Where to start. . . Instaputz notes that the Doughy Pantload is pleased to note that Vox Day likes his new book, Liberal Fascism, stating enthusiastically, “I like Vox.”

This, of course, being the same self-styled Vox Day who once marveled at German efficiency in ridding themselves of undesirable elements in the 1940s and opined that similar methods could be applied to undocumented aliens in this country:

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens. . .

and then defended his comment by stating:

So, there are no lessons to be learned from the National Socialists?

The Pantload must be desperate for praise, indeed.

Of course, one of the lessons which should be learned from the example of National Socialism is what catastrophes can result from the false elevation of vapid, cretinous gasbags to the status of “intellectual” and treating their intellectual spoor as serious thought.

NEW YORK - Gunmen hijacked a FedEx delivery truck loaded with Christmas presents early Friday on a Manhattan street, officials said.

The truck was headed to a company facility in Newark after midnight when two men brandishing a gun confronted the driver at a traffic light, police said. The driver was forced out of the truck and into a car. He was found about four hours earlier in Brooklyn, police said.

Source

That the GAO report leaked to the press (because someone was afraid “improvements” to the progress reported therein would be made under pressure) stated that only three of the 18 goals set by Congress had been met. . . wait, here it is, just last Thursday:

Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq Goals
GAO Draft at Odds With White House

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

The strikingly negative GAO draft, which will be delivered to Congress in final form on Tuesday, comes as the White House prepares to deliver its own new benchmark report in the second week of September, along with congressional testimony from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. They are expected to describe significant security improvements and offer at least some promise for political reconciliation in Iraq.

And yet today, I pick up the paper (so to speak) and find that:

GAO: Iraq Hasn’t Met 11 of 18 Benchmarks

Violence in Iraq remains high, fewer Iraqi security forces are capable of acting independently, and the Baghdad legislature has failed to reach major political agreements needed to curb sectarian violence, says a report released Tuesday.

The study by the Government Accountability Office is a blunt assessment that challenges President Bush’s findings on the war as he prepares to announce plans for the U.S. military campaign, which has cost the lives of more than 3,700 U.S. troops since it began in 2003.

The White House dismissed GAO’s findings as a static view of progress in Iraq, despite its successful efforts to temper some of the more minor findings in the report. After receiving substantial resistance from the White House, the GAO determined that Iraq has partially met four out of 18 political and security goals — two more than identified in an earlier draft report.

That would mean that the GAO report was revised to indicate that 4 more goals had been “partially met”. Well, perhaps one of the goals was “Ability to sneak the President into isolated, well-fortified bases for a Photo Op.”

Why was the draft of the GAO report leaked last Thursday, you might ask?

The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version — as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

Mission Accomplished!

I love Coco. I wonder if she would come with me on a Ghetto Bus Tour?

“I want you to see what I see,” says Beauty Turner, after leading the group off the bus to a weedy lot where the Robert Taylor Homes once stood. “To hear the voices of the voiceless.”

Why sue the school district?

Family Of Girl Who Married Teacher Sues School District

WILMINGTON, N.C. — The parents of a 16-year-old girl who recently married a 40-year-old former high school coach have filed a lawsuit against the Brunswick County Board of Education, saying school officials failed to protect their daughter.

In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, Dennis and Betty Hager of Oak Island are seeking at least $20,000 from the school district for allegedly failing to discipline former teacher Brenton Wuchae and causing the family emotional pain and suffering. The science teacher and cross country coach mentored Windy Hager at South Brunswick High School and resigned June 18, the same day the couple married.

The Brunswick County Board of Education last week released a detailed account of the school’s involvement in the case, saying school administrators closely monitored and limited the couple’s relationship but never found evidence of any romance.

I like the phrase “evidence of romance” - sounds like a cheap novel!

Marriage of Great Benefit to the Depressed

MONDAY, June 4 (HealthDay News) — Depressed people get more of a psychological boost from marriage than people who aren’t depressed, even though depressed people tend to have poorer quality marriages, a U.S. study finds.

Yeah, but what about the ones that marry them?!

The LAT’s homicide report, has turned into an open blog for the daughter of a crime victim. Since her mother’s death at the end of April, LaQuita Suggs has been chronicling coming to terms with her loss and dealing with grief.

