Rightwingers Come To The Aid Of Mercenary Rapists

There really is no low that the right wing can sink to in this country. They'll defend the indefensible as long as it is to the (perceived) benefit of the Republican party. Well winger extraordinaire Bob Owens steps up to meet the challenge that is Jamie Leigh Jones. She is suing KBR and Halliburton for covering up a gang rape that she endured two years ago. It seems that the Bush Administration was also helpful in keeping a lid on things. Now that the media has caught wind of it, mercenaries and the Justice Department is diving for cover. Now who will provide backup for these bastards?

Predictably, the 101st keyboardists are stepping up for duty:

Bob has a number of concerns, e.g. what actually happened to the rape kit, and wonders why an earlier sexual harassment case involving the victim isn’t getting more play. Of course that second point helps rather than hurts the argument that KBR has gender sensitivity problems, so three cheers to Bob for bringing it up.

He ends with this gem:

A third claim made in The Blotter is that in the wake of the alleged rape, Jones was, “…held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR…”

Shipping containers typically found in Iraq (and elsewhere) are either 20’ or 40’ steel and aluminum boxes with little to no ventilation. On the days Jones was confined by KBR (July 29-30, 2005), the mean average temperature was 100-degrees, with air temperatures over 110 degrees for 6 hours straight both afternoons. It seems implausible that a person would survive such conditions without adequate food and water.

As much as it pains me to truth-squad a great writer like Bob Owens, repurposed shipping containers (Container Housing Units, or CHUs) are a fairly common type of housing in Iraq. Indeed, one can’t help asking whatever happened to the proud citizen journalist corps of Graeme Frost fame. Has anybody photographed her countertops yet? Harassed an ex-boyfriend? The only thing to do is keep digging.

And this is only the first couple of days...you know Bob, Michelle Malkin and the rest of that ilk will be looking for any kind of dirt to smear Jamie with. Who cares if she got raped, we have a country George Bush and friends to defend.

George Orwell Predicted The Wingnuts

The more you read George Orwell's 1984 masterpiece, the scarier it becomes especially as we live in the year 2007. What he predicted in 1948 is coming true by leaps and bounds in George Bush's America. Bush couldn't do it alone, neo-con think tanks, Fox News and the right wing blogosphere help him to try and move that Overton Window further and further over the precipice of sanity. Well, Orwell even predicted Michelle Malkin and the rest of her horde.

From A Tiny Revolution:

The Scott Beauchamp affair is reminding me of this, from 1984:

A Party member...is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline...called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

At first it seems amazing that Orwell could have precisely described today's right-wing blurgh world sixty years ago. But the right-wing blurghs are just an outgrowth of human nature, which never changes. (In particular I'm always been struck by the consistency with which such people are unable to understand analogies.)

No further analysis needed, Orwell covered them in one paragraph. Protective stupidity for George Bush is what they do best.

RedState Bans Ron Paul

Tucker "bowtie" Carlson has a discussion on Ron Paul and his supporters being banned on right wing blogs:

Shame On CNN's John Roberts

You know, I expect all of the abhorrent things that people like Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin and the cacophony of the right-wing blogosphere do to people that get in their way. Their assault on twelve year old Graeme Frost is disgusting, but not overly surprising. The worst thing is when the traditional media outlets start reporting with a wingnut point of view.

From ThinkProgress:

CNN’s John Roberts reported: “Some of the accusations [against the Frosts] may be exaggerated or false. But did the Democrats make a tactical error in holding up Graeme as their poster child?” A CNN political analyst then placed the blame squarely on the Democrats’ shoulders:

I think in this instance what happened was the Democrats didn’t do as much of a vetting as they could have done on this young man, his situation, his family. […]

More and more, Congress is acting less like a deliberative legislative body, and more like a political campaign. We’ve been seeing the politicization of every aspect of government.

There was no "tactical error" on the part of the Democrats. Graeme is the perfect example of why we need to have S-CHIP in the way that the bi-partisan Congress passed it. Their vetting of the Frost family was perfectly sufficient, the problem was when bloggers and pundits on the right cherry picked information to damage the reputation of this boy and his family.

As for "politicization," George Bush made the decision to go nuclear when he vetoed this overwhelmingly popular bill. Americans are by and large in favor of what Congress set out to do. The health care problem is out of control in our country and we are grateful that they are starting to help those who can hardly help themselves. These children are too young to have to be burdened with our failed system of privatized health care. It is our duty to make sure those that have the least among us and especially the most vulnerable be able to obtain medical care.

