30.
Freedom of speech is dead in America.
Posted by John Freeman July 29, 09 05:31 PM
32.
I think this is a free speak issue if he wasn’t acting in his official capacity as a P.O.
Posted by pia3 July 29, 09 05:31 PM
Got it: Freak peen issue (very serious cookie) — Freep speak, not officially a previous owner or Post Office. Welp, here we go:
Read the rest of this entry »
ABOVE: Pat Boone (Click here for the uncensored NSFW version).
Pat “Junk in a Box” Boone has a new column up at Wingnut Daily about waterboarding. I don’t know about you, but when I have questions about waterboarding and other forms of torture I think there is no better expert than a washed-up pop singer.
Until a couple of years ago, “waterboarding” sounded like some kind of fun at the beach.
Unless, of course, you had ever read a book about the World War II war crime tribunals.
Thanks to much media exploitation, politically motivated accusations, certain criminally leaked classified information and of course some actual facts, the word “waterboarding” became synonymous with heinous, barbaric torture.
If you suspect that Boone is going to say heinous, barbaric torture is a good thing, well, you’ll be half-right. It’s a good thing when done to Muslims.
Almost ignored in all the anti-American clamor was the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, confessed mastermind of the World Trade Center carnage, as a result of being “waterboarded” 130 times – with no lasting damage at all – finally divulged information that thwarted the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge and saved an estimated 10,000 innocent lives! So the technique, harsh as it is, proved effective.
Sadly, of course, no! Iyman Faris, the person convicted of the Brooklyn Bridge plot, had, according to Bush’s own DOJ, abandoned his plot at the end of 2002, after deciding that his scheme to collapse the bridge by using a blow torch on the cables was unlikely to succeed. This was before Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had even been captured, much less waterboarded. Another difficulty with his plot would have been luring the “estimated 10,000″ people to stand on the bridge while the terrorists tried to melt the suspension cables with a blow torch.
But what’s good for the Muslim is bad for the Amurikun.
And now, whether expressly intended or not, America is being waterboarded!
The nation – its economy and political body – has been strapped down, blindfolded and hosed. A new administration, empowered by control of both houses of Congress and the most liberal president in history, is immersing us all in a torrent of debt. While we gasp for breath and try to cry “Time out!” we continue to be flooded with staggering commitments neither we nor our children have approved or will be able to fulfill
That may well be most preposterous extended metaphor since Britney Spears’s “Circus,” and Boone is only just getting wound up.
And now, while we’re strapped down by the Democrat-controlled Congress, gasping and gulping beneath a flood of strong-arm tactics, the “health reform” bill taking shape outlines a “minimum-benefits package” that will be universal – that is, required of every American’s insurance plan, whether provided by a private firm or by the government.
No! Please, stop! Don’t inundate me in more health care! I’ll say anything you want, just don’t pour anymore of the elimination of preexisting condition exclusion down my nose! I can’t breathe!! Oh, God, no! I’m choking on keeping my health insurance when I lose my job. I confess. I’m part of a cell that wants to change the name of Reagan National Airport back to National Airport and turn every Dunkin’ Donuts store into an abortion clinic. Just stop! I beg you. I’ll say anything.
This just in, Red Sox fans. Manny and Big ‘Skin’ Papi (Big, Bigger, Biggest Papi?) tested positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003. Tainted championships. Bury your heads in shame, etc.
O’Reilly is trashing those commie drug-lovers in Yurp again. One of his Dutch viewers hits him with, you know, reality:
It’s amazing how quickly right-wing arguments lose validity the minute you start looking at actual facts. If only our media would do the same.
UPDATE: Looking at my bestest friend NationMaster, I also see that the United States has more prisoners per capita than Russia. Yes, Russia. The country that has made imprisoning people a point of national pride for centuries.
ABOVE: The Double Life of Erick Erickson
Shorter Erick Erickson, Red State
Malkin Goes to #1. Leftist Horde Attacks.
