Army v. Navy, and Pitt v. WVU.
Go Army. Go EErs!
by John Cole| 25 Comments
This post is in: Sports
This post is in: Blogospheric Navel-Gazing, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To
If ever you were under the illusion that Greater Wingnuttia was anything other than a bunch of partisan goobers wholly uninterested in the truth and wedded only to the needs of the Republican party, surely the last week has shed you of that illusion. As I write this, only one fringe nutter has even mentioned the emerging Rudy Giuliani financial scandal. None of them has mentioned the fabulist at NRO. How can this be? Where are our brave truth detectors?
Let’s compare:
– When a 12 year old kid had the nerve to state that he benefited from a government program and thinks other kids should too, a massive orgy of ‘Truth detecting’ took place. Counters were examined. Houses were visited. Property records were scrutinized. Statements were parsed.
– When a private in the army wrote some tales with a few anecdotes about what he had experienced in the war in Iraq, and a few disagreed, no grain of sand was left unturned. Scale models of armored vehicles were built. Experts were called, emailed, and interrogated. Myspace accounts were looked up. Entire fields of Cray Supercomputers had to be brought online just to handle all the “debunking” and commentary from the wingnuts.
But now, a Republican front-runner FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT has clearly played fast and loose with the public’s money to hide/finance his extramarital dalliances, and the truth detectors on the right are silent. When an NRO columnist admits straight-up to making shit up to radically overstate a military threat to a key ally, perhaps to agitate for American military involvement, our fact-checkers snooze. The sum total of the response can be summed up as a giant yawn.
Crickets. Not even a “heh, indeed” can be found on these topics from our brave and intrepid citizen journalists. Hell, they are lagging FAR behind all the traditional media, who are cranking out tons of stories about Giuliani. Greater Wingnuttia should change their motto from “We’ll fact check your ass” to “We’ll fact check your ass, if you aren’t a Republican.” At least that would be honest.
*** Update ***
The Captain weighs in, only to downplay and all but dismiss the charges and then brushes off the brewing scandal as ‘marital woes’:
While I believe this to be a minor issue for Giuliani in terms of ethics — it tells us nothing new about his relationship with Judith Nathan before their marriage that didn’t already make contemporaneous headlines — the Giuliani team has not handled it very well. They should acknowledge that they made mistakes in handling the billings in 2000 and 2001 and apologize for the errors. The longer they issue threadbare rationalizations, the longer this will stick to the campaign.
Allegedly misusing public funds to drive around your girlfriend and engage in all sort of accounting shell games to hide your behavior is, according to the Good Captain, no big deal. Can anyone imagine the stories if this was, say, Hillary Clinton instead of Giuliani? By now, they would be investigating all state and local laws to see if they could indict her for adultery. All together now- IOKIYAR.
After reading Captain Ed it is pretty obvious how the right wing blogosphere will handle the Giuliani business, as it will be Plame redux. The same group of folks who were able to scour fonts in the Dan Rather case, make the most intricate arguments about bullet casings in Baghdad with Beauchamp, examine every aspect of health insurance policies in Maryland for the Frost family, will all of a sudden become “confused” by all the accounting numbers. The virtual certainty about all things divined from anonymous Free Republic investigators will be replaced with assertions of “confusion” and “trickiness” and complaints about “complicated accounting.” It will be “difficult” to come to a conclusion whether he has done anything wrong, and it will not be “clear” if he violated any laws. Just take the phrase “Was she really covert” and replace it with “Did he really do anything wrong” and you have your blogospheric talking points from Greater Wingnuttia for the next two weeks.
The same folks who got degrees and a Nobel Peace Prize in neurosurgery during the Schiavo affair will, by the end of the week, be forced to pretend they can’t balance a checkbook. It should be pretty funny to watch. That is if they don’t just manage to ignore it altogether.
The Suddenly Incurious Citizen JournalistsPost + Comments (108)
This post is in: Open Threads
It’s World AIDS Day, just FYI. There are no gay friendly categories here (except “Republican Stupidity”), so this is categorized as”Other”
This post is in: Open Threads
My friend has a D-Link router that constantly fails. He lives in my townhome community in the same style house as I do. I have a Linksys Router that never fails. Anyone know if D-link just sucks? Or am I just lucky?
This post is in: Beer Blogging
It’s 3:45 am. I’m looking at the CNN Web site. I notice a spelling error that annoys me.
But who cares? Welcome to December. By the way, I’m drinking a Don de Dieu by Unibroue. An incredible beer, made in Canada, 9% alcohol and made, of course, in the style of the Belgian Triples. Yum. From the Web site:
This smooth, exceptionally strong triple wheat ale offers a complex flavor that is slightly fruity, malty, nutty and yeasty, with a hint of unfiltered sake.
We recommend pairing it with grilled game meats, spicy Asian or Latin cuisine, ripened cheeses and charcuterie.
On another note, the hostage crisis is resolved. The Clintons called it off – or so the Freepers would have you believe, or whatever.
And, finally, Evel Knievel is dead.
Happy December: Open Thread, Beer, Other Stuff: Early AM EditionPost + Comments (18)
by John Cole| 32 Comments
This post is in: Politics
From the Bradrocket:
But seriously: there are times when I want to throw up my hands and say “Screw it!” and vote for a Ron Paul-Kucinich Kucinich-Paul Unity ‘08 ticket. Because while each one of them is, respectively, a wee bit flaky or crazy, I’m pretty sure they’re both sincere. Face it, folks: people who claim to have seen UFOs and who want to return America to the gold standard aren’t trying to deceive the American public by telling them what they want to hear.
He has a point.
by John Cole| 53 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
And the taserings continue in earnest:
he FBI is investigating after a Trotwood police officer used a Taser on a pregnant woman.
Trotwood Public Safety Director Michael Etter said the incident happened on Nov. 18. He said the woman arrived at the police department asking to give up custody of her 1-year-old son.
Etter said an officer spoke with the woman as she held onto the child outside the police department.
“(He) attempted to obtain information on both the mother and the child, at which time the mother refused to give any information and became very agitated,” Etter said.
Surveillance video from the police department shows the woman trying to leave with the child. The officer then grabs her coat in an effort to get her to stop.
Etter said the officer was doing what he thought was in the best interest of the boy.
The video shows the woman struggling with the officer, who then takes the child from her and gives the boy to another officer. The first officer then forces the woman down on her stomach, and he then uses a Taser on her neck.
In defense of the officer, she may have been planning to ask a GOP candidate a question in the next debate, so we are glad this was handled quickly and without incident.
*** Update ***
Via Radley, yet another tale of America’s finest at work.
Great Moments In Law Enforcement, A Continuing StoryPost + Comments (53)