I remember this game. If your hand is bigger than your face, it means you have an STD, right?

I know this one.

Um, “What is Little Green Fooseball”?

Do not diss the Goo Goo Clusters.

“has no bottom teeth from eating Goo Goo Clusters” – I laughed so hard tears began to blur my view of the computer screen.

Did you know that Hitler breathed? If you hate Hitler you’ll stop breathing.

Can I submit ein wirklich grosses yeee-haaw!

Apparently, Hitler was vegetarian, too, which allows the wingnuts to conclude he was liberal.

These guys are worse than the dog chasing its tail. So much bullshit has been flung that nobody can even remember what the original discussion was about. Consider:

9/11 changed everything. Democrats are pussies. We need to kill everyone. Only the Codpiece can save us. Bin Laden hearts Democrats!!!! Afghanistan!

No, not Afghanistan, Iraq! Nuclear weapons, mushroom cloud, WMD, centrifuges.

Wait, wait, it gets better. Democracy, purple fingers, changing the entire Middle East.

Hold on, that dog is still going. We’ll stand down when they stand up.

No, no, that’s not it. Petraeus!!!! That’s it. September, September, September.

Hmmmmm. And now for the big finish: 9/11! Bin Laden hearts Democrats! Democrats are pussies!

So, despite the vertigo and nausea and dizziness, all of the right-wing contortions were not a dog spinning in repeated circles, it was just that same mangy dog spinning in one big, lazy six year circle.

Like the shampoo bottle says: Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

You have to wonder if OBL might be trying to employ a form of jiujitsu in his remarks. By identifying the Democrats with the antiwar position in Iraq, OBL may be trying to goad Americans into supporting the Republican position to further commit to fighting in Iraq, thus draining us further.

Wait, where is the “Yankee” in CY from? He says he was born in North Carolina, he’s there now, and nothing in his bio shows he ever left. I feel duped! This is like a hundred Jamil Husseins as far as I’m concerned.

mdhatter – what has Subscriber Trunk Dialing got to do with your hand being bigger than your face?

BTW, Pammy has a bizarre approach to international law. According to her logic, the Japanese weren’t the agressors at Pearl Harbour, it was the Americans for shooting back at the Japanese planes.

Completely OT, why don’t you hit on Adam Yoshida anymore? As you don’t feel that you can go on giving Megan that special kind of Sadly No! luuurv, how about kicking the shit out of Adam.

Hitler loved dogs. Thus all dog lovers are nazis.

Also OT: Thanks to felon disenfranchisement, here’s one person who probably won’t be voting Republican this year. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20687668/

FLORENCE, Ore. – A woman was arrested and charged with arson and burglary after police say she set fire to the home of a neighbor she thought had stolen her keys.

Sgt. Clint Riley of the Lane County Sheriff’s Office said the 23-year-old woman later found her keys hanging from her pants pocket.

when did that yankee dood start writing comedy? —

“Thoughts and opinions only have the value a reader assigns to it. On matters of fact, I try to establish credibility by doing research the reader may not have time to conduct on his own, and in matters of opinion, I try to offer a reasonable level of support for my position. Whether you are a Pulitzer-winning journalist or a Weblog Award nominee, your value comes from your credibility and your ability to substantiate what you say, and your ability to admit and correct mistakes”.

Sad thing about this guy is he thinks he’s a one man MSM fact checking machine.

The wingnuts got one win … they nailed Dan Rather, basically because CBS was setup by a remarkably slick operation. The wingnut bloggers got Used as part of a very sophisticated scheme to inoculate Bush against his own somewhat toxic service record. They think they did it all on their own, when in truth it was created for them and handed to them on a platter. All they had to do was froth on cue.

Everything else has been a dismal exercise in their own overblown self-importance as they try to recreate a success that they were not even responsible for in the first place. Jamil Hussein, Scott Beauchamp, GAO reports etc.

Reality has painted these maroons into a corner. Our job is to make sure they don’t get out.

Hey wait a minute! Doesn’t OBM rail against taxes? And doesn’t he believe that religious dogma should be the law of the land? And aren’t his pockets full of oil money? Why, I’m beginning to think Osama’s a Republican! What’s that? He doesn’t give blumpies in public restrooms? Never mind.

The correct answer to Confederate Yankees’ questions is Hugo Chávez Frías, which means the distinguished Senator from Nevada and the constitutitonal President of the Bolivarian Republican of Venezuela are the same person!

From the Washington Post interview, quoted by bklyn above:

Thoughts and opinions only have the value a reader assigns to it.

Slap a big old sic at the end of that sentence by former college freshman composition instructor Confederate Yankee.

constitutitonal constitutional. I am the self-correcting blogosphere.

your value comes from your credibility and your ability to substantiate what you say, and your ability to admit and correct mistakes

That’s your value, not his.

Just when I thought I couldn’t have less respect for Slaveholding–uh, Confederate Yankee.

Who claims that Democrats in Congress have failed to listen to the will of the American people to stop the Iraq War

Washington Post-ABC News Poll
The Washington Post
Sunday, September 9, 2007

Winning: 34%
Losing: 48%

I would point these numbers out to Yankee, but I think he is literally incapable of comprehending them.

Whoops, forgot the link to above poll:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_090907.html

Hat tip to Glenn Greenwald.

10:21 PDT. You can watch Ike Skelton be v. frustrated and muttering about “assholes” and “Duncan knows I don’t need a fucking lecture” on CSPAN 3 online, as they wait for Petraeus’s microphone to be fixed. That’s one “pissed off” chairman.

New York Times/CBS News Poll

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/09102007_pollresults.pdf

20. Do you think the US made a mistake getting involved in the current war against Iraq, or not?

Increase: 11%
Keep the Same Number: 19%
Decrease: 35%
Remove All: 30%

(Not so) Shorter how to think like Bob Owens.

Yes, I know. Doy.

Wait….
Now, thanks to Malkin, they’re calling Osama a socialist.
One of ace’s crew made a joke about listening to him and going commie back in the 40s.

Have people decided to stop giving words fixed meanings? Cause, ummm, between the being a religious fanatic and the getting his start fighting communists in Afghanistan you’d think……

I guess that’s not how Bob Owens thinks.

Wait… didn’t Dinesh D’Souza write a book earlier this year in which he agreed with a number of radical Islam’s criticisms of the United States? So, following right-wing reasoning, doesn’t that make al Qaeda a bunch of wingnuts?

“…has no bottom teeth from eating Goo-Goo Clusters”

Hey, I’m missing several of my own from eating Necco wafers. What are you implying?

Just to address the “Confederate” bit for this guy …

Listen, arsepipe, we kicked your shiftless, lazy, wanting-black-people-to-do-your-fucking-work-for-you asses back in the Civil War. That’s right, it’s called the fucking Civil War. Treason has Consequences. You dumbasses want to pretend that you’re part of some noble lost cause, you really need to get over yourselves.

You were wrong then. You were wrong during the Civil Rights movement, and you’re fucking wrong now.

The Confederacy was a cancer on the body of this great nation. You malignant assholes want to open up this particular can of worms again, then fucking-A bring it.

Chinless, inbred dipshit.

I know we’re not going to be re-fighting the Civil War here, but this “confederate” nonsense just pisses me off.

Sweet Jesus, this is just too much…

“I’ve always felt people were entitled to my opinion. What constantly amazes me is that literally tens of people each day willingly volunteer to submit themselves to my hits and missives, and many become regular readers.”

– I’d say that hearing Gomer’s opinions are a privilege, not a right. Let’s just be clear on that.
– “Literally tens of people.” Literally? I guess that’s better than figuratively, but it’s still not a hit count to brag about.
– “Hits and missives.” Clever phrase. I bet he spent a lot of time on that one.

As for his work history, I think he forgot fry cook; brain surgeon; and double-knot spy.

OK, I’m grabbin’ my shotgun and heading back over to teh fish barrel. Woohoo! We eat tonight!

Yankee’s idiocy may be hard-wired

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

Scientists at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles, showed through a simple experiment to be reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

…respondents who had described themselves as liberals showed “significantly greater conflict-related neural activity” when the hypothetical situation called for an unscheduled break in routine.

Conservatives, however, were less flexible, refusing to deviate from old habits “despite signals that this … should be changed.”

iberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

This is really the crux of the matter.

Our brains work.

It’s totally out-of-bounds to call bin Laden a liberal. I mean, I went to that panel he was on with Digby and Yglesias at Yearly Kos. He said he wouldn’t even repeal all of the bankruptcy bill, and that “we need to listen to both sides of the argument” on telecom legislation! He’s a total Broderite if you ask me. Enjoying those G-town cocktail parties a little too much.

You have to wonder if OBL might be trying to employ a form of jiujitsu in his remarks. By identifying the Democrats with the antiwar position in Iraq, OBL may be trying to goad Americans into supporting the Republican position to further commit to fighting in Iraq, thus draining us further.

There’s really no wondering about it–most analysts have come to the conclusion that that’s exactly what bin Laden is doing. Bush has helped bin Laden immeasurably, and bin Laden, himself no idiot, employs a very basic bit of reverse psychology, and look who falls for it hook, line, and sinker. Why, that’d be the wingnuts!

It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.

bin Laden, himself no idiot, employs a very basic bit of reverse psychology, and look who falls for it hook, line, and sinker.

Osama=Bugs Bunny.

Osama is bugs! That’s wonderful. Now somebody with skillz photshop bugs in a keffiyeh. Or OBL with rabbit ears.

I know we’re not going to be re-fighting the Civil War here, but this “confederate” nonsense just pisses me off.

Man, I feel ya. I’m Southern and have to listen to and deal with this nonsense. I admit, I had the whole “Southern Pride” thing going when I was a teenager, but once I wander out into the rest of the world, well, I realized how idiotic that mindset was on so many levels. Even beyond everything else, it struck me how foolish it was to define myself, even partly, by a horrible war fought to sustain a horrible way of life.

