Irony, Literature, And Talk Radio

This clip is destined to be classic.



So the caller has "returned to the church" partly because of Beck? I'm curious as to what her denomination is. Is she a snake-handling, Holiness, tongue-speaker?

Not only that, but isn't it rather ironic that Beck and this caller are discussing a book that is about a demon writing letters about how to trick their intended audience. Am I calling Beck a demon soldier for Satan? No, but he certainly is a soldier for the modern conservative movement - a group that is out to ensure that there is not only class warfare, but that a portrait of liberals/progressives be painted that depicts a group that is out to push the country forward for everyone and not just a select few that happen to have a few extra zeros to the left of the decimal point in their checking accounts.

While it has been over 20 years since I read Lewis' book in which he uses a fictional character to espouse his own ideological ramblings, I find it rather troublesome that Beck and the caller seem to be taking this work of fiction as fact. This is one of major downfalls of conservative thought - using fictional world as the primary thesis statement of what you are trying to push off as fact.

The Love/Hate Stimulation

A couple of days off from blogging and paying far too much attention to news all together and it appears I really didn't miss much that wasn't already brewing on Monday. That being said........

Interesting how the conservative narrative shifts.

Federal Judge Rips Pres. Obama's Lawsuit Against Arizona

And the reactionary conservatives GOWILD!!!

The reaction at Fox"Nation" was a mix of jubulation and praise for U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton. But the honeymoon that the Washington Post had reported on wouldn't even last the week. The same was true for the mouth-agape crowd at HotAir.

A federal judge pushed back Thursday against a contention by the Obama Justice Department that a tough new Arizona immigration law set to take effect next week would cause "irreparable harm" and intrude into federal immigration enforcement.

"Why can't Arizona be as inhospitable as they wish to people who have entered or remained in the United States?" U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton asked in a pointed exchange with Deputy Solicitor General Edwin S. Kneedler. Her comment came during a rare federal court hearing in the Justice Department's lawsuit against Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer (R).

Bolton, a Democratic appointee, also questioned a core part of the Justice Department's argument that she should declare the law unconstitutional: that it is "preempted" by federal law because immigration enforcement is an exclusive federal prerogative.

"How is there a preemption issue?" the judge asked. "I understand there may be other issues, but you're arguing preemption. Where is the preemption if everybody who is arrested for some crime has their immigration status checked?"

At issue in Thursday's hearing, argued in a tan-colored "special proceedings" courtroom" inside the federal courthouse, was whether Bolton would grant a preliminary injunction to stop the law from taking effect while the federal lawsuit proceeds.

As dozens of protesters marched outside, the hearing marked the first round in the Obama administration's effort to stop the state's crackdown on illegal immigration. The tension in the courtroom reflected a broader national debate over what has become a political divisive issue: whether police should have the power to question people they suspect are in the United States illegally.

So, whom does the prototypical conservative blame when something goes against their very ideals? If you said Obama - at least for this instance - you're wrong.

Clinton-Appointed Judge Guts Ariz. Immigration Law

That's right, it's never fair to blame the man who left office less than two years ago, but it completely fair to blame the one that left almost 10 years ago.

While the previous post at Fox"Nation" garnered less than 500 posts since the 23rd, the later - with the evil Clinton named attached to it - is approaching 1700 posts in just over 24hrs.

Will the predictability of conservative ever end?

We Aren't Afriad Of Her

Some conservatives are actually crowing about liberals/progressives desire to see the Republicans give Palin the 2012 nomination for the presidency. Not so much because of her ability to hold down the position effectively - and they likely know that she can't - but because it would be such fun to watch unfold.

With Palin, the DNC narrative is already set and, equally importantly, her name recognition is such that they could frame the election as a choice between two mega-stars, not a referendum on The One’s first term. That’s their strategy in November too, of course: If they run on their record they’re dead on arrival, no matter what the voices in Harry Reid’s head might be telling him, so they’re forced to push a “GOP is worse!” message that deflects attention onto their opponents. Hence the constant agonizing among the Republican House leadership about whether to endorse a specific conservative agenda for the midterms, which gives the Dems something concrete to attack, or whether to sell themselves more vaguely as candidates of, er, hope and change vis-a-vis Pelosi’s Democratic majority. If Sarahcuda’s the nominee, we get a real “A vs. B” choice election, not an “A vs. Not A” referendum as typically happens with incumbent presidents. That would be tons of fun to write about under any circumstance, but with two larger-than-life candidates like her and The One, it’d be blog paradise; it’d also have the party establishment, which is eager for a straightforward “anyone but Obama” campaign, breathing into paper bags. No wonder lefty bloggers are gung ho. And hey — just think how much fresh new Trig Truther material they must have saved up by now.

