The banality of this "issue" is positively suffocating. The sophomoric red herrings are legion. The waste of public employee FTE - hell, I could retire in luxury on the money wasted.

Moreover, there IS a way out of the "false dichotomy" box -- simply get the government OUT of the marriage business. Civil unions for all, straight or gay. Let the churches "consecrate" (or not) "marriages" as they see fit.

This crap is SO minor league.

This bitch cracks me up. Her sole schtick is to serve up increasingly wildly hyperbolic and vitriolic ad hominem attack opinions about others who hold views differing from hers. And, on EVERY social and political topic, like she knows everything about everything. There's apparently NO topic of controversy concerning which she won't acidly impugne the motives and acumen of all others.

Maybe she believes all of her banal, insulting crap, or maybe it's all just (effective thus far) marketing.

Great post, DurianJoe.

She is indeed wretched.

STFU.

It's a number. "Just" a number.

http://www.blgadd.com/Just_a_Number.jpg

and, here's the reason for it:

http://www.blgadd.com/The_Disgracer_in_Chief.jpg

" Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction..."

"..Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. When the gravest of threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab "street," the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are "sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans." Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of Jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart. And our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced, just as it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991..."

"... In other times the world saw how the United States defeated fierce enemies, then helped rebuild their countries, forming strong bonds between our peoples and our governments. Today in Afghanistan, the world is seeing that America acts not to conquer but to liberate, and remains in friendship to help the people build a future of stability, self-determination, and peace.

We would act in that same spirit after a regime change in Iraq. With our help, a liberated Iraq can be a great nation once again. Iraq is rich in natural resources and human talent, and has unlimited potential for a peaceful, prosperous future. Our goal would be an Iraq that has territorial integrity, a government that is democratic and pluralistic, a nation where the human rights of every ethnic and religious group are recognized and protected. In that troubled land all who seek justice, and dignity, and the chance to live their own lives, can know they have a friend and ally in the United States of America..."

________

Yeah, things are going along exactly as he envisioned. Piece of cake. The entire region from Afghanistan to Gaza is now flowering in freedom, democracy, and peace. Jeesh, with all that you've accomplished thus far, we most certainly must go on to see what great new stuff you'll do in the next few years with retention of congressional control.

Dude is utterly blind to his own megalomaniacal incompetence. Go [bleep] yourself, Mr. Cheney.

Rummie, is that one of those "unknown unknowns that we don't know about"?

No WONDER we're in such as mess over there. What a moron.

It's worth it.

Just not for MY daughters, though.

- George War President Bush

Rhetorical food fight of the frat boys.

NO.POSSIBLE.WAY.TO.OVERSTATE.THE.IDIOCY.OF.THIS.MAN.

We gotta all be caught in some aggregate bad dream.

Science is always at a disadvantage in the face of Deniers, simply because inherent in science is the acknowledgment of the possibility of error, and the thus inherent tentativeness of empirical findings. The proportion of things that are dispositively deductively "proven" for all time by science is vanishingly small. So, these clowns can commit the "perfectionism" and "straw man" fallacies ad nauseum.

To be rational, you have to do comparative quantitative risk-cost benefit analysis using the best available data (knowing you will get some stuff wrong), about which something dopes like Blunt have zero clue.

Read Tim Flannery's depressing, utterly cogent climate change book " The Weather Makers." (triangulate it with other stuff like Jarod Diamond's " Collapse.") The science is in, as good as it gets. We are cooking our planet, and if we continue, we face unprecedented world-wide misery.

OK, be on the lookout for anyone acting nervous, agitated, furtive, or otherwise suspicious. Also, pay special hyper-vigilant attention to people looking and acting utterly "normal" so as to throw TSA gumshoes off the trail. The terrists adopt such tack-ticks to further their Islamo-fascist ideeee-olo-geee.

That about covers it. Carry on.

Go FUCK yourself, you treasonous chickenhawk war criminal.

I fired off a letter to my paper in reaction (they printed it):

_____

I am so comforted by the omnipresent news photos showing Kevlar-clad military and paramilitary personnel now fanning out at airports everywhere in the U.S., their automatic weapons at the ready, K-9 attack dogs by their sides.

These dudes have all been specially trained to take out a tube of Katusha hair gel at 200 meters, firing from the hip.

_____

The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave has become Bush's Land of the Perpetual CODE BROWN shitstained shorts, which suits him just fine.