I lied

I know I said the chorus of exploding right-wingnut heads would be enough to keep me amused for awhile, but really, uh... I lied. It's not enough. I'm tired. For good or ill, this koolade drinker is riding off on her sparkly pink Unicorn of Hope & Change and JoyJoyJoy. Thanks for reading...

Do-over

Is it "Take Your Daughter to Work Day" again already? Katie Couric did a second interview with Sarah Palin today... but this time John McCain was there to defend her brainless remarks about Pakistan. It's painful... but watch if you dare:




Oh my god, that was excruciating... you can just see McCain thinking "I hope they believe this bullshit" as he explains that a question from a voter is "Gotcha Journalism". Oh please. It wasn't a journalist who asked the question that Palin fucked up so badly, it was an ordinary citizen. And she needs a babysitter to make excuses for her and stop her from making any more mindblowingly stupid comments?

On the other hand, why the hell not? Maybe a Vice Presidential Babysitter isn't a bad idea -- if someone had been babysitting Dick Cheney on that fateful day in February 2006, an old guy might not have gotten shot in the face.

Moving the goalposts, 9/11 Edition

The Bush Administration may be on its way out, but their breathtaking douchebaggery is endless!

In a press conference at the White House yesterday, press secretary Dana Perino revealed the new Official Bush Administration Excuse For Not Finding Osama Bin Laden -- because Osama Bin Laden didn't do it!:

We all knew that was coming, it was just a matter of when. Hopefully someone will make sure John McCain gets the memo.

From the "Tangled Web" Department

"Luxury Aircraft" Edition.

In her acceptance speech at the RNC the other night, Sarah Palin tells a lie of inference about the sale of the Alaska governor's jet:

"I put it on E-Bay".

John McCain later turns it into an outright whopper:

"You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay -- and made a profit!"

And sadly, The Truth:

"It appears that, as promised during her bid for governor in 2006, Palin did try to sell the plane on eBay but that doing so was not as easy as it might have sounded. After putting it up to auction, there was one serious bid, in December 2006, and it fell through. Still, the Westwind II was sold about eight months later, achieving Palin's goal of ridding the state of a luxury item.

But that hasn't stopped Palin, or John McCain, from implying -- and, on Friday, claiming outright -- that Palin did sell the jet on the Internet."

Not only was it not sold on E-Bay, but when the plane finally was sold through an aircraft broker, it was sold at a loss of almost $600,000.

It's hard to say why they'd even bring the plane up, knowing it would be looked into and their claims found to be dirty filthy disgusting lies. I'm starting to think there might be some kind of Liar's Tourette's Syndrome at work here.

That's why we call them "lying liars"

In the wake of the KLRVU debacle, it's worth remembering that social conservatives are against more than just abortion, and are equally disingenuous in how they champion their other pet causes.

I mean, who could possibly forget the feverish campaigning they did against equal marriage in the run-up to the last election? In anticipation of a socially-conservative Harper government taking the reins and rolling back the ridiculous right for gay couples to celebrate their love just like anyone else, a number of "Defend Marriage! Think of The Children!"-type websites sprung up overnight. They were all run by the same people, but the noise they were able to generate made them seem like a far greater number than they really were. Like when they freep online polls. Or conduct you-know-what kind of phone POLLS.

The methods the socons used in their anti-equal marriage campaign are uncannily similar to their campaigns against abortion and, most recently, against Morgentaler's Order of Canada -- a lot of noise being generated by not that many people. Buckets wonders if their movement can even properly be called "grassroots", or is it something else?

Can you take a little more Stupid?

Sure ya can!

Now that the MASSIVE POLL has been beaten to a bleeding pulp, while we wait for the doctor to take its pulse and declare it D.O.A., let's check out another fetus fetishist site, "4 My Canada".

"4 My Canada" is ostensibly a "youth" site for up-and-coming fetus fetishists (okay, "up-but-not-coming") -- you can tell by the use of "4" instead of "for". There's imagery of young people doing young people stuff like standing around with red tape over their mouths,

and articles about activities of interest to da yoot, like prayer sieges and anti-abortion Facebook groups. Movie recommendations? Ben Stein's "Expelled" is not to be missed! You can sign up for a 24/7 Prayer Siege (4 time slots still available, guys: please pray for calorie-negative chocolate), and get ready to Party Down at a big prayer shindig in Ottawa on August 28 (mark your calendars "INcoming!!!").

