KERNERS ARE GO!
Monday, June 2nd., Ringlers Pub, 1332 West Burnside!
Above: Ringlers Pub
5PM until whenever (with a possible raid on Voodoo Donuts)!
Auxiliary jaunt at 4! To see the tall ships! At the waterfront!
This combination Drinking Sadlyly event and gender-neutral bachelor party may be liveblogged (if you’re lucky) by the inimitable and awesome Mikey, who is making the trip to PDX for the occasion!
It’s been a rough week for Dan Riehl, Steve Gilbert and their fellow dumpster-diving, countertop-appraising Stinkertons. In pursuing the riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma that isn’t the military record of Barack Obama’s great-uncle, they’ve had their ears boxed by a WWII vet, been easily proven wrong in their speculative fantasies and come this close to breaking bread with Holocaust deniers as they parsed the differences between stops on the Nazi roadmap to the Final Solution.
It really couldn’t get more embarrassing for these people, could it? Well, it could, but we’d have to imagine a twist to this story so far-fetched as to beggar belief. Like, say, if the eager investigator on Gilbert’s ‘Sweetness and Light’ blog who sent harassing emails to WWII vet Ray Kitchell and his son Mark:
—– Original Message —–
From: cigarskunk
To: [mark kitchell]
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:38 PM
Subject: Searching for Charles W PayneDear Sirs,
In light of the recent controversy over the military service of Barrak Obama’s grandfather, Charles W Payne, I was hoping to contact you to get some kind of verification of his membership in the 89th.
I’ve checked the records of http://www.kshs.org/genealogis…..p;branch=N and they only list him as being in the Navy.
I would like to get a second source to confirm that Obama is still lying on this subject as my grandfathers, father and uncles all served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam and I don’t particularly care for politicians lying about the service of family members to further thier political agendas.
Thank you in advance!
From: [Mark Kitchell]
To: cigarskunk
Subject: Re: Searching for Charles W Payne
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 18:52:48 +0200You are the one who is lying. Mr. Payne served in the 89th Divison, 355th Infantry Regiment, Company K.
…Turned out to be a sexual fetishist who regularly commissions artwork of himself as a cigar-chomping skunk getting its knob sucked by a menagerie of voluptuously drawn cartoon rabbits, gophers and other assorted mammalia. If he turned out to be a regular attendee of ‘furry’ gatherings so desperate and noxious in his social interactions that members of that oft-maligned subculture shunned him as a pariah.
Which is preposterous, of course. There’s just no way a person like that could be one of the leading figures in the Wingnutosphere’s ongoing Great Uncle investigation. It would be far too surreal if… Wait, what’s that you say?
No, you must be jok-
OMFG. You are fucking kidding me.
Above: Art hiked from Crush Yiff Destroy
(h/t: Archer 813 in comments.)
Gavin adds: Props and apologies to our furry commenters Cargo and Simba. From Crush Yiff Destroy comes an encomium, excerpted below:
In August, Cigarskunk came to CYD in order to assert his heterosexuality and to explain why the furries hated him: He was 100 percent straight, he smoked, he was conservative, and he brought females to conventions, because he was not gay. He stated, restated, and then stated some more that he really loved women and was totally straight, and then went on to call everybody else gay. Literally; he responded to every negative post by calling the poster a closet homosexual or a homophobe, and he did so in the kind of haughty manner that makes you want to plunge your hands through your computer screen and wrap your fingers around the throat of the person on the other side.
After babbling endlessly that he wasn’t gay and everyone else was, Cigarskunk began to ramble about cigars and how great they were. It was fetishistic: “Cigars, cigars, cigars, by God, I love cigars. My favorite color is cigar-brown. Cigar smoke, cigar smell, cigar taste; cigars are fucking great. I really, really like cigars. Cigars make my day. Cigars have a Zen-like quality to them, and they’re so damn good. Ooh, yes, cigars. I think about cigars all the time. I fucking love cigars.”
Rest assured, by the time his ass was banned in record time (after a mere 3 posts), everyone knew that he really, really, really loved cigars. Afterwards, Cigarskunk pounded out essays of staggering length, detailing how everyone at CYD was a lunatic and all the hate was heaped upon poor little him. Plus, cigars were great. Everyone pointed and laughed.
Jonah Goldberg is piling on the McClellan business. Although that might be physically painful if literally true, Jonah’s takedown is scarcely perceptible in the metaphorical sense.
