The greatest blog

The greatest blog ever to grace the internet can be found at http://realterrorists.blogspot.com/. It is titled simply “The American Dream”.

This blog began and ended on July 3, 2005. It has only one post, and it only needs one. The writing achieves an elegance the Den has sometimes striven for. The author is clearly an astute student of history. His ideas are profound and original. He draws on a wide knowledge of literature to support them by citing verses from history’s great poets such as Kurt Cobain. His artful use of all-caps could be considered poetic in itself.

No excerpt can do the piece justice, but below is a short one.

Here we are in the Twenty-first Century helplessly watching yet another Human Culture is “Oppressed” by a “White Suppremest Imperialistic Power”. Who’s country is the opposite of independent and who’s Rich illustrious lifestyle is nothing more than the “Spoils of War” A Nation that FORCES its POLITICAL GOALS upon another society through MILITARY POWER is called an Empire. And when its POLITICAL GOALS are RACIALY and FINANCIALLY motivated its called a “HATE CRIME” or WAR CRIME/CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

(:sniffle: I always need a Kleenex when I get to that part)

“Read the whole thing” are words I do not use lightly, but if ever they applied…! I am certain you will be as impressed as I was, and perhaps it will change the way you think about the world, and about life. Perhaps you will even wish to add this superior link to your blogroll, as I am now considering.

Georgia: It’s really quite simple

The clearest, sharpest commentary on the Georgia situation is surely coming from one of the great publications of our time. Yes, I’m speaking of Pravda.

World Opinion Favors Russia – Winning the Media War

Even Americans are saying, “Thank you Russia for standing up to the crackpots in control of our government.”…

…Their all too numerous outlets are pummeling the world community with distortions, trying to shove the castor oil of the empire down our collective throats, but the gag reflex is well intact and their lies remain unpalatable.

Condoleeza Rice, What is Wrong With You?

Are you hysterical or what? Having a difficult menopause? How many times do we have to tell you, Russia calls the shots these days. So keep your hysterical whining to yourself and stop reiterating the same thing time and time again. Russia will withdraw from Georgia when it sees fit. And if it doesn’t see fit, it won’t. Russian troops will move around Georgia for as long as they like. As and when they like. As and when they choose.

Is Condoleeza Rice stupid?

OK her boss is, we all know that and that’s why nobody pays any attention to what he says or if they do, it is to have a good laugh at how such an imbecile could supposedly rule the roost in Washington (when everyone knows it is Cheney and his energy and arms lobbies). So Bush gets a discount, like the uncle that farts at family dinners, like the retarded nephew who belches swearwords after his third litre of Coke, like the simpleton that sits outside the church on Sundays begging for money informing everyone that he is an astronaut on Thursday afternoons.

Bush, Cheney and Rice; Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels

With what moral authority do these mainstays of the neoconservative, corporate elitist, greedy, self-interested Washington regime speak, when in their own closet there are skeletons labelled Abu Ghraib, Iraq, Guantanamo, mass murder, war crimes, illegal invasion, torture, illegal detention, disrespect for international law, denial of due process, rape…?

Up until now you might not have known what to think about Georgia. It might have seemed like a complicated affair, like there could be two sides to what’s going on, or that you might have to study the issue further, when in fact all you need to know to be educated on this episode of history in the making is that Bush is an uncle that farts at family dinners, Cheney is a rapist, and Condoleeza Rice is having a difficult menopause.

That should clear up that. Now back to cheering for our Olympic heroes.

Uh-uh. Nope. Too late. You can’t say that

I’m tired of all these people in or working closely with the military speaking their minds on military matters. Get a load of this guy:

The war continues to abate in Iraq. Violence is still present, but, of course, Iraq was a relatively violent place long before Coalition forces moved in. I would go so far as to say that barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended.

Hold on here. Didn’t a certain US senator already declare failure in Iraq? Wasn’t the declaration made over a year ago? Is Michael Yon even paying attention to things??

