Whiskey Fire

llewrO

Shorter the post below, as well as shorter Wingnut-O-Sphere:

Kids singing = Oppression!

Bush gutting habeas corpus = Freedom!

Also, 2 + 2 = Flib flibetty glub glub glub!

Video representation of essence of right wing blogs, below.

What a Better Life!

Shorter wannabe Bride o' Christ:

This You Tube video of kids singing a song about Obama proves not merely that we are all inevitably doomed to a tortured existence in a hellish Orwellian dystopia, but also that all that silly liberal stuff about how Bush wasn't very good on civil liberties was all... silly hysterical stuff and nonsense! (Pardon my language but these leftists just steam my breviary! Hmmmph!)

Not exaggerating: "This has more than a little whiff of Havana and Moscow about it, sorry.... I look at that beautiful child, with her lovely, lilting voice and her open mien, and I see lines for bread, lines for shoes, lines for meat, lines, lines, lines. I see the privileged few driving by the lines and giving the raised fist, encouraging the proletariat to 'keep it real.'"

The YouTube video is kitsch. Sheesh. Much like, say, this:

Which I find kind of creepy, mostly because it's a pillow. ("Look, honey, we got a wet spot on our Lord and Savior's chin, and it's making the President smile! It's a miracle!") Is this silly thing a sign of incipient fascism? Perhaps not: as that relentless Internets Sleuth and charcoal-grill enthusiast The Confederate Yankee reminds us, you can't have Nazism without the production values.

Naturally enough Jonah Goldberg weighs in, or farts in, on YouTube/Death Camp/Happy Obama Song-Gate, huffily informing the leftist brownshirts who have stormed the NRO offices sent him emails that the video is not at all like that scene in Jesus Camp where they do that spooky "pray for Bush" thing because, and I quote:

The Bush campaign didn't use glassy-eyed kids in a messianic P.R. stunt to promote their candidate, nor did any affiliated outreach group. Meanwhile, that is precisely what the Obama camp is doing — with the active support of the head of NBC, the parent company of MSNBC by the way.

Which is good stuff, because -- and this will shock you -- as Goldberg was forced to admit, it turns out that "NBC, the parent company of MSNBC, by the way," had nothing to do with the video after all! Ha ha! And that the Obama campaign, or "affiliated outreach groups," didn't do the video either!

It's also kind of piquant that a video of kids singning is for wingnuts a danger signal, but a concerted attempt to, say, stock the Justice Department with religious extremist hacks is all good fun.

During the wingnuts' upcoming time in the political wilderness I wouldn't be at all surprised to see some bright young entrepreneur build some vacation/concentration camp where for a few thousand bucks a week "conservatives" can be force fed lattes and arugula by hippie lesbians and illegal immigrants, with compulsory yoga drills at dawn along with mandatory Bible flushing and Koran smooching. Reality won't conform to their desires, but there's no reason the free market can't provide a substitute, just like people nowadays who really really want to get spanked can always find somebody willing to take money to do it. Smack! There's pots of money to be made here, if you can stomach the work. 

Anyhow, whatever your thoughts on the video, it probably is not a sign of The New Holocaust. The kids, like, just ain't that scary. Unlike, say, Bob Owens and his commenters:

Indoctrinate the children at an early age and you will have them for life. The teachings of the Catholic Church, Muslims, Totalitarian states, cults, and all mind control zealots with dreams of ruling the masses and imposing his will on them. We have a willing segment of our society who are buying into this and sacrificing their children much like the pagan sacrificial practices of the past.

are the end times near? can anyone stop this?

This is scary. All these kids need are brown shirts and swastikas on their arms and they could be singing for Hitler.

That's Scary! Children should not be used in politicals... but Obama does think his is a religious movement with him as God... Poor kids, elitist Obama.

Because these wingnuts are the people who so cherish free speech and democratic ideals, I was particularly charmed by these suggested remedies for this highly oppressive video:

That teacher should be fired for using kids in a political message and for using school property to promote a candidate...public or private school.

These delusional fools should be locked up for child abuse, and the kids sent to be deprogrammed.

So I have to wonder, does this video violate the McCain-Feingold prohibition against mentioning a candidate’s name in a campaign add.
re: the “Vote” at the end of the video.

But this commenter really sums it up:

Another scene from Lloyd Wright's "Evita" enacted, and the irony of it is lost on the players.

