Today brings the news that the Pentagon is drawing up plans to strike the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.  This is consistent with the Bush administrations long march toward military aggression against Iran.  President Bush has long been shoring up support in the military for a campaign of aggression, which has thus far resisted yet another pointless war craved by feckless civilian leadership.  

You would think that, after foolishly voting to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, our leaders would have carry themselves in a more cautious manner.  Unfortunately, that has not been the case.  

To those of use who have been worried about bees dying off due to an unexplained syndrome called Colony Collapse Disorder, a new study offers an interesting possible explanation: pollutants originating largely from car exhaust are interfering with the scent chemicals used by flowers to attract the bees.  

I, like most of you, am an Obama supporter and am generally sick of Clinton's tactics, but she did something really good tonight.  I am prouder to be a Democrat because of it, and I urge Senator Obama to do the same thing: she encouraged her supporters not to vote for McCain.

Good job, Senator Clinton.  People have been getting kind of crazy lately, and I was worried that many were a little too invested in their candidates to be of any use to the Democratic Party and our ideals.  

This means, of course, that we may want to tone down the assertions that she will ruin Dems' chances of winning the Presidency in November.  They may have things under control more than we think.

Come November, we are going to kick McCain's ass.  Who's with me?

Hello everyone.  I am a touch of a conspiracy theorist.  I look for improbable coincidences.  Most of the time, I never find out if my hypotheses are right.  Right off the bat, it's important to note that this is nothing more than speculation on my part.  If you want to hear about my other theories, tell me, and I'll write about them on my blog.  

You see, I normally don't think that any of the things that I vaguely suspect are worth writing about, but today is different.

This is going to be a series.  Many foundations of conservatism exist to deconstruct, so I’ll only tackle a few at a time.  Today’s dose includes the Straw Man, the Red Herring, and the Common Enemy.  It all appears in an article entitled "Why the Left Lies about Sex" by Kevin McCullough and posted at Townhall.com.  

It starts thusly: "Liberals want your child to have sex."  This statement, to many people, is merely a lie.  But it is actually much more involved than that.  It is the center of a world-devouring black hole of bullshit.

[Note: all links are at my website: inarticulablefeeling.us  I use iWeb now, and it is difficult to export text-links.  Sorry.]

I have something to add to the ruckus over this graph, from a WSJ editorial:

The Wall Street Journal used the above graph in an op-ed hocking supply-side propaganda, but several things are wrong with this graph.  Many others have already dissected the amazing display of mathematical ignorance the graph reveals, which I’ll outline below.  

The Blogger Code of Ethics is probably a wash (and rightly so, as it would have been ineffective), but we still could use some ideas for countering sexualized online attacks against women.  Though more than one strategy would help, I thought I would call the community's attention to a tactic employed by one of our online forefathers: Mike Godwin.  Yup, he's that Godwin–the mastermind behind Godwin's Law.

I just watched an episode of House which turned out to be obvious propaganda for banning abortion.  I have never watched the show and was immediately drawn into the story.  You have to give Fox one thing: they weave their right-wing propaganda into the taught threads of an entertaining plot.

The premise was that a woman's pregnancy threatened her life, leaving her to decide whether to abort the pregnancy.  You can already see where this is going.  House–a rude doctor whose massive mental database of rare diseases stands where compassionate warmth might otherwise reside–wanted to perform a late term abortion.  The patient agrees and asks her doctor to perform the procedure.  Note: some commenters have mentioned that the patient did not want to have the abortion; I still think that she eventually agreed, but I am not so sure.  Leave it to commenters to make me doubt what I thought I witnessed with my own eyes and ears.  Thus, take my claim of the patient's agreement to have an abortion with a grain of salt.

First of all, despite what you have been told, the "theory" that HIV causes AIDS is not set in stone.  Many scientists still have doubts, but they are denied research funding to prove their claims.  The problem is that certain radical scientists–who actually despise the scientific principle of skepticism–are dominating the discourse with their dogmatic views.

How could this happen?  Powerful pharmaceutical companies have formed a political action committee that pays scientists to misinform the public in order to sell people unnecessary and expensive "anti-retroviral" drugs for the rest of their lives.

The worst part is that good people are losing everything trying to expose the lie.  Examples include people like a South African researcher named Thabo Mbeki, who is destitute, living on the street, and probably now dead.

