Dum Pendebat Filius

The long-awaited vacation is finally here, readers: the first leg of the journey starts tonight, with a flight to the Horn of Africa. I’ll be back, with pictures from Ethiopia and Egypt, during the first week of June.

I might as well make it official: this blog’s going on hiatus for a few weeks, readers. I plan on returning sometime during the first week of June. Stay tuned…

Who believes in personal responsibility, readers? Wingnuts do, that’s who.

Presidential candidate Sen. John Sidney McCain III (R - AZ) thinks Americans need to take personal responsibility for their chronic illnesses:

John McCain Believes in Personal Responsibility

* We must do more to take care of ourselves to prevent chronic diseases when possible, and do more to adhere to treatment after we are diagnosed with an illness.

Suck it up, sickies. It’s your own damn fault. That’s the American way.

And Mark Noonan at Blogs for Victory takes a stand against the evil “stars and media corporations” who enslaved his loved ones:

How many of us have friends and family members who went whole hog into sex and drugs because it was “cool” - and made “cool” because various pop culture heros [sic] did it (or, at least, seemed to do it) and it never appeared to cause them any problems, and is presented to the public as a heck of a lot of fun? Counting quicky [sic] among my friends and family over the past 30 years, I come up with seven who destroyed their lives at the urging of popular culture, and one of them is actually dead. True, we all have to be held responsible for our own choices in life - and these friends and family members are paying their price… in poverty, addiction and, in one case, in a coffin. And as we all have to be held responsible for our choices, shouldn’t stars and media corporations pay their price for their choices? No one was ever clamouring [sic] for gansta-rap [sic] - the music business put it out, and slickly marketed it for maximum impact on young people. They created the market for it, and then raked in the huge profits… isn’t it high time they paid a bit back? Made good some of the damage they’ve done?

Do you follow that, readers? Mark Noonan claims that “the urging of popular culture” caused seven of his “friends and family [members]” to “destroy[] their lives” with “sex and drugs.” He then claims that “stars and media corporations” should “pay the price” for it. His “friends and family” are apparently helpless robots, who have no choice but to obey “the urging of popular culture,” but the dictates of “personal responsibility” call for some unspecified price to be paid by the evil “stars and media corporations” who “put.. out” and “slickly marketed” something he calls “gansta-rap,” ostensibly as part of their evil plan to trick good Americans into going “whole hog into sex and drugs.”

That’s what Personal Responsibility is all about, readers.

(McCain link via Sadly, No!)

In the previous post, I linked to a TMZ.com item that said Barack Obama might be sneaking the occasional cigarette. Now I have seen Jake Tapper’s blog post (one of the sources for the TMZ post I linked to), and it just drips with holier-than-thou hokum. It’s not the smoking, readers — it’s the lies.

It’s not a big deal in the scheme of things — the war on Iraq, a major economic crisis — indeed, it’s miniscule. Hardly worth mentioning.

Except that I don’t like feeling that I wasn’t being dealt with honestly. And as much as citizens who are suspect [sic] of the media might scoff at such a notion, many of us consider ourselves to be your representatives to help make sure our leaders are telling us the truth, and leading the country down a path we’re confident is the right one. (Corny, I know.)

Yes, readers, Jake Tapper thinks it’s a problem if Obama’s maybe not telling the truth about firing up a couple of Marlboro Lights every now and then, because Jake and his friends in the news media are very concerned about making sure that politicians are all being honest with the American people. If I were making this up, you wouldn’t believe it.

TMZ.com reports that Barack Obama might still be smoking cigarettes on the Q.T.

Forget about gender and skin color — is today’s America ready for a President who smokes? As we all know, it’s considered diabolically wicked to indulge in cigs these days. Anti-tobacco fanaticism has become so mainstream, and so fanatical, that smokers are thought of as, quite simply, bad people.

As a former cigarette smoker, I have to say I think it would be pretty surprising if Barack Obama was actually able to go through the pressure and stress of a political campaign without “falling off the wagon” and picking up a cigarette at least once in a while. I’ve been off the cigs for eighteen months now, and it’s still pretty much day-to-day — I still want to smoke almost all the fucking time. If I had known how hard it would be to quit, and that it would be hard for such a long time, I doubt I’d even have tried quitting. If the anti-tobacco fanatics had any idea how hard it is to stop smoking, I suspect many of them would tone it down a bit.

(Well, actually, no. No, they wouldn’t. Anti-tobacco fanatics are assholes, and if they didn’t have tobacco smoking to be assholes about, they’d find something else to be assholes about; but that’s neither here nor there.)

Anyway, readers, if Barack Obama is indeed still smoking, he had better keep it to himself. A cigarette smoker cannot be elected President in today’s America.

