Andrew Shirvell has discovered a new level of being closeted

Wow. I've seen my share of self-loathing right wing closet cases before, but this guy takes it to another level. Also, I'm pretty sure he's mentally retarded.

TARP a success?

If Bush/Paulson/Obama/Geithner's policy worked, then they should get credit where credit's due.

El Rushbo not a fan of science.

Is anyone surprised that the leader of the conservative movement thinks Darwin "screwed up" the human race?

Have your credit cards ready

I love how all of these things are obligated to include Phyllis Schlafly in these things (see also: the 2011 Anti-Erection Calendar) despite the fact that she hasn't been relevant in 40 years simply because she bankrolls so much of the wingnut media gravy train.

Also, straight to DVD. That's how you know it's good.

This is what pathetic looks like.

So sad.

BEST-VALUE LAW SCHOOLS: Tennessee Ranks #11 on a list ranking schools based on high bar passage, low indebtedness, and employment after graduation.

Based on all factors, like you know, how good a law school it is, Tennessee ranks 60th, giving it bragging rights on the University of Kentucky.

There's that soft bigotry of low expectations, again.

Train wreck.

That would officially be one Christine O'Donnell.

Way to go, Teabaggers!

Breitbart, Loser.

Andrew Breitbart is having a bad day. His puppy, James O'Keefe, has gotten himself into a smidgen of trouble. This has not gone unnoticed by Oliver Willis, who casually refers to O'Keefe as part of Breitbart's 'crew.'

For Breitbart, who has shown himself to be totally fine with smearing ACORN and a respected African American federal employee, this is a bridge too far... 



I hope this happens! But only because I also want Breitbart to sue that holier than thou skank The Anchoress, who's used similar language ("So, here we are, the Breitbart crew presents Episode #4 in the Adventures of a Cartoonish Pimp and Ho at ACORN..."). Take one for the team, Oliver.

VDH steps outside his comfort zone

Victorius Davidius Hanson should stick to talking about subjects he knows - namely his all-consuming and not-at-all-kinda-homoerotic obsession with ancient Greek military tactics - and leave the heavy lifting to people who are, if not more intelligent, at least more practiced at being hacks.

Doing so might avoid trainwrecks like this crowd-pleasing explanation of why there would be no outsourcing if taxes were lower and American workers weren't so talentless (compared to the 12 year old Laotians and illiterate adults who make up the manufacturing end of the overseas high-tech industry).

If only we were more like the Spartans...

Sad. Funny.

Yikes! The Christine O'Donnell hilarity has taken a turn for the worse amusing.

Her party is, sensibly, backing the hell away from the Delaware trainwreck, who has lied about pretty much everything.

Luckily, here's Ben Domenech, a fellow whose entire career is a fabrication, to defend her.

Priceless.

CNN:

A conservative activist known for making undercover videos plotted to embarrass a CNN correspondent by recording a meeting on hidden cameras aboard a floating "palace of pleasure" and making sexually suggestive comments, e-mails and a planning document show.

James O'Keefe, best known for hitting the community organizing group ACORN with an undercover video sting, hoped to get CNN Investigative Correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a boat filled with sexually explicit props and then record the session, those documents show.

The plan apparently was thwarted after Boudreau was warned minutes before it was supposed to happen.

James O'Keefe, February 1, 2010:

Well, I think that me and my colleagues, what our goal is to get to the truth. And to expose corruption. And that's my mission in life. And that's what I'm going to continue to do. I still stand behind the fact that investigative journalists have been doing this for years, "Dateline," CBS, "60 Minutes, they built their career on this so I -- that's tradition I'm following and sort of a new age journalism.

Matt Taibbi takes down the Tea Party.

And oh boy, it's a doozie.

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them.

Indeed.

Headline of the Day.

It's Politico ftw:

Black GOP hopefuls could boost ranks – to one

Also, this probably won't happen.

The Least Interesting Sentence in History.

Folks, look no further:

Jim Manzi is living in France.

It's hard to quantify how much I do not fucking care.

Biggest gap ever between rich and poor in US.

The triumph of modern conservatism, in a nutshell.

This is just proof, for people like Putz and McMegan, how many Americans are lazy shiftless people who lack self-discipline.

"Americans' Religious IQ Lacking"

So says CNN.

The only shocking thing is that most Americans, more than 75% of whom are self-identified Christians, can't even get basic Bible questions right. I'm talking about crap that the average atheist could answer, like "What is the first book of the Bible."

Why should we be surprised? Americans treat the Bible the same way they treat the Constititution - like a website Terms of Use agreement. They don't bother reading it, they just click "I agree."

