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First, to lay the foundation here, you need to go read Paul Krugman (again). I'll wait 'cuz, you know, that's just the kind of guy I am.
So, let's make sure you understand Krugman's revelatory observation. In rationalizing its global, non-selective War on Terror, the Bush administration brazenly and dishonestly lumped the entire Muslim community into one big pot. Al-Qaeda equalled Iraq equalled Saddam Hussein equalled dark-skinned people wearing turbans equalled the bad guys and, fuck 'em, we're taking 'em all out. But, as Krugman points out, that wide-sweeping generalization came back to bite them in the ass.
After having spent years refusing to distinguish between different kinds of Muslims, the Bushies were now adamant that there were, in fact, different kinds, and guilt by association is a bad thing and why are all you big meanies being so unfair? Well, life's tough but that's what you call being hoist by your own petard, no? If you pound home a point long enough, you can't really blame people when they finally buy into it. And what does this have to do with the moronic Len Kutchma over here? I'm glad you asked
Kutchma, like his loathsome little role model Ben Stein, is outraged, yes indeedy, that the Academy Awards didn't turn into a flag-waving lovefest for the U.S. military and why the hell not, he clearly complains. Several reasons leap to mind.
First, despite what's happening in Kutchma's version of reality, the Academy Awards is about movies, so no one there has any legal, moral or ethical obligation to break stride and start pimping for the American military. If they wanted to, they could have, but they clearly chose not to and that was their right so deal with it and get over it.
Second, it's not clear why the Academy, the presenters or the honorees would feel any need to suck up to the right-wing, pro-war neo-cons anyway. From the Right's perspective, Hollywood is nothing but a disgusting cesspool of left-wing, liberal, America-hating, terrorist-loving, troop-despising, immoral, sexually-depraved lowlifes. Having been painted that way for years, it's a little puzzling, then, why those same neo-cons would get their scrotums in a twist when those same Hollywood elites behave exactly the way they've been described all this time. Come now, let's be consistent, shall we? If you're going to denigrate an entire industry, you don't also have the right to be outraged when they do precisely what you've been accusing them of all this time, do you?
Next (and in a delicious twist of irony) we have Dumbfuck ... uh, Kutchma, quoting Stein:
I did not see every second of it, but my wife did, and she joins me in noting that there was not one word of tribute, not one breath, to our fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan or to their families or their widows or orphans.
Um, yeah. Those would be the brave fighting men and women who were sent to fight a war based on utter lies, who are having their tours extended under "stop-loss" orders, who are having their benefits eviscerated, who are having their bodies shipped back in the dead of night far away from the inconvenient publicity of the media and whose widows and orphans are being treated with absolute contempt by George W. Who Gives A Shit? who has yet to attend a single one of their funerals. But, hey, let's not let facts get in the way of a good rant, shall we? Fucking Academy members, what a bunch of pricks, right? But that's not the best part. Oh, no, not by a long shot.
Since the beginning, support for the troops has been relentlessly equated with support for the policies of the Bush administration. If you supported Bush, you were for the troops. If you loved the troops, then, by association, you agreed with the administration's imperialistic war policies. If you disagreed with Bush, they you were clearly a soldier-hating terrorist sympathizer.
There was no middle ground allowed. You were simply not permitted to dislike or disagree with Bush yet still be a staunch defender of the U.S. military. It didn't matter, for instance, that Cindy Sheehan wanted nothing more than to get American soldiers out of Iraq before any more of them were killed. Nope. By taking a stand against Bush, she hated America and that was all there was to it.
Now, given this thoroughly phony dichotomy that's been pounded home again and again, is it any wonder that even those who support the troops are going to be reluctant to express that? Because, if that had happened at the Oscars, you know exactly what the headlines would have read the next day. "Oscar presenters publicly back Bush." "Academy bravely defends Republican war effort." Or similarly dishonest rubbish.
It wouldn't have mattered if those people had very clearly stated that they supported the troops while absolutely despising the people who sent them into Iraq to be killed. That distinction would have been totally and utterly ignored, which is why I'm not the least bit surprised about what went down at the Oscars.
Did you seriously expect anything different?
Tell me that this doesn't surprise you in the least. First, there's K-Lo:
Ian Wilmut has confessed he did not clone Dolly the sheep. Could cloning be any more disingenuous?
Then there's her not-mentally-retarded colleague Andrew Stuttaford:
That's a slightly misleading headline in the Telegraph, Kathryn. The sheep was cloned: the only question was as to the exact nature of Wilmut's role ("supervisory", it seems, whatever that may mean).
See what happens when you base your entire opinion on reading nothing more than the headline? Bad things happen.
Now pay attention, children, 'cuz here's how it works. If a Democrat does it, it's a scandal. If a Republican does it, it's a terrible shame. Got that? Good. Now go fetch CC some more bourbon.
Shorter Dust My Broom: "When I say "support," I mean, of course, anything short of, you know, actually fighting."
Shorter Adam Daifallah: "How dare someone from the political Left have money? Someone should investigate this. Hey, how do you like my suit?"
Shorter Sham the Tory Man: "As a charter member of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, let me explain how outrageous it is when someone else refuses to go into combat."
Shorter Steve Janke: "It is absolutely unacceptable when those on the Left start to behave like us."
Shorter Steve Janke: "Just in case you missed me the first time. And because I really like saying 'venereal disease.'"
We interrupt your regular indictments and arrests of senior Republican officials to announce that there is no -- I repeat, NO -- credible threat of an NCAA basketball-related terrorist attack. The terror alert is now being reduced from Syracuse orange to Minnesota yellow.
That is all.
Shorter Len Kutchma: "As someone who refused to watch the Academy Awards, let me explain why they sucked."
Shorter Kate McMillan: "It's always a tragedy when a white Christian is killed."
Shorter civitatensis: "It really, really, really hurts to admit that Bill Clinton has a point, so I'm going to do it as gracelessly and tactlessly as possible."
Shorter Steve Janke: "Children and the Catholic Church: What can possibly go wrong?"
Shorter Arabian dissent: "I'm with Stupid."
Let's see, there's this guy who has a nasty habit of walking off with stuff he hasn't paid for. Which inspires this guy to wonder, huh? Who dat? To which question Atrios helpfully supplies the answer.
You know, when it's this easy, there's almost no fun in it any more.
UH OH ... Coincidence?
HEH, INDEEDY: Jpod pulls an Ann Coulter.
Shorter Brent Colbert: "Sure, I'd read Paul Krugman if it weren't for all those big words he keeps using. Some of them are really hard."
If it's coming from those on the Canadian right, maybe we can just call it "newsiness." Let's start with the slack-jawed, drooling outrage here where, if we follow the link to Fox News, we read:
Revisionist Rhymes
Some nursery schools in Oxfordshire, England, have taken offense to classic nursery rhymes like, "Baa Baa Black Sheep" so they're teaching children to sing, "Baa Baa, Rainbow Sheep," instead. The Times of London reports teachers have also dropped the seven dwarfs from the title of "Snow White," and changed the ending of Humpty Dumpty — letting all the king's men put Humpty back together again after all. The manager of two area nursery schools says he's just promoting equal opportunity, saying, "No one should feel pointed out because of their race, gender, or anything else."
Whereupon, because this just begs for a closer examination, we further follow the trail to the Times Online article, where things now become a bit clearer:
Instead of singing “Baa baa, black sheep” as generations of children have learnt to do, toddlers in Oxfordshire are being taught to sing “Baa baa, rainbow sheep”...
Stuart Chamberlain, manager of the Family Centre in Abingdon and the Sure Start centre in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, told the local Courier Journal newspaper: “We have taken the equal opportunities approach to everything we do.
