The classics never go out of style.

Go. Read. Be amused.

Blog rankings by incoming links.

A favour if you would. I know that, in my travels, I've seen blog rankings that are based on the number of incoming links. Where would I find that? I'd like to do some calculations for particular blogs based on that, but I don't recall where I once ran across it. Muchos gracias.

"Earth to Denyse ... come in, Denyse ..."

It's almost cruel, but let's take a quick whack at Canadian anti-Darwinist Denyse O'Leary, whose lack of awareness is at least moderately amusing at the best of times:

Saturday, September 15, 2007
Creation museum opens in Alberta, Canada

Recently, I was reflecting on the differences between the way the intelligent design controversy shapes up in Canada and the United States. And lo and behold, a Creation Science Museum just opened in Big Valley, in the western province of Alberta, in June.

Yes, it really does take Denyse only three months to finally clue in to what the rest of us have been chuckling over for quite some time. But let's let Denyse continue to entertain us:

Unlike the Kentucky extravaganza in the United States, the museum developed by Harry Nibourg with exhibits by Vance Nelson of Creation Truth Ministries of Red Deer, Alberta, is housed in a 900 square foot bungalow .

Creation Truth Ministries is a Christian evangelistic organization that wants "to see unbelievers come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ".

And you thought creation "science" had something to do with, you know, science. When will you ever learn?

"WTF???" open thread.

By the end of today, I plan on being a MySQL expert which means I'm going to be moderately busy so it's your job to locate and comment on what you think is the most hilarious, the most eye-rolling, the most purely entertaining examples of hypocritical, right-wing doofitude you can find. I'll start things off gently.

I know you can top that.

Kerry and dickheads and Tasers, oh my!

Some readers are none too pleased with my professed lack of sympathy with carefully-choreographed Taser victim Andrew Meyer, so let me clarify my position.

Did Meyer really deserve to get Tasered for what he did? Probably not. Did the cops over-react? Probably. Am I shedding any tears over Meyer's beatdown at the hands of some of UF's finest? I slept just fine last night, thanks.

See, there's a difference between accepting that someone is "technically" in the right, while still being willing to suggest that they really, really had it coming to them.

If you walk into your neighbourhood biker bar with a t-shirt that reads, "Harley riders suck dick," well, that is your right, of course. Free speech, free expression, that sort of thing. And when they find you out in the parking lot later with a exhaust pipe inserted where it wouldn't do you the least bit of good, you can argue all you want about how that was your "right" and, hey, I'd be the first one to technically agree with you while pointing out that what you did was seriously boneheaded and I just can't feel a whole lot sorry.

Similarly, I couldn't possibly argue that Meyer had every constitutional right to yap his face off the way he did. But when you're being escorted out by four burly law enforcement officials, at least one of whom has 50,000 volts strapped to his holster, then it's a really bad idea to be physically fighting back in support of those constitutional rights. At times like that, you go quietly and argue your case later at a safe distance from big guys with blunt objects that they can whap you or electrocute you with.

There's being "right," and there's being "stupid." And, sometimes, being right just isn't enough of a defense for being stupid.

Yeah, and there was that other thing, too.

Blogging Tory "Gay and Right" Fred is seriously miffed that former Harvard University president Larry Summers was invited, then uninvited, to be a keynote speaker at a dinner for the UC Board of Regents. And what exactly was Summers' sin?

Well, see, all the evidence indicates that he's kind of sexist. And kind of a bigot. And that sort of thing just doesn't play well at some dinner parties, know what I'm sayin'? But that's not the best part.

See, one would think that, if Fred gets this bent out of shape over simply being dissed over a dinner party, he'd be outraged -- absolutely livid, I tell you -- over what happened to Duke academic Erwin Chemerinsky, who had his hiring as the new dean at the UC Irvine law school pulled because he was too liberal, only to have it given back due to overwhelming protest.

See the difference? Summers loses out on an evening of free food because he's a sexist pig: Fred howls. Chemerinsky is the target of a concerted attack by the right to strip him of his deanship, solely because he's a vocal defender of civil liberties? Well, do I really need to explain how much that caused Fred any lack of sleep? Yeah, about that much.

I need to find some smarter conservatives to pick on. This is getting seriously boring.

BY THE WAY, about that nefarious liberal academic bias you keep hearing so much about? Well, bite me.

(For those of you who aren't quite sure who David Horowitz is, there are only two things you need to know about him:

• He is the primary source of 98% of the accusations that there is a nefarious liberal academic bias, and


• He is a hideous, sleazy, pathological liar about everything.

I'm glad I could clear that up for you.)

... and sometimes, you DESERVE a good Tasering.

