Note that it was all because of the torture enhanced interrogation methods. This ignores that waterboarding didn’t stop key prisoners from giving false information about the courier or downplaying his importance of traditional methods of covert intelligence that was used in finding bin Laden. To give all credit to waterboarding is misleading to the extreme.

Over at Andrew Bolt’s blog he has resorted to quoting a blog that no-one has heard of that claims that the military had to overrule Obama to kill bin Laden. Sound fishy? Military overruling the President, and the news is only available on some obscure blog? Well other stories from this blog that Andrew Bolt thinks is credible include one of a job advertisement in Romania for new Al-Qaeda leader, 14 year old girl has x-ray vision. Curious.

More articles from this site that Southbank superjournalist Andrew Bolt thinks is credible.

Alien UFO’s are really here.

Aliens gatecrash Royal wedding.

How Nostradamus predicted 9/11.

And yes, my personal favorite “Reptilian conspiracy theory”

Just all part of the rigorous fact-checking by our Andrew Bolt. It’s not that he would believe any old rubbish if it happened to be anti-Obama. Not at all.

Bolt’s commenter’s are also not convinced.

There is NO DOUBT!

I think Obama, worked in conjunction with the RAND corporation in conjunction with the reverse-vampires staged the Osama raid to please our reptilian overlords. WHY DON’T YOU OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE!!!!

Seriously though, these people are insane.

Update: On twitter someone pointed out that they suspected the website is one of those that anyone can submit anything to so it is unfair of me to categorise the whole thing as crazy. To me that just sounds more damning, that Andrew Bolt would willingly quote something that is as credible as a forum post of Free Republic or 4chan. But in the interest of fairness I have looked at the author of the Obama was overruled article. Ultersman’s articles appear to be a collection of wacky rants and conspiracies mainly about the Obama administration. And what a surprise, he is also a birther.

Once again thats some kick ass fact checking and verifying you are doing Andrew Bolt.

Update 2: Bolt has finally realised the link was bogus. Very interesting what he will believe if it happens to be about someone he doesn’t like.

Some more info on Ultersman from Media Matters.

I know what I saw and I know what I heard.  I know who I saw.  Maybe it was some kind of phase he was going through at the time.  Maybe he was experimenting with a different lifestyle.  Maybe the death of that man was just a coincidence.  I don’t know the answers to that.  I just know what I know.  I just know what I heard and saw.  On that night I heard Barack Obama in that conference room with another man.  I saw Barack Obamastep out of that room with another man.  I smelled what I think was some kind of drug they were using.  And I know that the other man who was in that room with Barack Obama was murdered about ten years later shortly after Barack Obama declared he was running for President of the United States.

That is my story.  I hope that you share it.  If something happens to me now, you will know why.

Yes, Ultserman published an article claiming that someone walked in on Barack Obama involved in drug fueled sex with another man and then later the other man wound up mysteriously dead. This is wacky, fringe lunatic stuff and Andrew Bolt believed this guy to be credible. Amazing.

This also got a run in yesterdays Crikey here and here.

Following on from the Donald Trump inspired birther silliness, Obama gets his revenge. Sorta.

Just watch this brilliant clip of Obama getting the better of Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Well played Obama, well played.

Consider the pickle.

The pickle is to the cucumber what the butterfly is to the caterpillar, although unlike the butterfly, the pickle lacks any aeronautic facilities whatsoever, and unlike the caterpillar, the pickle is incapable of movement. The pickle, it could be said, is the vegetable equivalent of a blind mole-rat, although unlike the blind mole-rat, the pickle does not live in a burrow, nor could it be considered “blind”, as sight itself is a sense which the pickle, at no stage in its evolution has ever possessed, nor could it, as a sighted pickle would be of no benefit to anyone or any thing and the evolutionary powers that be which determine such developments were appropriately across these issues at the time to sensibly decide that the pickle would not be requiring of any optical sensibilities.

Additionally, the pickle’s inherent physical inflexibility means that, unlike (for example) a domesticated feline, the pickle is incapable of reclining on a cushion, a lap, or a blanket, and nor will a pickle purr.

