Whiskey Fire

Cocksoldiers

Discuss:

When John McCain says American soldiers could be in Iraq for 100 years, the Liberal Mainstream Media screams "out of context!" -- even though when the remarks are put into "context," they become even crazier.

When Wesley Clark says that "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," context explicitly does not matter to the Liberal Mainstream Media.

Interesting, ain't it? Whoever could have seen this coming?

BONUS. My very favorite quote so far about this crap is from ABC's Rick Klein, on why this Matters So Very Very Much:

Clark’s comments seem to miss a vital point about the McCain campaign: Yes, his military service is part of his stock campaign biography, but McCain is not running on that record nearly as much as he’s running on his service in Congress.

Bullfuckingshit. Or, bullshitfucking.

Here is McCain not running on his war record:

"When I was offered a chance to go home early from prison camp in Vietnam, I put my country first,” McCain said on a conference call Tuesday night with independent and Democratic voters in South Florida. “And I’ve been doing that ever since."

Here is continuing to downplay his war record.

And whoops, there goes McCain, once more avoiding any mention of his war record as a qualification for high office!

And here is a speech where McCain deliberately avoids saying that his war record gave him qualities of character and judgment that would qualify him for the position of chief executive.

And I could go on.

All of which makes  Rick Klein's assertion that:

Clark is right that “getting shot down” isn’t a qualification to be president, but McCain isn’t saying that it is.

A load of shit.

If Clark is right, then he's right.

Guess What They've Been Saying

You almost hate to point this out, but, well... there it is, sailing right over the plate, a breaking ball that just won't break. Jonah Goldberg:

Douthat & Salam 

Get a nice review from Norm Ornstein in today's Times. I'm about halfway through myself. Thoughts to come (even though Ross enticingly vowed to comment on my own tome once he'd finished and never followed through, as far as I know).

No shit.

There's been a bit of buzz about the interesting thoughts about the future of conservatism emanating from a new generation of young right wing thinkers and intellectuals. I myself think certain corpses ought not to be reanimated, but that's beside the immediate point, which is that nobody who talks about bold new conservative thinking ever bothers to mention Jonah Goldberg, for some reason.

Other fun from The Corner involves Mark Hemingway's claim that when Karl Rove talks about Barack Obama in country clubs, he didn't mean anything to do with race, just "elitism." This is funny because Rove was talking about a particular country club "type" familiar to most members of country clubs, a "type" who is allegedly not as salt of the earth as... everyone else at the... uh... country club... *cough*... (Golf clap.) 

And country clubs, of course, have never been places where elitism and racism have traditionally met, kissed, and fucked on the fairway. Right.

Verily I say unto you

by flory

I must confess, I made a point of avoiding, to the extent possible, the lamentations and beating of breasts that accompanied the departure of Tim Russert from this earthly vale. Or something.

Because after all....he was nothing but a pumpkinheaded narcissist who made a shitload of money parading his proximity to the great and powerful. And bloviating about it on Sunday mornings.

And I gotta say, I really wish I had managed to forever and a day miss this: (via the inestimable Wolcott):

I think Tim Russert had become for Quinn, and for many of his colleagues, the very face of Christ - the only Christ they had ever seen. And now all they knew of Christ has been taken from them.

Whaaa? He's not merely a saint? He's the very face of the christ?

Wonder what Pope Ratzi thinks? Goddamn peasant stealing the limelight.

(Added by Thers: Russ Christ, by watertiger)

The Big Makeover

by Molly Ivors

I've been waiting with bated breath to see what Maureen might come up with in the wake of her public smackdown and the current inexorable (but not surprising) surge toward party unity. (Many of us predicted this, you know.) MoDo's response?

Picking on older women (and you know, not too much older than you, Mo. Just sayin').

I mean, wow. Following the finest examples of crappy news coverage we've seen over the last six months (I picture J. Jonah Jameson, the cranky editor from Spiderman, screaming "Find me a racist Hillary supporter! Stat!"), MoDo takes a fine moment and focuses almost exclusively on one old lady who's having a hard time letting go.

Carmella Lewis, with her Hillary T-shirt and Hillary placard, came all the way from Denver to make sure there would be plenty of ambiguity, duality and ferocity in Unity.

Just as Hillary was testing out the unfamiliar familiarity “Barack and me” Friday and talking about “his grace and his grit,” Carmella began loudly booing and waving her sign.

“We want Hillary!” screamed the 57-year-old retired ad saleswoman and Clinton delegate.

“It’s over, lady!” yelled some Obama supporters a few yards away.

Standing between the Sharks and the Jets, David Axelrod took pity on an older friend of Carmella’s who was suffering from aridity in the Unity humidity. The chief Obama strategist fetched a glass of water and brought it to the woman, who was wearing five Hillary buttons.

