These Glowing And Ruddy Fables Precede The Noonan-day
Thoughts Of Men, As Aurora The Sun’s Rays
Some More Stuff That Isn’t Supposed to Happen in Iraq
How will our war critics explain this one:
Sometimes I dream of Mark Noonan. A brass band plays ‘roll out the barrel,’ and indeed, Mark rolls one out on a hand truck. It’s an old wooden one with metal hoops, and it’s filled with water. A pause dawns and elapses. “How will you lefties shoot these fish?” he chirps, handing me a shotgun.
See, I like Mark. A lot of these wingnuts are mean-spirited liars, but he’s genial and seems to have an instinct toward fair play. He’s just dumber than a sack of roof shingles, is the only thing.
BAGHDAD — Iraqi citizens continued to benefit from the improved security measures here Monday. Since temporary protective barriers have been raised to keep suicide bombers at bay within certain areas of the city, markets around Baghdad have resumed business and returned a sense of normalcy to the Iraqi population in local neighborhoods.
“Shoppers feel much safer [in the Rusafa District] going into the market now and they’ve actually seen an increase in the number of local citizens using that market,� said U.S. Army Lt. Col. John Rudolph, assistant chief of staff of civil military operations for Multi-National Division-Baghdad. “It’s a perception or an attitude that the stigma of the random violence has lessened.�
Remember how we used to laugh at Mark for not knowing the difference between a news story and a press release? Apparently, the magic twinkly-dust of enlightened reason has worn off: The document he’s waving is a press release from the government’s official Operation Iraqi Freedom page.
News flash: Special investigative report finds that
Cheesy Totsâ„¢ are delicious
Meanwhile, the Doura Market in Baghdad has also seen a significant difference.
According to Rudolph, Doura Market went from an unorganized street market of only a few dozen vendors to a thriving market place with more than 200 sellers.
Haifa Street was known as a “hot-bed� of extremist activity, but currently, it serves as a thriving market area.
“We’ve turned that around,� said U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the deputy commanding general for support with Multi-National Force-Baghdad. “Now, we have a thriving market area, which is starting to grow, and a revitalization process that will make the Iraqis really proud.�
It’s never clear what percentage of the electorate falls into the simple sack-of-roof-shingles category (it used to seem like roughly a third until Bush’s approval ratings started dipping into the high 20s), but it’s an education to see Mark decide what a conservative should believe on a given issue, and then stubbornly fool himself into believing that thing over and over again, employing the same bad evidence and flimsy arguments each new time.
It’s like watching someone doggedly hitting himself over the head with a shovel. [Clong.] “Ow, my head!” [Clong.] “This goes to show what I’ve always…” [Clong.] “Gaah! Damn these liberals, always banging my…” [Clong.] “…with a shovel!” [Clong.]
Here’s Mark again:
Are you going to go to a crowded shopping center if you think it likely that terrorists, who target crowded shopping centers, are around? No, you wouldn’t – so, we’re either left with the theory that Iraqis are monumentally stupid, or the understanding that the troop surge is working.
Because okay, Iraqis would totally stop buying food. Either that or they’d all go to a non-crowded market, while the terrorists blew things up in the empty crowded one that no Iraqis were going to.
But the best part is that if you secure a market, terrorists can’t just go blow things up somewhere else. Because that would be cheating.
Ok, lefties, start explaining it away or bringing up something bad you think President Bush did…
I’m actually on my way out the door, but this cleaning-up-the-markets narrative seems a wee familiar. I wonder if there’s been a…
[Zeerp!] Hello, dum-dum!
Oh hi, Great Gazoogle. Say, what’s this?
So it looks as though the Doura Market story has already been around the block a few times — like for almost a year. Welp, seeya next time, Mark. Same moonbat time, same moonbat channel, and Bush blows goats, and all that.
Ah, but see, this time it really IS secure, so they were just saving taxpayer dollars by using the same press release – not like them taxenspend dummycrats who would waste money writing brand new press releases.
Or actually, you know, rebuilding Iraq.
Or New Orleans, for that matter.
