Right Wing Nut House

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!

Michelle Malkin and Bryan Preston (of Hot Air) have made it to Baghdad and are currently embedded with a unit that appears to be at the center of the action:

My Hot Air colleague Bryan Preston and I have been in Iraq, embedded with an incredibly dedicated Army unit in Baghdad tasked with training Iraqi security forces (both Shia and Sunni) conducting counterinsurgency operations, and carrying out civil affairs work. Yes, there is danger and chaos and unspeakable bloodshed in parts of Baghdad. Sectarian violence–compounded by everyday street crime and tribal conflict–is rampant. Corruption, incompetence, and apathy infect the Iraqi government. You’ve gotten endless news coverage of all that. But there are also pockets of success and signs of hope amid utter despair. I’ll give you more details of our embed unit after we get home. We have much to report and will be publishing a multi-part video and audio series, blog posts, and op-eds on security conditions, media malpractice, and the big picture on the war next week. Having met, watched, and interviewed a broad cross-section of our troops during our brief but fruitful travels, my faith in the U.S. military has never been stronger– but I will not sugarcoat my skepticism and doubts about decisions being made in Washington.

First of all, I speak for (almost) everybody both left and right when I wish them good luck and pray that they stay safe.

I say “almost” everyone because if the past is any guide, there will be sneering contempt from some lefty blogs - criticism that drips with racism, sexism, and a a jaw dropping kind of obscene hate. I plan on posting the reaction from the left to Malkin’s trip to Iraq because these people must be exposed as the ignorant racists they truly are. Ignoring their hypocrisy only makes them believe they are clever rather than pond scum.

Criticism of Malkin and Preston is not the issue. It is perfectly acceptable to criticize what they write and their impressions of what is going on Iraq. But the rancid way in which some lefty bloggers will personalize their criticism will not be tolerated by me or, I imagine, a host of others.

Feel free to leave links from lefty blogs in the comments who you feel step over the line. As news spreads of the Malkin/Preston embed, I should have plenty to write about this afternoon.

It’s been almost 24 hours since news broke that a conservative man who posted at Free Republic has been arrested for sending threatening letters to prominent liberals laced with white powder and I have to admit I am ashamed to be a conservative.

That’s 24 long hours - exactly one day - that conservative bloggers have failed miserably in their duty to police their ranks by condemning without hesitation and with a virulence matching those brave, right thinking bloggers on the left a fellow conservative who, as we all know, was only doing what all of us secretly want to do but don’t have the guts - cause the left to go into paroxysms of over the top rhetorical gibberish about us hateful, spiteful, goose stepping, fascists who use “eliminationist rhetoric” with the practiced ease of your average Kluxer. (NOTE: I suggest to confirm my last statement, you lefties might want to check with Senator Byrd…just to be sure.)

I’m talking about domestic terrorism here. I’m talking about condemning this poor, deluded schmuck - who both his lawyer and prosecutor believe to be nuttier than my Auntie Midge’s fruitcake - because he not only posts at Free Republic but because he has a crush on Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin!

Shameful. “Where’s Malkin?” asks that guardian of truth and righteousness Dave Neiwert?

Malkin — who is quick to proclaim random acts of violence on a jihadist terror conspiracy within our borders, but never seems to worry about actual acts of domestic terrorism — has so far ignored Mr. Castagana at her site.

Malkin, the guys at Powerline, even Ed Morrissey should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. Not jumping on this story IMMEDIATELY - and by “immediately” I mean they should have been on this story like white on rice (oops! my bad!) at a minimum of 1/4 hour after this story hit the internet - only highlights their TOTAL and UTTER hypocrisy when it comes to terrorists. So what if they guy is LOONIER THAN A JUNE BUG? He’s a conservative, iddn’t he? He loves Malkin, doddn’t he? That’s enough for me.

Who knows…given all the “connections” the left is finding to conservatives on this guy, maybe even it will come out that he’s Ann Coulter’s secret boyfriend. Or Malkin’s pen pal. Or Hitler’s long lost son. Anything is possible.

Neiwert is a stitch. Here he uses one of his favorite “literary” devices - self righteously eschewing blanket condemnation of his subject and in the breathtaking space of a few words, going ahead and issuing the sweeping generalization anyway:

As Bruce Wilson and Evan Derkacz point out, it is unfair to smear all conservatives generally with the acts of loons like Castagana. But there is, as I’ve remarked previously, a level of culpability here as well in cases like these:

What all of these incidents have in common is the mental instability of the actors; and I’ve explored previously how that affects the way society and the law must deal with the perpetrators. In the case of Buford Furrow, for instance, his mental illness became a mitigating factor in his eventual sentence, as prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty in large part because of it.

It’s “unfair” to smear all conservatives like this so let me do it anyway. I just won’t call it responsibility. I’ll call it “culpability.” Such nuance deserves “The Annoyingly Pious Verbal Smokescreen of the Year Award.” Luv it.