Ah, there we go -- this new attack of political correctness run amok is, in fact, the result of a single manager of two different day care centres but let's not stop that from extrapolating the silliness to the entire shrieking, moonbat left, shall we?
In any event, surely Chamberlain is only buckling under the strain of massive and crippling public pressure. Oh, wait:
A mother whose daughter attends the Sure Start nursery at the Family Centre in Abingdon, who did not want to be named, said parents had been astonished by the change.
“Baa Baa, Black Sheep has been one of the most well-known nursery rhymes for generations. For people to come along and fiddle with it is ridiculous. What on earth is a rainbow sheep anyway?
“I’ve spoken to other parents about it and none of us has ever heard of anyone getting offended by the words ‘black sheep’.”
By way of analogy, of course, one could tar the entire ideological Right as hate-filled, homophobic, racist bigots because, well, this guy exists. But that would be unfair, so we won't do that.
Via Liberal Catnip:
"We want to protect the American people," House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said this morning. "We've been doing it the last four and a half years.
Well, actually, Dennis, that would be, um, four years, five months and 30 days. But who's counting, right?
If you have the time, there are all of two paragraphs here that are worth reading and pondering at length. My favourite part (which refers specifically to the GOP but which can, without too much trouble, be extended to right-wing discourse in general):
The GOP has mastered an error condition in the political process, an infinite loop of abstraction that drains all meaning from political speech. They don’t have to focus on meaning, really, at all, they just turn up the burbling nonsense until we all descend past the noise machine event horizon into infinitely unproductive debate, never to re-emerge.
One stellar example of this is, I think, any Scott McClellan press gaggle that you can find here. As any regular reader of a Scottie gaggle will know, these little get-togethers aren't meant to impart any actual information. Rather, they've turned into an elaborate, carefully-choreographed game in which the White House Press Corps try to phrase their questions as carefully as possible, while McClellan pulls out a numbered excuse as to why he can ignore it and move on the next questioner.
The question has been answered already, it's been addressed previously by the President, you have to ask someone else, Scottie disagrees with your characterization, yes I know what the President said yesterday but he misspoke and, by the way, if you have any evidence to back up that question, he'd be happy to hear it. And the dance continues and time passes and, eventually, everyone leaves, no one being any the wiser.
The absolutely best example of this descent into the right-wing noise machine recently is, of course, the debate over the breaching of the levees of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
Ignore the years of warnings from numerous people about how the levees simply weren't built to withstand a Cat 5 storm, and how they desperately needed strengthening, and how everyone watching Katrina barrel in from the Gulf could see what kind of kick-ass monster storm it was.
Ignore how countless experts talked about the very real possibility of the levees not being able to withstand a storm of this magnitude and of the levees failing or of being "overwhelmed" and the possibility of massive and catastrophic flooding and how, months after Katrina, thousands are still homeless and dead bodies are still being hauled out of ruined homes and hundreds are still missing.
Yes, all of these issues that might actually be worth, you know, discussing have been savagely swept from the table of public discourse, to be replaced by the only debate of value: Is being "topped" significantly different from being "breached" because, after all, they're two different words and, technically, nothing is more important than making people understand that two different words always have two totally different meanings and should never, ever, ever be confused unless you're talking about "sexual relations" and "blowjobs" which, of course, mean exactly the same thing and are grounds for impeachment but that's, like, a totally different situation altogether and if you claim that it's somehow analogous, well, I just have to disagree with your characterization, don't I?
Sigh. I'm sure it's none of my business, but would it be possible for the Liberals to choose a new leader who hasn't slept with the current Conservative Deputy Leader?
"You keep using that word 'loophole'. I do not think it means what you think it means."
It's not like I have any hard evidence for it but, given the disturbing similarities in the way they dishonestly misrepresent the facts, has anyone really seen Jason and this guy together at the same time?
And by "hard" evidence, I don't mean Jeff Gannon-type "hard." But you knew that, right?
As much as I tried (and, yes, seriously, I did give it my best shot), I can't resist commenting on this stupidity. And it's not like I'm picking on Jason or anything -- it's just that there's so much right-wing stupidity out there but it's kind of convenient to not have to go looking for it when you know you can find all of it in one place. One-stop shopping, as it were.
Apparently, the new dumbfuck wanker talking point is that there's no way President Top Gun CrotchBulge McFlightSuit should have anticipated the "breach" of the New Orleans levees by Hurricane Katrina since it's possible no one actually used the word "breach" in his presence.
Apparently, all of the President's advisors and consultants and emergency preparedness teams completely forgot that, when dealing with the mentally retarded, you have to sit them down, and get their attention, and speak slowly and enunciate to make sure they're following you so that they might, perhaps, God help us all, consider what you're saying and perhaps consider unexplored eventualities.
See, it wasn't enough that there were numerous warnings about the levees being "topped." It wasn't enough that countless articles pointed out that that "the current levee system around the city was designed to withstand the equivalent of a Category 3 storm," and everyone knew that Katrina was a monster of a Cat 4/5 heading for the coast.
It wasn't enough that, months before, people like Chris Mooney had already written that:
In the event of a slow-moving Category 4 or Category 5 hurricane (with winds up to or exceeding 155 miles per hour), it's possible that only those crow's nests would remain above the water level. Such a storm, plowing over the lake, could generate a 20-foot surge that would easily overwhelm the levees of New Orleans, which only protect against a hybrid Category 2 or Category 3 storm (with winds up to about 110 miles per hour and a storm surge up to 12 feet).
No, apparently, countless articles and news pieces and warnings about the levees "failing," or "being topped," or being "overwhelmed" or possibly "unable to withstand" a Cat 4/5 hurricane don't count since, well, the word "breach" allegedly didn't come up and that's the magic word and unless you say the magic word, it doesn't count, does it?
This week's Associated Press reporting on the leaked Katrina briefing tapes contains a seemingly minor but actually quite significant factual error and subsequent hit job on President Bush. The reporting buried among sturdier assertions the claim that Mr. Bush was warned about possible breaches of the levees on Aug. 28-29, right before and during Hurricane Katrina's onslaught on the Gulf Coast. In reality, he was warned about many potential problems on these tapes -- but levee breaches weren't among them. The AP reported this as though it were fact, and then uncritically quoted Democratic partisans who were only too happy to parrot it.
So ... Bush was aware of "many potential problems" but the concept of levees that had been designed to handle no more than a Cat 3 storm actually, you know, failing in some way under the onslaught of a monster like Katrina ... well, that would have required, you know, thinking ahead and connecting the dots. And, as we've all seen, the Bush administration doesn't do dots. Dots are for pussies.
AND THE BEST PART: I almost forgot this gem:
Official: Even new Gulf levees could fail
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal coordinator for Gulf Coast recovery efforts said Monday he will focus on ensuring the region's levees are stronger than they were before Hurricane Katrina — but can't offer assurances that they could withstand another storm of that size.
Read that again to make sure you appreciate what it means. All this time, the talking point has been that no one could have appreciated the breach of the New Orleans levees as they existed at the time. And yet administration officials are openly admitting that, even if the levees were rebuilt to be stronger than before, there would be no guarantee they would withstand another Katrina.
So, I ask you, how can one make that admission and, in the same breath, take the position that no one should have at least considered the failures of the original, weaker levees?
But perhaps I'm being unfair since, if you read that article carefully, it never actually, technically uses the word "breach," per se. So I guess we're good here. Sorry. My bad. Carry on.
FLOG THAT BABY: It's not like I need to beat this horse any deader than it is, but there's one more point that I think needs airing. As we all know, in once again passing the buck, President Dumbfuck claimed that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." Let's make sure we understand what he's saying here.
