Mitch Hedberg

Such a Great Talent – Cut Short by Drugs

Missing Original Comedy

Comedy Central presents Mitch Hedberg

9/11 Nutroot Harassment

Crazy (Un-thoughtful Even) 9/11 Conspiratorialists!

This next article was pointed out to me by my friendly adversary – really a great guy whom I have “healthful banter” with. It is a great article from the New York Post.

Thanks for the heads-up Kimba.

9/11 SKEPTICS' LUNATIC FRINGE TARGETS VICTIM'S WIDOW

By ANDREA PEYSER

July 16, 2007

THIS time, they've gone too far. A group of 9/11 conspiracy theorists - whackos who deny that jumbo jets brought down the World Trade Center - is on the attack. But their latest target isn't the government, which they claim destroyed the buildings with explosives.

They're using a vicious Internet assault to pick on an elderly widow.

"They're dirty sons of bastards! They are not real men," feisty Ellen Mariani, 69, told me. Ellen lost her husband aboard United 175 on Sept. 11, 2001.

"They have no respect for women, no respect for the dead and no respect for little children who now have been orphaned."

Ellen is the subject of a blistering battering on the Web site of an outfit that calls itself "9/11 Researchers." While conspiracy theories are nothing new - Rosie O'Donnell gave voice on "The View" to the belief the government was involved - these bozos blast fellow conspiracy groups for not going far enough.

On their Web site, Ellen's current, private home address is listed for every whack job to see. There also is "evidence" that her husband helped plan the attacks.

How could a retired, 58-year-old deliveryman help plan the destruction of the Twin Towers? The proof, presented as a kind of "gotcha!" smoking gun, is strikingly shallow.

Linked to the Web site is a copy of a deed transferring her husband's real property to Ellen. He took it out on July 26, 2001, 47 days before the trade center was destroyed.

As further "proof" that Louis Mariani - who went by his middle name, Neil - was involved, the Web site posts the lease transferring management rights of the World Trade Center to Larry Silverstein. The lease was taken out two days before Louis Mariani put his property in Ellen's name. Aha!

Confused? So am I.

The Web site is the work of a Rick Siegel, who hawks DVDs that purport to prove the trade center's destruction was an inside job. He is partners with Nico Haupt, who is known for sending blistering e-mail rants to trade-center survivors.

My attempts to reach both men were fruitless.

The odd thing is that the loonies are picking on Ellen. She has been outspoken in insisting that the government knows more about the attacks than it is admitting. But a source familiar with the groups says they tend to target people who fall short of their extreme anti-Semitic, anti-everything views.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Neil, Ellen's husband of 13 years, boarded United 175 from Boston, bound for the wedding of Ellen's daughter. Ellen was flying separately because she had booked her flight months before, and it was full.

She's refused to take a dime from the fund that compensates victims.

"Could you go to sleep at night, knowing you took money for your husband's death?" she asks.

"Try to eat alone. Try to watch programs you both liked on TV without feeling guilty. Try to go to sleep at night while you don't have your honey with you. This is the hell I go through every day.

"I don't need evil people attacking me."

It's gone far enough.

Bad News... Well, At Least for the "Gorites"

Bad News for the Global Warmers

As usual the news keeps rolling in that is at odds with the Global Warming folks. As usual I am going to post the entire article, and it can be found at Grass Root Institute, and it was posted at Townhall.com

When Physics Trumps Hysteria in Global Warming

by Michael R. Fox, Ph.D.

July 18, 2007

Studiously hidden from public view are some extraordinary findings in physics which are providing new understanding of our planetary history, as well as providing a much more plausible scientific understanding of global warming. Regrettably, the current hysteria about global warming is based much more on fear, political agendas, and computer models that don’t agree with each other or the climate, rather than hard-nosed evidence and science.

The climate forces which have led to the estimated 0.6C degree temperature increase over the past 100 years or more (according to the International Panel on Climate Change) have been assumed to be man-made CO2 emissions from advanced nations including the U.S. We know this can’t be true for several reasons.

The first is that water vapor provides 95 percent of the total of the greenhouse gases, not CO2. The total of the CO2 represents less than 3 percent of the total. The second is that of the total atmospheric CO2 inventory, the manmade fraction is less than 3 percent of the CO2 total and therefore far less than 1 percent of the total greenhouse gas inventories. Third, studies of the recent climate variations are finding, for example, (See article by J. Oestermans, Science, p. 375, April 29, 2005) that glaciers have been receding since 1750 or so, well before any significant man-made CO2 emissions occurred.

