Right Wing Nut House

There are times I truly feel sorry for Markos Moulitsas Zúniga AKA “Kos.” His fans and worshipers number in the millions. He has the top political weblog in the country. He gets thousands of dollars a month in advertising.

Well, okay. I don’t feel that sorry for him. After all, his nickname, “Screw ‘em” Kos, was given for the curious epitaph Mr. Zúniga’ directed at those unfortunate souls in Fallujah two years ago who were murdered and then hung from a bridge while a crowd danced a jig in celebration. I’m told the offending post has mysteriously disappeared from his archives. Too bad he didn’t go ahead and delete most of what he wrote during the last election cycle.

But let’s give credit where credit is due. Kos has had it with the tin foil hat crowd:

Today I did something I’ve never done before (not even during the Fraudster mess), and wish I’d never had to do.

I made a mass banning of people perpetuating a series of bizarre, off-the-wall, unsupported and frankly embarrassing conspiracy theories.

I have a high tolerance level for material I deem appropriate for this site, but one thing I REFUSE to allow is bullshit conspiracy theories. You know the ones — Bush and Blair conspired to bomb London in order to take the heat off their respective political problems. I can’t imagine what fucking world these people live in, but it sure ain’t the Reality Based Community.

So I banned these people, and those that have been recommending diaries like it. And I will continue to do so until the purge is complete, and make no mistake — this is a purge.

A purge! A purge! Oh, really?

Update: I’ve been reinstating some of the banned accounts as they email me. Some people wondered why there wasn’t any warning. There have been warnings from others — repeated pleadings for people to ground themselves in reality.

It’s telling that I have NEVER done something like this before. Because this has been an extreme situation. This isn’t about disagreeing with what people are saying. If that was the case, everyone would’ve been banned by now. The myth of the “echo chamber” is just that. A myth.

But as for warnings, well, this has been my warning. I wanted it clear that I was serious, and I think that has come through. I am reinstating those who ask to be reinstated. But the message has been sent.

The message has been sent…but has it been received? Here’s one of the first commenters on this “Purge Post”:

Who decides which conspiracy theories are acceptable?

The American people were lied to repeatedly in order to go to war against Iraq. Conspiracy theory? Nope, fact.

Don’t know enough about either of the last two to decide either way. That’s up to the individual.

This “Emily Litella” moment is predictable and, as Kevin at Wizbang points out, it “makes one wonder how many Kossites will be left?”

Because once you get down to it, the modern Democratic Party is little better than a third world conspiracy mill that constantly feeds its wild eyed members ever more bizarre and outlandish intrigues in order to assuage all the slights - both real and imagined - received at the hands of their political opponents.

This flight from reality would be amusing if we weren’t fighting a war for our survival and trying to overturn centuries of oppression in the middle east. The sad fact is, as I’ve stated many times on this site, we need the left in order to win this war and succeed in the middle east. But like Tom Cruise in Top Gun following his crash that killed his best friend, the left simply is incapable of engaging the enemy. They are standing on the sidelines like a bunch of old men at a shuffleboard tournament, kibitzing and criticizing while not lifting a finger to help.

To say that they were obstructionists would be incorrect because they’ve made themselves totally irrelevant in the national security debate. The harm they do is that their conspiracy theories and overinflated rhetoric about Nazis and death camps are used as propaganda by our enemies to provoke and inflame the passions of the Arab street. In short, while they hate it when I say it, their rhetoric gives aid and comfort to the people we’re fighting. It gives them the only thing they have at this point - hope. Hope that the people who really want to fight this war and win will be thrown out of office and people who have no stomach for the fight are put in. It’s the only chance they have and like a drowning man hanging on to a piece of driftwood, the terrorists have latched on to it and are hanging on until help arrives…

The Democrats and their apologists who make up the community of Kos.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin:

Wouldn’t it be something if the Democrat Party took a hint and tried draining its own fever swamps, too?

Now that would be a public works project that I could support enthusiastically. The only drawback would be the size and scope of the endeavor. Maybe we should start with something a little more manageable.

Like draining the Everglades.

