The World O' Crap Archive

Welcome to the Collected World O' Crap, a comprehensive library of posts from the original Salon Blog, and our successor site, world-o-crap.com (2006 to 2010).

Current posts can be found here.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Desperate Last Minute Friday Cat Blogging

Finally crawling free of the miasma.  I’m not sure what I had, but whatever it was, I’m pretty sure it killed 80% of the men working on the Panama Canal.  And just so we don’t go an entire week without an update, here’s Riley’s expression upon being told that Ann Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot.”

“Quelle surprise.”

And here’s Hobbes attempting to make your head explode.

“It’s nothing personal, Bi-ped, it’s just what I do.”
Gads! Yer alive! Thank the jeebus, or somefink. And SZ?
Hi, scott! Good to see you’re still amongst teh living!
Y’know, considering that that mAnn Coulter comment was designed specifically to piss off people more-or-less exactly like me, it had surprisingly little impact. For someone who exists on a diet of outrage provoked in others, she’s reached that unfortunate point of rapidly diminishing returns. L’il Awrful Annie will have to reach deeper and deeper into her bucket of muck, searching for some horridly vile term with which to insult people… JUST SO SHE’LL BE NOTICED!!! I think mAnn’s 15 minutes are just about over.
After all, pointing and yelling, “Faggot!” isn’t all that dangerous. Gays are still a relatively safe minority to mock. A handful of newspapers will end up dropping her “column,” because *this* of all things will finally clue them in to the fact that mAnn’s a hatemonger (!). So, maybe she’ll progress to calling Governor Richardson a “spic,” or barak Obama the “n”-word. One can only hope.
Yeah! What Marq said! And…
awwwwwwwwwwwwwww. cute widdle kitties!
Hobbes, turn that powerful gaze on Adams-Apple Annie.
Though I suspect her head wouldn’t explode, just deflate like a pricked balloon.
Awwwww. Adorable.
Marq, I’m with you. Also, I may be maryc, based on this comment. Though I’ll add that calling people a “faggot” is Ann’s big party trick, and one I suspect we’re all bored with by now. Edwards, Gore, Bill Clinton–for Chrissakes, she’s said it about every Dem nominee but Kucinich and Hillary–and she’s called Hillary a lesbian.
Hey, Ann! Learn to burp the alphabet or something. This one’s old.
Okay so for about the millionth time I have this overwhelming desire to reach through my computer screen and scoop up another adorable pet, be it kitty, bassett hound or puppy. I guess my own will just have to suffer through another bout of compensatory smushing (oh, in case you didn’t know, that would be some combination of kissing, scratching, tickling, ruffling of fur, etc.) and someone should take a picture of THAT! All I can say Scott is that I sure am glad you’re alive and welcome back but I’m still going to have to check back here about 20xday on average until sz returns.
BTW: You mean you’re not *normally* here 20X a day?
D, darling — aren’t YOU?
Amen to everything that everybody said, and if somebody would buy the gas, I’d happily travel to wherever that shim-bat hangs in the daylight hours and beat it to smithereens with an aluminum baseball bat. Or is that too direct?
Personally, I don’t understand why no one has done it sooner — after all, how can you make a “martyr” of a batshit psycho-no-cunt whom NO ONE CAN STOMACH ANYWAY?!?!!?! Maybe Malkin would try to have shim cannonized, but that’s about as far as it would go.
Okay, enough fomenting bludgeoning for now — the library ladies are looking at me funny again.
Love y’all, and especially love your brilliantly evil kitties, Scott! And please send/smoke-signal/emote to S.Z. my best wishes & hope that she’ll get her ass back here soon!
BTW: You mean you’re not *normally* here 20X a day?
Well, uh, yeah.
Thank the Great Cat you’re back.
Okay, enough fomenting bludgeoning for now — the library ladies are looking at me funny again.
Annti, ya gotta learn to do that without steam shooting out of your ears. You can get away with looking at teh pr0n that way, too, unless teh liebarrians have anti-pr0n filters installed.
Until seeing Riley’s picture I was unclear on why my black cat spent the better part of Saturday afternoon hurling on five different spots of the rug. I tried to shield her from Ann Coulter, but she must have seen her somewhere…
Glad you’re back and feeling human again. And S.Z., hope all is well with you.
We just got back from two days at the casino in mississippi, and our weird, unsociable dachschund has abruptly bonded with our older, long haired, fussy cat. It’s really funny; he snuggles up to her on the bed, follows her around the house. When she’s sitting in the windowsill, he sits a few feet away and looks at her with longing in his beady little brown eyes. They are both it-ted, so there ain’t no mixing of the species going on. The dog now likes the cat more than he likes me, is all.
Well, I’m typically on The Blessed Tubes of the Internets 20X a day, but I took a break this morning. I’ll always, ALWAYS remember that one of my best friends told me about the verdict in the Libby trial. I’d just called her to boast about the oldest Biscuitbarrel lad’s upcoming summer internship.
After cooing maternally, my pal said, “You mean you’re NOT calling about the Libby verdict?”
“There’s a verdict?” (Queeny-looking chest-clutching on my end.)
Ah, beautiful… As are the kitties, of course.

Protective Gear Must Be Worn In This Area


Sorry for the silent running this week.  I’ve been down with a flu bug, and s.z. has apparently gone off the grid.  Hope to get back to regular posting in a day or two.

