In response to this post Glenn Reynolds replies in part with the following:
While I think that Drum’s comparison with U.S. and Israeli strategy today with Soviet strategy in Afghanistan — if that’s what he means, which isn’t quite clear to me — is wrong, I think that his reference to “casual genocide” as the preferred strategy of pro-war people is pretty clear, and pretty absurd. Yeah, you see that kind of thing in blog comments sometime, but I think most people support current U.S. military efforts because they fear that ignoring the problem is likely to produce more death and violence over the long term, not less. (Hence the frequent invocations of 1936 and 1938). That’s certainly my view.
My emphasis. Note that once again Perfesser Corncob reveals himself to be a master at weasel-phrasing. The emphasized passage is not quite a denial, and yet the reader is clearly meant to assume that Reynolds never engaged in rhetoric like that.
(Also notice that — of course — Kevin Drum doesn’t bust Reynolds on this, no doubt on the grounds that sensible centrists must pretend that Reynolds is a serious person, qualitatively different from Coulter, Savage, Ledeen, et al.)
And you thought only abortionist, commie institutions like PBS thumbed their noses at the free market by undertaking annoying pledge drives. Sadly, No! Bradrocket already covered Pasty’s self-pitying scheme, and now I see that the White Trash at Red State are begging, too.
But whereas Pasty only offers a righteous cock-slapping to his contributors, Red State boasts that their donors will get a preview of the new site, Red State 2.0! For only 25$, you too can look through the knothole and behold their shiny new corrugated tin shack, complete with (portable, naturally) burning-cross yard ornaments, glossy faux-marble Ten Commandments signs, some spiffy yard sale tables, and a handsome cement pond in which Box Turtle Ben shall peacefully frolic so long as that “whites only” sign stays up on the privacy fence. Tarnation! ain’t that worth the 25$ you’d otherwise blow on a gallon jug of moonshine or a quarter-gram of crystal meth? Yessir, shur nuff is!
The Yesha Rabbinical Council announced in response to an IDF attack in Kfar Qanna that “according to Jewish law, during a time of battle and war, there is no such term as ‘innocents’ of the enemy.”
All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians,” the statement said.
(Efrat Weiss)
However, the Yesha Rabbinical Council cited a Deb Frisch Exception, saying that the leaving of icky comments about people’s families on the Internet is a terrible atrocity to be condemned by all civilized people — and for which the only redress is banning the trollmassive cash donations.
Brought to you by pow-pow-Powerline: An exercise in circle-jerkingly citing IDF press releases and right-wing Israeli media as authoritative news sources, while still screwing up the most basic details of a story — resulting in an approving link from the Minneapolis Minge Ninjas. Objective: Justify the Qana attack via speculation and creative blameswitching.
Shrader and Gannon did not question the rather unique makeup of the families hardest hit in the attack (my bold):
Israel suspended air attacks on south Lebanon for 48 hours starting early Monday in the face of widespread outrage over an airstrike on a house that killed 56 Lebanese, almost all of them women and children.
[jump to page 2]
Red Cross officials said 56 were killed and police said 34 children and 12 adult women were among the dead.
[snip]
In Qana, workers pulled dirt-covered bodies of young boys and girls dressed in the shorts and T-shirts they had been sleeping in out of the mangled wreckage of the building. Bodies were carried in blankets.
Two extended families, the Shalhoubs and the Hashems, had gathered in the house for shelter from another night of Israeli bombardment in the border area when the strike brought the building down.
“I was so afraid. There was dirt and rocks and I couldn’t see. Everything was black,” said 13-year-old Noor Hashem, who survived, although her five siblings did not. She was pulled out of the ruins by her uncle, whose wife and five children also died.
34 children. 12 adult women. Not a single adult male officially listed among them. How strangely asexual these “civilian” families seem to be.
Except for the ten adult males killed, seeing as 56 is ten more than 46 (for most definitions of ‘ten’).
Coming Soon: Presence of adult males in Qana death toll proves Hizbollah using victims as ‘human shields.’ Get on it, boys!
Update: ‘Were the Qana Bodies Staged?’: A bonus exercise in selective sourcing and convenient amnesia, in which Confederate Yankee grabs a story from a right-wing Israeli journal (whose only source is IDF press statements), swallows it whole, and adds some me-too commentary.
These guys have it so easy, man.
Among other interesting features (for instance, a new, improved timeline helpfully provided by the impartial IDF), we learn that unlike that time in the distant past when an American missile killed al-Zarqawi — that legendary figure remembered down a long, long march of ages from a time when the world was young — those killed by the concussion created by explosives don’t ever look reasonably intact on the surface and die of internal injuries, like al-Zarqawi did, and as was widely explained all over the place, lo! those distant several weeks ago.
Coming Soon: It’s All the Media’s Fault (Somehow).
