Not this buffoon again!



It's always interesting when local leftoid politicians get tired of abusing the "clients" in their urban lairs and decide to use the seemingly endless taxpayer resources at their command to make a "broader statement." One day it's a nuclear free zone and the next it's Rafah as a sister city. Idle hands do the Devil's work, I guess.

But all this is harmless wanking compared to their studied abuse of the legal system in refusing to notice illegal aliens, disdaining cooperation in terrorist investigations, trying to drive firearm manufacturers out of business, and demanding documentation of obscure business links to slavery, as foreplay for the eventual reparations lawsuits. Yet in all this primo pustulosis, one leftoid loon takes pride of place for the political vendettas that he conducts via the legal system and that's ole Travis County (Austin, TX) Democrat District Attorney, Ronnie Earle. After scrabbling around pissing and moaning for years, he finally has decided to indict Tom Delay for, er, well, that's not too clear to anybody but ole Ronnie. The usual suspects are all atwitter at the thought, although there are some who have a few qualms. I guess us regular folks just don't think big enough. I wonder if we could find some rural county DA's who would indict Ronnie Earle for being a pernicious prat. Naw, they likely take their jobs seriously.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:24 PM -

 
A chip off the ole crock



Former CBS fabulist, Mary Mapes, has received the reward of the notorious, but unincarcerated - she has a book coming out November 8. Rand Simberg provides the requisite fisking to her continued cluelessness ("peripheral spacing") and studied disingenuousness (they're called timezones, Mary), but it is worth reading the whole excerpt on Amazon to see the inner workings of the mind of an "ace" MSM newshawk.

The day after the fake National Guard papers story went on the air, Mary was spending some quality time high fiving the other drones in the hive at CBS when she got an inkling that making one up wasn't going to serve this time:

I remember staring, disheartened and angry, at one posting. “60 Minutes is going down,” the writer crowed exultantly.

My heart started to pound. There is nothing more frightening for a reporter than the possibility of being wrong, seriously wrong. That is the reason that we checked and rechecked, argued about wording, took care to be certain that the video that accompanied the words didn’t create a new and unintended nuance. Being right, being sure, was everything. And right now, on the Internet, it appeared everything was falling apart.

I had a real physical reaction as I read the angry online accounts. It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe. My heart was pounding like I had become a cartoon character whose heart outline pushes out the front of her shirt with each beat. The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out.

The longtime reporter in me was pissed off ... and I hung on to her strength and certainty for dear life. I had never been fundamentally wrong, never been fooled, never been under this kind of attack. I resolved to fight back.

Yikes, better call Kinkos!

In retrospect, Matley was right and our story never recovered from this basic misunderstanding. Faxing changes a document in so many ways, large and small, that analyzing a memo that had been faxed---in some cases not once, but twice---was virtually impossible. The faxing destroyed the subtle arcs and lines in the letters. The characters bled into each other. The details of how the typed characters failed to line up perfectly inside each word were lost.

Er, Mary the problem wasn't that the documents were fuzzy - it was that they matched too well the default output of Microsoft Word with that pesky "peripheral spacing."

I knew what we were seeing was not a simple mistake made because of technical differences in the way the documents looked. This was something else, something new and fundamentally frightening. I had never seen this kind of response to any story. This was like rounding a corner in the woods and spotting a new creature, all venom and claws and teeth. You didn’t know what it was, but you sure knew it was out to get you.

As I watched the postings pile up and saw the words quickly become more hateful, it dawned on me that I was present at the birth of a political jihad, a movement conceived in radical conservative back rooms, given life in cyberspace, and growing by the minute.

Ruh Oh! Sounds like the VRWC to me! Pretty scary, eh kids?

There's much more of the same - poor little Mary the intrepid newshawk beset by rightwing meanies. Tres boring. On the other hand, the angst is great:

When I walked down the hall, I saw groups of people clumped together talking animatedly, then watched as they grew silent when I approached. They’d squeak out a, “Hi, Mary,” as I trudged dejectedly past. It was sort of the journalistic equivalent of having toilet paper stuck to your shoe. I can’t say that I blamed them or that I would have behaved any differently in their positions. Nothing like this had ever happened before to me or to anyone I knew of. What is journalistic etiquette for watching someone’s story and career go up in flames? Everyone knew what was going on. Everyone knew it was going very badly. No one knew what to say.

How about, "Mary, you shouldn't pull things out of your butt"?

Some people pitched in and tried to help bail the water out of our sinking ship. ... Assistant producers offered to open up Andy Rooney’s office and let us look at his collection of old typewriters.

Bwhahaha!

I was incredulous that the mainstream press---a group I’d been a part of for nearly twenty-five years and thought I knew---was falling for the blogs’ critiques.

Some things are so obvious that you can't spin em, Mary.

There's apparently lots more in this vein, but you have to wonder how she managed to fill 384 pages. After all, how many ways are there to say that Mary wouldn't recognize the truth if it bit her on her nether regions?

But wait, there's more! It turns out that Mary's mentor, that ole crock Dan Rather is out on the golf course with O.J. looking for the "real" story, since CBS won't let him do it on their nickel:

"CBS News doesn't want me to do that story. They wouldn't let me do that story," Rather said, declining to elaborate further.

