January 12, 2011

Is today's media engaged in "yellow journalism"?
— Purple Avenger

Many would be quick to say - "of course they are"; however I'm going to argue that what we're seeing now is a somewhat different and more dangerous beast than traditional yellow journalism.

The term "yellow" originally derived from a character known as the "Yellow Kid" in an old comic, Hogan's Alley, that ran in Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper, the New York World, starting in the late 1800's.

It is rather ironic that the vaunted Pulitzer prize is named after one of the USA's earliest practitioners of yellow journalism in the daily format. Of course, Hearst is probably more often associated with yellow journalism due to his jingoistic promoting of the Spanish American war, but Pulitzer was his contemporary and equal when it came to being ummm..."challenged" ethically. In that era of the "robber barons", the newspapers purporting to expose their excesses were equally guilty of their own excesses and ummm...integrity lapses.

The one thing that clearly distinguished the early vanguard of yellow journalism from media today is the perspective it took. The Pulitzer and Hearst types were shameless self-promoters and didn't hide anonymously behind a corporate facade.

They also appear to have understood their markets rather well compared to today's media, hence their bent towards amorphous populist approaches, rather than hard political ideology in any particular direction. The targets of their political attacks and scandal reporting were all over the map. It would be hard to say they were clearly protecting any political party as a matter of corporate policy.

With the public's trust in the media today falling off a cliff, its hard to make a viable case that today's media actually understands its market as well as the early practicioners of yellow journalism did. As jingoistic and incredible as much of the Pulitzer and Hearst reportage was, the buying public bought into it. In Hearst's case, they bought in enough to push the nation into a war.

Today, we appear to have a somewhat different, and far more sinister, situation where media protection and promotion of particular political agendas seems to have supplanted the more benign populist angle of old style yellow journalism.

Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex. What I believe has developed, or is developing today, could be termed the political-media complex, a defacto political-media oligarchy; the media effectively acts as the propaganda arm of established political parties. The populist perspective has largely vanished, or is present only in token form, replaced by propaganda provided pretty much verbatim from the political parties.

Traditional yellow journalism was never joined at the hip with governing entities in this manner we see today. This is a fundamentally new beast entirely, even though it may exhibit certain superficial characteristics of 100 year old yellow journalism.

The challenger to this media-political oligarchy is of course the internet where consumers of information can get any (or multiple) angles, including foreign, on events/news they choose, not just predigested talking points straight from the RNC or DNC.

If you want the deranged perspective you can find it without having to go to Harvard Square and spend time listening to the disjoint ramblings of a loon discoursing atop a milk crate. If you want thoughtful and non-partisan analysis, its here. If you want politically slanted rants, they're here. If you want actual text of legislation under consideration rather than media distillations, or having to wait for it to pass to see what's in it, you can find it here.

Even better, is the fact that any reasonably competent information consumer can research multiple aspects and original texts on some issue within minutes rather than the months of snail mail and wearing out the shoe leather it might have taken only 15 years ago. The disproof of inept lies and shoddy fabrications is now almost instantaneous, although the unmasking clever high quality frauds might take a week. As the power of the media-political complex increases, the forces that can counteract abuses of that power have increased even faster. An army of Davids is watching them 7x24, and they don't like it one bit.

The old yellow journalists were a much more diverse bunch than today's lockstep media. Their targets were all over the map and political spectrum. Maybe its time to stop using "yellow journalism" as a derogatory term? As I see it, it was a (generally) more honorable and public interest focused activity than the bullshit we're seeing from the media-political complex today.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 01:01 AM | Comments (114)
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January 11, 2011

Overnight Open Thread
— Maetenloch

Yay - Happy 2nd Birthday to the ONT!

Genghis thinks it should have been strangled in the crib but I think certain Arab merchants would have paid top dollar to deflower it. Sigh. Yet another chance to make high four figures missed.

Birthday party and gift exchange to be held at a date and location TBD.

ewok-birthday-cake.jpg
more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:36 PM | Comments (574)
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Obama Calls Dupnik: Hey, Thanks For Being Such a Help!
— Ace

Oh yeah, Dupnik's a help, all right.

Thus underscoring a tactic of Obama's which is all too well-known by now: Speaking loftily and assuming the false image as above petty politics while encouraging his supporters to stick the knife into every warm body around.

