ABOVE: Don Surber in front of his newly-remodeled home
Poor Don Surber. Apparently he’s locked himself in his shack, barricading the door with various auto parts he found lying around his living room. He’s sitting in a corner clutching a .22 in one hand and three bottles of Tylenol in the other. “Obama will have to pry the Tylenol from my cold dead hands,” Surber keeps muttering to himself while pointing his rifle at the front door. Surber is certain that the FBI, the CIA, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, CNN, La Raza and The Poca, West Virginia Department of Park and Recreation are all amassed just outside his door, heavily-armed and waiting for the signal to burst through the door, guns ablaze, in order to take away his Tylenol.
Part of the reason why we keep returning to the deep well of the blog postings of this Pliny of Poca — other than to ridicule his personal appearance through the magic of Photoshop — is just that there are only a handful of wingnut bloggers who manage to maintain that perfect balance of laziness, stupidity and insanity that Surber does. In any given post, there are general only slightly fewer errors than there are vowels.
Take the “Obama is going to take my Tylenol” post that has Surber stockpiling Tylenol and guarding this stash with the .22 that he usually employs to shoot frogs in the crick behind his house when they get too noisy. Almost everything about it is just, well, wrong.
President Obama’s administration is weighing restrictions on buying Tylenol, Excedrin and other over-the-counter medications. More over-regulation by the government. If a prescription is required to get a Tylenol, that will up the cost of health care.
Just like Don, we’re only a few keystrokes away from the FDA document detailing the proposals under consideration. Unlike Don, we’re not too busy eating moonpies and swilling RC Cola to retrieve and read the document.
Now, lookie here, here’s a fascinating little tidbit in the report. The proposals that the Advisory Panel is considering were developed by the FDA’s Acetaminophen Hepatotoxicity Working Group in a report they released on February 26, 2008. And who was President then? Not Obama. So this really isn’t a reason to take a jab at Obama. Strrrrrike One!
And is one of the proposals under consideration requiring a prescription for Tylenol or taking it off the market? Nope. Strrrrrrrrike Two!!
There are about 200 acetaminophen-related deaths each year, Fox News reported.
Does the Fox News story that Surber links report that? Not so much. It doesn’t say anything at all about acetaminophen-related deaths. Strrrrrrike Three!!!
Okay, let’s have a heart and use the Beep Ball rules used for the visually impaired. That way Surber can have one more strike before he’s out.
Are there 200 acetaminophen-related deaths per year? Let’s roll the film of the FDA report in question:
Summarizing data from five different surveillance systems, there were an estimated 56,000 emergency room visits, 26,000 hospitalizations, and 458 deaths related to acetaminophen-associated overdoses per year during the 1990-1998 period.
Batter out.
I think it’s safe to say, yet again, that this will be another year in which the Pulitzer committee will take a pass on Surber.
June 8: David Letterman tells a joke about the Palin family, forcing conservatives to divert precious blogging resources away from Obama-bashing to defend the plucky Alaskans. A trial run of the diversionary tactics the MSM will soon use to help squash Iranian freedom?
June 24: South Carolina governor Mark Sanford admits to Argentinian affair, kicking off major MSM operations against Iran’s Green Revolution.
June 26: Michael Jackson dies. Liberal media blitzkrieg is now in full swing as unending wave of Jacko chyrons effectively trample the corpse of Neda into the dust.
There are times when I wonder what, exactly, conservatives mean when they say they want to “promote democracy” in other countries. Now, via the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page, we have our answer: it involves supporting military coups against democratically-elected governments:
Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution. It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.
But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.
This reminds me of Ralph Peters’ recent declaration that the American military should start actively slaughtering members of the American media in order to procure more favorable coverage:
Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.
Do you guys even understand what “democracy” means? Because to my way of thinking, it doesn’t involve military coups and violent censorship of the press. But that’s just me.
When Chief Justice John Roberts was in his twenties and working in the Reagan White House, he already saw the dangers of Negro “music” from the likes of Michael Jackson and Prince. How cool is that?
