The Post-Shame Society
Shorter Michelle Malkin:
Conyers calls for investigation into Aunti Zeituni info leak; Joe the Plumber still on his own
Newspapers including the Columbus Dispatch and the New York Times are reporting on the appalling outrage of Ohio bureaucrats improperly accessing the records of Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher, a bone-chilling incident of partisan harassment that has spurred official investigations and has led to the filing of gross misconduct charges against Toledo police employee JulieBOING! Joe the Plumber has been utterly and shockingly ignored, while unhinged leftist so-called “privacy” thugs and their liberal media lackeys are screaming demented anti-government conspiracy theories about so-called “misuse of private [sic] information” in an attempt to to protect a lawbreaking bad person who must be destroyed. Laughably, John Conyers (D-Moonbat) has written an insane letter calling for an investigation, while…
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
As Digby wrote on Friday, even before the Aunti Zeituni story reached the barricades:
Now, as it happens, I think that public employees searching through Joe the plumber’s governmental records is absolutely wrong and that people should lose their jobs if they did it. It creeped me out too. And I thought the press treatment was overkill as well — right up until the moment that Joe started grandstanding for the cameras, got an agent and started talking to people about a recording contract.
But, again, Malkin is hardly the right person to complain considering the absolutely horrific invasion of privacy she perpetrated against the Frost family. It’s mind-boggling that, of all people in the right wing blogosphere, she has appointed herself to be the one to lead this story. The sheer brass of it, the unreflective audacity, is simply breathtaking.
This is why I say that they have retired the concept of hypocrisy. It goes far beyond double standards or duplicity or bad faith. There’s an aggression to it, a boldness, that dares people to bring up the bald and obvious fact that the person making the charge is herself a far worse perpetrator of the thing she is decrying. There’s an intellectual violence in it.
What kind of countertops does Auntie Seituni have? Tell me that!
All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true in itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
–Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
I honestly do not understand why anyone would care about Joe the Plumber or Aunt Zeituni. For that matter, I really don’t fathom why Obama having a tentative connection to William Ayers means that he embraces the actions and ideology of that man. But then having watched this election for two years, and lived through eight years of a Bush presidency, I have learned that the most important things to the village elders in Washington are the most asinine. Even if Obama does win, I still fear for the world, just a bit less than if Pailin wins.
“There is a word in Newspeak” said Syme, “I don’t know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse: applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.”
– George Orwell, 1984
What kind of countertops does Auntie Seituni have? Tell me that!
Black.
Your Grace: No one cares about “Joe the Plumber” except McCain the Candidate. No one cares about Aunt Zeituni except desperate, screaming hatebags who will until the very last moment of this election grab hold of any bit of garbage that floats their way, no matter how repulsive, ridiculous or nonexistent it may be, and then cling to it as if it’ll somehow reverse their downward spiral. They’ve got nothing else to do. They’re entirely out of ideas, political capital, and everything else, and they’re goin’ down ugly, just as one would expect.
They don’t. Or at least, most people don’t. The Aunt Zeituni’s of the world are merely bombs for partisans to throw at each other. The vast majority of voters are standing quite outside of all this, looking on like you’d watch a husband and wife having a furious argument–you can see that whatever they’re arguing about is clearly really important to them, but you yourself couldn’t give less of a shit.
MzNicky, you and I posted roughly the same thing, but you said it much better.
All I can say is, if all they have at this point is some story about how an aunt of Obama’s is in the country in a state of limbo, denied asylum, but also avoiding deportation, that’s the best thing I can think of. I’ve been waiting for an October surprise all this time, and have yet to find one.
Honestly, I thought it was going to be the Pennsylvania. People have shown in polling that they’re so stupid that they’ll waver as much as ten percentage points in either direction based on which candidate visited their state most recently. Awfully short attention span most of the electorate has anymore.
I am outraged by the anonymous contributions made to the Obama campaign. Outraged!
Can we now claim that McCain’s candidacy “transcends shame”?
It’s times like this what make me wish that a winning Obama really would be the unitary executive tyrant all the righties fear.