Did Obama tell Dupnik to stop with the stupid claims about Sarah Palin being directly responsible for this? Apparently not; if Dupnik's behavior is any indicator, Obama encouraged it, either explicitly or tacitly-- I wasn't watching the first segment, but JackStraw tells me Dupnik was back on Hardball yet again (he gets his mail delivered there now) to assert, more directly than ever, that Sarah Palin is directly responsible for the shooting.

Thanks, Sheriff Dupnik! You're doing a great job healing the community. And by community, I mean dispirited Democratic caucus and their media spirit squad.

Posted by: Ace at 01:56 PM | Comments (615)
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How Do You Say Something You Know Isn't True And Avoid Getting Called On It? Let The Media Show You!
— SPADES-OF: ACE

Suppose I want to say "Jared Loughner was inspired by a steady diet of Rush Limbaugh, episodes of Sarah Palin's Alaska, and Tea Party rallies."

What is the defect in that? Well, if you're a leftist, it's perfect in every single way: It connects a shooting to your political enemies and gives you an advantage you can't get via your policies. But the one problem with it -- which isn't a problem so much as an obstacle -- is that it's simply not true.

But it's so wonderful! It should be true; the fact that is not is more of a defect of reality than a defect of this wonderful sentence you've written in your head. Your ideology is perfect in its precision; it's reality that's messy, disordered, and off-message.

So there's this sentence. Gorgeous, really. It deserves to be written. It deserves to be carved in ten foot tall white marble megaliths.

But you can't write it. Because of that one little problem obstacle. If you write it, you will immediately have it fact-checked, and facts being stupid things, you will be forced to state it is not, in fact, true.

This is a symptom of what I mentioned yesterday, the lack of any "Phase 2" (in South Park Gnome terminology) to connect Phase 1, steal underpants/complain about rhetoric of violence from the right, with Phase 3, Profit!!! Two out of three ain't bad, liberals figure, and so what if there is nothing to connect 1 to 3? We'll just talk up 1 and 3 until we're blue in the face and assume 2.

See, assumptions and implications can't be fact-checked. You didn't actually say them, so no one can claim you said something untrue. You didn't say it; you just implied the living fuck out of it. But there's no such thing as an implication-check, now is there?

Watch Newsweek do this. Look at the headline, then look at the picture.

The Missed Warning Signs

A 2009 study warned that the rise of right-wing extremism could spur violent attacks. But the report was attacked by Republicans, including now-Speaker John Boehner.

Now-- having headlined the story about "right wing extremism" and shown a picture of Jared Lee Loughner to illustrate it, you'd think they'd go on to explain how it is Jared Lee Loughner is connected to the right, or even read a single right-leaning website at all. You'd be wrong.

Because they have no evidence of that, and if they claimed they did, they'd be fact-checked. So they don't say it. They just imply it so strongly it's as if they said it -- but better, because they didn't say it, so there's no fact-check, and no need for retraction or correction!

This is what American liberal journalism is reduced to -- lying by implication.

Here's as close as Newsweek's editors will permit this author to imply a connection:

In the wake of last weekendÂ’s attempted assassination of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, which left six dead and 14 wounded, the reportÂ’s warning of a lone wolf attack from someone with extremist tendencies seems prescient.

Note the headline spoke of "right wing" violence, but here, in connecting Loughner to the report, they will only say "someone with extremist tendencies." Which, by the way, is a lie, because we usually do not discuss psychopaths as "extremists," which implies a political orthodoxy.

Which Loughner didn't have -- though, to the extent he did, it was more left than right.

But they resort to that because they need to connect this up with "right wing extremists," but can't say "right wing." That is not proven. Not only is that not proven, there is no evidence at all to suggest it and a fair amount to suggest against it! So instead, they say one thing in the headline -- so you know what they mean -- and put the image of Loughner right below it, without writing a single sentence that actually links the two.

When they have the chance to write such a sentence -- they don't. Because they know it's untrue, they know it will be fact-checked. So they just continue implying it, this time by shifting the terms of discussion from the headline's "right wing extremism" to a general description of a maniac, "person with extremist tendencies."

And, at the end, their method of implying a connection is to report... that no one has found a connection. Yet, would be the operative but unstated word here.

While discussion has swirled around possible ties between accused gunman Jared Loughner and right-wing extremists, DHS on Monday said department officials “have not established any such possible link.” Levin doesn’t believe extremism was the sole driving factor. “This guy is a mentally deranged person first,” he said, and noted that the mentally ill often latch on to conspiracy theories to layer over their already “obsessive and aggressive template.”