Charles Johnson is also noticing and has a thought about Kos’ deliberate use of the word “purge”:

Once this revelation dawned upon him, in true reactionary fashion he carried out a “purge” to get rid of some of the nuts—and then had to un-purge and let them back in.

You ever hear a conservative use the word “purge” to describe an ideological cleansing? Hitler “purged” the S.A. and had his buddy Ernst Roehm murdered after dragging him out of the bed he was sharing with his male lover. Stalin “purged” the Red Army by having tens of thousands of officers executed, many of whom committed no crime whatsoever. It seems that the word has meaning and usage for only the most despicable tyrants in history.

That would place Kos in familiar territory.

Scott Johnson of Powerline has a post on Newsweek’s internal investigation into how Michael Isikoff and John Barry’s story on the copy of a Qur’an being flushed down a toilet - a story that now appears to have no basis in fact - made it into the magazine’s “Periscope” section.

Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. The brief periscope item (”SouthCom Showdown”) had reported on the expected results of an upcoming U.S. Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo. According to NEWSWEEK, SouthCom investigators found that Gitmo interrogators had flushed a Qur’an down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur’an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them.

How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest? While continuing to report events on the ground, NEWSWEEK interviewed government officials, diplomats and its own staffers, and reconstructed this narrative of events:

Scott sums it up nicely:

So Isikoff relied on a telephone call with an anonymous government official paraphrasing a forthcoming report, confirmed by placing a draft of the Periscope item before another anonymous government official. Isikoff never saw the underlying report or even had it read to him.

And this is what passes for “journalism” at Newsweek.

The magazine’s critique, written by Evan Thomas, finds something even more startling:

On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original periscope item. He said, “We pursue all credible allegations” of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur’an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur’an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, “People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?”

This is an everyday occurence in Washington. An “anonymous source” curries favor with the media by exaggerating or even making up out of whole cloth incidents or quotes that reflect badly on someone else. Who knows what this guy’s axe is. The fact that he’s bactracking from his story immediately after the riots indeed raises the question “How could he be credible now?”

Isikoff is an experienced investigative reporter. He made his bones breaking the Lewinsky scandal back in the 1990’s. The life blood of most investigative journalists has now become “anonymous” or “unnamed” sources. Until Watergate, such sources were used sparingly and judiciously by the press for the obvious reason that if someone wasn’t willing to “go on the record” the chances are there were other motives involved for the source talking to the press in the first place. The motives could be personal, sexual, political, or the simple need for attention.

And Evan Thomas does a poor job of trying to explain how this questionable information got into his magazine in the first place. Scott has an observation about that:

Like Lawrence DiRita, I have a question of my own for NEWSWEEK. Is this how an elite newsmagazine confesses error and corrects the record when it makes a big mess?

On a related note, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs takes issue with our government’s response:

Perhaps even more disgusting than this display of violent irrationality from the RoP (Religion of Peace) is our own government’s rush to appease, even before any facts are discovered. The Newsweek article isn’t the only reason this madness is continuing to spiral out of control; when the US’s first reaction is to apologize and abase ourselves in the face of thuggish Dark Ages behavior, what else should we expect? Weakness invites attack.

I agree wholeheartedly. We should have waited until the Pentagon at least had completed a preliminary investigation (finished Saturday) and then denied the Qur’an incident in the strongest possible language. By leaving the door open to the idea that the incident is true, we’ve allowed our enemies to stir up the Arab street against us. Now we have the prospect of having to deal with things like this:

The clerics in the northeastern province of Badakhshan said they wanted President Bush to handle the matter honestly “and hand the culprits over to an Islamic country for punishment.”

“If that does not happen within three days, we will launch a jihad against America,” said a statement issued by about 300 clerics, referring to Muslim holy war, after meeting in the main mosque in the provincial capital, Faizabad.

(HT: LGF)

I doubt whether this issue is going to go away anytime soon. And just like with Abu Ghraib with everyone who ever set foot in that prison being tortured, every poor little terrorist who found himself incarcerated by the US will weep about the desecration of the Qur’an that the infidel’s forced him to watch.

