Titus Pullo of Legio XIII Gemina stomps everyone’s ass until Patrick Stewart comes in to fuck him up. Then Lucius Vorenus, Titus’ centurio, has a rare pang of pity and destroys Patrick Stewart with his own ugly fantasy mace.

Science Officer Ash of the Nostromo, now exposed as a robot, waxes poetic about the alien.

A compelling argument for cloning, set to music.

I don’t have words to describe this video and it’s short, so just watch it.

By far the funniest parody of Der Untergang I have seen. “My entire army is retarded! I mean literally retarded! You promised me we put away all the retards back when we got the gays and the communists. So a few slip through. Fine. But a WHOLE ARMY OF THEM?”

I like all the God’s eye views in this video. Peter Jackson would be proud. The Red Army looks about ready to invade Mordor.

Ragnarok is a UK-based neofolk / folk metal band. Many of their songs are in Old English. No shit!

We all know that the Times has a remarkable penchant for cramming a whole lot of stupid into their op-ed page, but Egan’s screed is really something else. Maureen Dowd, Gail Collins, and Tom Friedman could pool their efforts and still have trouble coming up to this level of aggressive foolishness. Egan’s topic? How dare Joe the Plumber strike a blow against Literature by writing a book? Oh, the humanity!

Egan first apostrophizes Joe, pleading with Joe to put down his pen, as crocodile tears the size of horseturds run down his face as he reflects on the plight of belles-lettrists across the globe whose literary efforts go unrewarded. Then he gets nasty. Then he gets stupid. Just look at this:

[Joe,] I don’t want you writing books. Not when too many good novelists remain unpublished. Not when too many extraordinary histories remain unread. Not when too many riveting memoirs are kicked back at authors after 10 years of toil. Not when voices in Iran, North Korea or China struggle to get past a censor’s gate.

Joe, a k a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, was no good as a citizen, having failed to pay his full share of taxes, no good as a plumber, not being fully credentialed, and not even any good as a faux American icon. Who could forget poor John McCain at his most befuddled, calling out for his working-class surrogate on a day when Joe stiffed him.

With a résumé full of failure, he now thinks he can join the profession of Mark Twain, George Orwell and Joan Didion.

Good lord, readers. This combination of self-congratulatory high-mindedness and nasty ad hominem attacks is truly remarkable.

Now, let’s get one thing straight here, before we go any further — I am no fan of Joe the Plumber. I think he’s a tool, and a deeply dishonest man to boot. But this column is so bad, so wrong-headed, so fucking stupid, that it actually puts me in the position of wanting to defend him.

Joe the Plumber was offered a lot of money to “write” a “book” (i.e. put his name and face on the cover of a ghostwritten piece of political hackwork, just in time for Christmas). Joe’s not the sharpest tool in the proverbial shed, but he’s not an idiot, and of course he took the money. Would I write a book if I were offered a similar deal? Damn straight.

What’s the big deal here? Joe the Plumber was offered a book deal, so he wrote a book. Does that mean Joe thinks he’s a professional author now? Will the Collected Works of Joe Wurzelbacher one day grace the elegant bookshelves of scholars? Did Joe the Plumber ever compare himself to Twain, Orwell, and/or Didion? Of course not. Egan did it for him, so that he could get angry about it, and scoff, rant, and rave about it. (Putting words in someone else’s mouth so that you can refute them is what’s known as building a strawman argument, by the way.) This might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen in a major newspaper.

So aggrieved is Egan that he turns to the late Chris Farley for inspiration:

When I heard J.T.P. had a book, I thought of that Chris Farley skit from “Saturday Night Live.” He’s a motivational counselor, trying to keep some slacker youths from living in a van down by the river, just like him. One kid tells him he wants to write.

“La-di-frickin’-da!” Farley says. “We got ourselves a writer here!”

La-di-frickin-da indeed, readers. Egan doesn’t give a goddamn what Joe the Plumber may actually have written, and we certainly won’t be treated to a book review by Egan once the book has appeared in stores; he’s just beside himself with rage that Joe got to publish a book at all. He seems to think that the only reason people write books is because they want to contribute to the canon of Highbrow Literature, and that Joe has sinned against Art and Letters by having had the effrontery to write something. Egan is just so very high-minded, so serious, such a lover of literature, that Joe’s book deal just breaks his heart. Give me a fucking break.

If Joe the Plumber had published an experimental novel, or a collection of short stories, Egan might have a point. But, for God’s sake, Joe the Plumber has no literary ambitions. Hell, he didn’t even really write the goddamn thing: it was ghostwritten by one Thomas N. Tabback.