Miss Hysteria is at it again. Who gives an eff.
Who gives an eff.
Not I, but all this documentation will come in handy when Overlord Barry X takes power. Teh Sadlies will be able to trade it for Marxism Points or something.
Weird that there have been 13 comments on this thread and not one of them is a troll! Except maybe for a few that show up while I’m typing this. Maybe they’re all off screaming at early voters that voting on Sunday is unChristian and antidemocratic.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone here know someone who is living here illegaly after having a plea of asylym denied?
I know someone who is not quite, but almost in that situation. And let me tell you, the alternative of being sent back to his country is – not just an unpleasantness. it’s devastation.
I hate the fact that people like Malkin and her cheerleading squad characterize people who are in seriously dangerous trouble, and criminalize them.
It makes me wonder – how many second cousin and third uncle twice removed Magalagangadingdongs are here on expired student visas, overstaying their tourist visas, and working under the table?
And why hasn’t Michelle Malkin supported her third cousin on her mothers’s side whose only means of support is to work as a bar-girl in a corrugated tin shack outside the Naval Base in Mindanao? Inquiring minds want to know.
The important thing here is that Michelle Malkin has abandoned any pretense to freelance oingo-boingo wogga-wogga shrieking and said her right-wing Sinner’s Prayer and gone back to playing wide receiver for Karl Rove.
She’s fast-tracking back to the Republican fold, by the look of it. She’s abandoned the basic idea of her own dignity and is prepared to eat literally any shit that the GOP gives her. Within the year, she’ll be back on Fox News – having always been on Fox News – and the last four years of confused dissent from the Party Line will disappear down the memory hole. Malkin has always been a McCainiac.
And I have heard recently how despicable it is that the entire lefty librul media is attacking McCain’s War Hero status by blaming him for the Forrestal. I mean, firstly, who is actually doing that? And secondly, umm, yeah, it would just be awful if people were to belittle an honest veteran’s war service and use it as a political smear, or anything. Like, say, getting lots of people to wear purple band-aids to a convention to mock his war injuries, or something.
These people really are disgusting, and while it makes me no end of happy that they will no longer be running our country, they will be no less crazy and deplorable for the next eight years. At least it’s going to be a side show rather than the main attraction.
The fact is, the only way Hussein can win is by cheating. Here in the Heartland, we are watching the poleing booths to make sure traiters and minorities who are not legal do not get to vote, voter fraud will be huge thansk to ACORN, which should be illegal, they cheat. Voter fraud is the problem, not voter supression, If you are legal and a citizen you have nothing to worry about, and Malkin did not stalk that family or harass them, she exposed the lie, and all you liberals do is hate Joe the Plummer who is an honest hard working man in the Heartland, not some coastal eleite faggot that you usually worship.
Michelle Malkin is the pet darky of the American nativist movement, doing the same obscene ‘but surely there’s an exception in the master volk for me!’ routine that D’Souza does – sucking up to the Aryan supremacists the way Chandra Bose did in the 40s and gleefully declaiming against the filthy, corrupt influence of their despicable ape-cousins.
As far as Malkin is concerned, Obama’s greatest crime isn’t so much being a devious Marxist-Muslim radical but being a miscegenee, a perversion of the pure American strain by the Farrakhanian conspiracy. It all boils down to the delusion that there’s something genetically meaningful about being ‘American’, something Zeituni and the one out of every eight Americans lacks – something so vital that their mere desire to live here is a perversion worthy of death.
Seriously, it gets painted over a little during her vicious Islamophobic and totalitarian tirades, along with her reliable election-year Republican cocksucking, so let me make it perfectly clear: the first and foremost thing driving Michelle Malkin in politics is racializing and segregating America. Anything that serves that end is good; anything that doesn’t is bad. That the Republicans have become so beloved of Michelle should seriously alarm anyone who is even vaguely considering voting for McCain.
Oh, and I suppose this sort of crap is The New Black, as it were, now that they can’t piss and moan about a birth certificate.
I felt like gilding the lily a few weeks ago that it may remain current.
My browser is too weak to follow the link. Is she really sending her flying monkeys after a police department employee?
