Right Wing Nut House

When I first read about Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams saying that she “would love to kill George Bush” I wasn’t particularly shocked. It’s not like we haven’t heard similar sentiments expressed everyday on liberal websites. In books, plays, and probably their wet dreams, liberals write and fantasize about bathing in the blood of George W. Bush, celebrating as the life oozes out of the President of the United States, dancing on his mangled corpse and the corpses of their political enemies.

I’d say that they were engaging in “eliminationist” fantasies but as I’ve pointed out before, there’s no such word.

But what made the statement shocking was the reaction of her audience - made up of children:

“I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence’, because I don’t believe that I am non-violent,” said Ms Williams, 64.

“Right now, I would love to kill George Bush.” Her young audience at the Brisbane City Hall clapped and cheered.

There’s something profoundly disturbing seeing children cheering on the murder of another human being, even if he is President of the United States and even if the left has made it perfectly acceptable to contemplate murdering him. It reminds me of stories that circulated in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. According to William Manchester’s searing chronicle of the assassination Death of a President, there were several instances in Dallas schools where, upon hearing that the President was shot, children spontaneously applauded.

The reason can be found in the Warren Report. When the Commission was discussing how much blame to place on the city of Dallas itself for the assassination, there were several members who believed they couldn’t be too harsh in their criticism. In the end, the Report downplayed the white hot atmosphere of hate and loathing against Kennedy that had been ginned up by Ted Dealy, owner of the Dallas News as well as the local John Birch Society that was made up of several prominent Dallas civic leaders. In fact, on the day of the assassination, Dealy’s paper ran a full page ad with a picture of Kennedy, front and side view as if looking at a mugshot, with the banner “Wanted For Treason” in bold, black letters across the top.

The Commission found that there were dozens of instances of people in Dallas talking openly of assassinating Kennedy when he came to town or wishing that someone would. Texas Governor John Connally had heard the talk as well and begged the President not to go to Dallas. But some of the President’s aides saw Connally’s warnings as self serving. The reason for the Texas trip was to repair the schism in the Democratic party between Connally’s boys and the liberal wing of the Texas Democratic party headed up by Congressman Henry Gonzalez. Connally’s warnings were seen as an effort to stop the President from coming to Texas and foiling the Governor’s plans to kick the liberals into the corner, freezing them out of party leadership positions and influence.

But Kennedy Derangement Syndrome was pretty much confined to Dallas and a few other cities in the south. What is clear from the reaction to Mrs. Williams ranting in Australia is that its successor, Bush hatred, has gone global. We shouldn’t be surprised by this given the planet-wide reach of mass media, the internet, satellite TV, and pop music (especially Hip-Hop) whose graphic images and language routinely threatens violence against the President and authority figures in general.

It makes one wonder - how many similar demonstrations would there be by children the world over? In the United States?

A proud day for the left. And God help liberals if something happens to our President before his term in office ends.

UPDATE

Goldstein has another example of superior, reasoned thought from the left. This post from Booman Tribune is a sterling example (one that we conservatives should take to heart) about how to engage in debate with your ideological foes:

Forgive me for this but Alan Dershowitz’s children should be hit by a 5000 lb. bomb made by an American military-industrial corporation, sold to Israel, and misfired into his home. Then he can talk to me. I will offer my sincere condolences. Then we will get drunk and talk about relative culpability. I’m sorry Alan. You’re scum. Among the people in history that would gladly bitch-slap you are Jesus, Buddha, Zoroaster, Socrates, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Nelson Mendala, Bishop Tutu, Pope John Paul II, and me. We’d all like to smack you for being a prick.

Actually, as Jeff points out, this threatening violence against children is getting to be something of a habit with the left recently, Perhaps like Magua in the Last of the Mohicans (nice turn by Wes Studi, btw) he “wishes to wipe his seed from the face of the earth.” More likely, he’s just a moronic twit who enjoys playing with himself thinking about naked dead children.

AND WHERE IS GLENN GREENWALD? WHY HASN’T GLENN GREENWALD CONDEMNED THIS OUTRAGEOUS RHETORIC?

Attention Hugh Hewitt Readers: The post Hugh was trying to link is here.

Let’s play a word game. We’ll call it “Word Nonsensing.” The object of the game is to make up words out of thin air and guess which ones would have the best chance of gaining wide acceptance and usage on the left.

Vagindisestablishmentarian. Noun. An anti-feminist. Or a conservative wanker.

Republifantakluxer. Noun. Someone who thinks all Republicans are racists. Or Dave Neiwert. Or, a conservative wanker.

Mascupenamourocon. Noun. Someone who is anti-gay rights. Or, a male blogger who thinks he’s a conservative. Or a conservative wanker.

Elminationist. Adjective. Describing rhetoric used by a conservative that a liberal disagrees with. Or, (n)someone in the act of peeing. Or, a conservative wanker.

Each of those words above are made up out of whole cloth. There is no English language dictionary on the planet that contains any of them. And yet, when trying to stifle debate about many of their cockamamie ideas (or simply to demonize the opposition) the left routinely invents words like “eliminationist.” This kind of disrespect toward language is par for the course as the lexicon of the New Left has been used as an effective public weapon against the right for nearly 50 years.

Certainly the English language is constantly in flux and words fall in and out of usage. Also, about 20,000 new words come into usage in any given year. But it isn’t so much the fact that the word is created but rather the reason it is used and the context in which it is applied.

This post is a perfect example. To call a liberal or liberal ideas “evil” does not in the slightest imply that the purveyor of the idea should be “eliminated.” And yet, such a construct is used routinely on the left in order to stifle debate on an issue that they do not wish to discuss or that they want to turn the tables on their conservative interlocutor in such a way as to delegitimize their critique.

Accusing a liberal of “treason” or of being a “traitor” may be hyperbole but it is not hate speech. I find it fascinating that liberals would be so touchy about being tarred with these epithets seeing that they find they words “patriotism” and “patriot” so problematic, “the last refuge of scoundrels” being a common add-on whenever the terms are used.

In short, the use of this made up word has become a convenient way for the left to ascribe almost criminal behavior to the right. It even extends to the use of humor and satire. The most recent kerfluffle involves Glenn Greenwald’s spectacularly ignorant take on “violence inciting” rhetoric used by the right.

It is perhaps de rigeur of moronic nincompoops like Glenn Greenwald that a kind of grim humorlessness permeates their writing. Portraying conservatives as homicidal racists or thuggish homophobes is serious, exhausting work. No time for laughter. No room for humor. The very concepts are alien, as if cracking a smile will cause an immediate and irreversible case of the jollies. Joking about “hanging journalists” or judges, or liberals for that matter is cause for an outpouring of the most hysterical, over the top, exaggerated, laughably overwrought spleen venting screeds imaginable. Does he really believe that conservative bloggers are serious about hanging another human being? Or that Ann Coulter (talk about over the top) is actually calling for judges to be executed? Or that any conservative polemicist, in the process of skewering liberals for one sort of idiocy or another, actually wishes physical harm to befall their target?

