For Memorial Day: Erick Erickson's Unassailable Logic

Okay, here's the background on this:

Barack Obama is attending a Memorial Day service in his hometown of Chicago. VP Biden will be laying the wreath at Arlington. To Erickson and the rest of the nutsos, this is proof, undeniable proof, of the President's disdain for the troops.

Media Matters pointed out that this was hardly unprecedented:

In 1983 President Reagan attended a "summit meeting in Williamsburg, Va." on Memorial Day while Deputy Secretary of Defense W. Paul Thayer laid a wreath at Arlington Cemetery. In 1992, George H.W. Bush attended a ceremony in Kennebunkport, Maine (where he also reportedly played a round of golf) while VP Dan Quayle laid the wreath at Arlington. In 2002, President George W. Bush commemorated Memorial Day at Normandy.

So Erickson came up with this argument. It's different for Obama because we have been slandering him with bs about his supposed hatred for the troops.

Then there's this,

From Erickson's ridiculous Redstate.com:

The problem for Barack Obama is simple.

The troops don’t like him no matter how much the White House propaganda machine tries to gin up staged pictures of Obama voting soldiers fawning all over him. But see the tepid response from cadets at West Point or talk privately with lots of soldiers and sailors and you get something else — they fundamentally do not respect their Commander in Chief.

Obama may talk about the government in the first person, but the men and women lying at Arlington know differently.

Yes, the corpses in the cemetery know differently. That's how you bolster your argument, with an appeal to the knowledge of dead people? The dead bodies know differently?
(grammar police: I think you mean they know "different" not "differently" To know differently would be to know by a different means of acquiring knowledge. For instance, I know about the battle of the bulge because I read about it in history class, whereas Grandpa McVet knows about it differently as he came by his knowledge by being present at the actual battle.)

Of course, Obama really doesn’t like the military, does he. [A period there, not a question mark, is intentional]

He doesn't like the military because we say that he doesn't like the military which proves that he doesn't like the military. It's hard to argue with logic like that.

There is Something Wrong with The American Public.

From Yahoo News:

In the five weeks since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, Obama had largely escaped political fallout. But as BP attempts yet again to seal the leak, a new USA Today/Gallup Poll finds a majority of Americans unhappy with Obama's handling of the spill. According to the poll, 53 percent rate Obama's handling "poor" or "very poor"; 43 percent believe Obama is doing a good job.

43% think that President Obama is doing a good job handling the oil spill? "Cuz I really can't think of anything that he's done besides wagging his finger and clucking his tongue at BP. 43% of Americans think that's a good job? God, I'd like to work for one of those people!

But wait, it gets better! (or worse)

Yet the poll also finds that the public tends to blame others in the mess more than it blames the White House. Asked broadly about the federal government's role, 60 percent rated the response "poor."

So 7% think that Obama is doing a good job, but that the Federal Government is not.

BP got the lowest marks: 73 percent of Americans gave the company's handling of the spill a "poor" rating. Still, a whopping 68 percent say BP should remain in charge of the cleanup.

68% think that BP is doing a poor job, and should reamain in charge. Wow. I gotta look into moving to Canada.

PS I will be in Charleston, SC for the next couple of days. I don't plan on being able to post until I get back. I don't think they have computers in Charleston, I think there's a city ordinance banning anything that can not be described as "quaint."

How Could Anyone Possibly Be Offended By That?

From Today's Atlanta Journal Constitution:

Catherine Ariemma never intended for students to be offended by the sight of four Ku Klux Klansmen at Lumpkin County High School.

Wow! Really, I just don't have anything to add to that. I've just been sitting in stunned silence since reading that opening sentence.

Ariemma, a six-year veteran with the Lumpkin County school system, said the students, who were working on a film project for her advanced placement U.S. history class, meant no harm.

She admitted that she may have made a mistake by letting the students film the Klan reenactment on campus.

Yeh, ya think? You think maybe that might not have been the wisest course of action? You sure?

"I feel terrible that I have students who feel threatened because of something from my class," Ariemma told the AJC. "In hindsight, I wouldn't have had them film that part at school."

Oh, well hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it? I mean, who could have possibly foreseen that any students would take offense at the sight of robed Klansmen walking around campus?

Ariemma's students were filming reenactments of various historical periods last week, and four donned Klan outfits, superintendent Dewey Moye told the AJC.

She said she walked with them through the cafeteria, but forgot students were there eating lunch.

Oh, my God! I totally forgot that the cafeteria is used by students as a place to eat lunch!

