The joke wasn't funny until I made it funny

I never want to hear the phrase "selective grief" again

I will lay out in plain terms why putting a French flag filter on your Facebook profile image does not constitute "selective grief."

1. All grief -- and for that matter, all emotion -- is selective. Humans aren't capable of anything but selective emotion. The opposite of "selective grief" would be "total grief," in which we express grief for every single grief-causing thing that happens in the world at any given moment. Guess what, nobody has enough time on his hands to show "total grief," because bad things happen every minute. Selective grief is the best anyone can do.
2. It's not grief, it's a profile photo. A picture on Facebook doesn't constitute grief, nor does it prove the act of grieving. It's not even designed to do that. By Facebook's own description, the French flag filter is meant to "show solidarity with the victims" of the Paris terror attack. Selective grief? No. Selective Facebook participation, maybe. But again, what other kind of Facebook participation is there?
3. Westerners are numb to the idea Middle East violence (yes, that means you too, Lebanon) through no fault of their own. When a terror attack happens in Paris, it makes big headlines because we aren't used to it. That's what makes it "news." The Syrian civil war, on the other hand, has been spilling into neighboring countries since it began in 2011 (and into Lebanon since 2012), yet it took an attack on Paris to bring some people's attention to this fact. Which people are those? Mainly the ones whining about selective grief.

I now consider the matter closed. "Selective grief" will henceforth be added to my list of Phrases That Trigger My Auto-Ignore Response. It'll be in good company there, with friends like "law-abiding gun owner" and "War on [anything]."

Will someone please think of the flags

Don't let the "politics" tag scare you off. I just wanted to show you this little gem of a debate (I guess?) from the Facebook wall of a guy I went to elementary school with...and who probably hates me now.

Hates me for my freedom.

No, I didn't watch the animal doctor "take down" the flag stompers. The click bait didn't work on me. "Under two minutes?" Do it in under 30 seconds and we'll talk. And yeah, I know the phrase "your mom" is the internet equivalent of depleted uranium. I guess I mostly just wanted to show off my correct use of "your" as opposed to "you're."

The moral of the story is, guard your opinions well. If you have an opinion, I will show up to trivialize and ridicule it until you change it. Because you don't need opinions. You need facts.

When Morons Collide

In other news, an army of under-informed Sarah Palin enthusiasts were captured on video at a book signing event. They displayed -- with great fervor -- their astounding lack of understanding about politics, policy, economics and science. Let their folly serve as a cautionary tale to any and all who would contribute to Palin's overinflated self-image.

Come on, America. It's time to stop stringing this woman along. She's already had too much ill-deserved time in the limelight. Cut her loose already.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One

A Nazi woman and a Jewish guy go to Vegas.

You're right. It's not very funny.

Fun with Bill, Kim and Dick

On Tuesday night, Japanese TV news showed a video still of this week's meeting between Kim Jong Il and Bill Clinton. This same striking still also appeared on the front page of yesterday's Yomiuri Shinbun. I failed to find the still anywhere online, so I decided to scan it and post it here.

Check out the grin on Kim. He looks like a twelve-year-old girl whose birthday party was just paid a surprise visit by David Beckham. (Come to think of it, Bill Clinton sort of looks like David Beckham being forced to visit a twelve-year-old girl's birthday party.)

Unfortunately, another person who resembles a child is Dick Morris, who has blasted Clinton for "boosting" North Korea. Apparently Dick Morris thinks that the foreign policy of the United States should more closely resemble the behavior of a child who thinks there are monsters under his bed. Morris would have us pretend that North Korea doesn't exist before he would have us engage them in diplomacy -- even if the diplomacy is successful, as it was in this case.

Dick Morris wants to plug his ears and cover his eyes while repeating the mantra, "If I can't see them, then they aren't there." He also contends that the freeing of hostages Euna Lee and Laura Ling was timed to distract Americans from the health care debate.

Dick Morris is stunningly dumb.

Plumber the Reporter

I take offense when Americans who suffer from a chronic case of "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about" syndrome (IDKWTHITAS) find ways to perpetuate the popular image of the Stupid American abroad.

Chromedomed idiot Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, who became famous for no particular reason during the 2008 presidential race, has no experience as a war correspondent, no experience as a reporter, no experience as a journalist and, judging from turns of phrase such as "I don't think journalists should be anywhere allowed war," not very much experience speaking English.