Perhaps when liberals talk about “feces flinging monkeys” and conservatives in the same breath we should take them to task for forcing animals to behave badly and call the ASPCA on them. Better yet, maybe the next time Mr. Hysterical uses the word “eliminationist” when talking about some right wing blogger who makes a joke about liberals, conservatives should empty their bladders on Greenwald’s book. After all, it’s not enough to use “eliminationist” rhetoric. We should practice being bladder eliminationists in real life. Besides, by peeing on his book, it will alleviate the stench of arrogant, self righteous, miasmic absolutism that wafts from its pages like a malodorous cheese.

I’m with Dan Riehl. I’ve had it with this guy. The bile he spews toward the right is beyond the normal mud wrestling and eye-gouging of political warfare. It has a special kind of frantic paranoia to it, as if he’s hiding under the bed and saving the republic from conservative perfidy at the same time. Delusional, a fantasist, and as Patterico has pointed out, an out and out liar, I am sick to death of him.

Begone and be good, Glenn. And if I were you and saw someone wearing a “Karl Rove Rocks!” T-shirt walking toward me carrying a rope, I’d shoot first and ask questions later.

This will necessarily be one of the most difficult posts I will ever write. Not because of the subject matter, mind you. It’s the way I type.

You see, in order to maintain the family-friendly nature of this site (can’t you see all those impressionable little 10 year olds clicking over to the House in order to discover the latest in the Glenn Greenwald soap opera? Or perhaps to pick up the latest inventive invective I spew toward the left?), I made it a hard and fast rule that I not spell out 3 of the more colorful metaphors in the English language.

You know which ones they are. I know which ones they are. I know you know which ones they are just like you know that I know which ones they are which means I don’t have to repeat them. The fact that my site is on the sh*t list in most libraries across the country already due to its “racist, sexist, homophobic” (did you forget anti-illegal immigrant?) slant, just makes my care to not use vulgarity on the site all the more puzzling. Chalk it up to a residual belief in Catholicism that posits the notion that my mother is reading what I write up in heaven. A pleasant thought, that. On the other hand, she was a Roosevelt liberal so I’m sure she clucks her tongue at some of the things that end up on this website.

Since I have voluntarily rejected spelling out completely the word “sh*t” and substituting the ubiquitous star, I might as well reveal that I am not a very good typist. Don’t ask me why but I only use three fingers on my left hand and one on my right. Weird, huh? Of course, that means that getting my fingers up to that sh*tty star on the keyboard can get to be a real f**king nuisance, ya know what I mean? I mean, sometimes I feel like a real paste eater when typing.

Maybe I should get some pointers from Goldstein on that. Or maybe TBogg could be helpful in this respect; he was one of the first to refer to Goldstein as a paste eater. Obviously, he knows all about paste eating - not much else - but paste eating seems to fall within the scope of his knowledge.

At any rate, what brought this unfortunate subject up is that absolute sh*tstorm that has been unleashed all because the President of the United States used the word “sh*t” at the G-8 banquet last night. And every lefty blogger in Christendom (if they believed in that sort of thing) is writing about it, linking each other in a frenzy of chattiness and gossip mongering reminiscent of 12 year old girls at a slumber party. Since liberals usually behave like 12 year old drama queens anyway, I’m sure they’re comfortable as hell feeling themselves up on the subject.

I know, I know…one would think that considering the mouth on some former occupants of the White House who will go unrecognized that the left wouldn’t be casting stones so close to glass houses. He-with-the-constantly-unflaccid-penis swore like a sailor as did his wife: She-who-throws-ashtrays-like-frisbees. But to be fair, the drama queens are also chattering about other things the President said.

As he chats with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bush expresses amazement that it will take Putin and an unidentified leader just as long to fly home to Moscow as it will take him to fly back to Washington. Putin’s reply could not be heard.

“You eight hours? Me too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country. Takes him eight hours to fly home. Not Coke, diet Coke. … Russia’s big and so is China. Yo Blair, what’re you doing? Are you leaving,” Bush said.

I have a challenge for you liberals out there. Bug your neighbor and tape his conversations for a couple of days. This has two advantages. First, you’ll be doing us all a favor (including the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, the DIA, DHS, and probably a couple of super-duper secret agencies we know nothing about but that you’re paranoid of anyway) by ascertaining whether or not your next door neighbor is a terrorist. But more importantly, you’ll discover what human beings talk about during their waking hours.

The Nobel Prize winning playwright (and anti-American dolt) Harold Pinter used to go to the park near his flat in London, sit on a bench, and listen to people talk. What he found was absolutely startling. In their unguarded moments, even people who’ve known each other for 50 years talk about nothing at all. Pinter’s plays are full of disjointed, disconnected dialogue that works because everyone recognizes it for what it truly is; the grunts and sighs, the vocalizations of human beings talking not to communicate but to assure each other that they mean each other no harm. In short, people talk like Bush do in order to put people at ease in a social situation. (I’d love to see Dr. Sanity delve into this).

Those fellows at the summit don’t know each other all that well - not in the biblical sense (although watching creepy Putin kiss that kid on the stomach last week chilled my bones) and certainly not in the way that long time friends relate to each other. Making polite small talk as Bush was doing was a fascinating example of Pinterian dialogue. His comments about Russia’s size, the time it takes to fly home, and especially his recognition that Blair was leaving - all of this could have been lifted from a Pinter play. It’s how everyone talks. And the fact that it doesn’t sound “Presidential” or “intelligent” shouldn’t surprise us.

It is strange and fascinating to catch a President in the act of being human. But of course, there was also the President expressing what was clearly frustration at the United Nations for not getting on Syria’s tail and getting Hizballah to stop shooting and face facts:

Bush expressed his frustration with the United Nations and his disgust with the militant Islamic group and its backers in Syria as he talked to British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the closing lunch at the Group of Eight summit.

“See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this sh*t and it’s over,” Bush told Blair as he chewed on a buttered roll.

Ezra Klein not only puts the entire incident in perspective, but recognizes how low “political reporting” has fallen:

That’s a big deal: Bush believes it within the Syrian government’s power to calm the conflict. Theoretically, that should have major implications for American diplomacy and, possibly, policy. So what’s CNN’s headline? “Open mic catches Bush expletive on Mideast”! The story is not that his substantive views on the issue have been uncovered, but that the president curses. Indeed, the article even speculates on how such a stunner slipped out, arguing that “the escalating crisis in the Middle East prompted him to use an expletive in a conversation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.”

This is your press corps. The President has a potty mouth is a more pressing story than the President believe sufficient pressure on the sovereign nation of Syria could be the key to ending an intensely volatile war in the Middle East. What a proud day for my profession.

Don’t get out the self-flagellating whip quite yet. Not when every top lefty blog is all atwitter over the President’s potty mouth. Saying sh*t out loud in a public place may have lost almost all of its shock value since the left has degraded language and meaning. But all of that is forgotten when Bush uses the term. All of a sudden, the word is indicative of the President’s (please choose only one) 1) incoherence, 2) simple mindedness, 3) confusion, 4) lack of vocabulary, or 5) stupidity. I suppose when an intellectual like TBogg or Jane Hamsher uses the word, it’s fraught with subtext and meaning. But when our Texas President uses it, it just shows what a sh*tkicking cracker he truly is.