ABOVE: Dan Riehl, sitzpinkler
Shorter Dan Riehl, Riehl Crazy World View:
Those Damned Brown People!
Bill Kristol, who famously struggles to achieve the accuracy of a broken clock, went on the Daily Show yesterday and served up the most bizarre argument against public health care to date. It all starts when Jon Stewart, in a bit of gotcha triumphalism (the health care talk begins at the 6:00 mark), manages to get Kristol to admit that the government does in fact provide ‘first-class health care’ … to the military (beginning at about the 11:00 mark).
Awesome in and of itself, but Kristol isn’t done. He goes on to argue, insanely, that even though we apparently can deliver such ‘first-class health care’ via government … the non-military citizens of the US ‘don’t deserve’ the same sort of health care option. Why? Because the troops are teh awesome and ordinary citizens are teh l00sers or something. Whatever.
But the key to this whole thing is that Kristol actually seems to be advocating worse health care policy for non-military members … for the express purpose of ensuring that the troops get ‘better health care’ than everybody else (Fox News contributors and senators excepted, natch). Think about that — Kristol wants to artificially maintain lower standards of health care for some people so that some other people can say their own health care provisions are ‘better’. That’s a tacit admission from one of conservatism’s ‘leading lights’ that better health care policy is not a zero-sum game … but we should make it so in deference to wingnut military fetishism.
After all, if your health care isn’t shittier than that of the troops … how can the troops say they have better health care? That’s the logic and it is fucking mind-boggling. Watch:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Bill Kristol Extended Interview | ||||
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And the Lebanese aren’t exactly thrilled either.
This unretouched photo of a Fox News graphic was stolen from Media Matters.
The photo above is an unaltered snapshot of the new fashion critic at America’s Shittiest Website™, Tevi Troy (right) and his wife Cathy Merrill-Williams (left). They are seen putting on the dog for the AEI’s annual dinner.
This is just awesome, like they’re not even pretending anymore …
No Offense, Officer — It’s Just Your Profession That’s Racist [Victor Davis Hanson]
Barack Obama has reached down to a lowly (though no longer “stupid”) cop and raised him up to the presidential empyrean: “And I have to tell you that, as I said yesterday, my impression of [Sgt. James Crowley] was that he was an outstanding police officer and a good man, and that was confirmed in the phone conversation — and I told him that,” Obama said in his Friday press briefing. …
07/27 06:00 AM
And:
The Reality of Black Crime [Heather Mac Donald]
Barack Obama has reached down to a lowly (though no longer “stupid”) cop and raised him up to the presidential empyrean: “And I have to tell you that, as I said yesterday, my impression of [Sgt. James Crowley] was that he was an outstanding police officer and a good man, and that was confirmed in the phone conversation — and I told him that,” Obama said in his Friday press briefing. …
07/27 09:00 AM
It’s like, VDH was all, ‘Hey! You got your racism in my lies!’ and then Heather MacDonald was all, ‘Hey! You got your lies in my racism!’ and then they took a bite and they were all, ‘Wow! Two great tastes that taste great together!’ and later, in a terrific bit of spin-off merchandising, they laid a trail of their new candy to entice all the extra-terrestrial black people off a cliff.
Shorter Tim Graham, NewsBlusters
Protesters Win: How the Gay Left Went Breaking and Entering Into Cronkite’s Heart
I really expected Heather Mac Donald, who collects wingnut welfare from the Manhattan Institute in exchange for collecting statistics demonstrating the inferiority of the non-white races, to have weighed in on the uppity Harvard professor before this. Perhaps she’s been busy working on her new book about how education is wasted on Negro children. But no matter, she has at last turned her bile-dipped pen to Professor Gates in an article, winsomely titled “Promoting Racial Paranoia,” in which she argues that racial profiling doesn’t exist, that there are statistics to prove it doesn’t exist and that anyone who says otherwise, like Professor Gates and his Negro cohort in the White House, are just race-baiting. And, she insists, these two race baiters will bear the ultimate blame when the restless jungle classes are whipped up by such falsehoods to talk back to police officers or commit other indignities against the white race.
