On the Conservation of Common Sense

"When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye." - Barry Goldwater

It cannot be said, often or firmly enough, that the Republican party in the US and various authoritarian and socially-conservative movements are the antithesis of all that is genuine, useful and true about traditional Conservatism.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan (February 16, 2009) - Evangelicalism vs Conservatism: "The critical definition of conservatism, by which I mean that political tradition Burke founded, rests on a distinction between theoretical and practical wisdom. Burke insisted that abstract ideas of the Truth should not be our guide in political thought and action. He foresaw what would happen when tradition ceded to absolutism in the French Revolution. He prized experience, the wisdom of time, and the adaptation of existing institutions to new social realities. So for conservatives, the core political virtue is practical reason and common sense, not ideology, theology or absolutism."

Of course, one then has to look to the values that do seem to motivate a social conservative these days. While such people often point to religious values, and generally specifically Christian values, it is quite difficult to see a connection between the "book values" cited and the words spoken.

But I do think another writer - again, damn it - has put their thumb squarely upon it. Joe Brewer, writing for Truthout:

Taxation as Conservatives Understand It

I've already alluded to an interesting metaphor that helps make sense of conservative thought about taxes, which I'll call Taxes Are a Burden to make it explicit. The understanding of taxation that follows from this metaphor can be seen in this story:

Hard-working Americans are in need of some tax relief. Years of mismanagement by tax-and-spend liberals have taken money out of the hands of working people and put it into bloated government programs that serve special interests. We need to cut taxes, return fiscal responsibility to government, and put money back in the hands of taxpayers who know best how to spend it.

This perspective is grounded in two beliefs: (1) The world is comprised of individuals; and (2) People are inherently bad and must learn right from wrong through self-discipline. I like to call this the "Me First" perspective because it assumes that people must help themselves before thinking about others. It can be summarized with the declaration, "You're on your own!" The Me First perspective assumes that any assistance from the community would be "coddling" or "spoiling" us. This claim is asserted as truth in the conservative worldview.

Taxation as Progressives Understand It

Progressives have a different understanding of taxation that can be expressed through a variety of metaphors: Taxes Are an Investment, Taxes Are Membership Dues, Taxes Are Pathways to Opportunity, Taxes Are Infrastructure and Taxes Are a Duty. (Read more about progressive taxation in "Progressive Taxation: Some Hidden Truths") Reasoning that emerges with these metaphors can be seen in this progressive story:

Our great nation was founded on a promise of protection and opportunity. Through our shared wealth, pooled together by taxation with representation, we have invested in the public infrastructure that makes possible the creation of new wealth. We have a sacred trust to keep this promise alive throughout our lifetimes, expand it as we are able, and pass it along to our children.

This perspective is grounded in the beliefs that (1) Individuals are influenced significantly by our communities; and (2) People are inherently good and benefit from cooperation with others. I like to call this the "People First" perspective because it assumes that people must help each other in order to enhance their ability to help themselves. It can be summarized with the declaration, "We're all in this together!" The People First perspective assumes that we are greater than the sum of our parts and that new opportunities emerge when we make wise investments with the common wealth we share.

Now, I consider myself Conservative by reflex, but, as with Andrew, that is in the foundational sense, the sense in which Burke spoke. Further - and this comes both from my readings and studies and from direct personal interactions with people of all stripes - is that interactions between human beings, for good and ill, depend upon our assumptions of good will upon the other party. As unfortunate as it is that this assumption of unworthy motives for any public good initiative, it at least has one aspect to it; due to the efforts of the proponents of this viewpoint and the effects that one might expect of any such mutual self-congratulation society, neither the cheerleaders nor those led have the least embarrassment in stating these utterly unjustifiable assumptions aloud as being matters of presumed fact.

It's not only trivial to find examples, it's so pervasive that it escapes the bounds of ordinary political discussion. It comes out when Michael Savage speaks of autism. It comes out when any attempt is made to rationally discuss climate change, special education priorities, child abuse, or - conspicuously, economics.

Now, economics has political implications - obviously. And obviously, how one approaches the discipline and how one applies insight provided by the discipline is of course influenced by one's sociopolitical viewpoints - but IF the discipline itself can actually produce absolutely contradictory information depending on the POLITICS of the person asking the question, it's completely useless.

Well, this actually seems to be the working assumption of rank and file conservatives, and it's a viewpoint that's certainly encouraged by their heroes - that there is no such thing as an objective reality - that everything is dependent upon politics. Worse yet, the assumption that all persons are evil, and that people who disagree must be not just evil, but evil conspirators allows the self justification of all manner of evil deeds in "preemptive self defense."

We are in the paradoxical position where the people most likely to insist on the imposition of a "greater moral order" are most likely to do starkly immoral, illegal and immensely unjust things in order to achieve that goal.

Now, there is absolutely nothing Conservative in elevating evil over good as the foundation for society. And no doubt, most social and religious conservatives would agree, and insist that they advocate no such thing, that they are striving against evils, such as abortion, such as "the homosexual agenda," such as "drug culture" and "moral corruption" and such like things. But, aside from the entirely questionable ethical matrices in which these things are deemed absolute, unquestionable, nonnegotiable evils, it also becomes quickly clear that no possible consequence of actions taken against these actions may be taken. Indeed, in the mind of a generic Social Conservative, making such an argument means that you are "really" simply part of the same evil; that whatever your stated intent, your real motive, your real thinking is due to your inherent depravity.

That has the effect of "thought stopping," and thought stopping - an technique to prevent examination of foundational assumptions - is the key to any successful mass movement that depends upon deception. It's one of the core goals of any system of brainwashing.

Now, I'm no atheist, so I will not immediately leap from there to the Dominionist collusion with Republicanism and conclude thereby that "Therefore religion is evil, a mere mechanism for social control by the elites, a means of demonizing the exercise of legitimate self will and free choice."

It is, however, an entirely rational conclusion to make, considering the impact Dominionism and other extreme religious movements have had upon world culture within the last decades, often in collusion despite apparent differences, and in concert with the darker aspects of Business and Government.

I don't happen to think this is in fact the fault of faith. It's simply that faith tends to concentrate a large number of people together, making it as an attractive power center as government to those who wish to influence others to support their own desires for power and influence, and even the most casual study of history establishes how regularly this had occurred and to what depressingly predictable ends.

Ends we are seeing right now.

It was to prevent just such outcomes, and I would argue, in genuine concern for the "better angels" of both faith and reason, good government and the genuine and appropriate ends of conscientious religious belief that the great thinkers of the Enlightenment argued for the necessity of a high barrier between church and state; that neither could properly focus on their proper ends by becoming entangled with the concerns of the other.

For when religious faith is perverted to excuse and even mandate violent words and acts against the "ungodly" in service of some supposed collective good - the result is never good. Moreover, it produces irresistible opportunities for the concealment and excuse of the most reprehensible acts and the most deplorable indifference toward the suffering and poverty of those deemed of no consequence by those who have gained control of church and state.

Goldwater, I think every good Christian ought t... by Gay_Art

Teablogging.net -- New Site for "Teabagger" Coverage

Innuendo! Entendres, double and even TRIPLE! Get your arch sexual-cultural references here! Fun for All! Bring Your Friends!