One of 4MC's initiatives is "OPERATION MOCO" -- "Morgentaler Order of Canada Outcry". They have protest postcards all ready to go, like this totally sane and sensible one for the Governor-General:

"Mass murderer" -- no hysterical hyperbole there. But never mind that, there's another postcard for... the Queen!

"Morgenaler? Order of Canada?" Fetus fetishists? Spell much?

And... whoops! Hold the phone! What's this!?

"The largest telephone poll in Canada's history"!?? That wouldn't happen to be the MASSIVE POLL that's lying crumpled and lifeless out in the parking lot after a 3-day non-stop pile-on shitkicking and chain-whipping at the hands of the reality-based blogging community... would it?

To call these people cretins would be an insult to cretins everywhere.

Massive Poll -- Bizarro World

The strange and twisted saga of the MASSIVE POLL continues -- raising eyebrows, and suspicion, in unexpected places:

:
Rabid anti-choicers were reeling after the one-two sucker punch delivered by the Ipsos-Reid and Angus Reid Morgentaler polls that left them stunned, baffled and walking around in circles muttering to themselves. Mayday! Mayday! Clearly they needed help to regroup, and CLC delivered with a MASSIVE NEW POLL that showed 56% opposed the Morgentaler OC. Shouts of ecstasy resounded, until -- you know. That thing. That "credibility" thing. No matter, they've got a big one online and they're not about to throw it back:

Some people just... don't... get it. Okay, time to play "Bizarro World".

Imagine, if you will, a parallel "opposite" universe where a pro-choice Liberal MP has a sibling who's active in organizing and fund-raising for the Liberal Party, but whose actual livelihood is... oh, I don't know, painting hockey helmets, say. Imagine that, in addition to the hockey helmets, this sibling runs a "polling company" of sorts, one with no portfolio, no contact information, basically no proof of its existence. Imagine that this "polling company" is commissioned by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada to conduct a poll on public opinion of the Morgentaler OC appointment, and imagine even further that the results show a healthy majority of approval.

Now imagine the shrieking howls of indignation and outrage from the anti-abortion half-wits. Yeah... that sound about right to you?

ETA - As I mentioned to deBeauxOs in the comments, it's worth noting that my Bizarro world scenario doesn't actually happen in real life because when the reality-based community conducts polls, we tend to go with legitimate pollsters.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Massive Poll - the train keeps a-rollin'

Whoops! We may have inadvertently stumbled over something here.

Back here in the comments, timekeeper was able to ascertain that the "Katherine" part of "Allan and Katherine", proprietors of "Laser Designs", is one Katherine Bruinooge, possibly related to anti-choice CPC MP for Winnipeg South, Rod Bruinooge? Yes, she is -- and she's definitely related (married) to Rod's brother, Allan Bruinooge, a Tory party organizer, and self-employed in -- you guessed it -- the laser technology industry.

Yes!!!

OK, I have to depart for work now (shit!) but will be back on my break.

Good work, people! Thanks to Eric and timekeeper, who dug up all this new info!

A DAY LATE AND TEN DOLLARS SHORT! From the FD thread, someone desperately tries to salvage the MASSIVE POLL's credibility:

Thanks, but we already knew that 12 hours ago. W00t!

They're not all stupid...

The spectre of suspicion having been raised over Campaign Life Coalition's MASSIVE NEW POLL, even some FDers are asking questions:

On the other hand... "LALALALALALALA! I can't hear you!!!"

Massive poll a massive scam? Part II

It gets weirder still.

Back here, I pondered some of the weirdness around Campaign Life Coalition's "MASSIVE NEW POLL" that supposedly indicates 56% of Canadians oppose Dr. Morgentaler's Order of Canada. Never mind that the results were so hopelessly skewed that they don't prove much other than 90% of Canadians don't give a shit about this issue -- I was curious to know something about the company that did the poll.

However, I was unable to find any contact info for "KLRVU Polling". A Canada 411 search of KLRVU (in a few different combinations) returned nada. A Google search also returned nothing other than what's been written about the poll in the last 24 hours. This is strange indeed: certainly any polling company that, according to the CLC press release,

"is a privately owned polling company working with private firms since 2006 providing research services"

would at least be listed in the phone book?

