Sadly, No!

Shorter John Lott

Exploding the Fireworks Safety 'Threat'

My statistical analysis proves that my children are dirty and stinky little rascals.

Inspired by MattT.

Shorter concept inspired by busy, busy, busy from an idea by D-Squared.

Added: Lott also writes:

This issue is badly distorted by the media. A search of the top 100 newspapers found 140 news stories in the last year warning that fireworks could be deadly if used improperly. But, despite this edge to the coverage, on average just six people a year died in fireworks-related incidents from 1990 to 2002. [...]

By comparison, about 20 times more children under the age of 10 drown in home bathtubs each year than the number of people who are killed in fireworks accidents.

Lott claims the issue is "distorted" by the media, but gives no data as to how many stories were published about the number of bathtub drownings. Without this piece of the puzzle, how are we to conclude that the coverage is "distorted?" Lott then adds:

Despite the fears raised by the media, fireworks deaths are just not something that people should spend any time worrying about.

Lott found an average 1.4 stories per paper per year -- and this amounts to fear mongering by the media? Did you know that according to LexisNexis, there were 232 stories in major papers* about poisonous snakes?

* Approximately 50, mostly American, papers.

Edit: Via Tim Lambert, we find out that Hunt Stilwell was equally unimpressed.

What do you mean we could lose?

Some things must be read to be believed:

Pentagon and Justice Department officials said they were considering moving all the prisoners from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a conservative judicial district within the United States, according to the [LA Times.] [...]

"They really didn't have a specific plan for what to do, case by case, if we lost," a senior Defense Department official was quoted as saying in the report. "The Justice Department didn't have a plan. State didn't have a plan.

"It's astounding to me that these cases have been pending for so long and nobody came up with a contingency plan." [Emphasis added]

Yeah, it's astounding. In other astounding developments:

Carole Coleman on Bush

Blair sends this link featuring Carole Coleman (that terribly rude Irish woman who wanted George Bush to answer her questions) discussing her interview with the President:

He was tough. He was very tough.

Tough as a stump.

Poor Andrew, reading what you link to is just so hard

In his continuing quest to call Michael Moore names, Andrew Sullivan writes:

JACKASS BEAT FAHRENHEIT: Yep, the movie with all those hot young straight dudes shoving toy cars up their posteriors actually beat out Michael Moore at the box office. F9/11 wasn't the biggest grossing documentary. Jackass was. It was non-fiction, and about as informative as Mr Moore. And a lot more to look at.

Andrew posted this on June 30 at 12:17 am. Had he actually read the comments on the post he linked to, he would have noticed that (leaving aside the ultra lame premise) the assertion is, in fact, inaccurate. A commenter pointed out on June 29 at 6:42 pm:

The estimate may not have beaten Jackass [$22.8 million,] but when the actual numbers came in it turns out it actually pulled in $23,920,637.

Box office results

Andrew linked two days late to a story that had turned out to be bogus a day later. Good luck with your fundraising. [For bonus entertainment, F9/11 managed to outsell Jackass while the latter was shown on 2,509 screens, compared to 868 for Moore's movie.]

Is there anything the angry right won't stoop to?

Update: Sadly, No! gets results:

JACKASS UPDATE: The initial returns of "Fahrenheit 9/11" were less than "Jackass." But the adjusted returns show F9/11 inching ahead of the boys with the toys. Let's see if Moore's propaganda beats out "Jackass's" total $64.2 million.

Yeah, let's see Andrew. Will you shut the fuck up when it does? Isn't it great how when Jackass was thought the winner (by $1.0 million) it was just a win, but F9/11 winning by $1.1 million is called "inching ahead?"

Lunatic is the word you apply to sane people

Fresh from our latest visit to The Rant in our quest to find a new Brian Cherry, we are happy to introduce you to Justin "Dapper" Darr, whose column is titled To Thy Own Self Be True. Justin is mad that another American has been killed in Iraq:

Savage is too kind a word to describe the perpetrators of this act. Savage is a word you apply to human beings.

Yes, savage is a word best used for humans -- and these people were obviously not humans. Justin, fortunately, knows why the terrorists psychopaths hate us:

Over 80 years ago, before there was an Israel, and America had no real interests in the Middle East, radical Islamists first wrote out the evils of our society based on the fact that we allowed unmarried men and women to dance together. That is correct. America was targeted as a decadent threat to Islam because we have high school proms.