Welcome to Teablogging.net! We’re here to serve as a gathering place for clear minded coverage of the Tea Party movement, provide information on high-profile teabaggers and serve as a clearinghouse for teabag related puns, innuendo and sex jokes.

read more | digg story

In Which Jon Swift Reminds Us How Good The Trolls Used Be.

I have a habit when it comes to the posts of Jon Swift. I save them, to savor slowly, quietly nodding and occasionally laughing out loud. So when I saw this headline appear on my sidebar, I chuckled and sat back - unlike most people.

For the record, I regret not having dessert first. But then again, this forces me to focus more upon the reaction to the post, rather than simply saying "me too."

Not that Digby did. As usual, Digby says what I might well have said had I been there. Well, as they say, 80% of political activism involves showing up.

The ever reasonable "conservative" Jon Swift has collected the most important, overlooked Pulitzer level stories emanating from the rightwing blogpshere during this election season. If the liberal media weren't so in the tank for teh gays and the you-know-whats, these stories would be in screaming headlines in every newspaper in the land.

...

More like this at the link. No wonder the newspaper business is on its last legs. they have no nose for the news. luckily for Americans these good folks are picking up where they left off.

Now, you may wonder why, if I am an actual, reasonable Conservative myself, first, why I cite Digby of all people, and second, perhaps more importantly, how the hell did I get the joke?

I'm Conservative, not stupid.

Actually, I'm a Progressive Conservative. That used to be an actual party up here in Canada - but they made the mistakes the Republicans have made first, and paid the price earlier. As a result, there is once again a healthy Conservative party in Canada; I was otherwise distracted, but it seems they survived in my abscence by repudiating any association with "Progress."

I'm not at all sure that was the problem, but they seized upon it as the obvious solution nonetheless.

But back to US Politics. Like all Canadians, expat and otherwise, of whatever political stripe, I pay more attention to US Politics than to Canadian politics. This is for two salient reasons.

First, Canadian parliamentary democracy is a system that more reliably ensures that persons elegible to lead the country are actually competent to lead the country. One may legitimately question their motives, their methods, frequently their morals and occasionally even their very sanity - but without any notable exception, they 'git 'er done.

We have even become somewhat reassured upon that front regarding the Bloq. Nor would there be any lack of quiet ironic appreciation of un seperatiste being placed in the hilariously ironic position of leading Canada forward as a unified nation. Oh, not that there would not be howls of outrage - but in our grey little Canadian hearts, we would assume that at the very least, we had one thing in common.

"Together; We are not Americans."

And - as our gratifyingly civilized leadership debates established - even the leaders of the Parti Quebequois and the unapologetic socialist leader of the New Democrats are clearly capable of passing a routine competency hearing.

OTOH, the best and the brightest American Conservatism had on offer this time around was... Ron Paul?!? When someone like Ron Paul (whom I adore, but would never consider to be mainstream in any sense of the word) comes out looking like the moderate grown-up, you should seriously consider that symptomatic of Serious Issues. (The widespread laughter and mockery should be taken as it is often meant, in the spirit of Grandmotherly Kindness.)

Second; it's an unavoidable fact of history and geopolitics that the decisions made in Washington and even in bordering states are as important or indeed, more important to Canadians than the polite suggestions issued from the Prime Minister's office.

Furthermore, we do love colorful politicians. We rarely elect them, because we find it just too embarrassing. The occasionally spectacular exceptions - such as Pierre Trudeau and Bill Vander Zalm of BC - serve us as occasional reminders as to how horrifying it can be to be noticed as a nation due to such antics. It's due to such reflexes that we retreat to safe, grey figures such as Steven Harper.

If the US's most besetting disorder may be said to be Xenophobia, ours could be said to be Social Phobia.

Or possibly we, as a nation, collectively share a touch of Asperger's Syndrome. Ghu knows, as a nation, we avoid over-stimulation and yet find it difficult to restrain ourselves from speaking from the moral high ground when we possess it. We are far more concerned with being Correct than being Right. Certainly we find it difficult to be in the same room with our loud, embarrassing US-ian cousins.

For most of us, the only pin one would ever see us wearing on a lapel is a simple red poppy - and that's a gesture that's irrespective of any political stance save deep, persistent national regret.

We do try to be polite - our tourism industry requires it - but it's often an exercises not dissimilar to a family thanksgiving dinner, when the people you must invite inexplicably fail to discern that in their case, the invitation should not have been taken to construe more than a polite gesture made in the expectation of an equally sincere note of regret.

IE, we upon the Canadian right still admire Thatcher, while mostly having come to stand upon the obvious - that Ronald Reagan was an opportunistic patsy. A corporatist, not a Conservative.

But we do love watching the drama and tossing our comments down upon the heads of the suffering fools from the unassailable moral high ground.

And speaking of "unassailable moral high ground," I come around to the reason why, if I am Conservative, why I'm leading with Digby, raving about a Jon Swift Post.

I'm Conservative, not stupid!

I didn't need Digby to tell me where the moral high-ground was. I have a well-informed moral compass. When I am in possession of the moral high-ground, littered with free ammunition that I merely need pick up and drop upon the hapless milling throngs below, I do not begrudge the use of that same factual ammunition by folks like digby when they are assailing the same people for the same reasons.

We are not in contention because we have an obvious common cause - which is to smack the stupid out of the deserving, so that we might actually, possibly, conceivably have the opportunity to participate in a meaningful political dialogue. And by "Meaningful Political Discussion" I of course mean one that requires several large pizzas and several pitchers of drinkable beer.

Besides, as I recurring point out to apparently little avail- I was here FIRST! I'd have even more evidence of it had I not been wiped out by a hacker a couple years ago.

The unfortunate truth is that there are very, very few voices of reason remaining on the official "conservative" cheer-leading squad. One may speculate as to why - the team sucks, the other squaddies and all the fans would embarrass a British soccer expedition to the Continent and they are - as Swift points out in his Swiftian way - taking positions that makes satire nearly impossible.

But Swift pulls it off, and with, were it possible, seemingly with even less effort than usual.

Obama was getting answers in the first debate through a clear plastic hearing aid in his ear

Ann Althouse has a unique ability to see things that no one else sees, not unlike my Aunt Agatha, until she was sent away to a rest home and forced to take medication that took away her abilities. During the primaries, Althouse discovered that a Hillary Clinton ad included the subliminal message “Nig” written on a child's pajamas. Then during the debates, Althouse noticed on her high definition television that Obama was wearing a clear plastic hearing aid in his ear and noted that he spoke haltingly as if someone was giving him the answers in the debate. “It's clearly there, a crescent of clear plastic,” she said in response to some skeptical comments (note her use of the word "crescent," a clever reference to Obama's secret Muslim heritage). Although Althouse later backed away from the story, which Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit linked to, she didn’t repudiate it entirely, concluding in the comments, "You know, just because the thing I saw wasn't there doesn't mean there wasn't something there that I didn't see." I don’t know if this is an acceptable standard of evidence in courts of law since I am not a law professor like Ms. Althouse, but it has come to be the standard of evidence in the conservative blogosphere, and I don’t see why the fuddy-duddy mainstream media can’t adopt this way of thinking, too.