I am glad I am finished writing now. Reaching for that star was getting to be a pain in the ass. Almost as hard as typing the words “intelligent” and “liberal” when they’re right next to each other.

Thankfully, I’ve had no occasion that I can recall offhand where my fingers were called upon to make that kind of effort.

This will be something of a confessional post in that I have seen the error of my ways and wish to make amends.

For all the times I referred to liberals as “loons,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.

For all the times I have called liberals “lickspittles,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.

For all the times I have referred to the left as “a gaggle of idiotic, self-important nitwits,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.

I could go on and on, of course, But like a sex addict who has forgotten the names of most of their scores, the herculean effort required to recall all the slights, the insults, the downright nasty things I’ve said about liberals over the years would tax the memory of an elephant and the patience of a conservative trying to explain capitalism to a lefty.

OOOPS! There I go again. I’m sorry, that one kind of slipped out. I wonder if there’s something I can take to help with the withdrawal symptoms…

If only I had realized how thin skinned my leftist brothers and sisters truly were, I would never have tried to marginalize them politically by coming up with ever more hurtful and inventive invective to describe their cockamamie ideas or unpalatable personalities in such a way as to cause the kind of psychic pain evinced in this post from Hume’s Ghost at Unclaimed Territory.

This is life altering stuff. Maybe I’ll run away in shame and join a Zoroastrian monastery. Maybe I’ll join the Peace Corps. Or the Foreign Legion.

I’ll have to stop laughing first:

Not too long ago a friend of mine told me she was trying to become more politically informed. To do so, she continued, she had begun reading Ann Coulter’s How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must). Think about that for a moment. This was an individual who did not know much about politics, was a non-ideological independent and the first person she could think of to learn more about politics from was a hate-mongering hack. This should have never happened, because Coulter should have been exposed for the vile, bigoted, intellectually bankrupt propagandist that she is by journalists a long time ago. In this regard, my friend was failed by a mainstream media which is more interested in using Coulter as a figure to drive up ratings than they are in doing their jobs of promoting a responsible national discourse.

First of all, I’m calling out the poster as a prevaricator. If there is anyone in America so stupid, so naive as to think that they can become “more politically informed” by reading Ann Coulter, I will eat my size 11B Floresheim Wingtips. How about picking up a frickin’ newspaper? Or a magazine?

No, sorry - I don’t buy it. That “friend” is a figment of the poster’s imagination. And only an idiot liberal would believe that anyone with half a brain would fall for such a transparent literary device.

Yes Coulter is vile. Bigoted? Perhaps. Intellectually bankrupt? Hardly. Coulter may be many things but even her enemies concede she has a first class mind. Certainly she’s smarter than the bozo who wrote this post in that Coulter would never underestimate the intelligence of her readers the way this fellow has by simply making stuff up.

But why invent someone so stupid? Why someone who has the brains of a marmoset and the political awareness of my pet cat Aramis?

SO THAT THE LIBERAL CAN RIDE TO THE RESCUE AND SAVE HER!

This is why I respond to Coulter and her apologists like Malkin, because I don’t want their hate corrupting people like my friend. In the comments of Glenn’s post, I linked to this entry I had previously written about why eliminationist rhetoric is not a joke as an explanation of why I write about extremists. You’ll notice that it contains a link to a post that Alonzo Fyfe wrote after his wife was sent an e-mail from a co-worker which fantasized about the deaths of liberals. The co-worker thought it “too good not to pass along.”

We must answer Coulter and her ilk, because unanswered their hateful rhetoric creeps into society, meant to divide us from our friends, family, and fellow Americans. The reason these pundits are incapable of disagreeing with someone without first labeling an opponent as liberal, Democrat, socialist, far left, moonbat, communist etc. (and the same can go for those who do the reverse) is because their tribal binary logic requires them to identify an outgroup, a “them” to be excluded, or worse, eliminated.

Wait a minute….hold the phone. My tribal binary logic circuits are corrupted. I wonder if Rush Limbaugh has a spare?

I should point out that there is nothing hateful in calling someone a liberal, or a moonbat, or a socialist, or even a Democrat. And while “eliminationist” rhetoric is vile and disgusting, only certain types of polemicists use it - those without the intellectual gifts to form complete sentences or close their mouths when breathing. As for the vile “jokes” coming from the likes of Coulter, Savage, Randi Rhodes, and half the posters at the Democratic Underground, poor taste in humor is not a danger to the republic. I would suggest the poster grow up a little and recognize that jokes about assassinating the President or Supreme Court judges are impolitic and ignorant - not yet crimes in America, though give liberals 20 years and they very well could be.

Few people on the web are more shallow in their thinking than Glenn Greenwald, quoted admirably here along with “The Propaganda Critic” who instructs us What It All Means:

This is why Glenn discovered that he was a “leftist” and/or a “liberal” for his opposition to the Bush administration. Sarcastically explaining this tactic, Glenn wrote

[T]hey label the argument and the person making it “leftist” and “liberal” and - presto! - no more need to address the arguments or consider its substance because it’s all been shooed away with one fell swoop of name-calling cliches.

In a post commenting on this I noted that the name-calling tactic is actually a common propaganda technique. The Propaganda Critic website describes name-calling thusly:

The name-calling technique links a person, or idea, to a negative symbol. The propagandist who uses this technique hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the negative symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence.

Sorta like calling me a “racist” or a “fascist” because I disagree with you. But liberals are above that sort of thing, right? I mean, it’s not like calling me a racist in order to delegitimze any countervailing arguments made in opposition to the dominant leftist worldview is the same thing. Coming from someone who obviously speaks with superior moral authority on the subject of race having felt the black man’s pain and sympathized with the oppressed, any arguments that run counter to the prevailing liberal position on race can automatically be tossed into the intellectual dustbin.

What. A. Crock.

And then, to prove how really clueless the author of this shallow piece of drivel truly is, I present Exhibit 15:

The rhetoric of these media transmitters, both by repackaging extremist views for mainstream consumption and by engaging in the ritual defamation of those with whom they disagree, serve to shift mainstream political discourse towards the extreme. I’m passing over this subject briefly but will direct your attention to Dave Neiwert’s seminal essay Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism: An exegesis (from which the transmitters link is taken) which exhaustively explains why and how American values are being transformed and corrupted by the right-wing extremism that the likes of Coulter and Malkin help to diffuse into every day discussion.

That’s right. No, you did not read it wrong. The author of a post skewering conservatives for name calling has approvingly linked to a post that refers to conservatives as fascists.

I am at a loss for words in trying to describe that kind of ignorance. It is beyond belief, beyond rationality. What’s worse, is that the post he links to by Dave Neiwert contains the jaw dropping notion that modern conservative issues have been stolen (or “transmitted”) from neo-Nazis and the Kluxers.

I took the time to debunk Neiwert’s idiocy here. I’ll give you the money grafs:

It is monstrous calumny to accuse conservatives thusly. Especially dressing his screed up, as Mr. Neiwert does in this piece, as some kind of psychological analysis of the motivations and deeply held beliefs of conservative bloggers. At bottom, the way conservatives are attacked in this piece says more about the arrogant, smug, self-righteous, self congratulatory left than it does about the people it seeks to deliberately defame.