Gee, radical Islamists sound a lot like these guys:

Now for the Christian young person you have more issues to deal with. First and foremost, does God want you to attend this prom? It would be really easy to just sweep this question under the rug and try to ignore it, but Christians should never ignore the things of this world that confront them and the things that tempt them to do evil. So let's get some answers from the Bible [...]

But did you also know that the sinful people got involved in fleshly dancing and that led to all kinds of immorality?

Justin has more:

John Kerry is not trouncing Bush in the polls because we understand that a Kerry victory would be tantamount to announcing open hunting season on Americans overseas.

So far, "we" know that Kerry isn't trouncing Bush because "we" realize that if Kerry is elected terrorists will start killing Americans all over the place. (Why they don't do so now remains unexplained.) But why are some people supporting Kerry instead of Bush:

Polls show support for Bush declining not because Americans feel bad about how we are treating the Iraqis, but because he is not being forceful enough.

Bush is being too nice, so voters say they will vote for Kerry even though they realize that voting for Kerry will mean "open season on Americans overseas." You really can't argue with that logic.

So what should we do now?

The time has come for decisive action no matter what the cost in international popularity.

Because if there's anything that smacks of indecisiveness, it is spending $200 billion and sending over 100,000 troops to occupy a country headed by a dictator whose arsenal of weapons of mass destruction consists of a single pre-1991 chemical warhead.

Justin: we'll see you at the Armed Forces Recruitment Office!

As for you, poor readers, you'll be seeing a lot more of Justin in the weeks to come. He is, after all:

a fountain of relatively useless knowledge do to years of University study.

as well as:

the hottest new conservative writer on the web so book mark this page and you can say you knew him before he was famous!

All aboard the Justin Darr Celebrity Train, now leaving Delusion City. If you need Justin, you can find him at a Wal-Mart in the Philadelphia area:

Justin Darr is a veteran retail manager from the Philadelphia area.

David Frum, the new Canadian Piñata

Yesterday, we took a first whack at David Frum's sorry attempt at economic analysis. Brad DeLong followed and wasn't impressed either.

Courtesy of The Toronto Star, we're happy to note that David Frum found himself again on the receiving end during CTV's election night coverage last night:

Best moment of the night came when Frum (the man who co-created the "axis of evil" line), opining in his eager-beaver way about how the Conservatives had positioned themselves left of this and right of that here or there, got slapped into the boards by Tobin, a former Liberal MP and premier of Newfoundland.

"George Bush's speeches don't work here!" snapped Tobin to a startled Frum.

In somewhat related news, here is one sentence from the same article that is begging for a creative ellipsis:

CTV took the low-budget road but gave us plenty of lively talk from the likes of former politicos Brian Tobin, Sheila Copps, John Crosbie and Deborah Grey, with consulting types such as Peter Donolo, Gerry Caplan and David Frum thrown into the mix.

could become:

CTV took the low-budget road [...] with consulting types such as Peter Donolo, Gerry Caplan and David Frum thrown into the mix.

Oh, the comedy!

Finally, we link to intelligent commentary

Via Hairy Fish Nuts, Juan Cole offers his thoughts on Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11:

So, I think the second half the the film, on Bush's Iraq policy, has virtues. He turns out to have been prescient about how fictitious the reasons for the war were. But some of the innuendo about the Saudis and Afghans just seems an attempt to damn by association, and seem to me to be based on faulty logic and inaccurate assertions.

Frederick from Beat Bush Blog finds out that the New York Times' math skills are even worse than those of David Frum.

August J. Pollack wonders if The Smoking Gun's Michael Moore voter registration find is as big a deal as some would believe.

No More Mister Nice Blog looks at a liberal hawk who is good at stating the obvious and missing the obviouser (yes, we coined that phrase!:)

I'm happy to learn from the article that Ignatieff believes torture is bad, even when it's done by the government he trusted to bring freedom and human rights to Iraq. But now that Ignatieff has had to acknowledge an unpleasant truth about George W. Bush, he seems ready to canonize ... Ronald Reagan:

And while we're too lazy to comment, Robert at My Blahg has lots of good posts on the Canadian election results.

Secret Bremer Man!

