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(Blogging's going to be a bit sporadic over the next few days but we'll do what we can.)
It's not like anyone needs to point out what sort of lying cretin Rush Limbaugh is, but there are times when he doesn't even try to appear honest. Media Matters has a recent litany of Limbaugh lies, and it's falsehood #6 that I find so amusing, in which Limbaugh claims that Democrat Nancy Pelosi "probably" voted to roll FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security. From the show transcript (emphasis added):
LIMBAUGH: So it [the Red Cross] was there [in New Orleans after the hurricane]. It was ready to go. FEMA is not a first-response agency. FEMA's got 2,500 employees. Nancy Pelosi probably voted to put FEMA in Homeland Security. This is my point. These people get around, ah, get to run around acting like spectators and bystanders. They are the ones that create this red tape. They are the ones that create bureaucracy upon bureaucracy upon bureaucracy.
Now, it's not that Pelosi did no such thing. Rather, it's the sheer dishonesty or laziness on Limbaugh's part that he didn't even check the public voting record to verify this one way or the other. What is the possible value of accusing someone of "probably" doing something when it would have taken no more than about two minutes to confirm it, one way or the other?
Limbaugh's strategy is, of course, painfully obvious. Smear Pelosi without really accusing her of anything (just suggesting it), then be able to back out later by saying, hey, I never really said that, I qualified it, what's your problem?
And thus ends your lesson regarding life in the right-wing echo chamber.
Shorter Weasel Boy: Shut up. Just shut up, OK?
(Background here, in case you give a shit.)
MORE OF THE SAME: Apparently, Weasel Boy makes an entire lifestyle of going around to other sites where his sanctimonious, Christian fundamentalist opinion isn't welcome and lecturing them on the error of their ways.
Which forces me to ask (not just WB but a depressingly large number of annoying, pushy Christians): What part of "Thanks but we're not interested" is so difficult to understand?
As I've said on occasion, sometimes satire just can't keep up with real life. As in, there's this recent piece of mine. Then there's the final cartoon in the sequence here.
As Lily Tomlin once said, no matter how cynical I get, I can't keep up.
Because, sometimes, you're too lazy to write something and you want everyone else to pick up the slack for a bit.
In politics, the definition of a "gaffe" is when someone says what they're actually thinking. Here's your gaffe of the week.
(CC News, Chapel Hill, NC) For the third time since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, President George Bush will personally visit the area to bolster his image, repair the political damage and get in the way of emergency relief efforts as much as possible.
While providing nothing whatsoever in the way of actual relief assistance, Bush will first interfere with emergency air rescue efforts by clearing out the local air space to allow Air Force One to fly in unhindered by local traffic.
Immediately upon touchdown, Bush will commandeer the services of the U.S. Navy's newest destroyer, the U.S.S. Halliburton, for essential photo opportunities, which will include pictures of Bush surrounded by hundreds of able seamen who would otherwise be engaged in actual rescue and relief work.
Bush and his entourage will then take charge of a number of Red Cross emergency vehicles to tour the most most devastated areas of New Orleans, during which the president is expected to look somberly and solemnly out of the windows while marveling at "all that water." Once this tour is over, the vehicles will be returned to the Red Cross to continue doing actual rescue work.
During the visit, Bush is scheduled to hug as many homeless, destitute victims of the storm as possible, in an effort to show that he doesn't mind actually touching poor people if it becomes politically necessary.
Explained Bush advisor Karl Rove when asked why a third visit had been planned, "Well, we did some polls and it turns out that, even after the first two visits, most people still hated George's guts. So we figured, what the hell, third time's a charm, right?"
This is uncomfortably amusing:
An e-mail I received from a NEWSWEEK reader says if somebody had tried to withdraw a feeding tube from a brain-damaged woman at the Superdome, Bush would have sent in the Marines...
I guess, if those starving, dehydrated victims at the Superdome really wanted help, they should have just reported that someone was trying to take away their Bibles.
And here's the ultimate irony:
As much as the Bushes disparaged Clinton over the years, they want him nearby as a human shield to show they’re capable of reaching out beyond the narrow confines of class and partisan politics. The irony of a Republican president now looking to the credibility of the last Democrat in the White House to maintain his standing reveals the extent to which Bush has fallen politically.
