Shorter me, musing about wireless and (tonight’s) biz trip to Detroit: there are many ways to celebrate Democracy by voting.

I call it Freedom.

OK Michelle Maglagaglagagalag is a terrorist.

And it doesn’t make me a racist to say that!

OK, who the heck is Herman Cain, and why has he kept his crazy hidden for so long? Some choice points from his Tiger column:

His personal attributes and accomplishments on the golf course point to a candidate who will be a problem solver, not a politician.

But… uh… Buh… Urr?

Tiger’s success on the golf course, which will translate to success in the White House, is a product of his character, discipline and leadership by example.

Success on the golf course will translate to success in the White House? Where do you find that version of Babelfish?

This is the same guy who beat the 1997 Masters Tournament field by 12 strokes – a record that still stands – at the age of 21, and then stated, “I’ve never played an entire tournament with my A-game. This was pretty close.” Imagine what he would do to Islamic terrorists and Nancy Pelosi.

What? Hit them with a 9-iron?

The Republican presidential candidate in 2016 must not come from inside the Beltway. He must come from inside the fairway, for all of us.

At the risk of repeating myself: But… uh… Buh… Urr?

Boy, that Virgin Ben shows how quickly the Christianist fucktards turned on Mel Gibson, huh? Just two years ago he was their hero. Now look!

And Stossel . . . you know, I work for a company that was acquired this year by Berkshire Hathaway. We had our annual sales meeting last week, and Warren Bufett attended and spoke there. When asked what he would do if he ran the country, his first answer was that he would dramatically raise taxes on people like him and re-instate the estate tax. Perhaps Stossel is interviewing the wrong people.

OF COURSE Tiger Woods is a Republican. He plays golf, doesn’t he?

OF COURSE Tiger Woods is a Republican. He plays golf, doesn’t he?

Plus, he’s a success at nearly everything he tries. That just screams Republican.

Cain compares Tiger Woods’s accomplishments to Eisenhower’s. Ike commanded the forces that won of World War II. Woods is a golfer. Sure, that is JUST LIKE beating the Nazis.

Dan Someone nailed it, “But… uh… Buh… Urr?”

Ya know, now that I think about it, Cain’s worship of Tiger shows us how deeply these people want a dictator. The yearning for the strong figure who is beyond us lowly mortals, who is superhuman, who will tell us what to do, who couldn’t possibly make any mistakes, it just comes through so clearly in that nasty little essay.

Not only are they terrified to think that democracy means that WE are responsible for our decisions (“NO! That is scary! Tiger will save us!”) but their criteria for who to worship are just bizarre. A B-movie actor in the eighties. A spoiled kid from the right family in the oughts. And now a golfer in the teens.

Tiger worship is so 5 years ago. Besides according The Malkin Rules, he is a terrorist. Oh and shhh….he married a white woman.

Thanks Mike, for ruining Chanukah for me! At least I can remember that the “puritan” Macabees ended up letting the Romans invade. That’s why the book of Macabee isn’t in the Hebrew Bible.

Oh hell, that global warming article is pure crap, but I’ll skip the wonkfest dissecting this thing.

Fred Singer, the scientist quoted in this article, routinely makes the following point when he gives speeches on the climate change circuit:

“Do you know what one of the biggest environmental problems facing this country was about 100 years ago? Mud. Mud mud mud. Muddy roads. And all the horse shit in the muddy roads. But eventually we figured out how to pave roads and we developed cars, so problem solved. And 100 years from now, if we actually need to do something about climate change, we’ll have some new technology so it’ll be no problem.”

Yes, he really says this (although I don’t think he actually says “shit”).

I demand a new 2-Minute Townhall image! Where did the old one go anyway? I’m starting to forget what a Baloo is…

The Koran issue is a major issue. I mean, look at Canada, they’ve already got Sharia courts, how long before they become the only courts?

It is coming to America too, if we let it.

On Fred Singer,

He disputes a scientific consensus, but the last peer reviewed article he has ever published was in 1997. It wasn’t even a real scientific article, rather it was his opinion that Kyoto was wrong.

See here:

http://www.sepp.org/research/scirsrch/eosdec97.html

Watch: Teh Funny!

Read: The Story.

