You Are Dumb - Wingnuts

It's Like They Read My Mind

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:02:20 -0500

Wingnuts, 30 July 2008

Man, some weeks things just go your way. First, Ryan Seacrest got bitten by a shark, fulfilling a dream I didn't even know I had until it was suddenly and surprisingly fulfilled. Then, Senator Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens gets handed a whopping great pile of indictments because he got his home remodeled by an oil company. Which is one step closer to a dream I've had for many years - Ted Stevens out of office and, ideally, behind bars.

And then, thanks to a bit of research, I find out the secret to my innermost beliefs. People spend years and years trying to figure themselves out, but I just had to spend five minutes on Conservapedia to learn that I'm an amoral, rebellious, superficial dad-hater who, despite living in times of peace and prosperity, suffered personal tragedy after a horrible experience during a schism in my state-run church. After which I mistakenly began to worship science.

It all makes sense now! All these years, I thought I was an atheist because I wasn't taught to believe as a child, which led to me thinking the whole thing was ridiculous as an adult. But that's not a reasonable explanation for atheism. I know that, because Conservapedia has helpfully compiled all the Reasonable Explanations in the section of their Atheism entry entitled "Reasonable Explanations for Atheism", and my explanation's not on the list.

Sure, it's easy to poke fun at Conservapedia (the conservative answer to Wikipedia started by Phyllis Schlafly's apparently otherwise-unemployable son, Andrew), but just because it's easy doesn't mean it's not necessary or fun. So this one goes out to my fellow readers and members of the A-Team. Feel free to check off one or more of these reasonable explanations that apply to you!

Moral Depravity! According to Conservapedia, "moral depravity has been demonstrated in the atheist community through history and through studies." Because this is Conservapedia, the fact that they claim it as a cause while describing it as either an effect or a correlation is to be expected. Am I deprived of God on account of I'm depraved, or depraved on account of I'm deprived? Since it's Conservapedia, bet on both.

Superficiality! "Noted ex-atheist and psychologist Dr. Paul Vitz has stated that he had superficial reasons for becoming an atheist such as the desire to be accepted by his Stanford professors who were united in disbelief regarding God." They have a point there. I cannot tell you the amount of peer pressure I got growing up to renounce God. It was worse than smoking. From the Cub Scouts, to the CCD kids, to the Pledge of Allegiance, there wasn't a single moment when I wasn't desperate to fit in with all the cool atheists around me. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for Vitz to leave the carefree, constantly-reinforced life of atheism for the outcast status of a believer.

Poor Relationship With Father! Man, did you know this Vitz guy got an entire book out of studying a handful of prominent atheists and drawing spurious conclusions from what he could glean of their personal lives? I didn't either. But Conservapedia sure seems to take it as, if you'll pardon the term, gospel.

Learned Times, Peace, and Prosperity! I love this one on so many levels. First, because it provides a reasonable explanation for the Bush presidency. He's just trying to drive down the number of atheists, whose numbers had grown fat from all that education, peace, and strong economic times. He sure broke our wagon, that's for damn sure. And second, because they get a chance to blame secular education for making people secular, comparing it to times of heavy religious education, which allowed people to find their natural path to God. Right.

Error! "Some argue that atheism partly stems from a failure to fairly and judiciously consider the facts." In logician circles, I believe this is known as "corrumpo ergo corrumpo", or "You are wrong because you are wrong." Proving that following the citations in a Conservapedia article is like following a turd through a sewer, I found that the quote above is the Conservapedia translation of a snarky, slightly douche-y quote from C.S. Lewis, who was taking time off from turning Jesus into a lion. Remember, if one guy sorta said it once, that's enough for a "some argue" from Schlafly's crew!

About the only reasonable explanation I can get behind is, not coincidentally, the only item in their list with no citations, no further explanation, and no interpretations. It just sits there, alone, next to its bullet, comfortable in its self-evidency. Negative Experiences With Theists. I don't know if it causes atheism, but I can be damn sure after all these years that it reinforces it.

Frum Here To Stupidity

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:12:46 -0500

Wingnuts, 28 July 2008

Memo to David Frum: GUESS WHAT YOUR NAME RHYMES WITH?

David Frum is angry. David Frum is upset. David Frum may not actually be in a tizzy, but You Are Dumb Dot Net's DopplerPlus ChildSafe Weathalert Stupidity Radar has him approaching a tizzy at forty miles an hour, with gusts up to fifty-five. And why is this? Why are David Frum's panties in such a bunch that they approach Panty Singularity? Because someone had the audacity, the unmitigated gall, to edit his televised interview to make him sound stupid.

Now, normally, I would be unsympathetic to David Frum, on the grounds that, well, he's David Frum, and Frum's always been kind of a fucktard. On the other hand, playing fast and loose in the editing booth IS one of the many crimes against humanity committed on a regular basis by the news media. So, which bastion of alleged journalistic ethics warped Frum's words? ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I was certainly impressed to see a clip of myself in the Stephen Colbert program Monday night. The clip, which runs from 5:20 to 5:27 in the broadcast, has me saying this: 'Here you have one of - the oldest man ever to seek the presidency. When you look at the polls, you can see there is much less enthusiasm for his candidacy. That's a pretty exciting story.' Colbert wryly comments afterward: 'Exactly. McCain is old and nobody likes him. That's an exciting story.'"

Oh. Guess I can safely wrap my sympathy in linen and pack it away in my cedar chest. Looks like I won't be needing it anytime soon. Frum's upset that he got taken out of context by a comedy show. I toyed, briefly, with the notion that Frum didn't realize The Colbert Report was comedy, but no, he actually thinks Stewart and Colbert should be held to standards as high as their cable news counterparts.

"In making their point, they themselves violate every kind of journalistic ethical rule. They say, "It's OK for us - we're fake news." That's a convenient excuse. But it's not really an adequate one. Yes, the blow-harding and bias and herd mentality of the rest of the cable media are pretty bad. But outright deception? A few days ago, Colbert scoffed at my friend David Brooks for referring to the "salad bar" at Applebee's - when Applebee's doesn't feature salad bars. An error - how ridiculous! But conscious fabrication? I guess that's OK, so long as it's done in the sacred name of comedy."

Frum's choice of analogy is awesomely hypocritical. First, nobody scoffed at David Brooks for merely referring to the salad bar at Applebee's. By taking Brooks' quote out of context, Frum deliberately hides the fact that Brooks was giving his expert opinion on Obama's ability to connect with everyday Americans. It's funny because Brooks doesn't know shit about connecting with everyday Americans, as evidenced by his thinking Applebee's has a FUCKING SALAD BAR. It wasn't just an error, it was an error that exposed how foolish it is to listen to anything David Brooks has to say.

On the other hand, the "conscious fabrication" of Frum's words wasn't even used to make fun of Frum! I watched that episode as it aired, and I didn't even notice it WAS Frum. He wasn't edited to be the punchline, he was edited to be the SETUP. Frum wasn't made to look particularly stupid by the Colbert Report. Especially compared to the full context of his remarks, revealed by Frum himself in his whiny little blog post:

"Barack Obama is one of the most — maybe he used to be interesting, but in this campaign he's been one of the most boring candidates ever. Content-free speeches, (INAUDIBLE). Meanwhile, in contrast — and if, by the way, the shoe were on the other foot, every journalist in America would see it. Here you have one of the — the oldest man ever to run for president, winning his party's nomination against the odds through sheer hard work and tenacity, and getting up earlier and campaigning harder than men 20 years his junior? That's a pretty exciting story.

Dude, Colbert did you a FAVOR. You spent five minutes trying to fluff John McCain's flaccid campaign on CNN in what appears to be a desperate attempt to diminish Obama's foreign trip. You should be thankful Colbert distilled your remarks down to seven seconds, but you're too damn busy marking down timecodes and missing the point to realize how easily you could have been the punchline.