So apparently, Deb Frisch has been leaving more disgusting and vile comments about Jeff Goldstein’s family over at other peoples’ blogs, which naturally means that it’s time to send Jeff some more money. Michelle Malkin laughably compares the whole ordeal to the Kitty Genovese murder:
Remember Kitty Genovese, the New York City woman stabbed to death near her home in Queens while her neighbors watched from their windows? The case popularized the psychological phenomenon dubbed the bystander effect or “Genovese syndrome.” You know: “I didn’t want to get involved.”
[Gavin adds: Oh, that would be a Sadly, No! on that. Michelle could even have crankily blamed the NY Times for the popular misconceptions about the Genovese case, so that’s a double whoopsie.]
A few weeks ago, blogger Jeff Goldstein outed an unhinged nutball, former University of Arizona lecturer in psychology Deborah Frisch, who left vile comments about Goldstein and his son at his site, Protein Wisdom. The case received some mainstream media attention –faulty, at that–after Frisch resigned. Most people have moved on. But not Frisch. She relocated to Eugene, Oregon, and the harassment of Jeff and his family continues.
Does posting awful and nasty things about someone’s family on another person’s blog really constitute “harassment?” And how is it any worse than posting someone’s cell phone number on your blog so your dumb-ass readers can call them and give them death threats?
Now here’s the punchline:
I can understand why some might not want to pay further attention or bother to help out. After all:
It’s someone else’s problem.
It’s dangerous.
I don’t want to get involved.
It’s Kitty Genovese Syndrome, blog-style. But if you feel moved to more than just stare out the window, here’s Jeff’s Paypal address:
proteinwisdom-at-celluloid-wisdom.com
Genius. I wish I could make money by getting into nasty Internets flame wars too.
[Someone who definitely isn’t Gavin adds: Hey Brad, I’m going to, um, beat you up. Bwaha, I am coming to get you. Woo!]
Incidentally, I think Patterico has the best advice on how to handle the situation:
What do you folks suggest Jeff do? He currently appears to be shutting the site down until this is settled. I advise against that; I would ban her and ignore her. But, failing that, what other options does he have?
Call the cops and give them her IP address. If she keeps it up, have the police call her and tell her to knock it off.
Since the following three sentences do not close today’s David Brooks column, baffled readers are left to conclude that his head somehow managed to remain unexploded:
Lebanon is a chance to show that the death cult is not invincible.
To its enormous credit, the Bush administration has kept its focus on that core reality, and it has developed a strategy to reverse the momentum: let Israel weaken Hezbollah, then build an international force to help create a better Lebanon.
Yet, having spent a week on the phone with experts and policy makers, I’d be lying if I said that I was optimistic the strategy will work.
Yep, you read that correctly. David Brooks heaps praise on the Bush administration for pursuing a policy that, while bold, he concedes is unlikely to succeed. Also, I should point out that his premise is that an immediate cease fire would essentially maintain the pre-conflict status quo, as far from ideal as that may be, while the continuation of hostilities could end up sowing “so much instability that it ends up toppling the same Lebanese government that it is trying to strengthen.”
Brooks, of course, prefers to pursue the larger risk that has less chance of success.
Point out everything that’s wrong with this sentence:
This AFP photograph shows Beirut demonstrators with a giant poster of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that was used in a rally protesting the accidental killing of civilian human shields, along with terrorists, in Qana.
But as I give my S,N! comrades a much-needed breather from wingnut-ridiculing, I’ll now apologise to the Cubs fans among our readers, whom I viciously slurred. I’m sorry. I should have made an exception for S,N! readers in my wholesale anti-Cubsdiatribes, anyway. But I also should have known that as soon as I wrathed-out on the whole Cubs Nation, the Great Jebus In The Sky would see fit to reward me with shit like this:
CHICAGO (AP) — Carlos Zambrano outpitched Chris Carpenter to win his ninth straight decision as the Chicago Cubs completed a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals with a 6-3 victory Sunday.
BLARG! FATTY CUBSBEAST CARLOS DID EAT THE REDBIRDS! BUT HOW DOES CARLOS NOT GET HIS ARM CHEWED BY GRAVYMONSTER DUSTY?? IT IS A MYSTERY!!!
V.D. Hanson — with emphasis on the V.D. (the wingnut disease!) — discourses on a “clarified” wartime lexicon, and thus we can trace the many spirochetes’ journey from Bush’s and Olmert’s jockstraps straight to Victor’s sore noggin:
“Civilians� in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.
“Collateral damage� refers mostly to casualties among Hezbollah’s human shields; it can never be used to describe civilian deaths inside Israel, because everything there is by intent a target.
[…]
“Innocent� often refers to Lebanese who aid the stockpiling of rockets or live next to those who do. It rarely refers to Israelis under attack.
The “militants� of Hezbollah don’t wear uniforms, and their prime targets are not those Israelis who do.