Don't worry, Bill. As soon as you're no longer politically useful, it'll be back to all being your fault. Say what you want about the GOP, but at least they're predictable.
Sometime tomorrow evening, I'll once again be rolling into Chapel Hill for a couple weeks of down time. If there are similarly cynically-minded folks, we can always congregate for an evening of drinking and left-wing propaganda. Suggestions welcome in the comments section. And, yes, you're buying.
Make yourself comfortable. It's a long read.
By now, everyone's heard of the off-camera bystander who told VP Dick Cheney to "go fuck yourself" while Cheney was being interviewed while touring the devastation of New Orleans. You can read about that bystander, a guy named Ben Marble, here, and here are the excerpts that should convince you Americans that you are, as a country, completely fucked given the current administration:
[Marble's] friend videotaped a little bit longer and then came back to Marble’s house. As they were salvaging a few things from Marble's home, two military police waving M-16's showed up and said they were looking for someone who fit Marble's description who had cursed at Cheney.
"I told them I was probably the person they were looking for, and so they put me in handcuffs and 'detained' me for about 20 minutes or so," Marble wrote. "My right thumb went numb because the cuffs were on so tight, but they were fairly courteous and eventually released me after getting all my contact info. They said I had NOT broken any laws so I was free to go."
That's "you are totally fucked" bit of evidence number one -- that Marble would be handcuffed, even though the military police openly admitted he hadn't done anything wrong. If you have trouble keeping more than one thought going at one time, then just understand this one crucial thing: you are now living in a police state, nothing less. And, because of that, the terrorists have won. (I'll blog more on this some day but, in essense, the administration of George Bush has done more to curtail your freedoms than Osama bin Laden ever did. But ... onward.)
Here's the second piece of "you are so totally fucked" evidence (emphasis added):
Dr. Ben Marble, a young emergency room physician who plays in alternative rock bands and does art on the side, needs our help. Since he was the one who told Dick Cheney to "go fuck yourself" on Sept. 8, that's the least we can do.
That's right. Dr. Ben Marble. An emergency room physician. People are still dying in Louisiana and the military police are handcuffing emergency room physicians.
You are so fucked.
When natural disaster meets religious apologetics. Go read. Credit to e-mailer Mary H.
(Note to tipsters: let me know if, or what kind of, news tip credit you want. By all means, leave a blog link, even if you e-mail privately, if you want me to link.)
Shorter Bush administration: Hey, that Brownie is too valuable a guy to waste on just one disaster.
There's a reason that, when it comes to the more sub-human residents of Wankerville, I try to avoid stuff like, you know, actually talking to them or anything. And this is a good example, where you can read the following from Weasel Boy himself in the comments section in case someone still hasn't figured out that he really doesn't give a fuck about the animals in the wake of Hurricane Katrina:
If given the choice, I would save Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden before my cats. Sure, they may not deserve it, but they are human beings. I have no right to make the judgment to let them die. To not save them when I could would be tantamount to murder and that is simply unacceptable despite the things they've done.
Did you catch that? Make sure you understand WB here as he puts on his superpower cloak of infinite nobility in claiming that, regardless of Hussein's or bin Laden's crimes, they are human beings and do not deserve to be allowed to die.
Of course, Weasel Boy is part of the same population of mouth-breathers who used Saddam Hussein's crimes against his people as the excuse to invade Iraq and kill tens of thousands of its citizens. (But, please, not to call them "people." Rather, call them "collateral damage.")
These are the people who, while they are apparently so humane and Godly that they would rescue Osama bin Laden from death, are the same ones who are shrieking with outrage over Bill Clinton's alleged failure to kill that evil son-of-a-bitch back in the late 1990s when he had the chance.
These are the people who are so sanctimonious they would not allow Saddam Hussein to die, yet fully supported an air strike on a Baghdad suburb which killed numerous civilians, on the off chance that it might wipe out that murderous prick.