What are we really discussing here? Nothing less than the ability to debate public policy issues without one side having recourse to use blood libel terms like “racist” in order to delegitimatize the thoughts, words, and deeds of one’s opponent. This is the reason “race” as a matter of public policy cannot be discussed rationally. The left starts with the premise that any deviation from its base assumptions on race is non-negotiable – an advantage they see as set in stone as the Ten Commandments. Hence, one cannot discuss reforming affirmative action because to do so is, by definition, racist.

Finally, not content with throwing a tantrum about conservative name calling (and then identifying conservatives as fascists) only one thing remains to be done in order to completely legitimize his argument; he must make liberals victims:

Coulter talks about “liberals” the way racists talk about blacks, the way the Nazis talked about Jews. Her “jokes” are predicated on the notion that the elimination of a set of humans are funny, her “jokes” are funny the way anti-Semitic “jokes” like this were funny, which is to say, they are not not funny. They are disgusting and deadly serious.

In the clip of her appearance on the Tonight Show, Coulter mentioned that she let her “smartest liberal friend” whom she told would be “smarter than any liberal I’m going to be on tv with” read her book. Could her bigotry be any plainer? Substitute in any other group that’s been hated against in history and see how that sentence sounds.

Where does one begin to deconstruct this bilge? Why would we want to substitute the word “liberal” for the word “Jew” or “black” or any other racial or religious group ? How can anyone be so incredibly arrogant and self-righteous to think that mocking someone for their political beliefs are in any way, shape, or form similar to making fun of one’s race?

This is identity politics run wild. It should now be out of bounds to criticize or make fun of a liberal because he’s a…a…LIBERAL!

I’m convinced that the author of this piece is not serious, that all this highfalutin language and flowery rhetoric is just an exercise in comedy writing. May I suggest that if the poster wants to audition for the Stephen Colbert show that he pick another subject, something more illustrative of his talent and peculiar intellectual gifts.

I hear they have an opening at Hallmark Cards.

UPDATE: 6/22

To all those who have taken me to task in the comments (and especially Mr. Ghost who authored the the original piece) you have a point of sorts when you criticize me for engaging in the very thing I am criticizing in the author’s piece.

The point of my piece was not to point out that “liberals do it too” - and if you could put yourself in my shoes for a few hours and have to read the vile, disgusting, ignorant claptrap I get in comments and emails you’d know that, in fact, they do it in spades. What disgusted me about Mr. Ghost’s piece was his puerile attempt to put a psychological gloss on his critique. That, and the usual liberal whining about mean, nasty Republicans spreading hate when all the left wants to do is spread love and understanding.

BULLSH*T!

Politics is a game for grown ups. To equate making a joke about the intellect of liberals (people laughed at that statement on the tonight show - it was a joke Mr. Ghost) with the stereotyping of blacks and Jews is outrageous demagoguery and an extraordinarily cynical attempt to piggyback the faux, hand wringing, whining left on the victimhood of the truly oppressed. It is wrong. It is identity politics at its worst. Not content with calling people Nazis, now people like Mr. Ghost wish to enable the left to do it and then be able to cry “Victim” if someone dares respond.

It won’t wash. And even though most conservative bloggers don’t bother with in-depth fisking of people like Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Bilmon, Neiwert, and the cadre of liberals who regularly accuse conservatives of being hateful, seeing it as an exercise in futility, I firmly believe that a record must be made that attempts to counter their illogic, misrepresentations, and even out right lies. At the very least, it lets them know that someone besides their fawning, drooling, mouth breathing fans are watching.

UPDATE II: BOZO SPEAKS

Dave Neiwert has joined the fray with a typical post that misrepresents everything I say while claiming that he doesn’t think conservatives are fascists - they just walk, talk, think, breathe, eat, and fornicate like them:

Moreover, as I went on later to explore in depth, mainstream conservatism is not fascist in the classic sense; what it has done, instead, is gradually adopt a series of appeals and memes that are classically fascist, but overall it lacks certain major traits, especially the violent thuggishness that really is the beating heart of fascism.

Note, also, that while Moran is grossly mischaracterizing what I wrote, he neglects to provide his readers any link to the work in question so that they may judge for themselves the accuracy of his charge. This kind of brain-dead dishonesty is something I’ve encountered before with right-wing bloggers, and again lays waste to the rosy-lensed notion that the blogosphere is “self-correcting.”

Did I mischaracterize what he wrote here?

What was most disturbing was, even in 2000, the way the mainstream conservative agenda was beginning to resemble the politics of longtime racists like David Duke and Richard Butler, the Aryan Nations leader: bashing welfare recipients, attacking affirmative action, complaining about “reverse discrimination,” calling for the elimination of immigrants. Since then, this trend has only accelerated, to the point that old-fashioned haters like Duke and the National Alliance are finding their ranks thinned by followers who just become Republicans.

I see the error of my ways. I’m just not nuanced enough of an intellect to detect the subtle differences in logic on display here. Republicans believe what David Duke believes but hey! They’re not racists. Even if Duke defectors are now mainstream Republicans, I’m still not calling Republicans racists, says Davey.

What a joke.

And, of course, I linked to the post that quote came from at the very top of my piece debunking his childish, amatuerish, and vapid attempts at psychoanalyzing conservative motivations. The fact that Davey and Mr. Ghost both are oblivious to their stupidity only makes their earnestness and seriousness all the more laughable.

For all of us who are breathlessly awaiting the photo-op of the Century - Karl Rove emerging from police headquarters following his arrest for Crimes Against Plame - Jason Leopold is once again tickling our curiosity and flitting around like the gadfly reporter that he is, looking over the prosecutors shoulder to tell us exactly when The Evil One will be brought low:

For the past few days, we have endured non-stop attacks on our credibility, and we have fought hard to defend our reputation. In addition, we have worked around the clock to provide additional information to our readership. People want to know more about this, and our job is to keep them informed. We take that responsibility seriously.

I love it when the self-important use the royal “we” when talking about themselves. And of course, it makes all the more dramatic when we are informed that “we have endured non stop attacks (sigh) on our credibility.”

I can’t for the life of me think of one reason why no one should believe Jason Leopold…Well, okay. I can’t think of any more than one reason why anyone should not believe Ja…Um…Anyone can make a couple of mistakes which means that doesn’t give us sufficient reason not to believe Jason Leop…

Let’s just say that’s all water under the bridge and Jason has promised us, like Bullwinkle promising Rocky about pulling the rabbit out of the hat, that “this time for sure! Presto!”

We can now report, however, that we have additional, independent sources that refute those denials by Corallo and Luskin. While we had only our own sources to work with in the beginning, additional sources have now come forward and offered corroboration to us.

We have been contacted by at least three reporters from mainstream media - network level organizations - who shared with us off-the-record confirmation and moral support. When we asked why they were not going public with this information, in each case they expressed frustration with superiors who would not allow it.

Oooh those meanie network level MSM editors. If only they had the courage, the indomitable spirit and will of our Jason to go ahead and publish unconfirmed rumors all in order to report THE TRUTH…without fear or apology for being wrong.