Mac Donald starts her uppity Negro schtick with this jab at Gates:
Here, in Gates’s own words, is what the caller observed: Gates and his “regular driver” from his “regular car service” were both on his front porch, “fiddl[ing] with the door.” (The New York Times recasts this delicious nugget from Gates’s limousine-liberal lifestyle as an interaction with a mere “taxi driver.”)
Blacks, you see, are supposed to take the bus back from the airport.
And, of course, Mac Donald can’t write on this incident without playing one more time the favorite trump card of wingnuts: black people are the real racists.
Gates undoubtedly means to imply that the 911 caller, in her timorous white racism, sees every black man as “big,” but it is he who is engaged in racial stereotyping, not her.
I get the feeling that if someone mentioned that all Ku Klux Klan members are white, Heather would accuse them of racial profiling
Okay, now for the statistics that prove that black men earn more than white men racial profiling doesn’t exist:
The ACLU and other anti-police activists have alleged for years that blacks are the victims of disproportionate and unjustified traffic stops, a charge that has become received wisdom among large swathes of the population. It happens to be contradicted by drivers themselves. The Bureau of Justice Statistics regularly polls tens of thousands of civilians about their contacts with the police. Virtually identical proportions of white, black, and Hispanic drivers — 9 percent — report being stopped by the police, though in 2005, the self-reported black stop rate — 8.1 percent — was nearly a percentage point lower than the self-reported white stop rate (8.9 percent).
Ha, libs! Blacks are stopped less than whites!! Shove that up your pansy butts!!! Or maybe not. People of a more critical bent than Ms. Mac Donald might remark that this counterintuitive result that cops stop white people at higher rates might be explained by another factor that just might cast these figures in a completely different light. And what might that other factor be? Car ownership perhaps?
Well, tell us, great Gazoogle, is the rate of car ownership by whites greater than, equal to, or less than car ownership by black? Why, it would appear that only about half as many blacks own cars as whites. Imagine that. And, of course, if a smaller percentage of blacks drive than whites but get stopped at the same rate, you don’t need to be Ms. Braniac from the Manhattan Institute to realize that driving while black is perilous.
As if this weren’t enough, Ms. Mac Donald has forgotten to mention a significant result of the study she cites. According to that study, once stopped by the police, blacks were more likely than whites to be issued a ticket, to have their car searched, to be arrested and to have force used against them.
Yep, statistics sure do prove that racial profiling doesn’t exist.
Shorter Brent Bözell, NewsBlusters
No Cash for ‘Bruno’
Thanks to free-market health care I have enjoyed no visits to the doctor in over five years but plenty of French wine and Japanese sushi so now I will live forever but I growed bored with it, so please Obamacare kill me in my tracks … it will be worth the better standard of living. Also, insofar as whereby lager, such as.
PS DID YOU KNOW – if you averaged eight hours of sleep over your lifetime, but I average seven, I haved live an average of 13.6 years longer conscious life than you, but you were better rested.
ABOVE: Noel Sheppard and Unidentified Monkey (right)
Shorter Noel Sheppard, NewsBlusters
CBS Adds Fuel to the Racism Fire Stoked By Gates Arrest (link fixed)
Via SteveB in teh comments, by way of Amy Goodman, here’s Congressman Louis Gohmert (R-Tex):
Well, if you go to the socialized medicine countries, you find about 20 percent worse results. You get it? One in five people have to die because they went to socialized medicine! Now, I’ve got three daughters and a wife. I would hate to think that, among five women, one of them is going to die because we go to socialized care, and we have to have these long lists.
SteveB notes:
I wouldn’t trust any health care statistics that come from a guy who adds up ‘three daughters and a wife’ and gets ‘five women’.