So, like I was saying, (mmmm, double fudge Yoo-Hoo) isn’t it funny how (glug glug) liberals are all like, ‘wah waahhh stop it!’ when America blows up Iraq and (farrrrrrrrrt-rt-t) tells its people how to live, but when it comes to (glug fart waft sniff nod smile) true imperialism — stuff like the Waxman-Markey bill inspiring other countries by example to do something about so-called “global warming” — liberals are all like, “yes, more please”. What a Double Stuf Ore — er, double standard!
In a country with more conservatives than liberals, it is puzzling — in fact, amazing — that we have the furthest left president of the United States in history, as well as the furthest left speaker of the House of Representatives.
Next up, terrified:
Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.
Oh no he didn’t — oh yes he did! Not to worry though, Tommy’s about to take a whack at it like Andres Galarraga at a 55-foot curve ball:
The glib pieties in Barack Obama’s televised sermonettes will not stop Iran from becoming a nuclear terrorist nation. Time is running out fast and we will be lucky if it doesn’t happen during the first term of this president. If he gets elected to a second term — which is quite possible, despite whatever economic disasters he leads us into — our fate as a nation may be sealed.
See, Iran just started working on a plan to become a “nuclear terrorist nation” and Obama’s televised sermonettes are providing them with exactly what had been missing until now (aka Step 2). Step 1: Chant ‘Death to America.’ Step 3: Nuclear terrorist nation. In case you thought Tommy was done however, you have no idea what it takes to become a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution:
Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War II. It is hard to believe that it would take much more than that for the United States of America to surrender — especially with people in control of both the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running in Iraq just a couple of years ago.
Read that again if you need an excuse to have a drink: Tommy considers it a possibility that Iran will develop two nuclear weapons, acquire the means to get them over here (alright, I live in Germany, so over there — so long, suckers), detonate them, and that the original Party of Shrill’s response will be: well, that’s it for us (goodnight Vegas, you’ve been great!). In what kind of fucked up, bizzaro, upside-down universe would this even be considered anything better than the ramblings of a very crazy frozen caveman? (Yes, frozen.)
A quadrupling of the national debt in just one year and accepting a nuclear-armed sponsor of international terrorism such as Iran are not things from which any country is guaranteed to recover.
There would be no guarantee indeed as far as that first thing is concerned: if it were true. I wouldn’t cancel afternoon school to bury that little shit! What you say? (PDF, see page 22). Is the projected gross Federal debt by 2019 (!), 23,140 US bn, quadruple the actual debt in 2008, 9,986 US bn? Sadly, No!? But Tommy is an economist! Maybe sharia law stole his calculator.
One good thing about Tommy is that he does have a good sense of humor:
That is why [the Republican party's] internal squabbles are important for the rest of us who are not Republicans.
Ha ha ha. That Thomas, he looks just like an independent. Yeah… looks like.
Bonus points for the note at the end of the column:
EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece has been amended since its initial posting.
Probably a case of verschlimmbessert. [Thanks to cw for the link.]
You just know that the good times are gonna roll when a post at Big Andy Brietblart’s Group Blob and All-Night Buffet-Style Wingnutateria starts off like this:
I’m sure that I’ll get some heat for this, but I feel it is timely to say …
When wingnuts apologize before they’ve even opened their mouths, it usually means they are about to blow a load of spittle-flecked nonsense about some sodomy-fueled conspiracy of Hollywood Jews, or about how they wouldn’t mind making abortion legal but only for black women, or about how an army of Pedros is going to force all groceries stores to label snack foods only in Spanish in order to starve conservatives to death. (“¡No más Cheetos para ti, gringo fascista!“)
But here our pre-apologizer is Steve “Don’t Call Me Gay Just Cuz I Look Gay” Crowder, so it’s not really hard to guess what Steve wants to get off his smooth (“Thanks, Nair for Men!”) chest:
Folks, it’s okay to find flamboyant homosexuality funny. Somewhere along the “common sense line,” people have started to equate the ability to find the humor in life with hate speech.”
