Eric Cantor!!! You Eagle Nose Douchebag!!!

Following a link from Eschaton, I visited a Think Progress post about Eric Cantor's partisan and ridiculous attack on Nancy Pelosi, where he asks his supporters to call House Democrats and let them know how angry they are about Pelosi.

I couldn't help posting a comment on Cantor's site:

Mr. Cantor, how's the "Stop Pelosi" thing going for you so far?

Don't listen to all these Liberals who are angry at you for not mentioning the Republican traitors. Stick to truthiness.

And one more thing, I tried calling the numbers above to let them know what I think but everyone on the other line speaks Arabic now. NANCY!!! LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE!!!

Problem is, comments are moderated on Cantor's site, which means that now the comment above has been changed to this:

Don’t listen to all these Liberals. Stick it to them.

Is that even legal?



Update: Five hours later, the altered comment has now been taken completely off the site. However, Argonaut's altered comment is still there, changed from this:

Dear Eric; I just called my congressmen like you wanted me to. I told him that I completely support everything Ms. Pelosi has done since January 20th. I did not tell him what a wanker you are, so your secret is safe for now.

To this:

I just called my congressman like you wanted me to. I told him that I want ms. pelosi to stop everything she has done since Jan 20th.

Glenn Beck: Worst Person in the World

"I've got some time and a camera."

My Weekend Round Up - Wesley Snipes Included

A quick recap after getting a new job, a visit to New Orleans, and a Christmas parade. Finally time to look at the news:

• Hastert has been negligent, but apparently not criminally negligent. You can't be responsible for stuff when you turn your head the other way, can you?

• Bush does an impersonation of the three monkeys by putting his hands on his eyes, his ears, and his mouth when the Iraq Study Group Report comes up.

• Conservative bloggers leave their mouths open. They don't like the report; it seems to contradict the idea that God put Bush in the White House. It contradicts the idea that the US is invincible.

• Speaking of USA Number One: The U.S. has the most prisoners in the world.

"The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens," said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs.

• Wesley Snipes?

• Fiji, anyone?

• As part of his final farewell world tour, Rumsfeld says a victory depends on staying power. Immediately after his speech, he gets the hell out.

Wish me luck on my new job. In return, I will wish you luck. One hand washes another. Reciprocity is what this world is all about.

Santorum: The World's Greatest

Hanging around YouTube, one finds pretty amazing stuff.

I won't be offended if you don't make it to the end of the video. It's basically the same: giving out gigantic checks, hanging out with soldiers, and posing with the family.

Advice for Leaders

Another Washington Post blog question:

What one recommendation would you make to the members of the U.S. House and Senate who will be elected Tuesday?

Now, being a busy man, I'm afraid I didn't have time to write recommendations for Tuesday's election, so instead, I cut-and-paste the recommendations I made in the previous elections. I hope that's okay:

Dear Sir/Madam,

It has been a great pleasure to see you in your hour of victory.

Now listen: I know it's hard to be a part of a system; a giant bureaucracy. I also know you may have to make some hard choices, at times vote against the immediate needs of the people. That's understandable. I will also look the other way when you support or oppose legislation along party lines if you believe that in the long run it will benefit the state, the country, and even the world. Go ahead, take a golf trip with a lobbyist; if you're going to talk business, you might as well do it in style, that's what I say. If you oppose the war but feel that going public with your opinions might be bad for your Party, rethink your opinions. Anyway, your opinion about the war is just an opinion, and nobody cares what you think--you represent the people, not your own personal ideology, and pollsters say your voters support the war, so you may as well be silent. It's not like you know anyone serving in Iraq, so what do you care anyway?

The next advice is not for all of you, so if you're straight feel free to talk amongst yourselves. Now, all you closeted lawmakers, nobody will ever know. This is the same advice I give Evangelical leaders, so you know it's a good one. Feel free to shout in public that gay people ruin America and that marriage is a holy institution given to us by God for some reason. Take a megaphone and drive around town calling homosexuals depraved sinners. It's for the good of the country. Trust me.

Now, about immigration... I know a large society is built on the sweat of cheap labor. The biggest open secret no one cares about. And I know you know about all that and I know you don't care. Still, for the sake of your party make an effort. Call for a fence. An electronic fence, what the hell. Don't worry, it's impossible to stop illegal immigration, so spreading xenophobia must be a victimless crime.