The mid 1700s were at the very depths of the Little Ice Age, which we have learned was the coldest climate over the last 5000 years. Obviously, other warming forces were at work before humans had anything to do with it.

It seems more logical that natural forces are still at work with warming and cooling our climate. For example, Fred Singer and Dennis Avery pointed out in their book Unstoppable Global Warming that over the past 1,000,000 years in climate observations, there have been about 600 periods of warming, and we can surmise from these cycles that among them are about 599 periods of cooling.

Now we have learned much more based upon observations of cosmic radiation, their sources, and the Sun’s magnetic fields, combined and new discoveries in the laboratory. A new and more comprehensive understanding of our planetary environment has emerged. This gives us a scientifically defensible explanation of both global warming and cooling.

As the Oesterman study of the 250 years of receding glaciers shows, warming preceded the CO2 increases of the 20th century. That is, man-made CO2 was not significantly involved in this 200 year warming period on the earth. Nor does man-made CO2 explain those 600 periods of warming over the past 1,000,000 years.

We have known that cosmic radiation is a source of very powerful radiation, more powerful than any in those huge manmade accelerators. We also know that the more energetic cosmic rays can reach the surface of the Earth passing completely through the atmosphere. Those of lesser energy can collide with molecules in the air causing an avalanche of nuclear and particle fragments as they pass through the atmosphere. The energy is dispersed in showers of these particles while still in the atmosphere.

These collisions are truly nuclear in nature, highly energetic, and take place in our atmosphere every second. These are the nuclear processes by which the atmosphere acts as a protective shield to inhabitants on the earth. These are well known to airline safety experts, as well as to those astronauts who spend weeks and months outside of our protective atmosphere.

The streams of cosmic radiation originate from deep space sources both within our galaxy, the Milky Way, as well as from galaxies more distant.

Most of the cosmic rays are charged particles (mostly protons) but less prevalent heavier particles are often measured too, and can be of enormous energy. Being charged particles they can be deflected and modulated by the many magnetic fields found in space. In the proximity of our Sun and the solar system incoming particles “feel” the magnetic field of the Sun and are deflected.

The extent of the deflection depends upon the strength of the magnetic field of the Sun. The solar magnetic field has been known, studied, and measured for only a few decades. As with other stars, the Sun is able to deflect many, but not all, of these particles of cosmic radiation away from our solar system and our planet according to well-known rules of physics and magnetism.

Thanks to some recent excellent experimental work in physics by those such as Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark, we now know that cosmic rays and some of the debris from nuclear collisions with atoms in the atmosphere are directly involved with the initiating mechanisms of cloud formation.

Basically, the more cosmic rays, the more clouds are formed and the cooler the temperature. Since many of the cosmic rays can be deflected by the Sun’s magnet field, the cosmic ray intensity varies inversely with the strength of that field. The stronger the solar magnetic field, the fewer cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, fewer clouds are formed, and the climate becomes warmer.

Today the Sun’s magnetic field is more than twice as strong as it was at the turn of the last century. During the mid 1700s during the Little Ice Age there was a 70 year period when there were no sunspots (called the Maunder Minimum), and the solar magnetic field was very weak.

The cosmic rays were not deflected as much by a weakened solar magnetic field, more clouds were formed, thus a cooler climate at that time. These findings provide a simple plausible explanation, defensible with sound physics, and don’t involve a major role for CO2 at all.

Some of the materials formed in the atmosphere by the cosmic ray collisions are radioactive as well, and are one of many natural sources of radioactivity. These are deposited in the Earth’s surface, and are used to construct a very accurate history of the geology and climate millions of years ago. It can be measured with surprising accuracy.

In this instance some important collision products formed in the upper atmosphere, are carbon-14 (C-14) and berrylium-10 (Be-10). Being radioactive they decay into non-radioactive products. These have accurately known periods of decay and scientists can measure these materials in both ice cores and geologic cores samples.

The amounts measured are directly related to many important natural features. Variations in both C-14 and Be-10 can be used to deduce the historical record of variations in the solar magnetic field. By similar techniques the scientists are able to determine variations in the cosmic radiation rates directly, going back hundreds of millions of years. Since the rate of influx of cosmic rays over time has not been constant, our climate has not been constant either.

What lies ahead are some exciting times in climate physics and our understanding of the environment. Unexplained findings in geological and climate histories are now being explained by these new lines of inquiry. It appears that the Sun’s magnetic field has had a stronger effect on our climate than just the variations in solar irradiance could explain.

