Right-wing snark, as it were.

Going for snark, and settling for illiteracy. Some things never go out of style, do they?

NEVER MIND, JOKE'S OVER. Wayne had simply misspelled the word "something" in his post title and, now that he's quietly fixed it, the original link doesn't work. It was cheap humour on my part. Carry on.

The fickliness of the trollosphere.

[Moved to the top just 'cuz I'm feeling unspeakably cruel today.]

Geez, dude, you could at least throw me a link or something. Think of the children. Think of the orphans. Think of my SiteMeter stats.

Mostly my SiteMeter stats, of course.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Oh, man, I think I just wet myself. In making a pompous, condescending ass of himself, our good buddy Wayne had used the "Ann Coulter defense" on behalf of Steve Janke:

Steve made the comment in jest, but a certain moonbat has taken great offense.

It was obviously a joke, but moonbats don't have a sense of humour ( or sense ).

And who arrives in Wayne's comments section to set him straight but Janke himself:

To be honest, Wayne, I wasn't joking at all.

It's moments like this that make it all worthwhile. If I had a tail, it would be wagging.

NO, STOP ... I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! Just read eb's comment. I swear, I can't think of anything to add that wouldn't be indescribably mean-spirited.

Proud to be hermetically sealed.

Why, yes, my echo chamber is amazingly comfortable. Why do you ask?

AFTERSNARK: Jason Mattera's dislike of Campus Progress might be a wee bit personal. Yeah, that Jason is a real piece of work.

All animals are equal ...

What a curious development:

In his latest column, Stephen Harper offers an update from Ottawa. "It's been quite a ride," the PM reports. Since the election, the new Conservative government has made progress "on all of our five priorities -- from cleaning up the federal government, to cutting taxes, cracking down on crime, supporting families, and strengthening our country at home and around the world."

Read that list again.

Notice anything?

Maybe not if you don't live in Ottawa. But in the capital, everybody who read that list spotted it immediately. Harper is playing Hide-the-Priority. And he's being pretty clumsy about it.
The fifth item in his list was never among the five priorities the Conservatives campaigned on. The fifth Conservative campaign priority was: "work with the provinces to establish a Patient Wait Times Guarantee." Harper has replaced it with this business about "strengthening our country."

And it's not a typo. He lists his priorities, newly amended, at the top of his column. Then he lists them again further down. There's the federal accountability act ("cleaning up the federal government"); the GST cut; the tough-on-crime stuff; the $1,200 in annual payments to parents of young children. And then once again, where health care used to be, Harper announces he's "begun work on uniting the country and making sure Canada's voice is heard internationally." ...

The Report Magazine column isn't an anomaly. It's part of a trend. You can still find the health care commitment if you go looking for it on government websites. But it has vanished from the government's "push" product -- the messages it sends out through speeches, broadcasts and written opinion articles. During a cabinet meeting in Quebec City at the end of June, the PM read a statement congratulating himself for "significant progress in addressing the priorities of Canadians." He listed four of the five priorities, but not wait times.

Ah, but I'm sure that we're just mistaken. Nothing to see here ... move along:

It was about this time that the pigs suddenly moved into the farmhouse and took up their residence there. Again the animals seemed to remember that a resolution against this had been passed in the early days, and again Squealer was able to convince them that this was not the case. It was absolutely necessary, he said, that the pigs, who were the brains of the farm, should have a quiet place to work in. It was also more suited to the dignity of the Leader (for of late he had taken to speaking of Napoleon under the title of "Leader") to live in a house than in a mere sty. Nevertheless, some of the animals were disturbed when they heard that the pigs not only took their meals in the kitchen and used the drawing-room as a recreation room, but also slept in the beds. Boxer passed it off as usual with "Napoleon is always right!", but Clover, who thought she remembered a definite ruling against beds, went to the end of the barn and tried to puzzle out the Seven Commandments which were inscribed there. Finding herself unable to read more than individual letters, she fetched Muriel.

"Muriel," she said, "read me the Fourth Commandment. Does it not say something about never sleeping in a bed?"

With some difficulty Muriel spelt it out.

"It says, 'No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets,"' she announced finally.