And so, while the suitability of the pickle as a domestic pet may be an arguably desirable proposition in the eyes of some, we may reasonably assume that, at this stage, and in consideration of those factors we have parsed above and to date, the probability of a surge in popularity of the pickle as a live-in companion for the over-55’s is not looking terribly good.

Sometimes we just need admit to the unpleasant truths of a thing, don’t you think?

Ta.

“This year, the stakes are higher than ever,” (Obama) said, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by Democratic officials. “It will be up to each of you to make sure that young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who powered our victory in 2008 stand together once again…”

That’s enough of that nonsense, thank you.

Let’s talk about retards.

Seems a whole bunch of people have been getting a mite tetchy lately about who’s calling who a retard and whether or not calling a person or a bunch of people retards can be considered acceptable in this day and age, this being a day and an age when taking offence at a mere word is guaranteed to generate more in the way of outrage than would an illustrated guide to buggering a chicken sideways with a vibrating fence post.

So, before we denude the English language altogether of those words that make some folks squirt in horror because someone might feel poorly if they’re used, we need to provide some clarity here on precisely how, why and when the word retard makes perfect sense in its application and when it does not.

To describe someone with a genuine intellectual disability, a diagnosed condition or affliction as a retard is not a clever thing to do. And those who are inclined to do so reveal more about their own intellectual corruption and emotional infantilism and inflict more damage to their own reputation (if they’ve got one) and social standing (if they’ve got that) than they would do to the subject or subjects of their slur.

And I feel that you would be perfectly within your rights, if you were the parent or guardian of someone so afflicted, to go forth and seek out the offending party and present them with a thumping good slap upside the head with a meat mallet by way of redress, though far be it for me to encourage random acts of brutal, senseless and satisfying violence, no matter how well justified you might feel they may be.

Yet let us now turn our attention to the appropriate usage of the word retard, and to those individuals to whom it may be most aptly and satisfactorily applied.

These are people who, despite giving every outward impression of being in full possession of their faculties, possess minds that have never been troubled, nor made the slightest acquaintance with, logic, demonstrable facts, historical record, depth of thought, analytic ability or even so much as a lick of common sense.

They dwell not in Candyland as Jacob Weisberg of Slate recently suggested, but rather a dark and ominous netherworld of bottomless conspiracy and paranoia, fuelled by hatred and fear, hounded by demons with pins in their heads whose only desire is to hunt them down, rob them of their freedoms, take their guns, piss on their bibles and probe the tender recesses of their children’s pink bits with monstrous black erections that have been tattooed all over with swastikas and sickles and Save the Whales slogans.

Their thought processes are so hampered, hindered, held back, impeded, limited in scope and just plain round-the-bend batshit crazy borderline psychotic that any reasonably intelligent person attempting some form of communication with these people is at risk of blowing up his or her own head.

They are, therefore, indisputably retards.

As Dan Kervick noted recently on The Washington Note, “If the previous generations of Americans had been captivated by the same radical libertarian philosophies that infect the current generation of dumbed-down, pseudo-educated, addicted and desperately lost imbeciles that make up much of the American public, we would never have built most of our dams, or our highways, or our schools.”

So, without further ado, let us now meet some retards, people whose every public utterance and action appears to indicate that they have been mightily entertained throughout their lives by playing with their own poo.

First up, from the state that gave us the good ol’ boy hisself, home of the original one-tooth, fartin’ farm animal fucker, here’s Don McLeroy of the Texas State Board of Education …

“Evolution is hooey … The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation … But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan — he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.”

Don goes on to say, “Our science standards are light years ahead of any other state when it comes to challenging evolution!”

Wubbidywubbidywubbidywub.

The Texans have been banging on about the evils of education for years, it seems. In 1994, “Texans for Governmental Integrity, sent out glossy flyers suggesting that one Democratic incumbent — a retired Methodist schoolteacher and grandmother of five was a pawn of the “radical homosexual lobby” who wanted to push steroids and alcohol on children and advocated in-class demonstrations on “how to masturbate and how to get an abortion!”

Now, nobody taught me how to masturbate when I was an adolescent, it’s something I figured out all by my little old ownsome … “Hello, hello, hello, I wonder what happens if I do this?”

