It does read as eerily familiar

What the fuck is wrong with you?!

I did enjoy it, sometimes a no-holds barred rant can brighten up your day, this one certainly did.

It’s gotta get worse before it gets better. Only when enough people wake up will we begin to recover from this national psychosis…..

A man who won’t account for his whereabouts during a time of war (when men were being drafted) is considered “pro-military”. His opponent, who voluntarily went into battle and still carries shrapnel is considered “anti-military”. We invaded a country that wasn’t a threat, didn’t have WMDs, had no role in 9/11…. And Osama been forgotten.

It’s kind that the rest of the world only considers us obese.

Osama hasn’t been completely forgotten. On the news this morning they said that the bounty on his head has been doubled to $50 million and they’re doing an advertising blitz in Afghanistan and Pakistan in hopes someone’s greed will overcome their sense of loyalty.

It did brighten my day

Hoping that OBL has friends who wouldn’t turn him over for $25m but would turn him over for $50m?

Oh c’mon Clif! Tell us how you really feel!  This one is a must read.  Warning! those on the right should swallow a gravol or two before opening.

You’re right decrepitoldfool.  Now we’re talking some real bling!  I’ll have his coordinates emailed to the authorities right away!

I am not too sure if this has been mentioned before but the survey where it was stated that 21% of the people felt “values” was their top concern is misleading.

The reason is because in comparison to previous elections that figure is low. It was around 40% during late 1980s and about 30% during Clinton’s time.

A man who won’t account for his whereabouts during a time of war (when men were being drafted) is considered “pro-militaryâ€?. His opponent, who voluntarily went into battle and still carries shrapnel is considered “anti-militaryâ€?. We invaded a country that wasn’t a threat, didn’t have WMDs, had no role in 9/11…. And Osama been forgotten.

Dude, don’t you know that “war is peace”, “ignorance is strength”, “up is down”, and the sky is green and the grass is blue?

You’ve gotta have some faith brotha.  Faith in Cheebus Christ and his Invisible Sky Daddy that farted lightening bolts out of his ass to create us.  You gotta have faith that the Invisible Sky Daddy put his bestest buddy and ecclesiastical interpretor—Brotha George W. Bush—on earth to fulfill his ultimate plan for his chosen ones—the ‘Merkin sheeple.

Praise Cheebus and pass the Funyuns. Amen.

Seriously.  America is like a skid row drunk now.  We have to hit bottom before we make a comeback.  The Fundies and their insane beliefs in Cheebus are guaranteed to take us there.  We may have to fight back, because they are hell bent on making Armegeddon happen and getting their stupid asses Raptured so they can watch from their ringside seat while us infidels backstroke through their imaginary lake of fire.

That was wonderful, and quite cathartic. It almost perfectly sums up what I very much WANT to say to alot of the slack-jawed Religious Wrong who think they own the fucking country, but damn that PC getting in the way… Ahhh, therapeutic!

My comment just disappeared so I will say only this.
DON’T TRY TO SAVE ME BECAUSE WHEN I DIE I WILL JUST ROT AWAY. BUT DO TRY TO SAVE THIS GREAT NATION WITH CLEAR, FAIR, AND INTELLIGENT MINDS NOT PEOPLE WHO THINK ONLY GOD AND JESUS KNOW THE WAY. WE ARE GOING TO LOSE EVERYTHING WE HAVE GAINED IF YOU DON’T WAKE UP AND ACT QUICKLY!

Sorry Steve McQueen but I think I might have a new hero.

Being a New Zealander who has been to the USA, I keep a close eye on CNN, and it always amazes me as to who gets airtime.  One report, which was on BBC, showed a reporter question 16-17 year old high school students.  In Texas.  Much to my dismay, none were dis-appointed that Mr Bush was re-elected.  One went so far as to say that he was estatic, and that he hoped that Bush, as a God-Fearing man, would help to ‘bring faith back into Americans lives.‘  What a ceramic container of excrement.  I’m happy to say that NZ has yet to reach such extremes, but we’re getting there, thanks to the Destiny Church.  Modelled on the best televangelists America has to offer, it is the vehicle for one man to push his homophobic and bigoted views.  Thankfully, the Density (sic) Church has been banned from hiring out the Wellington High School hall, because students signed a petitionsaying they didn’t agree with the bile being spilled there.  Big ups to them.  Hopefully I can pirate the TV3 signal in the morning and screen ‘The Ackercocke Hour, with Anton la Vey’s former janitor’ in place of their load of wank.  Tips anyone?