Rich Lowry is a Funny Guy.

No, really. The editor the National Review is, like, Louis CK/Bill Hicks funny:

Given our well-earned reputation for accuracy and independence...

Laughed so hard I cleared my sinuses.

Fuckers.

Putz:

ARE U.S. PORTS still vulnerable to a nuclear 9/11? “The report said DHS has failed to develop a comprehensive strategy to defend the nation against nuclear threats from around the globe despite a 2008 admonition from Congress to do so.”

Oh, suddenly the GOP gives a shit about port security? Really?

Maybe if Putz's idiot pals hadn't bitched about the Dubai Ports World deal -- one of Bush's few good ideas -- we wouldn't be in this mess. So thanks a lot, bedwetter brigade, for leaving New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans port terminals vulnerable. When policy gets made in flyover country, the cities get fucked.

Health care reform unpopular because it was insufficent.

Anyone surprised?

Putz and McMegan and their fellow travelers are in the 25% that don't think "the government should be involved in health care."

But everyone else wants more change, more government, not less.

McMegan makes some more friends.

Hehindeedy!

But...but...the Tea Party is all about economics.

Putz's gal in Delaware.

O’DONNELL: You know what, evolution is a myth. And even Darwin himself –

MAHER: Evolution is a myth?!? Have you ever looked at a monkey!

O’DONNELL: Well then, why they — why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?

Why I hate Glenn Reynolds and Megan McArdle, Part 1,323

Nothing worse than a glibertarian quoting a glibertarian asshole.

Over at 11D, Laura asks a question that's on a lot of minds these days:

'm certain that college (though not many graduate programs) do lead to higher lifetime salaries. However, costs have gotten out of control. Why have tuition rates gone up so much? How does a six figure student loan burden affect a person's future?

As it happens, a recent post by Instapundit offers a possible answer:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we'll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren't causes of middle-class status, they're markers for possessing the kinds of traits -- self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. -- that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn't produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

Where to start?

I guess the GI Bill for one. That big gumnit program worked pretty well in producing a middle class, yes?

See also the tax rates for the wealthiest Americans from 1941-1981, which further subsidized the greatest expansion of the middle class in world history.

Probably fair to say both were successful.

Also, if you happen to born a Bush, do you really need "self-discipline" to acquire a home or go to college? Nah.

Finally, is it funny to anyone else that a professor at a public university thinks his employer "undermines" college education?

Oops.

Putz:

NEW SHOCK POLL: PALADINO WITHIN SIX POINTS OF CUOMO.

Or not.

Just one day after a poll showed his Republican opponent, Carl P. Paladino, with surprising strength in a one-to-one matchup, a new survey from a different polling organization showed Mr. Cuomo with a far wider margin. The new poll (pdf), issued by the Siena Research Institute, showed Mr. Cuomo leading Mr. Paladino by 57 percent to 24 percent, with Rick A. Lazio, who lost the Republican primary but remains in the race on the Conservative Party line, earning 8 percent.

Convenient

America's Shittiest Website engages in some first-class wankery over the ridiculous "Pledge to America" non-issue:

Thursday morning, Republican congressmen are responding to that pressure by making a “Pledge to America.” The inevitable question will be: Is the pledge as bold as the Contract?

The answer is: The pledge is bolder. The Contract with America merely promised to hold votes on popular bills that had been bottled up during decades of Democratic control of the House. The pledge commits Republicans to working toward a broad conservative agenda that, if implemented, would make the federal government significantly smaller, Congress more accountable, and America more prosperous.

So just talk about how awesome it is and ignore the fact that none of this shit will actually happen. That way, in a few years the NRO and its ilk can complain that their ideas are still awesome...if only we would try them.

Liberties.

And I would remind you of the liberties Barry Goldwater, in 1964, wanted to defend. To keep blacks in their place:

The Civil Rights Act, signed July 2, 1964, by President Lyndon Johnson, ended legal discrimination against blacks at hotels, restaurants and department stores. It also made discrimination illegal in hiring. Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee that year, decided to make himself a voice for opponents of the Act.

Goldwater said he supported the white Southern position on civil rights, which was that each and every state had a sovereign right to control its laws. The Arizona Republican argued that each American has the right to decide whom to hire, whom to do business with and whom to welcome in his or her restaurant. The senator was right at home with Southern politicians who called the Civil Rights Act an attack on "the Southern way of life."

Forty-six years later, the Goldwater credo remains a rallying cry for the GOP.

"He ran as a visionary and is acting like a functionary."

Yep.

New GOP agenda remarkably like Bush/Cheney GOP agenda.

