Category: Stupid

The IOC: The First Bastards Up Against the Wall When the Revolution Comes

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The IOC just meekly assented to allowing the Chinese government to filter internet access for the reporters at the games, despite promising otherwise just weeks ago.

What a bunch of losers.

That being said, ShaMao’er asks the question that immediately comes to mind, “The same old question… why are they so dumb?”

Meaning the Chinese government. They had to know that this would be found out in short order, and they had to know that the consequences of being found out would be worse than anything that a reporter pulled off Amnesty International’s web site.

My only guess is that is about a need to be in control trumped their need to get good foreign press.

A number of analyses have suggested that the primary audience that is being targeted by the PRC for the Olympics is internal, not external, and that would explain this action.

Why Amy Sullivan is a Complete Idiot

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Amy Sullivan has always been a one note pundit: The Democratic party must reach out to religious voters, and protect them from those evil radical secularists who would make fun of them.

The problem there is very basic: there are no radical secularists in the leadership of the Democratic party.

For that matter, I believe that there has been one atheist who has ever served as a member of Congress, so she is talking about people who do not exist.

Now, she is prattling on about how Obama is making overt evangelical religiosity work for him.

First, she claims that Obama has “pivoted to announce that an Obama administration would fix, expand and elevate the faith-based initiative”.

Except, of course, if these organizations take federal money, Obama won’t allow them to discriminate on the basis of religion, and they will be subject to federal accounting and auditing standards, which has always been the case until Bush set up his own “faith based initiative.”

The purpose of Bush’s program was to ensure that there was neither fiscal accountability nor discrimination protection, so it is a complete refutation of Bush’s program.

In fact, what is implied is that he will sweep up massive numbers of white evangelicals in so doing, even though the religious right demand that they be subject to no fiscal accountability and be given the right to discriminate.

The core message of the politicized right wing evangelical is hostility to integration and to minorities.

Similarly, when she lauds Bush’s “Compassionate Conservativism”, she does not understand, or more likely refuses to understand that this is a dog whistle to the religious right, referring to Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, which says that “true compassion” is not giving charity, because, “Compassion means tough love in which those who give must demand self-help from those who receive,” which means let “black babies starve”.

The religious Evangelical does not begin with Roe v. Wade and abortion, bur rather with Green v. Connally, which revoked the tax exempt status of discriminatory private religious schools.

So we can run a poll on religious affiliation vs. candidate support, and you can see that Obama is polling lower than either Kerry in 2004 or Gore in 2000. (h/t Talkleft on the poll)

Barack Obama has no chance of picking up white right wing Evangelical voters, and the votes he picks up from black Evangelicals and Hispanic Catholics are because the Republican party is implacably hostile to them.

Amy Sullivan is a one trick pony, but her pony is a dog, and I’ll call her my “Wanker of the Day”.

What the F&^% is Wrong With the Obama Veep Team?!?!

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Ann Veneman??? They are floating the name of Ann Veneman as a name under consideration?

She’s a Republican, she prevented farmers from testing their cows for Mad Cow disease, and she is a former member of the Bush administration.

These folks want a former Bushie as Vice President?

Obama needs to get whoever is leaking this to STFU, and to get whoever suggested this to STFU too.

BTW, it turns out that The Nation is all over this, and goes into some more detail, calling Veneman “uniquely awful”:

  • Her political strength is in California, which is redundant.
  • The rural and farmer communities distrust her, and in fact booed her when she visited “fly over” country.
  • Her background is as a vociferously absolutist supporter of free trade deals.
  • Her tenure as Ag Secretary was, “strictly pro-agribusiness, pro-pesticide company, pro-pharmaceutical.”
  • Is a big supporter of Frankenfoods.

Additionally, I think that some of Obama’s staff miss the bigger point: While his current supporters will ALL vote for him, this is the sort of choice that would demoralize them.

Note that the original source is Politico, and so is a bit suspect though.

Epic Fail: Condoleeza Edition

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Condoleeza Rice, once more attempting to make the world look like it did before the USSR collapsed, has failed again, this time in attempting to form a NATO style security union.