Yes, it was a nice cathartic rant, but I must say I take umbrage at Garboden’s characterization of saw sharpeners as being possum-breathed.  I am a saw sharpener, at least sometimes, and I am not possum-breathed.  At least I don’t see how I could be, never having eaten or frenchkissed a Native American Marsupial in my life.

By the way, I might mention here, not that I want to condone or contribute to thread drift (this is what happens when I drink two beers- take note!) that marsupials actually evolved in North America, spread around the world, and subsequently died out everywhere, except in Australia and environs, outgunned by the eutherian mammals, with the exception of the canny and admirable opposum and its kin.

Other than that, I’d say Garboden was pretty fair and evenhanded.

Well, it wouldn’t be a left-wing post-mortem of the 2004 elections without blaming the voters for “getting it wrongâ€?.  Heaven forbid the problem could be with the Democratic Party.  That’s not the liberal way of looking at the world, right?  If our guy loses, it isn’t his fault.  The problem must be with the voters themselves.

Oh, wait a second.  I think I see the problem.  Let me enlighten you:

Garboden: Fundamentalism, the facile belief in the unexplained and un-researched, is something you born-agains share with Al Qaeda, whose ideologues doggedly adhere to religious misinterpretations every bit as silly and dangerous as yours.  In fact, America’s religious right has so much in common with the Shiah, it’s a wonder you guys don’t invite them to join the Rotary.

Let’s get this straight.

Clif Garboden doesn’t see any difference between a woman who lives in Oklahoma, goes to Church every Sunday, and volunteers at the VFW—and the bloodthirsty murderers in Iraq who declared “War on Democracy” this week.  These are the same to him.

The Butchers of Baghdad who have killed thousands of their countrymen and women.  Who would rather burn Iraq to the ground than let it elect its leaders.  Who want the Westerners to leave so they can get down to the business of exterminating their fellow Muslims.  Those people are morally equivalent to George W. Bush, who said this one week after Sept 11th:

“We’re in a fight for our principles and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.â€?

Les, Mick, decrepitoldfool, Scorn, Tabitha, TeRRoRan: You agreed with him.  This is how you see the world.  Does that make you ashamed?

Does that make you ashamed?

No.

Let’s get this straight.

Okay.

By a tiny margins, voters got it wrong and the Democratic Party is partially to blame for not helping the voters to make the right decision.

Given that the ongoing war in Iraq was started under false pretenses, Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, the tortured torture memos, and so on, it is debatable who the bloody murderers and butchers in Iraq are. The US never had the moral high ground in the first place and it has been going downhill from there. The woman on Oklahoma is not the moral equivalent of any combatant party in Iraq, but if she voted for Bush she is complicit with the war and its full ramifications.

Personally, I couldn’t care less about Bush’s speeches - his actions speak louder any day.

Do I feel ashamed about agreeing with the sentiments expressed by the rant? No.

The man who eats meat is on the same moral level as the butcher.  Doesn’t matter if the butcher uses a car bomb or a cruise missile.

Something odd occurred to me this morning.  We can fight a legal battle for years over the fate of a comotose woman in Florida (as Jeb Bush has done) because we’re not comfortable with taking life to end suffering.  Then we just shrug over collateral damage - you know, people?  in Iraq because we feel like we’re reducing the suffering of the Iraqi people.

Sure, Garboden’s rant was over-the-top.  And it did brighten my day.  No, I wouldn’t confirm Garboden as secretary of state but he isn’t running for the job.

Yes, I do hate Bush&co, because I believe they have made us less secure with this distraction in Iraq and by alienating our allies.  We aren’t going to beat terrorism by telling the rest of the world to take a hike. 

When some dirty bomb goes off in Boston it will be because some terrorist was able to find innumerable hiding places in a world fed up with American arrogance.  We are making enemies faster than we are killing them.

Yes, the voters “got it wrong.“  If you don’t agree with me, fine; I don’t expect you to.  But that’s my assessment.

