Oh, snap!

Elizabeth Edwards smacks down Annthrax Coulter in 2007:

I don't think anyone took Coulter seriously after that.

I love the smell of Schadenfreude on a Sunday night

Ann Coulter is being probed. Following our Jan. 11 column, Connecticut’s Elections Enforcement Commission is making a “thorough investigation” of whether the conservative pundit broke the law by voting in the Nutmeg State while living in New York City, according to a commission spokeswoman.
Officials are responding to a formal complaint filed by Coulterwatch.com blogger Dan Borchers. “For over 10 years, Ann Coulter has gotten away with illegal, immoral and unethical behavior, ranging from plagiarism to defamation, perjury to voter fraud,” claims the conservative Borchers. Coulter declined to comment, but in the past has branded Borchers a stalker. He says the FBI has determined he poses no threat.

Heh. "Ann Coulter is being probed." Hee.

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves

From the Murdoch Post's Page Six.

Schadenfreude? Moi?

Coulters Cleaning House Again...Who's Next? Maron Hits NYC, Head First Into the Hurricane....

Last night at ComixNY, Marc Maron talked up a seamless 55 minute set of pain and insight and commentary about the human condition, but mostly his condition. As he said, the pain is so palpable that it rolls out onto the first couple of rows of the club and doesn't dissipate into the funny till around row 3. This show was intense, passionate, real, and political...and he didn't really address politics directly at all; but then, I find everything to be political or to fall into the political pattern, and the big feeling of despair that has descended over so many of us. This is basic stuff about having your foundation torn apart and your world tipped over. Its also about the decisions that we make and what its like to grow up in this delicate world.
From Scottish haggis as Soylent Green, complete with
Charlton Heston on top of a truck, to the impossibilities involved in relationships and forging on in this life, it was an hour packed with some sort of hilarious dismay and common understanding of being thoughtful in a world that is moving a little too fast these days.
I'm looking for the one man show and book coming out of this evolving set...he is honing something with new takes on old bits and newer new bits, and its only a matter of time before some smart producer backs an off-Broadway show, and at least, that we hear him back on the radio full time!

Don't miss Marc and Sam Seder on Tuesdays doing their Vod-cast Marc Vs. Sam Show live at 11AM EST at Sam's page....available as a Vod-cast after the fact too!





Anne Coulter and her ilk want to clean things up...

This story is not about a specific smear job perpetuated on a kid, or some failed attempt to ruin the career and life of a candidate. Its more about the M$M giving time over and over again to a cabal who want to use the "news" pulpit to disseminate false information in service to their own bank-books and a doctrine that is built on corrupted theory and clearly not the laws of this country. It is about actions that are so far outside of what is socially acceptable, even in this time of mind numbing cacophony of information and entertainment, that has dulled the senses and lowered our standards of what we put up with.
This is about about the putrid atmosphere that we are living in, where any pundit can do the equivalent of yelling fire in a movie theater and then claim that it was only their free speech talking. Its about harassing small children, sick people, and small sick children.

Our Constitutional rights take for granted that we are not animals. We are free to speak within reason, yes, but where does reason end? Clearly, there are certain things that, when said, can be so deeply disturbing and meant to hurt, and cause anguish to other people on enough levels as to neuter any sort of response or action, that they incite to action others who are the lowest form of racist, bottom-base of our kind; the low hanging fruit, to quote a philosopher dressed in a comic's threads.....who would keep the muck of their slime-pit for themselves in the way that a certain cretin whines "mine, mine" from the bottom of it's pit.
This is why its not freedom of speech to hang nooses from whites-only trees, and this is why libel laws protect people who are wrongfully smeared publicly. This is also why reporters used to want to have real sources before they put stories on the air and in the newspaper. When did that become the exception rather than the rule? When did the likes of Anne Coulter become a pseudo-intelligencia specialist reporter, rather than a hack who should be working for the News of the World's alien abduction section?