Vote: Le Blogue Bérubé!

ifthethunderdontgetya, I hope you enjoy your stay.
We get a bad rep here, but there’s actually a lot of positives.
Try Greektown, or the stadium area (courtesy of Mike Ilitch, the owner of the Wings and Tigers). There are some great spots.

If the Baker-Hamilton Report had been issued in 1943, today we’d all be driving German cars and watching Japanese televisions.

Boy-howdy, it’s a good thing that didn’t happen, eh…?

‘Bozo’ Bozell, ‘Still Dead’ Buckley, and ‘The Lesser’ Limpbaugh need to get behind ‘Mark of’ Cain’s Tiger-Woods-in-2016 campaign immediately! It will be the gift that keeps on giving… to us evil-minded progressives. Also, I have high hopes that Willard “Mitt” Romney would feel impelled to show up at Tiger’s door with a Mormon bible in one hand and a “Tiger for VP” button in the other, and the film of that particular visit should be pants-wettingly funny even if you don’t live in Massachusetts!

The Koran issue is a major issue. I mean, look at Canada, they’ve already got Sharia courts, how long before they become the only courts?

It is coming to America too, if we let it.

I remember back in my days of schooling, the inevitably right-wing social studies teachers would argue that sharia law was really a sign of what American law should do, especially the chopping off of hands, heads and what have you to teach criminals to know better.

It’s amazing what a few years of culture-imposed xenophobia and racism can do to multicultural hatred for the criminal lot.

Also, how is sharia law any better than the constant badgering that all American judicial law is based on Christianity?

Ok look. Help me out here. I need to line up like twenty thousand wingnuts. Then I need to walk down the line, slapping each one upside the head a few times in turn. When their eyes focus and it appears I have their attention, I need to explain to them that I AM A FUCKING LIBERAL. What does that mean? I want people to have a right to an abortion. To have a right to be gay. To have a right to live their lives without any undue influence from government OR church. I don’t LIKE christians who want to impose their just-so stories on me, any more than I would accept muslims imposing THEIR just-so stories. It’s time for these idiots to shut the fuck up. It is THEM that are much more closely allied to the muslim clerics, and they need to recognize that boozin, screwin, abortin, laisez faire liberals are their best bastion against islamic caliphate and shari’a law…

mikey

The Koran issue is a major issue. I mean, look at Canada, they’ve already got Sharia courts, how long before they become the only courts?

The only religious courts you have to worry about in this country are Christianist ones. And I’d say even that is unlikely.

It is coming to America too, if we let it.

Don’t worry dear. I’ll get you a fresh set of bed sheets.

Yeah, the Republican party is going to nominate a black man who married a white woman. Sure. That’ll happen reeeeeeal soon. Riiiiiight. I can’t wait.

Ok look. Help me out here. I need to line up like twenty thousand wingnuts. Then I need to walk down the line, slapping each one upside the head a few times in turn.

Oooo, I’m on board. Where do I sign up?

Shoelimpy, naturally, is talking out of it’s trademarked ass. The issue at hand is the option for court-ordered arbitration to be handled by a religious, rather than secular arbitrator, if desired.

Since this option was always available for Jewish and Christian couples, it only became an issue when feminist groups started pointing out that Muslim arbitration based on Sharia was going to invariably favor the man in marriage situations.

So, this meant discriminating against Muslims, keeping the religious arbitration exemption, or scrapping the entire religious exemption for arbitration. And since Christians and Jews weren’t about to give up their patriarchal religious bullshit arbitration options, they just used it as an excuse to wring their hands at the islamofascist threat of multiculturalism.

So remember kids: Any government that’s not secular will be just as likely to respect the bullshit you don’t believe as likely as they’ll respect the bullshit you believe.

Myrtle – Thanks. I didn’t realize it was so long ago since he last had a peer-reviewed article (too distracted was I by the horse shit and all…).

The Koran issue is a major issue. I mean, look at Canada, they’ve already got Sharia courts, how long before they become the only courts?

Never, because I don’t believe there are Sharia courts in Canada.

Shoedicklimpy ™ is a second rate troll, not worthy of mine, or your’s attention.
I will, however wish him or her a very Merry Christmas (half sincere, half to make the “War on Christmas morons shut the hell up).
So Shoelimpy, have a Happy Holidays, a great Channukah and a great Kwanzaa.
I’ve covered all bases, which should put Shoedicklimpy into a paroxysm, which would be the best Xmas gift evar.

