Maybe the government should run the militaries of America's enemies.

Tea Party person Richard Harris (not the actor), articulates his movement's wet dream in an article in the New York Times: "Government should do the military and the roads and just about nothing else. They foul everything up if they do."

In other words, he wants an organization that he thinks is too incompetent or inefficient to do something like deliver a letter to be in charge of defending the country.

That's not "Tea Party," that's "Peter Principle."

It's too stupid to fail.

Let's save some hate for Guam, people.

In Chambers County, Texas, three Puerto Rican men are in custody, charged with stabbing to death a man who had let them stay in his trailer.

Horrific crimes like this almost inevitably lead to a show of force from the peanut-brain gallery.

Searcher61 wrote:

No reverence or value on human life. See what you want, TAKE it! "American Dream," INDEED! OUR American Dream is to DEPORT those who come here illegally to take advantage of OUR hard work, and to ELIMINATE those who come here illegally to take advantage of us AND kill us when we try to help them!...

lea1 wrote:

How long will will let these people come to our country? seems when they said where they were from "Devillier" would have asked about their legal status in our country... coming to our country for the illegals means food stamps,free medical care, and rights that we as americans do not have. It also means they can rob and kill and then move on.

sk134 wrote:

This is one reason why law officers should be able to ask the simple question :Are you here legally? If he could have asked, perhaps a man would be alive today.

Danzmark wrote:

Time to throw ALL these illegals out ! The American Dream doesn't include the rest of the Americans letting these parasites sneak in.

But my favourite comment comes early in the stream of invective, from the 10th person to comment.

Bear1949 wrote:

ILLEGAL ALIENS doing what they do best, KILLING AMERICAN citizens.

That's my favourite comment because only 13 minutes earlier, the very first commenter made a bold prediction.

CheeryEyed wrote:

I despise Puerto Ricans for whining that they can't be a state nor can they be independent. That said, I'm waiting for the idiots to call these goons illegals.

What CheeryEyed is hinting at, of course, is that Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States and - since 1917 - people born in Puerto Rico are American citizens.

The peanut-brain gallery speaks.

In Decatur, Georgia, a 4-year-old boy was killed by a bullet from celebratory gunfire while attending a New Year’s Eve church service. The bullet is believed to have come from a weapon fired into the air before it pierced the church roof and struck the boy in the head.

We can be grateful to one of the website's commentators for immediately identifying the salient issue:

What is the church roof made of...Saran Wrap? Once the bullet makes its way down towards earth and hits the roof, there should be enough friction force on the bullet to slow it down before it completely exits the roof material.

Jan. 1, 2010 7:50pm EST | from trizone

"Join The Discussion." (But try not to get too much spit on your monitor.)

Adapted from a letter I sent to the editor of The Globe And Mail earlier this week.

It's time for news organizations' websites to discontinue the practice of offering their readers the opportunity to comment on the stories they publish.

Billed as a way for a site's readers to share their thoughts, in reality the commenters rarely contribute anything thoughtful or worthwhile. Rather, the comments are frequently puerile, juvenile, inane and banal, and all too often they are simply hateful, vulgar, and offensive. Today's exemplar: theglobeandmail.com, the website of The Globe And Mail newspaper, "a blue-chip brand whose credibility is unchallenged... [and] universally recognized as Canada's newspaper of record."

Last Tuesday in Ottawa, a police constable named Eric Czapnik was stabbed to death as he did paperwork in his cruiser. A few hours later, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer on leave because of mental health issues was charged with his homicide. The comments section of the Globe And Mail's story provided a disturbing insight into how the feature has devolved. By 10pm that night, 28 of the 218 comments posted were deleted by The Globe's editors for content "not consistent with [The Globe's] guidelines." Many of those that remained were little more than malice-filled expressions of the commenters' personal biases.

Two commenters agree - before an arrest is announced - that the suspect "was either on probation, parole, or bail... AND he was unemployed and contributing nothing to society." Another speculates later that the suspect "wanted to die 'death by cop' style" but "didn't have guts" to kill himself. Yet another seems to imply that Const. Czapnik's murder and the death of Robert Dziekanski in 2007 is part of some kind of RCMP-organized attack on Poles; that writer might be on the same page as the one who believes that RCMP officers have "been given a blank cheque to cover up all their past murders." And there's no shortage of commenters calling one another "idiot" or "mental midget."

This sort of thing isn't isolated. Pick an online story at random and you're almost guaranteed to find something: airport delays? Let's call Muslims terrorists. Fired at age 42 for being too old? Let's make a crack about global warming. Unemployed at 59? Let's mock you because you were in a union. Gym memberships? "This is the most insipid drivel I have ever had the misfortune to read."

The Globe And Mail invites its readers to "Join The Discussion," but these people are uninterested in discussing anything. They just want another forum for their bilious, vitriolic, racist hatemongering. And websites like The Globe And Mail seem to be happy to give them one.

The Fine Art Of The Apology.

Joanne Brazel-Wheatcroft, mentioned in an earlier post for describing Joe Wilson, the candidate for Superior Court Judge in Washington, as a "BIGOT" and an exemplar of "what assholes the republicans are," has finally apologized for erroneously directing her invective at Mr. Wilson. She had, of course, meant to call the Joe Wilson who is the Republican member of Congress those names.

