My special hate for 9/11 conspiracy theorists

I hate people who cannot see logic.

I'm not talking about those who have actual mental deficiencies. I understand that a child with a mental limitation or someone who has a severe and limiting disease is not capable of the thought process that we know as logic.

However, there are adult creatures known as 9/11 conspiracy theorists who actively ignore logical thought in order to come to the conclusion that a plane didn't actually fly into a building on 9/11. Or, alternately, that a burning building cannot collapse due to structural damage.

This idiot, the one who uploaded this video, is one of those tools:


Now naturally, upon seeing this video, I tried to explain to the idiot in question that elevators can fail if there is a plane that flies into a building. Because while all modern elevators have safety features, they all have limitations. They were not meant to keep an elevator from falling after the cables are cut and when tons of burning liquid kerosene are poured on top of them.

This idea was not acceptable to the idiot who posted this. He/she/it responded with:

Approximately eight 100-millionths of one percent of elevator rides resulted in an anomaly ..... that about sums it up. So right there your odds are 1 in 80,000,000,000. Now multiply those odds with all the other anomolies, like three steel buildings collapsing from fire in one event on the same, when a steel building has never collapsed from greater fires. NORAD off duty .... etc. The official story, with your fireball down shafts, is at least a billion trillion to 1, if even that

I wanted to reply to IranContraScumDid911. But not too ironically, they blocked me from posting anything else as a response. Which makes sense, because they also wrote this:

Four plane crashes disappeared in one event? What are the odds not one tail or wing would never be recovered? The black boxes disappeared?

I'm going to work backwards.
The only way that the conspiracy theorist could believe that four planes did NOT disappear in one event is if they honestly thought that the bulk of New York who SAW the planes fly into the two twin towers were all lying. They furthermore would have to believe that the people in the Pentagon, who lost friends, were also lying. Finally, they'd have to believe that the people who were working in ATC, who literally dedicate their lives to the idea of planes not running into things, were complicit in this lie. Its kinda like believing that a hospital full of doctors were all involved in killing 400 patients on the same day. But I digress.
The point is that when the writer says:

"What are the odds not one tail or wing would never be recovered?"

...They are actively denying that the four planes were witnessed hitting said items. They are denying that the video of the first plane hitting the first tower (taken by firefighters, no less) is real. They are denying that the second plane hitting the second tower (taken by scores of different news outlets) is real.
The odds of you recovering a wing of a plane that hits a building while traveling at 600mph is approximately 0.0000001%. That's a guess on my part.


100% of cases where a commercial airplane has slammed into a building has resulted in elevator failures. The fact that you cannot grasp this (or that you believe that because the odds of non-airplane-related-elevator-crashes are so great) boggles my mind.
Here's a parallel thought for you to ponder. Your chances of sitting in your office on an average day and having a plane plow into your building and immolate you in a gigantic ball of flame are 5,000,000,000,000,000 to 1.

The mere fact that someone can't believe that an elevator would fail in a building that was slammed into by an airplane hurts my brain. Its someone who believes in a perfect world.... where nothing fails, even under the most extreme circumstances.
Again, if it were an actual kid, I'd have no problem. Kids have trouble grasping simple concepts. Adults shouldn't.
Planes that smash into buildings are annihilated.
Buildings that are hit by commercial aircraft suffer severe damage.

Elevators that have a plane fly through their shaft can fail.

Guess how many waivers for the new health care law have been issued?

The Obama administration approved 204 new waivers to Democrats' healthcare reform law over the past month, bringing the total to 1,372.

Neat.
Now the Hill article makes it clear that they are only temporary, and that its just for one part of the health care law. However, how shitty can a law be, when you have to issue 1,372 temporary waivers for companies affected by it?
For that matter, how fair can it be?

Daley's post mayor payday

Great article by NBC.
It turns out that Mayor Daley can keep 1 million worth of campaign contributions that he never spent. So the next time you pay for parking, allow yourself to wonder out loud about that parking meter scandal... and how Daley sold the rights to parking in the city to LAZ.