There was no noble lost cause and the only things to be proud of as a Southerner is how far we actually have come – as a region and as a collected people, white and black – since then. Progress, in other words – be it Dr. King or Elvis or my cousin’s husband not having to worry about his neighbors lynching him – is what we should be honoring, not holding onto a shameful past. But none of these “Southern partisans” ever seem to see it that way.

So, yeah…fuck that “fergit hell” nonsense, and I’ll put on my Hank Williams Jr. concert t-shirt and say that.

There isn’t any felon disenfranchisement in Oregon.

Man, you shoot the low-hanging fruit, tho, this guy doesn’t have two stones to rub together.

But he does have a bad knee.

So, yeah…fuck that “fergit hell” nonsense, and I’ll put on my Hank Williams Jr. concert t-shirt and say that.

I always wanted a T-shirt or bumper sticker showing a Redcoat holding a Union Jack and the caption, “Forget bloody hell!”

#10 (Kuda Bux): He may not be a Yankee, but he’s certainly a yanqui.

That’s it — from now on, he’s Confederate Yanqui to me.

It’s incredibly hilarious to me that CY(qui) thinks that Harry fucking Reid is a disciple of Noam Chomsky and that he hates capitalism. The right wing is really incapable of distinguishing between positions to the left of, say, John McCain. There’s Good Conservatives, and then there’s RINO moderate sissyboys, and then there’s radical leftist Communazis.

Moderate liberals, left-liberals, social democrats, Marxists, non-Marxists, Leninists, Trotskyists, ultra-leftists, revolutionary socialists, syndicalists, and all of the hundreds (if not thousands) of leftist sects and parties with drastically varying positions, tactics, and rhetoric — they’re all apparently the same damn thing.

I mean, even if you’re going to gloss over the tremendous differences between, say, anarcho-syndicalists and Marxist-Leninists (by citing their occasional cooperation), you’re still glossing over the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between liberalism and leftism and their historical opposition to each other.

It’s as fundamental a logical error as suggesting that Jerry Falwell and Robert Heinlein are politically compatible because they both fall roughly to the arbitrary right of an arbitrarily placed center.

If you weren’t a blogger, what other occupation(s) would you consider?

I would have been a soldier. My left knee, operated on once already and still problematic, refused to co-operate. My high school guidance counselor suggested the Forest Service, which would not have been a bad choice, but I wouldn’t mind being a hunting or fishing guide, either. And yes, I’d love to hunt with the Vice President, without any reservations.

– Confederate Yankee, member in good standing of the 101st fighting keyboarders, chicken hawk brigade.

There appears to be a sore knee epidemic raging among conservatives. Must be all that time spent on their knees – in prayer – in mens rooms.

Legalize: Good One!

the more i hear from these right wing clowns the more sympathy i have for them.

no one would like to live in such a dank and festering world view they have, but the worst part is that the enemies they are scared about are simply projections of their own basic personalities.

there appears to be a complete lack of critical self-analysis inherent in these people about how they traveled thru their life to believe in what they believe, and worst of all any attempt to do so is held in ridicule.

it is akin to seeing a machine operating on only half capacity and being proud of it

I just hope that the sore knee sufferers get the treatment they need.

VP Cheneybot 9000 doesn’t go “hunting”. He walks up to a crippled, chained-up animal, and shoots an old person in the face.

He singled out Keith for the hate list? Zany. You know you’re doing something right if they’re shooting at you.

Actually, some guy, I think he shoots ’em from the car when he can.

“it is akin to seeing a machine operating on only half capacity and being proud of it.”

Even if someone brings him the manual which explains how to fix the machine so that it might work more efficiently. To accept this assistance, the winger mind would be forced to also accept that it been operating in a flawed manner. This can not be permitted.

So, the guy who offers the winger the manual is called a traitor, arrested, and shipped off to Gitmo, while the machine proceeds to catch fire and burn down the factory – which of course is the fault of the guy who offered the manual, … because if he didn’t hate the factory so much, the machine … would … have worked properly, and garble …. ajksljkfljl …… asd … yike….. gulp.

“a different brad said,

September 10, 2007 at 19:33

Wait….
Now, thanks to Malkin, they’re calling Osama a socialist.
One of ace’s crew made a joke about listening to him and going commie back in the 40s.

Have people decided to stop giving words fixed meanings? Cause, ummm, between the being a religious fanatic and the getting his start fighting communists in Afghanistan you’d think……”

I have for years believed that conservatives live in a world of Null-A, where “A” = “not A” or anything they damned want in any particular situation if it benefits them.

others, less couth just call them liars.

Actually, some guy, I think he shoots ‘em from the car when he can.

Sure, when he’s feeling frisky. Other times, he just pays interns to throw grenades into the pens…

mikey

WHO is a middle aged man working at the bottom rung of retail?

Bush has helped bin Laden immeasurably, and bin Laden, himself no idiot, employs a very basic bit of reverse psychology, and look who falls for it hook, line, and sinker. Why, that’d be the wingnuts!

Wingnet Inc. executive produced the new OBL and I hear that in the first cut there was admission that the Great Mooninite Panic really was a dry run and Ted Turner and teh left were in on the whole thing. I guess we’ll have to wait for the director’s cut. And to push the wingnuts’ psychosexual buttons they tried like hell to get him to drop in a reference to the Vagina Monologues but he refused say vagina. Wouldn’t come out of his trailer for hours.

You have to wonder if OBL might be trying to employ a form of jiujitsu in his remarks. By identifying the Democrats with the antiwar position in Iraq, OBL may be trying to goad Americans into supporting the Republican position to further commit to fighting in Iraq, thus draining us further.”

Yeah, you could wonder about that. You could also wonder whether bin Laden had plastic surgery to make his nose wider, ’cause whoever that is in the video, it ain’t bin Laden.

bin Laden admires Chomsky? Sheeesh, is that the best that Dubya’s scriptwriters can come up with?

Emmanuel Goldstein, anyone? Doubleplusgood!

“bin Laden admires Chomsky? Sheeesh, is that the best that Dubya’s scriptwriters can come up with?”

Well, look, I suggested Paul Krugman in one of the early rewrite meetings, but they haven’t been listening to me on any of this for some time now. I’d stop going to the meetings altogether, but they usually have a decent supply of Krispy Kremes, and I’m sucka for those chocolate-topped ones.

And the ones with the sprinkles.

Oh, and the long, twisty ones. I forget what they’re called, but they’re pretty darn tasty.

I feel the urge to say I don’t buy the OBL conspiracy theories.

It falls well outside the competence of the administration to organize even a shitty attempt at that.

Well said, Bubba. Conspiracy theories are primarily, in my opinion, searches for the hand of god. Some folk need to see order in the chaos that is life.
But the admin is capable of taking other footage of random muslims and calling it Osama. The 9/11 “confession” video is rather obviously not bin Laden. I don’t care if Loose Change makes the same claim, a stopped clock n etc….

I tend to be suspicious of any of the fancy conspiracy theories, both for reasons of competence mentioned above, and also because they require a large number of people involved to keep the secret unto death. That just don’t happen when there are books to be written, movies to be cast and appearances on cable news shows to jumpstart a moribund career.

American conspiracies, such as iran contra and Desert One, tend to rather quickly collapse under their own weight, as americans are the entrepreneurial type and typically will deal with any problem encountered by adding resources.

Remember “Kelly’s Heroes”?

“Yeah, I’m gonna need about three hundred feet of bridge out here…”

mikey

Righteous Bubba said
I feel the urge to say I don’t buy the OBL conspiracy theories. It falls well outside the competence of the administration to organize even a shitty attempt at that.

I agree but sometimes I am not so sure. These are such strange times. This so-called Bin Laden video is odd. His nose does look wider and his beard is shorter. Supposedly it’s ok to dye your beard (in OBL’s sect) but I don’t think there is any tolerance at all for cutting it. I could be wrong as I have had little interest such details.

bin Laden and al Qaeda was created by the CIA and he is still a CIA asset. It really did look like they deliberately allowed him to escape Tora Bora and they really have called off the hunt for OBL.

And then there is Sibel Edmonds. There is a very interesting diary on her on DailyKos today.

I would say that money and power and shared goals to getting it are usually enough to explain a lot of so-called conspiracies. I think there is most likely there is a lot of shit going on that we’ll never know about. It seems kinda pointless to obsess about what we cannot know or do anything about if we did.

I could be wrong as I have had little interest such details.

There’s a start. I don’t know either.

bin Laden and al Qaeda was created by the CIA and he is still a CIA asset.

This is untrue as far as I know, the latter assertion coming from loonyland. Bin Laden was a player in Afghanistan and as such he received indirect funding via weaponry supplied to others, but was never directly supported.

A couple small corrections. al Quada was NOT created by the CIA. The mujihadeen were fighting the russians before the CIA figured out (mostly with MI-6’s help) that they could make them into a bigger, better fighting force by funding and equipping them. They became a CIA asset, but that is a far cry from being created by the CIA.

It is, I believe, a little unreasonable to say they are still a CIA asset. In order to accept that worldview, you have to accept that the Cole, the Embassy bombings, 9/11 and 7/7 were CIA operations. I’m pretty damn cynical, but I’m not buying that.

I dunno. Maybe I’m just naive. But there are limits to the things I’m willing to believe, because to accept them would require me to take some kind of action. I don’t take those actions because I don’t believe they are warranted.

The way america has operated in the world, it is no stretch to believe there are people who hate us and want to kill us. If I was an iraqi, I’d have run up some yankee body count. I don’t understand why we have to believe that all this is an internal plot when it’s plenty obvious why these jihadis would want to wage war against us…

mikey

Hitler was a socialist,dontchaknow!!!1!111!You know it’s even part of the name;National Socialism.What the fuck happened to your lips?Confederate Yankee meaning a treasonous prick.

A couple of points: Secrets are very hard to keep. People like to talk. People especially like being the person talking about secret stuff. Makes us seem important and in the know. At best a government (or anyone for that matter) can do is muddy the waters around the scandal a bit. Accuse the leaker of having a grudge or insinuating that there exists an alliance between the MSM, the Democrats and Osama to make America look bad.

