it.

Let’s try and stretch that “casual association” with sexual perversion, shall we? First of all, we have this clod from South Dakota. Then there’s Foley. And, um…oh yeah. That mayor out in Washington state, the internet stalker. And then there’s…uh…well, I’m sure that Tristero could think of hundreds and hundreds of other conservative lawmakers to make his case, that there is “more than a casual association” between social conservative lawmakers and sexual perversion, can’t he. Can he?

The idiot is talking through a bodily orifice not generally used for conversing. What an absolutely riotously stupid notion. The idiocy of even broaching such a connection leaves one gasping for air. How many lawmakers, (and just to give his case a boost, let’s include preachers and others who are just advocates for those positions), have been arrested on charges of sexual perversion? Maybe we should ask John Aravosis. I’m sure he has those figures at his slimy fingertips.

Take that number – and once again, let’s be generous and say 20 – and divide it by the thousands of lawmakers who similarly use the social issues for electoral advancement but don’t go around fondling little boys or playing doctor with children. The fact that it is an infinitesimal percentage of the whole tells you all you need to know about Mr. Tristero’s mind numbingly stupid postulate.

No, my brainless friend, it is definitely not fair to raise the more general question about “obsessive concern” for the issues of abortion and gay marriage and any connection with sexual perversion. Only in a warped, dysfunctional, hyper-partisan mind would such a stew of witlessness make its way from some deep, unknowable part of the subconscious and see the light of day.

And Tristero’s got company. The list of blogs and bloggers on the left who have jumped on Tristero’s mindless meanderings is staggering. Would someone please tell me what possible connection there could be in any clinical, scientific, statistical, or even coincidental way between perverse sexual proclivities and those who advocate against abortion and gay marriage? You can’t because there is none to be found – except in the feverish blatherings of left wing bloggers who insist on wildly extrapolating conclusions not based on any rational suppositions and from virtually non-existent evidence.

It is the purest of smears – par for the course from those in the “reality based community” who regularly take leave of their senses to revel in illogic and bathe in the bile generated by their hate and loathing for their political opponents.

Hypocrisy and politics are joined at the hip. Al Gore (who arguably wants to control my life as much if not more than any social conservative through his draconian “solutions” to global warming ) weeps for the planet while living in a house that generates more carbon emissions in one night than my little abode does in two weeks. Ditto the celebrities who are on the global warming finger wagging tour who fly around the world in private carbon spewing jets.

Egregious examples of hypocrisy abound on both sides of the aisle. Why then this obsession with conservative hypocrisy regarding sex? In the finest intellectual traditions of Hullabalo and Tristero, let me speculate that by railing against this kind of hypocrisy, lefties are covering up their own sexual inadequacies. Perhaps they can’t get it up unless watching re runs of Pee Wee’s Playhouse? Or maybe it’s something more sinister. It could be that they are secretly sexually envious of Republicans because everyone knows that conservative women are drop dead gorgeous compared to liberal females. Their secret fantasies about conservative babes drives them insane, thus these irrational attacks.

Of course, that last was a baseless, scurrilous, and unfounded attack with no evidence to speak of and counterintuitive to boot.

Welcome to Tristero’s world…

Were you really surprised that fully 35% of Democrats believe that George Bush had foreknowledge of 9/11? Couple that with the number who “aren’t sure” (waiting for an appointment with their Tarot card reader) and you have 61% of the “Reality Based Community” who have lost touch with reality and should be declared certifiably insane.

While the 9/11 Truthers go on their merry way, ignoring the fact that their “theories” have been totally debunked by the real members of the reality based community -scientists – Democrats continue to find it useful to intimate, to hint, to give credence to, and even to come right out and say that George Bush knew about 9/11 in advance and, by inference, planned and executed the operation.

It was the hard left that first raised questions about the Kennedy Assassination and largely for the same purpose; to undermine confidence in the government. While the Warren Commission has been bruised and battered over the years, it has held up as a narrative of the assassination surprisingly well. Three separate scientific inquiries have shown that the so-called “magic bullet” could easily have made the wounds on both Kennedy and Connally, the most controversial of the Commission’s conclusions.

Other aspects of the Commission’s report have never been seriously challenged while much of the “evidence” that Oswald was involved with the FBI or CIA or the Mafia has been largely debunked. And the “hero” in Oliver Stone’s 3 hour lie of a movie JFK Jim Garrison – the rabidly ambitious, homophobic, out of control District Attorney who ruined the life of an innocent man (Clay Shaw) was exposed for the rogue prosecutor he truly was by both CBS and NBC as well as several authors, most notably Gerald Posner.

It does no good, of course, to point this out. Most young people believe Oswald was working for the American government and was either a patsy in the plot to kill Kennedy or murdered the President at the behest of the CIA or the “military industrial complex.” The damage done by this fantasizing to faith in the government (not, I hasten to add, politicians) has been irreparable. And since some of those early Kennedy truthers were actually being paid by the KGB or writing in magazines that were funded by Soviet intelligence, the disinformation campaign (which began in France with the publication in the French Communist Party newspaper L’Humanite just days after Kennedy’s funeral that Oswald was a CIA agent) succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its perpetrators.

But this meme is different because apparently, only Democrats are stupid enough to think George Bush had anything to do with 9/11. Republicans, as to be expected, reject the idea of Bush involvement by 7-1. But it is independents who close the case for Democratic Party idiocy. Only 18% believe the fantasy.

