Rage Against the Ditto Machine

With my adblock in place, I don’t have a thousand ads to click. So, I clicked the link. And I guess now I’ve got a list of names for when if I ever snap and go on a Snapple-induced assault-rifle rampage. I could feel the stupid creeping into my room through the intertubes. I think I need a shower as well. On my own though, not with you, Adam. I may be living in Idaho these days, but I’ve still got a fairly narrow stance.

Oh Dan, I could hug you for that! In fact, I will next time I see you!

Once my cursor hovered over the link and identified it as pajamas media, I knew it wasn’t anywhere I wanted to go.

Besides, I don’t have to leave here. WF should be around any minute to tell us what a fraud Al is.

Jack (welcome) Back from Iraq, I’ve often thought the same thing….usually after reading one of his comments.

The best I can guess is that EVERYONE realizes what a catastrophic mistake electing Bush was. Those on the right can only justify such a blatently stupid move by trying to prove that Al was worse. So there has been an unending crusade to discredit him. When he came out with “An Inconvenient Truth” they inflated his utility bills and attacked him for being an energy wasting hypocrite. Now they have an even bigger hurdle than an Oscar (and Emmy and Grammy) to bring him down from. It’s a big task to slime a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but who else could do it? Fresh from their disgusting attack on Graeme Frost (the kid who needs the health care that the President vetoed) they can devote their full attention to their favorite villain, a man who would have kept us out of…hell he just won the Nobel PEACE Prize.

It just dawned on me. They hate Peace, so any one who wins the prize is automatically the enemy.

Sorry Al.

You are correct, Murray. They really do hate peace. It does not serve their perceived interests, nor does it give them the Republicans-are-strong-on-defense mythology that they need to maintain power and enhance their “defense” stock portfolios. I mean even the notion of a peace dividend after the fall of the Berlin Wall sent them off the deep end.

Can we still Rage Against the Ditto Heads,too?

Well, c’mon, ladies ‘n gents, it’s not like global warming is all that scary … I mean, it’s not like imaginary threats of terrorism … there’re no brown people to demonize; ya can’t jettison th’ Constitution in order to fight global warming; and who wants to give up their SUV’s, anyways?

See, we need to find a way to blame that climate change thing on th’ al Qaeda … or th’ Mexicans … or both!

Hey, now there’s a marketing strategy for ya!

Of course you know that Essex derives its from the East Seaxe or East Saxons, Wessex from the West Saxons, and Sussex from the South Saxons. Interestingly enough, there were no North Saxons, or else today we would have the town of … wait for it… Nosex.

I hope you all saw where I declared the Vatican to be the first carbon neutral state on the planet. It seemed easy enough; we have no heavy industry burning coal and fouling the air. But I’ve still got to figure out how to do it. Maybe I could just say it’s carbon neutral. I’m the Pope, who’s going to say I am lying? Well, besides Cardinal Bernie, who’ll say anything that will get him in front of a TV news camera. He’s hard at work, re-inventing himself as a long suffering radical cleric. As you may imagine, he has a lot of work in front of him and a long row to hoe.

Well, it’s the weekend, which means I still have another 43,278 children, cripples, and alcoholics to bless before the Sabbath ends. Fortunately, they’ll all get herded into St. Peter’s Square tomorrow morning and I can do it all at once. That certainly makes life easier, but you cannot imagine the smell. Mein Gott!!!

Pity the historically appropriate ancestor of Prescott, GHW, and GW Bush wasn’t a North Saxon (no animosity intended toward Jenna and Laura, about whom I have no particular attitude).

Lapelgate might set a new standard for mindless media shit. Once again, the title of Alexandra Pelosi’s take on the ‘04 election: WELCOME TO THE FLYING CIRCUS: HOW THE MEDIA MAKES A FREAK SHOW OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS.

What?!! More scandal - not only the priest in Argentina getting convicted last week in the deaths of seven prisoners during the “Dirty War”, now we have the Italian TV network La7 using secret cameras to catch Monsignor Tammaaso Stenico in a sex sting with a gay boy. I thought all the closeted homosexuals were in the Republican Party in the US. Wait, maybe Monsignor Stenico joined the Republican Party last year when he was doing his sabbatical @ Notre Dame. I’ll have to get Cardinal Bernie in on this to spin it just the right way. Of course, I’ll now owe him a dispensation. Gott knows what that will cost me…

Seattle D, I had precisely the same reaction watching Real Time last night. Tucker Carlson is not a very intelligent person; he’s constantly making inapt analogies — e.g., if the NYT can hire private security for its handful of employees in Iraq, why can’t the State Department hire Blackwater to do a job that used to belong to the Marines? (Duh, because one is a private company and the other’s the U.S. friggin’ government, dipshit) — and not seeing obvious hypocrisy — e.g., if Bill Maher thinks there’s nothing wrong with a man playing with his, er, “little soldier” on his own time, why does he criticize a right-wing “Christian” anti-gay nutjob for wrapping himself in multiple layers of rubber, inserting a plastic object up his you-know-what, and playing with his “li’l soldier”. As to the latter, Carlson kept saying, “I don’t get it Bill; I thought you wanted him to masturbate.” Um, no, shit-for-brains, we don’t want stupid right-wingers to do anything; we want them to leave the rest of us alone and stop telling us what we can and can’t do — especially if they’re going to do the very things they tell everyone else not to do.

