Chair Dickhead of Thursday

Codernaut says: i hate people
jendean2003 says: what happened
Codernaut says: nothing
jendean2003 says: well something must have happened
Codernaut says: i just hate people
Codernaut says: they think they're funny
Codernaut says: but they're not
Codernaut says: they think they're being polite
Codernaut says: but they're not
Codernaut says: most people are ignorant, rude and stupid
jendean2003 says: are you sure nothing happened
Codernaut says: the cube i'm in at this client is one of like 4 in a square
Codernaut says: that all face each other, kind of thing
Codernaut says: so in the middle there is an open space with some chairs
Codernaut says: and there are 3 other people in this cube area
Codernaut says: and they're all moving out to make room for more ibm portal people
Codernaut says: on this project
Codernaut says: so the guys who are moving are all ibmers too
Codernaut says: and they've been here for like 5 years
Codernaut says: one guy for 11 years
Codernaut says: and so they know everyone at --client redacted-- and what not
Codernaut says: and other people who are on their project are always hanging out here
Codernaut says: shooting the shit
Codernaut says: and it is annoying
Codernaut says: and there is a tragic lack of chairs
Codernaut says: so frequently someone is using my chair when i come back from someplace
Codernaut says: so i go get coffee about 20 min ago
Codernaut says: and i come back with a coffee, fruit cup and bottle of water - hands full
Codernaut says: and they're all hanging out and laughing and making stupid comments about golf and the one guy's putter being bent or something
Codernaut says: and this one guy is in my chair
Codernaut says: and he's laughing and cackling and hacking.
Codernaut says: like he was drunk
Codernaut says: older smoking type
Codernaut says: ha ha ha ha, his putter was crooked, ha ha ha!
Codernaut says: and he's in my chair
Codernaut says: and so i maneuver around all the people who can't be bothered to get out of my way
Codernaut says: which is fine. they're mostly proto-human anyway and don't know any better
Codernaut says: and the guy knows he's in my chair, cause he's in my cube
Codernaut says: and he doesn't get up
Codernaut says: he's just looking at me with this stupid look on his face. again, like he was drunk
Codernaut says: so i say, could I have my chair please?
Codernaut says: and he says 'no!'
Codernaut says: and then he laughs and laughs and cackles and everyone thinks that is the funniest thing they've heard all day
Codernaut says: fucking idiots
jendean2003 says: i hope you told him to fuck off
Codernaut says: i mean, it wasn't even funny. if he had said something funny, i would have laughed
Codernaut says: i went into 'disapproving dismissal' mode
Codernaut says: said nothing. didn't even ackowledge that he said anything
Codernaut says: no smile, no eye contact, nothing
Codernaut says: like he didn't exist
Codernaut says: total dismissal of him as a human being
Codernaut says: and i put my stuff in my cube
Codernaut says: on the desk
Codernaut says: now, everyone else got the message.
Codernaut says: the talking stopped and they began shifting around in obvious embarrassed discomfort
Codernaut says: and then i paused to allow the full freeze to descend on the chair dickhead
Codernaut says: and he got up and left
Codernaut says: and as he was leaving he said 'jeez'
Codernaut says: like he was upset that i didn't think he was funny
Codernaut says: so i'm satisfied a little bit that the chris 'cold brush-off of death' got to him
Codernaut says: i love having the ability of making everyone suddenly uncomfortable
jendean2003 says: you do have that amazing ability
Codernaut says: i mean, it was a mood killing chill that i brought on
Codernaut says: and everyone left
jendean2003 says: that's my man
Codernaut says: god, just reliving it makes me feel better

I Have All Your Phone Numbers in a Database

I shall call it '411'. I can use this '411' to find anyone's name and address in any state of the union at any time day or night. It also contains the address of every American household and business. No one can stop me!

Seriously though, how did you think the security services of the United States were monitoring phone calls to terrorists? I mean, how did you think it was working?

OF COURSE the system records data about vocal communications. This would include all sorts of metadata about the calls and include actual recordings of the calls themselves. This metadata is analyzed by computers in the same way Google analyzes the metadata about what's on your computer in order to provide Google Desktop functionality. Cause, as I'm sure you already know, Google maintains a vast database of not only what is on Google Desktop users' computers, but also what you like to search for on the Net (late at night when the mood strikes).

So I propose a new headline: Google Monitoring Internet Search Usage. Nobody seems to care much about a private company having your information or recording and archiving where and what you surf for on the web.

Or here's another: Social Security Administration Stores American's Social Security Numbers in Vast Database

I like this one: IRS Knows How Much Money You Make and Stores it In a Vast Database

Or perhaps: Every Credit Bureau in the World Has Every Conceivable Piece of Private Data About You Stored in a Vast Database That They Then Sell To Other Companies Who Try To Sell You Crap You Don't Need.

I guess I'm a little confused as to why anyone could be shocked, SHOCKED! that the NSA analyzes our phone calls. Isn't that the sort of thing we employ them to do? Have employed them to do since Truman created the agency?

Carnivore anyone? How about Echelon? How is trapping and recording and archiving internet traffic or fax traffic or postal traffic any different than recording oral traffic? We've been openly scanning IP packets since the Clinton Administration looking for terrorist communications but nobody seems to mind.

Moreover, nobody cared when the New York Times ran a story about this last year. The sanctimonious Senators on Capitol Hill bemoaning the erosion of civil liberties are hypocrites. They've all known all along that this sort of stuff happens and it is ridiculously disingenuous to pretend they're concerned all of a sudden.

So says I, foolish, foolish people.

Technorati: ChrisCam, webcam, Weblog, NSA, Bush, Media, Politics, Wiretapping, Echelon, Carnivore,

Totally Unbiased at ABC News

Nah, there's no anti-Bush bias in the mainstream media. No way. Oh wait a sec. What's this Blackberry email I just got?

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU MARCH 23, 2006 13:11:09 ET XXXXX
ABC NEWS EXEC: 'BUSH MAKES ME SICK'; E-MAIL REVEALED
**Exclusive**

A top producer at ABC NEWS declared "Bush makes me sick" in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.

John Green, currently executive producer of the weekend edition of GOOD MORNING AMERICA, unloaded on the president in an ABC company email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.

"If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke," Green complained.

The blunt comments by Green, along with other emails obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT, further reveal the inner workings of the nation's news outlets.

A friend of Green's at ABC says Green is mortified by the email. "John feels so badly about this email. He is a straight shooter and great producer who is always fair. That said, he deeply regrets the sentiment expressed in the email and the embarrassment it causes ABC News."

Technorati: ChrisCam, Webcam, ABC News, Blackberry, Media, Politics, Bush, George Bush, The Left

Hamas Ho-Hum, part 2

Just a quick thought. Why do news reports continue to refer to the Hamas election victory as 'surprising' and 'a complete surprise' and 'landslide' ?

First of all, it wasn't a landslide. A landslide is winning 525 US Electoral votes to 13. Ronald Reagan had a landslide in 1984. Hamas winning 56% of parliament is not a landslide. It is a majority, true. But if winning a majority constitutes a landslide, then George W Bush won a landslide victory in 2004.

Secondly, anyone who had even a passing knowledge of Palestinian politics over the past few years knows that Hamas was far more popular than Fatah. In part because they bothered to listen to the people and attempted to address their concerns for social services in the form of health clinics, day cares and poor houses while the government lined its pockets with the foreign aid that was meant for the people. Not at all surprising. Not nearly a shock. Any sober assessment of the situation pre-election would have recognized the reality on the ground. The fact that the media is shocked and surprised comes as no surprise at all since it has been evident to me for quite awhile that the media lives in its own self-created reality. A reality, I might add, that is bizarrely disconnected from the world I live in.

Technorati: media, hamas, palestine, Middle East, Israel, Terrorism.

Murtha's Crystal Ball

So Congressman Murtha is at it again. Instead of being satisfied with his elevated public profile following his call to abandon the Iraqis, he's now assuming the role of fortune-teller with his predictions of the future.

From the AP:

Murtha Says Iraq Is Now a 'Civil War'
PITTSBURGH
U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year due to political pressure in a Congressional election year, Rep. John Murtha predicted.

Murtha, a decorated Vietnam veteran from Johnstown, created a firestorm in November when he called for troops to be pulled out of Iraq. On Thursday, he told editors and reporters from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that the war in Iraq is a civil war and the U.S. should disengage.

"Our troops are the target," Murtha told the newspaper. "We're not fighting terrorism in Iraq. We're fighting a civil war in Iraq. We've got to give them an incentive. We fought our Civil War. Let them fight their civil war."

Murtha, the senior Democrat on the House appropriations defense panel, said many Iraqis think "it's all right to kill Americans" and that most Iraqis want U.S. troops out of the country.

