Robot Monkeys

Marc Thiessen deifies Helms in Monday’s WaPo. Oh poor Jesse! How you stood up to such horrible men like Clinton and Castro! The quote that really got me though was this:

What his critics could not appreciate is that, by the time he left office, Jesse Helms had become a mainstream conservative. And it was not because Helms had moved toward the mainstream — it was because the mainstream moved toward him.

The sad thing is, the unabashed racist, who bragged to Sen. Arlen Specter when Carol Moseley-Braun shared an elevator with them, “I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing Dixie until she cries.” (Chicago Sun-Times, 8/5/93). This is the man famously responded to a caller to Larry King in 1995 who said, “I want to thank you for everything you’ve done to help keep down the niggers,” responded with a salute and “Well, thank you, I think.” (Wilmington Star-News, 9/16/95) The same man who described gays as “weak, morally sick wretches,”(Newsweek, 12/5/94) and opposed AIDS funding because it was divine retribution, because “There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy.”(States News Service, 5/17/88)

Christopher Hitchens has it right when he calls him, “a provincial redneck”. Unfortunately so is Marc Thiessen claim of him being, “a mainstream conservative.” Just as Barry Goldwater famously went from reactionary conservative to liberal, by not changing a position. As it’s been said, “Goldwater didn’t leave the Republican party. The Republican party left him.”

The best comment I have say I heard about the passing of Jesse Helms, comes from Ryan, “I hope that Heaven has some sort of affirmative action, and Helms loses his spot to a minority.”

It would be fitting. Burn Hell you old embarrassing son of a bitch.

Ahh, got to love the Republicans are strong on China. That’s unfair. The dems cave too. They’re both beholden to their corporate masters. Bush in a stunning display of strength, will attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

Keeping quiet, not saying anything. “Rolling” if you will shows strength. Saying, “Hey. We don’t like this,” according to White House advisor, Stephen Hadley put it, “a cop out”.

Bravo. Bravo. I would expect nothing less from the Glorious American Government.

First up, we have defending hot dog eating champ Joey Chestnut defeating ex-champ Takeru “Arthritic Jaw” Kobayashi. w00t!

Secondly, we have Sen. Jesse Helms taking MC Hawking’s advice at 86.

USA! USA! USA!

Whenever I think that nothing Fox will do will surprise me, they manage to dig a ditch an get just that much lower.

The great thing about Fox & Friends is just how unabashedly “fair and balanced” it is. The hosts are such horrible hacks, but even then I didn’t think Roger Alles would let them stupid to essentially juvenile graffiti. Photoshopping photos of people you don’t like.

Wow. Just wow.

So CNN publishes an article about the Great Tomato Scare of 2008 (If anyone wants to use that, you owe me a buck.), and the headline completely misrepresents the article. The headline: “Health Officials Question Whether Tomatoes Behind Outbreak“. And what’s the quote from the story hightlights?
“FDA: ‘There is a strong epidemiological association with tomatoes.’” So where’s the source of the fear?

“Produce investigations are very difficult, because a lot of times, vegetables are eaten all together,” said Dr. Patricia Griffin, chief of the Enteric Diseases Epidemiology Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. That makes it hard to trace back any one item to a source of contamination, she added. “We continue to keep an open mind about the possible source of this outbreak, as does FDA.”

Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the Food and Drug Administration, agreed. “There is a strong epidemiological association with tomatoes,” but the agency is also “looking into other ingredients,” he said.

So you have the scientists basically saying, “While we can’t be 100% sure it’s not from the tomatoes, we really really think it is.” Which of course means the take away is, “Scientists Dumbfounded!”

Now Occam’s Razor and Hanlon’s Razor says that I should attribute this to pure laziness, and that’s probably true. After all, the one story from Billy’s journalism classes is the time the TA or prof tried to explain the concept of a quorum using the example of “one more after the half.” Apparently this was too much more most of the students who would calculate the number required for a quorum as simply half, or one less than half. At least one proclaiming, “We’re not math majors!”

The future of American journalism at its finest.

However, I can’t help but think that this CNN headline is more indicative of American attitudes towards science. Nothing is known for certain, so nothing is known, and therefore everything is equally likely.
I believe this attitude comes from the poor state of math and science education in this country, and the need for “fair and balanced” coverage.

After 5 years of Iraq and 7 years on Afghanistan, the war is played out.

So why am I supposed to take the MSM seriously again?

Obama supports immunity for the telcoms that broke the law in GWB’s illegal wiretapping. Why? Because when the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.

Hope for change indeed.

U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba (Ret.):

There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account.

Sorry Tony. There’s no question of that either. They won’t be.

What should happen is that the International Criminal Court should issue an arrest warrant, and then the principles: George W, Cheney, Rummy, John Yoo, Scooter Libby, and the whole lot, should be arrested as soon as they step off the plane in a foreign country. Hell, Interpol should take a page out of their playbook and perform an “extraordinary rendition” and arrest them here.

Hell! Why the hell isn’t the Berkley city council ordering the Berkeley PD to arrest John Yoo at his office at 890 Simon Hall? I’ll tell you why. Because unlike the fucking Berkeley Nuclear Free Zone, this would actually achieve something, and hippies aren’t about achieving real change. They’re all about “sending messages” and forming drum circles and raging against the war machine and what not. Just not achieving real change.

If there’s one thing those crazy libertarians at “Reason” get right, it’s the war on pot. Reason obliterates ONDCP’s latest attempt to scare old pot smokers into thinking that pot is not only bad, but way worse than ever before. Fun facts include:

• Drug Czar Walters cites a level of THC in old pot that would make it impossible for anyone to have gotten high in the 1970s
• Drug Czar Walters creates a “scary” increase in THC levels by comparing the lowest outlier to the highest outlier.
• Standard correlation versus causation propaganda

and of course the real kicker:

• More people are in drug treatment today because of pot, therefore pot is worse. We know more people are in drug treatment today because of pot, because part of our crackdown on pot, we compel arrestees to attend drug treatment programs.

Nice and circular. They way God intended.

Anonymous former newspaper man, as recounted by Frank Scandale, editor of The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey:

Yep, you guys have a liberal paper, albeit one I have never read. How can I know this? Well, and I say this with tongue in cheek, it would never occur to a conservative paper to engage in such introspection.