Enjoy the Meltdown

Pamela Geller after reading Monday's news.

Pamela "Atlas Shrugs" Geller, who is one of the more bug-fuck insane personalities on the Internet (and brother, that's saying a lot), completely lost her shit over the Annapolis conference on Middle East peace (which itself is, oh, about seven years too late). Just go here and look. Insane, racist, eliminationist babbling seems to be her stock in trade. She refers to Hamas as "savages," and calls the conference itself a "gang bang." She also links to Frank Gaffney's bizarre screed in which he claims the conference is a "gang rape." Keep in mind that these people often refer to liberals/progressives/anyone to the left of Atilla the Hun as "deranged" or "unhinged." I believe the psychologists call that "projection."

Naturally, you have to read the comments as well. Some of Ms. Geller's commenters are even crazier than she is, which is no mean feat. I particularly enjoy wxjames' declaration that we need "devine leadership." I actually agree. Andy Devine would make a fine leader. But wait, he's dead. Damn.

I hope James Wolcott weighs in on this topic soon. He has such a talent for commentary regarding Pammycakes.

So It's Been A While

Here's a monkey giving a cat CPR. Why? Just because.

Hey hey, loyal readers. Sorry I've been away for a while. But I should have more time for this blogging silliness now. In fact, check out this grim shit:

HOUSTON — The cha-chick of a shell entering a shotgun's chamber rattled through the 911 line just before Joe Horn stepped out his front door.

Horn, 61, had phoned police when he saw two men break into his neighbor's suburban Houston home through a window in broad daylight. Now they were getting away with a bag of loot.

"Don't go outside the house," the 911 operator pleaded. "You're going to get yourself shot if you go outside that house with a gun. I don't care what you think."

"You want to make a bet?" Horn answered. "I'm going to kill them."

He did.

Admirers, including several of his neighbors, say Horn is a hero for killing the burglars, protecting his neighborhood and sending a message to would-be criminals. Critics call him a loose cannon. His attorney says Horn just feared for his life.

Prosecuting Horn could prove difficult in Texas, where few people sympathize with criminals and many have an almost religious belief in the right to self-defense. The case could test the state's self-defense laws, which allow people to use deadly force in certain situations to protect themselves, their property and their neighbors' property.

Horn was home in Pasadena, about 15 miles southeast of Houston, on Nov. 14 when he heard glass breaking, said his attorney, Tom Lambright. He looked out the window and saw 38-year-old Miguel Antonio DeJesus and 30-year-old Diego Ortiz using a crowbar to break out the rest of the glass.

He grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and called 911, Lambright said.

"Uh, I've got a shotgun," he told the dispatcher. "Uh, do you want me to stop them?"

"Nope, don't do that," the dispatcher responded. "Ain't no property worth shooting somebody over, OK?"

Horn and the dispatcher spoke for several minutes, during which Horn pleaded with the dispatcher to send someone to catch the men and vowed not to let them escape. Over and over, the dispatcher told him to stay inside. Horn repeatedly said he couldn't.

When the men crawled back out the window carrying a bag, Horn began to sound increasingly frantic.

"Well, here it goes, buddy," Horn said as a shell clicked into the chamber. "You hear the shotgun clicking and I'm going."

Lambright said Horn had intended to take a look around when he left his house and instead came face to face with the burglars, standing 10 to 12 feet from him in his yard.

Horn would have been no match in a physical confrontation with the two strong young men, Lambright said. So when one or both of them "made lunging movements," Horn fired in self-defense, he said.

I'm never moving to Texas. It's okay to shoot someone you see robbing the house across the street? Fuck that nonsense. Let's get this straight--he called 911, they told him not to confront the two burglars. He did anyway, vowing to kill them. Isn't that first-degree murder?

Yeah, yeah, the two dudes shouldn't have been robbing the house, but that in no way excuses murdering them. Wait for the cops to show up, give them a description, and forget about it. This sick bastard values a bag of his neighbor's property more than the lives of two other humans.

His lawyer is calling the shootings "self-defense." He walked out of his house to confront and, by his own admission, murder two men who posed no threat to him. That ain't self-defense. Not even in Texas.

Bingo!

Since Jude loves when I quote the Volokhs . . .