Needless to say, Frum's concern with assembled quotes stops with Colbert. It's odd how he doesn't even mention the biggest fabricated quote of the past week - when CBS took bits from two different questions to hide the fact that John McCain credited the troop surge of 2007 for the Anbar Awakening of 2006. Katie Couric's crew trimmed all the bad parts out of the answer, lifted some words from another answer to help rebuild the word count, and when called on it, claimed it was just "time constraints" and didn't change the meaning of what McCain said.

But to David Frum, his seven seconds of Colbert Report faux fame are much more worthy of attention. Because Frum's a narcissistic, hypocritical clown.

Sleeping Dragons and Lies

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:34:44 -0500

Wingnuts, 25 July 2008

Memo to Katherine Kersten: YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

Watch out, folks. Minnesota's dullest conservative has a new cause, and she will not rest until every last one of us are sick to death of her endless carping. And what is this new issue that has her in such an excitable state? A sleeping dragon!

That is, the "sleeping dragon" of protesters at the Republican National Convention. The RNC will be covering the Twin Cities with an oily, black stain right after Labor Day. Since Kersten is such an awful writer, I have no way of knowing if "sleeping dragon" is something the protesters are calling themselves, a term some law enforcement dude thought up, or Kersten's own term, helpfully wrapped in quotation marks so her Neanderthal followers don't take it literally and try to get George Bush a sainthood before September. In any case, she's scared shitless.

And when a conservative is scared shitless, there is only one metaphorical round plastic oral insert that will quell their bawling: a draconian show of force by an even more empowered authoritarian police force. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Denver City Council's public safety committee will vote today on an ordinance that would bar protesters from carrying items such as weighted PVC pipes, carabiners and quick-drying concrete... St. Paul police officials do not see a need for a Denver-style ordinance... Will we be ready?"

That's awesome. Pass laws outlawing the possession of common, everyday items to deal with a problem that, if it happens at all, will only last a few days. Let's just give police free(r) license to stop, detain, and Taser people based on suspicion of potential wrongdoing. That always goes well.

And what will the snoozing lizard use these dastardly devices for? Ostensibly, it's to make it more difficult for the police to break up human barricades. Which, I must point out, is a non-violent form of protest. If protesters, even the dreaded "anarchists" Kersten invokes at every opportunity, chain themselves across a street leading to the XCel Center, the average citizen will suffer what's known in Saneworld as a "minor inconvenience".

There are, in spite of 6 years of a Pawlenty administration, other working roads in St. Paul. And if you're actually trying to get to the XCel, well, elections have consequences, as your glorious leader said once. That Kersten wants to live a life free of the consequences of a pissed-off country, angered by Kersten's best friends running it like a bunch of power-mad, feces-throwing monkeys? Not my problem.

Frankly, we're long overdue for some civil fucking unrest in this country, and if a few hippies with blogs cuffing themselves to lampposts is the worst we have to worry about, Kersten and her ilk should drop to their knees and thank their beloved Jesus that the big sacrifice they have to make for fucking us all over is leaving their hotel an hour or two early. In other, less civilized times, people who ruled like the GOP were the ones attached to lampposts. And not in a comfortable way.

Kersten is also required by the bylaws of the authoritarian playbook to raise the horrific spectre of Seattle 1999, when protests of the World Trade Organization conference turned rowdy. Kersten calls the protests "traumatic and destructive", but we all know how wingnuts love to exaggerate any trauma related to "World Trade", don't we? Some intersections blocked, some windows smashed, some dumpsters set on fire, but then the pepper spray and the rubber bullets came out. Order was restored, and the people who ended up the most traumatized have not, I'm guessing, earned Kersten's sympathy.

Seattle got over it. And if, in defiance of all physical law, Kersten turns out to be right, it still won't be that bad. We'll get over it, too. But I have a tough time imagining her being right, considering the myriad other ways she's disconnected from reality. Case in point - it turns out the "anarchists" whose blogs she's fastidiously monitoring so that she can alert us to the impending apocalypse are also planning to protest at the DNC convention in Denver. Which prompts this from Kersten:

"Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee-to-be, has called for an end to the Iraq war and otherwise adopted a leftist's dream agenda." - Like fuck he has. Believe me. I'm a leftist. I have a dream agenda. It involves single-payer health care, electric cars powered by orbital solar power stations, and a whole bunch of people, from Dubya on down, wearing orange jumpsuits and making custom license plates with pro-gay messages on them. Obama's nowhere near that. Being willing to settle for a guy who won't lose is not my dream, trust me.

But I will take Katherine Kersten's discomfort when Obama wins as a nice consolation prize.

Putting The Ew In Euphemism

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:22:27 -0500

Wingnuts, 17 July 2008

Memo to John Derbyshire: YOU ARE DUMB. STOP BEING PROUD OF IT.

One of the reasons I run this place is to try to provide a certain amount of counterweight to something that's even worse than the rampant stupidity that our society is infested with. And that's the constant REVELING in our stupidity. Being stupid and wrong should have shame attached to it. There should be social consequences for saying shit that makes no sense. You shouldn't cheer it, you shouldn't worship it, and you certainly shouldn't spend your time coming up with new nicknames for intelligence that make it seem like something to shun.

We've seen it with "elitism", which, as we all know, is the official nickname for "knowing anything that isn't Twinkies or NASCAR". But John Derbyshire, one of the raving fuckwits who make the National Review Online such a rich source of comedy for this space, has one-upped them all with his newest pro-ignorance linguistic broadside. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you "Educational Romanticism".

Isn't that just fucking lovely? "Elitism" just makes intelligence seem like something that sets you apart... in a bad way, mind. Educational Romanticism actually manages to make learning sound femmy. Foppish, even. Like the "Physics For Poets" bit from Patton Oswalt's standup routine. What's that? You want to learn something? Well, here, let me dig out a frilly-necked shirt for you and send you off with a copy of an Oscar Wilde book, because Oscar Wilde was gay, and so are books. Or instead, you can get your head out of the clouds, forget about that impractical, romantic idea of "education", and get your ass down here with the rest of us. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is on lap 480, and these Twinkies aren't going to eat themselves.

And what prompted Derbyshire's bit of slander-by-neologism? The Obama-Spanish controversy. Now, there have been a whole lot of stupid, stupid, stupid fucking controversies surrounding Barack Obama in the past week or so. So many that they caused my brain to engage its sanity-protecting Fuckit brand apathy circuits. Jesse Jackson said the word "nuts"? Fuckit! The New Yorker had a cartoon on its cover? Fuckit! Barack Obama suggested Americans learn Spanish? Fuckit!

But you know how it works, especially if you've seen "Fantastic Voyage". In the body politic, there is an organ known as the Islets of Malkindobbs, which produces R-Cells. R-Cells are incredibly sensitive antibodies that swarm and attack anything they even remotely perceive as a foreign invader. To the R-Cells, there's no difference between a small child learning the language of the Invading Brown Horde, and a teeny tiny Raquel Welch in a wetsuit. They'll mindlessly pile on until the "threat" is eliminated.

In Derbyshire's case, this means some incredible mental gymnastics in order to justify staying stupid. Never mind that if he'd put the same amount of effort into learning things as he did in justifying not learning things, he'd speak Spanish, Korean, and Arabic by the end of the month. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The cold fact is that absent exceptional circumstances — the most common of which is, total immersion at a receptive age — not many human beings can learn another language. Oh, you can learn enough to stumble along and get by on a trip abroad, but if you can attain fluency in a language not your own, without those exceptional circumstances, you are an unusually smart and gifted person."

Yes, folks, a right-wing pundit is arguing that learning a second language is damn near impossible unless you are unusually smart and gifted. So the next time some nutjob (like John Derbyshire) wants you to be concerned about a Mexican "invasion" of people who refuse to assimilate, and want to keep their own language, try to remember how some nutjob (like John Derbyshire) thinks that learning a second language is like the toughest thing ever. At least the computers in Star Trek had the common decency to fucking explode when they thought like that.