Scroll all the way down to the end of Egan’s screed and you’ll see this note, from the NYT editors, which pretty much sums it all up:

Maureen Dowd is off today.

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.

Having said that, I will confess that the prospect of a Clinton-McCain contest makes me distinctly uneasy. Why? It’s simple. The political press corps has been completely in love with Saint John Straight-Talk McCain since the halcyon days they spent on McCain’s bus during Campaign 2000. To this day, mainstream journalists mouth McCain’s campaign slogans for him. They love the man.

At the same time, the political press corps simply loathes Hillary Clinton. Candidate Clinton is going to have to deal with attacks on two fronts — the anti-Clinton right wing will go into overdrive with smears and swift-boatings, to be sure, but they’ll be aided and abetted by a Clinton-hating mainstream news media.

For this reason, I think a Clinton-McCain matchup might be the best possible scenario for the GOP come November. One can already see the narrative: the Straight-Talking Maverick versus the Shrill Focus-Group-Driven Power-Hungry Shrew. Republicans will not have to lift a finger to make this happen: the press corps will write this story all by themselves, for reasons of their own. Will liberals and Democrats fight back this time?

I’d say I don’t much care for those odds. If I were a Republican or a wingnut, I’d be crossing my fingers for Hillary Clinton, readers.

Today, Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler has named Steve Adubato “Pundit of the Year” for his foolishness. Read the whole thing:

It was [Rush] Limbaugh who jump-started the rumor, long ago, that Hillary Clinton helped kill Vince Foster — and broken-souled losers have clung to such fantasies down through all the years. In August 1999, for example, a certain red-faced cable ranter [Chris Matthews] had Gennifer Flowers on his show, for a long and bizarre half-hour; she spent her half-hour telling the world about all the people both Clintons had murdered. The ranter said he had no idea that Flowers was going to mutter such things, and who knows — it’s possible he might have been telling the truth, clueless as he so typically is. But when we liberals keep agreeing to disappear this part of our history, we agree to look away from the insides of Big Pundit World’s tortured head. Let’s throw away that “polarizing” euphemism: Why do so many people hate Hillary Clinton? Adubato reminded us this week — and he mentioned “Whitewater” too!

What could Adubato possibly have meant by that statement about Foster? We have no earthly idea. Earlier this year, some of the inmates began to toy with the Foster story again, amusing themselves by meowing that Clinton hadn’t been kind enough to her friend in the last tragic months of his life. But surely, even a man like Adubato knows what sorts of ugly musing he triggers with such a cruel, ugly comment.

If you’ve forgotten the ugly 1999 incident in which Chris Matthews brought Gennifer Flowers onto his cable show and permitted her to accuse the President (and First Lady) of the United States of multiple murders, an Internet wingnut anti-Clinton site has helpfully provided some of the “money quotes” –

FLOWERS: Well, in the first place I hope that [Hillary Clinton] does not succeed at becoming a United States Senator from New York. I think that would be a travesty. We’ve had enough of these people; these criminals, these liars, these murderers. We need to get them out of political office, please.

MATTHEWS: Murderers?

FLOWERS: Well, there is a Clinton death list. If anyone would like to go to my website and take a look at it…

MATTHEWS: Well, we have your website here – www.genniferflowers.com. But what will they find if they go there in terms of murder? I didn’t know that one.

FLOWERS: Well, there are a number of deaths associated with Bill Clinton and his administration and his operatives. I would just suggest that they go on and take a look at it.

MATTHEWS: Do you believe that the President ordered the killing of anyone?

FLOWERS: I believe that he did. And I believe that I wouldn’t be sitting here talking with you today had I not become high profile as I did. Even though I didn’t do it on purpose, it saved my life.

That was a high point in the history of cable news, readers. You’d do well to keep this episode in mind the next time you hear a wingnut decrying the “liberal bias” of Chris Matthews and MSNBC.

Steve Adubato seems to be carrying on what Bocephus might have called a “family tradition” over at MSNBC: Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

UPDATE — In case you missed it in the previous CDS post, commenter and comrade Stram pointed us to an online copy of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s final report on the death of Vince Foster.

Exhibit B: MSNBC “media analyst” Steve Adubato demands that Hillary Clinton explain “exactly how Vince Foster died.” (Your Left-Wing Liberal Media in action, readers!)