"There is no reason in the world we couldn't do what we're doing (in Iraq) from the periphery," Murtha said. "I've just come to the conclusion it's going to happen and it's just a matter of time."

Murtha, who voted in 2002 to give President Bush the authority to go to war, said he believes Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, had no ties to al-Qaida and wasn't a threat to the United States.

He wants U.S. troops to be redeployed to Kuwait and areas around Iraq. He predicted there will be fewer than 100,000 troops by midsummer and that the pullout by the end of the year.

"We're not cutting and running. We're giving the Iraqis incentive to take over," he said.

Murtha also weighed in on other topics during the meeting, saying the United States should use diplomacy in combating the threats Iran poses to Mideast stability. He also said Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., could win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, but that she would lose in the general election.

Is it just me or is it a silly picture? Can you envision him rubbing a crystal ball and telling a gaggle of reporters, rapt with attention, who will win the next election or how many troops we'll have in theater by this time next year? I wonder what forces he's in touch with, beyond his own lunacy, of course.

Regarding his civil war comments, I think Mr. Murtha is confused. It isn't 1968 and we aren't fighting the Vietcong. There isn't a civil war in Iraq. There is, in a small part of the country, an insurgency being conducted by foreigners and disgruntled former Baathists. Their numbers have been estimated at 5,000-20,000 compared with the Iraqi Army's force strength in low 100,000s. Conflict consists of low intensity skirmishes. The general violence hasn't escalated in the past 3 years. It remains a low-grade conflict that is making no progress at destabilizing the nation.

It is hardly a 'civil war' comparable to the American Civil War (as Murtha suggests) or any other civil war for that matter. There are no armies on the battlefield conducting warfare. In fact, most of the country is peaceful. If anything, the insurgency in Iraq resembles gang warfare in South Central Los Angeles. While there was a lot of buzz in 2003 and 2004 about the murder rate in Baghdad being lower than most American cities, I couldn't find any supportive data (aside from blogger's assertions). I actually spent the entire morning doing some research in this area and collected some statistics on the murder rate in Washington DC for 2005 versus the murder rate in Baghdad for 2005. The numbers vary widely depending on what source you're using and how they calculate their data. For example, some reports include 'violent crime' in their murder rate. This would include attempted murders, rapes, assaults, etc. Other reports have varying population figures for each of the cities. The Army figures don't include American or Iraqi security forces casualties. But however you analyze it, the murder rate in Washington is not much lower than that in Baghdad.

DC pop 553,000
35-60 murders per 100,000 = 192 - 330 per year

Baghdad pop 5,948,000
5-20 murders per 100,000 = 295 - 1180 per year.

Would Murtha suggest that there is a 'civil war' in the District of Columbia? I'm just so tired of hearing him and people like him rant on and on, carelessly tossing out supposed 'facts' that are in reality simply either their own opinion or something they heard from someone somewhere. Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war, the Four Horsemen aren't upon us, the region isn't descending into chaos, were not in a quagmire and most of all, this isn't Vietnam redux.

Technorati: murtha, Iraq, baghdad, lunatic, democrats

GO AWAY!!

Wherever he's been for the past few years, he needs to go back! I hate his ridiculous accent, his pedantic babble, his demeaning, patronizing, pontificating, professorial nonsense. His very voice irriates me, grating on my nerves like nails on a chalkboard. His hair is silly, his weight fluctuates in an Oprah-esque fashion, his features plain, his expressions wooden. GO AWAY AL GORE!

Brace yourself, then read his latest blather over here: GORE

ich bin ein dickless roboter!

Sean Penn, Would-Be Hero

He's an idiot. Couldn't find anything interesting in Iran eh Sean?

Sean Penn's rescue bid sinks
From correspondents in New Orleans
05sep05

EFFORTS by Hollywood actor Sean Penn to aid New Orleans victims stranded by Hurricane Katrina foundered badly overnight, when the boat he was piloting to launch a rescue attempt sprang a leak.

Penn had planned to rescue children waylaid by Katrina's flood waters, but apparently forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the vessel, which began taking water within seconds of its launch.

The actor, known for his political activism, was seen wearing what appeared to be a white flak jacket and frantically bailing water out of the sinking vessel with a red plastic cup.

When the boat's motor failed to start, those aboard were forced to use paddles to propel themselves down the flooded New Orleans street.

Asked what he had hoped to achieve in the waterlogged city, the actor replied: "Whatever I can do to help."

With the boat loaded with members of Penn's entourage, including a personal photographer, one bystander taunted the actor: "How are you going to get any people in that thing?"

I have a question. Why did it take him 7 days to get on site to provide relief?! As a caring hollywood type, shouldn't he have divined the course of the hurricane and been pre-positioned to rush in the minute the rain stopped?


Wahhh, my boat sunk.


Why on earth is he wearing a flak jacket?

Technotrati: sean penn, hurricane katrina


*****UPDATE
As much as it pains me to admit this, it turns out that Sean Penn actually DID save a few dozen people. Presumeably he achieved this after he managed to bail out his boat with that little plastic cup. I'm sure he made certain to have his great deeds recorded by the entourage of sycophants he brought with him which included personal photographers, videographers and even a historian (the eminent Douglas Brinkley).

So considering the fact that I've saved no one, I ought not to mock him. But chances are good that I will anyway.

Kanye West Doesn't Care About White People

As I'm sure everyone is aware, the ever-colorful asshat Kanye West revealed himself yet again to be a complete moron last night on live television.

The pathetic NBC attempt at a fundraiser, replete with all of 7 stars for a whole hour (the Tsunami telethon was 3 hours, wasn't it?), would have put just about anyone to sleep if it weren't for Kanye West's outburst part way through the sad event.

They had to pull John Goodman out of hiding to be on the show. That tells you how concerned the Hollywood stars are about this issue. And here I thought John Goodman was dead.

At any rate the barely intelligible Kanye West rant, a testament no doubt to his total illiteracy as well as his ignorance, went something like this:


(The scene opens with a solumn Mike Myers and a fidgety Kanye West looking at the teleprompter. Or so we think...)

Mike Myers: The landscape of the city has changed dramatically, tragically and perhaps irreversibly. There is now over 25 feet of water where there was once city streets and thriving neighborhoods.

Kanye West: I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, "They're looting." You see a white family, it says, "They're looking for food." And, you know, it's been five days because most of the people are black. And even for me to complain about it, I would be a hypocrite because I've tried to turn away from the TV because it's too hard to watch. I've even been shopping before even giving a donation, so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there. So anybody out there that wants to do anything that we can help -- with the way America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. I mean, the Red Cross is doing everything they can. We already realize a lot of people that could help are at war right now, fighting another way -- and they've given them permission to go down and shoot us!

(An obviously confused or perturbed Mike Myers glances about to make sure they're still on the air before returning to the script)

Mike Myers: And subtle, but in many ways even more profoundly devastating, is the lasting damage to the survivors' will to rebuild and remain in the area. The destruction of the spirit of the people of southern Louisiana and Mississippi may end up being the most tragic loss of all.

Kanye West: George Bush doesn't care about black people!

(Mike Myers, now with big round eyes and in obvious shock, begins to stammer)

Mike Myers: Uh, please call . . .


And.....scene! It was at this point that someone realized what was happening and rapdily cut to an unprepared Chris Tucker backstage who appeared to be rummaging in a refridgerator. Trooper that he is, he picked right up with some more scripted blather.

And I think it is interesting to note that instead of apologizing for the absurdity of the entire affair, instead of a statement that rebuked the outburst, nobody mentioned the event until the very end when Matt Lauer made an excuse for it by claiming that 'emotions are running high'. This was followed by the standard lawyer-composed statement in a press release that the remarks didn't reflect the views of the network.

Frankly, after being home so much lately and being forced by my wife to watch that NBC morning show with Katie Couric, whatever it's called (the one where instead of reporting any real news, they pick out wedding dresses and talk about feelings), I quite honestly think that Kanye West's views DO in fact reflect the views of the network.

Technorati tag:kanye west

Outrage in Seattle

There is a reported increase in videotaped beatings that are being released on the net. It's ridiculous and stupid. But this one takes the cake. They beat up some Veterans who had just got home from Iraq.

SEATTLE - Two soldiers who just returned from a year in Iraq were badly beaten in an attack outside Pioneer Square. But believe it or not, someone caught the beating on videotape. Now, police are asking for your help identifying the suspects.

The brutality of it all was captured on tape outside of Larry's Nightclub on First and Yesler on July 31.

Police say the victims were with two women who'd been groped by the suspects. One of the women threw a hot dog at the suspects and walked away.

They didn't get very far. The three suspects ran after them and began attacking the two men -- two soldiers who'd come home from the war.

The graphic videotape shows both victims getting beaten over and over again, and then after one of the victims loses consciousness, a suspect starts stomping on his head.

Now police want your help in catching these guys.

