Dumb As A Post

A freeper conducts a covert operation:

POST'S profile was deleted from the Web site following Friday's interview, but on Thursday night included this message: "F the Democrats! I am a former Republican Committeeman in the Town of Plattekill/County of Ulster in New York State. School Board Elect member of the Hyde Park School Board. I will eventually be a Republican Committeeman in the Town of Hyde Park/County of Dutchess in New York State."

The Hyde Park School Board must be so proud.

(Link via BuzzFlash.)

Can We Impeach This Idiot?

As a general matter, I think blog triumphalists are tools -- particularly when they're Instacracker/Jeff Jarvis types whose beliefs are fueled by liberal media fantasies. (Waiting, checkbook in hand, for that Pajamas Media IPO? Thought not.)

But Judge Dick Posner takes it to the other idiotic extreme:

How can the conventional news media hope to compete? Especially when the competition is not entirely fair. The bloggers are parasitical on the conventional media. They copy the news and opinion generated by the conventional media, often at considerable expense, without picking up any of the tab. The degree of parasitism is striking in the case of those blogs that provide their readers with links to newspaper articles. The links enable the audience to read the articles without buying the newspaper. The legitimate gripe of the conventional media is not that bloggers undermine the overall accuracy of news reporting, but that they are free riders who may in the long run undermine the ability of the conventional media to finance the very reporting on which bloggers depend.

Those accursed bloggers! Allowing blogreaders to read for free on the internet the newspapers that they'd, uh, otherwise be able to read for free on the internet.

You can thank me later.

But it's not all doom and gloom for Posner. The upside is a blogs as flypaper theory:

The argument for filtering is an argument for censorship. (That it is made by liberals is evidence that everyone secretly favors censorship of the opinions he fears.) But probably there is little harm and some good in unfiltered media. They enable unorthodox views to get a hearing. They get 12 million people to write rather than just stare passively at a screen. In an age of specialization and professionalism, they give amateurs a platform. They allow people to blow off steam who might otherwise adopt more dangerous forms of self-expression. They even enable the authorities to keep tabs on potential troublemakers; intelligence and law enforcement agencies devote substantial resources to monitoring blogs and Internet chat rooms.

The good isn't freedom of expression, the exchange of ideas or political empowerment; it's keeping the looneys where we can see them.

I know blogging keeps me and my high-powered rifle off the roof. Most of the time.

And I'm glad to learn the feds are keeping an eye on the likes of 7thcircuitpozzstud6969@aol.com.

Perhaps the real reason Poz loathes bloggers is that even unprofessional wackos like myself can kick the ass of the Posner/Becker Blog. That's gotta hurt a public intellectual. Particularly one who doesn't give too much thought about what he publishes.

May Be The Stupidest Person Alive

We interrupt this interruption to consider Cliff May, who is working hard to beat Doughy Pantload, Tiffany Midgeson-Pantload and I.Q.-Lo. for the title of Most Cretinous Cornerite.

When last we met Cliff, he was telling us how President Franklin D. Roosevelt rose from the dead and reassumed his executive authority in order to commission an investigation into the attack on Pearl Harbor.

But Cliffie can top that, easy:

COVER STORIES [Cliff May]

[Pantload] pointed out in the Corner earlier that one neighbor, quoted in the Washington Times, had been told Valerie Plame was an economist.

But Joe Wilson's lawyer said in USA today that he thought she was an out of work consultant -- and though he was her very good friend he didn't know what kind of consultant. He wrote:

When I first met Joe and Valerie, I quickly got to the classic Washington question: What do you do? -- Valerie's answer was more than a little vague. She quickly said she was a consultant. As a fourth-generation Washingtonian, I have learned that when someone says, "I'm a consultant," that is a cue to back off, as it usually means the person is unemployed or "between engagements."

But in The Nation, David Corn wrote that Plame was "known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm." The name of that firm came out later -- when reporters found that Plame had contributed to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign and had filled out a form identifying herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates, which was quickly revealed to be a flimsy CIA front company.