Thanks for the image.

And thanks, thunder, for those links. I laughed myself crying at this very public coffee shop because of you. Have a good time in my cité du naissance.

I need to line up like twenty thousand wingnuts. Then I need to walk down the line, slapping each one upside the head a few times in turn. When their eyes focus and it appears I have their attention, I need to explain to them that I AM A FUCKING LIBERAL… It’s time for these idiots to shut the fuck up. It is THEM that are much more closely allied to the muslim clerics, and they need to recognize that boozin, screwin, abortin, laisez faire liberals are their best bastion against islamic caliphate and shari’a law…

Mikey, I would not only help you organize, and then buy a ticket to watch the event, I would buy extra tickets to give as Solstice presents to my family & friends!

Tragically, even if we were given our best chance to implement this sterling idea, it wouldn’t get through to the ones who need it. Because the Talibangelicals see us liberals as “the enemy”, but the Sharia Junkies are “the COMPETITION”. They’re like two big, dumb, angry dogs tethered to opposite sides of a chain-link fence… the existence of cats, squirrels, humans, and dogs who don’t spend their entire lives spinning in a narrow circle of packed dirt & their own filth is annoying, but it’s the other sad, angry, abused animal on the wrong side of the fence that REALLY makes them crazy.

The Malkin thread has the most insane winger comment I have ever seem. A big claim I know, but you be the judge.

“The war on terror is not a law enforcement issue. Where would we be if we waited for the Germans to commit crimes here before we put a stop to their efforts to dominate the world?”

You almost managed to convince me to click through to David Limbaugh, on the grounds that no one could be that stupid. Then I thought about his parentage.

Over at http://www.realclimate.org (a great site run by climate scientists), we have collectively derived:

The Climate Change Denial Four Step.

1. Climate change is not happening.
2. If it is happening, it’s not our fault.
3. If it is our fault, it’s too late to stop it.
4. If it’s too late to stop it, there’s still time to make lots of money from it.

The Koran issue is a major issue. I mean, look at Canada, they’ve already got Sharia courts, how long before they become the only courts?
—

And Sharia Twain.

OK, there our Senate majority goes, straight into teh toilet. Possibly. Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota had something like a stroke today. Or a heart attack. The doctors are currently saying that it wasn’t a stroke… OR a heart attack. But, if Johnson is unable to fulfill his duties, his governor gets to appoint pretty much anyone he pleases to the post until the next election, which is ’08. The Governor of South Dakota is… (wait for it!) a Republican! That would make it a 50-50 Senate, with a Cheney tiebreaker vote, and possibly Lieberman switching sides at the least opportune moment. So, lets all pray for Sen. Johnson’s full recovery, even us atheists.

There’s a song about The King Of Fuh.

All hail the Fuh King!

Thanks, lemonheads, I made it alive (barely). If that was you in the blue pickup truck, or whoever it was, sorry, I was trying to read my directions and drive in the dark at the same time.

I hate when that happens. I’m afraid there will be no time for enjoyment here, it will be busy not-fun all day and then a long drive back.

Thanks mucho for the weekly Reader’s Digest-style wingnut fix – it’s the only way I can actually ingest their stuff and still keep it down.

urp

maddie said,
December 14, 2006 at 4:38

Myrtle – Thanks. I didn’t realize it was so long ago since he last had a peer-reviewed article (too distracted was I by the horse shit and all…).
—
Almost by definition, professional “skeptics” of consensus scientific work rarely if ever publish relevant work in published journals on the subject they are “skeptical” of. This is because deep down they know they are wrong but are being paid to say things (ie. by coal companies, right wing whack job religious groups); or their scientific skills are so poor that they cannot produce research that will pass muster in a scientific journal.

What you often see are scientists from a completely different field leveraging their degrees and position to “comment” and “critique” scientific work that is completely and totally out of their expertise. This is done to dupe their audience who is so scientifically illiterate that they believe that all scientists are totally competent to issue judgments on all fields of science, even those they know nothing about in a professional sense.

