Oct
31
31
More Halloween Fun
S.Z. explains how trick-or-treating is really part of Satan’s master plot to take sole possession of your kids’ groins. Read the whole thing.
Gavin adds:
Oct
31
31
Drinkin’ Liberally: Halloween Edition
I’ll be at Drinking Liberally in Cambridge tonight. Make sure you come- you’ll get to see my awesome Halloween outfit!!!
Oct
31
31
Swanky Halloween!
I can’t think of a better way to spend Halloween than by reading lots of columns from America’s scariest minister, Pastor Joseph Grant Swank, Jr. Let’s get things started, eh?
Above: Creak, rumble, Aieee! pipe organ, coyotes, rattle-rattle Mua-ha-ha,
thunder “Have some Necco wafers, kids!” boo, slide whistle, eek.
Column #1: HARLOTS HOVER OVER NEW ORLEANS:
There are not enough beds in jails to stash the streetwalkers. Many are released by cops back on the streets within minutes. Recycling?
That last bit is almost a haiku. Let’s just cut out a syllable to make it work:
Many are released
By cops back on the streets with-
In days. Recycling?
Swank-tacular!
Hooking is a spiked business in the city-that-should-never-be-built-again-there. It’s now open season for prostitutes and more flooding. Waters will rush again into the bowl, only to spell havoc repeat. Levees won’t hold. Remember I said it first. However, those into silly nostalgia and political word games promise a resurrection of the mansions and art and culture and all that sort of fluffy stuff.
Describing culture and art as “all the sort of fluffy stuff” is certainly something I’ve never heard before. But hey, what can you expect from an elitist snob like Swank who regularly watches such high-quality entertainment as Oprah?
Oct
31
31
The Projectionists (Mildly Updated)
Above: Blogs for Bush in effect
I have a feeling so have we.
With eight days before the midterm elections, the New York Times ran a front page story today alleging that “the American military has not properly tracked hundreds of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces.â€? Does sthis story sound a bit familiar to you? It should.
On October 25, 2004, “coincidentally” eight days before the president election, the New York Times published a story that falsely alleged missing weapons at the al Qa’qaa weapons facility in Iraq.
‘Coincidentally’ in scare-quotes means that an Iraqi report of October 10th, 2004, “just happened” to say “the following”:
Oct
30
30
Grogan: Republicans Must Cheat to Win
And we’d thought the GOP had lost the kook vote.
Window of opportunity? . . .quick close it!
Kaye Grogan
October 19, 2006
When a potential voter observes the vulturous attitude of Nancy Pelosi waiting in the wings to be “Speaker of the House” this should be more than enough of an incentive to register your pets, pay a special visit to the dearly departed encouraging them to rise up and go to the polls long enough to vote — to defeat Pelosi’s chances of cracking her whip in the house.
Um, do what now?
Huh.
…Okay, kitties. We have a special cat-treat assignment for you next Tuesday.
“Yay!”
Oct
30
30
How to be a wingnut
Thomas Sowell, who finds in Iraq a good excuse to slam diversity and liberals, unleashes this little gem over at Opinion Journal:
However we got into Iraq
How did the U.S. get into Iraq anyway? It’s just so damn complicated. Coming up next on Thomas’ how the hell did that happen story hour:
Feel free to add your own in the comments…
Oct
30
30
…And Arcs of Toilet Paper Gladdened the Election-Day Sky
Today’s Democrats mess on America’s doorstep
Marie Jon’
October 25, 2006
We have been bombarded with vicious and unwarranted politicking over Iraq and the war on terror for more than five years. The constant attacks have demoralized our citizens and our troops serving their country.
Most of us have felt frustrated and angered by what we observe coming from those who call themselves liberal progressives. They have managed to turn our country inside out. They have willfully divided the nation for their own selfish objectives.