The hell of it is, the moonbat left will pick up on this and once again make common cause with the enemies of the United States.

UPDATE

As you can imagine, the blogosphere’s big guns have trained their sights on this story and are letting Newsweek and by extension their MSM critics have it right in the chops.

Michelle Malkin does her usual great job of rounding up reaction from blogs both big and small.

The Captain fire’s a well aimed broadside:

Remember this when the Exempt Media gets on its righteous high horse and instructs us on their superior system of checks and balances. Newsweek ran an explosive story based on a single, unnamed source that it knew would cause a huge effect on the Muslim world, at precisely the moment when we need to ensure that people understand that we’re not at war with Islam. It’s just a little late to say, “Oops, we’re sorry.” It’s a little late to unring the bell that Newsweek rang with its false story — it’s too late for the nine people who died because Newsweek couldn’t wait to run its story without checking it properly first.

Ouch!

The Anchoress asks an excellent question:

Great job, NEWSWEEK. The new standard in journalism is the “prove the negative” standard? If someone “does not argue” against a story that confirms it is true, and so it’s okay to run with an anonymous story that will undoubtedly ignite something violent and bad? Clearly, Mark Whitaker is trying to claim that reporting these so-called desecrations of the Muslim Holy Book is a matter of ethical journalism. Rules of Ethical journalism has never inspired him to report on the Holy Bible being used for toilet paper, but I digress…

The Jawas have a nice summary.

Sisyphean Musings gets flamed by a Kossak on the subject and gives back generously.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network

Here’s a roundup of a few reactions to the Iraqi elections:

The Captain has a breakdown of turnout numbers by region:

Nationwide: 72%
Baghdad: 80%
South: 92%
Najaf: 80%
Karbala: 90%

The Baghdad number jumps out immediately. The city has a large Sunni minority and a large number of followers of radical Cleric al Sadr who just a few months ago were killing our boys in Najaf. Chrenkoff has this statement from a Sunni cleric trying to spin the fact that apparently more Sunnis than expected turned out to vote:

” ‘The associationÂ’s call for a boycott of the election was not a fatwa (religious edict), but only a statement,’ said Association of Muslim Scholars spokesman Omar Ragheb. ‘It was never a question of something religiously prohibited or permitted. We never sought to force anyone to boycott’.”

Uh-Huh.

Arthur also breaks down the Sunnis into four main groups:

Talking of “the Sunnis” in the context of the vote is a big generalisation, of course. The Sunnis of Iraq are not a monolith, and arguably could be divided into four different groups, each with its own attitude towards the election: 1) moderate, anti-terror Sunnis who are actually voting; 2) Sunnis who want to vote but by virtue of their residence in terrorist strongholds are too intimidated to; 3) Sunnis who have done the math and couldn’t be bothered to vote because whatever happens, on January 31 they will not be in control of the country; and 4) Sunnis who ran, or directly or indirectly benefited under, Saddam’s regime and are therefore hostile to any changes that see them lose their previous status.

Pretty reasonable assumptions there. The concern, of course, is over international legitimacy. I believe that number comes in at anything over 40%. Anything less, and there are legitimate questions.

Powerline writes of simple faith:

The process by which we succeed in Iraq (if we do) can be thought of as a series of events by which one party keeps faith with the others. First, we kept faith with the people of Iraq by remaining in force to rebuild the country after we toppled Saddam and carried out our search for WMD. Then, the Shiite majority kept faith by rejecting the radical elements when they rose up against the occupation. We then kept faith with the Shiites by scheduling elections and seeing them through as scheduled. And today, the Iraqi people kept faith by turning out and voting.

This is precisely why the reason for the triumph these elections represent will go over the head of the lefties. We’re speaking two different languages here. Words like “faith” have no meaning to people who only believe in what they can see and touch. Don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about God here. I’m talking about the ability to reach outside of yourself and latch on to something that transcends the physical senses. It’s one thing to “believe” in something or someone; as in I “believe” in George Bush (or John Kerry for that matter). It’s quite another thing to say “I have faith in George Bush.” Faith requires a leap beyond logic, beyond the self into the realm of the sublime.

