CommonPrejudice

Wingnuts

From Easily Distracted (via Atrios)

...He leans out to point at my car bumper. Which is entirely unadorned except for a Kerry-Edwards sticker from 2004.

“YOU FAGGOT YOU VOTED FOR THAT WAR CRIMINAL. I’M GOING TO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF YOU.” Guy is turning a shade of purple. I don’t think he’s just putting on a show. He actually sped up, nearly rammed with his car at high speed and is now seriously contemplating attacking me over a bumper sticker. I’m so astonished that I’m speechless. He looks at me, looks at the house, and I think he’s noticing that there’s another car there and therefore maybe someone who is going to call the cops if something happens. Plus, I’m thinking the same thing myself, and getting out my cell phone. Machismo be damned: we just entered psycho territory. He pulls away and speeds off, yelling all the while. I spend about ten minutes kind of trembling as the adrenaline drains away...

These are the Limbaugh listeners. These are the ones who cheer wildly as the Malkins, the Steyns attack children and families for supporting certain health care programs. And there are millions of them. Scary place this United States.

Wingnut Logic

The extreme right's argument regarding terrorism, epitomized by the cliche driven, simplistic,and mendacious Michelle Maglalang (Malkin), can be essentially understood by the following analogy.

A patient is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease that needs surgery urgently. The doctor, with little forethought, cuts open the patient and removes whatever they can find. Then they rush through the closing procedure so as to be free to operate on someone who has a mild case of appendicitis, when surgery in this case was probably the worst alternative.

In the subsequent procedure, the doctor does such a poor job that now the new patient has a host of infections and related illnesses and is on deathbed. Meanwhile the original patient, whose disease could have been treated if extreme care had been used, is also knocking on death's door and the potential for the disease to spread has increased manifold.

But on the sixth year anniversary of the discovery of the original disease Malkin and her ilk proudly point out that the disease that rendered the first patient critical will never be forgotten. Oh, and for anyone who looks like they might be a carrier of the disease to be denounced to the health authorities. After all, a search for a cure would just be "justifying" the disease.

I guess the 'do no harm' thing doesn't apply when dealing in war. Do as much harm as you want - whether it means seeing hundreds of thousands die and millions more become refugees while at the same time creating a substantially higher risk of more attacks - as long as you do not forget about the original attack while inexpertly pointing out people who may be after you based solely on their appearance.

Yeah, that's the way to go about it.

[To learn about the absurdities of Maglalang's John Doe Movement see here and especially here. This is the psuedo-populist movement designed to protect the American populace from terrorist attacks by having good old American whites reporting every foreigner who looks suspicious and in the process keeping community swimming pools safe from Shari law. You know, the movement named after Frank Capra's movie about "contemporary realities: the ugly face of hate; the power of uniformed bigots in red, white, and blue shirts; the agony of disillusionment, and the wild dark passions of mobs."]

They'll Spin Anything

Last week Pew Global Attitudes Project came out with a new global survey, one of the results being in fact, that the world to some respect is becoming a happier place. Obviously there can be a host of economic and non-economic reasons for this and for a discussion on the results you can see here.

One other part of the survey is interesting:

The percentage of Muslims saying that suicide bombing is justified in the defense of Islam has declined dramatically over the past five years in five of eight countries where trends are available. In Lebanon, for example, just 34% of Muslims say suicide bombings in the defense of Islam are often or sometimes justified; in 2002, 74% expressed this view. However, Palestinians stand out for their broad acceptance of suicide bombing. Seven-in-ten-Palestinians say this tactic is at least sometimes justified.

Now of course it is impossible to determine precisely what would cause this drop, though I would hazard a guess that daily viewing of the suicide bombers of Iraq killing fellow Muslims has had a dramatic effect.

Let's however check out how RealClearPolitics interpret just this one number. First though let's remember what Pew Global AttitudesProject published just one month ago:

The U.S. image remains abysmal in most Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, and continues to decline among the publics of many of America's oldest allies. Favorable views of the U.S. are in single digits in Turkey (9%) and have declined to 15% in Pakistan. Currently, just 30% of Germans have a positive view of the U.S. – down from 42% as recently as two years ago – and favorable ratings inch ever lower in Great Britain and Canada.

Ok now RealClearPolitics (and I reiterate, this based alone on the survey of Muslims' view on suicide bombers).

We've been instructed by many sages that the rest of the world hates us and does not want to follow our example. The Pew Global numbers tell us something different

It's a good thing the United States is around to demonstrate that suicide bombing is wrong because the rest of the world just wouldn't understand this uniquely American way of thinking.

The Best Line....

re: Coulter's appearance on Tweety's show:

Coulter seemed shocked that Edwards even had a wife, since she had once called him a "faggot." Was her gaydar not working properly? she seemed to be wondering. Had all those men who had told her they were gay only done so to get her to leave them alone?

A Brief Foray into Foxville

I can't yet find the transcript, but last night I was channel surfing and - horrors of all horrors - I paused on Fox News long enough to hear Sean Hannity comment on a new study on the melting of the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro (as well as, of course, tossing in a dig or two at Al Gore)

The study contradicts the claim made by Gore in Inconvenient Truth that the disappearance of the mountain's icecap is evidence of global warming. Of course Hannity's ridicules Gore's portrayal with the obvious intent to call into question the whole premise of the movie and the notion of global warming itself. And without a hint of irony Hannity goes on to make some general statement about the need to listen to scientists regarding these climate issues. Finally he notes how Gore won't have to worry as he still had all that money coming in from inventing the internet.