Then I discovered that the CLC press release that ran in CNW, identical to the lifesite article in every other way, also had a phone number for "KLRVU Polling", 204-999-7446. A reverse lookup turned it up as a non-published number, very strange indeed for any kind of business. A Google search of the phone number revealed that it's being used by two businesses in Winnipeg. One is a small custom jewelry engraving business called "Lasercut Designs" (936 James St., Winnipeg), and the other a company called "WMD Mobile Media" (address: 4626 Roblin Blvd, Winnipeg) that has something to do with billboards (but naturally! has no website yet). So far no evidence of anything to do with polling services. However...

The Lasercut Designs site has a link to their online Ecom site. The Ecom site uses CPU Technologies, a provider of E-commerce software. A link at the bottom of the page goes to a CPU site that displays its various software offerings. This could be the polling connection: maybe through CPU the people who run Lasercut Designs (Allan and Katherine) were able to get a polling software program of some kind, which they then used to conduct the CLC poll?

Add to all that the fact that "INFOLIST Canada", the company who provided "KLRVU Polling" with the random phone-calling algorithm used in the MASSIVE NEW POLL, is also Canada 411 and Google-challenged. The result, accurate 19 times out of 20, is that the CLC's MASSIVE NEW POLL is raising more questions than answers.

And now --

let's hear from that elusive 24 percent of Americans who are so cataclysmically dull-witted that they still think Georgie Bush is doing a good job, and that a Republican administration is the only thing standing between the USA and another terrorist attack...

... in spite of the screamingly obvious fact that the Republicans were in charge when the last one happened. This is a new nadir of stupid for which there is, as yet, no appropriate descriptor. For now, "fucking braindead" will have to do.

On bullshit and breaks

In marathoning it's called "hitting the wall". I don't know if there's a blogging equivalent, but after 10 days of frenzied blogging in the wake of Dr. M's OC appointment and the barrage of batshit bullshit that followed, I was suddenly exhausted. I couldn't stand to read or even think about one more word of the steaming loads of bullshit being dumped by the "busload" on blogs and in the media over this topic and the tangential abortion issue. I was tired, man.

Normally bullshit is great incentive to blog -- it shouldn't be ignored because there's a chance that some unsuspecting person out there might believe it. Bullshit should be shot down whenever and wherever it's found and its sanctimonious, stupid and self-righteous propagators ridiculed with gusto. But these people are first and foremost propaganda-bots who never budge from their script, even in the face of evidence that contradicts them. In advertising we used to call it "Wearing down their resistance with repetition". The same kind of psychology is at work with anti-abortion propagandists -- knowing full well that the numbers aren't on their side, their only hope is to wear down resistance with an endless loop of lies. To literally exhaust people into seeing things their way.

But it wasn't just the hysterical jabbering of fetus fetishists that was getting to me, it was the entire media circus that played up the "controversy" and "outrage" and the media's distinct anti-choice bias. It wasn't my paranoid imagination -- a perusal of the story through Google shows a 2 to 1 anti-choice bias in the MSM (that obviously doesn't include dubious sources like lifesite and other right-wing nuthouses, or published "letters to the editor"). The Ottawa Citizen's David Warren alone generated numerous shrieking screeds on the topic, culminating with yesterday's hysterical pronouncement that the world is collapsing under the weight of moral decay, and it's all the fault of Dr. Morgentaler and his "gliberal" supporters. Because "moral order is easy to tear down, hard to build":

"While I unburdened myself last week of my contempt for Canada's governess-general, her chief justice, her prime minister and other, undesignated officials -- in the affair of what I have come to call the "Order of Morgentaler" -- I'm not sure the people of Canada have yet been sufficiently condemned, and I will devote this week's column to rectifying that oversight."

Well, you go girl!

Anyway, the break is over and my energy is renewed. I'll mop the floor with Warren later, after I fuel up with caffeine and outrage. Then...

Bring it!

Possessed

Argghh, sometimes I am so brought down by anti-choice nitwits -- their obfuscations, their exaggerations, their hysterical hyperbole, their filthy disgusting pigfucking lying. Because they subscribe to the "Big Lie" method of propaganda -- keep repeating the same lie over and over and eventually people will think it's the truth -- it's critical that those of us in the Real World constantly rebut and debunk the same old horseshit, over and over and over again. It gets repetitive and boring and sometimes, a little depressing.

But that's only sometimes -- mostly they're a rich motherlode of comedy gold that I mine at every opportunity. Like yesterday, when Birth Pangs posted about some new and rotten craziness being shrieked by one of these pearl-clutching nitwits. A short, feverish discussion ensued at the Fainting Couch, and:

Ya gotta love accusations of "incoherency" and "illogic" that wind up with delusional, superstitious gibberish about sin and demonic possession.