"We consider them very dangerous," said Seattle Police Officer Sean Whitcomb.

After not getting any leads, Seattle police have just released this tape to the media even though it happened over three weeks ago.

If you know who these suspects are, or have any information in the case, you're asked to call Seattle Police.

Both victims suffered broken jaws, while one suffered a broken arm and both had other broken bones and several bruises.

Hey, I've got an idea. Let's send these hooligans to Iraq. Shit like this convinces me of the need for compulsory military service for our urban youth.

There are pictures of the thugs at the bottom of the article.

****UPDATE
I'm obviously a late-comer idiot to this story. Ace of Spades, Michelle, and mypetjawa all had the story. Yesterday.

Babs is Back, in Black!

I just can't wait for Babs' big pop comeback. It will probably be accompanied by some idiotic quote on her part either on her website or someplace else. She'll likely invent her own historical figure in order to quote some wildly inappropriate thing and use her own invention out of context to comment on something she believes is relevent. She really is terrible about her historical quotes and hysterical rants. I mean, at least quote something that is meaningful when applied to a current-events situation that you wish to comment on.

So here is the new cover art for her huge comeback album:

And here is a link to the news story about her big pop comeback. At least the author writes with a touch of satire.

I have my own cover art for the album that I humbly submit. Image courtesy of my newborn:

Sheehan's Group Refuses to Hear Opposing View

I find it high irony that the group Sheehan founded to grab the media spotlight refuses to meet with the opposition. Remind me again, isn't the whole point of their protest to force the President to hear the 'cold hard truth' about Iraq? And yet at the same time they flatly reject any attempt by another group to question them about their version of that 'truth' ? Strange indeed. Or maybe not, if you accept that she's a media hound supported by other groups of hate-filled people still bitter about 2000 and 2004. They are incapable of seeing any other viewpoint, so strong and ingrained is their hatred of those whom they believe to be beneath them (i.e. Bush and 60-some million of their countrymen).

I'm just glad that there are people with enough testicular fortitude to go out there and oppose them.

War Backers Set Up Camp Near Bush Ranch
By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer Sun Aug 21,12:49 PM ET

CRAWFORD, Texas - A patriotic camp with a "God Bless Our President!" banner sprung up downtown Saturday, countering the anti-war demonstration started by a fallen soldier's mother two weeks ago near President Bush's ranch.

The camp is named "Fort Qualls," in memory of Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Wayne Qualls, 20, who died in Iraq last fall.

"If I have to sacrifice my whole family for the sake of our country and world, other countries that want freedom, I'll do that," said the soldier's father, Gary Qualls, a friend of the local business owner who started the pro-Bush camp. He said his 16-year-old son now wants to enlist, and he supports that decision.

Qualls' frustration with the anti-war demonstrators erupted last week when he removed a cross bearing his son's name that was among hundreds the group had put up along the road to Bush's ranch.

Qualls called the protesters' views disrespectful to soldiers, and said he had to yank out two more crosses after protesters kept replacing them.

Cindy Sheehan, whose 24-year-old son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, died last year in Iraq, started the anti-war demonstration along the roadside on Aug. 6. "Camp Casey" has since grown to about 100 core participants, and hundreds more from across the nation have visited.

...

Bush has said he sympathizes with Sheehan but won't change his schedule to meet with her. She and other families met with Bush about two months after Casey Sheehan died, before she became a vocal opponent of the war.

Large counter-protests were held in a ditch near Sheehan's site a week after she arrived, and since then, a few Bush supporters have stood in the sun holding signs for several hours each day.

Bill Johnson, a local gift shop owner who created "Fort Qualls," said he wanted to offer a larger, more convenient place for Bush supporters to gather.

He and others at "Fort Qualls" have asked for a debate with those at the Crawford Peace House, which is helping Sheehan.

It's unclear if that will happen. But a member of Gold Star Families for Peace, co-founded by Sheehan and comprised of relatives of fallen soldiers, said her group would not participate.

"We're asking for a meeting with the president, period," said Michelle DeFord, whose 37-year-old son, Sgt. David W. Johnson, was in the Army National Guard from Oregon when he was killed in Iraq last fall. "We don't want to debate with people who don't understand our point of view."

See? They don't want to debate. They want to TELL. They want to LECTURE. They want to 'EDUCATE' Bush about how wrong he his about everything from global warming to his exercise regimen. They have no interest in hearing anything else at all or even being questioned. They are so fundementalist and extremist in their ingrained beliefs that they can't fathom a possible alternate viewpoint and refuse to even hear it.

This elitist mentality is the wrong way to go about effecting change. Instead of mocking vitriol, for example, Lance Armstrong used his personal friendship with Bush last week to civilly oppose the President's policies. He rode with him, they discussed various things no doubt. Bush knows that Lance is against the war on terror and Lance knows that the President isn't stupid or pig-headed or evil, he simply disagrees with him. Amazing isn't it?

The Iranian Information Minister

This is so laughable that it reminds me of someone I love dearly. Someone I have missed since the early days of March 2003. See if you can guess who this sounds like.

From the Islamic Republic News Agency:

Tehran, Aug 20, IRNA
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi here Saturday said that the claims of US administrators on Iran's interference in Iraq are mere hallucinations.

Speaking to reporters, he said that Iran's contact with various Iraqi groups has been in line with following its democratic policy.

He added that the world has declared on various occasions the role played by Iran in promoting tranquility in Iraq.

"The US troops are impotent in controlling Iraq, while the explosions and assassination of defenseless Iraqi people has a growing trend.

"The current events in Iraq are quite shocking and mark the US wrong policy in administration of affairs and promoting security in Iraq," he added.

He noted that the remarks of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld against Iran are meant to cover up their own impotence.

"Iran does not benefit from Iraq's instability and we believe that promoting security in Iraq will help safeguard the regional security," he added.

About the propaganda raised by the foreign media on introducing Iran's new cabinet, Asefi said that such propaganda should not be taken seriously, given that they will stop through time.

"Such propaganda was also raised once Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office as president, but they gradually stopped. The same is now true about the new cabinet," he added.

He pointed to Britain's role in the unrests in southern Iran and said that sufficient evidence has been found to prove the interference of Britain and that the issue will be followed up to prevent any further events in future.

"Unless the US administration changes its attitude towards Iran, any dialogue will be out of question," he concluded.

Yep! He's baaack! Or at least, someone like him is baaack!


You are having hallucinations!

The Huffington Post Smells Like My Newborn's Shit

I think I'm a reasonable guy. I mean I engage in a lot of hyperbole for the shock value, but at heart I'm really not a right wing nut. Most people would say I'm right of center but that I don't totally subscribe to that political philosophy. All in all I can read an opposing opinion editorial without getting upset. I may even change my opinion from time to time.

But reading the Huffington Post makes me itch. I mean, it gives me hives. I swell up so bad I need my epi-pen. That is probably the reaction the bloggers on that site are going for, which is fine I suppose. But I can only take so much phony made-up bullshit before I get angry about it.

I guess I have to finally admit that I can't, for the life of me, understand what drives the people who write on that website. I don't get them. I don't understand how they can see things the way they see them. I come from a socialist country, I was educated in New York and Boston. I'm not a yahoo from the backcountry. I was trained to read and think critically on a subject before rendering an opinion. But these guys have me at an absolute loss for explanation.

Take the recent post by Cindy Sheehan, who by the way has been given a megaphone courtesy the Huffington Post. Notice that there wasn't an offer of free publicity when Cindy supported the effort to bring peace to the Middle East and security to America. Now that she opposes those efforts and has struck a Vietnam-esque protester pose, complete with meaningless candlelight vigils and random hippies, the Post is gaga to have her espouse her anti-establishment, politically regressionist nonsense.

Here's the post in question:

Memo to Drudge, et al: It's Not About Me, It's About the War

Even after my repeated attempts to keep the focus of my protest on the war, the Drudge Report and others continue to try to make the issue about me. But I am not the issue. The issue is a disastrous war that's killing our sons and daughters and making our country less secure. They attack me because they can no longer defend this war.

I've come to Crawford to bring to the president's doorstep the harsh realities of a war he's been trying so hard to avoid. But no matter what they say or how many shotguns they fire or how many crosses they destroy, they're not going to stop me from speaking out about a war that needlessly killed my son.

Sigh.Somebody please explain to me what pipe she's been smoking out of.

There are OPINIONS and then there are FACTS. OPINIONS are technically meaningless, but powerfully effective at swaying emotion even when they are FACTUALLY incorrect. That is the biggest problem I see with unfettered media. Imagine how different the world would be if only FACTS were relayed via print, television and internet.

It is Cindy's OPINION that Drudge is writing about her to distract from the war and that he ought to be writing about the war. The FACT is that Drudge is the same as she is. A media whore who splashes the latest scraps of rumor as if it were reality.

