JABbering Stooge

Yes, Bill-O. I said “holiday.” What’re you going to do, sic “Fox Security™©®” on me?

Anyway, in about half an hour, we’ll be driving to Phoenix to celebrate Christmas with my brother. I expect to be back on New Year’s Eve, at the latest, so posting will be light to non-existent for the duration.

So until then, Merry Christmahanukwanzafestisolstieid!

It’s official. Today marks the 56^th Friedman Unit since I came into the world. Let me just say: Wow! What a ride it’s been. And it ain’t over yet!

Israel, or at least the Israeli wingnut Likud-Kadima coalition that’s running things in Israel at the moment, really seems to have a wild hair up their collective asses over the fact that any Muslim is allowed to live. We’ve already seen them try to discredit the NIE that threw cold water on their hard-on for war with Iran. And now they’re amping up the rhetoric, calling the NIE “faulty” and effectively saying that any attempt to prevent them from turning Iran into so much radioactive glass could spark a regional war.

As if the situation in the Middle East couldn’t get any worse, MSNBC is reporting that Israel is continuing to put into place more restrictive policies regarding its Arab citizens - policies that increasingly mirror Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Racial Purity Laws. Basically, just take the section “Jews under the Nazis (1930s-1040)” from the Wikipedia article on the history of Jews in Germany, change the dates, replace all references to “Jews” with “Arabs,” replace all references to “Aryans” with “Jews” and replace all references to “Germans” with “Israelis,” and you have a rough idea of what the Israeli wingnuts are trying to do.

My response to the Israeli wingnuts who seem to think that the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim: “In order to be free, you had to learn to fight. No one questions that, but you’ve over-compensated. You are like abused children, who have grown big enough to do it to someone else, as if that will somehow balance the scales. It won’t. If you let your anger cloud your judgment, it will destroy you.”

Here are three recent stories that give lie to the claim by wingnuts that conservative Christians are God’s gift to mankind and Muslims are incurably violent reprobates who need to be shoved into human-sized microwaves.

• The War on The War on Christmas Turns Bloody

  Culture Warriors on the Q train in New York beat the snot out of Jews after hurling anti-Semitic slurs at the victims. What did the Jewish passengers do to deserve an American-style Kristallnacht? Merely saying “Happy Hanukkah” in response to being greeted with “Merry Christmas.”

  Bill O’Reilly would be proud.

  And there’s a bonus feature to this story guaranteed to make conservatives’ heads a-splode: a Muslim student from Bangladesh came to the aid of the Jews - earning a shiner for his efforts.

• Shorter African Conservative Christians: She Turned Me Into a Newt!

  Remember how wingnuts have jumped on a series of stories out of Africa about Muslims blowing their tops at any actions they didn’t approve of - naming teddy bears “Mohammed,” beauty pageants and minority groups that the Sudanese government gave the green light to exterminate? Well, now we’ve got conservative Christians in Africa channeling the “Witch” scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The only difference this time is that instead of targeting uppity bitches who don’t know their place (barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen), these “Christians” are targeting kids. Why isn’t The Loofah King, self-appointed protector of the kids, on this case?

  Somewhere, Jesus is weeping.

• Creationist gets Five Years in Australian Prison for Stabbing Evolution Supporter

  And you thought the TEA forcing Chris Comer to resign for the thoughtcrime of forwarding an informational e-mail or the Institute for Creation Research getting the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to give them a legitimate accreditation was bad. What’s worse, the sentence was so lenient because the judge in the case called the accused “a person of good character” and that the crime was “a complete aberration.”

  To be fair, copious amounts of alcohol had been consumed prior to the fatal altercation, but that doesn’t absolve Mr. York of culpability for his crime.

So the next time some wingnut tries to feed you the “Conservative Christians GOOD! Muslims BAD!” line, don’t hesitate to call them on their bullshit.

See his take on the Chris Comer firing ouster here. The money paragraph:

Other details that question intelligent design include flu season, Ding Dongs, the intersection of Sixth and Lamar, cedar fever, low-flow toilets and University of Texas offensive coordinator Greg Davis. I’m sure you could add some non-intelligent design features that you have seen around here.

I could add Governor Goodhair, State Sen. Dan Patrick, toll roads and Mayor Will Winn’s potty-mouthed tirades about Austin traffic, just off the top of my head.

The Golden Compass is #1 at the box office!

Via Crooks and Liars: CIA destroys tapes showing GWOT suspects being waterboarded.

Add yet another count of obstruction of justice to the crimes this administration is guilty of.

ImpeachSTRONG

Keith Olbermann’s special comment on Bush and the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran:

As always, Crooks and Liars has the transcript.

Ugh…

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials, who’ve been warning that Iran would soon pose a nuclear threat to the world, reacted angrily Tuesday to a new U.S. intelligence finding that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 and to date hasn’t resumed trying to produce nuclear weapons.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak directly challenged the new assessment in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the new finding wouldn’t deter Israel or the United States from pressing its campaign to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapons capability.

Who died and made Ehud Olmert President of the United States?

The cost of Bush’s “industry, regulate thyself” policies continues to escalate. Thanks to the utter eviscerating of the Consumer Products Safety Commission, toxic toys are still getting through in alarming numbers. Meanwhile, GE is recalling 92,000 combination microwave/conventional ovens because they present a fire hazard.

Geez, what has happened to business in America? When did minimizing cost, especially at the expense of good corporate citizenship, become such an obsession among the MBA crowd?

You know, Atrios has been referring to the subprime mortgage crisis as the “Big Shitpile.” This is starting to resemble a Toxic Shitpile.