From Tuesday?s LA Times:

Invoking the memory of more than 270 service members buried at Arlington National Cemetery who have died in combat since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush vowed Monday to honor them by ?completing the mission for which they gave their lives.?

Finally, the President is making sense. It?s clear that the only way to truly honor those who have died in Iraq is to make sure they?ve got plenty of company at Arlington. Basically, Bush feels about American troops the same way Jay Leno feels about Doritos: ?Go ahead and kill ?em. We?ll make more.?

Patriots all over the blogosphere heave a sigh of relief, for it?s obvious from his remarks that the President isn?t considering a withdrawal, redeployment, or even a graduated drawdown of our military presence in the Middle East. And thank goodness. After all, from the neo-con perspective, we don?t need an exit strategy, since it was hard enough to get into Iraq in the first place. Bill Clinton wouldn?t let them in, no matter how nicely they dressed or how hard Paul Wolfowitz flirted with him, and it was just sheer luck that Bush was working the door that one night and Condi had really cute shoes on and we were able to slip past the velvet rope and set up a provisional government while the manager was in the back stairwell doing some blow. Therefore, to withdraw from Iraq now would be imprudent if not catastrophic, unless we first got our hand stamped.

As Jonah Goldberg, Rich Lowry, Max Boot and other latter day Sun Tzus have pointed out, the problem isn?t that we?re losing the war in Iraq, the problem is that America doesn?t believe the people who keep telling us that we?re not losing the war in Iraq. In other words, the issue isn?t product performance, it?s spokesmodel credibility.

Which brings us back to Doritos and our honored dead. In the beginning, the Iraq War was every bit as popular as Mini Cool Ranch Flavored Tortilla Chips, because like Jay Leno, the American public found President Bush affable, unassuming, and trustworthy (and because nobody accused you of being a Fifth Column in the Clash of Civilizations if you pointed out that Doritos have a lot of saturated fat, and you?d rather just have some Triscuits, or maybe a Rykrisp). Nowadays, Bush?s approval ratings dangle in the mid-30s, while the public increasingly views the invasion of Iraq as a mistake, and the ensuing low intensity conflict as a quagmire. Clearly, the manifold challenges facing the U.S. military in Iraq?tribal and ethnic rivalries, irreconcilable religious conflicts, the influence of regional powers with goals antithetical to our own, and insufficient resources to prosecute a successful counter-insurgency strategy?means that we must gird our loins, summon up the blood, and solve this problem in the traditional American way: through advertising.

Again, let?s look to Doritos for our inspiration. In the beginning, Frito-Lay?s corn-based snack items were promoted by NAFTA entrepreneur The Frito Bandito. Eventually, after a highly successful career as a TV pitchman, the Frito Bandito noticed that he was a racist stereotype filched from the last reel of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and retired. Enter Jay Leno. Eventually, after a highly successful stint hawking artery-occluding junk food, he noticed that his lantern jaw awakened racial memories of the bloody struggle between Cro-Magnon humans and Ice Age Neanderthals, and he went back to making jokes about Clinton?s schlong.

So if we can replace current spokesmodel George W. Bush with someone more sincere, the war will immediately become popular again, and people like Jeff Goldstein and the Powerline boys can calm down and replace their current shrillness with their former smugness. But who can America turn to in this dark hour to restore hope and faith in George Bush’s war? Well, to us the new candidate is obvious:

Dick Cheney.

After all, fat, balding white men are the most trustworthy people on the planet. Remember Walter Cronkite? He was the most trusted man in America. And what about Wilford Brimley? Didn?t that wrinkled, jowly face and walrus mustache make you want to rise at the crack of dawn and shovel down dehydrated oatmeal? Of course it did, and Dick has all the same qualities. In fact, if Quaker Oats had half the brains President Bush has, they could have enjoyed Dick?s services all through the 1980s, since he was just a congressman, and once you?ve voted against Head Start, against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela, and against establishing a holiday to honor Martin Luther King, your afternoon is pretty much free. Anyway, we think it would have gone a little something like this?

(In the interest of full disclosure, some people have pointed out that Dick Cheney has an 18% approval rating, while Wilfred Brimley has 2478 friends on , and apparently so far hasn?t shot any of them in the face.)

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 22 Comments »

We pause and bow our heads in respect for s.z.’s computer, which has died again. Unfortunately, its predecessor seems disinclined to come out of retirement for one last job, thereby violating Action Movie Law, so posting may be a bit spotty this week.

Now a word from our sponsor | 13 Comments »

Blogs Agog Over Google News Censorship!!!

Or so says Noel at “Newsbusters,” which is so agog about Google News’ “censorship”of a few wingnut sites that we fear it may succumb to apoplexy.

And while this blog isn’t all that agog to learn about Google “capriciously terminating its relationship with [the]conservative e-zines and web journals” New Media Journal, The Jawa Report, and MichNews.com for “promoting hate speech viewpoints” in regard to Islam, we were slightly bemused when we heard that somebody at Google had to actually read their stuff.

Here’s more on this important story from WorldNetDaily, via Townhall:

Search engine giant Google has cut off its news relationship with a number of online news publications that include frank discussions of radical Islam ? the New Media Journal becoming the latest termination, as its owner just discovered.

Rusty Shackleford, owner of The Jawa Report, received a similar e-mail message March 29 informing him: “Upon recent review, we’ve found that your site contains hate speech, and we will no longer be including it in Google News.”

Two weeks later, Jim Sesi’s MichNews.com was cut off, with Google providing three examples of “hate speech” by conservative writer J. Grant Swank, Jr.