Well, my kid had the flu this week, so I’ve had to be on the Tamiflu thing, too. I’m cleared for sick room entrance, if you need me to bring you anything.
uh oh, I knew I should have sent her a little something to keep Ziggy fed
It’s that damn Vladimir Putin. I just know it.
“gone off the grid?” I hope that’s not code for “in rehab”, though if it is, maybe she can persuade Britney to return. (I swear, if that girl had a nickel for every moronic thing she did…oh wait, she does!)
I hope you get well soon.
The olde english medical dictionary includes a cure for the common cold. Goes like this:
“Nail your hat to the wall opposite the foot of your bed. Return to your bed and drink spirits until you see two hats.”
I’d include, “repeat if necessary”..
Hope you feel better soon…
mikey
Hope that you feel better soon, Scott, and holler if there’s anything that I can do to help.
And what, exactly, does “off the grid” mean for S.Z.? ‘Round here, it means that the ‘lectricity has been cut off, and if that’s the case, I’d like to know. I’m a broke-ass motherfucker my damn self, but I might be able to rally the troops (or troupe) to get something done. I hope that, whatever it is, that it’s not as bad as I fear it is, and that she’ll soon be returned to us.
I’m going to be off-the-nets next week, probably for a couple of weeks, because I have to ship my computer off to a friend, in hopes of saving the old thing, and I’d sure as hell like to know that S.Z. is okay before I go dark. If you can get her to holla at a bitch, I’d sure appreciate the hell out of it.
Love to y’all both, and your furry four-legged masters.
I think mikey’s on to a winner, there. And if S.Z.’s computer gave out again, or there’s anything else we can help with, sing out.
Without you guys here, I’d have to resort to bugging the hell out of my housemates. As such, I bet I could get them to chip in a bit for ya, too.
Does the “s.z. is off the grid” comment mean that her unreliable computer is on the fritz again? Should we start a “buy s.z. a Mac funs via the Pay Pal button on the front page? The cheapest iMac, which would be more than enough for s.z.’s requirements is just a tad under a grand. It would likely be usable for 5-8 years, which is 2-5 years longer than the expected lifespan of a generic PC, Plus, it comes with an insanely useful software bundle.
Oh, and recover from your illness, scott! Isn’t it amazing how literally every deathly malady starts with “flu-like symptoms?” Feh!
I can’t tell you how grateful I am that others are as puzzled by the “off the grid” thing as I was. I thought this was another hip thing we old folks were, you know, “in the dark” about.
Missing you. Get better fast.
Say, anyone else having problems accessing Sadly,No! ?
I also can’t get through to dreamhost.com….
Yeah, I can’t get to Sadly, No! I was hoping to read something on Doug Giles’ column about teh gays.
Sadly, Sadly is a NO! for me as well. :(
Sorry for being cryptic. By “off the grid,” I just meant I hadn’t been able to get s.z. on the phone. (But at least I didn’t resist the impulse to blurt that she was “off the chain!” like the chick in Hairy Polarity and the Sinister Sorcery Satire
http://tinyurl.com/2p7fz5
However, we spoke last night, and it turns out that she’s also been down with the flu, and two of her kitties have some sort of bug as well, so there’s a yellow flag flying over her house at the moment.
As for Sadly, No!…We’re both on Dreamhost, which has announced a series of planned outtages today for maintenance purposes, or maybe just to protest Rinko Kikuchi’s Oscar nomination for Best Relentlessly Nude Girl in a Pointless Subplot in Babel. Anyway, judging by comments, it’s mostly affecting European sites at the moment, but I’m sure we’ll shortly get sucked into the abyss ourselves.
Ok, that made my day. My favorite intert00bz phrase of 2006 was “insufficiently cynical”. I know its not even march yet, but I’m prepared to nominate “Relentlessly Nude” for ’07. Thanks, man…
mikey
Just to counterbalance Mikey, I intend to use “relentlessly cynical” and “insufficiently nude” as my favourite real-life phrases.
“Insufficiently nude” is my new phrase, I think. Though I will balance it with “overly nude” in reference to people like Rush Limbaugh, whether he’s wearing a three-piece suit or an apple green thong.
That image notwithstanding, S.Z. and kitties, get well. It’s looking like I’ve got the flu or something, too, so we can all blame Scott. Or else this is just instant karma for having told my sister in law that I was coming down with something as an I-don’t-hold-newborns excuse.
And you guys were offline for most of last night, along with Sadly, No! You’ve done your bit for the tubes, I think.
Just to offer up a third possibility, Doc, I could go with Relentlessly Insufficient and Cynically Nude. But those come frighteningly close to accurately identifying me…
mikey
Off the grid? Mercury went retrograde 2/13 and will go direct on 3/7. Electronic gear will behave weirdly until then. Best to laugh it off. Unless you’re truly off the grid and trying to run a computer with solar or windpower with a cell phone DSL uplink, in which case connectivity will always be a crapshoot.
Cure for the flu: Oscillococcinum.
Get well, Scott. As for s.z. being off the grid, I hope this doesn’t mean she’s been erased by the MCP’s henchprogram Sark.
Get well soon, Scott! I wish I could serve you a steaming bowl of my restorative chicken soup. The oldest Biscuitbarrel lad is recovering from having his wisdom teeth out, so it’s a shame you’re so far from Casa Biscuitbarrel… We’re all set up for sick folk.
Come back Scott and s.z.! Come back! We neeeeeeeddd you!!!!
hey! anyone else having trouble getting to Google or their gmail accounts? At home, Google seems to be completely down.
Someone on another blog wondered if it was a TimeWarner connection. That’s what we have at home, and since Google works for me at work, I’m wondering if it’s just TimeWarner customers having the issue?
All of us are just rattling around the toobz aimlessly hoping that you’ll be better soon. We miss you. Hope you feel better soonest — my cats miss hearing stories about your cats.
maryc, dunno if you’re still having Google issues, but here at MarqHQ, I’ve got a ComcastTube, and have had zero probs getting thru to teh Google. Not that I’m necessarily endorsing teh Comcast….

The Chair Recognizes The Distinguished Gentleman In The Rip-away French Maid Costume

Looks like we’ll have to stop subcontracting Gavin at Sadly, No! to concoct embarrassing Photoshop portraits of American Greetings executives.  Their Blue Mountain e-card division has heard the voices, as President Bush might say, and opted to drop the Democrats in Bondage line, rather than balance it with depictions of John McCain and Rudy Guiliani in ball gags and three-strap penis cages.  Mustn’t lower the level of discourse, after all.
Maryc forwarded me the following email, which a chastened Blue Mountain rep sent to a friend of hers who had joined in the chorus of disapproval:
Hello,
Thank you for contacting BlueMountain.com Customer Service.
Thank you for sharing your feedback. Political satire is popular with our subscribers. However, we understand that this particular e-card was offensive to you and others. Therefore, we have removed it from the site. We
apologize to you, and to the others we offended. We always appreciate consumer feedback, and will take your
comments into consideration when developing political satire in the future.
Thank you,
Joshua M
Your Customer Support Representative
BlueMountain.com
Well, not to belabor the point, but I don’t see how depicting the non-sexually repressed party as a bunch of costumed submissives qualifies as satire, political or otherwise, but no doubt the laugh track from Fox’s Half Hour News Hour would find it funny.
Still, any bets that “when developing political satire in the future,” Blue Mountain puts out a series of Valentine cards showing Dick Cheney, naked but for a leather posing pouch, leading George W. Bush around on a leash, and pausing occasionally to make the nude Commander-in-Chief swish flies with his horsetail butt-plug?

