Meatbag

Catching up on The Daily Show from last week. (God bless TiVo!)
Arnold:

And to those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say, don’t be economic girly-men!

Stewart:

Yes, for the 1.3M Americans who have sunk into poverty this year, Arnold’s message to you is simply, “Suck it up faggots.” “Walk it off.” “You can do it.”

While I’m talking about it, more on the Arnold speech:
Arnold crowed over the Nixon/Humphrey debate. Nevermind there was actually was no such debate, and Nixon was thrown out of office months later in disgrace.
Also nevermind this wasn’t the only flatout lie. Case in point: the “Soviet tanks” comment. There never were any Soviet tanks in his Austrian hometown when he lived there.
Total meatbag.
(Of course, we should probably blame Karen Hughes for the blunders, not Arnold. She was so busy with the Zell “I challenge you to a duel” Miller fascist manifesto and the Shrub proclamation of disinformation vs. insurmountable facts, she probably forgot to fudge these facts as well as the others. Hope she’s getting overtime, the poor girl. More on Hughes: The Other Women)
UPDATE: My GOP friend notes that I may have taken things out of context. So, I’ll concede Arnie never used the word “debate” and he never said the tanks were in his hometown — just in Austria. Does anyone else get the facts vs. implication angle? Of course not, because that matters not. I’m just a liberal baby eater.
So let’s break down to true analysis, implication aside: Arnie based his decision to be a Republican entirely on TV. So he says. That same TV provided him all said needed principles to align himself to a party, God bless El Impeachadiablo Nixon. Secondly, wherever Soviet tanks appeared in Austria, he was there — apparently privy to some sort invasion schedule from the enemy — so he could make such a claim at the RNC. Unless he’s holding out on some sort of unexpected vacation which included Soviet tanks as a bonus. Because, as those pesky facts dictate, they did not parade down Main St. in his hometown. But he SAW them. So he must of been traveling. Or something. Honestly, I tend to think the Soviet Tank Tour of Austria is a bit less exciting than the Sex Tour of Cambodia, but bygones…

KE04 Office Plan

Like, um, really funny:

[ credit: Wonkette ]

“Factual Errors”

Suckholes at CNN obsessed with a Kerry “factual error” in a speech this morning, when Kerry said General Shenseki was fired by the Bush admin. over a disagreement. In fact, he “retired.” Yeah, retired. Uh huh. Retired. Right…
Meanwhile, here’s Dicky yesterday, letting us all know that if we don’t re-elect them come Nov. 2nd the terrorists have won:

It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.

Priorities, you weenies. Priorities. I mean, after all, Cheney is apparently privy to some information that electing Kerry will directly lead to a terrorist attack. Those are the facts I want to know.

Sullivan

What Atrios says:

One annoying habit of my liberal brethren in the blogosphere is to seize on any harsh denunciation of the Bush administration by Andrew Sullivan as a breath of fresh air, or something. Look, there are moderates and open minded Republicans whose opinions we can respect and whose opposition to the Bush administration is more than welcome, but Andrew Sullivan is not one of those people. Andrew Sullivan is one of those people who, as Charles Pierce has suggested, should simply be shunned by all decent people.
In the immediate aftermath of September 11th, Sullivan wrote this:

The middle part of the country – the great red zone that voted for Bush – is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column.

This is something he’s so proud of that he’s included it in the “greatest hits” section of his blog.
Sullivan was literally concerned that the “decadent Left” was plotting treason against the country, desiring to aid and abet terrorists. And, with this began the mission by armchair warriors everywhere to do what they imagined was their duty – to hunt down and destroy anyone who was insufficiently enthusiastic about whatever the latest Bush administration policy was. This warblogger mission was, in their eyes, a noble mission. At least as noble as, say, enlisting. Thus began the process of the marginalization of anyone who would seriously question the course of this “war on terror.” Disagreement with the Bush administration became disagreement with “America.” People who were “anti Bush” became “anti America” and “pro terrorist.”
You reap what you sow. If the patriotically correct police had been a bit more concerned with the actual battle against terrorism, instead of whatever Susan Sontag wrote that week, they may have noticed that the administration was diverting money and resources away from Afghanistan and towards Iraq. They may have noticed that the desire to go to war in Iraq – something the warbloggers such as Sullivan who, having been disappointed by the premature ejaculation of the conflict in Afghanistan eagerly joined – would ensure that their first pet war would be a disaster both for us and for the people of Afghanistan.
Then we got to pet war two. Sullivan and ilk called us appeasers. Compared us to Chamberlain. Said we were “objectively pro-Saddam.” The 101st Fighting Keyboarders had their second mission – to take us to war in Iraq. Let’s remember the climate they helped foster. Remember the shit-storm which erupted when Natalie Maines said the following:

So you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.

