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Archive for January 2007
It’s D’Lirious, It’s D’Souza
Posted by Clif on 01/30/07 at 11:27 pm
Category: Politics, Wingnuts, Terrorism
Distractions at work almost caused me to miss the latest hilarity of the D’Souza Bozopalooza — an article in the WaPo where Dinesh whines about how the liberals are being mean, really mean, to him. This seems to D’Souza to be terribly unfair since he only blamed one of the worst American tragedies on liberals. It’s not like he said that they were secular progressives or atheistic abortionists or anything really awful.
Not surprisingly, D’Souza exaggerates the extent of criticism in order to claim that his personal safety is now at risk. Mark Warren, Dinesh says, “threatened to put me in the hospital,” although if you read the review in question you’ll find nothing of the sort. By now, of course, we’re used to Dinesh’s elaborate fantasies about the liberal threat, so this should come as no surprise.
Later on in the WaPo piece he tries to wiggle out from his earlier (and false) assertions that there were U.S. troops in Mecca. Dinesh made that bogus claim at least twice in the book and several of his Bozapalooza appearances. So here’s the wiggle:
Bin Laden isn’t upset because there are U.S. troops in Mecca, as liberals are fond of saying. (There are no U.S. troops in Mecca.)
Dinesh, you see, never said it; the liberals said it, further proof, of course, that the liberals are, as usual, wrong. Oddly enough a Google search doesn’t show a single liberal making such a claim but returns D’Souza, and then D’Souza, and then D’Souza yet again, and wait D’Souza one, two, three more times making that claim. The second search result reveals this amusing little catalog of D’Souza’s claims about U.S. troops in Mecca. Dinesh’s claims that it’s the liberals who said there are U.S. troops in Mecca is about as convincing as a teenager standing in a reeking cloud of methane busy trying to blame the fart on someone else.
But my favorite line from Dinesh’s Apologia Pro Vita Mia is this:
I am not, as [James Wolcott] says, an unqualified right-wing hack. Rather, I am a scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
Which I suppose makes him a qualified right wing hack?
Frosty the No Man
Posted by Clif on 01/27/07 at 3:41 pm Category: Wingnuts, Fundies, Environment
You have probably already seen the comments of Frosty “The No Man” Hardison on Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. Frosty is the nutjob who raised a religious objection to the Gore film and convinced his daughter’s school district to ban the showing of the film to its students.
“Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher,” said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. “The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD.”
Well, if you thought that was funny, are you in ever in for a treat, because Frosty has his own web site. (Mirrored here.) So, put down any beverage that you don’t want to snort on your computer, and let’s go visit Frosty’s site. It’s got lots of blinkies and cheesy animations, including the ubiquitous wavy American flag. Frosty, you see, designs web sites and will design one for you too (for a fee of course).
But we’re more interested in Frosty’s ideas on global warming which he kindly makes available on his site here. Frosty’s treatise on global warming leads off with Frosty’s best argument:
Global warming didn’t just begin 50 years ago. The earth started WARMING BACK UP and the glaciers began to recede when? How long ago? Scientists GUESS a range anywhere between 10,000 to 30,000 years ago? I personally think it was closer to 6,000 years ago, because the Bible says the earth is what about 12,000 years 14,000 years old at most? . . . And just how many cars were Americans driving back then to start the glaciers receding?
Okay, well that settles it. We can all go home now. But, wait, there’s more:
Let’s face it, our sun is getting older too… don’t you think there are variations of emmissions [sic] in the sun kind of like those from a camp fire? Or how about the location of the sun? Ever thought of that?
Or how about the heat from all the other stars in the universe? Ever think of that?
Likewise, have any of you looked outside of your window and seen the scientific facts that are happening in your own back yard that indicate OTHER planets are also increasing in temperature?
Good point. I really should have noticed that the size of the weeds in my back yard demonstrates that the surface temperature of Mars is increasing.
Do you want to believe scientists who claim the earth is billions of years old, but can’t produce any thing all those billions of years old to prove it?
And rocks don’t count unless, of course, they are date stamped.
Okay so let’s argue for global warming and the positive affects [sic]. As the waters rise, what do you think will happen to the earths water temperatures? They’ll cool down the deeper they get and after the huge deposits of frozen methane are released. Water tables will rise, more heat generates more clouds, more clouds reflect and block harmful sunlight and produce more rain for crops, with the rising water tables many desserts will have the potential of being reclaimed and turned into productive fields etc. . . .None of this is presented in Al Gore’s PowerPoint slant on global warming.
Nor is there anything about how global warming will make birds fly farther and the flapping of their wings will start cooling the earth back down.
