1. If your opponent is a girl, say she’s ugly and probably had plastic surgery.
2. If your opponent is a boy, say he’s gay and cite as proof, where applicable, his childless marriage.
(Thanks to Fritz and Solitaire.)
GOP Campaign Strategies
Close, but don't bank on that cigar
New piece up at The Guardian's Comment is Free, looking at the important Senate races.
Republicans Re-writing Reality
Again.
Welcome to the new Republican talking point: "We never said 'Stay the Course.'"
Bush started it, and like good little parrots, the Republicans are repeating it.
Gee, is there an election coming up or something?
Redefining Manhood: Follow-Up
Sara Robinson’s post There’s Something About the Men, which served as the basis for my post Angry Men, Searching Men—and What They Can Learn From Girls and Queers, has also prompted posts from Echidne, Tigtog, and Amanda. JackGoff and Michael Baines also comment on my post. Thanks to Coturnix for getting this salon going—all of the above links are highly recommended and worth your time to read.
I want to take a moment to highlight something Amanda wrote, beginning with her observation that, as part of the traditional definition of manhood, attributes like “fraternity, responsibility, self-reliance, moral uprightness and possibly creativity have all gotten attached to the concept of masculinity,” which becomes decidedly problematic when that definition has also historically relied so heavily on not just the Otherness of women, but on the domination of and superiority to them. All of these attributes in and of themselves are good things, so there’s a certain sense among some men that assailing traditional manhood is a condemnation of its characteristics, and we must necessarily extricate its intrinsic qualities (which are good) from the way they are cultivated in definitions of traditional manhood (which is bad).
Amanda:The fundamental problem is all these good things about masculinity were traditionally cultivated in the service of dominating women. And I didn’t get this idea from feminism so much as I did reading people who are advocating a return to gender roles. In the conservative view, in order for men to be good men and have all these things, women must be subservient. Responsibility for the family, self-reliance, and moral uprightness in particular are described by many traditional conservatives as the qualities men will only have if they can use them as currency to exchange for female subservience. It didn’t take but a few seconds to see that conservatives also tend to view male creative energy and hard work as motivated by female subservience. Unfortunately, fraternity is a quality that developed as a side effect from creating male-only environments that deliberately block women from obtaining power and equality.
The real issue here, is recreating “spaces and ways for men to be taught all these masculine qualities without making those qualities dependent on the exclusion and oppression of women.” And, as I did, Amanda points to feminism as a model, and cites examples of men who are already using this model successfully.
…[Hugo] is a classic example of someone who’s taken to heart the notion that what liberal men should do is create spaces to teach these “masculine virtues” while not teaching oppression and domination. He’s a youth minister and that’s basically his goals with the teenage boys there. Anyone who falls all over themselves praising things like the Promise Keepers for this should support Hugo’s work, right? Well, not exactly—he has a lot of commenters who are Christians like him but politically conservative and they make it clear that they don’t think Hugo is teaching these young men proper manhood. Even if they do think that these virtues are good in and of themselves, they don’t think that men can be motivated to be good men without the prize of having women in service to you for it. Moreover, they’re not even interested in the possibility; in their world, manhood is synonymous with male dominance, and the opportunity to be dominant is the main appeal of manhood.
It’s important to be realistic about why men are drawn to organizations with reactionary philosophies and it’s not just listlessness or aimlessness but bona fide anger that they are living in a time where they don’t have access to domination over women that they feel men before them had. Weirdly enough, feminism has actually managed to redefine womanhood to create a female version of these fine if secondary qualities of traditional masculinity. Through the struggle for equality, feminists quickly realized that sorority, responsibility, self-reliance, moral uprightness and supporting each other’s creativity was not only good for the cause but good for each other. And we did it without having oppression as our central goal, demonstrating that it’s entirely possible. So pro-feminist men like Hugo and groups like Men Can Stop Rape are using feminists as a model for how to recreate a non-oppressive version of masculinity. I’d add that a lot of feminist-minded men I know do just fine in defining a manhood for themselves that’s not predicated on oppressing women—look at the old Pandagon bloggers Ezra and Jesse as two examples. Liberals have done a pretty decent job of redefining marriage from an institution based on female subservience to a partnership, and manhood has made the shift as well. It isn’t always easy and we stumble and screw up, but it’s really quite doable.
