If you came with a warning label what would it be?
Warning: Wandering hands.
Caution: Exposure to hair may become addictive.
Archive for August, 2008
OK, so it’s no secret that I’m relatively to amazingly liberal. I also make no bones about my pure and righteous hatred for the terrible human beings that have twisted a once valid political ideal (Conservatism) into the great hulking anti-conservation monster that it is today.
However, when I think of the blatant lies perpetuated by the extreme nut-jobs of the right wing (I’m drawing a distinction here for the moderate or even sane conservatives), I expect that at the very least they’ll confine their attacks to the Democratic party, Socialists, environmentalists, and homosexuals (which many claim are all the same entity). It really shocks and astounds me when they turn on each other.
That’s right, kids, Jerome Corsi, best known for his book Unfit for Command which called into question John Kerry’s service record in 2004 and started the so-called “Swift Boat” attacks, has, at least once in his professional career, plagiarized another journalist’s work. Now, I will admit that this happened in 2006, and everybody makes mistakes, but what gets me is that he refused to own up to it publicly. No, actually what gets me is that he plagiarized another conservative journalist’s work without apology. I disagree with most of what Debbie Schlussel has to say, but I can’t help but agree that this sort of thing calls into question all of his work. Or, in the pundit’s own (correctly attributed) words, “We can assume, then, that everything else he writes is similarly shop-lifted from others.”
Of course, Debbie, that’s not really true. Some of it he makes up whole cloth. Such as the idea that President Bush is trying to make one big nation out of North America, or that the DNC has been funding the Iranian nuclear program, or, as he writes in his newest book The Obama Nation, that Barack Obama tried to pass a bill that would give .7 percent of the GDP to foreign aid, promotes infanticide (aboration after the baby is born), and that he didn’t dedicate his book to his mother, father, or grandparents (not that it should matter, but he did). It was pointed out on Countdown tonight that while he painstakingly footnotes all of his “facts,” of the first eleven footnotes in the book, nine of them refer to his own work. This was most likely based on the idea that he’s a trustworthy, honest fellow with no agenda.
But seriously, while we all know that Jerome Corsi is an idiot, this is really out of the water for his type of idiot. I mean, at least Anne Coulter consistently lies about the other side in a mindless fashion. Corsi kind of makes it up as he goes along, spewing friendly fire occasionally along the way. If it weren’t so sad, it would be supremely amusing. The question becomes, will his lies be nearly as effective this election term?
Odds are, not as much. While the Kerry campaign laughed off Corsi, assuming that the American people were too smart, too educated, possessed of too much common sense to believe the often crazy and blatant lies (such as he was awarded his medals based on writing “spot” reports that highlighted or even lied about his activities on missions), the Obama campaign is making no such assumptions. In all fairness, they have the hindsight to realize that Americans elected George W. Bush twice. What was it the president said, “Fool me once…” something? I don’t know, I get lost after that.
And, as The Obama Nation premieres at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list (largely due to bulk sales to conservative groups, hence the little bullet that will appear next to its name), the Obama campaign has already put together the really well-written and conceived Unfit for Publication, a forty-page document focusing on the lies published in Corsi’s latest attempt at political storytelling. He’s got nothing to lose by making a reasoned argument pointing out the false, bordering on libelous claims made in this book, and I’m happy to see a Democrat with the balls to actually fight back, but rather than doing so with smear ads and catchphrases, he does so through reasoned debate in which his campaign “[takes] you through the allegations point by point.” That’s what I’m looking for in a leader: somebody willing to take the time to explain himself and actually respond to attacks rather than trying to clear his name in a series of sound bites. We live in the era of instant communication: if you’re not willing to use it, you’re doomed to failure. Barack Obama is using any tool at his disposal to run a reasonably clean (I do remember one negative attack in which he claimed that McCain received $2 million from Big Oil when he only received $1.3 million, but that’s the only one I can think of at the moment) campaign against McCain and essentially keep taking to high road while continually pointing out every dirty trick John McCain uses to try to bring him down.
Stolen from a number of others…
Fuck or Pass Game
There is at least one person on your friends list that wants to fuck the hell out of you.
So lets play the Fuck or Pass game.
The rules are simple.
If you want to fuck the person who posts this, send him or her a reply saying “I’d Fuck you.”
But, you have to post this in your journal, in exchange.
And marvel at the replies.
Comments are screened.
I’ve gotta say, I’m really liking my new Linux box. I’ve finally gotten the system on there and I’m slowly putting the applications I need onto it.
The best thing is, Gentoo makes things like this so remarkably easy. All I have to do is type “emerge” followed by the name of the application that I want and it accesses the ebuild, figures out what other programs I’ll need, downloads all the appropriate files, compiles them, and puts them in the right place so all I have to do is wait for it to be done and use it. And it’s so quick about it! And with so little RAM since I lost one of my chips!
I’m compiling KDE on the computer itself, and I was using another terminal to try and get my printer working, specifically so I can use it over the network. Now I’m ported into it from my laptop using an SSH client doing basically the same thing, making all of this so much easier. Then I need to work on being able to access my ntfs partition, which shouldn’t be too hard, and figure out how to display on my television, but that might have to wait for a GUI.
In general, I love having the ability to do whatever I want with this system, from wherever I am. One of the best parts is, anything I can think of, somebody smarter than I has already likely thought of it and written something to make it happen. And if they haven’t, I guess that’s a reason for me to learn how to do it. And since Gentoo seems to have the most helpful community of people to help as compared to any other Linux distro, if I have problems I know who to ask.
So, I’m going to go back to loving Portage and watching Charlie Bartlett (great film, BTW). But I wanted to geek out a little on Gentoo Linux.
Kaoru's Complete Waste of Time 