So, never underestimate the power of the Swank!

BTW, you can find the Swanster’s latest via Google News at such fine wingnut sites as The Post Chronicle (see, for example, “Anglicans Criticize Madonna Cross . . .”) and NewsByUs (“666! : Senate Votes on Homosexual Nuptials on 6-6-06“). So, your Swank fix is still available whenever you get to jonsing for some of that sweet, sweet prose.

But, if you’re like me, you want to know what the Pastor has to say about the most vital issue of our times, the new Tom Hanks’ movie and the novel it was based on. Therefore, allow me to present part of Pastor Swank’s seminal work, END TIMES DEVIL ATTACK AGAINST JESUS: DA VINCI CODE:

Dan Brown’s DA VINCI CODE presents Jesus as merely human, not divine.

This is another attack against the coming Christ. It comes from the devil.

Take that, Opie!

I could not help but conclude that with such good-news headway via Mel Gibson’s “The Passion,” the devil could not sit for long until he would blast thinkers with hell’s definition of Jesus. So there comes DA VINCI CODE making Jesus out to be “just one of us.”

That darn devil, always trying to best God’s box office!

Anyway, speaking of the DaVinci Code, David E. proposes another one of our popular* contest!

I’ve been told that the movie posits a particular person who is the
descendant of Jesus — but I don’t know who, as that wasn’t an element
of the book, which I shamefully did read.

So that could be a fun contest: who would be the funniest person to
claim is the descendant of Jesus? Jackie Mason? Bill O’Reilly?
Possibilities are endless.

They certainly are, David! So send in your entries today!

But to get back to what the blogger are all agog about, here’s more from Newsbuster Noel:

What will the next subject be that serves as a catalyst for Google to promote their unique brand of corporate censorship? Which website will be the next to have it’s Internet presence diminished at the hands of Google’s ?progressive? ideological agenda? WorldNetDaily? JihadWatch? NewsMax??

Not NewsMax!!! Dear God, not NewsMax! For if they are removed from Google News, wherever will we learn about “Men, Hate Rejection? Women Will Approach You First”?

Yet, maybe the wisest insight came from Nathan Tabor at The Conservative Voice: ?Google ALGORithms and AL GORE. The left-wing version of Internet symmetry??

Yeah, Nathan had the wisest insight. I think he said it all.

P.S. While writing this post, I had to wash 2 dogs (they discovered the joy of rolling in mud, and managed to be covered in clay from literally nose to tail, top to bottom), and had a computer die (I think it was the power supply again — I had to finish this on my antiquated computer in my basement that runs on kerosine and AOL 4.0). So, I learned that one disparages Swank at one’s peril!

In any case, start coming up with your ideas for the “Who is Descended from Jesus” contest.

*Popular, in that I like them, in that they force YOU to do the actual work, and they involve no actual judging, no prizes, and no acclaim.

Swank Bank | 57 Comments »

Americablog points us to this Townhall column by Star Parker, which finally explodes the myth that Republicans seek to use anti-gay rhetoric as a wedge to pry African-American support away from the Democratic Party:

Anyone still harboring doubts that we need a Federal Marriage Amendment should read what Mary Cheney has to say about it in her new book. No, you don’t have to buy it. A five-minute skimming session in the bookstore is all it will take.

Any longer and someone might notice you devouring the Cheney family?s latest contribution to lesbian lit and mistake you for a, uh… Dutch water diversion structure, if you know what I mean, and then you?d never get a man. Well, you would, but just as an observer, or possibly as a subscriber to your premium webcam site. And besides, this one isn?t nearly as hot as Sisters.

In a few breezy sentences, Mary Cheney confidently relegates a few thousand years of religious tradition regarding the nature of marriage to an historic footnote and curiosity.

And as Ann Coulter has taught us, footnotes are the moral equivalent of date rape.

According to her, legal formalization of this traditional arrangement would abrogate freedom and be discriminatory.

Um?isn?t marriage already legal? I mean, I know I can be a bit of a bastard, but don?t tell me I?m a bastard! (In the “Andrew Stevens is The Bastard in John Jakes? The Bastard” sense.)

Cheney effortlessly transforms traditional marriage and family from the core institution on which our free society is built into an instrument of oppression.

She?s breezy! She?s effortless! Mary Cheney isn?t just a deviant attempting to subvert the natural order of society, she?s a new fragrance by Price Matchabelli! But come on, she really wants to turn traditional marriage into an instrument of oppression? You?re a little late to that party, Sister Man!

With little thought

(…and as someone who spent five minutes flipping through this book in order to marshal her exhaustive rebuttal, Star knows whereof she speaks)

she glosses over the truth that this is not about freedom but about the exchange of one source of authority for our laws and values for another. Will it be the bible or Mary Cheney’s youthful passions and impulses?

That?s a pretty tough choice. I guess I?d have to see her version of the Decalogue first. If it contained less of that thou shalt not covet thy neighbor?s ox stuff and more commandments that thou shalt serve Cadillac margaritas during marathons of The L Word, I think we could tempt over at least a few of the pervier Founding Fathers. Maybe not John Adams or Alexander Hamilton, but probably Jefferson. And definitely Franklin.

Sure, there are lesbians in the ghetto.

Although suspiciously this fact was omitted from Elvis Presley?s exhaustive 1969 study of inner city pathologies, ?In the Ghetto.?

But they generally don’t “discover” their sexuality one post-pubescent day and break the news to their doting parents, amidst tears and hugs

Yep, for a white girl all it takes to ?discover? she’s a lesbian is a one-day Outward Bound excursion. But in the ghetto, becoming a lesbian requires ?learning? your sexuality over a grueling 13 week course at an accredited vocational school.

