Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I’d like to take a minute or two to argue on behalf of Rosie O’Donnell’s free speech rights. I know that’s a little like fighting to protect the right of the sun to rise in the East, or of the Angel of Death to come along and nip us all someday…the prospect of Rosie spouting her latest snippet of foolishness, has a certain inevitability to it. She may lose this right tomorrow, and you could still set your watch by her doing it anyway.
But it isn’t enough, for me, that Rosie actually do some talking. I want to make sure she is everlastingly allowed to do so. I want her comments to be given sanction. No, more than that: visibility. I want Rosie O’Donnell on a pedestal.
In fact, my principle objection to her spot on The View, is that the forum is improper. There are three other ladies on that show, and in the clips I’ve seen, every once in awhile one of those three just might get a word in edgewise. Not fair!
I’m thinking a radio show. Every Saturday, twelve hours in a row. And a federal law that all kids in public school, from the fourth grade up to the tenth, have to ponder every Monday morning what Rosie said that weekend.
Why do I want this? Because I think people are starting to figure out, finally, what’s been happening to them. What “stars” like Rosie have been doing to them. Try this. Go to the Hot Air page about her latest embarrassments and view the first video clip. Rosie is going to introduce the latest event, with Kalid Shiekh Mohammed’s confessions to thirty-or-so failed & attempted terrorist attacks around the world…your target is, almost precisely, the halfway point.
At that halfway point, something exceedingly exceptional happens, someone besides Rosie gets to say something. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the one that I and all the other red-blooded men would actually like to sleep with, asks “Well you have– you don’t believe he had ties to any of this?” And Rosie sez…
I think the man has been in custody of the American government, in secret CIA torture prisons in Guantanamo Bay, where torture is accepted and allowed, and he finally is the guy who admits to doing everything. They finally found the guy. It’s not that guy bin Laden. It’s this guy they’ve had since ‘93. And look, this is the picture they released of him. Doesn’t, he look healthy?
See what I mean? Rosie is a national treasure. She’s like a walking monument to all the idiocy there is and ever was.
So first of all — and I think people are starting to get this about people like Rosie — she didn’t answer Hasselbeck’s question. She goes off on this tangent about prison and torture, to deliberately change the subject because she knows she has to. She argues that we’ve had this fellow in our custody for a very long time, but misstates that by a decade. She’s got some kind of argument that’s built around the notion that we’ve been leaning on this greaseball really hard for a long time, but it’s not an argument sufficiently durable to actually be stated from stem-to-stern, because one gathers that if it was strong enough to bear up under that kind of weight, she woulda-done it. But then to buttress this argument that doesn’t actually lead anywhere, she shows off this picture of the greaseball. Oops. The picture was taken when we first caught ‘im. Not after we got done leaning on ‘im. Nice try.
But the money-shot is when she’s articulating the words “tooorrrtttuuuuuuurrrreee” and “seeeecccrrreeettt ppprrriiisssooonnns,” scanning around the audience with that “can I get an Amen here” look on her doughy face, and coming up mostly empty.
Hasselbeck’s question, when you think about it, is devastating. It can be scrutinized in detail, or ignored entirely — it makes a great point either way. Mohammed confessed to thirty-one nasty things, and it’s generally agreed, may have exaggerated some of them. My understanding is this fellow is given to boasting, so if Rosie seeks to instill doubt about some of these, maybe even a huge chunk of the list of 31, in my book she doesn’t have much work to do.
But Elisabeth wants to know if Mohammed is guilty of none of them. I mean, ponder this for a little bit. Mohammed is actually guilty of one item on the list…or all but one item. Between those two extremes, is there any practical difference?
I submit not. Which means what Rosie is contributing, amounts to just so much noise. What’s meaningful about this latest incident, is now we’ve got a situation where more people understand this is all Rosie is contributing.
This unflattering light, furthermore, is being scattered off in the direction of all those other people who sound just like Rosie. We, as in the “Big We,” are finally starting to get that they aren’t contributing much more than noise, either.
Now outside the political realm where perception-equals-reality, when we step into the more concrete plane of reality-is-reality and look at what’s real, we see: The situation’s unchanged. Islamic weirdo greaseballs want to kill us. We’re killing them instead — and taking them prisoner, and getting information out of them about more Islamic weirdo greaseballs who want to kill us, and how we can capture and kill them too. This is good work. Not purely good work; you can smear it if you try. And that’s exactly what these “dissenters” are trying to do. Trying like the dickens. Trying, trying, trying…and it really isn’t much help to anybody.
Mohammed himself, like Rosie, is a good representation of a broad class of people just like him. He’s guilty of some of the things on his confession list, and probably most of the things. I’m given to understand we have a lot of other folks in custody just like that. What they know, that we have not yet learned, may be of some value. So it becomes a worthy question to ask: What do we do with those folks?
The way I see it, after we consign the compulsive subject-changers and tangent-chasers to the kiddie table and deliberate like adults, we have four options.
One, we can do what I call “torture.” What it means to me. Fire and steel. When people say “we should not torture, because it compromises our esteem in the world community,” this is what they’re talking about. They may think they’re talking about Item #2, below. They’re not. They’re talking about yanking arms out of sockets, and stuff like that.
Two. We can do what the Rosie O’Dumbells call “torture.” Asking questions of people, in a way you wouldn’t want to have questions asked of you. Things that don’t involve physical damage. Waterboarding. Psy-Ops. “Your leaders have abandoned you, who do you think you’re protecting?” Sleep deprivation. Let’s face it: People in the much-vaunted “World Community” who hate us because we do these things, are “friends” we don’t need. They aren’t ready to start liking us again if/when we refrain from doing this. Who the hell do they think they’re kidding?
Three. We can go ahead and ask terrorists the way you would like to have people ask you for things. Like borrowing a cup of sugar. Kindly tell us, please, Mister Terrorist? As soon as we’re about as obnoxious as a Jehovah’s Witness on your front porch, we back off. Maybe check back in a couple months.
Four. We don’t ask them squat.
Is there a fifth option? Maybe someone else can come up with a fifth. I don’t see one. From where I sit, we are limited to those four. And the last two of those four, in my mind, are completely unacceptable. Furthermore, I don’t think anyone of sane mind would find those last two acceptable. If either of those last two appeal to you, you’re just drinking way too much anti-war kool-aid — and, yes, anti-American kool-aid — you have some kind of assurances that terrorists will never ever harm one hair on your head, or anyone in your family or circle of friends, preceived assurance, or imagined. You either believe the “there is no terrorist threat” hype, or else you are one evil narcissistic sonofabitch.
And because national security does have something to do with good relations, I think we should lop off Option One as well.
That leaves Option Two, which Rosie says she doesn’t like. But it’s the only option left. And I think most people are starting to get that. Slowly. There simply are no sane alternatives. We waterboard, and we waterboard like there’s no tomorrow.
We conclude this post with yet another Rosie O’Donnell “Moment of Zen.” Like I said, let her talk. People need to be reminded how stupid and dangerous people like Rosie really are, and what a mutually estranged and distant relationship these people have with what the rest of us call “reality.”
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