So why leave us in suspense, Jason? Tell us, oh prescient one, when can the celebrations commence?

We reported that Patrick Fitzgerald had, “instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 business hours to get his affairs in order….” That does not mean that at the end of that 24-hour period, Fitzgerald is obliged to hold a press conference and make an announcement. It just means that he has given Rove a 24-hour formal notification. Fitzgerald is not obliged to make an announcement at any point; he does so at his own discretion, and not if it compromises his case. So we’re all stuck waiting here. Grab some coffee.

Now we understand. For a minute there, you had us all going. It’s our fault that we misinterpreted “24 hours” to mean “24 hours.”

So these are “doggie hours?” Or maybe donkey hours since we are keeping time by a Democratic clock.

Whenever it happens (and I hate to inform my partisan friends but Fitzy doesn’t investigate for three years and only indict little Scooter - he needs a much larger scalp to place on his lodgepole), you can be sure that our Jason will be strutting like a peacock and crowing like a cock about how accurate he was in his reporting…even if everyone on the planet knows full well what a sorry excuse for a “reporter” he truly is.

UPDATE

Jeralyn Merritt continues to be one of the only lefty bloggers who seems keen on getting to the bottom of Leopold’s claims.

Ms. Merritt has a detailed post mixing intelligent speculation with some hard headed questions for Mr. Leopold. Read it all.

As we all know, bloggers are a pretty diverse lot. There are mommy and daddy bloggers. There are teen-age girl bloggers who post on their little MySpace sites, sharing information about tampons, boys, and whatevah. There are people who blog about food, about books, about sex, about no sex, about great sex, and sex and sex…

You can tell where my mind is this morning…

Then there are the political bloggers. One would think that these would fall into three basic categories; liberal, conservative, and moderate. Not so. There is one other category of political blogger, usually liberal but conservatives are not without representation in this taxonomic classification; the Blowhards.

The Blowhard blogger is identifiable usually after reading the first two or three sentences of any post. That’s how long it takes to discover that the writer is an idiot. Don’t believe me? Read the first two sentences in any Debbie Schlussel post and I guarantee that you’ll either be laughing at the depth and breadth of her ignorance or weeping in disgust at the vileness of her spiteful rants.

A similar reaction can be gleaned from reading the liberal blogger TBogg. The writer is one of those lefties who finds it amusing to exaggerate the beliefs of his political opponents to the point that his rants move beyond the broadly satirical and come to rest in the realm of outright lying. Being a Blowhard, he realizes perfectly well that his lies anger his opponents which is why so few of us on the right even make an attempt to answer him. Trying to knock down a hundred strawmen, plus deal with his ignorance, and on top of that attempt to point out inconsistencies in his logic all add up to what usually would be a waste of precious time - time better spent picking the lint out of my navel or perhaps clipping my toenails. Either activity is more uplifting than paying much attention to this Blowhard of a blogger.

After reading this, however, I felt that someone should say something about this misanthrope’s assault on reason and a well-ordered mind.

For instance, after gleefully pointing out that “America stayed away in droves” from United 93 over the weekend, the Blowhard links to a site detailing the estimated box office totals for the weekend films. He first fails to point out that it finished a strong second to two films with huge advertising budgets. And then he failed to include the most important information contained in the linked article:

Though unique in its proximity to the real-life tragedy it depicts, the “too soon” refrain did not ground United 93. Outside of the Sept. 11 hook, the marketing was not compelling, with its flashes of small talk and shaky camera shots, nor did the picture appear that different from the TV recreations. People go to the movies to be entertained, which includes thoughts and emotions, not just laughs and thrills, but United 93 appealed more to a sense of duty or sacrifice rather than the inspirational heroism of the passengers.

Not many more, though, chose the weekend’s ostensibly fun option, RV. It was the top-grossing picture, but it took a massive 3,639 theaters to get to its estimated $16.4 million start. Distributor Sony reported that families accounted for 56 percent of the audience.

Celebrating ones ignorance about the movie industry should come as no surprise since Blowhards are usually so clueless they mistake their ostensible cleverness for deep thought. Even a cursory analysis shows how remarkable an opening weekend it was for U-93. It took in almost a third more money per screen as the Robin Williams vehicle RV - $4506 to $6465 for U-93. For a film with no big stars, no appeal to teenagers, and a large, still unknown segment of the population who either won’t see it because it brings up bad memories or, like TBogg, don’t want to be associated with their fellow Americans who eat “goobers,” this is an extraordinary number.

The profile of a U-93 viewer also suggests strong weekday numbers will be forthcoming as well. A similar phenomena was prevalent during Passion of the Christ, especially as word of mouth swept the country. Adults are much more likely to attend movies during the week than teenagers which should push U-93’s numbers even higher in the days ahead.

The key will be how much drop off there will be in weekend #2 and #3. If the film has similar numbers next weekend, the chances for a surprise hit are very good indeed.

And what does Blowhard TBooger have to say? Anything intelligent? Anything prescient?

Ever since 9/11 the Culture Commandos of the right have bitched because “Hollyweird” has failed to give them authentic Islamojihadhiricans to hate on the silver screen and now, when they get their chance, eh…they come down with social anxiety disorder or the theater seats are too hard on their pilonidal cysts.

I’m tempted to let that idiocy stand without comment as a testament to the Blowhard’s jaw dropping stupidity but allow me one minor observation:

THE FILM HAS BEEN OPEN THREE FRICKIN’ DAYS, NITWIT!

I suppose 60 million people who voted for Bush in 2004 (plus the several million Democratic “Culture Commandos” who view what happened on 9/11 as something more than the day they interrupted programming on The Cartoon Channel) could have squeezed into the 1795 theaters where U-93 was showing by doubling up in all of those seats. But then, there are all those “pilonidal cysts” which would have necessitated countless bloody trips to theater bathrooms as one after another, they would have burst causing untold discomfort for their seating companions.

Really now, Blowhard. To make a statement like that and expect anyone to take you for anything but a clown bespeaks a hubris of truly gargantuan proportions. You’re in Bill Clinton territory there, pal.

Not content with taking down his pants in public, Blowhard then removes his underwear:

We will stop here to point out that the other film about 9/11 pulled down $23,920,637 on 868 screens in its first weekend (insert your own ‘America hates America’ comment here).

Blowhard is writing about Michael Moore’s left wing wet dream Fahrenheit 9/11. What TBum doesn’t tell you is that more than $12 million of that opening was the take from theaters not located in the United States. Byron York:

Fahrenheit 9/11 also did well in Seattle, Montreal, Ottawa, Portland, Oregon, Monterey, California, and Burlington, Vermont. In all, two things stand out from those numbers. One is that the picture overperformed only in blue states, and even then only in the most urban parts of those blue states. And the second is that it did very well in Canada. Fahrenheit 9/11 consistently overperformed in Canadian cities; without that boffo business, the film’s gross would have been significantly smaller than it was.