We live among animals who lack basic evolutionary movement beyond instinctual knee-jerk separation based on superficial aspects of each other which might have, at some point in the prehistoric days, served a Darwinian purpose for breeding and tribal safety, but in this time of creature comforts and education, mean nothing more than one's protection from the sun and what size of nose or texture of hair they have...
The bible assumes that all humans are as out of control and...bad...as these people are in their do as I say sitcom foibles in the government. Why is it that the ones spewing the most vile concepts and values, are the ones most in need of the rules from an unseen father in the sky who offers an unseen reward to a chosen few? Yet those few seem to live most outside of any basic tenants of kindness and giving ever preached by any faith. Its almost as if the label if believer is more a label of one who needs that much structure or they might spin out of control and do horrible things....and they do horrible things.

from the Greenwich girl, Anne Coulter, who seemingly has never lived up to what shes wanted so badly, or gotten what shes needed in life,(why else is someone so snobby, elitist and in need of citing their college and brand over and over; jealousy makes for an ugly disposition.)

How disappointed her friends and family must be to see what a monster their daughter, sister, friend has become; that is, if she is able to have relationships. There is a certain Barbara Bush things to her, where she talks down to the little people. Those who think they are her "fans" or "in" on her blog, think again; you are all the little people in her world. She hangs with the Palm Beach and Greenwich crowd...you will never approach her golden palace.
She sits like an unsteady reptile, on high stools for uber leg exposure, dressed like the art whores of the NYC Soho gallery scene of the 80's, or like a Robert Palmer robot girl with that shiny stiffness, Adams apple bobbing....she is on TV sets, under lights, flipping golden hair, with the mocking surety of the truly weak who try too hard to seem assured. She doles out "truths" that are mind-bendingly, numbingly, obviously, as untrue as they are hurtful in a way meant to shred and destroy the opponent. If asked about confirmation or any basic reporting, she shrugs it off as opinion or puts it off, as in this-story-is-about-to-break-you'll-see...and by then, shes gone...not that any of the softball flirty pundits who always wanted to be with a real man before, would follow up anyway. Those soft white dough boys ask silly follow-ups in all seriousness, like this is a person who should be taken seriously.

This hard woman, who might surprise us all if she is able to have human relationships at all, beyond her fag-hag retinue with BFF-Drudge and his ilk, plys her trade in pure pulp shock, and uses what will plainly translate into book sales and money, to create publicity and an aura around herself of ...talent?...No, real talent comes out of substance, real life, and a feeling for the world and those who survive here. This smirking cretin has no substance at all.

There is a certain pure place that we all strive for in our own way, and there is something, through age and experience, that settles in each of us where the battle is clearly fought, less by tearing down your perceived opponent than by accepting yourself and others and looking at your own footprint in this life, and how much air you take up in any room. Its giving up the fight in favor of the battle, and natural empathy which cannot be developed or bought; its just there.
The kind of badness that Coulter represents is not only negative to the world and our development as human beings, but hurtful to the specific individuals that she attacks. These include children, widows, and whole groups of people who have lived through enough persecution to know bullshit when they see it. Strange that the real man in this tale ends up to be Donny Deutsch, but there you have it. Yeah, watch her backpedal frantically, but, its not gonna work this time. You may be able to get away with alot, but the Jews don't fuck around, girlie. She is exactly the sort of Nazi that we're all on the lookout for these days, Jews, half-Jews like me, and every other American of any ilk with an ounce of smarts or feeling for where humanity is heading.

Clearly Coulter is some sort of Sociopath. She seems to lack boundaries regarding what is appropriate in social interaction. I can see her watching herself and mocking and snickering, while she chips away at the lives of others and spreads her own brand of pain, all the while counting the dollars pouring in because shock sells.
Its a shame and it takes away from any discourse that we might have been able to have.

I've noticed that alot of us have rage-fatigue, and are feeling really used up and limp lately. How many times can you be smacked in the face before you just stay down? Maybe the devolving of the Bush administration came in a little too clearly, a little too extensive and huge. We could've guessed this string of events, but on 9-10 no one would have believed any of this...I can't believe alot of it now, even as I would believe anything these days.

Driftglass, one of the best writers on these internets, brings it home for me:

"And it reminded me that when I pause and take the time to open that clench of anger and the snark that fuels a lot of what I write and look inside, there in the center I find grief.

