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Gather round, friends, because radio gabber and adopted son of Ronald Reagan whose unused portion was returned for a full refund Michael Reagan is giving a seminar on dealing with all enemies, foreign and domestic.  In short: point a gun at them (but just to avoid trouble with the authorities, make it an unloaded gun, and be careful to look silly while you’re doing it).

I know what you’re thinking. “Did he fire six shots or only five?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is an empty .22, the least powerful handgun in the world, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Oh.  You do?  Well…You should probably go buy some Lotto scratchers then.

WikiLeaks’ Assange and Pvt. Manning Should be Tried for Treason

If we had a president in the White House who understood that we are at war with a crazed faction of Islam, and was willing to act on that belief, there would be no question about how we should deal with people who give aid and comfort to the enemy — they’d be tried for treason and when found guilty stood up before a firing squad.

A president like Michael’s dad.  A man who, if he did not necessarily know we were at war with a crazed faction of Islam, almost certainly began to suspect it after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, when someone in the White House pointed out that he had managed to lose more U.S. Marines in a single day than any president since World War II.  And unlike the current Administration, Reagan had a plan for dealing with the traitors who give aid and comfort to the enemy: sell weapons to the same crazed faction that attacked us, thereby making the traitors look like small potatoes (because aid and comfort is nice, but TOW anti-tank missiles are nicer; not to mention the lovely key-shaped baked goods that came with them as lagniappe), and ensuring that whoever was getting killed — us, them, whoever — we’d make a profit on it.  Because the man was first, last, and always a Fiscal Conservative.

Julian Assange and his fellow conspirator Pvt. Bradley Manning allegedly betrayed the United States, gave aid and comfort to the terrorists who seek to destroy the United States, and if found guilty they deserve nothing less than death sentences for their unspeakable crimes.

I’m not sure that Assange, an Australian who doesn’t live in the United States, can legally “betray” it, but still, one can’t ignore the precedent set by the execution of Daniel Ellsberg.

Their pitifully lame excuse that they were merely trying to provide information to the American people that was being improperly withheld from them by the government is on a par with Benedict Arnold’s claim that he was merely trying to inform the British on information the American people believed they deserved to have.

Often when I read a conservative  columnist and encounter what context indicates is a joke, I think, “well, that’s kind of stupid.”  But then I remember that everything liberals observe in wingnuts (sociopathy, hypocrisy, racism, etc.) is really just a projection of our own mental illnesses, so in reality the conservative columnist is actually so smart that his writing probably works on multiple levels at once, which means that at this very moment, there is some place, in a quantum branch of infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, where that joke is funny.

Anyway, the super-intelligent pan-dimensional mice seem to like a good Benedict Arnold gag.

On the contrary, the public does not have the right to know everything — some information needs to be kept secret if the public’s safety is to be assured. Consumers do not need to know the gory details of how sausage is made

Rather than establishing the business-strangling USDA, the government should have just hanged Upton Sinclair.

…nor do the people need to be made aware of all of the details of what is being done to protect them.

For instance, Erin Brockovich spilled the beans about how Pacific Gas & Electric contaminated the residents of a small California town with hexavalent chromium.  What Hollywood didn’t tell you — and what you didn’t need to know — is that PG&E was working under contract from the U.S. government to make Californians unappealing to the aliens who wrote that To Serve Man cookbook.  NASA figured out that if you fill humans with enough hexavalent chromium, they become the equivalent of the Japanese fugu fish — very tricky to prepare without poisoning the diner — and the aliens would go find some other planet with a dominant species they could just microwave.

Nobody ever demanded that those scientists engaged in building the atomic bomb that ended the war with Japan should do their work openly and share their secrets with the public, and nobody has the right to decide which secrets the public has a need to know.

Nobody has a right to decide what should be secret?  So who or what handles security classification for the federal government?  That NotMe guy from Family Circus?  A platoon of Shmoo?