Wars are “lost at home” because citizens lack the will to stand up and do what is correct. Blame the media and a party that is morally bankrupt and corrupt. “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for,” the DNC chairman Howard Dean told Democrats gathered at a Manhattan hotel, according to the New York Daily News.
Today’s Democrats contribute nothing toward the betterment of our country. Now, they have messed on America’s doorstep. It’s time to show them with your vote, just what you think of them. It’s time to scrape them off.
Ding-dong, Marie!
Oct
29
29
And Now A Word From Our Sponsor
Liv-A Snaps are made with real liver! And dogs love ‘em!
Above: Pam! I Feel Like A Woman (doop-doop de-doo-doo)
“Obama bin Laden” — we’ve been waiting for that one. Also, Pammy predicts a lot of Democratic “fighting” about electronic voting machines, because “voter fraud is the only way [Democrats] can win” and “machines don’t lie.”
Besides being head-bonkingly stupid in four simultaneous dimensions of space-time, that’s actually quite interesting. There’s been a rising murmur on the right about ballot fraud, and about some kind of planned Republican pushback after the election results come in and they prove unfavorable to the GOP.
What it means, I don’t know; but it’s like hearing teacups rattling in the pantry and noticing that the cats are all hanging out under the furniture. Maybe nothing, but a bit eerie, seismically.
Treat your dog to Liv-A Snaps!
Oct
29
29
Beavers Squeeze Trojans, Booty Gives It Away
I don’t usually follow college football, but the puns for the Oregon State/USC game totally write themselves.
Above: Booty shaken
Update:
Some Guy said,
October 29, 2006 at 6:06Nothing about the World Series?
Oct
29
29
The Greatest Scene from the Greastest Greatest Movie Ever
God do I love Dolemite:
You no-business born-insecure motherFUCKAS!!!
Oct
28
28
High Noonan
Mark Noonan, of Red State and Blogs for Bush, has crafted a sequel to his notorious ‘Death of Science’ essay — because, like they always say, when you find yourself standing in a hole, you’d better keep digging.
I’d like to make one thing clear here – a lot of lefty posters on the original Death of Science thread tried to make out that I was some sort of Luddite opposed to scientific pursuit. This assertion is rather flabbergasting when made against a man who favors a massive increase in spending on NASA. When I say “Science” in this context, I mean that worldview which placed science athwart religion and said the two cannot mix. My contention is not only that they mix fine, but that you can’t really do science unless you are firmly grounded in faith and have a general knowledge of theology.
Oh, brilliant. Like we didn’t learn a lesson from Ye Greate Spayce Rayce of 1538, when the Anglicans’ new lean, efficient prayer engines won the tech war, but the Catholics’ desperate Mass Accelerator research nearly brought Jesus back prematurely.
“Ho, heretic! Make way!” “Eat mine fumes, Papist!
There are some things mankind wasn’t meant to meddle with!
Oct
28
28
Late-Night Victor Davis Hanson Interlude
Say, it’s quiet tonight — too quiet.
Above: Cue V.D. Hanson theme music.
Uh-oh. Let’s see what’s brewing with our favorite formerly reputable historian:
Watching and reading the recent Washington punditry, whether in print or on television, is a depressing spectacle. Almost all—Charles Krauthammer is the most notable exception—have somehow triangulated on the war, not mentioning why and how in the B.C. days they sort of, kinda, not really called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. For some the Road to Damascus was the looting or Abu Ghraib, for others the increasing violence. Still more now say the absence of WMD did the trick.
But almost none of the firebrands of 2003 speaks the truth behind the facade: They supported the war when it looked like few casualties and a quick reconstruction and thus confirmation of their own muscular humanitarianism—and then bailed along the way when they realized that wasn’t going to happen and the unpopular war might instead brand them as “war mongers�, “chicken-hawks� or just fools.