Second, I just don’t buy faking Osama. Too much risk for not enough reward. It isn’t 2003 anymore. The terror plank ain’t a sure thing for the Republican party these days. Besides, if someone in the administration got caught doing such a thing right now with the whole mighty General Petreaus report descending upon the hill, it might be slightly counterproductive. Besides, why fake something when they can just get some insurgent statement off a website (or signals intercept) and claim “Number 3 Al-Qaeda in Iraq says the following. Plus that has the advantage of not reminding people that the President has kinda, you know, failed to get the guy who killed 3000 Americans six years ago.

RubDMC, that would be the kruller, I believe.

Just want to say that one can be part of a conspiracy and not be aware of it.All operational functions in intelligence,espionage,or terrorism are compartmentalized.

Osama’s message boils down to this:

OBL: Ni-ni-ni-ni-ni-ni boo-booh, miss-me, miss-me, now you gonna kiss-me, ni-ni-ni-ni boo-boo, Georgie-Porgie, yoooou caaaaan’t catch me, ni-ni-ni-ni-ni boo-boo…

Does anybody here truly believe Oswald was a lone assassin.One needs to look at his background.What I’m trying to say is that I for one cannot say who killed Kennedy.Either one.

One thing that I have discovered is that gross incompetence can often look like a conspiracy.

Living in Miami, I am currently seeing things that look like the worst corruption I’ve ever seen in my life – and my dad’s in the mob and I have friends from Chicago. Roadwork doesn’t get done when it’s supposed to, the cousin of somebody on the school board owns a company that makes school uniforms just as the school board magically votes in a proposition that all public schools become uniform schools, the chief of police “test drives” a luxury SUV – for a year. Stuff like that.

As I begin to see how things work in this city, though, I begin to see that it’s not deliberate corruption going on around here. City officials are just so ignorant and incompetent that it honestly never occurs to them that “test driving” an SUV for a whole damn year causes the appearance of impropriety. In fact, I doubt many city officials around here could spell “impropriety”, much less define it.

Considering the track record of the Bush brain trust, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out a similar phenomenon was occurring there.

Jillian,since your dad is mobbed up,I’m not sure I should debate you.But that explanation seems to oversimplifie motives of individuals,institutional ideology and the fact that these people in question are hyper-ambitious,highly motivated and are in the position of command and control of all the various organs of the state.I would never say”I know what happened”or get into debating arcana. I just have a damn good intuition that the sun is going to rise in the East.The one question to ask is;cui bono?

I’m not saying conspiracies never happen; I’m just saying that around here, if you ask “cui bono?”, the answer is likely to be “You said ‘boner’ – heheheheh!!”

I swear when I first moved to Miami, I thought I had moved into the worst pit of corruption I’d ever seen. I’m just not so sure anymore.

Look, it’s simple. In a sense, it’s about duty. If you really believe your governement runs terror ops against it’s people, if you really believe American intelligence agencies assassinated a president, if you really believe there are plots afoot within the government to destroy what it is we believe in, then you have to take up arms. You can’t honestly believe that and sit on your ass.

If I was to truly come to believe in these conspiracies, I would have to work to thwart those ops. I’d lose, and I’d die, but I’d have no choice. So if it’s a game, shut up. If you think it’s real, why do you do nothing?

mikey

And don’t worry about the dad stuff – I haven’t seen or spoken to him in years.

Life’s too short for the kind of drama that would bring.

If it weren’t for all those “Legal” opinions coming out of Bush’s lawyers I might be able to buy into the whole “incompetence” idea.

owlbear, they’re not incompetent.

They’re evil.

Being evil requires a certain amount of intelligence and self-awareness. I’m not sure Bush rises to that level – he really is a stupid motherfucker.

Not everyone in the Bush cabinet is.

His lawyers certainly aren’t.

I believe in evil, and that’s just what they are.

Bush might be evil, he might be just stupid – but for the life of me, I can’t be arsed to care about the distinction anymore.

But that explanation seems to oversimplifie motives of individuals,institutional ideology and the fact that these people in question are hyper-ambitious,highly motivated and are in the position of command and control of all the various organs of the state.I would never say”I know what happened”or get into debating arcana.

Whatever it is you’re getting at, nobody disagrees that conspiracies exist. Some are plausible, some are not.

Oh, and as for Osama’s appearance?

I’ve read he has a kidney problem. I’m betting he is a very sick and the beard is fake.
He has also been the target of lots of bombs. I really hope with all the Tens of Millions of dollars spent over the last ten years we at least managed to break his nose once.

Those damn kidneys are going to be what kills him, you know. Billions, wasted. Tens of thousands of lives, cut short.

He got exactly what he wanted.

Is everyone stupid or crazy or what? Has it occured to anyone that it isn’t the beard that’s fake in that footage of Osama, but it could be Osama himself. The simplest explanation would suggest that the man in the video is an imposter. Or maybe I’m just crazy or stupid. Has anyone else figured this one out?

And another thing, how can we be sure the tape actually came from Al-Qaeda? It’s timing seems awful suspicious….

Mikey said…

I dunno. Maybe I’m just naive. But there are limits to the things I’m willing to believe, because to accept them would require me to take some kind of action. I don’t take those actions because I don’t believe they are warranted.

Er…umm.. I am guessing I am misreading you but, isn’t that sort of circular? I don’t accept/believe in X because I might have to get pissed and break my foot off in someone’s ass. But I can’t be bothered to to actually act regardless because action isn’t warranted. So, I choose not to believe in X because it would cause me to act if I did, and I don’t act (not warranted), so I don’t take action because, if I did believe in X, I would have to but… won’t get fooled again!!111!1

I don’t even follow these conspiracy theories but I am more than willing to act. At this point I don’t think it should take believing in a conspiracy theory — there are plenty of plainly evident reasons to warrant “action.” Maybe I should read up on these conspiracy theories, then I would realize that action is unwarranted:)

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

The Osama tape is totally, completely, utterly fucking irrelevant. It doesn’t matter at all whether it’s real or fake. Who fucking cares?

Regardless of whether it’s real or fake, the fucking administration is going to react in the exact same goddamn stupid way to it. They’re going to be all “Oh, please, B’rer Fox, don’t throw me in that briar patch”, and that’s exactly what they’ll do.

Why would anyone think it matters whether the impetus toward this act is genuine or contrived? It changes nothing.

No, it appears I wasn’t misreading you….

Mikey,

You really don’t believe there are plenty of valid reasons to take action now? Silly question I suppose… you have already said you do not believe there are.

Every day I am a bit more disheartened.

Jillian,
I have gone exactly the opposite trajectory. I started this company a few years ago and the investors who put money in it and installed their man as a CEO completely screwed things up. For long time I thought it was sheer stupidity, as I could not fathom why they would want to destroy something that could benefit them.

Little by little facts emerged… For once, the money was not theirs, it was institutional, including public pension funds (you know, teachers, firefighters and likes), so they couldn’t care less, they were still getting paid. Then other evidence came to the front about how they benefitted immensely from what they were doing, even if the company was going down.

So, it goes both ways: things that look like conspiracy can be just sheer incompetence and things that look like stupidity may may turn out to to be premidiated conspiracies, or any combinations of the two.

Here’s what is very intriguing: the two investors I am talking about have MBAs from Harvard, same as our Beloved Leader. This is a tough school to get in and to graduate, no matter who your mommy and daddy are.

The way GWB is perceived as some caricature is totally misleading. He is a terrible speaker and may appear goofy, but to think of him as a bumbling idiot is wrong. He graduated from Harvard when his Daddy was basically nobody (having a Dad in charge of the mission in Beijing is not gonna make anyone at Harvard go oooh and aaaah).

In my mind he is definetely more evil than dumb…

I have consistently made it clear I don’t buy any of it.

But my question stands: How can you genuinely believe in these kinds of conspiracies and NOT take action? What would it take to get you to act? I think it’s a bunch of game play. But for anyone who believes it, your whole world is a lie. How can you come to any conclusion other than to fight?

mikey

DEMIZE!

Actually, we already know the answer the the Kennedy thing – didn’t Mick Jagger tell you “after all, it was you and me?”

Somebody buy that guy a chin, he looks like his lower face fell off.

Krassen?
His grandpa was a US Senator, and rather rich. This isn’t a one generation legacy, by a longshot. GW is functionally retarded. But he’s also mostly the equivalent of Ronald McDonald. A mascot/cheerleader/eventual fall guy. He’s an asshole, but he’s a pawn.
Jillian’s point holds true, I think.
Hell, if they were truly evil they’d be far more subtle, and sneaky. It wouldn’t be so blatant.
Dumb and greedy are more than enough to account for this mess, unfortunately.
I half wish there was a massive, secret conspiracy. At least then there’d be a plan.

Ooops. *not by a longshot.
I McArdled it.

Uh no, the tape is not irrelevant. If it didn’t come from Al-Qaeda, where did it come from? Possibly someone trying to manipulate public opinion to achieve political goals? Now who do you think would do a thing like that?

Now who do you think would do a thing like that?

Why Osama bin Laden of course.

Who the fuck cares where it came from?

If it cam from al-Qaeda, then they are trying to manipulate the American public into supporting the Republican party, so that the Republican party will continue to make America look like a fucking asshole to the rest of the world for as long as possible, because al-Qaeda hates America and likes it when we look like assholes.

If it came from the Republican party, then the Republican party is trying to manipulate the American public into supporting the Republican party so that the Republican party can continue to shit all over the rest of the world, just like it’s been doing for six years now.

If it came from the Democratic party…..well, we all know the Democratic party is full of stupid, incompetent fuckheads, so why would that surprise anyone if they fucked up THIS badly?

It honestly doesn’t matter where it came from when the end results are the same.

Seriously – I bet you think it mattered whether or not there really was an Emmanuel Goldstein, too.

You’re completely missing the point.

I see. I guess you’re right. Please tell me what really matters Julian. Without the guidance of your superior intellect I’m totally lost. Who’s Emmanuel Goldstein?

Cjenk, look here:

The simplest explanation would suggest that the man in the video is an imposter.