After all, readers, it’s not like there’s a war going on or anything. The press coverage of our last two presidential elections was almost completely driven by the political press corps’ character-based narratives. How do you like where it’s gotten us, readers? How do you like your endless war overseas, your frightening erosion of civil liberties at home, your executive branch openly and proudly claiming the right to spy on, imprison indefinitely, and even torture its own citizens, without warrants or oversight of any kind, all in the name of “national security”?

Who cares about any of that stuff? I’d rather not think about it… What kind of cheese do the candidates like to eat? What’s on their iPods? Would they be fun to spend time with at a backyard barbecue? Which of them would you like to drink a beer and watch the game with? That’s what matters.

Rush:

It — this is — this is stunning stuff, and of course, this rates page A22 in the mainstream press, as does the Iraqi Constitution. That rates A22 — what — that’s in the Washington Post.

[...]

And it goes on, and on, and on to describe what a pleasant day election day was in Iraq. It — if you look at this, folks, perhaps the most amazing awe-inspiring, positive, and triumphant story of the past two years — and it’s on page A22 of the Washington Post. We have paid for this achievement. We have paid for this achievement with the blood of our sons and daughters. And their families. This has to be recognized and celebrated. It’s a disgrace to bury this on page A22.

[...]

Talent on loan from God. Meeting and surpassing all audience expectations on a daily basis. Now to be fair, the New York Times did front-page the big news out of Iraq. The Washington Post didn’t. Page A22. But the New York Times did: “Early Signs Show Iraqis’ Approval of Constitution.”

There was indeed a story on page A22 of the Post on Sunday. But guess what, readers? You know what already: there was also a bigger story on the front page. Whoops! Rush missed that one. He did indeed “meet and surpass my expectations” this time. If some inconvenient fact gets in the way of the rant you’ve been planning, why let it stop you? Just ignore it!

Methinks the MSM is preparing to bury the story of the Iraq vote in the back pages…

Washington Post, Sunday 16 October 2005, Page A1:

• “Sunni Turnout Is High In Vote on Iraqi Charter”
• “In a Sunni Quarter, A Day of Emotion”

New York Times, Sunday 16 October 2005, front page:

• “Turnout Is Mixed as Iraqis Cast Votes on Constitution”
• “Two Sides of the Sunni Vote: Deserted Polls and Long Lines”

Somebody’s a little bit thirsty. Faux outrage at the “MSM” really gets you parched. Wouldn’t a nice cold drink hit the spot, readers?

Boiled down, it looks as though turnout was good and that the Constitution is heading for approval. We can expect, therefore, little or no mention of it in the news over the next couple days. Taking one thing with another, I figure that we’re in for a surge in Rove stories because that (a) isn’t about Iraq and (b) feeds into MSM wet-dreams about an indictment of someone, anyone, in the Bush Administration. For those of us in the real world, however, I think we’re in for a great day in human history.

Back in January there were more than 100 terrorist attacks during the voting…today there were about 5. Obviously, American and Iraqi forces learned lessons from January and the preparations for today were even better than before, but this was “it”. This was the day the terrorists had to prove they were the stronger. They failed.

Now, if the MSM would just pull out of Iraq altogether, I think we’d largely see the end of terrorism there…they are playing it up for the cameras, boys and girls, and for the anti-Bush spin the MSM puts on all Iraq news.

Yep, it’s all about the “anti-Bush spin.” The key to winning the war on terror? Get rid of the press.

Oh, yeaahh!

(link via Dadahead)

From the right, Captain Ed is angry at a report that appeared on Drudge which claims the Times is “looking into the adoption records of the children of Supreme Court Nominee John G. Roberts”:

[Captain Ed:] The Times should confine their interest to points germane to Roberts’ ability to perform as a Supreme Court jurist, not go on fishing trips into the most personal parts of his family life.

If [NYT executive editor] Bill Keller can’t tell the difference between the New York Times and the National Enquirer, it’s no wonder that his readers can’t, either.

From the left, Digby is pissed about rumors that the Plame-outing investigation might be stymied by Judith Miller’s refusal to talk:

I can’t tell you how much it’s going to chap my hide to see Karl Rove and his buddies skate because Judith Miller is covering for them. After watching them willfully and credulously print every smear that scumbags like David Bossie could dream up about Bill Clinton, the NY Times makes a fetish of protecting the Bush administration. Our paper of record has seriously lost its way. It is now little more than a Republican plaything; its reputation is being used as a vehicle to mislead the public; its ethics and standards are being manipulated to cover up corruption. Something is very rotten at the Grey Lady.

Fishing expeditions into a conservative Supreme Court nominee’s family life, and a fetish of protecting the Bush administration. There’s got to be some sort of bias going on…