This has got to be Tweet Pic of the week.
'I Jay Carney hereby resign my... Wait a second! You want me to sign this?'
A quick digest of stuff which I've seen, read, noticed, thought "Gee I ought to blog that", etc. over the last 4 or 5 months. Maybe I'll make this a regular feature.... Please don't hold your breath.
There's an interesting albeit rambling post on the Ochlophobist blog in which our friend Diane really shines in the comments. I like reading Owen's stuff; he's a lot more "picky" than I — for lack of a better word — that is why it's sort of interesting that he became Catholic, left the Catholic Church for Eastern Orthodoxy for 10 years, and has now sort of come back to here comes everybody, but admits he still might receive communion at a Greek church. Which I don't really get, but I'm me and Owen is more fascinating that way. And plus I get the feeling that he is a genuinely good person who knows what he is doing even if I don't get him.
In the hilarity department we have this from Kathy Shaidle, her rather deprecatory take on our favorite (snort) book, The Little way of Ruthie Leming. Here's an excerpt from the aptly-titled "Why not just accept that your family are jerks and tell them to drop dead?":
“When I was younger, I left my hick family in their hick town and went to the big city where no one would laugh or yell at me for wanting to make something of myself.
“A family tragedy forced me to go back home, where my family and I were reconciled — which is what I thought I wanted cuz I read it in a book somewhere.
“Better yet, I got a book of my own out of it that sold a ton of copies.
“But now I’m miserable again because it turns out that my family is still a bunch of assholes.”
The American Conservative has a reader survey up at the moment. Have they finally noticed their own pointlessness? Once an dreadnought of Paleoconservatism, they degenerated into a ship of fools in search of a heading. It's telling that a magazine founded by people with adamantine convictions should now be reduced to asking the readership what it wants to hear.
I encourage all readers to rush to the TAC site and put in your two cents. I did. Of course, I asked them to get rid of the most egregious barnacles (Dreher, McConnell) and stowaways, (Millman). I also added that they can do without the children they recruited (Coppage, Olmstead). Of course, I also suggested that they might return to the Paleoconservative roots from which they sprung. Finally I suggested that they try breaking some news rather than merely mooning over events as they do now. Phil Geraldi is the only one at TAC who tells readers things they don't already know.
It is important to recognize this survey for what it is. TAC realizes that having purged actual conservatives in order to forge some sort of new conservatism, they have created an amorphous symposium of nothing in articular. The point of conservatism is to preserve the best, even if unpopular. Nothing speaks more of TAC's lack of Conservatism than its flailing about for direction in this way.
Remember our old Dangerous Ideas posts from days of yore? Well, I give you the whole Google robot car debacle-waiting-to-happen.
Our Cub Reporter was on the job, reporting on the causes of the UCSB murders last week. Of course, a cautionary statement is appropriate, lest the reader run off with his or her own pet theory:
C-FAM reports on the Obama's Administration attempt to shove the LGBT agenda down everyone's throat in the international community. Excerpt:
U.S. and international leaders increasingly criticize President Obama’s foreign policy approach, especially his weak responses to massive human rights atrocities and religious cleansing in the Middle East and Africa.
But the Obama administration boasts – and few disagree – it has been all-hands-on-deck when it comes to expanding sexual rights.
The State Department released a fact sheet listing its “significantly expanded efforts” to promote LGBT rights through “private engagement with governments and civil society, public diplomacy, foreign assistance, and work in multilateral fora.”
“There are few areas where I think our task is so clear” as to work “for the rights and the dignity of LGBT persons around the world,” said Secretary John Kerry.
National leaders and foreign policy experts say this focus has caused a backlash in some countries.
Uganda President Museveni reportedly initially leaned against legislation toughening penalties on homosexuality. When he signed it into law, Museveni pointed out pressure from Obama had a reverse effect.
“I would like to discourage the USA government from taking the line that passing this law will ‘complicate our valued relationship’ with the USA as President Obama said,” Museveni said.
“Africans do not seek to impose our views on anybody. We do not want anybody to impose their views on us.”
Straight from Miskatonic U. (not to be confused with Wossamotta U.), proof that hooking up the jumper cables to Sis's rotting earlobes is always worth a shot at another tinkle of paperback sales.
When The Dead Come For You
Read the whole thing, or, you know, just take my word for it and spare yourself another episode of this banal little horror show.
Manufactured anger is in the news right now with President Obama's latest stage performance over the VA scandal. Rush Limbaugh is talking about it right now with a fun montage made up of about 5 years worth of unconvincing Obama play-rage over things like the IRS scandal, the healthcare.gov fiasco, etc. Limbaugh also makes the very astute observation that the mock outrage is messaging which targets people he calls "low-information voters", not those of us who know play-acting when we see it.
The Media Report has a great example of the same sort of mock-rage-as-messaging with this piece about Mitchell Garabedian's recent fit asserting that the Catholic Church is "once again acting in the most immoral way by allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children" merely because the church wouldn't pony up over a false accusation:
Garabedian probably thought he would have it just as easy when he filed a similar lawsuit, also in 2012, against the Diocese of Fall River, alleging abuse by a priest starting in the late 1970s. In his suit, Garabedian made the astonishing claim that a priest abused two parishioners for nearly a decade starting when the boys were 9 or ten years old and lasting until they were seventeen.