Tax cuts, deregulation, abortion, teh gay, etc.

Uh, didn't we just do that for a decade or so?

This is Either the Craziest Threat in History, or Martin Peretz Needs an Editor.

Behold:

Yes, I know it is Israel that is preparing for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. And maybe also America.

Oy.

John Hawkins is a stupid person

Intellectual Chernobyl's resident fratboy - how sad is it to set the bar at Goldberg / Brietbart and still be unable to clear it? - lets "the establishment" know that it gets 7 things wrong about the TeaTards.

1. The Tea Partiers have a radical agenda!

Nobody believes this. It is a sad, Koch-funded rehash of the last 50 years of ultra-conservatism under a new banner. Birchers -> Moral Majoritarians -> Dittoheads -> Teabaggers. Same group of idiots, same ration of horseshit for ideas.

2. These Tea Partiers don't believe in compromise!

Hawkins explains how Washington defines compromise as "giving the liberals everything they want." With Teabaggers in power (suspend disbelief for a moment and imagine it) there will be compromise, redefined as giving the Teabaggers everything they want.

3. The Tea Party is driving away moderates!

No, it's just nominating drooling assheads who can't win general elections.

4. The Tea Party is knocking off important Republicans we need in D.C.!

Put a period after "Republicans" and this is true.

5. These Tea Partiers are just Republicans who will fall in line once the GOP gets power again!

Fall in line with whom? The sane members of the GOP? I'm sure the 'Baggers will be perfectly willing to John Hawkins Compromise with whoever is in power.

6. These Tea Partiers don't understand how politics works!

The Hawk allows that "there are plenty of people at Tea Parties who aren't all that hooked into politics" and "it's fair to say that some of the candidates the Tea Party has backed have turned out to be duds." He goes on to argue that "establishment" Republicans (Crist, etc.) do not understand politics. Having punted the question of whether Teabaggers understand politics, he moves on. That said, Things Tea Partiers Do Not Understand is the longest book in the English language and, when translated, will give Remembrance of Things Past a run for its money.

7. These Tea Partiers just want to say "no" to everything!

Hudson Hawk explains:

Right now, our country is like a car that's heading toward a cliff at 100 mph and the people in charge want to simultaneously speed up and cut the brake lines. Are we supposed to say, "Why don’t we meet you in the middle? Cut the brake lines, slow it down to 55 mph, and we'll stop all our backseat complaining about that cliff. Deal?"

In other words they say no to everything and will continue to do so until everyone perceives politics through the same paranoid, reactionary lens. Or to put it more poetically:

Put a balanced budget amendment, term limits, and a repeal of Obamacare on the agenda and watch how quickly Tea Partiers say "yes." But, until we get the barrel of the gun out of this country's mouth, we have to keep saying "no" when we're asked for handfuls of bullets.

Kind of an odd analogy from a group of people who spend a substantial portion of their time hand-loading ammo in their basements. I mean, who else do we ask for bullets?

Why are these people allowed in polite company?

Holy shit.

The most serious implication of human sexual imprinting for our genetic future is that it would establish the destructiveness of school integration, especially in the middle and high-school years. One can only wonder to what degree the advocates of school integration, such as former NAACP attorney Jack Greenberg, were conscious of this scientific concept. It also compounds the culpability of media moguls who deliberately popularize miscegenation in films directed toward adolescents and pre-adolescents. In the midst of this onslaught against our youth, parents need to be reminded that they have a natural obligation, as essential as providing food and shelter, to instill in their children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage.

Roger Stone for Retards.

So funny, for so many reasons.

As someone mildly skilled in the black arts of oppo research and campaign-related political warfare via the Net...

May Dan Riehl never be cursed with self-awareness.

Please.

I liked Paul Krugman's column just fine until this:

You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence.

...and me? Fella, I get the Fitzgerald reference, but if you have two three homes (one of which cost $1.7 million) and no kids, you're rich. And if you also have a Nobel Prize and a column in the Times, you have more influence than any Times readers -- i.e., "you" --  can possibly imagine.

..."I lead a very privileged life," Krugman notes on his blog.

Glenn Reynolds does love him some hilarious false equivalencies.

Putzy, linking to Powertools:

SCOTT JOHNSON: If Al Franken was able to overcome his personal record to become a United States Senator, Christine O’Donnell certainly can.

Right, because doing coke as a comedy sketch writer in the '70s is really the same fucking thing as saying you "dabbled in witchcraft" and had a date on a "satanic altar" -- while you're presenting yourself as the Jesus candidate.

Genius.

In which the President mischaracterizes the majority of the country as liberals.

Health care reform and war: not good issues to flog liberals with.