In 1992, she suggested that Boris Yeltsin not be accorded the formalities of a head of state, because she thought that the USSR was coming back “real soon now”, and since then, she has done her level best to recreate a Soviet style menace out of Russia.

I imagine it’s because her so called area of expertise (see the Yeltsin example above), the USSR, has gone away, and so she is trying to recreate academic relevance.

Don’t worry dear, you sucked at being a Sovietologist too.

Epic Fail

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So, WaPo scribe Krissah Williams Thompson is talking with some young Republicans at a bar, that she describes as, “A who’s who of young conservatives,” and they are bumming.

Let’s see, we have:

  • The 20-something who helped steer Fred Thompson’s Internet operation.
  • The young woman who put Mitt Romney’s Web site on the map.
  • A 24-year-old staffer for Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions for Winning the Future.
  • Editor in chief of the Heritage Foundation’s Web site.
  • A full time blogger at Townhall.com.

Ummmm….I thought that conservatives were supposed to feel crappy when they failed. That they objected to efforts to raise self esteem absent of accomplishment.

When you are failures, you are supposed to feel bad.

The Sick Old Man Can’t Even Get the Facts Right on His Signature Issue

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John Sidney McCain III barely graduated from Annapolis, 894 of 899, and then only because because daddy was a high ranking admiral.

Now, he gets the escalation in Iraq wrong, claiming that the so-called “Anbar Awakening” was the result of the “surge” even though it pre-dated Bush’s first mention of escalation in Iraq by 6 months.

Of course, this is Katie Couric’s CBS, so when the gaff was made, they edited it out, because by the rules of the “kule kidz” in the press corps, any gaff by McCain is an honest mistake, and the public must be shielded from seeing the “straight talker” when he shows himself to be a complete pratt.

Boeing Pisses Off F-35 Program Executive Officer

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As if USAF Genearals weren’t already Pissy enough, it appears that General Charles Davis is upset about Boeing’s sales pitch for the F-18 E/F.

He’s upset because Boeing is, “predicting further cost overruns and delays for the F-35 program,” and using it as a selling point for the Super Bug.

Seeing as how the JSF has already had a, “50% cost increase and an at least 18-month delay during the first seven years of development,” perhaps the good general should look inward, rather than outward.

Abolish the US Air Force: Comfort Capsule Edition

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I don’t mean junk the planes, just fold it back into the US Army Air Corps.

Case in point, the Air Force Top Brass is spending some $20 million counter-terrorism funds to build “comfort capsules” to be used by senior generals when traveling.

And these people were very involved in this project:

One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table’s wood be darkened.

Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.

(emphasis mine)

I understand the need of these guys to stay connected, but that would be a large screen laptop with secure network connections and a satcom link, not this.

Apparrently General Robert McMahon, Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for logistics, installations and mission support, who appears to be the prime mover behind this, and claims that it is, “not opulent”, and that he wanted the change to blue because “it would not show as much dirt” as brown, the color of dirt.

Harry Reid Prepares to Stick It to Tom Coburn

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Tom Coburn, the Australopithecine Senator from Oklahoma, has repeatedly abused the Senate courtesy known as a “hold”, and has applied it to over 100 bills, and Harry Reid has had enough, so he has repackaged all of these bills into an omnibus legislative package that will hit the floor in August.

Reid in uncharacteristically blunt language, says of Coburn, “For those of you who may not know this, you cannot negotiate with Coburn. It’s something that you learn over the years, that it’s a waste of time.”

Seeing as how this legislation will have earmarks and pork for many pet projects, all Reid has to do is to peel off 9 Republicans limit debate and get it passed.

Of course, they could vote against the bills….two months before election day….

Micheal O’Hanlon Can Go Cheney Himself

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So, the Washington Post conducted a poll on the war, and talked to some so-called experts.

One of them was the wanktacular Michael O’Hanlon:

To say you’re going to get out on a certain schedule — regardless of what the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is happening on the ground — is the height of absurdity,’ said O’Hanlon, who described himself as ‘livid.’ ‘I’m not going to go to the next level of invective and say he shouldn’t be president. I’ll leave that to someone else.’

(emphasis mine)

  • This guy is not a Middle East expert.
  • He’s not a terrorism expert.
  • He does not speak Arabic.

