Right Wing Nut House

It is as predictable as the annual September collapse of the Chicago Cubs. Every single holiday in which we seek to celebrate what is good and decent about this country and contemplate all that we should treasure and be thankful for, some lickspittle lefty feels an obligation to point out that we should take the ceremonial sword and open up our midsection to atone for all of the past sins committed by our ancestors.

The fact that our “liberal conscience” has the historical knowledge and cognitive abilities of a high school sophomore doesn’t seem to faze the mainstream media who always seem to find room on the editorial pages for their juvenile diatribes. It is just one more example of the disconnect demonstrated by the dissonant left and their childish need for attention.

The holiday of Thanksgiving seems to bring out the worst in these galoots. If we’re not reading about the inequities of capitalism which has ground millions of our fellow citizens under its jackboot, we’re doing the slow burn over some idiot’s interpretation of the historical baggage accrued to the cultural conflict between whites and Native Americans. Sometimes, like this year. we get a twofer.

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

That the world’s great powers achieved “greatness” through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin — the genocide of indigenous people — is of special importance today. It’s now routine — even among conservative commentators — to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

(HT: Michelle Malkin)

This excreable screed, penned by one Robert Jensen who purports to be a professor of journalism, should probably be dismissed as the ravings of an escapee from some lunatic asylum or perhaps the latest statement issued from the Democratic National Committee (some would argue the differences there are insignificant). Nevertheless, a cursory Technorati search revealed the fact that no one has taken the time or effort to contradict this moonbat’s flawed historical interpretation not to mention the outright falsehoods contained in his not-ready-for-high-school essay.

If it’s not too much to ask, can we please not have any more judgments from the left about “moral progress” or the lack thereof made by the United States over the past 200 years or so? The fact is that agitation for both fair and humane engagement of Native Americans as well as the abolitionist movement were both propelled by the most profound religious conservatism in our nation’s history. As historian James Brewer Stewart points out, it was the Second Great Awakening (the first occurring during the early colonial period) that was the catalyst for reformist movements of all stripes:

By stressing the moral imperative to end sinful practices and each person’s responsibility to uphold God’s will in society, preachers like Lyman Beecher, Nathaniel Taylor, and Charles G. Finney in what came to be called the Second Great Awakening led massive religious revivals in the 1820s that gave a major impetus to the later emergence of abolitionism as well as to such other reforming crusades as temperance, pacifism, and women’s rights. By the early 1830s, Theodore D. Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and Elizur Wright, Jr., all spiritually nourished by revivalism, had taken up the cause of “immediate emancipation.”

This basic Christian belief in the value and dignity of every human being that to this day animates religious conservatives has suffered through a revisionism that would make Clio, the Muse of History, weep with anger. While it is true that some Southern preachers took it upon themselves to try and justify slavery via the bible - even to the point that it permanently split many Protestant denominations - the facts are that conservative revivalism played a dominant role in both the abolitionist movement and the efforts to reform government policies toward Native Americans.

Make no mistake. The United States government has much to answer for in its dealings with Native Americans. But a point not answered by Mr. Jensen or any other advocate for the historical revisionism that passes for a critique of the government’s Indian policy is the realization that every single time in the history of human civilization a society that possessed nastier germs, superior organizational skills, and more devastating weaponry came into contact with hunter gatherers, very bad things happened to the berry eaters.

In his controversial Pulitzter Prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel, author Jared Diamond asks the question why were the Europeans able to sail across the ocean and conquer (or subdue) Native American tribes in the Americas and not the other way around? The answer, according to Diamond was no inherent inferiority on the part of Native Americans but rather factors relating to the environment such as the flora and fauna that flourished on the Eurasian continent versus the Americas. That, plus the ease of idea diffusion that allowed innovations such as large scale agriculture to sweep across Eurasia with breathtaking speed (historically speaking) as opposed to the problems presented by the geography of the Americas that prevented agriculture from moving much beyond the Incans in South America and the Aztecs in North America until less than 500 years before Columbus’ voyage.

Diamond points out that the more than 3,000 year headstart Europeans had in organizing a civilization based on agriculture was more than enough time to develop superior technologies as well as allow for the mutation of some really nasty bugs so that the contact between indigenous peoples and Europeans was guaranteed to be a catastrophe.

This is true not only of recent history with Europeans subjugating North and South America, but also of the most ancient histories of which we are aware. The Celtic people who colonized much of Europe did not enounter pristine wilderness untouched by the hand of man. They overran much of continental Europe 500 years before the birth of Christ, enjoying the distinction of sacking both Rome and Delphi. And the remnants of their culture was eliminated over the years by a host of conquerers including the Romans and the Saxons.

I daresay there aren’t too many lefties agitating for the return of Ireland and England to the descendants of the Druids.

And while we’re at it, I might point out that recent archeological evidence has pointed to several migrations of peoples from Asia to North America with the last occurring approximately 8,000 years ago.

Anyone wanna guess what happened to those indigenous people before the people we refer to as indigenous actually became “indigenous?”

Mr. Jensen then makes the usual mistake of assuming that since very few choose to feel the kind of personal guilt that he is able to absolve himself of thanks to his humble mea culpa, that the reason must be something sinister; that American history is hidden away in a closet guarded by CIA agents 24 hours a day:

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it’s also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

For every pronouncement made by a politician or government official calling for the elimination of Native Americans, I could point to sentiments expressing exactly the oppoiste viewpoint made by others or even that same individual. There is nothing in American life that brought out more schizophrenia - with the possible exception of slavery - than our relations to and feelings about Native Americans. Every American President from Washington to Theodore Roosevelt called for fair and humane treatment of Indians. The fact that they usually fell far short in putting that rhetoric into practice was due to a variety of factors not the least of which the nasty habit Native Americans had of massacring settlers (women and children included) and torturing captives in the most barbarous ways imaginable (even some ways beyond imagining).

If it were a simple matter of “pushing back” against white encroachment, such behavior could be understood if not excused. However, many Native American tribes eagerly insinuated themselves into the politics of empire being played out on the North American continent not by attacking armies but by killing innocents - a tactic guaranteed to bring down reprisals by governments and even individual settlers. Did they believe that their taking sides would grant them immunity from the anger and revenge of whites?

If Jensen wants to blame the entire white race for the tragedy that occurred during the clash of cultures with Native Americans, then I would simply quote that great line from the movie Gettysburg in which crusty Seargant Buster Killrean says “Any man who judges by the group is a peawit.” The kind of deterministic interpretation of history that allows for condemning an entire race of people for the actions of their ancestors - especially when that interpretation leaves out inconvenient facts and analysis - should be relegated with the rest of Marxian and Hegelian claptrap to the ash heap where it belongs.

And the idea that “between 95 and 99 percent” of Native Americans were the victims of genocide is laughable. Unless one wants to posit the notion that the smallpox virus should be hauled into the World Court and charged with crimes against humanity, Jensen’s idiotic statement should be revealed as either a bald faced lie or a comical lack of historical knowledge not to mention a breathtaking minimization of what genocide really is.

