Fallout in Houston From the Vigilante Case

The outrageous decision not to indict a Houston man who ignored repeated requests from a 911 operator not to shoot two men burglarizing his neighbor's home has forced a US Congresswoman to call for an inquiry into how they do business down there:

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has called for a congressional inquiry into the state's most populous county, saying recent events show that its legal system "has been tarnished." The Democrat primarily cited a recent Harris County grand jury decision not to indict a suburban homeowner who shot to death two men he suspected of burglarizing a neighbor's home.

"As far as many are concerned, justice was not rendered," said Jackson Lee, speaking at news conference Sunday. "There needs to be a question about how the case was presented. Was there no basis for this individual to be tried by a jury of his peers?"

Jackson Lee said her call for a federal inquiry also was spurred by a string of other controversial cases and scandals involving Harris County criminal justice agencies.

"With the many misgivings surrounding the Harris County legal system, it is fair to say that this local judicial system has been tarnished," Jackson Lee said. "It is time for all officials to be held accountable and true justice and democracy to be restored."

This is the story that Lee is referring to:

A Harris County grand jury on Monday ended the rancorous seven-month debate over Pasadena resident Joe Horn's decision to gun down two illegal immigrant burglars in his front yard, concluding the act was a justifiable use of deadly force and not murder.

The grand jury heard two weeks of testimony from witnesses, including Horn. They likely also heard his breathless 911 call, during which the increasingly frustrated retiree ignored a dispatcher's pleas to stay inside and out of harm's way. The Nov. 14 call ended with the sound of Horn racking a shell into his 12-gauge shotgun's chamber followed by three gunshots that killed Colombians Diego Ortiz, 30, and Hernando Riascos Torres, 38.

Each man was shot in the back. They had taken about $2,000 in the burglary.

Horn's defense hinged on his assertion that he fired out of fear for his life, making the shooting justifiable under Texas law. The law also permits the use of deadly force to protect property under some circumstances.

Having heard the 911 tape, I can tell you that there is no reason Horn should have been allowed to go free. He is the classic vigilante, confused, emotional and freaked out by the experience, not calm and collected. He is told, plainly and clearly, by the dispatcher to do nothing. He is told to put his gun down. He runs outside, yells, "move and you're dead!" at the men, and shoots both of them in the back. Moments later, the police arrive, and they almost certainly would have caught both of the men.

I hope the Congressional inquiry accomplishes something, because there is something wrong with our country--and it isn't guns. It's the idiots who get guns who don't know how to use guns or do what they're told.

Debunking Wingnut Bullshit, Talk Left Style

It doesn't get any better than this:

I noted last night that a supply of uranium from Iraq had been successfully moved to Montreal in secrecy.

If you check into this, you'll quickly find that the uranium a) was not weapons grade and b) was well known to the UN and IAEA and was being stored legally by Saddam's government. It was legally in Iraq according to international law.

I wondered if the right wing echo chamber would use this as "proof" that the WMD claims were true after all. I got even better than I hoped, as not only do they use it that way, but they reveal how dishonest they are by the way they have done this.

Yes--Iraq had yellowcake uranium. And they had it legally, and with the blessing of the international community. Makes a wingnut's head explode, doesn't it?

--WS

Freeper Ignorance of the American Flag

Found this by accident. I wanted to find some really cool colors and pictures to post for this weekend, but when I found THIS, well, it became a much better post by throwing what I had planned out the window.

Some idiot Freeper started saying "ding ding ding!" and started jumping up and down because he THOUGHT he spotted an unpatriotic display of the American Flag at a protest in Berkley, California last spring:


CAPTION from FreeRepublic.com:

Flag in distress? Vietnam beads & a rat tail!

Hope I don't know him!

Semper Fi

First of all, dumbfuck--your "Semper Fi" is a little out of place for someone who is obviously a non-Marine. Anyone with any brains at all--any brains at all--will tell you that the flag sewn on the leather jacket of the gentleman in the picture is NOT an American flag in distress. An American flag in distress is displayed upside down. The American flag pictured here is stars to the front, as in, what a warrior would carry into battle.



See? See how the flag on this soldier's uniform looks?



What a great object lesson for this holiday weekend--there is no shortage of denigrating wingnuts and fuckheads who know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER about this country who will spout off at the drop of a hat against another American without even bothering to actually fucking know what they're talking about.

Is this still America? Sometimes, I just sit here and shake my head.

--WS

Refuting the Idiotic Assertions of K-Lo

It's super-bonus wingnut-debunking time--and why not go with a slam-dunk and take some K-Lo (Kathryn Jean Lopez) out for a good debunking?

Today, she gets some valuable exposure from the folks at CBS News.com:

George Bush may have gone to war for Halliburton and or his daddy but at least he wasn’t getting us attacked in New York and Washington again. During the 2004 campaign, Clark explained that President Bush “was focused single-mindedly on missile defense, the centerpiece of his foreign policy.” And so: “George Bush was sworn in in January 2001- a full nine months before the attacks. That day he took the oath that every commander-in-chief of our nation has taken: to defend our nation and to protect the lives of the American people. But for nine months he did not live up to that oath.”

As always, the facts surface and K-Lo is left holding her plentiful sack of lies...

According to Clark: “They [the administration] disregarded the warnings of the intelligence community and the Clinton administration on what the greatest threat to America was. They marched to their own drumbeat and they got caught out of step and it cost 3,000 people their lives in this country.”

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S

It does beg the question of what exactly the Democrats who were in the White House before Bush did to prevent 9/11. But that would suggest Clark should be held accountable for his words, something the U.S. media hasn’t bothered to do. If we did, Clark would not be an Obama foreign-policy adviser, he would have never been on "Face the Nation" as an Obama surrogate, he would have never been a Hillary adviser ridiculously arguing that Clinton’s experience exceeds McCain’s.

He did a hell of a lot more than Bush ever did.

Conservatives should not let this Clark moment pass. Barack Obama should distance himself from efforts to dishonor McCain’s military service. Obama should be disappointed and saddened. This is not the Wesley Clark he knew. And he should drop Wesley Clark as an adviser. That would be general progress away from the paranoid style of American politics.

Right after McCain drops all of the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth (like Bud Day), the lobbyists who think that if terrorists strike the US that it would be good for McCain (like Charlie Black), and anyone else who is incapable of understanding that Wes Clark isn't the bad guy here--the bad guy is the guy who forgot to hide what was in McCain's military records.

--WS

Lara Logan Targeted By The Right Wing Media

Remember how CBS Correspondent Lara Logan criticized the media and the lack of coverage on the major networks of the Iraq War? Well, this is pushback:

Tale of the love fight first broke on the freerepublic.com in December.

The scandal comes just as the former model's journalistic career is starting to skyrocket.

It's a stunning turn of events for the respected journalist, who once told The Washington Post that she "has no social life."

Yesterday, CBS announced, without a hint of irony, that she was given a new Washington assignment as chief foreign-affairs correspondent. She joined the network in 2002 and became a "60 Minutes" correspondent in 2006.

The network touted her as the only American reporter who was in Baghdad when the United States invaded in 2003.

That's their source? Free Republic dot freakin' com?

Logan's prestigious assignment as the chief foreign-affairs correspondent is going to be scrutinized and attacked--she covered the Iraq War as well as anyone else and never pulled any punches.

It's a wonder she's still alive, actually. She's been shot at more times than any of the people from the right wing coming after her. How sad is it that a woman born in South Africa who works for CBS news has more combat experience than the majority of Republican members of the House, the Senate, and the Bush Administration itself?

--WS

No, the Iranians DO NOT have a missile that can hit the United States

Via Think Progress, we get one of the most insane and batshit crazy pieces of unadulterated fear mongering and out-and-out stupidity I have seen this year.




Dumbasses...

No, the Iranians do NOT have any missile, of any kind whatsoever, that can actually hit an installation in the continental United States of America.