DADT, Liz Warren, card check, fine. But Afghanistan and the Aetna/WellPoint bailout?

Not smart.

Uh, Kevin? Might wanna blame the people in charge.

Kevin Drum:

I wish Obama and his staff would knock off these kinds of jibes, but even so it doesn't make sense to go this ballistic over a casual remark at a fundraising event. Maybe we should all ease up a bit on this stuff.

First of all, it's not "just a casual remark at a fundraising event." It's "f***ing retarded." It's "the professional left." It's consistent with a pattern of thumbing your nose at your base. All of which is politically stupid a) in your first term, when you're vulnerable; and b) when the country's in shitty shape.

"Knock off these kinds of jibes"? Is he serious?

Run, Sarah! Run!

Sweet.

Sarah Palin may be edging closer to a 2012 presidential run, telling Fox News "I would give it a shot" if the American people think she's "the one."

If The Quitter runs, Obama is the luckiest politician in the history of politics. To face her twice? And to follow George W. Bush?

Good Deed Friday.

I urge you to kick in a few bucks to Art Campaign,

a billboard art exhibition curated by the Good Children Gallery, an artist-run collective in New Orleans. The first of several artist-run spaces to open in the Bywater neighborhood of the Upper Ninth Ward, Good Children is in its third year of operation and is now a leading contemporary space in the city. We seek to promote a dialogue between contemporary artists living and working locally with artistic and aesthetic themes circulating internationally.

More on Good Children Gallery here. (Disclosure: Jess Bizer, one of the gallery artists, is a long-time best pal. She's also atrociously talented.)

Diversity.

K-Lo got snubbed again!

Martin Peretz on Muslims.

Peretzdossier is wonderful, but only goes back to mid-2005. That lets Marty Peretz off easy. Here's a taste -- with citations! -- of what the rotten bastard was saying about Muslims further back:

• "vainglorious but failed Arab civilization,"¹ 
• "any thoughtful Muslim must conclude that Muslim torments don't count for much in the world,"² 
• "Palestinian nationalism is just another version of Muslim piety,"³  
• "Arabs and Muslims are not all, or even mostly, stickfigure gunmen and bomb throwers,"⁴ 
• "[9/11] ... was a satanic calculus of a certain brand of Muslim piety,"⁵  
• "the Palestinian nation seems to me not yet a faithful community, not yet faithful to itself beyond family or tribe, class, or degree of Muslim piety,"⁶  
• "the Arab populace seems to see peace as a respite before a future war," ⁷ 
• "[France, Spain and Germany] are in at least as much peril as we are--and, given the growing Muslim population in Europe, perhaps more,"⁸ 
• "[Europe's] elites had not foreseen that a virtually unchecked Muslim immigration might hijack the welfare state,"⁹ 
• "a deep truth about much of the Muslim world ... is that it practices a politics of frenzy, that it is gladly feverish, and that it regularly mistakes excitability for authenticity"¹⁰

¹ TNR direct mail, 1991
² TNR, Mar 1994
³TNR, Jan 1996
⁴TNR, Nov 1998
⁵TNR, Oct 2001
⁶TNR, Jan 2003
⁷TNR, May 2004
⁸TNR, June 2004
⁹TNR, Feb 2005
¹⁰TNR, May 2005

Overcompensating Much?

Dan Riehl talks smack:

[I]t seems neither Erick Erickson, nor Ben Domenech have the balls to talk to me on the phone, because I might be mad. A third party has asked me to stand down, because they don't want a fight. What are they, effin' kidding me? You asked for it, Ben. I left you a message hours ago - you chicken sh/t punk. You still haven't taken responsibility for your site's smearing of, first, Mark Levin, and now you are trying to blame it on me. So, here goes, buddy boy.

"stand down"? "punk"? "buddy boy"? When this sap realizes he's just a c-grade wingnut blogger, and not living in a Hemingway story, he's gonna be mighty embarrassed!

Stay classy, Tucker!

Tucker's Folly has a delightful little slideshow entitled "Baby Got Back: Meet Ines Sainz" to affirm that Ms. Sainz dresses like a whore and thus is a fair target for sexual harassment.

I guess they're trying to build female readership this week.

Christine O'Donnell Does Not Like Gays.

By all accounts, Christine O'Donnell has a lot of crazy ideas. It would take a long time to sort them all out. So, in the interest of this monster not getting elected to the Senate, here (via a nexislexis search) are a few of the things she has said about gays, in particular, over the years.

On New York's gay rights parade (2000):

O'DONNELL: But let me tell you something! They -- homosexuals' special rights groups can get away with so much more than nobody else can!