The overwhelming majority of Native American deaths following the landing of Columbus - perhaps as some have said in the 75-90% range - were the result of contracting some of the nastiest diseases on the planet for which the tribes had absolutely no immunity. Guenter Lewey:

About all this there is no essential disagreement. The most hideous enemy of native Americans was not the white man and his weaponry, concludes Alfred Crosby, “but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath.” It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers.

And most of those deaths did not occur as a direct result of contact with whites but rather because of the remarkable trade network operating on the North American continent long before Columbus’ trip was even imagined.

Some tribes were trading empires whose geographic breadth put to shame just about anything Europe could offer. At the time that Marco Polo was writing about the marvels in far away China, Native American tribes in Michigan and Minnesota were trading copper for sea shells from both coasts. It was this far flung trading network that caused diseases like small pox, measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever to spread like wild fire among Indian populations, wiping out entire cultures that had existed for thousands of years in a matter of months.

By using the term “genocide” to describe what can only be termed a tragedy of history brands Jensen and his ilk as deliberate falsifiers. In order to make a political point, they are willing to eschew reason, logic, and history itself. And by applying the incendiary sin of “genocide” to Europeans who had no clue as to how disease was spread or even what a virus or a germ was - cheapens the actual genocide practiced against Jews, Armenians, and others whose deliberate murder was carried out for the expressed purpose of eliminating their seed from the planet.

After saying all of this, it is a legitimate question to ask just what the US government is guilty of when talking about the clash of cultures which resulted in so many needless deaths on both sides? Certainly the sins of ommission far outweigh those of commission. It was never officially United States policy to exterminate all Indians everywhere. There was throughout American history a belief that Indians would be better off if they acted like whites. In that sense, the worst one can say is that the US government wished to wipe traditional Native American culture off the map. Trying to turn hunter-gathering nomads into farmers was pure folly but it hardly qualifies as genocide.

Of course, the history of treaty violations by the government is rife with both perfidity on the part of government and a tragic misunderstanding of Native American tribal structure. There were numerous instances of the government signing a treaty with some tribal elements who would agree to cede land while other chiefs refused the terms of such treaties. The predictable outcome of such misunderstandings led to predations on both sides.

Yes, there is blood on the hands of the US government when it comes to their dealings with Native American tribes throughout our history. But is Moonbat Jensen correct? Is this reason enough to turn Thansgiving into some kind of New Age Tantric fast ritual where we drink guana juice and walk across hot coals to atone for our sins?

Mr. Jensen is free to do whatever he wants on Thanksgiving. But the idea of collective guilt is both morally and intellectually corrupt. It reveals a mind that substitutes platitudes for serious thinking and a jaw dropping ignorance of the facts. For this, the good professor should delve into a little atonement politics himself. To do so, however, one would need the ability for introspection, something that the professor and his ilk have proven that they have neither the temperment or the depth of intellect to practice.

From the moonbats that gave us the telling slogan “Better Red than Dead” comes this bit of cheer regarding the annual Veterans Day Celebration in Berkeley:

Berkeley’s Veterans Day ceremony, scheduled for Nov. 11, was abruptly canceled on Monday because the volunteer organizing committee split over the political content.

At issue was a proposal by the chairman, singer/songwriter Country Joe McDonald, to have Bill Mitchell, a co-founder of Cindy Sheehan’s organization, Gold Star Families for Peace, as the keynote speaker.

Mitchell’s and Sheehan’s sons were killed in Iraq the same day.

Some committee members worried that Mitchell would inject an unwelcome note of partisanship into the event, which has been scrupulously non-political in years past.

Michelle Malkin said it better than anyone; “File this under “We support our troops…by refusing to honor their service.”

Berkeley isn’t just a bastion of liberalism. It is one of only a handful of genuine communist communities in the country. As far as being better red than dead…I report, you decide. Here are some of the resolutions passed by the City Council in the last few years:

“Request the City Manager send letters to our elected national representatives asking them to take whatever action they can to cease the bombing of Afghanistan and to seek a legal, nonmilitary resolution; 2) Endorse and send to these officials, the attached letter recently presented by Vice Mayor Shirek to the Congressional Black Caucus, which acknowledges and grieves the tragic events of September 11th; and 3) adjourn this Council meeting in memory of the innocent civilians in Afghanistan being harmed and made refugees due to the bombing.”

This resolution was passed less than 6 weeks after 9/11.

In an historic vote on September 10, 2002 the City Council of Berkeley, California enacted Resolution #61744, declaring the space 60 kilometers and above the City is a space-based weapons free zone. On September 14th, Congressman Kucinich, was officially presented the Resolution by Councilmember Dona Spring, who initiated this milestone Resolution, before 700 people in Wheeler Auditorium, who gave Kucinich and Spring a cheering ovation.

This resolution violates several treaties to which the US is a signatory, not to mention being just plain batty.

WHEREAS, the citizens of the City of Berkeley consider it to be our sovereign right and civic duty to recognize that corporations remain artificial entities created by the people through our state legislatures; hope to nurture and expand democracy in Berkeley and in our nation; and reject the concept of corporate constitutional rights based on “corporate personhood” or any other factor.

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Council of the City of Berkeley supports amending the United States and California Constitutions to declare that corporations are not granted the protections or rights of persons, and supports amending the United States and California Constitutions to declare that the expenditure of corporate money is not a form of constitutionally protected speech.

This from our friends who began the so-called “Free Speech” movement of the 1960’s. I wonder if they would outlaw similar spending by labor unions?

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the Berkeley City Council has banned log-burning fireplaces from new homes. Not content to stop the madness there, however, Jami Caseber, the “environmental activist” who led the drive to institute the ban, also wants to ban the use of existing fireplaces.

The ban also applies to wood-burning cooking equipment, a condition of the legislation that has pissed off some Berkeleyites. Alice Waters, owner of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse restaurant and a world-famous advocate for organic foods, says she burns half a cord of oak and fig weekly in her grill and oven, which has no pollution-control equipment. Although her appliances are grandfathered under the just-passed law, Walker is nevertheless opposed to the law. As she (needlessly) explains to the Times, “‘we’ve had a fundamental connection between fire and food since the beginning of time.’”

Anyone else find the irony of burning oil or natural gas to keep warm rather than wood to be as delicious as I do?

Berkeley Food Policy Council

Mission Statement

To build a local food system based on sustainable regional agriculture
that fosters the local economy and assures all people of Berkeley
have access to healthy, affordable and culturally appropriate food
from non-emergency sources.

I hate to ask what “culturally appropriate” food might be. And who decides what is “sustainable regional agriculture?” Berkeley is smack dab in the middle of some of the most productive farmland on the planet. Now, you and I might call that “sustainable.” But to the food Nazis in Berkeley, corporate farming is a rape of the land.

This is what it would be like living under the thumb of these crazies. And the fact that they have canceled a Veterans Day celebration because they couldn’t agree that it was appropriate to inject politics into a memorial service for people who gave their lives so that the Berkeleyites could play at being mini-commissars and regulate people’s lives inside and out only goes to show that the left has no concept of what it takes to defend what they so cavalierly exercise.

