A leftist, politically-shrill Ian Murphy pranked Governor Walker in a phone stunt that wound up proving nothing, except that Governor Walker says the exact same thing to campaign contributors that he says to the public.

Now, this requires verification, but here's a column by a leftist, politically-shrill Ian Murphy.

Same guy? Well I'd bet it is but it remains to be seen.

FUCK THE TROOPS

So, 4000 rubes are dead. Cry me the Tigris. Another 30,000 have been seriously wounded. Boo fucking hoo. They got what they asked for—and cool robotic limbs, too.

Likely, just reading the above paragraph made you uncomfortable. But why?

The benevolence of America’s “troops” is sacrosanct. Questioning their rectitude simply isn’t done. It’s the forbidden zone. We may rail against this tragic war, but our soldiers are lauded by all as saints. Why? They volunteered to partake in this savage idiocy, and for this they deserve our utmost respect? I think not.

The nearly two-thirds of us who know this war is bullshit need to stop sucking off the troops. They get enough action raping female soldiers and sodomizing Iraqi detainees. The political left is intent on “supporting” the troops by bringing them home, which is a good thing. But after rightly denouncing the administration’s lies and condemning this awful war, relatively sensible pundits—like Keith Olbermann—turn around and lovingly praise the soldiers’ brave service to the country. Why?

Maybe this was also meant as a prank. But I sorta doubt it.

What I'm guessing is that this proves that Ian Murphy is a leftist double-threat -- capable of FAIL in two completely different mediums.

Thanks to Biggles of the RAF.

Posted by: Ace at 03:27 PM | Comments (151)
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And not even his own feces.

Please, please take this man's stupid TV show away so we can force his lunatic ass on to reality TV shows.

Just total stupidity and lunacy, on the Alex Jones show. Good quote (but take your pick): "Thomas Jefferson was a pussy."

They say an eccentric is just a lunatic with money. What happens when you're rich and famous too? You get kind of arrogant in your insanity. Charlie Sheen pretty much thinks that everything Charlie Sheen says is very witty and very meaningful. He inflects just about everything in that "let me drop a truthbomb on you" sort of way, even when he's talking about pooping his pants.

He's like Gary Busey without the career accomplishment.

Posted by: Ace at 01:36 PM | Comments (287)
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A FaceBook app was sold which would monitor the relationship status of someone you knew stalked and give you an instant alert the status changed.

Apparently it was learned that this was a little creepy and stalker-friendly and has been ended by FaceBook.

I didn't like the feature. It seems to take half of the fun out of stalking to automate that obsessive reloading of a page.

Posted by: Ace at 01:25 PM | Comments (60)
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Now that Discovery is in safely in space, the Livestream box is safely below the fold. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 12:43 PM | Comments (134)
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And oil prices drop on a combination of those rumors and a pledge from the Saudis to pump more oil to make up (some) for disruptions.

As usual, this sort of rumor is useful to a rebellion as it often causes straddlers to flip to their side, so one party has a big vested interest in propagating it.

But, as this type of rumor can be devastating, Qadaffy has a huge interest in appearing on TV and dispelling it, so the longer he waits on that, the likelier it is it's true.

If he appears in some kind of canned announcement, that's almost a confirmation.

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (81)
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I'm glad there are no conspiracy-minded connect-the-dots wheels-within-wheels all-events-are-connected-by-invisible-strings theorists on the left. They always point out Glenn Beck has this tendency, so it makes me happy indeed they have no one on their side like that.

Like, indulging in reductivist magical thinking in which complex events are force-jammed into one simple, all-explaining Ur Theory.

Yup, glad nothing like that goes on on the left.

You knew this was coming, didn’t you? A major cause of the revolutionary fervor sweeping the Arab world, according to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, is catastrophic climate change caused by human beings. The causal link is famine, say the authors of the piece: “Could hunger, and the threat to power that accompanies it, be what finally forces political leaders to act” against greenhouse-gas emissions?