Political leaders, environmental advocates, and even Oscar-winning documentarians who claim that “the debate of climate science is over”, have been shown once again to be very wrong.

Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., a science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level.

WOW! Kids Got Game... Literally

Arcade Master

Hot Air is Late to the Party

Called It

I have been ahead of this game for months! You should read “I have a lot of crazy ‘New World Order’ friends that think the CIA blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma and the Twin Towers” where he says he has lots of friends in the John Birch Society.

….Asked about the John Birch Society Society by the author, Paul responds, “Is that BAD? I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society. They’re generally well-educated and they understand the Constitution. I don’t know how many positions they would have that I don’t agree with.”

Found at Hot Air

Plame Case Dismissed!!!

Yup...


I beat Drudge!

Judge a conservative… the press is going to go ape-*$%!

http://hotair.com/archives/2007/07/19/breaking-plame-out/

New York Steam Explosion

Crazy Footage... and Sound

Ron Paul Is a Nut!

Ron Paul & John Birch Style Conspiracies

This is with thanks to Hot Air

Like I have said before, Ron Paul is not a conservative… he is a conspiratorial nut. For ease of reading I am going to quote entirely Hot Air here:

Tragically, The Only Man Who Can Save America once again finds his patriotic words twisted beyond recognition. Or does he? Read David Freddoso’s apologia and then read the transcript of the exchange at Politico. Actually, never mind — I’ll quote it right here:

Alex Jones: “Congressman, just out of the gates. Cindy Sheehan yesterday on my show went further than anybody has ever gone. She said, ‘a distinct chance of a staged terror attack or the government allowing that to happen it to happen.’ Bush is saying he doesn’t care what the people want the war will continue. They’ve set up the military commissions act; they’ve set up the John Warner defense authorization act. He signed PDD 51, making himself literally dictator…he ‘gave himself that power.’ How much danger are we in now, with the Homeland Security head feeling in his gut we are about to be hit. Republican memos saying they need terror attacks, they need Al Qaeda hit us to be able to continue the war, top military strategists saying it. How much danger are we in of some new Gulf of Tonkin provocation?”

Ron Paul: “Well, I think we are in great danger of it. We are danger in many ways - the attack on our civil liberties here at home, the foreign policy that is in shambles and our obligations overseas and commitment, which endangers our troops and our national defense. So everyday, we are in worse shape. And right now there is an orchestrated effort to blame the Iranians for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq. And we’re quite concerned, many of us, that the attack will be on Iran and that will confuse things and jeopardize so many more of our troops, so I would say that we are in much greater danger than we have been even 4 or 5 years ago. Whether it is overseas or even by terrorists here at home, because I just think the policies are seriously flawed.”

Freddoso makes it sound like the only reference to a staged terror attack was in passing at the beginning of a hopelessly opaque, minutes-long ramble which no human could possibly be expected to remember. Transparently false. First of all, the question wasn’t “multi-part” as he suggests. Jones’s point, to suggest that Bush and company were conspiring to instigate a second national trauma they can exploit to expand the war and gain dictatorial power, was perfectly clear. “I think we are in great danger of it” came the dopey reply. Second, everything Jones says leading in to the question at the end about the Gulf of Tonkin has to do with a staged terror attack — the dark reference to Chertoff’s gut, the mentions of Al Qaeda needing to hit us, etc. If Paul thought there was some material difference between a staged attack and a Gulf of Tonkin scenario, why didn’t he say so? That’s the real objection to him: whatever he might have meant by his answer, he’s unusually comfortable with questions like these, such that it never occurs to him to challenge people on statements that would have alarm bells ringing in your and my heads. A long, rambling question that began with a statement of Holocaust denial and then segued into criticism of Gitmo wouldn’t pass unchallenged by most of us. Why does Paul let the repeated insinuations of a staged attack pass in silence? If he had any big problem with it, he wouldn’t be on Jones’s show in first place. That’s the punchline to Freddoso’s piece — he acknowledges that Jones is a “madman” in his post and then says appearing on his show is the “only” thing Paul’s “stupidly” guilty of. Hey David: he appears regularly. He knows exactly what the show’s about. Stupidity or naivete has nothing to do with it.

Finally, having defended Paul by saying he’s merely talking about a Gulf of Tonkin incident, he’s got to show why that’s no big deal. Because remember — according to Freddoso, appearing on the show is the only thing Paul’s guilty of.