It begs the question; is there anything they would consider dying for to protect outside of their own miserable hides?

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

WELCOME RUSH LIMBAUGH LISTENERS!

Hope you set a spell, relax, and read a few items. May I suggest you browse my History post archive?
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For the left, the aftermath of Katrina has proven to be a godsend. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seen them this happy since Hugo Chavez hornswaggled Jimmy Carter into certifying his victory in a recall vote last year. There’s just something about communist thugs that brings a smile to the face of an American lefty and makes their hearts go pitter patter.

But even a victory by “The Laughing Goat” ( La Cabra que Ríe) couldn’t possibly gladden the hearts and warm the cockles of liberals like the prospect of celebrating…what? Well, there’s that drop in the President’s poll numbers. And then there’s…let’s see. Oh! Did I mention the drop in the President’s poll numbers?

Yes, these are heady days for our left wing friends. The fact that their celebrations are taking place as a direct result of the distress, suffering, anguish and death of tens of thousands of their fellow citizens seems to not be of much concern to our morally superior betters. In fact, it has emboldened them to advance every crack pot theory on race and class that has poisoned American politics for going on forty years. One could say the left is dancing on the graves of black people, celebrating the exploitation of a political opening brought about by the incompetence of relief efforts in the largely black neighborhoods of New Orleans except for one thing; most of those graves are empty at the moment because the future les habitants haven’t even been plucked from the floodwaters yet.

But why let a small detail like common decency spoil a good party? It’s Mardi Gras in September in the Big Easy and liberals are dancing the Cajun Reel with the thousands of grinning skeletons who very soon now will start filling up the temporary mortuaries set up to receive them. The fact that we will be denied the edifying spectactle of watching the gruesome task of retrieving these corpses has now led to charges of a “cover-up” - as if focusing a camera on the bloated, blackened remains of our fellow citizens should be made into some kind of reality TV show. Kind of a Survivor meets The Great Race high concept production. Why, the syndication possibilities are staggering.

Consider the hue and cry that went up in the hours and days following September 11, 2001 about how we shouldn’t be showing images of the tortured souls as they jumped to their deaths from those doomed towers.Or the unbearable, constant replaying of the horrific scenes of destruction as the towers fell. The rational at the time was that such appalling images would breed anger and hate. But the anger and hate that would be bred by showing the maggoty corpses left behind by a man-made disaster are perfectly alright - as long as that anger and hate is directed at George Bush. After all, from the left’s perspective, if you can’t use images of a rotting cadaver for the ultimate good of making George Bush look bad, why bother?

That’s all they have to live for, of course. That and the possibility that the American people will become so outraged at the President’s choice of Michael Brown to head up the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that they will rise up in their righteous anger and smite the Republicans a mortal blow at the polls next year. The elevation of horse show impressario Brown to the lofty perch of FEMA Director may have been an unconscionable and unfathomable act of stupidity on the part of the President. But so was having Ron Brown’s Commerce Department give technology transfer waivers to American companies so that the Chinese army could improve the accuracy of thier ICBMs (Clinton). Or selling arms for hostages (Reagan). Or putting price controls on crude oil (Carter). Or putting wage and price controls into place when inflation was at the “astronomical” rate of 4.7% (Nixon). Or supporting Cuban ex-pats in a doomed-from-the-start effort to take back their country from Castro (Kennedy).

All President’s make huge mistakes. Some lead to economic distress. Others actually cost lives. At this moment, despite the left’s charges that Bush is insensitive, I doubt whether the President is getting much restful sleep these past few nights. If there is anything at all that the American people have sensed about this man on a personal level, it is a sense of a simple, faith-based compassion for his fellow citizens. Does he recognize personal responsibility in his disasterous choice of Michael Brown as FEMA Director? Firing the incompetent fool would be a good indication one way or another.

But giving Master Brown the heave-ho won’t satisfy the baying hounds at the President’s doorstep. The ghosts of New Orleans may indeed haunt Mr. Bush’s Presidency from here on out if he doesn’t act soon to counter the impression that the Federal government isn’t on top of this relief effort. It isn’t enough to promise money and support for the half million displaced people whose lives have been shattered by the storm. This is a given in America. It’s doing what’s expected.

What the President needs to do is the unexpected. Americans will back a President after he makes a mistake only when he admits the error in public and asks for forgiveness. Reagan and Clinton both made monumental errors in their second terms and yet finished their times in office with the strong support and even affection of the American people because they recognized their mistakes, apologized for them, and moved on to bigger and better things.

Following Iran-Contra, Reagan negotiated the first real reductions in a class of nuclear weapons when he signed a treaty with the Soviets eliminating medium range missiles from Europe. And following Clinton’s apology for lying to the American people about “that woman,” and his subsequent impeachment, he seemed to gather new energies which allowed him to finish his term with approval ratings over 60%.

Clearly, this is a mea culpa moment for Bush. But whether his political enemies, who now have the upper hand, allow him the luxury of such a course of action is problematic. The left’s continued glee at having the President on the run will last only as long as the President stubbornly refuses to make things right with the American people.

Things went horribly wrong in New Orleans. And while the inexplicable gaffes of the disaster tag team of Blanc-o-Nagin will ultimately come to be seen as at least equally responsible for the tragedy, the American people want an acknowledgement of what they’ve seen with their own eyes and heard with their own ears; the people that the President dispatched to deal with the relief efforts failed miserably. They want the President to take ultimate responsibility for this and they want it done soon. Any delay will be seen as playing politics and that’s something the American people have no patience for right now.

Do the right thing, Mr. Bush. And do it now.

I feel so much better knowing that Pat Robertson has proposed a practical albiet illegal solution to our problem with Venezualean President Hugo Chavez; grease the strutting S.O.B.:

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a “terrific danger” to the United States.

Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former presidential candidate, said on “The 700 Club” it was the United States’ duty to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a “launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.”

Before we start hearing barking from the moonbats, I might point to this delectable bit of information that came to us yesterday in which far left communists and Islamists have joined together to oppose “The Great Satan” … that is, unless you’re a communist. Communists don’t believe in Satan. Or God. Or sanity, for that matter:

On Monday, Sept. 12, 7:30 p.m., Middle East historian Mark LeVine presents his new book Why They Don’t Hate Us: Unveiling the Axis of Evil and engages in conversation with CODEPINK cofounder Jodie Evans, who has made several trips to Iraq, along with Baghdad-born Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a progressive voice for Muslim Americans based in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. The evening is moderated by political scientist Suzi Weissman, host of KPFK’s “Beneath the Surface” Monday edition, and is cosponsored by CODEPINK and MPAC.

CODEPINK you may recall is spending the month of August with other all-American moonbats in Crawford babysitting Cindy Sheehan. But of course, the loons in Crawford love America as much as you or I…as they tirelessly keep trying to convince us.