Instead of that honest admission, we get instead either cardboard cut-out villains of the “my perfect three-week war, your screwed-up three-year occupation� type—a Douglas Feith, Gen. Sanchez, or Paul Bremmer—or all sorts of unappreciated and untapped brilliance: from trisecting the country to “redeploying� to Kurdistan, or Kuwait, or Okinawa?
[...]
[H]ad the United States had a republic secure and up and running in Baghdad 3 months after the end of the three-week war, at a cost of, say, 400 fatalities, missing Weapons of Mass Destruction and all other the other complaints would not have been real issues, as supporters would have pointed to the other 22 writs of war in the October 2002 Congressional resolutions that are as valid now as they were then.
Shorter V.D. Hanson: “Support Our Oops.”
Oct
28
28
Where Are My Manners?
I can’t believe I failed to mention conservative Jon Swift’s outstanding analysis of Battlestar Galactica. Here’s an excerpt:
Some are calling the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica the best show on television so I decided to check out the season premiere to see what all the hype was about. It turns out to be even better than I had heard. The Sci Fi Channel show is a moving and haunting allegory about why we should stay the course in Iraq. The heroes are a deeply religious race, called the Cylons, who struggle to bring democratic ideals and Christian values to a planet called New Caprica (Iraq, of course) in the face of an increasingly violent insurgency. In a clever and ironic twist the Christian Cylons (Americans) are actually very human-like machines, while the villainous “humans” on New Caprica (al Qaeda) are brutal terrorists who follow a primitive polytheistic religion and behave like animals.
Although I am not generally a big fan of science fiction (my favorite genres are biblical epics, alpine mountain dramas, and women’s prison movies), Battlestar Galactica is not really about the future as much as it’s a subversive analysis of current events.
Read the whole thing.
Also, I forgot to give a shout out to Ezra Klein for helping me get this sucker published. Thanks, homey!
Oct
27
27
Thanks For Helping
With a crucial election only days away, social critic Camille Paglia has some advice for her fellow Democrats:
Above: Camille Paglia
The way the Democratic leadership was in clear collusion with the major media to push [the Mark Foley] story in the month before the midterm election seems to me to have been a big fat gift to Ann Coulter and the other conservative commentators who say the mainstream media are simply the lapdogs of the Democrats. Every time I turned on the news it was “Foley, Foley, Foley!” — and in suspiciously similar language and repetitive talking points.
[...]
We saw the beginning of this in that grotesque moment in the last presidential debates when John Kerry came out with that clearly prefab line identifying Mary Cheney as a lesbian.
[...]
All that’s been accomplished by [the Foley] scandal is to call into question one of the central erotic archetypes of gay male tradition — the ephebic beauty of boys at their muscular peak between the ages of 16 and 18. It goes back through Western iconography from Michelangelo’s nudes to Hadrian’s Antinous and beyond that to Greek sculpture. It’s a formula at the heart of Plato’s dialogues, as in the Symposium, which shows Socrates in love with but also declining sex with the handsome young Alcibiades.
[...]
And why didn’t Democrats notice that they were drifting into an area which has been the province of the right wing — that is, the attempt to gain authoritarian control over interpersonal communications on the Web? It’s very worrisome and yet more proof that the Democrats have lost their way.
[...]
Every feminist who wants to smash the glass ceiling should realize she has a stake in Condi Rice’s success.
[...]
The Democrats’ portrayal of Republicans as fat cats out of touch with ordinary Americans just doesn’t fly anymore, and they should drop it. I think the center of the Republican Party really is small-businessmen and very practical people who correctly see that it’s job creation and wealth creation that sustain an economy — not government intervention and government control, that suffocating nanny-state mentality.
Oct
27
27
Published!!!11!
The good folks over at the American Prospect Online were kind enough to publish a piece I wrote about Republicans and Battlestar Galactica. Go check it out if you want (and tell ‘em how much you think it RULES!!!11!).
Cheers!
PS- Now y’all know my last name. Yippee. Please don’t let Patterico know- I don’t want him stalking me at my home address. Thx.