Call it BDS. Call it laughable stupidity. But every time I read one of these mountebanks bragging about being a member of the “Reality Based Community,” I’m just going to leave a link to this Rassmussen survey as proof that most of those sites should carry the disclaimer “Caveat Emptor.”

NOTE: The original headline of this post referred to Sullivan working for Time Magazine. Of course, he now works for The Atlantic – something I was aware of but totally forgot when I wrote the post at 3:30 AM this morning.

Gosh. Where are those legions of editors and fact checkers when you need them? (I could have used a few myself judging by the note above, eh? Ed.)

Our own crazy conservative uncle Andrew Sullivan got snookered by a fake web site that reported the “news” that Fox was spinning off their hit TV series 24 into a Saturday morning children’s cartoon that featured Jack Bauer as a young cub scout torturing other kids and “kicking Arab ass.”

Here’s Andrew’s post:

Ann Coulter: set your Tivo. Money quote:

“We spent a lot time doing research on this game,” says Surnow. “Using a sponge, team members must take the water from a filled bucket and squeeze the water from the soaked sponge into an empty bucket. First team to fill the empty bucket wins.” Surnow said he chose the Sponge Bucket Game because it provides opportunities for little Jack to interrogate the little Arabs.

“There’s a great scene before the game starts where little Jack takes an Arab kid named Abdul and sticks his head in the water-filled bucket,” says Surnow. “Jack keeps his head under the water until he drowns. The kid did not give Jack the answers he needed, and for the greater good of the Cub Scouts of America, Jack had to send a strong and clear message.”

That’s a strong “enhanced” message. Just like Mr Tenet says.

The irony in this piece regarding Tenet’s “enhanced message” will probably save Mr. Sullivan total embarrassment as he will more than likely claim he knew it was a joke all along, that you can’t fool him, he’s Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic!

But my friend Taylor Marsh has no such excuse:

But one thing the show never tried to do is appeal to kids, children that is. However, considering Surnow also tried to wingnut the “Daily Show” by offering some lame spin off complete with Rush and Coulter as president and veep, I can’t say I’m shocked that he’d also try to morph “24” for kids. But the idea is creepy. One can only wonder what torture will look like in the new kids version. Abducting their dogs and holding them for ransom or maybe something worse? Mr. Surnow needs a long vacation.

I would think that Mr. Sullivan owes the lovely Ms. Marsh an apology. After all, if The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan puts it on his blog, it must be true, no?

Except Dean Barnett saw through the gag immediately and also offers some thoughts on why Andrew can hardly claim that he knew he was having his leg pulled all along:

[I]n the sidebar of the piece Andrew links to are stories titled, “BASINGER RELEASES OWN LINE OF ANSWERING MACHINES,” “BEAN FARMERS BURNING HUGH GRANT IN EFFIGY,” and “CARSON DALY’S PAID AUDIENCE DEMANDS WAGE INCREASE.”

Did Andrew really not know this was a joke? Is it possible his intellect and sense of humor have been so thoroughly strangled by his oh-so righteous anger? Judging by his post which is completely irony and humor free, the only possible answer is yes. The alternative is that Andrew Sullivan is suddenly joking about torture. For some reason, that strikes me as unlikely.

I knew it was a gag reading “quotes” from series creator Joel Surnow in the story:

“Just because we’ll show Jack as a little kid, doesn’t mean he’s going to stop kicking the ass of all those Arabs he runs into,” says Surnow. “We’re getting our message across to adults that it takes a lot of torture to get the truth from these terrorists, and we believe that children need to see that as well because they’re growing up in an extremely dangerous world.”

I’ve read many articles quoting Surnow and seen him interviewed a dozen times and never, ever heard him talk like that. In fact, I would say that only someone already disposed to believe responsible conservatives like Surnow are perfectly capable of such obscene bigotry could possibly take something like that seriously.

For those who are already down on the right (Marsh is center left. Andrew is…well, Andrew) perhaps this kind of idiocy rings true because they are eager to suspend belief and think the worst of conservatives. This is a mindset that is able to color and spin what conservatives say and twist context and meaning until what emerges as “analysis” bears little resemblance to the original intent of the speaker. Lambchop is an expert at this kind of context assassination. Using a combination of laughably amateurish armchair psychology and a dead serious manipulation of the English language, commentators on the left routinely attack the right in this dishonest manner.

For Mr. Sullivan and his army of fact checkers and editors, however, another explanation might be in order.

Is Andrew really that stupid?

UPDATE

In all fairness, Sully isn’t the only prominent mainstream media organ to have been fooled by this website. A Baltimore TV station breathlessly reported on the Michael Richards story using info from “Dateline: Hollywood” (second item):

A WJZ staffer ripped the story off the Web—without realizing that the source, DatelineHollywood.com, is a purely satirical site, which invented the completely bogus item as a riff on Richards’s real-life racist outburst at an L.A. comedy club last month.

The producer missed some pretty obvious tipoffs—like the line about Richards pouring Aunt Jemima pancake syrup over Goldberg’s head. Also: The links to other “articles,” including “Britney Spears’ Vagina Asks Press for Privacy” and “Rupert Murdoch Found Dead Next to Bloody Glove.”