As SAP, another liberal man who’s doing just fine with redefinition, pointed out in comments, “Men (and I speak in very general terms here) have never felt the need to redefine their own roles in light of the ascent of feminism, probably because they never really took it all very seriously. Their collective reaction—everything from the sexist jokes to the gun nuts and fundies—plainly shows this. It's been all reactive and not in a good way.” That’s really the crux of the matter moving forward. Men who are interested in redefining manhood must do without setting it in a negatively reactive or oppressive/exclusionary framework.
That’s not always going to be an easy task, particularly for good men who don’t feel compelled to subjugate women, yet still define their manhood in terms that are nonetheless rooted in a model of inequality. A perfect example is the chivalrous man, who defines manhood primarily through protection of women. Clearly, the spirit is not the same as active discrimination, but, dependent as it is on the perception of a fundamental inequality between men and women, it is no less pernicious, which is more easily understood when looking at its roots, as men evolved from overt oppressors to benevolent oppressors—"In exchange for other inequalities that will be perpetuated against you to maintain our privilege, we'll protect you from the worst of our lot."
Kmtberry says in comments: “I think it may have served a good and useful purpose when good men felt that part of their job was protecting women and children from ‘bad’ men. If it were the JOB of good men to protect us from rapists et cetera, (rather than the job of women to protect themselves), men might be more into getting rapists in prison.” And this is precisely where the nuance of redefinition becomes necessary. There is certainly a place (and a need) for men to become involved in the prevention of rape and child abuse, but it is not the antiquated, if alluring, role of a tough guy who steps in to save the day or a member of a posse who seeks revenge against the bad guy to make other guys think twice before messin’ with their wimmin. The role of the redefined man must be as an ally—taking an active role in rape and child abuse prevention, by, as suggested by Men Can Stop Rape, “challenging harmful aspects of traditional masculinity, valuing alternative visions of male strength, and embracing their vital roles as allies with women and girls in fostering healthy relationships and gender equality.”
It’s not as glamorous—or as easy—as carrying a big stick, but alliance is a show of strength all its own, which is not predicated on any remnants of inequality.
A Little Monday Morning Frivolity
From an episode of Robot Chicken that I saw last night. It gave me the giggles (particularly Jenna), so I thought I'd share.
"You have found weapons of mass destruction."
"... Uh... Hi. We haven't."
The Bradley Effect
In light of Barack Obama’s acknowledgement that he’s considering a presidential run, I found this Newsweek article on “the Bradley Effect” rather interesting, though its focus is primarily on the Senate race over the seat being vacated by Bill Frist, in which the Democratic challenger, Harold Ford, Jr., is black.
As black candidates reaching out to largely white constituencies have discovered in the past, when it comes to measuring political popularity there are lies, damned lies—and polls, on which they rest their fate at their peril.Is it naïve to believe that things have changed, or have we seen the turning of this tide? It’s difficult to measure racism that has gone underground. The kind of covert racism that would lead someone support civil rights and say they’d vote for a black candidate, even though they wouldn’t actually vote for him, is the same kind of racism that could leave a fella like George Allen with black defenders who would swear from here to eternity that he’s not a racist and white intimates who would swear from here to eternity that they’ve heard him use the N-word. Neither of them are necessarily lying, but just speaking from their respective experiences with him, and there are plenty of white folks who express racism only when they think it’s “safe”—that is, with other white folks, or in the privacy of a voting booth.
The phenomenon was first widely noted in 1982, when Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley lost a squeaker of a race for governor after being widely projected as the winner. Douglas Wilder also came up against the "Bradley Effect" when he barely won the 1989 contest for governor of Virginia, after leading comfortably in the polls.
Ronald Walters of the University of Maryland was at Wilder's hotel as a projected easy victory turned into a nail-biter. That is a night "I'll never forget," says Walters, who thinks it "naive" to believe that things have changed very much. He believes that some percentage of whites—perhaps 5 percent or so, intent on being seen as less biased than they may be—will claim to support a nonwhite candidate when they actually do not.
Other political observers think the effect may have diminished over time. "We may be seeing the turning of this," says Ed Sarpolus, vice president of EPIC-MRA, a Michigan-based polling firm.
