The Awful, Rowing Toward God
Posted on April 21st, 2009 by Gavin M.
Shorter Cap’n Ed Morrissey:
DHS ignored civil-liberties lawyers’ warnings on report; Update: Senators demand data, explanation
- It is ridiculous to blame Bush for commissioning the DHS report, because while the Bush administration might have wanted an assessment of right-wing extremist threats, it would not necessarily have wanted one that blamed it on right-wing extremism.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™
Notes:
1 – We’ve switched Ed’s favorite coffee with Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, James Adkisson, Michael F. Griffin, Chad “The Michelle Malkin Anthrax Fraudster” Castagana, John “Dirty Bomb” Cummings, Richard Poplawski, Donald Cooper, Paul Jennings Hill, Tharin Robert Gartrell and associates, David McMenemy, Albert Brock, Francisco Martin Duran, Frank Eugene Corder, John Salvi, Japes Kopp, Bradley T. Kahle, Clayton Waagner, Martin Uphoff, Chad Altman, Shelley Shannon, Timothy Dale Johnson, Buford Furrow, probably some others that we’re forgetting, a scheme by Georgia wingnuts to kill Mexican people with machine guns; numerous unknown arsonists, bombers, assailants, and killers, possibly including the Leahy/Daschle anthrax terrorist; assorted anti-government militias; let’s not even get into the whole Aryan Nations thing; and last and also pretty much least, Matthew Derosia, who rammed an SUV into an abortion clinic in January ’09, in Ed’s own demesne of St. Paul, MN. Let’s see if he notices!
2 – The kind of polemical reasoning that Ed is displaying — which isn’t an especially Ed thing, but occurs throughout the WingNet, wherever its cultees confront current events — seemed for a long time to be a way of ordering the world through a kind of ritual storytelling. We saw it like this: The writer begins by eyeing some emerging news or gossip item and decides what meaning it ought to have, in the manner of a sculptor inspecting a block of marble for the forms possible within it. He then applies the chisel, removing context and uncongenial detail and adding decorative work where needed, until the item emerges as a sort of tiny reverse roman à clef, full of recognizable things in fictional arrangements.
The moral at the heart of each story is nearly always a variation of the Wingnut Credo: “In our virtue, the unworthy provoke us. Reckoning will come.” And we thought that the point of constructing the stories was to arrive at the moral each time, from one way and then another, until the ruts from one’s cart wheels and sleigh runners were so deeply inscribed that all possible stories seemed to fall into them and travel toward the same conclusion.
That’s what we thought. But that was before Obama won, and having won was inaugurated, at which point the online right seemed to realize that something had taken place that couldn’t be rationalized away, that Obama was no longer just a man-on-TV for them to hiss at, but a figure invested with real power over the direction of the country, and with nothing to stop him from going against the Republican consensus, against the laws of conservatism itself, literally at will. There was a pause as for a great filling of lungs, and then they pitched the 360-degree hurricane spaz that continues to loft our kites and spin our dynamo’s propeller — or really, its opposite-of-a-propeller. And since then, with wheelbarrows and cows circling outside the windows, with Malkin occasionally blowing past on her bicycle in sucky Chroma-key, I’ve started to see this style of reasoning as less of an exercise in narrative than a legalistic exercise.
What Ed and its other practitioners seem to be doing is taking the stories that life and the vasty Internet hands them (or that Memeorandum or even Digg does, in case of curiosty: your-doin-it-wrongn), and creating these macramé constructions of casuistry not just as stories, and not as arguments that their interpretations of events are correct — not as a means of proving anything to anybody — but as arguments of the Talmudic sort that are addressed to men, but are cast at such an arc always to land finally upon God’s desk, pleading a case before His bench as to what is and isn’t fair, and what therefore ought to be true.
That’s how it’s been seeming lately. And it strikes me all of a sudden that this is one critique from us that they might be pleased to accept. That is, it might bring them in a new and congenial way toward the point of the matter: That in their virtue, the unworthy provoke them — and that reckoning will come.
