Wanker of the Day

8 Comments

1. 

   corvus on April 23, 2009 at 10:17 am

   Wanker of the Day? He should be so lucky. Joe Lieberman is a 24/7/365 wanking machine.

   To be fair, I hear he donates the weekly shearing of hair from his palms to make wigs for cancer victims. Or was it sweaters for Israeli settlers in the West Bank?

2. 

   Brendan Skwire on April 23, 2009 at 10:39 am

   man, did i have a fun conversation with his office over this one.

3. 

   Brendan Skwire on April 23, 2009 at 10:50 am

   dude, call up. his number is 202-224-4041. Listen to the logical contortions his staff goes into to pretend he never supported waterboarding, except when he did.

   It is HILARIOUS.

   and yeah, i get that the people ansswering the phone are low-level flaks, but man.  There is a reason i can’t go into politics, and it’s because I just can’t handle that kind fo cognitive dissonance, the sheer lies i would have to tell myself on a daily basis.  and perhaps that’s one of the biggest problems with politics.  One the topic of organized religion, tom paine wrote:

   But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

   It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this?

   i think that applies just as well to politics and politicians.

   • 

     corvus on April 23, 2009 at 3:20 pm

     Hm, interesting. That’s long been my main objection to religious faith of the ordinary sort, e.g., believing a remotely literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis. If you spend your entire life, from an early age, training yourself to accept as fact things which are obviously false as your foremost duty in life, you are essentially training yourself to be detached from reality and incapable of evaluating factual evidence. As such, even quiet, well-behaved religionists are a detriment to society.

     I should note that it is possible to have religious beliefs without being brain-damaged, but if and only if those beliefs are not in conflict with scientific evidence or, more accurately, if they are subject to revision on the basis of scientific evidence. Obviously, religionists of that sort are few and far between.

   • 

     Mum on April 23, 2009 at 4:54 pm

     Great Thomas Paine quote.   Reading the torture memos and all of the relevant press has also reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Kafka’s “The Trial”:

     “No,” said the priest, “it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.”  “A melancholy conclusion,” said K.  “It turns lying into a universal principle.”

4. 

   americanforliberty on April 23, 2009 at 11:15 am

   I believe someone needs to tell Joe there is no chance that President Obama will kiss him. So Joe can stop lying about water boarding and that W really never kissed him.  

5. 

   Prometheus09 on April 23, 2009 at 11:30 am

   Of the day every day.

   Remember how kids complained about how there’s a mother’s day and a father’s day but no kid’s day.

   and then you tell the kid everyday is kid’s day.

   everyday is joe lieberman’s a wanker day..

   so really.  this isn’t news.

   boring post actually.

   tell us something we don’t already know.

   • 

     Mum on April 23, 2009 at 4:56 pm

     I wouldn’t call it a boring post.  The Think Progress post was entertaining.  Any time I can see or hear the torture enablers tangled up in their own metafictions, distortions, and convoluted logic, I am far from bored.