America’s Funniest Right-Wing Emails

Renata asks:

Not only did “Dimitry” (a desperate attempt to americanize a clearly foreign name?) win Funniest Right-Wing Email of the Day, he may also have taken home the prize for Funniest Way Ever to Spell “Massachusetts”, don’t you think?

By the way, I know this may be way too much trouble for you, but how about a

Funniest Right-Wing Email Ever contest? That is, if you do keep track of all

the junk you get. You could post some of your all-time favorites and then

let us, your loyal readers and supporters, vote and pick the best one. (We

could even make a reenactment of the latest presidential elections and

actually pick the guy who LOST as the winner!) And the prize, well, how

about a one-way ticket to Gitmo with the chance to be part of the whole “a

more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions” extravaganza?

Sure would be fun!

You’re right. As fun a project as AFRWE would be, it would be way too much trouble. And my in box just isn’t big enough to store all the idiocy I receive from people who regretably enjoy the same right to vote as the rest of us.

Renata also writes the

Jen and Brad Dish Update

I also hear that Brad’s recent, close friendship with Angelina Jolie

bothered Jen.

Comprise This!

Christine responds to Snotty Dave by noting that he has been wrong since the 18th century:

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

One entry found for comprise.

Main Entry: com·prise

Pronunciation: k&m-‘prIz

Function: transitive verb

Inflected Form(s): com·prised; com·pris·ing

Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French compris, past participle of comprendre, from Latin comprehendere

1 : to include especially within a particular scope

2 : to be made up of

3 : COMPOSE, CONSTITUTE usage

Although it has been in use since the late 18th century, sense 3 is still attacked as wrong. Why it has been singled out is not clear, but until comparatively recent times it was found chiefly in scientific or technical writing rather than belles lettres. Our current evidence shows a slight shift in usage: sense 3 is somewhat more frequent in recent literary use than the earlier senses. You should be aware, however, that if you use sense 3 you may be subject to criticism for doing so, and you may want to choose a safer synonym such as compose or make up.

Gitmo Apologist

Using many of the arguments au courrant on rightist talk radio, GOR (Gadly of Rall) Ira writes:

Your compassion for our Gitmo inmates is admirable. However, you should recognize that anyone who was a member of the Taliban participated in

doing to an entire country, the same thing that they are now experiencing.

According to the Pentagon, only about three dozen out of the thousands of Muslims rotting away in US gulags (now, for life!) were leaders of the Taliban regime or Al Qaeda officials. The remainder were grunt soldiers, ordinary tribal militia with no more say in Taliban law than an ordinary American GI has on American foreign policy. By Ira’s logic any US serviceperson, or even civilian as many of the Gitmo detainees are, is legally responsible for the most egregious crimes committed by George W. Bush and other leaders. God, I hope not!

And after 9/11, anyone hanging around to shoot at Americans in Afghanistan already knew he didn’t have a bright future.

Yo, Ira–forgetting something? Americans aren’t supposed to BE in Afghanistan. And if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be getting shot at…there.

These people are very committed to their cause. They are doing God’s work by trying to destroy our way of life.

They don’t give a shit about our way of life. Islamists want to alter the way of life in their countries. Granted, their ideology is something I disagree with. But that doesn’t give me the right to overthrow their government. Afghan women can and should rise up to liberate themselves. And it’s the only way it’ll stick, anyway.

The most amusing thing is that because of their ideology, their incarceration causes them less anguish than it does you.

Right. Because Muslims aren’t normal people. They LIKE having flashlights rammed up their ass. They love being beaten to a pulp, sometimes to death. Just like the Vietnamese didn’t value life as much as we do.

You are right, that it is unlikely any additional useful information will be obtained. However, I think another option is a viable solution. Perhaps you and a collection of likeminded civil libertarians could each volunteer to take permanent legal guardianship of a terrorist and put them up at your place until they are fully ready to resume their terrorist lifestyle. This would unburden the taxpayers, and remove a major headache for the Administration. Sounds like a win-win situation.