Yeah…I’d say that link to Spears should have been a dead giveaway. Everyone knows that Britt’s private parts seek out all the publicity that the MSM will grant.

A wonder of western inventiveness and technology; the Bidet

The first time I ever saw one, I fell in love.

I was staying at a very expensive hotel in downtown Washington, D.C. – one of my more radical efforts at persuading some comely lass that she could do worse than bedding down with me for the night despite my less than impressive bank book. The fact that I lost the girl, ended up spending the night alone, and got charged $75 bucks for a bottle of flat champagne is one more reason I should write some kind of history detailing my many outrageously failed and sadly ironic amours. I can’t promise too many racy anecdotes but as a cautionary tale/tragedy, it could end up being a bestseller.

But back to the matter at, er…hand. I noticed when getting ready for my doomed from the start date that the bathroom seemed particularly well equipped. In fact, there appeared to be two toilets. “So this is how the rich live,” I thought. “Must be nice. One toilet to sit down on and another to piss standing up.”

But this second toilet appeared to contain enough differences that I felt a thorough investigation was called for. There appeared to be some kind of bizarre structure to the metal assembly at the bottom of the bowl. I didn’t think it was some kind of fancy drain but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out just what function the strange grouping of what appeared to be towers and bars might be for. It looked like a miniature from the set of Metropolis.

Kneeling in front of the contraption, I noticed a knob on the side. Recognizing that when twisted it would turn water on somewhere, I was thinking to myself “Jesus! Are the wealthy really able to control the flush of their own toilets? Now that’s what I call power.”

Not hardly. A face full of water disabused me of that notion right pronto. The metal assembly was a complex, elegant water disbursal system and the knob controlled the force of the water that shot from the metal assembly at the bottom of the bowl.

Now I will admit to being something of a rube about many things in life. I am a simple, dumb American when it comes to food, clothing, alcoholic beverages, and art. I like my sports violent and my sex hot, sweaty, and loud. And if someone disses my country or the flag I take it very personally.

Having said that, I confess that I pondered the utility of this nameless bathroom contraption for about 10 minutes before the light bulb went off. “Aha! What will those Europeans think of next.”

Notice that I automatically assumed a European ancestry for the beast. No self respecting American would squat like a Sumo wrestler over an open cave of porcelain even if the end result would be fewer pairs of undies needing an extra dab of Spray and Wash to get out those “stubborn stains.” But at the same time, a wave of jealousy washed over me and I envied our cousins across the sea. It means that European bathrooms are probably bigger than my kitchen. And any married couple in a hurry to get out the door in the morning can attest to the dire straits of American home design where closet sized bathrooms seem to be the norm and the fights that break out over premium space in front of the sink (and hence, the mirror) have been the cause of upping our country’s already astronomical divorce rate.

It was only later on that I connected the word “bidet” (pronounced “B-day”) with the gizmo I’d seen at the hotel. And proving once and for all that you can find anything on the internet, I dug up this little history of the contraption along with some surprising uses those marvelously clever Europeans put it to:

The bidet is certainly an invaluable aid to hygiene, and can be especially helpful among the elderly and those with handicaps. Another valuable feature of the dear bidet is its use as a “sitz bath” or “hip bath.” This is a type of bath in which only the hips and buttocks are soaked in a saline or salty water. “Sitzen” in German means “to sit”. Many diseases and discomforts are remedied in a sitz bath; patients of surgery, infections of the bladder or vagina, even to ease the pain of hemorrhoids. In the United States, the bidet has developed an aura of indelicacy, mostly for its principle use; to wash the private parts, but its funny, because its purpose can be extended – used even to wash lingerie and soak feet!

All of this becomes relevant when discussing Sheryl Crow’s idea that the government should build toilet paper dispensing machines that hand out one square of paper per customer. No more, no less. One square of toilet paper or you are branded “not very green at all” and are shunned by your neighbors, your brainwashed children, dogs, cats, and the rest of civilized society.

Of course, there are other things you can do to be green. Like giving up your private jets. Or even foreswearing electric guitars, amplifiers, microphones, synthesizers, and all other electronic means of making music which use carbon polluting electricity generated by dirty power plants. Also, the production of CD’s is among the most polluting activities known to man. (Ever see the leftover sludge from the metals contained in a CD?) And giving up concerts where tens of thousands of people make the pilgrimage to your appearance in not very eco-friendly automobiles would probably do more to stop global warming than 300 million people walking around smelling like a sewer because they were unable to properly attend to the hygienic necessities as a result of eating solid food.

Perhaps Ms. Crow doesn’t realize that her suggestion is a washout because when she takes a crap, something much different emerges to plop into the toilet than what normal humans may be used to seeing. Perhaps she is special in this regard and only the very best of stools – well formed, neat, symmetric, and smelling like a Texas yellow rose – are gifted to the world.

Maybe someone will slip Ms. Crow a little Ex Lax. Serve her right for meddling with the primal forces of nature, trying to come between an American citizen and his Charmin. And I’d love to be there when she’s forced to use that one square of TP after the explosion of “reality” that the Ex Lax supplies.

Of course, there’s always the B-Day.

UPDATE

This BBC story is self explanatory. And unintentionally funny.

