Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Gaffe-ny

[Programming Note: We're having an Automobile Reanimation Beg-a-Thon, in an effort to rouse our car from its two year-long coma in time for Mary to start her new job -- which, unlike her last one, is not on the bus line.  Details here.  We now join our post already in progress...]

Somebody hand me the phone.  Frank Gaffney's erection has persisted longer than four hours, and I'm starting to get worried...
 "Look at this thing!  It's like a front porch flag pole!...By the way, any of you troopers feel like coming over here and blowing reveille?"
GAFFNEY: America’s ‘Iron Lady’
Michele Bachmann is fearless in challenging Islamist influence
Movie theaters across America have recently showed a film depicting former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a woman whose visionary leadership and fortitude — particularly in the fight against Soviet communism — earned her the sobriquet “the Iron Lady.”

Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann's hallucinatory leadership and ineptitude earned her various nicknames, including "the Flycatcher," "Bat Boy," and "Overjoyed Contestant Selected for The Price Is Right."
Lady Thatcher’s partner in dispatching that toxic ideology to the “ash heap of history,” Ronald Reagan
Gaffney's description makes the two world leaders sound like the "sanitation engineers" played by Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen in the rollicking 1991 action-comedy, Men at Work.
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan meet to discuss the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands, 1982 (artist's conception).
Today, it is threatened by another totalitarian ideology that some have aptly described as “communism with a god”: the supremacist Islamic doctrine known as Shariah.
Which was a poor choice for a supremacist Islamic doctrine name, because they already call the wind Mariah, so they're continually getting each other's mail.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!  Do not drink or eat anything for the duration of the next sentence, especially hot or carbonated beverages, or foods which could pose a choking hazard, such as pretzels, peanuts, or pimento-stuffed olives.
Fortunately, it turns out that as we confront our time’s most imminent threat to freedom, we have found America’s Iron Lady: Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. 
Okay, if you've just drenched your keyboard, or are presently doubled over, wheezing and gagging and looking desperately around the room for someone who knows the Heimlich Maneuver, don't say the Robot from Lost in Space didn't warn you.
Her Thatcheresque qualities are evident in the fearless and visionary leadership she is providing in opposing Shariah’s most formidable champions, the Muslim Brotherhood.
Yeah, yeah, Michael Buffer.  Can you hurry up with the "...in this corner" introductions and just get to the "Let's get ready to ruuuuuumble!" part?
In particular, Mrs. Bachmann’s training as a tax attorney has prepared her well for the painstaking business of studying and mastering arcane organizational, financial and other relationships that are at the core of the stealthy subversion the Muslim Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad.” 
Maybe it's because Bruce Willis is a well known Hollywood conservative, but I consider it no coincidence that in the fifth installment of the venerable Die Hard series, John McClain retires from the police department and becomes a tax attorney who just happens to find himself trapped in an H & R Block office attacked by terrorists in Die Hard With a Penalty Abatement Under Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Rules.
Her experience raising 28 kids
Marcus's teats must be really sore.
counting her own and foster children, has steeled her against the name-calling and worse that have met her efforts to bring those skills to bear to expose and defeat the jihadists, wherever they may be.
So her kids called her names and worse?  What'd they do, pull a scimitar and declare a fatwa against Michele whenever she failed to trim the crust off their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?
It’s a good thing.
Thanks, Martha Stewart.
 At the moment, Mrs. Bachmann is not facing mere name-calling but outright character assassination.
I would advise her character to steer clear of Ford's Theater and Dealey Plaza, but it's a pretty small target.
She has been singled out for special treatment despite the fact that she was one of five members of Congress (the others were Reps. Louie Gohmert of Texas, Trent Franks of Arizona, Lynn A. Westmoreland of Georgia and Thomas J. Rooney of Florida) who had the temerity to send to the federal inspector general formal requests for investigations into Muslim Brotherhood influence operations inside our government. That’s a threat every bit as dangerous as the communist subversion of a generation ago.
A generation ago would have been roughly 1982.  Was communist subversion really a big thing at the time?  I think if you polled the American people that year, they would have agreed that our biggest problems were Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide, the continuing popularity of Knight Rider, a brutal recession, and the release of Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder's Ebony and Ivory.