I don’t think that came out exactly the way I intended. I hope I made the point.

Meanwhile, Iraqi bloggers are really upbeat, I mean, to them this must be Christmas, New Years, St. Patricks Day, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one. This from “Iraq the Model” courtesy of Charles Johnson:

We had all kinds of feelings in our minds while we were on our way to the ballot box except one feeling that never came to us, that was fear.

I couldnÂ’t think of a scene more beautiful than that

Finally, Bill and INDC rounds up some misleading wire service headlines:

Scanning a minority of the headlines of a google news search gives us a tedious glimpse of the political unconsciousness of Fifth Columnists:

What’s the real story here? That two dozen people died in a country that’s a regular victim of terrorism? Or that perhaps 8,000,000 people stood up and demanded Democracy, shedding a half-century of brutal oppression and defying the threats of terrorists? What it would take to wring a positive headline out of those editors is beyond me.

I realize “If it bleeds, it leads” is gospel in the MSM but Jeez! Even the NY Times and WAPO had optimistic, almost giddy reports.

As I said in my first post early this morning, I’m going to withhold final judgment on how successful these elections were until some hard numbers come in, probably on Tuesday. But early reports are very encouraging. And if the Iraqi people can maintain this kind of enthusiasm, the transition to a democratic state may be realized despite the certainty that the insurgency will continue.

My guess would be that the insurgents will now concentrate all of their efforts in trying to start a civil war between the Shi’ias and Sunnis. Only by turning Iraq into another Lebanon can the Sunni’s have a chance to dominate the government again.

Another trip down the blogroll. Let’s see what some of the “newbies” are doing.

Beautiful Atrocities is “outraged.” The amazing thing about this fantastic parody of “The Today Show” is that, like all good satire, it has the ring of truth. The fact that the reporter who fed the lack of armor question to Secretary Rumsfeld felt he had “his best day as a journalist”–even though as Bill at INDC points out it would be a stretch to call what he did “journalism,”–the reaction by Democrats and war critics has been both predictable and lame. This “gotcha” mentality may, in fact be harming the war effort according to LGF’s Charles Johnson.

The question I’d have for that reporter and indeed for many in the national press would be “How much do you think about reporting information that could result in American casualties?” Did, as Johnson’s post point out, 65 straight days of coverage of the Abu Gahraib prison scandal radicalize some segments of the Iraqi population against the Americans? In their partisan zeal to defeat the President, did some reporters cross the line and become advocates not for a political opposition but for the battlefield enemies of our soldiers?

Satire gets you thinking, doesn’t it?

The Carnivorous Conservative is photoblogging here and here. The Air Force testimony reminds me of a series of “photoshop” pictures in “Hustler” Magazine years ago that had Senators from BOTH parties doing commentaries on Anita Hill’s titillating testimony before the Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. Ted Kennedy was a lout then…he’s a lout now.

David Earney is blogging the weather…in Baghdad. He’s also spot on with his analysis of Bush’s endorsement of Kofi Annan:

“There is no way to make the UN a fairly elected body, but empowering the institution and actually having a UN that is capable of really accomplishing things scares the hell out of me.”

David’s thought is that Kofi and the whole gang of incompetent boobs who currently run the UN bureaucracy are actually less of a threat than someone who could say, be an effective spokesman for the Security Council.

Amen to that.

Digger has some choice thoughts on the Kerik imbroglio.

“I think the man is qualified for the position of Director of Homeland Security, but I also have a twinge of happiness in this occurring. People care about this illegal alien problem we have and I’m happy to see people paying for their hiring of these individuals.”

I agree. The immigration issue, to me, is not about race…it’s about sovereignty. If there is one definition of sovereignty accepted the world over it has to be a nation’s right to defensible borders. When people pour over those borders as if they weren’t there, that damages our sovereignty and cripples our ability to defend ourselves.

My fear is that we won’t develop the political courage to address this problem until terrorists slip over the border and devastate an American city. The opponents of immigration reform should realize once that happens, the current proposals will seem like mild palliatives compared to the draconian measures sure to follow on the heels of a terrorist attack.

