I’ll repeat this, because I like to: I’m not really into politics. I’m not really into religion. But when someone abuses logic to defend their views on either, it really pisses me off.

Ann Coulter led me to Ted Rall which lead me to some Tom Toles political cartoon controversy which led me to some guy’s opinion on a Toles cartoon:

Mr. Toles and the editors at the Washington Post, while observing their right to freedom of the press, have without remorse or apology defended the cartoon and their right to print it, but they have clearly misjudged the tolerance the American people may show the press, especially when it so disrespects American servicemen and servicewomen. Fred Hiatt, Editorial Page Editor was quoted as saying, “I can understand the strong feelings, but I took it (the cartoon) to be about the state of the Army, and not one mean to demean wounded soldiers.”

Are you kidding me? If Tom Toles, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist can draw a cartoon like that and editors can proof it and say, “Yeah, that’s about the state of the Army…” then the quality assurance and “reasonable man” process at the Washington Post is so beyond repair that all involved should be sacked. To me, this cartoon is really about courage, or the lack thereof; Tom Toles and Fred Hiatt knew what they were drawing and publishing and knew how it would be interpreted, but now they hide behind the Bill of Rights to mask their true intentions, defend their poor judgment, and show a clear lack of respect for those who have sacrificed in the service of our Nation. While such a lack of moral courage is nothing new in Washington, this time, it goes beyond the pale.

whubbudawuggudaWhat the hell are you drivelling about? This guy actually thinks that Toles is trying to say that, because a soldier loses all his limbs, he’s a coward? Or something? How do you look at that comic and say “Toles is calling our servicemen cowards”?

I guess if you start with the assumption that Rumsfeld is Ozymandias, you figure the comic can’t possibly be about him. So then the chart means that the quality of servicemen is going down. Or something Jesus. But that assumption totally disregards Dr. Rumsfeld’s statement; if it was about the declining quality of servicemen, he’d say something more like “they just don’t make ‘em like they used to” or similar. But when he lets his political logic cloud the more obvious point being made in the comic…ugh nevermind why do I bother trying to explain simple humor concepts to these people.

I know I’ve asked this question before, but why, O Lord, does anybody pay attention to this woman?

Media Matters – Coulter on Sen. Chafee: “They Shot the Wrong Lincoln”

Don’t answer that question. Answer this one: is there an equivalent loony for the Left? Someone who regularly says in interviews that conservative politicians should be killed? I wanna know how a “liberal-controlled media” could allow Coulter to continue. And you couldn’t even say “she’s part of the Liberal agenda by showing how ridiculous the Right is” at this point. Big corporations aren’t that subtle. If the Left had control of the media, she’d be a flight attendant, at best.

Media Matters – Limbaugh blamed the left for obesity crisis, lamented that in America, we “[d]idn’t teach them how to … slaughter a cow to get the butter; we gave them the butter”

christ. Okay, once we get past the comedy of Rush Limbaugh saying we get butter from the squeezin’s of cow gizzards or whatever, this “the Left is to blame for obesity” just pisses me off. That’s what happens when you look at everything through one lens, everything’s about politics. The Left is not responsible for obesity in America, you dolt, human nature plus the free market is responsible for obesity in America.

And even forgetting that idiocy: yeah, Rush, that’s the problem we’re inflicting on the poor: we’re just feeding them too damn much. They’re poor and desperate because our hearts are just too big. How’s anyone ever gonna get off welfare if they’re stuck in their trailers while armed federal agents shove sausage and biscuits and gravy down their throats.

I don’t have the fortitude required to watch the video in that story. Someone gotta tell me if it’d piss me off as much as I think it would.

Edit: Rush has the full transcript on his own website. Sheese, even Nagin had the sense to backpedal from Chocolate City.

Namely, to just give out links.

There’ve been plenty of The Onion ripoffs over the years, but thanks to a link yet again provided by Bob, I’ve only now noticed Lark News, which is a worthy Christian stories version of fake news, and a whole lot funnier than that description makes it sound. They’ve been around for years, so I’m pretty late on this, but what the hell. They rise to the Onion’s level of humor and subtlety, which is rare for fake news sites.
Some of my current favorites are Little ministry bets big on Super Bowl ad and Iraqis glad to be free of Saddam, Chick tracts.

A co-worker told me about this car he saw on the Discovery (or Science or something) channel, and we found the web site for it:
The MDI Air Car – the world´s cleanest car.

A car that runs on compressed air. My first thought was, okay, how clean is it really? Because people tend to forget this with electric cars: the electricity has to be generated somewhere, and it’s probably a polluting coal plant that’s doing it. But their site says they have a fuel/air hybrid (I’m just guessing, the fuel part is for an internal compressor maybe?) that gives the car a range of 1200 miles.  I wish I saw the show or it had more detail here, though, the site seems like mostly rah-rah we’re great stuff.

I was in Starbucks yesterday, and I’m in the habit of scanning over the newspapers while I wait for my drink. I caught this headline in the New York Times:

Some in G.O.P. Say Iran Threat Is Played Down

WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 — Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States.

Here is the link, but I think that’s only publicly available for seven days, so the link will soon be useless.

