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Archive for September 2007
Slavery: The Bright Side
Posted by Clif on 09/28/07 at 12:15 am
Category: Politics
Bet you didn’t know that slavery in America had a bright side, but leave it to Michael Medved to find it, even if he does have to make up lots of stuff along the way. In fact, slavery doesn’t just have one bright side, it has bright sides! Why, lordy, it’s almost enough to make me want to quit my job and become a slave in a cotton field.
Let’s see what these bright sides are.
1. SLAVERY WAS AN ANCIENT AND UNIVERSAL INSTITUTION, NOT A DISTINCTIVELY AMERICAN INNOVATION.
At the time of the founding of the Republic in 1776, slavery existed literally everywhere on earth and had been an accepted aspect of human history from the very beginning of organized societies.
Clearly, slaves in the American South found it a great consolation that there were lots of other slaves in other countries and had been for many years. If you want to see for yourself how good this argument is, try it out on the next person you meet with cancer. “Stop complaining, Mildred, you act like your the only person who ever got cancer! In fact, millions of people have cancer, so kwichyer bitchin’, okay?”
And, of course, Medved’s claim that in 1776 slavery existed “literally everywhere on earth” is a steaming pile.
2. SLAVERY EXISTED ONLY BRIEFLY, AND IN LIMITED LOCALES, IN THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC – INVOLVING ONLY A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S AMERICANS.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution put a formal end to the institution of slavery 89 years after the birth of the Republic.
Only 89 years? Why that’s nothing. And don’t forget that the concentration camps in Germany only lasted several years, so why the hell are people complaining about them?
3. THOUGH BRUTAL, SLAVERY WASN’T GENOCIDAL: LIVE SLAVES WERE VALUABLE BUT DEAD CAPTIVES BROUGHT NO PROFIT.
Historians agree that hundreds of thousands, and probably millions of slaves perished over the course of 300 years during the rigors of the “Middle Passage” across the Atlantic Ocean.
Because, it’s only genocidal when you kill billions of people.
4. IT’S NOT TRUE THAT THE U.S. BECAME A WEALTHY NATION THROUGH THE ABUSE OF SLAVE LABOR: THE MOST PROSPEROUS STATES IN THE COUNTRY WERE THOSE THAT FIRST FREED THEIR SLAVES.
In fact, Southern plantation owners lost money on each slave. They kept them only out of a sense of Christian charity. More wicked states like New York and Connecticut freed the slaves so that they’d stop losing money on them and could become centers of banking, finance and industry.
5. WHILE AMERICA DESERVES NO UNIQUE BLAME FOR THE EXISTENCE OF SLAVERY, THE UNITED STATES MERITS SPECIAL CREDIT FOR ITS RAPID ABOLITION.
In the course of scarcely more than a century following the emergence of the American Republic, men of conscience, principle and unflagging energy succeeded in abolishing slavery not just in the New World but in all nations of the West.
This is rather like a defendant trying to argue to a judge that even though he did try to kill his wife, he got her to the hospital pretty quickly. But the best part is the notion that Americans ended slavery in all nations in the West. Apparently had it not been for the Emancipation Proclamation, there would still be slaves in London waiting to be freed.
6. THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THAT TODAY’S AFRICAN-AMERICANS WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THEIR ANCESTORS HAD REMAINED BEHIND IN AFRICA.
Come on, Mikey, say what you really mean — if we hadn’t abducted their relatives into hard labor they’d still be running around with bones in their noses, worshipping pagan gods and eating each other.
NOTE: This post appeared for about 3 minutes at Sadly, No! until I discovered that only minutes before Jillian posted on the same Medved column there. Coincidence or hacking? You decide.
Surber Strikes Again
Posted by Clif on 09/26/07 at 11:57 pm Category: Wingnut Science, Climate Change
The good citizens of West Virginia are often unfairly accused of intellectual handicaps due to excessive gene pool mingling. They could do much to eliminate that stereotype by chasing Don Surber, the Pundit of Poca, West Virginia, from the state and allowing the citizens of another state to claim him as their own native, yet dim-witted, son.
Surber in his latest blog post for the Charleston Daily Mail stumbled over a piece in the Moonie Times about geo-engineering as a possible response to global warming. Surber cites this portion from the column:
Geo-engineering is the deliberate modification of large scale geophysical processes … The first of the two most common examples cited is placement of reflective aerosols into the upper atmosphere in order to reflect incoming sunlight and thus reduce global temperature.
To which Surber parries with this daftly ignorant attempt at a wingnut gotcha:
Hmm. Aerosol. Back in the 1970s when the scientific consensus was mankind’s environmental sins were going to be punished with global cooling, we had to sacrifice our aerosol spray deodorants to the pagan god, Mother Nature. Let’s dig them out — and revert to our old formula for air conditioners.