Are we still talking about peer-reviewed papers? I hope so, since that way, this comment will be slightly less OT. I have been reading a paper by Jack and Jeanne Block, on the personality qualities of children who later grew up to vote more or less liberal or conservative, and a couple of Block’s concluding paragraphs are too good not to repeat. Though I’m not saying they’d make good sound-bites. This is the “whiny-ass titty baby” paper cited by John Dean.

“…timorous conservatives of either gender tend to be easily rattled by uncertainty (and always there can be the feeling of uncertainty) and therefore will feel more comfortable and safer with already structured and predictable — therefore more traditional — environments; they will tend to be resistant to change toward what might be self-threatening and forsaking of established modes of behavior; they will be attracted by and will tend to support decisive (if self-appointed) leaders who are presumed to have special and security-enhancing knowledge.

“Conversely, why will under-controllers of either gender tend toward the more politically liberal? Given their personal proclivities toward uncommon perspectives of possibility, an appetite for novelty, and their easier expression of impulse, they will often encounter in the everyday world constraints and frustrations that do not appear to be sensibly or societally required. As a first line of adaptive reaction, they will wish these constraints removed or the world rearranged to be less frustrating. Various justifications, not necessarily narrowly self-serving, will be confidently brought forward in support of alternative political principles oriented toward achieving a better life for all. Ironically, the sheer variety of changes and improvements suggested by the liberal-minded under-controller may explain the diffuseness, and subsequent ineffectiveness, of liberals in politics where a collective single-mindedness of purpose so often is required.”

#Shoelimpy™ said, The Koran issue is a major issue. I mean, look at Canada, they’ve already got Sharia courts, how long before they become the only courts? It is coming to America too, if we let it.

Shoelimpy has it wrong. Ontario, the only province that briefly considered the possibility (mainly to save $) banned them (mainly because the public at large, especially Muslim women, said “over our dead body!”)

Oh yeah, and here’s one link, two links on that.

About this Tim Johnson thing:

At 11 p.m., Mr. Johnson was undergoing surgery, and was expected to be in the operating room until the early morning hours.

This conflicts with the earlier reports that seemed more upbeat. Couple the above with his past prostate cancer, and it’s understandable that a lot of talk is centered around contigency.

Tiger has surely contemplated both his future goals in golf and his next challenges when he retires from the game.

Maybe. The guy is worth a billion dollars, is in the prime of his career, and can look forward to fifteen more years being the best golfer in the world. I doubt he spends a lot of time worrying what he will do next.

How refreshing to have a political outsider run for president again.

He’s talking about Reagan, but man, by 1980, Reagan hadn’t acted for like 20 years and was very immersed in politics. He wasn’t exactly an outsider.

I mercifully don’t sense many phony platitudes toward a “compassionate� streak in Tiger.

Why? Because he doesn’t intentionally three-putt a couple of times on the back nine so the rest of the field doesn’t feel so bad? And this has what to do with his politics?

How about LeBron in 2024?

I doubt Tiger is 35, but I could be wrong.

From the Stossel column:

Philosopher David Kelley put it this way. …

Kelley is the “founder and senior fellow of the Atlas Society”, an Ayn Rand-inspired “think” tank promoting Obectivism (a.k.a. FuckyouIgotmineism).

Stossel’s such a tool. How the hell anybody over the age of 19 can still be buying into Rand’s discredited claptrap is a mystery.

And Tiger Woods for president? Townhall.com really is where stupid throws its parties.

“Townhall.com really is where stupid throws its parties.”

I wonder who they get to cater? Does Wacky AtlasPam cook?

Yeah, the Republican party is going to nominate a black man who married a white woman.
Splutter… cynical… splutter… reprehensible… gack splutter…
Oh, you’re talking about Tiger Woods. I thought someone had suggested O. J. Simpson. Forget I said anything, OK?

The fact is, Der Limpenshoer and I are just pissed that the Sharia kids’ parents let them pretend that their laws are god’s laws and ours don’t. Fuckin’ lucky…

Isn’t it Lord Acton’s dictum? I mean, sure, it’s an epigram too, but still …

It’d be a shame if Tim Johnson had to leave office, but then again, it would help us in the War on Terror if we had a Republican-led Senate.

Gary ~ you’ve moved from troll to ghoul. Go fuck yourself.