But wait! Can Derbyshire go even farther overboard? Perhaps with an oblique reference to "The Bell Curve", the modern racist's best friend, which Derbyshire loves to pieces? I believe he can.

"Obama suffers from the fallacy — extremely common among high-IQ lefties — that everyone else is just as smart as he is, or could easily be made so with a few educational reforms. In fact, below some cutoff point, which I'd guess at around minus one standard deviation in IQ (that would encompass sixteen percent of the population), education beyond the three R's is a waste of time, and foreign-language instruction a total waste of time."

I'm not sure why Derbyshire stops there. I mean, if learning a second language is so difficult, learning the first one can't be that easy. I bet there's a part of his bell curve that wouldn't even benefit from the "Three R's" - since two of them help you learn a language, and mastery of the third makes you realize that "The Bell Curve" is a steaming pile of shit.

But I'll cut Derbyshire this one, small bit of slack. If I spent all day hanging around National Review Online with Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and John Derbyshire, I too might come to believe that getting people to learn things was a complete fucking waste of my, and their time. But I still wouldn't find it romantic.

Killer Robots From Berkeley

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:32:02 -0500

Wingnuts, 2 July 2008

Memo to Greater Wingnuttia: YOU ARE DUMB.

It never fails. Just when I'm starting to feel the cynical dread as I watch yet another Democratic candidate duck and cover in the face of a barrage from the stupidly hostile - or is that hostile and stupid? - media, along comes the right-wing blogosphere to make me feel better about myself, and by extension, the entire left-wing, from Harry Reid's vague lip-service to the Constitution all the way to Starbuck-smashing anarchists. Because at least we're not scared of robots.

I suppose we're duly wary of some robots, like robot drones with bombs strapped to them, but we're not afraid of the cute robots. We don't wake up at night in a cold sweat, terrified that Robosapien will brainwash our children with a vision of Aryan perfection, or that Japan's unending array of special-purpose fetish robots will endear the young to the amazing things that can come from unregulated markets. This is because, well, we're sane. You know who's not sane? Greg Pollowitz at National Review Online:

"It was like a 90-minute lecture on the dangers of over consumption, big corporations, and the destruction of the environment." Man, that sounds awful. I can't imagine someone claiming that over-consumption and the destruction of the environment are dangerous. What gall these as-yet-unrevealed purveyors of entertainment have! But wait, we need corroboration. Take it away, Glenn Beck!

"You know if your kid has ever come home and said, 'Dad, how come we use so much styrofoam,' oh, this is the movie for you. I love that. 'Dad, how come we don't recycle as much as we should?' 'We do recycle.' 'Well, teacher says we don't recycle enough.' 'Oh, really? Is that what teacher is saying? What's the teacher's phone number?' I'm becoming one of those people, I really am." - What perfidious film could possibly drive Glenn Beck into fantasies about berating his child's teacher, and can we stop ourselves from wondering exactly how that fantasy ends? Quick, we need a distraction! Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism, you're our only hope!

"I agree that the Malthusian fear mongering was annoying." - I, too, would be annoyed if someone kept trying to convince me I should be afraid of Thomas Malthus, who, after 180-plus-years in the grave, wouldn't even make a good zombie in some kind of highly ineffective zombie philosopher uprising. I think it's time for the big reveal in any event, for which we turn to yet another of the National Review Online denizens, Shannon Coffin:

"As for me, Pixar's latest offering was Godforsaken dreck. Mankind has had to abandon the earth because there is too much garbage. WALL-E is the only remaining garbage compacting robot in a metropolis of garbage skyscrapers. And his only living companion is a cockroach, described by a Washington Post reviewer (who doubtlessly thinks very highly of the Nobel Committee) as cute, but pretty much just a cockroach... From the first moment of the film, my kids were bombarded with leftist propaganda about the evils of mankind."

Now, the National Review Online has a creepy stalker thing with Star Trek, so it's understandable that they think at least one character in every science fiction piece is a stand-in for Communists. Now, I haven't seen Wall-E yet. For all I know, it could be the Marxist diatribe that only crazy wingnuts, and nobody else on the planet, thinks it is. But is it really Marxist to say that garbage is bad?

I can't imagine why Jonah Goldberg and his NRO pals would be, perhaps, offended by scenes of corpulent, pasty humans in thrall to a decadent corporate lifestyle. But at least they didn't take it as far as "Dirty Harry", who you may recall from his Hollywood-hating screeds over at Libertas. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Have we lost Pixar? Have we lost the wonderful studio who brought us The Incredibles and Ratatouille to Bush Derangement Syndrome? Here you have a winning streak going back ten-years, enormous amounts of public goodwill, equal amounts of credibility as serious storytellers, and they stop things cold, yanking you out of the story with the liberal nonsense."

OK, "The Incredibles" I understand. Wingnuts read a whole Randian "the superior should be allowed to run roughshod over the inferior" subtext into the movie that wasn't there. But "Ratatouille"? How can Dirty Harry rail about the hidden liberal message of Wall-E while praising a film in which a hedonistic French rodent wins his ultimate victory over... a critic? It's as if Harry were dome kind of idiot, blinded by ideology, and still using the phrase "Bush Derangement Syndrome" to describe criticism of a man with a 23% approval rating.

Democratic candidates take note. If you are hesitant to take on the right-wing noise machine, consider wrapping a box in tinfoil and putting it on your head. That should make them completely lose their shit.

The Path Of Least Intelligence

Wed, 28 May 2008 21:45:59 -0500

Wingnuts, 30 May 2008

Memo to America: WE WIN!

The war on terror is over! Radical Islamic fundamentalist jihadis have failed in their ongoing efforts to establish a caliphate in Kansas and impose sharia law in Berkeley! Lower the alert status to green! Someone run out and find a sailor, preferably white, and a young woman, preferably white and not on the Pill, and rush them to Times Square so they can kiss, pronto! Sunday, May 25, or thereabouts, shall henceforth be known as V-RIFJ day. Or something.

And all because one brave company, a company that in many ways represents America more than any other, has stopped encouraging the terrorists by showing an ad on the Internet that shows a celebrity cook slash talk show host wearing a scarf that, if you squint, sort of kind of looks like the scarves Palestinians wear. And Palestinians are terrorists, so she was a terrorist, and she was defeated, so we've defeated terrorism! Freedom in on the march!

Of course, if terrorism has been defeated, there's nobody left who can strap on a bomb and meet me at an outdoor cafe, so that he can light the fuse and put me out of my FUCKING MISERY so that I won't have to hear anything quite this stupid ever again. The sweet release of flaming death being denied me, the least I can do is put a name to my pain. Or three names. Well, technically, one name, one blog title, and a corporate trademark. Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, and Dunkin' Donuts.

Here, as best as I can reconstruct it, is what happened. Dunkin' Donuts hired Rachael Ray to promote their entire line of lard- and caffeine-laced products. In an Internet ad, Ray used her gaping maw of doom to extol the virtues of Dunkin' Donuts' iced coffee, which I'm sure makes an effective calmative after her daily crystal meth bender. In the ad, she is wearing a scarf. The scarf has fringe. The scarf has black bits. The scarf has white bits. The scarf is draped around her neck. This caused Charles Johnson, at the Internet's premiere brownhate site, Little Green Footballs, to remark thusly:

"I didn’t believe this story when people first started emailing about it; but sure enough, it’s true. Dunkin' Donuts, the venerable old fried dough seller, is the latest American firm to casually promote the symbol of Palestinian terrorism and the intifada, the kaffiyeh, via Rachael Ray... this isn’t happening in a vacuum, and Ray is not the first celebrity to show up wearing one of these."

