A day or two ago, after reading some of the 'Obama's Katrina' diaries (and the flaming comment sections thereof), I wrote a rather pointed diary at The Motley Moose (my little shared home on the 'net). In said diary, I made my feelings about a certain segment of the DKos community that irked me very clear.

Truth be told, I'd have to go to FreeRepublic to see the same amount of utterly uninformed, hyperbolic bullshit. The place is overrun with imbeciles. Save the lesser objects of scorn, there is literally no difference between these knuckleheads and the very worst of the Teabagging Birther set. The obvious, and excruciatingly irrational hatred of all things Obama leads me to conclude that they are kindred spirits, drooling sycophants trapped in an endless For/Next loop.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

I've always known that wingnuts turn both ways, but up until now I've always taken comfort in the thought that, for the most part, we that skewed left were better, more rational, more reasoned. Smarter. Today, that illusion is shattered.

Crossposted from The Motley Moose

*The one that says 'Bad Motherf#cker' on it.

As a young, and presumably naive Obama Administration was shaping AfPak policy way back in aught-nine, there was a lot of hooey from bloggers, pundits, the chattering class, and politicians from both sides of the aisle about who was really in charge -- a neophyte Democratic President or the wiley batch of Generals backed by a behemoth and press-savvy Pentagon.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, goes before Congress this week, and with him comes this question: Who's really in charge here, the generals or President Barack Obama?

{snip}

"The president's decision is already being softened and made mush of," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) told POLITICO. And within the House and Senate Appropriations committees, senior Democrats - themselves veterans of past wars - have grown increasingly concerned by the political clout of a generation of younger, often press-savvy military commanders.

{snip}

"I've always believed that the president of the United States is the commander in chief," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who was awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II. "It concerns me when I see my president, the commander in chief, having to debate with generals. They can do that privately, but he should be able to say to General A, 'This is the way we're going to do our business.' ... I would expect generals to advise the president but not to go public."

{snip}

"He's got to be very, very much on top of the type of missions and the way in which these troops are deployed," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) told POLITICO. "It's clear to me that there are limitations. We should not be going in, clearing and holding areas where we don't have the ability to come in immediately with Afghans."

"If we don't, we're going to be digging ourselves a hole," he said. "[Obama] has to very careful not to allow that to happen."

Some advance snips from Jonathan Alter's new book The Promise, President Obama, Year One provide a riveting look inside the Obama War Room, and reveal a remarkably astute Commander-in-Chief who out-manueved, out-foxed, and decisively reigned in the military leadership intent on testing his mettle.

Crossposted from The Motley Moose.

Former CNN denture rattler Lou Dobbs is considering a run for the Presidency, according to GQ's Jeanne Marie Laskas. I know what you're thinking. We're talking about his white hot desire to park his flat, pimply ass in the in big chair at the I Hate Messicans Club, right?  No, he means the Presidency of the United States.

Dobbs, a professional xenophobe who likes to fancy himself an 'independent populist' out to protect the American working man (namely from brown people and cotton pickin' blacks like Condi Rice and Barack Obama) wants to be the leader of the free world. Maybe it's 'just a nit', but Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour isn't likely to be a running mate, since he's eyeing the same prize himself. Maybe spelling/literacy expert Tom Tancredo meets muster, but damn it, where's David Duke when you need him?  

Crossposted from The Motley Moose

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here:

Not like the brazen giant intellectual men of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs wisdom astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A(n) mighty woman ignorant American with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning will scorch all reason, and her name
Mother of Morons Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome STOOPID; her mild blank eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame Birthers, Tenthers,
Paultards, Militias, and a veritable mob of simpleton Patriots.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp soshulizm!" cries she
With spittle spritzing lips. "Give me your tired gullible, your poor obtuse,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free fail basic mathematics,
The wretched shortsighted refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless dumb, tempest-tossed imbecilic to me,
I lift my lamp corndog beside the golden door!"

Bonus: we have Sarah Palin.  Also.