He starts out with a swipe at McClellan’s grasp of the English language:
It’s been rumored that McClellan was hired by the Bush White House to appeal to a specific sub-constituency: pasty middle-aged men with a thumbless grasp of the English language.
Although you may snicker at DoughBob LoadPants calling anyone else pasty, you should be convulsed in laughter and spewing your morning coffee all over your laptop that Jonah would have the temerity to accuse anyone else of having “a thumbless grasp of the English language.” Item:
In McClellan’s book, What Happened (oddly missing a question mark), the author purports to explain how the Bush White House launched a “propaganda machine” to push the country into a war of choice.
Sweet Fowler’s Modern English Usage on a pogo stick, this feckless fleshlump doesn’t even know that interrogative pronouns can be used both to ask a question and to introduce a noun clause. Goucher College should be quite proud of its most famous alumnus.
Gavin adds: To be rigorously charitable, he might have been attempting a joke. But as usual, the joke is ultimately on Jonah:
Jonah Goldberg, January 10, 2008:
[Ezra Klein] calls John Holbo’s “review” of my book “one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve ever read in the blogosphere.” Of course Holbo hadn’t actually — what’s that word again? oh right — read my book before he crafted this oh so fine piece of writing. Once again, Ezra is so perfectly, comically, Ezra. He himself famously finds it very hard to read books (It’s hard and it’s boring and it takes a really long time, he says). So he outsources criticism to people who haven’t read it either. It’s a pas de deux of phone-it-in hackery.
Wait, let’s have that phrase again:
…phone-it-in hackery.
Jonah Goldberg, May 30, 2008:
In McClellan’s book, What Happened (oddly missing a question mark), the author purports to explain how the Bush White House launched a “propaganda machine” to push the country into a war of choice.
I have not read the book. I will once I finish eating the contents of my sock drawer (which ranks slightly higher on my to-do list).
Don’t forget the crow drawer.
Clif adds: At the request of commenters sagra and Doctorb Science, we have Jonah with paste:
Hi there. I’m writing regarding your application to the 2008 Democratic National Convention’s General Blogger Pool.
As you may know, we’ve had overwhelming interest in the credentialed blogger program this year. Several hundred great blogs submitted applications. But we have very limited space. Unfortunately, your blog will not be credentialed at 2008 Democratic National Convention.
No problem!
See, I was gonna cut my hair, start pretending that Anne-Marie Slaughter is a Dirty Fucking Hippie, go back into my archive and change a few things (I believe the cachet thing is to have been for the Iraq War before one was against it), adopt a thoroughly Panglossian attitude about one or other of the Democratic candidates; I was gonna go the whole nine yards; I was gonna be a Sensible Liberal. And I totally would have pulled it off. People would have been saying, “My, who’s that handsome and informed fellow there? He could be the next Peter Beinart.” Sure, I would have had to stop fucking cussing, stop being occasionally funny, stop insulting wingnuts — and stop popping pills, too. But I was prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. And I could really use that extra 25 cents the establishment pays for a social democrat’s soul. I was gonna do it…
Until the DNCC murdered my embryonic career-change like.. well, rather like the partial-birth abortionists we all admire!
So now, I’ll have to go to Denver and blog from the “Big Tent” (I knew Armando’s ego was huge, but large enough to contain a whole media facility?) that the DNCC has kindly provided for the rejects from whose uncouth, Unserious opinions it wants maximum distance. I dunno where I’d stay, though; maybe some of my comrades in ANSWER have a spare cardboard box? (I do have an ex in Boulder but she’d probably shoot me if I knocked on her door. Not that she’d be wrong to do that.) Or how about you people from NORML? I mean, I’ll sleep on the street if I have to. I can pop enough tuinal, smoke enough crack, mainline enough meth, and down enough vodka to make it through — and being a dirty fucking hippie (a real one!), Lord knows I don’t need a place to bathe. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.
At any rate, fuck you thank you, DNCC. I’ll blog outside while others with half our traffic snack on your hors d’oeuvres. You could have had a Sensible Liberal. Now you’re gonna get Hunter S. Mailer Mencken.
As copies of Scott McClellan’s book fall into the hands of über-partisan Bush nuts, we can expect that there will be an orgy of sleuthing, as the Bush nuts comb meticulously through McClellan’s book looking for intimations and hidden clues, rather like ancient Egyptian priests casting animal entrails and finding evidence of calumny in the particular twist of a goat’s small intestine.
Mark Hemingway has taken up this task at America’s Shittiest Website™ and believes he has evidence that McClellan was all along merely a liberal in disguise who took the Press Secretary position merely as an opportunity to write a lie-filled exposé that would allow him to enrich himself at the expense of his former employer.