I’d stamp this one “Warning Notice – Intelligence Sources and Methods Involved (WNINTEL),” but I don’t have any arms.

Pvt. Bradley Manning, the soldier who is alleged to have illegally obtained the documents, is already behind bars where, if justice is to be served, he will remain for the rest of his life. Assange’s punishment is yet to be determined, but it should be equally as harsh, if indeed he escapes the hangman’s noose, although he should not.

Oh, Michael, that’s your answer for everything.  Seriously.  In 2008 he called for an anti-war activist to be shot for transmitting information — not to our enemies in this case, but to our troops, in the form of DVDs containing some nutty 9/11 Truther documentary:

“Excuse me folks, I’m going to say this. We ought to find the people who are doing this, take them out and shoot them. Really. You take them out, they are traitors to this country, and shoot them. You have a problem with that? Deal with it. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that’s what they are, and you shoot them dead. I’ll pay for the bullets.” Reagan adds, “How about you take Mark Dice out and put him in the middle of a firing range. Tie him to a post, don’t blindfold him, let it rip and have some fun with Mark Dice.”

Meanwhile, back in the present…

According to news reports, the Feds are attempting to learn whether Assange violated any criminal laws

But that doesn’t mean we should wait to execute him for treason.  Or at least transport him to a penal colony on the other side of the world.  I bet he’d hate that.

but there is no question of the serious nature of the crimes committed by Assange and Manning — by their despicable actions they have plunged a dagger into the hearts of the American people

They have stabbed the American people in the head with the Sausage of Knowledge!

It should be kept in mind that Assange and Manning are not the only entities who have put the American people at risk. Those in the media who couldn’t wait to publish the information given them by the pair are equally guilty of endangering the American people.

Exactly — we’re Americans!  You’re better off putting a bullet in our brains than a fact.

26 Responses to “Mikey’s Got A Gun!”

“They have stabbed the American people in the head with the Sausage of Knowledge!”

Thank you for that pre-breakfast laugh.

Now I want sausage.

Me too. Or fugu, which I will now, forever, refer to as fufu, because I like the typo just that much.

Incidentally, Oliver North, in his bio, claims that it was just a birthday cake for someone on the trip, and that some keys fell onto the frosting, it was all, he swears, totally innocent. But he’s been known to lie, some.

And I would totally, totally trust Shmoo
to decide what should be a state secret, and also probably to run the Fed. Oh, wait, that’s Gleep. Or is it Gloop? But still, Shmoo can classify and declassify at will. I would trust it not to out Valerie Plame on a whim.

Personally, I would trust Sepp Blatter because his name is so cool, like, why not?

President of FIFA, by the way, which is sorta like being the most expensive whore in the Olympic Planning Committee green room.)

But seriously, the guys is a dead ringer for a noisome used car dealer, and he’s not worried about trusting authority? Do the word groups check/mail, cum/mouth, or not/me betray anything to this asshat?

The secrets of sausage manufacture is your fucking metaphor? Jesus wept. It’s like writing a column seriously urging people not to store their needles in haystacks.

And we really have summited the whole Rightist Idiot notion of treason (that it consists of doing anything which they believe hinders incontinent militarism) when they start slinging it at foreigners, haven’t we?

(A word, if I may, about the actual meaning of that old saw: you should, of course, avoid any contact with the slaughterhouse, or feedlot, if you’re squeamish, and you should probably forswear meat while you’re at it. But there is a considerable difference between modern commercial sausage production and the old days, when sausage was largely the major way to use up freshlets, the rapidly spoiling part of the food animal, and other scraps. This is why so many types of sausage are smoked. Modern commercial sausage because it must be moved quickly and with care, (and, needless to say here, because of nanny statism) is probably one of the safest products in your grocer’s meat case, with two exceptions: hot dogs, most of which use stuff you really, really, really don’t want to eat, and which, courtesy the Ronald Fucking Reagan-era wholesale graft-off of meat inspection and grading to meat producers and packers, use mechanically-boned “meat”, aka, ground bone; and the sausage the grocer makes himself, which consists, for most of ‘em, of the stuff which was about to expire, and now will sit for a few more days. You like sausage, buy packaged. We’d note to Mr. Half-Reagan here that this is precisely the sort of information the public does need, but we’re afraid it might save his life.)