Bush is not simply saying that he didn't anticipate that possibility. All of the idiotic defenses springing up to defend Bush are based on the claim that no one actually used the word "breach" in his presence so, therefore, everything's cool and he's off the hook.
But in saying the above, Bush is not simply claiming that he's an ignorant dumbfuck, oh no. He's not simply saying, "Well, no one warned me so I had no way of knowing." No, what he's saying above is that every other person involved in emergency preparedness was equally moronic. He's not simply saying that he's an idiot. Rather, he's accusing every other person that was involved in emergency preparedness for Katrina of being just as much of a dumbfuck as he is.
Now, if I was one of those people, and I had been pondering whether the levees might actually fail and trying to warn people, I'd be pretty fucking pissed. If I was one of those people, I'd be all over the airwaves making it clear that I wasn't as big an idiot as President Pretzel. I would be contacting every media outlet on the planet, explaining that, if Bush wanted to admit to being a complete retard, that was his choice, but he wasn't going to besmirch my good name and reputation.
So all of these defenses of "Well, no one used the word 'breach' in his presence" are missing the bigger point by a country mile. We all know the man's an idiot. We've all accepted that. But when he goes on national TV and accuses everyone else of being just as much of an idiot, then it's time for those folks to step up and correct the record.
Fer Chrissake, will someone please just give Commander Chimpy a blowjob so he can be impeached?
Apparently, the new approach to American national security is to pray like hell that nothing goes wrong. Yeah, that'll work.
AFTERSNARK: And here's how the experts do it.
You know, after you read this, this doesn't seem that funny any more, does it?
For those of you who are big fans of the cartoons of Mark Fiore, a private e-mailer touts his own work with a more Canadian flavour here.
So, it's been a while -- let's see what's been happening this side of the border these days. Ah, here we go:
- Stephen Harper, who ran on a platform of family values, has told provinces who thought they'd hammered out a day-care deal to fuck off.
- Stephen Harper, who ran on a platform of more openness in government, has told the House of Commons that, when it comes to public discussion on the role of Canadians in Afghanistan, they can fuck off.
- Stephen Harper, who ran on a platform of restoring ethics to government, has just told the current ethics commissioner to, well, you know, just fuck off.
Have I missed anything? Tune in next Wednesday at 9 p.m. for the next installment of "Stephen Harper tells everyone else to fuck off." (9:30 in Newfoundland.)
And doesn't this just explain a whole lot?
My life as a blonde
By Margaret Wente
I discovered Miss Clairol in the summer of my 14th year. It was the turning point in my desperate quest. My quest was to somehow transform myself from a gawky, mousy, awkward, clunky, painfully shy adolescent from the Prairies into a California surfer girl. And so it was that I became a blonde.
And, intellectually speaking, it's been pretty much blonde ever since.
Oh and, by the way, just bite me:
"We appreciate the comments and suggestion of the congressman, among many other congressmen and people from the White House also, as well as the senators," Sultan Bin Sulayem, Dubai Ports World's chairman, told CNN. "This 45 days that we have volunteered for review is a good chance for all of us, I think. And I think by the end of this, they will realize that there is no fear, no worry about security."
DP World officials suggested yesterday that within days, Peninsular & Oriental's operations will belong to them, no matter what Congress does.
No big surprise. They don't do democracy over there; what makes anyone think they'd care about it elsewhere?
It's always entertaining to recognize when words have become completely meaningless:
"We are continuing to move forward to charge ahead in the campaign," she said.
At which point, the campaign exploded with such violent ferocity it left large chunks embedded in the walls.
... this idiot:
The Missouri Valley Conference barred certain cheerleading stunts during this week's women's basketball tournament, a precaution taken after a Southern Illinois cheerleader plunged 15 feet and landed on her head...
Salukis cheerleader Kristi Yamaoka was left with a concussion and a cracked neck vertebra when she fell during a timeout in Sunday's MVC men's championship game.
She drew national attention as she was wheeled off the court. She gave a two-handed thumbs up while strapped to a gurney, then made cheerleading moves with her arms in time to the band's playing of the school fight song.
Yessir, nothing says "potentially serious spinal cord injury" like doing jerky, animated cheerleading moves while being wheeled out on a gurney. Hey, it's the first thing that would occur to me.
And over here, The Rev. (who you can now find nestling snugly in the blogroll over there on the right ... no, doofus, the other right) reminds us of the annual Koufax awards, to which I shall add my $0.02.
Best blog: Yup, I'd go for Firedoglake as well. I will add that I'd probably pass on Eschaton these days -- still a good blog but too many open threads. Seems like Duncan's mailing it in a bit too much but, still, it's one of my regular reads.
Best New Blog: Um, yeah. Glenn Greenwald here is a no-brainer, about the same way that UNC's Tyler Hansbrough is a no-brainer for NCAA Freshman of the Year in basketball. And, remember, I'm normally a Duke fan. If Glenn doesn't win this one, I will seriously start believing in Satan.
Best Group Blog: Personally, I'm a big fan of First Draft. Athenae alone can put most other group blogs to shame.
Deserving of wider recognition: Oh, yeah. The Galloping Beaver. Good call. It doesn't matter how lazy you are, you really have to haul your sorry ass over there and vote for Dave and Cheryl. I only wish I could write that well. If Dave gets any better, I will have to kill him.
Most Humourous Blog: You already know the answer to that one. This guy. I'm pretty sure my recommendation here will make all the difference in a tight race.
Oh, baby ... Daddy wants one of these. And by now, you shouldn't even need to ask why.
Shorter Jason: Jesus loves you. Well, OK, not you poor people. He doesn't give a fuck about you. Losers.
AFTERSNARK: Well, you just knew Jason would have to weigh in with something suitably idiotic, like being upset with the idea of those poor folks getting "endless amounts of money" to live on. So let's see just how compassionate conservatism was going to lend a hand, shall we?
First, we find some members of the New Orleans City Council who might as well be channeling Jason himself:
New Orleans doesn't want its poorest residents back — unless they agree to work.
That was the message from three New Orleans City Council members who said government programs have "pampered" the city's residents for too long.
And if they agree to work? No problem -- Jason's ideological buddies will fuck them over there as well:
President Bush yesterday suspended application of the federal law governing workers' pay on federal contracts in the Hurricane Katrina-damaged areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The action infuriated labor leaders and their Democratic supporters in Congress, who said it will lower wages and make it harder for union contractors to win bids...
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, accused Bush of "using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities."
Miller said: "In New Orleans, where a quarter of the city was poor, the prevailing wage for construction labor is about $9 per hour, according to the Department of Labor. In effect, President Bush is saying that people should be paid less than $9 an hour to rebuild their communities."
How about that, Jason? First, you take people who never had much in the first place, and have them lose even that. Then you tell them they can't return home (if there's even a home to return to) unless they agree to work. And if they accept those terms, you pull the rug out from under them by cancelling the federal minimum wage guarantees so that wealthy corporations can exploit them with crap wages to get even wealthier.
And the amazing thing about all of that, Jason? None of it bothers you. Even a little bit. How Christian of you.
BY THE WAY, JASON, I love this challenge of yours in the comments section:
Gee, CC, perhaps you could point out where in the Bible it states that the government should give endless amounts of money to people for them to live on.
Gosh, Jason, I don't know ... how about this from Matthew 5:42: "Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."
I think we've finally established that, between you and me, Jason, only one of us actually knows anything about Scripture and Christian compassion. And it's not you, is it?
If you can't decide whether it looks more like Jesus or Mary, then it's just a stain and you should launder it, all right?
