If You Really Loved Me You'd Let Me Eat Your Brain

I tried posting a comment in reply to the 3XHAR's comment but BlogSpirit treated me very, very badly, and it hurt my self esteem very much, so I had to have a time out, hug my Gender-Neutral "Happy With My Body The Way It Is" Bear, and then come back to write a new post.

Here are some of the funnier examples:

ACLU IRP director opposes letting law enforcement detain immigrants when they're merely suspected of being in violation of a law or a threat to national security. Can't detain 'em without evidence.

ACLU opposes a law that'd increase information-sharing between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, information like, say, immigration status. This is a great companion to the one above.

"Expand and enforce the civil rights of and civil liberties of non-citizens." Roll back the "punitive, discriminatory and, at minimum, constitutionally flawed legislation that targeted the civil liberties and civil rights of newcomers." Their words, not mine.

ACLU opposes more secure ID cards that could be used to prove that you're not an illegal alien. The play the Big Brother card on this one, and I don't buy it.

Urging support of NM Senate Bill 103, "a bill that would require state and local law enforcement agencies to refrain from using their resources to detect or apprehend people whose only offense is that they are suspected of residing in the United States in violation of federal civil immigration laws."

Immigrants don't need to comply with regulations requiring them to register, even after going to a hearing, being told to register, given a few extra months, missing the deadline again...and even when this happens, they damn well deserve a lawyer at taxpayer expense and should fight extradition.

Opposing the shocking, illegal, and Nazi-like 9/11 Commission recommendations that all people entering the U.S. carry (wait for it) valid passports. The outrage! Again, the ACLU Parrot complains about nation IDs, government surveillance, erosion of imaginary rights...wrraaack.

The ACLU's position seems clear to me: Open the borders to everyone who isn’t carrying a weapon. Well, unless the have the proper paperwork for it. Let them in first, ask questions later.

From an AP report on recent Iraqi operations:

On Saturday, troops searching the town found four Iraqi hostages beaten, handcuffed and chained to a wall in a torture center, the military said. Some of the men were believed to be Iraqi border guards who had been held for three weeks.

Troops searching the bunker found nooses, electrical wire and a bathtub filled with water for electric shocks and mock drownings.

In the basement, troops found automatic rifles, ammunition, terrorist training manuals and DVDs showing insurgents beheading captives, Pool said.

And where is Amnesty International's condemnation of this alleged torture? Will they be calling for a special investigation, an open and fair trial for the alleged torturers in, say, Sweden? NGOs like Amnesty International and the ICRC huff and puff about imaginary U.S. torture while the real crimes against humanity are occurring elsewhere.

Multimillionaire tree hugger Ralph Nader was in Washington, DC last week raising funds to retire the debt from his 2004 presidential campaign. He complained about being left off the ballots in some Southern states, saying "I felt like a nigger." This was reported by Evan Gahr on his chimpstein.com Web site then picked up by the New York Daily News.

Nader gets no sympathy from me. I doubt that he's ever been in the minority of anything (rich white heterosexual Jewish non-disabled male college graduate (Princeton and Harvard Law)) and wouldn't know discrimination from a toffee apple. Comparing ballot access politics with the rape, murder, and owning of human beings just because their skin was dark? Does not compute. Taking away a person's name, ancestry, and age (by denying them the knowledge of when they were born and who their parents were) and treating them like livestock isn't even in the same universe as maneuvering within a legal system to prevent someone from being on a ballot.

At times like this, and especially with anything involving the concept of race, I like to ask myself, "What would Al Sharpton do?" Not much it seems. From the New York Daily News article:

"If Ed Koch had said what Ralph Nader said, we'd be marching," Sharpton noted. "This [scolding] doesn't rise to the level of a march. It rises to the level of a wrist slap."

Does Sharpton realize what he's saying? That there is a double standard at work? I'm baffled by the quote above because I can't tell what Sharpton was trying to get across. I think he may just be the stupidest person to ever have been a thought-leader at the national level for an major ethnic group in America. Jesse Jackson was a crook and shakedown artist, but at least he was smart.

Let me back up a bit for the bigger picture and my main point. Faithful readers know that Manual Override would never blog something if it wasn't true, or could have been true if the facts were totally different. We have high blogolistic standards here and it pains us to rely on a gossip rag like the Daily News for our sources. Why the Daily News and not the New York Times? Simply put, liberal media outlets aren't interested in stories about their own kind using bad words. They save up their outrage for the day a conservative says "nigger" or, in the case of Trent Lott, just mentions the South. Ralph Nader gets a pass. Former KKK Kleagle and current Senator Robert "white niggers" Byrd gets a pass.

I did a lot of searching to find out if any other MSM outlets reported Nader's comments but found none. Lots of blogs, but no MSM outlets. That's pretty sad.

