RelentlesslyOptimistic

Because his lips are moving: Fox News Claims Bush “Never” Linked Saddam and Al-Qaeda

How did we go this long without a "BTLAM" post featuring Faux News? Maybe it was worth the wait, though; this one via Think Progress is a doozy:

Fox News Host Chris Wallace Claims Bush “Never” Linked Saddam and al-Qaeda

Wallace picks apart a single presidential statement that he claims critics are misinterpreting; he defends it as Bush equating rather than linking Al Qaeda and Hussien. He ignores the dozens of other Bush statements explicitly claiming a link, though, such as this one from February 8, 2002:

"Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks...Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."

Bush's hand-picked weapons inspector disagreed with those assertions, of course. So it isn't just the "liberal media."

What you kinda want to happen when you leave your job, even if you like your employer

KC Blogger Nick Davis left his job. Look what happened:

Knitting fun: Darned Cute Penguin Sweaters!

It sounds silly, but it has a serious purpose. MAKE: Blog pointed to this story from the Tasmanian Conservation Trust:

In the case of a major oil spill, these jumpers will be used to help rehabilitate Little penguins (Eudyptula minor) that have been oil affected. Oil clogs the feathers of these tiny seagoing birds, and reduces their insulating and waterproofing qualities. Even worse, the penguins attempt to clean themselves by preening, and rapidly become poisoned."

Pretty darned cute. Get it? Darned?  Oh well....

I want to see a study after their use about whether there's any correlation between survival and color or pattern!

Speading the bubble love: Garden Bubble Cam

How cool is this?  Press a button (during daylight hours) and a few seconds later a 30-second blast from a bubble machine sends bubbles across Andie & Mike's South Florida garden and your computer screen. If only they had smoke and color, too!

They do have stats (which I used to create a lovely multicolored chart showing when people most need a bubble break), pics of the Bubble House and a description of the RAIBM* equipment - all available in the extended post accessible from the link below.

*Redundant Array of Inexpensive Bubble Machines

His lips are moving: Rumsfeld “I Didn’t Advocate Invasion”

This illustrates one of the criteria for inclusion in the "Their lips are moving" list: the claim has to be so outrageous as to make you laugh. Think Progress reports on several recent instances of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claiming that he wasn't an advocate for war with Iraq: 

STEPHANOPOULOS: If you had known that no weapons of mass destruction would be found, would you have advocated invasion?
RUMSFELD: I didn’t advocate invasion.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You didn’t?
RUMSFELD: No, I wasn’t asked.

Snort.

A few questions for patriots

Yesterday would have been Robert F. Kennedy’s 80th birthday. It was also the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Nuremberg Trials. And today’s NYTimes carried a story of the three Republican Senators, led by John McCain, who are putting anti-torture amendments in budget bills.

The only thing fellow Republicans had to say about McCain was that he was handing "Democrats an opening to politicize the Iraq war."  Meanwhile, we torture people around the world with no due process and with the full approval of some. We're sponsoring death squads in Iraq that are conducting "disappearances" of political opponents. The President’s advisor exposed a covert CIA agent as retribution for her husband’s criticism of the war. And the Bush Administration has recently launched a campaign to paint opponents to the war as unpatriotic.

Robert Kennedy said that violence starts when we objectify our opponents:

When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies---to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.
[...]
We learn to share only a common fear--only a common desire to retreat from each other--only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force...The question is whether we can find in our midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
[...]
We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be enobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land.

Are we creating a better society and a better world with the ferocity with which we paint our opponents as lesser beings? Will Americans sixty years from now look away in shame or embarrassment at our actions today? How do we get from this place of turning moral issues into ways to win, and our opponents into lesser beings who we are justified in torturing and killing? How do we instead begin to have honest discussions about the kind of country we want to create and be? How do we "find in our midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose?"

New feature: Because their lips are moving

Now that the Bush Administration has launched a campaign to paint their opponents as liars, the absurdities are growing ridiculous! So I decided I needed a special place to keep track of them all, the list you see at right, titled after the the old joke.

The catalyst for these posts was the White House's effort to get two news organizations to change their transcripts of a news conference to match the Press Office version, even though their version was clearly contradicted by a video. Damned unpatriotic video, if you ask me!

Then Bush said that "we don't torture" as if Abu Ghraib had not happened, as if his own Attorney General had not drafted policies allowing torture, as if his Administration had not that same day threatened to veto legislation that restricted torture!

Now that Bush is trying to recover from dismal poll numbers and complete lack of credibility from all but the batshit-crazy part of his base, the absurd statments and actions are going to be flying thick and fast. We here at R.O. will try to stay on top of the best ones, but will need your help. Post your own examples in the comments, or email them to me at the link below. Of course, I don't have the bandwidth to list all the lies coming from the Administration, so I'll only add to the list the most ridiculous or absurd examples.

What if Congress had opposed Vietnam sooner?

Despite denials from the right, the Iraqi Quagmire resembles Vietnam in many ways, not the least of which is the response by the pro-war leadership to criticism. What if someone in Congress had had the courage to call for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam sooner? How would history have changed, how many more would have lived if we hadn't had to endure the endless peace talks seeking "peace with honor?"

