The sheer dumbassery of Ben Shapiro

I write this here because Ben Shapiro is, sadly, a UCLA graduate. One of the few mistakes UCLA has managed to produce. Shapiro was a child prodigy, starting at UCLA at the age of 16. But see, from talking to people that knew him, Shapiro was the classic case where those around him heaped praise upon him for being so smart, which led to unqualified arrogance on his part. And when he got to college and met professors who *gasp* were smarter than him, his lack of maturity couldn't handle it. Why, he couldn't possibly be wrong about anything! It must be those damned liberal professors who are wrong! It's why he wrote that book Brainwashed about how college professors are deviously trying to brainwash their students into becoming liberals. No, Ben, it's called critical thinking skills. Something you obviously never learned at UCLA. That, my friends, is Ben Shapiro in a nutshell.

And so today I was alerted to the latest piece of tripe he wrote for TownHall.com. His primary nonsensical claim? Barack Obama "went to a private high school and has spent about as much time facing down serious racism as Mitt Romney".

Wow. Just wow. I mean, what can you really say after seeing tripe such as that? Really, Ben? That's what you think? Got any proof of that, other than how Obama went to a private high school, where I'm sure racism simply did not exist? Cuz, you know, it's only in those damned public schools where racism still lingers. Say, UCLA is a public school..........

Of course, Obama not encountering enough racism for Shapiro's satisfaction at that private high school may have been because it was in Punahou, Hawaii, with a mix of a bunch of different races, and where whites were (and still are) a minority.

Yep, see, the best place to understand racism is to go to a young, white, conservative blogger who was raised in Burbank by two Reagan Republicans. As Kossack EdSF notes similarly: "The more privileged we gays are the less homophobia we experience."

As Wikipedia notes about him, he is a "very strong advocate for abstinence before marriage". For Ben, that won't be a problem. And from this latest column of his, it seems he understands what racism is as much as he understands "knowing" the opposite sex, in the Biblical sense of things. Which makes it even more interesting that he references Rick Salomon, creator of an infamous tape (OK, one of them) involving Paris Hilton:

Obama is a candidate who knows less about foreign policy than Rick Salomon, who at least knows about Paris.

Now, how did such a chaste young man like Shapiro even hear of Salomon? Must be that evil Internet warping his mind.

And finally, what does he mean by this line?

Barack Obama is the Halle Berry of American politics -- he's a pretty, nonthreatening face who happens to be the right color and, therefore, demands our plaudits.

Does Shapiro mean to say that if Halle Berry's skin were darker, then... he would find her threatening? Take what Shapiro says to its logical conclusion, and we come to a very disturbing discovery about what lurks deep inside Ben's mind.

The stench of 15 rotting corpses

Maybe this isn't the post you want to read right before Thanksgiving, but it is important to highlight the corruption and fraud and waste that's going on in Iraq.

Vanity Fair has a very disturbing story about massive fraud and war profiteering by Kellogg, Brown & Root, a former Halliburton subsidiary, including the nauseating tale of a container with rotting corpses being used to store ice for our soldiers. Read the whole story, if you dare.

Consider the case of Grayson's client Bud Conyers, a big, bearded 43-year-old who lives with his ex-wife and her nine children, four of them his, in Enid, Oklahoma. Conyers worked in Iraq as a driver for Kellogg, Brown & Root. Spun off by Halliburton as an independent concern in April, KBR is the world's fifth-largest construction company. Before the war started, the Pentagon awarded it two huge contracts: one, now terminated, to restore the Iraqi oil industry, and another, still in effect, to provide a wide array of logistical-support services to the U.S. military.

In the midday heat of June 16, 2003, Conyers was summoned to fix a broken refrigerated truck—a "reefer," in contractor parlance—at Log Base Seitz, on the edge of Baghdad's airport. He and his colleagues had barely begun to inspect the sealed trailer when they found themselves reeling from a nauseating stench. The freezer was powered by the engine, and only after they got it running again, several hours later, did they dare open the doors.