I cite this particular excerpt because, well, Ann Althouse is one of the few remaining worthy targets. She can be amusing in her own right, and it's quite often deliberate. Nonetheless she does have a certain reputation for shooting first and clearing the range afterward. Like Dick Cheney, you really want to have his back, because the front side has an erratic aim and underdeveloped target identifying skills. So, it is with admiration that I note that, while Althouse's offenses against reason and common sense hardly rose to the standards of that evidenced in sources like Protein Wisdom.

As one Radical Commie Facist from Socialist Austrailia sarcastically observes: - "Conservative bloggers need to stick together, especially now that the majority of Americans seem to be voting in a most un-American manner."

I had always wondered to myself what they were stuck together with - but then again, the very name "Protein Wisdom" supplies me the answer. I'm told it does wonders for one's complexion. (I was, at deadline, still too sane to request a comment on that supposition from Ann Althouse.)

But speaking of intemperate ejaculations - I must point out for the amusement of my fellows how much more ably Jon trolls Althouse while maintaining the persona of a simple conservative than they typical conservative troll succeeds in trolling in the persona of a Typical Liberal With Some Small Concerns.

Go forth and and revel in Althouse's outraged pearlcluctching - with the delightful insight that "pearl necklace" and "Protein Wisdom" have entendres in common.

Obama for the cause of Law and Order

Auburn McCanta: Arizona Officer Supports Obama for the cause of Law and Order:

"We don't discuss politics at work," Lt. Cable explains. "It's paramount for police officers to maintain an aura of neutrality, which means discussions of politics are off-limits. Even in our private lives, we keep our politics close to the vest. Every police officer's primary function is to maintain or reestablish the status quo during any given situation. That's our role. As cops, we hold and preserve a conservative stance in dealing with the public because it serves to settle things. Even our private lives, we're a pretty conservative bunch. By default, then, most cops are conservative by nature and practice. Like the military, we pretty much tend to vote Republican."

But he's going to vote - conservatively - for Obama. He has several compelling reasons; I'm going to pick just this one. (You really need to read the article itself. )

Lt. Cable discussed the way each campaign has conducted itself from a standpoint of crowd control. To him, the Obama rallies seem organized and enthusiastic, but nevertheless, respectful. From a police view, there's vigilance for the occasional rabble-rouser, but there's not chaos or disruption. Detractors are tolerated, yet carefully monitored and controlled.

On the other hand, the McCain and Palin gatherings "seem to be trouble from the start." As the good Lieutenant puts it, "I'm responsible for my officers in the field. I believe policy is set at the top, so if I allow an anything-goes atmosphere, my officers are going to be confused. If, however, I set an example of proper conduct, everyone below me will know what's expected. What I hear from McCain and Palin is mean-spirited confusion and that translates to the crowd in those explosive responses we've heard like, 'terrorist' and 'kill him.' From a police viewpoint, that's a crowd control nightmare. You've got to wonder what McCain ... as a military man ... is thinking and why he would allow that kind of atmosphere."

"These guys are playing the ultimate 'bad cop' and it makes life miserable for those of us who are responsible then to clean up their mess."

This nutshells my own gut reaction, a reaction I've had since dubya got put into office. He and his sort are cocksure and contemptuous of actual common sense conservative values, such as expressed above. Here's a few more I live by.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

"Don't make a mess if you aren't willing to clean it up."

"Don't be a bully; nobody respects bullies."

"To complain is to volunteer."

"Be the neighbor you want to live next to."

"If you had to cheat, you didn't win."

"The 'easy way' isn't."

Now, being as I am now in Canada, the exercise is moot for me. I'm done with this; I've suffered through two stolen elections and a tidal wave of arrogance, stupidity and lies that is being passed off as a "cultural revolution" and "conservative leadership." Four words with not a lick of substantive reality to them.

I stopped calling myself a Christian a long time ago, not because I left the church, but because the church left me. And now, the same people have taken the Union and done what they did to a properly conservative Christianity - replaced substance with selected dogmas that mandate the most unpatriotic and antisocial behavior in the name of patriotism.

Well, Mah fellow Umurikins - I'm done. I'm Canadian. I'm a dual citizen, but I was born on this side of the line, and all my life-experience tells me that only a damn fool would choose to put up with such crap as trickles down upon the average US citizen, and what level of damn-fool ignorance is required to think that what trickles down hasn't passed through corporate kidneys first.

As a Canadian and as a small-c conservative in the Canadian sense of the word, I need not add conditional clauses. There is no "I'm Canadian, but..."

Obama is not merely the only rational choice, he's actually the conservative choice, because he's in favor of conserving the things that the vast majority of US citizens need conserved - their homes, their jobs, their well-being, their piece of mind and the lives and mental health of their daughters, sons, cousins and spouses in the armed forces.

To believe otherwise, in fact, to even confuse Obama with someone espousing anything resembling genuine Liberalism, requires that you believe all kinds of damn fool things about what "liberals" really want to do.

Just visit digg or any other such site to see what I mean.

Siegelman and Scrushy - Tip of the Iceburg?

Alternet: Going to Jail for Being a Democrat: How Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman Got Roved
By Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch.

The frame-up of Siegelman and businessman Richard Scrushy is so crystal clear and blatant that 52 former state attorney generals from across America, both Republicans and Democrats, have urged the US Congress to investigate the Bush administration's use of the US Department of Justice to rid themselves of a Democratic governor who "they could not beat fair and square," according to Grant Woods, former Republican Attorney General of Arizona and co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee. Woods says that he has never seen a case with so "many red flags pointing to injustice."

The abuse of American justice by the Bush administration in order to ruin Siegelman is so crystal clear that even the corporate media organization CBS allowed "60 Minutes" to broadcast on February 24, 2008, a damning indictment of the railroading of Siegelman. Extremely coincidental "technical difficulties" caused WHNT, the CBS station covering the populous northern third of Alabama, to go black during the broadcast. The station initially offered a lame excuse of network difficulties that CBS in New York denied. The Republican-owned print media in Alabama seemed to have the inside track on every aspect of the prosecution's case against Siegelman. You just have to look at their editorials and articles following the 60 Minutes broadcast to get a taste of what counts for "objective journalism" in their mind.

The story itself bears so much similarity to so many other stories that it seems almost routine. It took a few of the comments to make me realize that suddenly "Dog bites Man" is genuine news.

The news is that "plausible deniablity" is off the table. We now know that when "Dog bites Man," it's almost always the same goddamn dog - just as we always suspected.

The Internet, the web and other emerging peer-to-peer connections are a staggering intelligence advantage to ordinary people, and a freakin' nightmare to those who would prefer to keep citizens "Mushroomed;" eg, "Kept in the dark and fed bullshit."

The Internet, the web, and now the various social media of "web 2.0" are a freaking godsend for people like me who justify their existence by making connections between apparently unrelated things. While the implications of it trouble civil libertarians when they contemplate how potentially troublesome data mining linkages could be, it's a fact that this particular phenomenon is at least as dangerous to those who would abuse their authority than to those they might find "dirt" on to abuse.

This case is fascinating evidence of that phenomenon. Not only do we have evidence of abuse, but clear and damning evidence pointing to a systematic cover-up.

It wasn't all that long ago that the assassinations of Robert and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and probably others were undertaken without any blow-back to those who set it up, or conclusive evidence pointing to who was responsible.