1 – We’ve switched Ed’s favorite coffee with Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, James Adkisson, Michael F. Griffin, Chad “The Michelle Malkin Anthrax Fraudster” Castagana, John “Dirty Bomb” Cummings, Richard Poplawski, Donald Cooper, Paul Jennings Hill, Tharin Robert Gartrell and associates, David McMenemy, Albert Brock, Francisco Martin Duran, Frank Eugene Corder, John Salvi, Japes Kopp, Bradley T. Kahle, Clayton Waagner, Martin Uphoff, Chad Altman, Shelley Shannon, Timothy Dale Johnson, Buford Furrow, probably some others that we’re forgetting, a scheme by Georgia wingnuts to kill Mexican people with machine guns; numerous unknown arsonists, bombers, assailants, and killers, possibly including the Leahy/Daschle anthrax terrorist; assorted anti-government militias; let’s not even get into the whole Aryan Nations thing; and last and also pretty much least, Matthew Derosia, who rammed an SUV into an abortion clinic in January ’09, in Ed’s own demesne of St. Paul, MN. Let’s see if he notices!
2 – The kind of polemical reasoning that Ed is displaying — which isn’t an especially Ed thing, but occurs throughout the WingNet, wherever its cultees confront current events — seemed for a long time to be a way of ordering the world through a kind of ritual storytelling. We saw it like this: The writer begins by eyeing some emerging news or gossip item and decides what meaning it ought to have, in the manner of a sculptor inspecting a block of marble for the forms possible within it. He then applies the chisel, removing context and uncongenial detail and adding decorative work where needed, until the item emerges as a sort of tiny reverse roman à clef, full of recognizable things in fictional arrangements.
The moral at the heart of each story is nearly always a variation of the Wingnut Credo: “In our virtue, the unworthy provoke us. Reckoning will come.” And we thought that the point of constructing the stories was to arrive at the moral each time, from one way and then another, until the ruts from one’s cart wheels and sleigh runners were so deeply inscribed that all possible stories seemed to fall into them and travel toward the same conclusion.
That’s what we thought. But that was before Obama won, and having won was inaugurated, at which point the online right seemed to realize that something had taken place that couldn’t be rationalized away, that Obama was no longer just a man-on-TV for them to hiss at, but a figure invested with real power over the direction of the country, and with nothing to stop him from going against the Republican consensus, against the laws of conservatism itself, literally at will. There was a pause as for a great filling of lungs, and then they pitched the 360-degree hurricane spaz that continues to loft our kites and spin our dynamo’s propeller — or really, its opposite-of-a-propeller. And since then, with wheelbarrows and cows circling outside the windows, with Malkin occasionally blowing past on her bicycle in sucky Chroma-key, I’ve started to see this style of reasoning as less of an exercise in narrative than a legalistic exercise.
What Ed and its other practitioners seem to be doing is taking the stories that life and the vasty Internet hands them (or that Memeorandum or even Digg does, in case of curiosty: your-doin-it-wrongn), and creating these macramé constructions of casuistry not just as stories, and not as arguments that their interpretations of events are correct — not as a means of proving anything to anybody — but as arguments of the Talmudic sort that are addressed to men, but are cast at such an arc always to land finally upon God’s desk, pleading a case before His bench as to what is and isn’t fair, and what therefore ought to be true.
That’s how it’s been seeming lately. And it strikes me all of a sudden that this is one critique from us that they might be pleased to accept. That is, it might bring them in a new and congenial way toward the point of the matter: That in their virtue, the unworthy provoke them — and that reckoning will come.
Civil Liberties lawyers? sounds a little ACLU-commie-pinko-bleeding-heart-wishy-washy-victim-obsessed to me. i wonder what captain ed is doing getting mixed up with people like that
Do wingnuts own mirrors or do they just not cast reflections?
Seriously, retarded dogs are more self-aware than these people.
I don’t think retarded dogs eat quite as much poop.
Oh, horror. The Reckoning. The words alone make me quiver like jelly on a plate.
Pedant’s Corner: Is “your-doin-it-wrongn” one of those traditions I’m totally unaware of? (Honest typo?)
Officer Lunatic: [yelling at God while near the “Bucket of Truth”] Ah! All right, I’ll look in your damn bucket!
[looks inside, then pulls out]
Officer Lunatic: Don’t you think I know that?
[shakes fist at sky]
Officer Lunatic: We’re not your pawns down here, dammit!
Or it could just be to piss the Liberals off. I mean, that’s pretty central to their argument.
So his argument actually is that Bush had so politicized all aspects of government, such a report could never be produced by it. Wow.