Minstrel shows are da bomb! Free Julie Myers. Resyndicate Amos ‘n Andy! And then let’s tell a few nigger jokes. They are crowd killers, I tell ya! Particularly where the people in the joke are named DeWinston, LaTasha and LeNoleum. And people who don’t think these jokes are the most hilarious ever, well, they just have some thick liberal PC stick up their butts. (Steve pauses for a moment and wonders how bad a thick stick up his butt might really be, at least with a thick coating of some of that Olay Regenerist he keeps on his nightstand.)
Let me be the first to say it. My name is Steven Crowder and …
Notice how Steve demonstrates his devotion to the writer’s craft with his understated solicitude for readers who might be too stupid to understand that the byline on his post is his actual name and not that of someone else.
… I happen to find blatant gayness funny. I mean really funny.
Talk about teh tea kettle cozy calling teh doily lavender.
I can remember my first “gay encounter” as a child. I was watching the Macy’s parade on Thanksgiving morning. Al Roker was interviewing Richard Simmons. As nothing more than a wide-eyed four-year-old, I was completely vexed [sic]. Here was a man on my television set, complete with chest-hair and quadriceps fuzz. He was just…“off” to me for some reason. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until the light bulb in my underdeveloped noggin turned on. “Hey Dad,” I asked. “Why does that man act like a woman?”
Is it just me or does anyone else also think that a four-year-old who notices “quadriceps fuzz” will be, a few years later, going fappity-fap-fap-fap over a Marlboro Man ad he tore out of a magazine?
To a straight man, the notion of walking around as a coiffed, waxed, nail-polish wearing, lispy dude is uproariously absurd. As people, we find absurdities funny. That’s our first step in making sense of them.
The whooshing sound you hear is the overcompensation blowing out Steve’s taut, baby-smooth, alabaster butt cheeks. (“Oh, noes! Must laugh at the gay or those feelings will start washing over me again.”)
For example: If right now a duck were to walk into your room wearing pajamas, you’d most likely laugh
Oh, not just laugh — I’d double over and piss my pants, Steve. That is the funniest thing ever, at least since rubber chickens. God, you’re killing me, Steve. Stop it. Please.
Because in your mind, there is no place in the natural world where ducks are seen wearing pajamas.
Thanks for clearing that up. (Do they pay you by the word at Andy’s Maison de Conneries?)
The same applies to blatantly gay men in rhinestone tank-tops and hot-pants. Nowhere in the straight man’s natural realm does that occur, and so the absurdity of it is funny.
But not as funny as someone who looks gayer than a night club in Chelsea at 3 a.m. trying to butch it up, lower his voice an octave and tell a fag joke without any words that have ethes in them. Now, that is funny.
Even so, if this were the kind of blog that would permit posts about a certain kind of reprehensible list, I’d so put Steve on my conservative guy version of that list, but we’re not, so I won’t.
The phrase ‘Sanford & Pun’ represents a rare, minimalist form of multiple-entendre, seldom encountered in the wild and so far unnamed. Another one, honoring TV pseudoeconomist Amity Shlaes, appeared here not long ago, regrettably in a hedged, lengthened title that was swapped in at the last moment in case ‘people didn’t get it’ — the kind of overthinking that, if brevity is the soul of wit, is wit’s Ausch. ‘Amity & Irony‘ is now the second best out of an oeuvre of three, while the really funny one is banked for later deployment.
Because yes, if ‘getting it’ were the point of humor, then today I might have said, “Hey, they posted the new schedule at the planetarium. Let’s get fucked up on drugs and catch Laser Dane Cook.” On the other hand, since the form in question is a way of explaining a joke into being — i.e., it is to actual-funny like licking a bouillon cube is to trying the soup — here’s what a diagram of it would look like, if there were any such thing as diagrams for experimental jokes you make up.
