Five Before Chaos

When it comes from Republicans, probably not.

Just popping around today, I saw a lot of “media in the tank for Obama” nonsense, and how there were more “positive” stories as of late about Obama. Hmm. Let’s see… McCain picks dumb-as-dogshit Veep, commits blunder after blunder, plays to the fears and idiocy of our most mean-spirited, dumbest Americans, as 15 people show up at an airport to see him a few days after Obama has 100,000 etc. etc… How on earth are you supposed to polish that turd? Somebody please tell me, I need to know.

How does one (unless on Fox News, of course), spin idiots at McCain rallies yelling “terrorist” and “socialist” as a good thing? How is one supposed to spin an interview with a lady who makes Dan Quayle Pauly Shore look like a genius, who can’t even answer basic questions about government, as something we’re supposed to feel good about? Am I missing something here?

Nah, it’s just the same ol’ same ol’ conservatives-as-perpetual-victims bullshit. It’s just more obvious now, because they’re being so blatant about it and what their ideology is really about.

Bonus question: how many of these dumbfucks actually know what socialism really is? How many fingers do you have?

Jeez, the pendulum really must be swinging our way this last year… Falwell, Friedman, Buckley, and now Heston. Hell must be getting rather crowded. I might have to start a “dead conservatives” thread at the rate it’s going.

Charlton Heston, who won the 1959 best actor Oscar as the chariot-racing “Ben-Hur” and portrayed Moses, Michelangelo, El Cid and other heroic figures in movie epics of the ’50s and ’60s, has died. He was 84.

“I have a face that belongs in another century,” he often remarked.

More like a worldview from another century… the 19th. I guess we can pry his gun from his “cold, dead hands” now.

Addendum: Ok, perhaps that was a bit harsh. Heston did step up to the plate on civil rights a long time ago. But there’s so much of him in his later life that was just not good, and that fairly or unfairly, colors my reaction to his death.

UPDATED below the jump.

It looks like this might is going to have to become a regular column on here, at the rate she’s going, bi-weekly. This time, our crazy, clueless conservative Charity, over at She’s Right, just really “isn’t sure” if torture is wrong. Now if you’re a regular reader of hers, you know she’s, uh, logically challenged, to be PC for the sake of snark. Actually, logic seems to be conspicuously absent over there. Put your brain around this and tell me if it starts to hurt:

If I was to take the premise that no credible intelligence comes from torture as true, along with the premise that credible intelligence was obtained using waterboarding, wouldn’t I have to conclude that waterboarding is not torture?

It looks like a form of torture to me. I mean, what else would you call it?

The only option left is to declare one of my premises to be false. If it is false that torture does not produce credible intelligence information, and in fact it does, that sure does undermine the most reasonable argument against the use of torture.

Just a side note here, that a civilized people should not use torture is not a reasonable argument. It is an emotional argument. If we based our laws on whether or not a practice makes some people feel icky when presented with a detailed description, we would have to end legalized abortion, now wouldn’t we?

So where does that leave waterboarding?

The answer is, I don’t really know. I think it is disturbing, but that in and of itself is not a reason that it should not be done.

No, it wasn’t one of George Bush’s speeches, although the flow is strikingly similar. See, like most of her ilk, she fails to grasp what humane behavior is, whether it’s not letting kids go without healthcare, or torturing people, whatever. And of course, torture of a living, breathing sentient human being is no different than aborting a fetus. Gotta throw that one in there.

Civilized people do not torture. That’ s part of what makes us civilized. What’s so hard to understand about that?

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I’ve never been a fan of the actor John Wayne. His macho bravado, both on screen and off, always rubbed him me the wrong way. My dad loved him. That also made me suspect, considering how Wayne’s macho bullshit had some influence on the choices my dad made as a young man (as in going into the USMC and doing 2 tours of ‘Nam instead of going to college). And he hated what Sergio Leone did to the western film genre, so that’s another black mark, as far as I’m concerned..

Anyways, there’s a great article over at Truthdig about Wayne. Today would have been his 100th birthday (he died in ’76 of cancer). The article, called Memorializing the Deadly Myth of John Wayne, reveals a rather unkind portrait of the man whose films glorified the military, often to the point of propaganda (as the Green Berets film was, in part financed by the Pentagon). And get this – like most of the GOP actors in Hollywood today, he never served in the military. What’s more, he was an all out draft-dodger:

Wayne was not only missing in action during the 1940s’ liberation of the Philippines and Europe, he wasn’t a cavalry officer, a Vietnam commando or a Leatherneck-flying or otherwise-for he was never in the military.

According to Gary Wills’ book “John Wayne’s America,” the man who portrayed the archetypal, battle-hardened Marine, Sgt. Stryker, in 1949′s “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” actually avoided the draft during WWII. Wills contends that the Duke did not reply to letters from the Selective Service system, and applied for deferments.

And Wayne was somewhat of a racist, although he did marry Hispanic women. Gotta love this:

Wayne was a vocal conservative, and his critics contend that the onscreen “Injun killer” was racist off-screen. In an infamous 1971 Playboy magazine interview, the Duke made insensitive comments about blacks and said this about America’s indigenous people: “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

Those selfish Indians, how dare they! Anyways, to me John Wayne signified so much of what is not right with America, and is the stereotype of the “macho American” that is so responsible for America’s standing in the world today. Have a read, you’ll know what I mean.