--WS

Kathryn Jean Lopez Is a Disgrace

Plus, she's a grade "A" moron of the first order. Here, she weighs in on Hillary Clinton by bringing up a book written by the late Barbara Olson.

Throughout the Clinton campaign, I’ve had this pang of anger that Barbara Olson couldn’t weigh in on Hillary’s run for the White House. Barbara could see the “Hillary for President” signs. There were too many signs in Hillary’s life pointing in the direction of the Oval Office for herself. Moreover, Barbara knew the Clintons didn’t have it in their blood to disappear from the national political stage.

Barbara Olson, of course, was murdered in the plane en route to California that hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

In her book, “Hell to Pay”, which chronicled Hillary’s pre-Senate political experience and ideology, Barbara wrote:

At one of her lunches with John Robert Starr at Little Rock’s Café Saint Moritz in 1989, there was a lapse in the conversation about Bill’s ambitions for national office. Starr took the opportunity to ask Hillary what she wanted to do. “She leaned toward me,” he recounted, “eyes ablaze, and said in as an intense voice as I have ever heard, ‘I want to run something!’”

Doesn't Lopez run the online portion of National Review? Women who want to "run something" are suspect, right? Ambition is something to be reviled, apparently. Unless you're a Republican, of course.

Olson's book was merely one of many titles spewed out by conservative publishing house Regnery in the 90s, and was never a serious candidate for being "archived" or respected as a book about Hillary Clinton. It was cheap fodder for quickie buys at the bookstore, part of the wingnut welfare that flowed during that time and allowed a small cottage industry to spring up. Hate the Clintons? Here's ANOTHER Regnery book for YOU! Conservative authors wrote so many that one could hardly blame Olson for contributing hers to the pile. Olson is no longer alive to defend herself. She has become a favorite martyr of pundits like Lopez--and the trick is to simply deflect criticism from herself by citing the work of the late author.

Olson concluded her book:
The Clinton years might seem like a long national nightmare of scandal, sleaze, and ruthless acquisition of power. Hillary herself is the link from the excesses of the Watergate staff, to the Whitewater fiasco, to the abuses of executive power, to the defense of her husband’s perjury and obstruction of justice. But now it is Hillary’s turn. The Clinton era is far from over and Hillary’s ambitions far from satisfied.

The problem with that is, we're living the nightmare of the Bush Administration, which is a thousand times worse than any wingnut could imagine under the Clintons. Ten thousand times worse. One could never imagine a President lying to take us to war. One could also never imagine a Presidential spokesman coming forward, hangdog with shame and guilt, to expose the lies that were told, either. We are looking at $4 bucks for a gallon of gas, a permanent presence in Iraq, almost 4,100 dead soldiers, over thirty thousand wounded, over a trillion dollars pissed away, habeas corpus suspended, signing statements that tell Congress to stuff it, runaway debt, runaway spending, incompetence on a scale never before seen in our government, and our ability to defend ourselves shattered because of a broken military.

Lopez is a disgraceful idiot because she can't stop obsessing about the Clintons well after that ship has sailed; her intellectual dishonesty shines through because what word never appears in her column?

"Bush."

Look for a lot of these wingnuts to run from that word.

--WS

Well, since it's that simple, I want to play too!

Appearing on right-wing blow-hard Mike Gallagher's radio show on Thursday, Tom DeLay played the lazy-assed republican game of "prove you aren't" by asserting that Barack Obama is a "Marxist" and unless he [Obama] stops what he is currently doing and proves the allegations of an irrelevant criminal thug false, then they are, to wit, true.

Explaining that Obama clinching the Democratic nomination is a good thing for John McCain, DeLay said Obama's "weakness" is that "nobody knows him."

"And if McCain does not define him as what he is — hey, I have said publicly, and I will again, that unless he proves me wrong, he is a Marxist," DeLay said.

The radio host agreed with DeLay, who is facing money laundering charges, saying Obama is "desperately trying to cover up what seems to be the kind of old school Marxist radical liberal failed ideology."

"Absolutely," DeLay said. "No doubt about it."

Really? It's that simple? All I have to do is say it, and it becomes incumbent upon you to disprove the allegation?

Cool! I can do this, too! How's this?

Tom DeLay is a pederaster and a satanist, and worse still...he blows goats! He has to prove to me that he has never blown a goat in his entire life, or my charges are true and he's a deviant goat-blower. And if he can't provide evidence that I am wrong, I am, by default, right!

I think I like this game!

~~BG

Everything Stupid Revolves Around Golf

...or maybe not. But when you look at the plans for the Green Zone in Iraq, one gets the sense that there is an overemphasis on "golf" and an underemphasis on "roads, sewage, and electricity."

A $5 [billion]tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a "dream" makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors. About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US state department or private foreign companies.

The US military released the first tentative artists' impression yesterday. An army source said the barbed wire, concrete blast barriers and checkpoints that currently disfigure the 5 sq mile area would be replaced by shopping malls, hotels, elegant apartment blocks and leisure parks. "This is at the end of the day an Iraqi-owned area and we will give it back to them with added value," said the source, who requested anonymity.

Really? We're going to just "give it back to them?" What if they decide they want to tear everything down and replace it with bombed out buildings, canals running full of raw sewage or a dumping grounds for executed militiamen? Will we say no?

Potential investors are being encouraged to take a punt that years ahead, Baghdad's fortunes may mirror former war-torn cities such as Sarajevo and Beirut that have risen from the ashes.

Marriott International has already signed a deal to build a hotel in the Green Zone, according to Navy Captain Thomas Karnowski, the chief US liaison. Also in the pipeline is a possible $1bn investment from MBI International, a hotel and resorts specialist led by Saudi sheikh, Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber.

One Los Angeles-based firm, C3, has said it wants to build an amusement park on the Green Zone's outskirts. As part of the first phase, a skateboard park is due to open this summer.

American officials stress that final decisions about reconstruction and development rest with the Iraqi government. Karnowski added that as well as the benefits of renovating and demilitarising an important area of Baghdad, the blueprint would help to create a "zone of influence" around the massive new US Embassy compound being built on the eastern tip of the Green Zone. The $1bn project to move the embassy from Saddam's old presidential palace is planned for completion later this year.

How's that going, by the way? Pretty good, I hear.

"When you have $1bn hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbours are. You want to influence what happens in your neighbourhood over time," Karnowski told Associated Press.

He acknowledged that any project would face formidable difficulties: "There is no sewer system, no working power system. Everything here is done on generators. No road repair work. There are no city services other than the minimal amount we provide to get by."

There is also the not insignificant matter of the dire security situation. Shia militants under attack from US and Iraqi forces elsewhere in the capital have been launching volleys of rockets on the Green Zone for much of the last month.

Despite the apparent Pentagon enthusiasm, other US officials in Baghdad seemed more sceptical. "We approach this with perhaps a dose of realism," offered one. "These are issues for the Iraqis to discuss. We do not own the International Zone, and its future is really up to the Iraqis."

For many Baghdad residents, the Green Zone has been a no-go area for years, first under Saddam and now under the occupation. "What do I care?" shrugged one, Ahmed Hussein. "I don't have electricity, I don't have fresh water and I don't have a job.

Don't like to play golf in a war zone? Too bad, moonbats! We're going to be there for a hundred years! Better get used to it. And the only way we're going to help Ahmed Hussein find a job and live a life of luxury is to put up a multi-billion dollar resort designed to appeal to craven, fat white men who like to play golf. What will then happen is that Ahmed can get a job fishing golf balls out of the Tigris for a dollar per thousand. If it can work in this country, it can work anywhere, right?

A New GI Bill Is Needed Immediately

Freshman Senator James Webb of Virginia is trying to bridge a critical gap between the cost of a college education and a promise made to our Veterans:

Congressional advocates of an update to the Montgomery GI Bill gathered for an impressive show of force Tuesday afternoon, pressing for swift passage of the measure.