This amenity did not stop the disunity. Carmella and her friends continued to cry, “Nobama!” “We love you, Hillary!” and “We need Hillary!” as Barack Obama sat onstage on a stool behind his former rival, his finger studiously at his lips.

Carmella was not impressed with all the kissing, laughing and whispering that Hill and Bam were diligently doing for the cameras, so that the moment could produce, as Obama press aide Robert Gibbs put it on “Larry King Live,” “a great picture.”

When it was Obama’s turn to speak, Carmella announced loudly, “I wish I had ear plugs.” Then, as Obama tried to ingratiate himself with the Hillary partisans in the crowd by saying that because of the New York senator, his daughters “can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do and do it better and do it in heels,” Carmella put her fingers in her ears.

As Obama tried to curry favor with Hillary, looking over at her sensible, sturdy shoes and marveling, “I still don’t know how she does it in heels,” Carmella tore up a tissue and stuffed it in her ears.

When Obama pandered with a line about how he wouldn’t “perpetuate a system in which women are paid less for the same work as men,” she put her hands over her tissue-stuffed ears.

“Maybe she’d like what she heard if she listened,” sighed Axelrod.

When Obama talked about moving beyond “all the petty bickering,” as Hillary robo-nodded at his side and CNN’s Candy Crowley applied pre-broadcast lipstick above her, Carmella glared at people applauding.

Afterward, Carmella got her idol to autograph her sign, telling the smiling Hillary, “You’re going to be the next president.”

She told The Times that she and her friends were all voting for John McCain and that Hillary was just doing what she had to do.

“But I have a gut feeling,” she said with macabre faith, “that something’s going to happen so that she becomes the nominee.”

Now, the question here is not so much whether such people exist: of course they do. We here in the left blogosphere generally see the other side of this, as in "If she's the VP, I'm not voting!" But, you know, we recognize this for what it is: bruises that haven't quite healed yet. But they will, and anyone who supported Clinton for any reason other than her gender are going to climb on the bus eventually. Obama's striking the right notes, they're both behaving well, and it's all going to be fine by August.

But MoDo focuses on Carmella. And by focusing I mean spending far more than the requisite quote or two of column time on her. Look at how much column space she gave this person! She must have been stalking her all day. (Note to Carmella: I'd buy thicker curtains, and if an improbably taut redhead in cherry-red pumps tries to deliver flowers to you, don't open the door.) Creepy.

But then, we knew this would happen. Part of what I've been waiting for is to see what the transition to general election nastiness would look like We all understand that Maureen's Cop Daddy issues mean that she's going to do everything she can to tear down the Dems between now and the election, in order to further the chances of Senator Matlock J. Depends and his trollop of a trophy wife. But I admit, I didn't expect her to be reduced to the fringes of the crowd quite this quickly.

And now, they're "Hill and Bam" and her colleagues in the media are the "Bamary press corps," with the exception of one Fox producer who circulated tapes of the former rivals saying mean things about each other. MoDo's Hannah Montana shiv is more subtle, slyly whispering that THEY'RE BIG FAKERS AND THEY STILL HATE EACH OTHER. Umm, yeah. Maureen. Whatever. Actually, I don't give a shit what they think of each other. Are they going to fix the country? Yes? Good. Now STFU.

But like Carmella and her impossible longing for the Glory Days, Maureen finally, finally gets a chance to relive her own: by focusing on He Who Must Not Be Named, who, she says, "who is in a self-pitying meltdown about not being Elvis anymore, trying to shake down Obama for more — more apologies for perceived snubs and more help paying off the $22 million Clinton debt." Ummm, you might have missed it, Mo, but Obama did donate this week. And just as Jimmy Carter was annoyed at Clinton for dismissing his accomplishments in office, Obama should have some respect for the Clinton administration. And I think he will, eventually, but as with Carmella, it'll take some time. And Bill will, too.

But I think the whole point of today's column was to suggest a rough equivalence between Carmella and Bill Clinton, one clearly belied by the fact that he was, you know, there. But in her desperation to create bad guys, MoDo's settled on Bill, the bad guy from her Pulitzer days.

Good luck with that.

Perfect This Time

by Molly Ivors

I'll stop bragging soon. But tonight, well... me & the kid.

Quite Relaxing

It perhaps ought to be explained to this idiot that making gay marriage legal will not force the Presbyterians, the Catholics, the Lubavitchers, or the My Left Ballatarians to accept gay marriage.

The First Amendment right to free exercise of religion should not be infringed as a result of the decision of any branch of the secular state to change the secular definition of marriage. The gay-marriage movement has a bumper sticker that shows, simply, an “equals” sign. If churches are forced to participate in activities that violate the conscience of their faith, we will need to raise up that same “equals” sign in their defense. Their right to dissent is fundamental to our system.

Gay marriage will merely make homosexuals who choose to avail themselves of a civil right available to heterosexuals equal before the civil law. Nice, polite Presbyterians will still be permitted to believe that said homosexuals are going to roast eternally for their shameful behavior, if these nice, polite Presbyterians so choose to believe. Church. State. Separated.