Michelle Malkin read Little Green Footballs that morning, and as soon as her erection subsided*, she posted about it, including, as is Malkin's way, her signature personal touch. You see, Malkin had, some time back, switched from liberal Starbucks to anti-immigrant Dunkin' Donuts. So the idea that Dunkin' Donuts was supporting jihad was very troubling to her:

"I’m hoping her hate couture choice was spurred more by ignorance than ideology. Is Ray’s blunder worth boycotting DD over? I’ll be interested to hear the company’s take. At this point, I’m going to give the management the benefit of the doubt... I highly doubt the executive offices are filled with moonbats who endorse Ray’s keffiyeh chic.

Now, let's try to remember that this entire issue is predicated on the establishment of two facts. One, that Rachael Ray was wearing a kaffiyeh, and not, for example, a scarf with paisleys on it she bought at a shop inside the United States, because while you can do Palestine on $40 a day, it's not terribly photogenic. And two, that wearing a kaffiyeh is an act that undermines both the Great War on Terror and the state of Israel, and should be confronted and stopped wherever it occurs.

The first is fairly easy to establish, and was - by Dunkin' Donuts, from whose spokespeople I got the above correct scarf description. And the second is, at best, the crazed ranting of agenda-blinded morons. So she wasn't wearing a kaffiyeh, and if she had been, the only people to care would be the clinically insane and/or fans of Japanese internment camps. Faced with these facts, put yourself in Dunkin' Donuts shoes. WHAT DO YOU DO?

You pull the motherfucking ad, that's what. Why? Because it's just an Internet ad. And Dunkin' Donuts doesn't give a shit if Michelle Malkin and Chuckles Johnson get victory boners out of the deal. Because Dunkin' Donuts, like any great American corporation, knows that the well-being of society has jack shit to do with their bottom line.

*Four hours and seven minutes later - she really should have consulted a doctor. Preferably Kevorkian.

Amerigo Vespussi

Mon, 12 May 2008 22:38:36 -0500

Wingnuts, 13 May 2008
Amerigo Vespussies
Memo to Paranoid Mapmakers: YOU ARE DUMB.

What is it with right-wing whitey and fake maps? I swear to fuck, these people are so worried about the size of their... borders, shall we say that they're constantly turning to cartography as either a trigger or a crutch.

Like how Absolut had to apologize for that ad it ran, in Mexico, showing the old map with Mexico owning all its old territory that's now part of the US. That sent the wingers apeshit, because on the big list of things that make conservatives piss themselves at night, the idea that one day, the brown, chili-loving people will come and take their stuff comes second only to the idea that one day, the brown, hummus-loving people will come and blow up all their stuff.

Never mind that the idea of Sweden (where Absolut comes from) teaming up with Mexico in a plot to take back California from The Austrian sounds like a rejected plot idea from one of those thrillers Newt Gingrich pretends he writes*. How dare an advertisement suggest to its target audience that things would have been better for them if history had played out differently! It's like Absolut is pissing clear, intoxicating urine on the very idea of manifest destiny!

The point to all this stuff I could have written months ago when the Absolut thing was topical is that conservatives are like dogs. Nothing is more important to them than perceived territory. Which is apparently why they like to scare each other with fake maps showing the takeover of the undeserving masses. Like at "Gates of Vienna", another in an endless series of blogs determined to warn us about the onrushing Islamic hordes. In this case, their ongoing invasion of Europe.

A recent post on the blog, referencing someone else's post on someone else's blog, talks about how the European Union is a bad thing and will facilitate the fall of the West by weakening the centuries-old individual European cultures that have kept the Muslims at bay for so long. Which is, for any number of reasons, fucking stupid. But the author of the post, who goes by the very i-shit-you-notty moniker of "Dymphna", illustrated her point with a map purportedly showing Europe circa 2067.

According to this map, France is the "Sultanate of France", Spain is "Al-Andalus", Italy is "Al-Italia", Britain is "Al-Bion", Germany is "Al-Lemania", and Norway and Sweden have merged into "Al-Skandia", only the map doesn't bother to erase the line between them because who gives a shit about the details when all the European countries have fake-Muslim names that in many cases are also vague puns? These countries are collectively colored green as "The Umma", which, like the "Demilitarized Dhimmi Zone" next to it, is one of those Arabic terms that douchebags throw about to show that they really want to rule them all.

It gets better, though. Dymphna got the map from her cohort blogger, who, and I swear I am not making this up, also has a pseudonym - "Baron Bodissey". Which, Wikipedia informs me, he stole from Jack Vance, which is especially funny, because the menacing map of Muslim mayhem was illustrating a bit of speculative fiction, emphasis on the "speculative" and even more emphasis on the "fiction", about a treaty between a descendant of Osama bin Laden and the Russian president that carves up the rest of Europe.

And because that's not heavy-handed enough, the treaty was signed on September 11, 2067. DUM DUM DUMMMMMMMMB! It's like one of those paranoid Red-baiting SF movies from the 60's, only stupider. It's so pathetic you'd wonder how anyone can fall for it, and then you see thousands of people falling for it and a few of them get TV shows handed to them, and you realize it's not just pathetic, it's toxic. Like a rattlesnake with a kazoo in its tail. Laugh at it, but from a nice safe distance. And maybe see if you can stop Glenn Beck from putting it on the air.

*Yeah, Newtie, and Shatner wrote TekWar, too. No, really. We believe you.

Dumb Fuck Chuck

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:57:01 -0500

Wingnuts, 28 March 2008
Memo to Chuck Norris: KNOW YOUR STRENGTHS.

If I were, at my current age, in my current physical condition, with my current experience, enter, shall we say, some form of martial arts competition, Chuck Norris would be well within his rights to laugh his ass off at me. I clearly don't belong there. I lack the discipline, the skills, the training, and the mindset to kick the ass of anyone over, say, five years old. Or whatever age they can reach my balls from a standing position.

So why the fuck is Chuck Norris writing political commentary? I'll tell you why. He saw all the attention he got when he endorsed Mike Huckabee, and somehow got the mistaken impression that the majority of that attention was due to his credibility as a representative of conservative politics, and not the novelty of an aging, has-been action star inserting himself into a losing campaign.

So Chuck keeps providing his insight, and TownHall.com, your one-stop shop for right-wing retardation, keeps publishing him. You know, in-between furious masturbation to Lone Wolf McQuade. It's a three-part column, divided into equal parts stupid, stupid victim, and incredibly offensive stupid, or as Norris puts it, "Guns, God, and Gays".

The guns part discusses the Supreme Court's latest gun-control case. Now, I'm not the big gun control guy I used to be as an Official Liberal, but this bit from Norris is just laughable. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Is someone joking? Could 27 words be any clearer?! 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'" Well, stop the fucking presses, everyone! The guy from The Octagon just recited the Second Amendment! It's all so clear now! The last half-century of arguing was just a waste of time. If only Chuck Norris had recited the Second Amendment sooner, so many divisive battles could have been avoided.

After his stirring defense of the absolute freedoms offered by the constitution, Beardy McFuckKnuckles moves on to the "God" section, relating a tale of religious oppression that will chill you to the bone. Apparently, a college newspaper published a cartoon of God having sex with Mary and lying about his vasectomy. Now, given what we've learned from the right-wing reaction to the Danish Muhammed cartoon scandal, and what we've learned above about Norris' absolutist stance on the Bill of Rights, can we all guess his clear, consistent reaction to this cartoon? I think we can.

"How abhorring it is when the freedom of the press is abused to demean the biblical God and the most sacred couple in Christendom, especially right before Easter. If the cartoon depicted Allah or Muhammad, there undoubtedly would have been a national decry of bigotry. Yet it seems in vogue to disgrace Christianity, and so it was brushed under the rug of contempt and barely highlighted by any news agency."

Have I mentioned that Chuck Norris is a meatheaded shitwit who's taken way too many blows to said meat head? The column couldn't have depicted Allah or Muhammed, because neither Allah or Muhammed GOT MARY PREGNANT. The joke only works with the Christian God. And it wasn't brushed under the rug. The reason it was barely highlighted by any news agency is that the only news agencies who give a shit what cartoons end up in the University of Virginia school newspaper are the right-wing rag sites Chuck appears to get all his information from.