And of course one of her former CIA supervisors said: "She was home for such a long time, she went to work every day at Langley, she was in an analytical type job, she was married to a high-profile diplomat with two kids. Most people who knew Valerie and her husband, I think, would have thought that she was an overt CIA employee."

Maybe there's a logical explanation for these different -- and mutually exclusive -- cover stories. If so, I'm sure someone will offer it. Or maybe the explanation is simpler: Maybe it demonstrates that Joe and Valerie weren't making a big effort -- just a little effort -- to keep her CIA connection secret.

Or maybe this is just an example of abysmally poor trade craft -- like having your shoe phone go off during a meeting with Goldfinger.

Yes, consultant, energy analyst and economist are mutually exclusive.

How could anyone think otherwise?

It's completely incredible.

It's physically and conceptually impossible.

The idea is insane.

It's inconceivable.

Barmy.

Batshit crazy.

Fucked in the haid.

Cliff May. Some say he's an odious dumbshit; some say he's a fraud; yet others say he's a twat. They're all correct.

See you next week.

It appears I will be taking one of those sudden and unexplained absences from the blog. Looks like a week and a bit more.

The kind that burn through repeat visitors and goodwill like a hot knife through butter.

And just as I was about to break through.

My apologies.

In the interim, check out the much better blogs on the right of your screen.

Something to Offend Everyone

I never watch wrestling, but I have a fondness for the WWE after it smacked a cool million and a grovelling apology out of el-Brent Bozell for his defamatory writings. But I'm not sure I buy the WWE's explanation for this bit of business:

World Wrestling Entertainment recently found itself in the position of defending the psychological and cultural nuances of one of its characters after a particularly ill-timed episode of "SmackDown." The episode featured an Arab-American character named Muhammad Hassan, and it ran on July 7, the same day as the London terrorist attacks.

The seven-minute segment included a group of Mr. Hassan's henchmen, wearing ski masks and camouflage, who ran into the ring to beat up the Undertaker, a popular wrestler and Mr. Hassan's rival. The same men carried the body of Mr. Hassan's sidekick, Shawn Daivari, over their heads, evoking a martyr's funeral. Mr. Hassan then came into the ring and choked the Undertaker. Although UPN, the Viacom subsidiary that broadcasts "SmackDown," ran a crawl across the bottom of the screen warning viewers of the potentially offensive content, many still complained.

...

"We did everything we could to advise people that there might be material that might be offensive to some people," [WWE spokesman Gary] Davis said. "The real problem is the perception of viewers watching that segment." Mr. Hassan, he explained, is not a terrorist, but an angry, disillusioned Arab-American, embracing his roots after experiencing racism from other Americans since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (Mr. Hassan's real name is Mark Copani and World Wrestling identifies him as Italian-American.)

Perhaps I'm too cynical, but does the WWE usually engage in such subtle cultural analyses? The guy's portrayed as a villian, and his "henchman" wear terrorist outfits. That's not exactly the kind of portrayal designed to garner sympathy for victims of racism. And wrestling fans aren't known for their discernment.

Perhaps "the Undertaker" is meant to personify corruption in the modern funeral industry, and Vince McMahon's the 21st century's Jessica Mitford.

John Gorenfeld has noted an unusual assertion by New Republic editor Michael Crowley on Slate.com. Speaking of L. Ron Hubbard, Crowley states: "Comparable crackpots-in-chief like Lyndon LaRouche and Sun Myung Moon have had almost no detectable national influence."

What influence does Scientology really have? The minds of Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Beck are pretty slim pickings, national influence-wise.

Update (7/19): Correction made re: location of Crowley article; see comments.

Soft on Terrorism

I've seen very little comment in the blogosphere, particularly from those on the right who fraudulently claim to oppose terror, about the life sentence handed down today against the second-deadliest living terrorist on American soil.