OPINION: She's deluded herself into thinking that her protest is about the war and not about her entire universe of political opinion. She's spoken out about how the Jews are in the wrong, how Bush is all about big business and oil, etc etc. Her blather is so predictable it reads like a Micheal Moore script. That is what she's all about, that is why she's protesting, that is why she's out there claiming it isn't about that but about her poor lost son whom she hasn't said boo about in a year and a half. The FACT is that she's an opportunist and all of her media relations are geared toward this.

OPINION: The war is disasterous. FACT: By every metric available, the battle of Iraq was and is a total victory. I wonder how she would have termed the American Revolution during the winter of 1779? Total failure. Complete defeat. Disasterous war. Washington is only out for his land-owning buddies.

OPINION: People attack her because they can't defend the war. FACT: There are far more factually accurate ways to defend the war on terror and the efforts over the next few generations to defeat extremisim then there are reasons to attack her. Many of those defenses are ignored or dismissed by Sheehan and her ilk. Although her son surely didn't dismiss them.

OPINION: Only her, Cindy Sheehan, the Joan d'Arc of the restless left wingers, can bring the harsh realities of war to the President's attention. And by God she'll camp out on his doorstep until he sees the destruction he has personally wrought, or until the cameras go home. FACT: The President knows more about war in general and this war in particular than Cindy will ever know. He has dealt with more emotions on this topic than Cindy will in a lifetime. The man has the burden of America's next few generations on his shoulders. He has committed America to a multi-generational effort that could take 100 years and claim tens of thousands of American lives. He's seen the suffering up close, he's been in the midst of it since 9/11. So, really, she should shut the hell up.

OPINION: George Bush and his war has killed her son needlessly. FACT: Bush didn't send her son. He volunteered to serve his nation and defend his fellow citizens (and those of us who aren't citizens but benefit anyway). He could have gone into the workforce, he could have gone surfing for the rest of his life or taken up hemp-making in some place in the Andes. But he chose his own life and no one, except him, is responsible for his decisions. To lay the blame for his choice at anyone else's feet is the lashing out of an emotional, politically motivated hack.


I'm going to start a category on idiotic things I read on Huffington that make me absolutely crazy. Not crazy because I'm driven mad at the inherent truth that I cannot contend with. No. Crazy because the people writing fail to stop, think, honestly consider both sides of the equation and then render an opinion. They simply make things up, build straw men to knock them down, mock that which they cannot defeat electorally and otherwise demean those that they feel themselves superior to.

I'm fed up and I just can't take it anymore. Now I'm off to change my newborn's diaper. Surely a more satisfying task than reading Huffington Post. At least his shit comes out his ass instead of his mouth.



I am NOT a crazed, deluded bitch! I am the Governor of California!
Arianna Huffington, the Iraqi Information Minister

Cindy Sheehan Checks Out of Reality, Into Asylum

Cindy Sheehan has obviously lost her grip on reality. Her latest tirade, as reported by Drudge, is simply off the hook. Despite being factually incorrect, it is just plain weird.

Anti-war protestor Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq, is calling for Bush's "impeachment," and for Israel to get out of Palestine!

"You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism," Sheehan declares.

Sheehan, who is asking for a second meeting with President Bush, says defiantly: "My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny...you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we'll put this war on trial."

"And now I'm going to use another 'I' word - impeachment - because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."

The 48-year-old California mom remains tented up in a ditch along the one-lane road that leads to Bush's Texas ranch.

As her protest entered its second week, hundreds of people with conflicting opinions about the war in Iraq descended on the area.

TIME mag reports in new editions on Monday: Sheehan gets support from her surviving son, Andy, in principle, but he recently sent her a long e-mail imploring her, "to come home because you need to support us at home."

So, she's a nutjob. Her obviously anti-semitic statements both now and in the past belie her mental state. In addition, aside from the simple fact that she doesn't pay taxes to George Bush, the President doesn't make war either. Her call for impeachment, I can only assume, is meant for members of Congress who authorized Iraqi Freedom.

And another thing. Making war on another country doesn't automatically make you a war criminal. Someone, somewhere, has to violate the Geneva Conventions in order to be tried for war crimes or crimes against humanity. The only one in this scenario that can fall into that category is the former tyrant Hussein. So I can only assume that she means that Saddam should be held accountable for his war crimes. And that I totally agree with.

I'm just glad that the anti-terrorist, pro-democracy part of our society is out there holding counter demonstrations. We shouldn't let this granola-eating, hippie, tree-hugging, peacenik media-whore spew her nonsense unopposed.


Hi, I do you like my hat? No? Then you must be a war criminal. Oh, and I hate Jews.

Perish the Thought!

From Drudge:

HELEN THOMAS ANGRY AFTER 'KILL SELF' OVER CHENEY COMMENTS PUBLISHED

White House press doyenne Helen Thomas is plenty peeved at her longtime friend Albert Eisele, editor of THE HILL newspaper in Washington, D.C.

In a column this week headlined "Reporter: Cheney's Not Presidential Material," Eisele quoted Thomas as saying "The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself. All we need is one more liar."

Thomas also said: "I think he'd like to run, but it would be a sad day for the country if he does," according to Eisele's column.

But Thomas said yesterday at the White House that her comments to Eisele were for his ears only. "I'll never talk to a reporter again!" Thomas was overheard saying.

"We were just talking -- I was ranting -- and he wrote about it. That isn't right. We all say stuff we don't want printed," Thomas said.

But Eisele said that when he called Thomas, "I assume she knew that we were on the record."

"She's obviously very upset about it, but it was a small item -- until Drudge picked it up and broadcast it across the universe," Eisele said.

Still, he noted that reporters aren't that happy when the tables are turned. "Nobody has thinner skin than reporters," Eisele said with a laugh.

Imagine! People say things they don't want printed! That stupid fat bitch should eat her own words. God I hate the fucking press. Self-righteous bastards.

In your fat old face Helen!

Ha Ha. Stupid Dick.

"Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line," the Illinois Democrat said. "To them I extend my heartfelt apologies."

His voice quaking and tears welling in his eyes, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate also apologized to any soldiers who felt insulted by his remarks.

"They're the best. I never, ever intended any disrespect for them," he said.

About time. It only took him a week. The rapidity of his apology must be an indication of the degree of sincerity. Which is to say, not much.

Normally I would link a bunch of sites so that I can increase my ranking in the Ecosystem, but frankly I'm just too bored and I know without even looking that EVERYONE has this story...

Tom Cruise Emulates Chris Tiberius (TC vs CT)

So I awoke this morning to this:

Tom Cruise Proposes to Katie Holmes
Jun 17, 6:10 AM (ET)
By SOPHIE NICHOLSON

PARIS (AP) - Actor Tom Cruise said he and girlfriend Katie Holmes are engaged, after he popped the question early Friday morning atop the Eiffel Tower.

Cruise, speaking at a Paris news conference with Holmes, said: "Yes, I proposed to her."

The couple often shared smiles and blushes as Cruise turned to look at her, with a massive diamond ring on her finger.

"It was early this morning at the Eiffel Tower, so I haven't slept at all," he said. "Today is a magnificent day for me, I'm engaged to a magnificent woman."

Asked why he chose the famed Paris landmark, he said: "I've never been to the Eiffel Tower. It's Paris, it's a beautiful city, it's very romantic."

...Yawn. So TC has proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Been there, done that.

You may recall, long before the days of blogging, but well into ChrisCam's 3rd year, that I proposed to a girl at the top of the Eiffel Tower. And I did it with some panache: it was Dec. 31 1999. CT top's TC. Oh, and MY fiance was within a generation of my own age.

And by the way? That engagement didn't, shall we say, "work out". So once he comes down of his obviously drug-induced high and calls of the engagement, I will have been TC's forerunner twice over.

And for my next trick, I will make Katie Holmes fall in love with ME. Oh, wait. I'm married.

And honestly? I can only find a couple people who remotely care about this topic: James Joyner and that guy at Gay Orbit.

The Penn Isn't Mightier

Sean Penn is an idiot. And you know what else? I thought he SUCKED ASS in The Interpreter. Anyway, I wonder how much he values his freedom of speech now? Perhaps enough to take up arms to defend it? Hopefully at the very least enough to quit harranguing those who are defending it on his behalf.

Camera of Sean Penn, Journalist, Confiscated in Iran
By E&P Staff
Published: June 12, 2005 8:15 PM ET
NEW YORK

Iran was rocked by bombings on Sunday, killing at least nine and wounding more than 30, as dozens of journalists from around the world gathered in advance of the presidential election this Friday. One of those journalists, actor Sean Penn--covering the events for the San Francisco Chronicle--was involved in a separate incident, and had his video camera confiscated for a time.