I had to Google Schmoo (there’s two words I can’t say together without laughing). But when I saw the picture the first thing that popped into my mind was a certain impromptu murder weapon from A Clockwork Orange. Probably because of the opinion I now have of Mikey.

Me too. Or fugu, which I will now, forever, refer to as fufu, because I like the typo just that much.

Oops. Thanks, D. I went ahead and fixed it anyway, just because I don’t want to ever get on the wrong side of the Tsukiji Fish Market Fugu Association.

Huh. Fareed Zakaria over at Newsweek says that the wikileaks docs show that the US was committing reasonably competant diplomacy. I guess all involved should be shot for that too, eh Mike?

Scott, you made up for the “fufu” typo by using “hanged” correctly. Grade for this post is still A.

Fareed Zakaria over at Newsweek says that the wikileaks docs show that the US was committing reasonably competant diplomacy.

So, like all good centrists, he was able to peep through any glass he’s given–this time the lowest level of State “secrets”–and discern the purity of US motives? At least this time he had better intel than when he supported the Iraq war.

I’m trying to give the wingnuts the benefit of the doubt on this whole “Assange should be tried/assassinated for treason!” meme.

Maybe they believe that the entire Internet is run by Americans, and if something is leaked on the Internet, it must therefore have been done by an American…

If this was one isolated blogger or grade D pundit, I’d write it off. But it seems to be the whole flock of them. They can’t ALL be that stupid, can they? Can they?

Jesus, what am I asking…

That’s Mike Reagan? I thought it was an old photo of Maurice Chevalier trying out for the part of Inspector Clousseau. Didn’t his father ever teach him not to point a gun at people?
But seriously, if you wanted to really give aid and comfort to al Qaeda, you couldn’t do better than let their leader slip away and then invade the wrong country, wasting a trillion bucks and several thousand American lives in the process. Stand that one up before a firing squad and see if anyone shoots!

There I was, getting serious and thinking about the up and down sides of what Julian Assange has done, and then the headlines interrupted:

“Arrest Warrant for Julian Assange Issued”

Krauthammer wrote a typically goofy column in which he imagined that Julian was in hiding, and counseled authorities to find him by starting with five-star hotels in Britain and working down from there.

To address the last hysteria first, Julian’s lawyer has pointed out to the BBC that British coppers know where Julian is, and have Julian’s phone number and encourage them to call.

And to address the first point last, the arrest warrant issued for Julian isn’t an arrest warrant, and further is unconnected with his leaking activities.

Well, except for the fact that Swedish authorities would like to talk to him about an allegation of “sex by surprise” (it’s a swedish thing, I guess) by a couple women who slept with him.

So in a way I’m almost glad that the madcap Michael Reagan has returned the discussion to the more relevant topic of whether Julian can be convicted of treason against a country he’s not a citizen of.

I asked a couple wingers on Gizmodo if, for example, an American hacker accessed Iranian intelligence files and leaked them, would they support that American being extradited to Iran to stand trial for “treason”… The answer, of course, was “Hell no! Other countries don’t have that right… but we do!”

I was not very surprised.

As for the Swedish charges against Assange, apparently they have upgraded them to out-right rape. While that’s an extremely serious charge, I just can’t shake the feeling that there are shenanigans going on behind the scenes…

As for the Swedish charges against Assange, apparently they have upgraded them to out-right rape.

No, Brian, they haven’t. You may be a day or two behind this fast-changing narrative, which is summarized nicely here.

For fun, you can also check out a blistering review by Julian’s lawyer here.

Tsukiji Fish Market Fugu Association

Killjoys. They’re probably just bitter because they didn’t think of fufu themselves.