But here’s an interesting observation – why was the report released when it was? Clearly, they didn’t start working on it until after Nov. 5, since it dwells so much on the first n—– President.
OMFG! Captain Ed is “right”. The Bush Admin may have asked for reports on political extremism, but the Intelligence Community wouldn’t start work on the right-wing wackos one until they knew they weren’t going to be waterboarded for writing it!
re: “Update: Senators demand a cookie” see footnote 1.
Hail Jah Rastafari.
Oh,Malkin and the rest have sent a fax to the DHS. Watc as it gets filed in the same bin as the photocopy paper offers and dodgy Mexican restuarant flyers.
O/T, but funny anyway. Some moron over at mantits Hugh H, cnstructs a whole screel on the teaparties:
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/d17731ca-cfae-4c7c-805e-2ddaed4de0ac
sorry, can’t figure out how to do blockquotes…. money quote:
1. The left sees them as a threat.
2. The events were largely driven by, and almost completely covered by, new media.
3. The Atlanta Party showed us what can happen when an integrated approach is applied to messaging.
is a little sad…..
4. ????
5. Profit
Hey remember the whole “where are the moderate muslims denouncing the actions of the extremists” thing?
Well, uh. See. Oh! It’s totally unfair and wrong that DHS (which, by the way, we’ve decided we hate) says there are right-wing extremists because we KNOW those extremists are ACORN thugs who were pretending to be right-wingers in order to make us look bad.
And, and, and … Oh yeah! They were all trained by Terrorist Baby Eater Ayers!
This is hilarious. Also.
1. The left sees them as a
threatmassive data-mining operation concocted to build a mailing list composed of the stupidest people in America.some people say, anyways.
This post is brilliant. Those footnotes are the perfect distillation of the Wingnut Credo and Wingnut Psychology.
[wingnut] C’mon–the left is WAAAAAYYY more violent than the right. There was the Weather Underground. And uh, hm, err, the Haymarket Riots! What about those? Huh? Huh?
[/wingnut]
Excepting that none of these types actually believes in God, or in a God Who is distinguishable from his or her tiniest brain fart.
The writer begins by eyeing some emerging news or gossip item and decides what meaning it ought to have, in the manner of a sculptor inspecting a block of marble for the forms possible within it. He then applies the chisel, removing context and uncongenial detail and adding decorative work where needed,
…Until it has been whittled away so much that it can be carried around in a matchbox.
Meanwhile, Erick the Twit* tweets about terror attacks. It’s almost like he’s … rooting for them.
Nah.
*You may substitute a similar word with a different vowel, I’m not going to risk the wrath of the WP Stasi Hamsters.
Sweet Jesus, thy exegesis! Shorters are fun, but in this case your notes make for a wonderful post in themselves which eloquently captures the essence of our poor, afflicted wingnuttia.
(Which is also my way of begging for a larger text size for my lousy eyes.)
Re: Shorter Cap’n Ed Morrissey
I’ve seen some wingnuts who occasionally exhibit signs of sanity (imagine how rare that is) insist that Cap’n Ed isn’t as bad as “the rest of them”.
I’ll be referencing this post, Gavin.
Aren’t these the same people who, when vegans, Quakers, and the Raging Grannies were being wiretapped by the NSA, said: If yer not doing anything wrong, ya got nuttin’ to worry about”
Gavin, it really does amaze me how one person can be so frickin’ smart and simultaneously so frickin’ funny. You are, I think, the best writer on the internets, hands down (and that includes Edroso). Thanks again for a brilliant (and I mean that in both the intelligent and the bright-and-shiny ha-ha sense) post.
That second-to-last paragraph, especially: “cast at such an arc always to land finally upon God’s desk”–comedic, syntactic, and argumentative gold, all rolled into one.
Best,
Derek.
Sculpture metaphor For The Win!!!
I would have just gone with “Shorter Wingnutz: Waaaaaaaaaaaah!” myself.
Cap’n Ed is the living proof that not only do empty barrels make the most noise but they make great echo chambers.
That whole proof thing just causes a lot of unproductive anxiety, Loosen the straining bonds of credibilty, wingnut. Only then will you soar.
I agree with Derek.
Also: “WingNet”? Gavin! Have you coined a new InternetsTubes tradition?