Back in the day, it only took a few judicious threats here and there, and the ominous, but truthful observation; "Who ya gonna tell?"

The answer today is "the whole goddamn world, and whatcha gonna do about it?" There are people alive today -Sibel Edmonds leaps to mind - who probably would have perished suddenly and quietly fifteen or twenty years ago.

The problem for those who start thinking in that way is this: There is no way to shut up a whistle-blower these days without significant and persuasive notice being taken. And if the implications of data-mining for connections between ordinary individuals may be troubling to ordinary individuals - imagine what the very idea does to the sphincters of people with connections to Karl Rove.

You see, this is one of those ideas that could have gotten me put in a quiet padded room somewhere very private, back in the day, just for pointing it out. But I hardly need to point it out, it's obvious, it's inevitable and it's already happening. The internet is a powerful and absolutely magnificent tool for individuals who need to evaluate the reliability of various information sources.

In "free and open societies" such as our own, a newspaper can be scrupulous about their journalistic standards and still be corrupt as all hell. There are probably three or four stories a year that are of critical importance - and if a paper sits on those stories, it's even better than publishing lies.

Well, that reality actually ended in the mid-eighties, when the Internet became a flood of information, and a way to reality-check information cheaply and reliably. What was first the tool of the hardwired geek intelligencia is now available to anyone with the cash to pick up a second-hand computer. If you are the slightest bit interested in data security, it's pretty darned easy to hide your tracks.

What this new reality amounts to is a means by which the average person can have access to the sort of information that William Casey would have sacrificed his left nut and his first-born to get his hands on - if he could have kept it to himself.

Indeed, that was J. Edgar Hoover's secret to power - files that contained dirt on everyone of significance in positions of power both public and private. Well, of course Rove has taken that tactic to heart - but the fact that he has done it is so clearly obvious to people in a position to "connect the dots" that it significantly erodes the effect.

For instance, ten years ago, even five years ago, Nancy Pelosi may well have gotten away with saying "impeachment is off the table." Anyone who disagreed and could object meaningfully would have no ability to do much of anything about it.

But by now there is some point to saying aloud that "taking impeachment off the table" made no goddamn sense politically or strategically when it's in the absolute best interest of honest Democrats to remove corrupt Republicans from power before they can fix the next election.

It makes sense to say that some combination of stupidity, incompetence and blackmail must account for the difference between implied promises in 2006 and delivered results in time for 2009 have significant and troubling implications.

The web hasn't eliminated smoke-filled back rooms where deals are made between politicians and "the people that matter." What it has done is put a live webcam in there, so we can see that the people in those smoke-filled rooms aren't any smarter, better informed or more high-minded than your average gas-station attendant or insurance agent.

We always had the right and the responsibility to oversee them. Now we have the practical capacity to do so; yes, that is bi-partisan urine trickling down their legs.

Oh - and by the by, what's true here in the US is true everywhere there is a robust Internet. So, pretty much, that means everywhere. The implications for the Taliban, for Norway, for China and Russia are all the same - there's no way of keeping "internal matters" internal, there's no way of ensuring that they don't end up on the front pages of their own media and blogs and there's no way of erasing every single trace of corrupt dealings.

Come to think of it, consider the implications of the internet in an honor society like Pakistan, where it becomes impossible to hide the private dealings of "men of the world."

It's a good way to get a private enterprise rocket grenade enema.

Nor is there any effective way of restricting access to that information without killing off their own economy. Now, some regimes don't give much of a crap about that - but that doesn't mean they can absolutely ensure that their citizenry will obey, when disobedience is so very profitable in so very many ways.

And it's also true of the United Nations, and stuffy old NGO's like the Red Cross. If it hadn't been for the web, I doubt they would have gotten so righteously hammered as they did in Canada, where the government took away their control over the blood supply after it turned out that they had willfully neglected to screen blood plasma for HIV - because it would have been "too expensive." That piece of data became widely known - along with another damning number - their overhead ate up 80 cents of every dollar donated. As I recall, - though it's only a vague recollections - it was a combination of hemophilia advocates who had been tracking this that brought it to national attention, but they did it by way of the internet, skipping the historical process of having to find someone to call who could do something and might be persuaded to do so.

Essentially, what has occurred is this: the web advantages people who deal honestly and who either have no skeletons in their closets, or who use them as festive decor while chuckling gleefully. It has made it clear that those who have invested a lot in appearing to have nothing to hide are less worrisome and more likely to screw you over than those who, say, like dressing up in rubber and don't much care about what "decent people" might think.

The average person is now capable of getting enough information to compete intellectually abd even strategically with "the people who matter," because we also have the ability to collaborate to mutual advantage at minimal cost.

Conservatives decry Wikipedia, for instance, because it's not "definitive," that it is "unreliable," and it's possible to insert innacurate information.

All of this is true - but what they don't comprehend is that the distinction between Wikipedia and, say, The World Book is that you can tell who's fingerprints are on which bit of information.

It's true that you can insert inaccuracies - but the act of doing so is information in it's own right; more compelling than the misinformation. Further, the process by which Wikipedia is self-policed tends to give extra validity to articles that have become stable and uncontested.

Compare that to the editorial policy of The Brittanica or Groliers.

Oh, wait. You can't.

So how do we know they have equal or higher standards, as is alleged by conservative sources?

They say so. Very authoritatively. And to the extent that you would have been able to check, that would be true, back in the day. The problem is, that makes you tend to rely on the accuracy of things you cannot check. And that is where the money is.

Go ahead, look up Armenian Genocide in three or four different encyclopedias.

Now go to Wikipedia. I don't actually know what it says - but I know that it will come from more perspectives than the "authoritative" sources, and the comments section will be more fun than "All My Children" and "Project Runway" put together.

History and culture is no longer defined by the victors, or by those who believe they are the "winners" in our society. Everybody gets their fifteen seconds - and it's archived by keyword on You-Tube forever.

A Worthy Heir to Westbrook Pegler

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God and tasted the eternal joy of heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?

Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
English dramatist & poet (1564 - 1593)

AlterNet: A Liberal Goes Undercover to Brave America's Premiere Right-Wing Gathering:

"FRIDAY MORNING. George W. Bush, when you get right down to it, is a fucker. That's why I don't like him. He's a fucker who does fucked-up things. He's a privileged little shit who doesn't give a damp hell for the opinions of the people he was elected to govern. He buys into the toxic economic theories of unreconstructed capitalism, despite never having had to earn an honest living in his life, and he supports a worldview that cuts out anyone who hasn't had his good fortune -- the worldview of a murderous plutocracy stained with swaths of luck and cruelty where first is first and second is nobody. He's stupid in the truest sense of the word: willfully ignorant and determined to surround himself with people who keep him that way, not only resistant to different ideas but actively hostile towards them. He is neurologically incapable of thinking ahead, and he consigns the consequences of his actions to the status of dreams. And he forced his country into a pointless, unnecessary, unconscionably wasteful war that will poison every aspect of American life for generations.

Worst of all, though, the son of a bitch made me get up at 2 o'clock in the morning to go to his fucking speech at CPAC."

I hardly need to say anything more - but of course I will.

While this above was indeed a classic Peglerization, the moment of true sadness for me was this:

A rail-thin brunette in the row in front of me tests my cover for the first time.

"Hi! Are these seats taken?"