No Quarter
We can’t all be Gary Ruppert. Some of us have to just admit defeat. For my part, I’m making a big pot of cream of tomato soup and a platter off grilled-cheese sammiches, pulling all the shades, and rocking on my heels in a corner for the next
three dayser,four years, er, eight years.Shorter Gary: Screeeeeech! I’m melting!
Lady Rothschild? The same Lady Rothschild that said she wouldn’t vote for Obama because he’s too “elitist”?
Ai yi yii.
“Obama is Hiding Mental History in His Medical Records ”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2122666/posts
As we come down the wire, the Freepers are now saying
Obama is insane. This is a classic case of projection.
Here’s my favorite arm chair psychologist from Free Republic –
”
It’s impossible to believe the nonsense Obama believes without being a little crazy, but my guess is that Obama has undergone psychiatric treatment to help him deal with his dominate, effeminate side. All that stuff about wanting to kill his white side isn’t surprising. He clearly wants to kill white America, as fast as he can, and maybe he relates his feminine persona to his whitey side. Lock him away for further study.
29 posted on 11/02/2008 10:22:36 AM PST by pallis
You just can’t make this stuff up.
I think it’s fairly clear by now that 99.9% of the PUMA folks aren’t actually disaffected Hillary Clinton voters, they’re just GOP shills and assorted crazy people.
I come bearing both scientific and anecdotal evidence of this. First, polling data. Obama is winning big among Democrats. I don’t have all the data in front of me, but I’d bet good money that it’s on par with Kerry’s numbers. Secondly, TalkLeft. Jeralyn, who once said she probably couldn’t support the ticket if Joe Biden were the VP nominee (citing, as I recall, his not-so-liberal record on criminal justice and his treatment of Anita Hill during Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings) has come around in a big way. Same for most of the other pro-Clinton/anti-Obama people there. They may not love him, but they sure as hell aren’t stupid enough to vote for McCain.
I’m just sayin’, fuck PUMA. They’re not remotely representative of Hillary supporters, and they haven’t had the slightest influence on this election.
freelance oingo-boingo wogga-wogga shrieking
Leave Oingo Boingo out of it.
It’s more than a matter of basic disagreement for me, because after having had folks I differed with give me a bare-knuckle mental slapdown enough times, I will take heed whenever I think there’s a reasonable argument being put forward – even if I doubt its robustness or its truth-value.
There’s a really easy way to tell if a neocon is worth your time or not … what are they focusing on? I’ll willingly peruse stuff I loathe, IF it refers to issues of real substance & urgency. You can learn at least as much from a foe as from a friend, if you keep your head up & watch your back while doing so.
What has Malkin (or any other hardcore 110%’er wingnut) got to say about Iraq – or the economy – or healthcare – or Darfur – or climate-change – or oil – or Afghanistan?
Doodley-squat.
A tiny mind must perforce remain trapped by tiny matters.
Malkin is an intellectual dust-mite.
Dominate? Veeeery intrestink. Tell me more about your mother.
Talking about hypocrisy, I was on some wingnut message board last night where the thread quickly delved into the topic of buying guns and ammo (as wingnut message boards are wont to do).
Many spoke of the impending socialist regime and brought up Jefferson’s writings about the necessity of overthrowing a government and specified that these guns and ammo were to be used when Obama sent the military after them. So these people are out buying guns and ammo with the specific purpose in mind that they might be used to kill members of the US military. Forgetting the outlandish nature of such fantasies, its amazing how quickly the GOP base has switched from, “we must support the troops” to “buy guns and ammo so we can shoot the troops when they come for us.”
Others seem to think their guns and ammo won’t be used against the troops, but the hordes of the black menage, or maybe just the evil liberal mobs. Either way, the undisputed commonality between these ideas is that these guns and ammo will be used against fellow Americans. How patriotic.
This is truly the harm of Palin’s divisions of “real” America and the rest of us. For these “patriots” to feel guiltless about their thoughts and fantasies of killing US citizens, and possibly US soldiers, they must delegitimize the claim to citizenship of their liberal “enemies”.