I should have more to say about it later when I finish reading it, but I just got my grubby paws on McClellan’s book and this jumped out on page 36:
One of my favorite classes at UT was a leadership course taught by Sara Weddington, a longtime friend of Ann Richards who was known for her involvement representing the anonymous “Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade, the case that made abortion legal across the United States.
Coming from an allegedly conservative Republican, that’s quite revealing.
Liking a class on leadership taught by a lawyer who once represented the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade is evidence that McClellan was a liberal mole in the Bush White House? No doubt Hemingway will also find conclusive evidence that McClellan was a donkey in elephant’s clothing from passages where McClellan confesses that he liked Jurassic Park even though it was directed by a liberal Jew, went to Starbucks once with a friend who ordered a soy-milk vente latte, and was twice close enough to Bill Clinton that he could have spit in his face, and didn’t.
Gavin adds:
Above: Another weekly staff meeting at Malkin, LLC
[Gavin adds: Oh lord, Little Green Footballs has been on this as well. One of Charles's goblins has traced the corporate structure of Public Affairs Books, and the comments are aroil with suggestions that McClellan was an undercover operative the whole time, and that conspiracies lurk everywhere, and wheels-within-wheels, and so forth. They have yet to become aware that a sister company, Basic Books, publishes William F. Buckley, Dinesh D'Souza, and other such luminaries. KERNERS ARE GO!]
As an aside, watching these schmucks go into complete meltdown mode never gets old. Who’s the next ex-loyal Bushie to write a blistering tell-all? Colin Powell? Gonzo? Rummy? Brownie? Harriet Miers? The possibilities are both tantalizing and endless.
Even Malkin has given up on Auschwitzgate, but Dan Riehl and his band of desperados soldier on:
Okay, so we have supposedly learned that it was Obama’s Great Uncle that liberated a sub-section of Buchenwald, not an uncle at Auschwitz. But if sources are correct and unless there’s some arcane military history in his favor, Obama still has a problem.
Apparently, Dan-o couldn’t figure out the great uncle’s middle initial, so that must mean he doesn’t exist. The word went out: KERNERS ARE GO!
Riehl compadre Steve Gilbert of Sweetness & Light did some digging and discovered a website dedicated to preserving the history of the 89th Infantry Division of World War II, the division in which Obama’s great uncle served and helped liberate the Ohrdruf satellite of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Seeking to get to the bottom of a mystery that had been solved hours earlier, Gilbert dutifully fired off an email to the site’s owners, Ray and Mark Kitchell, thus setting up the greatest bitch slap in history:
—– Original Message —–
From: Steve Gilbert
To: markkitchell@yahoo.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:14 AM
Subject: Any Record Of Charles W Payne?Mr. Kitchell,
As you may have heard by now, Barack Obama has claimed that his great uncle Charlie Payne was a member of the 89th Div that liberated Buchenwald.
According to records his full name is either Charles W Payne or Charles T Payne (most likely the former), and he was born in 1924 — and he is still alive today.
He most likely was from Kansas at the time of enlistment.
Do you have any record of this gentleman?
Thank you,
Steve Gilbert
sweetness-light.comPS – If you go to my website, you will see that I was probably the first to note the error in Mr. Obama’s first claims about his “uncle.”
Obama Claims His Uncle Liberated Auschwitz | Sweetness & Light
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-claims-his-uncle-liberated-auschwitz
The reply was quick and to the point:
Please crawl back under the rock you came out from.
Good day
Raymond Kitchell, veteran 89th Inf Div
Bonus Shorter Newsbusters:
Bonus Shorter Gateway Pundit:
Bonus Powerline primate-behavior moment, featuring while-you-watch rationalization and social construction of reality:
Is this book really necessary?
When Scott McClellan was the president’s press secretary, I usually winced when I heard him speak. The wincing finally ended when Tony Snow replaced McClellan.
Now, with the publication of his new book, we get the chance to wince once more. It’s an opportunity I intend to pass up.
Paul is offering as a new piece of information that he did not enjoy watching McClellan perform his duties as Press Secretary. For that reason, he is saying, there is liable to be nothing greatly of interest to him in McClellan’s book.
It will be interesting, though, to compare the degree to which the MSM reviews and reports on McClellan’s book with the negligible extent to which it has reviewed and reported on Douglas Feith’s inside look at the conduct of the war on terrorism during the first Bush 43 administration.