Several hundred women at a sit-in outside the entrance to Tehran University demanded rights revoked after the 1979 Islamic revolution. As chants and taunts arose, police and plainclothesmen surrounded the demonstrators, pushing away those trying to join the group. Officials also cut off cell phone service in the area, and challenged reporters nearby.

In the process, they briefly seized the video camera of Penn, 44, acccording to The Washington Post. He had arrived in Iran as a reporter for his friend Phil Bronstein, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Penn was spotted on Friday with a notebook in hand covering a prayer service. He has also written about his visits to Iraq for the Chronicle.

Maybe the mullahs thought he was there as a human shield. Cause, you know, that worked out so well for him in Iraq. Stupid ass.

Laurence Simon has a cool new leftist bingo card that rocks. Download it, and check off Penn.

Barking Moonbat also opines.


Why doesn't anyone like my mustache?

Thank God for Blogdom!

I'm a bit astonished at what I saw on Hardball last night. There was Chris 'Big-Head' Matthews doing a segment on WMD and in it he made the rather bizarre claim that we now know there are not and never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

No. Sorry blowhard. Wrong answer. The Duelfer report clearly shows that as late as February 2003 (yes less than a month before the war began), Saddam had purchased WMD components from abroad and had authorized the use of chemical weapons on American troops should an invasion occur. These are the same chemical weapons that Chris Matthews is claiming don't exist and never existed.

That nutcase on MSNBC is attributing his claims to the Duelfer report provided to the CIA. Well, go read it for yourself. It's in 3 easy-to-read volumes. The executive summary titled 'Charles Duelfer's Transmittal Message' is an excellent way to get a quick overview of the report.

The only section that you will find where Mr. Duelfer comes close to suggesting we invaded based on bad intelligence is the section where he says:

"Distant technical analysts mistakenly identified evidence and drew incorrect conclusions. There is also the potential of the obverse problem. Observers may have evidence before them and not recognize it because of unfamiliarity with the subject. Often ISG found no evidence of one thing or another. It may be that a more accurate formulation might be we recognized no evidence. This is a fundamental conundrum in assessing alien circumstances."

So read the report. It's very informative. Then go read Chris Matthew's 'Hardblogger' where he says:

"A Washington Post headline today says the search for weapons in mass destruction has ended— so it's official— there are no weapons of mass destruction... which was the reason for the war in Iraq."

After you read the report and after you read the swaggerer's ranting, ask yourself if the two are even remotely related.

First, he says 'there are no weapons of mass destruction.' False. The report says they cannot be found, not that they don't or never existed.

Second, he says that WMD 'was the reason for the war in Iraq.' False. The 'grave and gathering' threat that President Bush spoke of in his State of the Union speech last January reflected the government line on the reasons for war. He had weapons in the past, we don't know if he still has them but our intelligence says he does, we know he's perfectly willing to use the WMD on a whim, he has the capability to rapidly expand (or rebuild) his stockpiles, he's a murdurous and unpredictable dictator sitting on the world's oil supply. THOSE were the reasons dipshit.

The ongoing unwillingness of the mainstream media to get over themselves and their ingrained prejudices and biases toward Iraq is leading to tremendous misinformation being bandied about as if it were fact. It is causing me great heartburn to realize that someone out there who may not wish to read the report for themselves will take Matthew's opinion as fact and not question it.

Please, I tell you now and for all history, you are finding no weapons.

This is how the media warps the news (indeed, makes up the news) and brainwashes the average Joe. Thank God for blogdom! At least in the blogosphere we have the ability to check the ideological motivation of the media to color the news to suit their political leanings.

If only more people would read blogs, the world would be a better place.

Rebuttal to My Dear Babs, Part the Second

In 1794, anarchy ruled in Western Pennsylvania. The residents were literally in open revolt at the excise tax on Whisky. This tax was imposed after the Consitution went into effect in 1789 to help balance the nation's budget and finance the debt from the Revolution. Jefferson and his followers (including Madison and Monroe) viewed this with glee. They openly hoped that French-style revolution would purge the new American Republic of its wicked ways (primarly they were most upset by the financial institutions, taxes, duties and whatnot represented by the whiskey tax). It was only through the courage of Washington, Henry Knox and Alexander Hamilton that an army was raised to put down the revolt.

On his way over the Allegheny mountains at the head of this American army, Hamilton wrote "205 miles westward of Philadelphia. I am thus far... on my way to attack and subdue the wicked insurgents of the west. A large army has cooled the courage of those madmen and the only question seems now to be how to guard best against the return of the frenzy."

It seems apt to note this statement in today's post-election wrangling. If only we could subdue the wicked insurgents of the west yet again.

Rebuttal To My Dear Babs, Part the First

Thomas Jefferson, whom Barbara Streisand simply loves to quote, is also greatly admired by William Jefferson Clinton. This could be enough of a statement in and of itself for some, but I chose to enlighten the reader as to my own thoughts on the original Mr. Jefferson. Why? Because it's my website. If you don't like it, piss off.

Visitors to Monitcello in the late 1700s would have been amazed at the sheer number of light-skinned slaves running around the Jefferson household. This is largely because he kept several of them as mistresses and produced at least 8 bastard children. By the time he was in his grave, he had freed only 7 of his slaves, not including the various mistresses he kept in sexual bondage.

Jefferson viewed Robbespierre and the other butchers of the French Revolution, responsible for countless murders in addition to regicide, as a hero. Not once did Jefferson flinch at the blood that was quite literally flowing through the streets of Paris. In fact, he went so far as to say that he would rather have half the human race destroyed in the mere effort at Revolution than to have none at all.

Jefferson was a coward who, as I've mentioned before, abandoned his post as Governor of Virginia during the Revolution. He fled on horseback into the country, leaving the government of that Commonwealth and his entire household at the mercy of the British just to save his own skin. During the great debates in the mid to late 1790s that saw the evolution of political party politics in America, Jefferson never directly attacked or criticized anyone. Instead he used surrogates to defame, slander and smear anyone he disagreed with. He went so far as to actively undermine the Administration of George Washington, whom he saw as an Anglophile. This coward wouldn't even fight with the pen in his own hand, let alone take up arms and fight for the American Revolution.

Jefferson wrote in the early 1780s that America's slaves should be "exported to some less friendly region where they might all be murdered or reduced to a more wretched state of slavery." He opined further about his beliefs that Whites were genetically superior to Blacks. He wrote, "They secrete less by the kidneys and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour." Finally, he created his own pseudoscience and, in the words of Hamilton, described blacks as "a peculiar race of animals below man and above the orangutan... a high kind of brute hitherto undescribed."

Thomas Jefferson is not a man to admiringly quote at length when consideration of moral virtue is the topic. Unfortunately for Babs, her ideological idol was a coward, a racist, blindly ambitious, a conspirator, an intriguer and utterly devoid of human compassion. I think it is reprehensible for her to apply the words of Jefferson to evoke some sort of noble resistence to the results of the election.

Bill Maher is a Big Fat Idiot

Hmmm. What is the MOST delicious part of this scandal? So...hard...to...choose. Could it be that the woman's nickname is Coco?

NOVEMBER 11--Comedian Bill Maher was slapped yesterday with a $9 million palimony suit by an ex-girlfriend who alleges that the HBO star subjected her to physical and verbal abuse, including "insulting, humiliating and degrading racial comments." In the below Los Angeles Superior Court complaint, Nancy Johnson, a centerfold model and former flight attendant also known as Coco Johnsen, alleges that Maher, 48, reneged on promises to pay her expenses and purchase a Beverly Hills home. Johnson, who says she dated Maher for 17 months before splitting from him in May, also contends that the performer promised to marry her and have children. Johnson, pictured at right, does not detail the degrading racial comments allegedly made by Maher, and recounts only one episode of supposed physical abuse by the host of HBO's "Real Time." She charges that Maher pulled her arm and shook her at one party, causing "injuries to her back and neck," and later that evening warned he'd hit her on the head with a hammer if she was unfaithful.

I love the fact that this smug son-of-a-bitch has finally got a comeuppance. Maybe leftists won't be so quick to jump on O'Reilly from now on.

Immigrant Anger

I came to this country as a moody teenager. Didn't much care about America or Americans. As I grew up, it became increasingly clear that I would never return to Canada. There was no incentive. The jobs in America are better, the pay is better, opportunity is far superior. I saw no difference in the education system and viewed American universities as vastly superior in terms of prestige, quality of education, access to prominent intellectuals and location. After all, who wants to go to school in the frozen tundra of nowheresville Ontario when great American schools abound in cities like Boston and New York?

As I studied American and European history in high school, I came to see the unique qualities that made this nation great. The notion of packing your entire family into a ship and leaving everything you have ever known to sail across the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean takes a certain quality of adventurism and determination. To then go one step further and carve your existence out of the wilds of the American continent, defend your family against natives, work hard and struggle just to survive, well these things take a person of unusually strong constitution and the will to succeed. America was blessed with a population of people who came here to seek their fortune. They expected nothing but the opportunity to either succeed or fail. And no king or aristocracy or religion or government was going to pre-determine their existence.

