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Archive for July 2005
The Bible Told Me So
Posted by Clif on 07/31/05 at 1:28 pm
Category: Red States, Fundies
Recently elected Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker doesn’t spend much time in the law library when he writes his opinions. Justice Parker doesn’t see much use in fussing with all those musty volumes of statutes and court opinions when the only book any Alabama judge needs to consult is his very own leather-bound, rice-paper, red-letter edition of the Bible.
Last Friday the Alabama Supreme Court upheld a decision refusing to award custody of a child to a father who was a drug addict and who had spent so little time with the child that he didn’t even know what size clothes the kid wore. Justice Parker, after hunkering down in his chambers with his Bible, decided that the father should have custody and filed a dissenting opinion. Parker’s dissent relied on Romans 13:1 which says that “there is no authority except from God.” And since God had given the child to this father, Justice Parker reasoned, “courts should interfere as little as possible with parental decision-making.” God apparently thought that the little boy should live in a crack house.
Justice Parker’s shenanigans shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone who has ever visited his web site, where you’ll find this endorsement of the Justice:
The thing you need to know about Justice Parker is (1) he fears God more than man; (2) consequently, he is the personification of principled leadership; (3) he has a model Christian marriage and is widely known as a true gentleman; (4) he is a skilled thinker who understand [sic] the constitution and the Christian presuppositions of all law; (5) he has been wise enough to place rock-solid Christian legal thinkers around him and to build a staff which will stand with him and not back down; and (6) God miraculously and wonderfully placed him in office, having ousted one of the very opponents who stood against Roy Moore on the issue of whether or not the state can acknowledge God. . . .
You know, if Alabama wanted to secede again, I’d be okay with that. Really.
Another Forgetful Elephant
Posted by Clif on 07/31/05 at 7:47 am Category: Lying Republicans
Jean Schmidt, the Republican candidate for Rob Portman’s House seat in Ohio, is suffering a classic case of GOP memory deficit syndrome. It seems that as state representative she was lobbying for an Ohio businessman who was not in her district but was giving her campaign contributions. The businessman wanted to sell Ohio lottery tickets over the Internet. Schmidt says she has absolutely no recollection, none whatsoever, not even a smidgen of a memory of ever lifting her tiniest little finger for this guy, which was about all she could say unless she wanted to straight out admit she was for sale. Unfortunately for Jean, Governor Taft’s office released a November 2001 email from one of his aids complaining that Schmidt “continues to bug me on the Internet lottery.” Oops.
She could probably blame the memory lapse on her meds, however, because viewing this interview with her on MSNBC, she certainly does need to be medicated. I’m not sure even a continuous Thorazine drip could get her back in control.
We Get Clown Mail
Posted by Clif on 07/30/05 at 11:45 am Category: Wingnuts, Town Hall Watch
In today’s mailbag we find an email from Michael Fumento, one of the residents of Clown Hall whose column I criticized two days ago. He’s really, really, really mad. It’s not every day that a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Group Think Tank says that I’m lower than a douchebag. Here’s the email from Senior Fellow Fumento:
Nice! You completely avoided discussing the purpose of the column, which was to show the double standard between what you’re allowed to write about if you’ve gone to Iraq versus what you’re allowed to write about if you haven’t. The head of Knight-Ridder’s DC office can rip US war efforts even though he’s never been closer to Iraq than the Washington Monument, but Pioneer-Press is %^%&* and a #@%$^& for speaking well of US war efforts because he’s never been closer than St. Paul. Right.It’s ridiculous to compare you to a douche bag; douche bags serve a purpose. I’m planning to return to Iraq (no, not the safer areas) when the hole in my side finishes healing. I paid for my ticket and all my equipment; you can do likewise. Care to join me?