The bill, primarily sponsored by Vietnam veterans Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) would cover the full cost of tuition at a public state university for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and provide a monthly living stipend.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) and over 25 veterans’ advocacy organizations all participated in a rally for the bill on the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

“At its heart, this bill is about helping a large and deserving group of young men and women readjust to the civilian life that we enjoy because of the sacrifices they make wearing that uniform,” said Reid.

The cost of everything is rising, and that includes the cost of going to college. That rise in costs has not been matched by an adequate increase in GI Bill benefits:

"These are people . . . who served the country at a time when very few people did," said Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), who is pushing a bill that would expand benefits for veterans, including active-duty guards and reservists, to cover the cost of the most expensive public universities and to match contributions from private schools with higher tuition, for four academic years. "We should give them the best shot at a good future."

An earlier version of the bill stalled in Congress; the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs opposed it as too expensive, too complex to administer and too likely to tempt troops to move back to civilian life. The bill, substantially revised, now has 58 co-sponsors, including both Democratic presidential candidates.

There are dozens of other bills, including one announced last week by senators including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), also a presidential candidate. Hundreds of supporters of Webb's bill plan to rally today on Capitol Hill.

Many people enlist to earn money for college, and almost everyone signs up for the education benefits -- which, in the case of the main GI Bill, requires a service member to pay about $1,200 into the plan-- but not everyone takes advantage of it. And that buy-in is not returned even if the benefits are unused.

About 70 percent use at least some part of it, said Keith Wilson, director of the education service, but the VA does not track how many earn degrees.

An independent study found that just over half use some part of the benefits, said Ray Kelley of AMVETS, a veterans support group, and only 8 percent use all. "Congress is realizing we're not giving them the benefits we say we're giving them," Kelley said. "They only have 36 months from the time they start using it to the time they finish." That means going to school full time, year-round.

Students apply for the flat-rate benefit monthly and get a check once it is confirmed that they are still enrolled. Luke Stalcup, 27, of Student Veterans of America, who served in Iraq and will attend Georgetown University for graduate study in the fall, said he paid his rent late every month after the GI bill check came in. Now he relies on loans and scholarships to cover the rest of the cost at Columbia University.

That's right--very few people did serve. This bill is so solid, only the craziest wingnuts are opposing it. Why should they care? These Veterans are never going to vote for them in the future. They don't have a powerful lobby in Washington D.C. that can help prop up a campaign fund. Taking care of the people who served is an idea that is actually under siege as we speak--more and more, the wingnuts are fleeing from the Bush doctrine of government by incompetents and returning to their old song and dance--pissing on everything that happened in the 1960s and the 1930s in the hopes of conjuring a Ronald Reagan who can appear and give them a conservative icon to worship:

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things - using the mantra of “change” endlessly - the cold fact is that virtually everything has says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

Protecting criminals, attacking business, increasing government spending, promoting a sense of envy and grievance, raising taxes on people who are productive, and subsidizing those who are not - all this is a re-run of the 1960s.

We paid a terrible price for such 1960s notions in the years that followed, in the form of soaring crime rates, double-digit inflation, and double-digit unemployment. During the 1960s, ghettoes across the countries were ravaged by riots from which many have not fully recovered to this day.

The violence and destruction were concentrated not where there was the greatest poverty or injustice but where there were the most liberal politicians, promoting grievances, and hamstringing the police.

Internationally, the approach that Senator Obama proposes - including the media magic of meetings between heads of state - was tried during the 1930s. That approach, in the name of peace, is what led to the most catastrophic war in human history.

Everything seems new to those too young to remember the old and too ignorant of history to have heard about it.

History? You mean the history of Republican Party politics from the 1930s, which encouraged doing business with Hitler and tore into Roosevelt for trying to help Britain? Remember lend lease? Remember when Roosevelt wanted to start preparing for war--he was fought every step of the way by Republican politicians. When the war was nearly upon us, the Republican Party was isolationist and unpatriotic to extremes that were conveniently forgotten once we banded together, joined our allies and defeated our enemies.

Modern conservatives have a deep, black hole in their memories--and let me fill it with some information about a certain Republican who, by the 1950s, was called "Mr. Republican" and was, in effect, the spiritual leader of the conservative movement:

Robert A. Taft:

A staunch non-interventionist, Taft believed that America should avoid any involvement in European or Asian wars and concentrate instead on solving its domestic problems. He believed that a strong U.S. military, combined with the natural geographic protection of the broad Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, would be adequate to protect America even if the Nazis overran all of Europe. Between the outbreak of war in September 1939 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 Taft opposed nearly all attempts to aid Allied forces fighting the Nazis in Europe. His outspoken opposition to aiding the Allied forces earned him strong criticism from many Republican liberals, such as Wendell Willkie and Thomas E. Dewey, who felt that America could best protect herself by fully supporting the British and other anti-Nazi forces. Although Taft fully supported the American war effort after Pearl Harbor, he continued to harbor a deep suspicion of American involvement in postwar military alliances with other nations, including NATO.

Here's another piece of history that this liberal is not ignorant of--a viable GI bill educated countless Veterans after World War II and helped us create an educated, professional, and thriving middle class. Hence, the need to support Webb's critical piece of legislation. It's a smart investment in our future. It's one we need to make every generation or so. It didn't bankrupt this country. It didn't lead to socialism. Here's another fact--our economy was wrecked by an unpopular and unnecessary war that divided the American people, one which was largely fought by the poor and the minorities and hundreds of thousands of whom we abandoned and forgot to take care of. Ring any fucking bells? Everything that was done back in the 1930s saved us from socialism, and saved capitalism as a viable ideology. Everything that happened in the 1960s is viewed through a wingnut prism designed to marginalize the Democratic Party. It's a shopworn lie that isn't going to play very well with voters born in the 1970s and 1980s who don't give a shit about what happened in the 1960s.

What you see in that vile little piece from Thomas Sowell is the new wingnut marketing campaign--everything that made America great is an evil, corrupt government program that will starve and kill us all and lead to socialism. Have you noticed how often you hear the terms "socialist" and "Marxist" out of these people lately? It's not for nothing that they're desperately trying to re-run the Reagan mantra of 'government is the problem.' Everything they have touched has turned to shit. They gotta run with whatever their diseased little minds can conjure up.

Desperation is self-evident every time a wingnut bleats about socialism, Reverend Wright, or the war on terror.


UPDATE - Blue Girl 11:35 a.m.

I shake my head in wonderment that this bill does not have 99 cosponsors. The GI Bill transformed America. It made the middle class, which became the envy of the entire world, possible. Every dollar spent on the GI Bill was returned to the economy seven times over.

Simply put, it made us a better, stronger and more diverse nation.

The promise of educational assistance is one of the most effective recruiting tools we have at our disposal, but it is more than that. It is a promise made to those who enlist that this country appreciates their sacrifice and their service and we will stand by them and help them move up in society in return for their service to protect it.

UPDATE II - PALE RIDER - 1:21PM

This helps explain what's really going on--and it's just bullshit:

...McCain has all but locked up the Republican presidential nomination and is preparing for a fall campaign in which his support of the Iraq war is sure to be a major issue. Yet the former Navy pilot and Vietnam POW makes himself a target by refusing to endorse Webb’s new GI education bill and instead signing on to a Republican alternative that focuses more on career soldiers than on the great majority who leave after their first four years.

Undaunted, Webb, who was a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam, is closing in on the bipartisan support needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate, where the cost of his package — estimated now at about $52 billion over 10 years — is sure to be an issue. But McCain’s support would seal the deal like nothing else, and the new Republican bill, together with a letter of opposition Tuesday from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, threatens to peel off support before the Democrat gets to the crucial threshold of 60 votes.

“There are fundamental differences,” McCain told Politico. “He creates a new bureaucracy and new rules. His bill offers the same benefits whether you stay three years or longer. We want to have a sliding scale to increase retention. I haven’t been in Washington, but my staff there said that his has not been eager to negotiate.”