Growth in black lesbianism is generally the product of a culture where families already have been destroyed.

But as Jonah Goldberg points out, it?s also a product of the sizzling Bush Economy, since recent studies show that lesbianism in the ghetto has been growing at an average rate of 3.2%, nearly double the rate under Clinton. And while the President has endured unceasing abuse for his supposed ?loss? of the majority black city of New Orleans, he has received zero credit for the deregulation and bold tax relief that have helped to create over 90,000 new black lesbians since 2002.

It’s so unfair.

These aren’t pioneers

(Again, see Sisters by Lynne Cheney. Page 98 is especially good. I?ll lend you my copy, just don?t smudge the notes in the margin.)

venturing out of an intact family that has given them a good life, to discover a new “lifestyle.”

?or any other condom. I mean what’s the point?

The injustice and discrimination they feel is to never have had the opportunity to grow up in an intact family and to understand what it means to have a man in your life who is responsible and from whom you can receive love and respect.

I don?t want to minimize the challenges faced by black families, I just don’t believe they’re the prime vector for homosexuality. Like a lot of people, I didn?t grow up in a two-parent home (often it wasn?t even a one-parent home) and as far as I know it didn?t turn me into a lesbian. (Okay, maybe I was a LUG, but that?s it.) And as long as we’re arguing social science by begging questions and pulling anecdotes out of our ascending ileums, I’ll just say that I?ve known a number of women who grew up without a father, and for most of them, it had no apparent effect on their sexuality. For the remaining minority, the effect seemed to consist largely of sleeping with their professors and screwing up the grading curve for the rest of us.

So, as conservative black activists like myself work to put humpty dumpty back together again in the way of the black family

?by criticizing white lesbians

we now have Vice President Cheney’s daughter working to get the message out that there really is no point to it. By her standards, the inner city is utopia.

Until now there has been some dispute over the conditions responsible for urban poverty. Was it primarily a product of underfunded schools and diminished social services? The death of the manufacturing sector? The lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow-era oppression? Nope. Turns out South-Central L.A. is the Garden of Eden (?the women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage, no?Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit? Sisters, page 129) and the only reason inequality still exists is because The Man is keeping you down! (And by The Man, I mean two lesbians planning a lovely Spring wedding in Vermont.)

Give vent to every impulse, legitimize every feeling and, by all means, don’t be judgmental.

??cause that?s Star’s job, bitches!

What Mary Cheney calls oppressive and straight, blacks call white.

And what you call ?Hell,? Rambo calls ?Home.?

It’s hard to figure out whether Mary Cheney is simpleminded or just disingenuous.

I sympathize, since it’s so hard to figure out if Star is ruthlessly cynical or just monumentally stupid.

Now it is absolutely clear that legalization of gay marriage opens the door to every imaginable possibility.

Oops, just checked my notes. That should read, ?it is absolutely clear that entering the wardrobe opens the door to Narnia.?

Once the authority for defining marriage moves from biblical tradition to politics

?women will start pouring out of the menstrual hut while they?re still unclean!

marriage will be defined by whatever might be deemed so by a court or that can be passed into law.

And how the hell are we gonna make that work with the rule of law. You gotta think this stuff through, people!

Such changes would impact every institution of our society

Our Department of Motor Vehicles! Our municipal recycling centers! Our Civic Light Operas!
Well. Maybe not that last one so much.

and Ms Cheney’s uninformed casualness about the scope and seriousness of this is frightening. We’ve already seen the impact in adoption. How about in our public school system, our military, our churches, or our corporations?

Well, given that our corporations are tax-exempt, holy places, the government wouldn?t dare touch them. But our churches are definitely in trouble!

We can look at Europe as a laboratory for what to expect. George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington reports in the current issue of Commentary Magazine, for instance, that in Spain, where gay marriage and adoption is now legal, the words “Father” and “Mother” are being replaced on birth certificates to “Progenitor A” and “Progenitor B.”

That?s pretty bad, but I think I?d still rather be called ?Progenitor B? on a birth certificate than ?Official A? in a Patrick Fitzgerald filing.

I don’t know what the president’s wife, Laura Bush, had for breakfast the other day

?she got up before I did and just left me a note on the pillow?oops.

The gay movement is but a new chapter being written by liberal elitists who brokered the displacement of tradition and personal responsibility with disastrous welfare state policies. Blacks paid dearly and still are paying.

In other words…Fight the Real Enemy:

Star Parker is president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education and author of the new book White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay and White Blues: How Pat Boone Could So Totally Kick Robert Johnson?s Ass.

By the way, in case you haven?t seen Pam Spaulding?s photo account of her wedding, it looks like it was both beautiful and informative, in that we now know that the conspiracy to keep America?s underclass crushed beneath the iron boot of oppression was hatched at the Apricot Cat and Black Dog Bed & Breakfast in Vancouver, British Columbia.

It?s always in the last place you look.

Teh GAYZ! | 22 Comments »

. . . Or maybe the Goddess of Irony.

In any case, here’s Kaye Grogan, with the ultimatum given to her by English Teachers Global:

Speak English . . . or else!

Okay it’s official � I hope! It has taken 200 plus years for English to become America’s official language. Maybe we missed something here. Did another boat come in behind the Mayflower with people speaking in unknown tongues?

Um, Kaye, there were lots of boats that came to America behind the Mayflower, and many of them contained people who spoke in such unknown tongues as Dutch, French, Spanish, etc. And there were boats that came BEFORE the Mayflower, some carrying people who spoke the unknown tongue of the Vikings. And there were people who lived here even before that, and they spoke in various unknown native American tongues! So, I guess you did miss something. Maybe you should go back to school or something.