"I told them, ‘I don't want you to walk through the building by yourselves because I don't want people to get the wrong idea," Ariemma said. "I failed to think about that there was a lunch track in the cafeteria when they went by."

How could anyone get the wrong idea? Four guys in Klan robes? Do you think someone might somehow mistake them for actual Klansmen? Seems pretty far-fetched to me!

Ariemma is an award-winning teaching.[sic] Last year, the Georgia Senate passed a resolution lauding her "dedication to her students and her profession" after she was honored as Lumpkin County High School's 2009 STAR Teacher.

And that is why we steer clear of Lumpkin County.

Let Me See If I've Got This Straight. . .

Sarah "Drill Me, Baby, Drill Me" Palin on the Obama Administration's reaction to the BP Oil spill:
(source)

“There is perhaps a hesitancy I don’t know how to say this the oil companies who have so supported Obama why the media hasn’t asked if there is any connection there to President Obama to take so doggone long to dive in there and grasp the complexity and potential tragedy that we are seeing there in the Gulf…if this were President Bush or Republican who hadn’t received the support form the oil companies as Obama, the msm would be all over his case, askin’ why he didn’t get in there to make sure the regulatory agencies were getting in there to make sure the oil companies weren’t getting away with this..”

So, let me see if I've got this. . .
Big Government has not done enough in the Gulf.
There wasn't enough regulation of the oil industry.
Those are your complaints here.
Really.

The problem here is, that this is your model that the administration followed for whatever reason. No government interference, let BP solve the problem on its own, the free market solution, blah blah blah. . . this is what you and your free-market conservative brethren have been preaching since at least the 1980's. Get government out of the way, let business have free rein and the market will solve all our problems with an invisible hand job.

And this is what happens when people are stupid enough to believe in this claptrap.


And it's not like this is some isolated incident. Remember when they de-regulated the Savings and Loans? We got stuck with a taxpayer-funded bailout.

Remember when they de-regulated the Airlines? We got ValuJet.

Remember when California de-regulated their Electricity Market? They got rolling blackouts, and eventually Arnold Schwarzenegger.

When they de-regulated the Accounting Industry, we got Arthur Anderson helping turn Enron into a giant con game.

When they de-regulated the banks, we got another taxpayer-funded bailout.

When they stopped enforcing the regulations on Coal Mining, we got the Sago diaster in 2006, the Upper Big Branch disaster in 2010, and lots of other smaller disasters. (see: link)

And yet, you people are continuously wailing about industry being over-regulated and how we need to get big government out of the way of these poor businesses who only want to do the right thing and create jobs and blah blah blah. Of course, whenever your advice is taken, big business proves itself to be completely untrustworthy, totally irresponsible and absolutely incapable of self-regulation. But apparently, you already know that, hence your criticism of the Obama Administration's reaction to the current disaster.

So, Congratulations, Sarah Palin! You were right about something. I'm sure it was completely accidental, but you were finally right about something. The regulatory agencies should have been much much stricter about safety precautions.

It's as if you were trying to pass the ball to a teammate, and your pass was so errant that the ball accidentally went through the hoop. Don't feel bad about how it happened, just be glad you got the two points.
Maybe the expression "pulled a Homer" could be replaced by "pulled a Palin." (h/t Simpsons)

One More random Thought About Rand Paul: He's a Total Tool

From the AP:

Rand Paul: WH criticism of BP sounds 'un-American'

(AP) – 8 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Kentucky's Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul is criticizing President Barack Obama's handling of the gulf oil debacle as putting "his boot heel on the throat of BP."

Yeah, that's a pretty typical tea-bagger insane overreaction. Criticizing someone is pretty much the same as crushing their windpipe with your boot. (a jackboot, one assumes)

Paul says Obama's criticism of the oil company sounds like an attack on business and "really un-American."

Um, you do know that "BP" stands for British Petroleum, right? They're a British company. So criticizing them is really more un-British, if anything.

In an interview Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Paul says the president's response is part of the "blame game" that's played in the U.S. Paul said that leads to the thinking that tragic incidents are "always someone's fault" and added, sometimes accidents just happen.

I thought that these Libertarians were supposed to be real big on personal responsibility. Apparently, not when it comes to large British corporations, I guess. Then, demanding that they pay for the damage that they did, for which they are responsible, is an un-American boot to the throat. So, what? we should pay? The American taxpayers should pay for cleaning up BP's mess? I don't get it. If I crash my car into Rand Paul's house, can I say that "sometimes accidents just happen," and it's not "always someone's fault," so stop playing "the blame game" and asking me to pay for the damages I did. God! It's like you're crushing my throat with your boot!