Oct
27
27
Depressing
Yes, it’s depressing how far we’ve fallen as a nation when headlines like this are no longer surprising:
Cheney endorses simulated drowning
And yes, that really is our vice president they’re talking about and not a convicted serial cannibal sex offender.
Wait, it does get better:
Dick Cheney, US vice-president, has endorsed the use of “water boarding” for terror suspects and confirmed that the controversial interrogation technique was used on Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the senior al-Qaeda operative now being held at Guantánamo Bay.
Cheney was responding to a radio interviewer from North Dakota station WDAY who asked whether water boarding, which involves simulated drowning, was a “no-brainer” if the information it yielded would save American lives. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Cheney replied.
The comments by the vice-president, who has been one of the leading advocates of reducing limitations on what interrogation techniques can be used in the war on terror, are the first public confirmation that water boarding has been used on suspects held in US custody.
Gee, that sounds like torture, doesn’t it?
“For a while there, I was criticized as being the ‘vice-president for torture’,” Cheney added. “We don’t torture … We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we’re party to and so forth.
“But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture and we need to be able to do that.”
I repeat: this is not some fringe wacko writing at NewsMax. This is, in fact, our vice president. God help us.
Gavin adds: The best description of waterboarding that I’ve seen is here. It’s a lot worse than most descriptions suggest. Let’s also not forget that an ‘enemy combatant’ is now whoever the President decides to name as one, without judicial review.
Oct
26
26
Let Me Help You With That, Mr. Pantload
Morally-, mentally-, and dietetically-disabled fucktard Jonah Goldberg says:
Ben Adler at Tapped has two posts (here and here ) in which he reveals that he works from the assumption that Republicans “in all seriousness, have it in” for people with disabilities. You can judge the merits of his argument on your own. What I find interesting is the worldview here. Adler assumes that Republicans operate as actual villains who want to do bad things to disabled people — that sticking it to the diabled is an actual animating passion on the right. Just for the record, I’ve now been party to, let’s say, hundreds of thousands of intra-conservative conversations large and small, public and private, written and spoken. Not once have I ever heard such a mustache-twirling desire put forward.
As a progressive, I shall of course kindly refresh Pantload’s memory with an example. Here’s Mark Steyn expressing real contempt for the disabled:
The post-Cold War interlude is over, an era of follies–OJ, Monica–and fatuities, a few of which Tuesday’s horror stories cruelly underlined: employees in wheelchairs, whom Bob Dole’s Americans with Disabilities Act and the various lobby groups insist can do anything able-bodied people can, found themselves trapped on the 80th floor, unable to get downstairs, unable even to do as others did and hurl themselves from the windows rather than be burned alive.”
Oct
26
26
Don’t Turn Around Or Anything, But He’s Still At It
Dan Riehl, that is.
Riehl: “I don’t particularly hate gays, you fag douchebag who is a clown! I will bitch-slap you.”
Update: This one ought to please the ladies, though I doubt many ladies use the MTA facilities as it is:
The line for the girls’ room just got longer.
Men who live as women can now legally use women’s rest rooms in New York’s transit system under an unprecedented deal revealed yesterday.The Metropolitan Transportation Authority agreed to allow riders to use MTA rest rooms “consistent with their gender expression,” the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund announced yesterday.
Ace notes that the NJ Supremo’s did leave it to the Democratic process, what’s left of it, to name Gay Marriage. lol That’s so freaking silly, as if it needs another name. But I suppose we could call it the Homo-Cohabitation Bill, or would bill be sexist?
Dan, you know, if there’s something you feel a need to share…
Above: cheap pun loaded with cultural freight
We’re not saying anything here; we’re just saying.
Oct
26
26
The Three-Legged Horse War
Above: Ralph Peters. Can someone get this man a box of Cocoa Puffs?
He really needs something to go cuckoo for besides war.