Seriously, why is Tucker Carlson so incapable of understanding (a) the difference between private action and government action; and (2) the obvious hypocrisy of right-wing Christian conservatives doing the very things they preach against. Why don’t those synapses fire in his brain? I mean, really … it says a lot about the guy’s character that he genuinely does not understand these things.

Thanks, Lemuel. Good luck and looking forward to the next installment.

And thanks, Dave vE. Here is the overtime for Realtime, where Tucker continues his obliviation:

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/real_time_ot_101207.mov

Considering that Henry Kissinger also won a Nobel Peace Prize, I consider it that much of an honor.

Yeah, the Nobel for Dr. Kill-the-Villagers-in-Neighboring-Countries-in-Very-Large-Numbers-with -Carpet-Bombing Kissinger is a major black mark against that honor. Awarding him an honor held by Martin Luther King, Jr. made me sick at heart.

WF, the vitriolic right dusted off the anti-Martin Luther King, Jr. playbook for their scripted assault on Al Gore for daring to speak truth on behalf of humankind. Oh, yeah, and King also spoke out against an immoral war. SS, DD (Different Decade).

At this point, changes in individual behavior are probably not going to affect much of anything.

I thought Paul Krugman did a pretty good job today of explaining why the rightwingers went apeshit over the Nobel Peace Prize award. I hope you can read this without having to register anymore.

WF, I’ve never thought of you as vitriolic, but the right wing noise machine that kicks in on cue certainly is. Rush and his ilk have banked a fortune off of vitriol, often misleading if not downright erroneous.
I was a senior in college when MLK, Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize and remember well what was said.

Living in a mansion is not an issue. How green that mansion is does matter. But regarding the private jet, how else is he going to travel? The question becomes why have we not pushed hard as a society on developing and incorporating the least harmful technology possible. Al Gore is incredibly valuable as a spokesperson for the green world we must do everything in our power to achieve, and the more he travels carrying that message the better.

Ironically, GWB’s ranch, as I understand it, is environmentally responsible, but he followed Dick Cheney’s inverse dictum that conservation is a personal virtue, not a government policy, which is exactly the wrong direction to go if you are the chief executive of the most powerful, most consumptive nation on earth. I applaud personal environmental virtue, but just as I drove a 33 mpg VW and had no measurable effect on the environment because the society of which I am apart chose to believe it could continue on its profligate ways, so GWB’s ranch has no measurable effect on environmental well being, but the impact of Al Gore as ecowarrior very well could. So focus not on the messenger so much as the message. Tell me where what he is championing is wrong, not whether he has to fly in a Gulfstream and has a very large house.

To whatever extent you have sound reasons to reject Al Gore’s message, fine, but calling someone courageous enough to call the Iraq War what it is when to do so brought down howls of scorn even from the MSM and a committed enough citizen to dedicate his time and energy to a cause of this magnitude and import a puke just doesn’t make sense to me.

Peace, dude, and remember what Gibran said: “Our children do not belong to us, we belong to our children.” To that I would add “and our children’s children, and their children and beyond.” These are the people I think Al Gore is championing.

¨remember what Gibran said: “Our children do not belong to us, we belong to our children.” To that I would add “and our children’s children, and their children and beyond.”

And/or our pets, other people´s children, and other people´s children´s pets.

David sez:

. . . But regarding the private jet, how else is he going to travel? . . .

Commercial, like the rest of us? I realize he has security issues with which to deal but still. . .

Anne,

It’s probably because they didn’t think up that particular racket* first. They’re jealous.

And they can’t figure out how to gain a monopoly on wind and sunshine.;-) Yet.:-0

*and no, I don’t believe that Al Gore considers his work in focusing attention on global warming to be a “racket.”

WF, sportsfolk are an important component in conservation. In fact, were it not for sports hunters, the deer in Florida would have been wiped out in the 20s, I think it was. I was a member of the NRA in the late 50s and into the 60s, but they took a turn I could not embrace (as also happened with Bush Senior). I’m not sure what they have to do with children’s well being at this point. But the sports conservation organizations, oh, yes, and a tip of the hat for supporting them.

Steve, I don’t think commercial is a practical alternative for what he needs to be doing at the moment. And I think that for whatever carbon footprint that leaves, it is one of the highest current uses of private jets.

Ann, not only are you a FanAp heartthrob, you do a magnificent job of not mincing words on this issue. Thank you.

Oh, Childless Dale, ’tis a pity. You do strike me as someone a child would be really lucky to own.