[POP CULTURAL REFERENCE (proper noun) | linking term | (name of metaphor or fallacy to be invoked)]
It is an architectonic improvement — whether or not an actual one — over the classic ‘perfect headline,’ as in the following real and invented examples:
Question for the theologians: Would Photoshopping in tears of blood count as ‘a malicious desecration’ of ‘an iconic representation of a mother’s love for a special needs child’? Or would that be a sign that Our Lady of Wasilla is a legitimate Marian apparition?
I don’t find anything funny about the Sanford affair. It’s the mom in me thinking about four handsome boys on Father’s Day weekend abandoned by their stupid, selfish father, who was busy tanning with his mistress in Argentina. Heart-breaking. Yes. Nauseating. Yes. Maddening. Yes. Funny? No.
Sometimes we imagine life at the Malkin house as most there must know it: the long hours of tensed breaths and sneeze-covering, of flinching at the cuckoo clock and the the doorbell; the tedium of suspense. It must almost be a relief when it finally breaks, when with panic and chair legs and sawdust and spraying crockery shards, it’s one long screech and crash windmilling up and down the stairs and around the corner from the kitchen to the den, slashing the black leather sofa with a bent lawnmower blade, tantruming with arms and legs, heaving the burning dog bed into the pool.
Robert Bidinotto weighs in on the moral transgressions of Eliot Spitzer that the media continue to ignore.
And my friends at The People’s Cube, who lampooned Operation Corner Office two years ago, have the photoshop of the day:
Then the horror as Michelle returns to her senses, flinging away the teeth-stripped live electrical cord with which she was menacing the salt water aquarium. Then the tears. And then, as you watch, there comes the change, like clouds closing over the moon — like a queasy seismic bump, unfelt but sensed — and the moment of self-recovery is past. Michelle looks around with a Popeye squint and a bold chin, swelling with spite at the unfairnesses the liberals were hypocritically getting away with in maliciously making conservatives feel bad for going on so-called berserk rampages — as they would certainly try to do. And yet they would hypocritically whine if attacked for exactly what they would attack you for!
As usual, she affirmed, they go around blaming others instead of admitting their own exact same things. Like, excuse me, we will be happy to talk about so-called ‘right-wing extremism’ as soon as the left takes responsibility for left-wing terrorist heroes like Bill Ayers, James Van Brunn, and Islam, and stops pointing the finger at so-called ‘right-wing extremism’ — because it is laughable to say that we are pointing the finger when look at them doing it, with their lies, accusing us of so-called finger-pointing, over there.
Which they will not stop doing, she orated, for while conservatives eschew moral relativism and take responsibility for our actions, it won’t be our fault if we’re forced to do something we know is wrong, because liberals deny any responsibility for our actions. Oooh, oooh, if conservatives even dare to say anything against their fascist tryings-to-destroy of conservatives just for living, they will unfairly lie that the real liars are us and the real destroyees are them — lying with their opposite lies and their backwards accusings of up-is-down lying, scheming with their unfair partisan lackeys and bosses in the worldwide left-wing biased MSM and also US government, until we are forced to destroy them by any means necessary, i.e. preemptively. AND NOW LOOK WHAT ME-THEY MADE THEM DO I THIS TIME!
Update 10:05am Eastern. Fox and AP say resignation will be effective Monday.
Update 10:12am Eastern: New word via Derb – Spitzenfreude.
Update 10:16am Eastern. Speaking of Spitzenfreude, Lone Star Times photoshops The Playas’ Ball.
Update 10:30am Eastern. Allah’s on Spitzer Watch. CNBC apparently got the scoop that the actual resignation will come down at 11:00am…now closer to 11:30am.
Update 10:46am Eastern. More Spitzenfreuder from the brilliant Iowahawk.
Update 10:56am Eastern. There’s an O.J.-like media swarm outside Spitzer’s high-rise apartment. In Albany, Republican State Senate majority leader Joe Bruno called on NY to move forward and prepare for transition.