Continuing, Paul suggests that the ‘mainstream media’ is likely to give greater coverage to McClellan’s presumably uninteresting book than to a book by neoconservative Iraq War architect Doulas Feith, which Paul considers to be interesting but insufficiently covered. The implicit reason for this is that the ‘mainstream media’ is biased against official statements and therefore reality.
JOHN adds: McClellan was a lousy press secretary. A much better spokesman, Tony Snow, once told me that the best thing about his job was the opportunity to follow President Bush around and observe his conduct of the Presidency. Tony said…
Here John also reveals a heretofore-unvoiced disapproval of McClellan’s competency — one stronger and more direct than Paul’s, as befits John’s status as the Alpha Powerliner. He then establishes expert knowledge of the subject by reporting an anecdote told personally to himself by Tony Snow, possibly on Friday, September 14, 2007, during the part of a day in which he visited the White House as part of a group of Bush-friendly bloggers. His claimed insider status is underlined with locutions such as “Tony says.”
…that he came away with a deep appreciation of President Bush’s character, judgment and knowledge of the issues. Unless McClellan can come up with some facts to back up his claims–
John is asserting that Tony Snow’s official praise of President Bush while on duty as Press Secretary, told to John in personal conversation, stands as ‘facts’ against which other more compelling facts must be presented if any credence is to be given to the ‘claims’ made by McClellan in his book which John has not read.
facts have been notably absent from the press accounts I’ve seen of his book–I think Tony’s assessment is considerably more reliable.
John has thus fairly judged the matter and found that no change is required from his prior authoritative position regarding President Bush.
PAUL adds: McClellan’s predecessor as press secretary, the far more able Ari Fleischer, wrote a book about his time in the post. Rich Noyes at Newsbusters reminds us that Fleischer’s book went virtually unnoticed by the MSM.
Paul, the Beta male, seconds John’s assessment and offers a helpful piece of additional confirmation, signaling unanimity amongst the clan.
She just won’t be deterred. Despite being roundly ridiculed by, like, everyone for her latest jihad against Rachel Ray’s scarf, Michelle Malkin has dedicated her entire weekly column to the affair. Read. Weep:
The keffiyeh kerfuffle
By Michelle Malkin • May 28, 2008 09:38 AMMy syndicated column today examines the keffiyeh kerfuffle with Dunkin’ Donuts and Rachael Ray that I noted on the blog last week. As you’ll recall, I linked to an item by LGF’s Charles Johnson about the scarf she wore in a recent Dunkin’ ad. Keffiyeh chic has been covered on this site and at Hot Air extensively (see here, here, and here). Anti-American fashion designers abroad and at home have mainstreamed and adapted the scarves as generic pro-Palestinian jihad or anti-war statements. Yet many folks out there remain completely oblivious to the apparel’s violent symbolism and anti-Israel overtones.
I remember a time when left-wingers were continually stereotyped as humorless paranoids who looked for symbols of racism, sexism and homophobia in just about every area of popular culture — novels, television shows, advertising, and so on. While there was obviously some truth to this caricature, it was generally limited to college professors who pushed critical theory as the primary tool for analyzing texts.
The entire right-wing blogosphere, on the other hand, fits this stereotype better than any egghead college perfesser ever could. As George Carlin would no doubt say about this entire affair: “I see them as symbols, and I leave them to the symbol-minded.”
Gavin adds: Shorter Michelle Malkin:
Above: Explanations are due.
Over at the World’s Shittiest Website, Jay Nordlinger offers evidence of the spectacular grasp of cultural fundamentals that earned him the prestigious Silver Sow award for excellence in farm reportage:
Interesting story behind this. I have a friend who’s a young Wall Streeter and a freedom-lover. A hobby of his is to collect baseball cards. And this is not just a hobby, but also a form of investing.
And, of course, as a young Wall Street investor and liker of freedom, I’m sure he never sends any business to that repressive dictatorship in China. But let’s never mention that again and get on with the thrust of the piece:
Used to be, baseball-card companies made . . . well, baseball cards. But then they branched out into other athletes: My friend has Michael Jordan, Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky, Tiger Woods, and so on. Many of these cards include signatures, by the way.
Did…did you people know that there are baseball cards that do not feature baseball players? We’ll have a special report on this right here on WNYX, right after Bill McNeil’s hard-hitting expose of outrageous lyrics in rap music, and Matthew Brock’s feature on the “Dilbert” cartoons that are sweeping the nation.