“He’s so full of it,” Webb said in response. “I have personally talked to John three times. I made a personal call to [McCain aide] Mark Salter months ago asking that they look at this.”

“Hell, no,” Webb bristled when asked if there had been an implicit message that he would attack McCain if he didn’t come on board.

"John McCain has been a longtime friend of mine, and I think if John sat down and examined what was in this bill, he would co-sponsor it,” Webb said. “I don’t want this to become a political issue. I want to get a bill done.”

The debate will soon come to a head when Congress takes up the administration’s request for new emergency funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current plan is for the House to take up a 2008 military construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations measure, strike its content and then layer in a series of three amendments that would include not only war funding but also very likely the Webb bill.

Ben Stein is a Wingnut and Everyone Knows It

Now that we have pretty much gotten to the bottom of what went on in the Texas polygamy case, and you'll have to indulge me here, because this kind of "twittery" really isn't my style, we find out that:

More than half the teen girls taken from a polygamist compound in west Texas have children or are pregnant, state officials said Monday.

A total of 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 are in state custody after a raid 3 1/2 weeks ago at the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Eldorado. Of those girls, 31 either have children or are pregnant, said Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar. Two of those are pregnant now, he said; it was unclear whether either of those two already have children.

"It shows you a pretty distinct pattern, that it was pretty pervasive," he said.

You read that right. And, yes, the age of consent in Texas is 17.
But what did serial wingnut Ben Stein say on Sunday morning?

What the heck is going on in Texas with the kids caught up in the polygamy ranch disaster?

Look, I am not a fan of polygamy. For one thing, it's all any man can do keeping up with one wife. For another, it's against the law in this country.

But the polygamists that have been in the news have been operating for decades. The authorities knew about it, and them. They didn't do a thing about it for all those years!

Then, on a totally unsubstantiated telephone call about sex abuse - which apparently did not come from anyone even connected to the polygamist compound - the state closed down the compound, and (what is totally incomprehensible) took the small children of the settlement away from their mothers and fathers.

Why? What crime had the kids committed? Why are they being dealt the most drastic punishment imaginable - separation from their mothers and fathers - for no known reason?

The state of Texas has not found one single crime against these children yet. Even if they do find one or two, how can that be a reason for taking dozens, maybe hundreds of children away from their mothers?

Now you know, Ben. Now you know. Rarely is someone smacked down harder than that, and I suspect the state of Texas had to let the information out because of wingnuts like Stein who were questioning whether it was necessary to separate so many children from their parents.

In fact, Stein went so far as to bring Mr. Godwin into all of this:

Look, I am a huge fan of Texas. I have many friends there and love being there. But what is the attorney general of Texas doing? This is an Orwellian nightmare. For no reason except what looks like a crank call, the lives of these children have been turned upside down and into a screaming horror movie.

Can't someone say the obvious here? That in this case, it's not the Mormons who are the criminals, it's the government of Texas.

Governor Perry, wake up and give those kids back to their mothers until you have some compelling, proven reason to do otherwise. What your state is doing here is Gestapo tactics pure and simple.

That crank call may have prevented a whole hell of a lot more abuse, so thank God for it. I know you didn't want to hear that answer, Ben, but thanks for asking. Now, if you could just shut the hell up...



...and let the state of Texas do what it needs to do in this tragic case, well, we'd all be better off.

I mean, what more proof do we need that you don't know what you're talking about?

Red State Proves They Are Ridiculous

You've gotta love the mouth breathers...they make blogging easy!



It's getting so bad out there, "right of center" groups are having to use ads on Red State to find people to do their bidding. Now, why would that be? Could it be that your garden variety moron isn't inclined to do the grunt work for Right Wing groups anymore? And it's getting so bad for Red State, they need to find a nickel-and-dime way to raise a little cash? What's the matter, guys? The price of microwave burritos outpacing your ability to pawn your deluxe Civil War Chess Set?

If you gotta run ads trying to hook up people to a cause which should draw scads of followers and which should really be, well, flush with volunteers instead of paid hacks, you've got some serious fucking movement issues. As in, your movement ain't moving anymore.

Love this comment:

"As you know, Erick, I've thought this was a great idea for a long time now and I'm glad to see RedState implementing it. I know I'll be there to help get this economy back in shape."

Oh, that'll do it. That'll solve all of our fucking problems, dude. You watch.

Here are some of the listings:

Sounds like Hank Hill is not a good candidate for this one. Butane is "the bastard gas."

Apr 10 Editor/Writer Butane Propane News Arcadia, CA
Butane-Propane News is looking for an editor for its monthly B2B magazine that covers the LPG industry in the U.S. and internationally. The position includes story development,... more

Hey! This is cool!

Film TV - "Suburban Hip Hop 'Roots' ? Long Beach, CA
THE PROJECT: A spec spot for the "Obama in 30 Seconds" contest sponsored by MoveOn. Judges include Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Oliver Stone, Steve Buscemi, and Tom Ortenberg.THE... more

Yes--Red State now carries ads for MoveOn.org because they are so cash-strapped.

Not going to find anyone at Red State for this:

Modeling Male Models Needed For Health M Los Angeles, CA
Health News is looking for male models for an upcoming photo shoot for our "Mens Health" issue. We are looking for well built guys in their early twenties to late thirties. If you... more

Hmmm...

Opportunity Detail
Job Title: Neurology position available
Specialty: Neurology
Job Type: Permanent
Board Certificates Required: BE/BC
Call Rotation: No Preference/Unknown
Accepts Visa Candidates: No
Opportunity State: Kentucky
Community Location Type: Not Specified

If you're advertising for a neurologist on Red State, your hospital has issues I don't even want to start contemplating...

These Sumbitches ain't about to let reality stand in the way of their predetermined narrative, are they?

I am watching the events unfold around the Petraeus testimony, and I can't believe the idiocy.

They keep bleating endlessly that "the Surge™ worked" but they aren't looking at the reality on the ground now that it is of necessity winding down. It can't be sustained, it was never more than a shell game, and it screwed over a lot of soldiers in the process. And now that the "Surge™" troops are being withdrawn, the violence is ratcheting up. Eighteen American deaths in the last three days. The only way it can be painted as a success is the fact that it allowed the idiot son to run out the clock. That is the only metric by which it can be deemed a success.

And by the way, who reintroduced the al Qaeda talking point? Everyone from Ambassador Crocker to that pesky little wingnut Adam Putnam are issuing dire warnings of al Qaeda having a base of operations in Iraq if the United States leaves. What the hell? It's a myth that al Qaeda is a significant threat in Iraq, and it has been debunked by everyone from Cato to Center for American Progress. There was no al Qaeda in Iraq before the invasion, and their won't be once the United States, of necessity, leaves.

The facts are easily verifiable, so why won't the M$M call any of these assholes on their blatant and overt dishonesty? What the fuck, over?

I'll Deal With the Wingnut...

A poster named "Ymarsakar" said:

Nobody here has a problem with wars being started on lies.

It is arbitrary to consider a war started on lies just because you don't want it to exist. It is truly arbitrary to make up history as you go along, as if you had any real problems with members of your own tribe starting wars based upon lies in WWII, Vietnam, Cold War, Civil War, etc.

THe difference between you and Bush is that Bush can produce something good for mankind at a fraction of the cost of what the Left or Roosevelt in WWII ended up sacrificing.

That kind of economy and conservation of human resources is just something people here are against.

The entire ideology of the Left and the Democrats are a lie, but it is not as if this was ever a bad thing to the members of that tribe.

First of all, thanks for sharing. Second of all, allow me to "disagree" with what you just said in a more public place than a mere comment thread. I hope it's okay that I'm elevating you to the front page--is it OK? If we hurt your feelings by paying attention to you, just let me know. Third of all, wow. Did you ever receive anything remotely resembling an "education" in a "school" with "books?" Jeebus.