But hey, I shouldn’t be ragging on Kaye for lack of historical knowledge and/or her faulty use of logic, when the message of her column is that a mastery of the English language should be a requirement of American citizenship.

So, read on as Kaye shows how it’s done:

Since when does a nation who taught their children to speak English fluently need to verify and have a vote in the Senate to make the language official? Only in America! . . .can these bizarre things keep happening.

Obviously, Kaye didn’t come from a nation which taught its children to write English fluently. I’m guessing that she actually hails from one of those fake American town that the Commies used to use to prepare sleeper agents to infiltrate the U.S. (And it was probably a fake town operated by the Bulgarians, or another one of the bottom tier Commie countries.)

According to some of the suggestions being proposed by our illustrious government � all illegal immigrants if they want to become legal citizens they are going to have to learn English, and forget about singing the National Anthem in Spanish. In other words, learn English or else! . . .or else what? I guess everyone not learning to speak English in a certain length of time will be sent to the back of the class. Then what? Heaven knows � deportation is out of the question!

Heaven said Kaye had plenty of time to learn English, and so it was okay to deport her. Seriously, I checked, and the heavenly hosts indicated that it was the only way to keep the rest of us safe from her sinful misuse of ellipses and such.

Anyway, this column contains a lot of other great stuff about how the 34 senators who voted against the “Official English Language Amendment” should be “recalled and ousted from office,” but I don’t want to bogart the Kaye. So, let’s just skip to the conclusion:

Hey! . . .you’re either for the American culture or you’re against it. You’re either an American in every true sense of the word or somewhere in-between � which translates into troublemakers.

Yeah! And if you don’t use the English language with a sufficient degree of fluency, you are clearly some kind of America-hater, and you should be sent to a Gitmo-like camp until the War on Bad English has been fought to a successful conclusion.

Oh, and if you speak a language other than English, even as a second language, then you are hardly an American in every true sense of the word. In fact, you are against the American culture. You are a troublemaker. In a word, you are a traitor, and should be shot!

I don’t know why Kaye didn’t take her argument to the proper conclusion — I guess her success as a wingnut has left her lazy, bloated, and complacent. (In this area, like so many others, Rush Limbaugh is a conservative role model.)

So, to inspire her, here are a couple of eager, new wingnuts. (And Kaye, they’re purportedly DEMOCRATS, proving that you Republicans can’t rest on your laurels if you want to make it today’s competitive field of wingnuttery.)

Alabama’s Democratic Party is distancing itself from two Democratic candidates for state office who think all illegal immigrants must leave or be killed.

Party officials described the platforms of candidates Larry Darby and Harry Lyon as ridiculous, unconstitutional and offensive. Darby is running for attorney general, and Lyon is a gubernatorial candidate.

Both agree the influx of illegal immigration into Alabama must be stopped, either through public hangings or martial law.

Lyon said if elected, he would sponsor a law to get all illegal immigrants out of the state within 90 days, or be hanged in public.

“It would only take five or 10 getting killed and broadcast on CNN for it to send a clear message to not set foot in Alabama,” said Lyon, a Pelham lawyer. “Anybody that breaks into my home is a threat to my life. I remember the Alamo.”

I’m guessing that he remembers the Alamo from personal experience, having fought illegal moon aliens there alongside Davy Crockett and Luke Skywalker.

Darby, though, said he would support Lyon in his election bid.

“If he’s willing to have public hangings of Mexicans, that sounds like he’s the right man for the job,” Darby said.

Darby is right! After all, Lyon has been endorsed by Michelle Malkin (or will be shortly).

Darby said if elected he would ask the governor to institute martial law to stop the influx of illegal immigrants into Alabama. If illegal immigrants attempt to evade law enforcement, they “should be shot on sight,” he said.

He said the number of Jews killed in World War II has been grossly exaggerated, and Jews must leave if the United States is to save itself.

“It would be good for Iran to blow Israel off the map,” he said.

Darby, who recently spoke to a group in New Jersey whose focus is to promote equal rights for whites, said the Democratic Party itself is racist because black lawmakers try to extort money from white candidates like himself.

It seems that Darby is the kind of candidate who can reach across party lines and find common cause with some of the state’s Republican voters — and yet Darby’s Democratic opponent has the nerve to call Darby “a crackpot trying to get some publicity.” I bet the opponent is just saying that because he’s prejudiced against white people.

Anyway, I urge Kaye to hit the campaign trail in Alabama — she could base her platform on the promise of weekly hangings of everyone who speaks a foreign language, with the spectacles being broadcast on Fox News. Plus, free punctuation marks for all!

But if she doesn’t run for office, I think it will prove that she’s not an American in the true sense of the word, and is against the culture. (And we already know that she’s against the language.)

UPDATE:

We see that Sadly, Brad! has also blogged about Kaye’s column (and that his comments on it run parallel to ours in many ways).

This act of war leaves us with no other option but to steal Marie JonApostrophe, the Sweetheart of Sadly No!

So, enjoy this selection from Marie’s latest:

Let’s keep in mind that President Bush has accomplished many wonderful things in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a good Christian heart. We have every reason to be proud of our president. He is a man with strong enduring convictions. He is the good guy.

We should continue to love our Commander-in-Chief who rises everyday to face the foes who continually try to undermine his every political achievement.

I think this was directed against Kaye, who would deport our President for his lack of English fluency, and against Brad, who has wavered in his love for George.