The Butchers of Baghdad who have killed thousands of their countrymen and women.  Who would rather burn Iraq to the ground than let it elect its leaders.  Who want the Westerners to leave so they can get down to the business of exterminating their fellow Muslims.  Those people are morally equivalent to George W. Bush, who said this one week after Sept 11th:

“We’re in a fight for our principles and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.�

I am really too tired to point out all the wrongs in your romanticised views of this war. Let me just point out, since the US has invaded Iraq there have been over 100,000 civilian casualties (this is very conservative number). As well, the region has been completely destabilized (looters, bandits, kidnappers), where , at least before, there used to be a semblance of order.

Who would the real butchers of Baghdad be? Then again, the media here has dehumanized the Arabs so much, that no one really cares about a few thousand inocent deaths… we are bringing them Democracy (not that we even know what that means anymore).

You agreed with him.  This is how you see the world.  Does that make you ashamed?

Not in the least. For many Fundamentalists here there would be little compunction to taking up similar methods to their counterparts over there if they thought they could get away with it and you know that as well as I do. Your attempt to paint all fundamentalists as innocent little old ladies is laughable in light of some of the emails I’ve received over the years.

Speaking as an both an effete Easterner and one of those born-agains, I think you guys on the Left need to rethink your plan to stop the Democrats from hemorrhaging voters.

Here are some free lessons on better ways to stop the bleeding:

Lesson 1: Don’t be apologists to militant Islam

This lesson is provided by Christopher Hitchens, liberal, atheist and after 9/11 a non-apologist:

So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left. From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? Suicide murderers in Palestine—disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLO—described as the victims of “despair.“ The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization. The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as “insurgents” or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. If this is liberal secularism, I’ll take a modest, God-fearing, deer-hunting Baptist from Kentucky every time, as long as he didn’t want to impose his principles on me (which our Constitution forbids him to do).

http://slate.com/id/2109377/

Lesson 2: Economics

I’ve read Thomas Frank’s “What’s the matter with Kansas”, the leading book in the “dumb hicks voting against their own self-interest” meme, and I’m astonished to find that there are still people who believe that unions, stronger government regulations of industry, higher marginal tax rates, and the nationalization of more businesses is somehow good for the economy in general or the working man in particular.

I don’t want to be accused of arguing a straw men, so I won’t mention the Soviet Union except to point out that even liberals have to concede that the dose-response curve of the “benefits” of these leftist economic is not a linear one.

For a more relevent non-strawman example I’ll use Europe. As reported in The Atlantic:

A minor blurb in The Atlantic:

If the European Union were a U.S. state, it would rank forty-seventh in per capita GDP, according to a report from Timbro, a Swedish free-market think tank. (Yes, there really is one.) In annual income the average European is on a par with residents of Mississippi, West Virginia, and Arkansas. (And the report excludes the newer, poorer EU nations of Eastern Europe.) The picture isn’t much rosier even in wealthier European states like France and Britain, both of which have per capita GDPs slightly lower than Alabama’s. Only tiny Luxembourg scores better than the American average.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200409/primarysources

I could go on, in particular about the results of how low birthrates are hurting everything from social security to unemployment, but picking on Europe is like clubbing baby seals. Suffice it to say, the US should not start following their example. I fully expect that as Muslim immigration increases (stressing social welfare services) and as the native population both ages and declines in nuber that Europe will get on it’s hands and knees, admit the errors of it’s ways, and start emulating the US.

Here’s another free lesson in family values, from a Christian. Do you know what the number one cause of black urban poverty is? Think about it for a second. This is important. I don’t want to tell you right away because I want the answer to sink in.

The number one cause of black urban poverty is breakdown of the family. Single mothers, step-families, live-in boyfriends. They are all destructive. There are, as always, exceptions, but for the black community to break the cycle of poverty they need marriage.

This is a fact that we’ve known since 1965 when a Democrat, Daniel Patrick Moynihan commissioned a study called ‘The Negro Family: a case for national action’, or more simply ‘The Moynihan Report’. Google the title, you’ll find a lot of good reading.

Moynihan was pilloried by the Left for speaking the truth. The Left would rather believe the lie that racism and underfunded social programs are the primary cause of black poverty rather than the truth.