Anyway, last year, my friend noticed that Topps put out a Fidel Castro card. It shows him in a baseball cap, and is all cute and cuddly. My friend was disgusted at this sweetheart treatment of a murderous dictator. So what did he do? He bought the card. He didn’t want it in anyone else’s possession.
Uh, Jay Nerdlinger’s friend? I hate to break this to you, Mr. “Investor”, but it’s fairly likely that Topps made more than one of those.
Then the question was, “What do I do with this card? Do I have some kind of ceremonial burning?” My friend decided against this — too much like book burning, and you can’t burn an idea. So he decided to deface the card and auction it — giving the proceeds to the anti-Castro, pro-freedom cause.
I guess book-defacing is okay, and you can deface an idea. Anyway, what kills me about this is that with any collector’s item (which, of course, this isn’t), it’s going to raise more money if you don’t deface it. These dimwits don’t even understand capitalism.
Having exhausted his idiocy re: baseball cards, Nordlinger unearths some exciting new idiocy re: his recent trip to Italy:
In the realm of demographics: There are many blacks in Florence now — black Africans, living and working. And many, many Chinese. That is really new. (New to me.) I was told that there is a town outside of Florence that is almost all Chinese. And they specialize in laundry. A stereotype, maybe, but a fact.
But do the blacks enjoy watty-melons? The reading public demands to know!
Santa Croce has changed a bit: For one thing, you have to pay to get in there. Pay? We used to just march through the front door. Now you go to a side door, forking over 5 euros. And you can’t get close to the art, memorials, and monuments: They’re all roped off, and you have to stand sort of far away. Gotta squint, hard. Stinks.
Well, Jay, that’s the legacy of market capitalism, small government, and the anti-terror panic for you.
Here’s something I never noticed in the adjoining Pazzi Chapel – or maybe I once knew about it, but merely forgot: a memorial to Florence Nightingale. What’s she doing there? At any rate, what a great person.
Man, is it just me, or is Nordlinger wandering into Abe Rosenthal/Larry King territory? I know that’s sort of the metier of his Impromptus column, but he’s straying dangerously close to senility here. But wait, it gets worse!
In the Pazzi Chapel, women were going into the men’s room, and men were going into the ladies’ room. Why? Because the doors were marked Signori (meaning men) and Signore (meaning women). And those words were way too close for bathrooms that millions of foreigners use! I mean, way too close. What were they thinking? What terrible signage!
How dare the Italians presume that foreign tourists learn two extremely basic words before visiting their country?
Move, now, to the Bargello Museum — whose hit item is Donatello’s David (the bronze one, not the marble one). You know that swishy little guy? Marvelous sculpture.
There you have it, folks: Jay “Il American Brutto” Nordlinger has just characterized one of the crowning works of Western art as faggy.
Finally, I went into an “artisanal” ice-cream shop — it was simply calling me — and had their peanut ice cream. Yes, peanut ice cream, and it was ambrosial. I of course thought of WFB — who would have loved it.
A fitting tribute, this peanut iced-cream, to the founder of modern conservativism. All hail Jay Nordlinger, who at 45 years old is now the right wing’s Andy Rooney.
Just consider how remarkable that is. George Bush’s own Press Secretary criticizes the American media for being “too deferential” to the Government.
If only Bush had refused to wear a flag pin, then they might have asked him some tougher questions.
Pace Michelle Malkin, illegal immigrants are dirty, rotten scoundrels, as likely to drive a school bus off a cliff as look at you. And let’s not even get started on the mess the wetbacks made of the azalea beds at our ancestral estate — they’d been instructed time and again to mind their horrible, smoke-belching gardening contraptions while edging the lawn, but to no avail. I rather think we shall have to deport them.
But to Michelle’s main point about the horrible school bus tragedy in Minnesota: ‘It didn’t have to happen.’
Authorities have confirmed that the the driver of the van that struck the school bus that killed 4 students on Tuesday is an illegal alien.
Officials at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement are checking to see where she came from and how long she’s been in Minnesota. FOX 9 has also learned that the name she gave to police, Alainiss Morales, is an alias.
We have our own suspicions about who this person might really be, but the important thing to note is that Michelle Malkin is correct — this didn’t have to happen. Any other view would be the most noxious sort of fatalism. If this ‘Alainiss Morales’ person hadn’t been allowed to insolently wade across the Rio Grande (or as we suspect, Lake Michigan), this wouldn’t have happened.