1. "It is arbitrary to consider a war started on lies just because you don't want it to exist. It is truly arbitrary to make up history as you go along, as if you had any real problems with members of your own tribe starting wars based upon lies in WWII, Vietnam, Cold War, Civil War, etc."

It's as if Bob Dole blurted out the phrase "Democrat Wars" and went back to looking like he just swallowed a turd. The problem with having a wingnut include "Cold War" and "Civil War" in this discussion is that you can't really get them to understand that Lincoln wiped out the South because they wanted to break apart and form their own country and we fought the Cold War because we thought the Communists needed to be held in check. Conservatives who CAN read history get that. The ones who can't think Lincoln raped Southern virtue and that we fought the Cold War until we could figure out how to abandon the Gold Standard. Nothing really makes sense here. Then there's the problem with Vietnam. Yes, the Gulf of Tonkin was bullshit. Unlike the Iraq War, only two Senators voted against going to war in Vietnam. Not enough voted against Iraq.

Now, I don't get why the wingnut brings up WWII. Does he want to talk about Panzer Divisions? They LOVE that stuff. They LOVE talking about the combat strength of XVII Army after D-Day and how von Whatchamacallit deployed his panzer formations to stave off a complete breakout. (no idea what that means)

What lie was WWII based on? The lie that Pearl Harbor got bombed? The lie that Germany and Italy declared war on us?

2. THe difference between you and Bush is that Bush can produce something good for mankind at a fraction of the cost of what the Left or Roosevelt in WWII ended up sacrificing.

Roosevelt crushed an entire Japanese empire--several million troops, thousands of ships and planes--as a second act. He fed raw material to the Russians, who ground up the majority of the German Army. Then he took back North Africa, most of Italy, and secured the Mediterranean before ordering the invasion of Western Europe. There, he joined our allies and smashed open the gates to central Europe and helped destroy a country that had conquered almost all of Europe and North Africa, fielded hundreds of divisons, tens of thousands of tanks, and came damned close to mass producing jets, scud-like missiles and even a nuclear weapon. ALL of this was accomplished in less than four years, start to finish. (December 1941 to September 1945)

Bush can't crush 25,000 irregular insurgents in a flat, desert country twice the size of Idaho. And he's had over five years.

3. That kind of economy and conservation of human resources is just something people here are against.

The entire ideology of the Left and the Democrats are a lie, but it is not as if this was ever a bad thing to the members of that tribe.

That sounds more like a juvenile taunt than it does an actual opinion. But does it do any good to ask a wingnut if they feel betrayed? Bush had everything going for him and he pissed it away. He failed, utterly, in everything he tried to accomplish. How can you accuse "the left" of being liars when there are almost daily examples of "the right" being populated by people who have said they're for family values and honestly and integrity and they keep getting caught with little boys, hookers, cash, meth and dildoes?

Anyway, thanks for commenting. Hope things are well there in Rawlings, Maryland.

Victor Davis Hanson Plays Pundit Again

Every time I see one of these, I let out a very angry sound and I throw my face onto the surface of my desk. The resulting thump shakes everything hanging on the walls. Occasionally, a picture falls and hits the floor.

Let me just say--as we work through this entire column, you will encounter more wingnut dishonesty than normal. Prepare yourself by sitting comfortably and try not to roll your eyes too much--the resulting damage to your cornea might impair your vision.

We know the critique of present American foreign policy under George W. Bush - unilateralist and preemptive - and to some extent we know Sen. Barack Obama’s promised corrective - multilateral and reflective. So let’s take a serious look at what exactly is wrong with the former, and how things would substantially improve under the latter.

Let’s start with India. Indians poll pro-American by wide margins - due no doubt to America’s unnecessary coddling of the world’s largest democracy. If Sen. Obama acts on his complaints about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs to India and institutes his anti-NAFTA preferences in U.S. trade relations, India may finally receive the tough love it has been needing. After all, didn’t President Bush give away the nuclear game with India? Perhaps a President Obama will back out of existing agreements in order to ensure that India does not receive advanced nuclear technology. (In recompense, they’ll have little reason to complain, relatively speaking: Sen. Obama has suggested the U.S. should preemptively invade our ally Pakistan in order to hunt down Osama bin Laden.)

A President Obama is going to see a lot of these columns. They are inherently dishonest attempts by conservatives to present a no-win situation based on something concocted out of thin air. Hanson wants to use a basic issue, apply it to one country, and then create a false scenario that would "trap" a supposedly hemmed-in President Obama because he took a position. Well, in the real world, positions shift with necessity--it's called pragmatism. And what you can't get at pragmatically, you get at through compromise. Conservatives forget that the real reason we're in trouble diplomatically throughout the world is because there is no compromising with ideologues who don't know the first thing about diplomacy. Here's another scenario--Obama sends real diplomats and trade representatives to India. They hammer out a great deal for both sides. The US and India hold to this agreement, mostly, and everything works out pretty much the way it was intended. Wow. Was that so hard?

News flash--we've ALREADY invaded Pakistan. We've ALREADY sent missiles and artillery into Pakistan. Heard the complaints from them? If that's where al Qaeda is, I expect my President to have someone there on the ground cutting throats. The right throats, of course.

And China - what are we doing wrong there? Its increasing appetite for world resources means it cares not a whit what happens in the Sudan, as long as it gets its oil. Some Chinese products, as Sen. Obama rightly reminds us, are shoddy and sometimes dangerous - no doubt a result of our indiscriminate free-trade policy. The way China treats Tibetans and Uyghur Muslims violates canons of human decency. Will a President Obama protect American jobs, champion human rights, and ensure fair and safe trade by redefining our relationship with China - which holds a trillion dollars in U.S. government bonds?

Those are Bush bonds and they were sold to pay for the tax cuts that allowed us to spend ourselves into oblivion in Iraq. So, right away, Obama would be handed an issue that constrains his ability to negotiate. As for human rights, you do realize that we're no longer in a position to lecture anyone, right? What with the waterboarding and the indefinite detentions and the lack of Habeus Corpus and all that, don't you? A President who restores those rights, throws the offenders in prison, and manages our debt will be a welcome change.

Anti-Americanism runs rampant in Europe. Under an Obama administration, should we expect friendlier governments than Sarkozy’s France or Merkel’s Germany? Perhaps Obama might cancel that provocative missile-defense system in Eastern Europe designed to stop an Iranian nuclear guided missile - a welcome end to the saber-rattling of George W. Bush’s cowboy diplomacy.

Or will Sen. Obama try to save American jobs by nullifying contracts with the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. to provide refueling tankers to the U.S. Air Force? We can be sure that he will embrace the emissions-reduction targets set in the Kyoto accords - in that way, he will encourage Europeans to do the same, since their repeated failures in meeting their promised reductions must surely be laid at Mr. Bush’s feet: the EU has been waiting for America to show the way. Perhaps Sen. Obama could regain EU goodwill by pressuring Europeans to drop agricultural subsidies - and eliminate our own - and so give former third-world farmers a break. That would be liberal change I could believe in.

Europe hasn't been pro-American, ever, really. Even when we liberated them, there was resentment and bitterness from some quarters. No amount of missile defense is ever going to be enough--the whole thing should be scrapped immediately. It provokes Russia, it doesn't work, and by the way--have you heard? It doesn't work. It won't work if there actually was a missile that could reach Europe from Iran. This is a wingnut fantasy. And drop the whole ag subsidies thing--you're a California farmer who has an inherent bias against midwestern farmers, what few there still are.

Then there is Russia. Surely Obama will do something about Putin, who seemed too cozy with Bush while he hijacked Russian democracy and used his oil to bully Europe. Perhaps Obama can craft an ingenious speech that will persuade the Kremlin’s ex-KGB kleptocrats to act more civilly in the world, especially concerning their trafficking with the likes of Iran and Syria?

