News Roundup for 9/8/10

According to Erik Erikson, this guy's a wuss

-Headline of the Day-
"CNN Contributor Erick Erickson Suggests Petraeus Is Folding 'Like A Cheap Suit' To Violent Islamists."

See, that's good metaphor because expensive suits are rigid and you can't fold them, so... OK, so it's a crappy metaphor, but CNN doesn't pay RedState.com's Erik Erikson to make with the metaphors, they pay him to... Well, that's not exactly clear. Be the resident dumbass, I guess.

Anyway, it used to be the fashion on the right to hold Gen. David Petraeus up as the pinnacle of American patriotism. Any criticism of him was an attack on America and the critic should be sent to Gitmo right pronto. It was like burning an American flag over a pile of dead bald eagles, while cursing Ronald Reagan. Just the worst thing anyone could possibly do ever.

But that was back when Bush was in office and there was some political advantage to hiding behind a Four Star General. This is not the case anymore, so the once deeply-held belief that Petraeus was literally above reproach is no longer so deeply-held. Ah, the fickle winds of Republican fashion.

See, Gen. Dave decided to chime in on a planned Quran-burning by a bunch of frootloops down in Florida by pointing out that it wasn't extremely constructive and could wind up getting a lot of people killed. This is crazy talk, Erikson argues. The he proceeds with some crazy talk of his own.

"Petraeus is essentially attributing direct responsibility for American deaths to the activities of American citizens (and I hasten to point out that he made no similar public pronouncement about the activities of antiwar demonstrators who, at least arguably, caused American deaths by giving the jihadis reason to believe they could drive us out of Iraq given enough casualties)," he writes.

Yeah, because those insurgent guys would totally have left US troops alone if it weren't for those damned peace protesters. They would've been pulling pranks or something (If Erik-Erik believes this, someone needs to stage some sort of an intervention (See, I can write parenthetically too! (And I'm better at it (All glory to William Faulkner!)))). And then, of course, he calls Petraeus a pussy. Not in so many words, mind you, but that's pretty much the gist of it.

Don't get Erikson wrong, though. He thinks "this pastor in Florida is terribly misguided." But if you can't taunt a billion and some people without a small fraction of them getting violent, then the terr'ists have surely won. Petraeus should know this.

Why does Gen. David Petraeus, formerly on the short-list for sainthood among the wingnutia, hate America? That's all Erik-Erik is asking. (Think Progress)


-Speaking of which...-
Think Progress also notes that top Republicans are pretty zip-lipped about this whole Quran-burning thing. According to the report, "MSNBC's Keith Olbermann reported last night that he asked top GOPers -- including President Bush, House Minority Leader John Boehner (OH), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), Sens. John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC), Jeff Sessions (AL), and Susan Collins (ME), Rep. Eric Cantor (VA), Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Liz Cheney -- if they would condemn Jones' Quran burning in light of Petraeus' remarks but none would offer any comment."

Either the GOP believes that their election hopes are more important than people's lives or they're more afraid of Islam-haters than terr'ists.

But I guess that's redundant. (Think Progress, with video)


-Bonus HotD-
"Tea Party candidate: Masturbation is the same as adultery."

I think Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell is doing adultery wrong. (Raw Story)