JABbering Stooge

Via MSRNC:

U.S. aims to ‘re-Americanize’ Afghanistan

Because "Afghanistanization" has worked soooooo well thus far.

Sidebar: Sometimes I wonder if Bush is running this war as if he were playing the “Bean Counter Challenge” for X-COM.

Remember when Wal-Mart sued one of its former employees for medical expenses incurred when she was off-duty? Remember how, under immense pressure from Keith Olbermann and the liberal blogosphere, the company sent out a letter on April 1st apologizing for lacking even the most vestigial sense of decency, eventually backing down on their claim to all the money in the trust fund set up to pay for Debbie Shank’s ongoing medical care? Well, it turns out that that letter had some Super Ultra Fine Print©™® written on it that read “April Fools!” Wal-Mart is dragging its feet over handing over control of the trust fund to the Shanks.

Typical money-grubbing soulless bastards. Fuck ‘em.

LA-LA-LA-LA!! I CAN’T HEAR BARACK OBAMA DENOUNCING HIS ANTI-AMERICAN, RACIST PASTOR!!! LA-LA-LA-LA!!!!!

Nearly two weeks after starting, I am now slightly less than two-thirds of the way through Monkey Girl. Although it’s been a very good book so far, I do have two complaints:

• Whoever did the copy editing for the book needs to be fired for incompetence. I have found several typos, copy/paste errors and other grammatical atrocities that wouldn’t pass muster in a college newspaper (especially the further I got into the book) — but given my experience with the college newspaper editing process*, I guess that would depend on the college newspaper.

• Humes twice makes the false claim that Bill O’Reilly works for CNN. First on page 211:

  Many residents of Dover began to feel a similar urge to run. They had liked seeing their neighbors quoted in The New York Times and seeing Dover featured as some sort of buckle on the Bible Belt on Bill O’Reilly’s talk show on Cable News Network, but once the novelty wore off, it was hard to feel good about where all this notoriety was taking the township.

  And then he did it again on page 224:

  This would prove to be an uphill battle, as the confusion — if that’s what it was — was national in scope. Within days after the lawsuit was filed, Bill O’Reilly, CNN’s most popular and highest-paid pundit, dedicated a segment to the controversy in Dover. He likened the ACLU to the Taliban, “infringing on the rights of all American students” by trying to keep ID out of schools.

  Note to Humes: Bill O’Reilly works for Fox News, not CNN. In fact, O’Reilly has never worked for CNN, to my knowledge. And given how frequently and vociferously The Lord of the Loofahs denigrates the rival network, it’s pretty safe to say that his head would explode if he ever discovered that someone claimed that he was employed by Ted Turner’s brainchild.

As I said before, in spite of those two issues, Monkey Girl has thus far proven a very enlightening and valuable read. Perhaps the most interesting parts of the book is the rather unflattering portrait painted of one of the key school board members at the time the decision to put ID in the curriculum was made: Angie Yingling. She was so clueless about what ID is, and so cowed by Bill Buckingham, that she flip-flopped more than a landed catfish on this one issue. Her voting record throughout the course of the controversy was so inconsistent that at one point, my reaction to her was “Angie Yingling? More like Angie Ding-a-ling!”

* I’d put up a link to one of my editorials at the University Star here to illustrate my point about college newspapers, but the paper’s website seems to be down for maintenance at the moment. Incidentally, in searching for the article in question on T3h Google™, I discovered that my good friend Bartcop linked to it. The title of the article, “Christian Right use religion for personal gain,” was not mine. My title for it was “Loathe Thy Neighbor.”

On his radio show yesterday, KPHX host Jeff Farias referred to the media shitstorm over Rev. Wright’s latest comments as “the Dean Scream all over again.” I had to laugh when I heard that, because I said the same thing when the Rev. Wright controversy first exploded onto the stage of Our Stupid National Discourse™. However, I think Farias is being a bit naïve in thinking that Obama’s near-total break from Wright yesterday will finally put this issue to bed, given how much the media has revealed itself to be totally unhinged with regard to Obama.

Sidebar: Ever since we lost the Austin Air America affiliate, I’ve had to console myself by streaming the Phoenix affiliate.

What Times is it?

Peggy Noonan deserves a Pulizter for questioning Obama’s patriotism by virtue of his being insufficiently reverent of noted anti-Semite Henry Ford!

Via Glennzilla.

* Assuming this was even written by the NBC Nightly News anchor at all. The wording and rhetoric used are so out of character for Williams’ on-screen persona that some would suspect that an intern with right-wing leanings or a wingnut hacker wrote it. Then again, if it turns out that those are indeed Williams’ true feelings, it would certainly explain a lot.

His latest column is available here, and it’s a good one. For the record, the Miami Herald’s title is “Reject intolerance cloaked in faith”. For me, the money quote is this:

Some did, at least. Ours is still an era wherein war, hatred and intolerance often wear a clerical collar. As Lawson puts it, “Much of Christianity in the United States has been more influenced by violence and sexism and racism and greed than by the teachings of Jesus.”

Indeed.

* With apologies to former ESPN sportscaster Dan Patrick.