Yeah…. I’m not sleeping tonight, boy. Not until I’ve scoured that image from my brain. Say what you will about the “humor” involved, I can’t actually think of any republican politicians I’m interested in seeing naked, even photoshopped naked. Al Gore, on the other hand…
Gee, thanks. This post broke the funny meter, and I’ll have to get it replaced.
As my witty and insightful comment was lost over at tBogg’s lately, let me just point out that it would appear that the Faux Team has invented “The Comedy Charnel.”
And now I shall go rummage for the brain bleach necessitated by the lovely images you presented to us…
Ewwww.
My eyes, the goggles they do nothing….
Okay so at least it wasn’t a non-apology apology, but it was the next best thing from the apologizer’s point of view: a more-or-less meaningless one. The cards aren’t offensive, unless stupidity offends you, in which case you’re living in the wrong country. What’s offensive is the insult to everyone’s intelligence in claiming this as “satire” when its content-free “humor” was apparently applied to one side only. The correct response was “You’ve obviously missed our Abrahoff & Pals™ Drag Queens for All Occasions line.” Did they have that available? Sadly, Nope.
While I appreciate your singular (I won’t say “single-handed,” for fear of misinterpretation) efforts at, erm, a, shall we say, “fair and balanced” grossout, the idea of seeing any of those vast, bloated, pasty, revolting rethugs in bondage gear is definitely helping my weight-loss regimen. My body thanks you even as my brain screams incomprehensible curses at you. I’m off to subdue it (the brain) with a little bleach and a scrubbing brush.
“Half Hour News Hour”!!! Hoo Hoo! Now THAT is comedy! Who says that conservatives can’t be funny. “Half Hour News Hour”! Get it? It isn’t an hour! It is only a half hour! But they call it a news hour anyway! Get it? Get it? Har!
And “Half Hour News Hour” isn’t even original. I’m thinking it was the name of the short-lived National Lampoon syndicated news parody, about which I remember nothing except that it was right around the time Geraldo became a national figure, and people kept tossing to the obviously Anglo “John Jones”, who’d angrily insist it was “Hwan Ho-nayse”.
I think that would be “Hone Ho -nez,” Doghouse.
…to say nothing of the Canadian comedy program This Hour Has Twenty-Two Minutes.
“Not Necessarily The News”? Is that the one y’all are talking about?
And Scott, why are so people so delicate? Shit, you haven’t described anything that hasn’t already HAPPENED in this White House — fuck, they can bring in hot & cold running MALE FUCKING PROSTITUTES, and nobody even fucking BLINKS, but OH! MAH GAWD, Dumbya’s got a dildo up his ass!
Pfft. Fuckin’ lightweights. Your president sucks dick in the Oval Office, instead of having a female intern do it. Such a shocker. Biggest closet-case self-loathing gay-bashing evil hypocritical motherfucker on the PLANET, is all. And judging from how much time that Cheney likes to spend out at “hunting camps,” I’d wager that he really prefers the “company of men” as well. Small wonder that they’ve been so het-up on pushing the “gay agenda” hyperbole, ’cause, y’know, if we treated teh gays like human beings, then somebody might ifringe upon our oh-so-naughty “secret” lives, and if it weren’t forbidden, then where’s the fun for a bunch of sadistic, uber-repressed WASPs???
The fact that these multi-faced hypocrites are in power is far more disgusting to me than the idea of Dumbya with a “pony tail.” Hell, Anne Rice has written kinkier shit, and SHE’s a lightweight.
How about e-greetings depicting W naked in a dog collar, or Cheney with panties on his head, or the whole bunch of them in a naked pyramid?
I can’t actually think of any republican politicians I’m interested in seeing naked
Mary Bono?
Umm, I believe Mary Carey is a republican.
Just sayin
mikey
Mikey, do you honestly believe that any republicunts ADMIT that Mary Carey is a republicunt? Do you honestly think that any of them ASSOCIATE with her beyond their daily circle-jerks in the basement of your local neighborhood Freemasons’ meeting hall?
Well, it’s a philosophical thing. If you told me tomorrow that Sigourney Weaver, who I admit to a longstanding lust for, was secretly a Bush voter, it would pretty much eliminate the whole lust thing. I’d look at her and think, “This woman supports torture, war crimes, and the destruction of the planet.” I don’t know that it’s possible to be turned on by anyone when you have that in your brain, I don’t care if they have the Ass of Shakira Herself. It all becomes irrelevant.
Doughy, pasty, bald, all these things I can accomodate with grace if not enthusiasm, and I have in the past. But the utter lack of empathy required to support the GOP in its current state, nope.
I will note that Ms Weaver is, as far as I know, *not* a Bush voter, being a conservationist of some note, whose lovely tones we will get to hear as she narrates the Discovery Channel version of the BBC series “Planet Earth” in the next couple of months.
Careful there, D., you’ve got a little drool right on the corner there… heh heh heh… And yes, Sigourney is a very bright woman, not really my type, but admirable nonetheless.
I’m brain-farting on who it was that I had the big crush on and then found out that they were a republicunt… I’ve successfully repressed it that well. But I understand how you feel — but then, I wouldn’t be attracted to Mary Carey anyway, as I generally prefer that my crushes be able to finish a sentence on their own.
At least George Clooney makes it easy to love him, being all generous and Democratic and intelligent and all… slobber-slobber-drool-drool *sigh*
Hey D.Sidhe and AnntiChrist -
Thanks for the comments. You’re folks are so right. Without a heart and a mind, the body doesn’t matter.
I, myself, have always been mad for Susan Sarandon.
I thought David Brock was hot. Then he stopped being Republican, and magically became a little bit hotter.
Ditton on the Susan Sarandon, TomG — DammitJanet did a lot for utilitarian old foundation garments, didn’t she? Not so much with the David Brock, though…
I still can’t remember who it was in whom I was so disappointed… man… If only I could repress my entire “childhood” this well… Sheesh!
George Clooney was hot even in “Syriana”, where he was fat and unshaven.