More “Where’s Malkin:”

Let’s check in with our doyenne of domestic terror hysteria, Michelle Malkin, seeing as she’s ‘worshipped’ by a suspect now in custody. I think we know what we’re going to find.

The demise of liberal talk radio…
By Michelle Malkin · November 13, 2006 12:32 PM

All I can say is, I’m thinking very seriously of de-linking Malkin over this outrage. And she should probably come clean about any connections she has with this terrorist. Did he ever send her an email? Perhaps we should look into the records of florists in the Washington DC area to see if he ever sent her flowers. Did she accept the flowers? Did she email him back thanking him for the flowers? Just what is her relationship with this terrorist?

Am I sounding hysterical enough? Try this reaction at Democratic Underground:

Their entire board will be investigated. Anyone who communicated with him, too.
But they have nothing to hide, do they?

It’s not like anyone over there encouraged him in any way or engaged in inciteful or hate speech, surely? And hey, who needs Habeus Corpus, right, freeps? Once everyone’s phone records, bank statements, and other transactions have been checked, all computer hard drives and other property seized will be returned, no doubt. Eventually.

For pure entertainment, there is nothing like a comment thread at DU to tickle your funny bone and make you hit your knees and thank the Lord that He gave you a full deck to play with.

But okay, I’ll go ahead and speak for my comrades since no other conservative has bothered to demonstrate the moral outrage, the simpering self righteousness, and predictable, tiresome condemnations required of us by our leftist overseers and guardians of truth here on the internet:

BAD FREEPER! BAD! BAD! BAD!

And make sure you tell your shrink about your crush on Coulter, Malkin, and all the other conservative women who strike your fancy. The lefties deem this as big a sin as being a terrorist which only goes to show how people’s priorities can get all screwed up during a time of war.

UPDATE

Neiwert (sorry Dave, it’s amatuerish and inexcusable to misspell your name - I’ll try harder next time) links here and lets loose the cannons of rhetorical idiocy:

– He doesn’t get that calling these haters to account for the acts that spring from their rhetoric — if by nothing else than openly expressing our moral outrage, and publicly shaming the entities who give them a megaphone — is hardly an attack on their audience. Unless, of course, the audience agrees with them.

Sort of the right-wing version Happy Fuzzy Wuzzy Bunny World.

As opposed to the left wing Snarling, Spitting, Smear Factory? If you expressed your “moral outrage” at Palestinian suicide bombers or al-Qaeda truck bombers with half the vehemence that you do against your fellow countrymen, your condemnations might have the ring of authenticity.

That said, this amatuerish psychologicizing about a connection between Ann Coulter making one of her stupid, horse’s ass comments about hanging Supreme Court judges and the loon who is in love with her sending baking powder to Keith Olberman is good stand up material but hardly proof of anything except an outrageously stupid attempt to smear people with which Neiwert disagrees.

I don’t care how many cites Dave can come up with from left wing psychologists or other arm chair Jungians, there is not one shred of proof, not one iota of evidence that draws a direct correlation between what Neiwert considers hateful rhetoric and violence or threatened violence against liberals.

Oh, uh..except Bill Clinton said it was so.

To believe that Timothy McVeigh blew up 187 people because of something Rush Limbaugh said (even if McVeigh listened to him every day and was a huge fan) or something Limbaugh hinted at, or something Limbaugh imparted to him via gypsy fortune teller is so ignorant its hard to know where to begin in deconstructing such foolishness. The suggestion by Clinton that “talk radio” was responsible for Oklahoma City was the lowest, the grossest political rhetoric I have heard in nearly 35 years of watching American politics. Nothing Nixon said came close. Nothing since - even Bush’s rhetoric - has come close. It was unconscionable. And it’s silly on its face.

People like McVeigh and this idiot Freeper don’t need Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh to encourage them to act they way they do. These people are in desperate need of attention. They search for identity within a group - McVeigh with the Kluxers, the anthrax loon with the Freepers - and it doesn’t help. They still feel alone.

Oswald, Sara Jane Moore, Squeaky Fromme, and most other 20th century perpetrators of political violence use political greivances as self-justification to lash out at the world that has rejected them. This is the established, recognized forensic determination for why almost all violence directed against political personalities takes place. They don’t need the “trigger” of a Limbaugh or a Coulter (or a Manson or a Castro) to become violent. Neither can they be dissuaded from carrying out their plans by friends or loved ones. Not mentally ill enough to be considered unfit to stand trial, they nevertheless are incapable of functioning in society and are a danger to both themselves and others.

The attempt to change this paradigm is a political effort and not serious analysis. It fits in nicely with the left’s storytelling with regard to conservative bogeymen like Limbaugh and Coulter while giving them a priveleged frame of reference to moralize against the right. And since it makes them feel good, I have no doubt the efforts of Neiwert and others in this regard will continue.