Holy Christ! It’s a good thing that conservative bloggers have another target this weekend. Otherwise, Bill Maher would probably be given whatever the blog equivalent would be of a bath in boiling oil followed by a good, solid racking:

As the discussion moved to the attempted assassination of Vice President Cheney last week, Maher asked his panel why it was necessary for the Huffington Post to remove comments by readers concerning their disappointment that the attempt failed. As the conversation ensued, Maher said one of the most disgraceful and irresponsible things uttered on a major television program since Bush was elected.

In a nutshell, the host said the world would be a safer place if the assassination attempt succeeded. And, he even had the nerve to reiterate it. Here’s the deplorable sequence of events for those that have the stomach for it.

What follows is a verbatim transcript of Maher, Barney Frank, Joe Scarborough, and John Ridley discussing the issue. Please note the reaction of the audience:

Maher: What about the people who got onto the Huffington Post – and these weren’t even the bloggers, these were just the comments section – who said they, they expressed regret that the attack on Dick Cheney failed.

Maher: That’s a funny joke. But, seriously, if this isn’t China, shouldn’t you be able to say that? Why did Arianna Huffington, my girlfriend, I love her, but why did she take that off right away?

A “FUNNY JOKE” THAT THE BOMB WAS WASTED?

Maher’s “sense of humor” leaves much to be desired. Perhaps Bill could come up with a couple of other knee slappers about assassination. How funny would it be if a stage light dropped right on his head in the middle of one of his shows? That would be hysterical. Think about it. The physical comedy potential of watching a 200 pound light drop 30 feet and land smack on his noggin is incredible. The look on his face alone might get him an Emmy. He’d be right up there with Buster Keaton, the Three Stooges, and Chevy Chase. Maybe he could even manage to slip on a banana peel at the same time.

Now that would deserve “laughter and applause.”

And why is the fall back position of liberals like Maher that the poor sots who were cheering on the jihadi trying to kill Cheney were the real victims – victims of censorship? That’s loony as Barney Frank patiently tries to explain:

Ridley: It’s one thing to say you hate Dick Cheney, which applies to his politics. It’s another thing to say, “I’m sorry he didn’t die in an explosion.” And I think, you know…

Frank: But you exercise control over the show the way that she does over her blog.

Maher doesn’t get it. He also apparently doesn’t get what it is to be a decent human being.

Maher: But I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow. (applause)

Maher: I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.

First of all, no it is not a “fact” that more people would live if Dick Cheney died in that blast. Where on earth did that come from? What evidence is there that this would be so? Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada.

It’s stupid. It’s beyond hatred and into obsessive, paranoid loathing to posit such a silly, puerile notion. In fact, if one were to give the idea a few seconds thought, my guess would be that the very next day, a helluva lot more people would die – almost all of them jihadis as we would almost certainly have told Musharraf to go to hell and bombed the crap out of the protected Taliban camps in the tribal areas of the northern provinces of Pakistan. So not only is Maher a miserable excuse for a human being, he’s an ignoramus to boot.

And what about that audience, eh? You go guys.

I did like Barney Frank and Joe Scarborough’s reaction – like they couldn’t believe what they were hearing. At least that shows them to be reasonably human. Why they didn’t get up and leave the lickspittle all by himself is beyond me. But reading Maher’s nonsense, it’s a chore just to keep my jaw from hitting the floor.

As for reaction from the left? Um…their attention is occupied elsewhere so we can’t be too hard on them. But somehow, I don’t think we’ll get Lambchop to write a 3,000 word screed condemning Maher’s “hate speech.” After all, calling someone a pejorative regarding their sexual orientation is so much juicier than the same old boring assassination fantasies about the national leaders of the United States of America.

UPDATE

Now this is a funny assassination fantasy:

Of course, by that same logic, were Maher to expire while eating a small mound of coke off the navel of some seventeen-year-old wannabe pop star, more people would probably watch HBO. And that’s just A FACT!

Allah:

Exit question one: will Cheney embarrass himself by trying to turn this into a fundraising gimmick? Exit question two: given the left’s (appropriate) outrage at Coulter’s attempt to question Edwards’s masculinity, should we expect their snickering about the size of her adam’s apple to stop anytime soon?

This post will be short – relatively speaking. That’s because I await with bated breath the announcements that will soon flow from governments around the world about sharing technology that they’ve been able to wangle from alien visitors.

No. Not visitors from another country.

A former Canadian defense minister is demanding governments worldwide disclose and use secret alien technologies obtained in alleged UFO crashes to stem climate change, a local paper said Wednesday.

“I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation … that could be a way to save our planet,” Paul Hellyer, 83, told the Ottawa Citizen.

Alien spacecrafts would have traveled vast distances to reach Earth, and so must be equipped with advanced propulsion systems or used exceptional fuels, he told the newspaper.

Such alien technologies could offer humanity alternatives to fossil fuels, he said, pointing to the enigmatic 1947 incident in Roswell, New Mexico—which has become a shrine for UFO believers—as an example of alien contact.

“We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough,” he said.

First, a word for you true believers out there. I am absolutely positively convinced that aliens exist – that there are dozens and dozens of civilizations in our galaxy alone. Some are more advanced than ours some not. I also believe that UFO’s are real, that people are not seeing things or hallucinating or lying.

But I also believe that saying we have been visited by aliens and that UFO’s are proof of this is a crock. There is exactly the same amount of evidence that UFO’s are transdimensional craft from a parallel universe or that they are time machines where humans from the future have come back to discover where we went wrong as there is evidence that UFO’s are from another planet.