Picture of L. Paul Bremer sent by the CPA earlier today, titled Ambassador Bremer Departs Iraq. Isn't he way too kewl for skewl?

David Frum shows us the Reagan years were not good for the average American Family

David Frum, likely getting ready to accept next year's Nobel prize in economics, explains why the liberal government in Canada has not been good to the average Canadian family:

Between 1993 and 2003, Canada’s total gross domestic product – the value of all Canadian-made goods and Canadian-provided services – rose by two-thirds. [...] Where did that extra production go? That’s the question answered by the second number, 45%. The lion’s share of Canadian economic growth in the 1990s was pocketed by government, especially the federal government. Between 1993 and 2003, federal revenues rose by 45%, or almost $60 billion.

Poor average Canadian family concludes Frum -- the Liberals have not been good for them at all. [sniff] Which is why we wondered how, using the test offered by David, the average American family fared under Reagan (data from 1981 to 1989:)

US GDP, 1981: US$3.06 trillion
US GDP, 1989: US$5.42 trillion

Increase of: 77%.

US Tax Revenue, 1981: US$599.1bn
US Tax Revenue, 1989: US$991.2bn

Increase of: 65%.

(Source: Excel file 1 and 2.)

Frum adds that disposable income went up by 31% during those ten years, which is apparently not good, though it's not that much lower than Reagan's 8 years (31.9%.) [3.1% v. 3.9%] Given how super duper we're told the Reagan years were, one wonders: why the sad face David?

Frum also bemoans the decline in the value of the Canadian dollar, though it's not clear what, exactly, he thinks the government should have done. (Nor does he note the fact that the US dollar has appreciated against the currencies of other countries at the same time.) Or note that as the most trade dependent of all G7 nations, Canada does reap some benefits from a weaker dollar.

So in conclusion: David Frum is a giant ass and he hates Ronald Reagan. Thank you.

Added: In the comments, reader dmm makes the obvious (non Reagan related point.) Time for a quiz:

Your income is $100, and your tax rate is 40%, which means (we think) that you pay $40 in taxes. Your income goes up by 40% to $140. Your tax rate remains the same, and you now pay 40% of $140, i.e. $56. So your taxes also went up by 40%. Does this mean that the government took all of your pay raise away? Sadly, No!

Creative Writing with Buddy Swing

Two weeks ago, we looked at the insect-metaphor-filled writing of Shane Arthur Swing. Swing père et fils are back this week, and their new adventures are titled "Better Fixed Now Then Later" and "Politics and Poetry." Shane's essay is a kind of Whose Line Is It Anyway take on creative writing, and we salute him for his efforts. Buddy's work, well, we wonder about a little. We were tempted to do a shorter version (Saddam Hussein is a lot like a poorly built garage that George Bush decided to level,) but realized that just didn't do justice to the last two paragraphs:

Finally, I installed the vinyl siding. The last, and top, piece was noticeably larger under the facer and soffit assembly that inclined dramatically upward at the end where it was attached to the upward slanting roof that was nailed to the end truss that rocked because of the exaggerated hump in the top of the wall that was caused by the hump in the base where it was attached to the bolt that had a small concrete buildup around its base. Now, it was too late to solve the problem.

President Bush was right. He fixed Saddam Hussein while he was still a small buildup around the base of a bolt.

Which leads us to conclude the following:

So far so good

The New York Times reports on the first day of the New Iraq®:

Already security forces, responding to today's announcement, were locking down sections of the capital. Several hotels refused to let guests go in or out, thousands of police stepped into the streets and American fighter jets cut arcs in the sky over Baghdad. Both American and Iraqi officials said they were expecting the handover to be marred by significant terrorist attacks.

In related Total Sovereignty® developments:

The new Iraqi government, consisting of many wealthy exiles who spent years away from Iraq, is barred from making long-term policy decisions and will not control the 160,000 foreign troops remaining in the country. The government has the right to ask them to leave — but has made clear it has no intention of doing so. The government also cannot reverse any of the laws passed by American administrators during the occupation.

[Emphasis added]

Thanks to Blair for the link.

There are thankless jobs...

...and then there is the job of highlighting Andrew Sullivan's internal contradictions, unsupported assertions and pointless awards. SullyWatch celebrates two years of doing all of that (and then some) this week. So why not consider giving something to the blogger who does not have it all?