America, unique among the nation-states, is a nation peopled by those who have come from somewhere else in the hopes of a better life. They bring their vigor, their talent, their drive and ambition, their unique cultural heritage. They come not with their hands out, but with a gleam in their eye and the full expectation that they will succeed.

That this wonderfully energetic, vibrant and turbulent influx of people has continued down to this day is a testament to the appeal of America. These special people struggle around the world to produce the vague hope that one day they can come here and live the dream. I didn't come by choice, and frankly only divine intervention caused my family to move here, but I have come to love this nation. Even to the point where I enlisted in the US Army out selfless devotion to defend the nation that had given me everything.

Through my father I learned of the economics of the American way. He works in the auto industry and I saw first hand the impact of unions, the impact of tariffs and trade barriers, and I saw the dramatic impact of high taxes and the unfavorable business climate of New York state. And after the Army, my experience living in Boston for 5 years gave me the empathy, compassion and socially liberal leanings that I lacked. I was shaped by these things. My mindset was crafted by America's mold, as countless millions of immigrants before me. America's greatness stems from this great, global flow of people, arriving in our ports of entry and melting into the vast bubbling pot of humanity that is our home. People come here. They add their distinctiveness to the whole and thereby improve it. They become Americans. Their progeny are Americans. Generations of people can look back on their ancestors with pride that they struggled hard to come to America, and America blessed them with immeasurable bounty.

Imagine my horror, therefore, when I read the following article:

Some Say US No Longer Feels Like Home By DEAN SCHABNER ABC News Nov. 10, 2004 -- Leora Dowling and her husband thought returning from deep in "red" America to her native New England would make them feel more comfortable, more like the people around them shared their values. Since the election, she's been contemplating another move. To Italy. "After the election, my husband and I asked ourselves, 'How could our country be heading backward? How could so many people miss or choose to ignore the obvious failures of the Bush administration?'" the former Florida resident said.

Heading backward?? In what way exactly? Because people feel uncomfortable with judges in Massachusetts unilaterally redefining marriage for the rest of us? And the question of why people ignore the failings of one President or another totally oversimplifies the motives that drive people to vote. People can dislike a man and still vote for him. They can also love the guy but think his policies are crap. Why can't left wingers like this woman see that people can hold different opinions than hers without being backward? Oh, and by the way, someone needs to tell ABC News up there in their northeastern ivory tower that Florida is not part of the South.

... For Dowling, as for others who ABCNews.com spoke with, though the immediate anger may be focused on the president — whether because of the war in Iraq, his stance on same-sex weddings, what they say is his blurring of the line between church and state, or his championing of the Patriot Act — there is a broader concern. They say they feel the United States is changing in ways they do not like, and they feel powerless to stop it.

So therefore the rest of America should bend to their wishes because they don't like where they think the nation is heading? It certainly doesn't get more snobbish or elitist than that. Hey, I don't like something, therefore you are all stupid for not thinking the same way I do. Come on.

"We were leaving anyhow, mostly because we want to start a family and we don't feel our children can get a decent education in the United States," said Brian Sinicki, of Laramie, Wyo. He said America's schools fail children by not teaching subjects like philosophy and civics, subjects that he said would give Americans not only a deeper understanding of the world, but an appreciation for why they should be more actively involved in the political process, not only voting but staying informed.

Hey, let's try getting reading, writing and arithmatic down pat first before we start heaping Hegel on the kids. Serioiusly, I want my kid to be able to read before they try teaching him the difference between the Sophists and Socratic philosophy. And just a point of clarification, Civics IS taught in the public school system.

He also criticized the media, and television in particular, for the way news is covered. "Television I think has single-handedly destroyed the level of political discourse," he said. "When I talk to people about politics, they're either radically misinformed or they wouldn't know how to define the terms that they use."

Here again the arrogance shows through in the words. According to this man there is only one objective truth in politics. Obviously, if you disagree with this truth, you're either radically misinformed or stupid. The implication is, of course, that anyone who thinks Bush is okay is stupid or just doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. I just cannot tolerate this sort of extremism. It's beyond elitist, it's downright aristocratic.

... Like Sinicki, Dowling didn't start thinking about moving abroad last week, but she said her concern was more about the role Bush's religious beliefs seem to play in his governing, and the role of religion in American society — what she called "aggressive Christianity." "There is this aggressive morality that seems to me to have nothing to do with Christianity," she said. "Our fathers were mostly Unitarians, not at all holy rollers."

So a man that is guided by his belief in something (be it God or scientific rationality) is unfit to be our leader? That's an odd thing to say. The best leaders throughout history have always been guided by something they believed in. In fact, a leader without a core belief system is by definition not a leader at all. And of course those core beliefs impact the policy decisions a leader makes. It is not only inherently required, it is to be highly desired. A man guided by nothing but polls and who allows no value system to govern his policy judgement cannot possibly lead anyone.

As for her apparent religious intolerance and bigotry, this woman should be informed that being religious doesn't make you a rabid fanatic of doctrine.

She also said it feels like there has been a closing of the American mind. "I can't understand when in our nation's history being an intellectual, having a questioning, curious mind, wanting to travel, became bad," she said. "I don't understand when it became stigmatized."

And I don't understand when believing in something bigger than yourself became evidence of backward stupidity. In one sentence she esentially claims all people who believe in God and practice their religion have a closed mind. In the next breath she bemoans why intellectual, enlightened smarty pants like herself get a bad rap. If anything, being religious has become stigmatized. And this woman defines herself as a stigmatizer of the faithful by her own words.

... "I do love my country and it hurts me very deeply to see what's happening here, to see us so far off course," she said. "But I've met a lot of evangelicals and they believe it deeply. They'd rather vote for fetuses and against gay people, rather than voting against war, with thousands dead, against guns, which we know kill people. When you're talking about deeply held religious beliefs, you're out of luck."

She's a bigot. She wants to prevent people from believing in anything but what she believes in. She dismisses evangelicals as mindless, brainwashed zealots. They'd rather vote for fetuses? If you believe a fetus is sentient life then why on earth would you consent to it being murdered? How is that evidence of an enlightened sensibility?

To be sure there are homophobes in this world. But I don't think the greater part of the nation votes against gay people. They vote against having other people tell them what marriage is or isn't. They vote to protect their nuptial contracts from being unilaterally redefined by someone in some remote part of the country.

The same for guns. We may all detest guns, we may wish nobody had them. But no one in this country has the right to enforce their belief system on someone who disagrees. I find it ironic that the thing these leftists are complaining about is the very thing they would advocate doing to those who disagree with them. People who support gun rights? I don't agree with them. Force a repeal of the 2nd Amendment and impose my beliefs on them. Christianity? I think it's for stupid rubes. Obliterate it from the face of American society. Come on. If these people truly loved the nation, they'd support its respect for all those who hold differing viewpoints.

While for some people who said they are investigating the possibility of leaving the country, the difficulty of finding work overseas could keep them in the United States, for those who operate Web-based businesses, that is not a problem. One such person, Kelly Ann Thomas of Houston, said she has put her house on the market and a real estate agent has been showing her properties in a Central American country. She said she did not want to say exactly where, because her agent told her he received 45 calls in one day from Americans looking to move to the same location. She has been concerned since Bush took office in 2001, she said. She started buying gold and investing in euros, because she and her husband, an oil trader, were worried about a "significant stock market collapse."

Here's another one who 'knows' that the objective truth is being ignored by a nation of deity worshipping monkeys.

The reason people won't leave is because in comparison the rest of the world sucks. I'm sorry, but it's true. There aren't jobs to be had in other countries like there are here. Why do you think people risk their lives to leave places like Central America? Why would they leave utopias such as France and Italy to come to a hellhole-nation of evangelical zealots? Because their home countries are noticeably lackluster in comparison to America. That's why. And come on, 45 calls? I think ABC should've made up a higher number that's a bit more shocking. Like how bout a billion calls. Oh, and ALL of them hated President Bush and voted for Kerry. Yeah, that sounds good. Cut. Print.

... "I can no longer in good conscience support a nation that believes it is OK to lie to start wars," she said. "I will not live in a country where dumb and dumber are my two choices for president. I'm taking my assets out of the country and moving to Central America, where ironically, I will have more freedom to live my life without interference from a corrupt government. My husband and I will leave within four months."