“If their personal belief is that they don’t want to say the Pledge of Allegiance, the district certainly isn’t going to dictate what they do.”
(Martha Parham, a spokeswoman for the Coast Community College District)

This story has a little bit of everything. Moonbats on parade. Kids playing dress-up-like-a-commie. Joe McCarthy. Conservatives standing up for America.

And a lesson in the nature of freedom:

Student leaders at a California college have touched off a furor by banning the Pledge of Allegiance at their meetings, saying they see no reason to publicly swear loyalty to God and the U.S. government.

The move by Orange Coast College student trustees, the latest clash over patriotism and religion in American schools, has infuriated some of their classmates — prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule.

“America is the one thing I’m passionate about and I can’t let them take that away from me,” 18-year-old political science major Christine Zoldos told Reuters.

The move was led by three recently elected student trustees, who ran for office wearing revolutionary-style berets and said they do not believe in publicly swearing an oath to the American flag and government at their school. One student trustee voted against the measure, which does not apply to other student groups or campus meetings.

I understand the students anger at the moonbats. And I think it’s great that the incident has galvanized people to demonstrate their loyalty to America. I hope they continue to say the pledge loudly every time that little group of proto-commies meets.

But demanding that the pledge be reinstated? Just where is it you think you live?

If 19 year old kids want to play dress up and pretend they’re revolutionaries while rejecting the pledge, and God, and America, they are perfectly free to do so. Others are free to disagree with them. The Che-wannabes should realize that their protest comes with a price - disapprobation of their peers and the community. The counter demonstrators should realize that the pseudo-socialists are exercising the cherished constitutional right of free speech and not try to force them to conform to any behavior to which they object.

And about that objection; one mini-Mao obviously hasn’t said the pledge in a while:

Ball said the ban largely came about because the trustees didn’t want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government before their meetings. “Loyalty ought to be something the government earns through performance, not through reciting a pledge,” he said.

The pledge says absolutely nothing about “government.” It talks about “the republic” and “the nation” not any specific government. In fact, the pledge is to “the flag.” If one believes (as I and most Americans do) that the flag represents the very best American ideals of liberty and equality for all, by refusing to pledge their allegiance to the flag, the fake radicals only prove that their towering ignorance is matched by a desire for authoritarian government - with them in charge, of course.

It is the nature of freedom that it be abused by the shallow, the ignorant, the callous, the fakers, and those who hate simply because hate is their natural state. And it is the genius of the United States that they suffer little more than name calling and the shunning of decent people everywhere. By gritting our teeth and tolerating wayward children like the Orange Coast College ignoramuses, we keep faith with our founders and all the men and women who have given their lives so that the flag these smug, self-righteous lickspittles refuse to swear allegiance to has meaning for the rest of us.

I am grateful to Michelle Malkin for giving me something to write about this morning. She reminds us that tomorrow is a very special day for those among us who become unhinged at the very thought of George W. Bush’s existence.

It is being billed as “A Day of Mass Resistance.” Methinks they cut that thought a little short. Perhaps a more accurate description of tomorrow’s festivities would be “A Day of Mass Resistance to Reality” or perhaps “A Day to Indulge Oneself in an Orgy of Self Pleasuring.” The movement bills itself as “The World Can’t Wait” and they seek to “Drive out the Bush Regime:”

World Can’t Wait is organizing people living in the United States to take responsibility to stop the whole disastrous course led by the Bush administration. We seek to create a political situation where the Bush administration’s program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking U.S. society is reversed.

We seek to mobilize millions to express their outrage, to speak the truth, to act with urgency and form an organized political resistance. We welcome any individuals and groups who agree that the Bush Regime should be driven out, whatever their political party affiliation or lack thereof. We reach out to people who have been fooled by Bush, and to those who have been most seriously affected by the outrages inflicted by the Bush Regime.

How this “political resistance” will “drive Bush from office” is left kind of vague. Given the self-loving proclivities of this self-important, self-serving, self-dramatizing bunch of dim witted nincompoops, perhaps they plan a “stroke in” of some kind. They seem to be so in love with their own towering conceits regarding Bush, America, and those of us who have been “fooled” by the President that it wouldn’t surprise me if they practiced a little self-actualization by having a “diddle-off” - sexual energy being such a positive force to throw against the evil madness of tyrant George.

Nothing gives the BDS crowd more orgasmic satisfaction than fantasies of having the power to bring down and grind into the dust with their jackboots the object of their obsessive hate. It is not unusual for Presidents to engender strong feelings of intense dislike amongst their ideological and party opponents. Goes with the job. Just ask Roosevelt who, despite a popularity with the general public that any President would envy, nevertheless raised the hackles of a goodly number of hard core Republicans to his dying day. Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Bill Clinton also elicited strong feelings of hate and loathing among a sizable segment of the the population.

Part of the reason for this hate has to do with the times they lived in, of course. Some of it was personality driven. Much of the unreasoning hatred directed at Bill Clinton was generational.