Curiously enough, Clover had not remembered that the Fourth Commandment mentioned sheets; but as it was there on the wall, it must have done so. And Squealer, who happened to be passing at this moment, attended by two or three dogs, was able to put the whole matter in its proper perspective.

"You have heard then, comrades," he said, "that we pigs now sleep in the beds of the farmhouse? And why not? You did not suppose, surely, that there was ever a ruling against beds? A bed merely means a place to sleep in. A pile of straw in a stall is a bed, properly regarded. The rule was against sheets, which are a human invention. We have removed the sheets from the farmhouse beds, and sleep between blankets. And very comfortable beds they are too! But not more comfortable than we need, I can tell you, comrades, with all the brainwork we have to do nowadays. You would not rob us of our repose, would you, comrades? You would not have us too tired to carry out our duties? Surely none of you wishes to see Jones back?"

The animals reassured him on this point immediately, and no more was said about the pigs sleeping in the farmhouse beds. And when, some days afterwards, it was announced that from now on the pigs would get up an hour later in the mornings than the other animals, no complaint was made about that either.

AFTERSNARK: And the revelation continues to spread.

Some people have decidedly unhealthy obsessions.

Jesus Christ ... does "Esquire" not have any fucking editors???

The thriftiness of the Conservatives ...

... is apparently overrated. Well, that and their integrity, but we'd already established that.

America, I have a dream.

Regardless of what you might think of our neighbours to the south, it's still true that America is the land of endless opportunity in that, even if you are completely and utterly mentally retarded, you can still rise to the level of, say, Republican congressman senator, or ... or ... um ... well, that's pretty much it, I guess.

Well, that or pro-life advocate. You don't really need a link for that last bit, do you?

What you call "unclear on the concept."

It's not like some people need any advice from me, but (emphasis added):

Is it just me, or does it seem that the CBC is blatantly, openly anti-Israeli these days? The reason I ask, is that when I was scrolling through my RSS reader just now, I saw this headline from cbc.ca: “Israel air attacks kill dozens in Lebanon” Note the use of the word attack. I’m not disputing that it was an attack, ...

Rule number one for the terms of intellectual engagement: an argument typically requires the involvement of an actual opponent. Debating only yourself generally leads to not getting invited back to the better dinner parties.

Oh, man ... those North Koreans are in a world of hurt now.

Whoa ... apparently, the wankersphere (or at least the Crazy-Assed Racist Redneck part of it) is all a-flutter over something that went right:

It was a picture-perfect pre-dawn Wednesday and a picture-perfect launch at White Sands Missile Range.

Hundreds of miles above southern New Mexico, it was a picture-perfect impact between two missiles...

The pre-dawn art show was the result of the third of five tests planned at White Sands Missile Range to determine the effectiveness of THAAD — Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile. And military officials said the test went better than they could have hoped.

"This was phenomenal," said U.S. Army Col. Charles Driessnack, the project manager for the Missile Defense Agency's THAAD program. "It performed as expected."

"All that's left to do," continued Driessnack, "is to force North Korea to launch their missile attacks against the U.S. from White Sands early in the morning, and we are so going to kick their asses. Seriously."

Fool me once, um ... how does that go again?

Those who don't remember history are condemned to continue looking like total cementheads:

Israel says Hezbollah plans to transfer the kidnapped IDF soldiers to Iran:

Israel has concrete evidence that Hezbollah plans to transfer the two Israel Defense Forces soldiers abducted Wednesday to Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said Thursday.

And if you don't buy that, well, then, Iran has WMDs, so we still have to nuke them. And if you don't believe that, well, they have these Jews and these badges ...

It's a cultural difference, you know.

Once upon a time, Canada's Charles McVety was adamant that "Canada needs a Ralph Reed," but it now seems as if this was all based on a misunderstanding, given the recently-revealed details of what is being described as "mortgaging old black people." The problem, of course, is that Canada doesn't really have all that many black people.

Now if we'd been talking about mortgaging aboriginals, well, OK, then. At least there would have been a market.

The lesser of two evils.

Ah, so we finally have a resolution to that whole abortion/"The Onion" flap, in which Pete is introduced to satire and doesn't recognize it. As Pete now explains,

My article was a joke, which obviously thousands of you didn't get, all the while accusing me of being the stupidest person on the planet.

