JABbering Stooge

The big story this weekend was conservative bloggers going apeshit over the New York Times’ supposed "leak" of the locations of the summer homes of Vice Presedent Dick "Go Fsck Yourself" Cheney and SecDef Donald "[The WMD’s are] in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat" Rumsfeld. Malkin and her ilk, of course, insist that this is in retaliation for "mere criticism" of the revelation of SWIFT’s anti-terrorism program (that SWIFT itself made public).

Never mind that Rumsfeld gave his permission for the photos to be taken and the article to be written.

Never mind that conservatives’ favorite news sources, Faux "News" and "News" Max had printed much the same article months before (which is proably why Rumsfeld gave his permission).

Never mind that the New York Times ran a similar, but more detailed, piece on former President Clinton (whom conservative luminary Ann Coulter famously issued a fatwa against - "Impeach or assassinate" were her words, I recall).

And indeed, the rabid righties are following through with calls to assassinate those "responsible" for the article in question.

Meanwhile, Malkin pretends to be above the fray by bloviating with selective outrage about lefty disclosures of bad MapQuest directions to the abodes of various and sundry conservatives.

Okay then, Mrs. Malkin. If you want to chide the left about selective outrage, let’s see you condemn the following:

1. In response to a Chuy’s manager whose only crime was carding Jenna and Tonic Barbara Bush in accordance with TABC regulations, the oh-so-rational members of Free Republic posted the manager’s "address, date of birth, drivers license and registration information, physical description, and even birth information about her infant child" (one example thread here). This happened in my backyard, "The People’s Republic of Austin," so you can understand my outrage.

2. Malkin herself posted the contact information of some UC - Santa Cruz students and sicced her rabid hatriot readers on them after a protest that ended in the expulsion of military recruiters from campus (even after learning that they were receiving death threats - her response was to whine about having her personal information posted and to repost a link to the offending information).

3. Finally, we have the Anthrax mailer from immediately after 9/11. Of particular note in this case are two things. First, the strain of anthrax used in the attack came from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, MD. The level of clearance required for someone to get their hands on a sample implies that the terrorist had connections inside the facility. This suggests that the attacker was a home-grown terrorist, rather than an al-Qaeda operative. Secondly, the attacks were specifically targeted at two of the rabid right’s chief targets: Democratic Senators and the "librul" media.
   

Oh wait. Let me guess, those are examples of righties being unhinged, so they don’t count in Malkin’s book.

Oh, but it gets better: Malkin’s calling for a "protest" outside the NYT Washington Bureau. In light of how recent conservative "protests" have turned out, I wouldn’t be surprised to find someone has torched/firebombed the NYT offices by this time tomorrow.

Little noticed amidst the impending celebration of our nation’s 230th birthday was the ten-year anniversary of the theatrical release of one of the best little B-movies of all time: Independence Day (ID4). In honor of that milestone, I would like to take note of some things I thought of while watching the movie for the n-th time.

1. The little irony noted on Wikipedia - Osama’s Wrecking Krew was able to pull off what the aliens couldn’t. However, it should be noted in the aliens’ defense that they had targeted the Empire State Building. As such, the WTC, while still in the blast radius, was far enough away that it did not receive a fatal blow. Given the ease with which the invaders wiped out the Empire State Building, the White House and other targets in the initial attack, I have no doubt that had the aliens picked their overgrown phallic targets differently, it wouldn’t have taken 102 minutes for the WTC to fall to pieces.

2. Mae Whitman, who played President Whitmore’s daughter, is now fully legal. She was last seen doing voice acting for the anime series Avatar: The Last Airbender and Kingdom Hearts II.

3. President Whitmore is most likely a Democrat. I say this for three reasons: 1) He served in Gulf War I, unlike many of the flag-bukkake fetishists in the GOP 2) The McLaughlin Group, most notably, Morton Kondracke, are seen constantly bad-mouthing him in the early part of the film, and 3) the film was released while Clinton was president, so a reasonable suspension of disbelief would lead one to conclude that the President in any film form the time period, unless otherwise specified, was a Democrat.

4. Assuming they survived the initial attack, the likes of Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Pillz-E, Michael Savage, Neal Boortz, etc., etc., etc. would use every opportunity available to blame the alien attack on Clinton’s Almighty Penis.

5. The above pundits would cheer the likely destruction of the New York Times by the aliens in their initial attack.

6. The above pundits would also blame the Los Angeles city destroyer’s shift in focus to Area 51 on the "treasonous outing of that military installation’s location" by the New York Times. Never mind the fact that the NYT was likely incinerated in the initial attack. Most especially, never mind the fact that it is quite explicitly stated that the aliens are powerful telepaths, and could pluck the relevant information from the mind(s) of the President, SecDef, and/or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as easily as you or I would pluck a grape from the vine.