Update 11:13am Eastern. Watch the “Apartment Stakeout Cam” at FoxNews.com.
Then weary, dreamless sleep, and another few long hours of putting on socks to slink to the bathroom so that your feet don’t slap on the floorboards, and whispering to the dog not to bark — and then a change in the air like a thunderstorm arriving, and the scream rises again.
Imagine Michael Jackson’s death as a kind of cake — which one might ‘have’ by declaring his musical genius to be more personally meaningful than the lurid details of his life, but which one could simultaneously ‘eat’ by mentioning molestation, plastic surgery and ‘Hollyweird’ in the same breath.
Since Simon’s theory seems to be that Iran’s Green Revolution is magically powered by Americans watching coverage of it on TV, the protesters might as well just fold up their uprising and go home. We expect Thriller to be the soundtrack for the rest of the week.
Nevertheless, Mark Sanford’s out-of-control Father’s Day jaunt to Buenos Aires is particularly ill-timed, not just because of the obvious disrespect to his wife, children, friends, citizens of his state, political party, etc.
Reason: IRAN.
At this moment, the eyes of this country should be fixed on the horrific events coming from that company and the struggle for freedom against all odds by many of its brave citizens.
Well, the Green Revolution is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wingnutz, Inc., after all.
We’ve always had a very special place in our hearts for The Rant The New Media Journal (TNMJ). It’s given us a lot over the years, such as Sadly, No! penultimate favorite Justin Darr. Most of all though, it also gave us (or rather, we gave it), Stanton Carlisle. And while TNMJ can only dream of being a supplier of pellets equal to thisguy, it can provide nutritive snacks… de merde. In a column entitled Necessity is the Mother of Invention, Nancy Salvato writes:
The Mainstream Media is struggling. Like California, they are going to have to reinvent themselves in order to survive in a digital world.
Because like the “M”ainstream “M”edia, California’s problem is that it’s just a Timex watch in a digital age. In fact, it’s our understanding that the entire state runs on duplication machines.
The music industry made the transformation several years ago, when they found CDs were being pirated and downloaded for free. Now, songs can be purchased for less than $1.00 which is changing the meaning of hit singles[.]
In the old days, a hit single was used to refer to a recorded track or single that has become very popular*. Whereas now, it refers to a digitally recorded track or single that has become very popular. It’s totally different!
Students can email their homework to their teachers and parents can sign off on it to assure the teacher that the work was done by their kids. No more, “the dog ate my homework” or copying a friend’s homework ten minutes before class.
No more quick copying thanks to computers — so long, duplication machines! (Offer void in California).
All students can engage by texting their answers to teachers’ discussion questions for a quick progress monitor.
Question: Why did the Republicans get their clocks cleaned in the last election?
Answer: @TEOTD SIHTH, MKAY? SIS. SOTMG! *
Yes, you can take my word for it that there was a verbal agreement between George Bush and Ariel Sharon regarding Israeli settlements, and it is deeply offensive to me that Hillary Clinton regards it as less worthy than a formal treaty.
GLENN GETS HOT CHICKS And I do mean hot. And judging by her writing, she is really quite smart too. Hey, I support the right to bear arms. As well as the right to arm bears. I have bare arms as I type these words, and my right is rather fetching, if I do say so myself. A teenage fan would be greatly appreciated.
posted by Pejman at 8/31/2002 04:16:00 PM
That last sentence is especially creepy. Anyway, here’s Perfesser Corncob’s post:
August 31, 2002
OKAY, THERE’S NO POINT MY EVER WRITING ANOTHER WORD. Not when I’ve written a law review article that has, apparently, induced fits of teen ecstasy. . . .
Well, with a little help.
posted at 11:48 AM by Glenn Reynolds
June 16, 2009
A LIBERTARIAN FANTASY: “Just think if Friedrich Hayek had been a sexy dame with big gazongas . . . “
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds at 9:30 am
And if she had a fully loaded Heckler & Koch semi-auto and a few cybernetic implants, no sock in glibertarian America would be safe from encrustation.