But BDS is an entirely different animal. Part of the reason for it must certainly include the fact that the hard left feels itself powerless, having been summarily given the boot from American politics for much of the last quarter century. Most Democrats today tend to trim their sails toward the center whenever they can thus enraging the netnuts and filling the intellectual left with disgust. For that reason, it appears that they must overly dramatize in their own minds how truly bad things are in America. The “Not in Our Name Statement of Conscience” reveals a mass delusion of jaw dropping proportions:

“No election, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights, and the end of science and reason.”

“It is our responsibility to stop the Bush regime from carrying out this disastrous course. We believe history will judge us sharply should we fail to act decisively.”

“The end of science and reason?” This should come as news to to the two Americans who just won the Nobel Prize for Physics. And despite the pitiful attempts of creationists and ID’ers to overturn rational thought, the inroads they have made in the last 6 years have been few and far between. More worrisome has been the politicization of science - not in the name of religion but in the name of advancing a specific political agenda. This is not new, by the way, as the government has bullied nutritionists, tobacco companies, Kyoto skeptics, and others for 30 years. But as long as you agree with that kind of interference, it apparently places the government on the side of the angels of science when in fact, it has constituted a war against reason that has been fought by both liberals and conservatives since the 1970’s.

The bottom line to all this drama is that for these, the most unbalanced of Americans, only by fantasizing that liberty and freedom have been snatched away by the Dark Lord Bush can their own overly heroic self image be justified. This is much more than derangement. It is a challenge to rationality itself.

Think about it. A sizable segment of the population has substituted a reality so out of kilter with observable truths that they seem to be willing to take extra-constitutional measures to overturn a fantasy world they have created in their own minds. Any challenges to this worldview is seen as trickery - either the “lapdog” press is deliberately withholding the “truth” of what’s going on or there is a conspiracy among the elites to keep the people in ignorance. No contrary information is allowed to penetrate the ongoing narrative that posits a belief in the heroic nature of those privileged enough to be in the know, blessed with that special knowledge that their fellow citizens are either too blind or too stupid to grasp. Such counter-arguments are heresy and not to be allowed to shed light into the shadow world their minds inhabit.

We can laugh at them - while shuddering with disgust at their hubris. In the end, they are harmless clowns whose act has a limited run. On January 20, 2009, they will be able to fold their tents and go back to their dull, dreary existence as ordinary citizens with fond memories of their time when they saw themselves as saviors of the Republic.

One of the more interesting developments in the post cold war world has been the endless comedy engendered by various thugs, hypocrites, dirty necked galoots, and bloodthirsty tyrants who have been thrown up by mobs, mullahs, and militaries across the world since the wall fell.

The entertainment value in watching the rank anti-Americanism, the twisting of history, the deliberate lies and exaggerated rhetoric has been immense - better than the first episode of Survivor anyway. And in their own ways, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have shown that each have missed their calling in life. Instead of being brutal tyrants oppressing the masses of their people, they very well could have been paired up to star in their very own sit-com. Or better yet, how about “The Hugo and Mahmoud Comedy Hour?”

The physical contrast is funny enough; Chavez - big, beefy, goat face ugly with a personality that seethes below the surface, ready to erupt at a moment’s notice. And Ahmadinejad - small, slight, elfish with that mischevious “Leave it to Beaver” smile as if to say “Don’t turn your back on me or I’ll drop a nuke in your soup!”

Almost like Laurel and Hardy. In fact, the similarities there would be striking. Chavez in a bowler hat with a little mustache, waddling alongside the vapid looking Ahmadinejad who sometimes appears to be half-asleep. The trouble they get into and then manage to get out of - usually as a result of random events having nothing to do with their own innate intelligence - is a perfect metaphor for their own careers.

In fact, the world has not seen their like very often. Idi Amin or perhaps a young Ghadaffi had the comic sense of the duo but not the messianic sense of mission or the real potential for troublemaking. The fact that both received long, sustained applause at the UN for their speeches should make every network executive in New York drool in anticipation of what their next act will look like.

Indeed, both didn’t disappoint. “Hugo Does Harlem” could be made into a Comedy Channel Special:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, appearing Thursday at a Harlem Church for an oil-for-poor event, repeated his ‘devil’ reference hurled a day earlier at President Bush during a speech at the United Nations.

“They told me that I should be careful after I called him the devil — and I think he is the devil — because he might kill me” Chavez told a crowd packed into the Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Harlem.

“But, I place myself in the hands of God,” he said.

The laugh-o-meter went off the scale with that last remark. This bodes well for ratings although the Comedy Channel already has their fair share of Bush Bashers in Stewart and Colbert. Perhaps they could sell the script to “The Home and Garden Network” or even “Animal Planet?”