As for the “new Gulf of Tonkin provovacation” suggested by Jones at the end of his question, and assented to by Paul, it is true that several paleoconservatives — including Pat Buchanan today — are starting to use similar language, referring to the minor military confrontation that was massively embellished to justify our official escalation of the Vietnam War. But the Gulf of Tonkin incident was not a “staged terrorist attack” either.

Really? Every conspiracy theorist version of Tonkin that I’ve ever heard of goes way beyond “embellishment” in explaining what happened. Rosie wasn’t talking about embellishment when she floated it on “The View.” And Alex Jones wasn’t talking about embellishment here:

Republican Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate Ron Paul fears a staged Gulf of Tonkin style incident may be used to provoke air strikes on Iran as numerous factors collide to heighten expectations that America may soon be embroiled in its third war in six years…

The August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, where US warships were apparently attacked by North Vietnamese PT Boats, was cited by President Johnson as a legitimate provocation mandating U.S. escalation in Vietnam, yet Tonkin was a staged charade that never took place. Declassified LBJ presidential tapes discuss how to spin the non-event to escalate it as justification for air strikes and the NSA faked intelligence data to make it appear as if two US ships had been lost.

Paul himself hasn’t referred to the supposed impending Iran attack as “staged” but he has used a similar word. Fast forward to about :25 here if you’re counting down and judge for yourself if Freddoso’s spinning.

Lindsay Graham Takes on the Naysayers!

Congressional Debate Like It Should Be

Democrat Calls Bush hitler, Says Behind 9/11 (Implicitly)

Another Typical Democrat… But One That Pledges an Oath to the Quran

Keth Ellison, a Democrat and the first Muslim in Congress, use to belong to the Nation of Islam before running for oofice. He “painted” himself as moderate to get into office, but he is still a racist pig. If tyou do not know what the Nation of Islam teaches, go to Watchman Fellowship’s bio of The Nation of Islam. Who’s the real racist here?

This is nothing new to the “New Democratic Party,” who frequently courts the radical within their party. If you need more evidence than a quick look at any left-wing blog that the Democrat Party has become the party of derangement, denial, conspiracy theories and blind hatred, a new Rasmussen poll shows that 35% of Democrats believe Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. (Religo-Political Talk - from an older post.)

VIDEO ADDED:

Bush like Hitler, says first Muslim in Congress

By Toby Harnden in Washington

Telegraph Article

America's first Muslim congressman has provoked outrage by apparently comparing President George W Bush to Adolf Hitler and hinting that he might have been responsible for the September 11 attacks.

Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler's later seizure of emergency powers.

"It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that," Mr Ellison said. "After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."

To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because "you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box - dismiss you". [In case you missed it, he just did with his Reichstag bit]

Vice-President Dick Cheney's stance of refusing to answer some questions from Congress was "the very definition of totalitarianism, authoritarianism and dictatorship", he added.

Mr Ellison also raised eyebrows by telling his audience: "You'll always find this Muslim standing up for your right to be atheists all you want."

A convert to Islam who was previously linked to the extremist Nation of Islam, Mr Ellison, 42, has cultivated a moderate image since being elected last November, concentrating on issues such as health and education.

This is great place to post Jonah Goldberg’s article from the National Review on this issue. It really shows the type of propaganda the Left (e.g., Democrats) is using:

“Bush=Hitler”
The politics of dangerous stupidity.

September 4, 2003

Nazis murdered millions of unarmed people. They put them in ovens. They made soap out of them. They carted off children in boxcars to die and used some of the kids for medical experiments, including injecting dyes into their eyes to see if they could improve their looks.

Lower on the list of charges, the Nazis enslaved millions and launched wars for territorial and egotistical gain (and sent many of the conquered populations to death camps as well). Lower still, they banned books and burned them too. They expropriated homes and businesses, banned religions, etc.

An intelligent person wouldn't normally assume these are the sorts of facts people forget. It's not quite the same thing as saying that the Mork and Mindy was a spin-off from Happy Days, is it?

I could, of course, get more graphic about what the Nazis did, but I don't much like writing about the Holocaust. It's not merely a depressing subject, its enormity is so depressing, so compacted down with evil and barbarity and cruelty that it folds in upon itself like a black hole. The gravitational pull of its tragedy has permanently bent the trajectory of mankind. Suffice it to say that the Nazis weren't simply generically bad, they were uniquely and monumentally evil, not just in their hearts but also in literally billions of intentional, well-planned, and bureaucratized decisions they made every day.