Note how deftly the lie was there -- they admit that there is no connection to the political extremism they're talking about here, none at all, but then follow thyat up Levin doesn't believe extremism was the sole driving factor, implying that it was a factor, just not the "sole driving" one. There may be other factors; but this one, extremism, was most important.

That sentence following the last one which stated there had been NO ESTABLISHED CONNECTION to politcal extremism of any kind, left right or center.

In just ten short words, without an actual positive sentence affirming that Loughner was driven by political extremism of a recognizable sort (such as the type outlined in this Homeland Security report), the article states that he was in fact driven by just that political extremism -- by implication, of course.

Again, they can't say, so they imply it. They cannot say "Loughner was driven by political extremism of the right" -- not true -- so they say no link has been made as of yet, but political extremism was not the sole driving factor behind the crime. There may have been other factors, other than the political extremism that was the main factor.

A factor so main that Newsweek cannot cite a single person declaring that affirmatively in a positive sentence.

The rest of the article is about that Homeland Security article saying veterans will come home and murder people and how smart a report it was. There is no connection to Loughner within the article other than what I have sketched for you.

The article ends on this lie:

Aaron Mehta is a reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative reporting organization in Washington D.C.

See, that's a lie, because "nonpartisan" is a legal category meaning simply "not formally, legally associated with either party. But the media uses this to hide the ideological affiliation of leftist organizations -- yes, the organization is technically "nonpartisan" on its paperwork it files with DC. But that is not an accurate description -- a more accurate one would be "extremely leftist organization which almost exclusively champions liberal and leftist causes and the Democratic Party."

Another way to describe it is a corporate shell of George Soros' greater Marxism, Inc., via his Open Society Initiative. (page 19)

But you choose -- those interesting, informative descriptions, or Newsweek's choice of the meaningless legalism "nonpartisan."

Note to the media: If a lie is so obvious and disprovable that you are forbidden to state it directly, isn't that a sign you shouldn't imply the fuck out of it?

Isn't that both dishonest and cowardly? You won't even write the words. You know they're not true. If you know they're not true -- why are you writing them via implication?


Another Way to Put It... JackStraw notices them doing this on Hardball; I've been noticing it too. This is the new normal of "journalism." Which JackStraw describes as:

This is the new technique. Don't explicitly connect the dots, just put the dots an inch apart and let the viewer connect them.

I want to point this out, and I think it's important: They're doing this partly because they're political hacks and partly because they're pandering to their leftist partisan audience, which wants to see assertions like this -- true or not! - -and will punish them by tuning out if they're not fed a steady diet of political pornography.

Newsweek's and Matthew's viewers don't show up for the truth or facts; they show up for leftist talking points. Now, both of these having pretenses of journalistic enterprises, they cannot simply lie directly. So they don't. They just, as JackStraw says, put two dots thisclose to each other and let their hyperpartisan audiences fill them in.

And, if the public begins to subconsciously associate the two together through the cute use of Loughner's picture under headlines about "right-wing extremism," so much the better.

Let me again point out that the media is very, very concerned if the "right wing" has "misinformation" about ObamaCare -- like the "misinformation" it will increase spending -- and works overtime to correct these misunderstandings by stupid conservatives.

And boy do they. And then they make fun of us for being so stupid as to think a trillion dollars in new government spending will actually increase government spending.

But notice what happens when the left if possessed of a belief that isn't true. Do they look right into the camera and say, "Look, I know what you're thinking, but the evidence does not support that?"

No. They pander to it. Without saying it's true they imply it's true; they assume it's true; they devote articles and "news segments" to suggesting it's true.

Can't say it's true, because it's not; but the leftist audience believes it's true, and whatever you do, you must not contradict them. You must reinforce their beliefs, even if you know they're factually simply wrong.

By the leftists, of the leftists, for the leftists.

Oh: A commenter points out the Center for Public Integrity is also funded by terrorist bomb-maker and Obama political patron Bill Ayers' Annenberg Foundation (a foundation he gave Obama a nice plush job at).

Another Good Article: Someone (I forget who) noted that a blog called "Chequerboard" had also used the South Park Gnomes analogy.

The article doesn't just talk about that -- it's a long-ish recapitulation of the left's lies with lots of good quotes beating them back.


Posted by: SPADES-OF: ACE at 01:07 PM | Comments (229)
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Sick and Tired
— SPADES-OF: ACE

No Labels: Hey, This Is Just What We Needed!!! It's not all bad news, of course. As Mark Halperin predicted, Barack Obama could really use a horrific tragedy to re-connect with the American people.