Wingnuts | 24 Comments »

Good news, everyone: the Young Americans for Freedom has been reborn!

As you may recalls, YAF (which is not to be confused with this YAF), is the conservative youth group started at William F. Buckley, Jr.’s house in the 1960′s, but which by later became a club for right-wing thugs and hooligans whose raison d’etre was to try to provoke fights so they could beat the crap out of “commies.”

But, apparently the death of Ronald Reagan so demoralized them that they just couldn’t summon the energy to clobber hippies anymore. At least, that’s what a glance at their site, which hasn’t been updated since 2003, seems to indicate.

So, you can understand why we were so excited to learn from Human Events Online that the group has made a come back. (And it’s just as thuggish as before!)

Here’s the report:

Young Americans for Freedom Is Reborn
by Craig Burgess and Kevin DeAnna

Members of Young Americans for Freedom came from as far away as Michigan to support a start-up chapter of YAF at Liberty University last weekend.

Hey, if any campus deserves a chapter of YAF, it’s Jerry Falwell’s college. And to think that it took an appearance by John McCain to get things rolling! (The YAFfers weren’t there to support McCain’s pro-war stance, or even to heckle him for cozying up to the Christian Right after calling Falwell an “agent of intolerance.” No, they came to denounce his immigration policies, since McCain has sponsored legislation which would allow illegals to remain alive. (And anti-immigrant rhetoric is a cornerstone of the reborn YAF.)

But back to HEI:

The YAF-ers came to oppose Sen. John McCain�s immigration policies and rallied along the side of the road. After getting lots of enthusiastic responses from passing cars, they marched to the entrance of the school and demonstrated there, leaving only after the police threatened them with arrest.

What a bunch of sissies! Do you think that the noble Confederate forces (or even the stalwart SS) would have stopped rallying about McCain’s immigration policies just because they were threatened with arrest? I hope they at least made some girls cry or took some candy from some kids after the cops left.

This action is part of a general effort to revitalize Young Americans for Freedom and create a real right-wing youth movement to mobilize against the Republican leadership for secure borders and national sovereignty.

Anybody besides me think they should just change the name of the group to “Hitler Youth” and be done with it?

During the protest several people stopped to talk with the YAF protesters. All were in support of the YAF position against McCain and illegal immigration. One construction worker walked from a nearby construction site to voice his support saying that most of his co-workers on the site could not even speak English.

And if you have the intolerant, redneck construction workers behind you on an issue, then you must be on the side of the angels.

A Liberty University parent also stopped and said he could not believe that someone like McCain was actually being invited to speak at Liberty.

Yeah! What was the administration thinking, letting a war hero Senator like McCain tarnish the good name of the university?

He asked about YAF and said he was glad to see that someone was openly voicing what most people were thinking.

That could be YAF’s new slogan: “We’re just voicing what most people are thinking, if the things that crawl under the rocks of FreeRepublic and LittleGreenFootballs are considered to be ‘most people.’”

Reporters also stopped by with questions about the rally and YAF.

And yet, when I did a Google News search, I found exactly one story about “Young Americans for Freedom” and “McCain” (it’s this very HEI piece). I bet Dan Rather personally spiked all the other pieces!

The day before members of YAF had attended a Minutemen rally in Washington, D.C., and were confronted with a gaggle of left-wing militants and Reconquistadors who attempted to disrupt the rally. They shouted obscenities and slogans in Spanish.

While the patriotic Yahoos YAFfers don’t speak any of those barbaric non-American languages, they knew the left-wing militants and traitors were shouting obscenities, because that’s just the kind of thing they would do. The YAFfers, of course, were the very model of civility and restraint.

No, wait, they behaved like trouble-making jerks.

YAF-ers carried Don�t Tread on Me Flags and megaphones and chanted �Smash Left-Wing Scum� at protesters, which caused some of them to attempt to turn violent. Police were forced to intervene when leftists attempt to surge at the pro-Minutemen line. The protesters seemed surprised to encounter right-wing activists who were not afraid to engage them.

Uh huh. I bet the leftists were shaking in their jackboots when they learned that THESE right-wing activists dared to employ deadly taunts and chants!

These activities highlight efforts by Young Americans for Freedom across the country to re-energize the right across America.

Check out the last photo, which shows the YAFfers protesting outside a Toys ‘R Us, to really get the picture of how inspiring and re-engergizing their efforts were.

Now, doesn’t that story make you proud of today’s young people?

Speaking of which, all their HEI bios tells us about our young authors is that they are members of YAF. So, I did a little Googling. Here’s part of what I learned about Kevin:

Kevin DeAnna is a recent graduate of William & Mary who is currently being sued for libel. It seems that while at W&M he served as editor of The Remnant, a far-right student publication which accused a 16-year-old girl of lying about being raped by a frat boy. (The boy accepted a plea, admitting to having had sex with an underage girl,and to have provided alcohol to a minor — The Remnant seemed to believe that this exonerated the boy of any wrongdoing. They called him “the only real victim in this case,” and referred to the victim as “the girl who lied.”)

Kevin himself wrote an editorial which claimed that he had known from the first that the girl’s story was �too theatrical” to be true, and said that it was obvious that “it would have been almost impossible for Kenneth Lang to put on a condom while simultaneously holding down a desperately struggling victim.” The girl is seeking $800,000 compensatory and punitive damages, so one hopes that Kevin has a good job.

Instead, one learns that he now holds a Deputy Office Manager position at Ken Blackwell’s Leadership Institute (he works in the Campaign Leadership School, which purports to show youngsters “how to win [elections] even if you are outspent and none of the so-called experts gives you a chance. ”

When not busy teaching kids “exactly what it takes to run a grassroots campaign and win!”, he recruits Freepers to join various flakey protests.