First, how do you KNOW that any of these guys are terrorists? Answer: you don’t. The government says they are–well, that a few of them are. Why should we believe them? Governments lie all the time; it’s what they do best. One of the best things about conservatives used to be their healthy distrust of central authority. It’s too bad they seem to have forgotten about that.

Abu Ghraib Began Here

Don’t forget, the Abu Ghraib prison guards started out as corrections officers here in the states. The heinous tactics they used in Iraq and elsewhere are tortures they brought with them from their previous experience in American prisons, as Keith reminds us:

I agree with The Normalization of Horror. When I see Americans shopping and acting like nothing is going on it just makes me sick. I was tortured 3 times by members of Special Operations Unit of the San Francisco Police Department. This happened in the 1990’s to me and several of my friends for feeding the hungry as a protest with Food Not Bombs. Its not to clear what we can do to wake Americans up but I returned to America to see what I could do. I am working on a Walkout for January 20th and March 18th. Anyway thanks for your great work.

A reminder that it is the patriotic duty of any American attending the Inauguration to turn their backs on Generalissimo El Busho.

US to Employ Death Squads Against Iraq

Herb writes:

I thought I heard recently that the CIA wants to employ death squads in Iraq…did I hear right? Did this get any attention from the press? Also, regarding the emailer Dimitry that you mentioned in your blog: I can understand the grammatical and spelling errors, but why does he have so much trouble

with punctuation? I took Russian in college, and I can assure you that commas and periods do exist in that language. The correct usage of said punctuation should

not be a foreign concept to him. Maybe he grew up next to Chernobyl.

I don’t know what’s wrong with Dimitry, but I suspect that similar strangeness exists in every tongue. There was extensive coverage in the progressive and European media about the Pentagon plan to deploy death squads against Sunni clerics and other Iraqi patriots, but the story began with Newsweek.

Lasers in Cockpits

Jim writes:

I think it’s time that someone publicly challenges these claims of lasers being shined (shone?, whatever) in cockpits. The claim is that an aircraft in flight, on approach, etc. is targeted by a laser and that the laser is capable of being held on a small target (pilot’s eyes) long enough to cause retinal damage or to momentarily blind the pilot. This is nonsense. Try this: Buy a laser pointer and take it outside. Find a street sign a block or two away and tell me how long you can hold the dot on a point on that sign, say the center of the O in STOP. Remember not to let the laser point into the sky or you may be charged under the Patriot Act. Imagine trying to do the same thing to an object several miles away. Simple geometry belies the claims.

The displacement of the dot is given by D * tan a, where D is the distance to the target and a is the angle. At one mile, the displacement of the dot by just one degree is 92 feet. You would need some very accurate tracking equipment to maintain a position within less than an inch on a target moving in excess of 200 miles an hour relative to the laser. Note that if the beam spreads out, so is it’s energy spread out over the area. For every laser there is a calculation for the amount of time of exposure required to induce retinal damage. The pupil size

and the beam width at target distance would need to be taken into account. I’m not a laser expert, but have worked with them as part of my physics studies in college. I enjoy your column. Keep up the good work.

I worked with lasers too, whenn I was a physics major at Columbia. I agree; there is zero possibility that these stories are anything more than hogwash. There’s too much diffusion at such a great distance.

Sticker

Matthew writes:

it’s too bad i didn’t see this earlier.. it’s a Bush/Pinochet bumper sticker http://www.cafepress.com/patriotboy.11775480

hey, it’s never too late.

What Should We Do?

Lee writes:

This liberal still thinks torture is wrong, not merely impractical. But what am I to do? I did what I could to stop this well-intentioned evil, but Kerry lost. What can I do that has enough of a chance to succeed that it’s worth taking away time I could spend with my wife and three children?

I wish I knew. Which is why I’m thinking about exactly that. The answer will present itself if good people focus on the problem.