His “expertise” is in military budgeting, and he has gotten a lot of face time on the air because he’s from the so called “center left” think tank, the Brookings Institution, and he loves the war in Iraq.

I understand that when the war in Iraq is over, he won’t be quoted 2-4 times a month by the national press, but that is no reason for him want Americans and Iraqis to keep dying.

Not also that the poll is wanktacular too, it says it’s about the candidates positions, but the question is, “Obama has proposed a timetable to withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq within 16 months of his taking office. McCain has opposed a specific timetable and said events should dictate when troops are withdrawn. Which approach do you prefer – a timetable or no timetable?“

That is a question designed to get a higher number (it’s 50%-49% in favor of the time table) than any other question, but it allows the Post to claim that people are evenly split, when “not worth fighting” wins 63% to 36%, and that success in the war is not necessary to win the war on terror (60% to 34%).

Magazine’s ‘satirical’ cover stirs controversy – Yahoo! News

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Well, the New Yorker just put our a new issue, and the cover is something else.

David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, defends the cover as “Satire, Meant To Target “Distortions And Misconceptions And Prejudices” About Obama.”

So a cartoon showing Barack Obama in Muslim garb, with a flag burning in the fireplace, bin Laden’s portrait on the wall, fist bumping with an AK-47 toting Michelle Obama is satire.

It may have been intended as such, but it’s not satire…or at the very least, it’s so poorly done that the satire is invisible to the observer, even one who is familiar with the magazine.

Interestingly enough, I think that the strongest critique, albeit an unintentional one, is a comment made by Jonah “Doughy Pantload” Goldberg in the National Review Online, he says that, “It’s almost exactly the sort of cover you could expect to find on the front of National Review.”

Well, yes it is, but the long term racism of the National Review is well known. William F. Buckley was supporting segregation into the 1970s.

We expect the National Review to be this stupid and racist. We don’t expect the New Yorker to be this stupid or racist.

And Speaking of Idiots…

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Cynthia McKinney got the Green Party nomination.

I have had discussions with her constituents, and it’s clear that she is a smaller version of George W. Bush.

She is where she is because of who her daddy was, and her tenure as a member of congress was disastrous. When things needed to be done in the district, regardless of which side the political divide you were on, meeting were scheduled to make sure she could not attend, because she would screw up any consensus and generally throw fits.

I don’t think that this is the year to vote for a 3rd party candidate, but I consider that to be a matter of the reader’s personal conscience, particularly in safe states like Texas or Massachusetts.

However I strongly suggest that voting for this third party candidate is a betrayal of your obligation to cast your vote in a meaningful way.

She was right about distrusting Bush, but a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Check out her record. Talk with her former constituents, and then vote for someone else.

12:10 AM

Amity Shlaes is an Idiot

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As I have blogged before, Amity Shlaes is a complete pratt, which explains why this was published in the craptacular Washington Post OP/ED pages.

I have no clue as to her basic level of intellect, she could simply be that stupid, or be paid to say these things, but in either case, the effect is the same, that I would not trust her with any implement sharper than a bowling ball.

In this case, she is offering a full throated defense of Phil Gramm’s calling the US a nation of whiners, because people are worrying about the recession.

She offers a number of defenses:

  • That there is no recession because GDP grew in the last quarter measured.

Wrong when inflation is put in the measure, even the bogus core CPI that is used.

  • That Phil Gramm subsequently said that he meant only politicians.

Again, disengenous at best, he said nation of whiners, and Gramm would never miss an opportunity to go after the now Democratic controlled Congress.

  • She claims because people who lost their homes during the depression had only borrowed 10% of their home purchase, while people now borrowed more than 90% of that price.

Again, losing a home is losing a home, and the increased level of leverage is an artifact increases in the price of a home which have been driven upward by policies to “increase home ownership”. Losing your home is losing your home.

  • Claiming that unemployment is still at historic lows when anyone who studies unemployment knows that the U3 numbers has been massaged over the past 30 years to near statistical worthlessness.