And, lo, yea verily, did the joys of toying with one’s own schmekel gradually reveal themselves to me and thus did I toil at my schmekel for quite some time until I met a girl with a Siouxsie Sioux hairstyle in the late 1970’s who relieved me of my blister-ridden burden and toyed with my schmekel on my behalf. For which I was most grateful, thank you Jesus.

And so, I am of a mind to believe that anyone who thinks an adolescent needs to be “taught” how to masturbate is, indubitably, a retard.

Moving on, let us now make our acquaintance with Teapot Tea Party member, Mrs. Stout …

“Worried about hyperinflation, social unrest or even martial law, she and her Tea Party members joined a coalition, Friends for Liberty, that includes representatives from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, the John Birch Society, and Oath Keepers, a new player in a resurgent militia movement … Mrs. Stout said she has begun to contemplate the possibility of “another civil war.” It is her deepest fear, she said. Yet she believes the stakes are that high. Basic freedoms are threatened, she said. Economic collapse, food shortages and civil unrest all seem imminent … “I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country,” Mrs. Stout said. She paused, considering her next words. “Peaceful means,” she continued, “are the best way of going about it. But sometimes you are not given a choice.”

Mrs. Stout is a member of a growing number of lunatic retards who labour under the fevered delusion that, “the Army is seeking “Internment/Resettlement” specialists”, that “Mr. Obama is trying to convert Interpol, the international police organization, into his personal police force” and that “Mr. Obama is using a strategy of manufactured crisis to destroy the economy and pave the way for dictatorship”.

In Indiana, for example, “Richard Behney, a Republican Senate candidate, told Tea Party supporters what he would do if the 2010 elections did not produce results to his liking: “I’m cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I’m serious about that, and I bet you are, too.””

Retards, yes?

But I’ve saved the best for last, for here, courtesy of John Avlon, former Republican speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani and author of “Wingnuts”, are the Retard Royales, their grey matter all withered pickle and mouldy cheese, sitting within a balding skull-bun of unquestionable dumb.

Meet Orange County’s Wiley Drake, and Arizona’s Steven L. Anderson …

Drake – “I’m known as a birther, you know. I don’t believe Obama was born in this country. He’s an illegal alien and so forth … And so I began to pray what the Bible teaches us to pray and that is imprecatory prayer. An imprecatory prayer is very strong. Imprecatory prayer in Psalms 109, for example, says if you have an evil leader above you, you pray that Satan will stand by his side and you ask God to make his children fatherless and his wife a widow and that his time in office be short… Other Psalms say when they speak evil, God will break out their teeth and when they run to do destruction God will break their legs.”

Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church – “I hate Barack Obama. You say, well, you just mean you don’t like what he stands for. No, I hate the person. Oh, you mean you just don’t like his policies. No, I hate him … I am not going to pray for his good. I am going to pray that he dies and goes to Hell.” …… “Break his teeth, oh God, in his mouth, as a snail which melteth, let him pass away, like an untimely birth of a woman—that he thinks—he calls it a woman’s right to choose, you know, he thinks it’s so wonderful, he ought to be aborted. It ought to be, ‘Abort Obama,’ that ought to be the motto.”

Onward KKKristian soldiers.

How’s your head? Still in one piece, I hope.

In cases such as these, the word retard seems so sadly inadequate. So we need a new word, and for the life of me, I can’t think of one. The language has its limits and so do I.

But I am open to suggestions, and so I shall leave it there and turn proceedings over to the readership (if we have any).

For ah have some whittlin’ to finish up on, and ah jes’ saw that chubby fella from the Ahce Cream Parly a-wander on by, goin’ down the fishin’ hole I reckons, and mah pants got tight agin.

Soooooooooooo-EEEEE!

Reckon I maht go down that fishin’ hole myself and make that boy squeal like a pig.

How’s mah tooth look?

The comments on my blog have grown increasingly vile — and are not in any way constructive, civil, fair-minded, or policy-oriented. I am turning them off …

… I’m off to Havana Cuba for a research trip for a few days and have no interest or time in playing hall monitor for folks who need to grow up …

… I have emphasized over and over again that I am too busy to blog, do my New America Foundation work, and be a nanny for those who are not mature enough to be able to manage a civil discussion here …

… Eventually, I will review the last few weeks of comments and remove every one of them that went over the line with extremely crass and demeaning language …

… If you folks grow up, we can turn this on — but it takes shared commitment and responsibility. I won’t tolerate those who can’t be civil — on all sides of these debates …

Clemons is one of the more lucid and level-headed observers of American politics and foreign policy in particular. I’ve never commented on his blog as I’ve never felt the need, and I’m way out of my depth when it comes to the finer points of U.S. foreign policy anyway. I’d rather just read what he has to say from time to time, hopefully learn something and give my brain some exercise.