A winga-net
A winga-net
A winga-net
A winga-net
A winga-net
A winga-net
A winga-net
A winga-net
In the WingNet®, the silly WingNet®
The nutters wet their pants
In the WingNet®, the wretched WingNet®
The warriors bleat and prance
ooooooooo, ooooooooo
winga, winga-way
______
(I’m sorry.)
Sadly…
No, the Atlanta Party was outdrawn by the Hawks/Heat game the night before. The Hawks/Heat game that mattered not one iota as the Eastern Conference 4/5 seeds were already in place, the Hawks/Heat game in which the starters barely played, the Hawks/Heat game in which Dwayne Wade didn’t even dress. I was there. OK crowd, I thought to myself. Couldn’t have ever seen that this event I happened to be at would outdraw The Biggest Democracy Thingy Protest In Human History, supported round the clock on a national scale by FOX X-TREME NEWZ and on a local scale by wingnut shouting head funzone 750 AM, home of Boortz and Cain and all that. They even got the guy from Big & Rich who isn’t Big. And yet…15K for the Atlanta Tea Party, 18K for the shitty NBA game.
Speaking of stupid wingnuts, I was over on another liberal blog and a troll chimed in to challenge readers what they thought of the recent news that Obama’s half-sister, Ruby, had been discovered living in Minnesota. Huh? Liberals? What did we think of that? Bet she’s not even here legally. Bet she illegally voted for Al Franken.
Someone else dismissed him, so he retorted by posting the link to his story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/20/bo-obamas-halfsister-ruby_n_189138.html
I’m so used to parody trolls from over here, I am still not entirely sure this guy wasn’t one, but they don’t seem to get them over there.
I think the opposite of a propeller is a turbine.
g- Klassic.
Hakuna Mutation, MzN
Wingers have no virtue and even less intellect. They are a mass composite reptilian brain comprising disorganized neural ganglia. That said, I am gleefully anticipating the full metal spontaneous human combustion in which they will inevitably participate.
See you all just don’t get it so I’ll make it simple.
1.Terrorism is perpetrated by, or in rare cases such as the Weatherman on behalf of, black, brown, or yellow folk and the environment.
2. Real, true white Americans oppose terrorism (and the aforementioned black, brown, or yellow folk and the environment).
3. Real, true white Americans support right-wing goals, extreme or not. Extremism in the defense of (white, male) liberty and all that.
THEREFORE, there can be no right-wing terrorism in the United States.
BAM! QED bitches.
I’m so used to parody trolls from over here, I am still not entirely sure this guy wasn’t one, but they don’t seem to get them over there.
If you’ve noticed their regular commenters over there, you’ll understand why they don’t need the parody trolls.
MzNicky’s excellent parody led me to this Tokens’ album cover.
Impressing The Honorable Janet Napolitano with their strongly worded letter.
How dare you accuse our returning veterans of possessing combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists! Let’s see your statistics! Can you prove that veterans have training in the use of guns, have had experience in firefights, and have more familiarity with explosives than the average citizen? Ha!! Didn’t think so. Our veterans are useless pussies who couldn’t lob a grenade out of a volleyball court.
If Napolitano responds to this accusation, I wonder what she will say?
That is incidentally a weird use of ellipses in the quote from the DHS report included in the letter to Napolitano. Ellipses are “. . . a series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence.”
What the original report said in full was:
So even though they quoted a full sentence, they ended the quote with ellipses, presumably to indicate a trailing off into silence. Incidentally the portion of the report they include was preceded by this:
It was ever thus.
…a troll chimed in to challenge readers what they thought of the recent news that Obama’s half-sister, Ruby, had been discovered living in Minnesota.
_______
…without listing any data to support such a vile claim against our nation’s veterans.
Outrage trumps reading comprehension every time.
But come on, facts are silly things, after all. I mean, conservative columnists are already pretending the wars are over when they attack Obama’s budget and say it’s the largest “peacetime deficit in U.S. history” …. it’s just a way of solidifying conservative framing of liberals: we don’t support the troops, and we spend like crazy.
Not sure how it shows your support for the troops to PRETEND THEY AREN’T STILL FIGHTING but whatever …
Arguing with an imaginary Sky Decider about what ought to be true but, you know, isn’t is the perfect synopsis, the sine qua non even, of wingnuttia.