As for our radioactive elf, the Iranian President, he took yesterday to lecture the Council on Foreign Relations about the Holocaust and history;

Maurice R. Greenberg: He has been quoted many times, including last evening, that the Holocaust needs to be explored as to whether or not it really occurred. And he says, “Well you know, every time somebody tries to do that, they get imprisoned.” Well, the reason some have been imprisoned is because it’s against the law in some places to deny that the Holocaust occurred.

Of course it occurred. And when he said that, I responded: “Listen, I went through Dachau during the war. To suggest it didn’t occur is simply a lie.” So he turned around and asked me how old I was, to determine if I was old enough to have been there. And then he changed the subject.

Q: So that was the extent of it?

MRG: Yes, but then there was a lot of follow up on that. He wanted to know why there was an objection to have professors and historians explore whether or not it had occurred. The fact of the matter, obviously we said, is that it’s a recognized fact that it occurred; it was 6 million Jews that perished in the Holocaust and that any single individual that denies that is not only wrong but is also trying to be revisionist of history.

[snip]

MRG: I think it’s almost impossible to do business with him as long as he has those views. He says: “Why should the Palestinians suffer even if there was a Holocaust? What does one have to do with the other?” I mean, they have nothing to do with each other. We don’t link them together. And we discussed that. They’re not linked.

He thinks the Palestinians should be permitted to return, that’s never going to happen. If the Palestinians returned to Israel, they’d swamp the country and there wouldn’t be an Israel. But he doesn’t want an Israel.

Q: It sounds like he didn’t make any effort to try to reach out…

MRG: No, no. There was no effort to reach out. He’s offensive. He’s smug. He’s a danger.

Not too much in the yucks department but more of a cereberal humor - something that might play better on The Sci-Fi Channel or maybe as a fall replacement for Keith Olberman on MSNBC.

Either way, American TV executives should take a long hard look at these two comedians. Not only would their anti-American rants play well in certain parts of the country, but they’d have that coveted 18-29 male demographic in the bag.

Via Little Green Footballs, we discover perhaps the greatest idea the far left has ever had in their rather checkered history:

Why Can’t America Have Human Rights?

Thursday, September 14th, 2006, 6:30 pm

The Nave at The Riverside Church, 490 Riverside Drive, New York

www.breakthrough.tv

An evening of performance and talks on Human Rights in the United States, including the death penalty, detentions and deportations, poverty, and violence and discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, and sexuality. The Forum will work to strengthen our connections and raise our voices to build an America that supports human rights instead of violating them.

They read my mind.

I too, have always wanted human rights in America. I too, wish we could dispense with all this constitutional nonsense which states that government’s derive their power from the consent of the governed. After all, that idiocy is more than 200 years old - time for a change. It would be so much easier if the government was able to tell us which rights it was willing to grant and which ones, well, we had no business worrying about.

That’s the practical effect of what this grouping of unbalanced, emotionally unstable, ignorant, and dangerous people are advocating. Because in order to achieve their nirvana of a “human rights” paradise, a radical altering of the relationship between the people and their government would have to take place.

Want to get rid of discrimination? It’s already illegal, of course. There are remedies in place to address the grievances of individuals who feel they have been denied opportunity based on their race, sex, or religion. (Many states also have remedies for those who feel discriminated against based on their sexual orientation). What these mountebanks are talking about is reaching down into the very heart of the personal and making it political. They wish to legislate the way that citizens think. In their version of the United States, even if you are unaware that you are discriminating against someone in a protected group, you would be held liable anyway. This is because what matters is the result of your hiring practices (or lending practices or any other decision made by private citizens affecting the protected classes). Intent is thrown out the window. If you don’t have enough members of the protected groups in your workforce, your hiring practices are discriminatory period.

This nonsense has been advanced by the gaggle of goosebrains who will be gathering later this month to lecture, to harangue, and to pontificate about what a human rights nightmare the United States of America has become.

Never mind that the death penalty is supported by a majority of the American people and that it is regularly reviewed by the courts. Will we someday get rid of the death penalty? Probably. But it won’t be because a bunch of blowhard moralists try and shame us into following their lead?

How about getting rid of poverty? First, it is an interesting construct that living in poverty is a violation of someone’s “human rights.” Ostensibly, the radicals believe that discrimination and racism by the government is the cause of poverty. The fact that these lickspittles don’t bat an eyelash when you point out that 48% of people who live in poverty are white makes their critique ring a little hollow. Why slow them down when they’re on an ant-American roll?

This discrimination and racism manifests itself in the inferior education offered to those in poverty stricken areas. No one seems to care that most of these school districts are in cities run by people of color and where school districts are managed (or mismanaged) by same. And you better keep your mouth shut about tax policies formulated by the racists who discriminate against people of their own race that drive businesses and hence jobs away from the cities. Practical economics tend to give the moonbats a headache.

Making America a human rights paradise will also apparently include doing away with jailing people for their crimes and amending our immigration laws to end the deportation of anyone not here legally. The latter would mean that we would do away with immigration laws entirely which would be a boon to the poverty bureaucrats in that no one seems to care about a massive influx of instant citizens who would be either unemployed or unemployable. And since their human rights paradise would demand these people be taken care of until they can get on their feet (and beyond), one would hope that there would be enough rich people to soak so that the requisite amount of tax monies could be raised for the poverty industry to enrich themselves.