Gee Gary, we just HAD a Republican-led Senate, along with everything else.

They led us into a disaster.

Here, watch this video until you wise/sober up.

You almost managed to convince me to click through to David Limbaugh, on the grounds that no one could be that stupid. Then I thought about his parentage.

Sometimes when I do these, Ken, I just cut and paste a sentence from the original, maybe change a word or three and move on to the next one. That’s more or less what I did with Limbaugh’s.

“Dictum.” YES! That’s the word I was looking for! By the time I get to the last three or four, I’m far stupider than when I started. I’m worried about the long-term effects of this little endeavor, to be honest.

Shorter David Limbaugh: It would be more realistic and sane if our foreign policy was conducted from the perspective that evil exists in the world and that it must be eliminated entirely, rather than to accept that other countries sometimes act in self-interest.

I just love this recurring bit wingnut pathology: Take a current, failed policy that’s ongoing but about to be changed. Hold this policy up as a bright, shiny, bling-like path to a new future. Assume that nobody will notice, and if they do, just say the policy wasn’t implemented right.

It’s like making a wrong right turn in your car, and then saying what we really need to be doing is making that wrong right turn in a more wrong-right-turn-y fashion.

It’s still a wrong wrong turn, unless you turn through 270 degrees (turning left via the U-Turn and Then Some Technique favored by drunks).

Travis, unfortunately this edition of 2MTH just missed out on the dump Victor Davis Hanson just took on honesty in his syndicated column:

… unlike similarly unstable Pakistan and North Korea, Iran has no nearby nuclear neighbors to keep it in check.

It takes a certain panache to claim a country has no nuclear neighbors in the very same sentence that you explicitly name one of them.

The fact is Lesley, Shoedicklimpy is immune from such strange oddities as ‘facts’. In fact, ‘facts’ are pro Islamofacistliberalhomonups…and we must bomb them.

Hey, now. Maps are hard, D. Aristophanes.

Mixing and matching the articles a bit, will the wingers have a problem with how Tiger Woods might or might not swear his oath of office should he become president? IIRC, Mr. Woods wouldn’t swear the oath on a Quran, but he wouldn’t swear the oath on a Bible either: I don’t think he’s a Christian, is he?

FuckDennis Prager.

history proves the truism of Lord Acton’s epigram
Or possibly it proves the epigram of his truism. I detect the symptoms of Swank overdose.

I’ve been very interested in Mesoamerican societies for some time now, so it was Ben Shapiro’s column that caught my eye:

“Not all civilizations are created equal: Some deserve to fall because they are deeply corrupt from the outset. Mayan civilization, with its human sacrifice and primitivism, was never a beacon of liberty. The Rousseau-ian values Gibson sees were not what distinguished Mayan civilization. The strength of Mayan civilization was based solely on its power — it was doomed to fail from the moment it encountered a society more powerful militaristically and economically than itself.”

Uh, Ben, it might be best to actually know something about a society before you start talking about what features distinguished it.

First of all, it can be argued quite well that, were it not for smallpox and other such diseases, the Aztecs would’ve repulsed the Spanish invasion. After Cortez killed Motecuhzoma, his succesor, Cuitlahuac, died of smallpox a mere four months after being elected emperor.

In other words, the Spanish had a signifigant advantage that severely depleted the Aztec army, but this was not due to any real planning or strategy on the part of either party.

Second, Wikipedia reminded me that it took more then a century to finish subduing each of the Mayan city-states.

And this is after the Spanish government had a very signifigant presence on the mainland.

“Western civilization has values worth protecting — liberty and equality of opportunity — and those values give it strength. Those values make us stronger than our enemies, unlike the Mayans. Equating all civilizations, as Gibson does, is what undermines Western values. There is a world of difference between using violence out of superstition and using violence to both ensure domestic security and free others from the oppression of a death cult that ritually beheads its citizens or dumps them in mass graves. It is moral barbarism of the highest order to equate the two, as Gibson does.”

Oy, you dork.

First of all, the Mayans valued learning. Writing and the Mathematical concept of zero were both invented, independantly, by the mayans, and remained inmportant cultural forces until the Spanish finally stomped them out.