And if I was heterosexually inclined in any way, Susan would be pretty high on my list. But Tim’s kinda cute in a nerdy way, in spite of “Howard the Duck”. (Hey, he was young and didn’t know better. I hope.)
He was cute in “Bull Durham,” in an endearing, slowest-puppy-in-the-litter kind of way, and yes, we know that he’s brighter than that now, but Tim’s not really my cup of tea.
Neither is that surly midget Costner, for that matter. Ugh.
I’ll tellya who else is a goddess, while we’re at it — Dana Owens (Queen Latifah) — okay, okay, she’s way too fucking suburban-New-Jersey-mainstream nowadays, and UGH! — that horrid purple tent dress in that commercial!!! — but she’s still gorgeous.
Jennifer Lewis, though (that’s the right last name, right? Dreamgirls wunderkind?) — SHE shows a lot of promise… heh heh heh… Yes, I’m a predatory ol’ letch. But only if they’re legal. So nyeh.
Are you thinking of Jennifer Hudsen?
http://www.imdb.com/nm1617685/
THIS is Jenifer Lewis:
http://www.imdb.com/nm0507338/
Our tastes in guys don’t overlap much. On the plus side, we wouldn’t have to compete to be ignored by them.
What about Natalie Maines’ husband, Adrian Pasder? Hottie or nottie? I think he’s freakin’ gorgeous.
And I love Jeremy Piven, especially after he mocked Billy Bush for asking a lame question. (Oh, Billy. Pretty boy, but dumb as a sack of rocks. Must be genetic.)
As much fun as this discussion has been tho, when are Scott and s.z. returning? I’d love to know what they made of Michael Medved’s ea-brained take on Tim Hardaway.
PEA-brained.
I really have to read my comments before posting them. Sometimes the keys stick.
I have no idea where in the hell that they are, although I like to hypothesize that S.Z. is out on patrol, scooping up abandoned/mistreated critters to her motherly bosom and taking them to the safety of her bounteous home, and that Scott is somewhere in W. Hollywood, gathering the troops for one helluva protest stunt at the Oscars.
Either that, or he’s going to be waiting tables at the biggest party of the night, and slipping rufies into the drinks of all of the really obnoxious scientologists… (I hope, I hope, I hope!!!)
No, it doesn’t appear that our tastes in men overlap that much, although WHO *wouldn’t* love George Clooney?!??! Best thing to come outta Kentucky since HST, dammit. And having befriended a few Kentucky whack-jobs in my day, lemme tellya, ain’t many of ‘em that look like or think like George. If any.
I like Natalie, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her husband — that name rings a bell, but I’m too lazy to go look it up at IMDB tonight. Plus I gotta make dinner. Ugh. I had a HUGE crush on Piven when he was on Ellen’s show, but then I’ve heard him make some political-ish quips, and he is kinda starting to remind me of John McCain — his philosophies/practices tend to flow with/flatter whatever audience he addresses. Plus, he’s too damned short for me, anyway. Can’t stand that Napoleon syndrome, dammit.
And you were right about Jennifer Hudson, I was brain-farting, but that Jennifer Lewis link didn’t open, so nyeh.
So, how do you feel about Hugh Laurie? I’ve still got (the one DVD that I didn’t sell) the “Young Ones” set that features Hugh doing a few very sick sketches with the boys, and he is a pervert of long standing, I’m proud to say… Too damned bad that he’s so happily fucking married, as if as if… *sigh* I hate how Murdoch’s flying monkeys have turned “HOUSE” into a fucking SOAP OPERA, but I still adore Hugh.
And no, I wouldn’t do Natalie, ’cause I’ve already been down that blonde-spinner road, and lemme tellya, they ain’t worth it!!! Sure, sure, I respect the hell out of her convictions and her loud-ass mouth, but as girlfriends, they’re a HUGE pain in the ass, those teeny little blonde princesses. The only time that they “act normal” is when they’re onstage or behind a mic.
Hey, I’m only 5’4″ myself.
Hugh Laurie? Funny man, great actor. Bit too much of a curmudgeon for me. Is it wrong that I wish House and Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) would hook up?
Oh, and about that Medved column, for those who didn’t see it: in addition to defending Hardaway’s bigotry, he also likened gay men to fat women, for reasons that are too ridiculous for me to elaborate on. Let’s just say that, with that column, Michael Medved earns the title of Stupidest Wingnut In America, pushing Dan Reihl into #2. (Face first, I hope.)
Oh, and speaking of “Napoleon syndrome”, I’m reminded of this exchange from “Love and Death”-
Napoleon: I wonder if you will be as difficult to conquer as all of Europe?
Sonia: Well, I weigh less.
Yeahhhh, but you don’t ACT like a Short Man, Bill, if you did, we’d have tied-up in a life-or-deathmatch AGES ago. You’re not nearly insecure enough to be a Napoleanite Wannabe. Sorry, kid, but you grew up too well.
And no, you’re not wrong for hoping that House & Wilson (that pretty brown-eyed doe) would hook up, but personally, I could live without the visuals. Wilson is too pretty for House, anyway — House likes hard women with sharp edges, and Wilson is so much more… ephemeral.
And it’s not that House is “curmudgeonly” — that’s far too shallow. The boy has ISSUES, as the pop-psych wannabes like to say.
When I said “curmudgeon”I was referring to Hugh Laurie, not the character he plays.
“hard woman sharp edges”, eh?
Now I wonder if there’s anybody I know who fits that descri-
naah. can’t think of any. nope. totally blanking out.
These “Which celebrity would I boink” conversations are too, too amusing, but I just can’t get started with one. It’s not that I don’t have a list… a great, big, gianormous list… BUT! It’s constantly in flux, morphing and changing. And, that’s even with me trying NOT to find out anything political about clelbrities at all. It’s bad enough to accidently hear an actor on the DVD commentary track and find out he’s a complete… fucking idiot. That turns me off a wee bit. Sure, I’d still do him. I just wouldn’t respect him in the morning.
Oh, who am I kidding?
I wouldn’t respect any of ‘em in the morning if they did me!
You wouldn’t want to be on a team that would have your member?
“’hard woman sharp edges’, eh?
Now I wonder if there’s anybody I know who fits that descri-
naah. can’t think of any. nope. totally blanking out.”

