"Good writing is clear thinking made visible."*

So what the hell is this? (Other than hilarious...)

It’s been said that the difference between the truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense. After its third season, Battlestar Galactica steadily failed on both counts.

* Ambrose Bierce

Well...

It looks like Santorum really is thinking about running for president and is trying to separate himself from the disastrous Bush administration. This should be hilarious, since he supported Bush's policies in Iraq in order to protect us from fictional monsters (or something) and then justified his support with b.s. evidence of Iraqi WMDs.

Though, honestly, the hardest thing for Santorum to do will be to distance himself from himself. I can't see anyone rallying around the cry of "Vote Santorum: He'll take away your birth control!"

From the Office of Things I'd Love To See

[PARODY]
From the office of Rep. Alan Grayson
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Recently, it was suggested by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that I was unwilling to be on his opinion program. Mr. O'Reilly went so far as to send the network's Teabagger cheerleader, Griff Jenkins to ambush me outside my office, but I was too busy to speak with him at that moment.

Primarily, Mr. Jenkins wanted to speak with me about an off-hand comment I made and for which I apologized. I shouldn't have referred to a lobbyist as a "K Street Whore" for a couple of reasons: A) It's insensitive and B) the lobbyist isn't selling, she's buying. It's the Republican Party that is acting like a party of whores by selling off their honor and even the lives of their constituents by opposing health care in order to please their insurance lobbyist customers.

I would note, however, that it seems unlikely Mr. O'Reilly truly cares about what he calls "irresponsible" language. Just ask Andrea Mackris.

On the other hand, I would be glad to meet with Mr. O'Reilly or one of his reporters, with a few stipulations:

1. Knowing Fox News' penchant for deceptively editing statements by Democrats, Mr. O'Reilly will agree to air the entire, unedited interview.
   
2. In order to ensure this promise is kept, a member of Representative Grayson's staff will be allowed to videotape the interview as it is conducted and the Congressman reserves the right to publish that video on YouTube should Mr. O'Reilly edit the video or refuse to air it.
   
3. The interview will take place in Representative Grayson's Congressional office.

I must admit that I feel disappointed about the animosity I feel emanating from Fox News and Mr. O'Reilly in particular and I would like to take the first step in repairing the relationship. Knowing how much Mr. O'Reilly enjoys a good falafel, I have ordered 100 falafels to be delivered to Fox News headquarters building tomorrow at noon. I hope that Mr. O'Reilly and his staff will accept this peace offering and I'm sure other members of the media might like to capture this delivery for posterity.

I'm looking forward to the interview!

Oh no! The stupid! Aieeeeeee!

Apparently, the rest of us are entitled to our math--which most people simply know as, you know, math--and Hannity is entitled to "the math." Which is also known as "the stupid."

Who's got the ego?

Bush, January 2007:

We stopped an Al Qaida plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We broke up a Southeast Asian terrorist cell grooming operatives for attacks inside the United States. We uncovered an Al Qaida cell developing anthrax to be used in attacks against America. And, just last August, British authorities uncovered a plot to blow up passenger planes bound for America over the Atlantic Ocean.*

For each life saved, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave public servants who devote their lives to finding the terrorists and stopping them.

Then this happened yesterday:

In his continuing effort to thank the law enforcement personnel who stopped alleged terrorist plotter Najibullah Zazi, President Obama on Thursday called the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in Denver and spoke to FBI Special Agent in Charge Jim Davis and about thirty of his fellow JTTF members.

Davis tells ABC News the call from the president was a huge boost to morale for agents still working the case.

"I've been doing this for 25 years and I'm not aware of any time the president has ever called the special agent in charge of a field office to communicate his thanks for an investigative effort," Davis said.

* (Of course these claims weren't true.)

Conspiracies abound

So this idiot grows a beard, lies about being a Muslim convert, gets an internship at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, steals a bunch of their stuff and then writes a book with his dad claiming there's a muslim conspiracy to undermine American national security.

Republicans have picked it up, screaming for an investigation into the findings.

Mrs. Myrick and Republican Reps. John Shadegg of Arizona, Paul Broun of Georgia and Trent Franks of Arizona called Wednesday for an investigation by the House sergeant-at-arms into whether CAIR was successful in planting congressional interns.

"If an organization that is connected to or supports terrorists is running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related congressional offices, I think this needs to be made known," Mr. Broun said.