Former Fairfax blogger Jack Marx once mused on a “thought”. That thought was, maybe if Israel relocated to Tasmania, things in the Middle East might settle down a bit.

People took him seriously.

265 comments later, he closed the forum. Check out some of those comments and you’ll understand why. He also received threats to his person and to his family (which do not appear on the site). Marx was later sacked by Fairfax for suggesting that Kevin Rudd may have got a hard-on in a strip-joint. He migrated to a blog at News Ltd, took some time off late last year to write a book, and has not returned to blogging.

I suspect he’s had a gutful of it all.

What is the solution to the Israel/Palestine conundrum? I haven’t got a fucking clue, but it would be nice if both sides could grow the fuck up and stop punching bullets through each other’s heads in this seemingly endless cycle of medieval revenge and learn to share their fucking toys.

Yet, take an issue like this, take any hot-button issue of the day, whether it be climate change or the so-called “Muslim menace” or refugees or abortion or gay marriage, try to write about these topics calmly and rationally on a mainstream or popular blog, and you can bet London to a brick that before too long, the rabid and the rancid, the defiantly, willfully ignorant and deranged, the thumping hordes of footsoldiers from the legions of the stupid will clusterfuck that blog in a manner that will soon have it looking and sounding like a spastic convention on a carousel in a tornado.

Of course there are some creative typists out there masquerading as journalists, writing blogs specifically for an audience of the stupid, because whipping up the stupid into spittle-lipped, frothing hysteria is so goshdarn easy.

The stupid? Why, they don’t think much on thinkin’ about a thing, but by golly they gots ‘emselves an opinion on it all, and they’s a’ gonna let the world know what that o-pin-yun is, yessirree.

And they’re very well served by the vast number of “opinion” writers in mainstream media who are, apparently, expert in all the things they have an “opinion” on, even though they’ve never studied on the thing they’re “expert” on beyond reading a whole bunch of “opinions” from a whole bunch of other “opinion” writers who are expert in a whole bunch of other things they’ve never studied on neither.

Y’ follow?

B’doi.

A friend of mine emailed me some thoughts on “opinion” …

“People have become obsessed with opinion. All those op-ed pieces now dominate in the old and new media. From Bolt to blogs. People gravitate to the ‘like-minded’ believing that traditional journalism, where you interview perhaps a newsmaker and two or three opposing sources in an attempt to reach some sort of fair representation of an issue, is now considered with abject mistrust. Balanced journalism is somehow thought to be biased or simply lies (see how the ABC gets pounded), yet opinion is ‘telling it like it is’ or ‘striking out for the little guy”.

Barack Obama once remarked in an interview that he liked to give some thought, study and measured consideration to an issue before shooting his mouth off about it. It’s certainly a novel concept after the last eight years to have a man who thinks of himself as the President of the United States first and not an action hero figurine.

Yet, if you’re brave enough and prepared to lose a few brain cells on the way, try reading some of the comments on American mainstream media blogs that deal with Obama’s proposed health-care plan. Obama thinks it might be a nifty idea to allow 47 million Americans to afford to see a doctor when they’re sick or spend some in hospital when they need to.

What a fuckin’ Nazi.

This audacious scheme, according to the legions of the stupid who comment on such blogs, will transform the United States into a genocidal slaughterhouse where old folk will be frog-marched into death camps and their bodies ground up for cattle-feed and aborted and bloody foetus’s will clog the waterways of the nation, having been untimely ripped from the tender wombs of their loving mama’s on, and by the order of, the newly unelected President for Life of the Multiverse who also just happens to be a Muslim terrorist and a goddamn nigger who weren’t even born in this country, he was born in that country over there, the one you can see from my house if you stand on your tippy-toes on the edge of the bathtub and look up and to the left a bit.