You’re definitely getting wiser with age, Bill.
And Marq, darling, being a slut does not preclude one from having standards, dear. After all, look at me! I’m the snottiest slut you’ll ever meet, but at least I’m SELECTIVE.
I’m a slut in theory-I WOULD be one, if there were takers. :)
I guess I’ll be slightly wiser next month. My birthday’s in about four weeks.
(20th try to post this, had Wo’C problems all damned day)
Awww, honey, don’t be so down on your sexiness… After all, if we allow OTHERS to define our “value” for us, then what’s the fucking point of having any self-worth at all?
(This coming from a woman who’d have to give out COUPONS to get repeat customers…)
Used to have this very insane friend who always said that “A whore is just a slut with the sense enough to CHARGE,” but then, she was always BROKE. So whether you give it away or sell it, what does it matter? It’s only SEX, after all, it ain’t like you’re inventing teh wheel or somesuch.
Sheesh. People get so wrapped-up in teh fucking, they forget who in the hell that THEY ARE sometimes, or rather, who they wanted to be before the world told them to be somebody else.
Teh wise has already been bestowed upon you, Bill, no matter how old of a coot you become.
OT, but…
Doghouse Riley: the obviously Anglo “John Jones”, who’d angrily insist it was “Hwan Ho-nayse”.
Basharov: I think that would be “Hone Ho -nez,” Doghouse.
…coincidentally, “Hone” is the NZ Maori form for “John”.
I’m pro-slut and pro-whore, for men and women. Do what you love. So to speak.
Marq, lame but true, I’m the flipside of that. Not paying any damned attention to popular culture, I always have to struggle to think of someone I drool over who is younger than, say, forty five, even if they were when I started drooling, which is admittedly not a given and never has been. I got my standbys and I am faithful, even if it’s one-sided.
Also, I have this thing about smarts… David Suzuki, David Attenborough, Margaret Atwood, Maya Angelou, the tragically late Molly Ivins. (I’m sensing some trends here, but they’re mostly because I have the instant recall of your average drunken wombat and fall back on patterns as memory aids.) Nonetheless, I defy you to tell me Angelou’s not still gorgeous or Suzuki doesn’t still have an amazing ass. mmmm…. Neil deGrasse Tyson…. Edith Widder… What? Okay, I’ll shut up now.
Awwww Deeeeeeeeee, if you’re gonna make us THINK about it, that’s going to kill the buzz! Sheeesh, if we have to do people that we RESPECT, that’s gonna ruin my batting average all to hell…