Aw Gavin,
You’re just jealous ‘cuz Markie is cuter than you are!
Wow. Just…wow. I’ve had planaria worms that are smarter than Nooners.
“It’s a perception or an attitude that the stigma of the random violence has lessened.�
That’s it. I’m sold.
And also . . .
Haifa Street was known as a “hot-bed� of extremist activity
I recognize that writing style. I think it’s the same guy who wrote the narration to the social studies filmstrips we had to watch back in the late 60s, early 70s.
Tune in next week when Noonan explains how the medieval castle was proof the countryside was safe.
No He Did Not Just Do That
You know, I once ran into the writings of a libertarian who wanted all schools to be private, and privately funded. One of the ways he was going to pay for this was by selling advertisments in textbooks.
I spent a day and a half giving myself the giggles imagining all the terrible things that would come from this….history textbooks sponsored by Phillip Morris claiming that the Europeans had beaten back the Indians because the whitefolk used tobacco more efficiently, health textbooks with McDonald’s ads in them discussing the advantages of a diet high in saturated fat, science textbooks poopooing the risk of PCB contamination brought to you by Dow Chemical……
Somehow, this educational system must actually exist somewhere, because Mark Noonan is obviously a graduate.
Thanks Gavin. I appreciate you confirming that goat rumor…
It’s never clear what percentage of the electorate falls into the simple sack-of-roof-shingles category (it used to seem like roughly a third until Bush’s approval ratings started dipping into the high 20s)…
There’s a logical fallacy here, Gavin. Just because all Bush supporters fall into the sack-of-roof-shingles category, it is not necessarily the case that all in the sack-of-roof-shingles category are Bush supporters.
Roughly a third of the electorate may still fall into this category, even if some of them have abandoned Bush for, say,
Arthur BranchFred Thompson.Agreed, IB – remember that part of the reason Bush’s support is dropping is that more and more of the Republican base thinks Dumbya isn’t being enough of an asshole. That bunch falls into the sack-o-shingles category too.
To parapharse Yogi: Nobody in Iraq goes to markets anymore. They’re too crowded.
You get your sack-o-shingles contingent, couple them with the box-o-hammers group and the dumber-than-dirt detachment and you get…
Teh Republican Base…
Now, gentlemen, you may commence pandering…
mikey
Besides, whatchew talking here, Gavin? Both John McCain AND Joe Lieberman shop there regularly, and you don’t see anyone blowing them up, now dooya?
mikey
Jillian, it sort of does. Jim Hightower discusses in one of his books what happens when schools lack for funding. The kids get “science” lessons involving Prego and Ragu and the “slotted spoon test”, they get math lessons where they learn to count with M&Ms or pepperoni slices, they get health lessons that debate self-esteem in terms of “bad hair days”, sponsored by a shampoo company. Rather than buying the computers and software they need, they get stuck with whatever is given to them and have to learn to teach from that. The sports teams are sponsored by companies and wear their shoes and drink their sodas. The cafeteria becomes a food court where fast food is the order of the day. “Educational” TV broadcasts are replete with ads. Dow sponsors science lessons on dioxin that would make John Stossel proud. The list goes on.
The truly sickening thing about all of this crap is, if the companies involved would just pay a fair share of taxes to begin with, the schools wouldn’t have to go begging to them for propaganda-laden supplies. And don’t think they don’t know it.
heehee, my dear D! I see this crapola all the time. I know I shouldn’t laugh at it, but I can’t help it sometimes – the alternatives involve sobbing helplessly into bottles of good scotch, and that’s a terrible thing to do to a good scotch.
Heck, one of the elementary schools down here is an official Leapfrog school. Every student is given a Leapfrog to take home, there’s one for each student in each classroom, and the educators are required to do lessons based on “Leapfrog technology”. And yet, in my school, we don’t have textbooks for every student and can only get “class sets” of photocopies (35 copies for 180 students).
If this sort of stuff pisses you off, I recommend distracting yourself with a good book. Like this. Max Barry is not the Charles Dickens of prose by any means, but the ideas he writes about are interesting enough, and his treatment of them funny enough, to more than make up for that. All he does is take our current private market fetishization to its logical conclusions….giving your credit card number when you call 911, changing your last name to the name of the company you work for, and so forth.