Yeah … or maybe the GOP politicians have given up all pretenses and are just automatically including their mistresses now.
At any rate, this is a useful enough place to tell a tale of ‘socialized medicine’. When I was living in Thailand, anybody could see a doctor for 20 baht. That’s about 50 cents US. Think about that for a goddamn second. And Thai doctors and dentists and nurses are generally well-trained (often in Western countries) and every one I ever encountered was highly competent.
Now, you still had to pay for any drugs you needed, but they were subsidized and pretty cheap. And procedures cost a bit, but not much. I had major dental work done — couple of root canals and two crowns — for about $150. Two C-section births at a very good, private hospital cost about $300 each … my two sons are healthy little fellas, alas, my marriage to their mom, not so much.
But you can also pay through the nose for the very best care if you have the loot. I happened to be insured by my work when I needed an appendectomy (the plan didn’t cover pregnancies, btw) so I went to the world-class Bumrungrad Hospital for the surgery. Cost a bit of scratch, it’s true — but at any rate, the Rep. Gohmerts can rest assured that socialized health care doesn’t have to eliminate the overpriced doctoring that they so clearly cherish.
Thailand also happens to be the No. 1 destination for people seeking sex change operations. ‘BWAHAHA,’ one imagines the wingnuts will reply, but those are tricky procedures and indicative of the caliber of the medical profession in that country. A country where you can see a doctor for 50-fucking-cents.
ABOVE: Kevin Aylward (left)
Shorter Kevin Aylward, CheezWhiz Blog
Police Have 911 And Dispatch Tapes In Gates Case
Via Think Progress, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Church):
When you tell people that the mortality rate in Canada is 25% higher for breast cancer, 18% higher for prostate cancer, you know, they say why in the world would we emulate a system like that? This is life threatening.
And then when you tell those people that the mortality rate for mortality is 3% higher in the United States, they’re all, so why in the world did you give me that line of bullshit about breast cancer and prostrates, you stone-faced Okie gargoyle?
Brad adds: OHGOODYOHGOODYOHGOODY!!!! I’ve been waiting to do one of these! Let’s get started, shall we?
Circulatory disease deaths per 100,000:
Child maltreatment deaths per 100,000:
Digestive disease deaths per 100,000:
Infant mortality rate per 1,000 live births
Intestinal diseases death rate
Proability of not reaching age 60:
Respiratory disease child death rate per 100,000
Heart disease deaths per 100,000:
HIV deaths per million people:
You get the point. If this is “socialized medicine,” sign me the hell up.
Paul Krugman on how our stupid media is really stupid:
OK, so let me get this straight. The initial reaction of the cable talking heads was that Obama blew it because he didn’t couch his argument in terms of personal anecdotes, Reagan-style. Then, when it was pointed out that he did, in fact, offer a number of specific examples of people harmed by our current system, the whine became that he didn’t give their names.
Now, it’s true that George Bush liked to give names of people who would benefit from his tax cuts; but Ronald Reagan’s anecdotes — about, say, the Cadillac-driving welfare queen — generally didn’t name names. And there was a good reason for that: with rare exceptions, Reagan’s folksy anecdotes weren’t true.
So what are the talking heads really complaining about? It’s not what Obama didn’t do — it’s what he did, namely talk seriously about policy. How unpresidential of him!
All true, but I think Obama does deserve some of the blame for how his press conference is being received.
The thing about our elite press corps is that everyone knows they’re dumb as rocks and everyone knows they hate, hate, hate thinking about policy. OK, so you’ve got some Ezra Kleins and Jon Cohns who do smart, substantive work on health care. But for the average Jake Tapper or Marc Halperin out there, policy work is BOOO-RIIIIIIING.
My point is that Team Obama should understand this and work it into their strategy. If you want the press corps to pay attention to your arguments you have to make it interesting for them. If that means resorting to cheesy Reaganesque anecdotes, then so be it.
You pitch your policies to the press corps you have, not the press corps you’d like to have.