I’m old and my eyes are weak. Enough with the micro-font notes, guys.
“…a troll chimed in to challenge readers what they thought of the recent news that Obama’s half-sister, Ruby, had been discovered living in Minnesota.”
That just happened over at Washingtonmonthly too, apparently a regular troll there, this is the new “Bill Ayers ghostwroet the memoir” height of dumbassery
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
~Michelangelo Buonarroti
I saw the moron in the marble and carved until I set him free.
~Ed Morrissey
Somewhat OT, but I read an interesting article about a linguistic study that identified a new part of speech. It’s called a “dissociative terminal conjunction”, and is used by a speaker to indicate that the preceding sentence, subordinate clause or phrase should be taken as an addition to a previous thesis or a statement made at an earlier time, even if that statement or its connection is unclear.
Actually, I just made that up. Also.
Let me know when conservatives hijack and airplane and ram it into skyscrapers, killing 3,000 people.
The real threat is, and always will be, Islamofascism.
BTW, how many times has the race card already been played on this thread by liberals?
Typical.
P.S. How’s that “change” working for ya?
Don’t feed the troll, friends. Remember: arguing with a troll is like playing chess with a mud-wrestling retarded dog. You both learn calculus, and the pigeon likes it. Or something. Also.
FTFY.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. The trolls aren’t even trying anymore.
Iris! Where are you?!?
“Do you have… a race card?”
“Go fish.”
disgruntled regular
No, I’m pretty sure I meant troll
From Tea Parties to Political Parties
By Larrey Anderson
So nearly half a million Americans finally “took to the streets.” Moms pushed baby carriages. Men and women skipped a day of work (some of their kids skipped school). Some entrepreneurs closed down their businesses. Almost half a million Americans had a multitude of tea parties and the mainstream media either ignored them or misrepresented them. So where does this leave us?
The most important thing that should emerge from this tea party movement is fresh political leadership. If a person can organize, on short notice a political protest attended by thousands of people in a small town or medium-sized city, then that person is more than qualified to run for public office.
The real world political meaning of the tea parties has nothing to do with what anthem to pick, or exactly which principles were or were not being protested. The actual political opportunity that arose on April 15th is the possibility of a whole slew of new candidates for political office.
There are some fundamental misunderstandings people have about politicians. Let me clear those up:
(1) Politicians are not smart. Most of them have average IQs — if they are lucky.
(2) Politicians are extraordinarily egocentric. They run for office because they love to see their face on the TV and they love to hear themselves talk. (President Obama is example #1 of this principle.)
(3) At the national level, politicians are (1) + (2) and they either have a lot of personal wealth — or they have worked their way up the system (running for local office first) by selling their souls to lobbyists on either the left or the right.
That’s it. That’s all you need to know about today’s average American politician.
Returning to the tea parties: If Americans are serious about taking back their country, then they had better get even more serious about running for public office. I have already described the kind of citizens who need to step up to the plate and run for office:
Let’s take this bull by the horns. Conservatives need to start running for office. I know. I know. This is a daunting idea. But stop and think about it for a moment. If Nancy Pelosi is fit to be the Speaker of the House, then at least 90% of the rest of America’s citizens are qualified to run for some public office. (This includes 99.99% of America’s conservative stay at home moms. Run ladies run!)
Which conservatives should run? Mothers whose children have left the nest, retired, or soon to be retired, business owners or workers, young conservatives who have been successful in business and can afford to sacrifice a few years in public office to help get the ship of state back on course, etc.
I don’t want to pat myself on the back too hard, but I will bet you that the people across the country who organized the tea parties were, for the most part, the people I described in that last paragraph. (Stay at home mothers with children also played a huge role in setting up the tea parties. These women should seriously consider running for public office. If Sarah Palin can run for mayor … so can you.)
What the tea parties did, in real political terms, was teach a whole new set of potential candidates that organizing and becoming actively involved in on the ground politics is a lot of work … but it is NOT rocket science.
If a person can organize an event and get thousands of people to show up, that same person can easily collect the few hundred signatures on a petition necessary to get on the ballot to run for office. (The number of signatures varies from state to state and from office to office; but it is never more than a couple of thousand signatures. Usually it is around one to five hundred, in some states even less.)
