My favorite bit, from the USA Today article quoted by Payne:

In the video, four men wearing what appear to be Marine combat uniforms are seen standing around three dead bodies, quietly talking and joking as the camera rolls. They are equipped with chest rigs, grenades, body armor and some specialized gear. One is holding a precision rifle.

Yes, a bunch of dudes standing over a pile of dead bodies with their dicks in their hands, and the most noteworthy aspect of the image is their gear?  What is this, a feature for Soldier of Fortune Magazine?  IOZ is right, there aren’t enough LOLs in the universe to do this justice.

(*Sorry, the “alleged” penises of “what appear to be” US soldiers.)

But this wouldn’t be a blog if I didn’t at least quibble with something, so here goes.  First, there’s this:

But while studies may show that married people have more sex than singles, that’s like pointing out that the man who spends fifty dollars on McDonald’s receives more calories than the man who spends fifty dollars on sushi, and is thus better fed. One of the main elements of sexual pleasure is novelty, and after the first year or so, that’s been killed deader than an unmarried fornicator in Afghanistan. Anyone out there in the real world knows that single people have far better sex than the average married person, who just clicks off the bedroom flat-screen to be confronted with the same tired genitals every night.

Novelty is one element of sexual pleasure, and it doesn’t necessarily equate with better sex.  To spin that analogy around, that’d be like saying that franks and beans is a better meal than beef bourguignon because you’re more accustomed to eating the latter.  I have a friend who’s still single, and, contrary to the cliché, I don’t find his sex life to be particularly enviable.  More often than not, on the rare occasions when he actually does get laid, I don’t get the impression that the sex is all that great; it’s more just a temporary respite from jerking off.  In other words, novelty’s about all he’s got, and novelty has a tendency to get boring, too.

Then there’s this:

The monk, when he turns from life, at least gains spiritual enlightenment. The adult, on the other hand, descends into a cosseted fog of drudgery and consumerism, weighted down by responsibilities and debt—debt! Of all the concepts that have lost their allure in this century!—his drives blunted by cheap surrogates. Relegated to the second tier of pleasures: food (the fetishization of a necessity, the sanctification of something that’s going to be shooting out your ass in 72 hours), vicarious drama (sports, reality television, porn), travel (the novelty of temporary dislocation). What could be sadder than becoming a tourist in life?

No arguments with the general, um, thrust here, but a couple of the particulars jump out at me.  First of all, I thought novelty was supposed to be a good thing.  Why is the novelty of a different sex partner okay, but the novelty of “temporary dislocation” from travel something to be pooh-poohed?  Also, it strikes me as a bit ironic that in an article blasting a conception of adulthood as nothing more than sheeplike conformity to insipid routine, the author would express such a drearily utilitarian attitude towards food.  I guess the first-tier pleasure is—what else?—sex.  But if an extraordinary interest in food is “the fetishization of a necessity,” what do you call an extraordinary interest in fucking?  It’s not a necessity in the same way that eating is, but they both satisfy biological urges, both provide corporeal pleasure.  Isn’t this just the sanctification of something that’s going to be shooting out of your dick in five minutes (though I’m sure Casanova never finishes in less than twenty)?

Yeah, the notion of adulthood that’s fed to us our whole lives is a massive fraud, like so much of the other shit we’re taught to believe.  And yeah, beyond a certain point, it seems like a lot of people become passionless drones, clinging to their lives rather than living them.  But some of us at least are just doing what we have to do to get by and taking our pleasures where we can.  We know we’re losing.  That’s why we’ve stopped keeping score.

Regime change has probably been the goal for some time. The Bush administration had received from Congress funding for a program of support for rebel ethnic groups in Iran to work to undermine the government. President Obama recently issued a finding which extends existing initiatives and is intended to create insurgencies inside Iran, primarily by supporting Iranian dissident groups to conduct domestic terrorism and undermine the Iranian regime.

For years now, a concerted covert U.S. campaign of cyber-terrorism, commercial sabotage, targeted assassinations, and proxy wars has been under way in Iran.

antiwar.com

It’s good to see yet another instance where Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-chief, has taken the war baton from Bush and run with it.  I can hear the apologists now: “Yeah, but if Romney gets elected, he’ll probably bomb Iran, and who knows what McCrazy would have done if he had won in ’08.  Probably would have nuked Tehran.”

And here’s your gratuitous rhetorical question of the day: Since we’re busy funding domestic terrorism in Iran, does that mean we’re going to put ourselves on that list of rogue nations, or does it only count as “terrorism” when somebody does it to us (or Israel)?

Teenagers who want to quit smoking in 2012 have a new tool at their disposal: personal messages of encouragement and advice sent straight to their phones, from the federal government.

I’m sure a bunch of text messages, lovingly auto-generated by the central database at the NIH, will have teenagers quitting smoking in droves.  Maybe I’m hopelessly old-school, but I thought the point of smoking when you’re a teenager is exactly because the grown-ups don’t approve.

Even more ridiculous, though, is the idea that he’s not actually anti-war.  It’s just that he doesn’t care enough about foreigners to drop bombs on them.  No, seriously:

But the nature of his anti-war stance is fundamentally different from that of liberal opposition to any given war. The tipoff is in his opposition to foreign aid, and his anti-United Nations position: he’s anti-war because the rest of the world just isn’t worth it.

And what exactly does “liberal opposition to any given war” mean in practice?  Voting for a “peace” candidate, who, once in office, proceeds to continue prosecuting the wars liberals oppose while expanding them into new areas?  At least ABL is honest when she writes, “So, am I monster for caring more about my uterus and the rights of minorities and the underclass than I am about the victims of drone strikes in a foreign land? Maybe. But I’m ok with it.”

Not to get too into trying to divine motive here, but it sure seems like the real problem is that certain liberals just hate seeing a conservative take a more principled stance on their issues, while their savior, the glorious Obamalord, continues to prove that he has no principles.

But even if it’s all true, and Paul really doesn’t give two shits about civil liberties and it’s just all about hating the federal government—who cares?   If you’re rotting in jail on drug charges and somebody comes along and tells you you’re free to go, are you going to question their motives before you agree to leave?  Only if you’re a fool.  Or a liberal, apparently.

Nearly nine years after the start of the controversial invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and sparked years of violence, Panetta told Iraqis “Your children will have a better future”, and said the US and Iraq would have “a new relationship rooted in mutual interest and mutual respect”.

“We are not about turn our backs on all that has been sacrificed and accomplished in Iraq,” Panetta said.

“Iraq will be tested in the days ahead by terrorism, by those who would seek to divide, by economic and social issues … by the demands of democracy itself,” he said, while adding that the US would be a “committed friend and … partner” to the country.

Aljazeera

In the spirit of dreaming up ridiculous analogies to depict America’s attitude toward its former colonial ward and now client state, Iraq, here’s one that occurred to me when I heard a clip of the speech quoted above on the radio this morning.  America is like a home invader who, after setting your house on fire and killing your husband (or wife, depending on your preference) and shooting your dog, moves in and forces you to marry him at gunpoint, whereupon he tortures your kids, shoots your cat, hires a bunch of contractors to fix the place up but instead they cash the checks and take off before finishing the job, and then, when he decides he’s finally had enough, he leaves, though before leaving, he pauses on the front lawn to tell you how much better off you are now than before he burned your house down and to announce how dedicated he is to your special friendship and to promise to come back any time if you ever need any more help with anything, really anything, and then he jumps into his already-running bright yellow Hummer and speeds off, spewing a cloud of exhaust fumes in your face.