new depths of stupidity

[solarbird]

I saw this before, but didn't know whether to believe it, but now there's a second source that isn't townhall.com: Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has decided to use the prestige of the Supreme Court to fuel paranoid conspiracy freak insanity about Barack Obama by taking to conference one of the various nutbar lawsuits against President-Designate Obama's citizenship. This is truly wretched. It's not just that the case has no merit; it's that Justice Thomas has decided to use the Supreme Court as a baiting toy to fuel the insane.

Glenn Greenwald has disturbing reports of possible backtracking - and the backtracking on the backtracking - on torture by Democratic leadership in the Senate. The Weekly Standard has, of course, been urging Chief Executive Bush to award the Medal of Freedom to torturers. Meanwhile, the New York Times still refuses to call torture "torture," and continues to label torture opponents as crazy leftists. More here, if you can stomach it.

Meanwhile, Pope Benedict has thrown Vatican efforts against a UN resolution calling for an end to the practice of criminalizing and punishing people for their sexual orientation. Yes: the Vatican, under Pope Benedict, is now actively working to keep queers illegal in many countries. The Catholic Church hierarchy is now effectively supporting the death penalty for homosexuality in Saudi Arabia.

Over in the Air Force, Capt. Christian Biscotti led a mandatory-attendence presentation at RAF Lakenheath declaring evolutionary theory a pro-suicide Marxist-Communist evil, and promoting Creationism as the antidote. Regular readers familiar with fundamentalist Creationist rhetoric will recognise many of the attack points made in the slides. The religious-indoctrination presentation was officially a "suicide prevention" exercise. Many more slides and a link to the entire presentation here.

Much of the above is borrowing/stealing from the highly sectarian The Purpose-Driven Life, by Pastor Rick Warren, who on the 3rd endorsed the assassination of foreign leaders he sees as "evil," supporting Fox News's Sean Hannity and his declaration that such actions are "righteous."

Closer to home, the University of Washington student newspaper The Daily has spurred protests after running an op-ed against same-sex marriage rights, bringing in the usual hate arguments that homosexuality is an emotional problem and that marriage rights for queers will lead to incest, bestiality, and pedophilia. (Original article here.) The article is accompanied by an abstract graphic of a generic man marrying a sheep. There's a student protest at 12:30, 5 December 2008, and a Facebook group here.

In creepy, creepy, creepy news, the number of troops the Pentagon is talking about deploying domestically has swelled to 20,000. The idea of any deployment was first floated a couple of months ago, and the number has grown five times since then. They are, of course, citing terrorism.

Finally, in somewhat more rational news, Vice-President Designate Biden came out in support of more and better support for passenger rail, particularly for in-city transportation.

eta: I've already had to use the banhammer once today on a newly-created account by an OBAMA IS A SEKRIT MUSLIM/birth-certificate crazy. I will continue to apply as necessary, so don't bother.

Comments

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine who is not an Obama supporter like myself has this to say (http://andysocial.livejournal.com/491037.html) about his citizenship. We both are in agreement that not liking someone doesn't mean make up crazy ass bullshit about them.

I've never weighed in on the torture subject. It's barbaric. Seems pretty obvious. But aren't a lot of the "pro torture" people pointing out that any form or incarceration or punishment for criminal activity could be labeled as such? Does, er, that group that's name has fallen completely out of my brain so now I can't even look them up, the anti torture group, have a definition of the term which allows for incarceration but is against physical/mental abuse (besides the mental anguish casued by being incarcerated :P)? Holy crap I can't think of it's name and I JUST thought of it while reading your post. Annoying!

[epawtows.livejournal.com]

Amnesty International?

I'm sure they have extremest members who think tongue-lashings count as torture, and believe that their opinions are that of AI's. But I doubt they represent AI's views any more than the 'not a natural citizen' kooks represent the GOP.

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

THAT'S IT!!!

Thanks it was driving me nuts

[solarbird]

But aren't a lot of the "pro torture" people pointing out that any form or incarceration or punishment for criminal activity could be labeled as such?
Not that I've seen. I could certainly see doing that as a red herring, so I'm sure someone has, though. But they're mostly arguing that things the US has always considered torture suddenly aren't torture if the US does them. Things like long-time-standing, sleep-dep, waterboarding (most well known), extreme cold treatment, things like that. Things the Allies prosecuted Nazis for after World War II, and the American army prosecuted its own soldiers for in Vietnam. You know, torture. When I talk about redefining words to mean nothing, this is a prime example.

Tho' in the last several months of this year, some of the prime offenders have stopped trying to redefine torture and just started using the word and saying torture is fine if we do it. I've linked to several examples over the past year. There've been proposals to legalise it outright, to set up legal structures (e.g., torture warrants) and so on. It's all barbarism, of course.

On passenger rail

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

Is this going to be something that will actually be cheaper to use than owning a car? If I took the DC metro to work in DC it would cost me substantially more than just owning my car. It annoys me to no end. Shouldn't public transportation be cheap???
Some people might say supporting public transportation is not a good stance for a libertarian type like myself. But as WWI and WWII showed us rail transport is key to moving troops and equipment so it's in our best interest to keep rail lines throughout major cities and across the country. And upkeep of those lines will be less of a burden on the public if we use them for public transport when not being actively invaded.