I don’t know what you’re doing with Occam’s razor but there’s blood all over the floor and you’re looking pale.

Jillian is smarter than you.

“Too smart is stupid.”- German proverb

I still think an investigation into the source of that tape would yield some interesting results.

Emmanuel Goldstein is the midget who played Webster.
It’s science fact!

Emmanuel Goldstein is the midget who played Webster.

Daniel Webster? He doesn’t have the stature to pull that off.

Cjenk, that German proverb is about how intelligent people can do stupid things, not claiming all seeming stupidity is a cover.
Conspiratorial righties seem to presume everyone is as dumb and hateful as they are, conspiratorial lefties seem to think everyone is intelligent and motivated.
Lemme put it this way. Did PETA create global warming in order to eventually claim eating meat is the “real” cause of it, or are they asshole opportunists misusing actual facts for their own good?
The admin doesn’t have to be behind Bin Laden to make opportunistic use of his doings. And that both the admin and Bin Laden have figured out they’re good for each other doesn’t mean they’re conspiring together.
As for the timing, ummmmm, tomorrow I get to look west and see two beams of light where buildings used to be. Maybe Bin Laden remembers the date, too? Bush wasn’t the only one to profit off all the deaths that day.

Since dinner shit has gotten all crazy up in here.I just wrote a long and well thought out rebuttal to Mikey and I hit some fucking key by mistake and poof,gone.Yes,I don’t think this govt.or any other gives a flying fuck about killing it’s own citizens.They do it all the time,you would know.For all kinds of fucked up reasons.I don’t buy the GWB.is a retard thing.Although HE most certainly is,his backers aren’t.He is supported by a cadre of dedicated ideological functionaries to rationalize and plan and profit from his down home figurehead status.Yes I believe the soil of democracy is fertilized with the blood of patriots every time the system becomes to corrupt and inflexible.so I’ll tell you what I’ll bring my Ruger mini22 and you bring the small arm of your choice and we’ll start the revolution together.Do you think we’ll get far against the entire reactionary police apparatus,I’ll take that as a no.Am I a pussy?I don’t think so.Am I realistic?yes.If there’s a little bit more of a chance of getting somewhere,I’ll see you on the barricades.But I don’t think it’s prudent or strategically beneficial to set yourself up for a suicide mission.I’m no martyr,but that doesn’t mean I have to be deluded.

Or the proverb could mean some people are so proud of their intelligence they just close their minds, and become stupid. No, I’m not a regular blog poster, but that doesn’t mean I’m fair game for someone who is just here to show off how smart they are by flaming someone else.

So julilan says I miss the point. What is the point then? Or I should say, what is THE POINT according to jullian?

#

Jillian said,

September 11, 2007 at 2:38

I’m not saying conspiracies never happen; I’m just saying that around here, if you ask “cui bono?”, the answer is likely to be “You said ‘boner’ – heheheheh!!”

I swear when I first moved to Miami, I thought I had moved into the worst pit of corruption I’d ever seen. I’m just not so sure anymore.
And that is why I love Teh “Sadly-No” and I know what you mean born & raised In NYC. I have lived in Miami and have family there,our own little 3rd.world tropicalia!!Right wing Cubans are fun though,no?

Well, to begin with, her name is Jillian.
Her point, I believe, is that the bread and circuses don’t matter, and never have.
This surface level garbage has no real effect, it just gives people stuff to chatter about.
As we’re demonstrating.

#

LA Confidential Pantload said,

September 11, 2007 at 3:44

DEMIZE!

Actually, we already know the answer the the Kennedy thing – didn’t Mick Jagger tell you “after all, it was you and me?”
DING,DING,DING Wehaveawinnah!

Or the proverb could mean some people are so proud of their intelligence they just close their minds, and become stupid.

When opening your mind means the wind whistles through it there’s a problem.

No, I’m not a regular blog poster, but that doesn’t mean I’m fair game for someone who is just here to show off how smart they are by flaming someone else.

Sure it does. Derision of sloppy thinking is an important thing. You’ve served it up, others knock it out of the park.

Thus far you have contributed…what that you can actually back up?

#

a different brad said,

September 11, 2007 at 4:29

“Emmanuel Goldstein is the midget who played Webster.
It’s science fact!”
Can I be Winston Smith?You mean Webster Tarpley,right???

Yeah I guess this is pretty pointless. But every time I think I’m getting paranoid I turn out to be right and just once I wish someone else would wise up, someone who is in a position to do something about it.

We’re so lucky to have Righteous Bubba as our crusader against sloppy thinking.

Yer my hero, bubba. Can I be just like you? Can I? Huh?

What’s that whistling sound? cjenk415 trying to think again?

Your self-certainty troubles me, and reminds me of many other 9/11 truthers I’ve met.
The problem is it leaves many overly credulous to anything that seems to support their views, and closed off to whatever challenges them.
As a pre-teen I was big on ufos and bigfoot and the like, and every 9/11 truth documentary and website I’ve ever seen reminds of Chariots of the Gods.
But neither am I, or I think anyone here, saying swallow the official line. Doubt everything, including yourself.

crusader against sloppy thinking.

Look up at the top of this thread. Then try the thread before it, and the one before that. Kinda the premise of the whole site, dontcha know. AP4RT FRM TEH BEAR N PUMA KONSPIRACY!!!

As a pre-teen I was big on ufos and bigfoot and the like, and every 9/11 truth documentary and website I’ve ever seen reminds of Chariots of the Gods.

I LOVE that shit. Went to the Sasquatch Seminar at the planetarium in Vancouver and everything, featuring lots of guys I’d seen on TV. Hilarious.

“Doubt everything, including yourself.” Now those are truly wise words.Let me add a quote by Voltaire I like,I might mangle it but “Those who would have you believe myths,would soon make you commit atrocities”

It sounds better in the original Lithuanian.

No,no,no – Emmanuel Goldstein runs a blog called Orwell’s Jism. It’s true – just google it up on the ol’ innernettubes.

No, I’m not certain that’s why I’m only suggesting an investigation. Not a witch-hunt or a purge. If the government can spend billions on a war why can’t they invest some time on getting some intelligence data that might lead to ending this war.

Ending this war….that is still our goal, isn’t it?

#

mikey said,

September 11, 2007 at 3:31

“I have consistently made it clear I don’t buy any of it.

But my question stands: How can you genuinely believe in these kinds of conspiracies and NOT take action? What would it take to get you to act? I think it’s a bunch of game play. But for anyone who believes it, your whole world is a lie. How can you come to any conclusion other than to fight?

mikey” There calling that terrorism these days soldier.

You know, who the fuck cares about the goddam tape?????

It just kills me, hearing people talk about Osama “coming out with a new video” like he’s Britney Fucking Spears or Timbaland. Oh, really? Who’s his agent? When’s the tour? Are they going to party at Pure when the video drops?

Listen people. The “leader” of the United State of America, Mr. George W. Bush, goes on camera a couple times a week to gabble some generalized nonsense he thinks is going to inspire people, and it probably does inspire some small percentage of the population’s mouth-breathers.

So the fucking “leader” of Al Queda goes on camera a little more rarely, since he’s more like Greta Garbo and likes to keep it secret and exclusive, but he’s still going on camera to gabble a bunch of generalized nonsense hoping to inspire – or provoke – people.

Does it make one fucking bit of difference? Maybe George Bush’s production values are a little better, but he lies, manipulates popular culture, speaks in coded language, and provokes reactions just as much as Osama bin Laden.

And, I would submit that both are equally effective – or ineffective – in motivating their followers to actually do something they want them to do.

George Bush invokes FDR and Lincoln and Mom and Apple Pie just like Osama invokes the holy prophet and the Koran and the battalion of virgins in heaven. They do it to keep the stupid ones rallying round.

Now – if someobody did fake it, who cares? You want to talk about fake? Let’s talk about fake George Bush posing at a factory like he’s pretending to run the assembly line machinery. Does anyone get any inspiration out of that? “Look, Uncle Fred, he hammered some nails; that means the plant’s gonna reopen soon and maybe we’ll get our jobs back.”

How about fake Fred Thompson in his fake red pickup truck?

Osama’s video is just another campaign ad. Whether his campaign released it or whether some other interest group (Republican Party? Saudi Prince? Hamas? Dirty Fucking Hippies?) doesn’t really matter.

#

LA Confidential Pantload said,

September 11, 2007 at 5:14

“No,no,no – Emmanuel Goldstein runs a blog called Orwell’s Jism. It’s true – just google it up on the ol’ innernettubes.”
Dontcha mean Al Goldstien,You beautiful bastards!!1!1

I have to admit, bigfoot is my little indulgence to myself, in that I let myself consider it plausible.
Ain’t enough biomass in the loch to sustain a population of Nessies, but a remnant population of a known, and recent, wood ape species that’s learned to avoid a natural rival in humanity remains…. possible.
Not to say the folk looking for em aren’t wonderfully amusing.
If you watch Ghost Hunters, check out their real website. Full of good laughs. Some very earnest discussion of the differences between fairies and elves, among other things.

Emmanuel Goldstein is black? I though he was Jewish! Gosh, I’m so confused…..

(whistling sound…)

“Doubt everything, including yourself?” Excuse me, but fuck that shit. This particular Islamoanarchisexual takes his marching orders from the Firesign Theatre: “You can believe me, because I never lie and I’m always right!”

Who cares where the tape came from? What’s so important about a tape?

If it’s real, it’s just some idiot up there on camera saying a lot of nonsense and lies, just like George Bush gets up there on camera saying a lot of nonsense and lies. Can you honestly say that anyone is motivated by anything George Bush says in front of a camera these days?

If it’s fake, it’s intended to be as “real” as George Bush standing in front of marines who were ordered to look like they like him serving them plastic turkey.

Like George Bush’s speeches, it’s just as full of invocations to past heroes who would roll over in their graves to be associated with him; just as full of fake sentiment and pieties that bear no resemblance to his actions and policies. He even has his swift-boat-like boogey men – Chomsky! Whoo! Next thing he’ll pull out Willie Horton. Is there anyone out there who is inspired by a speech of George Bush’s? Then why do you think there is anyone out there inspired by a speech of OBL wearing a funny nose and glasses?