Of course, that’s a tall order given our current enforcement policy. And anyway, even if ‘Alainiss Morales’ had been stopped, some other illegal might have hit that school bus. Whether a ‘Debbee Gibsonzales’ or an ‘Avrilla De La Vignillenueva’, we can’t really know — only that it might have occurred.
So clearly we needed for all illegals to have been duly rounded up and deported well before this incident even took place, so we could be sure that it really, really wouldn’t have happened. Nor would that effort have been particularly impractical, of dubious merit, cruelly draconian or have resulted in any unforeseen and unintended consequences. Anything to get each and every ‘Alainiss Morales’ off that particular road at that particular time. Because isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? When you crash into a school bus full of children, on your deportation day?
Well, it isn’t ironic at all, and is in fact a gross misuse of the word, which is, indeed, central to Michelle’s and my point. Nor is there anything resembling irony in the fact that even as the number of illegal immigrants in this country has risen, going from about 8.5 million in 2000 to some 11.6 million in 2006, the number of traffic fatalities per 100 miles driven has sunk to record lows.
And to any critic who might raise an eyebrow over the above statistics, Michelle and I would have you know that is disingenuous at best to attribute full causality to a single factor like illegal immigration when explaining a complex trend like falling vehicular death rates. Whereas blaming a person’s immigration status alone for one particular vehicular death and then extrapolating from your verdict the further conclusion that every illegal immigrant who ever lived must be collectively blamed as well, is, of course, perfectly legitimate. And if it’s four deaths, and they’re children … well, that is some steel-trap logic you will never defeat, moonbat.
More recently we learn via Malkin boy ward See-Dubya that the Papist conspiracy to foist Aztlan upon us all is infecting proper Christians:
The “New Sanctuary Movement” in mainline Protestant churches
By see-dubya • May 27, 2008 02:21 PM
First of all, can we change the misleading term “mainline Protestant” denominations? They’re not really that “mainline” anymore.
Gavin adds: Just like Sister Ray said.
They built ugly churches and began regarding the Bible as optional, and as a result they’re dwindling away like the Church of England. I like “sideline Protestants”, but I’m open to suggestions.
May we humbly suggest ‘Los Protestantistas’? Or perhaps the more piquant ’spic-loving race-traitors’?
Anyway, the latest inspiration for the sideline Protestants is their new Magdalene, Elvira Arellano. Today the Washington Times has published a report on this “New Sanctuary Movement” that Arellano inspired.
Ahh, the Times. A more well-regarded and responsible agent of the fourth estate we would be hard-pressed to name. If only its publishers would heed my many requests to cease printing it upon recyclable newsprint — the hobos who gather ’round our rubbish bin to fight over the past week’s editions are a menace.
I’ll let you read the whole irritating thing, but let me draw your attention to this detail at the end: the whole movement hinges on a single legal loophole, one that could quite easily be closed by an interested Congress:
Although sheltering illegal immigrants is a felony, sanctuary organizers said in interviews that they had found a loophole in the law: They inform the local ICE office about an immigrant’s presence, thereby evading any charge of secretly harboring fugitives.
Shouldn’t openly harboring fugitives be a crime as well?
Indeed. And how terribly un-Christian, isn’t it just, to offer shelter and food to the wretched and poor. Next thing you know, they’ll be letting itinerant preggos squirt out their mewling brats in the rectory. Why, Jesus would be puking his guts out if he were alive to see what’s going on in His name!
Update: ‘hawkeye54′ (whose moniker, incidentally, gives us hope) in comments on the See-Dubya thread informs us:
And as ['sideline Protestant'] congregations seem to put more emphasis on themes such as shamnesty and glowbull warming than what should be their primary goal, and tending to substitute entertainment and 5-minute PC soundbites in place of meaningful teaching – maybe the term should be “Sideshow Protestants”
Clever spelling of ‘global’ aside, what’s notable is that hawkeye54 never gets around to explaining what these congregations’ ‘primary goal’ should be. One assumes that ‘turning away poor people’ would be an insufficient example of ‘meaningful teaching’ in the great Christian tradition, so perhaps it’s alerting the police to their presence or better yet, citizen-arresting them.
Remember when Dick Cheney snottily described energy conservation as a “personal virtue?” Hey Dick, maybe if we’d spent the last eight years raising fuel-efficiency standards and giving people more public transportation options, we wouldn’t have to deal with bullshit like this:
As gas prices soar, thieves grow more brazen
[...]
[W]ith the average price of a gallon of gas having more than doubled in the last two years, thieves are branching out. Across the country, drivers are waking up to find their gas caps pried open and their tanks dry.