As for ending violence, (another invented “human right”), it would be interesting to see how the Bierkenstock sandal wearers would go about that massive undertaking. Censorship of violent programs on TV and the media? Perhaps making alcohol and drugs illegal? Maybe require the burning of incense and chanting 3 times a day in order to soothe the souls of us savage beasts?

Deny people access to drugs and alcohol and the violence problem in America is reduced substantially. As for the sociopaths, one supposes that the technological innovations of the future will include some kind of conditioning regimen a la A Clockwork Orange. While they’re at it, it would not surprise me if this group of proto-authoritarians would be in favor of using that conditioning to address other “human rights” problems we have here in America such as racism, sexism, and other personal demons that the government currently discourages but under the lefties tender loving care would be banished via brainwashing.

The bottom line of all this moralizing and America bashing is that the prescriptions that will be offered up by this rogues gallery of galoots will look a lot like efforts of every other utopian schemer - including Lenin - and that realize a top-down, authoritarian society to force people to adapt is the only way to achieve their goals.

I wonder who will be on top telling us what’s best for us to think, to believe? Better question: Who do you think that committed group of radicals thinks will be on top when the revolution is over?

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech in Utah at the American Legion Convention on Tuesday that appears to have brought out the very best of lefty hypocrisy, hand wringing, and faux outrage. For that, perhaps the DoD can mint a new kind of medal for Rummy and award it in lieu of any of his rosy Iraq scenarios coming true. At the very least, the Secretary’s speech proved that his usefulness to the cause of victory in Iraq and the War on Terror is not entirely at an end.

Despite his numerous shortcomings - pointed out here and elsewhere - Rumsfeld has always fulfilled his duty as spokesman for American military policy by supplying an excellent intellectual/historical framework for our actions. My beef has never been with his general defense of the war but rather with his Pollyanish responses to what has specifically been happening on the ground in Iraq. In this, he is no different than any other administration spokesman whose overly optimistic assumptions and scenarios about Iraq have been proven wrong time and time again.

But the Secretary has, according to the left and their fair-haired boy Keith Olberman, committed the cardinal sin of using historical analogy to critique their utter blindness about the consequences of leaving Iraq before some kind of stability is achieved as well as their continuing disbelief that the War on Terror is anything except some kind of gigantic political game being used by Republicans to win elections.

Rummy’s choice of 1930’s England was, in my judgment, a poor one (as was Olberman’s laughable choice of the same time period to respond to the Secretary’s criticism). Poor Neville Chamberlain’s corpse has been dug up and displayed so much recently that the damn thing is falling apart already. In essence, Rummy’s analogy using 1930’s Britain and comparing the appeasement policies of the Democratic left with Chamberlain’s kowtowing to Hitler was, if nothing else, eloquently put:

Over the next decades, a sentiment took root that contended that if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be accommodated, then the carnage and the destruction of then-recent memory of World War I could be avoided.

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among Western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis, the rise of fascism and nazism, they were ridiculed or ignored. Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated or that it was someone else’s problem. Some nations tried to negotiate a separate peace, even as the enemy made its deadly ambitions crystal clear. It was, as Winston Churchill observed, a bit like feeding a crocodile, hoping it would eat you last.

One could write volumes about why Churchill was in the political wilderness, how his imperial ambitions regarding India had come a cropper of political reality and how he had angered his own party to the point that he had been stripped of his leadership positions. And people suspected - rightly so - that Churchill’s anti-Nazism while obviously heartfelt, was also a convenient way to tweak first the government of Stanley Baldwin and then Chamberlain. He may indeed have been a prophet but hardly pure of heart or without an agenda of his own. This made his critique of appeasement policy ring very hollow with most MP’s and caused a vicious push back by Baldwin especially who despised Churchill personally.

But please observe Keith Olberman’s towering rant against Rumsfeld last night and how he jumped on both the historical analogy with the 1930’s and this Rumsfeld observation:

And in every army, there are occasional bad actors, the ones who dominate the headlines today, who don’t live up to the standards of the oath and of our country. But you also know that they are a very, very small percentage of the literally hundreds of thousands of honorable men and women in all theaters in this struggle who are serving our country with humanity, with decency, with professionalism, and with courage in the face of continuous provocation. (Applause.)

And that is important in any long struggle or long war, where any kind of moral or intellectual confusion about who and what is right or wrong, can weaken the ability of free societies to persevere.

Our enemies know this well. They frequently invoke the names of Beirut or Somalia — places they see as examples of American retreat and American weakness. And as we’ve seen — even this month — in Lebanon, they design attacks and manipulate the media to try to demoralize public opinion. They doctor photographs of casualties. They use civilians as human shields. And then they try to provoke an outcry when civilians are killed in their midst, which of course was their intent.