Now it isn't exactly a newsflash to highlight how incredibly dishonest Fox news is. However what sometimes still amazes me is how one can stop and watch 30 seconds of their nonsense and hear the most shameful transgressions of basic fact and logic. Even more unsettling is the realization that millions of people will believe it and repeat it until those who still maintain some semblance of being informed are invariably confronted with these statements while having a cold one at the local pub.

To begin with Hannity's cracking wise on the old "Gore invented the internet" is not only well passed any humor shelf life (even it had some degree of truth, which of course it doesn't), given the uncountable number of lies Bush and company have told, this type of joke is simply pathetic. Secondly and much more egregiously, is Hannity's calling into question the "environmental extremists" (his words - best translated as "round earthers" for those of us who consider the sky to be blue) claims about global warming in general. Indeed, it does appear, as climate scientist Philip Mote states, “Kilimanjaro is a grossly overused misexample of the effects of climate change..." However, shockingly, Hannity does not tell the rest of the story.

Mote is concerned that critics will try to use the article to debunk broader climate-change trends.

He hastens to add that global warming is, indeed, responsible for the fact that nearly every other glacier around the globe is melting away. Kilimanjaro just happens to be the worst possible case study.

In fact, the danger of invoking the study as some sort of evidence against global warming is considered so great by one of the authors of the 2004 study on Mount Kilimanjaro - George Kaser - that Kasar decided not to have his name put on the article on Mount Kilimanjaro that will appear in the July/August issue of American Scientist. Climate scientist Douglas Hardy adds more.

Even though the mountain presents an interesting scientific puzzle, it’s an anomaly compared to what’s happening with other glaciers, said Douglas Hardy, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Massachusetts. The new article will be seized on by “global warming naysayers” and could give people the mistaken impression that it calls global warming into question, Hardy predicted. “What value to society does that serve?” he asked.

This is really Mickey Mouse stuff. All one has to do is read the rest of the article to understand how the study of Mount Kilimanjaro has nothing to do whatsoever with the overwhelming scientific consensus regarding global warming and the contributions to it made by humans. It is surely a massive insult to one's intelligence to portray the study in any other way. However this is precisely what you get when you accidentally pause on Fox News for thirty seconds.

Wingnut experiment

Bill Clinton is getting ravaged by usual suspects, the Tuckers, the Dowds, for a speaking fee of $150,000 he charged to the Boys and Girls Club of Los Angeles (not that it doesn't seem a tad excessive, though certainly par for the course in the U.S.) Meanwhile do you think these hacks could have perhaps checked other prominent pols' history of collecting speaking fees? No, I didn't think so.

They would have discovered that "America's mayor" gave up his position on the Iraqi Study Group in order to go on a speaking tour while raking in 11.4 million dollars in 14 months in the process.

So there you go. The outrage is the ex-president - who by the way only charged for 57 of the 352 speeches he made last year - not the presidential candidate who enriched himself to the extreme instead of donating his time to a group that was dealing with the most disastrous foreign policy quagmire of this generation.

Now go ahead and ask your neighbourhood wingnut which story they have heard of. Then ask them to explain to you how again the media is liberal.

"It's often best to keep the lights off"

He's already Atrios' Wanker of the Day and Greenwald has jumped all over him, but as I can't remember the last time I saw a column so egregiously incompetent and misinformed I felt I just had to throw in my two cents.

Richard Cohen is the very worst - and I truly mean this - the very worst mainstream media has to offer.

In virtually every sentence in this piece of basura there are omissions, errors and outright lies. Of course it would not at all be difficult to go through the "column" point by point, and make a mockery of his knowledge and reasoning skills. But to waste that much time on this supposed "liberal" columnist would in itself be a crime.

The only question really is how this man could possibly be published anywhere, never mind in one of the most prominent newspapers in the United States. He is a true embarrassment.

On the bright side it seems that The Purple Teardrop with Clutched Pearls Cluster just isn't enough for this go-getter. Clearly he now moves into the early lead for Wank of the Year.    

Update: Of course Somerby mentions Cohen's inanity and really poses an important question after discussing other betrayals of journalism the Washington Post has been offering up as of late:

Readers, what is up with the Post?  What on earth is going on inside this inane, childish newspaper?

The Stupidest Argument in the History of Time

Glen Greenwald said:

Although it is a heated competition, I think the single dumbest and most intellectually dishonest rhetorical tactic -- wielded most prominently by Drudge but with plenty of followers doing the same -- is from those who cite cold weather conditions on a given day in order to impliedly discredit the worldwide consensus of climatologists and other scientists on global warming. It would be as if someone constantly linked to individual obituaries as proof that world population is not really growing. It is that dumb and dishonest.

I profoundly disagree. It's far dumber than that.

 

Unbelievable

I thought of putting this in the arglebargle or fufurah sidebar, but this is so inane that it needs a post of its own. Doughboy (Via Drum)

I think all intelligent, patriotic and informed people can agree: It would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet.

This was published no less in the Los Angeles Times. In terms of what can get printed in major American dailies, there are simply no standards.

The Lowest

Wow, what an asshole.