A sadness around which I have girded cleverness and rage....
Because it’s absolutely no fun loathing your leaders -- Honestly don't understand how the Right can grow so fat feasting on such a thin, bilious gruel decade after decade.

It is, in fact, just terribly sad to look out at your country and see an insane asylum.

Terribly sad to see monsters and madmen smashing the finest, most precious heirlooms in your country’s treasure house to atoms. And to see their followers in their millions clap and dance in the ruins as they do it....
I, too, so very much miss being able to look across the political divide and see anyone on the other side who has not been bred to believe that selfishness, mercilessness and misanthropy are virtues.

And when we talk of tolerance?

We are told to fuck tolerance.

Step by unholy step, theirs has become a Party and a Movement that makes an outright sociopath like Ann Coulter their Goddess, and uses “tolerance” as a smirking, eye-rolling epithet....Hey, dickhead: tolerance doesn’t mean I have to love you or agree with you. It means that my vision of democratic civilization demands that I make allowances for people I do not love, and with whom I do not agree.

It means that some of my tax dollars will go towards paving and grading the roads that allow you to drive in safety and comfort from your doublewide in Swinefuck all the way to the Pixley Bijou so you can see “The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause” in Dolby on the Big Screen.

And it means that some of your taxes will go to pay for public defenders, health insurance, and a measure of security for the elderly, the weak, the poor and whole lot of other people you despise for various reasons....

The question is, how is it possible on the eve of the turnaround, that the network news and talk shows still have a spot for her and that O'Reilly and Limbaugh and Malkin and their ilk, still spew their filth daily?
Ratings be damned! Tucker Carlson has a tiny audience...too tiny to warrant his continued spot in the prime news-time of MSNBC early evenings interspersed with Chris Matthews...it reruns, 2 times, no less! and he is who invites his "great friend" Coulter onto our airwaves...He is who elevated the absolutely talentless Willie Giest from hack producer to television personality of the most base and frat boy extreme.

Ive been waiting for this change for so long...So, why is it so hard to get the programmers to at least cut out the wingnuttia? The American people turn on what is on. If we dont let the programmers know that we have had enough, how can we expect it to get better?
What information do we get from Coulter's book tour? What does anyone gain from Coulter getting on TV and calling all democrats stupid? The fact that there is a market for this indicates less that humans are into this sort of thing, and more that the education system is fucked in this country, and the media follows suit, so this is all that people have access to if there is no regulation...and then it sells, and around we go!
viewerservices@msnbc.com
Tucker@msnbc.com
Dan Abrams stays out of the contact whirl over at the home ship at MSNBC, but Im sure that Viewer Services gets to him...these are his decisions after all.





Drifty is a gift...and I hope that he realizes that there are people out there of the same mind...even though I myself have been planning my semi-retreat from the grid with my chickens and some plans of solar panels and my healthy-so-far Artesian well. When I see the cruelness of human discourse these days I go limp...when I see how hard people in the real world are struggling, I cant find my breath....I don't understand why things happen the way they do, but I do know that alot of what is going on is manipulated and planned. I don't mean that in a tin foil hat sort of way, but in a deliberate, blatant, we-are-doing-this-to-you-and-you-have-no-way-out, sort of way.

Its kindly grandpa Reagan standing there reading his cards saying"why would corporations need regulation? They have ethics, They can police themselves."
Like, yeah, we are all grownups here, no one is reaching under the stall of anyones potty in this place... Then come to find that just about everyone has one hand or another under the stall door somewhere for something.... But the dies is cast and we cant go back....

Yeah, there is plenty to worry about..plenty...
as long as Condi Rice is scouring the planet for more feathers to ruffle. I don't know what to say about it anymore, except, enjoy the ride. Its gonna be nothing if not interesting.

cross posted from RIPCoco with pictures!!

Not even I could make this up

I've talked a lot about how after the Christofascist Zombie Wingnut Brigade gets rid of abortion they're going after birth control in their effort to control women. But it goes beyond even that.

They want to take away your right to vote.

You heard me.