Here is one of the links on The Drudge Report:

If you follow the link, it takes you to Breitbart.com, which has the same headline.

Breitbart, with the tagline "Just the News," is one of Drudge's favorite linked sites and a conservative "news" outlet run by Andrew Breitbart, a conservative commentator.

I am repeatedly astounded by the impudence of Bush and the Neo-cons.  Hidden in the private-healthcare-tax-cut "plan" laid out in the State of the Union Address is a provision that would cut payroll (Social Security) taxes as an incentive to those who buy health insurance.  

The problem is that, apparently, they also lose benefits accordingly when they retire.  Thus, this is yet another covert attack on Social Security, and it really shows Bush's contempt for the poor.  

Bush is supposed to be a follower of Jesus, who is reported in the Bible to have said, "Anything you do unto the least of these, you do also unto me."

I am no longer a Christian because of my unwillingness to support any god or religion that sends anyone to hell for eternity.  That said, I struggle with this sometimes when people go out of their way to hurt the poor, the unfortunate, the old, and the weak.  The neo-cons won't rest until every one of us is servile and desparate.  Goddamn them all.

I thought John Kerry did reasonably well in the 2004 presidential debates.  He seemed cool and collected, and Bush seemed petulant and unprepared.

But we've heard all that before.  Every following day, most pundits announced that Kerry won each debate.

A great deal of our assessments had to do with the split-screen coverage of the debates.  The two campaigns agreed to bar them from the airwaves, but networks showed the footage anyway.

Watching Bush gesture and make faces at Kerry was hilarious and embarrassing at the same time.  I thought that he exhibited nothing but defeat.

And I was wrong.  I was not just wrong in being certain that Bush lost the election by acting like a jackass, I was also wrong in assuming that the split-screen images of the two candidates helped the one who was confident and composed–Kerry–and hurt the one who appeared to be one step from the crazy-former-presidents-asylum–you know who.

Apparently, I was wrong.  We were all wrong.

Through Life News (long story how I found the site), a "pro-life" website dedicated to opposing abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, I found an ad link to a plea by the Thomas More Society on behalf of Angela and Daniel Michael, who are being sued by an Illinois abortion doctor for nuisance.  The advertisement requests donations to fund the Michaels' defense and includes this hilarious photo of Yogendra Shah, the abortion doctor suing them:

The Iranian president's plans to consolidate power over his government appear to have failed, as early polls show that moderate opposition parties are favored over that of Ahmadinejad.  This comes as Bush administration pressure on Iran has virtually ceased.

Many people assume without rational basis that the only way to confront right-wing fanatics like the Iranian president is with right-wing fanaticism.  The idea is that some people only listen to threats of force.

The problem is that the opposite is true.  When people are afraid, they tend to support authoritarian leaders who consolidate their power and respond to threats in kind.  When September 11 scared America, they felt united around a man who promised to protect them and to get revenge.

Byron York's headline on the fourteenth: "Did the Clinton Administration Spy On Princess Diana? No."

York goes on to weasel out of his previous story by blaming the British press:

"On Tuesday, writing about stories in the British press that U.S. intelligence services spied on Princess Diana, I wrote, 'The first thing to remember...is that British press accounts can be notoriously unreliable.'"

It must be that liberal bias against Clinton in the British press... wait...  Do they have a conservative bias over there?  Or a liberal bias that leads them to fool American Conservatives into writing things that will later embarrass them?!?  Ha!  Of course!!!

Here is the headline of the Post Chronicle article, dated 14 December 2006: "Was Bill Clinton Too Busy With Diana To Bother With Osama?"

Had I been paying attention over the past few days, I would have noticed what was going on.

Bill O'Reilly, expert on everything, boldly proclaimed on his radio show that Americans, as a result of an addiction to "the machines," have "created their own reality..."  The whole tirade over at GamePolitics is worth the time to read:

http://tinyurl.com/...

I have been watching The Show with Zefrank for several months, now.  He is a web maven, a funny guy and a New Yorker.  His "shows" are really video blog posts that are funny, honest, arrogant, goofy and smart.  He reminds me of Jon Stewart, in that I wish I could sum up some of the disappointment and frustration of the past five years like this guy.  Never has this been so evident than in his post last week when, answering a question in the comment section of his site, he told the story of his experience of that day.  It sums up what I think we all have been trying to tell our fellow Americans* for a long time.  Check it out: http://tinyurl.com/...