Iowahawk is channeling Jesse Jackson and charging vote fraud in Wizbang’s Weblog Awards.

A sample of the Reverend’s oratory:

“Reverend Iowahawk contacted me soon after the evidence of impropriety began. He explained the many problems and irregularities being reported. He assured me his check would clear. I decided I must be involved.”

With the Reverend on the case, I have no doubt we’ll get to the bottom of it.

Rightwingsparkle has a different take on immigration reform:

“Living in Texas and in a large city near the Mexican border, employing illegal aliens is commonplace. I know what your going to say…it is still illegal. Which is one of the reasons this guest worker program should take affect. A lot of Republicans have a problem with Bush’s immigration policies, but I understand where he is coming from. I know we have a security problem now, but Mexicans are not the ones we fear. This guest worker program will at least identify those here and coming in.”

Reading her post tugs at the heartstrings of most conservatives. The question I would have for Mrs. Sparkle would be: By making current “illegals” legal, don’t we just encourage another wave of border crossings similar to what happened after Bush 41’s amnesty program?

The key to immigration reform is enforcement. I fear that enforcing any program encompassing millions of guest workers would necessarily be haphazard and unfair to both employers and immigrants. Or do we grow the INS into another gigantic federal department, sucking tax dollars into ineffective and worthless “showcase” programs?

Preston Taylor Holmes is mad at France (again). It seems Jacques (please trim your nosehairs) Chirac is a little nostalgic for soviet style repression of free speech:

“The French, led by their spineless, corrupt leader, Jacques “The Worm” Chirac, are seeking to outlaw “sexist and homophobic” comments. That’s right, you call somebody an ass-pirate, and you’re going to jail for up to a year. Then you’ll find out what ass-pirate really means.”

Mr. Holmes’ suggestion about how to deal with the problem may seem extreme to some. But it begs the question as to how much longer we can carry on the charade that the French are our “allies” when they trash the United States every chance they get and start to pull crap like this on their own citizens.

Vive liberté!

Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Can you take me with you?
For my hand is cold
And needs warmth
Where are you going?

Far beyond where the horizon lies
Where the horizon lies
And the land sinks into mellow blueness
Oh please, take me with you

“By My Side” from “Godspell” Music and New Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz.

A few days back, Gerard Vanderleun of “American Digest” wrote a fascinating post on the future of blogs:

“For good or ill, blogs are a force to be reckoned with on the national and international scene. What remains to be seen is whether or not blogs, as a medium — or better still “a multi-medium of the multitudes” — can build upon this position, bootstrapping themselves into ever widening spheres of influence. This is, as is the manner of blogs, already happening on an ad hoc basis. It will continue to happen at an accelerating pace. But it can be accelerated through applications of capital, organization, planning, and most importantly, intent.”

Gerard brings up Rathergate and points out that more than anything, it was a fluke; a confluence of events that led to “blowback”:

“In a reactive medium such as blogging, one brings one’s opinions and expertise (limited, expansive or non-existent) to any question that engages one’s interest. At times, the confluence of these factors — most famously in the CBS False Documents scandal — creates a situation that causes what is sometimes referred to as “blowback” in the analog world. But these cases are still few and far between since there are not that many situations where the elements (documents, pdf files, computer and typewriter and word processing knowledge) combine to form a perfect storm of blogging blowback.”

Spot on. Blogger triumphalism regarding Rather’s retirement was, I believe, misplaced. I tried to make the point here that Rather was preferable to what we’re going to get with the next generation of MSM anchors. And for all the writing and analytical talent out there, how many bloggers are going to become real, working journalists? Vanderleun makes a similar point:

“Individual bloggers typically begin their pages with a few friends and family and slowly build readership, if they build it at all, over months and years. Three focused group blogs bannered at the top of newyorktimes.com would achieve in a matter of weeks a readership that most bloggers only dream of. And corporate bloggers would also have something most bloggers don’t even begin to dream of, a paycheck. NYTimesBlogs.com would also enjoy many other advantages that could, left to their own devices, take them to the top of the Technorati 100 and reduce the readership of other pages across the board.