We Should Stop Being Selfish And Let Democrats Share That Sweet, Sweet Taste of Failure

Was there ever a time when our pundits were smarter than our populace?  Granted, the 24-hour news cycle – much like the Iraq War – has forced cable chat shows to lower their recruitment standards to the point where even Dan Riehl is asked his opinion of the pre-fab controversy de jour.  But back in the Fifties, when television news was still in diapers –and cloth diapers, the kind you had to safety pin! – every town of respectable size had one or more local newspapers, often both morning and evening editions, and not infrequently, an indigenous brewery.  So there was plenty of opportunity for Triple A farm club-quality blowhards to dip their spleen in printers ink and give it a squeeze over the Op-Ed page.
            But now newspapers are undergoing a mass extinction event the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the Permian-Triassic transition, and yet scarce remaining column inches are turned over weekly to the likes of Jonah Goldberg, a man who – as public intellectuals go – makes Jethro Bodine look like Bertrand Russell.
            I used to believe that the most annoying characteristic of stupid-people-who-are-paid-to-tell-us-what-to-think is their factory standard belief that they’re smarter than everyone else.  But I’ve changed my mind; that rates a distant second now, behind their conviction that everyone else is not only less smart, but as stupid as a tubeworm.  I suspect this is a byproduct of Wingnut Welfare: if someone were to award me a sinecure where all I had to do was lift my leg periodically and expel some gaseous, half-digested insight, then bleg for readers to email me supporting evidence, I might also come to the conclusion that being smart is effortless.  And anyone who isn’t getting paid for sitting around all day eating Frosted Pop-Tarts and downloading Star Trek slash is a barely sentient loser.
            So Jonah breezes in, all Harold Hill-like, and to sell us rubes a wagonload of tubas:
If you believe that the war on terror is real — really real — then you think it is inevitable that more and bloodier conflicts with radical Islam are on the way, regardless of who is in the White House. If the clash of civilizations is afoot, then the issues separating Democrats and Republicans are as pressing as whether the captain of the Titanic is going to have fish or chicken for dinner. There’s a showdown coming. Period. Full stop. My task isn’t to convince you that this view is correct (though I basically believe it is), but merely that it is honestly and firmly held by many on the right and by a comparative handful on the left.
Personally, I’m hard-pressed to name anybody on the left who still believes this.  (And the first person who mentions Joe Lieberman gets bitch-slapped with a copy of Kenneth Pollack’s The Threatening Storm.  But I could be wrong.  Does anybody with any credibility on the left actually think there’s a “clash of civilizations” in progress?  Is liberal Western democracy about to be felled by the reaping scimitars of the Taliban?  I don’t know…To me, the fact that a bunch of illiterate religious fanatics abetted a bunch of middle-class religious fanatics who managed to knock down some buildings and kill 3000 people in a sneak attack isn’t evidence of a “clash of civilizations.”  It’s the logline for a remake of The Mouse That Roared directed by James Wan.
And that’s the problem: Only a handful of people on the left — and far too few liberals — see radical Islamists as a bigger threat than George W. Bush.
Maybe that’s because George W. Bush is in charge of the most powerful country on the planet, while – our allies the Saudis excepted – “radical Islamists” aren’t in charge of any country, except the country George Bush put them in charge of.
Which is why if you really think that we are in an existential conflict with a deadly enemy, there’s a good case for the Democrats to take the reins. Not because Democrats are better, wiser or more responsible about foreign policy. That’s a case for Democrats to make about themselves and certainly not one many on the right believe. No, the argument, felt in places we don’t talk about at cocktail parties
Great.  Now I’m thinking about the places Jonah DOES feel at cocktail parties.
–is that the Democrats have been such irresponsible backseat drivers that they have to be forced to take the wheel to grasp how treacherous the road ahead is.
Um.  If I were sitting in the back seat while Dad careened all over a mountain highway in a torrential downpour, blowing past roadblocks and flashing signs screaming “Bridge Out Ahead,” and he suddenly turned the wheel over to me, I’d do what most of the backseat driving Democrats are advising:  Turn the Fucking Car Around.
The current spectacle in Congress has made it clear that the Democrats don’t believe that the war in Iraq is America’s war. They think it’s Bush’s vanity project turned albatross
As stupid as Jonah is, I have to admit, this is one of the most cogent and succinct descriptions of the Iraq War I have ever read.
It was always a bit of a myth that partisanship ended at the water’s edge.
Or at least, it’s been a pretty moribund tradition every since the Kosovo crisis, when Trent Lott remarked, “You can support the troops without supporting the president.”
But Democrats have debunked, exposed and parodied that myth.  Of course, they claim that the president started it by running foreign policy as a partisan enterprise. Fine, there’s obviously some truth there.
And the Five Day Forecast for Hell:  Overnight temperatures dipping into the teens, with highs of in the low 30s.  Watch for icy, but well-paved road conditions.
But when the likes of Sens. Hillary Clinton and Jay Rockefeller whine that they were misled into war, they’re declaring that they never took their responsibilities seriously in the first place.
Translation:  You fucked up.  You trusted us.
Of course, many Democrats sincerely believe that the war on terror is real and that Iraq is a dangerous distraction from it. But that’s not the issue.
“Some people sincerely believe that my throwing a bucket of gasoline rather than water on this smoldering pile of leaves in the yard is only going to feed the fire and cause it to quickly get out of control and burn down the house.  But that’s not the issue.”
Terror hawks think you can’t both believe the war on terror is real and argue for handing Iraq over to the enemy — even if we shouldn’t have gone in in the first place.  If the war on terror really isn’t that big a deal, hurray. Then Democrats can’t do that much damage
Because frankly, after 6 years of Bush and Cheney, there’s nothing left to break.
–and we can all argue about the minimum wage and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plane.
Judging by the recent content on Fox News, a Clash of Civilizations certainly hasn’t inhibited you from yakking about the plane thing.
If it is a big deal, Democrats need to be slapped out of their anti-Bush hysteria by real life. Australian Prime Minister John Howard — a Churchillian figure to hawks —
I frankly doubt that John Howard is a Churchillian figure to parakeets.
–said this week that Al Qaeda is “praying” for a Democratic victory in 2008. It may be.
Dr. E. Douglas Whitehead, a John Holmesian figure to his fellow penis enlargement surgeons, said this week that Jonah is “praying” for two more inches so he can finally urinate standing up.  He may well be.
But what happens when a President Clinton or Obama has a 9/11 — or worse — on her or his watch?\
I’m guessing they probably won’t take an impromptu tour of Midwestern military bases while refusing to come out of the can on Air Force One.
Or is faced by the prospect of an Iraq run by terrorists? I’d like to hope that president would rise to the occasion, out of conviction or political self-interest.
I’d settle for a president who’d just put down the damn childrens book.
For hawks who believe that the Bush White House either hasn’t been hawkish enough or has done a much better job than the conventional wisdom holds (remember, no terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11)
Well, there’ve been bombings and stuff.  And all those letters filled with weaponized anthrax that shut down the Postal Service.  But those mostly targeted women and Democrats, and were committed by white guys, so that’s really more of a law enforcement issue.

