Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) And A Proper Fisking.........

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Scott Burgess over at the Daily Ablution points towards the L'Ombre de l'Olivier, "The Shadow of the Olive Tree", a blog listed as "being the maunderings of an Englishman on the Cote' d'Azur". In the latest post from "The Shadow of the Olive Tree", this englishmen properly fisks the latest example of Bush derangement Syndrome (BDS) which was written in the English newspaper the Gaurdian.

Before I give you a taste of the fisking, I thought I'd offer my thoughts about BDS, and the horrible effects thereof. I am constantly in the presence of severe cases of BDS, due to the nature of the places I hangout and the age groups which frequent these areas. It is no secret that Bush is not particularly popular among the 21-35 age bracket. It's considered quite uncool to be the one guy who will stick up for Bush at the bar, but I have no particularly republican affiliations. I find myself having to defend the actions of this administration repeatedly due to the intellectual laziness of those who blindly criticize Bush. For instance, the canard that "Bush lied to send us to Iraq" either willfully ignores or involuntarily misleads one to believe that it was Bush who actually approved the military actions in Iraq when BY LAW it is required of Congress for this to happen. Don't even get me started about the fact that Bush didn't actually lie about anything anyways, I have grown so sick of forcing people to ACTUALLY FARKING READ WHAT HANS BLIX WROTE IN 2002 about Iraq that I simply can't be bothered anymore. I don't particularly care if I'm cool or not, but I refuse to sit there and just listen to people belch out deranged falsehoods about our president simply because they believe he's some bible humping zealot.

Jeff over Protein Wisdom has a post today about how defeatist the left has become in our prosecution of the war against Islamic extremists that it appears as though even if Iraq turned in to a perfect vision from Jefferson himself overnight it would still be an abysmal failure of Vietnam-like proportions. This is also a prime example of the intellectual vacuum appearing during the onset of BDS.

We return to Francis at The Shadow of the Olive Tree, and his fisking of an article by Mark Kurlansky in today's Gaurdian....

Do NOT Pay This Author a Salary

Bush Derangement Syndrome is a sad thing to observe, especially when it bumps up against the reality. BDS sufferers believe, amongst other things, that President Bush is practically illiterate with a reading level of a first grade student and no interest in anything beyond those typically red-state redneck hobbies of shooting or NASCAR. Take for example Mark Kurlansky, the author of a book about the history of salt who cannot believe that Shrub McChimpy might actually read his book and writes an entire column of bile in the Grauniad on the subject. The column is so stupid I think it is worth fisking from start to finish:

Hope you like my book, Mr Bush
What does it mean that George W Bush, a man who has demonstrated little ability for reflection, who is known to read no newspapers and whose headlong charge into disaster after cataclysm has shown a complete ignorance of history, who wants to throw out centuries of scientific learning and replace it with mythical mumbo-jumbo that he mistakenly calls religion, who preaches Christianity but seems to have never read the teachings of the great anti-war activist, Jesus Christ, is now spending his vacation reading my book, Salt: A World History?

It is hard to imagine how many more innuendoes can be stuffed into a single rhetorical question so suffice it to say that none of these innuendoes is backed up by any evidence. One wonders what is required to demonstrate "ability for reflection" - checking into a Buddhist meditation centre perhaps? A non-biased observer might consider that President Bush's christianity could be taken as evidence of reflective ability - what exactly is prayer and bible study if not reflection? But no, that is just mythical mumbo-jumbo and doesn't count, and anyway Mark Kurlansky, who from his description of Christianity would seem to be an atheist, is able as a result of his religious expertise to identify that President Bush is in fact a misguided believer, perhaps even a heretic, in that he is perverting the teachings of Jesus Christ. And "disaster after cataclysm" seems a little strong given the robust US economy, the reduction in government deficit etc. etc. Perhaps by ignorance of history Mark means ignoring of what passes for "Historical facts" in the politically correct ivory towers of academia these days as opposed to, say, history as written by Winston Churchill.

Read the rest of the fisking, for it is good......