Political Time Is Linear

Since I'm mostly too tired and disgusted to come up with original content, a reminder from Atrios:

I've never quite been able figure out why the image of the burning twin towers is seen by Republicans as something in their favor. In my universe the timeline goes something like this:

Jan 20, 2001 Bush Inaugurated
Jan 25, 2001 Richard Clarke sends Condi Rice memo, warning about al Qaeda. Rice does nothing.
August 6, 2001 Bush gets memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to strike in US." Bush responds by telling the briefer, "All right. You've covered your ass, now." Then does nothing.
September 11, 2001 Bin Laden strikes in US.

UPDATE:  In which Wiley Cody fails the Internets.

I was sincerely of the belief that Wiley Cody at BullShit Cairn was smarter than your average garden slug.  I was sincerely wrong in that belief.  In his first virginal steps into the selling Republicant outrage, he meets the World Wide Web, falls down and goes boom.  Lets see if we can spot how many ways Wiley can be full of shit in one post:

1)  The post, this post, over which Wiley has an outragegasm, was mostly just a copy of a post from Atrios.  It's bad enough that Wiley attacks me for thinking there was a point to the writing, but far worse that Wiley doesn't have a clue that I didn't write it.  Strange he could have missed that, but not surprising considering the number of righty websites who appropriate others words without attribution.  Yup, he's an idiot.

2)  He completely missed the link in that quote, which would have given context to the quote itself.  The link pointed directly to the same billboard pictured here.  Again it is unsurprising that many right-wing idiots won't follow a link.  When that was harshly pointed out to his dim self, Wiley tried to cover his stupid ass with a comment a) telling me what I should have written to please him, b) dismissing the exploitation of 9/11 from the guy who really committed such an act,  with a fantasy that he was really just profiteering.  That's 'worse than what I did' (remember, I didn't do a thing, Atrios did) but obviously understandable when the real outrage should be the fact that I would notice and comment on the stupidity.  It's hard to believe that someone can have a website and truly be that partisan ... and dumb.  It's easy to forgive Wiley, if only because he was flailing around trying to hide the fact that he was too idiotic to even know what the discussion was about because he was too stupid to follow a simple link.

3)  Wiley doesn't understand English.  He accuses me of painting all Republicans with the shame of the asshole who purchased the billboard.  I never did that.  And since he remains utterly confused by who wrote what, I should point out to this toddler that Atrios never wrote that either.  What was written is that Republicans who politicize 9/11 are denying reality.  The evidence was the billboard.  The Internets could come up with a helluva lot more.  Wiley can deny it, and lay the blame at my feet, but I have to ask:  which more stupid, denying reality or claiming that I am morally responsible for it?

4)  I have some questions for you, Wiley?  What "line" do you wail that I crossed?  You never clarified.  And precisely what do you think you can do about it?

5)   In the perfect convergence of  stupidity and hypocrisy, Wiley clutches his pearls at my having 'crossed some unspecified line' of politicizing 9/11, and then Wiley himself does it.

Maybe he’s noticing that conservatives are more likely to remember that the world has evil in it - the evil that was demonstrated in September 11, 2001 - while liberals have forgotten that such evil exists outside of the Bush Administration.

Actually, I/Atrios was suggesting that the asshole with the billboard doesn't understand history, any more than Wiley does (which means not at all).   Ya see, I've read the 9/11 commission report.  I even have a hard copy.  And I remember full well how the Bush administration tried to politicize even that, and how few of it's suggestions for the administration have been implemented, or work if they have.  FEMA, anyone?

But what's striking is that the timeline I/Atrios portray is absolutely accurate.  The remedial garden-slug Wiley can't show one inaccuracy to it.  To his credit, he was smart enough not to try.

6)  Wiley pulls a well known Republicant tactic out of whatever passes for an ass on garden-slugs.  9/11 was Bill Clinton's fault.  Whatever Clinton didn't do completely excuses George Bush from the shame of doing *nothing*.  In fact, we can excuse W because Osama's mother didn't abort him.  Or let's blame Thomas Jefferson for writing the Declaration of Independence.  Or we can point to one holy hell of a lot of circumstances that still cannot exonerate Bush for having been warned ... and doing nothing.

7)  Wiley can't resist an attempt to demean my employment, though he's too stupid to realize that a)  he's just crossed a well known line of discourse on the Intertubes (don't stalk people, you fucking moron.  That works in real life too), and b) there is nothing wrong with my employment at all.  There is nothing wrong with my employment.  You got a problem, specify.

Wiley writes:

The fact remains, however, that his time line by itself warrants the title “idiot”…

I've shown quite clearly that it doesn't.  It's accurate.  Wiley calls the completely unestablished point a "fact", the true sign of an idiot.  Thus he is a hypocrite, yet again.  When I was growing up, back when common sense actually meant something, there was a term my peers and I used for people so willfully stupid that only profanity could get across the depth of our derision for them.  That term was "Dumbass".  To this day, I don't use it lightly.  But Wiley has earned the moniker.  After this episode of having his ass kicked by reality, he truly deserves the title.  He's a dumbass.

(And SteveT, I'd really like to know exactly what points you "disagree" with me/Atrios on.  Do you care to clarify?)

Comments

[CharleyCarp]

Yeah, but he went to the smoldering wreckage. Heaven knows Bill Clinton wouldn't have done that . . .

[Patia]

Wulfgar: It just doesn't get any simpler than that, does it?

Charley: You're kidding, right? Bush turns Sept. 11 into a photo op and that makes it all better?

[Steve T.]

Wulfgar: I (respectfully) clarified over at our place.