"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them..." - Thomas Jefferson
It's not even worth reading, to be honest. So let's just gut it right at the outset, which is easy because the entire thing is premised on a total lie.
Here's how it starts. (All emphases mine.)
Library Tower looms 73 stories above Los Angeles. But the Pacific Coast's highest skyscraper could have become a smoldering pile of steel beams had CIA interrogators not waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed 183 times in March 2003, as declassified memoranda reveal. Americans should be proud that our public servants had the patience and persistence to pressure al-Qaida's self-described military chief until he cracked, ratted out his homicidal conspirators, and prevented a bloody attack that could have murdered thousands of innocents and transformed much of downtown L.A. into Ground Zero West.
Simple enough. The claim is that the torture of Mohammed, who was arrested in March of 2003, prevented the Library Tower from being attacked. The entire editorial rests upon this premise.
Which means the entire editorial is based on an outright lie, since the plot was foiled in February of 2002.
Q: Fran, just one other follow up. What we don't know is the time. Can you give us some more details on the timeline on this -- meaning, you know, when, exactly, was this plot scheduled for? Do we know that?
MS. TOWNSEND: We don't know exactly when the plot was scheduled for. The intelligence tells us that Khalid Shaykh Muhammad began to initiate it in October of 2001. We know that between then and when the lead operative was arrested in February of '02, between those two periods of time, they traveled through Afghanistan, they met with bin Laden, they swore biat, they came back, and the lead guy is arrested, which disrupts it in February of '02. So you see what I'm saying? It's during that short window of time, between October of 2001 and February of 2002, but we don't know when they planned -- we don't know when it was planned to actually be executed.
Want confirmation? Ok, how about this Fact Sheet put out in 2007 by the Bush administration?
In 2002, we broke up a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast. During a hearing at Guantanamo Bay two months ago, KSM stated that the intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles.
So the torture of KSM in March of 2003 retroactively led to the foiling of the Library Tower plot in February of 2002? That's quite a feat.
Is there any lie these monsters won't tell to justify their beloved torture?
Hey, remember that stupid presidential debate? The one I blogged about here? Back when Joe the Douchesack and ACORN were all the rage?
In that post, I mocked McCain for saying this:
[ACORN] is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.
Prophetic words indeed!
Of course, McCain wasn't the only jackass pushing the fear of voter fraud. It was all over the place. Crazyidiotseverywherewereup in armsabout ACORN. Because they just couldn't idly sit by and let voter registration destroy our country!
They were extra-upset in Ohio, where McCain's state campaign chairman subpoenaed people who did the unthinkable act of registering to vote on the same day that they actually voted! Here's what he had to say:
“If the secretary of state is listening and she has no evidence of voter fraud in Hamilton County, I'm telling you there is,” Deters said during a Monday press conference.
Deters said about 40 percent of those registration forms either lacked a proper address or could not be verified in the state’s database.
“During that five-day window, it was a free-for-all,” Deters said.
This Deters dude subpoenaed information on about 700 people. No doubt all guilty of horrible ACORN fraud!
A report Tuesday by a special prosecutor appointed to the investigation found that only one voter committed fraud.
A Connecticut man in town visiting his sister cast a ballot on Oct. 4 but later told officials what he had done.
He pleaded guilty Dec. 29 to attempted false voter registration and was sentenced to one year of probation, a $1,000 fine and 250 hours of community service.
Can the fabric of democracy survive? I sincerely doubt it!
So there's this whole kerfuffle going on in the Benson/Hayes race in the 37th district. I was going to write about it last night, but I got distracted. I didn't really feel like it anyway.
However, today I discovered some dipshit commenter lying about Benson in a comment on my earlier post about Kurt Hayes. You have him/her to thank for this post. (*)
See, I'm not heavily invested in this race. I wrote about it before primarily because Hayes' secret agenda is disturbing and deserved to be publicized a bit. I will write about it today because I really, really hate liars. And there are a lot of them involved in all this.
Okay, on to business.
There have been two articles in the Worcester Telegram lately about a conflict between the Benson & Hayes camps.
At issue is a House bill that would take $450 million from the state’s stabilization fund, divide it up and return to the 352 cities and towns. It would be a one-time transfer, and communities would have to function without it the following year.