Al Gore’s video has no place in my kids public school class room . . . where thanks to the Becka Bill, the attendance is mandatory under the age of 16, and where no other choices or perspectives are being offered to counter all of the liberally biased agenda being presented. It’s no wonder kids are shooting each other what with them living in the US and with all this blame being heaped upon them in the classrooms for being an American.
Also, Al Gore’s movie leads to underage sex because the kids figure they’re all gonna die so they’d better get it on while they still can.
Frosty, however, is a practical man. He’s not a whiner, but a man of solutions:
[B]eing a man of God I always try to present solutions and not just complain about things. So I present this potential solution: One way this WORLD could make a dent in what has already transpired, would be to build several huge nuclear power plants in the polar regions and install several freezer coils at the edges of the polar glaciers to begin expanding the size of the ice and begin making more ice.
Or we could lasso Pluto with a giant rope and put it in the Pacific Ocean to cool things down.
I think Frosty may be my new favorite wingnut.
NOTE: Frosty’s site, not surprisingly, keeps exceeding its bandwidth limits and getting shut off by Geocities. For the moment, I have Frosty’s paper on global warming archived here.
UPDATE: We seem to have overloaded Frosty’s site. So we’ve mirrored it, in all its glory, here.
(Cross-posted at The American Street.)
Surprise of the Month
Posted by Clif on 01/26/07 at 2:16 am Category: Politics, Buttars
Utah Republican state senator Chris Buttars responded yesterday to an initiative to repeal Utah’s sodomy statute by vowing to fight the bill “all the way” and by revealing more than anyone wants to know about his sex life:
You can like sodomy, I don’t,” he said. “I think sodomy is sickening.
Sounds like sour grapes to me.
One Watt Bulb in a Hundred Watt World
Posted by Clif on 01/24/07 at 4:05 pm Category: Politics
The award for most preposteous pre-SOTU nose-in-Bush’s-butt spin goes, hands down, to former Sooner quarterback and low-wattage Republican consultant J.C. Watts who said this on CNN:
Paula, that 34 percent number that we saw in the poll, I don’t think that number says we don’t like you. . . . I think the number says we don’t like the direction of the way things are going in Iraq.
If you gave Watts a wedgie, he’d think you did it because you didn’t like his underpants.
However, this Washington Post poll makes it clear that, with Bush, it’s the man not the briefs. Fifty-seven percent of the respondents say that Bush is not honest or trustworthy. Even more people, 67%, say that Bush doesn’t understand “the problems of people like you.” So it’s not like anyone would want to invite Bush to a family cookout if only he’d just get the troops out of Iraq.
Mad as Hell
Posted by Clif on 01/23/07 at 12:24 pm Category: Rants
The protocol in the gym in my condo building is that the televisions should all be tuned to the same channel and that, naturally, the channel already being watched can’t be changed without everyone’s consent.
This morning, as a result, I was subjected to Today Show hell. For the entire 35 minutes that I was running on the treadmill, there was not one second of hard national news. We had an endless segment on why reality-show quasi-celebrity “The Bachelorette” wanted to stay single. Then, an even longer segment where Martha Stewart demonstrated the flower arranging skills she picked up in the slammer, which basically meant threading a tangerine and tying it onto a bunch of greens. AAARRRRGGGHHH!
Not a whisper about the latest bombing in Baghdad that killed 88 people. A Chinese missile blew a communications satellite out of the sky but you wouldn’t have heard a word about that on the Today Show unless the pieces could be put in a flower arrangement after they fell to earth. Preznit Bush’s approval rating is in the toilet, but since he wasn’t trying to marry the Bachelorette, that number couldn’t be more irrelevant. If Al Qaeda had a suitcase nuke, you’d only hear about it on the Today Show if it were part of Linday Lohan’s luggage when she checked into rehab.
But, as they say, when network television hands you a pile of crap, make Matt Lauer fertilizer. So here’s my idea. If we can’t cure American stupidity we can sure make a whack at curing American obesity with our exclusive Outside the Tent patented and trademarked three-step Meredith Vieira Flat Tummies for Dummies Exercise Program™
1. Turn on Today Show.
2. Start running on treadmill.
3. Stop when Today Show runs a hard news item or when the show is over, whichever comes first.
Results guaranteed in two weeks or less.
Nice Work If You Can Get It
Posted by Clif on 01/23/07 at 12:42 am Category: Wingnuts
Can I have Cathy Seipp’s, er, job? What better job could there possibly be than hers, where she can make stuff up, call it a column, send it to National Review Online, and even get paid for it?
Cathy’s latest column is on health insurance even though her only apparent qualification in this area is that she knows that Blue Cross is not simply the Red Cross for Democrats.