This is, I think, an ominous development -- the increasingly common notion that the government can insist that no one be permitted to publicly disclose what they know about how the government itself investigates crimes and terrorism, and how it treats those suspected of wrongdoing. Am I missing something? Is there some important historical precedent for this?

Right on.

Memo To Benito Giuliani and The Christian Right: Shut The Fuck Up

There's a lotta evil in this photo. A lotta crazy, too.

As you may have heard by now, the evil husk of a human known as Rudolph Giuliani recently received the endorsement of sanctimonious sack of shit Pat Robertson. So let's go over what this means. Giuliani is claiming that he deserves to be President because of September 11th. At least, that's what I get out of his campaign rhetoric. He wants to "keep America safe" by turning the country into a mirror image of the USSR's police state ca. 1948, plus racism. He wants to lock more people up indefinitely, spy on your telephone conversations and bank records, and torture the shit out of anyone even suspected of being an "enemy," as defined by him (note: history teaches us that such an approach never, ever ends well). In one of the Republican "debates" (if by "debate" you mean "the howling of the monkeys flinging shit at the zoo"), Giuliani got all up in nutjob Libertarian Ron Paul's grill because Paul had the audacity to suggest that US foreign policy might, might have something to do with motivating terrorist attacks against the United States. Here's exactly what Paul said:

Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us.

--snip--

I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- (bell rings) -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

Wow. That's really controversial, isn't it? Cause precedes effect. Oh my. However, since that pesky little thing known as "reason" has no place in Republican politics, Giuliani, howling and throwing shit like the finest piece of in-heat monkey ass in the world was just out of reach, screeched that Ron Paul must be off his meds. Rather than examine actual causes and try to prevent doing things that are the geopolitical equivalent of kicking a hornet's nest and then wondering why you're getting stung (oh, I'm not saying that we shouldn't find Osama bin Laden and throw him in a hole for the rest of his miserable fucking life, so don't get all pissy about that), Rudolph decided to attack Ron Paul. To wit:

Wendell, may I comment on that? That's really an extraordinary statement. That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th.

And I would ask the congressman to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that.

That's right, bitches. But it went on, as Ron Paul tried to use (gasp) a historical example to buttress his argument:

I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?

In case you're wondering, Paul's position is the same as set out in the US Government's 9/11 Commission Report (warning-PDF). But it's so much more fun and easy to say that "They hate us for our freedoms." Yeah, Giuliani fell back on the same tired-ass explanations for terrorism that were oh-so-popular immediately after 9/11 in a post-debate interview with talk show host and Republican cum bucket Sean Hannity--you can see the video here. I wonder if, during the "harsh interrogations," the idea of which get Giuliani's shriveled little penis semi-tumescent, the modern-day inquisitors ask the detainees why they hate our freedoms.

But what does all this have to do with Pat Robertson? I'm glad you asked. Two days after the 9/11 terror attacks, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell got together on TV to combine their two-and-a-half functioning neurons into a brain trust for the ages, in an attempt to determine why these awful attacks had just taken place. You know what they blamed? Our freedoms.

Falwell said, "The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I'll hear from them for this, but throwing God...successfully with the help of the federal court system...throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen."
Robertson said, "I totally concur, and the problem is we've adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government, and so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system."

The word "hypocrite" doesn't begin to describe these two cocksuckers. Giuliani is running for president based on the fact that he wasn't visibly shitting himself on the morning of September 11, 2001. He wants to tear down a couple of centuries' worth of liberties to make sure that the people who "hate our freedom" won't have anything left to hate. If anyone suggests that there might be root causes for terrorism, he totally loses his shit. He also supports abortion rights, gay rights, has been seen in drag in public on several occasions, associates with suspected criminals, is a serial adulterer, and treats his ex-wives and his children like they carry the plague. Pat Robertson loudly declaims that abortion and homosexuality and feminism and, you know, our rights are why we endure terrorism, and also spent all of the Clinton years warning us that Clinton's sexual indiscretions were going to doom us all, because we just can't be led by people who enjoy orgasms and don't think that homosexuals should be confined to prison camps. It makes baby Jeebus angry. Also, in case you were wondering if Giuliani is actually the most "moral" of the Republican presidential candidates (according to the fucked-up morality of the Christian right, that is), Mike Huckabee is actually a Baptist minister. So Robertson could've thrown his support behind a candidate who is much more Republican Jeebus-friendly than Giuliani. But he didn't.

Giuliani and Robertson. They've teamed up.