Well babe, I got news for you. Do you think there is a nation or government in all of human history that hasn't lied? If you're not going to live in country where the government lies, then I guess we'll be seeing you on Mars. I wonder how she'll feel when, after moving her assets to this mystical Central American country, the completely corrupt government there appropriates all of her assets because there is no established rule of law that governs society. I wonder how she'll feel when she gets to Central America and lives under constant threat of rebel militias burning her house to the ground because she won't 'tolerate' their use of guns. Perhaps she'll reconsider her choice of nation when any and all dissent against the Banana Republic is extinguished with squads of men who make you disappear in the middle of the night. I suspect she'll be shocked to learn that there is not universal healthcare or legions of highly educated professionals who are willing to sit around eating fondue and discussing the folly of the dumb American people. She may be surprised when her husband cannot get a job because there are none to be had.

But America will still extend its hand to her when she comes wading across the Rio Grande, fleeing the pack of thugs who just raped her and killed her husband for his watch.

What angers me about this type of thinking is that it totally derides people like me. I'm an immigrant and I don't like people disparaging America because they don't agree with some segment of the people, or even with a prevailing political leaning. People like me have gone to extraordinary lengths to come here and make something of themselves. This bountiful Republic has so much more to offer than another other place. It is disgraceful that someone who enjoys the status of Citizen should contemplate leaving because they don't always get their way, because they don't like the current mood, because they cannot in good conscience allow other people's beliefs to be held, because they feel superior to the countless morons who subscribe to the folly of faith, because they don't like America.

Let them go. We don't need that type of intolerant person here. But I would caution them before they pick up their toys and leave, they should think twice before disgracing millions who have struggled to make this country what it is today.

America has given them everything. How dare they take her for granted?

Babs Causes the Universe to Implode

Oy vey. Now you know this had to happen sometime. Barbara Streisand has gone and single-handedly rewritten American history in another intellectually challenged attempt to bash GW. Seriously, she makes the President look like Isaac Newton. If this is the best the left can do, they've got bigger problems than a red, red map of America.

We Must Have Patience ...Barbra Streisand Posted on November 8, 2004 In response to the results of the Presidential election last week, I would like to share with you a quote from Thomas Jefferson. Although written in 1798, I feel his words speak perfectly to the strong sentiments of frustration and disappointment 48% of the country feel.

First of all, it isn't 48% of the country you twit. It's 48% of the people who voted. You see, 48% of the country would be 141,461,689 people which, of course, is far more than the total number of people that voted in the election. So, you're wrong.

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles.

Mr. Jefferson wrote this about the Federalists led by Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was the man who fought gallantly and heroically at Washington's side while Jefferson, as Governor of Virginia, abandoned his post and Richmond in the face of a small band of British skirmishers and fled into the countryside, leaving his 100 slaves to fend for themselves. Hamilton, after doing more than any other single man to organize the Continental Army and press the Congress to finance the War, went on to become second only to James Madison in responsibility for the shape of the Constitution. He churned out the Federalist papers promoting the document and can be credited nearly single-handedly for the fact that New York accepted the document and ratified it. All this while Jefferson lounged about in Paris in a foppish powdered wig.

Not satisfied to rest on his laurels, Hamilton went on to create the financial institutions of our Republic. He created the Coast Guard. He created the Treasury Department. He created the capital markets in America. He insituted the notion of financed national debt. He is mostly responsible for America's close ties with England instead of France (as Jefferson wanted). It has been argued that if Jefferson had prevailed, America would still be a backward rural state. More than likely the peasant society of farmers that Jefferson dreamed of would have succumbed to socialism in the late 1800s.

So, frankly my dear, holding up Jefferson's attacks against everything that America came to represent as proof-positive that GW is a witch is plainly foolish. You're foolish. You foolish, foolish bitch.

It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt......If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."

Can anyone guess what 'horrors of war and public debt' Jefferson referred to in 1798? Yes that's right, the Revolution that gave birth to our nation. Can we guess what war and public debt our wonderful Californian idiot is alluding to when she quotes Jefferson? No doubt she is derisively alluding to Iraq and our current budget deficit. We know from her prior statements that she's against the war, so let's put 2 and 2 together. Are you, my dear Babs, comparing the most noble Revolutionary War to Iraqi Freedom which we all know you wish had never happened? Can you even fathom the depths of your stupidity?

See, the problem dear Brutus is not in ourselves but in the stars that we are morons. If Babs knew a damn thing about America (or, in fact, anything at all) she'd know enough not to invoke one of Jefferson's fits of temper against Federalism, financial institutions, commerce and the Industrial Revolution to support the view that Democrats just had a bad day and that they really don't need to structurally reform their party. Don't worry, just wait and in time the majority will come around to leftist views. Um, right.

You know what your problem is Babs? You're stupid and your agent really ought not allow you to speak.

The link to the original article if you care to read more of her nutty ideas.

******Update
Nod to Michelle for the trackback. I just love everything she says. I love how she reminds us about the time Babs made up the Shakespeare quote and was humiliated by Drudge. Hehe! Plus she has a fantastic find, which is the original letter that Jefferson wrote, excerpted by Babs the Idiot. Here's the link to it. Go read it and you'll have one up on Streisand who obviously never read it and has no freaking clue what she's talking about.

(set to music)...Barbaracanyou hear me....

Hi, I'm stupid.

As told by Christo on November 8, 2004 @ 22:14

 FILED UNDER: Stupid People
 PERMANENT LINK

Oh No! Jimmy Strikes Again!

Oh Jimmy, why? Why do you insist on revealing your creeping senility to the world? As a former President you should have the courtesy to go away and die silently instead of actively undermining America in the foreign press.

Naturally it's the Guardian again that reports on Jimmy's latest bout of silliness:

Bush exploits suffering of 9/11, says Carter Oliver Burkeman in Atlanta Monday October 25, 2004 The Guardian George Bush has exploited the suffering of September 11 and turned back decades of efforts to make the world a safer place, the former president Jimmy Carter says in an interview with the Guardian published today. Attacking Mr Bush and Tony Blair over Iraq, Mr Carter calls the war "a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements".

Um, completely unjust? Not hardly. The UN Security Council itself unanimously promised 'serious consequences' if their demands weren't met. What does Jimmy think was meant by the term 'serious consequences'? Does he interpret that as 'we will protest vehemently' or perhaps go so far as 'we will write a strongly worded essay for Foreign Affairs' ?? And as for the whole effort being an adventure based on misleading statements, it was most certainly not. It was based on inaccurate intelligence, but nobody intentionally mislead other people. Frankly, I think that can be considered libel since it is blatantly untrue. Somebody should sue peanut boy.

He also criticises Mr Bush for "lack of effort" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and accuses him of abandoning nuclear non-proliferation initiatives championed by five presidents. The US "suffered, in 9/11, a terrible and shocking attack ... and George Bush has been adroit at exploiting that attack, and he has elevated himself, in the consciousness of many Americans, to a heroic commander-in-chief, fighting a global threat against America," Mr Carter says. "He's repeatedly played that card, and to some degree quite successfully. I think that success has dissipated. I don't know if it's dissipating fast enough to affect the election. We'll soon know."

What, like Bush is Mao Tse Deng or something? He's encouraging some sort of a cult-of-Bush-the-hero? Come on, that's just plain stupid. Bush was thrust into something he didn't want, that America didn't want. And he led. He led in the fashion that he thought best to protect us from a global threat against America. Yes Jimmy, there is a global threat against America. Where the fuck have you been for 3 years? Were you taking an old-person nap during September 11th? Perhaps it was the fact that you were totally blind to the threat during your own dismal Presidency that you can sit in judgement of someone who can actually recognize a threat when he sees it.

Mr Carter, 80, was president from 1977-1981, but did not win re-election amid the US hostage crisis in Iran. By comparison, support for Mr Bush's Iraq invasion is widespread, something Mr Carter attributes to a transformation in America's national mood.

Yeah, it was called 9/11. That's what changed the national mood.

"When your troops go to war, the prime minister or the president change overnight from an administrator, dealing with taxation and welfare and health and deteriorating roads, into the commander-in-chief," he says. "And it's just become almost unpatriotic to describe Bush's fallacious and ill-advised and mistaken and sometimes misleading actions."

This is perhaps the single most revealing statement ever made by a liberal. Carter views the President as an 'administrator' who overseas taxation and welfare and healthcare and the physical infrastructure of the country. Um, no. Sorry. That would be the legislature, not the executive that makes laws regarding those things and appropriates funding for them. The President is the chief executive not chief administrator. He is the head of state and the head of government. He leads by putting forth ideas, by making decisions that affect the common welfare of the people, by enforcing laws passed by the Congress. Jimmy, please, the President leads the people, he doesn't administer to them or pander to them or take care of them. That is a key difference, Jimmy, between the leftist liberal ideology and the correct one (i.e. the right-of center one, he says with a wink and a smile). The President isn't the wetnurse-in-chief, he is the Commander-in-Chief.