“Multinational,� as in “multinational force,� usually means “third-world mercenaries who sympathize with Hezbollah.� See “peacekeepers.�
“Peacekeepers� keep no peace, but always side with the less Western of the belligerents.
[…]
What explains this distortion of language? A lot.
[…]
But most of all, the world deplores the Jewish state because it is strong, and can strike back rather than suffer. In fact, global onlookers would prefer either one of two scenarios for the long-suffering Jews to learn their lesson. The first is absolute symmetry and moral equivalence: when Israel is attacked, it kills only as many as it loses. For each rocket that lands, it drops only one bomb in retaliation — as if any aggressor in the history of warfare has ever ceased its attacks on such insane logic.
The other desideratum is the destruction of Israel itself. Iran promised to wipe Israel off the map, and then gave Hezbollah thousands of missiles to fulfill that pledge. In response, the world snored. If tomorrow more powerful rockets hit Tel Aviv armed with Syrian chemicals or biological agents, or Iranian nukes, the “international� community would urge “restraint� — and keep urging it until Israel disappeared altogether. And the day after its disappearance, the Europeans and Arabs would sigh relief, mumble a few pieties, and then smile, “Life goes on.�
Well, I have a few clarified wingnut definitions for Diseased Dicktor:
Courtesy of NobodySpecial in comments, I’m treated to Mark Steyn’s latest bit of fascist tosspottery. It’s stunning; in the same vein as his last offering, but the general thesis is expanded. Last time he urged our government to act more like the Iranians’. Now he’s urging our society and culture to be more like that of militant Islam.
He sullenly recounts how Kathryn Jean Lopez was put in her place last week by an emailer who argued that practicing wingnut “journalism” was not at all the same thing as being in uniform and fighting on the ground. K-Lo, to her credit, took this rather better than Steyn, who is more sensitive to righteous deprecations of his self-regarding journalistic sacrifices:
Atrios, after offering a pungent quote from Marshall Witless, sez:
Basically there are people who imagine that there is a supermajority political consensus in this country which is shattered by nasty partisanship[…]
It’s authoritarian because it calls for conformity and brands dissenters as the problem. Get on board the unity bus, they say, can’t we all get along. That’s what the nation needs. Stop your nasty disagreements, and let my team rule without criticism.
So either we destroy Iran’s nuclear program by force, or Iran is going to get the bomb, likely provoking nuclear proliferation throughout the region.
That means a whole lot of Islamic bombs floating around the Middle East for the indefinite future. It would probably take another terrorist strike to move the American public in the direction of a more hawkish approach. Over the long term, in the absence of greater national unity and more decisive American military action, you’d have to say the odds of nuclear terror within the next decade have risen substantially. Should we blame the president for this? I don’t think so. To a degree, I blame the dovish Dems. Without a national consensus, the country can’t take decisive action.
I’ll see Travis’s Noah’s ark and Gavin’s Ark of the Covenant and raise them with my “Ancient Book of Psalms”. Blah; all that Travis’s and Gavin’s archeological coups prove is the greatness of God or Jebus or the Hamburglar or someone. Mine, on the other hand, does that and considerably more: it justifies whatever Israel does!
Pammy describes it as a “miracle”, as evidence of “G-d weigh[ing] in.” We’re told that the book was found open at Psalm 83, which apparently augurs well for wackos like Pam (and you thought Randroids were athiests — nope, not when believing in “G-d” is a necessary part of tribalist hategasms), the great multitude of Rapturist nutbags in God’s (other) country, and the relatively small number of fundamentalist Jews in Israel.
Yet happy as Batshit Shrieks is about the artifact, Psalm 83, and all that it allegedly portends, I’m certain that deep down she’s disappointed in “G-d” that He didn’t see fit to “make found” an ancient book of Deuteronomy — open, instead, at chapter 25, verse 19. That’s some explicit justification for genocide right there and thus would be the greatest possible spiritual food (in comparison, the Psalm is but an hors d’oeuvre) for all the heirs of Kahane in Israel and America now cheering so wildly, “Shoot, apartment building, score!”
… at least if you find yourself in Iran or Russia.
AP reports (h/t Iran Focus) that “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as ‘pizzas’ which will now be known as ‘elastic loaves,’ state media reported Saturday.”
I could quote someone’s recounting of a neoconservative meeting where someone said that it was ominous that the Soviets didn’t have a word for “detente“. Or I could mention how Ronald Reagan righteously condemned Russian culture on the basis that it “didn’t have a word for ‘freedom’” (it does, of course. I think it’s swoboda, but I might be wrong). But instead I think I’ll confine my response to two words, two delicious words of potato-y goodness: Freedom Fries.
Nope, no Orwell or Confucius references. Not on this post. I’m too hungry now, and it’s dinner time.