Tintin adds: For added creep factor, particularly given Pejman’s claim that his bare right arm is rather fetching, here’s a rare photo of Pejman. Seriously.
The always excellent Instaputz, scouting the usual glibertarian-transhumanist-gun nut wasteland down Knoxville way where the fascist nerds roam, notices a particularly fatuous (even by the august Perfesser Corncob’s standards, which is saying a lot) blurb and link to Pejman Yousefzadeh, and strikes.
A quick site search, some copypasta, and — voila! The result is one of those posts I absolutely love; it’s an internet archaeologist’s exploration into Ur-Wingnuttia, and we just don’t get enough of those. Instaputz shows the history of approving links from Reynolds to Yousefzadeh and in the process demonstrates that each wingnut’s not-so-unique brand of stupidity and/or insanity and/or moral degeneracy is, adjusted for events, almost perfectly static.
Each post is just as flamingly wingnutty as the one preceding it — all the way back to their Golden Era, the age in which they established their styles (Reynolds’s being pithy and passive-aggressive, Yousefzadeh’s pompous and priggish) and, along with a legion of other shut-ins, founded a cult dedicated to the worship of angelic neocon warriors whose For All Time battle against satanic islamofascists and demonic transnationalist progressives so neatly mirrored (surprise, surprise) their own warbloggers’ heroic struggle against the “idiotarian” menace. Like the old occultists used to say, “as above, so below.” Anyway, their Gods failed but the cult persists and their proselytizing goes on and on and on (for a transhumanist, the Perfesser sure isn’t much on personal evolution).
While Instaputz’s artifacts are impressive, I want MOAR! Despite a site migration to Roger El’s personal FAILproject, Reynolds’s archives are relatively orderly. Which means they’re too vast to scrounge through pleasurably; also, the Perfesser’s oeuvre is too well-known. I want to dig where others have not (lately, at least).
Yousefzadeh has been at it about as long as Reynolds but never became much more than a B-list blogger. He, like the Perfesser, wrote for Tech Central Station (remember that shithole? Last I heard, its longtime editor Nick Schulz bought it, whence it died, then moved on to edit AEI’s glossy new rag, and it too promptly died), but he was never as adept staying on the Wingnut Welfare gravytrain as the resourceful Perfesser. Yousefzadeh is currently the Token Brown Pundit for a site otherwise completely Red (state) and White (trash). Before that, he had his own site the url of which is now dead; before that, he had a blogspot account, which is where the real treasures are.
And what treasures! Digging more or less at random, look at the shit I found:
[Weapons] inspections [in Iraq] are not worth the paper the Ba’athist regime used to transmit their proposal. Needless to say, I am skeptical of the offer. So is Steven Den Beste. And for that matter, so is the White House.
posted by Pejman at 9/16/2002 10:56:00 PM
CLAUSEWITZ HE AIN’T Bill Clinton thinks that we ought to get Osama bin Laden before going after Saddam Hussein. Never mind that the two are not mutually exclusive. Never mind that bin Laden may already be dead. Never mind that if he is alive, making his death a prerequisite for any attack against Iraq gives Saddam Hussein even more of an incentive to support al Qaeda, as James Taranto points out today. In short, never mind basic facts. Bill Clinton wants you to take his advice. Any takers?
posted by Pejman at 9/06/2002 01:50:00 PM
OF TRANSNATIONALIST PROGRESSIVES Vegard Valberg has some thoughts on the “tranzies,” their ideology, their future, and their presence in the European Union.
posted by Pejman at 9/03/2002 09:39:00 AM
LILEKS SPEAKS . . . Correction: Lileks Fisks. And what a Fisking it is. Incidentally, any guesses as to whether Stephen Green has recovered from the joy of yet another favorable Lileks mention? It must be sort of like having da Vinci compliment one of your inventions.