Message to Michael Yon: Once in awhile you should step away from the field where the action is actually taken place and into the far rear echelons of politics back home,  where facts and first-hand observations can’t get in the way of popular memes and biases, and if you had done so you might have been able to learn that the war has long since been over, dood. We LOST it by congressional fiat.

Also worth stating is that while the senator who declared the surge in Iraq a failure received some criticism for doing so, the pronouncement was, if anything, too late. The proper time to declare a war effort a failure should be the moment when the first American body bag is filled. That’s how you teach our enemies not to mess.

Bush lied, ideologies died

Michael J Totten reports:

Iraq is where ideologies go to die. Arab nationalism, Baathism, anti-Americanism, al-Qaidism, Donald Rumsfeldism, and Moqtada al-Sadrism have either died there or are dying. Conventional liberal opinion, more or less correct about the foundering American war effort from 2004 to 2006, has been severely bloodied—along with Iraq’s worst insurgent groups and militias—by General David Petraeus’s leadership of the American troop surge. Even post-9/11 fear of Islam has proven unsustainable for those who regularly interact with ordinary Iraqis.

“Everything dies in Iraq”. “Stench of death overshadows counter-insurgency efforts in Iraq”. “Another month of surge sees the death toll in Iraq continue to rise”.

If you are a journalist wishing to use one of these headlines for an article, contact me and we’ll talk. My fees are very reasonable.

I have discovered the invincible argument

I encountered it recently, and it went like this:

“Anyone who thinks that the reason we went into Iraq was for anything other than oil is insane.”

As I tried to think of a counterargument to this I quickly realized that the task was futile. This truly was an invincible argument. I had no choice but to accept it, as you, my dear readers, must now be realizing yourselves.

Normally when you encounter a statement which is false, you can refute it with a statement of fact. But no statement can be uttered in contradiction to this one without the speaker classifying himself among the mentally unhinged, thereby rendering his own statement, as well as anything else he may say–or even think–as dismissible, at the least. (At the most, he ought be carted off to the funny farm as a preventative measure against further pronouncements of nonsense)

The argument of the type “Anyone who thinks/believes X is insane” is therefore completely impervious to all refutation. It is thoroughly unassailable; the bulletproof standard of debate. It is to debate what Shaquille O’Neal is to basketball. Like the Pythagorean Theorem, it ain’t got no answer. My regret is that it took me this long to discover it. Think of all the applications!

Work – “Anyone who thinks that the most valuable employee this company has got is any person other than myself is insane.”

Try this with your coworkers. Should they attempt to deny it they’ll come out looking like imbeciles in front of your boss, which can only be good for you.

School – “Teacher, anyone who thinks that this assignment is anything other than a total waste of time is insane.”

Ouch! Just imagining the silence with which these words would have stricken my high school chemistry teacher tickles me with delight…and not a small amount of nostalgic regret.

Dating – “Gertrude, anyone who thinks you’ve got anything better to do with your time than go moshing with me this saturday is insane.”

This one is almost too good to share.

Well now, what should you do when you find yourself on the receiving end of the golden argument? You should agree with the speaker–quickly. Otherwise, I’ll be seeing you in the padded cell across from me.

How a cycle of violence is perpetuated

“I swear on the blood (of the victims), we will achieve all our goals in securing a stable Iraq. We will continue to … crush the terrorists and target their strongholds.”

— Nuri al-Maliki, today

(and the man is clearly succeeding)

Godwin’s Second Law

We all know Godwin’s First Law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

According to Wikipedia, Godwin introduced the above as a memetic experiment. I’m wondering if the same could be done with his Second Law:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a rant involving Bush or his administration approaches one.

A friend and I may have come up with it, but we’d be glad to attribute it to Godwin if it would speed up memetic acceleration. I’m a half a mind to write up a Wikipedia entry on it now in order to get it going. What do you think?