What we need, say the legions of the stupid, what we need is to bring ol’ serial-killin’ George back to sort things out, talk about a culture of life and blow some shit up.

What we need, say the legions of the stupid, is someone just like us.

Good grief.

Even a few conservatives have had a gutful of this crap.

I won’t read Andrew Bolt’s hysterically stupid dog-whistling bullshit anymore, Miranda Devine’s too daffy to contemplate wasting time with, Gerard Henderson’s dreary, deathless prose has me nodding off after a paragraph. I’ve never bothered with Piers Akerman or that other Daily Telegraph guy and I never will.

Nor do I comment on mainstream media blogs. I read a few, but I won’t read the comments anymore. I’ve come to the conclusion that many of my fellow men and women throughout the world are clinically insane.

Fuck ‘em.

And why am I saying this?

Because it’s my opinion on the matter.

And anyone who dare disagree is a fist-fuckin’, dog-ball suckin’, baby-rapin’, Nazi-lovin’, greenie fuckin’ lefty faggot.

So there. Nyah, nyah.

For example, there’s this one guy who made a living pushing a ball around a paddock with his foot and had some substance abuse issues and allegedly roughed up his girlfriend who has “written” a book just to let people know he is not a deadshit.

His name is Wayne. He’s misunderstood, that’s all, and it hurts. It hurts real bad. Poor Wayne.

There’s this woman who married a fat bloke and fucked him till he got caught for killing people. She’s “written” a book about it just in case people had the wrong impression and thought less of her because of her lifestyle choices. She too would like everyone to know that she is not a deadshit.

Her name is Roberta. She’s misunderstood, that’s all, just another true-blue little Aussie battler trying to make a go of things and it hurts. Poor Roberta.

Then there’s this other guy. His name is Mick Gatto. Just because he used to hang around with crooks and do God-only-knows-what for a living, doesn’t mean Mick is a deadshit.

So Mick has “written” a book too. To let everyone know he’s just very misunderstood. Poor Mick.

Nowadays, Mick is thought of as Australia’s answer to Sam Giancana.

Australia’s answer to “The Grapes of Wrath” is “The Castle”, just in case you need a little perspective on that. Australia’s answer to David Attenborough is Steve Irwin if you need a little more. Australia’s answer to Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow would probably be a couple of teenage shoplifters in fucking Minto.

Groupthink Books Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of Groupthink Industries & Holdings Incorporated) has always prided itself on publishing works of literature. Which is to say, books that are actually written by the person whose name is on the cover.

Fuck that for a joke.

Because it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s had the misfortune to hear any of these three “so-not-deadshits” speak publicly that none of them could probably write the word “penis” on a toilet wall without a spellcheck and an editor present.

So, bugger the literature, we’re pulping the lot, tearing up all our contracts, and putting the freaks up front.

We’ve decided to hire three ghostwriters on a permanent, rotating-shift basis and set them about the writing of books about deadshits who’ve never actually done much or achieved anything of lasting worth for anyone’s benefit other than their own and who never shut up about it.

We’re calling this series “Deadshit Dialogues” and currently have 24 “books” slated for publication during 2010, all of which will be entitled “My Life” just to keep things nice and simple for the common folk.

We here at Groupthink Books Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of Groupthink Industries & Holdings Incorporated) are confident that our brave new publishing initiative will bring about a much needed revolution in the book industry in these troubled times. Which is to say, the continuing publication of stacks and stacks and stacks and stacks of books by and about a whole bunch of “who the fuck?” deadshits who deserve to be known and understood by squillions. That’s what they say, anyway.

So you can take “Dreams From My Father” and shove it up your arse.

Why on earth would anyone want to read about some random fucker who became the first African-American President of the United States when you can read all about the life and times of an aging and overweight ex-boxer who used to hang around with crooks in pubs and cafes pretending to be characters from a Mario Puzo novel?

That’s real life, that is. You think you know what real life is all about? You don’t know jack shit.

But now, courtesy of Groupthink Books Ltd (a wholly owned subsidiary of Groupthink Industries & Holdings Incorporated) new “Deadshit Dialogues” series, you can read all about real life and get yourself some right and proper learnings fixed to your learnin’ organ (that spongy thing inside your head, up on top).

Because books about people who actually achieve things in life aren’t worth a pinch of shit, quite frankly.