This one, from....well, who's the nuttiest wingnut you can think of...at World Nut Daily, comes to us courtesy of Dave at Seeing the Forest:

According to a recent poll of women voters commissioned by "Lifetime Television" ("Television for Women"!) women are complaining again. Over a third of the women respondents say none of the presidential candidates are addressing their concerns.

According to the summary provided by the "Lifetime Television" web page, the top concerns of half or more of the respondents are these: the "insufficient effort to cure breast cancer," gun control, medical benefits, childcare, the rising cost of a college education, the connection between pollution and health risks, violence against women, and equal pay.

Nearly three-fourths believe it is more important for the government to shore up the Social Security Ponzi scheme than to bother with those silly tax cuts.

These could only be the poll results of people who have nothing to do with the creation of wealth. They sit home waiting for their husbands to bring home the money, or toil away at little jobs dreamed up to assuage the egos of bourgeois women living in the suburbs.

[snip]

As a class, women have never borne collective responsibility for work, they have never learned how to store food for the winter, and they have not generated economic growth.

If you needed further proof that Ann Coulter is really a man, look no further. Only a man who's uncomfortable as either a man OR a woman could hate women this much.

And don't give me the usual pablum about how Ann Coulter doesn't represent conservatives. You guys on the right want to decide that one ad that some people found tasteless by Moveon.org represents all liberals AND the Democratic Party, then this lunatic harpy represents all of you.

Ann Coulter, domestic terrorist

And here is the section of the very USA PATRIOT Act she so vigorously defends that applies:

(a) Whoever, with intent that another person engage in conduct constituting a felony that has as an element the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against property or against the person of another in violation of the laws of the United States, and under circumstances strongly corroborative of that intent, solicits, commands, induces, or otherwise endeavors to persuade such other person to engage in such conduct, shall be imprisoned not more than one-half the maximum term of imprisonment or (notwithstanding section 3571) fined not more than one-half of the maximum fine prescribed for the punishment of the crime solicited, or both; or if the crime solicited is punishable by life imprisonment or death, shall be imprisoned for not more than twenty years.

18 U.S.C. § 373(a).

Ann Coulter has a right to say what she wants. She does not have the right to national exposure for it

How much longer are mainstream media outlets going to continue to give this woman a microphone?

Sorry, Matt, but when you're a hypocrite, all bets are off

Conservatives sure do love their gay prostitutes, don't they? First it was Jimmyjeff Gannonguckert, now Matt Sanchez, darling of CPAC because he's a Latino gay military conservative.

Today, in a truly cranium-combusting piece in Salon, Sanchez sees nothing inconsistent about sucking up to the very people who revile people like himself.

In September 2005, I wrote a column for the campus newspaper that blasted the anti-military bias among my fellow students at Columbia University. In addition to being an American studies major at Columbia, I am a Marine Corps reservist, and my comrades in arms were proud of me once that column had turned into appearances on "The O'Reilly Factor" and "Hannity & Colmes" and an opinion piece for the New York Post. None of those media outlets knew who I had been before I was a Marine, an Ivy Leaguer and an outspoken defender of the military.

Up until last weekend, Salon and the rest of the left-wing media had largely ignored me. Given the left's constant talk about equality, discrimination, minority rights and systemic oppression, I thought the fact that I was a Latino Marine, a nontraditional, 36-year-old Ivy League student and a 100 percent flag-waving red-blooded Reagan Republican would make my point of view interesting, but so be it. Everything is political now, and even the double standards have talking points.

Then came last weekend. I was invited to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, an annual convention of the right attended by more than 5,000 people, to accept the Jeanne Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award. It was recognition for what I'd said in print and on-air about anti-military attitudes on campus. During CPAC, I had my picture taken with the controversial conservative pundit and author Ann Coulter.

Coulter's comments about John Edwards drew unprecedented attention to this year's CPAC. Then, after a while, some of that attention was turned on me.

[snip]

Porn reduces the mind and flattens the soul. I don't like it. That's not hypocrisy talking; that's just experience. I sometimes think of myself, ironically, as a progressive: I started off as a liberal but I progressed to conservatism. Part of that transformation is due to my time in the industry. How does a conservative trace his roots to such distasteful beginnings? I didn't like porn's liberalism. In porn, everything taboo is trivialized and everything trivial is magnified.