I want a war sim…

Den of Hydralisks urges anyone with an interest in present US military conflicts and/or Starcraft-style real time strategy gaming to read this piece of genius by David Wong. It is all kinds of awesome. I nominate it for web article of the century. Excerpt:

I want that Public Support Meter to rise and fall according to Troops Lost, Length of Conflict, Innocents Killed and Whether or Not There is Anything Else On TV That Week. I want to lose 200 public-support points because, in a war where 8,000 units have been lost, one of my Mutalisks happened to be caught on video accidentally eating one clergyman. Then, later, my destruction of an entire enemy city will go unnoticed because the Nude Zero-Gravity Futureball championship went into overtime.

A little bad press would serve those mutas right for being all pomp and glory up there in the air while we hydras do the dirty work on the ground and get scant credit for it (not that we’re complaining, mind you).

H/T to Dean’s World

some serious heavy bigtime CYA

MSNBC: “Besides that, the feng shui is all wrong. Navy to alter swastika-shaped barracks after aerial photos highlight snafu”

omfg can u say smoking gun ppl this is all the evidence u need that iraq is a disaster and the so-calld ‘war on terror”s a lie and we have no plan to win the peach and we went in ofr oil$$$ nothing else which would mabey ok i guess if multi-laterilly with france and UN came along to share the loot iwht us but they didnt so i’ts immoral and all a plan to steal civil liberties from the poorest 1% of amerikkans to give the wealthiest 1% at expence of the environent which he STOLE–yes STOLE th e election to turn guantanaomo into the next vietnam (bu tnot the area were kerry servd in) atleast clinton only sex with waterbufalo not chsaed after larry on craigslist but bu$sh so much worse then clinton also Israel Zionists r nazi rasists too jus study history cause it alway repeat itself repeat itself Palestianis loosing thier freedoms thru govtwiretaping inocent crimanals wich rujmsfeld spyed on he said “we know where they are” HE SAID THAT!! its on tape but faux news is owned by rupert murderoc dont show u wat bu$h si really doingteh plans hidden but t here is all there for anynoe 2 see repeat itself exposes the big righ-wing lie about sexual wmd fantsaies to repeat istelf turn us into no joke dudwe re turning into a crhisitian fundamentalish dictatorhsip before rv ery eyes!!!!!!!!!!

Better slime selection

Forward Deployed observing the fraudulence of chickenhawk Petraeus:

If Moveon.org’s attempt to slime General Petraeus wasn’t bad enough, now the left’s desperation to slime him has reached even new lows with the Daily Kos claiming the general is wearing a fraudulent medal:

As Den of Hydralisks readers know, I’ve been calling for the destruction of this bad bad man for two months now. It’s not that I haven’t been given the proper credit that bugs me. Really, I could care less about the credit (which only I rightly deserve). It is the flawed thought process employed here by other well-meaning surrenderists that is slightly disturbing.

Indignance at the wearing of a false badge implies that a genuine one would be a thing worth respecting. What message are we sending about our uniformed battalion of baby-butchers when we complain so? What should really make us furious about Petraeus is not that he wears a fake medal, but that he should be in possession of any medal at all when there are plenty of good fences to be found everywhere.

GIBSON: When you threw, how far do you think they went?

KERRY: Probably thirty or forty feet. When I stood at that fence, I wanted to make my stance clear, my message understood. I was in Vietnam.

GIBSON: How bout 3-4 feet off the bounce.

KERRY: Absolutely not.

GIBSON: Did you forget I was there? That was the lamest throw I have ever laid eyes on. You barely cleared…

KERRY: I am not sure why you would say that Charlie, I have quite the manly arm.

GIBSON: I distinctly recall you executing more of a light toss, or a flip.

KERRY: This is ridiculous; a reporter of the “Boston Globe” was there, dozens of photographers were there. I clearly threw those medals over in a manly maneuver.

GIBSON: Medals?

KERRY: I did not say medals.

Oh yes you did, soldier, and you should be damn proud of it!!