COLMES: Well, what are they getting away with here, Christine? Tell me what you're seeing...

O'DONNELL: They're getting away with nudity!

FAY: Oh, right.

O'DONNELL: They're getting away with nudity! They're getting away with lasciviousness! They're getting away with perversion!

FAY: Oh, Christine...

O'DONNELL: They're getting away with blasphemy!

On Coors' decision to give benefits to gay employees' partners (1995, The Toronto Star):

Christine O'Donnell, press secretary of the 600,000-member Concerned Women of America, said her conservative group opposes the new Coors policy because, "We think that it legitimizes the homosexual lifestyle."

On Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual History Month (1995, St. Louis Post-Dispatch):

Christine O'Donnell, press secretary for Concerned Women, said, "The school system should be used purely for academia and not for social experiments."


..."The U.S. Supreme Court does not recognize the homosexual community as a minority group. We believe homosexuality is a chosen lifestyle, and it is reversible."

On the Ryan White Care Act, which "sought funding to improve availability of care for low-income, uninsured and under-insured victims of AIDS and their families." (1995, Concerned Women for America press release)

The Ryan White Care Act provides money for community-based counseling centers. While that may sound noble and compassionate, we know from experience that "AIDS education" becomes a platform for the homosexual community to recruit adolescents and lure teens into a self-destructive sexual lifestyle.

John Cole's talking to you too, Glenn Reynolds.

A beautiful rant.

I’m seriously psyched about all these teahadist victories, and I want each and everyone of you to vow to help me to never let anyone forget that the jerkoffs at Reason have been pimping the tea parties from day one. I wonder how Angle, O’Donnell, and Miller feel about marijuana legalization, John Stagliano’s occupation, torture, civil liberties, no-knock raids, warrentless wiretaps, military adventurism, and all those things you all pretend to care about?

Oh, you’re gonna get your limited government, Christian style, and you’re gonna get it good, you morons- I may even chip in for the wetsuits and dildo for you special cases at Hit and Run. I can’t blame crazy people for being bat shit crazy, but I sure as hell can heap some scorn on pricks like the Reason writers for running rhetorical cover for the lunatics and helping to mainstream their insanity (I know, I know- you don’t PERSONALLY believe Obama is a Kenyan!). Y’all might as well write for Red State.

Indeed, as should Putzy.

Markos makes a funny.

Heh:

So it's been a great night, and DE-Sen told us all we need to know about the 2012 GOP presidential nomination -- either bring the crazy, or get the hell out of the GOP.

Can't wait.

Outsourcing

I am so fucking tired of trying to keep up with Megan McArdle's stupidity that I am more than happy to outsource the task. Feast upon one of the most epic exercises in McArdle Deconstruction in the history of the internet.

The wingnut circular firing squad.

For a bunch of people who are going to win lots of seats in November, the right is not a happy place right now, thanks to the Teabaggers.

And yes, I'm loving Mark Levin's non-stop Facebook fatwas.

Stop Laughing!

Putz makes a funny:

HOW THE REPUBLICANS COULD LOSE THE TEA PARTY: “If the GOP retakes Congress and doesn’t immediately take on the Tea Partiers’ top issue, the national debt, they face a backlash that could cost them the support of the movement—whose expectations are sky high.”

Please. These dumb motherfuckers aren't going anywhere, mainly because they're long-time Republicans! But let's be serious: Despite my unhappiness with the Dems on many issues, I would sooner have my balls bronzed than vote for one of the mopes these wankers are so fond of. (This includes Paul Ryan, who may be "reasonable" compared to his compadres, but is still totally insane.)

Unlike the teabaggers, my self-awareness prevents me from even pretending this is an option.

George Bush's Very Public Lie.

K-Lo and Keith Hennessey are getting all blubbery about Bush's September 14, 2001 bullhorn speech. "Thanks once again to President George W. Bush for his leadership during this time of national tragedy and crisis," intones Hennessey.

For the record, here, via the AP, is the entirety of Bush's remarks:

I want you all to know that America today - America today is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here, for the workers who work here, for the families who mourn, this nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut, and we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens.

AUDIENCE: George we can't hear you!

BUSH: I can hear you. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA!

BUSH: The nation sends its love and compassion to everybody who's here.

Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for making the nation proud. And may God bless America.

That bolded sentence was, of course, a lie. On that day, three days after the attacks, the White House was already planning to invade Iraq. Moreover, the people who knocked those buildings down -- the 19 hijackers -- were from, variously, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. To my knowledge, none of these countries "heard" from the US. 