Poor Don has a problem realizing that the same word might actually connote different things. If I say that Don is a dick, he apparently thinks I’m saying that he is the male sex organ, and scoffs at the stupidity of such a notion. Likewise, Surber imagines that the aerosol referred to in the geo-engineering example must be the same aerosol he used to spritz under his pits, at least when he had enough money to buy both a can of Right Guard and his daily ration of Mountain Dew and Slim Jims.
Worse, of course, is that Don apparently has no clue why the CFC-based aerosols in his can of Right Guard were banned in the first place. It had, of course, nothing to do with global cooling but, instead, with ozone layer depletion and the increase in skin cancer caused by UVB radiation that is blocked by the ozone layer.
But, hey, don’t tell Don. If he wants to douse himself with Axe Body Spray, his co-workers will thank you.
D’Bozo and D’Gays
Posted by Clif on 09/25/07 at 2:19 pm Category: Politics, Gay Issues, Wingnuts, Iran
Yesterday’s comments at Columbia by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about gays (or the lack thereof) in Iran set off a stampede of gay-hating wingnuts rushing to their keyboards to profess how much they really - no, really! — loved teh gays. Leading the pack was Dinesh D’Bozo who seems to have forgotten that he just recently wrote a book claiming that the reason the terrorists hate us is because we don’t hate gays enough and that the way to win the war on terror was for us to hate gays as much as we can.
But before D’Bozo can give teh gays a little D’Bozo love in his column, he’s got to give Columbia a little D’Bozo hate for asking Ahmadinejad to speak in the first place. According to D’Bozo, this is deeply hypocritical because Columbia will let Ahmadinejad speak but won’t let ROTC recruit on campus. Sadly, most clowns can see that D’Bozo’s point would only have much resonance if, say, Columbia were letting Ahmadinejad recruit — you know, individually interview students and hand out applications to work for the Iranian government.
But now D’Bozo whips out his rubber chicken and squirts water out of his lapel flower:
Meanwhile, Iran’s policies toward homosexuals are–shall we say–somewhat more stringent than those of the U.S. military. I visited the website of Human Rights Watch where the country’s sorry record is pretty well laid out. A few months ago, to take a random example, the Iranian police raided a home where men were allegedly dressed up as women. The men were accused of homosexuality, detained without a lawyer, and beaten.
Whoa, there, fellow. Before you shed too many more crocodile tears over injustice to gays, you ought to remember that in your book you were saying that we needed harsher policies towards gays to keep the Muslims from attacking us. So, doesn’t that mean that it makes more sense to allow the gay-hating Iranian speak on campus? Because if we let the gay-loving ROTC guy on, that will just make the Muslims hate us more.
But, wait, there’s more!
Actually I don’t agree with conservatives who say that the man should be prevented from speaking. Let him come and let him talk. If Ahmadinejad blames America and Israel for terrorism and calls for both to be wiped off the map, he would be doing no more than echoing what many leftists at Columbia have been saying for years.
Look, I know that part of the prerogative of being a clown is that you can make things up, but this goes to far even for the wildly imaginative D’Bozo. Does D’Bozo really want us to believe that there are “many” leftists at Columbia calling for America to be wiped off the map? Maybe he, or one of his blog-trolling fans, can provide an example or two.
Gone
Posted by Clif on 09/20/07 at 11:38 pm Category: Politics, Dog Blogging
Tonight my beloved dog Fanny, 15 years of age, collapsed and died. She had been suffering from cancer for the past several months. She was the best dog I could have ever hoped for and I’ll miss her more than I can even express right now. More about her later, but it may be a few days before I can blog again. I’m crushed.
Anbar, Texas
Posted by Clif on 09/20/07 at 8:56 am Category: White House, Iraq, Stupid Republicans
Yesterday K-Lo and Kate O’Beirne from National Review were invited to the White House for an on-the-record brown-nosing session with Bush and, of course, they thereafter dutifully provided the sycophantic report that the White House expected. Not surprisingly, Bush served up, and Kate and K-Lo swallowed, a steaming dish about how swimmingly things were going in Iraq.
But the most ridiculous statement about Iraq from the “commanding Commander-in-Chief” — yes, K-Lo actually wrote that — reported by the dynamic duo was this:
President Bush was comforted to notice that his meetings with local leaders in Anbar looked a lot like his meetings with county commissioners when he was governor of Texas.
It’s hard to figure out what on earth Bush means by this. Perhaps he said that because both the local sheiks and the Texas commissioners pack heat. Or because both groups wear silly hats and smell like farm animals. My guess, though, is that it was because both groups are a bunch of religious fanatics who want to blow up people who belong to the wrong religion.
You Mean There’s Oil in Iraq?
Posted by Clif on 09/18/07 at 11:06 pm Category: Iraq
Predictably Alan Greenspan’s remarks that the invasion of Iraq was motivated by oil has made Greenspan as popular in wingnut circles as Larry Craig in a Senate office building men’s room.