"Help yourself."

"Oh, thanks, sir!" Sir. So much for getting laid. "I'm (name redacted) from the University of Small Midwestern State's Conservative Student Alliance."

"Leonard Pierce, American Milk Solids Council."

"I'm sorry? What is that?"

"It's an industry group for milk solids manufacturers. We lobby Washington lawmakers to lessen regulations on the export of milk solids. The problem is that the government blames us for the incompetence of African mothers."

"That is so unfair."

"Tell me about it."

I have two reactions. First, Irony is Dead, but then we knew that; Carl Rove is still bragging about the ambush.

But second; dear Lord, Leonard; to even think of screwing around with a Midwestern muffin that stupid, and who has likely never heard of a condom in an approving (much less informative) context, one, who due to context and description is no doubt also a sorority member if not a cheerleader?

I'd rather time travel back to the 80's and skank it up at a gay bath house. It would be, I think, marginally less risky - and the conversation would for damn sure be more interesting.

'Politically Correct' is not the opposite of 'Stupid Racist...'

But some days it's hard to explain why that's not exactly true.

I found this link polluting my sidebar. "Political Correctness" caught my eye, and I have lots to say on that particular set of ideas. Unfortunately, this was the Usual Usage of Right-Thinking Sorts. That is to say, a whine that it's no longer "politically correct" to yell "nigger" in a crowded theater.

Friday, 21 December 2007 Why would someone look to someone else and ask if its OK to say what you want to say ? We are a free people. Nobody decides what is proper to say. The European socialist may control language ( can even over rule what you name your child ( Italy) ) but here we have a Constitution with the Bill of Rights that protects our freedom of speech, but we have no right not to be offended. One should not be afraid to offend someone with their speech because of what others will say, but only out of personal respect and consideration for that person. Not a group.

In America we are all individuals. All people are free and different. When someone allows someone else to speak for them they give-up their freedom and any chance of success as a person. No person can speak for others. What may offend one may compliment another. When someone says they speak for a race, a sex, or any other group , they are, in effect disrespecting those in that group as individuals and stripping them of their own personal power of opinion. When, those in that group start believing what is being represented about them their own initiative is devolved and they become slaves to the group leaders opinion. Their lack of personal power and self respect hinders them from obtaining, self respect , jobs , relationships and yes even respecting the law. Its only in the state of no self respect can one be offended.

When we find these “ Personal Power Thieves “ who claim to speak for others we should prosecute them for theft but, instead we glorify them as great leaders ( i.e. jessie jackson, ) and when we recognize them as such we commit a crime against those they claim to speak for.

I have some friends who describe themselves as Black, one who is Negro and yes some who are Colored, Dutchman, Hillbilly, Crout, White and African American but all are proud Americans only. When one considers if what he may say is politically correct, he to has fallen into someones controlled group and loses his individual respect.

Remember that only in socialism are there divisions and to " Divide and Conquer or Control ” is whats being attempted here as evident when questioning ones own speech.

And That's The National Word

Technorati Profile

I posted a comment - and then realized that expecting the comment to stay - or even appear - was silly. Not when such a disagreeable post had nothing but dittos following it. So I decided instead to respond here.

My response to this post and to the majority of the commentators is "horseshit."

The term "political correctness" is being used here in the usual sense - by stupid people who think they are "rugged individuals" just like all other "Right-Thinking Americans." They are trying to use arguments crafted by their betters for the protection of significant speech intended to provoke debate between citizens to justify the right to offend others.

There is, indeed, no right to not be offended. But there are words for the act speaking in ways intended to offend large numbers of people with the potential of provoking violence and making debate pointless.

Stupidity. Verbal Assault. Hate Speech. And quite possibly - "Death by Misadventure."

These "rugged individualists" all seem to band together, with the same sets "Evil Others", like "Socialists" and "Liberals" and Mexicans. Such obvious unintentional irony seems to be the hallmark of the New Right - and would embarrass the HELL out of Saint Barry G.

They are crying out that people are attempting to suppress their literal right to yell "nigger" in a crowded theater. Well, yes, some people are.

When you wish to disturb the peace and have the clearly insane belief that you should get away get away with it, a little suppression is in order. It may be technically illegal - perhaps even "wrong" in some sense to leave you bleeding and whimpering in a corner as the consequence of your actions. It's perhaps even against the Darwinian ideal to prevent that from happening, as stupidity really ought to be it's own reward. Nonetheless, there are may reasons why we prefer the rule of law to Lex Talonis and disapprove of those who would try the patience of others with stupidities intended to provoke what they fondly believe will be futile, choked, impotent outrage. Sensible people do not wish to be anywhere near such a deserving recipient of Karma. Karma ain't all that precise.

Me, I actually DO support their putative "right" to yell "nigger" in a crowded theater in the depth of darkest Harlem, but I also support the long-neglected "fighting words doctrine."

That is to say, should you be fool enough to do that, the law should hold those so deliberately provoked harmless, and the consequence of such damnfoolishness should be listed as "death by natural causes," or possibly "aggravated pesticide," while any damages resulting should be assessed against your estate.

Real Rugged Individualists assume that other people are also individuals - Equally honorable, just as touchy and probably armed.


Therefore, they are courteous!

Courtesy does not even imply agreement. It means that one refrains from stupidly and needlessly insulting ones whom one does disagree with. It means treating others with respect - and especially those with whom you disagree.

I deplore the concept of Political Correctness myself - but the author is deliberately confusing it with attempts to distinguish between disagreeable protected speech and Hate Speech. So I need not confuse matters by speaking about Political Correctness. This ain't that.

This is about the putative "right" to hold stupid, uninformed, racist opinions without consequence. This is an insistence on the right to form and maintain a lynch mob to attack and suppress all the ideas they don't want to hear, or which cause them to doubt the validity of their own pinheaded self-righteousness.

It's a position that should (and quite possibly does) embarrass people who sincerely believe in the superiority of the white race, and who really do try to support that view with evidence and argument they think persuasive.

I do not agree with the conclusion, or much respect the quality of the reasoning, but I do respect the willingness to play the game at long odds.

But these people - they don't have that degree of self-respect. And because of that, they do not understand that courtesy is not a concession to the "tender feelings" of others but rather evidence of one secure enough in their own selves and the validity of their own position that they need not be rude, discourteous or dismissive, even toward those those they despise. Hate speech is properly seen as verbal violence that can easily lead to literal violence.

Oh, people who confuse "your" and "you're" should really invest in a spelling and grammar check - especially when deriding institutions of higher learning.

It's little ironies like that that suggest to intelligent folks of all political hues that everyone holding these opinions are as dangerously stupid as their communications make them seem. Should it become common enough to seem stereotypical, - well, one of my favorite ironies of the ages is a grumpy quotation from WWII:

"This Hitler fellow has made it impossible for a gentleman to be an Anti-Semite."

Let me hit that nail again: If the general perception becomes that everyone holding a particular set of views holds them for reasons as evidently disreputable, superficial and for reasons that reasonable people will assume to be at least partially racist, whatever validity the positions may have becomes quite irrelevant.

At some point it just becomes too damn embarrassing to be seen holding the views you do in public, at least. So in one generation, or two at the most - the intellectual justifications for the core idea are gone. There are only those who think it's stupid - and those stupid enough to not understand how stupid they appear.