Indeed. I hate it when irony is lost, my own self. I'm pretty sure though that if we look for it hard enough, it'll turn up, though.

Abusing the Signal

Insty gets a hot scoop!

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

Distressing news indeed from the inner sanctum of the Bumfuck Beacon. However, I regret to inform our friends on the right that, strictly speaking, it may not be precisely true that the MSM's refusal to call Barack Obama a terrorist is what is swinging the election towards the Democrats. The fact that the GOP has created multiple disasters at home and abroad may be more relevant.

I wouldn't worry, though -- if the nation does somehow return to peace and prosperity, I don't doubt the New York Times will eventually become bored enough to care about preposterous trivial shit once again. For the rest of us, the upside of the botched wars, the mounds of corpses, the torture regime, and the financial meltdown, is that the media is finally focusing (badly, but still) on issues that actually matter. But this too shall pass. Wingnuts will be able to dangle their bright shiny objects again at some point in the future. (That is, if we even have a future at all, and we are  so fortunate as not to die screaming from multiple infected bites inflicted by mutant rats, or be compelled to start living in caves with nary a poachable wi-fi network to grab signal from.) So, chin up, conservatives! Turn that frown upside-down, etc.

Insty's add-on is also entertaining:

UPDATE:  The Anchoress hears similar things. And reader Eric Schubert: "The Edwards debacle was proof enough of where the heart of the MSM lies, and lack of curiousity of the press about Edwards probably cost Hillary the nomination...."

Two points:

1. It is not remotely surprising that people who like to dress up like pretend nuns & gad about on the Internet hear all sorts of fascinating things. In a clinical sense, anyhow. 

2. The point about how the MSM not caring about who Edwards was fucking ended up costing Hillary the nomination: that is, as the professionals say, all my shiny balls.

MORE. Insty updates to point out that the Dinosaur Media is dying, dying! and that the future lies in the news being provided to us by ersatz suburban nuns and illiterates with free email accounts, and that this will be a net gain for Democracy. By 2012, the MSM will be dead, dead!

It's a good gig Insty has, MSM-doom-prophesying, as stable as en endowed chair, if dumber. I'm quite sure he'll be able to sell the same old warmed over gibberish for many election cycles to come. Unless the mutant rats get us first, something I myself am right now sort of rooting for.

AND MORE! Hi there, mutant rats.

EVEN MORE! Patterico weighs in, in his patented "fuck the forest, trees full speed ahead" idiom:

The article also says:

During an October 2006 debate in the Alaska governor’s race, Palin urged that evolution and creationist ideas be taught together in state schools. “Don’t be afraid of information and let kids debate both sides,” she said.

But the L.A. Times doesn’t mention that, after the debate, Palin clarified that — contrary to what the L.A. Times says — she did not intend for creationism to be taught in the schools:

In an interview Thursday, Palin said she meant only to say that discussion of alternative views should be allowed to arise in Alaska classrooms:

“I don’t think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn’t have to be part of the curriculum.”

She added that, if elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add such creation-based alternatives to the state’s required curriculum.

Because the walking back of the gaffe -- here meaning the honest expression of what one sincerely believes that it turns out sane people think is stupid -- is even more important than the gaffe itself. Here's the link Patterico neglects to provide us. Here's the actual full story:

The volatile issue of teaching creation science in public schools popped up in the Alaska governor's race this week when Republican Sarah Palin said she thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state's public classrooms.

Palin was answering a question from the moderator near the conclusion of Wednesday night's televised debate on KAKM Channel 7 when she said, "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

How silly of anyone to think she could have ever claimed she supported "teaching" creationism in public schools when THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT SHE FUCKING SAID. Then when she realized that what plays in Wasilla Wingnuttia sounds nuts in the wider world, she faked like that's not what she meant, at all.

Excuse me if, given this anecdote, I have nothing but the desire to urinate from a great height upon those who want to cite the Ayers nonsense as Ironclad Proof that Obama is a Stealth Radical.

The Brides Have Hit Glass

by Molly Ivors.

Oh. My. God.

Jeebus, she even pretended  that the other night was Obama's problem. What more  do they want?

Excuse Me, Napoleon

Ann Althouse: Tom Brokaw displaying blatant and indeed preposterous favoritism towards McCain shows just how deep in the tank the MSM is for Obama. No, really.