Boots on the Ground Needed
Posted on 02/16/2006 11:12:16 AM PST by kevinjdeanna

This is an urgent request to all DC freepers. Young Americans for Freedom is going to be counterprotesting the open borders march on this Saturday, March 18, on the West Lawn of the Capitol. Any boots on the ground would be much appreciated.

Sadly, only a handful of people joined the protest (even Kevin said he ditched it to protest the Danes, or eat Danish or something), but it still was apparently a great success:

Everyone did a great job and I was proud to work with you guys.

We put up a bunch of pictures at our website smashleftwingscum.com too.

Yes, Kevin and Craig are two of the guiding lights behind the erudite journal of ideas Smash Left-Wing Scum, which offers more details about the YAF/Scum protests against McCain and immigrants:

While left-wing scum Senator John McCain gave the commencement speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, 5 of your Smash Left-Wing Scum heroes told the residence of Lynchburg that true conservative oppose John McCain and his leftist immigration stance.

A handful of others joined the SLWS members in the protest that gained a fair amount of support from passersby. Due to permit restrictions, we were only allowed to protest in a place where we would not be visible to McCain.

McCain apparently couldn’t see the five Scums and their “handful of others” over at Toys R’ Us, and so our heroes didn’t get a chance to beat him to a pulp like they planned.

But it was a little more exciting at the Minutemen rally:

As many of you know, there was a big Minuteman rally in DC today. … Towards the end of the rally, the 6 SLWS operatives began chanting “Smash Left-Wing Scum!”, and others from our side joined. Women, children, old men. One Capitol Police officer told us to leave because we were ‘just trying to start crap’, but instead we began talking to him and he settled down.

So this is the kind of activity that the reborn YAF is undertaking in an effort to re-energize the right! I can see why Human Events Online was proud to herald their achievements.

But it is true that the YAF/Scum forces have had a real impact on stuff. (At least, that’s what their site says.)

What impact has SLWS had?

Well, we’ve encouraged some protests and demonstrations on both coasts and in a few states in between. We’ve broke some stories. We’ve encouraged a number of conservatives to understand that there is no need for decorum when it comes to dealing with left-wing scum.

I’m sure Ronald Reagan and Bill Buckley are very proud.

Now, on to Craig Burgess.

But here the plot takes a sinister turn, for there is no Craig Burgess associated with YAF! No, Craig is actually Craig BURGERS, AKA CW Burgers, AKA “Arminius .” (You’ll have to come up with your own theory about why he changed his name for this article — mine involves a young man who was fed up with taunts about fast food sandwiches.)

Now, here’s a brief bio, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Craig Burgers is a paleoconservative political activist from Michigan. He is a founding member of the Michigan Youth Offensive, a national board member of Young Americans for Freedom, and an official with the local Republican Party. Burgers has been quoted in dozens of newspapers and other media sources for organizing demonstrations against liberals like Jesse Jackson and Al Gore. Conservative author Dan Flynn calls Burgers “Burger-time.”

And here’s part of his old YAF profile:

What was your greatest influence in becoming conservative/libertarian

Watching western civilization being destroyed before my eyes

Your greatest YAF story

Plenty of great YAF stories. My favorite moments would have to be protesting Jesse Jackson and the pro-America rallies we held at MSU in support of the war on terror. On all those occasions we got to confront the left face to face.

Interestingly enough, almost everyone’s “greatest YAF story” involves a physical confrontations with liberal scum.

Your top 5 heroes

Wilhelmus Van Nassau, Dutch independence leader.
S.J.P. Kruger, Leader of the South African Boer resistance to British aggression.
Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy.
Patrick Henry, American patriot
Ronald Reagan, He just rules

White supremacy rulz 2!!!

What is the best story you can tell from a protest

Some leftists were holding an anti-war rally and we were out numbered at least 4 to 1 but thaks to the help of our gigantic MSU-YAF megaphone we were able to drown them out totally. Cars along the road booed the leftists and cheered for us as we marched behind them with flags and signs saying “USA kicks ass!”. Later we got in a car and drove along side them blasting a siren and shouting “USA USA USA” and “March faster commies, we don’t got all day.” They were so angry, it was hilarious. Some old hippie wearing a Mao button lost it and started screaming “F YOU F YOU” over and over. It was great to ruin the left’s little anti-war parade.

Wow, that was a great story! I hope that “Craig Burgess” isn’t too good to blast commies with a siren.

Craig should have graduated from Michigan State by now (he started college in 2001) , but I can’t discover what he’s doing now — possibly he became a professional bully, and possibly he rolls drunks for change.

But whatever he’s doing, it apparently pays him well enough (and gives him enough free time) that he can travel the country to rally the right, stage protests at Toys ‘R Us, and hassle the liberal/hippie scum.

In conclusion, I hope this piece left you as encouraged about the future of America as I am, and that you’ll encourage the young neo-Nazis of your acqaintance to check out YAF. Do it for Bill Buckley.

Wingnuts | 37 Comments »

In his LA Times column this morning, Forget Privacy, We Need to Spy More, Max Boot rose to periscope depth and, in the words of Winky from Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, �sighted enemy, smeared same.� The enemy in this case being the U.S.S. Constitution.

When it comes to the war on terror, the biggest advantage we have comes from our electronic wizardry.

Sadly, the past six years have given Osama bin Laden sufficient time to perfect his game, and reports indicate that he has achieved parity with our pinball wizardry.