This is almost impossible to believe:
Echoing Bush's own later explanation, Duffy said yesterday that the president in his now-famous Sept. 1 comment did not mean that no one had ever anticipated breaches of the levees that guard New Orleans from flooding. Instead, Duffy said, Bush meant only that after the storm's landfall, many people believed New Orleans had escaped its most powerful winds.
What can you say? Even the White House has finally given up defending the lie, and is now simply redefining it away. How utterly, utterly predictable.
Try, if you can, to wrap your head around the fact that Scott over at PowerTools (Time's Blog of the Year, remember?) thinks that this is just a terrific smackdown:
Why, for two distinct groups of Americans, has it become a matter of conviction held with religious intensity that there cannot have been any relationship between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq?
I'm not sure it's physically possible to be any dumber than that. I'm not aware of any responsible critic of the Iraq war taking the position that there "cannot" have been any Saddam/al-Qaida relationship. How moronic would that be? Of course there could have been a relationship. It's always possible, in the same pedantic, technical sense that it's possible that George Bush and Dick Cheney are underground al-Qaida members, bent on destroying the United States through the enactment of stunningly self-destructive economic and military policies.
OK, that last part just creeped me out a bit, but that's not the point here.
The point is that no one is making the claim that gets Scott so excited. Rather, the claim is that there is no conclusive evidence that there was such a relationship, which is a totally different stance entirely.
Sadly, this distinction is utterly lost on the mentally disadvantaged who, when you say something like "You can't prove a connection between Saddam and al-Qaida," think it's just the wickedest of comebacks to respond, "Oh, yeah? Well ... well ... you can't prove there wasn't! So there!"
These are, naturally and for the most part, the same imbeciles who, when you say, "You can't prove God exists," snap back, "Yeah, well, you can't prove he doesn't!" Along those lines, I have no actual evidence that Bill O'Reilly has had carnal relations with livestock but, on the other hand, I'm pretty sure he can't prove that he hasn't. Stalemate.
And this is what passes for deep thought in Wankerville. Is that frightening or what?
And since we were having such a delightful discussion of the merits (or lack thereof) of the opportunistic parasites otherwise known as Christian missionaries, I thought I'd bring up one of my favourite dilemmas -- that by evangelizing, these people are almost certainly condemning numerous folks straight to hell. (Or, as we original Manitobans prefer to call it, North Winnipeg.)
Here's the problem. Said missionaries (and their defenders) are adamant -- adamant, I tell you -- that they have a responsibility to bring the Word to the ignorant, unsaved masses in order to give them a chance for eternal salvation. An interesting proposal, if you ignore the complete lack of any evidence whatsoever to support that position, but that's not why we're here.
The sticky part of this whole business is, if you firmly believe that one has to be saved and accept Jesus in order to make it into heaven, what happens to anyone who has never, ever even heard of Christianity? What happens to those people? Are they condemned to an eternity in hellfire for something that simply isn't their fault? You might think there's a delightfully snappy comeback to this conundrum. You'd be wrong.
As you can read here, this is still a point of great debate in theological circles with no clear winner. The hardliners, of course, take the position that, no Jesus, no salvation; life's tough but, if you lived a few hundred years ago, perhaps in the middle of Africa and were thoroughly ignorant of Christianity, well, gosh, that's too bad. It might sound harsh but, Jesus being the Prince of Peace and all, you're going to burn in hell and you clearly have it coming.
Moving on, if you're not clinically insane and reject the above for the hateful, vindictive swill that it is, well, there are a number of more moderate positions as you can see at that link, some of them being (unintentionally, I'm sure) quite comical, such as:
Middle Knowledge: God, having infinite wisdom, knows who would have rejected the gospel if it had been presented to them. As a result, they never have had the opportunity to accept the Gospel. Those people will be transported to Hell when they die.
Okay, then -- kind of an interesting twist on pre-destination and free will, as it were. But the most interesting position is this one:
Inclusivism: Non-Christian believers will avoid Hell if they worship a deity of some sort, because God works through all of the world's religious faiths. Agnostics, Atheists, Buddhists, etc. who do not believe in a God will go to Hell.
to which, as an atheist, I can appropriately respond, fuck you, you sanctimonious dimwits. No, wait, sorry, that's not the point I was trying to make. No, the point in the above is that, acccording to Inclusivism, if you're part of an isolated tribe that already worships a deity of any kind, you're apparently (as I read it) already going to heaven. But if, suddenly and out of nowhere, a pompous, Bible-whomping representative of God appears and lays a pile of Scripture on you and you conclude (not unreasonably) that he is a raving, demented loon, you have just been condemned to hell.
See how that works? According to Inclusivism, if you were utterly ignorant of Christianity and the concept of salvation, you stood a pretty good chance of eternal bliss. But the instant someone forced the knowledge of Christian salvation on you, then, by definition, if you rejected it, you were going down.
By those rules, then, it's simply criminally irresponsibe to evangelize to anyone who's never heard the Word of God. By doing so, you've most likely just put their soul in mortal peril. As long as they're ignorant, they might be doing just fine, eternity-wise. The instant you force-feed them the notion of salvation, they are now possibly in deep, deep trouble. The only logical conclusion, then, is that missionaries should, if they find people that are still blissfully uncontaminated by the Good Book, shut the hell up, turn around and walk away. Anything else is just stupid.
Let the apologetics begin.
BY THE WAY, if you're feeling cocky that you know the actual prerequisites for salvation, I suggest popping over here and checking out the section, "Are we saved through works?" And don't come back until you understand it, y'hear?
There's no news here. None at all. These people aren't even trying to be remotely believable anymore. It's as if they all know that everyone's made up their minds, so what's the point in wasting any time on facts?
Over at Think Progress, we have Judd catching PowerTools' AssRocket flat-out lying. Assrocket (emphasis added):
“Murtha’s suggestion that the administration said Iraq had nuclear weapons is absurd. (Why don’t talk show hosts ever seem to call Democrats on these wild misrepresentations?)”
At which point, Judd helpfully gives us Dick "Go fuck yourself or I'll shoot you in the face" Cheney from back in 2003:
We know that based on intelligence that he has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong.
What can you say to this? How can you possibly respond when someone's dishonesty is this fucking blatant and breathtaking? How exactly do you react when "Big Time" Dick says, on December 9, 2001 on "Meet the Press" (emphasis added):
RUSSERT: The plane on the ground in Iraq used to train non-Iraqi hijackers.
Do you still believe there is no evidence that Iraq was involved in September 11?
CHENEY: Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed, that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.
then completely denies having ever said any such thing. What do you say?
Seriously. What do you say?
Via PZ over at Pharyngula, confirmation that I'm not the only one who thinks artist Thomas Kinkade turns out overvalued kitsch and is a thoroughly repulsive human being on top of that.
Years ago, when Kinkade was at the peak of his popularity, I had a number of friends (mostly female) who absolutely adored his stuff. I, on the other hand, thought it was on par with velvet Elvis and dogs playing poker.
To each his own, I guess.
Oh, yawn. Once again, pathological nutbar David Horowitz is polluting the airwaves with claims of a massive, leftist academic conspiracy. Frankly, I'm too damned lazy to beat up on him one more time so I'll just leave you with a piece I wrote last year.
It's aged well, hasn't it?
Sometimes, it really is this basic:
Dear Lord, the gods have been good to me. As an offering, I present these milk and cookies. If you wish me to eat them instead, please give me no sign whatsoever.
...
Thy will be done (munch munch munch).
Rebuilding year, indeed. UNC has suddenly become the team that no one wants to see in their bracket.