But hey, if these assholes want to celebrate what is at best a failure of leadership and at worst a trillion dollar deception, well, that's okay with me.

What a coincidence

Over at Tucker's Folly, some idiot of whom I have never heard decides that "It's Time to Revisit the Balance Between Freedom and Security." Shorter version: "Now that we have a Democratic President, shouldn't we start complaining that the 'War on Terror' is an affront to our individual rights?"

Also, this rhetorical gem:

Led by pressure from thinkers like Ron Paul, a libertarian Congressman and ex-gynecologist who understands the value of pulling out, we seem to be correcting our mistakes. Obama, like most men with prowess, fears premature evacuation.

My Brilliant Analogy: Let Me Show You It.

What is this, 2005?

Via an approving Putz, here's James Taranto:

The reason President Bush did a better job at managing Americans’ mistrust of Muslims is not, as Obama seems to suggest, that the Bush economy was so much better than the Obama one. It is, rather, that Americans, on this matter, trusted Bush. There’s an old Vulcan proverb: Only Nixon could go to China. Bush commanded trust when he spoke up for peaceful Muslims, because Americans understood he was on our side against the terrorists.

Wow. I'm so old I remember when a suggestion of this nature -- that the President is "on the side" of terrorists -- would have made Putz angry. Now, miracle of miracles, he endorses it.

Probably just a librul tryin' to make Tea Partiers look bad.

When Teabaggers attack.

Great national governing party you're building there, Republicans.

And Plymouth Rock was a brave symbol against terror.

An update from The Quitter's alternate history of the United States.

Rick Warren Says Many Offensively Stupid Things.

But this takes the cake:

Brad Thor is a Shitty Reporter.

In July, I tweaked Big Government and its stooge-for-hire, Brad Thor, because their scoop -- that Mullah Omar was in US custody -- hadn't panned out. Thor got pretty pissy and made it known he wasn't pleased with our little "blog site."

Anyway, here's the AP from a few days ago...

KABUL, Afghanistan – The Taliban's shadowy leader told Afghans on Wednesday that the insurgents are winning the war and warned Americans that they are wasting lives and billions in tax dollars by continuing in the conflict.

In an end-of-Ramadan message posted on jihadist websites and relayed by the Site Intelligence Group, the Taliban leader also said the Americans and their allies will soon leave the country. He urged his fighters to adhere to his code of conduct and avoid harming civilians — instructions U.S. commanders say the Taliban frequently ignore.

"The victory of our Islamic nation over the invading infidels is now imminent and the driving force behind this is the belief in the help of Allah and unity among ourselves," Mullah Omar said. "In the time to come, we will try to establish an Islamic, independent, perfect and strong system."

In remarks directed to the American people, Mullah Omar said the U.S. military had failed to achieve its objectives after nearly nine years.

All of which is to say that Rick Sanchez is probably a better reporter than Brad Thor and Breitbart is a retarded asshole.

Journalism 101

World Nut Daily headline: U.S. soldiers to be subjected to "mind control"

The phrase "mind control", included in the headline in quotation marks, appears nowhere in the story.

McArdle punked, again.

Geez, this is getting embarrassing.

Why hasn't Larry Summers been fired? (cont'd.)

Frank Rich sees the problem, too.

So again, for the sake of accountability, why hasn't he been fired?

Define "more sensible" pls.

Hmmmm.

I don’t really know what to say anymore, beyond the fact that I wouldn’t have thought Barack Obama coming into office and implementing more sensible policies would end up with the idea of a full-bore civilizational struggle against Islam moving closer to the American mainstream.

As I noted in comments, hasn't Obama augmented the Bush/Cheney War on Terror?

Top 5 Craziest Things Putz Wrote on 9/11.

1.

Hysterical overreaction is a major danger of terrorism; yielding to it plays into the terrorists' hands. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that the people who need to hear this message aren't reading InstaPundit.

2.

Cruise missiles are fine, but this can't be one of those Bill Clinton wham-bam-I've-bombed-you-ma'am specials. Whoever we decide is responsible must be obliterated sufficiently to ensure that this won't happen again. I just hope we know what we're doing on this.

3.

Clinton was always concerned about looking like a bully. Bush needn't worry about that. It will be open season -- not just militarily, but economically, diplomatically, and every other way -- on any and every Arab country that Bush wants to target.

4.

ARAB COUNTRIES that want to escape the consequences had best start sucking up to Bush right away...

And finally...

GEORGE BUSH IS NOW THE MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD: People always say that about Presidents, of course, but usually it's only notionally true. Now, if he wants to nuke Baghdad, there is nobody to say him nay -- and damned few who would want to. That's a danger if he goes off half-cocked, but I don't think there's much risk of that.