Ms. Benson said the Republican Town Committee in Shirley, a district town, released a statement on its Web site claiming that she is opposed to returning the money to the cities and towns. Mike Mackin, her campaign manager, said the Shirley town committee took a statement made at a debate, cut it in half, and fabricated her stance on returning the money.
“They knowingly made it up. I guess that’s what you do when you can’t win based on an honest discussion of issues,” Mr. Mackin said.
Seriously, this was a dumb thing to complain about. The Shirley RTC clearly has a Capuchin monkey of less-than-average intelligence running its website. It could have been ignored and we would have all been better off. Alas, this was not to be, and now everyone's pissing me off and I'm writing a long post about it. Grr!
Jen Benson with her elitist and condescending attitude, [Sic] saying in one instance that she was not clear on releasing the 450 million to [Sic] then later supporting it saying that BEACON HILL said the local officials were not smart enough to realize this was a one time increase…
Blah blah blah "elitist" blah blah blah bullshit. I can't even put in all the [Sic]s that deserves, because you wouldn't be able to read it.
So this barely-literate thing above is an issue of contention. Because it's a lie. You can see what Benson said for yourself, though it's not exactly exciting viewing:
Basically yeah, she supports releasing the money. Pretty clear.
What was Kurt Hayes' response?
Mr. Hayes said last night he had no idea what Ms. Benson is talking about, and has no input into what goes on the Shirley Republican Town Committee Web site. He said he was the driving force to get the bill to give the money to communities placed as referendums on local ballots in all six district towns.
“She has stated that she is in support of it, but I’ve not seen any evidence of that,” he said.
Apparently that guy sitting right next to Benson in the clip above wasn't Kurt Hayes. Or maybe he didn't bother paying attention to what she was saying. That would explain why he has no idea what's going on. Was he high, maybe? That might explain why he thinks that Benson stating she's in support of it doesn't count as "evidence" that she supports it.
[State GOP douchewad Barney] Keller contended that Ms. Benson has said in videotaped forums that some legislators are against the one-time transfer because the money would be gone the next year, yet could be figured into operating budgets for future years. He said she needs to reveal which legislators took this position.
What?
What the hell kind of lame attack is that? They're whining that Benson wasn't specific enough about something she said? Something that's totally unrelated to the issue at hand, which is that the Shirley RTC was lying about her stance on releasing that money to local communities.
Oh, it's not really an attack at all. It's a "we got caught lying so this is how we'll cover our asses" move.
“Jen Benson should immediately disclose which legislators she talked with (who) don’t trust cities and towns to handle receiving millions of dollars in local aid. The public deserves to know which of our legislators don’t trust our communities to handle tax dollars. If she will not disclose who she has spoken with, then she should apologize for her outrageous negative attack on Kurt Hayes,” Mr. Keller said.
Oh? Why the fuck should she disclose this to you? So you can run attack ads against them? So you can twist their concerns about temporarily inflated budgets around into not "not trusting our communities"?
Because it's not like it matters. And it's not like it's the issue. Way to try to change the topic! How about condemning the lies of your own party? No? Didn't think so.
The Shirley folks have a little update about all this. Allow me to reprint it for you!
NOTE; The Shirley Republican Town Committee would like to clarify one portion of our endorsement and comment
1. We are deeply appreciative of the Benson team taking time in their busy election effort to review our web site.
Sarcasm? All well and good if this were on a blog or something. But on the official Shirley Republican Town Committee website? Not classy.
2. The WORCESTER T/G [Sic] indicated they tried to contact the "Chair, who was unavailable for comment" [Sic] A false statement as the chair was available on 28 October 2008, [Sic] all evening when the contact was supposed to have been made.
Damn that liberal media!
Wait a second, where does that quote come from? The article from the 29th only says: "Ms. Dumont could not be reached last night."
Maybe it was updated after the fact? Someone with a hard copy of the paper want to check that out? Or maybe it's just another lie...
3. We are providing a link OFF OF Ms. Benson's Web site, EDITED by the Benson people. The readers may go to that link and view exactly what Ms. Benson said and did not say and like all people desiring to be educated voters, make up their own mind based on Ms. Benson's own words http://jenbenson.org/lottery.html.