While there are no national statistics yet tracking an increase in gas thefts, police across the country say they’re investigating more reports than ever before:
- Using an empty gas can and a siphon, thieves were able to suck 30 gallons of diesel from a bus in a Bethesda, Md., parking lot.
- In Beaver Dam, Wis., “they’re just going to cars at night and siphoning gas out of them,” said Stephanie Lehmann, who said several cars in her neighborhood had been hit.
- Police in Evansville, Ind., said thieves drained all of the fuel this month from seven trucks belonging to a local office of JBM Inc., a metal fabrication chain. They put the loss at $700.
- And police in Denver are investigating a rash of of incidents in which thieves drill small holes into gas tanks and siphon off the fuel. “This is clearly not the way it’s been done in the past, by taking a hose and putting it in a gas tank,” police Detective John White said.
Nice work, assholes. Thanks for the legacy.
Oh. And then there’s this:
Health problems feared for kids who lived in FEMA trailers
Doctors fear tens of thousands of children who lived in FEMA trailers after Hurricane Katrina could have lifelong health problems.
The trailers — up to 143,000 of them — may have formaldehyde fumes up to five times the safe level. Formaldehyde is classified as a probable cancer-causing agent, and kids are believed to be at particular risk.
One young mother, whose 15-month-old daughter was born while the woman was living in a trailer, says her little girl has persistent breathing problems. She says she never would have stayed so long in the trailer if she’d known the risk.
The formaldehyde was detected in the trailers when they were sent to the Gulf Coast following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But there was no push to get people out of them until this February.
Heckuva job, shitbags.
Incidentally, I’m looking to organize a Million Middle Finger March in Washington, DC next year. The premise is simple: we get a million people to gather in our nation’s capital to flip Bush the bird as he takes off in his helicopter after the new president is sworn in.
Who’s with me?
The Empire Strikes Back
by Joe Malchow on May 21, 2008Whatever the varying definitions of “overreaction,” one must undoubtedly be the debauching of a governance system, tested by the centuries and manifestly contributory to the weal of the organization it controls, because the last three or four elections have not fadged quite as one desired. Yet those are precisely the circs at Dartmouth College, where four independent trustees have been elected over better-funded candidates who support the College’s executives unswervingly. And now? As mystery writer Roger L. Simon says, the empire is striking back.
Meet the $10,000 prizewinner of the America’s Future Foundation 2008 College Blogger Award.
Judges included Jonah Goldberg of National Review; Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit; Radley Balko of The Agitator and Reason; Jonathan Adler of The Volokh Conspiracy; Robert Bluey of the Heritage Foundation and RobertBluey.com; Mary Katharine Ham of TownHall.com; and Megan McArdle of Asymmetrical Information at TheAtlantic.com.
Prior recognition of Mr. Malchow’s enthusiastic contrafribularities include classmates laughing at his prose, a 2007 fellowship from the Wall Street Journal, and the role of The Fratboy in the TBogg epic, Blow it Out Your Ass, Fratboy.
So let’s see. Michelle-Malkinwise, the past four days have given us:
1) A nutty campaign against Dunkin’ Donuts to drop a Rachael Ray ad, for the reason that Ray was wearing a scarf that resembled scarves worn in the Middle East, and was therefore abetting terrorism. Result: Success!
2) A nutty and dishonest campaign against the Subway chain (and Scholastic, Inc.) for sponsoring a contest that excluded homeschoolers in that it allowed kids to win thousands of dollars of sports equipment for their schools. Result: Success!
This is in addition to the usual lunacy, conspiracy thinking, crude partisan smears, and mortifying far-right crankism that Malkin provides daily, as sponsored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, a tax-funded government agency of high profile and vital responsibility:
Yes, that’s a recruitment ad.
No, we don’t imagine they thought that one through very carefully.
Butt Scud (aka John Hinderaker) launches another dud from his hospital bedside:
Barack Obama must be the most gaffe-prone politician in memory.
What was really offensive about Obama’s New Mexico appearance, however, was what followed his very brief, but generally appropriate, tribute to America’s war dead. He continued with a town hall-style question and answer period that cast veterans in the only role with which the Democrats are comfortable–victims–and sought to politicize the holiday.
Apparently when Obama talks on Memorial Day about assuring that veterans with PTSD get treatment, this is offensive politicization of the holiday, whereas when McCain yaks on interminably on the same holiday about why college benefits for veterans should be limited, this is a heart-wrenching and completely appropriate display of genuine patriotism by a decorated war hero.