I didn’t read the whole article then, but I’m glad that the first thought I had was also covered in the article: geez, this sounds pretty damn familiar, doesn’t it? The only difference between this intelligence situation and the slightly-post-9/11 intelligence situation is that we’re actually hearing about it ahead of time. But it still comes to:

(okay, think of Jon Stewart doing Dick Cheney as Burgess Meredith doing the Penguin:)

“Hwahhh hwahhh hwahhh! Need better intelligence! Can’t you see the threat posed by this disjoint, arbitrary collection of events that I can group together to draw conclusions I like, hwahhh? Hwahhh!”

ugh. I mean. If you’re going to hire experts, believe the experts. If you don’t believe them then don’t pay lip service to the idea you need them.

ah hell this post could be much better. think it needs someone with more insight to treat it properly.

What with Pluto losing its planetness, now apparently NPR is letting us know that we might have to return those 39c astrology scrolls we bought on the counter at Wawa.

NPR : Astrologers Join Debate of Pluto’s Planetary Status

Crooks and Liars » Bush says: “Iraq Had ‘Nothing’ To Do With 9/11″

Okay, in the Further Displaying Ignorance About My Own Country Department:

Way back when I griped about the gay marrage amendment, Pandemic pointed out that an amendment would be necessary for this to be banned at the federal level. But then how are there Federal laws at all? Well, not “at all”, but…like, medical marijuana, for example. I keep hearing that it’s allowed in some states but illegal at the federal level, but there isn’t a marijuana amendment, right?

If this post is any indication, I should be reading realitique more often. I’m just gonna paste the whole thing here, because I wish I wrote it.

realitique™ has obtained a copy of Bush’s response to Jude Anna Diggs Taylor’s ruling on the illegality of warrantless wiretapping:

Omnipresent Pepperdine law professor and part-time authoritarian theocratic anti-constitutional power-worshipper Douglas Kmiec agreed with the president, stating on NPR’s Some Things Gingerly Considered and Occasionally Reported with Beltway Spin, “War, war, unitary executive, war, terror, 9/11.”

<spinn> I wonder how much a breathalizer test costs, assuming you don’t get one for free from a cop
<spinn> I’d like to get a certain amount of drunk and see what my blood alcohol is, to know what 0.08 feels like exactly
<tieboy> looks like a breathalizer cost about $40 on amazon
<spinn> hm.
<bob> paypal it and put the video on the forums
<bob> i don’t have paypal but i’d send you five bucks
<spinn> yeah, I could make a story out of this, but eh
<spinn> really the point is “what’s that blood alcohol level feel like” and that’s only of interest to me specifically
<spinn> though I do enjoy some of these ebay auction titles for them
<spinn> *ALCOHOL DETECTOR* Breathalyser perfect gift
<spinn> alcohol breathalizer tester lovely gadget DRIVE SAFELY
<Craig> greg — 0.08 feels a lot less drunk than you would think
<Craig> when you feel drunk, you’re usually in the double digits
<spinn> yeah, I know about three levels of alcohol feeling
<spinn> would like to find out what each is
<tieboy> 1) relaxed. 2) buzzed. 3) happy. 4) funny. 5) amorous. 6) out-going. 7) horny. 8) annoying. 9)embarrassing. 10) depressed 11) violent 12) rapey
<tieboy> that’s why I stop at 11 drinks

Crime Pays for Shit

I keep saying to my friends that we should do this–find some old comics and re-text them–but it’s just too intimidating, knowing Jay Pinkerton exists.

He’s editor for the new Cracked magazine, now. It’s interesting that he’s moved his site to jaypinkerton.cracked.com. Geez, maybe they need his traffic more than he needs theirs.

See, now, if she said “shit” while saying Syria controls Hezbollah, maybe we’d have something.

That’s been CNN’s Most Popular Video yesterday and today. Lebanon doesn’t even come up until #4.

As Craig (another guy without a website, so I can’t link him) said: How can [Mark] pack that much sense-makin’ into that short little rant?

Zompist’s Rant Page: Don’t Fall For It

I’m a great fan of packing maximum meaning and imagery into minimum wordspace. Here’s a great sentence farther down his page, as he’s debunking someone’s complaints in their To Kill A Mockingbird review: “Not a single one of these rusty iron arrows connects.” Not only does the writer not connect, but he was woefully underequipped to even try. Nice.

In my daily audio self-flagellation, I was listening to the Laura Ingram show, but Laura wasn’t there, there was some other woman filling in whose name repeatedly eluded me. Doesn’t matter, she had the same shrill sarcastic whine as Laura, so they’re interchangeable. (“Whyyyy? I mean whyyyy does this happen? Whyyyyyyyyyy?”)

I loved this bit I caught, though. She says, “over the weekend–not that you’d know it by watching the mainstram media–there was a rally for Hezbollah” something something. And a sentence or two later, “and they’re holding signs, I can’t even read you some of them, about hating Jews, getting rid of Jews…the Washington Post has the full picture of them.”

Or something. That’s not quite it, but I’m paraphrasing. If it was up to the mainstream media, you’d never read this article in the Washington Post?

But then, shortly after she was saying that everyone in that rally should be detained for questioning, so I just had to turn off my radio and make her not my problem anymore.