Category Archives: Puritopians

Somebody please get these people their pony. Sparkle!

Glenn Greenwald and the national conversation about sexual assault and rape

Posted on January 3, 2012 by | 26 Comments

We’ve got a long way to go, baby

My friend Extreme Liberal posted a piece here awhile back titled “I was sexually assaulted as a child”. With Glenn Greenwald’s obscene comments about my good friend Angry Black Lady, I thought now might be a good time to tell my own story of being sexually molested as a young boy.

Unlike Extreme Liberal’s assault, I was, in fact, not aware that I had actually been assaulted until many years later. You may well ask, “If you didn’t know you were assaulted, how can you say you were?” You can trust me when I tell you that I have asked myself that same question.
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Posted in Eclectablog, Personal Tales, Puritopians, Respect, War on Women

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The End-Of-Year Emopants Blowout!

Posted on January 1, 2012 by | 49 Comments

Both Glenn Greenwald and Taylor Marsh saw fit to end the year with massive anti-Obama rants where they basically announce openly their opposition to the President for 2012.  Not that their opposition didn’t exist before, it’s just now official.  First, Double G defends Ron Paul’s “effect” on our political discourse:

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Posted in Election 2012? Oy vey!, Our Pundits of Perpetual Disappointment, Puritopians, Ratfvckery, Zandar

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Against The Current: Cenk Chooses A Side, And It's Not Ours

Posted on December 30, 2011 by | 64 Comments

Meet the new employee/boss relationship involving Keith Olbermann, same as the old employee/boss relationship involving Keith Olbermann.

Keith Olbermann, who came to Current TV this year to remake the channel and compete against his old home, MSNBC, is sitting out the biggest political nights of the season.

Despite being the biggest star on the fledging channel, Mr. Olbermann is not scheduled to anchor Current’s coverage of the Iowa caucus or the New Hampshire primary in January. Instead, Current’s other prime time anchors, Cenk Uygur and Jennifer Granholm, will be joined by the channel’s chairman, the former vice president Al Gore, according to the channel’s TV schedule.

Mr. Olbermann also was noticeably absent from two special reports that Current produced after Republican debates in mid-December. Those, too, were anchored by Mr. Uygur.

These absences suggest that there may be new tension between Mr. Olbermann and the managers at Current, who are trying to create a progressive-oriented cable news channel.

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Posted in Our Pundits of Perpetual Disappointment, Puritopians, Ratfvckery, Zandar

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Bradley Manning can’t be a hero AND a victim

Posted on December 28, 2011 by | 28 Comments

Bradley Manning is a “true American hero,” a modern-day Daniel Ellsberg, a brave and selfless patriot and soldier who sacrificed his own freedom in order to fight against the “enemies of public liberty” and awaken the American masses to the realities of war.

 But even if you believe Manning is a “true American traitor,” a modern-day Benedict Arnold who betrayed his unit and disavowed his oath to country by haphazardly leaking hundreds of thousands of war reports and State Department cables, most of which he didn’t bother reading, Manning is entitled to a fair trial nonetheless. 

Unfortunately for the Puritopian emoprogs of the far left who fueled this hero motif by peddling “Free Manning” T-shirts and tweeting “Free Bradley” hashtags, being a hero and getting a fair trial are mutually exclusive, at least as far as his attorneys can tell.

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Posted in Legal Shenanigans, LGBTQ Shenanigans, Nicholas Wilbur, Puritopians

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Bradley Manning's fair-weather friends

Posted on December 21, 2011 by | 17 Comments

One of the most frustrating aspects of trying to discuss the case of Pfc. Bradley Manning is the weird phenomenon of bandwagoning the issue creates. Working backwards from “WikiLeaks is good,” his staunchest supporters seem to reason that the release of thousands of classified State Department cables is good; therefore the person who released them (as Manning apparently claimed he did) was justified in his action; therefore any punishment of him is unjust and cruel. I’ve lost count of the number of irritating, undergraduate-level Nineteen Eighty-Four references made in this vein.

Manning’s guilt or innocence notwithstanding for the moment, the hapless private has been turned into an avatar by two factions who seek to use his case to move their respective flags forward. There are the WikiLeakers, who, while seeking greater transparency in government, seem to have convinced themselves that any state secret is intolerable. And there are, tragically in my view, those champions of LGBT rights who believe Manning is being treated unjustly specifically due to his struggles with sexuality and gender identity – and they seem willing to ignore or wave aside any wrongs he may have actually committed.

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Posted in Ian Boudreau, LGBTQ Shenanigans, Puritopians

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Breanna Manning’s Twinkie Defense: ‘Gays can’t keep secrets’

Posted on December 20, 2011 by | 29 Comments

One mind-bogglingly offensive step forward in the Bradley Manning case, one giant leap backward for the gay community.