Of course the main congresspeople pushing this are clearly a bit nutty and the guy who sent his son undercover is a major nutjob who's convinced Obama's a Muslim who wants to bring Sharia law to the United States, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at the evidence they claim demonstrates (in the words of North Carolina Republican Rep. Sue Myrick) a "concerted effort on the part of radical Islamists to infiltrate our major institutions."

And here's the evidence, taken from a memo stolen from the CAIR offices:




It reads: We will focus on influencing congressmen responsible for policy that directly impacts the American Muslim community. (For example congressmen on the judiciary, intelligence and homeland security committees.) We will develop national initiatives such as a lobby day and placing Muslim interns in Congressional offices.

In other words, the undercover investigation came up with nothing. This is simply a typical PR planning memo in which a group seeks to get a hearing for its constituents by getting people near those who can make a difference. If you think there's something special about this, however, check out the mission of the conservative Leadership Institute, which uses almost precisely the same language.

The Leadership Institute’s mission is to increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists and leaders in the public policy process. To accomplish this mission, the Institute identifies, recruits, trains, and places conservatives in government, politics, and the media.

Morton Blackwell's Leadership Institute has been creating and farming out conservative ideologues for 30 years now and there's nothing wrong with that. Right wingers have every right to build a base of support for their beliefs. If, however, CAIR is a conspiracy, then the Leadership Institute has been operating a conspiracy since 1979.

The truth is, getting an aide position in Congress is a complicated and often grueling process and getting a position on a committee that deals with defense and security requires a thorough background check. So the Muslim aides to congresspeople have to have proven their loyalty to the U.S.

Arguing with these people about this won't help, of course. As Blackwell himself once wrote, "Those fully convinced of a conspiracy theory take any contradictory information as proof positive of just how clever the masters of the conspiracy are."

Returning to Ron Radosh

Four years ago, I pointed out that I didn't think much of Marty Peretz, who praised Ron Radosh's book, Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance With The Left. I pointed out that the book that Peretz claimed to be "wise" and "honest" was written by a hack who had written things like this:

On the other side of the divide are self-described progressives steeped in existential depravity. They are people with a memory eviscerated over time. For them rap is music and manners are arbitrary rules. Having lived only in a debased culture, they do not have standards on which to rely except the popular dogma of environmentalism, and the avoidance of discrimination.

These are not the words of someone who seems capable of fair-minded wisdom and I said as much. But the (admittedly great) Daniel Radosh came to his dad's defense, saying that he had spoken with his father about the column who told Daniel he'd "never seen (the column) before," despite it being his byline. "Some intern at the Hudson Institute is so about to get fired," Daniel added.

Now this one piece doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things. Radosh has proven that he's a less than fair-minded observer time and time again since then. However, it seemed important to bring up today, as Radosh jumps onto the nutty "Bill Ayers wrote Dreams From My Father" bandwagon.

The "evidence" that Ayers wrote Obama's book is, to be sure, ridiculous. The evidence to suggest that Ron Radosh is projecting is pretty strong.

At the time I first brought up Radosh's writings, I attempted to contact The Hudson Institute to find out what sort of mix-up had occurred to allow an article to be published under someone else's byline, but no one would return my calls. Still, four years after I first brought this up and seven years after it was first published, the column is still available with Radosh's byline.

It is reasonable to assume that, despite the suggestion by Daniel that his father was miffed by the column, Ron Radosh either has no problem with his name being attached to an essay he didn't write or he lied about not having written. To his own son, no less.

Is it just me?

I'm strangely excited by our plan to bomb the moon, so I'll be getting up in the middle of the night to check it out.

P.S. Just found out that you can download Le Voyage Dans La Lune here for free. Film geeks take note.

Idiot caller seeks to renew pre-Mayflower America

So, Mike Signorile opened up the lines on his radio show and "Jim from Oklahoma called."

SIGNORILE: Jim from Oklahoma, you're on the Michelangelo Signorile show. Hi, Jim.

JIM: Uh, yeah, uh, I'm going to lead an overthrow. I've got a small group here in Oklahoma and we're planning on conducting this small coup.

SIGNORILE: Wait, you're going to stage a coup yourself? Out of Oklahoma?

JIM: Yeah. Yeah. I've got a clan of people--I wouldn't say clan--a group of people out here, we plan on marching to the White House.

SIGNORILE: What are you going to do?

JIM: We're going to take over and get this country back online to where it was 400 years ago.

Oy, are these people dumb.