The email reads like something written and sent after a few snootfuls of gin, then regretted, perhaps even completely forgotten, the following morning. Even so, I thought it deserved a reply:
Dear Mr. Fumento:Thank you for your kind email. This is the very first time that the author of a column I’ve criticized has complained that I did not comment on all the errors in the column. Frankly, I thought that pointing out that you called the Green Zone a “barren section” of Baghdad sufficiently discredited your column that nothing more needed to be said. However, at your thoughtful suggestion, I’m happy to discuss what else was wrong with your column.
Your column’s characterization of the dispute between Yost and his colleagues at Knight Ridder is completely off base. It does not support the double standard that you claim:
Behold a clear double standard for Iraq commentators. If you attack U.S. war efforts, you may do so all you wish from the safety and comfort of American soil. Conversely, don’t even think about writing something positive unless you’ve spent time in Iraq
In fact, the dispute was about a Knight Ridder editor (Yost) who hadn’t been in Iraq and who was accusing reporters who actually were in Iraq of filing misleading reports. And although Clark Hoyt, the head of KR’s DC bureau whom you criticized, hadn’t himself been to Iraq, the majority of his column simply reprinted the critical comments of KR’s Baghdad Bureau Chief regarding Yost’s column.
Additionally, your statement that reporters in Iraq file their dispatches “from the safety and comfort of a cozy hotel behind layers of concrete barriers and concertina wire” is an unimaginably loathsome misrepresentation. Tell that to Yassir Salahee, the KR reporter shot to death in Baghdad on June 24. Tell that to Richard Wild, a cameraman for British network ITN, who was shot to death in Baghdad. Tell that to the 61 journalists who have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war.
Finally, your column leaves the erroneous impression that you were wounded while you were embedded in Iraq:
As it happens, I did go to Iraq. I was embedded with the Marines at Camp Fallujah in hostile Anbar province, nearly lost my life, and returned with a colostomy bag as a souvenir.
Perhaps you should have told your readers what really happened: that you came down with an impacted colon which burst and that less than two weeks after your only dispatch from Iraq, you were back in Arlington, Virginia. No doubt the rough conditions in Iraq contributed to the colon ailment, but it’s not like you were the victim of hostile fire as your ambiguous language may lead readers to think.
Don’t get me wrong. I do admire writers, even those with whom I disagree, who travel to a dangerous place to chase a story. I hope that you have a speedy recovery. And I hope that when you do return to Iraq, you (and as many other Americans as possible) return safely home.
Yours truly,
Clif
LIAR, LIAR, CK Underpants on Fire
Posted by Clif on 07/29/05 at 6:04 pm Category: Gay Issues, Fundies
Last night CNN did a segment on the Love in Action Refuge — LIAR — a religious boot camp where parents can send gay kids, usually against their will, to wean them from Calvin Klein underwear, hair products and other sinful trappings of the homosexual lifestyle. At the end of the segment, Paula interviewed one of the LIARs, a fellow named Gerard Wellman, who works for LIAR and claims to have successfully undergone LIAR conversion therapy.
Here’s what Gerard had to say to Paula:
ZAHN: Once again, though, the criticism of this is you’re taking a population of kids, whose sexual identity in some cases probably isn’t yet fully informed…WELLMAN: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
ZAHN: You’re forcing them into which is a different situation, and when you’re going through this program, in the 20s. Do you understand the vulnerability of these kids?
WELLMAN: In that regard…
ZAHN: … and the potential long-term damaging consequences of this type of therapy?
WELLMAN: I don’t acknowledge that. Because what we are doing, we are respecting the parents’ responsibility to raise their children as they see fit. It’s the same thing as music lessons, for instance. Should parents not be allowed to enroll their children in music lessons?
Yeah, Gerard, forcing kids into the LIAR program is exactly like sending a kid to music lessons . . . if the kid is deaf. Here are some of the rules of the LIAR program that show just how much the LIAR program is like music lessons:
Yep, Mr. Wankerman, that’s just like music lessons.