America needs a Mum :) Hilary T-Shirt
Jonah Goldberg and people like him insist on using this “cocktail party” standard (“felt in places we don’t talk about at cocktail parties”). Does anyone here regularly go to the effete sort of gatherings Jonah has in mind, where we play Anti-American Scrabble, talk about how we want to “lose” in Iraq, and pooh-pooh the concerns of “real people”? News: We are real people, and the scenario Jonah is talking about is familiar to only… himself and his friends. Obviously there are a lot more cocktail parties and a lot more self-important, delusional blowhards in his circle inside the Beltway than there are out here. As Michael Palin once said (on Monty Python), “Bum. OH, what a giveaway!”
I’d say that the Beltway Sniper attacks certainly count as a form of terrorism. Especially considering that Jonah and his ilk consider IED attacks against American soldiers to somehow constitute “terrorism.” Such a broad definition has to include a prolonged series of shootings with an extortionate goal. Those were in 2002. Which, by my count, is since 9/11/2001.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard — a Churchillian figure to hawks
*spits coffee all over his keyboard and monitor*
OK, so I know that among whimps like Jonah, there is a sorta rule to use Churchill’s name and the word “appeasement” at least twice a week and I have gotten used to it. But I swear to God, after this one, even Winston himself has probably risen from his grave and set out on a voyage to the US in order to kick the crap out of Jonah. If you turn on the news and see Jonah dead with a Romeo y Julieta sticking out from his ass, remember, I called it.
I’d hate to think how drunk I’d have to be to get through a cocktail party with Jonah’s crowd. I’m thinking a whole bottle of Jameson’s… but I’d wind up in jail before the evening was over.
“Democrats have been such irresponsible backseat drivers that they have to be forced to take the wheel to grasp how treacherous the road ahead is.”
Those Republicans – what patriots. Deliberately getting their asses kicked in November so that Democrats would be forced to be in control of Congress and then they would be forced to realize that, to cue up Harold Hill, “We Got Terror right/ Here in River City/ And that starts with T/ and that Rhymes with B/ and that stands for Bu” – sorry,my bad – “that starts with T/ and that Rhymes with P /and that stands for Pool.”
These guys’ attitudes are not entirely a byproduct of Wingnut Welfare–maybe Wingnut Extortion is a better term, with Clear Channel gobbling up stations and either putting dissenting voices out of work or moving them to more marginal time slots.
Yeah, we all know that Fox and Clear Channel suck up to the White House, get favors from the FCC, become richer and more powerful, use their wealth and power to further suck up, and round we go again.
But the problem started much earlier, when stations began to think that news could be more than a service provided to viewers, it could be a profit center.
Reagan’s press secretary/political adviser/loyalty enforcer Lyn Nofziger understood that “news” was just another form of entertainment for the masses. He didn’t feel the least bit shy about saying so publicly. Since then, the Republicans have just gotten better at shaping and defining the debate, and Democrats haven’t pulled off a major media coup since the Kennedy/Nixon debates in 1960.
At some point in journalism’s slide into the abyss, “Communication” became a major offered at college. The original broadcast journalists were mostly very well educated, and shared the quaint notion that you had to have something worth communicating before stepping in front of a microphone.
“Terror Hawks” would make a great toyline. I’m thinking something sort of like Dino Riders, but birds with zombies or trolls on them.
And I’ve long wondered: is Jonah even capable of speaking without using a simile, a cliche, or a metaphor every paragraph? The man’s head is stuffed full of things other people have said to him. It all gets randomly spat out onto his column like some sort of drunken episode of magnetic poetry. And now I’m doing it.
Keep it comin’, Scott. If I don’t keep laughing at these guys, I’m going to end up beating several of them with wicker rakes for having the sheer bad taste to exist on my planet. Hey, Annti! Road trip?
“I frankly doubt that John Howard is a Churchillian figure to parakeets.”
Actually Churchill would probably have seen little John Howard as a parrot-like figure
“Dr. E. Douglas Whitehead, a John Holmesian figure to his fellow penis enlargement surgeons, said this week that Jonah is ‘praying’ for two more inches so he can finally urinate standing up. He may well be.”
Best. Laugh. Of. The. Week.
Until I got to this line of Doughy Pantload’s:
“(remember, no terrorist attacks on our soil since 9/11)”
BWUAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAAA!!!!!!
Riiiiiiiight. ‘Cause 9/11 just “happened.” They didn’t know that it was coming, and the Bush Regime isn’t thicker-than-thieves with the bin Laden clan. Riiiiiiiiighttt.
“The original broadcast journalists were mostly very well educated, and shared the quaint notion that you had to have something worth communicating before stepping in front of a microphone.”
Trashfire, you are so right. BUT — to use the word, “Journalism” in the same POST, on the same BLOG as the words, Jonah Doughy Pantload Goldberg — is worse than heresy. Doughy Pantload is to journalism as Rupert Murdoch is to ethics. ANTITHESIS.
Look at what’s working in the “media” in this country — broadcast, print or cable — you get “personalities,” not journalists. You get bottle blondes and bimbos, you get pompous bloviating douchebags, you get talking heads that are emptier than their puffed-up resumes, you do NOT get “journalists.”
I haven’t seen a real journalist in this country’s mass media since Cronkite retired. If it weren’t for blogs, there wouldn’t BE any journalism left in this country.
D. Sidhe, darlin’, you bring the rake and the gas money, I’ll bring the truck! Although we’re prolly gonna need something a little more substantial to reach through the dough and hit on some actual bone & flesh on Jonah… Do you think that the tire-tool will do it? Or are we going to need something with a longer reach?
And the fact that this little pus-wad thinks that being a war-hawk is a GOOD thing — as if there’s no profits to be made in war, as if there’s no strings being pulled behind the scene, as if the neocons would ever have the cajones to fight any of their wars THEMSELVES — but why would they, when they can destroy the economy and FORCE the poor kids to take the bullets?!??! — is he really this fucking naive/stupid, or is he just the sloppiest excuse for a raving shill that’s ever existed?
It still, to this day, boggles my mind that weak-minded, useless parasites like this were not only brought to term, but that they could sustain something resembling “life” outside of the womb. If, indeed, Jonah was born of a “womb” — he seems more like he came of a particularly painful bowel movement.
Scott, you have my undying admiration for not only surviving the torture of reading Jonah’s pathetic excuse for prose, but for being able to actually handle it and dissect it for us. I hope that you were wearing a full-body HAZMAT condom the whole time.
I frankly doubt that John Howard is a Churchillian figure to parakeets.
[stifled laughter, akvavit sprayed everywhere, etcetera].
The thing about John Howard is that the Iraq invasion saved his political career. The moment he went running after G W Bush, waving the Australian flag and shouting ‘Me too!’, his popularity soared — Aussies collectively were delighted at the chance to take part in a war, as long as they were promised a quick victory, no sacrifice on their part, and a big slice of the glory. Aussies are like that. They are not so much the schoolyard bully, and more like the big thick kids who follow the Alpha-bully around, waiting for him to find a victim, so they can pile in enthusiastically and join in the kicking as soon as the victim is on the ground.
Any Aussies reading this can now feel free to slag off New Zealanders.
Anyway, now that Iraq has turned to custard and the Australian electorate are realising that they are not going to be basking in some else’s glory any time soon, they are not well pleased, and Howard’s popularity is going down faster than [insert obscene metaphor here]. So he is following his political instincts and attacking the nearest person with brown skin — Obama, most recently — since this is always a crowd-pleaser with his followers.
The man is fast approaching his fortieth birthday.
Really.
How many times, as above, does he fill another order for 800 words with all the brio of a kid working a double shift handing you a burger cooked fifteen minutes before you walked to the counter?