(CC NEWS) In defending the strategy of new Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to convince former Liberal David Emerson to switch parties, former Conservative cabinet minister John Crosbie praised Harper for "thinking outside the box," describing Harper as a man who has "a firm hand at the tiller" and a man who lives in "the real world". Proclaimed Crosbie,
In attempting this Harper has shown he is a political leader who can think outside the box, as demonstrated by inviting David Emerson, re-elected as a Liberal, to become the minister of international trade — and inviting Michael Fortier, co-chair of the campaign, to become minister of public works after appointing him to the Senate.
Crosbie continued:
Emerson’s acceptance was in no way comparable to Belinda Stronach, once a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party and a member of the shadow cabinet... The movement of Emerson to the Harper government, following the election, was in no way deserving of the hysterical hissy fit frenzy of much of the media — the same media caught by surprise but undisturbed when Martin bargained Stronach into his cabinet.
Regarding Stronach, Crosbie described her as "the same cheap, traitorous, back-stabbing slut she's always been. How people can compare these two situations is absolutely beyond me."
WHOOPS, John, not David Crosbie. Too many Davids for one article. Sigh.
Pandamonium, of course.
Yes, yes, I'm coming to this a couple days late but Jesus, Mary, Mother of God! What the fuck is happening here? Two words, dude: "Restraining order." Seriously.
[And a warm Canadian welcome to all you bitches. (If you don't know what that means, then you're getting here from somewhere else and, no, I think I'll just leave you to puzzle that out on your own because that's just the kind of guy I am.)]
Over here, Digby reproduces one of the most jaw-dropping and revealing admissions about the whole anti-choice movement:
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls "convenience." He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother's life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.
BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
Just take a deep breath before you plunge back in there, because the stench of racism, bigotry and downright stupidity is purely overpowering.
So what would constitute an exception to the ban on abortions? Well, first, it can't involve just a female, no sir, it would seem to require a "girl." Apparently, adult women need not apply.
Next, we apparently need the extra condition that the victim be a "virgin" who was saving herself for marriage since, as we all know, any non-virgin girl who gets raped and impregnated just had it coming to her, the little slut, and it serves her right, doesn't it? But, wait. There's more.
She was also sodomized, despite the fact that, medically speaking, sodomy and conception don't have a whole lot to do with one another. And it wouldn't be just any old, garden-variety sodomy, no sir, we're talking "sodomized as bad as you can possibly make [sic] it," whatever the fuck that means.
(I'm also guessing that the conditions listed above wouldn't cover this case, would it:
According to [ex-wife Linda Carruth] Davis, [Bush appointee Dr. David W.] Hager's public moralizing on sexual matters clashed with his deplorable treatment of her during their marriage. Davis alleges that between 1995 and their divorce in 2002, Hager repeatedly sodomized her without her consent. Several sources on and off the record confirmed that she had told them it was the sexual and emotional abuse within their marriage that eventually forced her out. "I probably wouldn't have objected so much, or felt it was so abusive if he had just wanted normal [vaginal] sex all the time," she explained to me. "But it was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that was so horrible."
After all, Davis wasn't a girl, she clearly wasn't a virgin and it's not at all clear that the sodomy was "as bad as you could possibly make it". And, besides, she wasn't impregnated so, really, this doesn't have anything to do with this story, but it was just fun to mention, don't you think? In any event ... onward.)
And, finally, we have the exception being based on the idea that the girl "was religious" since, as we all know, those are the only ones worth worrying about since, if you're a Godless whore, well, you get what you deserve, isn't that right?
You've always known that these people are about as spiritually evil and ugly as it's possible for a human being to be, but it's rare to see all that ugliness on such open and naked display. It purely takes your breath away, doesn't it?
AFTERTHOUGHT: It's almost impossible to encapsulate this kind of grotesque evil in a sentence or two but I'll give the last word to stevedore-philosopher Eric Hoffer:
What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.
SERIOUSLY CREEPY AFTERTHOUGHT: Is it just me, or can anyone else practically hear Napoli getting a hard-on describing just how thoroughly brutalized, raped and sodomized a girl would have to be to qualify for an abortion?
I'm thinking Napoli is not the guy I'd want to leave alone with my school-age children. If you catch my drift.
BONUS TRACK: Jesus' General says it in far fewer words.
I think we really have to expand on the recent development with Wal-Mart and pharmacists and personal conscience and all that stuff from back here. Specifically, I want to take a closer look at just the following paragraph, since there's a whole lot going on just below the surface that's not immediately obvious:
Chomiuk said the company will maintain its conscientious objection policy, which it said is consistent with the tenets of the American Pharmaceutical Association. The policy, except where prohibited by law, allows any Wal-Mart or Sam's Club pharmacy employee who does not feel comfortable dispensing a prescription to refer customers to another pharmacist or pharmacy.
Let's deconstruct this slowly and carefully, shall we? First, Wal-Mart spokesweasel Ron Chomiuk describes the company's new policy as being consistent with the "tenets" of the APA. What exactly does that mean?
Despite what Chomiuk is implying, the APA doesn't have an official set of "tenets." What they have is an official Code of Ethics adopted in 1994 that you can read here and, if you read that code carefully, it says nothing whatsoever about a pharmacist's right to refuse to dispense medication based on their Bible-thumping, right-wing whackjob beliefs. The closest you get is in clause IV, which reads in part:
A pharmacist has a duty to tell the truth and to act with conviction of conscience.
Now, you'd think that clause introducing the notion of "conscience" would be the launching point to explain in more detail how this whole personal conscience thing works, but you'd be wrong. Instead, you have the rest of that clause which undercuts it entirely:
A pharmacist avoids discriminatory practices, behavior or work conditions that impair professional judgment, and actions that compromise dedication to the best interests of patients.
Well, how about that? After a brief tip of the hat to the idea of conscience, that clause quite clearly comes down on the side of the customer, being pretty darned adamant that pharmacists are to avoid discrimination and to act in the best interests of their patients. That seems fairly straightforward so what is Chomiuk babbling about?
Well, if you read carefully, you'll notice that Chomiuk is claiming that Wal-Mart's policy is consistent, not with the APA's Code of Ethics, but with its "tenets." And since the APA has no official set of "tenets" in the first place, Chomiuk is clearly just trying to paint a picture of the APA's overall nebulous philosophy, without having to get into, you know, reading the actual words.
It's a clever trick -- ignore the APA's actual written position and make arm-waving, abstract hints about what they really mean in their "tenets." Yes, it's sleazy, but it's not the end of Chomiuk's intellectual dishonesty. Oh, yes, it gets worse.
Note also how Chomiuk claims that Wal-Mart's position is "consistent" with the APA's, a statement that has virtually no value whatsoever. What does it mean to be "consistent?" I'm glad you asked.
As an example by way of analogy, if a recent murder was committed with a .357 Magnum, and you happen to own just that type of gun, I can legitimately claim that accusing you of being the murderer is "consistent" with the evidence. Note that your ownership in no way actually suggests you're the guilty party. One can just as logically say that anyone who owns that kind of handgun could justifiably be said to be a suspect because such a claim would be "consistent" with the evidence.
(To get even more tasteless, I could quite logically suggest that, if you're a male, then it's "consistent" that you're the perpetrator in a recent rape. The rapist was a male, you're a male -- thus, you being the actual rapist is "consistent" with the evidence. I trust I've made my point.)
In short, consistency by itself is virtually worthless, and Chomiuk clearly knows that, which is why he doesn't claim that the APA actually supports Wal-Mart's position. He can't say that because he knows it's rubbish, so he falls back on the weasel word of "consistent" and hopes no one notices the difference.