This is clearly evident in his "Gays" section, which is a long diatribe about the "National Day of Silence", in which students across America remain silent for a day to protest discrimination against, and beating of, gay and lesbian students. Keep that in mind, because here's what Chuck learned about NDOS:

"I was appalled when I read the American Family Association report that Friday, April 25, 'several thousand schools across the nation will be observing "Day of Silence (DOS)." DOS is a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools. DOS is sponsored by an activist homosexual group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.'" - Now, the problem with getting your news from Donald Wildmon is that the utter void of knowledge it creates may cause you to say something so incredibly insensitive and offensive that the world will know what an asshole you are. Ready? PULL THE ASSHOLE, TEXAS RANGER LEVER!

"For example, Thomas Jefferson drafted a bill concerning the criminal laws of Virginia, in which he proposed that the penalty for sexual deviance should be unique corporal punishment. Jefferson's views were indeed representative of early America: 'Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.' Can you imagine a statesman proposing such a law today?"

No, because with the exception of Chuck Norris and his friends at the AFA, we aren't quite as barbaric a bunch of bastards as we were in the 1700s. Chuck can claim all he wants that he's not really "espousing such treatment", the fact of the matter is his reaction to an event designed to focus attention on the physical abuse of gays and lesbians is to point out that Thomas Slavefucker Jefferson at one point advocated for the physical abuse of gays and lesbians. Nice one, Chuck. Very classy. Given the finesse with which you wield your debating skills, I've got to wonder just how many times the skills you're more famous for have been employed in, shall we say, a strident, fisty defense of "family values".

Superliminal Stupidity

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:47:21 -0600

Wingnuts, 4 March 2008
Memo to Ann Althouse: YOU ARE DUMB.

Also, me calling you dumb does not thus prove that you are smart. That's not how it works. I can understand, certainly, why you interpret people calling you stupid and crazy as vindication, because dear sweet merciful fuck, it must happen every 45 seconds. If I got kicked in the shins every forty five seconds, I'd probably convince myself that I enjoyed it after a day or two.

But I'd still be getting kicked in the shins. Similarly, it is not true that, as you claim, "The vicious attack on the messenger bespeaks fear of the message and lack of a substantive argument against it". Also, please stop using the word "bespeak". Thank you.

The reason people may not be crafting substantive arguments against the message is that this is the message. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"The intense scrutiny of the "RATS" ad heightens the assumption that presidential candidates these days pay close attention to any incidental lettering that appears in their ads. "RATS" as part of the word "bureaucrats" in an ad criticizing Gore's prescription plan is nothing compared to "NIG" isolated on a sleeping child's shoulder in an ad intended to create doubts about a black man's ability to take an urgent phone call at 3 a.m., an ad authorized by a candidate who has already heard accusations that her campaign is slipping racial material into its attacks on her opponent. This is either a revolting outrage or shocking incompetence."

Oh, it's both. Just, you know. My revolted outrage at Ann Althouse's shocking incompetence. In case you can't parse the whole thing from the closing paragraph above, what Althouse is saying is that the Hillary Clinton campaign dressed a small child up in "Good Night" pajamas, then positioned that child so that, for a second and a half, in the lower-left corner of the frame, the letters "NIG" could be seen. And since NIG are the first three letters of "nigger", Hillary Clinton is a racist.

Lest we forget, the last time Ann Althouse graced these hallowed pixels, it was for analyzing a Hillary Clinton campaign video so strenuously that she thought an onion ring was a vagina. When it comes to cynicism about marketing and politics, you have to look long and hard to find people who surpass me, but come the fuck on.

Set aside, for a second, that Ann Althouse is as equipped to ferret out subliminal Democratic racism as I am to give birth to a hideous giant ant-baby. The biggest part of her argument, after pausing, enlarging, and adjusting the contrast on the video so that the "NIG" is visible, is that this is no different from the "RATS" ad from 2000.

If you don't remember the "RATS" ad, I wouldn't be surprised. One of the ads from the Bush/Gore campaign, there was a bit of a to-do when people noticed that whoever was doing the animated on-screen digital text filled the frame with the word "RATS" before pulling back and showing the whole word, "Bureaucrats". If you look carefully, you can see the biggest flaw in Althouse's analysis.

Digital text on a screen is, to borrow a phrase from our brethren in the intelligent design movement, much too complicated to have possibly arisen through a series of accidents. Digital text is placed on the screen by a graphic artist. Of course, something can be put on the screen intentionally, and STILL not be an example of a plot to insert subliminal messages into advertising to influence voters.

By contrast, a child, fabric, and a bed is what we call a "complex system", out of which any number of accidents could arise. And while, as Althouse claims, I'm sure that that the editors of the ad did look at pretty much every single frame of the ad, to spot the subliminal racism and leave it in, they'd have to be as batshit crazy as Ann Althouse. In which case they wouldn't be producing campaign videos, they'd be on the Internet, ranting about onion vaginas and racist pajamas.

And the whole thing is moot anyway, because everybody remembers the 1996 scientific study out of Yale that, while searching for evidence that Kevin Nealon is funny, also definitively proved that subliminal messages don't affect behavior.

So, you know. Let Althouse believe all she wants that her vindication lies in our collective inability to take her seriously when she freeze-frames on N, I, and half a G and thinks she's found the last hidden bastion of racism in American society. You'll never disavow the stinky guy on the bus of the notion that he shouldn't have to pay full fare because he's Abraham Lincoln, either.

Renew Your English Lessons First

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:24:30 -0600

Wingnuts, 15 February 2008
Memo to the collective talent of Renew America: YOU ARE DUMB.

On Wednesday, I mentioned a misguided bit of comedy from Erick Erickson, the editor of right-wing blog RedState. Erickson posited that left-wing blogs were more successful than right-wing blogs because they've got tons of free time due to not having jobs and having lots of abortions. And certainly that's part of it. And once Planned Parenthood rolls out their free WiFi access later this year, Markos and Atrios and company will be able to bash Bush -during- their many abortions, so the gap's only going to get wider.

But I still don't think that's the whole story. There's got to be some credit given to the fact that right-wing bloggers are awful, awful writers. I mean, sure, their audience manages the impressive semantic feat of not being the most discriminating bunch while at the same time being the most discriminating bunch, but goddamn, some of that shit is just as insultingly unintelligible in structure as it is in ideology. Especially the text spewed at Renew America.

Hilarious examples pulled from a cursory review of the site's articles? Oh, I've got those. In spades. We start off with Warner Todd Huston, author of "I Am A RINO". Now, if you're not a masochistic reader of online political crap, you may not know what a RINO is. Huston recognizes that he needs to explain it, and here's how he goes about it. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"For those unfamiliar, RINO is not only shorthand for rhinoceros, that great beast of the African plains, but it is also an acronym. It stands for, "Republican In Name Only" — RINO."

Um, Warner? Todd? Warner Todd? I'm not sure which parts of your ridiculous fucking name you go by, but I think you need to know something. "RINO" is only shorthand for "rhinoceros" if you're saying it. And you're not saying it, you're writing. Just because you're required to be homophobic to write for Renew America doesn't mean you have to be homophonophobic. If it -was- a spoken speech, it'd still read like someone who was told to "open with a joke" and then had to go look up what a joke was. Written out, it's clumsy, awkward, and completely wrong.

And then there's J. Matt Barber. What the fuck is with these names? Anyway, Barber wrote an article called "Unmasking The Gay Agenda". There is absolutely nothing of interest in it at all. I mention it only because he makes the inexplicable decision to start it with a subhead: BALANCE OF POWER.

You don't start with a subhead. Again, it's like it was prepared for some entirely different medium - in this case, Ugly Powerpoint Presentation, and he just copy and pasted the text into a posting box. There are certainly enough bullet points in his piece to support that conclusion.