Sell your office to the highest bidder, lie your way to leadership posts, ride on the backs of people with dying family members and give them false hopes, support an endless war, look the other way when civil rights are taken away to be replaced by propaganda and media consolidation, let the eagle soar. If Bush and Chaney say it's good, that's good enough for me and should be good enough for you. No one ever achieved anything by being contrarian. Look what happened to Jesus, for Christ's sake.

And most importantly, have fun. After all, this won't last forever.

Ted Haggard's Letters from Home

I know it's a terrible sin to kick a man when he's down, especially someone with so much inner torment and self-delusion, but this guy, who calls Bush the great liberator of the Islamic world, well... it's still inexcusable. Sorry.


Ted Haggard quotes from Letters from Home, a collection of letters to his teenage children:

Actually, you two are already a source of strength. I can see it in your friends when they come over to our home. They see you as stable, consistent people. They trust you. When they have no idea what their own parents are doing, they know that our home is a safe place. They can depend on the fact that there is security and love here. They can tell that no one is nervous or deceptive.

Some of your friends will be in sexual trouble. . . . Others will forfeit their lives because of their lack of self-control and may lose themselves in drugs and alcohol.

Here is the basic idea: Everything in your life is public. There are no secrets. Everything you say, everything you do, everyplace you go, every thought you think is going to be known by all. So if you want to do something that you'll have to keep secret, don't do it. If you want to say something that you'll have to ask people to keep secret, don't say it. Don't believe the lie that you can ever say something, do something, go somewhere or think things that others won't know about. People who believe in secrets are people who ultimately fail.

Every time you hear that thought in your head or have someone tell you, "Let's do it-no one will ever find out," you can be sure that whatever you're considering is not worth doing.

One lie, one drink, one rendezvous, one pill, one joint, one look, one time. Yeah! Sure! Really? I don't think so.

Most of the things that happen to us are a result of the seeds that we have sown. Sometimes these seeds sprout quickly; other times they take years before producing a harvest. But they always produce.

Haggard has just stepped down from the Presidency of The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). If he trusts his own faith, he shouldn't worry too much, as the NAE states:

We further call upon pastors and theologians, along with medical and sociological specialists with the Christian community to expand research on the factors which give rise to homosexuality and to develop therapy, pastoral care and congregational support leading to complete restoration.

Good luck, Ted.

On the Republican Base

There is a slight fear; a slight deja vu feeling to it all. Here we are, two years later, and events seem to be repeating themselves:

Most people are against the war and critical about the way it has been run by Rumsfeld, and even a seemingly good economy doesn't mean a thing to most struggling Americans.

Yet, just like two years ago, with gay marriage in the news, is the topic of conversation about to be changed again?

You can bet Rove was celebrating the New Jersey Court decision of last week. Here was finally what the Republicans have been hoping for since Bush's "I have a mandate" speech backfired and started the downfall of the Republican Party. Here was, finally, a hope of restoring the faith of the Republican base.

But much has changed in the last two years, which makes the New Jersey decision meaningless for Republicans, and this is clearly evident in debates and Republican talking points: While in 2004 the GOP was successful in creating an illusion of positive All-American values, the topics of conversation are different now.

They try to scare voters with threats of taxes, trying to paint themselves again as the party of laissez-faire small government, but ask any Republican who had invested money and time on gambling websites and it's evident that the GOP is now considered by a majority of Americans the Big Brother party. Billions of Dollars in deficit is not something they can hide with threats of taxes or with speeches about trickle-down theories. The more they mention taxes the more people think about what the last six years have done to the country's economy and the more hypocritical they all seem.

Speaking of hypocrisy: between a book detailing the contempt Republican leaders feel for religious leaders and daily scandals involving Republicans, it is clear the religious "base" is not motivated anymore. "If we mobilize all our voters, we'll do well on Election Day," says John Boehner. Well Mr. Boehner, you should have thought about that before you gave away the government to lobbyists and mobsters, before you let pedophiles ruin the lives of children, before you let incompetent fools run FEMA and the Pentagon, before you gave the Vice President a gun permit, before you claimed a brain-dead woman smiled at her birthday as you let thousands drown in New Orleans.

John Boehner and Carl Rove want to mobilize the base, and they hope a threat of gay marriage will do that, but when people who actually feel threatened by the prospect of gay marriages have two parties to chose from, they cannot vote for the party of scandals and world-wide destruction. The days of the Republican Party base are over.

Jesus! Brick Walls! Matching Yellow! Bad Facial Hair! Laboranashbinashak!