Send In The Clowns
Posted by Clif on 07/28/05 at 7:58 pm Category: Wingnuts, Town Hall Watch
Today’s batch of columns over at Clown Hall, offers an intriguing melange of wingnuttery, stupidity, incompetence and straight-out racism. Let’s go have a look.
First, let’s pay a visit to Clown Hall guest columnist Michael Fumento who complains that the “mainstream media” is suppressing all the good things going on in Iraq, like the hundreds of Wal-Marts that have been opened all over the country and the high-speed train service now connecting Baghdad and Basra. Instead, the MSM just covers the bombings:
OF COURSE the war coverage is slanted: The adage “If it bleeds it leads” doesn’t halt at the Iraqi border. That’s why when two small shells land in a barren section of city the size of Boston CNN.com blares: “Blasts rock Baghdad near coalition headquarters”
Hmm, “near coalition headquarters” doesn’t much sound like a “barren section of” Baghdad to me. Indeed, if you follow the link to the CNN article in question, you’ll find a story about shells exploding in the Green Zone. Barren indeed. Further proof that absolutely no one edits this shit.
Over at Larry Kudlow’s column, we have the most desperate (and preposterous) defense of Karl Rove yet:
If by some distant chance Bush advisor Karl Rove is pushed out of the White House by the Valerie Plame/CIA kerfuffle, it would come at the detriment of pro-growth economic policies and quite conceivably the stock market and the economy as well.
That’s right. If Karl gets indicted, it will put the economy in the toilet, we’ll all have to sell our houses, live under bridges, and eat in soup kitchens. And if Scooter Libby goes to jail, the end result will be that Bin Laden gets to move into the White House.
No trip to Clown Hall is complete without paying a call on one of their resident racists. So today we’ll visit the odious Moonie Times columnist Suzanne Fields:
It’s difficult to say such things without being accused of making common cause with racists. But 40 years and billions of dollars of government money have rarely put poor black kids on an equal footing with poor white kids because the problem begins at home. “They are not simply middle-class parents manque,” writes Kay Hymowitz in City Journal magazine. “They have their own culture of child rearing, and — not to mince words — that culture is a recipe for more poverty.”
That’s right, Suzanne, it is difficult to say that without being called racist because the statement that poor black parents are worse at raising children than poor white parents is, well, pretty frigging racist.
A Bird in the Bush
Posted by Clif on 07/28/05 at 8:47 am Category: White HouseI think that all the sniping by the press at Bush’s beloved “Turd Blossom” has started to get to Bush, judging from this bird he flipped to the press corps last night. Something to think about: this man has that finger on the button.
Click here to see the whole video.
UPDATE: Some people, including the usually reliable Dan Froomkin, are saying that the video shows Bush’s thumb extended, not his middle finger. I don’t believe it. The extended digit is clearly more elongated than a thumb. Perhaps its the Pinocchio effect and every time Bush lies his thumb gets a little longer, but it that were the case I suspect the thumb would be even longer than the digit in question.
Getting One’s Goat
Posted by Clif on 07/27/05 at 4:49 pm Category: HumorFrom CNN’s home page a few minutes ago:
The former president reportedly said that he’s already married, and that there weren’t enough goats in the world to get him to do it again. Chelsea’s response was even more to the point: “Ick!” Rick Santorum blamed the startlingly incestuous proposition on gay marriage in Massachusetts, and said he wouldn’t be surprised if Chelsea wound up marrying an entire herd of goats when all was said and done.
(The mangled CNN headline links to this story.)
Mad About Harry
Posted by Clif on 07/27/05 at 8:44 am Category: Fundies
The inaptly named Agape Press brings us the latest news on the efforts of the faithful to stomp out Harry Potter before every Baptist child in our Christian nation knows more about Professor Dumbledore than about the book of Leviticus. At the forefront of this battle is ventriloquist and semi-literate preacher Tim Todd, who succinctly phrases his beef with the young Harry and his evil books:
“The things that concern me about the Harry Potter series,” the preacher and Christian publisher notes, “are things like sacrificing animals . . . or being possessed by demons — these are not things that we want to have our children subjected to.”
