JABbering Stooge

John Kelso is rapidly becoming one of my favorite columnists at the Austin American-Statesman. His Friday column, "Tom DeLay: He would have cut and run at the Alamo" (The dead-trees version carries the headline "Hammer’s scared of being nailed"), ridicules DeLay for his cowardly cutting and running from his re-election campaign against Democratic challenger Nick Lampson. Here’s the money-shot:

Sure, Tom DeLay is a human piñata these days. But he’s been whackin’ his opponents with a stick for candy for quite some time. So now it’s his turn.

I just noticed on my Karl Rove Countup calendar, courtesy of Take Back the Media and other places, that Bush’s rubber-stamp Congress has gone 1000 days without investigating the illegal, treasonous, politically-motivated outing of CIA NOC Valerie Plame. An outing that, if "Scooter" Libby is actually telling the truth this time instead of blowing smoke out his ass to save his own hide, was approved by the Leaker-in-Chief himself.

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Apr. 9, 2006 10:34 AM)

Oh, this is rich. Tom DeLay, the ethically-challenged Dr. Vahzilok of the Christo-Fascist Zombie Brigade who recently announced that he will resign his House seat in June because of possible impending indictment on official corruption charges in relation to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has announced that he will seek to file an ethics complaint against Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney for her assault on the Capitol Police officer who detained her for trying to sneak in to the Longworth House Office Building.

They’ve been having a field day making fun of the ambiguous Homeland Security warning signs over at AMERICAblog. John Aravosis has even resurrected an old website that makes fun of some early images.

In that spirit, AMERICAblog has asked readers to come up with appropriate captions for the following set of images:

Here are mine:

1) No, the Abramoff files are not here. Move along, Citizen.

2) Medical attention works the same way in real life as in an MMORPG: a big symbol appears and you instantly revive in front of a blocky building.

3) Ph34r my cartoon anger!

4) Organic chemistry is bad. It produces a bunch of gibberish symbols that cause bad gas and hurricanes.

5) Look, ma! I’m making this guy choke himself with my evil librul mind control rays and Katrina footage!

6) No hunting or fishing, unless you are Dick Cheney.

7) If the rising sun takes up half the sky, pull over immediately. You’ve been taking too many drugs.

8) Pedophilia in a car gives DHS officials a stiffy.

9) Believing everything PowerLine says is a sign that you are gullible. I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Apr. 5, 2006 4:30 PM)

Via NanceGreggs at Democratic Underground, with some embellishments added:

In the fanfiction subgenre of MST fics, one of the common clichés is to have one of the MSTers respond to the general theme of the piece (or a specific section) by suggesting "worse" ideas/topics for the original author to write about, immediately followed by another MSTer saying something along the lines of "Don’t give him/her any ideas!" For example:

SCIMITAR: Only three things can do this to Ksa.

REI: And they are?

SCIMITAR: Child porn, bad spelling, and Sakuya.

RANMA: Well, I haven’t seen Peter this mad since Nintendo canceled bringing `Earthbound 2′ to the states.

RYOGA: Well, at least Tank cop hasn’t made any lemons with Sakuya in the-URK!

(Ksawarrior is now holding Ryoga by the neck, floating three feet off the ground.)

KSA(really P.O.ed): Don’t give him ideas. (Drops Ryoga, and returns to his seat.)

In that vein, it seems that the UK Register has done exactly that in publishing an April Fool’s Day gag article suggesting that President Bush, as part of the War on Terrorism, was preparing an executive order preventing him from relinquishing power on Jan. 20, 2009.

Grist for the conspiracy mill? Under ordinary circumstances, maybe. However, as some astute Bartcoppers pointed out, there are a couple of items that, coupled with the date of publication, make it clear that this was printed as a goof:

• The URL for the article, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/01/gwot_cha/, is not one that falls in the Register’s normal directory structure for serious articles about events here in the U.S. - read the directory name, "gwot_cha," fast enough, and it almost sounds like "gotcha!"

• Many of the names cited as sources in the article are names of actors who have starred in Three Stooges short films, such as Christine McIntyre, Jock Mahoney, Philip Van Zandt and Bud Jamison.

Poorly though out April Fool’s gag? Soitanly! N’yuck! N’yuck! N’yuck! N’yuck! However, given the amount of criminality coming out of this administration, seeing them actually put it into practice is not out of the realm of possibility.

Please don’t give the Bushies any ideas, UK Register editors!

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Apr. 4, 2006 3:29 AM)

The fine folks at Sadly, No! (2005 Koufax Award runner-up for Most Humorous Blog) bring us this choice bit of wingnuttery from the pen keyboard of Fred Hutchison over at Alan Keyes’ asylum of whackjobs and conspiracy theorists known as "Renew America." I thought that I would add a few comments of my own.