(note: This was originally posted May 23rd. I reposted this today so we could read LaQuita’s comment.)

(LaQuita Suggs’ mother Ella Suggs was stabbed to death at a bus stop April 29. For previous posts, click here.)

It seems that time does not skip a beat. You have to try to stay a float or you will become overwhelmed by the issues of life. I am still struggling with making it day by day but I am learning how to focus on right now instead of looking too far ahead. Grief is a terrible thing, but if you can keep living strenght is bound to emerge. I would still like to submit a biography about my Mom just to assist me with talking publicly aobut how wonderful she was.

Finally - an entire site dedicated to one of my biggest pet peeves! Find it all here.

RM: That’’s awesome!

And it’s also, as luck would have it, my motto.

I could probably write more and actually try to change your life, but I am uninspired.

God bless you, Jesus Martinez! Not that we need a patron saint of MR, but just in case we do… well, let’s just say I wouldn’t be unhappy with JM.

After Jimmy Carter stated the obvious truth about the Bush administration’s disastrous incompetence in foreign policy, GOP spokeswoman hurled back this lame comeback, hurling the Republican’s current idol at the former Nobel Peace Prize winner:

She said that it was hard to take Carter seriously because he also “challenged Ronald Reagan’s strategy for the Cold War.”

This response is merely a combination of logical fallacies: ad hominem, changing the subject, etc. But it is also interesting because it posits the false assumption that Ronald Reagan’s presidency was flawless in its execution of foreign policy. The basic argument is staggering in its inanity: since Carter differed with Reagan on Soviet policy, his criticism of Bush’s complete degeneration of US standing in the Middle East and the disastrous consequences of his poorly thought out and even more ineptly executed foreign policy in regards to the Middle East should be ignored.

Leave aside for the time being the fact that Carter brokered the most significant breakthrough in the Middle East in the last 60 years with the Camp David accords. Forget that Nobel Peace Prize, too. Let’s focus for a second on Reagan.

Reagan’s foreign policy with respect to the Middle East was extremely confused and ineffective. He led an ineffective intervention in Lebanon which ended in disaster and withdrawal. His administration brokered illegal arms deals with Iran, though the extent to which Reagan was even compus mentos is brought into doubt by Reagan’s later testimony during which it appeared he was unaware of much that was transpiring due to the early onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s. The Reagan administration also gave money and arms to radical Islamists in Afghanistan, much of it to groups which later formed al Qaeda. His administration fostered cozier ties to Saddam’s Iraqi regime as well.

Republicans like to credit Reagan with the demise of the Soviet Union, a grotesque oversimplification and patent overreaching. One must acknowledge that Reagan was successful in dealing with the Soviets, showing surprising nimbleness in switching from bellicosity to dialog, and his dealings with Gorbachev were surprisingly effective. Give him credit there.

But the collapse of the Soviet Union was the culmination of 70 years of economic backwardness and internal contradictions. The inefficiencies of a planned economy were not created by Reagan, nor were the ethnic frictions, demographic impulses, state corruption, or the myriad of other factors which ultimately led to the Soviet downfall.

The current Reagan fetishism of the GOP is both marked and extreme. The GOP debates have become stylized Reagan love-ins, with each candidate passing over the Bush regimes to declare his (there are no woman candidates) undying love and devotion to the dementia-afflicted paragon of Republican virtue: Ronald Reagan.

But what are their other choices? If you think about it, the candidates don’t have many choices when it comes to harkening back. Of the Republican Presidents in the past 75 years, Nixon resigned in disgrace, the unpopular Bush I was defeated for reelection, and Bush II is setting records for fecklessness, unpopularity, and incompetence (Iraq, Katrina, Gonzales). Not surprising no one wants the W albatross around his neck.

They could harken back to Eisenhower, except that he had the temerity to speak out against the “Military Industrial Complex” which is now the GOP’s money-teat and the provider of jobs for soulless vampires like Dick Cheney, once their stints at ruining the country are over. That leaves only Reagan, who if he was alive and had still his wits about him would likely be shaking his head and muttering to himself, “There they go again.”

MORE:This Modern World nails it.