It turns out to have been an easy mistake to make, for, as Ms. Brazel-Wheatcroft notes in her apology, "I saw two old men on facebook and assumed they were the same person."

Joe Wilson, the candidate, is 49 years old. Joe Wilson, the congressman, is 62.

Ms. Brazel-Wheatcroft's shoe size is 6, and her favourite flavour is Manolo Blahnik.

Tom Hank's volleyball from that movie has been getting hate mail, too.

byoolin's law: Statistically speaking, your neighbour is just fuckin' stupid.


The other night, the President of the United States said that "what we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government.... unyielding ideological camps... an opportunity to score short-term political points... [and] confusion has reigned."

Tell that to Joe Wilson. He's got people logging onto his Facebook page to tear him a new one, calling him a bigot, blaming him for "the mess we are in," comparing him - unflatteringly - to Rush Limbaugh and the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, or accusing him of having "no class what so ever." The occasional poster thanks him for his "courage" or "for speaking the truth and for [his] public and military service."

But - and this is a big but - the odds are pretty good that those people meant to excoriate (or praise) Joe Wilson (R - SC), the Congressman who yelled, "You lie!" during the President's speech to Congress on Wednesday, and not the lawyer from Snohomish County, Washington who is running for Superior Court Judge.

Now poor Joe Wilson is left with a Facebook page that's been hijacked by people like Joanne Brazel-Wheatcroft, who call him "BIGOT!" and say that he's "proved... what assholes the republicans are." When her error is pointed out to her by a conservative poster, she attacks his "grammer" and notes that "I did manage to find "the" Joe Wilson after I realized my mistake. I am not a republican, so I can admit I made a mistake, but I have corrected it!"

Since Ms. Brazel-Wheatcroft has not, as of this writing, apologized to the candidate Wilson, one might reasonably infer that correcting her mistake means that she's since redirected her sentiments to the congressman Wilson.


Click on the image or here to launch a larger version in another window.

Let's hear it for the electorate!

I probably should stop calling it "the local fishwrap." I wouldn't dream of wrapping fish in it.

Like many other newspapers' websites, my town's local fishwrap, Wheeling's Intelligencer & News-Register, allows its readers to comment on many articles on its website. The site's Terms of Service say that the comment feature is “provided to give users an interesting and stimulating forum to express their opinions and share ideas and information.”

“It is a condition of your use of these Services,” say the Terms, that people don't, among other things, use “vulgar, profane, abusive, hateful or racist language or expressions” or make “attacks of a personal, racial or religious nature” or “post any material that is threatening, false, defamatory, misleading, fraudulent, unfair, and inaccurate... [or] is unreasonably harmful or offensive to any individual, community, association, business or group.”

It's a system that works, except when it doesn't, which is usually. You know that old saying that opinions are like assholes – everybody's got one? The News-Register's comments section seems to be on a single-minded quest to tip that balance. Now, a lot of news (and other) websites have comments sections that seem to be populated mostly by people who have checked their good manners at the door. But the News-Register's comments are different. The comments on nearly every story seem to rapidly and rabidly devolve into demonstrations of who can be the most puerile and juvenile. How juvenile, you ask?

Well, here's user “EllisWyatt” implying that “GymJones” is a homosexual voyeur in response to GymJones calling him gay and “a little whiny c-u-n-t” (the hyphens are there to defeat the Dirty Word Filter) during an interesting and stimulating discussion of some local steelworkers being recalled from layoffs.



Elsewhere, “AlexanderShulgin” adds a non-journalist's perspective to a story about poor weather during the local Jamboree In The Hills music festival: “Tit bit nipply,” he remarks, expanding upon his own earlier comment - “Let’s see some t i t i e s [sic]” - on another story about the Jamboree.


“WVUGator2” agrees with EllisWyatt that a fire at a local country club “is a classic example of Jewish Lighning [sic],” - arson as an implement of insurance fraud - in part because “we all know Moondog could not get his bike up Route 88.” Moondog, a bit of a local celebrity, is known for riding a bicycle that flies a very large flag. Were it not for the difficulty in riding that bike up the very steep hill, Moondog, an African-American, would seem to be high on WVUGator2's list of suspects.



On the healthcare issue, “conservsquatch” says GymJones is both incestuous and a pedophile: “Gymjones does his mother. He also still touches little boys,” while “Truthseeker” believes many of the commenters “enjoy kicking puppies and kittens.”



Commenting on another healthcare story, “Highland” postulated that “[President] Obama will shut down any hospital that refuses to perform abortions,” prompting “acousticportal” to riposte in customary fashion, “Highland...are you really that ignorant? f-n blind follower.”

When a nearby school board announced the appointment of a principal to a new position after allegations of harrassment had been made against him, EllisWyatt suggested that county voters were “morons,” prompting shastacooper to call him “truly, truly the VILLAGE IDIOT.” Then, when “All4One” lamented the lack of civility in the comments to that point, COACH1 seemed to imply that All4One was a corrupt crony of the former principal, which in turn prompted Honeybun to speculate that COACH1 “may have been getting some special favors from” said former principal.

So, the News-Register's comment pages are home to a pretty sad-sack bunch of intemperate, insulting, homophobic, vitriolic, foul-mouthed, xenophobic, intolerant, petty, vindictive, rude and libelous people, and the Wheeling Intelligencer & News-Register seems unable or unwilling to do anything about it. Maybe its editors just have a different definition of “an interesting and stimulating forum.”