Eric Rudolph, who has confessed to the Atlanta Olympics bombing and three other explosions that killed two and injured 150, received two life sentences today for a fatal abortion clinic blast after angrily denouncing abortion and telling the federal court that "deadly force is needed to stop it."

Mr. Rudolph, a 38-year-old former Army explosives expert, pleaded guilty in April to setting off a bomb that injured a nurse, Emily Lyons, and killed a police officer, Robert Sanderson, outside the Woman All Women abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., in 1998.

Where are all the voices that were heard so loudly when the BBC called the London terrorists "bombers"? Can't they manage even a peep of outrage at the U.S. media's failure to call Rudolph what he really is? Aren't they disturbed that the Justice Department cut a deal with a religious fanatic whose faith is repellent to all decent humans? Have they spent one second grieving Rudolph's victims?

Back On The Chain Gang

Judy Miller is learning to share.

Keller said Miller had been trying to answer the many letters she has received "as much as she can." Her time is also occupied with reading from the prison library and watching CNN and Fox News when other prisoners do not keep the shared television on hip-hop and rap music videos. "Those seem to be the favorite of the cell block," the editor said.

At least there's one place you can still see music videos.

But how can she get messages from Novak and Rove this way?

Who's Your Daddy?

Howard the Duck Fineman pens, on bended knee, another Rove puffer in this week's Newsweak. The Duck rehashes all of the genius mythology while omitting the truth above Rove's dirty tricks past. Fineman does appear to confirm, the veracity of one Rove nickname, Fat Bastard:

Rove's father was an oil geologist, and it was perhaps from him that Rove got both his sense of history and his almost manic love of detail. You measured time in eons, but you found evidence with a magnifying glass. One of five kids, a voracious reader with a vaulting sense of ambition, Rove wanted to be president -- or at least be able to debate like one. Nixon and Jack Kennedy had squared off dramatically in 1960. Karl was only 9 but eventually became a mainstay of the debate team, carrying a box full of notecards of "research." To intimidate his foes, Rove would arrive with what looked like thousands of notecards, most of which were blank. The real ones were carefully chosen, and Rove knew how to use them.

Like an entire generation of baby-boom conservatives, Rove's political boot camp was the College Republicans, which, in his case, was something of a misnomer, since he dropped out of the University of Utah to join them in the late '60s. They were under the aegis of the Nixon White House, a tie that may have augmented the usual adolescent urge to dabble in dirty tricks. Rove did his share -- stealing campaign stationery and inviting the world to a Democratic beer bash was one -- but the CRs were important to him for other reasons. They gave him a sense of order and belonging, which he may well have needed. His dad walked out in 1969; in 1970, he learned that he and a brother had been fathered by someone other than the man he had called Dad. (Eleven years later, his mother committed suicide.)

The slobbering Duck's fawning prose doesn't indicate whether the geologist was the sperm donor or the nominal father; most likely neither would want credit for the unfortunate spawn.

And, yes, stolen stationery and phony fliers is as far as Fineman goes with respect to Rove's sleazy and illegal conduct. Fineman portrays Rove's "dirty tricks" as an "adolescent urge," thus minimizing Rove's crimes both substantively and chronologically. Newsweak will remain weak as long as it continues to publish Rove's reports under the Fineman byline.

Mens Rea

Cooper says:

The notes, and my subsequent e-mails, go on to indicate that Rove told me material was going to be declassified in the coming days that would cast doubt on Wilson's mission and his findings.

...

....Although it's not reflected in my notes or subsequent e-mails, I have a distinct memory of Rove ending the call by saying, "I've already said too much."