I find it astounding that there are white people who will say they’ll vote for a black person to a pollster, when they really wouldn’t, but, then again, I also find it astounding that there are still white people in my predominantly white, redneck, red state town who will say all kinds of crazy racist shit to me with the presumption that I share their sentiments, just because I’m white.
I can’t imagine what the Bradley Effect could mean for a national election with a black Democratic presidential candidate, but I suspect that race plays a bigger issue the more similar the candidates are. In other words, if Obama were running against a wildly conservative candidate, a Rick Santorum-type, I don’t believe that his race would matter nearly as much as the vast policy difference he represented. But if Obama were running against a candidate with a reputation, even if undeserved, for moderation, like John McCain, and the contest were framed as center-left versus center-right, I believe his race would suddenly be weighed more heavily by those voters predisposed to caring about race in the first place, as there appeared less policy difference for voters’ consideration. And that seems to me to leave Obama the centrist in a rather precarious position—though I certainly wouldn’t advocate against Obama running for that reason, because it’s just one of many question marks any candidate faces.
Anyway, I just thought I’d throw it out there and see what you make of it.
(Crossposted at Ezra's place.)
You Americans and Your Crazy Imaginations
Who are you gonna believe? President Bush or your lying eyes?
During an interview today on ABC’s This Week, President Bush tried to distance himself from what has been his core strategy in Iraq for the last three years. George Stephanopoulos asked about James Baker’s plan to develop a strategy for Iraq that is “between ’stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’”
Bush responded, ‘We’ve never been stay the course, George!’
Think Progress has the video and a collection of quotes that tend to undermine the president's claim.
(Crossposted at Ezra's place.)
Right On
Chet:
The Democratic Party (which, I hate to tell you folks, may be "liberal" by US standards but is a centre-right party by international standards) had control of the House of Representatives for forty years before the Republican takeover of 1994. It's had control of the White House for twenty of the last forty-six years. It last had control of the Senate in 2002, a mere four years ago. There is plenty of history of the Democrats being in control of part or all of the federal government. At any time, has that party established a Department of Peace? Made alliances with Castro? Launched a communist revolution? Done anything like any of this crazy crap?Go read the whole thing.
No, no, no, and no.
Quote of the Day
“You have to separate the marketing from the reality. The reality is, these members are not homophobic. For the most part, they're using this marketing to play to our base and stay in power. They have to turn out the votes." — David Duncan, former board member of the Lesbian and Gay Congressional Staff Association and former aide to disgraced Congressman Bob Ney (R-Ohio), explaining the GOP’s anti-gay strategy. (Via.)
Angry Men, Searching Men—and What They Can Learn From Girls and Queers
Mr. Shakes and I rarely fight. Even when we’re debating an issue, whether one of us is playing devil’s advocate or we genuinely have different takes on the subject, we can get pretty passionate without getting angry. But there’s one subject that can send both of us into separate corners after baring teeth and claws—sexism.
Part of it, as Mr. Shakes would admit, is that he just doesn’t know what he’s talking about half the time. That’s not a function of his being stupid or unknowledgeable; it’s just that he’s not a woman. I can still introduce a concept like a woman’s body being treated as community property into a conversation and he looks at me blankly. It’s not his experience; he doesn’t know what it’s like to have strangers put his hands on his pregnant belly, or have his ass grabbed on a train by another commuter, or have his boss stare at his breasts instead of looking him in the eye. Like many men, he regards with some amusement the stereotypical mysteries of womanhood—the plethora of bottles, jars, and contraptions that make a bathroom counter top look like a chemist’s set, the fascination with shoes, going to the restroom in pairs, the stuff of jokes and sitcoms. But there is a whole unknown cultural experience of womanhood that is a mystery to him, too, much of which he doesn’t even realize exists, until I tell him. Manhood is so easily substituted for personhood; there are times he is shocked with how very different our lives are, even though they look so very similar at first glance.
Like any member of a non-dominant group, I am more familiar with his experience than he is with mine.