Oh, and by the way, at the end of the article, he claims that "'Gayness' is not an 'immutable' or unchangeable condition as homosexual apologists would have you believe. People can find freedom from homosexual behaviors and even from same-sex attractions. It's not easy, but untold thousands of former homosexuals have done it.". So, you know, In case you were wondering on what basis I decided he was worthy of ridicule. He's one of THOSE assholes.

And finally we have Donald Hank, who makes up for his lack of a third name by having a nickname first name as his last name. Hank, like everyone else at Renew America, hates the living shit out of John McCain, for the same wrong reasons "independents" love him. Like his stance on immigration, which I thought I understood until I read Hank's description of it:

"Senator McCain says he is the candidate best positioned to protect America from its foreign enemies, but like his fellow neocon, George W. Bush, refuses to support closing the border or deporting illegal immigrants, none of whom are required to show any evidence that they are not enemies of the US, thanks to the lax policies in place due to politicians like McCain."

My god! It's the fabled Ourobourous Sentence! Oh, wait, no. It just has its head up its own ass. Never mind.

And I'm sorry, but illegal immigrants being required to show evidence that they're not enemies? How would that work, exactly? What would that evidence consist of? If the rest of Renew America is any indication, it'd be a flag lapel pin, a demonstration of heterosexuality, and spitting on a picture of John McCain. I'm not sure when they'd actually do that, of course, since they snuck into the country, and the Hank types say we have to kick them out regardless of their love of country.

It makes no fucking sense. But that's par for the course at Renew America, where the staff writers are either some of the dumbest sonsabitches to ever grace the series of tubes, or they're being told to act like it because the highest-profile contributor to the site is Alan Keyes, and it's the only way to make him look good.

Family Overfriendly

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:08:33 -0600

Wingnuts, 29 January 2008
Memo to Daniel Thompson: YOU ARE DUMB.

At this point, it's moved beyond comedy correlation. It's moved beyond comedy rule. If you are promoting what is traditionally referred to as "family values", you are doing something in secret that you don't want us to know about. Something filthy and dirty and odds are, illegal. Period.

So champion one married man and one married woman, neither of whom had ever seen another person's genitals until their wedding night, who then proceed to make babies with an absolute minimum of pleasure for the rest of their intimate lives. Go nuts. Hold rallies. Make signs. Picket porn shops and gay weddings. To your heart's content. But don't get upset when we assume you've got a dungeon in your basement full of sex toys, underage prostitutes, and farm animals. Because you do, and we both fucking know it, don't we?

Daniel Thompson was already semi-famous for a classic bit of wingnut, family-values stupidity. Remember the big to-do from a few years ago when certain video stores were taking it upon themselves to edit down R-rated and PG-13 movies for their humble, Godly clientèle? Religious hicks from Utah and elsewhere who wanted to be part of pop-culture without seeing a nipple? Well, Daniel Thompson was big into that. He ran various shops in Orem, Utah - "CleanFlicks" and "Flix Club", depending on when you look - that sold and rented the movies.

Those things have always pissed me off anyway. You don't get to decry the crudeness and depravity of culture on the one hand, and get to talk about how "Mr. Woodcock" ended around the water cooler on the other hand. You can be a prude and isolate yourself OR join the rest of us in our media-obsessed everyday lives. Thompson was letting them eat their cake and have it too. And speaking of eating it and having it...

Things were rough enough after legal rulings in favor of the Directors' Guild effectively outlawed the practice. In December, Flix Club shut down after almost two years of trying to pretend they were an "educational" business. And then Thompson had to go and get arrested on charges of getting blowjobs from fourteen-year-old girls. Oh, sure, He said he thought they were 18, but "they" always say they thought they were 18. "They" also say they love listening to Hannah Montana and eating candy in their van.

Oh, and then, as part of the investigation into the incident, which allegedly saw Thompson and a compatriot paying for the Oral in Orem from a pair of enterprising young teens who were looking to raise the money to leave home, the police searched the Flix Club store, and found what they allege is an underground pornography ring, with cameras and computers and multiple copies of various titles. And it's not like they can claim these were just the hardcore anal sex scenes they cut out of copies of Superbad and Delta Farce. OK, maybe Delta Farce.

It's classic. And the worst part about it is that you've gotta wonder if the name itself, with its equally classic LI combination that makes for a double-taking all-caps sign (FLIX CLUB) wasn't Thompson thumbing his fake blue nose at all the supposedly real bluenoses coming for their fix of good clean fun. Laughing as they never noticed the typographical entendre, then retiring to his back room to get his hardcore porn on, the clean, morally upstanding folk of Orem none the wiser.

But it's just as likely that every single one of his customers, coming in to get tittie-free copies of Titanic, or cleaned-up copies of Pirates 3, went home, plopped their spawn in front of the DVD player, then snuck downstairs to get their freak on with goats and latex. All a carefully orchestrated surface veneer of holier-than-thou, concealing all the things the family values crowd wants to stop us from seeing and doing, plus much, much worse.

Damn Near Killed Him

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:52:31 -0600

Wingnuts, 16 January 2008
Memo to Glenn Beck: YOU ARE... CORDIALLY INVITED.

Hey, everyone! Let's throw a Pity Party! I've already got a low-bitrate, highly compressed AAC file of the world's tiniest violin playing the world's saddest song. I'll load it into an iPod Shuffle and connect It to a greeting card speaker.

Now all we need is a punch bowl, a couple of card tables, and someone to print up a banner reading "Sorry About Your Asshole, Asshole!" Hey, did Microsoft ever make a Screen Bean that's bent over in severe rectal distress? No? Ah well. Off to Google Image Search!

Yes, everyone's favorite cable news pundit, Glenn Beck, is recovering from what appears to be botched hemorrhoid surgery. I will leave the obvious jokes about cranial damage and increased fact-extraction capacity to my gentle readers. While I am clearly not averse to kicking a man, or in Beck's case, a shambling beast-child, while he is down, any straight line involving Glenn Beck's diseased pooperchute would have been comedically strip-mined within minutes of his video going up on YouTube.

And what a video it is. In many ways, it's a spiritual sequel to that beloved hit, "Hasselhoff Can Has Cheezburger?". Intended as a bedside update for Glenn Beck's handful of fan, the clip features a disheveled, loopy, medicated Beck whining about how badly the greatest health care system in the world" treated his bunghole. Seven and a half minutes of rambling awesomeness and the distillation of purest schadenfreude.

Now I do feel sorry, in an abstract sense, that what was supposed to be an outpatient ass-debarnacling turned into a five day ordeal of pain and drugs. Since it happened to Glenn Beck, that sympathy will have to stay abstract. Why we need to hold a rockin', rollin' Pity Party for him has more to do with his reaction to the whole ordeal. First, from the self-important and hilarious "Beck From The Dead" video. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I'm writing something now on the real meaning of compassion, because I know what it means, I think I can define it now... we don't even understand compassion anymore, and I have some real examples of compassion, and what it means, and how best to apply compassion."

It's clear from this, the rest of the video, and quotes after the fact that Glenn Beck defines compassion as BEING NICE TO GLENN BECK WHEN GLENN BECK IS IN DISTRESS. The doctors were impatient! The nurses were mean! Only the woman who brought him his food would make eye contact with him! He had to wait two hours for pain meds even though he could tell, in his medicated state and his limited, bed-ridden perspective, that "it wasn't a busy night at all". Whine whine whine. Glenn Beck went to the hospital, got what he needed, and presumably has a very nice health insurance package from CNN, but since he didn't get treated the way he thinks he deserved, his eyes are now open to the state of health care in America.

And how is it broken? Well, he tells the AP, "it's not going to be solved by government, it's not going to be solved by getting the HMOs out, it's not going to be solved by a new marbled-lobby health center. It's by hiring people that understand about caring for people."