Charles Johnson on this strange marraige between the far left secularists and far right religious nuts:

Salam Al-Marayati is notorious for telling radio station KCRW, within hours of the September 11 mass murder: “If we’re going to look at suspects we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies.”

Quite a “progressive voice,” eh?

Indeed. But getting back to Pat Robertson, one might ask why such a drastic step would be necessary to get rid of Castro’s mini-me?

“You know, I don’t know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it,” Robertson said. “It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war … and I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.”

“We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” Robertson said.

“We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,” he continued. “It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought I was reading some dialogue from Team America except that Trey Parker is much saner than Robertson and has a better sense of humor.

Did anyone ask what the Lord said about all this? As you may be aware, Robertson talks to God quite often. In fact, if there’s one person I’ve heard of who has more than just a passing familiarity with the Almighty its the Reverend Robertson. I mean, he and the Lord are on a first name basis to hear the Reverend tell it.

That said, wouldn’t it have been more Christian of Robertson to pray for a bolt of lightening to strike the Venuezalean Dictator rather than a bullet between the eyes? Or maybe something a little less suspicious like a gas explosion in the Presidential Palace? Better yet, the CIA at one time tried to kill Castro by giving him a poisonous cigar. Anything except a gundown in the middle of some street.

This is a man who ran for President in 1988 and was actually taken seriously by some Republicans. I sincerely hope that this outburst is due to the onset of some form of dementia rather than a serious proposal from the biggest albatross going for the Republican party.

Here’s a question for all my wonderful little trolls whose comments are not only getting more obscene (they know I’ll delete them if they use profanity) but also more desperate:

If Cindy Sheehan is the “Rosa Parks” of the peace movement, if she’s the second coming of Martin Luther King or the “tipping point” that will energize the anti war movement and turn it into a raging prairie fire that will sweep evil George and his neocons from office, how come there are less than 100 people camping out at salon de Cindee in Crawford?

For God’s sake, Waco, a city of more than 100,000, is just a hop skip and a jump from Crawford. Are you trying to tell me with a city of that size and that close that you can’t even get the local loonies to come out and show their support for Sheehan?

I hate to bring this up, but Rosa Parks brought the entire city of Montgomery Alabama to its knees. And she did it without PR flaks, the international press, or political advice from Joe Trippi. Good thing Trippi wasn’t there. Otherwise, the sainted Mrs. Parks and her cause would be in the same political graveyard occupied by other losing campaigns Trippi has masterminded. Trippi previously worked on the presidential campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Dick Gephardt - losers all. In fact, looking at that list you realize not one of those worthies even got close enough to smell the oval office.

Hell, even for the daily demonstrations against the war the site doesn’t draw more than a couple of hundred people.

You’d think with all the ink spilled and pixels filled with Cindymania that there would be thousands of lefties down there, screaming their rage and anger at Bush for not doing what they want - which is basically roll over and die.

What’s the matter? Don’t have the courage of your convictions? Don’t want to camp out under the broiling west Texas sun and suffer for the cause? Is the issue of war and peace so unimportant to you that you’re not willing to leave your families, you jobs, all the comforts of home and endure the danger of tripping over a camera cable or getting hit by a speeding satellite truck? Are you afraid you’re going to get poked in the eye by a wayward reporter’s pencil? Does the prospect of being in such close proximity to a bunch of tobacco chewing, bible reading, shotgun toting, red state goobers give you the cold sweats? What’s the matter…

ARE YOU…CHICKENDOVES?

Where’s the spirit that brought us Lenin’s October Revolution? Where’s the courage that gave us Mao’s Long March? Where’s the defiance that fueled the Vietnamese in their quest to defeat the United States - a defiance made easier by your ideological ancestor’s cheering them on while calling for the defeat of the United States armed forces on the field of battle.

Face it. The reason there is no anti-war prairie fire sweeping the country is that you and your lefty friends are a pale imitation of the hard-eyed radicals that manned the battlements in the 1960’s. Those guys wanted a revolution. Your generation complains if there’s no wi-fi access. They wanted to foment mass protest. You people can’t function unless there’s a Starbucks within a couple of blocks. They were readers of Ginsberg, Sartre, and listened to songs by Joan Baez. You guys think addle brained Kurt Cobaine was a poet.

The whole world is watching and you’re sitting in front of your computer writing paeans to a witless, anti-semitic media glutton whose anti-American rants and conspiratorial flights of fancy have driven away all but the most willfully deluded among Democrats.

If you’re so all fired in love with what she’s doing, why aren’t you down there supporting her?

CHICKENDOVE! CHICKENDOVE! CHICKENDOVE!

Abbie Hoffman is turning over in his grave. The Berrigan brothers and other courageous anti-war leftists who were willing to go to jail for their beliefs are weeping in disgust (Note: Philip Berrigan died in 2002). You are shaming the legacy of these people with your cowardice and slavish devotion to comfort and luxury.

And what about your children? What’s the matter, are you afraid to send them to Crawford? Hah! Just as I thought. You’re perfectly willing to send other liberal’s children to stand out in the hot sun, get their mugs on TV day after day, and risk life and limb by taking the chance of having their tin foil hat fall off while mingling with the crush of media folk and other wild eyed leftists. But when it comes to making the ultimate sacrifice and send your kids to man the battlements of the anti-war movement, you balk like the chickendoves you really are.

Get serious, moonbats! Or didn’t you know? There’s a war on!

UPDATE

Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy knows there’s a war on.

They’ve been after George Bush almost since day one. He was “The Accidental President,” “The Smirking Chimp,” “Bushitler,” and worse. They whined like 12 year old girls when Bush used their weak stance on national security against them in the mid term elections of 2002 as a club to beat them soundly. They grumbled like curmudgeons as Bush achieved one legislative success after another on taxes, defense, homeland security, and the budget. They squealed like stuck pigs when the President’s popularity soared after the initial invasion of Iraq. And even now, with the President’s popularity at an all time low, their “issues” are not getting any traction. I’m being sarcastic of course. The only issue the left has had for 5 years had been its unreasoning and unbalanced hatred of George Bush.

Let’s face it; if the left were a baseball team, my Chicago Cubs would have competition for being the worst team in the sport’s history. They can’t play defense. Their pitcher’s lob the ball up to the plate and the Republicans and Bush keep hitting one home run after another. When they get a chance in the field, they end up fumbling the ball, dropping it, and then kicking it for good measure. On offense, they’re pathetic. They just keep swinging and missing. In fact, things are so bad for the left, that lately when they swing they let go of the bat and it sails into the stands, injuring the very people who should be rooting for them.

But, like the swaggering buffoons they are, they talk a good game but never deliver. At least 4 times in the last year they’ve confidently predicted the end of George Bush. And each and every time they’ve predicted it, they haven’t only been wrong, they’ve been comically self deluded.

With a batting average like that, it’s no wonder they’ve never been in the game.

It’s really been a question of wishful thinking. The left thinks that if they can only believe hard enough, their dream of bringing down the President will come true. Sort of like saving Tinkerbell in Peter Pan by averring your belief in her existence but without the magic fairy dust. This has led to some of the most farcical and convoluted campaigns in American political history, each one confidently predicting the end of the Bush Presidency and each one in its turn fizzling out like a wet firecraker on the Fourth of July.