Yet, for some reason, he's been sent to Israel as a "war correspondent" by conservative opinion website PajamasTV:

"Joe" says, in the above clip, that he "liked back in World War I and World War II, when you'd go to the threater and you'd see your troops on the screen." For someone who went to the threater during World War I, this "Joe" is incredibly well-preserved.

I'm also wondering if maybe his new bosses at PajamasTV couldn't have informed their new correspondent a little more thoroughly before sending him overseas. In this excerpt from a conversation between Wurzelbacher and an Israeli reporter, he attempts to create journalistic drama by manufacturing a "disagreement" (WARNING: This failed attempt at "gotcha!" reporting may cause confusion, dizziness and nausea):

JOE: The story here is people are being killed and the media's slanting it and trying to make it Hamas is, uh, as far as, that Israel's being bad. Do you believe Israel is bad?

REPORTER: Do I believe it?

JOE: Yeah, do you?!

REPORTER: I'm Israeli, so...

JOE: So answer the question!

REPORTER: No, I don't think Israel is bad.

JOE: Do you think Israel has every right to protect itself?

REPORTER: Yeah.

[pause]

JOE: You do?!

REPORTER: Yeah.

JOE: Have you said that on air?

REPORTER: I'm just a reporter.

Plumber, get out of the reporter's way before a rocket falls on your head. Your every action since last October has been designed for one purpose only: To get attention. What other explanation can their be for someone becoming a war correspondent and then using their airtime to decry the existence of war correspondents? Oh wait, there is another explanation. YOU'RE A PLUMBER.

Palin? "Nailing?"

In this clip from Fox "News," reporter Carl Cameron BLOWS THE LID OFF!!! the dark, sticky underbelly of the McCain-Palin campaign. Bill O'Reilly halfheartedly defends his polar bear-killing sweetheart, but it's clear he's rearranging deck chairs on the already sunken Titanic. Among the amazing deficits in Sarah Palin's expertise:

She couldn't identify the countries that constitute North America.

She thought that Africa was a country, and South Africa just a region within that country.

She threw tantrums, despite being an adult (at least in the physical sense).

Lady, there are only three countries in North America. At least take a wild guess...you're bound to get at least one of them right!

(Huh huh huh..."nailing.")

Well Done, America

The US has been broken for eight years. Step 1 of its repair: Complete.

I spent this morning following the election coverage online, cheering in my chair for every republican defeat. I feel like I can finally take a long-overdue timeout from being frustrated. Let's hope the reduction of stress doesn't harm my ability to blog in any way.

Warm congratulations to Mr. Obama, and to everyone who helped him become President-elect.

Obama 3; McCain 0

Did you watch the third presidential debate? What the hell is wrong with John McCain? I think he needs an ambulance.

He might have had a chance in the debate if he had spent more time answering the questions being asked of him. Instead he verbally wandered around like Hansel and/or Gretel, making goofy allusions to Nancy Reagan, JFK, Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression and some mythical plumber named Joe (who somehow makes $250,000 a year). His eyes swam as if he was receiving a hidden opiate drip. And he made the face pictured above.

I can't help but think McCain doesn't really want to be president. He wants to take a nap. Let's get this election over with so he can retire with his last shred of dignity intact.

Right-Wing Rats Jumping Ship

It's all the rage to distance yourself from John McCain these days. Everyone's doing it. Even the people you most expect to find defending the hapless geezer -- including the "big Bills," O'Reilly and Kristol -- have seen the bootlessness of their own positions, and are now lining up to have a shot at the Dunk a POW tank. Whether its down to his economic ineptitude, his laughable VP pick or his inability to raise his arms over his head, everyone finds something to dislike in John McCain.

And so can you.

There Is Hope For Chris Matthews

Once in a while, MSNBC's Chris Matthews makes a good point about something. Here he is at the RNC, making a point about Sarah Palin as he takes on a pair of her ditziest cheerleaders.

VIDEO

Note the contention by Republican Representative Adam Putnam (the red-headed stepchild on the right) that scrutiny of Sarah Palin is unfair in comparison to previous scrutiny of Hillary Clinton. The way I see it, he's effectively saying that all women who run for office are the same, and should all be held to the same burden of proof regardless of their credentials. Except this conversation isn't about all women. It's about Sarah Palin.

World to McCain: "You've Got to be Joking"

I've been trying to resist the temptation to do any more political blogging for a while. But when strange stuff like this happens, I just can't stop myself.