A School Opens in the USA, Yet the Media Focuses on Republican Scandals. Typical.

Weekend Edition

Foley's excuse, Rev. Macaca, admits he'd done something wrong, but he's not quite sure what it was. He was just a little bit too high. Damn.

The Great-Centrist-Hope threatens to kill himself if Democrats win the election, yet fails to support a Republican, leaving him hanging with a sign and an empty promise... Just because he's involved with the Foley cover-up.

We were about to settle down and reflect on the Republican Scandal of the Week, involving a corrupt family in a Republican stronghold, a whistle-blowing campaign staffer, Serbians, the Russian mob, Kuwaiti businessmen, money laundering, and real estate.

But then, of course, another day, another October surprise: the FBI searches the office of a California Republican congressional candidate to find the source of a letter threatening immigrants with possible deportation if they try to vote. The letter was written in Spanish, which is very considerate.

But the FBI can't leave those poor Republicans alone for a second. Here's another investigation. This time the man received classified information, put it in an ad, and then denied knowing it was illegally obtained, saying "he did not know how the information was obtained, but that if it was done illegally, whoever did it should be held responsible." Yea...

With all these FBI investigations and cover-ups and scandals and the terrible month in Iraq, one has to ask oneself, why doesn't the media report on the good things that happened last week? I'm sure somewhere in the US there was a school opening, right? And what about the pseudo punk winning Project Runway? And the Baltimore Flugtag? IE7? Keith Urban is in rehab, shouldn't that be at the top of the news? Isn't it time for Janet Jackson to expose another nipple?

Another View From the Right

Ten soldiers were killed today in Iraq and the Right is not afraid to talk about it!

Michelle Malkin attacks Angelina Jolie while giving us the real reason behind the war:

You want to talk about wasted resources? That $10 billion Saddam Hussein siphoned off in the U.N. Oil-for-Food debacle could have fed a lot of hungry people...

Malkin brings up the Oil-for-Food scandal. I guess that makes the war worth it. Here we have the new justification for war: not WMDs, 9/11 connection, or reverse domino theory, no. We went to war in Iraq because Saddam reportedly stole $10 billion Dollars.

What else?
LGF talks about Iraq, especially about the great work the government (sorry, the anonymous Iraqi exiles' group) is doing in the war against terror, specifically targeting suicide bombers. An ad, produced by an LA company and filmed with American actors, shows the effect of suicide bombings Matrix style. That's a step in the right direction for winning hearts and minds in the Middle East. Now, if only we can rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure, all while putting an end to the civil war, ridding the country of US-installed corrupt officials, ressurecting 655,000 people, and oh, getting the hell out of there.

And of course you can always count on Free Republic to bring out the irony lover in you. Discussing a speech by Rumsfeld:

You can not help but come away positive and upbeat to know that such a man is at the top of the military under a President who knows what the military is for and how well it does what its mission is...whatever that may be.

Betrayed

That must have felt great.

For years they had to make a choice between the lesser of evils--two parties with meaningless differences--and so, they didn't vote. Who cares about taxes or even gun control when both parties had been led by people religious only in photo-ops before elections? Sure, abortions were a serious issue, but still, there was a feeling that no one really cared.

Then came Bush, a born-again Christian admitting to his addictions and sharing his regrets; one of us: fragile yet decisive.

He cared about the life of Terri Schiavo (he cared so much, he even tried to save her life in the middle of his vacation), and he cared about the sanctity of marriage, and he cared about the ten commandments, and he cared about the lives of those poor stem-cells, as if anyone even knows what it means.

So they stood by him. So many of them voted for Bush, even Diebold executives were left in shock. They supported the war in Iraq and Social Security reform, and they averted their eyes when the budget tanked and their civil liberties were taken away. Heck, they could even stand an Abramoff or two, and a Delay and a Kerik and Halliburton and CIA outing and Abu-Ghraib and Guantanamo torture and Afghanistan and Iran and North Korea and... Gosh help us all... even the Foley cover-up.

How said is it for them to find out it was all a lie; that trying so hard to reach God, they had signed a deal with the Devil? First, Little Tucker admits "elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power," and then the excerpts from a revealing new book by David Kuo, which claims "some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as 'the nuts.' . . . 'ridiculous,' 'out of control,' and just plain 'goofy.'"

It must have been great to imagine the party in power cared about them.
Stay home next time. Nobody cares.

Now Can We Have Our Rights Back?