At the end of a discussion in which both candidates were perfectly well represented by their mouthpieces, Brokaw thought fairness required him to say, essentially, "Well, the American people still think McCain is much better on these questions."

Brokaw began the discussion by saying "We're not going to get into this business about who won and lost the debate." He made a point of not presenting Schmidt and Axelrod with poll numbers on that subject. And none of his other questions were based on polls, nor did Schmidt and Axelrod bring up any polls. So why did Brokaw end like that?

My guess? Inside NBC, they are fretting about criticism that they show favoritism toward Obama, so Brokaw thought it might help to lob out a glaring hunk of McCain favoritism. Sorry! That just looked really weird. Consequently, it reinforced the perception that NBC favors Obama.

Truly a dizzying intellect. But even that's less fun than this slice of fried gold:

What are some irrational things that's intelligent, educated people believe in?

For example, I know law professors who believe in astrology.

I got that beat. I know a law professor who thinks she's intelligent.  HI-OOOOOH! Rimshot! Joke about Doc Severinsen's tie! (That was the straightest straight line ever. It was miles straighter than a GOP politician voting against gay marriage, anyhow.)

Obama Doesn't Care about Your Shitty Kook Blog

Oh good grief. Wingnut twit decides Barack Obama is trying to Crush His Blog:

This is MacRanger of Macsmind. As you know I was hacked by operatives of the Obama Campaign last month. Well, it happened again. Basically they flooded the site with “sql bombs” according to the host that caused the shared server to stop running. Subsequently be had to disable the site. This had to do with running the “Obama wants to Disarm America” post which more than 2 million people viewed on the site. Just like the goons in Missouri, the Obama truthers can’t let the truth be known. I’ve now moved the blog back to blogspot at macsmind.blogspot.com at least temporally. Because of the hacking job I had to move to another host but unfortunately they haven’t got the server up yet to redirect the traffic to blogspot. I would appreciate a mention to your readers. I’m getting a couple of hundred emails about “what happened”, but as you can imagine it hard to get the word out by reply.

This from the comment section is pretty choice:

After the McCain/Obama debate, right-wing sites were bombarded with negatives comments about McCain under the name of anonymous, of which I'm sure there are many.

I think so too. But the real comedy is that Obama is allegedly doing this because he doesn't want the TRUTH out... about how he doesn't think nuclear missiles are a great investment in America's Future.

You know who shot Vince Foster? Obama. True story.

Bailout V 2.0

by flory

An outline of the latest bailout proposal has appeared. But before we get into that, for the philosophical, psychological and political underpinnings of the whole mess, see Thers.

Couple of interesting provisions:

Guarantees taxpayers are repaid in full -- if other protections have not actually produced a profit

I think, although the outline doesn't spell it out, that this might be referring to a theoretical new fee that might be applied to the financial services industry in 4 years if the purchased assets haven't appreciated enough for the taxpayers to breakeven. Per Politico:

On two key points, final compromises were required for competing priorities between House Democrats and Republicans. In the first case, Democrats had proposed that the Treasury be required to impose a fee on Wall Street transactions to help cover the cost of any government losses as a result of the rescue plan. But Republicans and Treasury resisted, and the final compromise calls for the next president to submit a legislative proposal to Congress in four years, after some assessment can be made of the costs to the government.

In four years, unless we're in a depression, nobody will remember anything about the current collapse of civilisation as we know it, so this legislative proposal will likely amount to nothing. This is generally called kicking the can down the road.

This part sucks:

Democrats stepped back from their demands for a change in law allowing bankruptcy judges to restructure residential mortgage payments, but the bill extends a popular tax provision to protect individuals from tax liability on their foreclosures.

One wonders which provision Paulson was willing to trade away to keep this from being included.

This part makes me very, very happy:

Recovers bonuses paid based on promised gains that later turn out to be false or inaccurate

Clawback provisons!!! Whoo Hoo!!! I actually never thought I'd see anything approaching this in the final bill. If there's any truth whatsoever to the whole notion of 'moral hazard', this is the only way to protect against it. Make the people involved hurt, not just their employers.

Of course, since none of this has been voted on, and some of the stories seem to indicate that House Republicans weren't actively involved in the negotiations, its anybody's guess if there's a snowball's chance of this  passing.

See a World and Eat it

I'm glad a deal on the financial crisis has been reached and that now the economy is saved and there will be no more problems with the economy.

