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Archive for December 2006
IOKIYAAR: Victor Davis Hanson Edition
Posted by Clif on 12/31/06 at 6:28 pm
Category: Wingnuts, America's Shittiest Website, IraqWell it’s a bloody shame that I already did my review at The American Street of the highlights of wingnuttery in 2006, because Victor Davis Drosophila Hoohaticus Hanson made a valiant effort at the eleventh hour, fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second to secure himself a coveted place on that list with this:
One of the most depressing sights of the entire Saddam postmortem were the clips shown ad nauseam
of all the dignitaries, diplomats, and obsequious reporters who in years past trekked to Baghdad to flatter or to pay homage to this creepy mass murderer. Watching a younger Kofi Annan, Lindberg like, pump Saddam’s hand, smiling and offering blandishments was sickening.
But why doesn’t VDDHH mention this and find it sickening as well?
There must be some reason, but for the life of me, I just can’t see why not. I suppose it’s only obvious to somebody who’s really smart and is a Senior Fellow at the Hoo-hah Institution and is the world’s expert on the salpinx. Perhaps the difference was that Annan was just offering “blandishments” but Rumsfeld was offering military helicopters that could be used to, you know, drop chemical bombs and things. Just a thought.
Some Thoughts on the Science of Jonahnism
Posted by Clif on 12/29/06 at 9:24 am Category: Wingnuts, America's Shittiest Website, Environment
It is with considerable peril that one should ever suggest that something that Jonah the Whale has said is the stupidest thing he will ever say, but I think I’ll venture out on thin ice here and say that this is indeed the stupidest thing he’ll ever say:
Whatever the merits of the global warming science and politics underlying the push to list polar bears as endangered species, I’m all in favor of saving them if they really are in trouble. As longtime Corner readers know, I’m far more sympathetic to intervening on a case by case basis than I am to the religious/holistic/Marxist cases for throwing a wet-blanket on global capitalism in the name of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
[I]f the polar bears need more floating ice to survive, let’s get them some more floating ice! Like artificial reefs, we can build fake floating ice, or make real floating ice, and distribute it across the polar bear habitat. Mightn’t this be expensive? you ask. I dunno maybe. I haven’t priced artificial polar bear ice platforms lately. But I will bet you dollars to doughnuts it would cost a mere fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost of a Kyoto regime. . . .
What this bobo apparently doesn’t understand is that it’s not a case of too little ice, but a case of ice forming too late and melting too early, so his idea of fake ice platforms is ludicrous.
But wait, wait, wait . . . Why am I even bothering to point out the imbecility of an idea that is this patently idiotic? Rather, isn’t this the perfect opportunity to ridicule Jonah by suggesting other Goldbergesque solutions to global warming? Like these:
- We can build twenty-foot levees on all the shorelines of the world to mitigate the effects of rising sea levels.
- Hey, what about building gigantic outdoor air conditioners to cool everything down?
- We could train polar bears to skate and move them all to ice rinks where they could perform in Disney’s “The Lion King on Ice,” thereby staying cool and earning their keep at the same time.
Other ideas are, of course, welcome in the comments.
Another Lecture from Professor DirigiBill
Posted by Clif on 12/28/06 at 1:36 pm Category: Loathsome Republicans, Iraq
Sanctimonious slob Bill Bennett is over at America’s Shittiest Website™(aka The Corner) posting about “decency” of all things. Listening to this blimp bloviate about decency is about as edifying as listening to Dick Cheney lecture on bravery in combat.