Re: On passenger rail

[solarbird]

My underlying policy concern here is oil dependency. Rail uses 10% the energy of trucks and cars, and can also be run (particularly in-city) on electric. I honestly see this as, amoungst other things, a national security/stability issue.

The fact that getting around in Japan - on rail, all over the place - was an absolute triviality and delight doesn't hurt anything either, of course. ^_^

Re: On passenger rail

[avram]

Seriously? Here in NYC, I can get a one-month unlimited-use bus and subway transit card for $81. Multiply that by 12, and it's $972/year. While the average NYC car owner has to pay about a thousand bucks just for insurance, not even counting the costs of gas, repairs, parking, and the car itself.

Re: On passenger rail

[partywhipple.livejournal.com]

Oh i know. NYC rocks, I grew up In Croton on Hudson and my dad took the train to work for like 10 years and it saved our family tons. But here If I want to go from the farthest out Metro stop 2 stops in it's like 3 bucks EACH WAY and may be more if it's On Peak. That doesn't include bus fare either. I don't think there's an unlimited travel pass I can buy. Booo!

[hubbit.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, there is so much stupid here I don't know where to start. I shall limit myself to just two.

Observation the first: Biscotti is a crackpot. The former Soviet Union and Lenin/Stalin had nothing to do with the communism (COMMUNE-ism, communal organization) of Marx and Engels. Marx was German and envisioned an orderly, ordered, rational society based on pooling contributions and drawing from that pool according to need; the various Peoples Republics that cropped up starting with Russia merely co-opted the name but used it to replace the existing barbaric governments with the same type of barbaric governments of their own. Tsar Nicholas was no saint. Chaing Kai-Shek was no saint. Batista was no saint.

And the US ideology is "Theism". Please. The US ideology is greenbacks and how to obtain more of them faster than anyone else.

Observation the first and a half: When I hear anything being declared "righteous", I immediately hear that word being spoken by Wolfman Jack.

Observation the second: Why is it that homosexuals marrying each other will lead to incest, bestiality and pedophilia...but when some obviously hetereosexual pervert in German shtups his daughter and sires children by her, hetereosexuality is not to blame? Guys who get arrested for meeting what they think are 13 year old girls but who are in fact 54 year old Federal agents, why does heterosexuality not get blamed for that?

[lickingtoad.livejournal.com]

I love you for point number two. *squee!*

[kathrynt.livejournal.com]

I keep asking the citizenship whackos this: Given that Barack Obama is clearly a citizen now -- he holds a passport and clearances -- there are only two avenues to that citizenship. Either he was a citizen from the instant of his birth (a "natural born" citizen), or he became a citizen through the process of naturalization.

So if he's not a "natural born" citizen, where the fuck is his naturalization paperwork?! If he's participated in some sort of scheme to hornswaggle the American people, it must have been completed by the time he was seven years old, because that's the first time he left the country on a US passport.

[solarbird]

I don't give them that much time. I mean, if the 1961 newspaper birth announcement can be PART OF THE PLOT!!1! to elect Mr. Obama to the Presidency 47 years later, all bets, by which I mean all shreds of sanity, are off.

[firni.livejournal.com]

I see that the plaintiff also sought to disqualify McCain from running, because McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

I'm still not expecting great things from Obama and never liked him, but my thought ever time I saw this brought up at any point was not even that it was crazy, but 'who the fuck cares?'

It's a law that might have made sense at one time in the early stages of this coutry but is now stupid. Aside from the obvious problems w/this particular case (i.e he is a natural born citizen), either he's gonna do a good job or he isn't. I don't care if his mother was KGB and he was born in Manchuria to some dude named Damian Nyarlathotep. It's irrelevant. (yeah, there's a law, but I take it as seriously as I do the one about not running red lights at 3 in the morning with no cars for miles)

Re: On passenger rail

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

In regards to Biden and light rail--gods, I hope that a Biden veep position means more money for light rail.

(Backgrounder: There's been discussion of light rail in Louisville for...oh, a number of years, almost a decade, but nothing has come of it because there's not been funding. Louisville is also a city roughly the size of Washington, DC.)

(Even worse, the de facto "Silicon Alley" in this part of the country is centered around Ft. Knox, even contract work--which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the fact that a) the only companies hiring locally even for contract work are in Ft. Knox and b) Ft. Knox is about an hour away from Louisville by car. Of course, our latest light rail/commuter rail proposal involves commuter rail lines between Louisville and Ft. Knox, which would be *perfect*...)

(But yeah, seriously, I am sick of the broken public transportation system here. *WASHINGTON'S* spoils me, much less Chicago's. Why is it that no city in the Midwest outside of Chicago can seem to have functional public transportation (yes, Indianapolis and Cincy are nearly as bad as well)?)

[denelian.livejournal.com]

whats hte bullshit that being a "dual-citizen" means that one is not a "natural born citizen"? BY DEFINITION, ANYONE born on US soil is a "natural born citizen"!!!!!