(One can also point out that, since consistency is such an open-ended notion, it would be just as logically defensible to claim that pharmacists being obligated to fill their customers' prescriptions is also totally consistent with the APA's code as well. But I'm sure Chomiuk knows that, too; he just doesn't want you to know it.)
In short, rather than take the position that the APA's Code of Ethics supports Wal-Mart, Chomiuk is reduced to gibbering about how the APA's (non-existent) "tenets" are simply "consistent" with Wal-Mart's position which, as we've now seen, couldn't possibly be any more meaningless.
To be concluded in Part 2: Birth control bad, Viagra good.
The Washington Post, a little late to the party:
The Gulf Coast might have suffered less had the president just asked a few people the right questions.
And the entire country might have suffered less had the Post asked a few people the right questions once upon a time. Funny how that works, isn't it?
Oh, dear. Religious con man Ralph Reed's political career seems to be swirling ever faster around the bowl these days. I suspect Canada "needs" a Ralph Reed about the way we need an outbreak of syphilis.
Remember when you were growing up, and your parents told you to always respect police officers because they were your friends? Not surprisingly, your parents lied to you about that, too.
Well, there's the apparently good news:
Officials of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. announced Friday the company will reverse its earlier policy and stock emergency contraception pills in all of its pharmacies effective March 20, saying the giant retailer could not justify being the country's only major pharmacy chain not to carry the morning-after pill.
Then there's the weaselly cop-out based on the technicality:
Chomiuk said the company will maintain its conscientious objection policy, which it said is consistent with the tenets of the American Pharmaceutical Association. The policy, except where prohibited by law, allows any Wal-Mart or Sam's Club pharmacy employee who does not feel comfortable dispensing a prescription to refer customers to another pharmacist or pharmacy.
You know, when these religious nutjob pharmacists decide to moralize to their customers, someone should really point out their position in the Great Food Chain of Life, courtesy of Bill Maher:
In conclusion, let me say to all the activist pharmacists out there, the ones who think sex is bad probably because sex with them always is. Fellas, a pharmacist is not a law-giver, not even a doctor. In the medical pecking order, you rank somewhere in between a chiropractor and a tree surgeon.
You don't answer to a law above the laws of men. You work for Sav-On. The doctors are the ones who make medical decisions because they went to medical school, whereas you were transferred from the counter where people drop off film.
Precisely. Don't think too highly of yourselves. Trust me, no one else does.
I don't have the energy to even get upset over the overwhelming hypocrisy here, but it's amusing to read this excerpt:
Cunningham: After years of service to this country, I made a very wrong turn. I rationalized this decision. No man has ever been more sorry. I accept responsibility. I need to make amends I want to do the right thing and clear these things up. I have made a u-turn, your honor, placing my life in the hands of god.
Fine. Then let God watch your back in the exercise yard. Good luck.
AFTERSNARK: Cunningham "rationalized" his lifestyle of total corruption and betrayal of the public trust? How the fuck do you do that? Seriously.
ONE LAW FOR THE RICH, ONE LAW FOR THE POOR. So, let's see here ... once upon a time, in 1992, we had this guy:
In perhaps the most extraordinary case of this kind, Jim Montgomery, a paraplegic immobilized from the waist down, who smoked marijuana to relieve muscle spasms, was arrested in Sayre, Oklahoma, when sheriffs found two ounces of pot in the pouch on the back of his wheelchair. Montgomery was tried and convicted in 1992, by a jury, for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, for possession of paraphernalia, for unlawful possession of a weapon during the commission of a crime (two handguns inherited from his father, a police officer), and for maintaining a place resorted to by users of controlled substances. His sentence was life in prison, plus sixteen years. Both the judge and the local prosecutor were disturbed by the sentence chosen by the jury; the judge subsequently reduced it to ten years. Montgomery spent ten months in a prison medical unit, where he developed a life-threatening infection, before being released on bond. His appeal is now pending.
Then we have Cunningham who, after confessing to "taking $2.4 million in bribes and evading more than $1 million in taxes" is sentenced to just over eight years and has the gall to ask for clemency first.
I just thought that was an amusing comparison.
Following the trail of bread crumbs that Cathie left behind, we learn that the U.S. is quietly restocking on the environmental disasters that are depleted uranium shells.
Well, yes, I'm sure we can all agree that DU shells are "extremely effective in penetrating heavy armor," but what does that have to do with the insurgency in Iraq? The troops there are not under fire from rebels in armored personnel carriers. They're being targeted with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside IEDs and the occasional suicide bomber in a car or pickup truck. Not a heavily-armored vehicle to be seen, so what's the rationale here?
One is guessing that, with the increasing casualty toll over there, the American military is no longer thinking rationally. They just want some serious shit with which to blow stuff up.
DOING A LITTLE HOMEWORK: As the old saying goes, all you need to do is follow the money. All that nasty stuff is coming from a company named Alliant Techsystems. Who dey? Let's let Google do the heavy lifting:
Formed in 1990 when Honeywell spun off its defense-related businesses to share holders, Alliant Techsystems is a $2 billion-a-year defense contractor that serves as the Pentagon's lead supplier of small-arms ammunition and medium-caliber rounds. It also produces solid rocket boosters for Trident II ballistic missiles and the space shuttle, parts for precision-guided munitions and satellite-guided bombs, and anti-tank mines. With an annual production run of some 500 million bullets, Alliant also supplies ammo to local law enforcement agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Well, they are busy little beavers, aren't they? The next paragraph is sort of amusing as well:
In late 2002, with war in Iraq imminent, a blogger named Dack Ragus included Alliant in his Perpetual War Portfolio, “an evenly weighted basket of five stocks poised to succeed in the age of perpetual war. The stocks were selected on the basis of popular product lines, strong political connections and lobbying efforts, and paid-for access to key Congressional decision-makers.” Other companies included in the portfolio were Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. “This portfolio can’t lose,” opined Ragus in an interview with the New York Post, “while Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz are in power.”
No shit, Sherlock. And if you keep reading:
Alliant made a killing off the Iraq war.
Ouch. Maybe it's just me but that's a pretty unfortunate choice of words, wouldn't you say?
FOLLOWUP? I'LL GIVE YOU FOLLOWUP. Hey, remember convicted GOP felon Randy "Duke" Cunningham? Here's one of his previous top 20 contributor lists. See anyone you know?
Y'all remember this uplifting demonstration of right-wing courage and loyalty, don't you?
It was only after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that Washington's concern for Kurdish rights suddenly reappeared in the build up to the last Gulf War. George Bush Sr. proclaimed Saddam Hussein the new Hitler and said the U.S. was fighting to free the Iraqi population. At the end of the war when Shiite Muslims in the south and the Kurds in the north rebelled against Hussein's regime, the U.S. abandoned them, permitting the Iraqi military to use helicopter gunships to crush the insurrections.
If you're an Iraqi with even a moderately good memory who's been supporting the U.S. all this time, well, all this talk about a quicktime American withdrawal might be making you a wee bit nervous, no?
BY THE WAY, make sure you follow the links far enough to appreciate 101st Fighting Keyboarder James Lileks, from the safety of his cubicle, telling an Iraqi blogger to be a grown-up. It's near the bottom.
No, no, don't thank me. Your admiration and a small bag of unmarked bills are all the appreciation I need.
This is delightful. If you need to come up to speed, start here.
By the way, I do -- I really do -- try to generate Canadian content at this site but when the most exciting development these days is that the man who promised to bring ethics back to Canadian politics is refusing to co-operate with the ethics commissioner, well, really, where's the news there? It's not like you didn't see that coming, is it?
Well, first there's stupid:
Shortly before concluding his trip to India on Friday, Bush said he would work with Musharraf to “reduce the appeal of radical Islam.”
