JABbering Stooge

Shorter Dennis Prager:

Liberals’ Desire To Be Loved Is Their Achilles’ Heel

Some liberals are decent people, despite their lack of morals and their hatred of America, but their flaws outweigh their virtues and therefore it’s okay to shoot them like rabid dogs in the streets.

* Text for “shorter” shamelessly stolen from zsa’s comment at Sadly, No!

You know, I just couldn’t let the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina go without posting some news about disaster-relief related cronyism and corruption.

As I’ve mentioned before, my mother is a church administrator for a local baptist church. After Katrina, she also started doing volunteer work for Texas Interfaith/Interagency Disaster Response (TIDR). It was through her work for TIDR that she learned of this official Letter of Protest sent by National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) to the Department of Health and Human Services, and the subsequent response rejecting the protest out-of-hand.

Apparently, DHHS sent out a RFP for case management services in times of disaster that was structured in such a way as to effectively preclude participation by volunteer and nonprofit organizations - probably in favor of oh, say, Halliburton and Blackwater Security. They’ve done such a bang-up job so far, why not turn everything over to them?

You know, as much as conservatives like to claim that only laissez-faire capitalism will provide everyone with ponies, unicorns, rainbows and candy, they have this disturbing penchant for promoting policies that are anything but free market and, rather conveniently, benefit their oligarchical/monopolistic patrons. Often to the detriment of society as a whole.

It’s official. America is in danger of losing its status as second-to-none in just about every measurable category. First, the heavy industry sector, such as steel production, moved overseas to reduce costs. Labor-intensive manufacturing followed soon after, for much the same reason - because sweatshops are so much better than good old American ingenuity, I guess. As a result, we’re no longer the world’s number one producer of manufactured goods.

Then problems started cropping up in our financial sector. As with industry, there was a steady drip, drip, drip of scandal after scandal, from the Savings and Loan crisis (which culminated in the Keating Five) to the dot-com bust to Enron and now the subprime mortgage crisis. It didn’t help matters that the European stock market closed higher than its American counterpart for the first time since World War I back in early April.

Now, we’re losing our intellectual edge.

Good riddance, Fredo. Don’t let the door hit ‘ya where the Good Lord split ‘ya.

Wait. What’s that President I-Like-To-Use-The-Constitution-As-Toilet-Paper? You have something to say about this?

It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work

Would that be the important work of spying on your critics? Or would it be the important work of purging the Justice Department of people who care more about law and order than a permanent Rethuglican majority?

because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.

No, Mr. President. His “good name” was “dragged through the mud” because he was a lawbreaking prick who at every single opportunity shat upon the very Constitution that he was sworn to uphold. And at your behest, I might add.

For no less than political reasons, I might point out.

Pot to kettle: You’re black!

Shorter Expelled:

Okay, I’ll admit, P. Z. Myers came up with the idea first. I just thought I’d give you a little tease to the topic I’ll be blogging about tomorrow.

In case you’re wondering, I saw this graffiti on the back of a restroom at the end of our bike tour down Haleakala, and just had to get my picture taken with it.

And no, I didn’t write it.

Gwen Stefani Dresses Down

Like, it’s sooooo unfair that Muslims are better able to intimidate those skank-whore-sluts who prance around in nothing but their birthday suits into performing in burqas than we are! Oh, I know! Maybe if we sent them some suspicious packages or left threatening messages on their answering machines! Hey, anybody know the number of that, like, dude with that ginormous array of guns and bombs and the fake U.N. IDs? Or maybe those militia dudes in Alabama! What? They’re all in the pokey? Bummer.

Hat tip, the fine folks at Sadly, No!

Remember how the Army has been so hard up for cannon fodder recruits that they’d reduced the entry requirements so low that skinheads and Neo-Nazis are now infiltrating the ranks?

Well, now it appears that those chickens are coming home to roost, as the Pentagon is now investigating a National Guard general’s aide for putting up a nakedly racist website that appears to advocate mass murder of undesirables. In other words, a “conservative humor” website.

The aide has been suspended, and the website mostly expunged, with the exception of a too-little-too-late disclaimer stating that the site reflected only the aide’s personal thoughts and opinions, and should in no way be conflated with the National Guard as a whole.