That’s the upside of the story. The downside revealed by the Nielsen EDI numbers is that Fahrenheit 9/11, far from being the runaway nationwide hit that Moore claimed, underperformed in dozens of markets throughout red states and, most important — as far as the presidential election was concerned — swing states. Dallas/Fort Worth, the ninth-largest movie market, accounts for 2.07 percent of North American box office but made up just 1.21 percent of Fahrenheit 9/11 box office, for an underperformance of nearly 42 percent. In Phoenix, the tenth-largest market, Fahrenheit 9/11 underperformed by 29 percent. In Houston, ranked twelfth for movies, it underperformed by 38 percent. In Orlando, it underperformed by 38 percent; Tampa-St. Petersburg, by 41 percent; Salt Lake City, by 61 percent.

The list goes on for quite a while: Las Vegas, Raleigh-Durham, San Antonio, Norfolk, Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis, Jacksonville, Flint, Michigan (Michael Moore’s home turf), and many others. And in Fayetteville and Tulsa, where Moore boasted that his movie had sold out, Fahrenheit 9/11 underperformed by 41 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

York had access to the industry book that the studios rely on to see how their movies are doing; Neilson’s EDI. Not only that, that “other movie about 9/11″ had a $15 million promotional budget which just happens to be exactly how much it cost to make U-93. In other words, Moore spent as much to promote his film as Greengrass and Universal spent in making U-93.

Finally, TBlech reminds me why I’m not a liberal anymore; I don’t like having Stalinists as ideological compatriots:

Of course, Michelle Malkin didn’t attend because her local multiplex refuses to make brown people sit in the balcony, so I guess that’s a reason not to go too.

Fortunately for us Special Ed took time out from his busy weekend to face the enemy close-up (okay, they were actors on a movie screeen, but come on, at least he left the house) to file this special report.

The fact that this guy gets 10,000 visitors a day who read this kind of nauseating piffle says more about the left than anything my poor efforts can reveal. And since I’ve already spent far more time debunking this diseased, insufferable, dirty necked, loutish galoot than he’s worth, I’ll quit so that I can do something more productive with my time; like cleaning the litterbox.

At least I’ll be able to throw that kind of offal into the garbage.

I missed all the fun this past weekend piling on poor Maryscott O’Connor when the pajama-clad left/dom exploded from the pages of the Washington Post onto righty blogs as the poster girl for the Daffy Duck left.

First, I was happy to see that we have one thing in common; we both smoke when we write. Longtime readers of this site know that when I prepare for my muse to take me in her arms and stroke me (yes…it’s THAT kind of relationship friends), I brew a strong pot of fresh bean coffee (this time of day I prefer either Kona or a Jamaican blend) and carefully place a freshly opened pack of Basic 100’s Full Flavor cigarettes within easy reach. The two - coffee and cigarettes - go together like sex and Barry White. And when in the throes of creative ecstasy, watching as the words writhe effortlessly (or tortuously) on the monitor in front of me, I unconsciously caress one cigarette after another, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs and exhaling a Murrowesque cloud of thoughtful, wisdom drenched, aromatic vapors.

If I can’t write like Murrow, at least I kinda smell like him.

Anyway, Maryscott sure sounded angry, didn’ she? Doc Sanity should make a housecall on this fruit and nut cake. Failing that, I think the poor woman needs a gigantic hug from all of us righties who make her life so miserable, day after day.

But Maryscott has the advantage of being in possession of at least half a brain. Poor Jim Carroll of the Boston Globe has not been vouchsafed such a luxury:

LAST WEEK, the rattling of sabers filled the air. Various published reports, most notably one from Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker, indicated that Washington is removing swords from scabbards and heightening the threat aimed at Iran, which refuses to suspend its nuclear project. It may be that such reports, based on alarming insider accounts of planning and military exercises, are themselves part of Washington’s strategy of coercive diplomacy. But who can trust the Bush administration to play games of feint and intimidation without unleashing forces it cannot control, stumbling again into disastrous confrontation?

An Iranian official dismissed the talk of imminent US military action as mere psychological warfare, but then he made a telling observation. Instead of attributing the escalations of threat to strategic impulses, the official labeled them a manifestation of ”Americans’ anger and despair.”

The phrase leapt out of the news report, demanding to be taken seriously. I hadn’t considered it before, but anger and despair so precisely define the broad American mood that those emotions may be the only things that President Bush and his circle have in common with the surrounding legions of his antagonists. We are in anger and despair because every nightmare of which we were warned has come to pass. Bush’s team is in anger and despair because their grand and — to them — selfless ambitions have been thwarted at every turn. Indeed, anger and despair can seem universally inevitable responses to what America has done and what it faces now.

“Rattling of sabers”…”removing swords from scabbards”… It sounds like Mr. Carroll has accidentally stumbled onto a game of Dungeons and Dragons. And the fact that “every nightmare of which we were warned has come to pass” would make things pretty dicey for us if only someone would please tell us 1) which nightmares are Carroll talking about and 2) who did the warning?

This is called hyperbole. Writers use it in lieu of outright lying when trying to sound like they know what they’re talking about. Not only does it give them a privileged frame of reference (Am I the only one who racked my brain frantically trying to conjure up which nightmares he was talking about and which one of 10,000 unhinged lefties might have warned us about them?) but it certainly does heighten the drama, doesn’t it?

Except, of course, this is not a screenplay, it’s a newspaper column. Or is it? Mr. Carroll’s psychological analysis of the Bush Administration’s “anger and despair” as well as our own “anger and despair” (I guess “anger and despair” are lethally contagious) makes it seem as if rather than appearing on the OpEd page, Carroll’s screed might have better been published in another venue more suited to his penetrating amateur psychoanalyzing.

I guess Mad Magazine didn’t have the space available.

Mr. Carroll explains:

While the anger and despair of those on the margins of power only increase the experience of marginal powerlessness, the anger and despair of those who continue to shape national policy can be truly dangerous if such policy owes more to these emotions than to reasoned realism. Is such affective disarray subliminally shaping the direction of US policy? That seems an impudent question. Yet all at once, like an out-of-focus lens snapping into clarity, it makes sense of what is happening. With the US military already stressed to an extreme in Iraq by challenges from a mainly Sunni insurgency, why in the world would Washington risk inflaming the Shi’ite population against us by wildly threatening Iran?

But such a thing happened before. It was the Bush administration’s anger and despair at its inability to capture Osama bin Laden that fueled the patent irrationality of the move against Saddam Hussein. The attack on Iraq three years ago was, at bottom, a blind act of rage at the way Al Qaeda and its leaders had eluded us in Afghanistan; a blindness that showed itself at once in the inadequacy of US war planning. Now, with Iran, nuclear weapons are at issue. And yet look at the self-defeating irrationality of the Bush team’s maneuvering. How do we hope to pressure Tehran into abandoning its nuclear project? Why, by making our threat explicitly nuclear.

OH FOR GOD’S SAKE!

I’m trying very hard not to lose control, a task made nearly impossible when reading such imbecilic, idiotic drivel.

The attack on Iraq three years ago was, at bottom, a blind act of rage at the way Al Qaeda and its leaders had eluded us in Afghanistan; a blindness that showed itself at once in the inadequacy of US war planning.

You’ll have to excuse me while I wipe my monitor of the spittle that exploded from my sputtering mouth, which occurred just prior to my jaw hitting the floor and starting to dig.