Being in the adult entertainment industry was sort of like being in a cult, and like all followers of a cult, I have a difficult time figuring out when I stopped believing in the party line. I can tell you, though, that by the time I finished my brief tour of the major studios, I was pretty disgusted with myself. It was an emotional low, and the people who surrounded me were like drug dealers interested only in being with the anesthetized in order not to shake off the stupor of being high.

Why did I become a conservative? Just look at what I left, and look at who is attacking me today. Let's face it: Those on the left who now attack me would be defending me if I had espoused liberal causes and spoken out against the Iraq war before I was outed as a pseudo celebrity. They'd be talking about publishing my memoir and putting me on a diversity ticket with Barack Obama. Instead, those who complain about wire-tapping reserve the right to pry into my private life and my past for political brownie points.

Sure, I had my picture taken with Ann Coulter. I don't agree with what she said, but anyone in the military would defend her right to say it. I'm not apologizing for it. I'm also not going to claim I'm sorry for leaving a long-ago summer job off my curriculum vitae. A lot things in my life don't add up, but then I was never good at math. It's just a part of my past, and as anyone who reflects on the past realizes, it contributes to who I am today.

Yes, it does, Matt. And you're wrong -- no one on the left cares about your past in gay porn. Unlike the people you're sucking up to on the right, we believe that what consenting adults do is their own business. Now, I can't speak for anyone in the gay community, but from where this 100% heterosexual, 20+ years married, middle-aged lapsed Jewish suburban woman is standing, you are not just a hypocrite, but are wrestling with a good bit of self-loathing.

I refuse to associate with any activities sponsored by A.N.S.W.E.R., because their pro-Palestinian view is NOT limited to opposition to Israeli government policy, but veers over into anti-Semitism. I won't associate with groups that hate people like me, nor will I support them or help them to gain power. So why on earth are you willing to associate with people like Ann Coulter and the rest of the crew? Why are you willing to associate with someone who refers to gay marriage as "insane"? Why on earth would you want to associate with people who profess to hate everything that you are? And even if they don't (which I wonder about, since the Republican party and its allies seem to be rife with barely-closeted gay men and women), why would you want to associate yourself with people who are willing to sacrifice YOU on the altar of their drooling, ignorant Jeebofascist base?

Matt, there is help for you -- not help to "cure" homosexuality, but help so that you can better accept yourself and stop allowing yourself to be used by people who would wipe you off the face of the earth if they thought they could get away with it. But you cannot expect to align yourself with the moral scolds of the right and expect your hypocrisy to not be fair game.

All right, get the duct tape

Ann, just shut the fuck up already:

Ann Coulter, fresh from implying that John Edwards is a "faggot," now has a statement on her Web site saying Edwards campaign manager David Bonior "is fronting for Arab terrorists."

Coulter made the homophobic slur about Edwards, a Democratic presidential candidate married to a woman, during a Friday speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Soon after, Bonior announced he was sending out a fund-raising letter seeking "Coulter Cash" to "show every would-be Republican mouthpiece that their bigoted attacks will not intimidate this campaign."

A copy of Bonior's letter was posted on Coulter's Web site, with this note underneath: "It's always good to divert Bonior from his principal pastime which is fronting for Arab terrorists."

Bonior was elected to Congress half a dozen times in Michigan, and served in Vietnam.

It's time to hang this idiot on the necks of every fucking Republican in this country. She IS their public face.

Want to watch ManThrax's head explode? Go send John Edwards some love. Even if you don't plan to vote for him, let's make her words have consequences. We know that Republicans applaud her every word. Let's give her words the opposite effect of what she intends.

John Amaechi is awesome`

Barry, our resident wingnut troll, has wondered in the comments why I haven't weighed in on Ann Coulter's use of the word "faggot". Well, perhaps it's because it's forced HIM to do so, or perhaps it's just that I haven't had much blogging time over the past few days.

Or perhaps it's because John Amaechi does it so much better than I could, and far more succinctly:

(h/t: Pam)