OK, then, so Pete's not the stupidest person on the planet -- he's just amazingly unfunny. I don't know, Pete ... at least when you were an idiot, you had an excuse for not being funny. But now ...

The chronology of softwood lumber.

"(1) It's absolutely an awesome, totally excellent deal but (2) even if it sucks, it's the only one we can get." I think we are now comfortably on to Phase Two.

One does get comments.

From back here, we have the indefatigable Mr Kennedy (Kennedy), who seeks to enlighten us on the civility of ideological debate in his own special way:

So now McCuntlan is now threatening the children of people whose politics he disagrees with.

First it was Fuck The Jews and now....

Like I have always said: No one hates like the left does. No one. From Howard Dean to Ward Churchill to Cindy Sheehan to Mikhail Moore to Randi Rhodes to Al Franken to Jack Murthafucker to Sven Robinson...and it goes on and on

And when I say "special," I don't really mean that in a good way. More like a "Everybody's a winner and gets a medal for just participating" kind of way. If you see where I'm going.

You can talk the talk, but do you walk the walk?

And while countless wankers are still all cranked up about mere blog comments regarding doing unspeakable things to peoples' children, the U.S. Army is actually going out and doing something about it. No news on whether they blogged about it, of course.

From the "WHAT writing on the wall?" Department.

What part of "Everybody hates you" is giving you difficulty? Well, OK, maybe not everybody. But I'm betting Rick's wife was a bit pissed.

Dr. Dawg meets the mole people.

In which our hero, Dr. Dawg, armed only with clear thinking, cogent arguments and the lance of mere reason, wanders into the circle jerk that is Steve's comments section and asks:

I won't defend [Deb] Frisch--she's clearly unhinged--but Robert has a point: why no outrage from you and others when Ann Coulter and others urge the US to commit genocide? At least Frisch has the excuse of being unbalanced in the clinical sense. What about Coulter?

to which commenter "Mac," in a seriously kick-ass display of what passes for right-wing snark that must just have them howling down at Dino's Beer and Peeler Bar, retorts:

Dr. Dawg, it appear [sic] you're hellbent on changing the subject. I wonder why that would be, hmmm?

which proves beyond any doubt that the good Dr. Dawg simply doesn't understand the rules of ideological discourse here, which are that, if Lefties suggest that the current CPC government appears to have some corruption problems, the proper response from the Right is to, of course, lash back savagely, howling on incessantly about the Liberals and the sponsorship scandal while, if anyone on the Left attempts to make an ideological comparison of that nature, they are naturally just being weaselly and evasive and changing the subject.

But that's just because those two situations are totally different. Totally.

Jesus Christ ... can you even SPELL "irony?"

From the comments section over at Steve's place, we have commenter "None":

Ever noticed that when a liberal says something way out of line they then say its all a joke?

Um ... yeah. I wonder where we learned that trick.

OOOOOH ... BONUS: Apparently, the light is finally starting to dawn:

Ann Coulter is no stranger to controversy, but her latest adventures have several newspapers questioning whether carrying her syndicated column is worth the trouble. The Shreveport (La.) Times is currently leaving the decision of whether or not to keep Coulter up to its readers. But the first newspaper to officially drop Coulter’s column since the latest uproar began seems to be The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she had appeared for about 14 months.

Opinion Page Editor Doug Neumann told E&P, “Our decision was made before the plagiarism allegations. It did come after the publication of [Coulter’s] book, but I would say it didn’t directly play any role on our decision.”

Which is as it should be. I was never overly impressed with the recent allegations of plagiarism. I mean, this is Ann Coulter we're talking about -- not exactly a bottomless pit of original punditry. It's more satisfying to see her get canned just for being a horrible human being, although replacing her with David Limbaugh doesn't exactly raise the intellectual temperature in the room, if you catch my drift.

P.S. Sadly, even though I've made it clear that he's not welcome here and keep deleting his comments, Canada's "Embassy of Conservative Maturity" insists on leaving the same comment over and over on this post.

You keep using that word "maturity," Pete. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Dear Steve: Let me explain the real meaning of "fear."

As much as I didn't feel like revisiting this issue, there's just a little too much to say to let it go by, so you'll forgive me if I decide to rip Canadian wanker Steve Janke a new one for being the insufferable dick that he is.