In doing a little research for this post, I googled up “Bush is finished,” Bush will be impeached,” and “Bush will resign.” It didn’t take me long to find a few hilarious examples of why the left is so divorced from reality and why, as D.J. Drummond likes to point out, “Liberalism isn’t an ideology, it’s a mental disorder.”

Did George W. Bush - and/or other top White House officials - have sexual relations with that man, James Guckert?

Lest you think this is an absurd question, I’ll refer you to the widespread rumors that Bush had a long-term sexual relationship with his Ambassador to Poland (”don’t forget Poland!”), former Yale classmate and Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe. As with every other Bush scandal (AWOL, Bulgegate, Harken Energy, etc.), the Victor Ashe scandal has been blacked out by the LRWM. [Lazy Right Wing Media]

Last week, we posted a petition for a Special Prosecutor for “Jeff Gannon.” (So far, we’ve collected nearly 8,000 signatures - please sign it if you haven’t yet.) Reps. Louise Slaughter and John Conyers asked Plame-gate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to expand his investigation to include Guckert/Gannon’s access to secret CIA documents about Valerie Plame. Fitzgerald has subpoena powers, so he’d have no trouble tracking down Guckert/Gannon’s clients from his pager records.

Guckert/Gannon is at the center of what may be the biggest sex/spy scandal in American history.

Watching the left go ballistic over the Gannon/Guckert affair was almost as much fun as watching them throw a tantrum when nobody listened to them. The plaintive wails about their left wing friends in the media not covering “the biggest sex/spy scandal in American history” reminded me of a 5 year old bursting into tears upon discovering there is no Santa Claus.

Their cries about Gannon were nothing compared to the biblical angst displayed following Bush’s victory in November. And this occurred even after Michael (”I don’t care; Supersize me) Moore came out with what they were absolutely sure would ring in the death knell of the Bush Administration; the release of Fahrenheit 911.

They were so sure that this tissue of lies, half truths, out of context quotes, and proven falsehoods would defeat Bush that even mainstream Democrats came to the Washington, D.C. premier to ride that pony to victory. Even after brilliant writers like Christopher Hitchens and John Podheretz had taken the movie apart piece by piece and exposed it for what it was; a film worthy of Hitler’s favorite propagandist Leni Riefenstahl who, by the way, the left found it within themselves to forgive following World War II.

This was typical analysis of the impact the film had on the American public:

Michael Moore’s triumph in “Fahrenheit 911″ is a measure of Jay Rosen’s observation that “the terms of authority are changing in American journalism.” In 1968 after the North Vietnamese Tet offensive, it was the CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite who signaled “enough” to the American TV audience, and to Lyndon Johnson. In 2004, it is the freelance camera dude and eternally unmade bed from Flint, Michigan who has cut through all the embedded blather about G. W. Bush and the so-called war on so-called terrorism. It’s a great country, and a great moment, in which one man can make the networks, the New York Times, the very best of our old institutional media (try the babbling David Brooks this morning) look so foolish, so irrelevant to the truth we really need to know

The swooning by the left following the release of that movie and the certitude with which they believed that Bush was finished as a candidate gave way to gloom and doom after the Republican convention. It was left to Michael Moore to rally the troops and in the process, reveal an inability to face reality:

WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street — and 54% now believe the war is wrong. YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS — YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO THAT?

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

And now here, in the dog days of summer, the hopes of the left have been dashed. Not once, but twice. First, the Rove-Wilson-Plame scandal has just never panned out the way they had hoped. Their hero, Joe Wilson, has been so thoroughly discredited that even the media won’t touch him anymore. And as the scandal has turned toward people in the press like Judith Miller who may or may not have had independent knowledge of Plame’s “secret” identity as a CIA agent, it becomes clearer that while acting despicably, Rove probably did nothing illegal. But that didn’t stop months of speculation that finally, once and for all, this would bring the President down

As with most of the dirty doings of the current administration, the Plame Affair has been buried, put through bureaucratic processes to buy time for Bush. But nothing stays buried forever. The blatant criminality of their actions are now bubbling back to the surface, and Bush’s Numero Uno, Karl Rove, affectionately known to George as “Turd Blossom” looks ready to take the fall for the capital offense of treason.

The significance of this latest development will not likely appear in the headlines for a few weeks yet, but it cannot be over-emphasized. Karl Rove (nee Roverer) has been, more than any other individual, the architect of what the world has suffered in these last years of the Bush presidency. These treasonable offenses, revealed thanks to Time Inc. are indefencible. The effects of this will rock the empirical plotting of George W. Bush and his accomplices, if given enough exposure.

Funny how these stories just seem to dissipate like clouds that never quite form, are never quite there. It’s symptomatic of the vacuity of the left’s intellectual engagement that they cannot grasp how truly out of touch with average Americans they really are.

Finally, there’s the Queen of Grief whose one woman vigil at the President’s ranch was supposed to “change the dynamic” of the anti war debate in favor of the those who wish to cut and run in Iraq. They called her “Rosa Parks” and an “icon” of the anti-war movement.

She turned out to be a loon.

Mainstream Democrats have been edging away from Mrs. Sheehan for days, something that the moonbat left hasn’t taken notice of yet. Judging by the number of posts at Huffington, they’re like beheaded chickens running around the barnyard not yet realizing that saner Democrats have abandoned this “icon.”

In fact, she hasn’t changed a thing. For all the millions of words written about Cindy Sheehan, there are still less than 100 people who have joined her little encampment. And while the press pumped up the “nationwide protest” the other night, the facts are a little grimmer for the loony left. Despite massive publicity, there was no massive turnout. Even in Hollywood they could only get about 700 people to stand for a few hours and relive the glories of Viet Nam era protests.

Face it. While many people are unhappy with the war and disapprove of the President’s job in handling Iraq, that simply doesn’t translate into the American people agreeing with the hard left that we should leave now. The war has transcended the President’s popularity. And while they may end up punishing Republicans in 2006 unless there’s some improvement, the left has once again handed the Republicans a gift. They have painted such an awful picture of the situation in Iraq that even modest improvement will seem like victory. They have made it easy for Republicans to claim progress simply by pointing to the left’s rhetoric and saying “See how things have improved?”

Once again, the left has been hoisted on its own petard. Their contempt for the intelligence and good sense of the American people has been on display for all to see. And it will cost them again in 2006.

I’m late to this blog swarm but I feel I just have to put my two cents in the pot regarding this extraordinarily stupid ruling by the NCAA that will ban Native American mascots for “March Madness” next year:

The National Collegiate Athletic Association banned the use of American Indian mascots by sports teams during its postseason tournaments, a ruling the president of Florida State University called “outrageous and insulting.”

The NCAA’s executive committee said the organization, which governs college sports, is limiting the prohibition to tournaments it controls. It doesn’t have the power to institute an outright ban, said University of Hartford President Walter Harrison, chairman of the committee.

