at-Largely

Yet another Conservative man with a small apparatus problem...

In the last few days, hormonally challenged,  knuckle-dragging Conservative men have taken issue with left-leaning women and right-leaning women alike, but not for addressing anything relating to what these woman have to say.

Erick Erickson shared his theory that feminists are too ugly to get dates and therefor, should be banished back in the kitchen.

Now responding to comments made by Meghan McCain (John McCain's daughter) that are critical of the tea-sniffing movement, yet another brainiac shows off the size of his IQ:

"My gawd! Does her car have an explosive device on board sign? The Obama's ought to adopt this misguided girl so Michelle can get her into an obesity program. Her arms are starting to look like flippers and it ain't all about the breasts. With the right hat and a honky horn, I'd think she was a trained seal!

I mean, seriously: arr arr arr. That poor girl."

I wonder if Dan Riehl will post some photos of himself so we may take a gander at this gorgeous man? Somehow I doubt it.

Erick Erickson's small apparatus, err, fragile ego

Take a gander at the photo below of Erick Erickson girls. Does he look like a person who is in any position to call someone ugly?

And yet this rather homely man does just that. He attacks a woman on her looks rather than on the merits of her argument, (h/t to Media Matters) and then extends that argument to all women of the non-doormat variety:

I am not sure if I am attractive enough NOT to be a feminist (according to Erickson's standards), but I am absolutely certain that I would never find the compliments of a man like Erickson to be a positive thing, not on any level. In addition, more often than not, men who attack a woman's looks instead of the merits (or lack there of) of her argument tend to be threatened by the fact that their own tiny apparatus might be discovered, their brain and/or their penis.

Think how the originator of the feminazi term - Rush Limbaugh - for all of his bluster, prefers to pop Viagra while on a sex tour to a third world country. Clearly, getting laid in the States is either too difficult for Rush or he has something to hide. I wager Erickson is equally as threatened by women in general, intelligent women in particular, and would wet himself if he were faced with a woman of both beauty and intellect - should he ever be lucky enough to meet one at his tea parties. 

And honestly, only a 12 year old, sexually frustrated little boy would vote for POTUS based entirely on a candidate's looks (cough, Sarah Palin).

Rep. John Murtha - RIP

In the last week there has been a lot of death. Now another addition: Rep. John Murtha.

US Soldier "waterboarded" his 4 year old daughter...

It is unclear if this soldier did any tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and if the technique he used, mentioned in the article below, is one he had picked up during his training. Regardless of where he got this idea or why he used this technique, what is clear is that at best, the military failed to properly screen him resulting in tragic consequences:

"A soldier waterboarded his four-year-old daughter because she was unable to recite her alphabet.

Joshua Tabor admitted to police he had used the CIA torture technique because he was so angry.

As his daughter 'squirmed' to get away, Tabor said he submerged her face three or four times until the water was lapping around her forehead and jawline.

Tabor, 27, who had won custody of his daughter only four weeks earlier, admitted choosing the punishment because the girl was terrified of water.

Tabor, a soldier at the Lewis-McChord base in Tacoma, Washington, was arrested after being seen walking around his neighbourhood wearing a Kevlar military helmet and threatening to break windows.

<snip>

Police have not revealed Tabor's military service, but his base is home to units that have served in Iraq and Afghanistan."

So the likely answer is yes, he did serve in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Was this man trained in this technique and if so, why and by whom? Did he use this technique on POWs in US custody? On children?

I have said this over and over, but the majority of the public does not seem to really understand that when an honest, moral, person is asked to do dishonest and immoral things, they will likely crack and never recover.

We don't know what kind of person Tabor was prior to his tour(s) of duty (assuming he did any recent tours). But we do know that the man is now a monster - and war does make monsters of us all in one way or another.

On a side note - although related - police learned of the torture and abuse from Tabor's girlfriend when they went to investigate the complaints about his threats of breaking windows. Now, it is clear that he is completely out of control, but surely the girlfriend was sane and rational? The article does not say, but I am curious if the girlfriend also served abroad and is likewise a horror show? Because if she is sane and watching this without notifying authorities, then the most criminal person in this story is her. 