Here are your details boys and girls!

This would be impressive if it meant something:

Iraq handover of sovereignty completed
Low-key ceremony comes two days early
Monday, June 28, 2004 Posted: 3:22 AM EDT (0722 GMT)

Iraqi President Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar: "This is a historic and happy day for us."

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The handover of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government took place at 10:26 a.m. local time Monday, two days before the June 30 deadline previously announced by the U.S.-led coalition, CNN has learned.

From the needless to say department:

The low-key ceremony happened inside the Coalition Provisional Authority's "Green Zone" headquarters in Baghdad.

The thing is David, sovereignty is in the eye of the beholder

CNN Analyst David Grange opines:

CNN Anchor: [Interim] Prime Minister [Ayad] Allawi of Iraq has suggested that he may have to impose martial law. Do you think it is time that he do so, and do so immediately in order to stop these kidnappings?

GRANGE: Well, you know, that's not something bad for the Iraqi people. They're used to a lot of control from someone, and if that control brings some type of order -- because that's the concern of the populace more so than a totally free society. They are used to security, even if it's imposed by a free or dictator-type government.

So I think that the prime minister could get away with that, and it may be prudent to do that on either side of the transition date, just to maintain rule of law in the situation. [Emphasis added]

In related news:

Allawi's fighting words may do little to deter the insurgents, but they set off alarm bells among U.S. officials. Bremer's aides said Allawi lacks the power to impose martial law, and Secretary of State Colin Powell warned that the U.S. would not support such a move. "The last thing we want," says a senior U.S. official, "is for the world to think we're foisting a new strongman on Iraq."

We are so out of here my friends!

CNN reports:

Handover of sovereignty in Iraq will take place Monday, two days before the June 30 deadline previously announced, diplomatic sources tell CNN. Details soon.

I have a vision folks, so there's no need to worry!

Well, as long as the man sees something, the need to be concerned is no longer operative:

My job is to do my job I'm going to do it the way I think is necessary. I'm going to set a vision. I will lead and we'll just let the chips fall where they may.

Meanwhile, today in Iraq another two dozen chips fell where they may. For the last time. (Please choose one of the following: desperate or major blow.)

Thanks to Blair for the first link.

Stupid TV Brian, be more funny!

Sadly, No! favorite (sorry Amber) Brian Cherry has a new column out, Our Bodies Ourselves, Kind Of. Sadly, the column is quite unremarkable and, if we did that sort of thing, would likely score quite poorly on the Poor Man's Kaye Grogan Quotient®. Brian argues that while feminists say the government can't tell them what to do with their bodies, in fact the government tells lots of people they can't do certain things with their bodies, which means (logically) that it's ok to ban abortions. So far, so good. (Well, not really but who cares, this is Brian "Literary Sticks" Cherry, so it's a sliding scale as they say.)

Yet there was one passage that caught our attention:

For example, my body and all the organs that lay below my warming layers of blubber are theoretically mine to control. Reality would soon come crashing down around me if I tried to sell one of my kidneys to the highest bidder.

Sound familiar? Of course it does! Thomas "Kidneys 'R 'Us" Sowell strikes again:

We should let people sell their kidneys if they want to. Damned liberal nanny state!

Brian does add a few interesting details about the federal law that prohibits organ sales:

Under a 1984 federal law the sale of organs is a felony that is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $50,000.

Gee, we wonder which President signed this bill into law? Could it be... Reagan?

As for the rest: Brian dear, you're going to have to work a lot harder than that.

In totally unrelated news: Fuck you.

Shorter David Brooks

All Hail Moore

It's Michael Moore's fault that I said something inaccurate in my last column.

or:

The release of Michael Moore's film gives me an excuse to string together a series of incoherent points to show that Moore is fat and dumb.

Shorter concept inspired by busy, busy, busy from an idea by D-Squared.

Sadly, Yes!

Ever so reliable Blair sent us a link to this surreal Bush interview broadcast on Irish TV yesterday.* (Streaming video, 11 minutes and 45MB.) For those lacking the patience, Uppish has an all too accurate summary:

Bush: Guess what? I'm a snide, arrogant, asshole who can't wipe the smirk off my face because I'm so gosh darned proud of myself for getting through that last sentence without screwing it up.