Rumsfeld is saying that America is right and our enemies are wrong and that anyone who doesn’t agree with that is “morally and intellectually” confused. But Olberman took that phrase and ran with it, positing the outrageous notion that Rumsfeld was saying that lefties who disagree with the Administration about Iraq are disloyal” and immoral:

Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence — indeed, the loyalty — of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants — our employees — with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

How we get from Rummy accusing the left of being “morally and intellectually confused” to being “disloyal” is quite a stretch, except for those like Olberman who bristle at the notion probably as a result of a guilty conscience. How else to explain their reaction?

And being “morally confused” is not the same as “impugning” someone’s morality. If Rumsfeld wanted to say that, I suspect that he would have come out and said that war opponents were immoral. It appears that Olberman is having trouble understanding the English language, not surprising for the former Sportscenter anchor who once thought that a gay Republican journalist with a White House press pass would bring down the President.

Leaping to conclusions is the least of Olberman’s problems in his little speech. His laughable description of the Baldwin/Chamberlain analogy to Bush would have made great stand up material:

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s — questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience — needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

In the immortal words of that famous movie Defense Secretary Albert Nimzicki in Independence Day, “That’s not entirely accurate.”

Confusing myopia with conspiracy is just about par for the course for Olberman, whose paranoia becomes much clearer later in his screed. The facts are a little more prosaic in that Chamberlain, while knowing of Germany’s many violations of Versailles also had other fish on the griddle in Europe at the time including having to deal with the clear and unmistakable designs of the Soviet Union on the Baltic states as well as his having to deal with the fact of French weakness and defeatism.

Chamberlain’s myopia lay in his belief - exploited by Hitler to the fullest - that Germany as a buffer against Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe was an absolute necessity. The French were weak, divided, and willing to avoid war at all costs. Sacrificing the Czechs was unconscionably cynical but, by Chamberlain’s lights, necessary. The later excuse that Munich gave England time to rearm doesn’t wash as much as his cold, calculations of power politics, realizing that without the Czech betrayal, Chamberlain would have to go to war and destroy the only military that could stop Soviet expansion which was wrongly seen as the true threat to the continent at that time.

The fact that there was almost universal support for this policy in Great Britain sort of gives the lie to Olberman’s contention that Chamberlain’s government “…[D]ismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s — questioning their intellect and their morality.” There simply were no critics outside of Churchill and a few cronies. There was no political opposition to speak of in Parliament. Churchill, for all intents and purposes, was alone. First Baldwin and then Chamberlain’s undermining of Churchill had as much to do with their personal dislike for him and his overweening ambitions as it did with any concern they had that the future Prime Minister’s critique would damage them politically.

But the guts of Olberman’s criticism is very basic; that dissent does not equal disloyalty. The fact that Rumsefeld never mentions the word “disloyal” or “patriotism” explodes Olberman’s basic premise. If being “confused” is the same as being “disloyal” 95% of the Congress could be placed in that category.

What makes Olberman’s rant even more problematic is his belief that any critique by the left of the Administration must not be answered at all. The very act of the Administration defending itself is a way to stifle dissent and put liberty in jeopardy. So despite being called a liar, a fascist, Hitler, a dictator, and any number of other charges made by liberals, the very act of answering their inanities proves their point.

Convenient, no?

And what happens when critics like Olberman put on their tin foil hats and go on national TV to spout nonsense like this:

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

That’s right. Olberman is saying that the President and Vice President of the United States may have personally profited from the war in Iraq. In other words, the President of the United States went to war to personally enrich himself.

Note that he doesn’t say that, but only hints at it. Indeed, as with all the loony left conspiracy theories, they practice a technique used by salesmen to lead the customer to the “right” conclusion. Instead of saying “We went to war because Bush/Cheney are greedy, heartless bastards who wanted to personally get rich off the profits of Haliburton” they instead add a caveat (”inadvertently”) and leave the conclusion (Bush + War + Personal fortune) for the listener to finish. This has the virtue of making them sound almost reasonable - except when you take their logic to its obvious conclusion.

Finally, Olberman uses an Edward R. Murrow quote to ostensibly prove his point about dissent. What he inadvertently ends up doing is proving that he is a certified idiot:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Perhaps Olberman should practice what he preaches:

“Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically” (from the war)…

There is not one iota of proof that Bush has personally profited from the war. But according to Murrow (Keith’s hero), we must remember that “accusation is not proof.” So why the accusation?

One must conclude that Olberman is either a blundering idiot or, like most lefties, so blinded by speaking truth to power that he simply can’t make the connection between Murrow’s words and his own off base, unproven, ridiculous charges.

