Travelgate

Sometimes it's hard even for a cynic to believe how extremely the Rightwingers operate in their fact-free zone. I've been reading about this non-issue that is being fanned by the Right-wing fanatics -- that the NYTimes committed treason by publishing something that reflects badly on Commander Codpiece -- and I've come across the next installment. This is the one from the Times travel section that featured the summer homes of Rumsfeld and Cheney in some posh suburb in Maryland. Somehow the wingnuts feel that this has endangered the lives of these patriots. This story is (what else is new) completely without merit. In fact, as Glenn Greenwald put it today:

If you wanted to debunk that accusation (that the NYTimes is "deliberately endangering the security of Rumsfeld and Cheney by printing that travel article") and had the power to have the best possible evidence magically materialize, you would wish for it turn out that the photographs were taken with the permission of Rumsfeld himself, that right-wing media outlets previously published the same information, and that the Secret Service would make clear how ludicrous the accusations are. And, lo and behold, that's exactly what materialized here. And yet the accusers, even in the face of that dream evidence, still insist that they were right all along and that this Travel article is highly suspicious.

There are no facts which matter. Literally, virtually every political controversy we have is generated by this fact-impervious mindset, this refusal to accept that what one wishes is true is not, in fact, true.

It gets worse. Don Davis has written a post called Traitorous New York Times Reveals Bush Lives in White House and it's all true, they have!

As pointed out by Michelle Malkin, one of the few non-blonde nut-job right-wing females, The New York Times has conspired to assassinate Cheney and Rumsfeld, by mentioning the location of their summer homes in the Times’ Escapes/Travel section.

But wait, it gets worse. The “Paper of Record,” the record will show, has mentioned no less than 1799 times over the last six years, that President Bush actually resides in the White House, thus making him a sitting duck for Al-Qaeda.

A Lexis-Nexis search further reveals that the Times has also consistently given away the location of Bush’s weekend retreat in Camp David, as well as his summer ranch home in Crawford, Texas, which has enabled crazies such as Cindy Sheehan to harass our poor Commander-in-Chief, while he tries to recharge his batteries after five-hour work days.

Indeed, The New York Times has even had the audacity to report on the precise location of that pathetic-looking brush that Dubya’ pretends to clear, in his desperate attempt to emulate Reaganesque wood-splitting or horse-riding.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist denounced the Times, not only for their disclosure of Bush’s whereabouts, but for giving away the specific location — the Senate floor — from which Frist regularly makes long-distance medical diagnoses.

Finally, according to William Donohue, President of The Catholic League, The New York Times has consistently demonstrated their anti-religious bias by disclosing that the Pope resides in the Vatican.