Of course, as a wingnut, I would expect her to ignore that many of these problems came from legislation that was proposed by Gramm, so her ignoring the context, that the architect of the policies that created this crisis is complaining that we are “whining” about the economy, is part of her job description.

It’s Fracking Ritual Cannibalism, Not a Cracker!

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Well, once again the forces of ignorance and hate, specifically those people who allow their own Satan to dominate their lives, have decided that what ever perverse god that they worship gives them the right to be and do evil.

As frequently happens, this story started with a, one Webster Cook, who decided that he would go to mass, and not eat the Eucharist, the cracker that is supposed to be the body of Christ, but instead, he would remove it from church.

It appears that he wanted to show it to a friend sitting in the back to help explain rituals of the church. A member of the church then assaulted him in an attempt to recover said cracker, or human flesh, or spiritual flesh, or whatever it is under Catholic theology, so Mr. Cook left.

What followed was a series of death threats from around the world, and Mr. Cook, fearing for his life, returned the cracker.

From what I understand of Catholic Dogma, and to be honest, this incident is making me far less interested in knowing or understanding, or respecting these beliefs, because those people who assaulted him and threatened his life are no different from the 19 men who flew planes into buildings on Septermber 11.

I understand that Mr. Cook did something that many Catholics find offensive. He shouldn’t have done it. In fact, he could have gotten one of the crackers before it was blessed, when it was still “just” a cracker, as opposed to some sort of mystical human flesh according to Catholic dogma, and showed it to his friend that way.

People had a right to be offended. They had no right to invoke behavior that reeks of the inquisition, and the behavior of the President of the School, the state school the University of Central Florida, who tacitly endorsed harassing the young man, should never be allowed to work in education again.

In any case, noted science blogger PZ Myers, of Pharyngula, came across this, and understood, as I do, that this behavior is not that of a fully developed human being, and noted that, “IT’S A FRACKIN’ CRACKER!“, and rightly condemned the behavior of the Taliban-Catholics.

Of course, now he’s being subjected to moronic harassment and likely threats of violence, in addition to demands to his employer that he be fired.

And, of course, racist and anti-Semitic bigot Bill Donohue, of the “Catholic League” (his own private rent-a-crowd) has had to weigh in on a witch hunt for Prof Myers too..

Satan does not exist in Jewish theology. Rather the Satan exists, where Satan is a title, meaning “adversary” or “prosecutor”. The Satan is our own evil inclination, and the people who are harassing Cook and Myers are doing their Satan’s work, not God’s work, because at their core, all they need is someone to hate.

I disagree with Mr. Meyers in only one area. It isn’t a cracker, it’s ritualized cannibalism.

There is actually a long history of cannibalism, both real and ritualized simulations, in religious observance, from Catholicism to the tribes of Papua New Guinea , and while I find it odd it’s not my business…Until you decide that your desire to eat human flesh, real, imagined, or spiritual allows you to justify violence against another.

If God is kind and just, and I believe he is, though it is impossible for a human to percieve the totality of God (Ein Sof in Kabbalistic Judaism), the God hates Bill Donohue and his ilk, because there is no greater sin than profaning his name (chillul Hashem).

Would Cardinal Walter Kasper STFU

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Obviously, I have made comments regarding the problems in the Anglican church over whether or not to ordain out gays. I feel that it involves me for two reasons:

  • The Christian Dominionist religious right (not Anglican) has aggressively spewed lies and hate on this issue as a part of a their larger agenda of establishing a fundamentalist theocracy in the US, which I consider a personal threat.
  • Because in the 3rd world you have people who not only object to ordination, but they also call for bigoted crusades against gays that are arguably genocidal under UN definitions, which we are obliged as human beings to oppose.

That being said, on the matter of whether or not to make women Bishops in the chruch, it’s not my business, and neither is it the business of the Catholic Church, where Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, has officially condemned this decision.

I understand his perspective, that this might be an impediment between the future reunification of the churches, but the schism between the Church of England and the Church of Rome is 474 years old. There will never be a reunification. Not only has it been to long, but the people of England would never put themselves under the authority of Rome again out of nationalism.

So please, would people in all religions other then the Church of England who feel inclined to make official statements on this matter shut the F@#$ up! It’s none of anyone else’s damn business.