I've already addressed how conservatives are throwing a digital tantrum because Rachel Maddow pointed out the accomplishments of the Obama administration, so why shouldn't there be a blinding light shown on the opposition - The Party Of No?

It's predictably telling that Morrissey would get in a dig at the obvious minority of liberals/progressives that even momentarily questioned the birth of Palin's son Trig. But that is one of the MO's of conservatives, paint your opposition as tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists. To me, that aspect of the modern conservative movement should be looked at, as they have openly embraced everything that Glenn Beck has espoused since be became the new Fox"News" poster-boy.

So what do the Democrats have to fear by Palin being the GOP nominee? Nothing, actually, as that would never happen. And from Ed Morrissey on down to the most low-level conservative flunky, there isn't one that can honestly say that Palin would make a great president without showing once ounce of uncertainty. Do they have the audacity, the balls enough, to put up someone who couldn't hack being a governor to be the leader of the proverbial free-world? And while they roundly don't give one droplet of duck shit what the rest of the world thinks of us, what type of message do you think that sends to other countries when you put someone like Sarah Palin literally inches away from the Presidency?

Palin is the trophy wife of the conservative movement, not the woman you want providing for and taking care of your children. I honestly don't think that one Republican in this country would enter the voting booth on election day 2012 and be willing to select her with a clear conscience, because they know she wouldn't be able to handle it. Does anyone remember how Palin refused to answer who she voted for in 2008? I'm guessing she even knows that her and McCain would have been abject failures. Then again, there are Republicans out there that are more than willing to send their own country down that dangerous path to complete and utter ruin just to prove a poorly conceived point. I'm sure that we all remember 2001-2008.

Who Will Follow Up On This?

Granted, the bulk of the documents that Wikileaks has obtained are largely speculative and need further investigation, one segment that Wired is reporting on merits some follow-up.

according to one of the WikiLeaks logs, Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security got a tip about the man at the very top of the most wanted list: Osama Bin Laden himself. The informant said that Bin Laden “had been transported to Peshawar hospital in Pakistan for treatment, where he has died.”

“NDS stressed that this was a single source report and had not been verified,” the log added. No other document in the WikiLeaks trove appears to corroborate this. So it looks like just another piece of RUMINT in a war full of it.

RUMINT is short for "rumored intelligence". But even rumors of this sort need to be looked into, especially considering that Benazir Bhutto, a woman with intimate knowledge of the happenings in her region, stated back in 2007 that Bin Laden had been murdered.

Let's postulate on why this piece of intel wasn't seriously researched. Firstly, it would put a massive dent into the Bush administration's desire to continue fighting in Afghanistan, even though his tenure would end less than 2 years later. Secondly, and more than likely most importantly, the Bush administration couldn't possibly admit that a foreign country had accomplished something that he had loudly and all too often boasted about American forces doing.

There have been theories and rumors that Bin Laden had died much earlier than 2007, but none had been substantiated by anyone of prominence like Benazir Bhutto. All previous speculations were framed in the context of tin-foil hat nutjob nonsense. As for me, this needs to be seriously reviewed and have proper context be revealed to the American public. After all, this is the most wanted man in the world we are talking about. But considering how this has been completely ignored since 2007, there's going to have to be a great deal of explaining why so many have been so silent.

The Theatre Of Damage Control

To use a phrase that we often hear from conservatives - question the timing.

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has a party fundraising event coming up in August that is scheduled to feature a very special guest: Conservative media activist Andrew Breitbart, according to a copy of the invitation exclusively obtained by TPM.

The fundraising event, billed as an "Election Countdown," will take place from August 12-14 in Beverly Hills, California, and will also feature other politicians such as California Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, and Nevada Republican gubernatorial nominee Brian Sandoval. Steele and Breitbart are scheduled to co-headline a welcome reception on the first evening, August 12.