McMegan really should leave the analysis to the grownups.

Owie-ow-ow.

You'd think she'd eventually get shamed and stop writing this Randian bullshit, but nah. She'll be back.

Uh, who cares who Rush Limbaugh went to HS with?

WTF?

Not that I care about El Rushbo's reputation -- it's exactly the kind of game the right-wing loves to play.

Hilarious.

Marty Peretz:

In any case, there are more Islamic fanatics in the world than anyone is willing to admit.

Yes, greater wingnuttia has been really OTR, on the QT, and very H-H about the Muslim Menace thing. Christ...

I'm sure this was the plan all along.

Someone probably told The Quitter that using dead Americans to enrich her bank account wasn't a wise move for a presidential candidate.

Meghan McCain is all tits and no brains, unlike...

Dan Riehl tapers off his Thorazine long enough to croak out a particularly wonderful rant against Meghan McCain (who, if you're not keeping up, is widely loathed in wingnut circles for her insufficiently wingnutty worldview).

This message might just as well be directed to Meghan McCain. But, really, would there be a point to that? Okay, there are actually two points of her's with which she seems obsessed, given a now infamous Tweet and a passage in her new book. I'm seeing a pattern here, distinctively D cup and out of date. The real female players on the Right today bring a lot of intellectual heft. And, Meghan, well, ... enuf said about that. No need to belabor a point, or even two, in American society today. That's contemporary, if you want to look it up, dear. Meghan's version of the hot n tot is actually waaay Nineties and over with at this point. She just doesn't know it, yet.

Hear that, Tits McGee? You need to bring serious "intellectual heft" to the table before people like Dan Riehl will angrily masturbate on his laptop while staring at your picture take you seriously. Like...

Jedediah Bila, one of several younger, more with it and engaged women stepping up in Right-side politics today weighs in on our current political environment.

Ah, yes. Quite the rocket scientist. Take a look at some of Jeddy's previous work. And note that Riehl's link takes you to something called "The American Association of Mature Citizens" website. Jedediah, your ship has come in!

Any other examples, Dan?

There have been ground breakers going back years, up to and including the likes of Sarah Palin, or Michele Bachman, Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter, who were already here.

Our Intellectual Heft: Let Us Show You It.

Restoring honor to 9/11 by selling tickets.

Those patriots, Glenn Beck and The Quitter, see 9/11 on the calendar and think -- "Hey! Great money-making opportunity!"

The Terrorists Have Indeed Won -- Ten Times Over.

Nearly nine years after Wingnut Christmas, it's equal parts scary and satisfying to see conservatives admit what we suspected all along -- they're a legion of racist bedwetters for whom there was never a distinction between invading Iraq/Afghanistan and simply killing Muslims -- even though Bush said otherwise. Take Andy McCarthy, for example.

We have been instructed in the need for special sensitivity to the unceasing demands of Islamic culture and falsely accused of intolerance by the people who wrote the book on intolerance. Americans have sacrificed blood and bottomless treasure for Islamic peoples who despise Americans — and despise us even more as our sacrifices and gestures of self-loathing intensify. Americans have watched as apologists for terrorists and sharia were made the face of an American Muslim community that we were simultaneously assured was the very picture of pro-American moderation.

Not anymore, motherfuckers! "Americans have had our fill," he writes. "We are willing to live many lies."

There's a palpable sense of relief here -- for Mr. McCarthy, the days of pretending Muslims are human beings are over.

Garth, that was a haiku.

What the fuck.


I mean, seriously. What the fuck.

Outsourcing my Glenn Reynolds posts to Tbogg.

Hehindeedy.

It's notable that Putz's reaction to the Discovery Channel nutter was "librul librul Al Gore is fat" -- and his reaction to the anti-gay, liberal hating right-wing Knoxville shooter (pictured above) was,

HMM: Neighbors: Accused shooter everyone's friend, hated Christianity. "The man accused of a mass church shooting this morning was described by his Powell neighbors as a helpful and kind man, but one who had issues with Christianity."

A fitting tribute

I like to commemorate Labor Day with a steaming pile of bullplop about the menace of "card check" and "big labor" from the President of the "National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation."

Thank god someone is out there on the frontier protecting our right to be fired without cause.

Drudge: Petraeus=DFH.

Subtle:

Larry Summers and Rahm Emmanuel were wrong. Shouldn't they be fired?

For those who apparently don't know why the stimulus is too small.

