I love when she writes about things of which I'm familiar

Megan decides to actually attack some conservative BS in order to show that she really is an independent cause, you know, four articles about liberals that love Cuba = one article about a ridiculous right wing ad being run on a major network. But of course she can't help resist throwing some left bashing in too and while doing so, she manages to get a number of facts wrong in just a few short sentences

Berkeley Bashers:

I am second to none in my admiration for our troops. But this ad is one of the weirdest ads I've ever seen. It's running on Fox News in Washington DC:

I feel that my fellow Washingtonians are probably going to have little effect on the Berkeley city council, which has so far proven fairly well immune from stronger influences, such as reason. I also find it hard to believe that the marines lost a great opportunity when they were told not to recruit in Berkely. Nor that there is much danger that cities around America will follow Berkely's lead and suddenly start wantonly disrespecting America's armed forces. It's pretty amazing that real people spent their hard-earned money on this.

It's good to know that Megan is second to none in her admiration for our troops. I know I, being a card carrying member of the left, feel a constant need to remind people that I'm second to none in my unadulterated hatred of anything and everything the troops do. I don't want anyone getting confused on that point when I say something that might seem like a tacit admission of their humanity.

As for the city council being immune to reason, I'll vouch for that. I live not two blocks from Berkeley City Hall and let me tell you, this town has more than its fair share of totally batshit insane.

Of course, when you're Megan, you can make yourself look stupid arguing that the sky is blue.

The marines didn't actually lose ANYTHING by the actions of the city council. For those that wish to be actually informed rather than just pulling shit out of their ass and trusting fox news, this is what happened:

1) The marines have had a recruiting station on Shattuck Ave (downtown Berkeley) for sometime.

2) Berkeley City Council (BCC), knowing that their constituents would not like this but realizing they can't exactly kick them out, grant a permanent parking space across the street for the group Code Pink so that a permanent protest may be held

3) Sometime later, BCC passed the resolution condemning the marines with no real ramifications or regulations.

4) A bunch of people got upset because of the extreme hyperbole of the resolution. BCC decided to reconsider the resolution.

5) On the day of BCC meeting for the reconsideration, there was a large protest containing both pro and anti war groups. My guess is that, at it's peak, at least 1000 people were there.

6) During the meeting, BCC decided to retract the resolution because of its harsh wording. They claim not to have read it carefully enough when they ratified it. They voted against giving the marines an apology because they felt that, though the wording was harsh, they were behindthe sentiment of the resolution and so had not done anything wrong.

So Megan's statement "I also find it hard to believe that the marines lost a great opportunity when they were told not to recruit in Berkely." has no grounding in reality for two reasons. the most obvious is that marines have and will continue to have a recruiting station in downtown Berkeley. The second is that I'd be willing to guess that it's actually a pretty successful recruiting station. Not only because it continues to exist despite widespread animosity in the town in which it's situated, but also because of demographics. Berkeley is not only home to many radical liberals but also lots and lots of poor people. It has a notoriously crappy school system. It is also right next to Oakland, another town with a large poor population. Finally, the recruiting station is very close to a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station which is the system the ferries everyone around San Francisco and the entire East Bay. So in reality, if the marines would most likely not like to lose this recruiting station.

So, yeah, she's dumb.