Shorter David Horowitz:

I’ve just co-authored a wingnutty screed that accuses liberals and Democrats of “sabotaging” the glorious War For The Liberation of Iraq From The Fell Clutches of Saddam, Iranian Mullahs, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, And/Or Satan.

If you’re one of the fifteen or so Americans who still somehow take me seriously, please do me a solid and help me beg Barnes & Noble and Borders to stock a couple copies of my foolish “book,” because the big chain bookstores have long since gotten wise to my particular brand of right-wing hucksterism and will ignore me otherwise.

UPDATE 2008/04/02

Some cheese to go with that whine –

Please call your local Barnes&Noble [sic] and ask them to speed things up. Be nice to whomever you talk to, because it’s likely that the non-chain book stores won’t even carry this book as they are mainly run by intolerant liberals and leftists who will not appreciate it [sic] All conservative.authors [sic] have to be grateful for [sic] the big chains for following the capitalist path — the path of liberty and tolerance for all.

Frightening:

(via Matthew Yglesias)

Blue and Gray, engaged in low-grade civil war

Whenever something bad happens in NYC (or anywhere else on the planet), Crazy Pammy leaps immediately to the conclusion that it’s an Islamofascist Terrorist Attack, except for the times when she decides it’s an act of civil war perpetrated by America-Hating Left-Wingers:

Who is the enemy here? There are two Americas - the America haters and the America lovers and in short order we’ll have low grade civil war.

Once again, egotist Ralph Nader has decided to run for President as a third-party spoiler. Apparently, it’s of crucial importance that Ralph Nader get some attention this year, and that he siphon off some votes that would otherwise go to the Dem nominee. Sure, the stakes might be high in 2008, but they’re not high enough for Ralph Nader.

During Campaign 2000, Ralph Nader insisted there was no difference between the two major political parties. Bush or Gore, he said, would be just the same. It didn’t matter which of the two became President. Some left-wingers were foolish enough to be seduced by his Green, populist, anti-Big-Business rhetoric.

What did we get with President Bush, readers?

A President who was in way over his head when things went wrong

Almost five years of war in Iraq

An America that detains people and tortures them, proudly and openly, in the name of “freedom”

Georgie played guitar…

So, Ralph Nader, how do you like your America seven years later, asshole?

Want to see how much more damage the GOP can do?

Go ahead and try to siphon off as many Dem votes as you can, and maybe we’ll get to find out!

What a difference a couple of weeks can make, readers.

The same person who eagerly rushed to reprint a sick story claiming that John McCain cut a deal with his Commie captors in Viet Nam so that he could relax in a Hanoi apartment and have sex with two hookers is now just furious that the New York Times is printing an article that talks about McCain’s close relationship with a female lobbyist.

Crazy Pammy, quoting Jack “Young Indy” Wheeler, 3 February 2008:

Dr. Wheeler has been kind enough to release his explosive article on John McCain, How The Clintons Will Destroy John McCain… Now you can read the whole thing; [sic]

[Wheeler:] According to T, [documents] reveal that McCain had made an “accommodation” with his captors, and in exchange, T’s father saw that he was provided with an apartment in Hanoi and the services of two prostitutes. Upon returning to his prison cell, he would say he had been held in solitary confinement. That may be why so many of his fellow prisoners said later they saw so little of him at Hoa Loa.

Crazy Pammy, reacting to the NYT article mentioning McCain’s “close relationship” with a lobbyist, 20 February 2008:

So what? Are we supposed to get our bowels in an uproar over a suggested rumor with a colleague? The leftards can’t have it both ways. We had to live through an eight year Clinton presidency with a horndog that fucked anything that moved — that is if he deigned to insert the one eyed snake. Rape, harassment, threats, cigars, all in a day’s work……………. yech.

Just seventeen days ago, McCain was such a villain that Crazy Pammy was more than happy to help Jack “Young Indy” Wheeler spread the nastiest rumors imaginable about him.

Less than three weeks later, the very idea of her “get[ting] [her] bowels in an uproar” over the appearance of impropriety between McCain and a lobbyist makes her sneer (and reflexively curse about Teh Clenis while she’s at it).

Question: What if the article in question had appeared at WorldNetDaily or at Young Indy Wheeler’s own website?

When Young Indy printed his looney-tunes conspiracy theories that accused McCain of cutting deals with the Commies and having sex with Vietnamese Commie hookers, it was a troubling story and a very big deal.

Today, when the NYT says McCain had a close relationship with a lobbyist, she’s all “So what? The NYT still hates America, and Teh Clenis still exists!”

It’s just as I predicted, readers — despite all their grumbling about how McCain’s a “RINO” and a “liberal,” the wingnuts will line up to vote for McCain in November. They were upset for a while, but they’re ready to join the McCain camp now.