Saturday, December 17, 2005

The Mirthless Response To Murtha

A wingnut collection:

The White House:

...he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party. The eve of an historic democratic election in Iraq is not the time to surrender to the terrorists.


After it was plain that reply went over not so well, Cheney changed his tune.

Jean Schmidt:

He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do. Danny and the rest of America and the world want the assurance from this body – that we will see this through.


She soon retracted the slander. See also here. "He", John Bubp, said he never mentioned Murtha by name, and would never call a fellow Marine a coward, leaving Schmidt to nicely twist in the wind. But Donald Rumsfeld took up for her.

Donald Rumsfeld:

[W]e also have to understand that our words have effects, and put yourself in the shoes of a soldier who thinks that we’re going to pull out precipitously or immediately as some people have proposed. Obviously, they have to wonder whether what they’re doing makes sense if that’s the idea, if that’s the debate…Put yourself in the shoes of the enemy. The enemy hears a big debate in the United States, and they have to wonder, maybe all we have to do is wait, and we’ll win.


House GOP:

GOP Lawmakers Float Ethics Probe of Murtha Republican lawmakers say that ties between Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and his brother’s lobbying firm, KSA Consulting, may warrant investigation by the House ethics committee.


Rod Dreher:

If tough, non-effete guys like Murtha are willing to go this far, and can make the case in ways that Red America can relate to -- and listening to him talk was like listening to my dad, who's about the same age, and his hunting buddies -- then the president is in big trouble. I'm sure there's going to be an anti-Murtha pile-on in the conservative blogosphere, but from where I sit, conservatives would be fools not to take this man seriously.


Michelle Malkin's Wingnutien Guest Blogger:

...it was enough to make Rod Dreher leave a big puddle on the floor. Seriously, one more panic like that and Bill Buckley may have to lend Dreher one of his testicles...

The present situation can come to no good. We have the formerly security savvy party running for the door at light speed. We have the moonbat party aiding and abetting the enemy.


Bill O'Reilly:

These pin-heads running around going, “Get out of Iraq now” don’t know what they are talking about. These are the same people before Hitler invaded in WWII that were saying, “He’s not such a bad guy.” They don’t get it.


Freepers and WingNutDaily

Rush Limbaugh:

...he's just the useful idiot of the moment...they portray this guy as a former hawk -- I don't think he ever has been a hawk in the -- in his career as a congress -- as a congressman....Murtha's just getting his 15 minutes of fame like Cindy Sheehan got...just the latest member of the endless parade of personalities around whom the Democrats can circle and support.


Bob Newman:

The traitor, Democratic Rep. John P. Murtha, agrees 100% with Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi that the Marine Corps, which is mangling the enemy on a daily basis in Iraq and suffering comparatively light casualties, should lay down its arms, call it quits, and abandon the people they are defending in the fledgling democracy of Iraq.


Brent Bozell:

Murtha's been anti-war for years.


Pastor Swank:

Then why do Congressmembers such as Murtha and Pelosi rant that US troops must be brought home immediately? If they are, Islamic killers will swamp New Iraq with blood and then turn with major thrusts against the US.


Christopher Hitchens:

They should know that the enemy says, bin Laden says, Zarqawi says, they‘ve been saying for years, the United States can‘t take it. It won‘t fight. It won‘t stand. It won‘t take casualties, that‘s why we‘ll win in the end.

People can look at that, and they can decide, they don‘t care. Or they can look at it and say, well, we don‘t want to prove them right. Or they can say, that well, we‘re helping them by resisting them, which I think some people actually believe possibly.

MATTHEWS: Helping whom?

HITCHENS: It‘s argued by some people that resisting the bin Ladenism and Zarqawiism makes it stronger. That we make them angry.

MATTHEWS: By going into war?

HITCHENS: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Going into that part of the world?

HITCHENS: I mean, I think it‘s a preposterous belief, but a lot of people seem to hold it. I suspect the congressman does.

I say that because I can‘t make sense of anything he actually said.


Ann Coulter:

It is simply a fact that Democrats like Murtha are encouraging the Iraqi insurgents when they say the war is going badly and it’s time to bring the troops home…[T]hey long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle. They fill the airwaves with treason…These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors.


Ann Coulter, again:

I haven't heard Republicans issue this many encomiums to one man since Ronald Reagan died. By now, Murtha has been transformed into the greatest warrior since Alexander the Great and is probably dating Jennifer Aniston....

What is this? Special Olympics for the Democrats? Can't Republicans disagree with a Democrat who demands that the U.S. surrender in the middle of a war without erecting monuments to him first? What would happen if a Democrat were to propose restoring Saddam Hussein to power? Is that Medal of Freedom territory?