If their fans hate them for that, fine. But this attitude was mainstreamed by the media, as if such a statement was truly outside the bounds of polite discourse. This culminated in the ridiculuous Diane Sawyer interview. Oddly, Maines actually hadn’t said a damn thing about Iraq, but in that climate Iraq was everything.
Once again, if we hadn’t been living in that climate, nursed by Sullivan and propagated by our mainstream media, we may have had more people asking tough questions about Afghanistan. Asking tough questions about the reasons for war. Asking tough questions about the disastrous handling of post-Saddam Iraq.
None of these things concerned Sullivan. His mission was to tar dissenters as treasonous supporters of dictators.
So, who the fuck cares what Andrew Sullivan thinks about anything?

Preach on, brother…
I honestly think we give Sullivan too much leeway because he’s a “boutique” conservative: a fag who loves Bush. His recent enlightening re: the Iraq war isn’t “enlightening” so much as it’s merely waking the hell up — way to late — to the painfully obvious. We latch on to him out of shear perplexity… unable to rationalize why someone who is so clearly hated by his chosen party blindly supports said party.
So, right, who the fuck cares what Andrew Sullivan thinks.

Daryn and Rush Sitting in a Tree…

K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
(Kagan and Limbaugh.)
…’scuse me while I crawl outta my skin.

Serendipity

Guess who’s going to the RNC?
Oh yeah, baby, ME!
Actually, I have to be in NYC next week for other reasons, but the irony certainly is not lost. I’m open for suggestions on how to crash the party, or at least piss off some wingnuts. Maybe I can get on TV humping Candy Crowley’s leg or something… okay, maybe not that, but dammit, the temptation is just too great. So what should I do, besides yelling FUGGEDABOUTDIT out the window?

Wolf Sucks

Had a ridiculous fluff piece on this morning with Ann Veneman, Agriculture Secretary, about “good nutrition” for our school kids and all the love of the government school breakfast and lunch programs. Not once did Wolf ask, “Why did the USDA under the Bush administration almost immediately reverse food safety rules enacted by the Clinton administration testing for E.Coli and other dangerous food-borne illness in the meat supply fed at our schools, which I may add, kills 5,000 American children each year?”
Let’s take a closer look at Veneman:
Common Dreams:

Veneman has served as a key member of the Reagan and Bush administration farm teams, as director of the California Department of Food and Agriculture during the gubernatorial administration of agribusiness favorite Pete Wilson, as an agribusiness lawyer and as a member of the national steering committee of Farmers and Ranchers for Bush. In those positions she has rarely missed an opportunity to promote a free-trade regimen that advances the interests of international food production and processing conglomerates, to encourage policies that lead to the displacement of family farms with huge factory farms, to open public lands for mineral extraction and timbering, to support genetic modification of food and to defend biotech experimentation with agriculture. Indeed, Veneman is a biotech absolutist who served on the board of Calgene, the corporation that launched the first genetically engineered food in 1994. Veneman told a forum last year, “We simply will not be able to feed the world without biotechnology.”
[snip]
In addition, she was actively involved in negotiating the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. So determined is Veneman to advance the free-trade agenda that Bush transition team aides briefly considered her as a candidate for the position of U.S. trade representative before handing the keys to the Department of Agriculture, with its 100,000-member staff and $100 billion budget, to the woman who has already proven her willingness to sacrifice the interests of American farmers on the altar of trade liberalization. Even as family farmers from Wisconsin and Minnesota were marching in the streets of Seattle to protest WTO interference with agricultural supports and food safety standards, Veneman was in Seattle to tell the WTO to move more aggressively to remove so-called “technical barriers to trade.”

And from Disinfopedia:

Ann Veneman served on the board of directors for Calgene Inc. In 1994, Calgene became the first company to bring genetically-engineered food, the Flavr Savr tomato, to supermarket shelves. Calgene was bought out by Monsanto, the nation