And Frum's/MacKinnon's/Blumberg's No Labels group can certainly loot the dead for loose change and usable shoes.

"It's a real tragedy, but it's also a real opportunity," said Mark McKinnon, co-founder of No Labels, a nonpartisan group founded last month.

How wonderful! Maybe, like Mary Jo Kopechne, the dead and maimed will one day look back on this as a worthwhile bargain.

Posted by: SPADES-OF: ACE at 11:47 AM | Comments (257)
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Good News...China Unveils And Tests It's Own 5th Generation Fighter!
— DrewM

You know, the one they weren't supposed to have until 2020, which meant we could safely cancel the F-22 program? Yeah, that one.

And the normally secretive Chinese wanted to make sure everyone saw it.

There's a reason for the change in policy.

More than anything, the PLA has taken on a different tone. Emboldened by the notion that ChinaÂ’s rise is unstoppable, its military has shed its traditional secrecy to become a brash, even boisterous interest group that openly advocates for policies, brandishes its new equipment and makes other claims like never before.

“Over the years, the Chinese military doctrine was ‘hide and bide’ – hide your resources and bide your time,” Vice Adm. David J. “Jack” Dorsett, director of U.S. naval intelligence, told reporters this week. “They now appear to have shifted into an era where they’re willing to show their resources and capabilities.”

Also of note about the test? It's timing. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates just happens to be in China now.

U.S. officials said that President Hu appeared to be taken by surprise when Mr. Gates asked him about the test flight during a meeting, hours after pictures and accounts of it began appearing online.

Analysts said that would be an embarrassment for China’s top leader—who in theory controls the military as chairman of the Central Military Commission—just as Chinese officials anxiously try to make sure Mr. Hu’s planned trip to the U.S. next week goes smoothly.

If the military deliberately kept Mr. Hu in the dark, that would reinforce concerns that hawkish elements in the military are increasingly driving China’s foreign policy—including ties with the U.S.—and that they are trying to enhance their power in China’s domestic politics ahead of a leadership transition next year.

“It was clear the civilian leadership was uninformed” of the J-20 test, said a senior U.S. defense official after the meeting between Mr. Gates and Mr. Hu.

There's really no good option here. Either Hu knew about the test and went along with the proactive timing or...he didn't know and other players are exerting pressure. Players like the Defense Minister who says China is preparing for, "Military Conflict In Every Strategic Direction"?

What could go wrong?

All of this comes on the heels of Gates announcing budget cuts for the Department of Defense. In addition to canceling major weapons programs like the Marines next generation amphibious assault vehicle (which given costs and the unlikely nature of an opposed amphibious assault in a world with modern missiles is certainly defensible and a discussion worth having), Gates is also talking about cutting troop numbers after years of expanding the Army and Marine Corps.

As I watched his presentation last week with Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all I could think of was what they were really saying was, "Honestly, history won't repeat itself again.".

Problem is, the Chinese are showing us that they are doing everything to ensure that yes, it will.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:26 AM | Comments (129)
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WTF?
— SPADES-OF: ACE

Or should I ask W-T: F?

Bookworm asks if maybe a little levity and distraction isn't a good thing right now.

So, to that end: A retirement-home chorus is led by a very douchey-looking choirmaster to do a medley of rap/hip-hop songs including selections by Outkast and MC Hammer and Usher, and, um, Eminem.

Upbeat takeaway message: You're never too old to look extremely foolish.

At the end of the clip, they promise/threaten that their next medley will feature "Fergilicious" by Fergie.

This is probably one of those "Yeah we're deliberately doing weird/odd/foolish stuff to make people go WTF? and get our video to go viral," but in that case: Mission accomplished.

Funny But More Relevant: more...

Posted by: SPADES-OF: ACE at 10:57 AM | Comments (87)
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Believe It Or Not, Lincoln Chaffe Is A Worse Governor Than He Was A Senator
— DrewM

It's almost impossible to believe but yeah, it's true.

Chafee doesnÂ’t plan to spend his own time on talk radio, and he intends to ban state employees from spending their state work time talking on talk radio, which was CarcieriÂ’s favorite medium and an integral part of his communications operation.

Spokesman Michael Trainor said a directive will go out over the next day or so that reflects that new policy.