“I believe that a prosperous, democratic Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbor for India and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world,” the president added.
Later, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters Bush meant to say Pakistan would be a force in the Muslim world. Pakistan is not an Arab country.
And then there's corrupt:
Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham has been sentenced to eight years and four months in prison for corruption, the longest term ever given to a congressman.
Don't worry, folks. Jason should be along any minute now to explain how it's all the fault of that gosh-darned liberal media. Yessir ... any minute now ...
BONUS TRACK: Getting back to stupid for just a minute ...
Just savour the overwhelming stench of mendacity coming out of the White House here:
... Administration and congressional officials said that the administration provided congressional investigators earlier this year with official transcripts of the daily noon FEMA conference calls conducted before, during and after Katrina. But the administration initially told Congress that the transcript for the Aug. 29 call—the call congressional investigators were most curious about, given that it occurred as the hurricane was actually battering the Gulf Coast—did not exist, with officials initially telling Capitol Hill that someone at FEMA or Homeland Security forgot to push the button on a tape recorder.
“Everybody has been looking for that transcript,” former FEMA chief Michael Brown said Wednesday.
Yeah, the one transcript that people were just dying to read ... damn ... sorry, squire ... my bad. But wait! What's this?
A White House official unexpectedly e-mailed the transcript to NEWSWEEK earlier today Wednesday morning—initially without explaining that it was the missing transcript. Two officials familiar with congressional investigations said that the document was turned over to Capitol Hill investigators Tuesday night. Administration officials told both Congress and NEWSWEEK that FEMA officials in Atlanta had taped the Aug. 29 conference call by aiming a video camera at a TV screen rather than following the usual recording procedure. The videotape was subsequently discovered and transcribed.
Wow. What luck -- the White House having that transcript the whole time. Man, I'll bet there are some red faces over there for sure. And why might the White House have wanted to sit on this thing? Oh ...
While the newly discovered transcript does provide new evidence of initial presidential engagement in the Katrina crisis and of conflicting information about the state of New Orleans levees on Aug. 29, it also exposes some contradictions in previous administration explanations about the role of the White House and top officials in handling the crisis.
Should have burned that fucking thing after all, I guess.
Why do the fiscally responsible hate America?
(Via AmericaBlog, of course.)
Hmmmmm ... I think a quick clarification is in order here. Apparently, I didn't make it sufficiently clear (and that was my fault) that my contempt back here was aimed at the foreign missionaries involved (that would be the Texas-based China Aid Association mentioned in the article, and others in general), and not the locals (about which more shortly so don't go away).
I suspect that I'm not alone when I suggest that one can despise meddling Christian evangelists without similarly disliking the locals to whom they're preaching, so for that misunderstanding, well, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. But wait. This brings up an interesting point.
If you didn't know any better, I'll bet you'd think that all of those right-wing wanks who moan on and on about Christian persecution in other countries actually, you know, care about those foreigners. Or at least you would think that until you did some research.
As an example, when it comes to the right-wing media, it doesn't really get any more right-wing than Fox News, does it? So, naturally, you wouldn't be surprised that Fox News would be concerned about the persecution of "unregistered" Christians in China, as described back in this 2002 news piece. Yes, you'd think that Fox News and its founder, Rupert Murdoch, were incredibly, incredibly concerned about these unfortunate victims.
Or at least, you'd think so until you read this piece at the Center for American Progress which describes how, in order to break into the Chinese media market, Murdoch happily tossed those folks overboard:
Time Magazine reported that while Murdoch is supposedly "a devout anti-Soviet and anti-communist" he "became bewitched by China in the early '90s." In an effort to persuade Chinese dictators that he would never challenge their behavior, Murdoch "threw the BBC off Star TV" (his satellite network operating in China) after BBC aired reports about Chinese human rights violations. Murdoch argued the BBC "was gratuitously attacking the regime, playing film of the massacre in Tiananmen Square over and over again." In 1998 Chinese President Jiang Zemin praised Murdoch for the "objective" way in which his papers and television covered China.
Yeah, a true defender of human rights, that Murdoch, until it might affect his bank account. Gotta understand your priorities, ya know.
Oh, and news coverage of this recent persecution of Chinese Christians? Perhaps I just couldn't find it but, as far as I can tell, you won't find a hint of it anywhere over at Fox News. Feel free to prove me wrong.
BONUS TRACK: Oh, and let's not forget that the same Bible-thumping, pious, devout loons who yammer on and on about all those unfortunate persecuted Christians are the same lowlifes responsible for oppressive crap like this.
Don't like my blogging? Dial 1-800-BITE-ME.
Now, scratch my belly.
Onward and upward in our exciting little discussion on human rights and electric cattle prods. This isn't the conclusion by any means, but I thought there was one point worth expanding on. When it comes to fundamental rights, I like to think there are three different ways of looking at them: whether you "deserve" them, whether you're "entitled" to them and whether you actually "have" them. So what's the difference?
First, there's "deserving." This is the Utopian scenario -- in a perfect world, everyone "deserves" the right to, say, freedom of worship. This is a purely theoretical concept; it's what you'd be talking about if you were at the United Nations and trying to hammer out a framework of what basic rights everyone "ought to" have. Perfectly reasonable and just as perfectly theoretical, but it's a nice place to start.
At the next level, there are the rights you're "entitled" to because they've been formalized in some way in, perhaps, a founding document of some kind. That is, they're explicitly spelled out in something like the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights or Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In short, they're not just a good idea, they're the law.
And, finally, there are the rights you actually have which, as we have already seen, are not necessarily the same ones you're entitled to, are they? That you're entitled to certain rights doesn't mean a whole lot if you're not allowed to exercise those rights, does it? And what does all of this have to do with the price of cattle prods in China? I'm glad you asked.
As one example, we've already seen the difference between being entitled to and actually having rights in the U.S. During the 2004 Republican National Convention, protestors who (quite reasonably) thought they had the right to freedom of speech and assembly and expression were nonetheless rounded up and dumped into fenced-in "free speech zones" or simply arrested. It didn't matter that they were "entitled" to those rights, as they simply weren't allowed to exercise them.
However, after the dust settled, several of these protestors went to court and sued for infringement of their rights and, just as reasonably, they won or, in other cases, had all charges against them dropped for a very simple reason -- they could point at the appropriate documentation to show that they were in fact entitled to do what they had been doing. In short, they had the law on their side which was all that mattered when things got to court. But that's most emphatically not what is happening in China.
When Christian missionaries are rounded up and arrested, they can't possibly make the argument that they're entitled to do what they've been doing because, quite simply, they're not. This situation is clearly not a parallel to the protestors in the U.S. because, the last time I looked, there is nothing in Chinese law that gives foreign missionaries the right to evangelize there.
If those missionaries end up in court in China, they can't point at any official documentation in Chinese law that gives them the right to preach on Chinese soil, period. Rather, at least based on my reading, Chinese law makes it very clear that that kind of proselytizing is not accepable. What this means, in a nutshell, is that those missionaries not only do not have the right to proselytize, they aren't even entitled to that right, so trying that argument in a Chinese courtroom would get them absolutely nowhere, and rightfully so. Simply put, these people were breaking Chinese law and they knew it.
As a last resort, these people can always argue that they "deserve" the right to evangelize and, if they want to make that argument, they're welcome to it, but don't confuse that argument with the one in which they're arguing that they're "entitled." You can argue all you want about what rights you "deserve" but, in the end, that argument doesn't carry a lot of weight in a repressive regime. Perhaps Clint Eastwood said it best:
Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman): I don't deserve this... to die like this...
Bill Munny (Clint Eastwood): Deserve's got nothin' to do with it.