Um, just curious: Wouldn't a worldwide conversion to non-fossil-fuel energy basically leave these guys with nothing to eat but sand?

Not that I'd mind that, but are these people capable of understanding their own religion? No oil burning = no money for Arab lands = hunger = further "threat to power that accompanies it." Fighting global warming, for real, actually hurts these guys, doesn't it?

But when children spin fantasies they tend to posit happy endings for everyone, so long as you give them the cookie they want.

As stuiec points out, if there's any connection here, it's the efforts to halt alleged global warming which have caused this, as more and more land is devoted to raising bullshit ethanol corn which makes food more scarce which drives up prices which causes hunger which causes "threat to power."

(Actually, there is definitely a connection there; just not sure how primary it is.)

So, um, like if you don't want hunger, stop fighting global warming.

But global warming is the Designated Villain and the supposedly green movement the Designated Hero so all good effects will be put into the Designated Hero's account and all ill effects into the Designated Villains, even though it doesn't make any sense.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (197)
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From here.

And where was Obama during this outpouring of incivility? "In an interview with a Milwaukee television station last week the president acknowledged that he hadn't followed the legislation in Wisconsin closely, but he characterized it as sounding like 'an assault on unions.' He made no mention of teachers violating the law in a de facto strike. He didn't say a word about the incendiary rhetoric or the tactic of marching on lawmakers' homes. And he said nothing about the missing state legislators and their antidemocratic walkout."

Such hypocrisy goes unremarked upon by most in the liberal punditocracy, which remains convinced the civility problem is a right-wing phenomenon.

From here.

We and a few others got a sage advisory on the topic of civility from this good anti-American leftist.

Ah well. The media won't cover that.

Since the left is taking a "f*** civility" stance (even while attempting to impose this stance on the right), I guess it's fair play to quote on of the all time best come-backs I've ever read on a blog.

Here was a leftist ConcernFag yelling at us:

Honestly. What the hell do any of you care about gays getting married? None of you know any gays. Gays don't belong to your bridge club, you're never going to invite one over for a barbecue. A gay couple on the other side of town could get married, you would never know it. It wouldn't affect your life in the slightest.

Yet here you are defending your DOMA, using the government to invade the private lives of people you don't know and don't live anywhere near bumblefuck Alabama.

You're bigots. Don't argue, don't bother with your disgusting retorts. You're bigots. Intolerant, hateful, xenophobic bigots. Using bigotry to get other bigots excited. That's your defense of marriage act. Rally bell for bigots at election time.

The world is changing and you bigots WILL be bred out of existence. History will remember you bigots like it remembers all the others - sadly.

Breed of us out of existence? Empire of Jeff thought that plan was a bit weak:

Better get busy out-breeding me, Jimmy-Joe.

Because while you've been occupied getting your shit pushed in, I've been punching out a new Master Race like an angry, white, dick-flavored Pez dispenser from your worst Republican nightmare.

Oh snap!, as black people always say, in television skits, in 1994.

I don't care who you are, that right there is comedy.

Thanks to runningrn for pointing out that zinger.

Posted by: Ace at 11:23 AM | Comments (126)
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NATO says it won't intervene. I don't think it would come down to that. (But I do object to what is supposedly an alliance for freedom announcing, for no particularly good reason, that it won't even consider acting to rid the world of a tyrant.)

But Qaddafy doesn't seem to have much of a reign left.

And dictators who do not go quietly often get dead. That would be a nice thing.

The popular uprising against Moammar Kadafi expanded into an oil-rich area of western Libya long considered one of his strongholds, leaving the long-time leader increasingly isolated and in danger of encirclement as he fights for survival.

Calm was returning to a stretch of eastern Libya seized by the opposition. Residents were restoring basic services in the country's second-largest city, Benghazi, and setting up informal governing structures.

"The uprising is over. Eastern Libya has all fallen from Kadafi's power," said Ashraf Sadaga, who helps oversee a mosque in the coastal city of Derna. At a rally there, one young man held a sign addressing Kadafi: "The people have dug your grave," it said.