Yesterday Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), a decorated Vietnam veteran and long-respected hawk (even Fox News calls him "one of Congress' most hawkish Democrats"), introduced a resolution that ignited Congress. As Dana Milbank at the Washington Post said:

"In his 37 years in the military, John Murtha won two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star with a Combat "V," and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. As a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania for the past 31 years, he has been a fierce hawk, championing conflicts in Central America and the Persian Gulf.
Yesterday, he was called a coward."
[...]
Murtha, whose brand of hawkishness has never been qualified by the word "chicken," was expecting the attacks. "I like guys who've never been there to criticize us who've been there. I like that," the burly old Marine said, hands in pocket. Referring to Vice President Cheney, he continued: "I like guys who got five deferments and never been there, and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."

Congressional Republicans submitted a weaker resolution that they sleazily also called the "Murtha Resolution," to replace the one Murtha championed. The gutted resolution failed after all Democrats and five Republicans voted against it. During the pre-vote debate, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) quoted as a constituent a former Marine and current Ohio State House Republican who sent a message to Murtha "that cowards cut and run, Marines never do." Think Progress reported (and has the video):

"Schmidt was later forced to return to the House floor and have her remarks stricken from the record. Despite having said the purpose of her “coward” statement was to “send Congressman Murtha a message,” Schmidt claimed:
"Mr. Speaker, my remarks were not directed to any member of the House and I did not intend to suggest they applied to any member, most especially the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania."

To translate from the Orwellian, I didn't say what I said and I didn't mean it anyway. GOP leaders also floated the idea of launching an ethics probe of Murtha.

Meanwhile, right-wing NewsBusters ("exposing and combating liberal media bias") used a misleading headline "Media Ignore Congressman Murtha’s Long History Of Opposition to the Iraq War" to muddy the waters around Murtha's positions on the Iraq war. Their story does report (as if it was a bad thing) that "Rep. Murtha has been expressing disgust with the Bush administration’s prosecution of this war since six months after it started."

So let me see if I understand: after initially voting for the war, a 37-year, decorated Marine later claims that the Administration's postwar planning was incompetent and that intelligence was manipulated. Somehow this fact is supposed to discredit his current position that the justification for war was based on manipulated intelligence, the war planning was incompetent, and that as a result the only sensible course left to us is immediate withdrawal. And the media ignoring this previous opposition is a liberal-media plot to destroy America. Maybe they've been talking to poor Bill O'Reilly.

Iraqi torture explained

Tom Toles helps us understand: their torture practices are part of the process of Iraq taking over governing responsibility from us.

“Nobody was beheaded or killed.”

From Davenetics* : When Friends Torture comes this question:

"...what happens when we learn that the Iraqis have been torturing suspects in a secret facility?

The Iraqi Interior Minister defended the facility by explaining that “Nobody was beheaded or killed.”

Meanwhile, the administration is pushing Congress to allow it to operate just such facilities. Sort of complicates things, no?"

Regarding the title quote, I'd really hope for a higher standard than that.

I like a person who takes play seriously

Play is far more important than we give it credit for, and bubbles are a favorite of mine, so I have to like this story in the December issue of Popular Science on Tim Kehoe's 11-year effort to create colored bubbles.

He expects them to hit the market next year, and the disappearing dye created as a result of his efforts is being considered for all kinds of new uses. In the meantime, the bubble idea I want to try is this guy's (who also shares info about the [real] magnetoplasmadynamic rocket engine he made for the Air Force):

"I took the output from a smoke generator, mixed it with helium from a party-balloon kit and ran the combination into an automatic bubble maker."

Even if I'd been to the mountain, I wouldn't wear this!

Via fellow Kansas City blogger Worst Weather Ever comes this astounding piece of work: the Bridger Mountain Man Coyote Fur Hat, only $200 from Cabela's, which in classic understated style says "this hat [is] a conversation starter at any gathering."

Where would you wear a hat like this? Please do leave a comment and tell us.

Because his lips are moving too!

Daily Kos pointed to this Talking Points Memo story about Dick Cheney's latest speech, where he deplores the "wild departure" from "some basic measure of truthfulness and good faith" in the "last several weeks."

He is shocked, shocked I tell you, that there is lying going on in Washington! Next thing you know, there will be reports that Cheney's close to the oil industry, or they'll try to convince us that Cheney uses foul language!

Update: Today Cheney accuses Democrats of lying about the White House lying about the reasons to go to war!

Poor Bill O'Reilly

Imagine this scene: a grizzled street person in a rancid overcoat reeking of urine approaches, and starts talking about the effects that the liberals have had on America. You avoid eye contact and try to pass by without engaging as he starts spitting his screed and it became clear that he believes that liberals somehow caused 9-11 and that tough measures were necessary to prevent liberals from destroying America.

By the time he started mumbling about how America would be better off if we let the terrorists attack the liberal bastion of San Francisco you'd be across the street, fumbling for your keys and hoping to get the door open before he pulled out a loofah and started talking about his fantasies and fondling himself.

The most extreme forms of painting yourself as a victim must be some kind of mental illness, and Bill O'Reilly has it bad. I feel sorry for him, and think that it’d be compassionate to relieve him of his responsibilities before his mental illness pushes him even farther around the bend than Pat Robertson.

Think Progress provides video and links to his latest fantastical fanatical tirade, defending his call for Al Qaeda to attack San Francisco. He said that if an attack happened "we're not going to do anything about it," and dismisses criticism as being only from "far left internet smear sites." Hmmnn, denial, blaming your "enemies" for your troubles…there’s got to be a DSM code for this!

What are we doing when we look away during a conversation?

Cognitive Daily reports on a fascinating study testing the theory that at least one reason we look away from faces in conversations is to free up cognitive resources. The commenters point out that there are many variables, and suggest that testing this on adults might dramatically change the results.

Via elearningpost.