Turncoat to more than country

Forget the insanity defense. Lawyers for Pfc. Bradley Manning are trying to keep their client out of prison by arguing the exact opposite of what homosexuals have been fighting against for decades: discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Politico.com reports that in addition to other odd and apparently gender-related behaviors, Manning had “at least one” e-mail address and had created a Facebook profile under the name “Breanna Manning,” according to a military investigator.

When the prosecution objected to the initial defense questioning about Manning’s gender issues, (Maj. Matthew) Kemkes said the questions were relevant to “whether Pfc. Manning had diminished capacity at the time of the alleged offenses.” An individual with diminished mental capacity could lack the intent necessary to be convicted of the charges facing Manning, Kemkes indicated.

Got that?

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Posted in Criminally Stupid, LGBTQ Shenanigans, Nicholas Wilbur, Puritopians

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Online Spammer Spreads #NDAA Propaganda

Posted on December 19, 2011 by | 32 Comments

Shenanigans are afoot.

Matt Osborne of Osborne Ink has the story:

On December 10th an unknown spammer posted a selectively-edited video of Senator Carl Levin at YouTube and proceeded to tweet the link 45 times over 24 hours. The link is now dead (video deleted by user), but it has already been copied to accounts on various video sites. To find out what Senator Levin actually said, you can go watch the full C-SPAN clip at PoliticusUSA.

The video set off an online freakout of epic proportions. Recipients of this ‘reply message spam’ included a Bradley Manning account, Occupy accounts, and assorted hacktivist accounts. It was like squirting lighter fluid onto a smoldering flame, feeding paranoid memes of right and left. Indeed, “Joe Fangorico” was nonpartisan, including FOX News’ own Joe Napolitano and Ron Paulites on his or her list.

That’s because spammers are mainly looking for clicks. They make money from the first click, and so have incentive to obtain as many clicks as possible. A certain subset of netizen culture is eager for outrage, and therefore prone to pass disinformation. Video evidence that President Obama has evil designs on habeas corpus? That’s traffic gold, which is why so many different sites featured the video.

Joe Fangorico is not just a spammer, he’s also a hacker. You can see the Twitter account here:

https://twitter.com/#!/JoeFangorico

(read the rest)

Who was taken in by and helped spread this tale?  Need you even ask? Continue reading →

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Posted in Criminally Stupid, Our Pundits of Perpetual Disappointment, Political Shenanigans, Puritopians

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Anwar al-Awlaki and #NDAA in context

Posted on December 19, 2011 by | 14 Comments

I first saw an American “Hellfire” missile while covering a U.S. Army training exercise near the DMZ in South Korea*. It was loaded on an Apache AH-64 attack helicopter, which was bristling with weaponry that also included a pod of 2.76” Hydra rockets and a vicious-looking, swivel-mounted chain gun under its nose, which I was informed fired explosive 30-milimeter rounds and was “linked” to a monocle attached to the gunner’s helmet – meaning that the gun always pointed at exactly what the gunner was looking at.

These were details I learned after being nearly tackled by the sergeant in charge of the refueling point – I had innocently wandered around the front of the aircraft, hoping to get some usable file photos of the division’s Apaches up close. A rule I hadn’t yet heard held that under no circumstances should anyone ever walk in front of that chain gun.

“It’s bad juju,” the NCO told me, as I dusted off my BDUs.

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Posted in Ian Boudreau, International Shenanigans, Libertarian Lunacy, Political Shenanigans, Puritopians

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The NDAA is Not a "Detention Bill": Why Language Matters

Posted on December 18, 2011 by | 26 Comments

“Outright media lies are easy to debunk. It’s the lazy, fact-free, inside baseball analysis that’s killing us.” -@Shoq

I have been getting bombarded by people on Twitter accusing me of “being on the wrong side of history” with respect to the NDAA simply because, I suppose, I am not exhibiting the appropriate amount of outrage to match theirs.  My interest in politics, the media, and the manner in which narratives are created and disseminated throughout Blogistan, the Twittersphere, and ultimately to the mainstream media is seemingly gauche to some.

One need only look at the 800 plus comments at Balloon Juice yesterday (here, here, and here), many of them excoriating me for focusing on the “wrong” issue. The politics of the day is less important than the fact that our civil liberties are being infringed — at least that is what I’m told.

Nonetheless, as is my right, I will continue to focus on what interests me, no matter how unimportant it may seem to some — and that is this: the language we use to describe and discuss important prevailing issues. Continue reading →

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Posted in Our Pundits of Perpetual Disappointment, Puritopians

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