And, of course, these are the same raving hypocrites who are so terribly, terribly concerned with the sanctity of human life, but are the biggest fans of capital punishment and, yeah, sometimes you end up wasting an innocent but, hey, whaddya gonna do, it's the price you pay for law and order and, by the way, those abortion doctors had that bullet to the brain coming to them, know what I mean?
This is why I try to not actually talk to these people. Because just when you think they've reached the bottom of the barrel in terms of intellectual idiocy, someone else comes along and lifts up the barrel.
WHOOPS: I'm not sure how I missed this the first time, but read the following passage carefully:
To not save [Hussein and bin Laden] when I could would be tantamount to murder and that is simply unacceptable despite the things they've done.
Got that? Simply standing by and letting either of those two die would be, as Weasel Boy puts it, "tantamount to murder." This is a little odd since conservative wanks like WB are generally pro-death penalty and, when they're asked how they justify that position in light of the Scriptural admonition "Thou shalt not kill," they're normally quick to offer up the same, tedious apologetic.
See, they'll say, the Bible doesn't really say, "Thou shalt not kill." Really, they'll say, it says you shouldn't "murder," which isn't the same thing, naturally, since those death row inmates have it coming to them so, while the death penalty means killing them, technically that isn't "murder."
So, to recap, simply standing by and allowing mass murderers to die is "tantamount to murder," while the deliberate and explicit execution of another human being isn't. This is the sort of thing that happens when you don't take the adults' advice to stop eating the paint chips.
BONUS TRACK: Thank ya, thank ya very much.
Somewhere, White House Press Lizard Scott McClellan is banging his head on a desk, moaning, "Noooooooooooooo ..."
Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown was replaced Friday as the man in charge of the Hurricane Katrina federal relief effort...
Brown, under fire over his qualifications and what critics call a bungled response to Katrina, will return to his duties in Washington as overall FEMA chief, Chertoff said.
Now, keep in mind, McClellan was the one who so thoroughly pissed off the entire press corps by refusing to engage in the "blame game." Apparently, while Scottie wasn't looking, his own administration did just that by holding someone at least a little accountable for the entire Katrina clusterfuck.
It remains to be seen how Scott explains this one at the next press gaggle, or whether he just saves everyone the trouble and resigns to "spend more time with his family."
P.S. Notice that this announcement came on a Friday afternoon. Coincidence?
"Well, except for that totally bogus biography. That's not so good."
From back in 2003, we have a description of the miserable failure of the Clinton administration:
During the Clinton administration, 59 Americans were killed by bin Laden’s operations, the author concludes
If I were the right-wing wankersphere today, I'd be really reluctant to get into a pissing context regarding bin Laden-related body counts, if you know what I mean.
Ms. Z sums up the recent spate of journalists finally getting some (metaphorical) balls as "both infuriating and gratifing." Especially that infuriating part. I mean, it's nice to see the spine again but, Jesus, why did it have to take the gruesome deaths of tens of thousands of people for folks to finally suggest that these bozoes are not the sharpest tools in the shed?
I'm just going to wait to see how long it lasts.
Damn ... dontcha just hate it when someone else scoops your next blog idea? Me too.
Oh, dear ... someone at the Times woke up with a wedgie or something.
P.S. And for the numerous right-wing dumbfucks who can't figure out the difference, this excerpt from that editorial shows how political patronage isn't always as unspeakably evil as when it's practised by the Bush administration:
Political patronage has always been a hallmark of Washington life. But President Bill Clinton appointed political pals at FEMA who actually knew something about disaster management. The former FEMA director James Lee Witt, whose tenure is widely considered a major success, was a friend of Mr. Clinton's when he took office in 1993, but he had run the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services. His top staff came from regional FEMA offices.
See how that works? He might be a friend, but he's a qualified and competent friend, and not some bizarre combination of ignorant, sycophantic, right-wing nutbar and hopeless hack. Yeah, there really is a difference.
PILE ON! Apparently, the Post doesn't think a whole lot more of FEMA than the Times. There msy be hope for those two pathetic excuses for newspapers yet. One can always dream.
While we might be complaining about the jaw-dropping ineptitude of current DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, let us not forget that, if it hadn't been for a spectacularly public meltdown, this guy would currently be running the show.
I guess one really should be grateful for small mercies.