As soon as Professor Rice is separated from the one thing she can't do--and that's understand and analyze Russia--then all will be well and improved.

Speaking of the Middle East, how will Obama restore American prestige there and ameliorate the damage done in the Bush years? Perhaps he could send Nancy Pelosi back to Syria to engage Mr. Assad? Or ask the Democratic Congress to condemn Turkey for the Armenian genocide?

Hell yes send members of Congress who know diplomacy--it would be a hell of a lot better than the McCain/Lieberman/Graham show on ice, which seems to favor cheap rugs, sunglasses, scripted moments and foot-in-mouth gaffes. Snarking about Pelosi's visit only forces me to remind the wingnuts--Republicans from the same Congress have been to see the boy tyrant Assad as well. And they fawned all over him.

Will Obama’s fast-track pullout of Iraq - and his willingness to sit down, without preconditions, with the mullahs of Iran - assure stability in the region, and win the confidence of our Arab allies? Sens. Obama and Hillary Clinton have both written epitaphs for the surge: Why, then, continue a failed policy? Once Americans are out of Iraq by mid-2009, Iraqis themselves - as Afghans, Cambodians, Somalis, Rwandans, and Yugoslavs have done before them - can work out their differences on their own. And since we were always the gratuitous targets that created terrorists ex nihilo, no doubt Dr. Zawahiri and President Ahmadinejad will move on to other Great Satans, once they see that those provocative American GIs have turned tail and fled their neighborhoods.

You can see Hanson going 'tee hee hee!' after he snickers about genocide, can't you? Well, let's see--Reagan abandoned Afghanistan, Nixon abandoned Cambodia, Bush I started our involvement in Somalia, Clinton admitted he failed in Rwanda in a rare moment of candor, and Bush I was basking in the glow of Desert Storm when Milosevic kicked off the festivities in the Balkans. But what do we have right now? The genocide in Iraq has been in full swing for over four years. The ethnic cleaning is happening right now. The absence of a strongman dictator means the Sunni and Shia get to fight it out. And conflating Zawahiri and Ahmadinejad is hilarious--blood enemies, a Sunni and a Shia, neither of which commands a single soldier. Wingnuts who can't tell the truth don't get to pontificate about these issues. It can't get any worse in Iraq, unless we put more US troops there and have higher casualties.

Since it is self-evident that the absence of another 9/11-like attack here at home was a fluke - and had nothing to do either with Guantanmo, the Patriot Act, wiretaps, the destruction of al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, or the annihilation of Wahhabi terrorists in Iraq - President Obama will be free to shut down all such legally dubious homeland-security measures. All that will reassure Americans and Europeans that those efforts were both unnecessary and antithetical to our values. There never was, and won’t be, any danger of another 9/11.

How many IRAQI Wahhabi terrorists that became radicalized since March of 2003 have attacked US soil? None. How many Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian terrorists? Quite a few. And there is no correlation between spying on the Quakers and every single American who uses a telephone or a computer and keeping this country safe from terrorists. Eliminating basic constitutional rights is only something you can do if you're a Republican. Flash forward exactly 12 months from now and Hanson will be braying about how much "police power" the Obama administration has to spy on busybody California farmers. Oh, you'll practically see him and his wingnut buddies in tears at the thought that President Obama might have the entire Freeper IP address database under FBI surveillance in order to help identify criminal conspiracies to manipulate public events.

Since NAFTA was a sell-out of American workers, President Obama can, as he seems to promise, withdraw from the association and restore tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods, while ending our xenophobic paranoia about “secure borders” - especially silly ideas like fences and walls. There would be no need to extend NAFTA-like accords to Colombia, and we should also reexamine sweetheart deals with Middle-Eastern countries like Jordan.

"Xenophobi paranoia" is a wingnut phenomenon. Obama probably isn't going to be xenophobic about a whole lot. Have you seen the guy?

The world between 1992-2000 is the model we are to emulate, it seems. The world was much safer then - before George W. Bush’s indiscriminate wars - and it can be so again. In those golden days, the U.S. rightly contextualized “random” terrorist acts - making the proper distinctions between war and “police matters.” Yes, it’s true that thousands of American soldiers died in those peaceful days - about 7,500 between 1993-2000 - but they did so in noncombatant-related operations. Back then, our experts appreciated the hard lines and firewalls that separated Hezbollah from Iran, Sunni terrorists from Shiite killers, and were always careful not to overreact and turn mere responses into needless wars. In extremis, we can employ tried-and-true tools like no-fly zones, oil-for-food embargoes, U.N. sanctions, and the occasional cruise missile - avoiding the mess of President Karzai’s Afghanistan or President Maliki’s Iraq, and the peripheral blowback involving a jittery Libya, Syria, and Pakistan’s Dr. A. Q. Khan.

YES! You read that right. 7,500 troops died under President Clinton. Wow. You have to dig down into the wingnut ouerve to get to that kind of logic. I know a bit about some of those that died. One guy in a car accident, leaving school. Another dropped dead in his home and was called "present and accounted for" for several days before they found his body. Another was killed by her husband. In the mind of the wingnut, all of those people died BECAUSE Clinton was the Commander in Chief.

Guess what? Roughly that same number have died under Bush in non-combat related matters like accidents and illness-related deaths. When you put ON TOP OF THAT nearly 30,000 wounded--many of them catastrophically wounded--AND over 4,000 killed in Iraq alone--you get an unacceptable toll. With those no-fly zones, cruise missiles and sanctions, we made a lot of mistakes, mistakes a President Obama will hopefully not repeat.

Carefully approaching terrorism as a law enforcement issue has been a rousing success whenever it is practiced. Ask the Brits and their IRA problem. Virtually everyone who fights terrorism does it through careful police work. Unless I'm missing where Spain invaded Saudi Arabia, I'm not seeing the logic in running that down.

This is the most egregiously dishonest punditry you're ever going to see. Watch it in the rear view mirror--it's a sad, pathetic thing by the side of the road, isn't it? Any man who can operate with that kind of logic is a man is batshit fucking crazy.

Presently the United States does the world’s heavy lifting under a Texan who says “nucular.” But soon it may well be charmed and mesmerized by a smooth-talking icon who raises trade barriers, leaves the Middle East to the Middle East, gets tough on China and India, relaxes relations with Iran, Syria, Cuba, and Venezuela, while redefining existing ones with Pakistan - and says to Europe, “We’re right behind you!” Let’s hope it will be as pleasant to see the results as it has been to listen to the utopian rhetoric.

Here's what blows their minds when they think of Obama--they can't understand why it all failed under Bush. They had the perfect President, the perfect situation in a fully controlled Republican Congress, and they had the perfect enemy to replace the Soviets. They had EVERYTHING. And they pissed it away. And now someone named Barack Hussein Obama is going to fix things and run things a thousand times better than they ever could simply by being competent.

That just blows their minds--that someone could be more competent and more knowledgeable. Intellectually insecure people must be extremely threatened right now. You can hear it in what Hanson writes.

Another Wingnut Radio Host Shoots His Mouth Off

Is it even news when these jackasses pull this shit anymore? How high is the bar these days? A big tip of the hat to the Minnesota Monitor for this one.

The Twin Cities' newest conservative talk show host has an idea for managing the thousands of protesters coming to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September: machine guns.

Chris Baker, formerly a talk radio host in Houston, took over the morning spot on KTLK in early March. On Friday, he took issue with the debate among Minneapolis law enforcement personnel as to whether police should limit the use of Tasers and pepper spray on protesters in Minneapolis [ I'm not linking to the audio file--it's 38 minutes long, it has a commercial in it, you can go to MN Monitor's site and check it out if you like.] Baker's suggestion is violent suppression of what he calls "stinky protesters" that are part of "an industry funded by billionaires and communist organizations (and) they are well-coordinated and incredibly dangerous."