And yet, in polite and supposedly sophisticated circles in America today it is acceptable to say George Bush is akin to a Nazi and that America is becoming Nazi-like. Indeed, in certain corners of the globe to disagree with this assertion is the more outlandish position than to agree with it.

In the September 1, 2003, issue of National Review, Byron York chronicles (read the piece here) some of the Bushphobia. He writes,

• A staple of Bush-hating is the portrayal of the president as a Nazi. That has, of course, been a prominent part of other attacks against other presidents, but today it seems to be deployed with particular aggressiveness against Bush. There are thousands of references, across the vastness of the Internet, linking Bush to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Do you want to buy a T-shirt with a swastika replacing the "s" in Bush? No problem. Do you want to collect images of Bush in a German army uniform, with a Hitler mustache Photoshopped onto his face? That's easy. Do you want to find pictures of Dick Cheney and Tom Ridge and Ari Fleischer dressed as Bush's Nazi henchmen? That's easy, too.

As York observes, It's not just the intellectual poltroons of the Internet who feign bravery by loudly saying what is patently stupid so that people a fraction dumber than them might mistake it for boldness and conviction. It's not just the masses of undifferentiated cattle who sport their Hitlerfied George Bush T-shirts and who chant slogans with a verve more truly reminiscent of Nuremberg than anything ever uttered by George Bush.

Indeed, "smart" people mouth this nonsense too. Scholars at Berkeley insist that George Bush shares a psychological profile with Hitler. An editorial writer for the Kansas City Star invokes Martin Niemoller's "First they came for the Jews…" mantra to decry the alleged excesses of the Patriot Act. Various Muslim activists are constantly suggesting that they are the Jews of the Nazified America. Almost everyday I get dozens of e-mails from seemingly intelligent liberals — and a few conservatives — who insist that I "can't deny it" anymore — it's 1933 Germany in America. Retired Princeton University professor Sheldon Wolin writes of the "inverted totalitarianism" of the Republican party — "a fervently doctrinal party, zealous, ruthless, antidemocratic, and boasting a near majority" — as a stand-in for a Nazi party which doesn't need to use "totalitarian thugs" to attain power. He writes:

• No doubt these remarks will be dismissed by some as alarmist, but I want to go further and name the emergent political system "inverted totalitarianism." By inverted I mean that while the current system and its operatives share with Nazism the aspiration toward unlimited power and aggressive expansionism, their methods and actions seem upside down. For example, in Weimar Germany, before the Nazis took power, the "streets" were dominated by totalitarian-oriented gangs of toughs, and whatever there was of democracy was confined to the government. In the United States, however, it is the streets where democracy is most alive — while the real danger lies with an increasingly unbridled government.

You may think that's brilliant stuff and that Wolin is a savant. As for me, I'm simply reminded of Walter Bagehot's observation that "In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius."

"It's going a bit far to compare the Bush of 2003 to the Hitler of 1933," writes Dave Lindorff in "Bush and Hitler: The Strategy of Fear," which according to York's article appeared in February on the site Counterpunch.org. "Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush administration's fear-mongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels . . . are not at all out of line."

In the September issue of Vanity Fair a photo of Richard Perle is placed alongside Joseph Goebbels and the caption asks: "Separated at Birth?" The editors of Vanity Fair ran the pictures because a letter-writer noted a similarity between the two. "Perle isn't the first government official to use deceit and fear mongering to force an extremist, irrational, and ultimately violent view on an entire nation, or globe." In the face of this idiocy the editors of The New Republic were forced to ask: "Does someone really need to explain to Vanity Fair that nothing Perle or President Bush will ever do can invite a comparison to Nazi Germany?"

But The New Republic misses the point. They believe Vanity Fair mistakenly took a "crank" correspondent too seriously. Unfortunately, The New Republic isn't taking Vanity Fair seriously enough. For while it's by no means an extraordinarily serious magazine, Vanity Fair is a near-perfect barometer for what is fashionable and what passes for intelligent conversation among the chattering classes.

Show me the camps. Show me the millions of people being gassed. Show me the tattoos on people's arms. Show me elderly Muslim men being beaten in the streets, their stores smashed, and books burned. Show me huge piles of emaciated bodies stocked high like cords of wood.

Instead, on the web we find juxtaposed pictures of Bush with a dog and Hitler with a dog; Bush posing with children and Hitler posing with children; Bush appearing before large crowds and Hitler appearing before large crowds. By such "standards" every president — every politician — since at least the day photography was invented is a Nazi. To assume the mantle of "reasonableness" — as Lindorff does — by conceding that Bush isn't as good an orator as Hitler was, is to claim soundness of mind by conceding that a clock doesn't melt because vests have no sleeves.