While we’re on the subject of guilt by association, let’s look at the friends and associates of The Human Talking Points Memo™ — Sean Hannity. It was Hannity, after all, who was instrumental in the political rehabilitation of Randall Terry — the former head of the terrorist organization Operation Rescue — during the Terri Schiavo case. Mind you, this is the same Randall Terry who said this about the appropriate government for America:

Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…. If a Christian voted for Clinton, he sinned against God. It’s that simple…. Our goal is a Christian Nation… we have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want Pluralism. We want theocracy. Theocracy means God rules. I’ve got a hot flash. God rules.

And let’s not forget about Hannity’s good friend Hal Turner — the known neo-Nazi who was a regular caller to Hannity’s radio show in its early days and was known for calling for the deaths of illegal immigrants and making nakedly racist remarks about African-Americans. He also took an unhealthy amount of glee in the murder of the husband and mother of Judge Joan Lefkow, among other horrors.

Naturally, Hannity has denied knowing Turner, evidence — and Turner’s own admission that Hannity and he were friends — be damned.

And yet, Hannity sees himself as such a superior paragon of moral virtues that he feels justified in constantly condemning Obama for his associations with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weather Underground member William Ayers — even going so far as to feed George Stephanopoulos a planted question with which to smear Obama.

Nice.

Chris,

We need to talk. We liberals have suspected for some time now that you aren’t particularly enamored of anyone to the left of Pat Buchanan. We were dismayed, but hardly surprised at your naked misogyny — not just for Senator Clinton, but for just about any woman who fancied herself as worth more than spending all her time barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

But nothing could have prepared the American people for the darkness in your heart that has been revealed in the weeks since Senator Obama became the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. It’s not just the unhealthy obsession with his bowling score; with how he handles himself in your average Greasy Spoon™; it’s not even the context-free, fact-free innuendos about “bittergate”, the lapel pin non-issue, or even Obama’s (rather distant) association with former Weather Underground member William Ayers — though that last bit is itself worthy of special criticism. No, I’m talking about the issue you and others like you in the “liberal” media are constantly hanging around Obama’s neck like a South African flaming tire: one Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

If I could point to any particular episode of Hardball as an especially flagrant example of tarring Obama with the “scary black pastor” smear, it would have to be last Thursday Monday*, when you devoted most of the show to paint Obama’s long-time pastor as “an issue” that hurts Obama. Not once did you make any mention of Rev. Wright’s honorable service in the United States Marine Corps and the United States Navy — service that he interrupted his collegiate studies for; service that lead him to be a member of LBJ’s personal medical team. Not once did you even attempt to note that one of the YouTube clips for which Rev. Wright became controversial was so horribly ripped from context as to make him seem irredeemably anti-American. Instead, you proceeded to assert, on several occasions (and not just the Thursday edition of Hardball) that the comments for which he became radioactive for Obama were the sum total of every single one of his sermons over the 30-plus years that he has been preaching. Even though Wright himself has said that the vast majority of his work, and the work of the church that he served for so long, was focused on the very things Jesus talked about — serving the poor and giving comfort to the afflicted. (Here’s a question for you to answer honestly, if you can: who knows best the content of Rev. Wright’s sermons over the course of his career — him, or you?)

And that’s not the worst of it, either. Your “crazy pastor alert” twaddle has been horrendously one-sided. Teflon John McCain, who you so lovingly lobbed softballs at two weeks ago, has not one, but two “crazy pastor issues” to deal with — assuming that you and the rest of the “liberal” media can quiet the thrill in your legs at the mere sight of McCain long enough to inquire about them.

Rev. John Hagee has called the Catholic Church “The Great Whore of Revelation.” The Catholic Church, Chris. Your church. Have you nothing to say in defense of your church? Or, as always seems to be the case with your politics, is blatant Catholic-bashing only okay if you’re a Republican?

And that isn’t the extent of Hagee’s obscene comments, either. He has blamed the Jews for the Holocaust and made other borderline anti-Semitic remarks. Worse yet, he has blamed Katrina on New Orleans for the crime of treating homosexuals as human beings. And as if that weren’t enough, when given the opportunity to retract or revise those comments by right-wing radio host Dennis Prager, Hagee essentially said, “Hell, no! I’m going to stay the course!”

Nor is Hagee the only “crazy pastor problem” hiding in Teflon John’s closet. Enter one Rev. Rod Parsley. Parsley has been referred to by no less than the Arizona Senator himself as his “spiritual guide.” And yet, Parsley has had the audacity to claim that the sole purpose of the founding of America was not to establish a modern democracy in the world, but to destroy Islam. Parsley openly refers to himself as a “Christocrat” and has compared reproductive rights advocates to Nazis. How is this in any way better or less “wacky” than Wright’s “God damn America” comments — a sentiment shared by no less than the late Jerry Falwell in the wake of 9/11.

John McCain has openly, almost eagerly, sought — and received — the endorsement of both of these men. Yet have you spent even one-billionth of one percent of the time you spent attacking Obama for Rev. Wright and William Ayers raking John McCain over the coals for seeking the endorsement of the likes of Hagee and Parsley? Hell no!

So tell us the truth, Chris, is all of this pent-up hatred for Obama because you’re a closeted racist, or because you’re a right-wing tool?

* UPDATE (April 29, 2008 2:45 PM): Matthews was even more egregious in his Obama-bashing yesterday, if you can believe it.

Senator Eight Houses on Obama:

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Sunday called Democratic rival Barack Obama insensitive to poor people and out of touch on economic issues.

So says the man who owns eight houses and uses his beer heiress wife’s private jet to travel to campaign events.

Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet pot.