The most important question facing Obama that day was how large the stimulus should be. Since the election, as the economy continued to worsen, the consensus among economists kept rising. A hundred-billion-dollar stimulus had seemed prudent earlier in the year. Congress now appeared receptive to something on the order of five hundred billion. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate, was calling for a trillion. Romer had run simulations of the effects of stimulus packages of varying sizes: six hundred billion dollars, eight hundred billion dollars, and $1.2 trillion. The best estimate for the output gap was some two trillion dollars over 2009 and 2010. Because of the multiplier effect, filling that gap didn’t require two trillion dollars of government spending, but Romer’s analysis, deeply informed by her work on the Depression, suggested that the package should probably be more than $1.2 trillion. The memo to Obama, however, detailed only two packages: a five-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar stimulus and an eight-hundred-and-ninety-billion-dollar stimulus. Summers did not include Romer’s $1.2-trillion projection.

Heckuva job, Larry.

Sorry, there's simply no way to blame the Republicans for this.

Why isn't "Free Market Day" a national holiday?

Since our Labor Day Holiday has its roots in organized labor and gasp!, socialism, I think conservatives should boycott it.

I can haz accountability?

It's obvious Obama's economic team screwed the pooch on the one big thing they had to do.

It's not too late, of course -- but who's getting fired for the screw up?

$3T price tag for Iraq War probably too low.

This should be thrown in the face of every Republican in the Fall.

There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn't include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.

As a result of two costly wars funded by debt, our fiscal house was in dismal shape even before the financial crisis -- and those fiscal woes compounded the downturn.

And just for shits and giggles, here's Jane Galt in 2003.

The war will certainly cost more than the $60b and change that the President is asking for. But it is not going to run us several trillion dollars (though even if it did, that would work out to less than 0.1% of GDP over the next 20 years.)

Haley Barbour: Southern right-wingers ended Jim Crow.

Yeah, not so much.

"The people that led the change of parties in the South ... was my generation," the 62 year old Barbour told an interviewer from Human Events. "I went to an integrated college. Never thought twice about it. And it was the old Democrats who had fought for segregation so hard. By my time, people realized that was the past, it was indefensible, wasn't going to be that way any more."

Hahahaha!

Barbour says,

"I don't know what possessed me, other than my oldest brother came home from the Army a Goldwater Republican in 1965."

Now why was that?

Could it have been that Civil Rights Act of 1964 thing that Goldwater opposed? Here's the states he won.


Amazingly, Mississippi went Republican!

Nice try, Haley.

Your GOP, 2010.

Johnson:

Has right wing American politics reached such a fever pitch of insanity that this is now a winning strategy — to simply cut yourself off from all possible challenges to your views, and run away from reporters?

Yes.

This has been another...

Yeah, because being wrong about everything has hurt Republicans so much.

Yeesh, Matt's just wrong here on so many levels. The entire conservative movement is built on lying to the choir, and it's been wildly successful in this country.

Iraq? Had WMD.
Global warming? Fake.
Tax cuts? Increase revenue.
Obama? A Marxist.

What are they right about? And they're about to take over the House of Representatives!

Anyway, I haven't read it, but as a marketer, I think American Taliban is coming out about 6 years too late.

Back in 2004, it would've been great. The Taliban had aided the people who attacked us in 2001, and the GOP was exploiting the war against them for political gains. And back then, Talibangelicals like Tom DeLay were running the GOP, and the religious right had a hotline to the White House.

But now? Feels a little dated.

Still, the liberal hand-wringing over it is deeply silly.

Shoulda listened to Paul Krugman.

Romer admits stimulus was too small.

So who should get fired over this?

There's No Pleasing the Retards.

Peter Kirsanow says that Obama's Iraq speech was

an insult to every American who believes in American exceptionalism.

Yeah, but in fairness, these people also believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Laffer Curve.

Totally not racist.

World Nut Daily: The lame-stream media lies when it says the Beck crowd was all white! There were in fact three black people there (two of whom were invited speakers) thankyouverymuch.

And isn't Albert Pujols, like, Mexican or something?

VDH talks in circles; film at 11

Victor Davis Hanson on America's Shittiest Website^tm:

Are we supposed to think that after 20 months a president is responsible for his own record (e.g., Bush need not be credited for his lonely, but critical support for the surge that allowed the withdrawal),

A few sentences later:

“Turning a page” is no more wise than promising a withdrawal target date. If Anbar breaks out tomorrow in violence, surely we will turn back a page to offer at least air support, if not more, to Iraqi forces. The terrorists know that as well as we do.

So, if I follow this correctly, the surge worked and withdrawal means Bush Was Right and We Won, but it isn't wise to start promising withdrawals because unstable areas of the country could conceivably erupt in violence, like, tomorrow.