Reporter: Mr. President, back to the war in Iraq...

Bush: Let me finish! I keep telling you how to do your job and you keep not doing it right. Guess what? I'm not done reciting empty phrases about freedom-loving 'mericans.

Continued...

Because we love you, our faithful readers, we'll try to have an edited, "best of" shorter version up later this weekend.

* Click here and then click on "Carole Anderson Coleman* talks to the President."

Edit: Full interview in RealMedia format for download. (8MB file.) (No image for the first 5 seconds or so, but on our machine things settle down after that.)

* Thanks to Mimiru for pointing out the error.

Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!

John, of 77002, previously known as Logan Circle Guy, reports that some people will go so far as to complain about their own stupidity:

The NY Times did a piece today on Houston's record-high rate of collisions between cars and the new light rail trains. Now, if you read this article, and had not been here and seen the places where these accidents are occurring, you might think the drivers had some valid points.

You'd be wrong.

More...

(Via Sullywatch.)

More news from the department of isolated incidents

More along the lines of this week's other, unrelated isolated incidents:

BAQOUBA, Iraq June 26, 2004 — Insurgents attacked two political party offices and a government building Saturday, killing three people and wounding two, the latest in an upsurge in violence just days before Iraq's interim government takes power.

Also Saturday, a car bombing wounded a Kurdish government official and killed one of his bodyguards in the northern city of Irbil, according to police and a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Finally, a Ron we can get excited about!

Reagan Jr backing Kerry

He said he could never join the Republican party because it "tolerates members who are bigots ... homophobes, racists" and revealed that he would vote for Democrat John Kerry on November 2.

Are you listening, Andrew Sullivan?

Don't say the truth, that's an attack!

The George W. Bush blog is getting upset:

John Kerry yesterday launched a new round of divisive, partisan attacks, including one aimed at the economic record of President Ronald Reagan

The article they link to quotes Kerry saying the following:

''I was part of that effort in the 1990s that had the courage to do what Ronald Reagan, for all his rhetoric -- and God rest his soul, we loved him for his strength in many things -- but I don't recall vetoes of major appropriations bills. I recall a lot of talk about deficits; I don't recall balancing the budget. I recall deficits getting larger."

Not only is this hardly an attack, it happens to be totally accurate. Yet this "you've attacked Ronnie" line is ripped from today's playbook (same link:)

He [Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt] also blasted Kerry for criticizing Reagan's fiscal record. ''Kerry's attack on President Reagan is beyond the pale, and will be very troubling to most Americans," he said.

So now, if you say that Reagan presided over increasingly large deficits, you're attacking the man. Is Alzheimer's contagious?

If you missed it...

This week's Flash Friday is Sadly, No Love! (6MB of pure comedy genius. Or as close as we'll ever get anyway.)

Shhh, the Ambassador is sleeping

Good thing this happened during the Clinton years:

...the German ambassador to the United States, Wolfgang Ischinger, recently disclosed a long-kept secret from his diplomatic career. Ischinger was a frequent participant in late-night teleconferences that Madeleine Albright held with European officials while she was U.S. secretary of state. While listening to a tape of one conference, officials in Germany's Foreign Ministry were particularly amused by the sound of someone snoring on the tape, but the culprit remained in the dark for a long time. At a recent meeting of the Robert-Bosch Foundation transatlantic exchange program, Ischinger confessed that it was he who had fallen asleep, aided he said by a hearty meal and a glass of heavy red wine.

By that logic, only four planes were hijacked on September 11

Iraqi's interim Prime Minister is apparently a graduate of the Ari Fleischer school of public relations:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's interim prime minister has vowed  to crush Baathist die-hards and foreign militants he blamed for  killing 100 people in a day of suicide bombings and attacks meant to sabotage next week's move toward Iraqi rule.

"These are isolated incidents," said Iyad Allawi. "We are  going to defeat them...We have been expecting this escalation  and we are expecting more escalation in the days ahead."

Here is your isolated incidents scoreboard for yesterday:

Attacks:

Go ahead, hit her with your best shot!

This time, our good friend Michelle Malkin means it!

Feel free to leave the profanity-free putdown you would have used on Leahy. (And for those who have been dying to leave one of these for me, go ahead if it gets you through the day.)

So what are you waiting for?