And - here's the kicker - opportunities to breed are allocated on just such perceptions.

When the contents of a post are highly congruent with an evident absence of factual understanding of the history and economic factors involved in various important cultural and economic issues, while being nearly word-for-word the views of known and famous liars, such as Limbaugh, Malkin and O'Rielly, it's likely a waste of effort to take you seriously enough to respectfully consider your opinions.

Courtesy is a requirement for civilized society. It requires a certain level of social skill, a certain minimal concept of polite language. It is advantaged by at least verbal literacy. If one wishes one's ideas to be heard and considered, the ability to speak without spitting is a minimal requirement.

I certainly have no reason to respect someone likely to mislabel me as a "kraut" AND misspell the slur. I certainly do not consider them to have the same right to an opinion as do I - and if it turns out that they are agreeing with me, using the same arguments as I might, I will do well to reassess my position.

By the way, I'm an Antiathoritarian Libertarian, and for damn sure an individualist; certified by the NRA as a marksman before I was able to drink legally.

To do that, you have to put a .22 round in a target the rough size of a human eyeball five times out of five at 25 feet, using a fifteen pound rifle and NO optics, prone, braced, kneeling and offhand.

Not only can I shoot a deer, I can skin it, butcher it and probably cook it better than most. And given a forge, tools and a stack of old rebar, I can make and edge tools good enough for those tasks.

I grew up near a small resource based town, on the land, and I bet I've shovelled more literal shit than most people have ever seen. I've driven a tractor, groomed horses and knocked domestic rabbits in the head so I could eat them. That last, by the age of five. I could field-strip most any rifle without looking at the directions - but I'm not that dumb.

In other words, this arrogant bastard is exactly the sort of redneck most suburban rednecks pretend to be.

I've never gone to Harvard - OR Yale. Or any university. I have two years of community college, and I learned how to learn and think for myself pretty much in spite of my education. I'm naturally very conservative of things worth respecting and conserving, such as the Constitution, momentum, credit and capital, cause and effect, the good opinion of others and every word of The Art of War.

I've read the Good Book from front to back - and formed my own opinions. Which are, by the by, nobody's business, but I know it well enough that I don't need someone else to tell me what it "Really" means.

But from the dull, turgid and depressingly conformist prose dropped by such twaddlepates, like so many individually indistinguishable rabbit droppings, these fake "real Americans" still think you need some form of "permission" to be an individualist - and that requires that you all nod in the same places when the same damn-fool things are said.

Right may be Right, but only if it's factually correct. And these days, if you are able to read and write on the Internet, there is no excuse for being factually challenged, no matter what your politics.

Please note that I have not said anything whatsoever to indicate what I might actually think on anything said above. I've only stated my opinion of the "reasoning" expressed. It would be particularly stupid to assume from that, or from the fact that I write in a particularly high-falutin' way that I'm some "liberal" or "socialist."

I AM an intellectual. So was Barry Goldwater. So was Henry the K. So was Nixon. And (as much as he tries to hide it) so is Bill Clinton. As is Ron Paul and his good buddy Dennis Kucinich.

None of them would agree on much, overall. And not one would be unwilling to back up their views with facts. Nor would any of them, to the best of my knowledge, WHINE about having to be accountable for their words - indeed, all of them are or were willing to be tried in the court of public opinion based on how well their ideas worked out.

Not so with the folks at The National Word, so deep in their dittohead groupthink that they are incapable of perceiving the irony in calling those who disagree "socialists," thinking that the definition of "socialism" is putting people into groups and making them think alike. It's an hilarious case of the National Socialist calling the Christian Democrat black.

Especially if his name is Sven.

Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians"

I'm devouring this book, and the footnotes are as tasty and entertaining (in a dark, horrifying, goddamit, I TOLD you so sort of way) as the text itself. While this is obviously mandatory socio-political ammunition for democrats and leftists, it's far, far more vital for Centrists, Independents, Libertarians and traditional Conservatives to read and understand.

Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians Chapter 6 Authoritarianism and Politics chapter6.pdf

10 On September 20, 2006 an independent Congressional-watch organization called
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington released its second annual “Most
Corrupt Members of Congress Report.” Three senators and seventeen members of the
House were named, most of them hold-overs from the first annual report (although the
news release noted with some glee that two of the previous winners were already on
their way to jail).

I found it instructive to look up the ratings these 20 lawmakers' voting records
received from the Family Research Council, the successor to the Christian Coalition
as the major lobbying organization for the Religious Right. The average was 80%.
Eight of the “most corrupt” had perfect 100% endorsements from the Family Research
Council. The lowest score was a 64% posted by the Democratic Representative Alan
Mollohan from West Virginia. (Seventeen of the twenty “most corrupt” were
Republicans.)

To be sure, many other lawmakers who got high scores from the Family
Research Council did not get named as most corrupt. But I think I read somewhere
that there’s this interesting connection between being a lying, dishonest, amoral
manipulator and becoming a leader of right-wing political/religious movements.
Back to Chapter

And then there's footnote seven, which I absolutely must highlight, with a link to John Dean's book, Conservatives without Conscience, which is referenced here.

7 If anyone ought to be interested in understanding authoritarianism, it’s the
mainstream conservatives who used to form and control the Republican Party. They
have seen their political party hijacked by the most radical element in their party, and
it’s anybody’s guess whether they can get it back. The takeover has been so complete
that many people have forgotten what “conservative” meant before it became
“authoritarian.” I don’t look forward to “conservative” becoming a dirty word the way
“liberal” did. Until we find someone who’s always right, democracy needs both
traditional and progressive voices to choose from. But the principled conservative
options have been badly tarred lately by authoritarianism.
I can’t imagine Senator Barry Goldwater agreeing with, “Our country
desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the
radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.”As John Dean points out,
Goldwater was quite apprehensive about what the “cultural conservatives” would do
to the Grand Old Party. “Mark my word,” the former senator said after the 1994 midterm
election, “if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they’re sure
trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten
me.” (Conservatives Without Conscience, p. xxxiv.)

I should also direct you to a particular post about the book - because of the hilariously ironic "criticism" of Dean's book by people who are clearly RWA's who MUST argue the premise - but cannot even seriously consider it deeply enough to argue, as it would require confronting their own demons. Almost literally.

Mr. Terence J. Nugent says:

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This book'spremise is the most absurd yet. He implies tha the Bush Administration fuels terror to preserve and expand quasi-dictatorial powers. In that case, it called an aisrike in on its own position on 9/11, as the White House was targeted. Perhaps Dean is on the jihadi payroll, as this is absurd as the anti-Zionist theory that the Isaelis did it.

As if this wasn't enought o prevent anyone of siound mind from spending their hard earned money on this abomination, the intellectual bankruptcy of his argument is absolutely appalling. It is axiomatic that left wing and right wing authoritarianisms are mirror images. Left and right traverse a circle that meets at dictatorship. Dean has evidently forgotten the communist authoritarian regimes of Joseph Stalin, Mau Tse Tung et. al. For a domestic example of quasi-liberal authoritarianism exhibit A is the Deomocratic dictatoship in the city of Chicago, and the County of Cook. Of course there is othing more authoitarian than jihadis, who we are trying to fight despite internal resistance from thelikes of Dean.