That is to say, there is zero evidence.

And this Hellyer fellow is hysterical. He wants world governments to share technologies from alien crashes?

Holy Mother! Are you trying to tell me that after building a ship capable of travelling the trillions of miles between stars, after avoiding singularities, cosmic strings, black holes, deadly radiation, rogue planets, comets, asteroids, proto-stars, and your odd space debris that they make it all the way to earth AND THEN CRASH?

What in God’s name do we need technology that fails for?

Thanks, but no thanks guys. If we want technology like that all we have to do is buy a Dell.

If the name Hellyer sounds familiar, it should. This is the gentleman who believes that George Bush is preparing to start an intergalactic war:

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, “I’m so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something.”

Hellyer revealed, “The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalleled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop.”

Hellyer warned, “The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, “The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.”

Talk about your nightmare scenario. Why, we could be vaporized by a Death Ray from some intergalactic spacecraft in an instant all because Bush is so dumb he thinks we can destroy any ship in the universe using our turbo lasers and photon torpedos.

You know what they say: “Intergalactic war is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.” Best leave it to moonbats like Hellyer. At least he knows how to surrender properly.

Would it surprise you that our friend Mr. Hellyer is also a 9/11 Truther? Re: Foreknowledge and Bush:

I think what did change over time were the consequences. When President Bush decided to declare war on terrorism. Terrorism is a terrible thing, but this was a police problem and an intelligence problem. What was wrong with your intelligence? Why didn’t you know this was going to happen? You spend billions and billions with spooks all over the world and surely you should have known what was going on. And, so I began to be concerned about that.

And then questions were raised by others. Why did the President just sit in the schoolroom when he heard the news? Why did he not acknowledge that he already knew what was going on? As a former Minister of National Defense, when the news came out I had to wonder. Why did airplanes fly around for an hour and a half without interceptors being scrambled from Andrews [Air Force Base]? Is it Andrews right next to the capitol? . . . I think the inquiry has been very shallow and superficial. And I would like to see a much tougher more in-depth inquiry.

I’m waiting for him to combine his two passions; will we soon see from Mr. Hellyer the most gigantic, intergalactic conspiracy of them all?

WERE ALIENS INVOLVED IN THE 9/11 ATTACKS?

Stay tuned…

First of all, I must point out that most of the blog posts on the left about the attack at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan that the Taliban claims targeted Vice President Dick Cheney have, for the most part, played it straight with a little grumbling about his gallivanting around the world at this point. (For some shocking and notable exceptions, see Malkin, AJ Strata, and Dean Barnett.)

Having said that, this post at Down With Tyranny deserves special attention – not only for its towering ignorance but for its unhinged hatred and despicable comparison of Vice President Cheney to Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s chief lieutenant in the Gestapo and at the time of his assassination, Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia:

When I was just a child I used to wrestle with a moral dilemma. If I could go back in time to the very beginning of Hitler’s chancellorship—and knowing in the early 1930s what we know currently about what he and the Nazis were up to—would I kill him? The fact that it would mean my own death was something I discounted entirely. Hitler was a man consumed with hatred and insanity who wielded immense power, power he used for destructiveness on a level rarely seen in history.

How does history judge Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik, respectively a Czech and a Slovak soldier, who assassinated Reinhard Heydrich on May 27, 1942. They didn’t travel back in time to do it, but from Britain and with the blessing of the Czech government in exile. Heydrich was an SS-Obergruppenfuhrer, chief of Gestapo, one of the 2 or 3 main architects of the Holocaust, and the brutal Governor of Bohemia and Moravia (Czechoslovakia). He wasn’t the vice president of Germany but at the time of his death Hitler considered him his political heir. Kubis and Gabcik ambushed him in his open car in a Prague suburb on his way to work. They were more successful than the Taliban suicide bomber was today.

Oh! So heroic! Oh! So dramatic! Discounting one’s own death in order to kill Hilter? One needs to ask if, in fact, the writer has grown up yet so that he can disabuse himself of such childish notions. What, pray tell, would have been the “moral dilemma” about killing Hitler? Especially, as the morally confused writer points out, if we knew “in the early 1930s what we know currently about what he and the Nazis were up to…”

This would seem to be a no-brainer – even for an unhinged loon like this poor fellow. Except dealing with concepts like “right” and “wrong” is still a chore for most of the left. They have resolved their dilemma by positing the notion that anyone and anything to the right of Ted Kennedy is evil and wrong. That way, they don’t have to think very hard – or know very much for that matter.

As far as what history has had to say about Heydrich’s assassins, some historians have criticized the British for allowing the boys to go ahead with their attack. That’s because what our morally feckless correspondent fails to point out is that as a result of Heydrich’s death, the Gestapo and SS went on a rampage that echoes down through the years all the way to the present.

More than 13,000 Czechs were rounded up and either murdered outright or sent to concentration camps. The entire towns of Lidice and Ležáky were razed to the ground, bulldozed until no trace of human habitation remained. All the men and boys over 16 were executed. Most of the women were sent to camps – others became subjects of medical experiments.

And the children? Immediately after the war, there were pitiful cries for help from the few surviving mothers of Lidice begging for news of their lost children. It wasn’t until several years later that their grim fate came to light; of the 105 children taken from the two towns, only 17 survived. Nine had been adopted by German families with another 8 found in an orphanage in Prague. The rest had been given “the shower treatment” shortly after being taken.