We pay a visit to an old friend

Before our switch to Movable Type, we had written about an eBay user who tended to leave peculiar responses to his feedback. Today, we turn our attention to feedback he leaves for others:

You know what, that just doesn't sound good

In yet another round of electricity in Iraq related news:

[Nick] Horne, for his part, was a computer consultant attracted by the idea of working in Iraq. He took a taxi from Jordan to Baghdad and landed a job as the CPA's senior adviser for electricity. He said he found himself briefing Bremer on the country's critical electricity grid, which he didn't yet understand. [Emphasis added]

In other related news:

Despite promises by the Coalition Provision Authority (CPA) to rebuild and expand Iraq's infrastructure, Iraq is still not producing as much electricity or as much oil on a sustained basis as it was just before the war, according to the report which blames a combination of sabotage by insurgents and incompetence and profiteering by big U.S. companies like Halliburton that captured virtually all of the reconstruction contracts to the exclusion of more-experienced Iraqi firms.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting for a correction (or even a reply to our email.)

It will never stop, will it?

No More Mister Nice Blog has the ultimate shorter version of Dick Morris' latest column. We'll just note that this sentence by Dick really caught our, uh, eye:

And [Clinton] cannot resist mounting the platform when it is erected every four years.

It's always about the Clenis.

Kick it way over the crossbar like Beckham

Oops.

Well aren't you lucky!

Sadly, we must take an early leave from the duties of Sadly, No! today Oskar is really bummed out about yesterday's football game, and we promised we'd go out looking for junk mail together.) The good news however is that we've decided to post this week's Flash Friday a day early. (Which means Flash Friday has, for all practical purposes, never actually been posted on a Friday. But we digress.)

Last week, we told you that our latest effort was totally awesome. (And no besides that were involved!) Well, this week's animation makes last week's look like a piece of crap. We kid you not. Sadly, No Love! will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will show you that when you get right down to it, and all appearances to the contrary, the good people of Sadly, No! truly are romantics at heart. Vicious, petty, mean-spirited, hateful, kick-a-man-when-he's-down, wouldn't-spit-on-his-hair-if-it-was-on-fire romantics. So sit back, put away your beverages, and enjoy Sadly, No Love!

Technical Notes: Animation is, yet again, a healthy 6MB, with every megabyte better than the next. Or something.

Credits: Were it not for Pete M. from The Dark Window, these things would consist of 3 pictures and 1 quote, circling around for 4 minutes. So we thank him once again for his essential, and invaluable, assistance. Fellow freedom-hater Blair also provided valuable feedback. [In other Pete M. related news, he has the latest on Wilson C. Lucom. Read it now before the authorities find out about it.]

[Removed some unrelated links.]

Review of Reviewers*

Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog and TBOGG review some Clinton book reviews.

* We miss SPY magazine.

As sovereign as I wanna be

The Washington Post reports:

The Bush administration has decided to take the unusual step of bestowing on its own troops and personnel immunity from prosecution by Iraqi courts for killing Iraqis or destroying local property after the occupation ends and political power is transferred to an interim Iraqi government, U.S. officials said.

The administration plans to accomplish that step -- which would bypass the most contentious remaining issue before the transfer of power -- by extending an order that has been in place during the year-long occupation of Iraq. Order 17 gives all foreign personnel in the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority immunity from "local criminal, civil and administrative jurisdiction and from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their parent states."

U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer is expected to extend Order 17 as one of his last acts before shutting down the occupation next week, U.S. officials said. The order is expected to last an additional six or seven months, until the first national elections are held. [Emphasis added]

Thanks to Blair for the link.

Hey Jude, don't make it bad

Roger Ailes points out what a real Saddam-lover looks like. His name? Jude Wanniski. His article? Saddam Suddenly Looks Innocent:

I'm only suggesting you go back to your law books and, for your own good, get a good grip on why Saddam Hussein is behind bars when it now turns out he doesn't seem to have done anything wrong. You might then be in a better position to advise the President on how to proceed in the best way to avoid further Bigtime Boo-Boos.

Now that is some seriously fucked up shit:

As an associate editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1972 to 1978, Jude Wanniski repopularized the classical theories of supply-side economics.

Come back next week, when Jude will write on the following topics:

Well, that sounds just about right

Following Germany's defeat last night:

Sadly, Yes!