At the moment, the news gathering organization of something like The New York Times is focused on delivering news and ‘analysis’ from a thousand different sources to a newsroom and from there to patterns of ink pressed into bleached wood pulp. If that focus shifts, only a little bit, to the electronic streams of blogs the effect on blog readership will be profound. Currently, the Blogosphere is relying on the fact that organizations like the Times are square and retrograde.”

Allah (bless his departed soul) also points out the limitations of blogs as a “hobby” and how we react to “real” news organizations:

“And kudos for at least recognizing that bloggers, at present, are almost wholly parasitic on the MSM. Instapundit had an item last week about how blogs are supposedly kicking Brian Williams’s ass, and two things immediately occurred to me. 1) If not for Williams and co., we wouldn’t have jackshit for material. And 2) even if we are kicking his ass, so what? Why the incessant triumphalism? To paraphrase what Chris Rock said of the O.J. acquittal, where’s my kicking-Brian-Williams’s-ass prize?”

(Note: Allah’s “mystery” disappearance turns out not to be a mystery…he got bored.)

So…what’s next? Given the impetus blogs have given corporate media, I have no doubt that within the next 12 months we see some attempt to co-opt blogs popularity either by imitation or by absorption. Will Glenn Reynolds quit his day job? How about Charles Johnson? Those two gentlemen could very well find themselves asked to join some kind of corporate blogging empire. Will that change the way they post? The frequency? Their point of view? Will that be the goal of new bloggers like me, starting a blog like we started garage bands 30 years ago?

Come to think of it, the maturation of Rock ‘n Roll might be a model for the blogosphere in the near future. Who’s going to sell out? Who’s going to stay “pure?” Would it matter to you if Ace or Frank J. used their site for beer ads or laundry soap instead of books?

So many questions with no answers. Gerard wrestles with the idea of this “revolution:

“Recently some wag secure in her mainstream media “career” remarked that revolutions don’t happen when people don’t leave their houses. In the past, that may have been true. But in the past, the controls of revolution were always found somewhere outside the house. This is not necessarily any longer the case. Through rudimentary linking and interactivity, blogs are able to raise money, promote candidates and issues to victory in elections, send supplies to those in need a continent or a world away, and even shake the foundations of governments around the world. If the seeds of revolution are in the ideas of men, then blogs are the means to scatter these seeds far and wide with little regard for borders. Revolutionary ideas and information once needed, at the very least, printing presses, paper, and committed couriers. No longer.”

“Shake the foundations of government…” One only need look at Iran and the affect blogs are having on that oppressed country to see how the radioactive mullahs are terrified of blogggers. Like the audio cassettes that helped overthrow the Shah 25 years ago, blogs are sowing the seeds of destruction of the Iranian government today. And once again, Gerard struggles to define “what it all means.”

“Having gained traction in the attention of many, blogging now needs to blog forward towards a greater focus. It needs to move from being reactive towards the active through a kind of Aikido point interactivity. The power implicit in the raw number of the now fully engaged minds of the Blogosphere make this possible. The fuel source will continue to be the strength of observable bias in which we are, to quote Mike Godwin of Godwin’s Law, “Mainlining each other’s thoughts.” A medium that broadcasts a vast spectrum of insights and knowledge will always be a medium worthy of attention. A medium that can learn to focus that broad spectrum is a medium transform the world far beyond the one to many broadcast model that has dominated the mediascape for centuries.”

I don’t know where this new media is going. All I know is I want to try and keep up with it. In her sci-fi masterpiece “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang” Kate Wilhelm posits a world where humanity has virtually destroyed itself and reproduces itself through cloning. After a few generations, the clones lose much of their essential humanity. Their emotions, their analytical skills, their originality fade away. It’s left to a 12 year old boy, conceived naturally by two clones, to reinvigorate the human race and start the regeneration process that will lead humans to a new awareness of themselves.

Blogs are changing the way people live. Will they simply fade away? Morph into something else? Or will they lead the human race towards a radically altered perception of the possible?

Anyway you look at it, things are going to change very quickly.