Rather also expressed suspicion about bloggers' role in publicizing CBS's mistakes in the Memogate affair.

"There are some strange, and to me, still mysterious things, certainly unexplained things that happened about how it got attacked and why, even before the program was over," Rather said, adding that his network was derelict in not "knowing enough of how quickly bloggers could strike."

Dan doesn't understand timezones either, I guess.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:46 PM -

 
Today's Weird News

Jax busts a move – to rap:

Cash it in, 50 Cent. Shrivel up, Slim Shady. Michael Jackson may be ready to rap.

Having once anointed himself the King of Pop, the singer now wants to reinvent himself as a booty-chasing hip-hopper, we hear.

The move toward a harder-edged sound is said to be part of a plan to put his child-molestation trial behind him. "Soon you will see him surrounded by all kinds of beautiful women," says "Alien Rock" author Michael Luckman, who's tapped into the Jackson camp.

Must maintain composure. Must ... Oh heck ... Bwahahaha! But wait, there's more:

Andre Van Pier thinks he has just the outfit for a Vegas show Jackson is said to be hatching.

Van Pier, who created costumes for several Jackson videos, envisions the Gloved One as a "Space Warrior," complete with Roman legion helmet and illuminated white leather jumpsuit.

"I want to transform Michael [into] a man with power on a level that we've never seen before," says Van Pier.

Forget about the power, just try for the "man" part.

So why can't we stop thinking of Bugs Bunny's little alien antagonist, Marvin?

Marvin the Martian has just been insulted.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 12:42 PM -

 
Cindy Sheehan goes to the Big House



In the next episode, Cindy misunderstands when one of her cellmates says "Lez be friends!"

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:43 PM -

 
Today's Hoot!

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi says This War Sucks:

Have you every been at Friday prayers when somebody just totally rips a gigantic falafel gasbomb while the Imam is cursing the crusaders and Jews? That's what it was like around the TV -- total dead silence. And with every shot of another placard-waving elderly hippie moron, every pachouli drum circle, possibly even more silence. Then, when the speakers started up, so did the uncomfortable buzz.

"Where are their weapons, effendi?"

"Well, ya see, um, they are using their um, voices as weapons, um, against empire and occupation, and..."

"It seems they will need much training for the street battles, effendi. Many are appear weak or fat or old."

"Well, see, er, they are basically offering more of a, uh, moral support, and..."

"Will they be conducting martrydom operations soon?"

"Okay, well, not exactly, but..."

"But... are these what the virgins in paradise will look like, effendi?"

Shit. I don't think I'll ever forget the look of horror in that poor Jordanian kid's eyes when the camera panned across that fugly forest of hairy vegan Heathers and uberbutch Andrea Dworkin manatees. And can you blame the poor trembling kid? Holy fargin' Prophet, sometimes I swear the only thing that keeps me motivated is knowing that a restored Caliphate means these hippie bowsers are gonna have their mugs and their bankles safely shielded under a burqqa.

By then the damage was done. I must have spent fifteen minutes trying to calm the boys down, promising them that Paradise is not gonna be a menage-a-72 with a bunch of Unitarian NPR grannies.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 10:02 AM -

 
It still won't stop the whining

BUSH-HATERS LIED! PEOPLE UN-DIED!

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 9:44 AM -

 
But it wasn't all bad news for Cindy Sheehan!

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 9:13 AM -

 
Media Whore Angst!

Life imitates parody:

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:30 AM -

 
Meanwhile in Euroland

(via E-nough!) France passes judgment on Katrina:

Do you know why France is never hit by hurricanes, even though she once owned Louisiana? It’s because France signed the Kyoto Protocol. Do you know why la petite Camargue in the south of France, with its famous bulls and free-range horses, was flooded twice this summer? It’s because George Bush did not sign the Kyoto Protocol.

Do you know why President Chirac did not get impeached after 15,000 people died in the 2003 French heat wave? Impeached? He didn’t even get pinched! It wasn’t his fault. How could it be his fault? He was on vacation. If some people were too dumb to retreat to a mountain chalet during this terrible vague de chaleur so what? So they shriveled up and died. The fact is, most of them were old; they would have died anyway. You’re not going to deprive a great statesman of his position at the helm of a great State just because 15,000 people didn’t have the sense to buy fans back in December!

French media coverage of Katrina and her aftermath will go down in history as Force 5 skullduggery. Let me go out on a limb here, and guess that the Iranians were more humane on this issue than the French. I’m just guessing. I’m just supposing that they said Allah was punishing us for killing Muslims, desecrating mosques, raping Muslim women, and defending the Zionist entity. Whereas the French, and first and foremost the incorrigible state-owned television channel France 2,* attacked us in our very foundations, set fire to our essence with inflammatory accusations, flailed us with acid-based criticism, smeared us with the muck of hearsay, propaganda, and outright lies, and even that was not enough to satisfy their lust for revenge. France 2’s new newswoman oozed contempt from every strand of her short cropped bleached blond locks. The station’s main man in the field gleefully gloated through every pore of his shiny outer space bald noggin. No alcohol-soaked floozy wandering bleary eyed through the ruins of la Nouvelle Orléans was too zonked to get a pass at a France 2 mike and belt out curses against the guv’mint.

Ah, everything's as usual, then!

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:02 AM -