Effective immediately, nicknames or mascots that are determined to be “hostile or abusive” can’t be shown on uniforms or other team-related clothing, Harrison said. He wasn’t specific about which nicknames or logos would be affected.

I’m totally with Jeff Goldstein on this:

The problem is, decisions like this are more than simply insulting, because they strengthen the political hand of prononents of identity politics, which in turn weakens individual rights and drives the PC culture that leads to the kind of balkinization and clash of cultures we’re now beginning to see all over Western Europe.

Quite a sad day for America, and another embarrassment to come out of our increasingly gutless academy.

My question for the NCAA is why stop at Native Americans? There are a whole host of mascots and symbols out there that are incredibly insulting and demeaning. Try these on for size:

FIGHTING IRISH OF NOTRE DAME

Anyone who thinks that picture of the leprechan with his fists balled up as if ready to fight isn’t an ethnic caricture, think again. It was a common cartoon as recently as the 1930’s to portray the Irish as drunken sots who loved to fight and always got into brawls. Besides, looking at my beloved Irish’s mascot, I detect that the little guy may have had a wee too much of a nip of the “crature.” Then again, because I’m Irish, maybe I’m just looking in a mirror.

USC TROJANS

Have you ever seen a more demeaning characterization of condoms in your life than the “Trojan” sitting on the horse? I must say, the least they could do is take the element of beastiality out of their mascot presentation. And have you noticed when the “Trojan” rides around the LA Collesium how he’s always waving that sword? Doesn’t that look just a little bit too phallic?

Imagine what would happen if the NCAA were to ban all the sexually demeaning mascots out there! Say Goodbye to the Washington “Huskies” and the Arizona State “Wildcats.”

OKLAHOMA SOONERS

Making a mascot of the famous Oklahoma “Sooner” is a travesty of AntiAmericanism. The “Sooner” was a nickname given to people with the true American spirit who were involved in the Oklahoma land rush in 1889. Thousands of people lined up at a starting point waiting for the signal to begin a mad rush to claim a portion of millions of acres of land. Then, when the cannon boomed…

The riders on horseback burst ahead of the droves of land seekers, but as they spread across the horizon they were discouraged to see that covered wagons and even men on foot had already occupied many prime places. As many as nine out of ten of these settlers had jumped the gun, earning themselves the name “Sooners”.

HOW DARE THEY! To demean the all-American traits of exhibiting initiative, imagination, and being a real “go-getter” is an affront to all of us who value what makes America great. Yes, they sort of violated the rules but we Americans know instinctively that unless you bend the rules a little, you’ll never get ahead in this country. Just look at Ken Lay.

BOSTON CELTICS

While we’re banning college mascots, how about going after the pros? The shamrock is an insult to every living Celt who treasures their past.

At one time, the Celts ruled an empire that stretched from the Black Sea to England. And yet they reduce that glorious past to a representation of one tiny Island in the Atlantic Ocean? Ridiculous.

BTW…if there are any living Celts out there please let me know. Since there are so many idiots in Europe who think we should give all that land back to our own Native Americans, maybe we can wangle a few million acres from some of those Euro-twits by laying a solid guilt trip on them for stealing Celtic lands.

NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS

Hah! Patriots? In Massachussetts? Are you kidding me?

Is there any bluer state than the deep, dark, blue of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts? I think serious consideration should be given by the NFL to yank that moniker from the two time Super Bowl champs and replace it with something more appropriate. Like the New England Chowderheads or how about the Boston Baked Beans?

To insult our patriot past by comparing the moonbats in Massachusetts with the brave fellows who endured Valley Forge, threw the British Army back 3 times at Bunker Hill, and pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor towards the noble goal of human liberty is unconscionably demeaning to today’s patrtiots. The moonbats today don’t even go to Valley Forge unless it’s in their heated RV. And the only thing they’re willing to pledge their fortunes to is the ACLU or Moveon.Org.

Mithras, who runs the liberal site Fables of Reconstruction , posted what he terms “A Conservative Blog Taxonomy.” It’s actually a very clever idea. And given that I’m a shameless and inveterate thief when it comes to harvesting ideas to feed this personal demon of a blog, I thought it might be interesting to duplicate the moonbat’s efforts and see what I could come up with in creating a “Moonbat Blog Taxonomy.”

Now taxonomy is generally defined in biology as an “orderly classification of plants and animals according to their presumed natural relationships.” This posed something of a problem since there’s no such thing as “natural relationships” when it comes to moonbats. In fact, there’s nothing natural at all about liberals in that you have to make a preternatural effort day in and day out to exhibit that amount of cluelessness regarding the world around you as it actually exists.

Be that as it may, in researching the subject, I arrived at a solution to my dilemma; categorize the sites using as a benchmark how far the blog deviates from the real world and descends into conspiratorial fantasy.

I discovered that the more forcefully the denizens of these sites bragged about being a member of the “Reality Based Community” the farther they actually were from existing on the same plane of the universe as the rest of us. Some maintain a passing familiarity with reality - as if reality were like walking past a beautiful woman and getting a tantalizing whiff of an exotic perfume. Others have had reality slap them upside the head and still deny the evidence of it with their own eyes and ears.

A “Reality Quotient” (RQ) will be assigned each site in order to rank their moonbattiness. A rank of “5″ indicates a firm foothold on reality. A rank of “1″ indicates a trip back to planet earth is in order.

KEVIN DRUM

Kevin Drum’s blog The Political Animal swings wildly between well written analyses of politics, the economy, and current events and a snivelling, simpering condenscension that grates on the mind like a fingernail run across a blackboard grates on the ears. His famous “A Few Wee Questions” for hawks on the Iraq war became the source of much hilarity on the right as well as conservative blog fodder for weeks. Not above letting his Bush hatred cloud his judgement.

RQ: 4.5

TALKLEFT

I’ve always found Jeralyn Merrit’s Talkleft to be island of reason in a sea of liberal idiocy.

When you think about it, that’s not saying much.

Merrit’s a smart, savvy attorney who knows criminal law but whose political judgement is, shall we say, wanting…As in “wanting one iota of political horsesense.” Like all other lefty bloggers, her posts on the Gannon/Guckert imbroglio got to be like watching an epileptic rolling around on the floor having a fit. Everyone else in the vicinity was wondering what the big deal was.

RQ: 4.1

WONKETTE

I’ve never understood the fascination with Wonkette AKA Anna Marie Cox. Maybe it’s the three names which make her sound mysterious. Maybe it’s the penis jokes which make her sound slutty. It can’t be her personal appearance. She looks like a pushing 40, pre-middle aged, dumpy, lumpy, policy maven.

She believes she can elevate snark to the level of political discourse as she gossips her way through the bedrooms, board rooms, and dining rooms of Washington. What passes for “information” is really just a regurgitation of news clippings and other blog posts with a smattering of innocuous, inane commentary. Not ill informed, just colorless with tepid attempts at humor. No insight. No original thinking. Dull, drab, almost humorless, and totally without redeeming value. In short, a waste of time and bandwidth.