On April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Despres. Then they let him into the United States.

Check out the AP story. The dude looks pretty whacked out.

I really wonder why the border agents couldn't detain him longer or turn him back. There were no concealed weapon laws in Maine, nothing regulating the length of a knife blade one could carry, etc? I find it hard to believe that our border agents can't refuse to let people on, even if they do have the proper documentation. Like, say, 19 or so Muslim terrorists.

Then again, I'm sure detaining him longer or refusing him entry would harm Mr. Despres' valuable rights. Pffft. Mark my words: Liberals and the ACLU are doing everything possible to weaken border controls, usually claiming that new controls would be racist.

I went and saw "Batman Begins" today. I ran into Broken Little Person Sitting on a Tree Limb there. He was also taking in the 1:00 PM unemployment matinee but unlike me he was getting paid to see the movie. I'm off the dole, but BLPSoaTL is still milking the system. More power to him.

I enjoyed the movie a lot and I can't find anything in it to complain about. I liked the way Batman's training was explained, and I didn't think spending half the movie on it was too much. Batman's high-tech gear is explained quickly and plausibly, and I liked how his limitations were shown. He's just a guy with cool toys, not superpowers. We're also given a glimpse of the kind of person Wayne could have become had he made different choices at critical junctures. To say more would give away too much.

The supporting cast was excellent. Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Gary Oldman were in fine form, and even Rutger Hauer turned in a good performance. But maybe that's because he had so few lines. Christian Bale was a good choice for Batman. He's a very physical actor - look at the extremes he went to for "American Psycho" and "The Machinist" - but not so well-known that his celebrity status would detract from the film.

I'm looking forward to the next movie in the Batman series. And I still stick by my prediction that some day Robbie Williams will play James Bond.

The AP says Katie Holmes is converting to Scientology.

Says Tom Cruise of Holmes:

Listen, the thing you've got to know about Katie is that she's an incredibly bright and self-determined woman. She makes her own decisions.

Mmm hmm. I don't want to sound like an Operating Thetan III, but allow me to recount the creation myth from the Church of Scientology:

'Teegeeack' (Earth) came to be populated 75 million years ago by 'thetans' (souls) when the evil ruler Xenu of the Galactic Federation cast them into volcanoes and blew them up with a hydrogen bomb to solve his local overpopulation problems.

Laaaaaaaaame. But not as lame as converting to a wackjob religion to impress your boyfriend.

Dear readers, I believe an anti-Clintonite may have gone too far this time.

Edward Klein's new book The Truth About Hillary claims the Bill raped Hillary back in 1979.

"I'm going back to my cottage to rape my wife," Klein quotes Bill Clinton as saying during a Bermuda getaway in 1979.

In the morning, the Clintons' room "looked like World War III. There are pillows and busted-up furniture all over the place," an unnamed source tells Klein.

Klein source claims Bill later learned Hillary was pregnant reading about it in the Arkansas Gazette.

"The fact that his wife didn't tell him that she was pregnant before she told a reporter doesn't seem to phase him one bit, because he says, 'Do you know what night that happened?"

"'No,' I say. 'When?"

"'It was Bermuda,' he says, 'And you were there!'"

Hmm. It could be true, since Bill has a well-established history of sexual harassment and rape. But if the Bermuda incident is true Bill just might be on the hook for it after all. His last-minute pardoning spree covered the "Gentleman Rapist from Little Rock, who has yet to be caught" but only for crimes committed in the state of Arkansas. Whoops!

Shocking Time cover story reveals horrific torture of the 20th hijacker!

The log reads like a night watchman’s diary. It is a sometimes shocking and often mundane hour-by-hour, even minute-by-minute account of a campaign to extract information. The log records every time al-Qahtani eats, sleeps, exercises or goes to the bathroom and every time he complies with or refuses his interrogators’ requests. The detainee’s physical condition is frequently checked by medical corpsmen—sometimes as often as three times a day—which indicates either spectacular concern about al-Qahtani’s health or persistent worry about just how much stress he can take. Although the log does not appear obviously censored, it is also plainly incomplete: there are numerous gaps in the notes about what is said and what is happening in the interrogation booth beyond details like "Detainee taken to bathroom and walked for 10 minutes," TIME reports.

Hmm, frequent doctor visits, food and water, a place to sleep. That's torture all right.

From a CNN report on the Time story:

The interrogation techniques included refusing al-Qahtani a bathroom break and forcing him to urinate in his pants.

"It's not appropriate," said Sen. Chuck Hagel on CNN's "Late Edition." "It's not at all within the standards of who we are as a civilized people, what our laws are.