It's certainly some odd timing for the RNC to be working closely with Breitbart, who, of course, has made headlines recently for circulating a video clip of then-Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod, an African-American, seeming to tell a story about how she would not help a white farmer who was down on his luck 24 year ago. Sherrod was quickly forced to resign last week. And as it turned out, the full video showed that Sherrod was telling a story about how she ultimately did not discriminate against the farmer -- that this was a great turning point in her own personal story of race relations in the South -- and she did help him. Indeed, the farmer himself has come forward to defend her and discuss their lasting friendship.

Sure, this could have been planned months in advance, but isn't it odd that Micheal "I'm going to tap into the modern hip-hop movement to get more votes" Steele AND Andrew "I'm going to prove that all blacks are either racists or out to do something illegal or detrimental of the fabric of this nation" Breitbart are going to do a fundraising duet?

I'm guessing this is where Fox"News" will chime in that Andrew isn't a racist because he's going to share the stage with a black man. I'm sure that's coming - probably in the form of Sean Hannity's program complete with "Rev." Jessie Lee Peterson and Eric Rush.

The Power Of Advertising

The modern conservative movement thinks that it's fine for a Republican VP to tell a sitting member of Congress to "go fuck himself", but don't use the dreaded f-bomb to show passion regarding how BP is, well, fucking shit up.

Oil Spill Charity "F-Bomb-A-Thon" from UnF--kTheGulf.com on Vimeo.

I'm not the best person to judge someone's age, but I'm pretty sure that I only spotting three people in that video that were under the age of 18, and one had their ears covered by their mom. And seriously, if conservatives think that a child is destined to because a Nazi-sympathizing, jew-hating, ideologue simply because their parents signed off on them appearing in a video and saying "fuck" twice when they were 10, I would more likely be worried about people like Micheal Savage and Glenn Beck being parents. But that's another post for another day.

To me, this is something that is missing from modern socio-political discourse - passion and a clear perspective. And isn't the point of advertising to grab the viewer attention? Of course it is. I think this is a great campaign and am about to put up my donation and will proudly wear my shirt around my seriously conservative town just to see what happens. In fact, I might even film it just to capture the responses.

Here's an exit question: Why are conservatives so eager to go after a campaign designed to help The Gulf simply because the word "fuck" was doled out less than most R-rated films but will completely deny any racist element of the Tea Bagger movement 24 hours a day?

Since The Right Won't Listen To Him.....

Conservatives are working themselves into a collective lather over this video of the President that was shown at Netroots Nation this past weekend.



As soon as I heard of it's showing, I knew that it wouldn't take the reactionary masses of the modern conservative movement to scream about how this is proof positive of liberal media bias because it featured Rachel Maddow.

Noel Sheppard of conservative website NewsBusters ended his screed with this:

Potentially the most liberal president in American history needed potentially the most liberal commentator on television to help him sell his record to a gathering of potentially the most liberal people in the country.

Despite what Maddow thinks, what does that say about this man's job performance eighteen months into his presidency?

And what does it say about MSNBC?

While I think it's more than a bit of a stretch to claim that Obama is the most liberal president ever, as he and his administration have caved to conservative demands far more than Bill Clinton did in his first term in office. There's still no Public Option in Healthcare Reform - though I am still strongly in favor of the Single Payer system. The recently passed Financial Reform act still have some gaping holes in it, namely the fact that the auto industry lobby was kowtowed to and they are getting a free pass on how they are inextricably linked to Wall Street. We are still in Afghanistan and Iraq, the cost of which maintaining our presence there make up more of the deficit that conservatives suddenly thought was created after Bush left office. Those three things alone don't paint the greatest liberal portrait of Barack Obama, so to claim him to be the King of the Liberals is a bit overreaching.

As far as Maddow's inclusion to the video, that was actually a segment from her program last month where she highlighted the accomplishments of the administration - something that conservatives most certainly don't want to be known, as it clearly tears down their narrative that he hasn't accomplished anything since taking office. And to say that she is the most liberal voice on television, it should be pointed out that she has been critical of democratic positions, and very affective at that.