Listen, people. If you're going to run a website, learn to write. The link is not "OFF OF" Benson's site. It's on Benson's site. It's only "EDITED" in the sense that it's a segment of the debate instead of the whole entire thing, which nobody would ever bother to watch anyway because it would be painfully boring.
I think the second sentence of that part was written by a Nigerian 419 scammer. Or Jerome Corsi.
4. We also note that Team Benson did not provide a full tape of the Shirley Debate or the two questions in the Lunenburg Debate referencing the lottery funds in general. Nor did they respond to Bensons [Sic] endorsement of expending taxpayer funds on illegal's [Sic] nor any of the other funds she desires to expend and the spending she wants to expand in the current Massachusetts fiscal crisis. The RTC STAND behinds [Sic] our endorsement of all three candidates as listed below, for the reasons listed below;
Why the hell should team Benson provide you assholes with anything? They could give you every bit of footage out there and you'd just claim she was holding something back.
You're the people making the ridiculous claim. You're the ones who have to back it up. If you can't back it up, I'll just keep calling you liars. Because you're liars.
Also, learn how to fucking punctuate.
Let's round up all the liars!
First, there was my dumb commenter.
Second, there was the Shirley Republican Town Committee.
Third, Kurt Hayes is either a liar or just incapable of paying attention to what his opponent was saying during the debate (so a moron).
Fourth, that Keller guy from the state GOP didn't so much lie as try to draw attention away from the lies already being told by whining about something totally unrelated. Still gets listed for being an accomplice.
That's a lot of liars! And they all support Kurt Hayes, the choice of lying assholes everywhere!
*Note to dipshit commenters: This isn't Save Fitchburg. I have a very low tolerance for liars and idiots. I very rarely delete comments, but will do so without hesitation if you really piss me off. More likely I'll just make fun of you for being an idiot. Either way, don't waste your time. This picture is all you get.
**Note to non-dipshit commenters: I love you guys. Thumbs up for you!
Here's a boring video of John McCain answering some idiot's question about progressive tax policies.
That's right, folks. John McCain is totally in favor of the redistribution of wealth. This is also true of every other politician in the country (except maybe Ron Paul, who is a moron). McCain even explicitly states that it's not Socialism!
“Alaska was conceding too much, and chipping away at our sovereignty. And Alaska—we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.”
"Share the wealth," huh? Socialist!
So why do McCain and Palin keep accusing Obama of being a Socialist for supporting progressive taxation, when they also support it (along with the vast majority of the population)?
Here is the single best thing to come out of last night's debate:
Awesome.
Most of the rest of it was babbling about "Joe the Plumber," plus the usual lies and obfuscations and pretty words that mean very little. The most exciting moment was when I really pissed off my friend's cat, who tried to maul me. He couldn't though, because he was declawed, and that must have been pretty frustrating. I feel bad about the whole thing. Sorry I was a dick to you, cat!
The results of the debate are pretty typical. If you already planned to vote for Obama, you still plan to do so. Ditto for McCain. If you're undecided at this point in the game you're probably so clueless you'll either miss the election entirely because you got confused about what month it is or you'll get lost trying to find your polling place and somehow drive into a lake. So who really cares what you think?
There are two things I want to mention, though. They both keep coming up, and they're both really aggravating.
This is a picture of an overhead projector: This is a picture of the Adler Planetarium's Zeiss Mark VI projector, which John McCain has repeatedly referred to as an "overhead projector":
Anyway, know why they need a donation page? Because while money for the planetarium was in a budget proposed by Obama, it never passed. The Adler Planetarium got no money to update their 40 year old projector.
Yet McCain repeatedly brings it up. It's bad enough that he thinks planetaria are "foolishness" (that is actually the word he used). But in his whining about someone daring to try to fund science education, he can't even be bothered to tell the truth, which is that the funding never passed. Argh!
It's part of a weird pattern of Republicans hating astronomy, for reasons I can't fathom.
McCain hates planetaria, Nathan Bech hates telescopes, Sarah Palin presumably hates the concept of heliocentrism. I guess the astonomers have it a little easier than the biologists, at least. Hell, nearly 70% of Republicans reject evolution.
I wonder why America is falling behind the rest of the world in science.