The other part of it, the place where it always becomes contentious, is that he has a particular blind spot for what is a qualitative intrinsic difference between men and women, and what is a difference rooted in the definitions of manhood and womanhood as dictated by cultural imperatives. That women’s breasts are shaped differently than men’s is an intrinsic difference; that they are regarded differently is cultural. On less obvious issues, sometimes Mr. Shakes just can’t wrap his head around it, and his counterargument essentially boils down to men and women are just different, babe—and that’s pretty much when I want to rip his throat out and become a lesbian.
Except I don’t. Not only because I know I can drive him straight up one wall and down another myself, but also because I know he’s trying. He hit the genetic jackpot when he was born a straight, white male, and he could easily live his entire life never making a modicum of effort to understand what it means to be gay, or a person of color, or a woman. But he hasn’t chosen to live a life of ignorant bliss.
So sometimes marital bliss takes a backseat while we fight the battle of the sexes.
The truth is, one of the problems in talking about this stuff is that saying “women and men are the same” is not the same as saying “women and men are equal.” Equality is not predicated on absolute likeness, nor should it be. Asserting that women and men are equal speaks to there being no fundamental differences between their capacities to learn and achieve, to their deserving the same pay for the same work and the same right to vote and the same opportunities. Women and men don’t have to be the same to achieve equality, and they are not. We’re different—and there’s nothing wrong with saying so, unless it’s used as an excuse for the perpetuation of inequality. Indeed, I would argue that substituting “sameness” for “equality” actually undermines our ability to celebrate our respective strengths and how they can complement each other to the betterment of us all.
Problematically, while we never seem to suffer from a lack of people willing to critique, from every conceivable angle and spanning the spectrum from fair to absurd, how women’s sex-specific qualities manifest themselves, what they mean for policy, and how they affect women and men, there is much less exploration of men’s sex-specific qualities and how they function in a changing culture. Critiques of the patriarchy (which is a crap paradigm for most men, too—especially not-rich ones) or sexism are not the same as redefining manhood, the women’s equivalent of which is rooted in the feminist movement, of which there is no male-centered counterpart. Certainly feminism is about achieving equality for women, but it is also about womanhood, which is both biological and cultural.
The lack of such an equivalent framework for men is part of what discerning biological difference versus cultural difference within themselves a dubious proposition for many men. As we see with women who reject feminism, they are keen to believe that what are easily identified cultural imperatives are really biological ones. For straight men, who exist in a culture largely structured to accommodate male primacy, pulling apart the intrinsic nature of men from the socialization borne of a society that reinforces the privilege of maleness, is exponentially more difficult.
And thusly, lots of men cannot dissociate their rigid understanding of manhood from the societal influences which are largely mutable; they’ve had no reason to question whether a society that so perfectly suits them has created a definition of manhood that isn’t “real,” and so attempts to change society are inextricably linked to attempts to change men in ways they believe they cannot be changed. And that makes a lot of men angry.
Which brings me to Sara Robinson’s There’s Something About the Men. After referencing 10 instances of men picking up guns in acts of depression, frustration, disenfranchisement, just since September 13, Sara concludes, quite correctly, I believe, that something is going very wrong among large numbers of American men:Militia members, gun nuts, hate criminals, fundamentalists, Minutemen, high-social dominance authoritarian leaders, submissive authoritarian followers, guys like the one below, guys like the ones above. Over the years, we've had a lot of conversations here trying to figuring out what makes them tick, where they want to take us, how we can keep from going there -- and perhaps most plangently: why do we seem to have so many of them? Often, if we talk about it long enough, the conversation always seems to come back to one place. And there it stops, as if on the edge of something vast and terrifying that we simply cannot bring ourselves to grapple with.
There are men, Sara notes, who attribute this problem to feminism, and, realistically, although a lot of boys are happier with undeserved privilege isn’t a fair argument against fighting for equality, it’s tough to ignore that the fight has indeed generated a fair bit of anger among men who view it as a zero-sum game. Anyone who believes that for every woman working, there’s a man without a job—or not as good a job as he’d otherwise have—isn’t rational enough to be persuaded of the reality that “in most of the ways that matter, we're a better, stronger society because” of feminism. And those angry, disaffected, irrational men have been well-courted by conservatives:
Something is not right with the boys. Something in the way Americans look at males and manhood has gone sour, curdling into to a rank, toxic, and nasty brew that is changing the entire flavor of our culture. Men everywhere seem to be furious. Some turn it outward against women, against society, against the institutions that no longer seem to nurture them. Some turn it inward against themselves, putting their energies into bizarre self-destructive fantasy lives centered around money, violence, and sex. Some, more disenchanted than angry, check out entirely, abdicating any interest in making commitments or contributions to a family, a profession, or a community to spend their lives as perpetual Lost Boys. Together, all this misdirected, destructive energy has become a social, cultural, and political liability that we can no longer afford to ignore.
