The Truth Finally Gets Its Pants On...

Jan 31st, 2013
3:00 pm CST

Mark Twain was right...

As is always, depressingly the case, it took the truth a lot longer to get its pants on before a lie went around the world...


NO, Obama is NOT tearing down Reagan's "childhood home" to "put up a parking lot."

The Saga Of Jonathan Krohn

July 10th, 2012

I remember when I first saw footage of then-conservative wunderkind Jonathan Krohn speaking to CPAC in 2009. At the time, as right wing media lionized him and center media puzzled over him, two things seemed clear to me; First, he had rehearsed the standard points of a movement which he found attractive quite well. Second, he was incredibly bright. He had, after all, written a book on the subject which is somewhat more than I had accomplished at that age.

As passionate as I may be about some of my positions today, I remember with a shudder just how strident I was as an early adolescent. I commented at the time that it was perfectly likely he would change his views before long.

Change he did. As anyone of a political timber knows, he spoke to Politico last week and described his transformation:

"I think it was naive. It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We're inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough."

It took a certain amount of grace for him to publicly revisit his positions in light of how much he had not only embraced but profited from partisan spectacle in the past. It's an interesting story. 

As I read the comments on twitter and in the initial Politico reporting, there was a certain amount of vulgar, right wing indignation. Just as there had been its opposite in 2009, the political public in the internet age do seem to take these things personally. 

The story should have faded. However, the "conservative" media ensured that it didn't. They went way beyond simple reporting and commentary and into the realm of character assassination. 

This weekend, young Mr. Krohn was compelled to pen a response for Salon:

"I have been treated by the political right with all the maturity of schoolyard bullies. The Daily Caller, for instance, wrote three articles about my shift, topping it off with an opinion piece in which they stated that I deserved criticism because I wear “thick-rimmed glasses” and I like Ludwig Wittgenstein. Why don’t they just call me “four-eyes”? These are not adults leveling serious criticism; these are scorned right-wingers showing all the maturity of a little boy. No wonder I fit in so well when I was 13.

I shouldn't be too surprised. Political divisiveness in America today is a childish thing anyway. The never-ending war between the left and the right seems to me like a couple of drunken college boys fighting over which one of their fraternities is cooler. Think about it: Once you join a side, you have to obey the house rules, go to all the parties, and defend your status as a member of the greatest club on campus. And this is what drove me away from conservatism to my admittedly center-left position of independent mindedness (if that’s a thing)."

I highly recommend the rest of his piece and not for the obvious political reasons. Mr. Krohn is a helluva writer. He's still basically a kid. His views will likely transform any number of times over the next twenty years. That's what happens to people who suffer the curse of critical thinking. But even if I find myself at ideological loggerheads with some future missive, I suspect it will be a good read.

In the meantime, we have seen the full weight and fury of the so-called "conservative" media directed into a campaign of ridicule against an American who is, by every legal definition, still a minor.

That says more about them than it says about him.

Understatement Of The Year Nominee

April 5th, 2012

I have to tip my hat to Right Wing Watch for this gem:

"As we have noted several times in recent weeks, David Barton has a problem accurately reporting on contemporary issues that are easily verifiable..."

Wow. This is politeness on a scale that deserves no small amount of praise.

David Barton convulsively lies every single time that he opens his face-hole. RWW has tirelessly and ceaselessly exposed his lies for quite a bit longer than the last few weeks.

Frankly, I suggest that they have every right to take a lot more credit here.

As to the particular matter at hand, David Barton was lying. Again. Really blatantly.

Dana Loesch, Artless Fascist, Strikes Again

Jan 13th, 2012
The original title included a pejorative that drew a great deal of blowback. It was not meant to be overtly sexist. I stand by the rest of the piece.

You have likely heard by now that some of our troops were recorded on video urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan. It is not only shocking and immoral, it is not merely a violation of the uniform military code, it is an act so cravenly stupid that it endangers the safety of their fellow servicemen and women. It invites savage retribution in an already brutal country. The ugliness doesn't end there...

Joe Coscarelli reports for NY Mag:

"Tea party favorite Dana Loesch, the editor-in-chief of Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism and a CNN political analyst, is a big fan of the Marines who were videotaped urinating on Taliban corpses, and would gladly "drop trou and do it too," she said on her radio showyesterday. "That's me though," she said, incredulous that such an event could be a scandal. "I want a million cool points for these guys. Is that harsh to say? Come on people, this is a war. What do people think this is?" On Twitter today, she can't believe anyone is outraged, at her or the troops."

Indeed. She can't possibly get it. I have had the displeasure of tangling with this disgusting harpy in the past. She is, quite possibly, one of the worst human beings on the face of the Earth. The evidence of corpse desecration which she thinks deserves "a million cool points" is below.



ABC News reports:

"The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) has already launched its own independent investigation into potential criminal activity shown in the video. All four Marines featured in the video have been identified and interviewed by investigators with the NCIS, the service said in a statement today. Officials are "still tracking down" whoever created and uploaded the video, the NCIS said.

The results of both the NCIS and the USMC investigations will be presented to Marine Lt. Gen. Thomas Waldhauser who will determine further action, the USMC said in a statement.

If authentic, the video portrays potential violations of both the first Geneva Convention, which calls for the dead to be "honorably interred" and graves to be "respected," as well as the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice for allegedly bringing "discredit upon the armed forces."

Audio of this vulgar, Eva Braun-wannabe's celebration of a war crime follows.

FOX Comments Roundup

April 19th, 2011

So. I have said it before and it bears repeating; I do not know how the watchdogs at FoxNewsComments can stand it. It's been a banner month so far for Murdoch's moderators. What have they NOT been deeming inappropriate lately?

Headline: Principal Apologizes For Mock Auction of Black Students in Virginia 

Headline: Mexican Authorities Find Mass Grave Holding 59 Bodies

20 people clicked "like" on this last one.

Sleep tight all you folks who might be foolish enough to think we are living in the 21st Century. 

AFA Spokesman Calls President Obama "Boy"

March 22nd, 2011

Amazing. If you had any doubts about the SPLC designating the American Family Association as a "hate group," this ought to dispel them. Their increasingly vile spokesman, Bryan J Fischer, referred to the African American President of the United States as "BOY."

The American Right's Tribalism

Feb 1st, 2011

In an interesting piece on the disconnected devotionalism of the American conservative fringe, Charles Johnson writes: 

"Within the tribe there's no need to be concerned with facts or accuracy; if the goal is to demonize a hated opponent, for example, anything and everything goes, including smears known to be false. That's because the objective is not to convince an impartial observer -- it's to reinforce the tribal bonds, the sense of belonging to something, with its own shared reality. That shared reality doesn't have to reflect actual reality; anybody who doesn't share it is by definition not part of the tribe, and therefore an enemy."

To the Becks, the Gellers, the Gaffneys, etc..., I'd say Mr. Johnson has you pegged.

Disgusting Fox Comment Of The Week Award

Jan 25th, 2011

We have a winner folks. Thank as always to Fox News Comments for going through them all so I don't have to anymore.

Olbermann On The Continuing Failure Of Civility

Jan 18th, 2011

Last night's comment from Olbermann did a fine job of illustrating just how quickly the rhetoric has ramped back up from the Right.  

"We learn that the right doesn't even recognize the irony of its claim of being unfairly blamed for the violence of others, when it has spent the last several years doing exactly that to Muslims -- particularly American Muslims. We also learn that the right can simultaneously insist no political party or inclination can be blamed for Tucson -- while it itself blames the Democratic party and the left, for Tucson."

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