But then again, I think it benefits those in power to have our schools remain as underfunded as possible. If the schools cannot afford to teach, we will continue to churn out students like Mark Noonan.
Troy: Now turn to the next problem. If you have three Pepsis and drink one, how much more refreshed are you? You, the redhead in the Chicago school system?
Girl: Pepsi?
Troy: Partial credit!
Gee, things are going great in Irakeystan?
Great! Let’s take all our people back home, now.
That Burger King thing scares me. The ads lately aren’t as bad as the first round, but that shit is still just creepy.
And how do schools find time for product placement when they have to spend all year teaching to the tests? Did the No Child Left Behind (by treating them all as retarded) Act create sponsorships?
Oh, and Mark left a comment that puts us all in our place.
“Wow, must have struck a lefty nerve – too bad I’m at work right now; can’t spend time really taking lefties to task…I will say:
Congressive:
I’ll take the world of MNF soldier-reporters, who are under orders not to lie, than I will any reporter for the NY Times, WaPo, LA Times, CNNCBSABCNBCMSNBC…we have all too much proof that the MSM, when it isn’t lying, is way to lazy to get the whole truth.”
um, not that I think anyone cares or nothin’…
but I posted the final installment of ‘Air Cannonball One’ at the thread downstairs. (shuffling away)
So by “taking us to task” what he really means is “demonstrating a level of paranoid denial and radical right wing indoctrination so great that he genuinely believes that anything he doesn’t like is leftist propaganda”. Oh. Ok. Thanks for the insight into your irrational dementia, Mark…
mikey
And yes, there is such thing as “rational dementia”. Just get me in between my third and fifth drink, and I’ll demonstrate…
I’ll take the world of MNF soldier-reporters, who are under orders not to lie
I saw that, too. It’s really beautiful in its stupidity. “Well, see, they were told not to lie. Therefore, they cannot possibly lie. Especially not in their capacity as surge shills.”
MNF soldier-reporters, who are under orders not to lie
Just like those soldiers at Abu Ghraib were under orders not to torture, which proves that no torture took place!
Does that mean he thinks that the guys at Haditha were under orders to slaughter civilians? ‘Cause otherwise there’s just no way they would have done it…
mikey
’ll take the world [sic] of MNF soldier-reporters
Wait, wait, wait. Monday Night Football has “soldier-reporters”? I guess the whole Dennis Miller thing went worse than we had heard.
By the way, that comment by Mark I quoted is also a boardgame.
How many grammatical errors can you find?
Totally, like, O/T:
What if Murdoch bought the WSJ?
So wait, the MNF reporter need an order not to lie? Gee that’s a telling fact, isn’t it? You’d think that they’d have had to have a history of misrepresenting the truth in order to require such a blatant, obvious directive. But thank goodness for people like Mark Noonan who quickly put to rest all suspicion of “Government Spokesperson: Things Going Well.” accuracy and integrity.
Operation Iraqi Freedom’s take: Since temporary protective barriers have been raised to keep suicide bombers at bay within certain areas of the city,…
NPR’s take: Now the market is coming back — protected by blast walls in every direction and troops under the command of U.S. Army Maj. General Joseph Fil. “We do not presume for a moment that this is going to stop suicide bombers,” Fil says. “But what it’ll do is it’ll make them really work hard to get in here.”… If you ignore the cordon of soldiers and hovering Apache helicopters, the market seems almost normal.
Noonan’s take: Are you going to go to a crowded shopping center if you think it likely that terrorists, who target crowded shopping centers, are around?
I have to admit that Noonan’s description is the most upbeat; it’s almost enough to make me want to go shopping.
Speaking fo being stupid.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/06/10/day-at-the-museum/
Three things spring to mind:
A: Adam should be a LOT hairier, as Nair and razors haven’t been invented yet. Hell, Eve should, too, but let’s move on.
B: Do those two have belly buttons in their rendering?
C: Why are they white? A very TAN white, to be sure, but still..