The National Security Agency has its share of problems, but it has long been the best in the business at intercepting and deciphering enemy communications. Until now.

Because frankly, the enemy�s conversations are pretty boring (mostly they chat about Muslim theology and couscous recipes), so the NSA has started intercepting and deciphering friendly communications, because we�re more likely to call phone sex lines or gab about Eve Longoria�s red carpet nip-slip at the Independent Spirit Awards.

If civil liberties agitators, grandstanding politicians and self-righteous newspaper editorialists have their way, we will have to give up our most potent line of defense because of largely hypothetical concerns about privacy violations.

Everyone who talks about the NSA�s domestic spying program is a liar, and everything they tell you is a lie, including that it�s even happening. If I repeat this often enough, I�m pretty sure I can get an android�s head to explode.

By the way, that one sentence wiped out the nation�s Strategic Modifier Reserve.

Assorted critics, taking a break from castigating the Bush administration for doing too little to protect the homeland, are now castigating it for doing too much.

A lot of you idiots don�t seem to understand this very important point, so let�s try to illustrate it with an analogy: An elderly woman is walking home from the bank after cashing her Social Security check. A blond 15-year old male whizzes past on a Razor and snatches her purse. She reports the theft to a cop, who immediately walks over to a bus bench and starts beating a 65-year old black woman with his nightstick. The grandstanding victim complains that this isn�t helping to get her purse back. The moral of the story is: There�s just no pleasing you people.

How dare the NSA receive without benefit of a court order telephone logs from AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon? Even though the records were anonymous and did not include the contents of any calls (Verizon and BellSouth have now denied offering any information at all)

Although they did admit to eating all the Frusen Gladje.

…hyperventilating worrywarts fret that fascism has descended.

If you love your civil liberties, let them go. If they come back, then you can exercise your free speech and peaceably assemble and be secure in your papers and effects. If not, then they were never your rights to begin with. Anyway, tell your skin condition to breathe into a paper bag and chill out.

Qwest is supposed to be the hero of this drama for having, in USA Today’s words, “the integrity to resist government pressure.”�Maybe Qwest should celebrate by launching an advertising campaign touting itself as the preferred telecom provider of Al Qaeda.

Yeah, Qwest. If you love Al Qaeda so much, why don�t you MARRY it?

All this concern with privacy would be touching if it weren’t so selective. With a few keystrokes, Google will display anything posted by or about you.

In that case, Hi MAX BOOT. Welcome to World O�Crap. Set a spell. Buy a mug.

A few more keystrokes can in all probability uncover the date of your birth, your address and telephone number and every place you have lived, along with satellite photos of the houses and how much you paid for them, any court actions you have been involved in and much, much more.

It is only a little more work to obtain your full credit history and Social Security number. Or details of your shopping, traveling and Web-browsing habits.

Well, it�s a little more work for you. Me, I just call up General Hayden.

Such information is routinely gathered and sold by myriad marketing outfits. So it’s OK to violate your privacy to sell you something � but not to protect you from being blown up.

Well, it�s OK according to the Republican Congress, which refuses to give consumers control of their credit reports and other personal financial information, lest it inconvenience the big banks and credit card companies.

How far do the civil-liberties absolutists want to take their logic?

This far: I want AT&T, BellSouth, and Verizon to launch an advertising campaign touting themselves as the preferred telecom provider of Heinrich Himmler.

Will troops in Afghanistan and Iraq soon have to read Miranda warnings to captured suspects and apply for a court’s permission before searching a terrorist safe house?

I�m guessing no, since we�re talking about the NSA spying on Americans here in the U.S., where there aren�t a lot of troops going house to house searching for insurgents.

But this does bring up something I�ve often puzzled over: Why do Max�s rhetorical questions always sound like they should be punctuated with an organ sting? Is it their haughty, yet spittle-flecked, over-the-top quality that gives them that mid-50s soap opera flavor? (�Will Marcia confront John about Sylvia? Will Dr. Morgan reach Helen in time to save her baby? Tune in tomorrow��)

Or do such niceties stop at our borders, thereby giving Al Qaeda and its ilk the freedom to operate unhindered only in the U.S.?

Yeah! If the government doesn�t get to spy on millions law-abiding U.S. citizens, then they don�t get to surveill a few dozen suspected terrorists. Those are the rules.

Much of this silliness can be traced to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which for the first time made judges the overseers of our spymasters.

It was much better when whip-wielding plantation managers were the overseers of the intelligence community, because not only was productivity unimpeded by all this eyewash about the Bill of Rights, but the CIA officers sang such lovely spirituals as they worked that we didn�t need Muzak in the elevators.

This was an understandable reaction to such abuses as the FBI’s wiretapping of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But FISA is a luxury we can no longer afford.

Martin Luther King is also a luxury we can no longer afford. Sorry, but if we let one subject of extensive and prolonged government surveillance have a holiday, then the next thing you know the civil liberties agitators won�t be satisfied until major appliance dealers are having sales on Osama bin Laden�s birthday.

Were it not for FISA’s high standard of “probable cause,” the FBI could have examined Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop in August 2001 and perhaps saved 3,000 lives.

Actually, were it not for FBI management�s disinterest in even seeking a warrant to search Moussaoui�s laptop, 3,000 lives might possibly have been saved. In fact, there were lots of actions the government could have taken to prevent the attacks on 9/11, but you know how hard it is to get anything done when the boss is on vacation.

Still, that leaves these FISA judges setting themselves above the Constitution by demanding some impossible, idealized, airy-fairy standard for issuing a warrant. �Probable cause.� PAH! How far did they have to reach to pull that one out of their asses?