A large portion of the blogosphere is outraged this morning over the Tasering of a student who was trying to ask Sen. John Kerry a question at a U of Florida campus forum. Let it hereby be known that I am not one of them.

Everything I've read suggests that I would have Tasered that airhead long before. Let's read the details:

"He apparently asked several questions -- he went on for quite awhile -- then he was asked to stop," university spokesman Steve Orlando said. "He had used his allotted time. His microphone was cut off, then he became upset."...

... [Andrew] Meyer struggles to escape for several seconds as up to four officers try to remove him from the room...

... Meyer screams for help and asks "What did I do?" as he tries to break away from officers. He is forced to the ground and officers order him to stop resisting...

Oh, and there's this excerpt from a statement from Kerry afterwards:

"In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way," he said in the statement. "I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but again I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention.

So, to recap, student Meyer rudely cuts in at the front of the line of people waiting to ask questions, he harangues Kerry endlessly and monopolizes the question time until his mic is finally and mercifully cut off, at which point he refuses to leave and subsequently resists arrest.

There may be cases of police over-reaction and excessive force that are worth protesting but, really, this is so not one of them. Sometimes, 50,000 volts is exactly the right response.

A SHORT FOLLOWUP: All right, I've watched the YouTube clip of the incident here and, frankly, I have no sympathy for Mr. Meyer, who spent that entire time being a total dickhead. Does that mean he deserved getting Tasered? Possibly not but, under the circumstances, I'm simply not going to let him become a poster boy for the unfairness of excessive force.

There's an old saying: Pick your battles. And if this battle involves defending Andrew Meyer, I am just not interested in enlisting for that one.

HEH. What TBogg said.

Even wingnuts have their limits.

An e-mailer brings my attention to yet another example of depressing scientific illiteracy by the Ottawa Citizen's David Warren. It's not the hopeless illogic in that piece that amuses; no, it's this plaintive appeal from a reader that is clearly not prepared to go down that road of batshit stupidity:

Among all the letters I have received on my Darwin columns -- mostly blind support, or blind abuse -- one struck me as especially worth answering:

“Wake up, man. Whether or not ‘Darwinism’ is good science, it is accepted as good science by most intelligent people, and if you persist in attacking it you will lose the respect of people who are prepared to listen to you on many other subjects. Why don’t you have the tactical sense to leave Darwinism alone?”

Translation: "Please, for the love of God, David, I like you but you're really creeping me out."

Eviscerating the rest of David's incomprehensible drooling is left as an exercise for the reader.

UPDATE: To my utter lack of surprise, Jeffrey has already been there and done that.

Apparently, (Catholic) girls just wanna have fun.

And the higher-ups are going to be having none of that:

The Halton Catholic School board may be the first in Ontario to ban the HPV vaccine in their schools. The Catholic School Board has been sent a letter by the conference of bishops, encouraging them to remember that HPV occurs only through sex, which is "appropriate only" in marriage.

On the other hand, those fun-loving bishops still heartily endorse the time-tested combination of latex condoms and Astroglide. Astroglide: because who needs girls, anyway?

Welcome to the party, PZ.

Jason? Is that you?

Why, yes, I DID call that nicely, didn't I?

Previously, from CC News Central, 10:17 a.m., Monday Sept 19:

P.S. If the Iraqi government says it wants Blackwater out, and the U.S. government says no, that's going to strain that whole definition of Iraqi "sovereignty" just a wee bit, don't you think?

Of course, one might also point out that we here at CC HQ have been trying to focus attention on this whole Iraqi "sovereignty" issue for quite some time, like here and here and here and here and here and here and ... well, you get the idea. So, under the circumstances, it's nice to see the mainstream media finally getting a clue:

Blackwater fight tests US view of Iraq

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A red-faced US government pleaded for patience from Baghdad as a private US security firm's role in a deadly gun battle tested US claims that war-torn Iraq is a sovereign nation.

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP!! Bravo, AFP -- welcome to the party. A couple years late but, what the hell, we can order fresh pizzas. And if you need any more story ideas, well, you know where to find me.

AFTERSNARK: Perhaps the most ironic part of that AFP article:

A top Iraqi judge has said Blackwater could face trial over the incident, in which some of its guards, who were escorting US embassy officials, opened fire in a Baghdad neighborhood, killing 10 people and wounding 13.

But Blackwater denies any wrongdoing, and US legal experts said the contractors may be immune from prosecution under a measure conceived by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority not long after the March 2003 invasion.

That would be that vaunted right-wing "accountability" and "personal responsibility" you keep hearing so much about. But you didn't need me to explain that, did you?

"... and if she buys kippers, it will not rain."

