Category: Uncategorized

O’Reilly: Now to me, they’re not fighting it hard enough. See, if I’m president, I got probably another 50-60 thousand with orders to shoot on sight anybody violating curfews. Shoot them on sight. That’s me… President O’Reilly… Curfew in Ramadi, seven o’clock at night. You’re on the street? You’re dead. I shoot you right between the eyes. OK? That’s how I run that country. Just like Saddam ran it. [Emphasis mine. -TM] Saddam didn’t have explosions – he didn’t have bombers. Did he? Because if you got out of line, you’re dead.

-The Radio Factor, 6/19/06

Hey Bill, I’ve got the perfect guy for the job. I’m sure he’s looking for work, too – if he can beat the rap.

UPDATE: Thanks to Utopia commenter Anonymous’ favorite weblogger, the Rude Pundit, who reminded me that O’Reilly also said that the International Red Cross was to blame for the Guantanamo prisoners’ suicides.

Not. making. this. up.

Oh, and pre-emptively: the minute The Rude Pundit gets a high-profile nightly TV show, or is featured on the cover of Time, we might begin to discuss how he “compares” to O’Reilly, Coulter, or the rogue’s gallery of hate merchants infecting the right-wing airwaves these days. Until then, not so much.

Firedoglake, on the tortured soldiers in Iraq:

The Democrats are united on the most important aspect of all: we all want to change course on Iraq.

Cut and run?

Republicans want to sit and watch.

In the midst of the current “Great news from Iraq! Seriously!” period we’re currently having, I came upon a Salon piece from 2004 that succinctly lays out how Bush’s image was changed to make him into a “regular guy.” There’s a lot of good stuff there, and I encourage you to read the whole thing. This passage, though, stood out for me:

The most revealing moment came when he thought the cameras were off: Before he gave his national address announcing that the war had begun, a camera caught Bush pumping his fist, as though instead of initiating a war he had kicked a winning field goal or hit a home run. “Feels good,” he said.

If that doesn’t make you feel at least a little sick to your stomach, I fear for your soul.

Never.

And also remember the rhetoric being thrown around today, and whose side you (and they) were on.

They’re on the wrong side of history. Then and now. Too bad history takes so long.

Just got back from a screening of Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” And of all the compelling information presented, this one fact stood out: in 2004, Science Magazine did a study of 928 peer-reviewed articles on climate change published from 1993-2003. They also studied news articles on climate change from that same period.

Percent of peer-reviewed articles that concluded global warming was naturally occurring (not caused by human activity): 0 percent

Percent of news articles which presented global warming as disputed theory: 53 percent

Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to deny reality, if that reality conflicts with their deeply-held beliefs. (See: HIV denialists, who so desperately want to believe that AIDS is caused by drug use and icky gay sex, not a virus that anyone can get.) And the mass media has extraordinary power to shape reactions to that reality. Add to that the anti-intellectualism gripping American society today, and you have a recipe for disaster.

See this movie.

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

-Charles Mackay

“[Mr. President,] you were in Baghdad for five hours. And you weren’t really even in Baghdad – you were in the Green Zone. That’s like going to the Olive Garden and then saying you visited Italy.”

-Jon Stewart

It must be agony for hard-line conservatives to watch Fred Phelps and his “church” these days. The cognitive dissonance must be excruciating. After all, “God Hates Fags” = GOOD, but demonstrating at Iraq war soldiers’ funerals = BAD. The pain! The pain!

“It is a shame when the overboard Homosexuals look less offensive than the so-called religious People.”
“I bet some of Phelps gang are closet fags themselves.”
“Unfortunately what I hate is the fact that I also think homosexuals are an abomination and these monkeys make people with real convictions Biblically grounded look like idiots.”

-random Free Republic mouth-breathers

As the “gays are icky and it’s an election year” train rolls on, I wonder: is someone archiving all this anti-gay rhetoric on the ephemeral World Wide Web and elsewhere, so in 50 years we can use it, Strom-Thurmond-style, to remind people what bigoted assholes they were?

I would respectfully suggest that HIV deniers like Dean Esmay, who call people who believe in 20 years of science “fucking cowards,” volunteer to have themselves and their entire families injected with HIV. If it’s so harmless, as they smugly and recklessly assert, then they can become heroes for the cause. Imagine the accolades they will receive as they sail, drug- and gay-sex-free, healthfully into old age.

Seriously. Put up or shut up, bitches.