Since Moynihan’s report in 1965 the rate of out-of-wedlock childbirths in the black community has more than doubled. As one black civil rights leader put it “When America catches a cold black America catches pneumonia” and this cold that America has caught is a result of the 50 year feminist attack on marriage.

This is a direct result of the liberals attempt to recreate family. The book that got the modern feminist movement started, The Feminine Mysique by Betty Freidan, referred to marriage as a ‘comfortable concentration camp’. Later feminists compared marraige to slavery and felt that communities of single mothers forming temporary relationships with men would be healthier. They were instrumental in the creation of the no-fault divorce laws that led to the skyrocketing divorce rate of the 70s and 80s. The current third wave of “sex-positive” feminists are more moderate towards marriage, but they also believe in empowering women and “reclaiming” the word slut.

On a personal level, my wife teaches at an inner-city middle school that is 99% minority. She’s the best teacher in the school, btw, ask her principle or ask her students. Not a teacher in the school doubts that most of the girls will get knocked up and drop out before they graduate high school. So if you want to celebrate a lifestyle of sexual permissiveness, go ahead. Just don’t pretend you are making the world a better place while you do it.

Everyone above me has said all the good stuff.  My answer to you then Daryl would have to be a no. 

Trying to disect this rant and fit the square peg is so completely conterproductive.  Garboden’s rant, as far as I can tell, did not suggested that the little old lady you describe was similar in the way you paint it.  But sophistry is the MO of the right.  Suggest a big theory with a spec of evidence, pass it off as a cogent argument, and…we’re done.  Apparently, a narrow world view has an effect of skewing comprehension.

Justin, speaking of straw-man arguments… no on here is an apologist for militant Islamists.  Trying to understand where someone is coming from is not an attempt to excuse their actions.

Why understand?  Because it will help us to use our limited resources in the most effective way.  At the very least, it will help us shoot at the right people, and it may even reduce the number of bullets we “need” to fire.

For that matter, if you look closely, not everyone who is against the war (and Bush) is even a “lefty.“  Pat Buchannan, for one example.  Or don’t you read The American Conservative?

Daryl, you’re an idiot making idiotic assumptions.

Nowhere have I written that I agreed with Garbodens rant, what I did write was that I enjoyed it. I don’t need to agree with someone to enjoy their writing.

Clif Garboden doesn’t see any difference between a woman who lives in Oklahoma, goes to Church every Sunday, and volunteers at the VFW—and the bloodthirsty murderers in Iraq who declared “War on Democracyâ€? this week.  These are the same to him.

Hold on and let me re-read what Clif actually said…

Okay, I will grant you that I skimmed the article this second time through but see no mention of this meek little church going Oklahoma volunteer. It’s almost as if she wasn’t in the article. But why would you want to take the most innocuous example you could fabricate and then compare it to “bloodthirsty murderers”? Why not compare, say, the religious nuts that bomb abortion clinics and assasinate abortion providers to your “bloodthirsty murderers”? More apt, no? I bet they go to church too.

Now try to compare your Oklahoma lady to an Islamic practitioner in ANY country (pick one) who does not advocate violence in the name of Allah because it goes against the teachings of the Koran. And they volunteer to work at the local Red Crescent. And nurse baby bunnies and tiny squirrels back to health when the need arises.

Apples to apples Daryl, you are trying to compare puppies to hemmoragic fever.

Justin, you’re late. Daryl already hit us with those same arguments in another thread. Didn’t convince anyone then and is unlikely to now either. Not sure why the hell you brought up inner city black family problems other than as a means to try and claim a moral superiority for your conservative mindset. It had nothing to do with the topic of the original rant.

...picking on Europe is like clubbing baby seals. Suffice it to say, the US should not start following their example.

Justin, which example do you mean?  The source you quote comparing the per capita GDP of European countries to that of US states is typical feelgood stuff, and revealing of what matters most to you conservatives: money.

To me, quality of life is a more important measure to compare than number of dollars, and I’m quite willing to settle for less “wealth” to get, here in Austria:
- decent schools
- real public transportation
- much lower crime rates
- universal health care
- no homelessness
- environmental protection, tax bonuses for alternative energy
- and not creating enemies faster than we can kill them.

Of course, if behaving more and more like a survivalist in a hidey hole (“I’ve got mine, and I’ll shoot anyone who gets too close”) is your idea the good life, then America is going in the right direction for you.