It’s partly Jonah–okay, it’s entirely Jonah; there’s no excuse at his age for exhibiting such breathtaking shallowness–and partly the fact that “conservatives” basically decided around the time he was learning to crawl that they weren’t talking to anybody but themselves any more, and he’s the end product. Has Goldberg ever written a word about “liberals” that gave you the impression he’d ever read and thought about what one had to say? Or ever met one and liked him as a person, had a friendly argument sometime over a couple of beers? Me neither. As I said about Lileks one time, he writes like a guy from the eighth row of an angry mob. The only difference is that with Lileks it’s laughable, but with Jonah it’s just pathetic.
And, again: while there may have been a time when this sort of stuff was excusable as mere wrongheadedness, or poor potty training, that day is past, thanks to the Bush administration. Recycling old Vietnam excuses in the defense of even greater incompetence and prevarication in Iraq is no longer simply stupid, or insane, or perverse; it is siding with the Church over Copernicus, five centuries later.
is Jonah even capable of speaking without using a simile, a cliche, or a metaphor every paragraph?
Oh, D., honey! Don’t be so hard on everybody’s favoritest s.o.s.*
Sure, all of those things are true; with the addition of obscenities, ad hominems, and gay schtick, that describes me to a “t” as well, so ixnay on teh arsnesshay, capisce?
FWIW, Jonah is fast becoming one of my least favorite wingnuts, ‘cos it’s true; teh stupid, it does burn!
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*…well! I almost got out of this sucker without using language that would make dainty blossoms like Fatha Donohue blush and weep. Well, too bad, ‘cos “s.o.s.,”as everyone knows, stands for “sacks of shit.” Or, the less intuitive, “Fatha Donohue.” Use interchangeably, at your own discretion.
D’oh! I guess that pig latin should have been “arshnesshay.” My bad (gawd, I hate that phrase!).
We was just sittin’ around the barber shop yesterday talkin’ about Toybee’s concept of the decline of civilizations when somebody, I think it was Wilbur, brought up that very issue. “It’s a matter of open, pluralistic societies versus cultures which ‘er much more integrated” Ben said. So we all got to that for a while — except for Jack, who had as usual fallen asleep in the chair for his afternoon nap — and we decided that Wilbur did make a pretty good point. At which point Barney ran into the shop a said, “Hey, there’ a fire at the wig factory! Firetrucks are on the way!” So we wandered down the street and watched the fire a bit until the building burned down.
Jonah Goldberg, a man who – as public intellectuals go – makes Jethro Bodine look like Bertrand Russell
If only he’d drown himself in his cement pond…
Is “really real” similar to “truly true”?
They think it’s Bush’s vanity project turned albatross
Worst. Remodel. Ever.
Herr Doktor Bimler, you remind me a lot of Mentis Fugit… Any acquaintance?
And if the Revolution ever comes, Jonah will be around #487th up against the wall. He’s that irrelevant, and has about that much effect on the world in general. The fact that he might actually draw a *paycheck* for his bloated bloviatings is what continues to shock me.
How desperate must they BE, to use THAT as filler?!??!?
Because frankly, after 6 years of Bush and Cheney, there’s nothing left to break.
I tried, I really tried to watch the Rush Limbaugh – Ann Coulter skit on that new “comedy” show, the 1/2 Hour News Hour, but after Rush smirkingly described, from his position as the guy who took over the presidency in 2009, that “Boy, the last two years under Democratic control sure were awful weren’t they?” I just couldn’t take the disgusting little piece ‘a $%#&@ for one more moment.
Their use of a laugh track got really annoying on the previous skit, some of the lines would have gotten a genuine laugh from a real audience, but a lot of the laughs were inappropriate.
you remind me a lot of Mentis Fugit… Any acquaintance?
I can’t say I know him under that name, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we rant at the same pubs.
I’m going to end up beating several of them with wicker rakes…
Hey Sidhe. Thats just not a very substantial choice of learnin implement, and as such you may find the entire experience less than satisfying. My own choice is a pool cue, you can run the gamut from an “attention-getter” to a “goodnight, Irene”. Gentlewoman, on the other hand, prefers a paisley metal cane, which I can understand, as style is always important. However, if you’re committed to gardening tools repurposed as wingnut whackers, you could do a lot worse than a hoe. Not only is it more effective and satisfying than a wicker rake, but it has the added advantage of sharing an identifier with pantload himself…
mikey
Don’t listen to mikey, Sidhe!!
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Use a Garden Weasel™. ‘Cos I seen it on teh tee vee!
Actually, I was going for kinda flimsy. I figured the outraged whines of any stray wingnut looking to feed their persecution complex with alleged death threats would just piss me off even more. But I suspect I was being too generous. None of them stopped being assholes yesterday, despite my restraint.
It’s been a real bad week here, and it’s only going to get more annoying. Anyone who’d like to help arrange an alibi or suggest a victim, please get in touch.
Not to pile on — OK, to pile on — but this line:
“No, the argument, felt in places we don’t talk about at cocktail parties…”
…isn’t even original. Jonah copped it from Jack Nicholson’s reply to Tom Cruise during the climactic cross-examination in “A Few Good Men.”
And you can look it up.
From the script:
JESSEP
(continuing)
Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have
to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You?
You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than
you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you
curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the
luxury of not knowing what I know: That Santiago’s death,
while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while
grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.
(beat)
You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you
don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You
me there.
Not the Charles Pierce?
Well, you know, tube worms aren’t that stupid. Considering that they live over 4000 feet deep in the Pacific and feed on an ocean floor vent of 400 degree sulfur water. That’s not too smart but they have the presence of mind when the sulfur food starts to slow down to pack up their little baby tube worms with exactly 29 days worth of food and send them a float. Low and behold those little tube worms find a new sulfur vent in exactly 29 days. Pretty smart, eh?
Robert, I must thank you for your eloquent worm defense.
I was considering making a far less coherent version of that same general point, coupled with “And when the fuckwits gobble the oil supply and global warming has set in, Scott, you’ll wish like hell you could survive hundreds of degrees and run on common pollutants.” But then I got sidetracked by the Terror Hawks thing.
Though, it’s possible Scott was talking not about Riftia or Alvinella, the hydrothermal vent worms, or even the cold seep worm that lives on methane and whose name I am too lazy to look up, but about the lugworm, which, while it only lives in a sort of mucus-and-sand cocoon, could be considered a tubeworm, or at least a training tubeworm, and is, I assure you, dumb as rocks, and a real drag on its book club meetings. Not to mention kinda ugly, too.
For the record, my partner hardly ever wants to discuss worms with me, and in fact even abandoned a conversation about zombie worms upon discovering they weren’t a World of Warcraft thing.
Thank you, Robert and D. Sidhe, for the Tuesday Tubeworm Blogging. I trust this is the first of a regular series.
“if someone were to award me a sinecure where all I had to do was lift my leg periodically and expel some gaseous, half-digested insight, then bleg for readers to email me supporting evidence, I might also come to the conclusion that being smart is effortless.”
Thank you. However the process is bit more detailed; the story of a slow devolution into cheetos-eating stuporifica. They used to call it learned helplessness, now its learned stupidity.
If I were sitting in the back seat while Dad careened all over a mountain highway in a torrential downpour, blowing past roadblocks and flashing signs screaming “Bridge Out Ahead,” and he suddenly turned the wheel over to me, I’d do what most of the backseat driving Democrats are advising: Turn the Fucking Car Around.
Pure gold!
I’m going to steal it next time I find myself at a cocktail party not talking about certain places.
Why would we be handing Iraq over to the enemy? I thought those wonderful things such as a constitution, elections and training how many thousands of Iraqi police and troops meant we would be handing it over to the elected Iraqi government. They already said they want us out of there. When are we to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin and say “We present to you a Republic if you can hold it.”? WE ARE OUT OF HERE!!!
Um.
I thought everyone knew that Western Liberal Democracies get their teeth kicked in by domestic fundamentalist and totalitarian forces, not foreign ones…