One of the first to try to toss Greenspan off the sleigh was Jay Nordlinger in a National Review column titled “Our Blood for Oil?” “Our” Blood? Where on earth does that “our” come from? Has Jay put a drop of his blood at risk? The only blood he’s shed in Iraq war is the paper cut he got last week while loading his printer.
Nordlinger’s main argument is this rhetorical question:
How go oil prices, now that we’ve removed Saddam Hussein “for oil”?
Well, Jay, about as well as our search for WMDs. The fact that this military misadventure was no more successful in restraining oil prices than it was in finding WMDs doesn’t mean that oil wasn’t a motivating factor.
My guess is that Jay knows his argument is a crock because he immediately engages in diversionary tactics:
And I should ask: Did we remove the Taliban for that same purpose? That’s what Michael Moore says.
Hey, people, pay no attention to the old Jew behind the curtain. Look over there. Look at that great big fat liar Michael Moore. That big fat liar said that Afghanistan was about oil so that proves that the invasion of Iraq couldn’t have been about oil.
If the folks at National Review could bottle and sell desperation they would never have to conduct another fund raiser.
Lying Sack of Pence
Posted by Clif on 09/17/07 at 10:08 am Category: Lying Republicans
Mike Pence (R - Nitwitistan), the serial liar who once compared his trip to a market in Baghdad to an afternoon at a Hoosier state fair, was at it again on CNN yesterday:
BLITZER: Alan Greenspan has a new book that has just come out … entitled, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” in which he makes a very, very sharp charge about the war in Iraq.
I’ll read it to you: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows. The Iraq war is largely about oil.” Do you agree with him? …
PENCE: Well, I really don’t, and I don’t — I was never in meetings where the chairman of the Federal Reserve was present during the run-up to the war. I was in many meetings where we discussed the … unwillingness to open up to U.N. weapons inspectors.
Except, of course, that in November 2002, five months before the invasion, Iraq allowed the weapons inspectors to return.
Other justifications given by Pence for the invasion included claims that Saddam’s mustache was blond and that Iraqis had been seen videotaping offensive coach signals during NFL games.
Poor Little Theodore
Posted by Clif on 09/15/07 at 10:47 am Category: Wankers
When Bill Sammon transfered from the Moonie Times to the equally vile Washington Examiner, he didn’t get any smarter. During a one-sided “Roundtable” on Faux News, Sammon defended the likely appointment of Theodore “Arkansas Project” Olson as AG on the grounds that his third wife died in one of the 9/11 plane crashes:
Democrats are the ones who are picking a fight preemptively, saying we are going to block this guy. Ted Olson is a brilliant constitutional lawyer. … Now Ted Olson was married to Barbara Olson, who died in the 9/11 plane crash into the Pentagon. …
I think beating up on a 9-11 widower makes about as much sense as beating up on General Petraeus. When it was the 9-11 widows no one was allowed to talk about it. But here is a guy who lost his wife on 9-11 and they are going to beat him up.
Look, if you feel sorry for Theodore then give him flowers or a copy of Why Bad Things Happen to Good People or something, not, fer chrissakes, the keys to the Justice Department. What’s next anyway? Are we going to make David Limbaugh head of the FDA because his brother is a junkie?
Besides, I don’t think we can really call Olson a “widower” now that he has his fourth wife on his arm — a blond Republican named Lady Booth who is young enough to be his daughter. I think the better term for Theodore now is “Daddy.”
Sessions Makes Secret Payments to Gay Activist
Posted by Clif on 09/14/07 at 12:16 pm Category: Gay Issues
Jeff Sessions — Alabama’s Junior Republican Senator and the Senate’s vilest and smallest member — has had an embarrassing little problem with Google Ads. It seems his campaign has paid a gay activist to run ads for Sessions.
A Web site best known for “outing” gay members of Congress is not where you would expect to see a campaign ad for U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile. But that’s exactly where you could find one last Tuesday: a four-line pitch on www.blogActive.com touting Sessions’ service to Alabama.
The blogActive site is run by Mike Rogers , a gay activist in the nation’s capital who has won new-found notoriety for raising questions last year about the sexual orientation of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig , R-Idaho. Craig pleaded guilty last month to disorderly conduct after being arrested in a June sex sting at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
“It’s not where we want to advertise at all,” Sessions campaign spokesman Chuck Spurlock said last week in response to Press-Register inquiries. But Google matches ads to sites where certain words appear, he said. The campaign has since blocked the ad from further appearances on Rogers’ site, he said.
Does Sessions want to stay away from blogActive because he’s afraid he is about to be outed? Or perhaps Sessions merely wants to support the right of Republicans to vote against teh gays while trolling public facilities for a little man-on-man action?
Either way, what I wouldn’t give for a screenshot of Sessions’s ad on blogActive.