I’ll give you a real moral dilemma, my morally immature blogging friend. Suppose you were Winston Churchill and knew full well the fury that would be unleashed upon the Czech people as a result of the killing of such an important Nazi. Would you still countenance the support of your government for the assassination plot, even knowing that thousands would die horrible deaths?

Kinda makes your moral dilemma about killing Cheney seem rather insipid now, doesn’t it?

Because that is what, in a roundabout and cowardly way you are trying to get at here. If only someone had killed Cheney when he was but a youngster, the world would be such a fine place, isn’t that what you’re saying? I don’t know any other way to read it – especially your disappointment that the Taliban suicide bomber was less “successful” than the Czech assassins of Heydrich.

Perhaps realizing he had gone over the edge, our Brave Sir Blogger pulls back at the last moment and advocates impeachment rather than assassination:

The deaths of vom Rath and Heydrich did nothing to slow Hitler down. What would have happened had the Taliban succeeded in killing Cheney is something we’ll never know. America’s fate is in the hands of Americans. We need to solve our own problems—and fortunately we have a constitutional process in which to do that.

If this is so, why the big write up about the heroes who assassinated Nazis? Why go so far as to point out that Heydrich “wasn’t the vice president of Germany but at the time of his death Hitler considered him his political heir” thus clearly connecting Cheney and Heydrich in your assassination fantasy?

(Note: It is doubtful that Hitler himself ever considered Heydrich his heir but it is clear that many in the inner circle believed the younger man – he was only 38 when he died – would be able to claw his way to the top eventually due to his sheer ruthlessness.)

I am not one to shy away from nasty political epithets. Nor do I believe political give and take to be a sport for the faint of heart. Politics is, in fact, a blood sport waged full tilt and with few holds barred. But anyone who doesn’t see how far beyond the pale this post and this blogger have gone deserve to be banished to the outer darkness. Sickening in its implications, shocking in its hate directed against the Vice President, I wonder if anyone on the left will denounce this calumny as so many on the right do when one of our unhinged brethren steps over the line?

UPDATE

Go. Read Goldstein. Now.

Speaking of Goldstein, I think this comment by him responding on the post linked above, should be saved for all time and should be carved into Glen Greenwald’s mausoleum:

Christ, if Greenwald were any more full of himself he’d run the risk of getting himself pregnant, or at the very least, being charged with his own rape.

I wish I could summon up some outrage over this “comic book” that is being distributed to San Francisco high school kids but every time I look at some of the panels and try to think of something serious to write, I break out laughing.

The introduction by the author, Joel Andreas, reveals a member of the paranoid left in good standing:

The September 11 attacks provided an opportunity for George W. Bush to declare a “War on Terrorism,” which in practice turned out to be an endless binge of war-making. The second edition was published in early 2002, following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The Bush Administration then turned to preparing for a new war against Iraq. A thin rhetorical veneer about combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction hardly concealed its underlying aim: to impose a new U.S. client regime in the Middle East and assure control over a country that has the world’s second largest known oil reserves. As the present edition goes to press, the U.S. is occupying Afghanistan and Iraq. In an effort to quell armed resistance, the U.S. military is taking harsh punitive measures against the civilian populations of both countries, feeding a spiral of violence that has repercussions around the world and is placing us all in greater danger.

Holy Smokes! It’s like trying to fisk Chomsky! So many exaggerations, misinformed non sequiturs, and out and out falsehoods that all a sane person can do is throw up their hands and laugh at the utter stupidity on display.

As for the comic book itself, the reference notes explain much: Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Peter Wyden, William Blum, Robert Fisk, Charles Bergquist – an honor roll of leftist historians whose writings are colored to this day by a discredited Marxist worldview involving economic determinism (although Marxists reject the idea of determinism ever being a Marxist concept – now that it’s an abject failure), reductionism and other tried and true hyper liberal historical/sociological concepts that survive only in the dusty offices and even dustier heads of leftist academics.

This worldview enjoyed much popularity for more than 100 years because it purported to explain human behavior by looking at class and macro-economic factors. The problem, of course, is that determinism doesn’t do a good job of describing human motivations at all. It has never done a good job of doing so and never will. In fact, if the collapse of Communism proved anything, it showed that leftist scholars who adhere to this worldview have been more wrong in interpreting and commenting on historical events than any similar group of scholars since perhaps the Greeks who ascribed divine intervention to historical occurrences.

But don’t tell leftist academics this. Their heads might explode.

But beyond the author of this comic book and his sources, there is the weird, almost casual disregard for context that makes the book – which is supposed to be used as a supplemental text – little more than the kind of rant you might hear from brainless, uneducated goofs like Cindy Sheehan or Dennis Kucinich. Case in point: Chapter Two “The Cold War:”

Aside from the gross exaggerations and lack of context given regarding those 200 military “interventions” – the overwhelming majority of which were to protect American citizens and property in times of revolution or civil unrest in countries that could not guarantee such protections – I would call your attention to the panel in the upper left of the screen where the young boy is reading what the leftists see as sanitized American history that promotes militarism while keeping our young people ignorant of “the truth.”