He said the policy emanates from a belief that talk radio is essentially “ratings-driven, for-profit programming,” and “we don’t think it is appropriate to use taxpayer resources” in the form of state employee work time to “support for-profit, ratings-driven programming.”

Trainor said the new governor will continue to talk to the news reporters for the local radio stations, and the nonprofit local NPR affiliate.

This is the act of a petulant man-child not a Governor.

If he doesn't want to go on talk radio, fine. That's his right. But banning all state employees from using a popular outlet to communicate with the people of the state about public matters? That's just idiotic.

And this idea that only talk radio is ratings and profit driven, where did that come from? Chafee is either a liar or an idiot if he really thinks that. Well, both is a possibility I guess.

Can you imagine if a Governor said he would not speak to TV, print or radio reporters and/or opinion journalists? They would be calling for his impeachment. But because it's talk radio and talk radio is generally the purview of conservatives and other lowlifes who never set foot in journalism school, they won't care or more likely will think it's about time.

Nothing like spanning the partisan divide and being a mature public official by telling some of your constituents there media outlets of choice don't quite measure up to the official standard.

Via Ben Smith

Posted by: DrewM at 10:05 AM | Comments (85)
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New Republic: Hey, Maybe Instead of Talking About "Rhetoric" We Should Talk About The Actual Problem, Mental Illness
— SPADES-OF: ACE

There's an idea. Captain Ed digests the New Republic article, or you can read the original.

Basically, reformers (as they were termed; the winning side is always called "reformers") rolled back the power of the government to involuntarily commit the insane. They did this out of fear of government abuse (and there were abuses), and out of respect for individual liberty and dignity.

Involuntary commitment can now only occur if bright-line factors are present: Specific threats, specific actions of violence (including attempts to commit suicide), etc.

But the general category of "so friggin' crazy and delusional I know this guy is going to do something someday to someone" is not grounds for involuntary commitment. Even if someone is clearly a bug-eyed bugfuck crazy Nephew Fester like Loughner, you can't commit him. I do not know but you can probably put someone in for 48 hours evaluation or something like that (I think I remember that from law school an episode of CSI I saw last month) but unless they give evidence in that time of one of the bright-line causes for commitment, you let them out after. Even if they're plainly off their trolleys.

It's a tough question, especially for a libertarian-minded conservative, because, absent evidence that a crazy person is going to do something violent, what right do you have to deprive them of their freedom and subject them to what is, for all intents and purposes, criminal incarceration without an actual crime?

Further, as far as nanny-stating and size of the government -- it costs money to lock people up this way. They're not criminals so you can't just warehouse them (and even that's expensive); you also have to pay for doctors and treatments and such. With the government already unable to pay for the responsbilities it has undertaken, how can any fiscal conservative justify a bold new area of government growth?

On the other hand: One can argue the government really never should have abandoned this particular mission to this extent, as ensuring the public safety-- and caring for those who plainly are incapable of caring for themselves -- is a core government mission.

But still: The cost.

Interesting question. I have no real answer to it. I could answer out of pure ideological reflex but I don't really like doing that.

Not So Tough? For a while now I have wanted a national effort (state action, but national effort) to improve and toughen our laws on stalking and criminal harassment.

It occurs to me that a large fraction of the crazies we have to keep our eye on run afoul of these laws, but suffer no consequence, because the laws are on the books but largely unenforced and not taken seriously by police.

Loughner, clearly, was sending around threats -- and I think Dupnik is flat-out lying when the claims the threats were not directed at Giffords. I think they were, and, per the Democrat Chair of Pima county, I suspect we'll find a treasure trove of information on the department's hard drives demonstrating this.

So there was predicate for state psychiatric intervention -- the crime of threat/harassment/stalking had been committed. That is a strong enough predicate to get the system into gear, to demand up to weeklong confined psychiatric evaluations, and to commit the person in question if he either 1) subsequently reoffends or 2) makes it plain during his evaluation period he intends to reoffend.

This would be fair and just -- there would in fact be the predicate of a crime before subjecting someone to incarceration, whether civil or criminal.

And it would in fact catch about 80% of these guys. Sure, some nutters just break without showing many outward signs, and we'd miss them. But 80%, I'm guessing, do break plenty of laws along these lines before they start shooting people. And if someone like Political Pundit Dupnik (who is a hobbyist sheriff in his downtime) could just take an interest in the pathologically weird before they start killing people, we could avoid a number of horrific murders.