If it’s real, it’s just as lame as George Bush. If it’s fake, it’s still just as lame as George Bush.

It’s like a TeeVee commercial – who cares?

I have to laugh at the news talk about the video – “Osama bin Ladin’s coming out with a new video, his first in three years.” – Like he was fucking Prince, maybe, or Springsteen. Oh, really? When’s it gonna drop? Is there gonna be a party for his posse at Pure?

I just wrote a long and well thought out rebuttal to Mikey and I hit some fucking key by mistake and poof,gone.

Yeah, me too – not a rebuttal to mikey, though. I wouldn’t do that.

It makes you humble, when you get stymied in mid-rant.

Oh, and cjenk? Quit being an asshole. You’re not worth a fingernail paring from either Jillian or Righteous Bubba, so start acting respectful or fuck off.

If you watch Ghost Hunters, check out their real website.

That kind of stuff is really fun. I’m in love with orbs, which I believe are the most democratic form of paranormal activity out there, in that anybody can catch them in a dusty room. To those who buy ’em they’re far more reliable than god, which is kind of sweet and hopefully harmless.

Allright, I’m done. I won’t even mention that they started it.

I sounds like everyone has given up on making a difference and just came here to vent so I’m obviously in the wrong forum.

I loved ghost stories as a kid. There’s not too much of it I believe anymore, but I had someone tell me a weird story once that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

cjenk, this is a snark forum. You’re kinda acting like you’re looking for the union rally and didn’t realize you walked into the bar instead of the meeting hall.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio Feel better now?

I’ll see your orbs and raise you flying rods.

I’ll see your orbs and raise you flying rods.

Somewhere I saw some comic – maybe by Drew Friedman? – that had various Rods popping up here and there in suspicious ways…Rod Stewart, Rod McKuen, et cetera.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

I had never heard of this. The talk page is pretty interesting. Thus far it seems like I should buy that there was a Gladio but that much of what’s ascribed to it – Order of the Solar Temple murders and so on – is somewhat ridiculous.

All alone and no duck to fart in.

Hey, Sadly, Nosites, cut the poor guy a little slack: I didn’t think he was pushing too far, and I’m uber-sensitive most of the time.

And cjenk415, Emmanuel Goldstein is the mythical enemy invented by the regime in Orwell’s 1984, in order to focus popular hatred and unite the citizenry behind the regime. Parallels abound.

I think Gladio figures in some 9/11 theories. That’s the only context I remember hearing about it.
Seems like something was going on in Italy, but, well, when isn’t there?

The simplest explanation would suggest that the man in the video is an imposter.

The speech was ghost written by Adam Gaddan. They wanted something they imagined an American audience would identify with and be persuasive, so that’s why it sounds like Osama Bin Ladin is about to show up at a Free Mumia rally.

Alright, if we’re reduced to linking to YouTube by Sadly, No! Customer Service’s non-compulsive non-McArdle type non-posting (Does she have a daily minimum? How many are allowed to be original, as opposed to grabbing big chunks of something else?) try this’n.
There’s a Monty Python subtext. (Very sub.)

Ah yes, forgot about Adam the American, son of goatherds & former metal fanboy.
And I’m guessing Bin Laden’s nose is wider ’cause he’s been sitting pretty in some well-equipped cave w/ plenty of food for the last few years, safe from U. S. Special Forces & the Pakistani gov’t.

Dang. It’s 9/11 where ever you are. It’s still 9/10 where I am.

I woke up at 5:45 that morning, ’cause I had to drive the junior high carpool to the bus stop. I pushed the button to turn on NPR and heard Bob Edwards saying there seems to have been an accident at the WTC with a small plane crashing into the building.

I went into the bedroom cause I can’t work the damn TV remote in the living room, and woke up my spouse when I turned on the bedroom TV.

The coffee was ready so I went to get a cup, and heard my spouse yell when the 2nd plane hit the #2 tower.

All I could think was I had to get to work cause we had some 50 members of a Cambodian performing arts troupe we were hosting, and I figured they’d be frightened, and it would be stupid and cowardly of me to stay home when I could be there helping keep things normal. So I drove to the carpool meeting place.

One of the moms came running out of her house in her bathrobe and asked if I thought the kids would be safe at junior high. We stood by the car in the early morning rural California light and figured, well, probably the terrorists werent’ going to hit Revere Jr. High.

I dropped the kids at the bus, listening to NPR playing the CNN feed. I had to pull the car over & stop on the boulevard when I heard Aaron Brown say the tower came down.

Then I went south on the 405 past LAX with no air traffic in the sky.

At work the Cambodians were freaked out, in their mild polite self-effacing way. It was war, and they were in a foreign country at war. But we rehearsed on schedule. Of the many performing arts organizations in the LA region, we were among the few who did not cancel our performance that week, because we knew that what we were presenting on our stage represented a triumph of art against war and hatred and death, and we couldn’t silence it.

On 9/12 we presented the first performance by classical dancers from Pnom Penh to be seen in California since the end of the Khmer Rouge.

Our local promoter’s son had been running late to the Risk Waters meeting at the Windows on the World, and he survived. But we didn’t learn that til after the show on Wednesday.

http://www.wisdomportal.com/LATimes-Cambodian(9-9-01).html

I can’t think of 9/11 without thinking of Cambodia.

and junior high school

http://www.ksilks.com/apsarapnt_V11.jpg

Weird, huh.

The mujihadeen were fighting the russians before the CIA figured out (mostly with MI-6’s help) that they could make them into a bigger, better fighting force by funding and equipping them.

Just for the record, the US was funding the mujahideen for about six months before the Russians invaded Afghanistan. Replace “russians” in that sentence with “the Afghan communist regime” and it’s fine. The CIA never directly funded UBL, but he and the Taliban probably got a fair amount of US money via Pakistan’s ISI for one. Or something – it’s kinda complicated.

I dunno if this video is a false flag or not, nor do I care. The notion that UBL has some kind of Blofeld-like command-and-control over AQ has been an absurdity since before 9/11, so I don’t know why anyone thinks the pronouncements of him, or his impersonator, matter.

The notion that UBL has some kind of Blofeld-like command-and-control over AQ has been an absurdity since before 9/11

Mmmmm… .wonder what kind of kitty cat he has?????

A paper tiger, obviously.

I feel kinda bad ’cause I think it was my post that pushed the thread over to the conspiracy theory side. I don’t believe in the grand conspiracies though certainly smaller one exist. What I was trying to same, somewhat inarticulately, is more like this:

The Shock Doctrine

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

Watch the trailer.

Her thesis is that governments take advantage of crisis situations to push through legislation that increases the power of the state. From what I have read on her website she doesn’t make the claim that states create those crisies (sp?). She seems to leave that for the reader to decide for him/her self.

—

Cryptomundo
Absolutely fascinating, they research reports on such things as Bigfoot and Nessie and others. And they have a brain.

—

“Loose Change” has been well debunked to my satisfaction. RFK has been also. Same with Roswell.

—

In times of great change like now people lose their moorings. It isn’t only in the political world that we see so much upheaval but in other areas also. The internet allows us to talk and discuss without the “official” filter of the traditional media. I think that’s a good thing but it is disorienting for many. In time this will all settle down.

Bugger™ is down for maintenance (or so Google™ can let the NSA or NRO go through our sites) so you’re stuck w/ me.

I don’t know why anyone thinks the pronouncements of him, or his impersonator, matter.

Sadly, because dipsticks like Treasonous Trick-knee, & Ace, etc., plus many less drooly but still gullible voters will take this as an indication that “leftists,” like Hillary, want to sell us out to the terrorist hordes, & will vote for an idiot like Giuliani, whose actions will make us more vulnerable to attack, & further increase the ranks of said terrorist hordes. And any internal clampdowns Rudy or “Double Gitmo” Romney orders will cause radicalization of more American muslims, which might be the real danger we’ll end up facing.

Late night sadly no!!!

Spouse is at Big Bear at a 3-day retreat for work. It’s me and the Rottweiller. I’m rocking out to my Itunes and eating leftovers from the fridge.

Well, it’s been fun. Gotta go to work in the morning, and the bureacracy never sleeps!

G’night y’all.

Her thesis is that governments take advantage of crisis situations to push through legislation that increases the power of the state.

I certainly buy this with regard to 9/11 and I have always felt bad about how quickly it entered my head that Bush would turn it into an excuse to do whatever he liked.

As for the rest, I think Naomi Klein’s generally pretty cool. Could be good stuff.

Mmmmm… .wonder what kind of kitty cat he has?????

A fifth column puma, of course

Here’s what is very intriguing: the two investors I am talking about have MBAs from Harvard, same as our Beloved Leader. This is a tough school to get in and to graduate… The way GWB is perceived as some caricature is totally misleading. He is a terrible speaker and may appear goofy, but to think of him as a bumbling idiot is wrong. He graduated from Harvard… In my mind he is definetely more evil than dumb…

*Ahem.* Krassen, as both parties will tell you, at length, “Harvard” and “Harvard Business School” are two very different entities, with mostly different faculties, different campuses, and — most important — different endowments. (I have heard that Yale sends more graduates, such as Dubya, to HBS than Harvard itself, but the baleful influence of McArdle has left me too lazy to look up the actual statistics.) There is a certain rigorous skill set required to graduate from HBS, but that skill set relies more on stuff like management practice and networking and core leadership than actual testable abilities.

Basically, the goal of all MBA programs is to produce people who will promote the future success of all other MBA holders (who will eventually give large sums of cash to their alma maters). This goal has very little to do — as you have found to your sorrow — with the success of the actual business being “run”, or at least controlled, by the MBAs in question. And HBS is regarded by many, including its graduates, as being the most quintessential of all MBA programs… thus the quotation from Wikipedia that “In a survey by the Wall Street Journal, recruiters repeatedly used words like “sense of entitlement,” “ego problems” and “arrogant” to describe the chief shortcoming of Harvard M.B.A. students”.