RQ: 4.0

MYDD

The duo of Jerome Armstrong and Chris Bowers at MyDD are perhaps the biggest purveyors of Democratic spin in the blogosphere. A paid consultant for the Dean campaign, Armstrong has a knack for being more wrong about more things political than any other big blogger I’ve seen. His analysis is shallow and trite. His writing is, well, boring. Vomiting up Democratic talking points on everything from the WoT to the Rove-Wilson-Plame affair, I have yet to see an orginal position taken in opposition to anything the Democrats have done.

RQ: 3.6

ESCHATON

Atrios AKA Duncan Black runs the site Eschaton. I’d call Mr. Black a snake in the grass but that would be insulting snakes, grass, and the sun that gives life to both of them. A true leftist lickspittle his “community” is the most vulgar, most obscenely obnoxious group of party hacks around. Black has been known to sic his minions on bloggers who displease him. A real class act.

RQ: 3.1

OLIVER WILLIS

If there was ever a more irrelvant hysteric on the left side of the sphere than Oliver Willis I haven’t discovered him yet. Famous for putting a “countdown” clock at the top of his blog counting the days that Brit Hume hadn’t resigned for , as Oliver put it so rationally: ” Hume intentionally manipulated the words of the 32nd president, Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt to make it appear as if FDR supported privatization of social security. This is a brazenly false falsehood.” After about a month, Mr. Willis removed the clock from his blog but not before several conservative bloggers razzed him hilariously.

Willis’ conspiracy mongering about everything from the 2004 election to Jeff Gannon reveals a pathological resistence to reality that makes him one of the top 5 cluebats on the left.

RQ: 2.4

AMERICABLOG

Even just typing the name makes me feel unclean. John Aravosis of Americablog is a walking argument for internet regulation (too bad I adamantly oppose it). The nauseating way in which he “outed” Jeff Gannon by publishing nude pictures of the quasi-journalist along with the suggestion that Gannon may have been a gay escort at one time, sickened decent people everywhere. The fact that he was cheered on by other lefty bloggers tells you all you need to know about the hypocrisy that drips from the snarling lips of the radical lefties.

The “conspiracy” pushed by Aravosis had Gannon sleeping with every male in the White House including the President. The fact that even the White House press corps let out a collective yawn at the whole affair proves that not only was there nothing to the story, but that some harmless twit of a conservative writer who wanted to hide his identity was unceremoniously outed by people with no integrity and no honor.

RQ: 1.4

THE HUFFINGTON POST

There are so many loons, goons, and poltroons who write for Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post that you all you have to do to find someone totally disconnected from reality is close your eyes, point, and click. It’s hard to say whether the B-list celebrities or C-list journalists who write for the site are more irrelevant. And Arianna herself presides over these mountebanks like a Queen of Tarts, jostling with the dozen or so posters for the honor of being named “Conservative Cannon Fodder for a Day.” There is no site out side of the Democratic Underground whose writers are more regularly nor more completely fisked.

RQ: 1.1

DAILY KOS

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga AKA Kos, AKA “Screw ‘em” Kos is possibly the worst thing to happen to the Democratic party since George McGovern. His ability to raise money from his legions of conspiracy mongering, paranoid readers makes him absolutely indispensible to the party’s infrastructure. Just recently, he almost singlehandedly took an unkown attorney and Iraqi War vet Paul “Two-faced” Hackett and, by raising nearly a half a million dollars in a fortnight, put him within spitting distance of winning the special election in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District.

What makes Kos such a ball and chain for the Democratic party is that despite his ability to raise money, the fantastical conspiracies given prominence on his site regarding Bush, the war, elections, Gannon/Guckert, Rove (again and again), Cheney, Haliburton, and on and on - give the party a patina of psychosis that leaves conservatives laughing and rational Democrats scratching their heads. His “0 for 16″ record when supporting a Democratic candidate also prove he’s a loser. If he couldn’t raise money, he’d be out of business since a political consultant is only as good as his won-loss record. And without the conspiritorial nature of his site, he’d lose half of his considerable readership. They’d simply pack up and go someplace that will feed their constant paranoia that the world is against them.

RQ: 0.4

DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND

I actually have a soft spot in my heart for the inmates at the Democratic Underground. Let’s face it; the internet just wouldn’t be the same without them. It’s become a matter of course for me that whenever I’ve got writer’s block, I visit the DU and, within 5 minutes, find something so outrageous, so far beyond the pale, that my dilemma regarding what to write about disappears in a flash. I wear their disapprobation like a badge of honor.

Perhaps one illustration of their complete disconnect from reality is in order. Following the tsunami tragedy last December, a comment thread at the site started to speculate that, in fact, secret US government tests in the ocean caused the giant waves. The comments got loonier and loonier as the DU’ers speculated that the earth itself was falling apart:

Since we know that the atmosphere has become contaminated by all the atomic testing, space stuff, electronic stuff, earth pollutants, etc., is it logical to wonder if: Perhaps the “bones” of our earth where this earthquake spawned have also been affected?

You just can’t make this stuff up.

For DU’ers, every election is stolen, every setback by Democrats is the result of a plot by Karl Rove, and everything else is Haliburton’s fault. In short, when looking for sanity at the Democratic Underground, it’s best to remember the sign that Dante Alighieri saw at the gates of hell in his poem “The Divine Comedy:

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

RQ: ARE YOU KIDDING?

This is just too stupid to be true:

President Bush said Monday he believes schools should discuss ”intelligent design” alongside evolution when teaching students about the creation of life.

During a round-table interview with reporters from five Texas newspapers, Bush declined to go into detail on his personal views of the origin of life. But he said students should learn about both theories, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported.

”I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,” Bush said. ”You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.”

Alright then, I’ve got a few more “ideas” that students should probably be exposed to as long as we’re talking about filling their heads with a bunch of nonsense like ID:.

1. The earth is actually a bowl sitting on the back of elephants. Hey! If its good enough for the Hindus, why not us?

2. The God Manitou took pity on a mother bear who had lost her cubs while swimming across Lake Michigan and turned the cubs into islands (the Manitou islands) and the mother into a sand dune (Sleeping Bear Sand Dune). The Ojibwa’s believe it…I did too until I was about 5 years old.

3. NASA really didn’t go to the moon. The moon walk was done on a Hollywood sound stage.

4. A stitch in time saves nine. Try it, Mr. President. It’s true.

5. The invention of the microwave oven is the result of back engineering alien technology found in the rubble of a spacecraft that crashed in Roswell, New Mexico in 1945…or was it 1948? The date doesn’t matter. What matters is many, many people believe it. (This info surprised the actual inventor of the microwave oven Percy L. Spencer)

6. Gerry Thomas, who recently passed away, invented the TV Dinner. Hell, the MSM believed it, why not teach it?

One can go on and on.