Speaking fo being stupid.
Ah speaks agin’.
I done types well.
Yeah, I saw that as I clicked the button. Heh. “click the button, Frank.”
Ah-hah! Goddammit, that’s where my hallucinations are coming from! They’re zombie versions of the Burger King commercials. I was wondering why they just sort of stand there in odd places, normally you expect zombies to be after your brains right out of the gate. Suddenly it all makes sense! Well, if only because I’m still taking the Inderal.
Um. I’m gonna slink away now. We now return you to your regularly scheduled sanity.
In re the burger king thing … I actually bought a game for the XBox that they were selling at BK. “Stealth King”. It was, like, 2 bucks or so. You sneak around various places, sneak up on people, and surprise them with a nice BK sandwich. I’m not making this up.
Creepiest goddamn thing. It was like a lame Splinter Cell, only instead of Sam Fisher dropping from the ductwork in the darkness and garroting some hapless minion, you’re this guy with a huge bearded head, wearing ermine and white tights, and you pop out from behind someone’s Ford Festiva with a burger and fries.
Scariest thing is, my kid actually played this game for a couple days. I played it a bit too.
I remember it well, because that’s just before we both started obsessively going to Burger King. Every day, sometimes 3 times a day. Just to get a jolt of that sweet sweet BK taste.
More on topic, I’m glad to see the markets of Baghdad are safe. I look forward to the pictures of Noonan enjoying a nice sandwich, perhaps the delicious BK Broiler (TM), at a quaint sidewalk cafe outside the Green Zone.
Wow! Congressive is actually a word! Per dictionary.com:
“Congressive
\Con*gres”sive\, a. Encountering, or coming together. –Sir T. Browne.”
Don’t know what Markie meant by it as a header, but hey, I usually never know what Markie means by most of the things he writes.
Ooooh, ooohh. If you go to the Burger King in Baghdad, you gotta try the FLOPPER TenderPea Flame Broiled Falafel with the BK Hummus. Kicks ASS!!
mikey
Before we get too moralistic about product placement, I suggest that Mikey should come clean about his sponsorship deal with the Scotch Whisky Promotion Board.
Hey, Goddamit, I was drunk when I signed that contract….
mikey
Sadly, Noonan’s message doesn’t seem to be getting to the right people. Lieberman, for example, seems not to have gotten the memo, as he has just declared that the U.S. needs to whup Iran’s ass for the Iranians’ role in training the nasty, scary terrorists in Iraq who don’t even really matter anymore.
Stop the Noonanity!
Remember the Maine! And the Turner Joy!
Jillian, you’re a Barry fan too! I’ve got all three of his books, and I interviewed him a coupla months ago for a community radio station I do some stuff for. He’s really funny to talk to: the kind of witty and entertaining guy who makes us feel like a stodgy boring old git.
Jennifer Government is my favourite, I think, but the others are good too. He’s an Aussie, you know (Preens self. Realises that having a great wit in the country is not the same as being a great wit oneself, and quits preening).
Hey, speaking of Noonan, when are y’all gonna make wit da book review?
Hey Jillian! Should I stop checking TLT? No action down there for over a month. Marq’s out, you’re the last post, what’s the deal in the basement?
mikey
The fact is that all you pot-smoking hippies hate Bush , er, McCain , er, Giuliani, because he’s right .
Goddamit, I was drunk when I signed that contract….
What a coincidence — I tried using exactly the same excuse.
Hey, speaking of Noonan, when are y’all gonna make wit da book review?
In order to read any book Mark Noonan wrote, I would have to be highly
medicatedcompensated…Oh, no, Faustus my friend. Our deal was years ago, cemented in the blood of the innocent. I’ll keep my end of the bargain, as you have kept yours…
mikey
Here’s what it looks like to me. Col. Rudolph just essentially stood in the center of Doura Market and shouted “Bring’em On!”
I sure hope he knows what he’s doing.