The Grapes of Ass

Who says America's not a great country:

• Abortion continues against the wishes of many States
• Sodomite and lesbian "marriage" is now legal in Massachusetts (and coming soon to a neighborhood near you)
• Children who pray in public schools are subject to prosecution
• Our schools continue to teach the discredited theory of Darwinian evolution
• The Bible is still not welcome in schools except under unconstitutional FEDERAL guidelines
• The 10 Commandments remain banned from public display
• Sodomy is now legal AND celebrated as "diversity" rather than condemned as perversion
• Preaching Christianity will soon be outlawed as "hate speech"
• Fathers are denied equal rights under law in cases of child custody
• Our right to keep and bear arms continues to be INFRINGED
• Private homes are now subject to arbitrary government seizure

Sounds good to me.

The foregoing is a parade of horribles imagined by ChristianExodus.org, a group with the goal of moving religious wingnuts to South Carolina in order to gain political control of the state. (They don't even bother tacking "Judeo" to their dream of a Christian Nation, so they're slightly more honest that most fundies.)

They've got an action plan:

Initial goals:

1. 2,500 members in our Phase One counties by September 30, 2006.
2. Work several local political campaigns in 2006 (election goals set at that time).
3. Move thousands more members into South Carolina by September 30, 2008.
4. Complete Phase One by end of 2008.

Then, they're gonna secede from the Union, or as they put it, "Institute constitutional reforms returning proper autonomy to the State by 2016 regardless of illegal edicts from Washington, D.C."

South Carolina can have the lot, as far as I'm concerned.

Update 7/17): The group is, not surprisingly, the brainchild of a Neo-Confederate.

Bloody Hell

The Linkin' Dumbass Debates

TBogg has the scoop on dumbass Jeff Jarvis' latest effort to promote his ever irrelevant blog. Jarvis proposes "Let's you and him debate, for the benefit of my traffic."

Jarvis of course claims the high road. Maybe he can liven things up by accusing one or both of his conscripted debaters of outing those Iraq the Model guys and placing their lives in jeopardy. He hasn't done that in a while.

Seems there is already a debate going on, at another, most respectable, website. And since Jarvis won't be preoccupied with refereeing a Yost/Lovelady scuffle, let me invite him to debate Prof. Glenn Reynolds here at Roger Ailes. Your topic, Jeff: "Resolved: My claim not to be a conservative is more unconvincing than Glenn's." Winner takes on Mickey Kaus.

Yet another idiot reporter printing the claims of Victoria Toerag and Bruce Sanford as if they were true:

The law was meant to crack down on what the act's congressional authors called "conscious and pernicious" disclosures of agents' identities, rather than disclosures arising from casual conversation or other circumstances.

...

Congress "did not intend for government employees to be vulnerable to prosecution for an unintentional or careless spilling of the beans about an undercover identity," wrote two Washington lawyers who helped draft the law, Victoria Toensing and Bruce Sanford, in an analysis of the Plame case this year. "A dauntingly high standard was therefore required for the prosecutor to charge the leaker."

Toensing, a deputy assistant attorney general under President Reagan, sees hurdles for Fitzgerald and strongly believes no crime was committed. In an interview, she said she doubted Plame qualified as a "covert" operative, and she said the CIA was "cavalier" about protecting her status. Plame's CIA position was "cocktail circuit talk" around Washington, Toensing said.

The wishes and dreams of the spinmeisters who "helped draft the law" are entirely meaningless. They are not members of Congress; they did not vote on the law; their opinions do not reflect the intent of Congress. The staute says what it says. And it doesn't say "pernicious," or contain an exception for "careless."

Every journalist who quotes this pair is conciously revealing him or herself to be an useful idiot for the Administration. Consider the consequences of using drafters' opinions as evidence of legislative intent: Our current laws would be interpreted by taking testimony from the lobbyists for the pharmaceutical manufacturers and credit card companies who write the legislation.

This idiot also provides no specifics regarding Toerag's purported doubts and recycled blather about the cocktail party circuit. He should either provide facts or leave Toerag's uninformed wishful thinking out of the article.