As Joseph Conrad wrote, "the horror! the horror!"

FBI wants records kept of Web sites visited

Thoughts on this?

"WASHINGTON--The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years, a requirement that law enforcement believes could help it in investigations of child pornography and other serious crimes.

FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users' "origin and destination information," a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.

At Thursday's meeting (PDF) of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, which was created by Congress and organized by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Motta stressed that the bureau was not asking that content data, such as the text of e-mail messages, be retained.

<snip>

"The question at least for the bureau has been about non-content transactional data to be preserved: transmission records, non-content records...addressing, routing, signaling of the communication," Motta said. Director Mueller recognizes, he added "there's going to be a balance of what industry can bear...He recommends origin and destination information for non-content data."

Motta pointed to a 2006 resolution from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which called for the "retention of customer subscriber information, and source and destination information for a minimum specified reasonable period of time so that it will be available to the law enforcement community."

I am all for getting child porn distributors and such, but consider what the Bush administration has done in the name of the war on terror and tell me, would you trust them to not abuse this power?  Consider what Nixon did with the limited tools he had and imagine what he and his plumbers would have done with such power. Would you have trusted this program to Nixon or Bush? Would you trust Obama not to abuse this power? I trust no one - that is part of my job description. So if the POTUS wanted to know who a journalist was communicating with and wanted copies of those communications, what would stop the FBI from providing it?

60 Minutes Does Rambo

Posted by Jeff Huber

“The Quiet Professionals,” a January 31 60 Minutes profile of Green Berets in Afghanistan, garnered mixed reviews from the polloi. Some observers found the segment to be an unabashed piece of pro-war propaganda. Others thought CBS purposely set out to do a hatchet job on the military in general and Special Forces in particular. Both perspectives have merit. Overall, the piece gave one the distinct impression that neither CBS nor the military’s Strategic Communication Directorate (yes, they really call it that) in Afghanistan knew what they were doing.

Bull of Goods

Some of the harshest criticism of the piece was aimed at 60 Minutes’ decision to assign the piece to British CBS newsmodel Lara Logan. Lara tells us during the intro that 60 Minutes “was given unprecedented access to a team of Green Berets, ‘ODA 7215.’ For two and a half months, our team lived with them, trained with them and went to battle with them.” It was painfully obvious over the course of the story that lovely Lara was not part of “our team.” She flew into Afghanistan for maybe an hour to do interviews, taped the intro and voiceovers back home in the CBS studios, and flitted off to the next glamorous thing she had to do. (That’s how most of the 60 Minutes headliners work; but it was particularly annoying to see cutesy Lara with the sultry accent doing the phantom anchoring on this particular story.)

Exclusive: How corporations secretly move millions to fund political ads

Posted by Brad Jacobson

“It’s unclear whether the Court was being naive or disingenuous.” - Paul S. Ryan, an attorney and expert in federal election law at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., on the Supreme Court's touting of disclosure provisions during its decision last month in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

My latest article for Raw Story:

The Supreme Court’s seismic January ruling that corporations are free to spend unlimited amounts of their profits to advertise for or against candidates may have been the latest shakeup of campaign finance – but gaping holes already allow corporations to spend enormous sums without leaving a paper trail, a Raw Story investigation has found.

Campaign finance experts confirmed that though disclosure rules remained intact in the new Supreme Court decision, there are effective methods to circumvent them.

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an attorney and campaign finance expert at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, said corporations already effectively end-run campaign finance law by shuffling money through trade associations.

“One of their favorites right now is spending through trade associations,” Torres-Spelliscy said.

Trade associations are considered tax-exempt non-profit organizations under US law. While they must report contributions received from other corporations to the Internal Revenue Service, the document itself remains confidential and is not made available to the public.

“Money coming through the trade association doesn’t get disclosed,” Torres-Spelliscy explained. “You can’t tell if it came from particular corporations.”

For example, she said, “The disclaimer form is likely to just say, ‘This is brought to you by the Chamber of Commerce,’ with no extra ability to see behind that.”

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