Really, *is* it possible for a foreign national to commit treason against us? Because that doesn’t sound right. There has to be a different word. I mean, on some level, *not* leaking our secrets might be considered treason to your home nation, assuming we were enemies.

Fufu still makes me happy, and yes, points for using hanged correctly, unlike those dipshits on the rightblogs who never seem to despite all the time they put into thinking about it. (I have this image of them all trying to masturbate with their feet, too. How’s *that* for an analogy?)

“I have this image of them all trying to masturbate with their feet, too. How’s that for an analogy?”
No idea; but it is a beautiful image.

Well shut my mouth, Chris. Thanks for the link. I could have sworn I read on Salon Friday that they had changed the charges…

Well, my point still stands, the whole thing is fishy as hell.

an empty .22, the least powerful handgun in the world

Well, yeah. But if you load the damn thing, it’s the professional hitperson’s weapon of choice…

A president like Michael’s dad. A man who, if he did not necessarily know we were at war with a crazed faction of Islam…

Alzheimer’s jokes. I see what you do there…

Julian Assange and his fellow conspirator Pvt. Bradley Manning allegedly betrayed the United States, gave aid and comfort to the terrorists who seek to destroy the United States, and if found guilty they deserve nothing less than death sentences for their unspeakable crimes.

As the publisher of Le Monde, said on Sept. 12, “We are all Americans now.”

Nevermind that he’s French Freedomench. Nevermind that Assange is unAmerican because he’s NOT American. The Reaganseed wants us to pursue a policy of multiculturalism because suddenly, foreigners matter.

Consumers do not need to know the gory details of how sausage is made

Or Reaganspawn, for that matter.

Um, I think I need to bleach my brain now…the thought of Ronnie having sex with anyone, much less Jane Wyman.

Of course, Mikey here was “adopted” (i.e. was probably Reaganspawn from an affair, so now I need MORE brain bleach).

NASA figured out that if you fill humans with enough hexavalent chromium, they become the equivalent of the Japanese fugu fish — very tricky to prepare without poisoning the diner — and the aliens would go find some other planet with a dominant species they could just microwave.

“Mo-om! Can I have a Pop Squart?”

Assange’s punishment is yet to be determined, but it should be equally as harsh, if indeed he escapes the hangman’s noose, although he should not.

Because, once more, Americans should care what the rest of the world believes about us!

…wait…what?

but there is no question of the serious nature of the crimes committed by Assange and Manning

Well, I mean, I know the Colts struggled but I wouldn’t lay the entire blame at Peyton’s door, and I certainly would say his crimes do not rise to the level of national treason.

But then I’m a Jets fan.

Those in the media who couldn’t wait to publish the information given them by the pair are equally guilty of endangering the American people.

Because NOBODY (there he is again!) should investigate the news beyond carefully prepared talking points handed to them.

Nobody.

(I have this image of them all trying to masturbate with their feet, too. How’s *that* for an analogy?)

Don’t knock it til you try it.

Stop judging me!

Well, except for the fact that Swedish authorities would like to talk to him about an allegation of “sex by surprise” (it’s a swedish thing, I guess) by a couple women who slept with him.

Sex without a condom, if the woman requests one.

…the public does not have the right to know everything.

Would seem to crash headon into

…nobody has the right to decide which secrets the public has a need to know.

Leaving no survivors.

Well, my point still stands, the whole thing is fishy as hell.

And sure enough, this morning brings the news that it’s back on again, sort of, with another attempt by Sweden to correctly fill out a form.

“Conservative humor”…isn’t that a contradiction in terms?

“Conservative humor”…isn’t that a contradiction in terms?

I find most conservatives pretty ridiculous.

I’m sorry, were you guys talking? I got stuck in this mobius strip of logic.

“According to news reports, the Feds are attempting to learn whether Assange violated any criminal laws…but there is no question of the serious nature of the crimes committed by Assange and Manning.”

Can any of you help me out?

Something to say?