Further, he might want to point out that the concepts of "cavelier" and "cocktail chatter" aren't found in the statute and aren't relevant to application of the statute. The issue is whether the U.S. is taking affirmative measures to conceal the agent's identity as a covert agent, not whether those measures succeded or were sufficiently pursued.

Then there's this:

Prosecutors have all but ignored the law. A national security law expert at Syracuse University law school, William Banks, said he could find no published legal decision interpreting the law.

Some think the law's dormancy reflects government employees' care to protect agents' identities in recent years. Others say the dearth of prosecutions shows that Congress intended to outlaw only very specific misconduct.

And yet others say their pets control their thoughts and order them to kill.

Those four sentences provide no information from which a reader could make an informed decision about whether "prosecutors," either individually or as a group, have "ignored" the law" or, if so, their reasons for doing so.

I realize journalists for daily papers have to be generalists, without expert knowledge on every subject on which they write. But you might expect them to have the minimal ability to question the assertions of a partisan hack offering opinions and unsubstantiated claims in the service of her party.

Grand Old Police Blotter: Duke's Down Edition

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), a Vietnam War fighter pilot whose house was raided by the FBI this month in an investigation of his ties to a defense contractor, announced yesterday that he will not seek reelection but will serve out his term.

"I learned in Vietnam that no one person is more important than the mission, and I do not intend to forget that lesson now," the eight-term House member said in San Marcos, Calif.

Nice try. You made yourself a hell of a lot more important than the mission when you took in hundreds of thousands from lobbyists and enjoyed the rewards all by yourself. You thwarted the mission, robbed your comrades-in-arms and joined the enemy forces. Maybe the feds can go easy on you and let you do your time in Fort Leavenworth.

Of course, Cunningham's fellow Republicans think Duke was doing the Lord's work:

Friends said Cunningham and his wife, Nancy, made the decision and were not pressured by Republican leaders. Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement that Cunningham's "career in Washington was defined by straight talk and hard work," and that with his announcement, he had done "for his party what he has always done for his country: He put the interests of others above his own ambitions."

Reynolds added, "And since you won't be using that donor list, Randy, mind if I take a quick peek?"

In other scumbag news, right-wing wacko Zell Miller is repaying over 100 grand in public funds he pocketed while Governor of Georgia. And Zell's a piker compared to Governor Predator. The Californian musclehead is collecting millions for "editing" muscle magazines, while vetoing laws disfavored by the magazines' advertisers.

Poor, Poor Pitiful Me

That sound coming from Las Vegas is the high-pitched whine of the Cash-Strapped Nevada Chickenhawk:

[Nathan] Taylor argues that the state's Republican delegation should have helped him fund the national Young Republican convention held last week at Mandalay Bay.

"I've got bills at the hotel I can't pay," said Taylor, a 29-year-old political science senior at UNR who said he had to quit his food service job and drop classes to plan the convention.

Taylor estimates that the convention, attended by about 600 people from around the nation, is at least $10,000 -- and up to $25,000 -- in the red.

As the chairman, he said he'll personally have to cough up the cash.

"It's a really sad day when my congressmen and my senator, who are sitting on millions, can't cut me a check for $25,000," Taylor said. "I don't think I'm asking for much."

That is sad.

I hear the Army is hiring, Nate. Given the time and effort you put into the convention and your experience in the food service industry, I'm sure your "two recent lung surgeries" won't pose any impediment to service.

If the military isn't interested, I'm sure Mandalay Bay could put you to work as a bellhop. (Lift with the knees, man!)

Meanwhile, Nathan is putting a positive spin on the convention, declaring it successful:

YRNC2005 would like to thank all of our sponsors and supporters for assisting us in hosting a successful YRNC2005.

Contributions can be mailed to:

YRNC2005, Inc.
c/o Nathan Taylor
P.O. Box 34779
Reno, NV 89533

For more information, you can email us at info@yrnc2005.com, or you can reach us by telephone at 775-741-4430.

