Some Friday Funnies (6/12/09)

Oh, is Christine Flowers a hoot today, everybody (from here)…

I DIDN'T kill George Tiller.

Neither did Bill O'Reilly, Randall Terry, Pope Benedict or the little old lady praying the rosary outside Planned Parenthood.

So to all of the pro-choice advocates and their sympathizers in the media, drop the collective guilt trip, OK? Because the myth that the pro-life movement bears any responsibility for Tiller's death is on par with the fairy tale that most abortions are performed to protect a woman's health.

I’ll give Flowers $20 to repeat those very words to workers and patients at a Planned Parenthood clinic of her choice (I live on a low budget – that’s the best I can do).

And do you want to know the really amusing part? No comments were allowed for a response.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

Today’s Washington Times (usually referred to as the “Moonie Times” because it’s owned by this guy) tells us this (along with some truly wretched anti-Clinton lies about 9/11, of course)…

Osama bin Laden, you have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney, and if you cannot afford one, an attorney will be provided. Do you understand these rights?

Well, we don't.

During a visit to Afghanistan, Rep. Mike Rogers, Michigan Republican, witnessed captured foreign fighters being read Miranda warnings. The Justice Department says this is done "to preserve the quality of evidence obtained." The practice began during the Bush years when congressional challenges to the administration's detainee policy required building criminal cases using "clean" evidence that could stand up in U.S. courts.

OK, now for the reality-based point of view, we have this…

Any random news article normally prompts wing-nuts to come out and start preaching their shock and outrage if it's something they can use as an attack against the opposing party. In comes the Weekly Standard report that claims that the Obama administration has secretly been mirandizing detainees in Afghanistan.

Well General Petraeus quickly dismissed that report as false while giving his keynote speech this morning at the Center for a New American Security conference.

“The real rumor yesterday is whether our forces were reading Miranda rights to detainees and the answer to that is no,” Petraeus said today.

I guess this is typical for Rogers (pictured), a “closet teabagger,” as noted here (hat tip to the blog "Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood").

The New York Times gave column space to Iran-Contra criminal and longtime neocon Elliott Abrams today (here), and he told us the following about the elections in Lebanon and Iran (this excerpt pertains to the former)…

Hezbollah’s inability to win support outside its Shiite base, along with the poor showing of its Christian ally, Gen. Michel Aoun, leaves Sheik Nasrallah diminished and less able to drag Lebanon into another war with Israel. He will play hardball, no doubt, in the negotiations over the next Lebanese government, and he retains the ability to take over downtown Beirut as he did in May 2008. But such displays of power were apparently the exact kind of thing that turned off swing voters — mostly Christians — and Hezbollah now uses them at its political peril.

However…

We should not idealize Lebanon’s election, nor its politics.

Gee, do you think that’s the case maybe because of this?

And yes, I know you can’t really measure the impact of Obama’s speech, but Dubya’s “our way or the highway” rhetoric helped cement the support of Ahmadinejad in Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories…just sayin’.

I guess the part here that’s humorous is the fact that Abrams is considered to have enough foreign policy “cred” to write unbiased on anywhere in the world, particularly a region as full of strife as the one he’s opining on today.

And finally, here is an Op-Ed for the L.A. Times written by Bill Maher that I thought was pretty amusing (something legitimately funny…I think Obama is following through in mostly good ways, but Maher makes a point with some of the jibes).

(And to be briefly serious, I’d like to suggest a “New Rule” for Maher; wingnuts who, by virtue of their written or spoken words as well as their actions, end up providing some flimsy – albeit utterly twisted – rationale for murder aimed at their objects of hate, don’t have any right to blame those with whom they disagree for the horrible, violent outcomes that inevitably ensue…Paul Krugman had a thing or two to say about that here today.)

Update: And by the way, do you want to know what else is funny? CNN actually considers the items I highlighted to be news.

OK, maybe Poppy Bush's skydive is news after all - I'll give you that.