And speaking of gaffes, I just came across this little jewel from Butt Scud back in February:
[A]ward categories come and go, [Hinderaker] said. “We were Time’s blog of the year for 2004,” he recalled. “There has never been another one.”
And likely that was for pretty much the same reason people stopped filling dirigibles with hydrogen gas: the results showed it wasn’t such a good idea in the first place.*
*And to head off any snark, yes, I know that the reason the Hindenburg went up in flames was likely that the dirigible’s shell was coated with rocket fuel. It’s a metaphor, folks, not science! Who would have gotten the point if I said it was the same reason they stopped coating dirigibles with iron oxide and aluminum-impregnated cellulose acetate butyrate?
Oh fun. The always-awesome Max Blumenthal reports that Senator Holy Joe Lieberman still plans on headlining John Hagee’s 2008 Christians United For Israel summit this summer:
Joseph Lieberman To Headline Upcoming Pastor Hagee Summit
[...]
In accepting Hagee’s invitation, Lieberman became the most senior elected representative confirmed to appear at the annual gala. Last year, when Lieberman spoke at Hagee’s summit, he compared the Texas televangelist to the biblical prophet Moses, dubbing him “an Ish Elochim,” or “a man of God.” Unless he rescinds his pledge to appear at this year’s summit, Lieberman can be expected to deliver another soul-stirring tribute.
Hagee’s vitriolic condemnation of Catholicism, his jeremiad declaring Hurricane Katrina divine punishment for New Orleans’ hosting of a “homosexual rally,” and his generally disturbing apocalyptic theology became national news last February when John McCain accepted his endorsement in a widely publicized ceremony.
While initially resisting pressure to reject Hagee’s endorsement, McCain finally ended his relationship with Hagee when a sermon by the preacher describing the Holocaust as the will of God registered on the mainstream media’s radar (Hear the now-infamous sermon here).
We’ve heard a lot of nonsense in recent years that any left-wing Jew who doesn’t unconditionally back the Israeli government’s actions is “self-loathing.” This lazy smear has been applied to many people over the past few years, including Steven Spielberg, Avraham Burg, George Soros, Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, and countless, countless others who have refused to wave the Likud pom-poms.
But ask yourselves: What behavior could possibly be more self-loathing than when someone deems that political convenience is worth tolerating the mad notion that one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity was all part of ‘God’s plan?’ Isn’t it time that we take a long look at what it actually means to be a ’self-loathing Jew?’
My apologies if this topic has been brought up for discussion earlier, either here or on another website. The desultory poking around I’ve done on the intertubes doesn’t seem to have yielded much along these lines, and I’ve been out of it enough that I might very well have missed it if it has been.
But we – and by “we” I mean “folks who consider themselves of a liberal or left-leaning political orientation” – need to start having a serious conversation, and the sooner we start it, the better. It’s a conversation that centers around this:
The numbers at the above link will change with time, so I have a grab of what they look like today stuck up here for reference. Regardless of which Democratic candidate emerges from the current internecine warfare with the nomination, as of today the November election is polling too close to call one way or the other. If you were planning on betting on the outcome of this election, I’d urge you not to wager anything you couldn’t afford to lose.
The question I want to put up for discussion is: what does it say about the overall viability of the Democratic party if, in the wake of the single most unpopular presidency in all of American history, the best candidates the Democrats can put up can only achieve ‘too close to call’ this far out from the election? What happens to the Democratic party if they manage to lose this upcoming election?
This far out from the election, a reasonable person would be predicting a pretty big Democratic swing in the polls, simply because (as even the Republicans acknowledge) just about everyone in the country hates George Bush. People should be telling pollsters at this point in time that they’d vote for a potted plant before they vote for another Republican. The gaps in these sorts of polls usually narrow the closer to the election you get — but it’s statistically impossible for the gap in these polls to be any narrower.
It doesn’t take amazing psychic abilities to predict that the narrative from the chattering classes, as we near November, will be something along the lines of, “Can the Democratic Party be saved?” And if McCain wins the general election, this will end up being the only topic of conversation on cable news networks for approximately the next 6,734 years or so. My feeling is that we might as well start having a conversation along these lines ourselves, before the conversation gets thrust upon us by the David Broders of the world.
Hopefully, most of you are enjoying your Memorial Day with some good food and good drink, so consider this an extension of your typical backyard barbecue banter. Am I totally off base for wondering what’s going to happen to the Democrats if they can’t win the White House under the most favorable conditions for victory they’ve had in almost a century?