Note that I do not think any of these “Rugged in Montana” types will do a damn thing. They wet themselves whenever you even mention the word Muslim. Its all anonymous internet tough talk in the echo chambers by a bunch of fat guys who probably lose their breath just walking between the refrigerator and their couch.st.
Pallis, I would like to take this opprutunity to thank each and every one of you Bushketeers out there. With your willing and joyful help, America will elect the most powerful president this country has ever seen.
Nice work guys!
This Lib says thanks! “and he’s African-American too? Ooh, you really shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble! Thank you!”
He clearly wants to kill white America, as fast as he can
This word, “clearly”, it does not mean what he thinks it means. Also, from the first sentence, “impossible”.
I hope she doesn’t stalk me or post my name and address on her web site so her fans can hunt me down and kill me.
I couldn’t resist emailing her that Digby post.
Here is the bit of hope I take away from the dispicable McCain campaign of 2008.
People who are not interested in politics per se, who do not aggressively seek information, indeed, who seldom read at all, have had the opportunity to observe two different processes played out in between american idol episodes.
The McCain campaign, all lies and sleaze all the time, talking about things that actually, the further removed from the political fray the observer is, appear more and more trivial. The McCain campaign talking endlessly and somewhat dishonestly about Obama, nary a word of substance about what McCain would be or do.
Meanwhile, due to his nature and circumstances, Obama has focused relentlessly on issues and policy prescriptions, what a President Obama would do and why he would do it.
To the more casual political participant, this election comes down to four questions:
1. Why should McCain be President?
2. Why SHOULDN’T McCain be President?
3. Why should Obama be President?
4. Why SHOULDN’T Obama be President?
This casual voter has information to formulate answers to 2, 3 and 4. He has, whether he is aware of it or not, very little basis for deciding question 1.
An Obama victory will cause the professional political community to consider the implications of the relative success of the two campaigns. And while nothing is ever certain, and one should never underestimate the basic viciousness of people close to power, it is at least possible that the lessons they learn will be to run a campaign more focused on the issues and solutions and less focused on trivial personal matters.
For that matter, one can also hope that the vast majority of voters will have learned to appreciate a candidate who tells them why they should vote for one over the other, and to reject one who tries to convince them that his opponent is fundamentally evil.
I also hope, somewhat vainly, I suspect, that there will be a large re-examination of the terms “arab” and “muslim” and the majority of americans will step back from the brink of equating these terms with “evil”, “enemy”, and “terrorist”….
mikey
Hello, I’ve returned from the dead to see if I might borrow the above Gary Ruppert post that simultaneously contains the terms “eleite faggot” and “poleing booths” for the Freudian slips section of the posthumous update of my volume Studies on Hysteria.
If this is possible, please confirm with an e-mail to my ghost c/o Vienna.
Seperated at Birth?
And I have heard recently how despicable it is that the entire lefty librul media is attacking McCain’s War Hero status by blaming him for the Forrestal.
Even if he wasn’t personally responsible, he was there when it happened, which means that he was “associated” with the doer of the deed, and much more directly so than most of the Obama “associates” we’ve come to know and love over the course of the flatulent howler monkey rampage, er, I mean, campaign.
My theory, BTW, is that it was the Bush administration’s obfuscatory use of words like “ties,” “links,” and “associations” in mounting their case for why Iraq had something to do with Al Qaeda that caused this awful Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon non-reasoning to metastasize so aggressively in the campaign. While it’s been overwhelmingly a Republican/conservative thing, Democrats have availed themselves of it too; I don’t think the Obama campaign has used it against McCain, but Obama people used it against Clinton, and Clinton people against Obama, when everyone was picking apart the statements of putative “surrogates” for covert and overt racism and sexism.
Dominate? Veeeery intrestink. Tell me more about your mother.
Her mustache tickles.
not some coastal eleite faggot that you usually worship.