First thing I thought when I watched the news was October Surprise, where any diversion will do.

But then I realized that this is the proof of Bush's six years of bullshit. He can roll up his sleeves on aircraft carriers and come to us with frightening speeches about good and evil, but no one can stop a plane from hitting a building in New York, not even "A War President" that's supposed to be tough when it comes to the war on terror.

They told us 9/11 changed everything in relation to Iraq, Iran, military budget, tax cuts, abortions, and civil liberties, but today all these argument have been debunked.

When you can stop a plane from hitting a building in NYC you can start tapping my phone again.

The Blame Game

Who's to blame for all these terrible things that happen so close to election time?

Why, it's the two usual suspects: Democrats and the media.

For one, as always, it's the Democrats' fault. Did Democrats bring up the Foley leak now in order to influence the election? It's simple math according to many Republicans, including little Tucker. It doesn't matter that the evidence points at a Republican source or that the question itself exists only to divert attention from the real issues: hypocrisy and cover up.

Then, it's the media's fault. Duke Cunningham proves once and for all he's a human being by writing a letter from prison, blaming the media for his troubles. As the man so eloquently writes, “I am human not an animal to keep whipping.” Well, it wasn't an animal that sold our government to buy a yacht.

Meanwhile, in other news, while Bush spends quality family time on the HS Bush, soldiers in Iraq write about life in Dante's Inferno.

Spell Checkers Gone Wild

Good times.



Just for fun, a collection of Conservative reactions to the GOP Scandal of the Day:

• Free Republic: "Will the ACLU step up in defense on Mr. Foley? This targeted arrasement has caused him the loss of his career and public humiliation and riducule."
• Drudge: IMs were "part of an online prank that by mistake got into the hands of enemy political operatives." - By the way, is the use of the word enemy really necessary?
  
• Macsmind: "The FBI, which is looking into the matter, as I mentioned here, will use specific forensic analysist to determine if in fact the corospondence discovered so far is in fact valid. . . . At this point it’s not know the full involvement of those - or of others yet to be discovered - is." - I'm not taking this quote out of context. It really doens't make any sense.
• Confederate Yankee on the Gay Baiting Left: "They can call it a 'big tent' party all they want, but by their actions, it's rather clear that what liberals are hiding under is just another name for a large white sheet."
• Just One Minute: "After years of 'sex is a private matter', it is not a war the Democrats want to start."
• BitsBlog: "First, in my opinion such acts are unforgavable. But on the other hand, we simply don't know enough about the chain of evidence in what we have before us, so as to make an educated judgement in the matter."

It would all be so funny and pathetic at the same time if we weren't in the middle of a never ending war these people admire so much from the safety of their keyboards. Fourteen soldiers have been killed since Monday.

They Forgot

What they don't remember and in hindsight should have paid more attention to (but leave them alone, they're protecting your families):

1. Seeing Abramoff in the White House. Apparently he was there quite a lot. They were probably too busy lighting Chanukah candles to notice him. They don't remember talking about a war in Iraq too, but Abramoff talked about it a year before the war.
2. Foley's fun little emails. Who can remember stuff like that when the country's at war? During Clinton's presidency we had time to deal with an affair with a 22 year-old, but now that we're in an endless war on terror... By the way, all this pressure to protect people from terrorists is enough to send anyone to the demon alcohol, and then... Well, we've all hit on kids when we were drunk, haven't we? And now, more than ever.
3. Is that Tenet again? Him and his silly warnings... Who can concentrate on all this security stuff when we have Chanukah parties to organize and young pages to hire? It's understandable to forget warnings, even if we are talking about the "starkest warning they had given the White House" about the threat from Osama bin Laden.
4. Didn't they use to love Woodward?

That's understandable. I forget things too. I can get through a whole hour without thinking about the incompetence of my government. Then I remember again.

What's That Smell?

Two questions today:

1. How should we react to our government torturing people?
2. What is Kissinger doing here? Or as Dave Attell says, "What's that smell?"

1. In the past, other countries did similar things, so what's the problem? We're at war, no?
Why should we be better than the Khymer Rouge? After all, struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.

Oh, wait, I'm plagiarizing.

2. As for the other question, we finally see the proof that Bush wants to achieve a lasting peace in Iraq; why else would he have a Nobel Peace Prize winner advising him?

Wait, I have a quote from him as well:

No foreign policy—no matter how ingenious—has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

What does that mean? It gives us two options: either leave Iraq now or work harder on the propaganda.