It is, of course, no accident that Mrs. Bachmann is being subjected to such vilification by the Islamists
Now, is this the original Islamists, or is it one of those pick-up groups that just tours under the name, like the Coasters, or the Drifters?
their allies on the left and in the establishment media’s amen chorus.
Say what you will about the establishment media's amen chorus, Frank, but I firmly believe this is the year that they're going all the way to Regionals!
As a principled, articulate and wildly popular Tea Party leader and conservative, she is a prime target for electoral defeat by her political foes.
Maybe I failed to pay sufficient attention to Schoolhouse Rock, but as I understand our system of electoral politics, if you're a member of Congress, and someone else is running for your seat, shouldn't you pretty much assume they're trying to defeat you?
 These include her fellow Minnesotan, Rep. Keith Ellison, the “first Muslim congressman,” who launched the initial attack on our Iron Lady. More on him in a moment.
But first, a message from Secretly Halal Campbell's Soup.
Regrettably, the Minnesota congresswoman has also been criticized by figures in her own party.
And this time they didn't even have the decency to wait until Edward R. Murrow aired a damning expose on See It Now.
 Some defended one of the individuals identified in the five legislators’ letter to the State Department’s inspector general: Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
It's pretty suspicious that that she was singled out by name by her defenders just because she was singled out by name by her attackers.  That kind of thing unfairly levels the playing field, and subjects libel to the same standards of "equality" that has always defined socialism this week.
 Others seem determined to deflect or at least deny the problem of which she appears to be but one example and a symptom:
There are several ways to view John McCain in light of his speech defending Huma Abedin.  1)  as a conservative politician alarmed by the rising neo-McCarthyism in his party, 2.) as a chivalrous old gentlemen gallantly defending a woman's honor, or 3.) as a blister preventing Dr. Bachmann from draining the symptomatic pus from the body politic.
There are individuals with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood inside or at least influencing the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security, as well as Foggy Bottom.
If the Muslim Brotherhood has actually managed to infiltrate all those institutions and departments -- and not just Frank Gaffney's pajama-pissing nightmares -- perhaps we should learn from their example, and see if we could use their methods to get a few Democrats in there.
With respect to Ms. Abedin, long-time federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy noted in a brilliant expose posted at National Review Online on July 21, the question is not whether she has committed a crime but if she should have a security clearance. 
Because accusations of a crime would require, you know, proof of some kind.  Anyway, try as I might, I just can't stay mad at Frank, when he goes and does something like this -- rebutting claims of McCarthyism by citing a guy named McCarthy.  And one who believes, as s.z. discovered here, that the government doesn't need no stinking warrants to search and seize Muslims, because "the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches, not warrantless searches."
The State Department’s own guidelines would appear to deny access to classified information to a person who has, as she does through living and deceased family members, “foreign associations that could create a heightened risk of foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, or coercion.”
Apparently Frank is privy to inside information concerning the imminent outbreak of the Zombie Apocalypse.  On the bright side, it seems the plague of undead will be less concerned with brain-eating, and more focused on subverting U.S. State Department diplomatic overtures in the Middle East and North Africa.
"Come on, Zombie Apocalypse, come onnn...!  Mama needs a date for CPAC!"
Until the critics — on Capitol Hill, in the media and elsewhere — perform the sort of due diligence that has characterized the approach taken by Mrs. Bachmann and her colleagues, their authority on the matter must be questioned.
The kind of due diligence which unearths hard and unexpected truths, such as the fact that -- contrary to popular misconception -- the 1969 Academy Award for Best Actor did not go to John Wayne Gacy  for his tough but tender portrayal of hard-drinking U.S. Marshal "Rooster" Cogburn in True Grit
That applies particularly to Mr. Ellison who claims not to know much about the Muslim Brotherhood, let alone have ties to it.
I like to claim that I have absolutely no connections to SPECTRE, but even I admit that my eye twitches a little when I say it.
Mrs. Bachmann’s response to her critics is vintage Lady Thatcher: “I will not be silenced.” 
You know, I don't even like Margaret Thatcher, and I still think it's sad that she's lived to see this comparison being made.  (Wait...Has she lived to see this comparison?  I better look her up on Wikipedia...Be right back...