Baker continued: "So we've been talking about police protection during the upcoming convention when all those stinky protesters are coming. There seems to be a big debate over whether or not police officers will be able to wear helmets, carry shields, use pepper spray and Tasers on this crowd. You know, I'll tell you what works on a crowd like this -- a machine gun, that always works very well."

Baker's co-host, "Jordan," agreed: "Mow 'em down, baby!" he added.

"You must have order, you cannot have a civilized society without order and if that means cracking a few skulls, so be it," said Baker. "A good ole boy network is what you need and hand out some ax handles."

Uh huh. Neither of these two pussies has ever been near the operating end of a machine gun or an axe handle, so I doubt whether this manly threat would ever get carried out. And talk about opening up a can of unintended consequences--that last bit about good ole boy network and axe handles brings to mind Lester Maddox and a whole other kind of crowd suppression tactic that most stations will just outright can you for bringing up.


[photo credit-AP. On occasion, Lester Maddox would sign the ax handles sold in his restaurant. They came to symbolize his resistance to the civil rights movement.]

You can tell a lot about these types from what they write about themeselves on a web page. Bear in mind, a radio station is paying this intellectual giant to share his ideas with a public that has granted this station free use of the airwaves. I shit you not--these nuggets come right from Baker's bio:

*I am an independent conservative with 3 small children and a wife who I love more than anything I could have ever imagine.

--This means that his manly talk show act ends when he walks through the door at home. The tough guy act ends when the foot hits the front step and doesn't start up again until said subject arrives at work ten minutes late and eats that first donut. Males who are insecure, maladjusted and intimidated by their wives often act like jackasses in public. In the case of Mr. Baker, there's an open microphone nearby.

*Politically I don't see one qualified person running for the office of President nor do I think that it matters at this point. I see politicians as nothing more than puppets and gangsters and that is regardless of party. Mexico owns this election.

--Nothing wrong with that statement except the whole part about Mexico. And pretty much everything else. Hooo, and he's well versed on American political discourse as well.

*The candidates I supported were Fred Thompson and Ron Paul.

--It's like he has it tattooed on his forehead--I'm a preening manchild, and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

*I believe in the concept of the individual. We are all individuals to start and we join groups as we grow but it is the concept and acknowledgment that we are individuals that is supposed to keep us on the right path. When our group goes down the wrong path then it is up to us as individuals to make a decision as an individual to leave the group and walk a path of righteousness.

--Except when the government forgets to take care of me. Then, I fall down on the ground shrieking hysterically that it's NOT FAIR and someone NEEDS TO TAKE CARE OF MY NEEDS and stop TELLING ME WHAT TO DO.

In other words, the guy is a fucking baby.

Wingnut Logic At Work

Typical of ignorant milbloggers, such as our fave wingnut perv Ace of Spades, this photo celebrates a victory that didn't happen and confuses the situation. But who cares about being accurate, right?

[photo from Reuters]

Of course, you can't explain anything to these people. Do you think THIS explains why so many flocked to the recruiting station?

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Tuesday honored the militias of the parties in the United Iraqi Alliance, i.e. the Da'wa (Islamic Call) Party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. They were singled out for having fought alongside government security forces, and some 10,000 of them were inducted into the latter.

Al-Zaman points to a double standard, insofar as the government has not similarly honored, or accepted into the state apparatus, most members of the Sunni Awakening Council militias that have been fighting the Qutbist Jihadis.

The induction of Badr Corps fighters (the paramilitary of ISCI) and those of the Da'wa Party into security positions came in the wake of the firing of thousands of officers and troops who had refused to obey orders to fire on the Mahdi Army militiamen in Baghdad and the southern provinces. They were accused of mutiny.

You gotta love the wingnut milblogger. There's no way of knowing for certain whether the men depicted in the picture are, in fact, Badr brigade members, but a careful check of their attire shows them to be fairly prosperous compared to most Iraqis, unafraid of a suicide bomber and definitely motivated to join a military that probably hadn't welcomed their participation until now. Celebrating the ascendancy of Iranian-trained and backed paramilitaries must be all the rage these days...

Wingnut Navel-Gazing Wankery

Somehow, we inspired a wingnut to gaze into the abyss and write ALL of this...and I am only showing you a snippet of it--the whole thing is really long and turgid. You get my meaning...

If you believe that humanity should band together to defeat evil, bandits, enemies of humanity, pirates, criminals, and the other riff raff trash, then you would see it as the good when your side is recruiting allies in the heart of enemy territory. If you believe you have right on your side, why wouldn’t you also believe that your enemies are only resisting you because they are ignorant and misguided? Why wouldn’t you believe that fighting them, and thus communicating the reality of your beliefs and cause in a way that diplomacy cannot, would not be beneficial to your long term goals in this war through convincing your former enemies that they should not be your current allies?

The Vet for Peace believes that Iraq is a waste of resources or at least whatever gains developed there, wouldn’t translate to the greater war on terror, as he sees and terms it.

That, however, is an arbitrary conclusion based upon arbitrary philosophical assumptions. For one thing, there are many individuals fighting this war and there will be many more individuals fighting this war in the future, both immediate and long term. The Vet for Peace talks about war prospects as if America doesn’t need allies in Iraq nor does America need governing and fighting experience in the heart of the Persian and Arabian historic empires. The people that will be fighting this war, present and future, and the families that will suffer on the front lines, both American and allied Iraqi or allied forces, deserve more from this Vet for Peace than to be discarded for some individual’s notion of armchair micromanagement and strategizing.

You should not discard your allies simply because you think a different front of the war deserves more attention and resources. You can discard them, like Israel discarded many Palestinians that worked with the Jews, Zionists, and Israeli intel agencies, but in the long term, however, whatever short term resources you may have saved by selling the Arabs out to their Arab enemies, will be more than used up on combating a unified enemy that you have not been able to divide because you have sacrificed all the allies amongst your enemies that could have divided those enemies. All the Arabs, all the Kurds, and all the Shia: sacrificed for one Peace advocate’s notion of streamlined warfare.

Declare victory and bring the troops home. As if you either have the power or the right to decide the fates of millions of Arabs and Americans based upon a whim, with no consideration of what the enemy has done or will do to kill the people that you should have been planning to protect but didn’t because you declared victory. Victory is earned and paid in blood, not in whims and boastful proclamations.

There is no compromise between people that don’t see how Iraq is necessary for America’s long term war prospects and those that believe Iraq must be won for America’s war efforts to be improved greatly.

The only “qualitative” difference between the US being involved in European and Asian matters as opposed to nation building in Iraq is that Iraq requires will, resources, sacrifices, and political deals to be made from the current and future generation of Americans. Whereas the US involvement in Europe and Japan was already paid for by a previous generation of Americans. This makes it very easy to support the involvement in Germany and Japan, when you don’t have to pay the butcher’s cost for it, than supporting Iraq, where resources are being re-directed to Iraq from your own little pet projects.

People love having things that they didn’t pay for. Something more expensive, like Iraq, now that is a different matter. It has different “qualitative” aspects, you see.

The rather interesting bit about the argument “Iraq was pre-emptive” while WWII was “reactive” is that the first forces Americans encountered and fought with when they landed on Africa were the French. Not the Japanese, interestingly enough. Not only that, but America, meaning Roosevelt and Churchill, decided to focus most of the resources on the European theater. Europe, which coincidentally, had not attacked America at Pearl Harbor.

American went to Africa, then Italy, then France after Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. America went to Iraq after 9/11 was attacked by Al Qaeda using Saudi operatives, while based in Afghanistan. Japan launched a carrier strike at Pearl from Japan. Roosevelt then went to Africa.

Either these people think they can lie to us and have us swallow their lies, or they are truly as ignorant of history as is required of a person to believe in such fallacious strategies and tactics as “declare victory when you want to and then leave”.