Paul Krugman predicted 7.3 unemployment with the stimulus

The other day, I found myself in another stupid Facebook debate with someone didn't know their facts.

I should be used to this by now. But it never fails to get to me when someone who leans to the left insists that I'm uninformed while saying something that's provably not true.

This all started when a friend posted a link to a Paul Krugman article.
I called Paul an idiot (my bad) and then stated why he was an idiot: That all of the spending he championed failed to bring down the unemployment rate.

Now I'd reprint the debate verbatim if I could. But as it happens far too often, a friend of my friend kept using insults until the original friend blocked us both from her Facebook account.
So by trying to correct the record with facts, suddenly, I'm the asshole. Even though I wasn't the one calling her other friend names.

I know. I know... I'm losing the point of why I wrote this.
Paul Krugman was for spending shitloads of money through the government. We all agree on this. He believed that it would result in a lower unemployment rate.
It is also true that Krugman was upset that only $787 BILLION dollars was being spent on the stimulus program. Krugman believed this to be small. Which makes sense.
I mean, if you're going to be a Keynesian economist, why wouldn't you believe in spending more money? Ideally, by spending 50 Trillion Dollars, we'd go into a huge economic boom that would never be matched! Right?

My friend's friend insisted that Krugman was right. That the stimulus was too small... which is why it had no effect. He said that Krugman readers would know that Paul predicted that the stimulus bill would fail to reduce the unemployment rate.
But Paul didn't say that.
In fact, Krugman said:

Unemployment is currently about 7 percent, and heading much higher; Obama himself says that absent stimulus it could go into double digits. Suppose that we’re looking at an economy that, absent stimulus, would have an average unemployment rate of 9 percent over the next two years; this plan would cut that to 7.3 percent, which would be a help but could easily be spun by critics as a failure.

Wow. A 7.3% unemployment rate would be spun into a 'failure' of Obama's $787 economic plan. Presuming, of course, that the president didn't have a fawning media that would change his every failure into rainbows and unicorns.

In case you didn't know this (or were arguing with me on Facebook), the nonfarm unemployment rate for April of 2011 was 9.0%.
I created this handy chart to show you what's the stimulus plan results have looked like, vs. the predicted results. Note that the uptick in unemployment in April has not been added.

Calling Osama Obama

A lot was made when a Fox affiliate accidentally put Obama's name in the screen crawl when Osama was killed.
Keep in mind, it was an affiliate.
But more importantly, they were not the only one to do so in the news.

Crack MSNBC reporter Norah O'Donnel tweeted:
"Obama shot and killed"

Of course, the left didn't go apeshit over that comment.

A Politifact you may have missed

When someone says a phrase like, "Every scientist agrees" or "All economists will tell you", it grates on my nerves.
Because economists don't agree. If they did, there would be one economic theory and we'd all follow it.
Scientists have a similar problem. The job of a scientist is to challenge conventional wisdom and question knowledge as we understand it.

Naturally, when I heard Obama say:

Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don't act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment and the American dream slipping further and further out of reach...

...I laughed.
It presumed a world full of Keynesian economists, economists who believe in government intervention.
Luckily, Politifact debunks this notion:

"...But we do know that Obama is wrong when he says there is "no disagreement that we need action by our government." Clearly, there is disagreement. We rate his statement False."

The DrudgeReport post that started it all

The Drudge Manifesto is not a great book. However, it has one moment in it that was well worth reading. Its the story of how Drudge found himself sitting on the political story of the decade, and how he realized that it truly was a big deal.

In the Drudge Manifesto, Matt describes the moment before he pressed the return key. He had double checked his facts, and apparently, his gut told him that the reaction that he was getting from everyone confirmed that it was real. Still... he knew that the moment he touched the return key, he was making a huge accusation.

Here's how it read on the day it happened:

Web Posted: 01/17/98 23:32:47 PST -- NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN

BLOCKBUSTER REPORT: 23-YEAR OLD, FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT

**World Exclusive**
**Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**

At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!