“At bottom” nothing. Say it was for oil. Say it was to avenge Saddam’s attempted assassination of his father. Say it was to get his buddies at Haliburton richer. Say it was because Bush knew there were no WMD’s but invaded anyway to help him win re-election.

Posit any crackpot, confused, moonbat theory about why we invaded Iraq. But to say that “at bottom” the invasion was an “act of blind rage” is mindless. The notion has no basis in fact whatsoever, There is not a shred of proof for it.

Proof? Proof? We don’t need no stinkin’ proof. We’ve got Jimbo Carroll and his Travelling Pseudo-Psychoanalytical Crystal Ball to look into the souls of men and tell us what they’re really thinking and feeling. And, of course, that special insight granted to only the purest of liberals who, after all, only have our best interests at heart and a desire to tell us what it all means.

And is this guy serious about “the inadequacy of US war planning” in Afghanistan? We did in a couple of months what the second most powerful army in the history of human civilization - the Soviet Military - couldn’t accomplish in a decade! And this represents “inadequacy in US war planning?” Get. A. Grip.

It’s almost as if Carroll has ensconced himself in an alternate imaginary universe, oblivious to the reality in this one, skipping along with his head in the clouds and his foot in his mouth, spouting his lunacies without realizing that the inhabitants of the real world look upon him as we would a masturbating monkey in the zoo; with a mix of curiosity and embarrassment.

More words of wisdom from our Flatulently Freudian Flim-Flam Fakir:

As if that were not irrational enough, the Bush administration chose this month, in the thick of its nuclear standoff with Tehran, to reveal plans for a new nuclear weapons manufacturing complex of its own — a major escalation of US nuclear capacity. This represents a movement away from merely maintaining our thousands of warheads to replacing them. The promise of new bombs to come, including the so-called bunker-buster under development, may be the final nail in the coffin of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which binds Washington to work for the elimination of nukes, not their enhancement.

Set the cauldron of Iraq to boiling even hotter by daring Iran to join in against us. Justify Iran’s impulse to obtain nuclear capacity by using our own nuclear capacity as a thermo-prod. How self-defeating can our actions get?

Surely, something besides intelligent strategic theory is at work here. Yes. These are the policies of deeply frustrated, angry, and psychologically wounded people. Those of us who oppose them will yield to our own versions of anger and despair at our peril, and the world’s. Fierce but reasoned opposition is more to the point than ever.

“Nuclear standoff?” Um…that would require two states to possess the demon weapons, something that may come to pass sooner rather than later but is not the case at present. Therefore, Carroll can drop the dramatic pretensions anytime he wishes.

As for our “bunker busters,” those have been in development for more than a decade which means that the former Commander in Chief William Jefferson Clinton also signed off on their development. Was he suffering from “anger and despair” too?

Building new nukes and retiring old ones is not against the NPT or START nor is it considered provocative except by anyone but liberals like Carroll who view any attempt by the United States to defend itself as “provocative” by default. I guess when someone says that they wish to destroy you while in the midst of racing to build weapons that can accomplish that task, we should avoid provocations like improving our ability to stop a bunch of maniacs from bringing about the end times.

The hysterics on the left about the United States using nuclear weapons has a kind of breathless, gossipy quality to it - sort of like a bunch of 13 year old girls talking about sex at a sleepover: “And then he kissed me and I got all mushy inside…OOOOOH.” It’s as if the mere discussion of the subject is both exciting and forbidden at the same time while giving the writer a special thrill to be in virgin territory. It’s not going to happen. To believe that there is one chance in a million of it happening is ignorant. Or it is a deliberate attempt to add to the “Bush is evil” theme that seems to be lefty writer’s favorite pastime.

Carroll is not a serious man. And to write a column so full of laughable postulates about the inner motivations of the Bush Administration is to reveal a either a writer who is extremely bored with himself or, more likely, unconsciously transferring his own “anger and despair” onto his enemies.

Wonder what Dr. Sanity would have to say about that?

UPDATE

Jonah Goldberg:

The week the deranged president of Iran again calls for the annihilation of Israel and once again denies the Holocaust ever happpened James Carroll draws the only logical conclusion: Bush is a lunatic and this administration is run by “deeply frustrated, angry, and psychologically wounded people.”

That about covers it…

It’s a lazy Sunday here at the House. Winter’s grip is still vise-like in the Midwest, but if I open my door, I can hear the satisfying crrrack of stitched horsehide striking green ash - a sure sign that Spring is, if not around the corner, at least within tobacco spitting distance .

My World Champion White Sox are trying to get the kinks out of a lineup and pitching staff that will once again vie for the title while the Cubs… The Cubs??? Well, it is almost Opening Day and the best that can be said is that the Cubs are still undefeated in the regular season. The Northsiders are presently going through their annual fantasy camp, pretending they are a major league team with a shot at making the playoffs while giving their long suffering (and completely clueless) fans hope that this will be the year that the curse of the billy goat will be lifted and the national leaguers will win the World Series.

Perhaps they should start wishing for something more realistic. Like a Republican mayor of Chicago.

Be that as it may, I thought it would be a nice idea to give my readers something to do while they were visiting besides being subjected to one more tiresome, tedious rant against lefty lickspittles, government waste, bloodthirsty jihadists, or the usual fiddle faddle about the endlessly fascinating but maddening game of politics.

How about another kind of game? Great! Let’s play “Who Said It?” Simply guess who said the following quotes. To make it real easy, I’ve made it a multiple choice game so be careful of trick answers.

* Look. While Domenech’s violations were blatant, it is status quo for the conservative movement. Quite frankly, intellectual dishonesty is what these people do for a living (there are entire organizations dedicated to documenting and rebutting their ooze). Whether it’s cooking the books on environmental data, changing their stories to suit a new set of facts, or just straight up and up lying, cheating, and stealing, the conservative cause is simply a fraud.

a) Oliver (“Like Sh*t to Shineola”) Willis
b) a homeless street lunatic
c) a baby marmoset passing gas
d) all of the above

Okay…so I started you off with an easy one. If you guessed “d” grab yourself a cookie and celebrate.

* Yes we do have Michael Moore, and when did he ever suggest blacks are genetically inferior to whites (Republican David Duke), that Supreme Court justices should be assassinated (Republican Ann Coulter), and when was he ever indicted (Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, and oh so many more)?He hasn’t, because Michael Moore is someone conservatives simply disagree with, and that makes him per se hateful. Kind of like the Dixie Chicks, except they have boobs too, which makes it an even bigger crime in Republican circles that they have opinions.

a) John Aravosis
b) Michael Moore’s roll of belly fat
c) The lint in Oliver Willis’ navel
d) John Aravosis’ lesbian lover

Obviously, the answer is once again “d” because everyone knows that if someone is going to tell as many lies as Mr. Trichinosis does about politics, they will lie about anything, including their real gender and who actually writes the twaddle that appears on their blog.