To Jimbo, you have to remember that the Kurds don’t mean a damn to the Vet for Peace so he doesn’t really give a Foxtrot Fauk about the Kurds being wiped out by Saddam’s weapons. Whereas your example of the “neighbor” is about neighbors. People you care about because they live near you and which you know personally. He don’t care about the Kurds. You expect him to think of the Kurds and Iraqis as “neighbors”? People have too parochial of an outlook for that kind of cosmopolitan thinking.

Does your brain hurt after that? Mine does.

Here's my response:

I thought we invaded Iraq because they had weapons of mass destruction. They didn't. Why are we still there?

K-Lo Gets It Backwards

If I'm reading this right--and I know I am, but I have to say things like that from time to time--then McCain is a leader because he has exactly the wrong strategy for fighting the war in Iraq:

What the “100 years” talk refers to is something McCain rightly said in response to a question during a New Hampshire townhall meeting in January. The question regarded Bush’s statement that we could be in Iraq for 50 more years. McCain sensibly responded: “Make it 100. We’ve . . . been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’s fine with me. I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al Qaeda is training, recruiting and equipping and motivating people every single day.”

When asked to clarify, he would go on to say that it could be 1,000 years, or even a million years. These are the lines that try Democrats’ souls. But McCain was right about the long war. It was a sensible answer. And though it doesn’t sound like the most attractive answer -- who wants 100 years in Iraq? -- it was straight talk from a senator who has a better track record on Iraq than most. And it may not hurt his campaign, either.

Now, that's a bit of a stretch. The only reason we stayed in those places was because of a symbiotic relationship between us and the host country which was based on protecting them while they rebuilt their society, infusing money into their economy, and because there was no popular groundswell of the will of the people in those host countries to throw us out either by violence or by protest. We had a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that was based on law, not something concocted on the way to secretly meet with the prime minister.

Pew reports that Americans are split about whether the war is going well or not. They’re split over bringing the troops home or keeping them there. But they know that 4,000 American lives have been lost valiantly, and Americans don’t like losing something they’ve gone into with their blood.

According to Pew, 53 percent of Americans think we can win this. A CBS poll indicates 42 percent acknowledging the surge has worked -- it’s meant progress. Contrary to the way the Dems talk, a Gallup poll had a minority (18 percent) favoring withdrawing the troops immediately.

Say what you want about McCain, but he’s been right about Iraq. He was right to say “no surrender.” He was right to support the surge. By contrast, Obama has been endorsed by MoveOn.org, which had the nerve to suggest Gen. David Petraeus was betraying us with false information. Clinton refused to condemn the ad, which was no surprise given the disrespect she showed the general in congressional questioning.

Wow--if that isn't cherry picking old polls and trying to shine a turd, I don't know what is. The war has been consistently unpopular. The people support the troops but not the Administration, which has had an approval rating so low for so long it shouldn't even be brought up in polite conversation. The Commander in Chief of this war has been so unpopular for so long, K-Lo has to gloss over it and cherry pick polls from one polling outfit just to try to skate past that whole thing about the war being about as popular as New Coke, pardoning Nixon and Yahoo Serious.

Here are some poll numbers to contemplate:

Nearly half of all Americans - 46 percent - want large numbers of U.S. troops to leave Iraq within the next year. Twenty-two percent are willing to have U.S. troops remain in the country for one to two years, and 28 percent are willing to have troops remain longer than that.

Fewer than one in three Americans approve of the way Mr. Bush is handling the war in Iraq. His 30 percent approval rating on the war is unchanged from last month and closely matches the president’s overall approval rating of 29 percent.

Thirty-six percent of Americans think the U.S. did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, while 59 percent believe the U.S. should have stayed out. In March 2003, nearly seven in 10 Americans said the U.S. did the right thing.

Just 31 percent of Americans think the U.S. should have stayed to rebuild Iraq after Saddam Hussein was removed from power. Twenty-seven percent say the U.S. should have pulled out of Iraq after removing Saddam, while 41 percent say the U.S. should have never gotten involved in the first place.

Twenty-eight percent of Americans believe Saddam was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. That figure is down significantly since the spring of 2003, when more than half of those surveyed said the former Iraqi leader was involved in the attacks.

That's gotta hurt--the only way McCain can take the wingnuttery all the way to the White House is for people to be confused about the reasons for the war. Once people finally wake up, they're going to be pissed.

And, no, he's been wrong about Iraq. He can't even get straight who makes up which side and who they're aligned with without being prompted by Joe Lieberman. He fails every basic test in a Commander in Chief--you know, the test that starts of with "we are fighting (blank) because (blank). When a candidate for President can't even get that much right, we're not talking statesman. We're talking confused and cranky.

He clearly doesn't have the temperment to be President. Just ask him if he sent his staff to talk to John Kerry about running on the Democratic ticket in 2004--you'll get an earful of his leadership, wisdom and judgement.

Something I Learned Today...

Apparently, the Democratic Party is entirely to blame for racism in this country! Did you know that? Neither did I. From the crackpots at the "Lincoln Heritage Institute" where you can find no shortage of articles defending Joe McCarthy, or denying global warming, or indignation about Obama's pastor comes this screed that completely ignores American history and skews every single possible thing that ever went wrong into something unrecognizable...well, you just have to read the clumsy tone of this to get what I'm saying. Lt. Colonel Frances Rice,U.S. Army Retired.

An Open Letter to the Democratic Party
By Lt. Colonel Frances Rice,U.S. Army Retired: Contributor to the LHI

"We, African American citizens of the United States, declare and assert:

Whereas in the early 1600's 20 African men and women were landed in Virginia from a Dutch ship as slaves and from that tiny seed grew the poisoned fruit of plantation slavery which shaped the course of American development,

Whereas reconciliation and healing always begin with an apology and an effort to repay those who have been wronged,

Whereas the Democratic Party has never apologized for their horrific atrocities and racist practices committed against African Americans during the past two hundred years, nor for the residual impact that those atrocities and practices and current soft bigotry of low expectations are having on us today,

Whereas the Democratic Party fought to expand slavery and, after the Civil War, established Jim Crow Laws, Black Codes and other repressive legislation that were designed to disenfranchise African Americans,

Whereas the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party, and their primary goal was to intimidate and terrorize African American voters, Republicans who moved South to protect African Americans and any other whites who supported them,

[snip]

Whereas Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore created harmful racial division when he falsely claimed that the 2000 presidential election was "stolen" from him and that African Americans in Florida were disenfranchised, even though a second recount of Florida votes by the "Miami Herald" and a consortium of major news organizations confirmed that he lost the election, and a ruling by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declared that African Americans were not denied the right to vote,

Whereas the Democratic Party's soft bigotry of low expectations and social promotions have consigned African Americans to economic bondage and created a culture of dependency on government social programs,

Whereas the Democratic Party's use of deception and fear to block welfare reform, the faith-based initiative and school choice that would help African Americans prosper is consistent with the Democratic Party's heritage of racism that included sanctioning of slavery and kukluxery, a perversion of moral sentiment among leaders of the Democratic Party whose racist legacy bode ill until this generation of African Americans,

Now, therefore, for the above and other documented atrocities and accumulated wrongs inflicted upon African Americans, we demand a formal written apology and other appropriate remuneration from the leadership of the Democratic party.

Can you imagine the mind that created that? Can you imagine the self-deluding fantasy that this poor woman suffers under? I read that and I just sat back and shook my head. Generally when you read something that purports to be "historical" or "factual" and have it look absolutely nothing like what we all understand or agree upon, well. The weirder it looks, the better, because it makes it easier to disprove and ultimately dismiss as the ranting and raving of a deranged person.

When she can wake up to the fact that the only reason--the ONLY reason--why anyone hears her voice at all is because Democrats forced the Civil Rights Act through and because Democrats have fought tooth and nail for minorities for decades while the Republican Party has all but run on a continual "Southern Strategy" while using people like Bradley Schlozman to disenfranchise their votes, then maybe we can have a dialogue.

Unbelievable.