Yep, she lived to see it.  Sad.)
We cannot allow America’s Iron Lady or her courageous colleagues to be silenced or otherwise punished for their needed leadership in countering the Muslim Brotherhood.
Well, the right bloggers and neo-cons seem filled with contempt toward the Significant Other in our Special Relationship, ever since the Brits dubbed Romney "Mitt the Twit," but just to be fair, let's flip over all the cards...This is their Iron Lady...
...and this is ours.
Finally...the X chromosome of Margaret Thatcher combined with the brain of Ronald Reagan.  It's like David Cronenberg's The Fly, but with kind of a downer ending.
Riley:  I can't believe it...Frank Gaffney actually makes you look smart!
Moondoggie:  I know, and I'm barely out-thinking this sock.

17 comments:

Carl said...

She's more like America's Iron Lazy.

FrJohn said...

"...who had the temerity to send to the federal inspector general formal requests for investigations..."

Haven't seen a good "had the temerity" for a long time. Frank's facial hair is a plus here--give him a frock coat, and he can play the outraged Victorian gent. "Sir, you have the TEMERITY to send a request for an INVESTIGATION?! I shall have you soundly HORSEWHIPPED, sir."

Bill S said...

Well, scott, if it's any consolation, Thatcher IS suffering from Alzheimer's, so she probably isn't aware of this column. She IS however, more tethered to reality than Bachmann, so there's that.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Moondoggie for Pretzeldent!
~

Anonymous said...

But Frank, just HOW MANY Mooslim subversives are there in our government?...205?....or 57?....

Ugluks Flea said...

There are fewer kind things to say about Thatcher than could be said about Reagan, and that's already a pretty short list. That said, even I am insulted by the glowing comparison between The Girl With The Faraway Eyes and that old hag.

And isn't there already "communism with a God"? I think it's called Christianity or something.

acrannymint said...

Re: Thatcher

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Apparently Frank is privy to inside information concerning the imminent outbreak of the Zombie Apocalypse.


Tell Frank it's not that hard to find:

http://empireofthesenseless.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/up-in-the-sky-beyond-the-chasm-my-eyes-behold-a-rare-phantasm/

merlallen said...

They constantly go on about Sharia Law even though right wing Christians would love it, it comes from the Old Testament which is the only part of the Bible they read

Suttree said...

Damn you and your coultergiest pictures. Although I'm sure she'd be a catch among the undead. Thanks I now have a mental image of mann and joe's corpse.

Carl said...

I, for one, welcome our Shania Lawed undead overlords.

Stacia said...

I will not ask what that brown stuff on McCarthy's tombstone is... I WILL NOT ASK what that brown stuff on McCarthy's tombstone is...

Scott said...

You know, I never even noticed that brown stuff before. I'm just going to be charitable and assume it's, uh...

Hm.

You know what? I'm not going to assume anything, because that way lies madness. Instead, I'm going to simply will myself to return to a prelapsarian state of blissful, brown-stuff-free innocence.

Li'l Innocent said...

Hate to be postlapsarian, but if you mean that yellowish bit below "McCarthy" and "Senate", I think 'tis but the reflection in the polished stone of a bunch of posies someone laid on the old beast's grave. Maybe Anne's posies.

So everyone can relax, unless ol' Tailgunner decides to answer the zombie summons.

Stacia said...

WHY WON'T YOU LET ME HAVE THIS?!

Sigh. You're right, of course. Now that you mention it, I can see the lovely boo-kay of posies reflected in the stone.

Li'l Innocent said...

Stacia, I'm so SORRY!
My mom always said I was tactless.

Scott said...

Of course, this raises the question, who's been polishing Joe McCarthy's tombstone? (I can see squatting on his grave, but not for the purpose of applying Lemon Pledge.)

Disqus