"If in fact we are treating prisoners this way, it's not only wrong, it's dangerous and very dumb and very shortsighted," the Nebraska Republican said.

"This is not how you win the people of the world over to our side, especially the Muslim world."

Uhhh, having a terrorist suspect piss himself isn't torture. And this is precisely how we should treat prisoners when they're being interrogated if A) it works and B) it isn't torture. I see nothing dangerous, dumb, or shortsighted about it. I further disagree with Sen. Hagel that these kind of interrogation tactics are going to alienate Muslims. Any reasonable Muslim is going to understand that the terrorist suspects are being held for a good reason and that they aren't being mistreated. Unreasonable Muslims are going to hate the US no matter what we do. Hagel's view is based on the stereotype of Muslims being uneducated and conservative. Far from it, they're highly educated and nuanced political thinkers.

What is shortsighted and dangerous is MSM outlets sensationalizing the treatment of prisoners, printing outright lies, and failing to fully explain just how fair the prisoners are actually being treated!

Dear Ms. Juris,

Your recent e-mail message offering your services, in the form of selling my condo for me, is a violation of the FSBO Madison Terms of Use. Paragraph three sentence three of the FSBO Madison Terms of Use reads:

Further, site visitors may not offer to sell
property sellers any goods or services.

For your reference the FSBO Madison Terms of Use can be found here.

As you may know, the CAN-SPAM act (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003) was designed to regulate interstate commerce by imposing limitations and penalties on the transmission of unsolicited commercial electronic mail via the Internet.

The CAN-SPAM act provides relief for the various aggrieved parties in a number of ways. Statutory damages of $250 per violation can be assessed and attorney's fees recovered. Your ISP may bring a civil action against you, recover actual monetary losses, and even aggravated damages depending on the circumstances. I also believe FSBO Madison would have grounds for a civil claim against you since you are violating their terms of use and being a nuisance to their users. If I decided to list with another for sale by owner site because I'm receiving e-mail like yours as a result of listing with FSBO Madison then you are in effect taking money away from FSBO Madison.

So here is what I have:

Your name
Your phone number
Your e-mail address
Your Internet Service Provider
The IP address you used to send my the e-mail message
Grounds for a civil lawsuit

Here is what you don't have:

A prior commercial relationship with me
My affirmative consent to e-mail me with commercial solicitations
No opt-out method in your e-mail message to me, a requirement of the CAN-SPAM act

Your unsolicited e-mail message has already consumed far too many of my resources: time spent downloading it, time spent reading it, the cost of storage space on my computer, even the time to write this message to you. You've wasted at least an hour of my life. I can never get that back.

Do not contact me again, not even to apologize. Do not send me any more unsolicited commercial e-mails. Do not call my house. Do not send me mail via the United States Postal Service. Do not give out my contact information to anyone else.

Good luck with your venture, and have a nice day!

--
Thomas C. Mueller

Note:
Back in 2001 or 2002 a Maggie Juris who was fired from CUNA for making too many personal phone calls on company time, sued CUNA (Dane County Case Number 2002CV003336) by filing a complaint with the state which found in its initial determination that there was no misconduct, had the decision reversed by an administrative law judge, then had it overturned again in circuit court, then was sued by the Department of Workforce Development (Dane County Case Number 2004UC000954) to pay back the unemployment compensation she'd been overpaid. I believe this is the woman I'm dealing with.

Did anyone catch the Janice Rogers Brown hearings today? The Democratic Senators piled on, as can be expected, comparing her to a right-wing radio host because she’s a strict constructionist. Gasp! She's an activist judge alright, just not the kind that the left likes.

A funny thing happened when Sen. Schumer (D-NY) put in his two cents. He said Brown's judicial activism shows that she wants to be a "dictator" or "grand exalted ruler." Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) criticized Schumer for using terminology associated with the KKK.

Session was incorrect though. The KKK never had an office with the title Grand Exalted Ruler. That'd be the Brotherhood Protectorate of Elks. Still, it was a faux pas for Schumer to use this kind of terminology when talking about a black woman who was born into poverty and a segregated world, the daughter of a sharecropper no less. Sessions could have saved himself the trouble had he consulted with former Klansman Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) who was presumably at the hearing.

My point is that the left has created a problem for itself by embracing identity politics and encouraging the rending of our societal quilt into tiny patches as millions of hands each pull in their own direction. More minority groups means more opportunities to offend. Any complaint of offense is self-validating - res ipsa loquitur, I think the Romans would have said. There is no hierarchy of offense because all minority group causes are morally equivalent. To assign a value to the aims and values of the offended is in itself offensive, like assigning a value to a human life.

Everybody complains, nobody wins. Be careful what you wish for, Democrats!

Check out the Wikipedia entry on the KKK for the interesting story of its Democratic roots.