I'm really very relieved.

FAIRY TALE UPDATE: "THE ASSHOLE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF WOLF WOLFITTY WOLF WOLF"

Once upon a time there was a village. In this village there lived a lot of well meaning idiots, and a few unscrupulous assholes.

The well meaning idiots had some neat shit that the unscrupulous assholes really wanted, stuff like gourmet salt grinders, DVD players, clean socks, delicious muffins, and the well meaning idiots' genitalia. So the unscrupulous assholes came up with a plan to get all this neat shit away from the well meaning idiots.

What they did was, they went out and dredged up a barely literate shepherd boy who would spout any sort of absurd garbage as long as he thought he was In Charge. They told this horrible prick of a pig-ignorant dickhead to go out to the edge of town and start screeching some sort of ludicrous shit about wolves coming to kill everyone. And he did. He went out to the edge of town and screaming "Here Come Teh Wolves and They Have Discovered Nucular Weaponz Holy Shit."

All of the well meaning idiots, being idiots, and well meaning, ran out to the edge of town, where, on their own initiative, they promptly shot themselves in the foot. As they were writhing on the ground in agony the unscrupulous assholes broke into their houses and stole their delicious muffins and clean socks.

A few years went by, and the unscrupulous assholes started to think, "damn, this salt is ground in a vulgar fashion, and I also want to watch some DVDs." So they told the punk shepherd boy to prance out to the edge of town and prattle on about wolves. And he did. And once more the well meaning idiots ran out after him, and promptly shot themselves in the other foot. And thus they lost their gourmet salt shakers and DVD players.

A few more years went by, and the unscrupulous assholes began to wonder if the well meaning idiots were so functionally moronic that if they sent out the dickhead shepherd boy to yell "IS WOLVES!" again, they could persuade the well meaning morons to let them install web cameras inside the idiots' homes to tape them fucking and then sell the footage to Internet pornographers.

While some of them doubted that even these idiots would fall for it, the more cynical prevailed. In the end what happened was that some of the well meaning idiots were so stupid that they ended up signing away their mortgages as well as the rights to not have their asses scoped out by the government and the images resold to private firms. They ended up losing their genitalia too!

As for the wolves, well, who the hell knows. Presumably they were waiting for the villagers to just kill themselves already, contemplating that all they needed to do was just hang out.

Or whatever.

Does It Snap or Just Happen?

Hey, is McCain's campaign still "suspended"? Because it's been really dull lately what with his campaign not doing anything and all.

And, baby, you can guess the rest

by Ripley

If you watched the debate tonight - or listened to it, as I did - one theme stands clear:  John McCain knows something.  Wait, let me re-type that with the proper deference and astoundyness.

John McCain knows some motherfucking shit about the motherfucking topics that relate to the fucking world your sorry motherfucking asses are living in... motherfuckers!

At least, that's what I gathered from his easy, breezy comments that always seemed to swirl down the Republican bowl to "I know [shit, Shinola, and possibly asses from elbows about the given topic]"  I shouldn't be surprised - after all, McCain's been saying he "knows" stuff for quite some time. 

He knows how to win wars.  He has a secret plan!  Fortunately, for someone, he's too smart to reveal his secret plan to George W. Bush and the DoD, and miss out on the glory a guy gets when he wins a war. 

He knows Foreign Policy.  Enh, let's skip that one... seriously.

He knows Finance and Economy.  What with all the saving and the loaning and the flayven and the hoyven!

He knows War and Veterans' issues.   Look, maybe it's time we stopped coddling these free-loading bastards.  It's time for  dead and wounded soldiers to stand up, stand up, stand up and fight! for John McCain's campaign instead of lying in their beds and, well... doing whatever they're doing that's reflecting poorly on his record of POW/MIA, wounded veterans.  Also, Iran!  Iran!  Iran!!

He knows [health care, poverty, infrastructure, education, take your pick] and you'd better believe he's ready to tell you that he knows about it.  Smooth word to your Mother, kids!

Well, I'm convinced.  I firmly believe that John McCain thinks he knows something.  And if he doesn't know it, I'm sure Sarah Palin will step in and, uh...  hey, did you hear that Schlitz is brewing their original recipe again?  I've heard it tastes great, so you know I'll be checking that out.

What, you were expecting Lynrd Skynrd? 

Rip -