But reports painted a grim picture of western Libya. Terrified residents of the capital, Tripoli, said pro-government militias rampaged through some residential areas, firing automatic weapons from pickup trucks and Land Cruisers.

The fall of Misurata, Libya's third-largest city and located little more than 100 miles east of Tripoli, as well as a smaller town in the far west meant that the rebellion inspired by revolts in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt now spans nearly the length of the country.

And they're planning the last assault.

Libya's antiregime forces promised to mount an offensive Thursday against the capital, Tripoli, as leader Moammar Gadhafi accused his opponents of being under the sway of al Qaeda.

Speaking by telephone to state television, the increasingly isolated leader directed his 23-minute address to citizens of al-Zawiya, an industrial town just 30 miles west of Tripoli where gun battles raged Thursday.

"What is this farce? You in al-Zawiya turn to [Osama] bin Laden?" he said. "He brainwashed your sons."

Qadaffy keeps saying the rebels are under the sway of Al Qaeda -- with apparently good reason. This is a case where one terrorist bastard is opposed by even greater terrorist monsters, and Al Qaeda is poised to reap the benefits of Qadaffy's downfall.

For example, from the first article linked:

Conditions were far calmer in eastern cities that already have fallen to the opposition, such as Derna, a coastal community of 100,000 people long considered a citadel of conservative Islam and a hotbed of anti-Kadafi sentiment.

But we're hardly going to help Qadaffy. I still have some optimism about all of this.

I do not believe it is "poverty" that is the "root cause of terrorism." I think it is more likely a combination of:

1. The idleness of non-working men who can do nothing at all in the world except sip tea in cafes all day and reassure each other about their supposed manfulness by concocting conspiracies about Jews and Westerners keeping them down (and then beat their wives at night)

2. A powerlessness over their own fates which translates into a naive, retarded (I use the term in the old, genuine sense) view of how the world works, in which childish fantasias dominate the "intellectual" meme-scape

3. The culture's utter failure in virtually any endeavor except militant, violent Islamism, which therefore makes militant, violent Islamism seem "authentic" in the same way drug-gangsters seem like romantic and accomplished figures to poor inner-city blacks and Hispanics who can't even imagine an alternative culturally "authentic" paradigm of success

And so on. These people are divorced from the real world, real world sweat and real world failure and real world success, too. It could just be that after a period of time the fantasias of conspiratorial, destructive, useless Islamism will give way to a harder and more realistic view of the world.

If people feel they have no connection to the ruling class, and therefore no hand in the shaping of their own lives, they wind up indulging in silly-bordering-on-lunatic conspiracy theories. (Again, see inner city blacks, who believe in a welter of quite-ludicrous conspiracy theories in which they are always, ultimately, the Hero of the story, in as much as the main character who is made to suffer is the Hero. If the Hero weren't incredibly important, surely no vast conspiracy would gather around him to keep him down.)

After a period of some truly awful years, it just could be that a culture forced to take responsibility for itself and its own failures will in fact become more responsible.

Failure and futility are great catalysts for sociopathy. It is no coincidence that our prisons are full of the ugly and stupid, undisciplined and unwanted, talentless and aimless. A culture which has produced little but failure and futility will produce sociopathy as its chief export crop.

I don't know if democracy* -- and real score-keeping of wins and losses -- can save this culture but I suppose anything's worth a try.

* I know people always say that it's the republic part that's more important in the "democratic republic" model of self-governance, and I agree, but I think the "republic" part is a bit of an advanced concept for this stunted culture.

Ideally we'd have a democratic republic here, but the words "ideally" and "Islam" really do not fit comfortably in the same sentence.

It is due to this tension (between a republic and a democracy) that people had mixed feelings about Mubarak -- he was anti-democratic, but in all likelihood he'll prove to have been more of a republican than the successor regime, which will probably practice absolute democracy in the sense that if 51% of the public votes to murder the other 49%, well, we took a vote, didn't we?