I used to write for a college newspaper. We never had anything that big to write about. Yet, every time, before you sent a story off, you'd reread it to make sure you weren't saying anything you'd regret later. Not just because of lawsuits. (Libel is a huge issue in the newsroom) You didn't want to write anything that you would have to retract later.

So when I read that part in the Drudge Manifesto, it gave me chills. Imagine having the biggest story of the year. The political story of the decade. You don't have an editor to look over your shoulder. Its just you, and your keyboard. And your accusation is against the most powerful man in the world.

I love a lot of things about my country, but the freedom of speech is probably what I value the greatest. There is something very comforting to me that Drudge was able to break this story with minimum repercussion (barring the democrats, themselves, who first called it an outrageous lie, and then openly defended the president having an affair with a 22 year old).

As I sit here behind my own keyboard, I'm reminded of both the privilege that I have, and the responsibility that comes with it.
With that in mind, from here on, I promise to renew my commitment to make sure that what I post is not only relevant, interesting, and topical... but that I can say without hesitation that I believe it to be 100% true.

For the debt limit, before he was against it

ABC news caught up to Obama, and asked him about one of his biggest flip flops since Gitmo.
When asked if it was a mistake to vote against the debt limit as a senator, the president said:

I think that it’s important to understand the vantage point of a Senator versus the vantage point of a…President. When you’re a Senator, traditionally what’s happened is this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit for the United States by a trillion dollars… As President, you start realizing, "You know what? We-- we can’t play around with this stuff. This is the full faith in credit of the United States." And so that was just a example of a new Senator, you know, making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I’m the first one to acknowledge it.

That's a very long winded way of saying that as a senator, he was trying to take political advantage of a situation. But now that he's a president, he has to be an adult.

I'm glad that the president is acknowledging his mistakes. (Even if he is doing that whole "I'm better then most people" thing, while doing it)
What appalls me is that at no point does he recognize how completely craven it was for him to "play politics" with trillions of debt.

"But is he constitutionally qualified to become president?"

I just wanted to remind everyone who first bought up the controversy about a presidential candidates citizenship:

"I would like to see Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as a presidential candidate, but I heard that he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. The Constitution requires that a president be a "natural born" citizen of the United States. Is Sen. McCain barred from the presidency? – Steven R. Pruett, Falls Church, Va."

That was in 1998.
The writer wrote to a political beat reporter for the Washington Post named Ken Rubin. Ken answered, in part:

"McCain has an adoring media on his side, and a reputation as someone who will make the difficult choices. What he shouldn't have is any question about his eligibility to be president."

An adoring media on his side. Huh. That sounds familiar.
Anyway, the point is, Barack isn't the first person who's birth has been questioned, as the report points out. (There's more there... I won't belabor it. Read the article.)
The biggest difference is that this adoring media finds race to be the motivator, but when McCain's detractors were questioning his citizenship, everyone understood it to be about:
1) politics
and
2) whether or not he was a citizen

Just thought I'd point that out.

Max Keiser is trying to get you to be violent

When you start suggesting that you should "hang bankers", you're just a tiny bit away from being a complete idiot.



It feels like it was just yesterday that the left was complaining about the violent rhetoric of the right.
I love how the bankers point out how inconsistent Max's arguments are.

Beck, Obama, and the Anti-Christ

I've been watching a steady stream of misinformation and straight out lies about Glenn Beck lately.
No matter what you think of the man, its not cool to lie about him.

So let's start with the lie. Which, naturally, starts with Media Matters:

Beck failed to ask Hagee about controversial statements, instead asked him if Obama might be the Antichrist

Reading that, one might conclude that Glenn Beck actually thought that it was a valid question to ask Hagee if Obama was the anti-Christ. Right?
That can't POSSIBLY be taken out of context.

I mean, Huffpo carried it too!
And those sounds formed a question that sounded out across the airwaves unto disbelieving ears. That question: "Is Barack Obama the anti-Christ."