I challenge those tea party organizers and attendees all across America. Do you really want to help save the country? Then put down the teacup and pick up the petition. (Specific instructions for running for office can easily be found online. There are some businesses that will, for a fee of course, actually walk you through the filing process. But it is not that hard to do it on your own.)
Every member of Congress, Democrat and Republican, who voted for President Bush’s — and Pelosi and Reed’s — first TARP bill should have competition in the primary and the general elections. Blue dog democrats who attended the tea parties, it is time to step up.
This list of members that voted for the first bailout bill includes around half of the Republican members of Congress. How did your Congressman vote? Find out here.
A conservative prosecuting attorney recently approached me after a meeting. He has followed my work on American Thinker. This young bright lawyer lives in a western state. His supposedly conservative Republican senator, whose name I will not mentioned, voted for the first TARP bill.
“I am going to run for the Senate against Senator X in the primary election in two years,” he announced.
“Do you have financing? Backing? Personal or family wealth?” I asked him.
“No. But that’s not the point,” he replied. “Someone has got to stand up to these politicians and to the Republican Party. Senator X votes one way in DC and then runs back to our state to apologize and give us excuses. Someone has to call him on it.”
“You know you will probably lose,” I warned the young lawyer.
“But I will get my name out there. I will show people I care. It’s not that hard to get the signatures. I can get on the ballot. I am going to make him explain himself. He is not getting a free ride this time.”
I cannot tell you how proud I was of this young man, his courage, his love of his country, love for the Constitution, and the faith he had in his fellow citizens.
He will probably lose. He will be outspent, at least, a hundred to one. And that will not be a bad thing for America. The Republicans, and the Republican Party in the state where he lives, will be forced to ask themselves, “Do we really want to keep playing politics as usual? Do we really want to believe the lies that Senator X is telling us? Hasn’t Senator X been in Washington far too long?”
Most important, the Republican Party will be forced to decide if it wants to continue to financially support a make believe conservative incumbent … or if the Republican Party needs to finally represent its grassroots members and invest some money in actually changing the Party’s political future and direction.
In other words, my young lawyer friend will win even if he loses. Maybe, just maybe, he might even win.
Tea party organizers across America pick the office. Get your petitions. Do it now. America needs you to do more than organize a few political rallies. We need you to run for public office. And, just like my young lawyer friend, you may lose the election, but you might help save our republic.
TLDR
The “tea-parties” were about as spontaneous as a DADV photo shoot
Pleasepleaseplease! Please nominate more wingnuts for office, GOP! Do it for the children!
I suggest the Palin/Keyes presidential ticket.
The Apology Obama Should Have Given
By Alan Aronoff
President Obama’s famous Apology Tour missed some of the critical aspects of American attitude and behavior throughout history for which we should express regret.
Here is the apology the President of the United States should have offered to the world:
America is the only country founded on the basis that basic human freedom and liberty are granted by God and not man. America is a shining light beckoning oppressed people of foreign lands to emigrate and live the ideals and dreams that are America. We only require that the immigrants assimilate into American culture. We are sorry that émigrés to the US are living and seeking the American dream whereas in France, Muslim immigrants living in the slums of its cities see no hope and chance for opportunity and are reduced to rioting and setting cars on fire.
America lives in the world of nations to support its friends and allies and thwart those who would seek to harm us. We came to the aid of our European allies in two great wars. After the Second World War, we instituted the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Western Europe and Japan in the aftermath of a world war and global depression. We did so to enable a rebirth of the global economy and raise the hope and standards of the world. We are sorry that by rebuilding Western Europe, America, not only by the luck of geography but also through the strength of our institutions and the creativity of our people, became the dominant economic and military power in the world.
America fought a bloody Civil War over slavery. America, through great loss to its people and its wealth, has shown that the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness extend to all Americans. We are sorry that America can show the true strength of our ideals to reject slavery while slavery was accepted in much of the world, and still exists in Africa and the Middle East.
America, through its military, has engaged in various wars during its history to protect our strategic interests. Unlike the military power houses of old, the US has never sought to permanently occupy other lands. Americas have been the only people in history who have sought to protect our interests, but not subjugate foreign people to our will. In the American occupation of Japan, that nation emerged from the occupation to rise to become a great ally of America and the world’s second largest economy. America apologizes for drawing this contrast to our allies and enemies alike who were the dominant powers of their day.