Anyway, better possessed than repossessed, as some of this wank's fellow travellers are finding out. Haha!

Speaking of sticky keyboards...

I thought I'd check on FD and see how they're holding up under the pile of libel suits they're being buried alive in. (I throw on the hip waders and go there so you don't have to.)

Conventional wisdom suggests it would make sense for all Free Speech Freedom Fighters to devote all their time and energy to neutralizing (without prejudice) any legal salvos being fired their way. But -- hmm. That sounds like it might be kind of... hard work. Wouldn't it be so much easier to just look around for someone else to sue? "We can do that too! Nyeah nyeah!"

Here's a man with a plan:

Huh. This guy apparently spends enough time poking around xtra, looking for action (-able statements) that he's even got some favourite "grist for actionable items"... Suggesting the Bible be banned? -- Actionable! Calling for an end to the taxpayer-funded free ride of Catholic Schools? -- Actionable!! Does this guy even understand what "actionable" means? -- Is that question Actionable! too?

I'm sure I don't have to point out the irony of those bemoaning libel chill and the curtailment of free speech simultaneously going around searching for someone they can sue. Given the litigious nature of some of those they point to as "free speech freedom fighters", I shouldn't be surprised by the cognitive dissonance... and yet, I always am.

But never mind that: "poke around" -- an innocent Freudian slip? I wonder.

Sneaky sneaky

From the "Whenever You Think They've Scraped The Bottom Of The Barrel, They Lift The Barrel" Department.

Okay. We already know all too well how sly, sneaky and stealthy the fetus fetishists are, but today I stumbled upon a story that shows their tactics have reached another new nadir. (I won't dare say they've bottomed right out, I've said it before so many times.)

"The Christian Institute", a group in the UK devoted to, I don't know, whatever the fuck it is they do, is taking The Google to court for refusing their anti-abortion propaganda. Get a load of this:

"A Christian group is suing Google over the internet giant's refusal to take its anti-abortion adverts.

The Christian Institute, a "non-denominational Christian charity", wanted to pay Google so that whenever the word "abortion" was typed into the popular search engine, its link would appear on the side of the screen.

The link would have read: "UK abortion law - news and views on abortion from the Christian Institute. www.christian.org.uk.""

See how this works? Some unsuspecting person is looking for information about something that should be nobody's business but their's and their doctor's, tries to do a Google search and gets bushwhacked! by a seemingly innocuous link to a site with "information" about abortion. Except we know what happens when that unsuspecting person goes *click*: they're treated to a heapin' helpin' of anti-abortion propaganda (spiced up with a dash of anti-gay proselytism). Very sneaky, fetus fetishists... but Google isn't buying it.

Of course, the fact that Google would refuse to be a party to this kind of disinformation campaign is nothing less than religious persecution and the stifling of free speech, so it's Hi-ho, hi-ho, off to court we go! CI spokeman Mike Judge (appropriate name or what?) sayeth:

"If there is to be a free exchange of ideas then Google cannot give special free speech rights to secular groups whilst censoring religious views.

"To say that religious sites with material on abortion are 'unacceptable content' (while) advertising pornography is ridiculous."

The group was supported by the Christian former Tory minister Ann Widdecombe, who said: "It does seem to me to be the most appalling and blatant case of religious discrimination and also to be a very silly attempt to stifle due debate."

Except, as one of the commenters at the Daily Mail points out:

And amen to that.

Happy 5th Anniversary, 6-day/week/month War

"The war could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months" -- Rumsfeld, 2003

"The insurgency is in its last throes" -- Cheney, 2005

"The insurgency is in its last throes" -- Cheney, 2006

"The insurgency is in its last -- err, okay, maybe not" -- Cheney, 2007

"The Iraq invasion was a success" -- Cheney, 2005

"The Iraq invasion was a success" -- Cheney, 2006

"The Iraq invasion was a success" -- Cheney, 2007

"The Iraq invasion was a success" -- Cheney, 2008

"The Iraq invasion was a success" -- Georgie, 2008

*Heave*

Oh yeah... price of oil on March 2003 - $37/barrel. Price today - $110/barrel.Ta-da!

Saddam - Al Qaeda zzzzzzz

Saddam - Al Qaeda. Saddam - Al Qaeda. Saddam - Saddam - Saddam - Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda - Al Qaeda - Saddam!