We are not making this up. Glenn Beck, serious newsman, needed to find out if Barack Obama was the Devourer of Worlds, Son of Harlots, Bearer of the Mark of the Beast. John Hagee had to be thrilled by the question: somehow, Beck managed to make Hagee look reasonable.

You'll note that on that link, it says 'video not found'.

Huh. I wonder why.

Beck has a video.

You should watch it. It pretty much proves that both Media Matters and Huffpo can. Not. Be Trusted.

More debt from 2009-2011 then from 2001-2007

This is from my latest research.


US DEBT:
Jan/2001 $5.7 Trillion
Jan/2007 $8.6 Trillion

In the 6 years of Republican control, the debt was raised by 2.9 Trillion.

Jan/2009 $10.6
Jan/2011 $14.0

From 2007 to 2009, the debt rose by $2 Trillion.
2 Trillion.
In 2 years of Democrat control of congress.

Now that was NOTHING compared to the drunken spending that would ensue after a Democrat took the presidency.

By this year, this January, our debt is 14 Trillion.

In two years, the president and congress have raised the debt by 3.4 Trillion.

Now I'm watching Democrats calling Republicans hypocrites.

Democrats and Obama have raised the debt by more in two years then the Republicans and Bush did in 6 years... and democrats have the balls to call the REPUBLICANS IRRESPONSIBLE?

2010 Afghanistan Troop casualties great than 2001-2006

From ICasualties:

2001 12
2002 49
2003 48
2004 52
2005 99
2006 98
2007 117
2008 155

Combining the two terms that Bush was in office, the total number of military fatalities in Afghanistan was 630.
From 2001 to 2006, the total was 358.

If you included 2007, that number would be 475. Or 7 more deaths then there currently are in 2010.

Let's put this in perspective:
2009 317
2010 468

During the 7 years of the Bush presidency, 630 of our brave soldiers died in Afghanistan.
During the past two years of the Obama presidency, 785 soldiers died in Afghanistan.

Now don't get me wrong. I want our soldiers fighting these battles. However, why is it that Barack, who complained about the deaths of American soldiers, is being given such a clear free pass on this?

Let me put it another way: What would be the response if a McCain/Palin team lost more soldiers in the first two years of their presidency then Bush did in the previous 7?

More history on the term Teabaggers

Earlier, I wrote a brief history on the liberal's use of the word "Teabagger". Since the left has remained obsessed with it, I thought I'd update it.

This is, in part, what Salon wrote:

Truth be told, though, for the most part conservatives haven't actually been using the words in such a way as to lend themselves to double entendre. With one or two exceptions, almost all of it has actually been coming from the left, which seems to have adopted the joke en masse during an earlier round of these protests back in February. After many hours of investigative journalism -- the kind that makes you wish you'd just gone to law school instead -- I think I've traced the meme's birth back to February 27th, when blogs like Instaputz and Wonkette started using it independently of one another. They were inspired by a photo that the Washington Independent's David Weigel shot of one protester carrying a sign that was, if you knew that second meaning, pretty funny: "Tea bag the liberal Dems before they tea bag you !!" (sic).

Since then, the left has used it so often, that Oxford added it to their dictionary.
Here's how various lefty websites covered this event. The Huffington Post:

Keith Olbermann took credit for popularizing the word on MSNBC Tuesday night. But the word "teabagger" actually started to spread after the Washington Independent's David Weigel photographed a protester at the first D.C. Tea Party Protest in February holding the sign, "Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You!!"

It actually wasn't Keith, but Rachel. Although you have to give Keith credit for copping to it.
What Mediaite wrote:

Their definition doesn’t touch upon any of the raunchier, more testicular connotations of the word, which Keith Olbermann and Anderson Cooper had a lot of fun with in April. Cooper can take a lot of credit for the popularization of the phrase: in response to David Gergen’s questions about the Republican Party’s abilities to organize and articulate a message, Cooper infamously quipped, “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.”‘

And, just to make sure you can read the original Oxford posting, click on it for the details.