Through American strength and resolve, we ended the Cold War, liberating hundreds of millions. Our Allies have benefited from the protection America provided. With the end of the Cold War, America needs to redeploy assets to serve her strategic objectives. With the changes in the world, our Allies will need to step up and become more engaged in support their own interests. America needs our allies to take more ownership for their own protection. America apologizes that we cannot be the policeman of the world. But, with help and resolve of our allies, we can make the world a safer place.
America is a country founded on the principle that man has inalienable rights. At certain times in our history, we have not exemplified those principles, but the best part of America and her people is that stand as a beacon to the world that man can live in peace, and people, through their own efforts can improve their lot in life. For that, America will never apologize.
Copy and paste troll copies and pastes.
Never mind about feeding the scroll-troll. Who’s got time to read a bunch of cut-and-past crap to respond to?
NEXT!
Here’s a shock: Both of those came from American Stinker.
I got a question for the liberals on here:
Why do you hate evangelicals? They want to be left alone. Do you actually know any in real life?
To others afflicted by an inability to easily read teeny-weeny text, there’s a simple solution. In Firefox, press Ctrl+= to increase text size, Ctrl– (minus) to decrease it, and Ctrl+0 (zero) to go back to normal. I have to do it regularly on most sites.
Why do you hate evangelicals? They want to be left alone. Do you actually know any in real life?
I love myself, actually.
You were saying?
See you all just don’t get it so I’ll make it simple.
1.Terrorism is perpetrated by, or in rare cases such as the Weatherman on behalf of, black, brown, or yellow folk and the environment.
2. Real, true white Americans oppose terrorism (and the aforementioned black, brown, or yellow folk and the environment).
3. Real, true white Americans support right-wing goals, extreme or not. Extremism in the defense of (white, male) liberty and all that.
4. ????
5. Profit!
When the “Oil” light blinks on in the Wingnut’s SUV, the problem isn’t that the car is low on oil, its that the Soros-funded sensor hates America and wants to humiliate them.
These aren’t appeals to heaven, they are attempts to cut the wires.
Troll Chow: It’s not just for breakfast anymore!
So even though they quoted a full sentence, they ended the quote with ellipses, presumably to indicate a trailing off into silence.
It’s a common rhetorical device, often meant to denote menace. I call that usage the “Ominous Ellipsis.” for example, “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help…”
More broadly, it’s as you say, the trailing off into silence, with the implication that the reader/listener is supposed to connect some dots (and how handy that an ellipsis is dots!) For the Jonah Goldbergian Star Wars reference version, cf. Han Solo’s criticism of lightsabers: “Good against remotes is one thing. Good against a living…? That’s something else.” There, it conveys a sense that the writer/speaker is teaching you something.
See, for example, nearly every mikey comment.
When Obama won, I was genuinely concerned that your source material for mockery would suffer. I was not counting on the frothing. My concern, which was alluded to in an earlier “why use fascism now?” post, is that their huff-puffery will not last very long. Pace yourselves, wingnuts, pace yourselves!
best sadly no ever! but don’t let it go to your head.
i really felt this part particularly…
“with wheelbarrows and cows circling outside the windows, with Malkin occasionally blowing past on her bicycle in sucky Chroma-key”
i totally picture ms. malkin now, wobbling on a pink bicycle with a basket on the handlebars, with some teletubby-style landscape scrolling behind her on a crappy-looking bluescreen, like the host of a local sunday-morning t.v. show specializing in rerunning old public-domain movies. how different life would be for all of us.
I dunno if there’s such a thing as “best sadly no ever.” I mean, it’s damn good and ranks right up there, but it’s up against classics such as Retardo’s deconstruction of Godlstein and Tintin’s dialogue on race with Mr. T and Ryan whats-his-name. I’m not sure it’s possible to narrow the Sadlies down to one single “best”.
To others afflicted by an inability to easily read teeny-weeny text, there’s a simple solution. In Firefox, press Ctrl+= to increase …
(Is that ominous enough for ya?)
CTL+scroll-wheel does it as well.
Another solution is to go get Opera which scales the entire page. On the rare occasions I use Firefox, pics and embeds don’t grow and shrink with the text. Plus Opera has mouse gestures which are the greatest browser innovation since forever.