You can show your support in the same way that Nate supports America's troops. Send Nate an e-mail stating that you either have sent, will send, or plan to send him a check, or have participated in events or projects supporting the sending of a check to him. (Note: Planning to send a check is not tax-deductible.)

Update: Jo Fish and Atrios support Nate, too.

The right's embrace of treason extends beyond its love for the treacherous Karl Rove. Clownhall.com is currently crowing that "Southern Heritage Remains at Vanderbilt" by linking to this subliterate paragraph from one Jos. Pylman:

In a victory for opponents of multiculturalism, Vanderbilt University has decided not to appeal a decision from the Tennessee Court of Appeals that bars the university from replacing the name "confederate" from a dorm room. CNN reports that in May the Court held that either the name, "Confederate Memorial Hall," be left alone or that the group that financed the building, the Daughters of the Confederacy, be reimbursed at a sum of $50,000. The administration at Vanderbilt decided to drop the matter, despite disagreeing with the outcome. This is another example of the egalitarian impulse running rampant in the South, where multiculturalists attempt to subdue Southern heritage in the name of creating "a more welcoming environment." This is a victory for those traditionalists hanging on to their heritage and progeny.

The heritage of anti-Americanism, that is.

The wanker Pylman is (or was) the editor-in-chief of the Cornell Review. And it shows in his writing.

Sowelled Out

Thomas "Kidneys on Ice" Sowell shares some profound random thoughts with us:

Usually I like four-star hotels better than five-star hotels. The four-star hotels tend to be comfortable and attractive places with amenities, but without the pretentiousness and fussiness of five-star hotels.

...

Now that Samatha Brown on the travel channel is overseas doing programs about outstanding hotels in Europe, I hope she will continue on to Asia and do a program on my favorite hotel in the world, the Shangri-la in Singapore.

Random thoughts or a pattern? Is Sowell looking for a cheap but unpretentious homebase from which to search for an impoverished kidney donor entrepreneur? Old Wing Sowell claims to feel "like an antique car that is being kept in running condition by high-priced mechanics." Nothing like some foreign spare parts to keep a clunker running.

At least Sowell managed to avoid plugging his book in this column. That seems to be SOP for wingnut pundits these days.

The rest of the column contains such gems of wisdom as

Many people are so preoccupied with the notion that their own knowledge exceeds the average knowledge of millions of other people that they overlook the more important fact that their knowledge is not even one-tenth of the total knowledge of those millions. That is the crucial fallacy behind the repeated failures of central planning and other forms of social engineering which concentrate power in the hands of people with less knowledge and more presumption.

Reading letters from liberals makes me fear that they are going to dislocate their shoulders from patting themselves on the back so much. The way they tell it, the reason they differ from others is that they are so much more compassionate, aware, concerned, nuanced, sophisticated and -- yes -- just plain smarter.

You might want to cut back on those pills, Tom.

Mouthpiece of Crap

What do we make of this?

Matt Cooper's lawyer, referencing the statements of Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, in the Wall Street Journal:

And in there, right at the end of the article about this matter is the following statement: "Mr. Rove hasn't asked any reporter to treat him as a confidential source in the matter," Mr. Luskin said, who I understand is Mr. Rove's lawyer. "So if Matt Cooper is going to jail to protect a source, it's not Karl he's protecting."

Luskin to National Review:

"Look at the Cooper e-mail," Luskin continues. "Karl speaks to him on double super secret background...I don't think that you can read that e-mail and conclude that what Karl was trying to do was to get Cooper to publish the name of Wilson's wife."

Yes, I know the weasel-minded distinction that Luskin's trying to make. It won't fly.

A confidential source is someone who asks for confidentiality before providing -- becoming a source of -- information. Which is what Rove asked of Cooper. Whether Rove wanted, wished or even asked Cooper not to quote him anonymously, he was a confidential source of information, and he asked to be treated as such. Even more importantly, it's irrelevant to Rove's criminal culpability.

Vacation slides from Hell.