If you haven’t read Ralph Peters’ latest column, then you really must. It’s a twelve-star tour de force wingnut masterwork where he argues that the Bush administration is losing the Iraq war because… (wait for it)… they’re being too nice to the terrorists! No, really:
Whether the issue is domestic law and order or fighting foreign wars, the great fallacy of the left is the belief that protecting the “human rightsâ€? of killers is more important than the elementary human right of the vast majority – the innocent – to live unmolested by murderers and fanatics.
Whether the cry is “Free Mumia!â€? or “Close Guantanamo!â€? or “Bring the Troops Home Now!â€? the consistent purpose is to rescue killers from justice – no matter the cost to law-abiding citizens here or to the millions of Iraqis who truly desire peace.
This situation was bad enough when save-the-cop-killers/pity-the-terrorists ideology only infected the left. But political correctness has so insinuated itself into our collective thinking that even the chest-thumping Bush administration refused to take on Iraq’s fanatical killers – with the result that Iraq is now frankly ungovernable.
And who gets the blame for this, I wonder?
Responsibility begins, of course, with the Iraqis, who have chosen old hatreds over new possibilities.
Of course! It’s the Iraqis’ fault for not enjoying having their country invaded and occupied! What a buncha backward fruits!
Oct
26
26
Dan Riehl: Worse Than Anyone Thought
Riehl World View, October 25, 2006, on the topic of gay marriage in New Jersey:
Perfectly liberal. The problem isn’t even the result, it’s how they get there. Apparently now the Courts get to instruct the legislature what laws to write and when to write them.
[U]nfortunately, NJ is such a wasteland of Liberalism, I doubt they’ll even challenge the ruling. As long as the lame ass politicians here get to keep their hand in the till, they’ll run along and do precisely what the court dictates. Why should they care about separation of powers so long as the corrupt cash keeps flowing their way?
Riehl World View, October 18, 2006, on the occasion of the conservative John Cole calling Dan Riehl a homophobe:
Really, though. I don’t know how you can read that and not see the overt homophobia and the sickness that is Riehl’s mindset. I am sure Dobson and Rove love it.
Really?
Robert Leroy Riehl Born: 05 Jan 1948 Died: 21 Jun 2004
That was an older brother of mine, John. He’s dead and, yes, he was Gay. You want to know how he died? He died alone, probably of aids for all I know and probably in a San Francisco flop house living on the government’s dime. I say probably because it was the last address I ever had for him from letters exchanged, not having seen the boy/man since I was about 15.
And you know why he died alone?
Yes, sort of. Yes, I think we do.
Not because he was Gay. He died that way because of small minded assholes who think that being Gay in America is a crime. And who is perpetuating that stereotype and trying to benefit from it, today, Cole? Me? Because I can mock someone whether they are straight or gay, because the orientation has no bearing on how I treat someone, one way or the other?
It may be true that Mr. Riehl would leave any of his relatives to die alone, probably in a flophouse, probably of AIDS for all he knows. We have only his own word to go by.
But next comes a routine that we know to expect from Mr. Riehl, and from Republicans everywhere as well as skunks. When challenged, emit a noxious spray:
Don’t you try and lecture me you superficial, sanctimonious twit. You know absolutely nothing about me. I am not doing a disservice to homosexuals because I make no distinction in how I treat people, Gay or straight. “I” couldn’t care less. I joke about them both, one and the same. And if an individual feels he wants to live out his life in private because the world today has not shifted enough generation-ally so as to relegate their sexual preference to some meaningless and fictitious norm … I have no problem with that. Can you say that for your friends who have no greater ambition but to win some passing political victory, you hypocritical jackass?
That filth like Rogers are allowed, by you and your friends, to dress up their humanity-loathing, faux activism in moral outrage aimed at the Right disgusts me. If I ever meet the scumbag, he’ll be lucky if I don’t bitch slap the clown.
I guess there’s nothing much to add to that — except Sheila, take a bow.