First off, a bit of hypocrisy on the part of Herr Huchison:

Homosexuals are difficult to categorize and analyze

They’re difficult to categorize and analyze? Yet here you are, "categorizing and analyzing" them (though "caricaturing and demonizing" would be more accurate).

Secondly, regarding his "7 Steps to Become T3h 3vil!", all seven steps apply to Reich-wingnuts to varying degrees:

1) The first floor down into the darkness involves denial that one is a sinner.

The Christo-Fascist Zombie Brigade (© 2004-2006 Marc Maron) is guilty of this one 24/7. They believe that simply because they and they alone "follow Christ," they are without sin.

2) From the stage-one denials, the journey into darkness proceeds downwards to a second denial–the denial that evil exists.

The right denies that evil exists on the right - that’s the exclusive property of lefties.

3) Then comes the descent into the delusion that those who fight evil are themselves evil.

This goes hand-in-hand with the above: because they delude themselves into believing that only lefties are t3h 3vil!!!1!, "libruls" are evil for opposing evil on the right.

4) Next comes the hatred of those who fight evil.

See LGF, FreeRepublic, RedState.com, etc.

5) The fifth floor down into darkness is to believe–or to be willing to tell the lie–that evil things are good, and good things are evil.

Things the right calls good: Torture, killing abortion providers, killing homosexuals, killing liberals, killing Muslims, pollution, etc.

Things the right calls evil: Being homosexual, women being anywhere other than barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, being a liberal, being a non-Christian, etc.

6) The sixth stage is to hate the victims of evil or to hate those whom the good guys are protecting.

See Pope Benedict Arnold I on the child abuse scandal. See also the vilification of the ACLU for their defense of homosexuals.

7) The seventh stage of evil is serial killing, terrorism, and genocide.

Three words: The Bush Doctrine.

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Apr. 3, 2006 6:04 PM)

I was amused by a letter to the editor in the yesterday’s edition of the Austin American-Statesman (unfortunately, it was only in the dead-trees version, not the online version). It went thusly:

Follow the leader

Re: William Rusher’s March 16 column, "Throwing in the towel":

Rusher concedes that our invasion of Iraq was based on faulty intelligence; that the administration’s occupation strategy was flawed; that William Buckley’s assessment of Bush’s failure "may" be correct; and that terrorist bombings and sectarian violence constitute bad news.

But Rusher suggests that we ignore bad news. After all, factual events are only reported because journalists hate Bush. Failure in Iraq will not be caused by lack of leadership, but only because of Americans’ unwillingness to support that lack of leadership. President Bush is Buzz Lightyear, and we are expected to follow him to infinity…and beyond.

Victor (REDACTED)
Austin

Certainly puts a new spin on that codpiece-enhanced flight suit that Bush wore on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, doesn’t it?

Indeed. (And disturbing, if true.)

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Mar. 20, 2006 2:53 AM)

Last week, in a speech at Georgetown University, former Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cautioned students against condoning "those who would strong-arm the judiciary," warning that such tactics would cause the United States to "[fall] into a dictatorship."

That’s great, Justice O’Connor, but it would be nice if you actually practiced what you preached. By declaring your intention to only retire under a Republican administration, and saying "that’s terrible" of the early call of Florida for Gore in the 2000 election, and not subsequently recusing yourself from Bush v. Gore, you personally handed the reins of power over to those who would do just that - turn this once-great country into a dictatorship.

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Mar. 20, 2006 2:29 AM)

While we’re adding entries to the Wingnut Debate Dictionary (They can debate? News to me.), allow me to add a couple of my own:

1.)The Liberalcaust: eliminationist rhetoric that blames The Left for all the problems of the world from The Fall of Man to male impotence and suggests that the only way to set things right (in more ways than one) is to "kill all the liberals." Also known as "The Final Solution to the Liberal Problem."

2.)Liberalenfrei: the state of the world after the Liberalcaust is implemented.

3.)Ignoratio Hovindi: the tendency to claim you’re going to give a particular argument against evolution before going off on wild tangents that have nothing to do with the argument you’re trying to make, interspersed with creationist book-hawking. From Hovind, Kent.

4.)Plurium Hovindum: the tendency, both written and oral debate, to offer without proof multiple rapid-fire assertions in the hopes that the respondant won’t have enough time to answer all of them, making the arguer the winner by default. Also known as "Cheney’s Shotgun" or "The Gish Gallop." From Hovind, Kent.

(See original post on the old blog here - originally posted Mar. 9, 2006 5:49 AM)