Alas, however, the diocese hired independent investigators to look into the matter, and they concluded that the evidence did not support Garabedian's claim. Most notably, the accused priest died in 1996 at 83 years old, and not a single allegation had ever been made against him.
Yet even though no evidence of abuse was found by investigators, the diocese agreed not only to offer free counseling for the men but to also enter a mediation process to bring closure to the case.
However, as the Diocese of Fall River reports, Garabedian recently abruptly "ended the mediation process."
In other words, when the diocese apparently refused Garabedian's demand for money, he unleashed his tirade that the Church was now somehow "allowing the wholesale sexual abuse of children."
I would also ask of ‘Another Mark’ (the 19th, 952PM) the same question that ‘Mark’ asks (the 20th, 652AM): why trust this lawyer (hereinafter: ‘MG’)?
Readers may recall my mention of a Boston attorney in D’Antonio’s book who was involved in various bits of quite possibly prohibited and unlawful skullduggery in helping the Boston Globe get its series published in early January 2002 (D’Antonio is pro-Stampede and sees MG’s activity as sort of charmingly enterprising). That attorney D’Antonio was discussing was none other than MG. And MG is certainly a prime candidate for inclusion among those torties who have taken the Anderson Strategies into the big-time.
And on what basis are we supposed to credit ‘Another Mark’s (hereinafter: ‘AM’) unsupported and global assertion that “the church HAS allowed the wholesale abuse of children”? [giveaway exaggerated formatting retained]
Which is then followed by snark to the effect that MG “must be doing something right now that David Pierre must attack you”.
Which also includes the classic Playbook legerdemain of presuming that the reporting of a historically and actually verifiable fact (i.e. MG’s publicly stated ire at the Diocese of Fall River) constitutes “an attack”.
And then a mere epithet about it being “laughable” that MG treats the Church as “a trip to the ATM”, also a juvenile bit from the Playbook that has been seen here many times.
And I would add that where the Church asks (as many organizations do) for “donations”, it does not try to take potential ‘donors’ to court in order to obtain vast sums from them on the basis of legal charges almost completely unsupported by any evidence.
Then a blunderbuss blam of a bunch of (otherwise quite rationally explicable) Church decisions in regard to “closing churches” that had been built – we see the smarmy heart-string pulling manipulative bit from the Playbook here – with “your hard earned heartfelt donations” from “you and your parents”.
Then a fresh paragraph with more Playbook stuff.
First, to the effect that “David Pierre acts as if every victim is a money sucking leach” [sic]: if anyone deliberately tried to bring a lawsuit against you, alleging acts from the long-ago for which they have no evidence but merely a story, and publicizes the whole thing highly, what would you consider such a person to be?
But then again: DP has never said any such thing as “money sucking leach” [sic] and I can’t recall any commenter using the term either.
But then again: in the Abusenik Playbook, if you don’t totally buy the script, then you are ‘attacking’ them. (The Abusenik objective here is to distract you from the fact that they may well be involved in something characterizable as the activity of a “money sucking leach”[sic] and therefore try to quickly get you (the reader or hearer) to focus on the (merely alleged) victimization of the whole thing.)
Second, we get – yet again – the mere but utter presumption of “the damage done” by alleged acts the nature and even the very existence of which has never been demonstrated. And I would also recall here the recent material here discussing the cautious use of “potential” in the statements of various scientific papers and research results. ‘Potential’ is not synonymous with ‘certain’ (and so even some phrase like ‘an absolutely certain potential’ would not move things forward at all in this regard).
Third, the Wig of Bemused and Honest Innocence with that “sadly”.
And then fourth: the use of the presumed “attacks” (discussed above in this comment of mine) to cluck condescendingly that “such attacks [do not] somehow support our church”. Would that be “our” Church? And is it not ‘supportive’ to point out how the allegations are unfounded and highly dubious and seriously improbable?
And in regard to “responsability”: did so many Abuseniks go to the same school of misspelling? There seems to be a pattern here.
And then fifth: the old “enabler” trope, right from the Playbook.
And then the next paragraph works toward whistling-away the profound and abyssal evidentiary and veracity problems with the Stampede and the Abuseniks: “simply because no one came forward while the priest was alive does nothing to prove he did not abuse during his lifetime” [correction supplied]
No, the fact that “no one came forward while the priest was alive” does not provide conclusive evidence that the alleged abuse never happened. But it also a) provides no evidence that the alleged abuse did happen and b) provides an element of increased-probability that the story was concocted opportunistically after the priest died, in order to cash in on the Stampede piñata game.
And it also provides some grounds for doubting the conceptual chops (and perhaps good faith) of anybody who would try to pass off such a conceptual misch as if it were clear and pristine logic, upon which he might base his assertions with no further need for explication.
And if the Church’s paid investigators “found no evidence” – although the Church (or Diocese, here) must know that it would very likely have to rely on those investigative findings in a public forum – then the same can be said for any investigators the tortie might engage (although, as we know, given the now-established dynamics of the Anderson Strategies in the Stampede, the tortie might well expect that his client’s claims and allegations and stories would never be required to face public and objective scrutiny in the first place anyway).
Abuseniks “really do see” us as “dumb blind sheep”, but “fortunately” – and especially through the work on TMR – that is not the case.
Which is what moves the Abuseniks to toss up the type of stuff we see here in the AM comment.