The likes of Wolin and Abbot Gleason are more clever. They, too, say that Nazism is coming, but they don't refer to the Holocaust. They simply mean an illiberal regime with imperial ambitions is in the offing. I think this is ludicrous, too. But it's a different argument. Nevertheless, the intellectuals insist on using Nazism as a way of decrying what they see as American militarism. But comparing America to Nazi Germany in this way is like saying Jonah Goldberg is just like the "Son of Sam" serial killer because they both get lots of parking tickets. To leave out all the genocide and murder is to leave out a pretty important part of the story.

So if you can't show me the death camps and the horror, find another example. Compare Bush to Bismarck or Franco or Mikey from the Life cereal commercials for all I care — because any of those would make more sense.

By the way, I don't say this because I feel a passionate need to defend George Bush. I would make the exact same points if Al Gore were president. I would make the exact same points if anybody running for the Democratic nomination were president. This has nothing to do with partisanship. It has to do with the fact that such comparisons are slanderous to the United States and historical truth and amount to Holocaust denial. When you say that anything George Bush has done is akin to what Hitler did, you make the Holocaust into nothing more than an example of partisan excess. Tax cuts are not genocide, as so many Democrats have suggested over the years. (For example,. during the Contract with America debate, Charles Rangel complained that "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things" that were in the Contract with America. In other words, the Contract with America was in some way worse than what Hitler did. At the end of the day, that is Holocaust denial.)

"Darn those Republicans" does not equal "Darn those Nazis." The Patriot Act is not the final solution. The handful of men in Guantanamo may not all be guilty of terrorism, but it's more than reasonable to assume they are. And no matter how you try to contort it, Gitmo is not the same thing as Auschwitz or Dachau. There are no children there. You don't get carted off to Cuba and gassed if you criticize the president or if you are one-quarter Muslim. And, inversely, there was no reasonable justification for throwing the Jews and the Gypsies and all the others into the death camps. The Jews weren't terrorists or members of a terrorist organization. To say that the men in Guantanamo — or any of the Muslims being politely interviewed by appointment — are akin to the Jews of Germany is to trivialize the experiences of the millions who were slaughtered. Even if you think Muslims are being unfairly inconvenienced, when you say they are the Jews of Nazified America you are in essence saying the worst crime of the Holocaust was to unfairly inconvenience the Jews.

But let's stop talking about Nazis.

I hate blue cheese. I mean I hate it. To me, it tastes like death or Al Sharpton's socks after they've been under the fridge for a year. But no matter how much I hate it, no matter how much I loathe its texture and smell and taste, it's still only blue or, if you must, "bleu" cheese. Even if you tripled my hatred for it, it would still just be a musky fromage from the land of cheese, long speeches, and short-lived loyalties. It would not, through the mysterious alchemy of hatred and bile, become poison. Sure, I could call it Sarin or Anthrax but that would not make it so.

Because, you see, hating an object doesn't change an object. Only the most arrogant and solipsistic fool would argue or convince himself that his hatred of something increases the importance of that thing.

And that's how I think of all these people who e-mail me insistent that George Bush is a Nazi. They believe they are so important, so noble, their hatred and fear must be rooted things of Great Consequence. It's just so prosaic to hate Republicans. I am better than that. So, Republicans must be Nazis. They must be a threat to the whole world and to the sanctity of everything I hold dear because anything less would not be worth my time. George Bush can't simply be someone I disagree with. No, his popularity must be an indication of mass hysteria, of Nuremberg-style devotion to evil.

So desperate are these people to live in interesting times and play the hero, that they are willing — eager — to topple every significant moral and historical category so they can role play as the Heroes who Would Not Stay Silent. That would be fine if these losers were playing some multisided dice game in their basements. But they're not. There's a war going on and these guys are acting like we're the real enemy. That's not just shameful and stupid, it's unhelpful.

UPDATE:

There are some very rude and callused comments left here, the links these commenter’s have left lead you to more lude and rude sites. SO THIS IS YOUR OFFICIAL WARNING – STRONG LANGUAGE AND NUDITY IN LINKS LEFT. I have chosen to leave them up to show how those of the Left choose to act, behave, and express themselves. It is in stark contrast to those from the right, even those atheists whom are conservative.

1993 Concept Car

Very Cool!
(a slight dent though will cost lots of money)