Who could forget that hypnotic little refrain chanted by the Bush administration in the buildup to the Iraq War (6 years ago)? It's long since been revealed to be one of the biggest steaming loads of bullshit in history, every kind of evidence, intelligence and conventional wisdom having long since shot it down and kicked its ass around every block in the world. But recently and most redundantly:

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military's first and only study looking into ties between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda showed no connection between the two, according to a military report released by the Pentagon.

The report released by the Joint Forces Command five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq said it found no "smoking gun" after reviewing about 600,000 Iraqi documents captured in the invasion and looking at interviews of key Iraqi leadership held by the United States, Pentagon officials said."

Shocked, shocked, I tell you.

Moving the goalposts

It's frustrating enough to have my factually-accurate posts censored(!) while bugfuck insane fetus-fetishist and guilt-glutton Denise Mountenay of the exploitive anti-choice group "Silent No More" is permitted to repeatedly back a dump-truck full of steaming bullshit into the same comments section and unload with impunity. But now, in a graphic illustration of the semantic gymnastics and goalpost moving routinely employed by anti-choicers, the infamous SUZANNE feels compelled to weigh in with her own unique misinterpretation of my post that calls BULLSHIT on Denise and her nefarious fellow travel-liars.

Attempting to shift the focus away from Denise and the hot sweaty coils of easily-refuted "abortion-breast cancer" bullshit that she knowingly passes off as Fact, SUZANNE takes me to task for my observation that maybe, just maybe, *some* of the women who have seemingly insurmountable post-abortive psychological issues -- I'm looking at you, Denise -- were a little fucked up to begin with. In my dictionary, "some" means "a few" or "not many", but on SUZANNE's little black and white planet, dictionaries, like science texts, must have all the confusing details censored out. Her translation is that "feminists" (such pigeonholery!) "dismiss post-abortive trauma" -- all and absolutely.

I won't waste any time deconstructing her argument: SUZANNE knows exactly what I meant by "some" (I'm looking at you, Denise) and if she were being honest, she'd have to acknowledge the possible truth of my observation. If she were to be really, brutally honest, she'd also have to admit that the odious creeps who exploit emotionally-fragile women and perpetuate their trauma with no regard for anything but the furthering of their agenda are the real villains in the scenario. Not someone who's actually *been there*, emotionally and physically, to support pre- and post-abortive women. But it's no big news flash to most of us that ideology trumps honesty when it comes to pushing the anti-choice agenda.

NEXT!

Retraction

Oh oh: Mea culpa, mea culpa! I have to retract something I said here, regarding the Sens Foundation "Better Halves" fundraiser, "First Place Pregnancy Centre" and its status as a registered charity.

It was originally thought that FPPC wasn't a registered charity, since that's what Revenue Canada told Heather Mallick. However, it turns out that while FPPC isn't registered under that name, it is a registered charity under its real (but for some reason, disguised) name, "Crisis Pregnancy Centre of Ottawa". Would it be rude to wonder why they feel compelled to disguise their real name? Well, that's another post for another day.

So the Sens Foundation can relax: they're not doing anything that contravenes tax law. They're just supporting a group whose sole purpose is to coerce women into becoming unwilling Fetal Support Systems. No problem, no problem at all... well, unless you're stuck on that old "womens' right to self-determination" thing.

(h/t TGB)

The Cable Man Cometh

I'm trying to type this as I wait impatiently for the arrival of Cable Guy so I can get back to regular blogging. I'd forgotten how painfully slow dialup is... links take at least 20 seconds to open, posting is like watching my computer grunt and groan in the throes of terminal constipation (I have to wait a few seconds for each word I've just typed to appear on the screen).

Just for the hell of it I ran a speed test on this connection and: 29kbps. I used to get 46-52kbps on my old dialup, WTF? 29kbps, that's like a tin can on a string! My high speed was about 5000kbps -- with that frame of reference, it's easy to see why things are getting ugly.

By late afternoon I was so frustrated that I called the cable guys and told them they had One Hour to get someone out here -- after that I was taking an axe to the box on the side of my house. "Oh no! You can't do that!" cried the CSR. "My house! I can do whatever the fuck I want to anything that's attached to it!" I screamed... "59 minutes!"

Oh, guess who just rolled up the driveway.

Update: And I'm back baby! 4,884kbps baahahahahaha!!! Yes!!!