16 May, 2008

Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.


Great news, my darlings! John Hagee knows who the Antichrist is (and it ain't us!):

Hagee’s predictions are very clear. Armageddon, the final battle, could begin, he wrote in his 2007 book “Jerusalem Countdown,” “before this book gets published.”

The Antichrist “will be the head of the European Union,” he writes.

The United Nations is off the hook! So is President Bush (damn the luck), Barak Obama, the ACLU, and the Pope, among far too many others. For an amusing list, don your flame retardant clothing and go poke around here.

And why does this belong in Happy Hour rather than Intolerancia? Oh, because Joe Lieberman, fuckwit extraordinaire, is babbling about how fine it is that John McCain wwwuuuuvvveeesss Pastor John "Batshit Insane" Hagee:

I can appreciate the fact that Joe Lieberman has finished off the McCain Kool Aid. I also realize Lieberman is completely on board with everything McCain says, does, and believes, and will defend the Republican presidential campaign against any charge, regardless of merit.

But I’m a little surprised Lieberman is willing to go so far as to defend radical televangelist John Hagee. We’re obviously well past any and all shark-jumping moments for Lieberman, but given some of Hagee’s thoughts on Judaism, I thought Lieberman might still have a shred of principle in him. I stand corrected.

Lieberman told Faux News, "He represents a lot of people in this country, particularly Christians who care about the state of Israel. He founded a group called Christians United for Israel." Apparently, the poor deluded McKool Aid drinker believes that "Christians United for Israel" would be a good thing. In this case, not so much:

In "Jerusalem Countdown: A Prelude To war" Hagee has stated that Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves by rebelling against God and that the Holocaust was God's way of forcing Jews to move to Israel where, Hagee predicts according to his interpretation of Biblical scripture, they will be mostly killed in the apocalyptic Mideast conflict Hagee's new lobbying group seems to be working to provoke and which John Hagee believes to be a necessary precondition for the "Rapture" that will lift Christians, but not Jews, bodily into Heaven to enjoy physical immortality amidst paradise.

Remember, this man is pushing for an apocalyptic nuclear war in the Middle East. Any Jew who doesn't convert to his brand of Christianity before then is a radioactive grease smear and deserves to be that way. This is the noxious fucker Lieberman is defending McCain for wooing.

Brilliant, Lieb. Way to show your powers of perception, again. You truly do belong with the Republicons now.

Speaking of right-wing nutbags, you know they're pretty pathetic when Chris "Misogynist" Matthews is sharp enough to cut the legs from under one:

I realize that not all right-wing voices are as dense and uninformed as Kevin James — he seems to be a uniquely embarrassing individual — but in some ways, Matthews was highlighting the flaw in the cliched conservative talking points . Any ol’ clown can pick up his talking points, and go on national television to shout “appeasement!” but if you just scratch the surface a little bit, you see that there’s nothing underneath. In James’ case, the poor schmuck didn’t even seem to know what “appeasement” means; he just wanted to use it over and over again without being questioned.

It’s a lengthy clip, but it’s surprisingly easy to summarize. James compared Obama to Neville Chamberlain because Obama is prepared to talk to our enemies, calling this “appeasement.” Matthews repeatedly asked James to explain what Chamberlain did to appease Hitler. The best James could come up with was, “He’s an appeaser!”

After telling this nut, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kevin,” Matthews explained, “What Chamberlain did wrong, most people would say, is not talking to Hitler, but giving him half of Czechoslovakia in 1938. That’s what he did wrong. Not talking to somebody. Appeasement is giving things away to the enemy.”

It wasn’t clear if James understood the history lesson. Indeed, it wasn’t clear if he could understand any history lesson that didn’t involve cartoons and monosyllabic words.

Most of them seem to have trouble even with that. Someday, science will identify the brain damage that leads one to become the kind of right-winger who's so mentally deficient that he throws sand while Chris Matthews is throwing knives. Someday, science will have the cure for these poor, damaged fuckwits. That is, if they don't manage to heave science over a cliff first.

Speaking of fuckwits, Bush's deranged power-grabs grow ever more extreme. This little New York Times tidbit from two weeks ago shows just how fucking extreme:

In a partial concession to Congressional pressure, the Bush administration agreed on Wednesday to show the Senate and House Intelligence Committees secret Justice Department legal opinions justifying harsh interrogation techniques that critics call torture.

[snip]

At the hearing, a department official, John P. Elwood, disclosed a previously unpublicized method to cloak government activities. Mr. Elwood acknowledged that the administration believed that the president could ignore or modify existing executive orders that he or other presidents have issued without disclosing the new interpretation.

Mr. Elwood, citing a 1980s precedent, said there was nothing new or unusual about such a view.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, challenged Mr. Elwood, saying the administration’s legal stance would let it secretly operate programs that are at odds with public executive orders that to all appearance remain in force. (emphasis added)


Take a moment to absorb that one, my darlings.

President Bush, in an ostensibly democratic country, believes that he can not only "ignore or modify exisiting executive orders," but he doesn't have to tell anybody about it. In other words, he gets to create his own fucking law, and nobody knows it's happening until he ambushes them with it.

No, that doesn't sound right to me, either. I shudder to think what kind of damage to our democracy we're going to uncover when these rat fuckers are kicked out of the White House. If these little rat fuckers haven't already created a legal structure to keep themselves in power, that is.

Someone get me a bottle. No, not a drink, just a bottle. An empty one with really thick glass. I want to see what sound it makes bouncing off our Fearless Leader's thick skull.

1 comment:

Woozle said...

You might want to read this.

I'm tracking this issue here.

As I understand it, the theory is that Bush put CoG plans into effect on 9/11 and, well, kinda never rescinded them. And now nobody who should know will give a straight answer about whether those plans are in effect, or even what they actually might be.