The second thing that irritates me into calcifying a black pearl of fury is this quote from McCain about ACORN. This is basically the new Republican talking point/excuse for why McCain is going to lose.
[ACORN] is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history ... maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.
Oh my god what total bullshit that is! Forget Diebold and the largescale disenfranchisement of potentially millions of people, what's important is that a few people might have registered "Mickey Mouse" to vote. So now when Mickey Mouse shows up to vote he will destroy democracy!
Here's a good explanation of ACORN and "voter fraud". In a nutshell, yes there have been cases of false registrations. This was fraud against ACORN, not voter fraud. There's no evidence anyone ever voted under the false registrations, someone was just trying to make some extra cash by registering people who don't exist.
In almost all cases, it was ACORN itself which drew attention to the fraudulent registrations. Their only crime (and this is only a crime in the eyes of Republicans) is trying to register poor people to vote. That's not a reliable Republican demographic!
Making this all the more annoying is that I can pinpoint when I first heard a Republican shill badmouthing ACORN. It was on NPR, in a piece about voter suppression by the Michigan GOP.
The shill downplayed the Republican attempts at voter suppression while also claiming that ACORN commits voter fraud for the Democrats. It was probably on September 11th that I heard it, judging from the date on this NPR blog entry.
Apparently it took the Republicans about two weeks to get their talking points coordinated, because it wasn't until around the 27th that attacking ACORN really started to take off.
The accusations are obvious bullshit to anyone who actually bothers to look at the facts. They're just a smokescreen to try to divert attention from the well-sourced evidence of Republican voter suppression.
Sadly, debunking lies like this just tends to make people believe them more strongly. Cognitive dissonance is a terrible thing.
You may have seen this article in the Sentinel the other day. It's about Nathan Bech, a Republican challenging John Olver for his seat in the House of Representatives.
It's an interesting article mostly because after a whole article that consisted of nothing but parroting favored Republican talking points, it ends with:
"I think people of Western and Central Mass. deserve better," he said. "I'm an independent thinker. A good idea's a good idea."
[...]
"I want to get this seat back into the hands of someone who will diligently and honestly represent the people and not just someone who pushes the party line," Bech said. "I can think for myself."
Okaaaay...
It was of course entirely possible that Bech does have some views that don't match up perfectly with the views of the Republican establishment, and the S&E article just didn't bother to mention them, so I checked out Bech's website.
Man, the guy really harps on being a vet. I will give him credit for that though, most Republicans who support the war haven't ever been in the armed service. He's a Republican who supports the war enough to have fought in it. It doesn't really separate him from the party leadership though, aside from making him seem less hypocritical.
So I kept looking for whatever I could find that might separate him out from other Republicans. Here's what I found:
He doesn't support a "National ID card," just something that's exactly like it.
He's opposed to torture (which he does not define).
Those are sort of at odds with the Republican party line, right?
No? Oh well, I tried.
But that's not the most interesting part of his website. The most interesting part of his site is this crazy gas thing where he shows how all his fancy plans would have us paying just $2.08 at the pump today compared to how Olver's plans would have us paying $4.01. Oh my god, the man must be good at telling people what they want to hear a genius!
Actually, he just seems to have taken these "ideas" from the Bush administration and stuck numbers with them.
Anyway, we have math to play with! Let's look at all his fancy-pants cuts!
His first item is: Bring onshore oil online (ANWR, Shale) with a savings of $0.70 - $1.60.
Hmm, that doesn't seem likely. I mean, this study (pdf) on ANWR drilling suggests a mean savings of 75 cents per barrel, and that's not until 2025. There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil, so that means a 1.8 cent decrease per gallon. Yay?
Now, that's wholesale of course. You'll probably see less retail. Maybe a cent, if you're lucky. So it must be the oil shale that account for somewhere between 69 cents and $1.59 in Bech's calculations.
I don't know where Bech gets his figures, but even this RAND study (pdf) suggests it would take at least 12 years to begin production and probably would only save a few dollars a gallon. Plus it would be environmentally disastrous to do, of course.
Well crap, Mr. Bech. Your first figure just didn't work out.
How about the next one? Bring deepwater oil online (OCS) with a savings of $0.90-$2.50. Sweet!