Sadly, neither Pastor Tim nor his friend on his lap, appear to be able to read the very Bible that they pretend to preach. Because if they had read the Bible, they would have to say it also was something that children shouldn’t be subjected to. Let’s start with Genesis 15:9 - 11:
[God said to Abraham,] “Bring me a heifer three years old, a she-goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”And he brought him all these, cut them in two, and laid each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two.
And when birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
Oops. Looks like we have animal sacrifice in the Bible. Lots of it, in fact.
Then we have this from Matthew 8:28-33:
When He [Jesus] had come to the other side, to the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two demon-possessed men, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass that way. . . .And He said to them, “Go.” So when they had come out, they went into the herd of swine. And suddenly the whole herd of swine ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and perished in the water. . . .
Then those who kept them fled; and they went away into the city and told everything, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men.
Oops. Looks like we have demonic possession in the Bible too. And more animal sacrifice. Those poor pigs. No child should be subjected to this.
Somehow I get the feeling that Preacher Tim didn’t quite graduate at the top of his class at Bible College.
Osama Bin Totally Forgotten
Posted by Clif on 07/26/05 at 5:29 pm Category: White House
According to an article in today’s New York Post, DEA documents reveal that Osama met “personally” with Columbian drug dealers in 2002 in a failed effort to purchase massive quantities of cocaine, which he intended to poison and resell in the U.S. The article notes that the documents do not say where the meeting took place.
So, we already know that Osama, far from cowering in a cave, is someplace where he can go to the movies, make 14 videotapes to send to Al-Jazeera, and get dialysis treatments. If the Post is to be believed, he is also able to have summit meetings with Columbian drug dealers, probably in a conference room, coffee shop or Holiday Inn Express somewhere in Peshawar or Islamabad. A bunch of Columbian cocaine kingpins can find Bin Laden but the current occupant of the White House can’t even say Osama’s name, much less figure out where in plain sight he is hiding.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq the “War against Terror” plods along without success while bombs go off in the London Underground.
Do you feel safer now?
(Picture of Osama at Wal-Mart filched from here.)
Wankers Don’t Get Bigger Than This
Posted by Clif on 07/26/05 at 8:18 am Category: America's Shittiest Website
No one else at America’s Shittiest Website™ has their nose so far up the White House’s widely encompassing butt than the useless shill Cliff May. This post by this smarmy sack of shit has really crossed the line:
Jonah pointed out in the Corner earlier that one neighbor, quoted in the Washington Times, had been told Valerie Plame was an economist.But Joe Wilson’s lawyer said in USA today that he thought she was [a] consultant. . . .
But in The Nation, David Corn wrote that Plame was “known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm.” The name of that firm came out later – when reporters found that Plame had contributed to Al Gore’s presidential primary campaign and had filled out a form identifying herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates, which was quickly revealed to be a flimsy CIA front company.
Maybe there’s a logical explanation for these different – and mutually exclusive — cover stories. Or maybe the explanation is simpler: Maybe it demonstrates that Joe and Valerie weren’t making a big effort – just a little effort – to keep her CIA connection secret.
This is so vile and repulsive I scarcely know where to start. To begin with consultant, economist and energy analyst are not “mutually exclusive,” just as in Cliff’s case pundit, douchebag, administration shill, pathological liar, former Republican party official, and National Review contributor aren’t “mutually exclusive.”
Even worse, when Cliff says that Brewster Jennings and Associates was quickly revealed as a “flimsy” front company for the CIA, he conveniently neglects to point out that this was revealed only because of the outing of Valerie Wilson who had listed BJ&A as her employer in FEC filings. If the White House hadn’t leaked Plame’s identity in the first place, BJ&A would still be a succesful CIA cover company. Oh, and by the way, it was Novakula who first mentioned in print the connection between Valerie Wilson and BJ&A.