John Dean was driven mad by Watergate and has since become a pawn of the left, just as he was a pawn of the right during Watergate. He was then, and is now, a dangerously misguided man who would not recognize intellectual honesty if it became incarnate before his blinded eyes.

This is exactly the sort of response, of course, that Bob Altemeyer's research would suggest to be inevitable. And it's certainly exactly the sort of mindless personal attack I've come to expect from those who wish to disagree with an ethical critique, but cannot without defending the indefensible.

And of course, that means that you lose the debate - in rational circles.

Well, there went the family values voters....

Vittter is mocked in The Hill for attempting to rebrand himself the Republican Party as "Fiscal Conservatives.

TheHill.com - Senate GOP to Vitter: We’ll handle the Republican reputation from here, thanks: "Senate GOP to Vitter: We’ll handle the Republican reputation from here, thanks
By Daphne Retter
July 26, 2007

Oh, how we would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) rose to speak during a Tuesday policy lunch.

Only seven days earlier, he had delivered a heartfelt apology at the same weekly meeting. Fellow Republicans responded with thunderous applause, and most refused to tell reporters how Vitter had addressed his forced public admission that he had committed a “serious sin” and was linked to an alleged prostitution ring.

So just imagine their confusion when Vitter scrambled to his feet a week later. Would he apologize again? Had he committed some new sin?

But no. Instead, he launched into a speech about his thoughts on “rebranding” the party by reclaiming the fiscal conservative mantle.

Yes, that’s right: Vitter, on improving the Republican image.

This time, his colleagues held the applause."

Of course they will all try to fly Vitter's lead kite themselves. Gee, the only topic where they have LESS credibility that on "traditional family values;" fiscal responsibility.

Attention, Bill O'Rielly and Melanie Morgan

tag: Media matters, Hot Talk, hate speech, KSFO, Fox News, Melanie Morgan, Bill O'Rielly

Why Don Imus? Well, why the hell not?

I was listening to Randi Rhodes yesterday, talking about Don Imus's racist gaffe. She was taking a contrarian position - why him, instead of, say, Rush, who is just as offensive without being funny, or Mike Savage who's plainly talking to fellow bigots, or Hannedy, who's plainly talking to fellow stupid bigots. Why pick on the guy who's trying to be funny?

The wit and wisdom of Don Imus. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

On blacks:

"William Cohen, the Mandingo deal." (Former Defense Secretary Cohen's wife is African-American.)

"Wasn't in a woodpile, was he?" (Responding to news that former black militant H. Rap Brown, subsequently known as Abdullah Al-Amin, was found hiding in a shed in Alabama after exchanging gunfire with police. Imus is here alluding to the expression "nigger in the woodpile.")

"Knuckle-dragging moron." (Description of basketball player Patrick Ewing.)

"We all have 12-inch penises." (After being asked what he has in common with Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Latrell Sprewell from the New York Knicks, and Al Sharpton.)

"Chest-thumping pimps." (Description of the New York Knicks.)

"A cleaning lady." (Reference to journalist Gwen Ifill, possibly out of pique that she wouldn't appear on his show. "I certainly don't know any black journalists who will," she wrote in the April 10 New York Times. The Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page used to appear, but after he made Imus pledge not to make offensive comments in the future, he was never asked back.)

On Jews:

"I remember when I first had [the Blind Boys of Alabama] on a few years ago, how the Jewish management at whatever, whoever we work for, CBS, or whatever it is, were bitching at me about it. […] I tried to put it in terms that these money-grubbing bastards could understand."

"Boner-nosed … beanie-wearing Jewboy." (Description of Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, a frequent guest.)

On women:

"That buck-tooth witch Satan, Hillary Clinton." […] "I never admitted it when I went down there and got in all that big jam, insulting Bill Clinton and his fat ugly wife, Satan. Did I? Did I ever say I was sorry for that?"

On Native Americans:

"The guy from F-Troop, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell." (This is a reference to the zany Indian characters on the 1960s TV sitcom F-Troop. They had names like "Roaring Chicken," "Crazy Cat," and "Chief Wild Eagle.")

On Japanese:

"Old Kabuki's in a coma and the market's going up. […] How old is the boy? The battery's running down on that boy." (Reference to Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who died the following week.)

On gays:

"I didn't know that Allan Bloom was coming in from the back end." (The homosexuality of the author of The Closing of the American Mind became widely known when Saul Bellow published Ravelstein, a novel whose protagonist was based on Bloom, who by then was deceased.)

"The enormously attractive [NBC political correspondent] Chip Reid, I can say without being accused of being some limp-wristed 'mo."

On the handicapped:

"Janet Reno's having a press conference. Ms. Reno, of course, has Parkinson's disease, has a noticeable tremor. […] I don't know how she gets that lipstick on (laughter) looking like a rodeo clown."

I fail to see the funny here. I don't listen to Imus, for the same reason I don't listen to Stern; I don't like feeling as if I need to floss my brain. And I consider this sort of mean-spirited "humor" to be inherently toxic, whatever the perspective, regardless of what "cause" is "served."

So, why Imus? Well, because the Rutger's Girls stepped in his form of "humor" and took it upon themselves to carve new shoes out of his reluctant hide.

I find that image funny.

Oh, and Randi, he's not the first. Spocko was the first (THIS year) to ram recordings of racist and hate-speech sideways up the noses of wingnut talk-jocks - and more importantly, their sponsors.

Don Imus, Randi Rhodes,

Speaking of Potty-Mouths.

Here's a rhetorical question for you: Which is worse, using the "seven words you can't use on Television" - as defined by George Carlin, or committing the "seven deadly social sins", as defined by Gandhi?"

Coulter: I Would Talk About Edwards But “You Have To Go Into Rehab If You Use The Word ‘Faggot’”

Speaking today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter said: “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.” Audience members said “ohhh” and then cheered. (Video on site)

Seeing this blonde turd in the soup of our great political discourse, I find it increasingly difficult to take the posturing of certain pearl-clutching hypocrites at all seriously. However, I'm willing to observe a potential compromise - they don't have to take as credible anything that contains one of the seven deadly words, and we don't have to take anyone who links to Coulter, laughs at Colter or buys Coulter's books serously. You are what you eat, folks - and in this case, politically speaking, I believe this boils down to "eat shit and die."

Not as a curse - as a matter-of-fact observation of fact; if you persist in eating shit, you will die. In this case, it's a viscerally disgusting metaphor for an even less appetizing reality.

tag: ann coulter, homophobia, seven deadly words, hate speech, potty mouths

It's better tor be obscene than absurd.

Gateway Pundit: "Seven words you can never say on television"... but which are said on the Internet. A lot.

Talk about potty-mouths.

The Net's not always a kid-friendly place; there is plenty of foul language out there. And of course, the blogosphere is no different.

But how different are the Rightosphere and Leftosphere when it comes to "dirty" language? Which side produces the most profanity-laced diatribes? Via Instapundit, I happened upon this interesting challenge from InstaPunk:

I propose an exercise to be performed by those who have the software and expertise to carry it out. The exercise is this: Search six months' worth of content, posts and comments, of the 20 most popular blogs on the right and the left. The search criteria are George Carlin's infamous '7 Dirty Words.' [Click this link for the list of expletives.]