PS: Deppen = schnooks, dolts.

Added: So long to the coach.

Yeah, imagine that!

Paula Jones, who like Paul Harvey is not yet dead, is mad:

Frustrated that ex-president Bill Clinton is still insisting he never sexually harassed her in interviews about his memoir "My Life," former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones is challenging him to a public debate. [...]

"He still thinks that that was not an admission of guilt when he settled out of court with me," she said, referring to the sexual harassment lawsuit she launched in 1994 that ended in Clinton's impeachment.

He still thinks that, does he? We wonder why:

Clinton-Jones settlement text
Whereas it is the desire of all the parties to end the above-captioned litigation for all purposes, it is hereby stipulated and agreed as follows: [...]

5. Nothing in this agreement shall be construed to be an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any party;

With her $850,000 maybe Paula can sign up for some reading comprehension courses.

If you've already met our neighbor

Say hello to... Get Donkey.

Wednesday Evening Neighbor Blogging

Ever since the infamous Atrios-Andrew Sullivan smackdown over anonymity, the good people of Sadly, No! have wondered whether we should just come out and, say, put up a picture or share a bit more about our personal lives. Some bloggers seem to go halfway, by posting pictures of their cat, in the tradition of Kevin Drum's Friday Cat Blogging. So we wondered, how could we improve on that and share a bit more about our personal lives. Which is why we are now proud to introduce Wednesday Evening Neighbor Blogging (WENB.)

Starting today and every Wednesday, we will post a picture of one our neighbors. (That is, every week until we run out of neighbors willing to let us take their picture and post it online, which may well happen sooner than we think.)

This week's neighbor is Oskar. He's lived in this part of town ever since we got here, and is by far our favorite neighbor. While he has a habit of going away for days at a time without telling us, he is very friendly whenever we stop by to say hello. He used to live with Lisa & Paula (lucky him!) but they moved out a few months ago. Oskar won't tell us why, so we know he's still upset. So if you ever find yourself in Stuttgart and see him, please do say hello for us. If you're nice, he might even tell you where to find us.

Shorter Judson "Pandas of Mass Destruction" Cox

Terrorists have more rights than you

Muslims in America should be arrested unless they immediately cease engaging in threatening and suspicious activities, like praying and going to Mosque.

Swarm! Swarm! Swarm!

Michelle Malkin has turned her comments on. Stop by and say hello (nicely!)

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Last week, Hairy Fish Nuts revealed how long terrorists have been desperate according to the White House. This week he finds out why, and the answer is: major blow.

Meanwhile, at catch.com Kevin reviews the comedy repertoire of George Bush. Even we don't make the same joke that often. Claims to the contrary left in the comments will be deleted.

Well, that's one way to motivate the team, or?

The front page of Germany's best selling newspaper today has a very special message for Germany's national football team, which faces a must-win situation in tonight's game against the Czech Republic. (Links are not office friendly, believe you us.)

You have to win ... or else.

Discuss.

Should we RSVP now or later?

Reader Alan (who is known to refer to this blog as Sadly, Seb) draws our attention to this Mrs. du Toit post:

CALLING ALL BLOGGERS

WHO SUPPORT THE WAR ON TERRORISM

and wish to get together on September 11, 2004. [...]

Time: 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm
Where: The Du Toit Home

Calling this a "party" would be crass. But it is, sort of, a party. It's more of a celebration that we're still here… still fighting… but also to commiserate about the atrocities of the day with people of good cheer and good company.

We're opening this up to all who might want to attend, in Texas and out of it. We are not going to create a celebrity roster of the bloggers who may or may not attend. Let me say that more simply: We are not going to disclose who is coming or not coming. [Emphasis added]

So, for those who are still fighting along with the 101st Fighting Keyboarders® ... be there (and ever so totally square.) [101st Fighting Keyboarders is a registered trademark of TBOGG, used without permission.]

Amber's Knight in Shining Armor

The Dickification of the Western Female, posted last November, is one of our all time favorite Sadly, No! pieces. Written in response to Kim du Toit's ridiculous The Pussification of the Western Male, we thought it so over the top, so utterly devoid of any logic or reason, that it would likely never be taken seriously by anyone, under any circumstances. Yet should never underestimate the number of people with an internet connection who are humour impaired, so we had added this disclaimer:

[Disclosure: This post is rated I for Irony and S for Sarcasm.]