Posted by: Ace at 10:52 AM | Comments (149)
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I’ve already done one “Donald Rumsfeld makes liberal look stupid” post and I guess I could do one a day for however long Rumsfeld’s book tour lasts. I wasn’t planning on that but last night’s Daily Show interview nicely encapsulates so much of what’s wrong with the media in particular but liberals in general.

First, hereÂ’s the video (if you just want to skip to the main part IÂ’m going to discuss, go to the second part of the interview. Also, IÂ’m only basing my comments are the edit that aired, not the full video)

Mostly Rumsfeld “wins” the interview by being charming and not the blood thirsty monster I imagine most Daily Show viewers imagined him to be. But his real strength here is he mostly just lets Stewart flounder around by occasional interjecting a brief and polite disagreement with Stewart’s premise. Stewart lets himself be sucked into Rumsfeld’s brier patch and the game is over.

Stewart actually tried his best to take the clown nose off at first. Starting with RumsfeldÂ’s quote about the dangers of mixing power and certainty is a reasonable starting point for the liberal critique of Bush/Rumsfeld/Iraq (not saying I agree with it, just looking at it from the outside). The problem begins when Stewart thinks he can box with RumsfeldÂ…he canÂ’t. Rumsfeld has been doing this longer than Stewart has been alive and Stewart isnÂ’t in the top 1,000 of toughest people RumsfeldÂ’s dealt with.

Stewart actually had a good question (again from the liberal)…why didn’t we see the doubt publicly that Rumsfeld claims (and documents) was present behind the scenes? The problem is, he never asks the question in that straight forward way. He lets Rumsfeld derail him over the word “sell” vs. “present” and a bunch of other minor quibbles. Stewart was so busy trying to figure out how to ask the perfect, legalistically inescapable question that would land banner headlines for him and possibly Rumsfeld in jail that he never just puts the question plainly to Rumsfeld.

One of the first things you need to remember when doing an interview isÂ…itÂ’s not about you the interviewer. ItÂ’s about getting an answer. Too often reporters and talk show hosts want to be the star and the smartest person in the room. They forget that being well informed and prepared while acting dumb (actually not so much dumb as just curious) can be a powerful weapon.

Stewart, along with “reporters” like Andrea Mitchell, also don’t just want an answer…they want the answer they think they should get, the one that will confirm their worldview and solidify their place in the media universe. That’s a tall order under the best of circumstances.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 10:28 AM | Comments (63)
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In an email, a blogger mentioned, off-handedly, the idea of "Purple Hearts for Tea Partiers."

I would suggest taking this idea seriously. I would suggest that when Tea Partiers congregate, they wear an armband of a specific color if there has been any assault on them in, say, the past month. I'd suggest Purple for a bruising attack/simple assault (as Tabitha Hale suffered), Red for any attack that draws blood, and black for a truly serious attack, a deadly sort of attack (which may or may not result in actual death).

I'd say that guy getting his fingers bitten off by a nonviolent, peaceful leftist Concern-Fag would be a black attack (and let's hope for no more of those).

The reason for this is simple: The media refuses to report these abuses. But they do love their pictures of Tea Partiers, so they have images of the people they're making snide remarks about.

If enough Tea Partiers adopt a specific sort of code system to demonstrate solidarity with the victims of leftist thuggery, the media will be forced to report it, even in their typical snide, dismissive manner. They will have to explain the presence of Purple or Red or Black armbands and note "They wear these to publicize attacks on them."

Which should make some viewers wonder: "Gee, why didn't the media itself publicize the attacks? I thought incivility was now Public Enemy Number one. Why are these people required to raise awareness of the attacks themselves?"

Oh, the media will have an answer: "Context." Whatever that means, because apparently there are some "contexts" that make an assault on a law-abiding girl non-newsworthy (and perhaps even justified). But at some point, they will have to break down and explain to their audience why so many in a crowd are wearing armbands.

And then the media can go on to explain why the usual rule of If It Bleeds It Leads has somehow stopped applying when someone on the right gets curb-stomped.

Posted by: Ace at 10:04 AM | Comments (171)
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