posted by Pejman at 9/06/2002 03:04:00 PM
THE MYSTERY OF SCOTT RITTER Tony Adragna and Jane Galt have both indicated that Scott Ritter’s recent statements on Iraq should not be trusted, because Ritter has so dramatically changed his views without a scintilla of evidence or justification for that radical change. The Blogosphere wonders what the cause is for Ritter’s reversal of position. Well, here’s your chance to offer theories and hypotheses for why Ritter has changed his mind. Leave your Musings below, and let me know your opinion as to why Ritter now so fervently believes that Iraq is not a threat, and why he believes that war with Iraq should not be an option. Personally, I think that he has been blackmailed. I know that a number of bloggers feel the same way. I can’t imagine another reason that would have caused him to change his mind in so dramatic a fashion.
posted by Pejman at 9/09/2002 11:12:00 AM
AN EPIC MISMATCH IF I EVER SAW ONE Jane Galt counters the various arguments of antiwar protestors in her typically lucid and intelligent manner.
posted by Pejman at 9/23/2002 11:17:00 AM
ROLL CALL OF SHAME A reader has forwarded me Fareed Zakaria’s excellent column where he slices and dices European countries for the reluctance to support the United States in a war against Iraq. His last paragraph is a classic: If France and Russia seek a world in which nations act purely on the basis of interest and power, they will get it. In it, America will do just fine. As the president’s recent national security strategy document makes clear, it will remain the “hyperpower.” But as France and Russia might have noticed, they’re not very powerful anymore. They have seats on the U.N. Security Council only because they won the last great war 50 years ago. (I use the word “won” loosely when speaking of France.) Unless they act responsibly, they are now in danger of losing the next one. Truer words have not been said.
posted by Pejman at 9/24/2002 11:06:00 AM
BIZARRO-WORLD Greg Buete takes on Scott Ritter and the apologists for Saddam Hussein.
posted by Pejman at 9/24/2002 12:06:00 PM
BEHOLD THE UNWASHED MASSES And in this case, chances are that they really are unwashed. If this is all the antiwar Left has to offer by way of an argument, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see the Right succeeding as well as it does in the larger debate.
posted by Pejman at 9/28/2002 01:50:00 PM
MY TECH CENTRAL STATION COLUMN IS UP This week, I discuss the application of Clausewitzian principles to the current war on terrorism.
posted by Pejman at 8/02/2002 01:09:00 PM
WARBLOGGERWATCH: ARE YOU LISTENING? Steven Den Beste explains the fallacy of strawman arguments–specifically in reference to the definition of “the Bush Doctrine.”
posted by Pejman at 8/05/2002 03:02:00 PM
WARGAMING Steven Den Beste has an interesting essay relating strategy and war games to the conduct and prosecution of an actual war. It’s no surprise to see that his thinking is heavily influenced by Clausewitz (especially when he discusses the chaotic aspects of war).
posted by Pejman at 8/05/2002 09:22:00 PM
TAKE A CHILL PILL OpinionJournal argues that there should be some semblance of calm in discussing the issue of detainees in the war on terrorism. I agree–comparing the detainees to Argentina’s “disappeared,” as former Secretary of State Warren Christopher did, was classic rhetorical overkill and demagoguery.
posted by Pejman at 8/08/2002 01:10:00 PM
JUST CALL HIM “CLAUSEWITZ” Stephen Green has some salient points regarding war with Iraq, and the use of weapons of mass destruction.