Posted by: SPADES-OF: ACE at 08:54 AM | Comments (322)
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Pima County Democratic Chair: I Don't Have Any Evidence To Back This Up But I'm Certain I'm Right To Throw Around Baseless, Reckless, Dangerous Rhetoric About Conservatives Using Baseless, Reckless, Dangerous Rhetoric
— SPADES-OF: ACE

Adventures in Elevating the Discourse, Chapter 183:

Conservatives gloating about the biography of the suspected shooter of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) will eat their words in the end, according to the chair of the Pima County Democratic Party.

"Here's what I think you're going to find," Jeff Rogers told me in an interview today. "I think you're going to find that he was [a conservative]."
...

Rogers, a defense attorney in town and a man with long connections to the city he calls "the Berkeley of Arizona," said that he's convinced people who immediately connected the shooting to the violent right-wing rhetoric of the past two years in Arizona have the right idea. He's convinced that once more is known about Loughner, a connection to the right will be found.

"I think we'll find a treasure trove of stuff from his computer," he told me. "How much of that we're going to get from law enforcement and know about and when? I don't know. But I'm betting you'll see a fair amount of that."

Rogers told me he's closely read Loughner's available internet postings and said that they suggest a rightward slant.

"How many lefties are anti-government?" he said. "I mean, That's not us."

"Maybe in the the 60s, but not now," he added. "We [on the left] tend to view government as the solution to problems, not as the problem."

Fact: It's hateful and inciting and in all ways untrue to say Democrats are socialists.

Fact: We know that Loughner couldn't have been a Democrat because he was anti-government and we know Democrats aren't anti-government; they're socialists by selective admission.

Reconcile these two facts at your leisure.

Thanks to SJ.

Ponder: Democrats continue insisting it's unforgivably inciting to call a socialist a socialist, but also insist that it's okay to continue calling of their opponents murderers.

See, you can't call a socialist a socialist, because even though that either is true, is arguably true, or is otherwise acceptable rhetoric, people get too upset when they think socialists are running their government and they may resort to violence to oppose them. So, that's out of bounds.

However, you can call conservatives such as Bush, Palin, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc., murderers all the live-long day. Apparently people might get upset if they realize a socialist has achieved a high political office, but they will not -- not -- be overly incensed to discover a killer has gained same office.

Compare and contrast to Keith Olbermann branding the right as inflicting a "New Holocaust" on the country. See, it's not like avoiding a Holocaust is a good reason to take up arms and go extralegal or anything. That's just some tough rhetoric, that's all that is.

But if you say Obama is pushing a New Socialism, that is excessively dangerous because people might resort to force of arms to stop that.

But a New Holocaust? No biggie!

These Are Not The Facts You're Looking For: Loughner was anti-government, in the sense he thought the entire space program was a hoax and the government was covering up UFO visitations.

Actually, even on a UFO site, Loughner manages to convince everyone there he's crazy. Because he can't even stick to the crazy topic at hand. No, he needs to talk about...

“What is wrong or right with the current date? How is the current date right or wrong? Why is or isn’t this the date? When is or isn’t the date ending or beginning? Today is July 7th 2010. Why is the year infinite in the date,” he wrote in another.

See, even when the accepted topic is already kind of out there, Loughner can't restrain himself to that topic; he's got to indulge in his brain-damaged sage crap about dates being somewhat arbitrary. (Wow, major insight there, Detective Einstein... next thing you'll be telling me that "Tuesday" is just an artificial idea I impose on the world."

Then he just rambles more about dates and, of course, grammar.

...

In one comment thread, Loughner put forward his theory that the entire space program was a hoax and that space shuttles were unable to support life, another poster soon questioned Loughner’s grammar. “This is sad to bring grammar into the argument,” Loughner said in response. “Get out of my face you miscreant with misconception!”

Perhaps the irony of that hasn't been underscored, with all the more serious stuff to discuss -- Loughner obsessed over "grammar" but in fact was an illiterate who knew nothing of proper grammar.

I believe maybe that's why he fixated on it -- because he was too stupid to understand what most kids pick up by middle-school, and also (as many lunatics do) conceived of himself as a messianic genius, he invented the theory that grammar is a conspiracy to explain away his complete FAIL at the English language, blaming his own illiteracy on dark government forces making up crazy rules just to confuse him and make him sound "wrong."

Oh PS it's Sarah Palin's fault because she said "refudiate" and that gave him a clue that top-level government people were changing the language on a daily basis.

Posted by: SPADES-OF: ACE at 08:14 AM | Comments (212)
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