As sociologists would describe it, the global-but-mostly-American-led MBA Army has become a priesthood. MBAs, like priests in a fundamentalist culture, are only secondarily useful within their societies as healers, record-keepers, artistic patrons, etc. The real business of any priesthood is to uphold the sacred mysteries of the national religion — and thus, most importantly, to perpetrate the success of the priestly caste and its central officers. Remember when Dubya described the war he wanted to wage on Iraq as “a crusade against evil”, and all the non-MBA leaders both here and elsewhere damn near shit themselves? Well, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black have always envied the power and prerogatives of the Medici-period papacy!

It’s no coincidence that the MBA “Masters of the Universe” and the Talibangelical “Moral Majority” fundamentalists have been happy to conspire in successfully taking the Republican Party away from the old-fashioned “Main Street” or “Eisenhower” Republicans. The MBAs and the Fundy-Shepherds share so much of their worldview, and so many common goals, that the perceived-by-us-progressives “illogic” of a partnership between the WSJ sociopaths and the Heartland pastors only seems to grow stronger every time a Repub congressman prioritizes his own re-election over the passage of “godly” (anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-sex) legislation, or a high-visibility Mall Church spokesman gets caught snorting coke off a male hooker’s back.

GWB didn’t start out as a moron. According to even his friendliest supporters, he’s so incurious as to be pathological, he’s sullen about his many & manifest shortcomings, he’s got the attention span of a mayfly, and he doesn’t enjoy reading. I personally believe he’s got ADHD and probably dyslexia, which is part of why he has so much trouble reciting prepared text even from cue-cards, and spending his life between the ages of 15 and 40 in a chemical haze can’t have been good for his brain either. But his Harvard Business School MBA, combined with his ensuing “business career” (running extended-family-funded boutique projects into the ground, getting bored, being bailed out by yet another family friend-&-helper, jumping feet-in-mouth-first into a newer shinier project) gave him the worst possible training for leading the Sole Remaining Superpower into the twenty-first century. So he’s spent the last seven years hollowing out the “core business” of America, he’s installed his cronies & fellow MBAs in every possible office regardless of their compentence, he’s funneled the nation’s profits directly into his corporate benefactor’s hands, he’s sold off every American asset he could lay his hands on (honestly or not), and he’s mortgaged your grandchildren’s future to outside investors (like China). And the Wall Street Journal has applauded him every single step of the way … because he’s been a lousy president, but he’s been a very good MBA.

Many, many very smart people spent their entire lives working out tables to explain the retrocession of the planets under Ptolemaic astronomy. Then Copernicus came along with his damned Sol-centric “theory”, and those tables fell into the domain of astrologers and cranks. Many, many other smart people — like Isaac Newton! — spent a great deal of time arguing over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, because in a Christian-theology-centered society the issue of angel’s physicality was actually important. Future historians, assuming there are any, may well consider the “MBA Cult” of the Late Twentieth Century C.E. as a roccocco cultural efflorescence quite as grotesque, and probably even more culturally destructive, than Torquemada.

Essentially, there’s an axis where Stupid and Evil intersect, and at that point talking about “conspiracies” is… beside the point. It doesn’t matter whether Dubya actually “knew” what Osama bin Laden had in mind, or whether he was just constitutionally and by training incapable of letting the actual worker bees in the CIA and the FBI, seventeen levels below his own corner-office dignity, do their jobs (and keep those 19 martyrs from doing theirs). It doesn’t matter whether the New! Improved! Chomsky-Quoting! bin Laden is “real”, or faked-by-al-Queda, or faked-by-the-NSA… what matters is whether Dubya’s minions can be prevented from treating the latest video as “real enough for the purpose of bombing Iran”. That’s the Great Cosmic Joke… it doesn’t take a giant all-encompassing Tristero Conspiracy for a handful of half-bright, sometimes-cunning, always-grasping politicians to bring our great nation to its knees. Or as the aphorism goes: Never ascribe malevolence what can be explained by stupidity — or laziness!

Future historians, assuming there are any

Oh you vile person. Heheheheheh.

What I want to know is this:

What Does 9/11 Mean 2U?
Dr BLT copyright 2007
http://www.drblt.net/music/WhatDoesNine11.mp3

I gotta go with Qetesh on this one – I don’t think cjenk415 went too far. None of us are infallable – not Mikey, nor Jillian, nor me. So, let’s not be so reactionary.

I think a lot of this conspiracy stuff stems from what we saw happen in the 2000 election. Do you really think the Florida vote was valid? Do you really support the SC decision to install chimpy as the supreme leader? Well, if you answered ‘No’ to either question, then you must believe that there are people who would go to extreme measures to get their hands on the reigns of power in this country. And from there it’s a short, slippery slope to Conspiracyland. The people that end up there are just trying to make some sense out of a scary, fucked-up world. Well shit, who isn’t?

Keep on doin’ what you do Nosians, but let’s leave the reactionary sniping to the other side. We have plenty of trolls to kick around; let’s not spend our energies kicking the folk who are supposedly on our side…

Anne Laurie said:

A whole lotta f*cking impressive stuff. I mean…damn.

I especially like: “(the) axis where stupid and evil intersect”. That was some fine writing.

HA!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2MTAX-_hS4&mode=related&search=
@5:25 – 5:30

I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

Noen, thanks for reminding me of that fucking monster Friedman: he’s responsible, at least in part, for a hell of a lot of suffering in south and central America. All those Friedman-ites, mad-keen to try out their theory du jour, took wild advantage of the CIA interference in those countries, and leached them of much of their wealth and most of their spirit.

Anne Laurie, you’re so right: ‘bidness’ is now a religion, and it’s a pernicious one. That and the military mindset go hand in hand. Greed and brutality are not new: the Crusades were a marvellous instance of the two camouflaged by a cloak of religion, and people still believe that crap today. But at least for hundreds of years, business wasn’t considered the central core of human life, whereas it is now, I think. Perhaps I’m not making much sense. I don’t feel I am.

And thanks for the backup, Celticgirl. I was surprised to see folks putting the boot in, and being a loudmouth just had to say something.

Finally, let’s not forget the other September 11th. I just wish that some idiots would realise that behaviour like the first leads to behaviour like the second.

Geez, I’m sorry for coming across as snappy as I did. It’s just that this conspiracy stuff gets me really pissed after a while. It makes us look insane, and there’s no reason for it. Passive conspiracies work just as well as active ones, and they’re a hell of a lot easier to pull off.

Look at it this way: there’s a historical argument to be made that Winston Churchill had intelligence that the Japanese were planning an attack on our Pacific shores, and he had this intelligence *before* December 7. He just chose to NOT pass it on.

I’m not really convinced of this, but WWII is not my thing overall. I’ve been known to argue for the point on a Saturday afternoon over beers with friends, though, so I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it turned out to be true.

And if it is true….I don’t much hold it against Churchill, despite the loss of American lives. Churchill and Roosevelt were both small-d democrats; they both understood the difficulties inherent in leading free peoples during times of conflict and war.

But if you can’t see the difference between Churchill having intelligence that something was going to happen, and Churchill sending buckets of red paint over to the RAF so that they could disguise themselves as zeroes and attack Hawaii, I submit that your sense of perspective is seriously skewed.

I hear you on election stealing, celticgirl, but election stealing is an old, old American passtime – older than baseball, even. It’s never a “national” conspiracy, though – it’s always on the local level, with the local party bosses doing what needs to be done to ensure the vote count comes out the way they need it to. It works just as well for getting “your” mayor elected as it does for ensuring that “your” electoral district goes the way you need it to.

Back in the olden days, we used to call the people who did this, collectively, “political machines”. Think Tamany Hall and the Tweed machine. Political machines still exist – we just no longer have the sort of press that has the intestinal fortitude to report on it anymore, so apparently the American public foolishly thinks the corruption in politics has been “cleaned up” or something.

this probably isn’t as coherent as I’d like, but it’s five thirty in the morning and I’m gonna be late for work. I can clarify anything this afternoon if anybody wants, but this is pretty much where I stand. Vast political conspiracies just don’t happen with the frequency that people want them to, and arguing otherwise makes you start to sound like one of those moon landing faker types after a while.

My favorite story about the moon landing kooks happened a few years ago, when a seventy-six year old Buzz Aldrin cold-cocked the last guy who came up to him arguing that Aldrin had never landed on the moon. Not that I like violence, but any day that somebody’s grandpa lays another guy out with a single punch is a good news day, is all I’m saying. 😉

We have plenty of trolls to kick around

Perhaps. But none as wonderful as Glenzilla commentator nabalzbbfr

“Real” or “fake”, he’s the true heir of Gary Ruppert. And a breath of fresh air in the mostly sycophantic Glenzilla threads.

OMG, Dr. BLT is back with a new song and I’m delighted to say that the passage of time has not resulted in any increase in talent. Still it’s the out-of-tune guitar, the missed notes, the grade school rhymes and the Fox News philosophy that gives Dr. BLT his charming je ne sais quoi.

truth, yeah, come on.

Anne Laurie: Great! Start your own “web log.” Just compile all the goodies you’ve posted here, if nothing else. I was going to say something to the effect of: “HBS is more about back-slapping, glad-handing, & networking than how to run a business,” but you nailed it! And unlike “taller econobloggers” who shall remain nameless, well & clearly written, & not a typo that I could spot!

Qetesh: Thanks for the reminder of other anniversaries. It takes an Australo-Abyssian sometimes.

Hey Jillian, I really wasn’t calling you out – and I do get your point about rabid conspiracy seekers. There is something very seductive about some of those theories, and well meaning people can get sucked into them to the point of no return. Again, I think it comes down to seeking some kind of answer when the whole world looks like it has well and truly gone mad.

As for election-stealing, well I guess Florida 2000 is as close as you can come to a national “conspiracy”. Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, electronic machines, voter suppression – that little scenario had it all. The consequences certainly worked on the national level, wouldn’t you agree?