So please, please Pat and Rudolph: Shut the fuck up. You two give hypocritical assholes a bad name.

I Fear To Watch, Yet I Cannot Turn Away

Gregg Easterbrook, undated file photo.

God damn it. I did it again. Another Tuesday rolled around, and I just couldn't stop myself from reading Gregg Easterbrook. He's the David Brooks of ESPN--convinced that he knows everything, and that his opinions are handed down from god himself, but is in fact a blithering idiot.

This week, Easterbrook praises the shitty football programs at Nebraska and Notre Dame for their high graduation success rates. Later, in the same column, he bitches about the lack of mid-week televised college games. I just couldn't take it, so I wrote ESPN's resident Charlie Gordon an e-mail, which I now reproduce in full:

Mr. Easterbrook:

In this week's column, you praise the currently lousy Division I-A football programs at the University of Nebraska and the University of Notre Dame for their high athlete graduation success rates. Yet, later in the same column, you call for more mid-major football teams to play mid-week games so that television viewers will have more games to watch. These sentiments are glaringly inconsistent.

As an alumnus of a C-USA school (the University of Southern Mississippi), I can tell you that mid-week games are a disaster from an academic point of view. When I attended Southern Miss, C-USA started playing Thursday night games, which were broadcast on ESPN. When the Golden Eagles had a home game, the entire university would shut down in the early afternoon (libraries and all) so that alumni tailgaters could have the run of the campus. You may argue that such a decision is the fault of the university administration, and cannot be laid at the feet of the football schedule (and its attendant lucrative television contract), and you would have a case. However, the effect of mid-week games on athletes, from an academic point of view, is awful. Division I sports teams already place Herculean demands on athletes who wish to both play and further their educations, and mid-week football games turn a difficult balancing act into a near-impossible one--such
contests totally disrupt class and study schedules for the players. And, of course, attending classes and studying are rather important contributors to graduation success rates. Would you like to take a Friday morning exam after starting at tailback the night before? I'm guessing your answer would be an emphatic "no."

If you want universities to focus more on educating their athletes, great. If you simply don't care about the quality of instruction for athletes (or the rest of the student bodies), and just want more D I-A games televised, then you are welcome to that opinion, though I would disagree strongly. However, you simply cannot have both.

Thank you for your time.

I really, really hope he writes back, so I can call him a dumbass for complaining about the New Hampshire state-run liquor stores, too. I know, I know. I have no idea how he worked talking about one state's alcohol sales into a column that's supposed to be about football, but that's the magic of Easterbrook.

Oh, and did you notice the amazing lack of swearing in that e-mail? Yeah, it was tough. I had to stand up and yell "fuck fuck fuck fuck cocksucker motherfucker tax cuts for the rich shit" after I got done typing.

Football? Damn Right. Football

Charlie Weis, Super Genius, drawing up game plans for Notre Dame.

First of all, allow me to say the following: AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Notre Dame is now 1-8. The Irish lost yesterday--to Navy.

That is not a typo. The last time the Middies beat Notre Dame, John F. Kennedy was President. He must have had conflicted emotions about that game.

I watched a good portion of the Navy-ND game, and it was astonishing. Charlie Weis, the Notre Dame coach, has a reputation for being a genius play-caller. I just didn't see that. Navy repeatedly used the highly innovative strategy of running the option on offense. That's right. Charlie Weis, Super Genius, couldn't stop an option play. The Navy offense ran for 261 yards on 66 attempts. They threw the ball nine times. Again, that is not a typo. The USNA's QB chucked the ball a grand total of nine times, two of which were interceptions. Knowing that his opponent wasn't going to pass, a coach with a reputation for phenomenal play calling couldn't stop a one-dimensional offense. And this wasn't the 1967 Green Bay Packer offense, either. Oh, no. I'm sure all the ND alumni are glad that Weis is getting 40 million bucks over the next eight years. That's the kind of money you pay a coach who does things that almost no one else has. Which, come to think of it, is what Weis is doing. I mean, it's been over four decades since Notre Dame lost to Navy. You really make a name for yourself if you can pull off a feat that hasn't been accomplished since the country was still on the gold standard.

I wonder what bowl game Notre Dame will end up going to this year.

Oh, and the Badgers stunk up the joint against Ohio State. But we kind of expected that, what without a starting D-line and all.