First (and I'll try to keep this part brief since there's so much more that needs to be said), it takes a special kind of right-wing assholitude to be waxing apoplectic these days over the appalling and totally unacceptable sentiments of one Deb Frisch, who dumped a pile of disgusting comments in the comments section of one Jeff Goldstein. (You remember Jeff Goldstein, right? You better, otherwise you're in for a serious cock-slapping. But I digress. Onward.)

It's fairly amusing to see the entire citizenry of Wankerville working themselves into a high dudgeon over the comments of one complete non-entity that most of us had never even heard of before. To read Steve's bullshit, you'd think he'd only just now ventured forth from his comfortable bubble to find that, heavens to Betsy, the blogosphere can be an unpleasant place! All that profanity and vulgarity! Why, it's enough to purely give one a case of the vapours, isn't it?

That's some nerve you've got there, Steve, considering the toxic cesspool you and your neo-con wank colleagues live in, with a constant stream of hate-filled bile from some of your best friends. I mean, really -- Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Kate McMillan ... oh, my, the list does go on, doesn't it? And yet, here you are, clawing your way through all of that right-wing nastiness and getting your nutsack in a knot over some utter nobody. That's some pretty selective outrage, don't you think, Steve? But that's not why we're here. Oh, no, there's a bigger issue at hand.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, you have to be pretty much a complete jackass to have written the following:

But back to our friend [Robert] McClelland. In my response to McClelland's nastiness, I mentioned my 5-year-old daughter in the context of knowing right from wrong. I wish I hadn't now. For the first time, I feel nervous knowing that McClelland knows I have young children.

To which one can only respond, fuck you, Steve, you lying sack of crap. As I already suggested in an earlier post, there is not a single person on the planet that genuinely believes that you're afraid of Robert McClelland. Not you, not me, not anyone. You know as well as I do that you don't have the slightest fear of Robert doing anything to your precious family but that doesn't stop you from being the despicable douchebag you are and throwing the suggestion out there.

No one's afraid of Robert McClelland, just as no one is legitimately concerned for their personal safety from Deb Frisch. You can think whatever you want of them in terms of wingnuttery or moonbattery or whatever catchy phrase the kids are using these days, but to suggest that you're actually in fear of them is indescribable rubbish. Because when it comes to fear, Steve, no one knows actual fear like those of us on the Left.

You want fear? Let me explain fear, Steve, you pompous prat.

Fear is wondering whether a bumper sticker on your car is going to get you fired. Or maybe arrested.

Fear is wondering if wearing the wrong kind of t-shirt is going to land you in handcuffs.

Fear is wanting to exercise your right to free speech and free expression in the United States, but ending up in a razor wire-surrounded detention center instead. Or maybe just getting the crap kicked out of you by an unhinged neo-con supporter while being held down by three Secret Service agents.

Fear is to want nothing more than to be treated with fairness and consideration, and being driven out of town by a wave of psychotic, religious whackjobs.

Fear is just doing your job as a journalist, and suddenly having your personal information splashed all over the Internet, with suggestions that you should be "hunted down" and taught a lesson.

Fear is never knowing if you're going to be murdered just because you're gay or because you're the wrong kind of doctor.

And, finally, fear is being a judge in the United States when prominent right-wing bloggers are openly calling for your execution, while others are simply murdering your family members.

Don't talk to me about fear, Steve, you insufferable twit. You don't have the foggiest idea what the word means, when one of the biggest issues for you and your brain-dead friends is whether two guys you've never met and will never know have the right to get married. Ooooooh, that's frightening, isn't it, Steve? One wonders how you and your buds can even sleep at night, lying there in mortal dread for the sanctity of your marriages, or scared witless that someone is going to force your kids to learn about evolution, or something equally horrific.

Don't talk to me about fear, Steve. Not until the day that you are genuinely afraid that some crazed atheist who doesn't like you will actually try to murder your kids. Then, and only then, will you have the right to join the discussion.

Until then, Steve, do us all a favour and shut the fuck up.

The dangers of the ownership society.

First, PZ Myers points out (quite correctly) that a disturbing number of Christians are demented fuckwits. One should now be able to sit back and wait for Jinx's response as he defends his demented fuckwit colleagues.

This should be good.