IMHO, Bushco went in with an agenda (backed up or pushed forward with a lot of PNAC bullshit – you choose) and were very good at leveraging opportunity/circumstance to their nefarious ends. Now, is that a conspiracy? Technically, no. But when you have a blueprint like PNAC’s it can look like it, especially with all this authoritarianism and shredding of the Constitution going on. That shit makes people jumpy. Opportunity (9/11) knocked, and Big Brother answered, in the guise of Dick Cheney and his minions (David Addington, John Woo, etc. ad nauseum). I think this is where Dear Leader got elbowed to left stage in the power grab within the administration.

Conspiracy? No. Evil? Oh Hell Yeah. These fuckers are supremely evil. Be honest, can you seriously look at Big Dick and not think of Dr. Evil?

Now, to more important matters:

zsa said,

September 11, 2007 at 1:53

RubDMC, that would be the kruller, I believe

mmmmmmm…..kruellers!

“OMG, Dr. BLT is back with a new song and I’m delighted to say that the passage of time has not resulted in any increase in talent. Still it’s the out-of-tune guitar, the missed notes, the grade school rhymes and the Fox News philosophy that gives Dr. BLT his charming je ne sais quoi.”

You forgot to answer my question, so I’m afraid I’ll be forced to ask it again. This time, I tuned up my guitar, but about half way into the song, it slipped out of tune again.

What Does 9/11 Mean 2U?
Dr BLT
http://www.drblt.net/music/WhatDoesNine11.mp3

Anne Laurie-

Outstanding post. I would add to it that HBS is very teamwork-oriented, so that Bush hardly ever submitted work under his sole name. Instead, course-work is completed by groups, and given who Bush was it would have been a very worthy investment for classmates to carry Bush through the whole process.

My father went to HBS (class of ’56) and considered the education extremely stressful (he had no connections) and not, in the end, very helpful. The connections made at Harvard can be very valuable, but this comes at the cost of a false sense of competence on the part of recent graduates. The conclusion was that a Harvard MBA graduate was worthless until they had been fired from two jobs.

It is useful to note here that in spite of his incompetence, Bush has never been fired. Having just a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing.

celticgirl – not to be pedantic at all, but I think you might have meant John Yoo, rather than John Woo. although if John Woo WAS one of Cheney’s advisors it would’ve been pretty cool to see the resultant Cheney v Saddam Mexican stand-off (with doves)

Great work, Annie Laurie.

My opinion on the Bush administration’s possible foreknowledge of 9/11 is not so much that they knew it would happen, or let it happen, or even engineered it to happen; instead I believe they were struck, more immediately than the media, by the thought that they SHOULD have known, or that they missed an opportunity, or that they fucked up, and so they spent a lot of time rewriting accounts, hiding shit, chasing their tails, etc.,with the sole purpose of covering up their failures.

I believe Bush’s moment at the elementary school was a moment where an empty-headed leader, managed by incompetent staff, was told to sit tight and play for time while they figured out what the fuck to do with him.

I never in a million years will believe Andrew Card whispered into Bush’s ear what he said he did – “America is under attack”. What I believe he whispered was “Something weird is going on, sit tight till we figure out what to do.”

I think all the official accounts of Bush’s actions that day are designed to make him appear less feckless than he really was.

So – no conspiracy of evil, but a conspiracy of image management.

IMHO, Bushco went in with an agenda (backed up or pushed forward with a lot of PNAC bullshit – you choose) and were very good at leveraging opportunity/circumstance to their nefarious ends. Now, is that a conspiracy? Technically, no.

Technically yes, and it’s one backed up by evidence.

Check out Romney trying to make people forget that Larry Craig was his homeboy until he got busted. He’s all like; “but, but I’ve got a narrow stance, see.”

When opening your mind means the wind whistles through it there’s a problem.

Or, in the words of the immortal Howard Devoto: “My mind, it ain’t so open that anything can crawl right in.”

kavalier said,

September 11, 2007 at 15:58

celticgirl – not to be pedantic at all, but I think you might have meant John Yoo, rather than John Woo. although if John Woo WAS one of Cheney’s advisors it would’ve been pretty cool to see the resultant Cheney v Saddam Mexican stand-off (with doves).
———————————————————————————-
No, dammit I meant film director John Woo – It’s a conspiracy, I tells ya! *hangs head in shame over Woo/Yoo confusion*

Bubba, what I meant was since it was published and available common knowledge, PNAC’s agenda was technically not a secret conspiracy. Maybe we’re splitting hairs on the definition of conspiracy…

Annie Laurie: superb.

I would just add, re Bush, that I used to think he was literally stupid. (Now I try to be amused.) He’s innately intelligent, but so constrained by his psychological issues, including but not limited to unresolved resentment toward Dad (exacerbated, continually, by Dad’s bailing him out of his every fuck-up), fear of Mom (who wouldn’t be afraid of her?), resentment at being labeled the family screw-up/disappointment, and a complete absence of self-awareness. The Bush family’s macho, manly “we’re not big on psychological introspection” is the same as a pyromaniac saying, “I happen to like fire.”

Oh, and there’s that little matter of somewhat sociopathic sadism with the blowing up of frogs w/ firecrackers, in his youf.

Any bets W falls off the wagon after his presidency is over? Or is that too obvious for words? AND leaves Laura?

Bubba, what I meant was since it was published and available common knowledge, PNAC’s agenda was technically not a secret conspiracy. Maybe we’re splitting hairs on the definition of conspiracy…

Probably, but there was an effort to cook the books going into Iraq, PNAC or no PNAC. That’s conspiracy, and it helped that people were cowed by 9/11.

“I believe Bush’s moment at the elementary school was a moment where an empty-headed leader, managed by incompetent staff, was told to sit tight and play for time while they figured out what the fuck to do with him.”

Amen to that, g.

And madd props to Anne Laurie. I agree, get a blog, do a compilation. I’d read it.

I don’t work with many MBA’s, but I do work with plenty of Harvard med students and grads. While most of them are impressively bright, if a bit single-minded, the old joke still stands:

Q – What do you call the person who graduates last in the class at Harvard Medical School?

A – Doctor

One of Frat Boy’s B-school profs spoke out a few years back and said, among other things:

At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that “people are poor because they are lazy.” He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to “free market competition.” To him, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was “socialism.”

There’s an even better account here:

“All Harvard Business School students want to become president of a company one day,” Tsurumi said. “I remember saying, if you become president of a company some day, may God help your customers and employees.”

Oh, and thanks to all for pointing out the name of that Krispy Kreme thang. Around here, a cruller (aka “crullah”) is a bit softer, and before Mitt Romney bought Dunkin Donuts to take them national, they did make the best ones.

I also love their honey dips. Now, a honey dip cruller, well, that’s a true thing of beauty.

But I won’t eat or drink anything from Dunkin Donuts anymore, because every cup of coffee you buy from them puts another nickle in Mitt Romney’s pocket. Ditto for Dominos “pizza,” which I never ate anyway because it is truly the shittiest excuse for what can be the most wonderful food thing.

Of course, Mitt is also an HBS grad…

Oh great, now I’m craving cruellers/kruellers. Where the hell am I gonna get one in rural f*cking Scotland?

Well, that’s the first downside I’ve encountered so far…

“Where the hell am I gonna get one in rural f*cking Scotland?”

First, heat a large pot of fat to about 350 degrees F…

Speaking of Mitt: I’m reading John Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, about lunatic Mormons.

I’d love to ask “Oven” Mitt if he really believes the orthodox line: Joseph Smith, gold plates, Nephri/Laman, etc.

Forget polygamy. Plain old everyday housebroken Donnie-and-Marie Mormonism is absurd enough.

Plain old everyday housebroken Donnie-and-Marie Mormonism is absurd enough.

The Mormon religion is really awesome because you can really say “that’s just fake.” “Reformed Egyptian” my ass.

Romney owns D&D? What the fuck??

The coffee, IMHO, sucks. Order it black with espresso and it still tastes sugar-laden. But I can’t survive without those doughnuts.

Doughnuts are a food group. I was born and raised in Rhode Island, so I’ve eaten D&D’s since birth. If Mom knew how to liquify them, they’d have been in my baby bottle. Even today, there are at least six (!) within a one-mile radius of my house.

Can’t. Survive.

If I suddenly stop posting, assume that I’ve taken one for the team. If I’m still here, I’m a traitor, albeit one smeared with chocolate frosting and festooned with crumbs.

What I want to know is whether or not Mitt Romney is pro sprinkle.

Well, to be fair, there’s a reasonable argument that Mormonism only seems more absurd than mainstream Christianity, etc, because it’s more recent.

Note that this doesn’t go for Scientology. That shit’s just way out there absurd.

That being said, I find all of it reasonably absurd, so there we are.

What I want to know is whether or not Mitt Romney is pro sprinkle.

I’m more interested in knowing what his position on Boston Creme is, myself.

Well, to be fair, there’s a reasonable argument that Mormonism only seems more absurd than mainstream Christianity, etc, because it’s more recent.

What I’m thinking about here is that con-man Joseph Smith could not translate a word of anything, therefore could not translate the plates, therefore the book of Mormon is bullshit.

Christianity is different in that millions around the world are happy to deal with heaven and hell and Christ himself metaphorically.

Well, but that’s the thing: we know more about Joseph Smith’s character and the incidents surrounding the appearance of the Book of Mormon in a historical sense due to it being a relatively recent thing than we do about the relevant parts of the Bible. For example, look at what was thrown out of the New Testament by the early Church, or the whole thing with the Book of James.

The Book of Mormon is, on its face, silly and racist, but I don’t see why, particularly given the benefit of a couple of millennia of historical forgetfulness, it couldn’t be taken as seriously as more mainline Christianity when you treat it metaphorically. Goodness knows there are enough silly things in the Old and New Testaments if you try to treat them as literal things.

Doctrines & Covenants is another story, of course.

Krakauer makes this point, too, Vivek S.

“Those who would assail The Book of Mormon should bear in mind that its veracity is no more dubious than the veracity of the Bible, say, or the Qur’an, or the sacred texts of most other religions. The latter texts simply enjoy the considerable advantage of having made their public debut in the shadowy recesses of the ancient past, and are thus much harder to refute.”