Over at Celestial Junk, Paul gives us a primer on right-wing logic, as it were:

Karzai to Canadians

Don't leave:

"He said that unequivocally it would mean that Afghanistan would fall back into anarchy -- that it would bring back the safe havens to terrorists and terrorists would be able to strike once again into the United States and Canada."

Quite right since, as we can easily see, as long as we are in Afghanistan driving the terrorists elsewhere, they cannot possibly attack Canada. But the instant we relax our vigilance and allow them to set up safe haven thousands of miles away, we are in mortal danger here at home.

In other news, I only hit you because I love you. Or something like that.

Some people eventually get a clue. Other people ...

Shorter Gerry Nicholls: "No, I'm still dumb as a sack of shit. Why do you ask?"

Sometimes, this job is way too easy.

Blogging Tory Raphael Alexander tries to alert us all to the potentially outrageous affront to democracy:

John Tory Warns Of Unelected MPPs

John Tory referred to appointed MPPs as "a second class" of politicians who are unaccountable to the public, and I think this is a perfectly accurate description. Not only is the addition of 22 MPPs extremely wasteful to taxpayer dollars, but it adds an aspect of the government in which politicians are unanswerable to the people, only to the party they were appointed by.

Really, sometimes the punchline just writes itself, doesn't it?

"La la la la la la la ... I can't HEARRRR you!": SDA edition.

Not that long ago, we had the Kate McMillan-inspired imbecility ... oh, just go read, you'll get the idea. And, in a disturbingly timely fashion, we have this more recent, seriously creepy incident:

Federal Prosecutor Arrested In Child Sex Sting

But this is not your average toe-tapping in airport bathroom stalls, uh uh:

A U.S. Justice Department official has been arrested on suspicion of traveling to Detroit over the weekend to have sex with a minor.

John David R. Atchison, 53, an assistant U.S. attorney from the northern district of Florida, was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Detroit Monday afternoon.

An undercover officer posed as a mother offering her child to Atchison for sex, according to police.

Prosecutors said Atchison flew from Pensacola, Fla., to Detroit on Sunday intending to have sex with the 5-year-old girl.

Excuse me? A 53-year-old official from the U.S DOJ was travelling from Florida to Detroit to have sex with a 5-year-old!? Does this get any more tasteless? Sadly, yes:

The undercover detective expressed concern about physical injury to the 5-year-old girl as a result of the sexual activity. Detectives said Atchison responded, " I am always gentle and loving; not to worry, no damage ever, no rough stuff ever. I only like it soft and nice."

The undercover detective asked how Atchison can be certain of no injury. He responded, "Just gotta go slow and very easy. I've done it plenty," according to detectives.

OK, then, no worries, he knows what he's doing. Yeesh. But read that entire article carefully. Notice what's missing? Why, yes ... the pervert's political affiliation. How odd. Now why would that be? In fact, if you read numerous online news pieces, there is no mention of party affiliation whatsoever. Apparently, you have to do a little digging to claim the following:

The only registered John Dave R Atchison (John David Roy Atchison)registered in Florida is a Republican from Gulf Breeze (Pensacola suburb) born in 1957, which fits the other information.....

Of course, that's still not proof but won't it be amusing to learn that the news coverage of this was sanitized because of Atchison's political affiliation? I'm just sayin'.

Don't you miss the old days when people were outraged by blowjobs from consenting adults? Yeah, those were good times, weren't they?

FREE AT NO EXTRA CHARGE: Because you can never have too much depressing, right-wing moronicity in your life.

And women getting the vote? That's some bad ju-ju there, too.

Shorter Spanky's Clubhouse: "It is vitally important that we continue to warn Canadians about the dangers of same-sex marriage, for reasons known only to us and all of these empty beer bottles strewn about on the floor."

P.S. "No, we're not done yet. Why do you ask?"

Your preznit speaks!

Via Think Progress, we learn that, after hearing exactly the same speech from Commander Chimpy McChimpster 23 times, a 24th time just isn't all that appealing:



Now if he'd just choked on a pretzel, that would have been must-see TV.

... and that second explanation isn't holding up too well, either.

Canada's Lowest Common Denominatrix™ is furious that former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan isn't getting the opportunity for a do-over on his initial revealing accusation:

Greenspan: No "War For Oil"

Well, here's a shocker - Alan "The Iraq war is largely about oil" Greenspan says he's been taken out of context. No kidding;

Greenspan clarified his remarks in an interview with the Washington Post, telling the newspaper that although securing global oil supplies was “not the administration’s motive,” he had presented the White House with a case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan said. “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?,’ I would say it was essential.”