Blogger friend Rick at Bent Corner has been doing a fine job of keeping up with the unbroken stream of weirdness that has ensued following John McCain's vice president selection, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. It feels like some new, damning chunk of bizarre news about this lady comes out every few hours. To summarize:

• Her political career consists of six years as Village Elder of Wasilla, AK (population 5500), followed by a couple years as governor.
• She appears to have lied about her fifth (and, god willing, final) pregnancy for the purpose of hiding the pregnancy of her teenage daughter.
• She wants all those polar bears dead.
• She has a very limited, spectatorial understanding of the Iraq War.
• She's a bit confused regarding the origins of the Pledge of Allegiance (and I'm willing to bet that she's unaware of what kind of salute the writer of the Pledge of Allegiance had in mind when he wrote it...but I digress).

• She did not possess a passport until 2007.
• Apparently, being a baby factory runs in the family.

A few hand-wringing republicans are still intent on using Palin's inexperience as some kind of crooked crowbar for attacking Obama's résumé, but even they have to admit that Obama isn't asking this badly for ridicule. How can someone with four (to five) kids possibly be McCain's VP? Her time will be divided between parenthood and the changing of the president's adult diapers, with no time left over for VP-ing.

In this video from MSNBC, Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan take a sledgehammer to Palin's credentials before it's even announced that she's been picked by McCain.

With such a unanimously adverse reaction to his VP pick, I can't help but wonder if McCain won't try to take it back before November. You know, pull a CREM maneuver and say, "Couldn't you guys tell I was only joking?" On the other hand, maybe it doesn't matter. The damage to his campaign is done.

With Supporters Like These: Part III

McCain backer's firm pleaded guilty to funding Columbian terrorists

Not only has Chiquita funded terrorist groups, they've funded terrorist groups that oppose each other. Talk about buttering one's banana (republic) on both sides.

Cal Thomas: Terrorizer

Every once in a while I get really sick of people trying to convince me that I'm in grave peril. Generally my worries in life are limited to issues such as the condition of my laptop, the possible inaccuracy of the weather forecast and the remote prospect of my apartment being destroyed by an earthquake. These are real, understandable apprehensions with basis in fact. But, once in a while, along comes some Cassandra who thinks I should also be worried about something really outlandish. Let me introduce you to one such fellow.

Creepy-looking conservative columnist Cal Thomas is trying his damnedest to make you spend every waking minute in fear of terrorism. He wants you to live in terror. He's a...I can't think of the word for this kind of person, but it's something like "terrorizer."

So, terrorizer Cal Thomas wrote last week that the US is under imminent danger of a terror attack (are you terrorized yet?). Every paragraph of his pessimistic little sermon entered my brain like a massive injection of some drug whose main side effect is uncontrollable eye-rolling. The subsequent headache I suffered might have been caused by said eye-rolling, or just by the inane content of the column. Probably both. Among the key points of Thomas's doomsday prophesy:

• "Enemy combatants" (redundant, I know) will, upon being released from Guantanamo Bay by "liberal judges" (exaggeration, I know), kill us all
• 9/11 OMG CHANGED EVERYTHING (cliché, I know) and is still sufficient justification for the US government to hold your grandmother prisoner indefinitely without charge
• The US's "War on Terror" (stupid, I know) is happening solely because of "their" hatred for "us," but not ours for them
• Be afraid, be very afraid (movie trailer language, I know)

Maybe the most disturbing thing about this article is something Thomas didn't intend to scare us with: At the end of the column, he says

The next attack... will come in a shopping mall, or a school, or on Wall Street, or possibly all three. It will occur simultaneously in many places and probably kill more than the nearly 3,000 who died in 2001.

You can start fretting about your lunch plans at Panda Express if you want, but I'm more concerned about something else: Just how does Cal Thomas know so much about how the next terror attack on the US will happen? By failing to cite his source, isn't he obstructing justice and protecting those who would carry out this most heinous food court/lunchroom/stock exchange onslaught? When will Cal Thomas publicly admit his links to terrorizers?

It used to be that only Cal Thomas's appearance frightened me. In most photos, he looks like an embalmed cadaver, or at least an elderly man wearing make-up. But the truth is far more sinister.

This summer...Cal Thomas IS....Terrorizer.

Rated PG-13 for jingoist rhetoric, blatant fear-mongering and brief nudity.

Scary as he sounds, we can't let grumpy, old biddies like Cal Thomas have any impact on our daily lives. Try as he and his ilk may to convince you to cancel your shopping trip, home-school your kids and stay the hell off Wall Street, it's incumbent upon us all to ignore those mouthy Chicken Littles. For on the day that the fear of terrorism affects your actions and habits, the terrorizers have already won.