The Eleites were a tribe in Canaan who were
wiped outresettled somewhere between Exodus and Deuteronomy. They don’t get specifically mentioned in the Old Testament because after the slaughter of the Amalekites, the general pattern was becoming familiar, and the Israelite scribes thought “second verse same as the first”.I was not previously aware that they worshipped bundles of wood.
attacking McCain’s War Hero status by blaming him for the Forrestal.
When a war involves bombing civilians on an unprecedented scale, I can’t see the importance of far-fetched accusations that one of the bombers was also responsible for an accident that killed some people on his own side.
Leave Oingo Boingo out of it.
Didn’t you know Danny Elfman is one of the Top Republican Rock Stars?
Leave Oingo Boingo out of it.
Didn’t you know that Oingo Boingo founder Danny Elfman is one of the Top Republican Rock Stars?
Even if that article concedes you may never have heard of him?
…Drat, WP keeps eating my comments without even a belch after. Here’s the third attempt, so if you see this comment three times, don’t be too surprised:
Leave Oingo Boingo out of it.
Didn’t you know that Oingo Boingo founder Danny Elfman is one of the Top Republican Rock Stars?
Even if that article concedes you may never have heard of him?
Leave Oingo Boingo out of it.
Didn’t you know that Oingo Boingo founder Danny Elfman is one of the Top Republican Rock Stars?
Even if the article that says so, which I can’t link because if I try, WordPress swallows my comment without a trace, concedes you may never have heard of him?
…though I see Elfman isn’t much of a Palin fan, yay for that.
Read the article about the birth certificate. Not a word about the fact that the child of an American citizen is an American citizen, no matter in what country that child is born.. And then look at the comments (at least the first two, and I suspect it continues in that vein…. )
What is WRONG with these people?
I agree. And I think the Bush admin’s very tricky, near-black-magic use of implying connections just by mentioning things in the same paragraph, also played a part. For example, all the times in Bush’s speeches when he would mention 9/11, and then immediately talk about Saddam Hussein. Thus not on the hook for making a *logical* connection that’s unfounded, while creating an unconscious implication that Saddam’s behind it all.
The one that has really bothered me lately is “Rashid Khalidi,” whose very name is sufficient to prompt a hail of boos from a Palin crowd. I bet she could get the same reaction by talking about Obama’s links to the writings of Fareed Zakaria, or his love for the favorite pastime of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
And I have heard recently how despicable it is that the entire lefty librul media is attacking McCain’s War Hero status by blaming him for the Forrestal.
The record is not exactly unambiguous about the events that day.
The one that has really bothered me lately is “Rashid Khalidi,” whose very name is sufficient to prompt a hail of boos from a Palin crowd.
Yes, this pisses me off no end. Khalidi is a mainstream scholar who in no way has involved himself in this campaign; he holds views that are well within the mainstream dialogue on the issue, and Sarah Palin is running around the country calling him a terrorist. I’d sue her and the whole damn McCain campaign for defamation, if I were him.
Didn’t you know that Oingo Boingo founder Danny Elfman is one of the Top Republican Rock Stars?
Not too surprising, coming from the guy who wrote “Only A Lad.”
Frank Zappa… [BOO!] Casey Kasem… [BOO!]
…Uh, Herbert “Tiny Tim” Khauri? [BOO!]
…Um, Tony Shalhoub? [BOO!]
The guy who played Klinger on M*A*S*H? [YAY!]
I.e., Jameel “Jamie Farr” Farah? [BOO!]
Shareef Abdur-Rahim! [BOO!]
Karim Rashid! [BOO!]
Paula Abdul! [BOO!]
OK, that last one was deserved.
Frank Zappa, Tiny Tim, George Halas and Don Shula, Doug Flutie, Jean Shaheen, John Sunnunu Dr. Michael DeBakey, boooooooooo…
I heard Obama bought one of those fancy Dirt Devil vacuum cleaners. The ones that are designed by… Karim Rashid! BOO!
Just a thought. . . As someone who’s livelihood depends on researching public records. Tax liens and such, while not easily Googleable, are public record and any journalist or researcher worth their salt is going to inspect the county clerk’s/registrar’s records for any available information. Some of the results might be embarrassing (like a lien for unpaid taxes), but they are public records for a very good reason.