I don't know what Republicans imagine they're getting out of all this love they keep throwing at Democrats. I've never heard a single liberal preface attacks on Oliver North with a recitation of North's magnificent service as a Marine. And unlike Murtha, who refuses to release his medical records showing he was entitled to his two Purple Hearts, we know what North did. (These Democrat military veterans are hardly shrinking violets when it comes to citing their medals, but they get awfully squeamish when pressed for details.)


Mickey Kaus:

In 1995, Newt Gingrich publicly suggested he wouldn't have provoked a government shutdown if he hadn't been made to use the rear door of President Clinton's plane. Gingrich was widely denounced as a petty crybaby. How is what Murtha told Newsweek any different?


Marshall Wittman:

Democrats should not be deceived by current polls which show the public is increasingly in support of withdrawal. It would be an entirely different matter if America actually left Iraq resulting in a national security disaster. The Democrats would then be branded for many years as the party of defeat and retreat.

...Murtha's position is unwise


John McCain:

MCCAIN: I think he has become too emotional

[and]

John Murtha is 'a lovable guy,' but 'he’s never been a big thinker; he’s an appropriator.' 'As we get older, we get more sentimental,' McCain says. 'And [Murtha] has been very, very affected by the funerals and the families. But you cannot let that affect the way you decide policy.'


clay-eating white trash:

Murtha is a Loser-Defeatist ...Murtha is dishonoring the efforts American soldiers have made there...Murtha is betraying the Iraqi people...


And I've saved the best for last. My old pal Jeff Goldstein:

Dreher suggests that he is simply warning conservatives that once they lose people like Murtha, the war effort is in trouble. But the fact of the matter is, the war effort is only in trouble if people like Dreher—writing for the National Review—continue to make a big deal out of losing every Democrat like Murtha, who has clearly allowed emotionalism to cloud his better judgment.

The war in Iraq is right because it is right. And that’s all there is to it, really.


This from an entry titled "Chickenlittlehawk," which scolds, in Goldstank's trademark fashion, Dreher (and by extention, Murtha) and anyone else who might deviate from the spectacularly brave Kill 'Em All stance he takes from his tattered and fart-stained barcalounger.

There's more:

He is, of course, dead wrong in just about everything he said, particularly from a strategic standpoint (and the chickenhawk stuff is simply idiotic coming from a Congressman), but at least he was willing to go on record with his position.

The substance of his "argument" is muddle-headed defeatism.


The parenthetical betrays the sting Goldstein feels, nevermind that just a day before he applied a (witless) derivative of the same insult to Dreher.

Kevin at Catch, who has a sharp eye, notices all this, pulls Goldstein over on the charge of irony-impairment. Determined to not only fail the irony-impairment field test, but also demonstrate that, aside everything else, he's hopped up on some serious goofballs, Goldstein explodes. He threatens sexual assault:

I added him to my AIM buddy list: catcomguy.

I’m going to see if we can set up a meeting. He seems so tough in his picture—cigarette, beer, hat turned backwards, Malcolm X glasses.

Wonder if he’d like to feel my dick slapping him across his face.


Goldstein is so proud of his self-soiling posture as the wingnut version of Ernst Roehm that he repeats it a few hours later:

It means what it means, you wannabe-tough baby pussy. Specifically, that if you want to call me a chickenhawk to my face, I've added you to my AIM (you haven't reciprocated) so that I can get your personal info, or give you mine, and we can arrange a meet up.

At which point, after I beat you like a bitch, I will hold you down and smack you across the face repeatedly with my cock.

Pretty simple.

Let's get started on this.


Drunk on his own witlessness, and determined to drive home the point that, yes, in Jeff Goldstein's psyche there is a particularly creepy salad of sex and violence issues, he repeats the threat again:

Pancakes? Bisquick and water.

Now about spanking Kevin's across his face with my cock...


Now there's nothing wrong with that sort of thing between consenting adults, but I don't think Kevin was at all flattered by Goldstein's juvenile attempts to instigate S/M gay sex -- if indeed it was not threatened sexual assault, which is by far the more obvious interpretation. My advice to Brownshirt Goldstein, since he obviously wishes so much to slap his cock across a man's face, is to ask permission first, and get some rules established. Also, he might wish to join the Rob Halford fan club. And e-mail John Derbyshire double-pronto.

By the way, Jeff, old pal: I'm flapping my arms right now and crowing in a loud, mocking voice, "Bawk Bawk". Chickenhawk.