Are conservatives claiming that Obama hasn't spoken to them? It seems as such, even though he has done more than just listen to the inane dribblings coming from the Right side of the metaphorical and literal aisle. The reality of this is that conservatives had 8 years to make gains for the country and didn't live up to what they were elected to do. What were their goals? Ask any conservative pundit and the answer you'll most likely get is that we were only attacked once during Bush's tenure. Or, to put it another way, that "we were kept safe". No policy accomplishments, not even a successful end to our occupation in Iraq or attaining even modest goals in Afghanistan.

Conservatives aren't as much pissed that there was a video of Obama addressing Netroots Nation as they are ashamed that they can't say that Bush was as successful as Obama has been in less than 2 years.

Releasing The Predictability

Both Ed Morrissey and the woman he and Allahpundit affectionately refer to as The Boss are really reaching for something that really isn't there with their latest attempt at smearing the Obama administration.

Michelle's purse-lipped outrage:

Here is what Team Obama’s “smart” and sensitive form of diplomacy has wrought: A hero’s welcome home to Libya for the murderous Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was released last August claiming he had terminal cancer and three months to live. A year later, the jihadist is still alive, senators want an investigation, and The Australian reports that the Obama administration backed “compassionate release.”

And Morrissey's over-reaching narrative:

What the US actually wanted, short of continuing Megrahi’s imprisonment, was a sort of house arrest in Scotland, not Libya. That is what was meant by LeBaron’s suggestion of “compassionate release.” The White House didn’t want Megrahi stepping off of a plane in Tripoli to cheering crowds, the exact scenario that played out in the end. While having Megrahi outside of prison wasn’t the nominal situation, that at least would have kept Megrahi from rubbing his freedom in the noses of the Pan Am 103 victims’ families.

The letter did not give a green light to Megrahi’s parole to Libya. Nevertheless, it shows the kind of ineptitude that has plagued the Obama administration’s diplomacy from the “reset button” with Russia to this day. LeBaron’s note was a clear signal to Scotland that the US had lost most of its interest in Megrahi; recall that the US had insisted originally that any parole must include extradition to the US. The Scottish government must have presumed that we would not strenuously object to their release of Megrahi to the Libyans after LeBaron failed to raise that point and demand Megrahi’s extradition.

Also, it shows that the Obama administration lied about being surprised by Megrahi’s release. They knew it was coming, and while they may have been surprised that he went to Libya, the White House knew Scotland was going to spring Megrahi one way or the other.

But if anyone takes the time to actually read the article in The Australian, they would get a far different picture than what Morrissy and Malkin are painting.

The Obama administration were expressly against the situation that ultimately played out. But if one were to go by Malkin and Morrissey's writings, you would get the picture that the US signed off on the deal to sent Megrahi back to Libya. Michelle and Ed's strategy in framing the story in this fashion is that they are banking on the laziness of conservatives to do any sort of fact checking. Unfortunately, that line of thinking normally works, as conservatives have a desire to believe the worst about anyone from the opposition party. I'm almost certain that if Malkin and Morrissey knew they could get away with it, they would have reported that Obama himself opened the cell door and extended a welcoming hand to Megrahi.

The US government, despite what these two clowns think, doesn't control the Scottish Justice Department, their prison system, or even those that took Megrahi into custody. These two pieces are clearly designed to distort the reality of this situation. And while this could have been handled much differently, what exactly do Malkin and Morrissey think that the Obama administration should have done? Should they have flown to Scotland and barrackaded the prison doors? Maybe send troops there as a show of force? We aren't really meant to understand that, as it's easier to inflate a situation to reflect your agenda rather than report it from an honest perspective.

Degrating What They Endorse

In which we see Megyn Kelly do her best concern trolling.



One has to marvel at the rank hypocrisy of Kelly, considering the fact that her and Fox are continuously going to bat for the Tea Baggers that espouse the same type of idiotic prattling that Tancredo is displaying here.

Adaptations

Ho. Lee. Shit.



Never would have suspected that the comic mini-series by Warren Ellis, arguably one of the most well-rounded and accomplished comic authors in the medium since Chris Claremont, would get this type of treatment.

If for no other reason, you should at least see this because Helen Mirren looks even sexier holding an assault weapon.