The trailer, unit number R-89, had been lying idle for two weeks, Conyers says, in temperatures that daily reached 120 degrees. "Inside, there were 15 human bodies," he recalls. "A lot of liquid stuff had just seeped out. There were body parts on the floor: eyes, fingers. The goo started seeping toward us. Boom! We shut the doors again." The corpses were Iraqis, who had been placed in the truck by a U.S. Army mortuary unit that was operating in the area. That evening, Conyers's colleague Wallace R. Wynia filed an official report: "On account of the heat the bodies were decomposing rapidly.... The inside of the trailer was awful."

It is not unheard of for trucks in a war zone to perform hearse duty. But both civilian and U.S.-military regulations state that once a trailer has been used to store corpses it can never again be loaded with food or drink intended for human consumption. According to the U.S. Army's Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, "Contact with whole or part human remains carries potential risks associated with pathogenic microbiological organisms that may be present in human blood and tissue." The diseases that may be communicated include aids,hepatitis, tuberculosis, septicemia, meningitis, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human variant of mad cow.

But when Bud Conyers next caught sight of trailer R-89, about a month later, it was packed not with human casualties but with bags of ice—ice that was going into drinks served to American troops. He took photographs, showing the ice bags, the trailer number, and the wooden decking, which appeared to be stained red. Another former KBR employee, James Logsdon, who now works as a police officer near Enid, says he first saw R-89 about a week after Conyers's grisly discovery. "You could still see a little bit of matter from the bodies, stuff that looked kind of pearly, and blood from the stomachs. It hadn't even been hosed down. Afterwards, I saw that truck in the P.W.C.—the public warehouse center—several times. There's nothing there except food and ice. It was backed up to a dock, being loaded."

As late as August 31, 11 weeks after trailer R-89 was emptied of the putrefying bodies, a KBR convoy commander named Jeff Allen filed a mission log stating that it had carried 5,000 pounds of ice that day. This ice, Allen wrote, was "bio-contaminated." But to his horror, on that day alone, "approx 1,800 pounds [were] used."

Conyers and Logsdon say that R-89 was not the only truck that was loaded with ice after being used as a mortuary. They attribute this state of affairs to a chronic shortage of trucks brought about by systemic failures in KBR's operation. The firm had purchased some 200 reefers in Iraq, but only a quarter of them worked. "We had crap-assed trucks they'd bought from local dealers," Logsdon says. "Often you'd be driving one they'd pieced together from several just to get it on the road." He and other former KBR workers say that even new vehicles, some of which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, often broke down because of an absence of affordable spare parts. Instead of paying to repair them, the company often burned disabled trucks in pits or by the side of the road. Conyers tried repeatedly to draw his superiors' attention to these and other alleged abuses, but to no avail. (In an e-mailed statement, KBR denied that it "did or does" order defective vehicles, adding that it disposes of equipment only with "the approval of designated Army personnel.")

Even more disgusting is that the Department of Justice would be trying to stonewall Grayson's investigations.

Could he be More Shallow?

"I'm not beholden to any particular group for getting me into this race or for getting me elected. My family, that's the only one I'm really beholden to, they're the ones who let their inheritance slip away, dollar by dollar."
-Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney

Wow. The Romney family is truly a model of sacrifice in the name of public service. Mitt's sons have not served in the military, but they have served their country by helping out his campaign. Now dad gives them another tip of the hat for putting their country first: they're letting him spend their inheritiance on running for president.

America owes the Romneys a big "thank you."

The United States cannot afford to have another president who is as clueless about national service as George W. Bush.

Columbia's President Lays the Smackdown!

After receiving a ton of criticism, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger delivered a blistering introduction of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Bollinger told Ahmadinejad that he exhibits "all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." [PWNED]

This LA Times article notes that the "strident and personal nature of his attack on the president of Iran was startling."