Those Christian missionaries knew what they were doing, and they knew it was against the law. And as to whether they "deserve" the right to evangelize in China, well, life's tough but deserve's got nothing to do with it.
And, no, we're not quite done here yet.
It might be a day or so before I revisit the current, animated discussion regarding Christian proselytizing and electric cattle prods but, in the meantime, I want to quickly touch on the subject of "rights" which will be important for that discussion.
Most people, if you ask them, would undoubtedly tell you that people have certain "rights," be they the right of free speech, right to worship in their own way, right of assembly and so on. Some folks will even go so far as to say that some of those rights are "inherent," "fundamental" or "inalienable," by which they mean that some rights are so utterly basic that everyone is somehow absolutely entitled to them.
That is complete nonsense.
Quite simply, the only "rights" you have are the ones granted to you by those in power, and nothing more. You don't inherently have the right to, say, free speech if the government doesn't allow it. You can whine that you deserve it, or that you're entitled to it. But if no one allows you to exercise it, then you don't "have" that right. Period. End of discussion.
As an example, consider the civil rights movement in the U.S. Many civil rights leaders, quite incorrectly, claimed that minorities had numerous rights that were being denied to them and, as proof, they would point to the Constitution. But what the Constitution said was, quite simply, irrelevant.
These people certainly had the right to say that they were entitled to certain rights as outlined in the Constitution. But as long as there were people who refused to let them enter restaurants or colleges, those people did not "have" those rights, regardless of what was promised to them by a piece of paper.
As a more recent example, protestors at the 2004 Republican National Convention could argue all they wanted about their "right" to assembly and free speech, even as they were being rounded up and collected into "free speech zones" behind razor wire. In other words, they had no such "rights" whatsoever. See my point?
There is no such thing as an "inalienable" right. The only rights you have are the ones you're allowed at any one time, and they can be taken away just as quickly as they're granted. Once you digest that, we can revisit the previous topic.
Oh, man ... evangelical Christians and electric cattle prods. Wet dreams just don't get a lot better than that, do they?
LET'S THINK ABOUT THIS, SHALL WE? I figured even some of my regular readers might be a little grossed out by my attitude here so let's give this some thought, shall we?
That the Chinese government is not happy with Christian evangelists is no big secret -- it's right out there in the open for everyone to see and those evangelists know exactly what risks they're taking, so it's not like they can bitch and whine about what happens to them when they get caught.
Given the Right's love affair with what they like to call "personal responsibility," well, this is pretty much the perfect example of that, isn't it? Those people know what the consequences will be and yet they insist on evangelizing anyway. Under the circumstances, then, since they know what the end result will be, they have no basis for complaint. They want to preach; ergo, they should accept the "personal responsibility" for what's going to happen afterwards.
(Furthermore, for those people to defend their actions by cloaking themselves in the mantle of "religious freedom" is about as brain-dead as me saying my right to free speech gives me the right to walk into a biker bar and say that Harley riders are a bunch of pussies. Sure, technically, I have the "right" to do that, but I better not whine about it when they stuff me upside down into the women's toilet. Like they say, actions have consequences.)
And finally, these evangelists are typically the same right-wing bigots who are adamant that, when immigrants move here, well, those people better learn to do things our way. Our country, our rules -- that's the attitude. Well, then, perhaps they'd better figure out that, like it or not, other countries have their rules as well. And if you know what those rules are and choose to break them anyway, well, don't be surprised when you don't get a whole lot of sympathy.
In short, if you choose to do stupid things, a lot of people aren't going to feel sorry for you when the inevitable bad things happen.
From last week, an article in the New York Times about sham prep schools whose only purpose is to give aspiring basketball players a bogus diploma to get them into college.
And what's so amusing about that? Well, the names of some of those bogus schools: Redemption Christian Academy, Lutheran Christian Academy, Genesis One Christian Academy, God's Academy, ...
Does anyone else see the common theme here?
AFTERSNARK: I'm thinking that, if you call your school "God's Academy," you best have one muthafuckin', kick-ass hoops team to back that up with.
SPEAKING OF REALLY DUMB ATHLETES, there's a raging controversy at the moment based on U of Texas superstar quarterback and Rose Bowl-winning Vince Young scoring disastrously low on the Wonderlic intelligence test at the recent NFL combine, as you can read here.
As you can read in that piece, out of a maximum of 50, most teams would like their potential quarterbacks to score in the 30s somewhere. According to reports out of the combine, Young scored a six on his first attempt, and a 16 on a re-test. This is for a college graduate.
Feel free to take a shot at some sample Wonderlic questions here.
Come on, cut the guy some slack. He thought it was a copy of the Western Standard, OK?
Sadly, McDonald's new quintuple McKitten burger with bacon and cheese didn't catch on the way they had hoped.
All right, this explains a whole lot about a group of guys who hung around together in loose-fitting robes, preaching about the dangers of lusting after women.
Yes, yes, everyone else is pointing this out so why not me, but there's an interesting twist at the end. We now have actual video footage of Commander Chimpy McChimpster being warned about the potential devastation of Hurricane Katrina, including a real live meteorologist in front of a radar image warning quite clearly about the possibility of levee failure before the storm hit. You with me so far? Good.
So how do you explain this piece of swill in the Washington Post that talks about this and yet, as John at AmericaBlog points out, at no point mentions Chimpy's subsequent position that absolutely no one could have imagined the levees being breeched? How can you possibly write a news piece and not mention something that relevant?
The Washington Post's new motto: "Striving to make our news department as hopelessly inept as our ombudsman."
You know that old joke where the drunk loses his keys somewhere down the block but is looking for them under the streetlight because the light is better there, right?
So, in the Global War on Terror™, if you can't actually capture real terrorists like Osama bin Laden, well, you might have to make do with someone closer to home that you can capture. It's just easier that way.
When life:
THE BUSH administration quietly orchestrated a major shift in U.S. policy toward Iran this month, requesting $85 million from Congress to help bring about regime change in Tehran. Washington is now seeking not just to contain Tehran's nuclear ambitions but also to topple the Iranian government.
imitates art.
Let's see ... I can spend that evening drinking heavily, or I can go to this. Decisions, decisions.
Oh, man, the entertainment value here is right off the scale: Trent Lott versus Commander Chimpy. With these two going at it, it's not like you care which one wins, you're just cheering for injuries.
The last few comments back here. Trust me on this one.
Shorter Laura Bush: "When I said that American women stand with Afghani women, I didn't mean they stand with them, you know, in their actual prison cells or anything."
The conventional wisdom is that you want your fighting men and women to not think too much and to just follow orders. But there's pliant and docile, and then there's just plain mentally retarded:
Almost 90% of U.S. troops in Iraq think the war is retaliation for Saddam’s role in 9/11.
Now let's think about this for a minute. Even though nine out of 10 of the troops think Saddam had something to do with 9/11, 72 per cent of them still want to get the fuck out of there.
Can you imagine how much higher that figure might be if those troops weren't, you know, stupid and actually understood that Saddam and 9/11 were in no way connected?
Maybe someone should explain it to them.
And this is why I've always liked Rickie Lee Jones.
(CC News) In a wide-ranging interview with ABC News' Elizabeth Vargas, U.S. President George Bush took the position that, with respect to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. is "better prepared than woefully unprepared."
Bush continued by insisting that he was, in fact, not the worst political leader in all of human history and that he was quite sure that he wasn't the "fucking stupidest human being on the face of the earth," given that that title was already spoken for.
In unrelated news, the Bush administration's plan to bring democracy to Iraq seemed to be right on track as the developing civil war there threatens to destabilize the entire region.