* I blame the illegal (but not immoral)immigrants no more for coming to this great nation than I would blame first grade children for becoming addicted to Heroin that a drug dealer (who stands across the street from their school)methodically sells to them every day.The Republicans and some Democrats who are for this present immigration bill have become that drug dealer while they themselves have also become addicted to the money from corporations and the hate that can get them their votes.

a) a 3 year old boy
b) a 5 year old girl
c) one million chimpanzees scribbling on pieces of paper
d) a typical Democrat commenting at The Democrat Daily Blog

This was your first trick question and I hope you said “b” although if you said “d” you would have been given credit for a valid comparison. (Note: It would have taken far less than one million chimps to produce that kind of idiocy).

* The President is a political maestro. When his poll numbers are down, he walks on stage, gets behind the podium, raises his baton, and conducts away. The media follows his tempo, his song. No, no, the violins are much too sad! Stop the chorus of sorrow! Drums, drums, we need more war drums! Bring the oboe forward, haven’t you heard Iran is going nuclear, we need something more foreboding! And the spellbound media plays along, altering its performance to appease the maestro. It is at its core a merciless, orchestrated assault on truth. The performance always has the same ending: a stabilizing of a ratings free-fall, then a two or three point uptick in Bush’s approval ratings that is then lauded as the resurgence of a “popular” President.

a) The Brother From Another Planet
b) Leonard Bernstein
c) Daily Kos writer Georgia 10
d) Yankee Doodle Dandy

If you guessed “a” you would be absolutely correct. No one on planet earth could actually believe that 1) the media is manipulated by Bush, and 2) that anyone would read such overly dramatic, hyperbolic claptrap.

* I don’t believe bush is a religious man at all. He’s a man who exploits the tragedy of others for profit, and that has been the story of him since day 1, and will be forever more.
There are no religious people behind that aggressive war, behind that roman fervor of the angry crowd; bush is entirely secular, selfish, greedy, and fastidiously ignorant. He has proven time and again, a gullible killer, and his grave will aways be remembered for the hundred thousand he killed in his great leap forward.

a) A commenter at the Democratic Underground
b) A commenter at the Democratic Underground
c) A commenter at the Democratic Underground
d) Are you kidding? I’ll give you 3 guesses and the first two don’t count.

How did you do? Now that wasn’t so hard, was it? I guess I didn’t figure in the predictability factor when dealing with the leftwing idiocies…

As host of the Carnival of the Clueless, I can tell you that putting on a Carnival is hard work. You have to put out a call for submissions. Then you have to read all the entries, come up with something interesting to say about each of them, and finally physically place the links on the blog post. For my little Carnival (about 30 links), I usually spend 3-4 hours painstakingly going through the process. The reward is a few links, a few laughs, and some eye opening glimpses into how human beings can be so screwed up.

As most readers of blogs are aware, there are literally dozens of carnivals out there. But until now, there was no carnival for the radical-progressives among us.

That’s because this cheeky fellow has, in the best traditions of American capitalism, seen a need and filled it. The very first “Carnival of the Radical-Progressives” is off and running, to a rather auspicious beginning. Carnival lover Glen Reynolds linked to this blockbuster which means the guy will get thousands of readers anxious to sample words of wisdom and outrage from the far left.

I hope they’re not too disappointed that there is a grand total of two - that’s right - 2 entries in the inaugural Carnival of Radical-Progressives.

And one of them is from the guy hosting it.

Perhaps his problem is in the way he defines a “Radical-Progressive:”

Welcome to the first Radical Progressive Carnival, a place where people who self-define as feminist,anti-racist,queer,or who dedicate themselves to progressive politics in any manner and who hold a sincere and firm respect for humanity in all its forms.

Pretty tame for a radical. No bomb throwers? Whatever happened to good, old fashioned, socialists? Or commies? Christ almighty, my Aunt Mildred would qualify as a “radical progressive” with this fellow!

And as far as holding a “sincere respect for humanity in all its forms,” this would probably let me out because as far as I know, there is still only one form of human life - at least on this planet. Do the radical-progressives know something I don’t? No doubt their expanded consciousness allows them insights that even just plain old vanilla progressives are not privy to.

I suppose it is mean and cruel of me to make fun of someone who is obviously sincere in his beliefs (misguided though they may be) and who seeks to use the internet to spread radical progressive thought far and wide. But somehow, when the stars align so perfectly and all the universal tumblers click into place, galactic justice demands that it be noted and commented on that the very first “Carnival of the Radical Progressives” drew exactly one entrant.

Now maybe if he changed the name to “Progressive-Radicals”…

We bloggers are known for taking a few liberties with the truth in order to get a laugh, or a rise out of our readers, or just because some of us are idiots and don’t know any better. Now that doesn’t mean we lie. It means we sort of stretch reality so that it fits around whatever point we’re trying to make. Hence, when lefty bloggers call right wing bloggers “fascists” they really don’t mean that we all walk around in brown shirts with swastikas on the sleeve giving the stiff-armed salute in slavish devotion to George Bush.

Well, then again…

Regardless, when I saw this on one of the major left wing sites, I first thought that it was a joke. I said to myself “This can’t be serious! Can anyone be so determined to be dense that they would actually believe what they’re writing here is true?”

You decide:

The new site Fancy Ford, built by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and with the blessing of Elizabeth Dole, is an interesting new web tactic. Racism online and mainstreamed.

The “Ford” refers to Representative Harold Ford, a good and decent man who is running for the Senate from Tennessee. But what, pray tell is this “Racism online and mainstreamed?”

What’s the message behind this site? The line of white women on the front page, the fact that it highlights his attendance at NBA All Star events featuring Biz Markie, the emphasis on opulence all combine to portray Ford as a pimp. The site tries to be subtle in its racism, but it fails.

Please excuse me while I pick my mandible up off the floor before it starts digging.

Methinks this fellow is a couple of shakes short of a finished martini.

The “line of white women” is a picture of some Playboy Bunnies, which refers to a Super Bowl party sponsored by the men’s magazine that the Congressman attended. That’s right. He is accusing the designer of the website of poring through thousands of photographs of Playboy Bunnies in order to find one picture that only features white women.

But wait! Here is more of the “subtle racism” our friend has sniffed out like McGruff the crime dog.

The goofball says that the site “highlights his attendance at NBA All Star events featuring Biz Markie.” Weeeellll…in the immortal words of Secretary of Defense Nimzicki from Independence Day “That’s not entirely accurate.” It seems that the good Congressman connected himself to Mr. Markie because all the website does is quote an invitation to a Ford fundraiser held during the NBA All-Star game. The site does not mention more than one “event” so the use of the plural in that charge is false and misleading.

Now that’s subtle. Taking something written by the Congressman’s own campaign and putting it on website. That’s never been done before. Sure smacks of racism to me.

But what of the charge that there is an “emphasis on opulence.”

Are you kidding me? From a party that constantly portrays Republicans as rich and out of touch with regular folk I have to listen to that kind of crap? Besides, the web site is making the point that all of these extravagant extras are enjoyed at his contributor’s expense. If I was going to give money to a candidate, don’t you think it might matter to me if the guy is pissing it away with $20,000 weekend stays at the Biltmore hotel?

Finally, and I know this was the most difficult part to follow, we come to the charge that the site is portraying Ford as a pimp.

Lemme get this straight: White women + NBA + Biz Markie + opulence = PIMP!

The guy is a goddamned Sherlock effing Holmes. That’s not only subtle. It’s damn near invisible.