Not surprisingly what has the supersized Bennett all exercised is the revelation that President Ford, during an interview with Bob Woodward, criticized the invasion of Iraq. And with that simple revelation all the encomiums for the former President by the Cornerdomites instantly ceased. Instead, the only sound coming from the Corner was the sound of the slime machine being cranked up by the serial slot machinist:
[M]ay I nevertheless be permitted to ask this: just how decent, how courageous, is what Jerry Ford did with Bob Woodward? He slams Bush & Cheney to Woodward in 2004, but asks Woodward not to print the interview until he’s dead. If he felt so strongly about his words having a derogatory affect, how about telling Woodward not to run the interview until after Bush & Cheney are out of office? The effect of what Ford did is to protect himself, ensuring he can’t be asked by others about his critiques, ensuring that there can be no dialogue. The way Ford does it with Woodward, he doesn’t have to defend himself…he simply drops it into Bob Woodward’s tape recorder and let’s the bomb go off when fully out of range, himself. This is not courage, this is not decent.
Sadly for Bennett, he reads as well as he gambles because he doesn’t get Ford’s conditions for publication quite right:
Ford requested that Woodward not publish the interview until Woodward had written a planned book about Ford or until the former president died.
This, of course, rather lets all the gas out of Bennett’s zeppelin since it was quite possible that Ford might still have been alive when Woodward’s contemplated book was published.
Once again, Bennett, the alleged exemplar of all virtues, is paying the wages of sloth.
Too Many Five O’Clock-tails
Posted by Clif on 12/27/06 at 4:48 pm Category: Politics
The divine, yet completely non-partisan, Professor Althouse is obviously spending her Christmas break washing down percocet tablets with tumblers of Brandy Manhattans. How else do you explain this post?
The number of Americans who have died in the Iraq war … has now surpassed the number who died in the 9/11 attacks. . . . A key question — with an unknowable answer — is: How many Americans would have died in post-9/11 attacks if we had not chosen the path of fighting back?
Hiccup. Burp. Questions without any possible answers — those are the best kind of questions, particularly when you have tenure. Like how many volcanoes would have erupted if we hadn’t invaded Iraq? How many more people would have died in tragic hunting accidents?
Several commenters criticized the Althouse post for linking Iraq and 9/11 which elicited this howler from Professor Althouse:
I never said I thought Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks.
Of course, you didn’t say that, Ann. You just said we were “fighting back” against 9/11 in Iraq which, as far you’re concerned, we could be doing in France or Bolivia or Liechtenstein.
Hoo-Hah Humbug
Posted by Clif on 12/26/06 at 1:15 pm Category: Wingnuts, America's Shittiest Website
K-Lo is pissed off because yesterday she was put her off her second piece of pecan pie by all those television stations showing poor people having Christmas dinner in shelters and stuff. Once again the liberal media spoils her Christmas by forgetting that the real meaning of Christmas isn’t about poor people and generosity but is about the baby who came to earth to fight gay marriage and Plan B contraception.
Fortunately, K-Lo found the perfect antidote: a column by Hoo-Hah Institution Senior Cretin Thomas “Ebenezer” Sowell who explains, just for Christmas, why it’s a-okay for poor people to be poor and rich people to be rich.
Well, the column doesn’t really explain that but rather just says that people who complain about income disparities should just shut the fuck up:
The media and academia are continuously obsessed with “gaps” and “disparities” in income. As one talk-show host put it, “It makes no sense” that a corporate executive makes over $50 million a year.
Ninety-nine percent of all the things that happen in this world “make no sense” to any given individual. Do you understand how your automobile’s transmission works? . . . Do you understand how aspirin stops headaches? How to make yogurt?
Years ago, a famous essay pointed out that nobody knows how to make a simple lead pencil. . . . If you cannot understand something as simple as making a lead pencil, why should you be surprised that you don’t understand why someone is making a lot more money than somebody else?
Don’t know how to fly a 747? Well, then, of course you don’t know why we are in Iraq. Don’t know how to make puff pastry? Well, then, of course you can’t understand why human beings have nothing to do with global warming. Don’t know the password for Thomas Sowell’s computer? Well, then, of course you don’t understand how to write such an imbecilic string of non-sequiturs.