posted by Pejman at 8/20/2002 01:09:00 PM
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY Thanks to Libertarian Samizdata for this excellent quote about pacifists: They preach that if you see a man flogging a woman to death you must not hit him. –G.K. Chesterton
posted by Pejman at 8/29/2002 11:42:00 PM
IDIOT-BASHING Rottweiler doesw a magnificent job slicing, dicing, and annihilating the Idiotarian mascot Philip Shropshire, who writes for Warbloggerwatch, and who has his own link in my “Circle of the Treacherous.” [......] You’ll see on Rottweiler’s blog that Phil calls us Nazis, despite the fact that he revels in the karmic deaths of what he believed to be 6000 people. I have a strong suspicion that Adolf Hitler would have found more to admire in Phil’s barbarity, than in anything that the “warbloggers” may have ever posted. Of course, I don’t expect Phil to understand any of this. It’s pretty obvious from his writings and the level of his arguments that he possesses the intellectual firepower of a decapitated cockroach. Which qualifies him eminently for writing and administration duties at Warbloggerwatch, I guess.
posted by Pejman at 8/16/2002 08:04:00 PM
IRAQ WAR WATCH Bill Kristol’s slamming of critics of a war with Iraq is well worth a read.
posted by Pejman at 8/20/2002 02:43:00 PM
It all belongs in a museum’s basement; and the perps, had they any decency and were there any justice in the world, would be broken and scorned, on the alcoholic blackout route to an eventual demise via exposure or mattress fire. But nooooo: America is a great meritocracy after all, so these shameless dipshits are still active and taken seriously; indeed, many are taken even more seriously.
“Galldernit, I knew if I’d a just hunkered down in the stall I wouldn’t have gotten hit with this egg.”
Sorry to go back to the Erick Erickson pellet bin so soon after Gavin, but the pellets are delicious, so sweet and so cold, and I have no impulse control. Now that we know that Governor Mark Sanford was on a booty-call in Buenos Aires, let’s see what Erick had to say about Sanford just yesterday:
First, we need to be clear on the facts — not the media speculation:
* Sanford did tell his staff and family where he was going.
* Because he was traveling without a security detail, it was in his best interests that no one knew he was gone.
* His political enemies — Republicans at that — ginned up the media story.
* When confronted by a pestering media, things went downhill.
* Again though, at all times there was no doubt that Sanford’s staff and family knew where he was.
Now, here is all you need to know about this whole entire story — the reaction from the erstwhile Republicans angry at Sanford for not being a fiscal squish and from the media all go back to their core belief that without Sanford manning the barricades of government at all times, the government will collapse and people will starve, die, and forget how to read and write.
That’s it.
Governor Sanford apologized again and again at his press conference to everybody he could think of, including, it would seem, Jon and Kate (plus 8), some guy named “Cubby,” Astor Piazzolla, Ed McMahon, Carrie Prejean, the Bible, the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, his possibly-former mistress, his church, and every single employee of the National Park Service. The least that Erick could do now is apologize to his readers. Instead, Erick will probably claim that he knew all along where Sanford was but had been personally asked by Sanford’s security detail to repeat the hiking story to protect Sanford from being killed by Argentinian terrorists.
Erick Erickson is a bin of pellets on the wall. When we’re hungry we go push a lever on it. It rewards us with pellets we eat. Pellets… [puts on sunglasses] Of laughter.
The media love covering grassroots attacks on major political candidates. The attacks signal a large base of Americans disturbed by a particular candidate or issue. When those grassroots attacks are manufactured by public relations firms, they aren’t real: they’re astroturfed –
[pulls cardboard cutout of Erickson from behind the couch; tapes picture of sunglasses to it.]
– fake attacks designed to look like a grassroots movement.
Astroturfing. But the question, Alexx, is whether he’s protecting his turf… [puts on sunglasses] Or humecting in it.
The RedState Gathering takes place in Atlanta, GA on August 1, 2009.
Atlanta. Or is that where… [puts on sunglasses] a Dead Late Blathering… [puts on sunglasses] fakes its case? [takes off one pair of sunglasses]
I’d like to thank American Majority and Americans for Prosperity for helping us out with it. Because of them, you guys get to come eat, drink, and visit on the cheap.
[takes off sunglasses, squints through collapsible telescope] Or should we say… [lowers telescope to show ring of shoe polish encircling eye] The chump? [periscope descends, MRI console rolls past, trace of light in sky is 1959 Corona spy satellite]