Leftists believe that American history is locked in a closet guarded by CIA agents 24 hours a day. If a history textbook somehow fails to show how truly evil the United States is, the obvious reason is that we are suppressing the “true” history of slavery, or depredations carried out against Indians, or oppression of women, or some such arbitrary yardstick of historical accuracy that textbooks deliberately leave out to promote a mindless, patriotic agenda.

I will be the first to take American history textbooks to task for being incomplete, simplistic, and these days, full of politically correct narratives that reflects the desire of textbook companies to sell more books rather than any genuine effort to tell America’s story. But in the end, the kind of “history” promoted by the left is, in fact, anti-history. The schizophrenic nature of our national story – a nation that loves liberty above all else but kept millions in bondage for the first 80 years of its existence among other dichotomies – cannot be illustrated in any single textbook or even series of textbooks and certainly not in a comic book where context is deliberately excluded in order to promote an agenda. In short, the comic book becomes a parody of itself. That panel in the upper left above could show the young man reading the comic book in which his picture appears.

What kind of high school would purchase comic books in the first place, especially when trying to facilitate discussion on such an extraordinarily complex subject? It is apparent that either San Francisco is full of ignorant high school kids who can only learn by being exposed to reading material the level that a kindergartner wouldn’t find challenging or that school authorities themselves have precious little confidence in the cognitive abilities of students under their care.

My guess is the latter. This country is full of clueless school officials who not only fail to challenge students in developing curricula that would give them a fully rounded education, but also seek to promote their own agendas and foist their own ideas upon students with little thought to developing their critical thinking skills – the ability of the student to think and reason for themselves. This includes liberals in San Francisco and conservatives in Kansas.

Stupidity among school boards knows no ideological limits.

Lambchop and TT-Boy at a recent strategy meeting of left wing bloggers.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt the need to fend off the chigger bites and gnat stings of some of my friends on the left. Oh, there has been the odd snarky comment, the snide reference to some post or other that the dufus either never bothered to read or couldn’t understand. But frankly, I’ve felt neglected of late by the port side of the sphere. In fact, I was getting worried that I was losing my ability to get a rise out netnuts.

It’s not been for lack of trying, I assure you. It’s just that it seems I’ve been getting a helluva lot more criticism from my friends on the right than the unhinged crowd on the left recently. Perhaps this says more about the inability the left to understand words containing more than 2 or 3 syllables than the unsettled nature of conservatism at present.

At any rate, my post on Marcotte below – specifically my update where I link Terry’s piece that asks some rather uncomfortable questions that the lefties have deigned to ignore entirely – has really flushed the cockroaches out from under the floorboards and sent them scurrying hither and thither, making a stink about my links to Dan Riehl and Michelle Malkin’s compilation of bigoted Marcottisms as well as making the charge that Terry and I somehow coordinated our posts, echoing each other’s talking points.

Terry is a big boy and can take care of himself. He hardly needs (nor, I imagine, wants) any input or “coordination” with me.

As for my linking Dan and Michelle, it is certainly a curious way to delegitimize any of my arguments by trying to say that Marcotte’s own words, which was the reason for my linking those posts in the first place, are somehow less bigoted, less hateful, less of a problem for her if they appear on blogs that the lefties don’t approve. The reason that is “ironic” escapes me as I’m sure it does most people with an IQ higher than your average marmoset.

This, of course, removes TT-Boy from that list:

Rick “The Lesser” Moran writes about Amanda and then he invites his readers to go see the ever-sensible Michelle Malkin and Dan Riehl.

I could have stayed up all night and not come up with anything near that funny…

The fact that TT Boy does indeed stay up all night in his job as grocery store stocker means that he truly can’t come up with anything near as funny as Marcotte’s nauseating, hate filled rants that I linked at those two websites. I’m sure if he really put his mind to it (or checked his archives) he could come close.

Meanwhile Atrios, about whom Chris Bowers gushed:

“Atrios has somehow managed to put up twelve posts a day, every day, for five years. A superhuman effort few can match.”

Well, let me play Superman for a moment and try to match the “twelve posts” put up by Duncan Black every day..

1. Open Thread
2. Open Thread
3. Open Thread
4. Bush Sucks! No more War.
5. Open Thread
6. Open Thread
7. Open Thread
8. Conservatives are Poopies!
9. Open Thread
10. Open Thread
11. Beware the Theocrats!
12. Open Thread
13. Open Thread

Befitting my Superhuman abilities, I went and did Mr. Black one better.

At any rate, The Reverend Mr. Black has made Terry “Wanker of the Day” calling him my “sock puppet.” A singular honor for which Terry is, I’m sure, grateful although since we disagree on almost every issue under the sun, that sock sure has a lot of holes in it – perhaps as many as we could find in Mr. Black’s head.

Yes, it sure is great to be back in the left’s bad graces. Now I can sit back and enjoy all the ever more imaginative insults and verbal bric-a-brats hurled in my direction, secure in the knowledge that when it comes to pissing off the lickspittle left, I haven’t lost my touch.

UPDATE

Terry responds to his critics here.

Well done, brother. And thanks.

Watching the destruction of Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon blogger and soon-to-be-ex “Blogmaster” for the Edwards campaign, has been one of the few bright spots in this otherwise dreary and depressing new year.

If ever there was a left wing hysteric who deserved to be tarred, feathered, and dragged through the mud and slime of their own writings, it is Marcotte. She is a perfect illustration of the liberal mindset that posits the notion of a relative moral code when it comes to racial, ethnic, religious, and gender semantics. For her, anything goes. No characterization of her political opponents is too vile. No racist, sexist, or bigoted thought is out of bounds.