Mr Bush and Mr Blair are blamed for helping to fuel the depth of anti-American feeling in the Islamic world. Denying any link between his handling of the Iranian crisis and the present threat, Mr Carter says: "The entire Islamic world condemned Iran. Nowadays, because of the unwarranted invasion of Iraq by Bush and Blair, which was a completely unjust adventure based on misleading statements, and the lack of any effort to resolve the Palestinian issue, [there is] massive Islamic condemnation of the United States."

Wait, wait. Time out. Muslim fundementalists hate us because of Iraqi Freedom? Hm. You know Jim-boy, that doesn't really explain why they totally intimidated your administration 25 years ago by taking western hostages. Or why they blew up airplanes throughout the 70's and 80's. Or why Muslims fought each other during the Iraq-Iran war. Or why Saddam invaded another Muslim country. Or why they attacked westerners repeatedly around the globe throughout the 90s (WTC in 93, embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, USS Cole, etc). Frankly, blaming Islamic militantism on Iraqi Freedom doesn't explain any number of other inconvenient facts of history.

The reality is, they hate us because of who we are. They have hated us since they first swept across North Africa and invaded Spain over a thousand years ago. They've hated us since they first attacked the gates of Vienna over 500 years ago. So don't make it seem, you dried up vainglorious old fart, that protecting American interests in 2003 has made the militant Muslim hate the Jew and hate the Christian and hate the Hindu and hate the Buddhist since the 7th century.

Watch Out All You Witches!

What on earth is the world coming to? Kids aren't allowed to celebrate Halloween because it might offend people? You know it certainly offends many devout Christians in the south, but we don't ban the kids from celebrating. This is the stupidest thing I've heard of since, well, a few minutes ago.

PUYALLUP, Wash., Oct. 21, 2004 -- A Washington state school district is canceling its annual Halloween celebration, and the explanation has some parents baffled. "Let them have their 30 minutes of dressing goofy and having candy," Silas Macon, a father of two school-age girls, said Wednesday outside Maplewood Elementary School after learning that the grade-school tradition of a party and parade in costume during the last half-hour of class before Halloween night won't happen this year in the district. A letter sent home to parents Wednesday said there will be no observance of Halloween in any of the district's schools. "We really want to make sure we're using all of our time in the best interest of our students," Puyallup School District spokeswoman Karen Hansen said.

Hey I have an idea. Stop spending all your money on football teams and stadiums and uniforms and teach your fucking kids how to read! In the meantime, let them have a break from your oppressive leftism!

The district said Halloween celebrations and children dressed in Halloween costumes might be offensive to real witches. "Witches with pointy noses and things like that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion and so we want to be respectful of that," Hansen said. The Wiccan, or Pagan, religion is said to be growing in the United States and there are Wiccan groups in Puyallup.

From what? From one to two? Why is everything that claims to be something automatically protected by every concievable politically correct stooge? It's like preventing people from wearing Darth Vader costums because it might offend Sith Lords.

On the district's list of guidelines related to holidays and celebrations is an item that reads: "Use of derogatory stereotypes is prohibited, such as the traditional image of a witch, which is offensive to members of the Wiccan religion." "I do lots of things that are not revolving around wearing a black outfit and stirring a cauldron," Wiccan priestess Cheryl Sulyma-Masson said in an interview with ABC News in which she explained that Wiccans, or Pagan Clergy, celebrate nature.

What?! Is this for real? So if I'm a member of some obscure religion that idolizes St. Valentine, I certainly hope that school will not allow offense stereotypes of cupids and other stupid crap from being sent on Valentine's day. Of course it happened in Washington state, since only something on the left coast could be this far out of the mainstream. How fucking PC can we get?

Good, stay there then.

I just have one thing to say about this. The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land. This nation is not subject to laws created by any other entity, including the United Nations and the World Court. Any war which is prosecuted with the backing of the Congress is legal and no one, not the UN nor any other body can rule it illegal.

A soldier in the American military does not have the option of deciding which war he's going to fight. Unless there are gross violations of the Geneva Conventions, the military doesn't permit the questioning of orders. Even when a soldier decides not to follow orders that he believes are in gross violation of the Geneva Conventions, all that he is guaranteed is that he won't be immediately shot. He's still breaking the law by committing mutiny.

The people mentioned in this article are cowards and they should face up to it. In that respect, Canada is a good place for them to go.

Flight from the fight

Two American soldiers have deserted, claiming asylum in Canada rather than serve in Iraq. They argue that the war is illegal under international law

Anne McIlroy
Tuesday April 13, 2004
The Guardian

Brandon Hughey is a teenager living among strangers, thousands of miles from his friends, family and home in San Angelo, Texas. The 18-year-old is one of two American servicemen who recently deserted their units and fled to Canada to claim asylum as refugees. "We plan to argue that the war in Iraq is illegal under international law and that I have a right not to choose to participate," he says.
Hughey, who has been taken in by a Quaker couple in the Ontario city of St Catharines, spends his days preparing his legal case. For breaks, he takes solitary walks downtown. He seems mature, composed, and hopeful that he will be able to build a new life for himself in Canada.

Hughey signed up for the army when he was 17, during his final year in high school. "I joined because it was the only way I was going to get a college education," he says. He went through basic training, and in his spare time began learning about the campaign in Iraq on the internet. He says he became increasingly uncomfortable about the mission, then so disturbed that he considered killing himself. He brought his questions to a commanding officer, who told him to stop thinking so much.

Then, through the internet, he met a stranger who offered help getting to Canada. He decided to leave and drove away from his base on March 2, the night before his unit was due to ship out for the Middle East. Now he was a deserter, terrified he would be stopped for speeding as he drove for 17 hours to meet a peace activist who took him across the Canadian border. They pretended to be basketball fans, on their way to a game in Toronto.

Through the Quaker church he met his lawyer, Jeffry House, who came to Canada from the US in 1970 after he was drafted to fight in Vietnam. He had graduated from college by then, and went on to earn a reputation in Toronto as a lawyer with a strong sense of social justice. Representing Hughey, who he says is "really just a sweet kid", and Jeremy Hinzman, 25, a private who fled to Canada with his wife and child in January, has brought back memories for him.

But it will take more than youthful appeal to win over the Canadian immigration and refugee board. Last year, a record 317 Americans applied for refugee status in Canada. Some were marijuana smokers claiming persecution. Others were Muslims who said they faced human rights abuses in the US. None was accepted as a legitimate refugee. In fact, only one American has ever been accepted as having a well-founded fear of persecution, and the courts overturned that decision.

House, however, believes the soldiers have a fair chance. He plans to make his case by producing at least one high-profile expert - possibly one of the British international law specialists who have condemned the Iraq war as illegal - to argue that the campaign there violates international law and cannot be justified. He says his clients are using the same legitimate legal grounds to refuse as soldiers throughout history have used when their superior officers order them to do something illegal - such as shooting civilian children.

House knows of only been one similar case argued before the refugee board. An Iranian soldier who deserted claimed refugee status because he didn't want to use poison gas on the Kurds during his country's war with Iraq. The board was unsympathetic, but the Canadian courts eventually ruled in his favour, and he was permitted to stay.

He also plans to cite a ruling of the English court of appeal two months ago in the case of a Russian conscript, Andrey Krotov, who deserted from the Russian army after he was sent to Grozny to fight in the Chechen war. The court ruled that refugee status could be available to a conscript who refused to serve when the service would require him to violate basic rules of human conduct as defined by international law.

House is hoping that Canada's stand on the invasion of Iraq will help his clients. The prime minister at the time, Jean Chrétien, never said the war was illegal under international law, but Canada decided not to participate.

To win refugee status in Canada, as in Britain, applicants have to convince the refugee board that they face a well-founded fear of persecution at home. This can be difficult for people from countries where arbitrary arrest and torture are routine, let alone for citizens of the US, Canada's closet ally. The law also specifies that fear of persecution is not the same as fear of prosecution.

In the past, says House, the board has accepted that refugees face persecution if they risk, for example, years in jail simply for reading a banned book. "It all comes down to whether it is justified to prosecute in these circumstances."

House points out that in the US the maximum penalty for desertion during a time of war is death. He concedes that the death penalty hasn't been used since the second world war, and his clients are more likely to face five years in jail if they return home. "But there is no guarantee," he says. In Canada the courts have ruled that someone cannot be deported to another country where they face the death penalty.

He doesn't see much difference between dodging the draft, as he did in 1970, and deserting the military when you joined voluntarily, as his two clients did. "It's hard to argue that you give up your entire moral personality once you are employed as a soldier."

Jeremy Hinzman, the other soldier claiming refugee status in Canada, agrees. He enlisted on January 17 2001, four months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, but before it became clear that President Bush would go to war in Iraq. He joined the army shortly after he got married, hoping, like Hughey, to earn money for college.

He had dabbled in Zen, and in January 2002 he and his wife Nga Nguyen began