This archaic law should be euthanized.

Except Bill Frist keeps shoving the feeding tube back in.

Replace it with legislation that gives the president permission to order any surveillance deemed necessary

…and to have people wearing insulting t-shirts shot on sight, or herded like cattle into giant rocketships and exiled to the moon!

…subject to only one proviso: If it is later determined that an intelligence-gathering operation was not ordered for legitimate national security objectives � if, for instance, it was designed to gather dirt on political opponents � then the culprits would be punished with lengthy prison sentences.

Fortunately, since no intelligence-gathering operation will ever be investigated by this Congress, we don�t really have to worry too much about that prison part.

Given that our intelligence bureaucracy leaks like a sinking ship, it is a safe bet that any hanky-panky would become front-page news faster than you can say “Pulitzer Prize.”

Yep. All these leaks, all these Pulitzer Prizes, all these Administration officials serving lengthy prison sentences. Oh wait�

So far there has been no suggestion that the NSA has done anything with disreputable motives.

Um, Max? Stop by my house�

The administration has nothing to be ashamed of.

But shame itself.

The only scandal here is that some people favor unilateral disarmament in our struggle against the suicide bombers.

Oooh, nice one! On the Strawman scale of Ending Your Argument by Symbolically Lighting a Bag of Dog Poop on Fire, Ringing the Doorbell, and Running, this column rates:

Wingnuts | 29 Comments »

I know I should be blogging about the President’s speech about immigration (you know, the one where he announced his plan to smuggle Karl Rove to Mexico, so Karl could be an undocumented day laborer to avoid prosecution), but for some reason, I’m just not that concerned about it. So, instead, let’s check in with Concerned Women for America, and see what’s new with them.

Well, here’s something that might be informative: a column by Janice “Mad at My Mop” Crouse in which she encourages women to be weak and dependent.

Let’s take a peak at it:

Two things about the billboard caught my attention. First, the woman, in her late 30s or early 40s, is a solitary figure whose image takes over the sign. Then, the caption is simple and bold: You Are Powerful.

The advertisement�s target audience is obvious. There is tremendous profit to be made by any company that successfully appeals to the more than 24 million unmarried women in the 20-44- year-old demographic.

Yes, since the billboard photo features just one woman, then obviously the advertisers (whoever they may be) are targeting old maids.

They make up 47 percent of all women in this age group (compared with only 19 percent that were unmarried in 1968).

Oh, for a return to the good, old days of 1968, when almost every woman could find somebody who would marry her! But today’s women are failures, who just can’t trap themselves a man. I blame billboards, for encouraging women to be solitary and powerful!

For, as Janice goes on to explain, wanting to be powerful goes along with wanting to be independent — and that’s a mistake, because it means that you will die alone and unloved. After all, nature designed women to be dependent on men (and therefore, married).

The sexual pleasure of the married bed is nature�s bait to induce us to accept and enjoy our dependence.

Personally, I don’t consider the sexual fulfillment of beds, be they married or single, to be any of my business.

But what I think Janice was trying to say is that nature tricked her into being dependent by hooking her on passionate, steamy sex. Now she will tell us more about her physical relationship with Mr. “No Wife Of Mine Will Use Sponge Mops” Crouse.

Relationship well-being depends upon touch. In my own experience, the rituals of touch enrich my relationship with my husband. We�ve been married 44 years, and we still reach out to hold hands during prayer, whenever I exit the car, or when we walk together.

Hot stuff, n’est-ce pas?

And anyway, ladies, the reason you can’t be independent or powerful is that you’re not a grizzly bear. End of story.

In my youth, the supposedly powerful solitary figure on the billboard might have appealed to me. No more. No matter how much our pride � particularly in our youth � would have it otherwise, nature dictates that dependency is an inherent, integral part of our existence.

Nature did not equip human females like she did the mighty female grizzly bear, which truly is powerful and independent. The mother bear is fully capable of raising her cub alone without any help, least of all from the male bear.

The human female, on the other hand, is eminently vulnerable, and the development of the human child takes years longer than in any other species.

Take that, all you single mothers out there! You are NOT truly powerful and independent, and you can NOT raise a child without the help of a male bear. And if you did, your offspring would become serial killers, or worse.

With that in mind, we might recall exactly what becomes of the adorable, cuddly, playful bear cubs. The powerful, independent she-bear mother, in her solitary way, produces very deadly predators.

And that’s why you should never trust another billboard.

Wingnuts | 36 Comments »

The World O’ Crap signature mug — As Seen in the recent Write Like a Wingnut Contest — is now available for purchase. Just click the link to the right, and get your day off to the Crappiest of Starts. Won’t you? Thank you.

Ad copy edited after input from our focus group.

Now a word from our sponsor | 17 Comments »

The LA Times sends us an anniversary card from A. Mitchell Palmer:

May 15, 1923: Upton Sinclair, a crusading writer, climbed the steps of a platform that striking dockworkers had built atop what they named Liberty Hill in San Pedro.

As someone held a candle for illumination, Sinclair began reading the Bill of Rights, making no reference to the 600 dockworkers who had recently been arrested for striking.

Sinclair only got as far as the first three lines of the 1st Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, before he was arrested. The incident would lead to the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

When presented with the first ten amendments to the Constitution at the end of a recent fundraising dinner, an irate President George W. Bush called the Bill of Rights “outrageous!” and said, “I won’t pay it! Why, I can get half these rights in Uzbekistan for the same price, and they’ll throw in the dissident-boiling for free!”

My Country Right, Wrong or Decline to State | 4 Comments »