I first began noticing the many odd notions people have about health insurance last year, after I wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed about my troubles with Blue Cross. . . .A commenter on Kevin Drum’s liberal Washington Monthly blog observed: “I can’t help but notice that this woman is a writer for the National Review.”
The implication, I suppose, was that “this woman” is a mean old Republican who therefore doesn’t care about the millions of Americans who are uninsured or underinsured. . . . But for some reason, the only politicians pushing expanded access to health care right now are Republicans: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.
Can Cathy really be that stupid? Or is she getting treatment for chronic google impairment? The only politicians “pushing expanded access to health care” aren’t Republicans. We have John Edwards and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy and Ron Wyden and . . . we could go on.
You’d think that if NRO had an editor, this whopper might have been corrected. But, wait! NRO does have an editor. That would be Kathryn Lopez. Of course, once Cathy made a reference to K-Lo’s favorite dream boat, that Stormin’ Mormon Mitt Romney, K-Lo went into such a swoon that she simply forgot that she was supposed to edit what Cathy wrote.
D’Souza D’Pwnd
Posted by Clif on 01/20/07 at 2:17 pm Category: Wingnuts
Our complete coverage of D’Souza’s Bozopalooza continues today at The American Street where we have exciting footage of D’Souza getting a swirlie from Alex Koppelman.
The Bozopalooza Continues
Posted by Clif on 01/18/07 at 10:58 pm Category: Wingnuts
Dartmouth’s most embarrassing graduate, otoplasty candidate Dinesh D’Souza, continued his book tour for “Enemies at Home: The True Story of How Ted Kennedy Flew a Jet into the World Trade Center While Hillary Applauded” with an appearance on Paula Zahn last night. Paula introduced D’Souza as America’s Most Respected Conservative™ and things plummeted downhill pretty quickly after that.
For example, we have this from Dinesh:
Well, he — he — bin Laden issued a letter to America right after 9/11. And about a third of the letter is about foreign policy. He talks about U.S. troops in Mecca. He talks about Israel.
But most of his letter is about gambling, fornication, adultery, homosexuality, gay marriage.
This, of course, proves that the way to become America’s Most Respective Conservative™ is, apparently, to have not the slightest clue of what you’re talking about.
Let’s start with Dinesh’s claim that there are U.S. troops in Mecca, which has been something of a persistent delusion for the dim-witted Dinesh. Warren Bass, writing in the WaPo last Sunday, called him on this error in one of the first reviews of the book. Dinesh must have seen this review and yet he still continues to push the whopper that the U.S. has troops in Mecca. Perhaps Dinesh thinks that Mecca is in Iraq.
Of course the rest of the statement is equally preposterous. Dinesh apparently thinks that the Osama letter he is referring to is locked away in the bowels of the Hoover Institution and only he can read it and therefore he can say whatever he wants about it. But due to the miracle of the Internets, a copy of the letter is just a click away. And so is proof of Dinesh’s imbecility.
To start with, let’s do away with the idea that the letter talks about gay marriage. It doesn’t. Not once. Nope. Not even if you play a recording of it backwards.
Next, let’s consider Dinesh’s claim that “most” of the letter “is about gambling, fornication, adultery, homosexuality, gay marriage.” There are 3,831 words in the letter. There are 537 words (generously counted) about gambling, fornication, adultery and homosexuality and, of course, not one single word about gay marriage. Being able to count, do simple arithmetic, read or tell the truth is apparently not a requirement to be a Robert and Karen Rishwain Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution or, clearly, to graduate from Dartmouth.
Oddly there are a couple of other things that Osama complains about in his letter that Dinesh neglects to mention. Money lending leads the list. Polluting the earth and failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is also mentioned in the letter. Oh, and best of all, this:
Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts.
Based on that it seems to me that Dinesh needs to explain why he’s not blaming 9/11 on the Republican Party.
Dixie Senator ‘Splains How to Fix Eye-rack
Posted by Clif on 01/17/07 at 10:41 pm Category: Iraq, Stupid Republicans
Jeff Sessions has the solution to Iraq all figured out:
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama, who has been a strong supporter of the administration’s policy on Iraq, says that he’s encouraged that the White House is taking up some of his concerns. In talks with the president last Monday, he raised the issue that Iraq needs to quickly “create a court system that deals with threats to the Iraqi state promptly.”
He adds: “When people don’t feel safe, you can’t wait five years to create a court system.”
When I read that I had to go back and check the dateline of the article to make sure it wasn’t three or four years old. Understandably, the Senator from Alabama is a little behind the times but even he should be aware that there is a court system in Iraq now. And perhaps I’m going out on a limb here, but it’s not the court system, or any lack thereof, that is the reason that Iraq is all fucked up.