I suppose we better get used to this idea that criticizing liberals for their stupidity on Iraq or the War on Terror is proof that we are slipping into a dictatorship. Of course, the criticism will continue which means that someday, liberals are going to have to declare that either they were wrong or that we actually live in full blown banana republic style dictatorship. Since the chances of liberals ever admitting they were wrong are about as good as bringing the dinosaurs back to life and the idea that we will ever slip into a dictatorship under Bush almost as far fetched, we can expect this meme, like so many others advanced by the left over the years, will fall by the wayside once they discover another avenue of attack.

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.

Russell Shaw has made a lot of people angry with this post at HuffPo about his desire for another 9/11, which he believes would show the American people that George Bush can’t protect them and thus cause a Democratic stampede at the polls in November that would bring the left to power.

First of all, I should amend the above statement slightly to reflect the fact that Shaw has made a lot of conservatives angry. The netnuts either agree with him or have yet to catch up to the blogswarm. Their reaction should be interesting. My guess is they will condemn his premise while agreeing with his version of America under Democratic rule.

And that is where Shaw’s real stupidity shows itself. I can’t believe he is actually serious about the premise of this article:

What if another terror attack just before this fall’s elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?

I start from the premise that there is already a substantial portion of the electorate that tends to vote GOP because they feel that Bush has “kept us safe,” and that the Republicans do a better job combating terrorism.

If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this “Bush has kept us safe” thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under.

If 5% of the “he’s kept us safe” revise their thinking enough to vote Democrat, well, then, the Dems could recapture the House and the Senate…”

We all know that being provocative in the blogosphere is the quickest way to fame. Shaw used so many qualifiers and caveats in his post fantasizing about rivers of blood flowing in American streets that the poor dear nearly tied himself into intellectual and moral knots. It proves that rather than really wishing for an attack, he wanted the widest possible audience for his vision of mass death leading to an electoral landslide. Shaw simply posits this outrageous premise to highlight what America would look like with the Democrats in charge.

In Shaw’s Utopia, the thousands of deaths in another 9/11 attack would be offset by many times that number “saved” by Democratic policies. In short, Shaw is intimating the jaw dropping idiocy that Republican policies kill people already and that if it takes a terrorist attack that kills thousands more in order to remove the Republican blight, so be it.

One might wonder about the gentleman’s sanity except this is standard fare for the left when it comes to critiquing conservative governance. It isn’t enough that Republican policies might be wrong, or misguided but rather they are unhealthy and are formulated with the idea of deliberately killing people.

Here’s an example of Shaw’s Utopia righting all wrongs with liberals riding to the rescue on a white horse:

Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;

It should be noted that getting rid of Roe V Wade would not end abortion in the United States. States would be free to pass their own laws regarding the right of a women to an abortion. This, of course, is how the issue of abortion should have been settled in the first place - through the democratic expression of voters not the diktats of a judge. In fact, prior to Roe, most states had relaxed their abortion laws and were moving toward the kind of legalization favored by the majority of Americans - abortions permitted in the first trimester with exceptions for the life and health of the mother and in cases of rape or incest.

The problem for abortion advocates is that instead of only having to deal with one entity - the US Supreme Court - to get their way, now they would have to deal with 50 state legislatures and all that messy democracy stuff. This is hugely expensive not to mention fraught with the danger that people might not agree with you and pass an abortion statute that reflects their own thinking on the matter rather than the thinking of their betters.

The world with the Democrats in charge gets even better:

Be in a position to elevate the party’s chances for a regime change in 2008. A regime change that would:

Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;

Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;

More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely cut highway deaths;

Enact meaningful gun control legislation that would reduce crime and cut fatalities by thousands a year;

Fund stem cell research that could result in cures saving millions of lives;

Boost the minimum wage, helping to cut down on poverty which helps spawn violent crime and the deaths that spring from those acts;

Be less inclined to launch foolish wars, absence of which would save thousands of soldiers’ lives- and quite likely moderate the likelihood of further terror acts.

Would universal health care really save “hundreds of thousands” of American lives? I guess one of the advantages of blogging at Huffpo is that you can throw out any old sh*t about any subject and not have to prove it to anyone.

How about funding stem cell research that would save “millions of lives?” Doesn’t Mr. Shaw know that adult stem cell research is more than adequately funded and that the debate over whether embryonic stem cells would cure anybody of anything is hardly conclusive either way? Again, no need to prove anything. He’s blogging at HuffPo.

Would gun control save thousands of people a year? Cities with the strictest gun control seem to have the highest rates of homicide. But Shaw doesn’t have to prove anything. He’s blogging at HuffPo.

It appears that Mr. Shaw doesn’t have to prove either his critique of conservative governance or that his prescriptions would actually address any shortcomings. After all, he’s blogging at HuffPo.

Be that as it may, this fake controversy generated by Shaw is extremely helpful in exposing the left’s curious detachment from reality regarding the War on Terror. I guess as long as it happens to someone else, as long as someone else is incinerated or drops out of the sky in an airplane that has been blow to kingdom come, the war is only a domestic political battleground and not a life and death struggle with fanatical jihadists.