New research is indicating that the Mayans may have ben the originators of writting in central America, and they were using essentially the same sytem when the Spanish arrived. The Spanish were so good at destroying writing that we’ve had to reconstruct from scratch a system that was in use as recently as 400 years ago.

You know how many Mayan books survived? Four. Four fucking books from a civilisation that had been writting books for thousands of years. You know how many books survived from ALL OF MESOAMERICA?

About 50. One fucking CITY in the region would’ve had more then 50 books.

So what makes the Spanish superior, again?

Not to mention the human sacrifice thing. You know what else was going on in the 1500s? THE INQUISITION.

The penalty for worshiping old gods in New Spain was death.

And while I’m not familiar with Mayan social systems, I AM familiar with Aztec ones.

The Aztecs were ruthlessly expansionist, they sacrificed people (And probably in greater numbers then the Mayans) and they kept slaves.

You know what else? They had a sort of proto-democracy (The emperor was elected by a group of councilmen, who were in turn elected by the neighboorhoods of the Capitol that they represented), Slaves could own property, marry and were seen as fully human by the law (Unlike the system of slavery in, oh, THE USA.), and the concept of empiricism was fully elucidated.

And they were conquered by a people who ALSO had human sacrifice, in addition to a system of slavery that considered slaves to be subhuman, a hereditary monarchy, and a church that supressed empiricism quite thouroughly.

Look, are MODERN Americans better then 15th century Mayans?

To the extent that that’s even a valid question, then yes, of course we are.

Were our 15th century ancestors better then the Mayans?

No, they very well fucking WEREN’T. They just as big into being savage assholes. Or as I like to say, same shit different plate.

That people still buy into this retarded manifest destiny BULLSHIT just pisses me off to no end.

Someone (Actually, I think it was someone here) said that the difference between America and Germany is that the Germans have had to apologize for their holocaust.

Meanwhile, we still look at ours as inevitable and good. It’s disgusting.

Jesus, that was a LOT longer then I meant it to be.

But it’s an emotional thing for me, even though I don’t have any ties to the area.

Not too long, that was awesome.

Christ,

not long enough and much more awesome than Aquagirl says. Keep it up, bro.

Yeah, Christopher, that was a great comment. I’m so used to Virgin Ben being a tool that I don’t bother reading him, but that seemed especially hacktacular. Smallpox was the main reason Europeans were able to conquer the New World, not their superior value system. And the Europeans’ other advantage, technology, progressed mostly in spite of Christianity. It makes me sick to read these triumphantalist Westerners (especially Victor David Hanson) beat their chests and proclaim that whites are better than everyone else.

There is a world of difference between using violence out of superstition and using violence to both ensure domestic security and free others from the oppression of a death cult that ritually beheads its citizens or dumps them in mass graves.

I consider that people like Virgin Ben seem to apply the same sort of magical thinking to the ‘war on terror’ as the folks that figured the only way the sun came out each day was through burning hearts.

And then I consider that those people still think they’re being rational.

Then I cut myself.

Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I’ve drawn a sharp distinction between drug users and drug dealers.

Still not completely insane. And with legalization, less worry about dealers!

Shorter Paul Greenberg: If the Baker-Hamilton Report had been issued in 1943, today we’d all be driving German cars and watching Japanese televisions.

This compels me to make the stereotypical false claims that “you owe me a new keyboard” and “I just spit coffee all over my monitor.” Maybe a couple of these Weblog Awards will turn out okay after all.

Kathleen Parkwhore. As usual she is 100% fact free.

>Ok look. Help me out here. I need to line up like twenty thousand wingnuts. Then I need to walk down the line, slapping each one upside the head a few times in turn.>

I still think the idea of a ‘Nad-O-Gram could work. Like singing telegrams for wingnuts, except instead of singing, when wingnut opens the door, they kick ’em in the ‘nads. then either recite the reason or drop a brief explanatory note as to why they’re receicing this message over/on their prone, writhing body, and depart.

…that Mel Shapiro piece is just precious. Yes indeed, we’re NOTHING LIKE those barbaric, corrupt savages, so STOP SAYING THAT.

when you’ve got a Townhall critic basically ‘Why do you hate America?
-ing Mel Gibson, i’d say there’s been a certain shift in the zeitgeist.

You people who run this site are geniuses.