Huzzah for our system.

Everybody's a Star

K-Lo tells the world of a thought that flitted into her consciousness.

You'll have bad times. And he'll have good times.   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

This Unity, New Hampshire, event was the ultimate in political mortification for Hillary Clinton.

I may be crazy. But Bill Clinton is not going to let himself be humiliated. He's in talks with McCain before long if he's not already. He's going to salvage his name before this election is over. Like I said ...

Someone tell K-Lo that Bill is planning a third party run with Romney, would you? You know, just for giggles.   

Your Name Is Wild

by Molly Ivors

Just a bit of meaningless parental and step-parental bragging on the eve of the teen's high school graduation.

We're proud of you, hon. On to college!

She's a Boy

Our nation faces many dire threats in these dark times. None however looms larger than the fact that any woman or young girl who enters a public restroom in the state of Colorado is now certain to be raped by drag queens, and it is against the law for women and girls to complain about it.

No, really!

Colorado's new state law that apparently was based on the belief that free speech rights are not unalienable and they sometimes must be restricted is scaring residents who now fear expressing their opinions in public.

WND reported the law, SB200, which was promoted as an "anti-discrimination" plan favoring alternative sexual lifestyles and gender perceptions, has made it a criminal offense to discriminate against someone based on those lifestyles or perceptions.

It's true -- adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the category of people you can't fire without cause is exactly the same thing as making it illegal to say "I hate fags!" in public, just like Jesus used to do.

The Focus [on the Family] analysis of the plan, according to spokesman Bruce Hausknecht, shows that besides the obvious impacts of opening restrooms and locker rooms statewide to members of either sex, depending on a perception of their gender, "the biggest danger this law poses is to the religious or moral consciences of small business owners who may object to doing business with people whose lifestyle they do not want to promote."

You know who else took away the right of deli owners and proprietors of karate schools to refuse to take money from queers? STALIN.

Individual residents also now are beginning to realize the potential of the new law, which was approved by the legislature with a declaration that it is needed for "public safety," so it is not subject to any vote of the people.

"Now, as I stand outside of a movie theater bathroom or a swimming pool shower room door and guard the most precious thing in my life: my wife and daughter's safety, modesty and privacy, I can no longer stop a man from entering a woman's domain," wrote a concern resident whose name was withheld. "(I will anyway, that's why I'm a criminal!)"

This guy is going a bit overboard -- doesn't he realize that he himself is now free to enter the bathroom with his wife and daughter and stand guard over their vaginas? Since nothing is more  precious to him than his wife's ability to go potty without being molested by guys wearing bras, I'd say it's his duty to be right there in the stall with her. He should bring a shotgun.

Because the dangers are real, folks:

"Will SB200 be the end of it? No. Next, hate crime legislation must be passed so that it is illegal for me to write this letter (as it is now illegal in Canada); then enforced homosexual/transsexual indoctrination of our children in the public educational system; finally, all other alternative forms of education must be outlawed. Impossible, you say? It's already happened in California," he said. "As I'm being forced into this 'shotgun' wedding with the radical homosexual agenda, I hope it's not too late to 'speak now, or forever hold my peace.' What is it called when you are forced, against your will, to participate in a sexual lifestyle that you find objectionable? I believe that is called 'rape.' My state legislature has 'violated' me and charged me with the crime."

RAPE! Can't argue with that logic.

Of course, there are some who express mild skepticism as to the religious right's interpretation of the likely consequences of the new law:

Focus on the Family founder. Dr. James Dobson believes this will open the door to fears that a predator, bisexual, cross-dresser or even a homosexual or heterosexual male might walk in and relieve himself in their presence. Attorney Ian Kalmanowitz disagrees with that fear. He tells me that there is no evidence that expanding protection to be from from discrimination would lead to an increase in sexual predation on women and children in the bathroom.

Oh, right, sure. But I bet this Kalmanowitz guy will be singing a different tune after the inevitable happens, and a vicious lesbian street gang violates him in front of the urinal the next time he takes a leak at a Rockies game.

I think Focus on the Family should produce a documentary film about their vision of the likely results of SB200, complete with artfully shot dramatizations. This would alert the public to the epic dangers that await our nation if we keep down this path.

Also, a film like that would be totally hawt.

Reprogram That Static Jive

Crisis on Earth-W!

Houston, We Have a Problem   [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Gallup: "Americans Prioritize the Economy Over Terrorism"

It is of course perfectly sensible for Americans to worry more about the economy than about terrorism. The odds of falling victim to a terrorist attack are incredibly low. The chances of being affected by a slumping economy are rather greater.

It says something about movement conservatism though that it's bad news for them when the nation isn't in the grip of widespread irrational panic. It says movement conservatism is a movement comprised of crazy assholes.