Yes, Glenn. That's the problem with health care. Not overworked doctors. Not understaffed nursing stations. Not insurers that deny coverage to the insured, and a national system that denies coverage to the uninsured. No, the problem is that the doctors and nurses and technicians don't understand about caring for people. And by people, we mean Glenn Beck and his malignant dumper.

I am not the first person, since this video broke wide, to mention that Glenn Beck is a reprehensible douchebag whom we should feel no sympathy for. Which allows Beck to play the classic Right Wing Douche Trump Card:

"I find it interesting that those who are always saying how intolerant I am, what a hate-monger I am, are the ones posting `I wish he would have died,' `I wish he would have killed himself, it would have saved us all this trouble.'" - OK. One more time. We'll say it real slow and put it up on a prompter so that even Glenn Beck can pretend he understands it.

Hating you is not hate-mongering. It's just hating. A hate-monger deals in hate. Promotes hate. Encourages hate. When we make fun of you for being a worthless sack of shit, we're just hating you. Not all pundits, not all bloated white people with hemorrhoids, just Glenn Beck. We're not taking someone, like a Congressman, and based solely on their membership in one of the world's major religions, accusing him of being an enemy of America. That's intolerant. That's hate-mongering. There's no irony, no hypocrisy, and nothing "interesting" about hating Glenn Beck as an individual, in the same way that there's nothing hypocritical or unnatural about wrinkling your nose in disgust at the delicate waft of a freshly-lain turd.

How Far-Left Are Your Roots (Part Two)

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:44:32 -0600

Wingnuts, 27 December 2007
Memo to the Leadership Institute: LIGHTNING ROUND TIME!

Not really. But when we ran out of time yesterday, our contestant, me, had scored a mere nine points out of a possible seventeen beliefs of the left, as recounted by the Leadership Institute in their documentary, "The Roots Of The Hard Left". Will I sprint to a glorious socialist finish, or will I peter out like the last dreary year of a five-year plan? Let's find out.

Liberty

Solve all problems. Give the Left all power. - It's worth a try, but we'll have to find a way to take it away from Harry Reid and the rest of the Democrats first. And we're out of the halftime gate like a shot with one more point!

Stamp out liberty. It's unfair. - No, unfairness is unfair. The Leadership Institute’s inability to distinguish between unfairness and liberty is not my problem, but it does keep me from getting a point.

Everything not compulsory must be prohibited - Who believes this? I’ll tell you who believes this. Nobody believes this. Seriously. You could actually construct a strawman of the worst socialist “liberal fascist” straight out of Jonah Goldberg’s nightmares, and that strawman would still look at this sentence and ask, “What the fuck are you smoking?”. No points.

Re-write history or stop teaching it. - If, by “history”, they mean the collection of white male exceptionalist myths that the Texas textbook industry has been fawning off on the school system for decades, then yes, I’ll take that point and use it to mark my place in _Guns, Germs, and Steel_. And if there’s one thing the Leadership Institute exudes, it’s white male exceptionalism. Plus one!

Keep campuses conservative-free zones - Not as a matter of policy. Can’t keep them con-free anyway, since they’re not con-free now. There will always be marketing departments and frat boys going for their MBAs. Let’s let natural social pressures take care of this the way it always has. No points again.

In the media, any conservatives are too many I don’t believe this at all. I think that in the new socialist utopia, we should keep Michael Savage around in a kennel and throw him a biscuit every time he insults Hillary Clinton. Again, no points. I’m starting to think their list isn’t actually representative of even extreme leftist beliefs.

No free speech for conservatives Not only am I willing to allow conservatives to speak, I just offered to pay them in Milk Bones for doing it. That’s not just free speech, that’s profitable free-market speech. Once again I am thwarted in my quest for points.

Only groups have rights - What, you mean like corporations? This is just getting ridiculous. How can I earn points towards being a proper socialist if the Leadership Institute imposes these standards that are completely alien to my culture? What’s next, an IQ test written by William Saletan*?

Give up your guns. We want you defenseless. In the case of the Leadership Institute, I think that’s wise because of their clearly demonstrated mental issues. Also, I’m feeling a bit point-starved right now, so I’ll pretend to feel much more strongly about guns than I actually do just to irritate them. ONE POINT.

Pay the union boss or we'll crack your skull - What the fuck, is this 1930? I’m in a union. Have been for over a decade. And nobody’s even come close to mentioning either skulls or the cracking thereof in any of my limited dealings with them. This may be because I live in the real world, and not a Heritage Foundation rewrite of “Norma Rae”. Maybe I can collectively bargain some more points.

Save the environment. Kill off all the people. - Not all the people. Just the Hummer drivers and rich assholes who, say, like to shoot clipped-wing quails in the face.

Destroy all non-government education - That’s just fucking projection, right there. You know, the left isn’t the side that’s actually run presidential candidates who have the elimination of an entire sector of education as part of their fucking platform. It’s like the Leadership Institute has stopped trying at this point.

Teachers unions -- more important than teaching kids - Goddammit. The only way I can even stretch this in such a way as to give myself a point is to accept the inherent flawed premise that there’s an innate trade-off between unionizing teachers and actual education. And that’s just fucking stupid.

When judges give us what we want, forget the laws and the Constitution - When judges give us what we want, they redefine laws and the Constitution. So yeah, we should probably forget the old version. Of course, this isn’t really a leftist belief, it’s just human nature, but that just means POINTS FOR EVERYBODY. Which is a fairly socialist belief in and of itself.

The Future Of America In The World

America causes all world problems - That’s not true. We’re much too lazy for that. We probably could cause all the world problems if we just applied ourselves, but we don’t, and thus, no points for me.

Eliminate patriotism - FUCK YES. Patriotism is a poor substitute for supporting your country because you’ve done the math and realized that in this particular case, they deserve support. Mmm. Precious point.

Bring on world government - There was a time, back when I read a lot more 60s science fiction, that I’d have thought this was a good idea, but I’d really hate to ruin the few national governments out there that are quite nice by diluting them with a bunch of other corrupt assholes. I have a feeling I won’t be finishing strong on the point front.

Next time, Marxist-Leninists will get it right - Yeah, sure. All fifty of them are really gonna get another shot.
So that’s 18 more points today. 35 possible points total. Adding the nine points I got yesterday, I scored… 14. Fourteen out of thirty five. And I cheated on a couple of those. Turns out that at the Leadership Institute, a socialist is a lot like logic, honor, and dignity – they wouldn’t know one if it bit them on the ass.

*Another joke for you lefty blog readers

How Far-Left Are Your Roots (Part One)

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 11:41:33 -0600

Wingnuts, 26 December 2007
Memo to the LeadershipInstitute: OK, I'M GAME.

The other day, I stumbled across a fascinating list. You see, it seems the Leadership Institute, one of the cogs in the conservative vat-growing frat-boy cloning machine, has compiled a little list. It's a list of sections in their documentary, "The Roots Of The Hard Left", and it's chock full of things they say that "socialists really think" about various subjects. It's a great list, and I thought I'd help the Leadership Institute people out. As one of the closest things they'll find to an actual, breathing socialist, I thought I'd turn their list into a quiz and see how well I did.

So here's how it goes. I'll list what they say socialists believe, and if I actually do believe it, I'll give myself a point. If not, no point. And then we'll see how I score. Feel free to play along at home and see how dark red your hard-left roots are.

Economics:

Profit Comes From Evil Greed - One point for me! I'm not quite willing to state a causal relationship in either direction, but there certainly is a strong correlation between profit and evil greed. I'm on my way to a socialist paradise!

Socialists must get all your property - This is a tricky one. If I -am- a socialist, then I'd be getting the property of non-socialists, and I'd come out ahead. If I'm NOT a socialist, then I'd end up giving up all my stuff. Very sneaky of them to put this early in a quiz they didn't know I was making out of their stuff. Good thing the concept is ridiculous on the face of it, or I'd have a tough time deciding. Zero points.