Who the devil cares if some people believe that “Intelligent Design” is the “correct” interpretation for the massive amount of fossil and anthropological evidence showing how human beings evolved? If it were up to you Mr. President and the right wing idiotarians who are pushing this “theory” humans would still believe that the earth was the center of the universe and that stars were fixed in the sky in a series of crystal spheres. That’s what the overwhelming majority of people believed as recently as 500 years ago.

The damage you and the idiotarians are doing to the minds of our young people is unconscionable. And it’s got to stop. So take your idiotic theory and shove it where the sun don’t shine and leave science to the rationalists. We’ll leave faith based issues to experts like you.

UPDATE

Welcome Instapundit Readers!

My, my some commenters seem to be in a snit…or is it sniff? I will reprint my reply to those who wish to tell me that ID is science, or that evolution is “only” a theory, or that we haven’t found any transitional fossiles, or that I’m a godless heathen who will burn in hellfire for all eternity, etc.

1. Anyone who says that ID is “science” is a loon.

When the rest of the world embraces ID with the same fervor that the zealots in this country do, come back and talk to me. Until then…shut your yaps.

UPDATE II

The question that reappears over and over again in the comments from ID supporters is “What’s wrong with teaching both and letting the kids decide?”

With that kind of logic, we could teach both the Steady State Theory of the cosmos as well as the Big Bang and let 15 year old kids try to work out the most complex and elegant set of mathmatical equations ever dreamed by the mind of man?

And when we teach Newton’s Laws, should we also teach what theories they replaced? And when teaching Einstein, perhaps we should also teach the theories of light that his ideas replaced. There are “thought experiments” that you can do to prove Einstein’s theories on the dual properties of light. But there were 18th and 19th century experiments that perfectly reasonable scientists could duplicate that proved that light was something entirely different than what Einstien proved it was.

Why not let the kids decide? Because it’s not up to them to “decide” the merits of something that by all accounts, is barely understood by the people who are teaching the subject!

Newton’s laws were almost perfect and worked very well - except they didn’t explain the orbit of Mercury. For hundreds of years, this anamoly with Mercury’s orbit was one of the great mysteries of science. It took Einstein’s theories to fill in Newton’s holes, including Mercury’s orbit, and thus built upon Newton’s work.

Intelligent Design would not build upon Darwin or any other evolutionists work. It would make a mockery of it. The capriciousness of the evolutionary process is “how we got here from there.” Just because the fossile record is incomplete - and given that less than 1/10 of 1% of all living things will die and not only fossilize, but also remain intact so that we can find and study them - doesn’t mean a damn thing. All it means is that we have to keep digging - literally.

In the future, look to the evolutionary biologists as they unlock the secrets in our DNA. That’s where the big news on origins will probably come from in the future.

This is just too weird. John Cole calls it “mind numbing.” Any which way you look at it, this represents the strangest turn yet in the Rove-Wilson-Plame affair.

The story starts at a hearing held by soon-to-be-once-again-former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney whose defeat in 2002 was a direct result of her nutty conspiracy theories about Bush and 9/11. Not content to leave well enough alone, on Friday McKinney put on a show for C-Span by holding forth with dozens of witnesses for 8 hours on 9/11 conspiracy theories. These include the theories that no plane hit the Pentagon, that the Twin Towers came down as a result of a “controlled demolition,” and that Flight 93 was shot down by F-16’s over the fields of Pennsylvania.

The hearing featured loons from every corner of the conspiracy spectrum including a former CIA agent Melvin Goodman who was quoted as saying that McKinney’s wacky views on the attack would some day become “conventional wisdom.”

How is this relevant to the Rovian kerfluffle? Mr. Goodman signed this letter along with several ex-CIA agents who were upset about the outing of Valerie Plame. The letter has been widely publicized and passed off as indicative of the way CIA operatives view the publication of Mrs. Wilson’s name.

Okay…so we have a genuine barking moonbat who thinks Cynthia McKinney is a prophet signing a letter criticizing the Bush administration for revealing the name of a covert operative. But dig a little deeper and you find this about the other signatories of that letter:

Ray McGovern, for instance, contributed an article to the ultra-left truthout.org arguing that the Downing Street Memo conclusively proves that Bush deliberately forged intelligence to get us into war in Iraq. Now, are we to believe that he just innocently and in a non-partisan manner became concerned about what happened to poor old Valerie Plame? If you’re still unconvinced, read his hysterical rant at DemocracyNow about what a right-wing rag the WaPo is.

And here’s a quote David MacMichael, another signer of this “non-partisan” letter:

Those were 1981-1983 under Reagan and under William Casey. In fact I embarked on that job the day Casey came in. I can assure you that the way in which the National Intelligence Council and the National Intelligence officers, the directing officers in there were stacked during the Casey years, meant that intelligence was designed, and I focused principally on Central America, the whole Iran Contra thing later, truthful analysis was not the highest priority there. The determination was to produce analyses that would support the previously decided upon policy so for me, getting back involved with Ray McGovern here and VIPS dealing with this current situation, its kind of like déjà vu all over again. It’s a familiar process.

You might recall during the Reagan years that the CIA was at war with the White House over a wide variety of issues, not the least of which was Russian military capabilities which were consistently overstated as was the strength of the Russian economy.

Leon of Red State highlights another signatory to the letter:

Additionally, several of the other signatories had been outspoken critics of the administration’s decision to go to war before the incident with Plame erupted, including Col. Patrick Lang. Vince Cannistraro was part of the group of CIA officials who suspiciously began speaking critically about the Bush administration in the month before the general election, rather than at a time when it might have been practically useful (such as, before the war).

This letter becomes less credible by the minute. We are still looking for a signatory that didn’t have an axe to grind with Bush BEFORE the outing of Plame.

Keep looking Leon but I don’t think you’ll find one.

If Rove or anyone else deliberately or otherwise outed a covert CIA agent he should be fired, even if he didn’t break the law. This should be a given. Hell, I’ve been calling for Rove to leave since the story heated up earlier this month.

But there’s something else I’ve been calling for:

I WANT AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ACTIVITIES OF THESE FORMER CIA AGENTS AND THEIR CONNECTION TO CURRENT INTELLIGENCE PERSONNEL WHO ARE SELECTIVELY LEAKING CLASSIFIED INFORMATION TO DISCREDIT THE ADMINISTRATION AND DELIBERATELY HARM THE WAR EFFORT.

This is what the Rove-Plame-Wilson affair is all about; push back by the White House in their war with the CIA. They may have gone too far. They may have harmed national security. But that doesn’t change the fact that unelected bureacrats in the CIA have opposed the Administration from the start and sought to sway an election last year by leaking cherry picked intel reports that showed the CIA in the best possible light with regards to WMD.

Some of the signatories to that letter may be in the thick of this scandal. Some of them may be conduits for classified information that journalists like Walter Pincus, Bob Novak, and Judith Miller received prior to the election last year. And the whole sordid mess is being ignored by the press in their effort to get Rove.

Fine…get Rove. But when is the MSM going to turn their attention to this clandestine conflict that Mrs. Wilson and her cohorts have been fighting for more than 2 years? This, not the Rovian affair, is the real threat to our country.