It's easier if you just assume they're ALL idiots.

There's a classic joke about a college mathematics professor who, on a regular basis, received "proofs" of Fermat's Last Theorem. They were, of course, always incorrect, which inspired the prof to finally draft a boilerplate response of the form:

Dear ________:
We have received your proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. The first error is on page _____, line _____. Thank you very much.

at which point the prof would hand off the submission to one of his grad students to fill in the appropriate blanks.

At this point, I believe this is the only proper response to any post by a Blogging Tory -- simply assume that, at some point, you will encounter unforgivable dishonesty and dumbfuckitude, at which point you can stop reading.

At the risk of being repetitive from my very last post, let me demonstrate this new strategy with one "Paul" of the blog Celestial Junk (or, as we like to refer to it these days, Intellectual Dreck), where Paul deludes himself into thinking he has written something devastatingly stinging and witty when he quotes another blogger:

The idea is for Senate Dems to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the crucial Iraq theater of the War on Terror, despite most of them having voted in favor of removing Saddam Hussein from power. Another benefit from the Democrat point of view is that the bill's inevitable failure will delay funding our troops in the field, helping to demoralize them and bring about their defeat. With their control of the establishment media and extremely low opinion of the American public, Dems believe they can spin this defeat and its catastrophic consequences to their own benefit in the 2008 elections.

(As an aside, even though Paul didn't actually pen the above, I'm going to write as if he did because, here at CC HQ, when we link approvingly to something, we take responsibility for its correctness, rather than acting like a weaselly little shit and complaining after the fact that, hey, that wasn't us, we just, you know, linked to it. Not around here -- you link to it, you own it.)

So, to business, where we learn that we don't have to get very far into Paul's post before the dumbfuckitude rears its ugly head (dumbfuckitude emphasis added):

The idea is for Senate Dems to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the crucial Iraq theater of the War on Terror, despite most of them having voted in favor of removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Hmmmmmmm ... what an interesting choice of words ... that "most" of the "Senate Dems" voted for the resolution. One wonders why Paul is being that selective. If we check out the actual 2002 vote, we find that, yes, in fact, that's true:

The Senate vote sharply divided Democrats, with 29 voting for the measure and 21 against.

And although "most" Senate Democrats voted for the resolution, a 29-21 margin isn't what you'd call an overwhelming landslide. But we're still left wondering -- why did Paul pick only on the Senate Dems? And the answer is not hard to track down:

This is the 296-133 roll call by which the House voted Thursday for a resolution to authorize President Bush to use military force in Iraq.

A ``yes'' vote is a vote to approve the resolution. Voting yes were 81 Democrats and 215 Republicans.

Voting no were 126 Democrats, six Republicans and one "independent."

Well, how about that? It turns out that, while the Senate Democrats went marginally for the resolution, the House Democrats resoundingly voted against it, by a whopping 126-81 margin. Gosh, that might have been nice to know. So when you add all those Dems together, the majority of them still voted against the resolution. That's what you call selective reporting. But wait -- it gets better.

Paul writes of the vote as being based on the idea of "removing Saddam Hussein from power." In fact, that wasn't the resolution at all, as you can read in the opening paragraph from that earlier CNN article (emphasis added):

In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions.

As anyone with a functioning brain stem can read, the resolution said nothing whatsoever about "removing Saddam from power." It referred solely to approving military action if Saddam didn't turn over his (non-existent) WMDs. And even if the resolution had involved regime change, I believe we can all safely say that that's not really much of an issue anymore since, the last time I looked, Saddam is now adequately dead to make that pretty much of a non-problem.

(And, against my better judgment, I'm going to be polite to Paul and not harp on the fact that the only reason even that many Democrats voted for the resolution was because the Bush administration flat-out lied to them about the absolute, guaranteed, "slam dunk" existence of WMDs. That's rich -- you lie to someone's face and then, down the road, you criticize them for being taken in by your lies. That takes some nerve.)

In short, then, Paul quietly and sneakily misrepresents the results of the actual vote at the time, as well as the contents of the actual resolution, suggesting he is either ridiculously dishonest or breathtakingly stupid -- perhaps even a little of both.

In any event, we can fill in our boilerplate:

Dear Paul:

Thank you for your conservative wankitude. The first example of idiotic and/or dishonest dumbfuckitude is in paragraph 1, line 3. Thanks for playing. Better luck next time.

I rather like this new approach. I see it being a real time-saver.

MIGHT AS WELL KICK HIM WHILE HE'S DOWN. I realize there's not much value in laying in a couple final boots to the nads while Paul's lying bleeding on the asphalt but -- what the fuck -- it's cheap entertainment.

Paul seems ever so excited that so many Democrats voted for the Iraq resolution back in 2002, but he fails to supply the context or the reservations so many of those Dems had at the time. You know, reservations like this (emphasis added):

In the Senate, 22 Democrats and one independent opposed the president in a vote just after 1 a.m. Friday. Many cited concerns that Bush might take military action without U.N. approval and provoke a terrorist reprisal from Hussein or from al Qaeda or other militant groups.

Um, yeah ... a lot of those Dems had concerns that Commander Chimpy might go it alone without the U.N. and invite a terrorist backlash. Gosh, who'd a thunk it?

Was that some seriously kick-ass foresight or what?