This is the "offshore drilling" stuff so popular with Bush and McCain and all their toadies these days. The one that would take 10 years before any oil would start flowing and then wouldn't actually have any impact on prices anyway. Well, maybe after 2030. But probably not.
This isn't working so well for Mr. Bech. All his savings are disappearing!
So, what's left?
blah blah blah "gas tax holiday" for 18 cents.
Man, do I even need to mention this one? Like the way every economist in the country has said it won't work? No, I didn't think so. Moving on.
His last sizable cut is also an old favorite of the Republicans who he's oh-so-different from.
Bring new refineries online for $0.15-$0.45.
Sure, that sounds swell. But nobody wants to build them because their profit-margins are razor-thin. The first new one since 1976 has been in the works for a decade or so, and construction has yet to even begin. They do claim to be expecting full operation by 2012, but I got that off a FAQ that's 4 years old.
Damn. Another one down.
I won't bother addressing the supposed 5 cent decrease from halting shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, since both Olver and Bech support it.
I'd like to know where Bech gets his figures (aside from the 18 cent gas holiday one, I already know that). They're either ridiculously optimistic or totally made up. Decide for yourself. Either way, his little gas price chart is nothing more than a big fat lie. Way to represent for the Replubicans, Bech!
A few months back, Tom Donnelly wrote a thing for the Fitchburg Voice blog.
In it, he had this bit:
Fitchburg is a great city that I enjoy living in. I choose to campaign in a positive manner, discussing the issues that Fitchburg faces, and focusing on the good things about Fitchburg. I have not and will not will use tactics of division and negativity.
Okay, wait a second. Before you start thinking I got a response to my email to Ted DeSalvatore asking what his job is, I didn't.
But there's an article on him in the Telegram, and the reporter sort of almost kinda did!
To quote:
He has owned a home remodeling business, video transfer operation and computer technician service. Currently, he’s taking a break from teaching computer repair at the Peterson School in Woburn to focus on running for mayor.
See, he's not unemployed, he's just "taking a break... to focus on running for mayor." It makes perfect sense!
Oh wait...
The Peterson School hasn't offered computer repair courses since December of 2005. But as I noted at the time, Ted formed his "exploratory committee" to look into running for mayor in February of 2007.
For those of you bad at math, that's roughly fourteen months after he would have last been teaching at the Peterson School.
Doubt me? Well, let's just look at archive.org and see the old course schedules!
First, though, have a gander at the current course schedule (Google cached because the site is unresponsive at the moment). See any computer courses at all? Nope, me neither.
To the wayback machine!
Here's how the schedule looked on April 6, 2005. It does have a "Computer Service and Support Technician Including A+ Certification Prep" course listed. It even links to this page which in turn links to this PDF, which is the source of that horrifying mustache photo I've used in the past. So there's Ted, back in 2005.
Funny thing though...
If we go forward to May 13, 2006 we find a couple computer courses listed, but this time we find "No class offered at this location" for them. See? Incidentally, that top link points back to the same old mustachioed page from 2005. It wasn't updated for 2006.
By April of 2007 the course is totally delisted, and obviously remains that way. So yeah, he hasn't been teaching since 2005.
That's a hell of a long time to "focus on running for mayor"! Fourteen months by my count prior to even forming an exploratory committee.
Also, if you'll recall, Ted's website still says:
Teacher of computer related courses: For the last eight years, Ted has taught computer service & networking courses in area colleges and private schools.
That very clearly suggests he's currently employed in that field. Or at least that he was employed in it very recently. A year and a half of unemployment makes you a "former teacher", not a "teacher". For that matter, was he even in this area for the last eight years?
No, he wasn't.
I don't even care that much that the guy's unemployed (if he can honestly live off his wife's income then good for him). His dilettante-ish employment history looks pretty bad though. And generally speaking, I'd rather have someone in office who's demonstrated a work ethic and stuff like that.
But when you get down to it, my real problem is that he's a huge fucking liar.
P.S. The rest of what Ted says in the Telegram article is also highly mock-worthy. But this is my second post this morning and if I don't get some work done I'm going to end up unemployed just like Ted. Someone out there please pick up my slack.
Unsurprisingly, another pro-torture editorial appears in the S&E. It's by syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock this time, and it's somehow even worse than McMenemy's evil nonsense from a few days ago.