Conservatives Have Way Too Much Time On Their Hands

There are many different issues and causes that a person can feel passionate about, whether you are on one side or the other. Letting women make decisions about their own body, should we help give health care to children who can not afford it, is it smart to stay in Iraq even though we are making it worse.....so many questions to ponder (though I would think the answers are easy in my humble opinion). Now to you nuts on the right, why the hell do you care so much about the logo on Google?

From The LA Times:

Google Inc. occasionally features light-hearted doodles on its colorful home-page logo to commemorate special occasions. But now they are drawing criticism from conservatives for not being more patriotic.

The Mountain View, Calif., company bathes its logo in stars and stripes every Independence Day, but last week's decision to honor the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch -- the second "g" in Google was replaced with a drawing of the Soviet satellite -- is being blasted by some conservatives.

Not only did Google honor an achievement by a totalitarian regime that was our Cold War enemy, they griped, but it did so without having ever altered its logo to commemorate U.S. military personnel on Memorial Day or Veterans Day.

"It's a kick to your belly," said conservative blogger Giovanni Gallucci, 39, a social media consultant from Dallas. "I understand these guys are scientists and engineers and they have their quirks and want to make sure people are recognized who might not normally be recognized . . . but why not celebrate the struggles that we've come through as a people?"

Seriously, can someone get that man a life.

Conservatives Disparage 12 Year Old Without Knowing The Facts

Simply put, rightwing bloggers and their compatriots in the Senate have no shame. In their typically ignorant fashion, they went ahead to blast twelve year-old Graeme Frost and his family after he gave the Democratic address concerning the S-CHIP program. If it weren't for federal health insurance, him and his sister would not have gotten the care they needed after a devastating car accident.

The young boy made a compelling case for S-CHIP but right-wing bloggers went snooping around, looking for details that could make the case for their villainous President and his decision to veto the bill to expand the program. They thought they found items that were helpful for their side, but if they had actually done due diligence they would have known to keep their mouths shut.

From The Blotter:

"People make choices and it's clear the Frosts have made choice to invest in property and a business, but not in private health insurance," Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner, wrote on his blog.

But Manley say conservative bloggers didn't dig deep enough. It turns out that the Frost children attend Baltimore’s Park School on near-full scholarships; they pay roughly $500 per child per year in tuition, he said.

Like many small-business owners, Halsey Frost can't even afford to provide health insurance to himself, Manley said.

"Last year, the Frost's made $45,000 combined," Manley said. "Over the past few years they have made no more than $50,000 combined depending on Halsey's ability to find work."

The Frosts did indeed decide to make a decision to invest....in their children. For one thousand dollars a year the kids will get a great education that can help provide for a great future. In our democracy, it is great that our representatives can enable the government to provide health insurance to families that can not afford the ever-increasing price of private programs.

When a couple only makes $45,000 a year, it is hard enough to put food on the table, let alone pay for adequate health care. For conservatives to spin facts for their benefit without caring about the full truth or the reputation of a middle class family is indicative of how they will stop at nothing to obey their failed ideas and a failed Presidency.

Kristol Rips YearlyKos, Rightwing Onslaught Continues

Driven by the farcical winds from the wingnut o'sphere and the airwaves emanating from Fox News, YearlyKos is being attacked by conseratives as the date of the convention approaches. The latest set of sticks and stones came from William Kristol yesterday on....you guessed it...Fox News.

From ThinkProgress:

Today on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol attacked the Democratic presidential candidates for their decision to attend the YearlyKos blogger convention. He held it up as evidence that the presidential candidates have “gone left.”

“Every Democratic presidential nominee is going to the DailyKos convention,” said Kristol. “That’s the left-wing blogger who was not respectable three or four years ago. The Howard Dean kind of sponsor. Now the whole party is going to pay court to him and to left wing blogs.”

The YearlyKos convention is independent of the blog DailyKos. So the candidates are not going to simply “pay court” to the head of DailyKos, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. Approximately 1,500 “people from all walks of life who belong to the Netroots community” are expected at the convention this year.

Moreover, as NPR’s Juan Williams points out, what Kristol describes “as left is now center.” “The majority of the American people, 70 percent, want us out of Iraq,” noted Williams. “In fact, if you asked Iraqis, 60 some percent of Iraqis say we’re doing more harm than good in Iraq.” In a survey conducted by Pew Internet and American Life after the 2006 mid-term election, “online political activists” were said to “mirror the general population of those who are civically active.” Like the progressive blogosphere, a solid majority of Americans believe President Bush should not have commuted the sentence of his former aide, Scooter Libby.