As the old preacher asked in the opening scenes of The Big Chill: "Are the satisfactions of being a good man among our common men no longer enough?" Given the number of men who seem to be completely disconnected from the very idea of the greater good, let alone the thought that they have any responsibility to it, the answer seems to be: No. They're not.The right wing has very aggressively stepped forward with all kinds of answers to salve their souls. The military. NASCAR. Promise Keepers. The Boy Scouts. And, more ominously, the KKK and the militias and the Minutemen. The conservative Cult of Maleness is full of tradition and ritual, conformity and hierarchy, the stuff of which male cultures have always been made. …Say what you will about all this puffed-up patriarchal posturing, but the fact remains: these made-for-men bonding ops seem to be channeling some powerful energy, and fulfilling some yawning emotional needs.
Progressives, however, Sara argues, have not been as forthcoming. She suggests that we need to admit that men and women are different and reject the “forced androgyny of liberal culture”—and here’s where I think she makes a mistake. I’m not sure to what liberal culture she’s referring, considering that even feminists are still arguing about wearing lip gloss and high heels. This reinforces the erroneous notion that arguing for equality is arguing for sameness, and even the feminists who reject feminine trappings don’t argue that women and men should be “the same.” We need to get it out of our heads and our dialogue that there are people of either gender vociferously advocating some approximation of a sci-fi fantasy in which we all wear spandex body suits and one’s sex is superfluous. Promulgating this notion, substituting being given the same opportunity and respect with being the same, is part of what drives the anger of men who feel disenfranchised from traditional notions of manhood and see no alternative around which to create a new definition.
And so, when Sara says she believes it “may be time for the progressive community to have an honest discussion about why these guys are angry; what they feel like they’ve lost; and how we’re going to rebuild a new definition of manhood that meets their deepest emotional, social, and spiritual needs without also bringing on the resurrection of the late-but-not-lamented macho asshole,” I couldn’t agree more—I just hope we can do it without relying on the strawliberal who supports forced androgyny, because that’s a false framework created in reaction to women who want to be seen as equals. It’s very dangerous to hold up liberal views of sex- and gender-redefinition as “the bad example” by invoking this backlash creation, because it is within liberalism that men will find their best models—feminism and the gay rights movement.
Sara suggests that maybe, for men, “the process of re-creating their place in our culture has hardly even started.” This is absolutely right, and a collective process is long overdue. A progressive men’s movement geared toward redefinition and re-creating men’s place in a changing culture may not appeal to the men flocking to the bastions of traditional manhood offered up by the rightwing any more than feminism does to rightwing women, but in the same way that feminism achieved a tipping point, whereafter traditional womanhood was seen as just that—“traditional,” but no longer a singular definition—a progressive men’s movement could accomplish the same. It might even find a few converts in the process—perhaps some of those angry men who see no alternative to the tradition they feel they are losing.
And, if nothing else, it would provide that long-absent framework that men who are already interested in such an endeavor have been missing, the tools to finally begin extracting what defines manhood according to men from what defines manhood according to a patriarchy. They are very different things indeed. Just ask a gay man—he’s already walking this road.
Going Out On a Limb Here...
Look, I know this opinion isn't going to be popular, but I've simply got to say it. Bash away at me in comments if you must, but I have to get this off my chest.
Jonah Goldberg is a jaw-droppingly stupid asshole. An incredibly moronic embarassment. A blockheaded, short-sighted, lie-spreading, hypocritical douchebag.
What? You all agree?
Oh, good.
Then enjoy with me, won't you, as Amanda eviscerates him?
Completely Heartbreaking
As the Iraq War grinds on, Bush insisting it will never end, and the deaths continue, continue, continue... writings such as this one are striking and vital:
After Pat's Birthday
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.
Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Read the whole thing; it's as inspiring as it is heartbreaking. You might also want to send a copy to every registered voter you know.
Particularly if they support this goddamned "president" and this goddamned war.
(Tip of the Energy Dome to oddjob)
Just. Shut. Up.
Someone let Prezint Yammer McBlowhard in front of a microphone again. (Bolds mine)
Bush: US Trops to Remain in Iraq Until "Terrorists" Defeated
WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush insisted that US troops would not pull out of Iraq before "the terrorists are defeated," a day after acknowledging a possible parallel between violence there and the Tet Offensive during the US war in Vietnam.A war he created. A completely unnecessary, illegal war of his own creation that has killed hundreds of thousands. We are at war because George W. Bush wanted a war.
The comments, coming less than three weeks before crucial elections, follow his acknowledgement on Wednesday that the current steep spike in violence in Iraq "could be" compared to the Tet Offensive, widely considered to be key to souring US public opinion on the Vietnam War.
"Our goal in Iraq is clear and unchanging. Our goal is victory," said Bush, speaking at a rally Thursday for embattled Republican congressman Don Sherwood in the town of La Plume, Pennsylvania.
"We are a nation at war, and we must do everything in our power to win that war," he said.
"We will not pull out our troops from Iraq before the terrorists are defeated. We will not pull out before Iraq can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself," he said.
Meanwhile:
Shiite Militia Takes Over Iraqi City
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Shiite militia run by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr seized control of a southern Iraqi city on Friday in one of the boldest acts of defiance yet by the country's powerful, unofficial armies, witnesses and police said.Yes indeed. Tch, tch. Awful shame, that.
Mahdi Army fighters stormed three main police stations Friday morning, residents said, planting explosives that flattened the buildings in Amarah, a city just 30 miles from the Iranian border that was under British command until August, when it was returned to Iraqi government control.
About 800 black-clad militiamen with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades were patrolling in commandeered police vehicles, witnesses said. Other fighters set up roadblocks on routes into the city and sound trucks circulated telling residents to stay indoors.
[...]
The showdown between the Mahdi and Badr militias has the potential to develop into an all-out conflict between the heavily armed groups and their political sponsors, both with large blocs in parliament and backers of al-Maliki's ruling coalition. It also could shatter the unity of Iraq's majority Shiites at a time when an enduring Sunni insurgency shows no signs of abating.
The U.N. refugee agency said at least 914,000 Iraqis have fled their homes since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, more than a third in response to the sectarian bloodshed this year.
The chief military spokesman in Iraq said a two-month-old security operation in Baghdad had failed to meet targets while the monthly death toll for American troops in October had climbed to 74, putting October on course to be the deadliest for U.S. forces in nearly two years.
"The violence is indeed disheartening," Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell said Thursday in Baghdad.
I simply can't believe that this is going on, and the big issue that's supposedly going to "defeat" Bush and the Republicans is Mark fucking Foley.
(We had joy, we had fun, we had cross-posts in the sun...)
Congratulations…
Representative Jerry Lewis (R-Calif), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee! You are today’s winner of The Shakespeare’s Sister Big Brass Balls of Ballsiness Award.
Scumbag.
Rumsfeld is “Inspired by God”
Well, this should certainly reassure Muslims who believe the US is on a crusade:
The top US general defended the leadership of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it is inspired by God.The good Lord is talking directly to Rumsfeld? I had no idea. I didn’t even know the good Lord had officially gotten his American citizenship, but it looks like he has. Congratulations, God! Nice to have you on our team. I always thought that “He’s got the whole world in his hands” thing was a little silly.
"He leads in a way that the good Lord tells him is best for our country," said Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Pathetic
The Republican Party will begin airing a hard-hitting ad this weekend that warns of more cataclysmic terror attacks against the U.S. homeland.Forget for a moment the practical fallacies implied by the suggestion that only the Republicans can protect us against terror—since we all know that’s total bunk. I just love the irony of terrorizing the American people with ominous scare ads in order to remind them that terror is our greatest threat.
The ad portrays Osama bin Laden and quotes his threats against America dating to February 1998. "These are the stakes," the ad concludes. "Vote November 7."