You know, if he ever gets out from under the glare of media scrutiny, I know of a couple of people who would be all to happy to help him run his website or have him on as a regular contributor:

It travels between the continents like trade winds.*

Case in point, the Japanese man who mailed his severed finger to the offices of the ruling right-wing Liberal Democratic Party in protest of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s refusal to visit Yasukuni Shrine on the anniversary of Japan’s surrender, which marked the end of World War II.

Yoshihiro Tanjo, a 54-year-old member of an ultra-right-wing group in Okayama, western Japan, was arrested on charges of threatening Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party, a prefectural police spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. He said no other details could be immediately released.

Kyodo News agency said Tanjo mailed his severed left pinky finger, a DVD showing the finger being chopped, and a protest statement to the LDP headquarters on Aug. 16, the day after the anniversary of the war’s end.

I for one, hope that Abe will not be intimidated by this thug, and will continue to avoid the controversial shrine. Though that would be expecting a lot from someone who had the JGSDF spy on anti-war groups.

* The title and first line were adapted from a line in the Babylon 5 TV movie “In the Beginning,” which is about the Earth-Minbari War.

Another example of how nutroots are completely mad

Uh…huh huh huh…huh huh huh…Libruls R st00pidz. LOLZ.

I kinda have to agree with SN-er Legalize:

I love it when wingers play the LOL-libz-r-st00pit-and-dont-now-smrt-w0rdz game, whilst simultaneously (a) rambling on incoherently about a non-existent topic, and (b) getting pissy about how everyone makes fun them for being fucking fuckity fuck-wits.

Heh. Indeed.

Sadly, the “Let’s look down our noses at libruls” theme wasn’t limited to Mr. Huston, as Our Lady of the Internment Camps did the same yesterday, using a recent study about the reading habits of Americans as the vehicle on which to metaphorically do repeated donuts over liberals. (Note: I’ll be putting that study in a larger context later.)

Quoth the MalKKKin:

And then there’s this:

Who are the 27 percent of people the AP-Ipsos poll found hadn’t read a single book this year? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women fit that category. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.

No indication on what these non-readers’ political affiliations are.

Translation: I’ll bet they’re st00pid libruls and t3h evil MSM is covering it up! Dur h’yuck! H’yuck! H’yuck!

And then her readers pile on:

I read one less book than the average liberal because I also fall into the “gainfully employed” category. It’s easy to read an extra book a year with all that government assistance.

Translation: All libruls are indolent welfare-queens with 12,432,452,346,235,423 kids and 24,345,754,124 Caddillacs!

Besides, reading Zinn, Chomsky and Churchill isn’t exactly the path to erudition.

Translation: Librul authors R even st00pidzer than their reedurs! H’yuck! H’yuck! H’yuck!

I haven’t met many well-read liberals. I have met a lot of pretentious liberals who think that mastering the lefty talking points demonstrates their intellectual superiority, but their knowledge of their positions is bumper sticker thin. Not only do they not read books, they don’t read magazines or newspapers, nor do they watch the news on TV. They get their current events from comedy routines on The Daily Show.

Uh. Huh. At the risk of making this an academic pissing contest, let me introduce you to a “well-read librul:” myself. I’ve got a BS in Information Systems with a minor in Japanese - from Carnegie frickkin’ Mellon, no less. In the last year, I’ve read everything from wingnut-revenge-fanstasies-disguised-as-novels to science fiction to serious policy analysis to textbooks on operating systems and artificial intelligence. I even finally got around to reading 1984, something I’d been wanting to do for a while now. I read the newspaper. And not just the local fishwrap, mind you. As far as economics goes, Herb fucking Simon taught at Carnegie Mellon, and even gave a guest lecture in one of my classes. His writings on economics were required reading in many of the courses I took at CMU. I could tell you things about bounded rationality, satisficing and Homo economicus that would make your head spin. But never mind that. I have the temerity to hold an opinion to the left of Atilla the Hun, so I must be stupid. *headdesk*

Note to Michelle: if you’re going be a WATB about liberal stereotypes of conservatives, it might be a bad idea to fling conservative stereotypes of liberals around.

As George Carlin once put it, “Let’s not have a double-standard, here. One standard will do just fine!”