It must be lonely out there Billy Boy in that bubble you live in. As Graham Nash once sung, "Won't you please come to Chicago for a ride" We promise it won't hurt, much.

Wingers Equate Michael Moore With Britain's Bombers

The mind of a rightwing blogger must be a scary place. In a head full of hate and fear, these people will do anything to villify and discredit the left. Their latest target was Michael Moore and his new film SiCKO. They were in agony after he highlighted our crazy gun culture in Bowling for Columbine. We know they hate him for calling out the President in Fahrenheit 9/11. Now bringing our health care crisis into the national spotlight has them hopping mad and they would even go as far as tying him to the amateur terrorists in London over the last few days.

From RawStory:

One writer, Mark Steyn, who contributes to the National Review Online's Corner blog, posted an e-mail he received in order to identify the connection between Moore's Sicko and the British terrorists.

"'Would these be Doctors who work for the U.K. health care system so lavishly praised by Michael Moore? ...Perhaps they are not Jihadists at all but simply men driven insane by their employer? Maybe Michael Moore has spawned an entirely new breed of suicide bomber — the alienated UK health care worker'" Steyn quotes from one e-mail, after noting "I've been getting more than a few letters along these lines."

He also posted a second e-mail, and observed, "Now that Dr Mohammed Asha has been arrested in the Glasgow/London terrorist investigation, several readers have noticed that this artfully combines Michael Moore's two most recent enthusiasms, 'insurgents' and socialized health care." Steyn, however adds, "Mr Moore has yet to call these medico-jihadists 'Minutemen.'"

So because he was a doctor, does that mean we should watch out for all doctors, or just Islamic doctors? We found out Congressman Mark Foley is a pedophile, does that mean all members of Congress should be kept away from our children? I could go on and on with the ridiculous comparisons, but the point is made that connecting Moore to the bombings in the U.K. is a pathetic attempt to smear the filmmaker.

Wingnuts Misinformation Campaign Continues

The right-wing apparatus relies on lies to keep itself afloat. Spreading fear (even if untrue) is what they do best and it has helped them report on news that really isn't based on fact. Their latest gaffe came from an anonymous right-wing blogger named "Ace of Spades." He/she claimed that ex-CIA Larry Johnson's report on the food supply for our troops was wrong because the document he relied on was a fake.

Ace relied on document 'expert' Charles Johnson to prove his assertion. A pdf examination proved to them that the document was false. So once Ace and Johnson got rolling, so did their counterparts throughout right-wing blog land.

From Glenn Greenwald:

The sea of right-wing blog followers then washed ashore, with one proclamation after the next like these:

** "Hi-larious Ratheresque hijinx on the part of Larry Johnson, ex-CIA moron, discussed by Ace."

** "The Has-Been Media is also incredibly stupid and easily fooled, so long as they can advance their political agenda . . . Check out the link to the memo. It's laughable.

** This is hilarious. Seems Super Duper Spook Larry (Plame Flame) Johnson got duped by a faked intel memo.

Needless to say, the memo is authentic. And some of the accusers are slowly starting to admit it (with no apologies to Johnson or The Washington Post for impugning their integrity, from what I have seen).

Leave it to the wingnut o'sphere to screw up another story. Not that this is any big surprise, there have been plenty of other ridiculously false stories debunked by those of us that reside in reality. It is unfortunate that the Washington Post actually picks up their garbage even with the lack of credibility that is out there, from Little Green Footballs to Michelle Malkin. When will they wake up and see how the right will use any means to try and combat the detractors of the war to protect George Bush.

All The News That's Fit To Print

Or so they say in journalism. Of course, the wingnut o'sphere does not even come close to anything resembling journalism. Not even a faint cry from what the mainstream media has become today. To the media's credit, they did break the story on the terrible conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The scandal created a huge firestorm that resulted in two generals being fired and the Army Secretary resigning.

With the White House in crisis mode, Bush is doing anything he can to look like a leader after the last six years of merely paying lip service to the hundreds of thousands of troops he has unjustifiably sent into harm's way. The media and the blogosphere has been on the case for two weeks now, but where are the right-wing blogs speaking out for the troops that they claim to support?

Well Jesus' General made this nifty little chart to show all the posts about the scandal on the right:



Wow, four fuckin' posts from those wingnuts that claim the left hates the troops. The same garbage that comes from those that cheer on the war without actually having the guts to serve on the front-line, or any line for that matter. For them it is back to the keyboard to type out their hate and their lies.