But the Hoo-hah Institution fellow is just getting wound up:
Obviously the point is that somebody ought to “do something” to change what you don’t understand. Usually that means that the government — politicians — should impose policies based on your ignorance of what is going on. . . . Of course, such political control of incomes is usually advocated only to deal with “the rich.”
I know and that really pisses me off. People should instead advocate taking more money from the poor, who clearly don’t even deserve what little they’ve scraped together. But what do I know? I don’t know how to knit an afghan.
The Gay Patriot Hates teh Gay Penguins
Posted by Clif on 12/24/06 at 3:58 pm Category: Gay Issues, Wingnuts, GayPatriot.net
God bless the Gay Patridiot. I didn’t really have time to blog today. Suspecting, however, that a choice morsel of idiocy could be quickly found over at the Gay Patridiot’s site, I wandered over and within just a minute or two found just such a morsel.
In a post over a school board debate about And Tango Makes Three a book about — gasp!! — gay penguins, the Patridiot has this to say:
Not having read the book, I can’t make a judgment on its merits. But I do think parents have a right to challenge the idea of having a sensitive subject like gay parenting presented to young children in a cartoon-like book.
This man is gay and yet he thinks there is something wrong with children learning about gay parenting. My question is this: is it the self-loathing that causes a gay man to become a Republican, or does becoming a Republican make a gay man self-loathing?
Warm — No, Sweltering — Regards from The Corner for the Holidays
Posted by Clif on 12/21/06 at 8:45 pm Category: America's Shittiest Website, Environment
Iain Murray, the global warming denier who, literally, wants to put a lump of coal in every stocking, has a particularly preposterous post today at America’s Shittiest Website™ (aka The Corner):
When the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, we heard repeatedly that Congress was blocking urgent action on global warming and that something had to be done NOW before it was too late. Now, with people who have argued that hearings on the matter were a waste of time in charge, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change simply states: “[W]e are optimistic that enactment of mandatory US climate action is plausible by 2008 and likely by 2010.”
Huh? Where are the demands for action now? What can have changed to calm them down so much? It’s almost as if this is merely a political issue to leverage for further electoral gain, not the crisis they’ve been banging on about.
Okay, so let’s play follow the link and find the real reason that the Pew Center says that action is “plausible by 2008 and likely by 2010:”
The 2006 elections have significantly improved the prospects of reasonable climate policy in the United States. . . . [T]he new Democratic congressional majority puts control of the agenda in the hands of policymakers who, to a large extent, favor climate action.
None of this suggests that enactment of mandatory climate change measures will be a simple matter. In particular, five of the new Democratic Senators come from states — Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia — where mandatory climate action is not an easy sell. A similar story can be told for the new Democratic Representatives.
Your wingnut welfare at work.
It Takes a Village Idiot
Posted by Clif on 12/20/06 at 8:14 pm Category: America's Shittiest Website
Cornerdomite Tim Graham was glued to his TV set this morning watching The View. How could he miss an episode featuring both über-Lesbian Rosie and über-Amazon Hillary? Certainly that would yield some outrage that he could rush over to America’s Shittiest Website™, and share with the other Cornerdomites.
And sure enough, it did:
Elisabeth Hasselback asked if being a multi-tasking mother would be an advantage over a male rival. Hillary claimed “we’ve never had a mother who ever ran for or held that position.”
Wrong. A mom just ran in the 2004 cycle, Carol Moseley Braun, who has an adult son, Matthew. Did Hillary forget? Isn’t she a Carol pal? Or does she just assume she’s the pioneer woman in every way?
Er, Tim, I don’t mean to intrude on your little “Hillary is a big fat liberal liar” party, but, strictly speaking, Carol ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, not for the presidency. Hillary was clearly talking about the presidency when she said no mother had ever run for or held “that position.”
What an idiot. Thank God he gets wingnut welfare from the Media Research Center. Otherwise he’d be running around town with a gasoline can and a story about how he needs $5 for enough gas to get home.