All this is part of the continuing campaign to smear Valerie Wilson as a bad spy who deserved what she got. This is the equivalent of blaming the altar boy because he once smiled at a pedophile priest. Except in this case, the altar boy didn’t smile.
Blessed Are the Astroturfers
Posted by Clif on 07/24/05 at 1:57 pm Category: Radical Clerics, Fundies
James Dobson and his minions at Focus on the Family are so excited about John Roberts that their website is encouraging their followers to “astroturf” local newspapers with letters supporting the Supreme Court nominee. Rightly suspecting the literacy of their supporters, the Focus folks have kindly written letters for their slack-jawed devotees to copy, sign and send. Apparently a handful of these supporters have more integrity than the Dobson gang and have worried that by lifting letters from the Focus website they might be guilty of plagiarism.
Nonsense, say the Focus Folks, and they provide a preposterously hilarious justification for why even Jesus himself would swipe stuff from the Focus website and pass it off as his own.
If [newspaper editors] are going to hang the label “plagiarist” on readers who use the help of professionals to frame their arguments persuasively, they’re going to need some extra labels to hand out to politicians . . . . After all, when your local paper quotes a speech from President Bush, it must realize he didn’t write it himself, right?
And, of course, when Joe Bleau from Baton Rouge writes a letter to the editor everyone will, of course, realize that, like the nation’s chief executive, Joe probably had a staff of people write the letter to the editor for him.
And then there’s the matter of what newspaper editors themselves do every day: They edit. That means they change the stories submitted by their staffs. . . . Does that make him a “plagiarist,” someone who’s passing off as his own work something that he didn’t write every word of?
Is it unkind of me to point out that in this case the reporter at least wrote some of the column, where Joe Bleau hasn’t written any part of the letter other than his name?
“[P]lagiarism” implies something absent in each of the above examples — taking someone else’s words and ideas without their knowledge or consent.
So, I take it, when Joe Bleau’s kids buy their term papers from an Internet cheat site, that’s okay because, of course, the cheat site gave them permission to copy the papers.
Focus on the Family: fooling the dimwitted since 1977.
Jonah Who?
Posted by Clif on 07/23/05 at 8:19 am Category: America's Shittiest Website
Oh my, but Jonah the Whale’s little whine this morning over at America’s Shittiest Website™ is just too funny and too pathetic:
Ana Marie Cox hates me. Ana according to an interview (transcribed by Cathy Seipp) and conducted by Mickey Kaus:Mickey: Who do you hate?
Ana Marie (after a pause to think, and a comment that Bush is actually quite personable): I just can’t stand Jonah Goldberg…
Mickey: Really? I think he’s incredibly talented.
Ana Marie: Michelle Malkin…But these people are like cartoon characters.
Eventually they opened it up to questions from the audience, and someone said, “I’m a little surprised that with all the evil going on in Washington, the only people you can think of to hate are people most of us have never heard of.”
I suppose I could get into a long diatribe about how it takes a lot of chutzpa for a potty-mouthed media creation like Wonkette to suggest she’s an even remotely reliable judge of who [sic] to take seriously, but in reality I just don’t care. On a personal level, I’m a bit surprised because our interactions had always been friendly. Oh well.
The one mildly interesting thing is that a questioner in the audience would know who Wonkette is but not who either me [sic] or Michelle Malkin are.
Sure, Jonah doesn’t care about this. That’s why he got up at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, all tired from having just spent a week playing shuffleboard with Midge Decter on the National Review Cruise, and wrote this long post about how much he really, really, really doesn’t care even the tiniest little bit what Wonkette thinks about him. Better yet, he seems truly surprised that there are people who don’t know (and apparently don’t care) who he is. Poor Jonah is just too stupid to realize that this was something that he was better off ignoring altogether.