Tax all income at 100% - That doesn't make any sense. If you tax income at 100%, there's no point to even having income. You just create a bureaucracy dedicated to the generation of meaningless pay stubs. And, since I don't work for H&R Block's tax prep department, I don't see an upside for me. Zero points. I hope the questions get better soon. I'm starting to feel like a bad socialist.

Support big government. No new tax cuts. Hooray! Something I can get behind fully, knowing in my heart of hearts what the Leaderdipshits define as "tax cuts". Plus one for me and Karl Marx!

Only government creates wealth - Well, they do print all the moneys. But Nintendo has made some wealth too, and one counter-example disproves an only, so I'm afraid, as a strict adherent to logic, that I must deny myself a point.

Bureaucrats spend your money better than you do - Given fifty bucks, I would spend it, most likely, on a Wii game. A bureaucrat would spend that same fifty bucks on paper clips. Which of the two contribute more to society? I'm afraid it's a draw. Ergo, bureaucrats spend money just as well as I do. No points.

To elect more socialists, destroy the economy - This is sort of true, really. Socialists (at least as defined by the Jerkwad Institute) come to power in times of economic crisis - but the economic crisis wasn't caused by socialists. It was caused by the free-market excesses of the previous stewards. We'll call it a point for me, and then make an off-hand reference to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Government jobs good; private employers bad - One look at my employment history and I'm one point closer to the strawman dressed like Karl Marx.

"Something for nothing" fools almost everyone - I'm sorry, who was it that was bringing up tax cuts again? This is patently true, and while it certainly seems like "fooling people into thinking they're getting something for nothing" is actually the bailiwick of unrestricted free-market capitalism and cause for another mention of the subprime mortgage crisis, under the terms and conditions, that's one more point for me.

Why work when you can loot those who do? - As a nerd, I tend to think of this question as "why seed, when you can leech?" This question has two answers - the first is that the system breaks if you do, and the second is that sometimes there are restrictions and punishments in place preventing it. On the other hand, on those occasions when it is both possible and feasible, it's actually quite nice. Call it a draw and award no points.

Socialism has never been tried - Yeah, and Bush isn't a true conservative, either. No points.
Family And American Culture

Traditional morality is always bad - Another one that requires some interpretation. Traditional morality isn't always bad, but it's always true that traditional morality isn't good because it's traditional. Given how these mental midgets define terms and "reason", I'd have to say that my caveat would be enough for them to give me the point, and therefore I will take it.

Do what feels good now. Make taxpayers pay the bill - The first is a result of personal philosophy and the second is a consequence of where I work, but I cannot deny that this is how I actually live my life. ONE MORE POINT!

Break all family ties - For this, I'm going to make the arbitrary decision that they are referring to DVD box sets of the Michael Gross series from the 80s. You may call it the Michael J. Fox series from the 80s, but as Tremors is a better movie than Doc Hollywood, I say otherwise. And yes, they should all be broken. Sure, it's a bit Stalinist of me, but the show sucked. One more point.

Make God illegal - That's just silly. I might as well make unicorns, vorpal swords, and compassionate conservatism illegal. So they must be talking about belief in non-existent concepts, which, while it should be discouraged through social pressure, shouldn't actually be outlawed. No points.

Masculine is bad; feminine is also bad - No. Genital-shape determinism is bad, of course. Macho assholery is bad. Andelin-styled gender roles are bad. _The Rules_ is bad. But as a rule, the overall butchness of you and yours is not my concern. No points.

Kill it. Why give your baby to a moral couple? Because the moral couple will send it to the Leadership Institute, where it will learn to be a College Republican and a K-Street lobbyist, a fate worse than death. ONE POINT.
At the halfway mark, out of seventeen possible points, I scored nine, which puts me at just over half a Karl Marx. Which would be a Kama. Which is half of a Kama Sutra. So on what I am calling the Leadership Institute test, I scored .25 Kama Sutras, or 16 sexual positions. Let's hope, for all our sakes, that I do better tomorrow.

Neville Say Neville Again

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:40:59 -0600

Wingnuts, 28 November 2007
Memo to Frank Gaffney: FIND A NEW ANALOGY.

Frank Gaffney is a known nutjob. He's such a known nutjob I'm surprised I've never brought him up before. He's a neocon in the "clash of civilizations", "World War III" mold that's all the rage these days. You know, the people who are terrified that any minute now, the Muslim world will succeed in its goal of invading us and converting us, but isn't the slightest bit concerned about the falling dollar.

The Washington Times is a known nutjob rag. It makes Fox News seem reasonable. If you're riding the subway, the Washington Times is officially the third-scariest thing the guy next to you could be reading, just behind hardcore pornography and To Serve Man. Plus, I hear it's run by the Moonies, which I'm led to believe is like Scientology, only more respectable.

That said, I do feel the need, for a couple of reasons, to point out this fascinating thesis, penned by Gaffney, and slapped onto recycled toilet paper by the Unification Church's fun-time daily. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"Despite official efforts to low-ball its significance, Miss Rice's conclave is shaping up to be a gang-rape of a nation on a scale not seen since Munich in 1938, when the British and French allowed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to have their violent way with Czechoslovakia. This time, the intended victim is Israel. As with the effort to appease the Nazis and Fascists nearly 70 years ago, however, the damage will not be confined to the rapee. The interests of the Free World in general and the United States in particular will suffer from what the Saudis and most of the other attendees have in mind for the Jewish State — namely, its dismemberment and ultimate destruction."

I have a love/hate/hate relationship with this quote. I love it for its delusional naivete. Condoleeza Rice is having a two-day summit to discuss the Israel-Palestine situation, and Frank Gaffney is so sure that she'll solve it, and that he'll hate the solution, that he's willing to bring out the term "gang-rape". That's awesome. A conflict that's been going on for hundreds of years, and the one to stop it in two days will be Condi? Armed only with the U.S. government's newfound desire to allow Israel to be dismembered? That part alone violates half a dozen laws of NEOCON logic, much less for-real human logic.

But seriously, dude. Gang-rape? Not only is the metaphor excessive, I'm not sure it even works in Gaffney's twisted context. Not even with all his attempts to bolster it by referencing naval rape cases in Annapolis (site of the conference), bringing up the Saudi rape case currently in the news, and calling pretty much everyone at the conference except the US and Israel a gang. Gaffney worked over that poor, defenseless rape metaphor like... shit, I've written myself into a corner here, haven't I?

But the most irritating thing of all in Gaffney's whole wretched piece is that once again, it brings out appeasing the Nazis. Munich. 1938. Neville Fucking Chamberlain. And no, Frank Gaffney does not get bonus points for the thing he's comparing to the Nazi peace conference actually being a peace conference. That boat sailed a long time ago, when every other fucking thing you could think of ended up being just like appeasing the Nazis.

Not bombing Iraq? Appeasing the Nazis. Not bombing Iran? Appease appease appease. In general thinking about talking with any world leader a few shades darker than "latte"? Naz-appeasey! Prosecuting Enron? Neville Chamberlain would have done that. Having your pets spayed and neutered? Might as well just fuck Eva Braun while you're at it. Decide you don't want to shop online during Cyber Monday? Sure, if you want to be complicit in the murder of millions of Jews.

I swear, Neville Chamberlain catches more shit for appeasing the Nazis once than the Nazis do for, well, actually being Nazis. And they were Nazis a whole bunch of times. Yes, we get it. A British guy made a bad call SEVENTY FUCKING YEARS AGO.

At this point, every time some wingnut mentions Chamberlain, I get a little bit more pissed off at old Neville for giving these bastards a talking point to beat into the earth's mantle, and a little bit less mad at him for actually appeasing the Nazis. And I'm pretty sure that's not the point of historical analogy. So can we collectively agree to cut it the fuck out? No? I didn't think so.