Madness in Wingnuttia.

[Welcome, Conservative Undergrounders. Try not to injure yourself on the big words or deep ideas here, OK?]

There's a reason I occasionally peruse the wanker blogs, and that's just to remind myself that these people really are clinically insane. Today's example can be found here, in which "Special Ed" has clearly been eating too much paste lately.

In defending U.S. Secretary of Defense and Arrogant Senility Donald Rumsfeld, who is now being publicly criticized by no fewer than six retired generals, Ed's unbelievable response is to point out that, hey, let's be fair, the Washington Times has a piece in which three retired generals are rushing to Rummy's defense. So there.

Pause. Reflect. Bang head on desk.

The fact that there are some retired officers willing to stand up for Rumsfeld is not news, period. It's irrelevant in ways that really, really irrelevant things can only aspire to.

Of course the criminally incompetent Rumsfeld will have his supporters, even among the military. This is what you expect. It's part of the military culture -- you have an obligation to support the civilian administration, end of story. Once you retire, of course, things might change but it's not surprising that many, if not most, of those people will still be willing to stand up for Rummy. But to use that support to neutralize the growing discontent is just brain-damaged. That Rummy still has support is not news. That Rummy now has public critics among the retired military is news.

By way of analogy, let's say a recent poll showed that a full 30 per cent of Republicans in Congress thought Bush should be impeached. That would be a hell of a story. But one gets the impression that Ed, in trying to dismiss it, would just point out that 70 per cent of Republicans still don't think Bush should be impeached, as if that meant something.

But the amount of support wouldn't be relevant. You expect members of the GOP to support Bush -- that's not news. But if a sizable number of them came out against Bush -- fuck, yes, that would be a huge development.

[UPDATE: By the way, it's not like that analogy is entirely hypothetical. Just so you know.]

In short, "man bites dog" is a story. "Dog bites man" isn't. You with me, Ed, you buffoon? But Ed's buffoonery doesn't end there.

Try to believe that anyone -- even someone as stupid as Captain Ed -- would write the following:

I think Rumsfeld has done an excellent job as SecDef and would prefer he continue until 2009.

Pause and savour that. Ed thinks Rummy has done an "excellent" job.

Now, if you want to debate Rumsfeld's competence, perhaps you could stake out the position that he's done a "good" job, or a "fine" job, or maybe even a "great" job under the circumstances, something like that. You can, if you're in touch with reality, find the things to give him credit for even as you rake him over the coals for the things he's botched hideously.

Sure, feel free to weigh the pros and cons, and make the appropriate judgment. Be as objective as you can. Be cruel. but fair. But, for God's sake, there is no conceivable metric under which you can seriously suggest that Rumsfeld's performance has been "excellent." At the very least, there are 2300+ U.S. military personnel who would disagree. If they weren't dead, that is.

(Captain Ed describing Rumsfeld as "excellent" brings to mind the gold standard against which all nauseating, GOP-oriented ass-kissing must be measured. That would, of course, be PowerLine's ButtRocket, fellating the Chimpster:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

Nice try, Ed.)

In any case, it's worth popping by sites like Ed's occasionally, just to gauge the current depth of their delusion. And, currently, it's pretty fucking deep.

AFTERSNARK: You're not surprised, are you?

A REAL-LIFE ANALOGY: Just in case you didn't get the logic here (and I know for a fact some of you didn't), let me introduce one more analogy. The current wanker talking point is that it's no big deal that six retired generals are demanding Rummy's resignation since, well, there are probably way more than that who publicly support him. Really? Is that the way your logic works?

If that's the case, perhaps you'd like to explain the wild, celebratory high-fiving among the citizens of Wankerville when then-Democratic senator Zell Miller publicly endorsed George W. Bush for president over John Kerry at the Republican National Convention. Oh, yes, that made the news, didn't it?

But why the celebration? After all, while you had one Democratic senator endorsing Bush, the other 43 of them still supported Kerry. Didn't stop the wankerhood from stroking themselves into a frenzy over Miller, did it?

So, a little consistency, perhaps? Is that too much to ask?

OH, LOOK: One of the generals defending Rummy turns out to be a liar. Shocking.