And this is what I found, using what I deemed -- through a mix of TTLB and 2006's Weblog Award lists -- to be the 18 biggest Lefty blogs, and 22 biggest Righty blogs. (Not counting this one. :)) I couldn't account for the 6-month time period, and I even gave the Lefty blogs a 4 blog advantage. But it didn't make much of a difference.

So how much more does the Left use Carlin's "seven words" versus the Right? According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1.

Yowsers.

Ok, let me get this straight: while THIS was happening, rather than chasing the story down and doing something to really support the troops, you were constructing methodology to count naughty words?

Words fail me. And aside from that, what's your point, fuckwit?

All this very precious pearl-clutching is utterly pointless in a quest for "civil discourse" if you do not also consider the impact on civil discourse of statements such as these: (via Instaputz)

Ohhh-kay. Let's do a trial run.

Putz: What we really should be doing is killing Iranian civilians. Heh.
Malkin: Exactly. And the NY Times publishers should be locked up for treason.
Denny K: Yeah! Let's hunt them down and find out where their kids go to school.
Coulter: My only regret is that Tim McVeigh didn't blow up the NY Times.
Misha: Forget the Times, I want the Supremes. Five robes, five ropes, five trees.
Lefty Blogger: You're all fucking crazy.

InstaPunk: See? The lefty bloggers are more hateful.

…[W]hy not run a few chapters of Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries through your little Shrill Detector, and then compare those results with a Richard Pryor set from the '70s.

Idiots.

Now, I'm not a leftie - I'm just an uppity libertarian with not much respect for foolishness and a decent regard for semantics.

Therefore, I have something in common with Shakespeare's Sister The Rude Pundit and indeed The Ace of Spades.

A man-portable un-powered entrenching tool is a fucking spade.



More Vicious Left-Wing Mockery

tag: potty mouths, Hate Speech, pearlclutching, unintentional irony, , culture, morality, ethics

How stupid do you have to be...

...to be a paid conservative columnist at Townhall.com?

THIS stupid.

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her.

There are, of course, NO "ill-favored, grossly overweight" Republican women. At least, not after the DMV opens again on Monday.

All your fat chicks belong to US, Medved!

What sort of amazing, delusional universe do you have to belong to in which this explaination of homophobia would make everyone shrug and say, "oh, well, that's ok then."

Lest I be accused of using "fair use" to distort his overall point - such as it is - I challenge you to read the whole thing without squicking on some level.

The following material is satire. It's sad that it has to be said, but we are occasionally read by those who honestly believe they ARE right because they are Right.

Medved reveals that a certain sort of "social conservatism" is more pathology than policy by, essentially, opening up his personal skull to show us the maggots infesting the necrotic tissue that used to be his brain.

He's proud of their manly tumescence, you see. And he just can't imagine what sort of irrational Scoleciphobic could object to him crooning to the few strays lounging on his pillow in the morning.

Shudder! Liberals allege that some people are born with maggots for brains, but this sort of disgusting behavior is a choice! To choose to celebrate such an unfortunate pathology as a lifestyle, to pick one's nose and hand wiggly examples proudly to horrified friends and colleagues - that is a violation of All Normal Family Behaviors. For the Sake of the Children, this cannot be permitted.

I say we worm him. Worm him NOW! And I'm not afraid to be accused of being "politically incorrect," or even "indulging in hate speech" for saying it, because I know people like Medved hate all those who tell the truth about their deviant maggoty nose-picking fetish.


Hat tip to Spocko via Echidne.

tag: Clash of Cultures, homophobia, Michael Medved, Tim Hardaway

Is It Three Strikes Yet?

I know that this may come as a shock to some who have long ago gotten used to the idea that the Administration's ideas all turn to crap uniformly, but HOW THE HELL did they screw THIS puppy? Are there NO real Conservatives left in the Executive Branch? Aren't there any people there who can get the job done in spite of Our Glorious Leader?

U.S. may have botched training of Iraqis - Yahoo! News: "'If the administration had been serious and competent about establishing a functioning democracy in Iraq, it would have seen the need for a trustworthy criminal justice system in which all Iraqis could have confidence,' Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., said in prepared remarks."

Of all the things I was in confident expectation of the Right comprehending intuitively and getting right is the need for law and order. This is such a staple of US Conservatism that it should shock the Midwest about as much as it shocks me. You cannot have a functional society of any kind without law enforcement, reliable courts and open marketplaces. On these three things hang ALL the law, and the Profits.

According to the report, co-authored by Hamilton and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, the U.S. erred by first assigning the task of shaping the judicial system in a largely lawless country to the State Department and private contractors who "did not have the expertise or the manpower to get the job done."

In 2004, the mission was assigned to the Defense Department, which devoted more money to the task. But department officials also were insufficiently trained for the job, Hamilton and Meese said.

As a result, Iraq has little if any on-the-street law enforcement personnel or a functioning judicial system free of corruption, they said.

Justice Department officials, they said, should lead the work of transforming the system. Police executives and supervisors should replace the military police personnel now assigned.

And the FBI should expand its investigative and forensic training in Iraq, Hamilton and Meese told the panel.

The recommendations about the Iraqi judicial system were included in the Iraq Study Group's report last year, but got little attention. Hamilton and Meese said Wednesday that unless the U.S. helps create a capable, trained professional police force and functioning criminal justice system, "ordinary Iraqis will not live in peace and will not have confidence in their new government."

This makes NZBear's call for mindless allegience to the President and his Praetorians particularly insulting, as the Pentagon has had three years to get this right, or get someone to get it right. I said it wass what Teddy Roosevelt referred to as being Morally Treasonable.
but I'll go a step further. This is a demand from 20% of the population to the 70% who can add, subtract and read between the lines that we cater to their stupid leader fetish, to validate their poor post-9/11 judgment at any cost.

At the time, I expected some thrashing about and I was resigned to the necessity of catering to that proportion of our population, both Left and Right, who wear ideological adult diapers of various brands. I expected there would be some time before the American people could be led back to sanity. But in my wildest nightmares, I never expected the adoption of the cold, wet diaper as the uniform of the Right.

Well, yes, I suppose it IS traumatic to have Daddy hauled off to jail after getting stoned on crack and beating up mommy for the seventeenth time. But what Baby doesn't understand is that crackheads do not make good fathers.

Meanwhile, there is no Law and Order Fairy; those of us in the Reality Based Universe know that keeping both Law and Order requires the hard work and dedication of skilled officers of the law and a reliable, effective system of justice. And as much as I, as an anti authoritarian, distrust officers of the law, it's in proportion to my concern that that particular officer of the Law is really just another street gang member with a carry permit.

But apparently we have not achieved even that degree of order.

I'm thinking that this Administration has used up all of it's three strikes about three times over, and needs to be retired. This is not tee-ball, the bats we swing are NOT plastic, and we have to get back to playing by grown-up rules.

As I wrote earlier in the week:

This "war on terror" has been prosecuted in such a way as to ensure failure from the first. What if that is the goal?

It would certainly be yet another impeachable offense. Indeed, if there is such a conspiracy, it would be a treasonable conspiracy. But as I argue, there's little point in wondering why at this point. What we, as citizens, need to realize is that we do indeed have the power to take away their toys and send them to a time-out room. Preferably a federal medium-security timeout.