Though it may have been a bit startling, it was certainly deserved. All I have to say is: Welcome to America, President Ahmadinejad! In a functioning republican democracy, the president must always answer tough questions, unless the question pertains to WMDs in Iraq, government wiretapping, the Katrina disaster, or the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. Questions from the legislature and the press may also be ignored. Everything else is fair game!

Why is it Democrats' Fault?

The senate refused to pass the the Webb-Hagel measure today. The measure sought to grant U.S. troops as much time at home as they spent in Iraq before being eligible for redeployment.

The New York Times reported the story under the headline "Democrats Fall Short in Vote on Home Leave for Troops," as though it reflects some sort of failure on senate Democrats. But the real failure here is on the part of senate Republicans (and Joe Lieberman). With the exceptions of Senators Chuck Hagel, Norm Coleman, John Sununu, Gordon Smith, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins, every Republican senator voted against the measure.

According to the Times, "Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, argued that it would hobble the president. “We have one commander in chief, and one only,” Mr. McCain said. The senator said the message he is getting from the troops in Iraq is simple: “Let us win.”"

Apparently, military families don't have a place in McCain's calculus, or the calculus of the vast majority of his party for that matter.

Where's Norman Hsu?

That's the question Judge Robert D. Foiles asked when Clinton campaign donor Norman Hsu failed to show up to court yesterday. Hsu turned himself in to California authorities this week after being on the run for 15 years. Originally wanted on charges of fraud, the Justice Department is currently investigating Hsu's fundraising efforts for a laundry list of Democratic pols, including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Al Franken, and Eliot Spitzer. It is suspected that he gave phony information about the contributors to his campaign cash bundles.

So, where is Norman Hsu? As it turns out, he is receiving sanctuary from Bruin Democrats President Kyle Kleckner. Kleckner, also known as "The Kleck," served as an intern for Hillary Clinton this summer. Ever the Clinton loyalist, he courageously volunteered to let Hsu take up residence in his Westwood apartment. Kyle says "Norm" is doing well given the circumstances. Tomorrow, they plan to watch a season of X-Files and crack open a couple of Smirnoff Ices. Check in for further updates on Norm's condition.

To Get out of Iraq, All We Need are Some Mega-Donors!

I have finally fully realized that our constitution's system of checks and balances is a fatally inadequate mechanism for reining in executive power. Today, I gave a lot of thought to bruinkid's diatribe about Harry Reid's "capitulation" to the president on the Iraq issue. And I came to the conclusion that it isn't really Reid's fault. The Democratic legislative branch just doesn't stand a chance in the face of President Bush's immense executive power over foreign policy.

But I have figured out a way for Democrats to finally wield some influence over the Bush White House. Though I must warn all of you that it will involve a lot of fundraising.

Now that the president is on his way out of Washington, one of his growing concerns is how to fund his presidential library. Of course, a presidential library is a very expensive project. The president estimates that he will need about $500 million to do the job right. The New Republic notes that he has already received donations from "wealthy heiresses, Arab nations, and captains of industry." If history is any indicator, he will probably auction off a few presidential pardons as well. Edward L. Cox donated between $100,000 and $250,000 to George H.W. Bush's library after his son--who was imprisoned on charges of bank fraud--received a presidential pardon in 1993. Likewise, Denise Rich gave $450,000 to build the William J. Clinton Library after her husband, Marc Rich, received a presidential pardon for charges of tax-evasion and racketeering.

Nevermind all this talk about phased-withdrawal and partitioning Iraq into ethnic enclaves. Getting out of Iraq really isn't that complicated; the only thing Democrats need to do is donate a hefty monetary contribution to the George W. Bush Presidential Library. Quick! Call George Soros and Norman Hsu! Get all those Democrats making money off hedge funds on the line, too!

I do forsee one small problem, though. It's unlikely that America will know anything about the Democratic Party's role in bringing our troops home. Unfortunately, like every president before him, Bush is not under legal obligation to make donations to his library public. What a pity!