If you give a democrat a cookie

If You Give a Democrat a Cookie from RightChange on Vimeo.

From our friends at Right Change.

Clarence Page: O'Donnel was right

I don't want to step on Clarence's toes here:

It turns out, if you want to get technical in a way that makes late-night college dormitory arguments go on forever, O'Donnell was correct. In fact, it is a well-worn talking point on the religious right, in particular, that the phrase "separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution.

Read the whole thing.

MoveOn, SteppedOn

By now, everyone has seen this video of MoveOn member Lauren Valle being taken down by Rand Paul supporters.



What you probably haven't seen is the event leading up to it:


So Lauren shoved her sign into the window of a moving car, and in response, Rand Paul supporters were keeping tabs on her.
That's why in the first video you can literally hear Rand Paul supporters calling for the police as they take down Lauren.

There are a few issues that I want to address with this. The first one being the assertion that Lauren's head was stomped on. That's just not true.
I have still frames from the video to prove it.

In the middle image, I copied the shape and size of her head from the 3rd frame, and overlapped it with center image. That's why it appears white.
So point #1 was that she had rushed his car earlier, trying to put a sign through it.
Point #2 is that she wasn't 'stomped' on the head. As this series of images show, he was stepping on her shoulder when she rotated her shoulder forward. His foot stays on her shoulder, but doesn't hit her head.

Reports from news outlets say that she received a concussion from this. I'm not sure how. But I digress.

My final point is about how members of the left have said that this is 'typical' of Tea Party behavior, and how the Tea Party is made of thugs.
Which pisses me off, considering the make up of these videos.

This one is from the Town Hall meetings on health care. You remember those? The ones where democrats felt that if you disagreed, you should be ejected from the 'open' meetings, and slapped around.
As in this case:




Then there was the guy who cold cocked a Tea Party protestor...


But by far, my worst example of violence against the Tea Party movement is this one. Please watch.


Kenneth Gladney was supposed to get his day in court with his attackers on October 27th. I can't find any news of it, anywhere... but I'll keep looking.

In the meantime, Lauren is being supported by everyone from Media Matters to Think Progress as a useless victim who just happened to be wandering through a crowd of thugs when she was attacked.
I beg of you, for the sake of context, to share the video of Lauren pushing her sign through the window of that moving car.
She's an idiot. Not a victim.

Tea Party members with Nazi signs

Okay. Its not actually Tea Party members.
Its democratic operatives making fun of Palin and Beck

Via the Gateway Pundit...

MTV shopping for drones. I mean, audience for an Obama Town Hall

Via Politico:

MTV, BET and CMT are casting the audience for town hall meeting with President Obama. Shooting Oct. 14, 4 p.m. in Washington, D.C.

Seeking—Audience Members: males & females, 18+.

To apply, email townhallaudience@mtvnmix.com and put “Town Hall” in the subject line. To ensure that the audience represents diverse interests and political views, include your name, phone number, hometown, school attending, your job and what issues, if any, you are interested in or passionate about. Also, provide a recent photo and short description of your political views. Submission deadline: Oct. 14. No pay.

According to Politico's report:

"We’re just trying to get the broadest, most diverse audience possible," she said, denying that either Republicans or ugly people would be screened out.

Whew. If they screened out both Republicans and the ugly people, there wouldn't be any one left.

Christopher Coates testimony on the Black Panther case

This really is riveting.
I'm not kidding.
Please watch this.


Please watch it. Christopher Coates was under pressure from the DOJ not to testify. He did anyway, as someone who worked for the Voter Rights division.
Coates testimony is that there were people inside of the DOJ who felt that Voter Intimidation cases should not be pursued if the victim is white. Furthermore, when the Obama administration took over the DOJ, they promoted those people into positions of power. Coates was then told that he should only pursue 'traditional' Voter Rights intimidation cases, which he understood as being where a non-white person was the victim.