Somehow I’m not surprised to find that Mikey is Satan…
Noonan Book Watch
• Six days ago, June 4
Caucus of Corruption: The Truth about the New Democratic Majority by Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #106,147
The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels & Karl Marx
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,637
• Today, June 10
Caucus of Corruption: The Truth about the New Democratic Majority by Matt Margolis and Mark Noonan
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #130,695 in Books
The Communist Manifesto by Friedrich Engels & Karl Marx
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,868
Uh-oh. Noonan down, communism up!
Must be ’cause of them illegal ignorants.
I tried to make a Faustian bargain one evening, after too many beers and a few nips of Aalborg Jubileum©. Of course there was the inevitable spelling mistake… which is how I acquired a container-load of cheap Fustian.
When you’re fighting for you life, the mortar and rocket rounds are landing inside the perimeter, you’re killing people at eyeball range, grenades are going off on both sides, machine gun tracers bouncing crazily off bunkers and holes, men are screaming in hate and fear and life comes down to sharp pieces of steel and your own ability to channel hatred, you are not terribly picky about the deity you make a deal with. You say “get me through this, allow me to kill them, do NOT allow them to kill me, and I’ll serve your needs, whatever they may be, forever. Please, please, please, just let me live through this night.
So I made my promises. I made my deal. Here I am, forty years on, still alive, still talking about it. Those Vietnamese fellas I killed? They are NOT HERE. They have nothing to say. And yet…
Here’s the thing. You take their lives. It coulda gone another way. But it didn’t. You said your foul prayers. You promised your service. Now, find a way to live and make that right. While your victims rot in unmarked graves.
mikey
Fuck
Richard Rorty died.
Him n Bernard Williams were about the only analytics I could stand.
Now Searle will get more press, probably.
Shit.
All governments, all administrations practice acts of mis and dis-information. This is a by-product of government, itself. Unfortunately, the age old interplay between government and economics leads many media companies, maybe most such companies, into the position of being a federal yes-man. This, also, is the unfortunate but necessary outgrowth of a free marketplace of ideas.
The only recourse for the citizen is to read widely from among many sources of information.
errr… is Gary Ruppert being sarcastic? Or is he just a fool? If the latter, I hope he keeps it up. Seeing conservatives unable to let go of their 60s fetish is election gold for progressives.
I call Faux-Gary.
That’s fake Gary.
Fake Gary is easy to spot, usually. The tone is all wrong, and there are fewer adjectives.
Speaking of adjectives — The next time Tacitus drops by, to drown our brains in the bath-tub of his prose, I reserve the right to recycle my earlier joke (about making a fustian bargain instead of a Faustian one).
zsa: I look forward to the pictures of Noonan enjoying a nice sandwich, perhaps the delicious BK Broiler (TM), at a quaint sidewalk cafe outside the Green Zone.
Oh, I think we’ve had just about enough of wingers being depicted holding sammiches.
(ducking and running, just ahead of the hurled rotten fruit & crockery)
“Gary Ruppert, Jr. said,
June 11, 2007 at 2:26
The fact is that all you pot-smoking hippies hate Bush , er, McCain , er, Giuliani, because he’s right .”
Fuck off Gary, I’m smoking pot now and I hated them just as much befor I lit it.
Wait just a doggone minute… you’re not Gary, but a tricksy simulacrum! I demand RealGary now, or at least a bacon sandwich and some coffee. An iced apple doughnut would be nice too and some of those little cheese crispy things if yoou’ve got them. The food in this place sucks. What was I talking about?
I was watching a Cubs-Braves game and somehow caught the first five minutes of Faux’s alleged “comedy” news show. The one with disclaimers at the beginning for Faux’s well-educated audience (the people who think Rush is an intellectual).
1. Shorter Faux “Comedy”: Arab names all sound alike, so America was smart to occupy Iraq in response to 9/11.
2. Shorter ESPN: A’s-Giants, Angels-Cards? No; let’s show Cubs-Baves, because those teams are NEVER on TV.
Hey Qetesh, I am definitely a Max Barry fan. Haven’t read Syrup yet, and won’t get to any time soon, alas – have at least a hundred-book backlog to work my way through (thank goodness for summer vacation). But evil, satirical parody is right up my alley, and I think Jennifer Government rings a number of very true notes.