Still, to paraphrase Sam Harris, “The minute you read something about Mormonism, you know it’s bogus.”

Still, to paraphrase Sam Harris, “The minute you read something about Mormonism, you know it’s bogus.”

Well, yeah, I agree. But like I said, I tend to think the same about most takes on the religion thing…so this isn’t me calling Mormonism not absurd, I just don’t think it’s especially more absurd.

“OMG, Dr. BLT is back with a new song and I’m delighted to say that the passage of time has not resulted in any increase in talent. Still it’s the out-of-tune guitar, the missed notes, the grade school rhymes and the Fox News philosophy that gives Dr. BLT his charming je ne sais quoi.”

You never answered my question, so, I’m going to pull a Sean Hannity and ask it again:

What Does 9/11 Mean 2U
Dr BLT copyright 2007 Smash Records
http://www.drblt.net/music/WhatDoesNine11.mp3

By the way, in case you didn’t pay attention to the lyrics, the song is not an confrontation of the left, it is a confrontation of extremism on both ends of the continuum. The “Fox News” shoe doesn’t fit. However, I should be grateful, this is the best compliment on my vocal production that I’ve ever received from you. As far as the guitar-tuning comment is concerned, playing with a guitar that’s tuned has become a hackneyed cliche at best. While anal retentive, purists and perfectionists like you are busy tuning your instruments, the rest of us are writing new songs that you secretly wish you had penned.

so this isn’t me calling Mormonism not absurd, I just don’t think it’s especially more absurd.

It’s not the absurdity I’m talking about though: it’s falsehood and definite proof of same. I think we both agree that Christianity itself is absurd.

“Romney owns D&D? What the fuck??”

Well, actually, they were bought by a syndicate that includes Mitt’s enterprise, Bain Capital.

Control of Dunkin’ Donuts reportedly is shifting back to the Bay State, with Boston private equity firms Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners winning an auction for the Canton company for $2.4 billion, along with other brands owned by Pernod Ricard SA.

Reuters and several other news agencies reported the deal will be announced Monday, citiing unidentified sources. Dunkin’ Donuts management is expected to be retained by Bain, Thomas H. Lee and Carlyle Group of Washington, D.C., which also was part of the syndicate.

Linky

(you might also recognize those fine folks at The Carlyle Group…)

As for that shitty “pizza:”

Domino’s rapidly expanded into a global franchise that now boasts 7,400 franchisee- and company-owned stores. There was bump in the growth curve during the early 1990s, but Monaghan turned it around before selling all but 7% of his stake in 1998 to an investor group controlled by Bain Capital. Monaghan now devotes most of his time to conservative causes, and Bain controls Domino’s with 49% of its voting stock and an unspecified number of nonvoting shares.

Linky 2

So, yeah, the highest volume sellers of two of the four most important food groups (1. Pizza, 2. Beer, 3. Donuts, 4. Ice Cream) – actually 3 out of 4, because the Dunkin deal included Baskin Robbins (shitty ice cream), have Mitt’s fingerprints on them.

Hmmm, is there a pattern here?

Syndicate.

Sounds like and old-timey crime novel.

At least Mitt hasn’t gotten his filthy hands on my beer. Then I’d have to cry my sober self to sleep at night.

So, what you’re saying is: It’s your beer, it’s your party (The Democrat Party, aka Pity Party) and you’ll cry if you want to. Well, what are you going to do if Mitt does take your beer, or at least tax it to death?

Cry, Cry, Cry
Dr BLT cover of Cash classic
http://www.drblt.net/music/crycrycry.mp3

Dr BLT
blog n roll’s ex-troll

“How can you genuinely believe in these kinds of conspiracies and NOT take action? What would it take to get you to act? I think it’s a bunch of game play. But for anyone who believes it, your whole world is a lie. How can you come to any conclusion other than to fight?”

Well, we got this guy here, he does top of the line industrial video, very smart, he says nothing’s stopping any one of us from having his position, there’s no old boys network, it’s all equal opportunity, you just have to work hard and do EVERYTHING right (which I guess means he has, no mistakes). He’s got a well-paying life that leaves him lots of free time to hang out here and snark with the best, not something you could easily give up.

This guy’s got a great line in Vietnam stories, heartbreaking realistic renditions of the fog of war just like the stories you get from real Vietnam vets. Other people have come to rely on him as a kind of moral compass and Vietnam bona fides are like the gold standard for authenticity.

Now imagine, what if he was making it up? Writing skills like his don’t grow on trees, they have to be practiced, developed. Very few people who go through intense trauma like that are able to articulate it so perfectly in prose, even forty years after the fact. Those skills are halfway to faking it, that’s what they’re for, and there’s no shortage of guys like the late Steve Gilliard who know enough details about Vietnam to make stuff up and get the details right, if they want to. A little real military service and you’d have the attitude down, maybe collect some more stories from people who were really (or knew people who were really) there.

So imagine what if you told people about this possibility. How would they respond? Simply acknowledging the possibility that they could have been faked out would make them feel uncomfortable, because you’re attacking their sense of their ability to know right and wrong, their sense of the way the world is. You’re implicitly attacking their judgement, and nobody likes that, especially these days when certainties are fewer all the time and you have a bunch of jackals in the White House redefining words to mean their opposites for political advantage. People like having their beliefs stroked.

So it’s likely these people would respond very negatively. You might gain some belief if you were a well-known member of their community, but as a no-name it’s easier for them just to close ranks and say, that’s a crackpot idea, it’s “just” a conspiracy theory, it’s misinformation, there’s no proof. They’re cognitively invested in believing the world is This Way, and can’t consider evne the possibility they’re wrong.

That, friends, is cognitive dissonance. And it can be used to further political objectives. You can do unthinkable things as long as you keep a happy face to the public. Why no, we’re NOT indiscriminately murdering Iraqi civilians, we’re NOT buying third-world sweatshop shoes, we’re NOT promoting illegal immigration to keep our citizens’ wages low, we’re NOT polluting our water supply with pissed-out pharmaceuticals and industrial waste — how can you SAY that, that’s AGAINST everything we believe in! Deniability is all, the people aren’t ready for the truth, we are the leaders of the common folks, and look at that standard of living! You can buy a plasma screen and an iPhone! Good times!

“How can you genuinely believe in these kinds of conspiracies and NOT take action? What would it take to get you to act? I think it’s a bunch of game play. But for anyone who believes it, your whole world is a lie. How can you come to any conclusion other than to fight?”

Well, my longer answer to this seems to have vanished, perhaps into moderator hell, so for a shorter one I’ll quote the Group News Blog quoting Steve Gilliard:

“What I’m trying to say to you… What Steve Gilliard said to y’all fifteen months ago… This is outside the ontology you committedly and unexaminedly live. To get this requires shifting into a reality-based non-authoritarian quantum world. Any interpretation you make from where you now live will have as much validity as a kid in kindergarten assessing a Ph.D. physics project: “Oh… shiny.” You just can’t get there from here.”

Hokay, shorter posts make it through. Longer answer (in chunks):

“How can you genuinely believe in these kinds of conspiracies and NOT take action? What would it take to get you to act? I think it’s a bunch of game play. But for anyone who believes it, your whole world is a lie. How can you come to any conclusion other than to fight?”

Well, we got this guy here, he does top of the line industrial video, very smart, he says nothing’s stopping any one of us from having his position, there’s no old boys network, it’s all equal opportunity, you just have to work hard and do EVERYTHING right (which I guess means he has, no mistakes). He’s got a well-paying life that leaves him lots of free time to hang out here and snark with the best, not something you could easily give up.

This guy’s got a great line in Vietnam stories, heartbreaking realistic renditions of the fog of war just like the stories you get from real Vietnam vets. Other people have come to rely on him as a kind of moral compass and Vietnam bona fides are like the gold standard for authenticity.

Now imagine, what if he was making it up? Writing skills like his don’t grow on trees, they have to be practiced, developed. Very few people who go through intense trauma like that are able to articulate it so perfectly in prose, even forty years after the fact. Those skills are halfway to faking it, that’s what they’re for, and there’s no shortage of guys like the late Steve Gilliard who know enough details about Vietnam to make stuff up and get the details right, if they want to. A little real military service and you’d have the attitude down, maybe collect some more stories from people who were really (or knew people who were really) there.

So imagine what if you told people about this possibility. How would they respond? Simply acknowledging the possibility that they could have been faked out would make them feel uncomfortable, because you’re attacking their sense of their ability to know right and wrong, their sense of the way the world is. You’re implicitly attacking their judgement, and nobody likes that, especially these days when certainties are fewer all the time and you have a bunch of jackals in the White House redefining words to mean their opposites for political advantage. People like having their beliefs stroked.

So it’s likely these people would respond very negatively. You might gain some belief if you were a well-known member of their community, but as a no-name it’s easier for them just to close ranks and say, that’s a crackpot idea, it’s “just” a conspiracy theory, it’s misinformation, there’s no proof. They’re cognitively invested in believing the world is This Way, and can’t consider evne the possibility they’re wrong.

That, friends, is cognitive dissonance. And it can be used to further political objectives. You can do unthinkable things as long as you keep a happy face to the public. Why no, we’re NOT indiscriminately murdering Iraqi civilians, we’re NOT buying third-world sweatshop shoes, we’re NOT promoting illegal immigration to keep our citizens’ wages low, we’re NOT polluting our water supply with pissed-out pharmaceuticals and industrial waste — how can you SAY that, that’s AGAINST everything we believe in! Deniability is all, the people aren’t ready for the truth, we are the leaders of the common folks, and look at that standard of living! You can buy a plasma screen and an iPhone! Good times!

Kruellers? Crullers? Oh yes. They were the long-extinct race with the awesome technology in Forbidden Planet.
What?
Oh.

Go to sleep,wake up,911 in NY,NY.Do day,read Sadly-No comments from last night.And shit gets all existential!!11!11Have a scone BEEYATCHEZZ!Oh you beautiful bastards…

the exciting world of newspaper advertising, with your host Bobby Owens

http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/239963.php

5. Everyone with common sense