[/Opera whoring]
^…I have noticed…
Let me know when conservatives hijack and airplane and ram it into skyscrapers, killing 3,000 people.
See: September 11, 2001.
Internal right-wing terrorists do not have high enough body counts, so we should not pay attention to them.
“Enough with the micro-font notes, guys.”
Uncle Mike and fellow geezers and geezerettes: When I push the “Command” button and the “+” button simultaneously on my keyboard, the letters and things on my screen magically get BIGGER!! It’s a miracle!!
Dang fool kids these days with their good eyesight and stuff! Dang ’em to Hades.
It’s not only intentional, but it took a good deal of fiddling and experimental typos to arrive at that one. The ‘gn’ morpheme sounds like ‘n,’ see — Like ‘gnome’ or some other word that starts like that. Pronounce ‘wrongn’ and it sounds like ‘wrong,’ except it trails off funny, like when comedy dumb people talk.
If I can briefly suggest that I’m insane, the precedent of ‘wrogn’ appears on an album by the old Dutch hardcore band, BGK (Balthasar Gerards Komando, with Bathasar Gerard being the assassin of William of Orange). It’s titled Nothing Can Go Wrogn, and the title is often misspelled as ‘wrong’, causing each time, as one might imagine, a zero-dimensional event in WTF-space that Big Bangs a parallel universe in every way identical to our own, except 14 billion years from now, when that guy writes the name of the album like that, somebody will kick his ass.
Anyway, something about that title has never sit right, and last night after physically typing it, I realized that a native English-speaker would hardly ever transpose those two letters. It looks like a mistake done intentionally: It looks, as it were, wrongn.
D’oh! Djur!! [shakes fist impotently]
at 17:49 Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist said,
You may be correct about their intention to convey a sense of menace. But IMO it just doesn’t work when they’re quoting verbatim a statement from a report, hoping to highlight its inaccuracy. Or unjustness. Or something. It just looks as though they don’t know how to punctuate a quote.
” … with Malkin occasionally blowing past on her bicycle in sucky Chroma-key”
~~~
i totally picture ms. malkin now, wobbling on a pink bicycle with a basket on the handlebars, with some teletubby-style landscape scrolling behind her on a crappy-looking bluescreen
I love that imagery too, but I picture it more “Wizard of Oz”-style, with MM’s face pasted onto the WWW’s body, furiously pedaling the bicycle on hurricane air and shrieking maniacally as she passes the bedroom window.
Gavin: Uh-huh. And I suppose you meant to misspell “curiosity” right before your “wrongn,” righth [sic]?
(I’m so so sorry. It’s a sickness.)
Uh, curiosity? No, but is this a trick like “Hey, they took ‘gullible’ out of the dictionary?” ‘Cause I’m totally about to fall for it.
I have cherished
the notes
that were in
the shorter
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Oh, ‘curiosty’ right there before the colon. Indeed, not a typo.
That’s my grafitti tag, btw.
“That’s me, TYOP. Pronounced like it’s spe…aw heck.”
Something that Captain Copyandpaste left off:
P.S. What’s that, you say? Trail of Tears, propping up dictatorships, Salvador Allende, My Lai, Abu Ghraib? Lalalalalala I can’t heeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaar yooooooooouuuuu…
curio-sty.
Tune: Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start The Fire
Tune: Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start The Fire
If that’s your idea of a tune….
And I suppose you meant to misspell “curiosity” right before your “wrongn,” righth [sic]?
That describe the state of being of taking an interest in curios, silly!
Hoo boy, time to reinforce your spit-screens & double up on earplugs – because if a measly DHS report on domestic right-wing extremists gets them jabbering & twitching en masse, then this is REALLY going to make them lose their shit.
Actually it smells pretty wimpy to me – but when has that ever kept them off their fainting-couches before?
You may substitute a similar word with a different vowel
Wingers lack both the depth and the charm.
Also, “Proud” has confirmed my suspicion that you *can* replace your average troll with a short Perl script.
Ah-ha. Thought there might be more than a typo going on.
Footnote #2 is a post in its own. A good one to revisit and expand on later, methinks.
Why do you hate evangelicals? They want to be left alone.
Can’t resist troll-feeding…
The problem with the evangelicals is that they don’t want to leave us alone.
I think I may have to beg for some porkulus money to start a geegaw shop called Curiocity.