With Supporters Like These: Part II

Is it just me, or does this guy look like Donald Rumsfeld?

With Supporters Like These: Part I

Fascinating stuff from Tran Trong Duyet, who was in charge of the prison where McCain claims to have been tortured. Duyet says no torture took place, AND that he'd vote for McCain if he were elligible to do so.

No torture? How about "enhanced interrogation?" Did any of that happen? This story demonstrates one of two things, take your pick:

1) McCain is a liar. Defend him at your own peril.

or

2) Liars support McCain. Defend him at your own peril.

My Blog is Better Than Debbie Schlussel's

Chorus, Isolate, Confirm does not pretend to be an important blog. It does not presume to be ground-breaking, nor does it view itself as a "top blog" in any category. But it's better than at least one political blog I can name:

DebbieSchlussel.com.

Her name sounds like a German pastry, but somewhere along the way, this woman has given up sweetness and decided to focus on just being flaky. Conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel regales her audience (?) with hateful tirades against Muslims and a vindictive, unending dislike of Sex and the City. She plays at being a movie critic, cramming her reviews with unrelated political commentary and rating films with "Marxes" or "Reagans."

She is a loser.

Appropriately for someone who has nothing nice to say about anything, Debbie Schlussel looks and sounds like a Michigan soccer mom who's been ingesting lead for the past 40 years. Observe:

I know being a blogger normally entails a lot of trash-talk, but come on, Debbie Schlussel. What did Sex and the City ever do to you?

Don't Be So Idiomatic

In 2005 and 2006 I put quite a bit of energy into slamming former White House press secretary Scottie-Scott McClellan. I saw him as a mushy marshmallow of a man whose career hinged on his ability to repeat whatever lies he was fed. And in regard to McClellan's capacity as the president's mouthpiece, I think that was an accurate assessment, "marshmallow" and all. Now, more than two years after his resignation from that post, McClellan has once again exploded onto the political scene with What Happened, his "oh no you di-int" account of the Bush Administration's misbehavior.

I'm not sure how interesting a book whose thesis is "Get this, the Iraq War is built on lies!" could possibly be, but I'm ready to read this book and let Scott McClellan redeem himself in full for all the times I cussed at his image on TV and drew goofy facial hair on his image in the newspaper.

Not everyone is as supportive, however, of McClellan's attempt to turn over a new leaf. Former White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy had this colorful comment about McClellan:

"Here's a guy who rode the president's coattails to the world stage and now is [urinating] on his political grave, all the way to the bank."

Now ignore, for a moment, the fact that the press secretary's job is to stand on the "world stage" in lieu of the president. Ignore the fact that riding the president's coattails is an inevitable side-effect of lying on his behalf. And ignore the fact that "deputy press secretary" sounds like a made-up title you'd bestow on a little girl on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. Ignore all that and take a good look at Duffy's maelstrom of idioms. You've got coattails, a stage, a grave and a bank, all in the same sentence! How exactly does one [urinate] to the bank, anyway? If you're [micturating] on a grave (even if it's a political grave), while simultaneously going to the bank, doesn't that make it pretty tough to hit your target?

Maybe I've misunderstood. Maybe McClellan is laughing so hard all the way to the bank, that he's started [whizzing] involuntarily. That happens sometimes, even to grown men.

I hope Trent Duffy writes a book, too. And I hope the whole book reads like that quote.

John McCain and the White Supremacists

It's not just a clever band name.

If you thought there was something fishy about John McCain's "reluctance" to recognize Martin Luther King Day as a legitimate national holiday back in 1983, you'll want to fill up on this intrigue:

McCain has paid $184,000 for the advisorial services a white supremacist named Richard Quinn. Quinn, who made the news less than a decade ago as editor-in-chief of the controversial Confederate periodical Southern Partisan, has written articles in which he describes Martin Luther King Day as "vitriolic and profane," Nelson Mandela as a terrorist (so, thank god Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas, right?) and David Duke as a "maverick."

I've heard "maverick" used to describe another politician who's in the news a lot these days, but I just can't remember who that politician is.

Compare McCain's $184,000 for Quinn to Obama's $22,500 for Reverend Wright, then tell me why we've heard so much news about Wright, yet so little about Quinn. This disproportion of coverage is just one more facet of a tragic, ongoing failure by the mainstream media to sensibly prioritize the information they choose to present to the woefully misinformed American voting public.