Here's the thing: 98 percent of Americans -- all but the top 2 percent of earners in the nation -- have received a tax cut as a result of the actions taken by his evil Kenyan holiness, Presidente Adolf Huzzien Obama. Despite the fact that nearly all of us will see as much as a 10 percent increase in our federal tax refunds, a February poll found that just 12 percent of Americans think they're paying less in taxes. Today, a full 34 percent think that they're paying more.  The rest think the Usurper-In-Chief has increased or kept taxes the same.

VERDICT: More than three quarters of Americans are wildly misinformed and/or staggeringly stupid.  

And that's just the general populace.  For X-TRA Strength Stoopid (with Tartar Control), consider a recent survey of self-identified 'Tea Party' adherents: 64 percent think their taxes have increased. Foghorn Leghorn would be shocked, I say, shocked to learn that 63 percent of this same mutton-headed mob say they get the majority of their political and current events news from the boob-tube, specifically from {drumroll} the Fox News Channel.

Happy Tax Day, Dipshits.

Crossposted from Motley Moose

Fresh scat from the Birfer loons, via HuffPo:

In his decision dismissing a lawsuit filed by Orly Taitz late last month, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carterr mentioned that some witnesses complained that the birther chief urged them to lie on the stand. Now, more details are out, as one of the witnesses has made his affidavit public.

Come on, is there anything more entertaining than soap opera drama, infighting, and adulterous sex among the architects of the Barry Hussien O'bama ain't a REALZ 'Murican sub-species?  No, there isn't.

Crossposted fromMotley Moose:

When I was in High School, I worked summers as a lifeguard at the community swimming pool in my rural northern California town.  My boss, a guy named Craig was a former student of my father's (the local high school social studies teacher).

Sometimes, Craig's son Josh used to come to work with his dad, along with his younger brother and sister.  Today, Staff Sgt. Joshua Keyes, 30, is a Para-rescueman or "PJ", (Para-jumper).  He keeps lookout aboard a HH-60 G, "Pave Hawk", helicopter, of the 55th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron, United States Air Force (USAF).  In the photo above,  Sgt. Keyes provides medical care to a battlefield casualty, Saturday, October 24, 2009, in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.

( - promoted by leftake)

Crossposted from The Motley Moose

Joe Wilson lets slip a skosh more of his nationally famous stoopid-i-tee. Via TPM:

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) says President Obama has endangered American lives by not doing more to alleviate the nation's short supply of H1N1 vaccine.

Except earlier this year, Wilson, along with 170 of his Republican cohorts in the House voted against the Supplemental Appropriations Bill ( H.R. 2346, which included the investment of $2 billion to assist the government in combating the H1N1 outbreak and to allow for further pandemic flu preparedness and response capacity.  

Crossposted from The Motley Moose.

According to recent reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are clear signs of a resurgence in the virulent "Patriot" movement--a broad coalition of previously autonomous and loosely related anti-government paramilitary militias, anti-tax rebels, "sovereign citizens", and so-called Constitutionalists--thought to have reached its zenith in the 1990s.

An inverted flag is a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.

Catalyzed by shifting demographic trends toward Caucasian minorities and the fringe conspiracy theories that are increasingly disseminated by mainstream media figures like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Michael Savage, and others, the anti-government movement is growing all across the United States. Feeding this extremism are the same usual radical ideologies, radical religious beliefs, pent-up anger, and frustration that can lead to violence-from 'lone wolf' hate crimes to acts of mass-casualty domestic terrorism.

Cross posted at Motley Moose

Dear Ms. Orly Taitz,

I am Barrister Lee H. Fogiv  a member of Kenya Bar Association (KBA).Your contact reached me through the World PUMA Encyclopaedia.Hence,I made up my mind to introduce this business to you in confidence for the mutual benefit of both of us.

(Promoted again -- this story seems to be heating up... - promoted by leftake)

Cross-posted from the irreverent Motley Moose.

Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had the temerity to suggest that the CIA had lied to her in briefings regarding the use of enhanced interrogation techniques?

Was the CIA also masking the truth about the "Executive Assassination Ring" directed by former Vice President Darth Cheney, the same one Seymour Hersh talked about back in March of this year?