This is because the left has insulated itself from such mundane considerations as good manners and decorous language by elevating themselves to what they consider to be a higher moral plane than the rest of us. Simply because they mean well, they are vouchsafed all manner of perfidious name calling and calumnious charges directed against their opponents.

The fact that Marcotte sees the world through the prism of post-modern feminism makes her impossible to take seriously on any level. Her writing is full of so many half truths, manufactured criticisms, dead-wrong assumptions, and a child like ignorance of the emotional universe inhabited by normal men and women that trying to decipher her scribblings – once you can get by the obscenities and work your way through the incoherence – is a task best left to a psychiatrist.

I won’t pollute this site with too many examples of what I mean. For that, I urge you to see Dan Riehl’s posts or Michelle Malkin’s writings on Marcotte.

This is one of those stories that starts out on the internet, jumps to cable talk shows, and finally, when the issue can no longer be ignored, appears in the mainstream press. In the case of Marcotte, her initial effort to hide some of her more outrageous and obscenity laced tirades against conservatives in general and men in particular by deleting the offending posts at Pandagon only made matters worse. In effect, it was no longer what she said (which was bad enough) that was the issue but rather her clumsy attempt to cover it up once she was named “Blogmaster” of the Edwards campaign.

But someone with a track record of stupidity as long and varied as Marcotte’s should have realized that she wouldn’t be able to delete all the offending posts written over the last few years. In the end, her weird anti-Catholic bigotry will probably end up bringing her career as “Blogmaster” to a quick and unceremonious close. Here’s Marcotte on the Catholic belief in the Immaculate Conception:

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

(HT: Patterico)

And in one of the more delicious ironies I can imagine, Marcotte may be brought down by the object of some of her more unbalanced rants; the Catholic Church:

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, demanded that Edwards fire Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.

“John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots,” Donohue wrote in a statement. “He has no choice but to fire them immediately.”

The Edwards campaign declined to comment. McEwan and Marcotte did not respond to e-mails requesting a response.

The New York Times tries to excuse Marcotte’s ravings as a consequence of being a member of the blogosphere:

The two women brought to the Edwards campaign long cyber trails in the incendiary language of the blogosphere. Other campaigns are likely to face similar controversies as they try to court voters using the latest techniques of online communication.

This is absurd. Marcotte is not being taken to task for “incendiary” writing. Holy Smokes! Anyone peruse the DNC or RNC sites lately? “Incendiary” language is hardly frowned upon and is, indeed, a prerequisite for latching on to any political campaign.

Marcotte’s will lose her job because despite the fact that she believes herself to be well meaning and, probably according to her lights incapable of hatred directed against any group, she is a rank bigot, a nauseating, die hard dogmatist whose sickening screeds against people she disagrees with (including most non-emasculated men) have sullied the debate between right and left for far too long.

Unfortunately, Marcotte’s type will always have a home on the left. She will be welcomed back with open arms and continue her unbalanced rants, raging against people whose only transgression is that they fail to fit their beliefs into her own narrow, warped, and cockeyed worldview.

Perhaps there will be an opening soon in some other campaign, a job that she will be eminently qualified to perform as only she is capable.

I hear Ahmadinejad will be running for President again. Those two see eye to eye on more issues than either is likely to admit. Not to mention both being a couple of draughts short of a full keg.

Sounds like a match made in heaven…

UPDATE

It has been far too long since we’ve heard from the lefty’s #1 thinker, pundit, and sock puppet Lambchop.

Here, Lambchop weighs in on this controversy in his usual understated, intelligent, and perspicacious manner. And I quote:

NEENER!! NEENER!! NEENER!! NEENER!! NEENER!! NEENER!!

UPDATE II: OMIGOD THE MORANS AGREE ON SOMETHING!

My brother Terry (who has a new blog that you should bookmark immediately) gets it exactly right:

Questions: What, if anything, does it tell us about Edwards that he’s joined up with this blogger? Is Edwards’ association with a person who has written these things a legitimate issue for voters, as they wonder—among other things—whom he might appoint to high office if he’s elected? If a Republican candidate teamed up with a right-wing blogger who spewed this kind of venom, how would people react? Is the mere raising of this issue a kind of underhanded censorship, a way of ruling out of bounds some kinds of opinion? Are we all just going to have to get used to a more rough-and-tumble, profane, and even hate-filled public arena in the age of the blogosphere?

Like any good journalist, he is asking the right questions – and the questions sort of answer themselves, don’t they? (HT: Malkin)

UPDATE III

Hugh Hewitt nails it and offers a challenge:

As L’Affaire Marcotte nears its inevitable conclusion, I can’t decide who was dumber, Marcotte or the Edwards campaign. On the one hand I can’t believe that Marcotte had become so comfortable in the left wing echo chamber that she actually believed her past didn’t preclude her from publicly entering a mainstream presidential campaign. On the other hand, I really can’t believe that the Edwards campaign apparently didn’t vet a high profile hire.

I’ve got this Friday at 9:13 a.m.

Okay, Big Daddy I’ll take some of that action. Give me Thursday at 2:00 PM Central. As you know, good politicians lance boils quickly. The very good ones do it decisively. Marcotte is gone by the end of lunchtime tomorrow. Book it!