He said that in his discussions with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, “I have never heard them basically say, ‘We’ve got to protect the oil supplies of the world,’ but that would have been my motive.”

Ed Morrissey explains;

Greenspan wanted to communicate how important the Middle East is in terms of global finances. He himself made the case for removing Saddam Hussein to keep financial markets from collapsing from an attack on world oil supplies, such as the one Saddam conducted during the first Gulf War. He took that argument to the White House, which specifically rejected it — quite the opposite of what the quote implied when first reported.

The chances of this correction being carried by the same Canadian media that rebroadcast the original misquote lie somewhere between zero and "not f'ing likely".

More on the news debacle here.

That's right -- the invasion of Iraq was never about oil; it was, instead, about toppling a brutal, murderous tyrant so that the people of Iraq could then flourish under the banner of democracy, controlling their destiny through the beauty of free and fair elections, and safe in the knowledge that they could now live in peace in a vibrant, prosperous and stable society without having to worry about being arbitrarily murdered in the streets based on their religious leanings, all the while providing the U.S. with an abundant supply of cheap oil.

Yeah, Kate, so ... how is that going, by the way?

BONUS GEOGRAPHICAL DUMBASSITUDE: And while Kate continues to worship at the feet of the incomprehensible one, we can amuse ourselves with another of Alan Greenspan's head-scratching droppings of wisdom:

"He [Greenspan] says he felt 'getting Saddam out of there was very important,'...because he was convinced the Iraq dictator wanted to control the Strait of Hormuz, through which a sizable portion of the world's oil passes...He conveyed that view to [Cheney and Rumsfeld]."

Well, OK, except for the tiny detail:



Yeah ... that detail. Sometimes, one wonders if any of these people can find their ass with both hands and a flashlight.

Even assassination can be made more time-efficient.

Blogging Tory Brian Lemon wants to make sure you understand who the real savages are here:

Lemon: The Religion of Peace

What a lovely Generous Act in Honour of Ramadan
"We are calling for the assassination of cartoonist Lars Vilks who dared insult our prophet ... and we announce a reward during this generous month of Ramadan," al Baghdadi said, according to transcripts of Islamic websites. The bounty of $100,000 would be upped to $150,000 if Vilks was ``slaughtered like a lamb," the al-Qaida leader said.

But Brian fails to point out that, while those Muslims may be bloodthirsty barbarians, they're not particularly well-organized. If they're going to call for the occasional fatwa, it would make more sense to not do this one victim at a time, but to collect all that information, with accompanying detail, then put it all up on a web page, with a running tally of who's been conveniently offed. You know ... like this.

See? Now isn't that a real time saver?

War profiteering by any other name ...

This week promises to be busy, so I'm going to point you in the right directions and you'll have to take it from there. If you need to be spoon-fed, well, you know where to go. Let's start here:

Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq
Civilian Number, Duties Are Issues

By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 5, 2006; Page D01

There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield.

And a bit more here:

Silent surge in contractor 'armies'

... Having civilians working in war zones is as old as war itself. But starting with US military action in the Balkans and Colombia in the mid-1990s and accelerating rapidly in Afghanistan and Iraq, the number and activity of contractors has greatly increased. Coming from dozens of countries, hired by hundreds of companies, contractors have seen their numbers rise faster than the Pentagon's ability to track them.

And the latest exciting development:

Iraqis Order Blackwater out of Iraq -- But Will It Leave?

Following a Baghdad shootout yesterday that left at least nine civilians dead, security-contractor giant Blackwater will no longer be permitted to operate in Iraq, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

The Interior Ministry's decision is likely to be a source of friction between the U.S. Embassy and Iraq. Not only does Blackwater guard many important U.S. officials there, but the embassy is unlikely to want a precedent established that allows the Iraqi government to kick out U.S. contractors for excessive use of force.

But what I think is just the bestest part of it all:

"A week ago today, Gen. David H. Petraeus started his rounds on Capitol Hill, reporting that security in Iraq was improving to the point that a small number of troops could begin coming home by year's end.

But 10 days ago, his commanders in Baghdad began advertising for private contractors to work in combat-supply warehouses on U.S. bases throughout Iraq because half the soldiers who had been working in the warehouses were needed for patrols, combat and protection of U.S. forces.

"With the increased insurgent activity, unit supply personnel must continue to pull force protection along with convoy escort and patrol duties," according to a statement of work that accompanied the Sept. 7 request for bidders from Multi-National Force-Iraq."

For some reason, I have this image of an irresistible force and an immovable object ...

P.S. If the Iraqi government says it wants Blackwater out, and the U.S. government says no, that's going to strain that whole definition of Iraqi "sovereignty" just a wee bit, don't you think?