Thanks to Google, the Dickification essay continues to be read every month. And so it was that the following comment was posted last week by one Jesse:

You should check out Ambers pages and articles, if you read just a little, which i did, from a few different articles, you would see quite clearly that Amber is not being completely facetious nor completely unsatirical.

The thing is Jesse, Amber didn't really write that essay. That's why we wrote:

We reprint below an essay sent to us from a woman blogger who has asked that she remain anonymous for now, so we will call her Amber Pawlik to protect her identity. So please sit back, grab an alcoholic beverage, and see what Amber Pawlik [not her real name!] has to say about:

Jesse doesn't seem to like the Sadly, No! blog though:

The level of response to this article is about as deep and complex as the canned soup you have crammed into Mrs Pawlik's crockery and should be wiped clean in favor of educated replies.

Alas, that will not likely occur.

The canned soup we have crammed into her crockery? Is your last name Swing, Jesse?

Anyone who mistook her rant here for pure straightforward elucidation is missing something from their own humor... and that would be their funny bone!

Except for that part about how it's not her rant. We do agree however that Amber's not had a funny bone in her for a long time (if ever.)

Oh Michelle, does this mean we can be friends?

Last week, we made fun of Michelle Malkin over her claims about asylum seekers and refugees (we were wrong,) and her outrage over TIME's revelation of Dick Cheney's location (she was wrong.) We were happy to see the following on her blog today:

Last week, I keyed off a Drudge headline about Time magazine's "revelation" of Dick Cheney's secret location, Site R. Turns out that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette blabbed about it nearly three years ago!

My bad for castigating Time. The Post-Gazette's bad for endangering the Veep. Time's bad for misleading people about not-new news. Drudge's bad for paying attention to Time.

All that's missing now is her apology to Captain James Yee. (Well, of course it would have been nice if Michelle had responded to our email pointing out her error, but nobody's perfect.)

NewsMax is reportedly full of shit

The good people of NewsMax are trying to get their readers upset!

The Jakarta Peace Conference -- with activists representing social movements and networks from 26 countries in Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa, Latin and North America -- came together in Jakarta, Indonesia to call for an international boycott of U.S. products on July 4, 2004.

Holy boycott Batman, we bet NewsMax has lots of evidence that all them mean foreigners are stickin' it to America!

In South Africa, the Iraq Action Committee of South Africa has called for a boycott of American and British products to protest the bombing of Iraq, with support from the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa.

Exports to South Africa 2002: US$: 2.5bn. 2003: US$2.8bn.

Almost one out of four people in the Asia-Pacific region said they have avoided purchasing American brands, according to a recent survey of 1,000 by the Leo Burnett ad agency. The agency polled consumers in India, China, South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Exports to China increased by US$6bn in 2003 compared to 2002. India: US$4.1bn to US$4.9bn. South Korea: US$22.5bn to US$24bn. Indonesia: US$2.6bn to US$2.5bn (the boycott is working!) Philippines: US$7.2bn to US$8bn.

Much of NewsMax's evidence looks like this:

In Malaysia, there is reportedly a drive to boycott U.S. products ... In Britain, the ExxonMobil Corp., known as Esso in Europe, has reportedly conceded that an activist boycott has hurt its sales. ... In Saudi Arabia, Saudi women have reportedly targeted U.S. cosmetic brands ...

And much of that:

there is an ongoing movement for a boycott of Coca Cola ... In France, an enterprising Muslim has come up with the brand name "Mecca Cola" to replace Coca-cola. ... In Hungary, Women for Environment and Green Women have joined a boycott against Shell [sic,] Esso, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, Pepsi and Coca Cola. ... In Portugal, there has been an ongoing boycott movement, with some of the companies targeted being Esso, Shell [double sic,] BP [triple sic,] Coca-Cola ... Colombian labor and human rights activists are pushing a Coca Cola

Coca-Cola, Starbucks, McDonald's anyone?

Some of the companies most symbolic of America haven't found any effect on sales [...]

"We have seen no impact from any sort of anti- Americanism,'' said Nani Beccalli, General Electric Co.'s president and chief executive for Europe who's based in Brussels.

"We have consciously looked for it and found none,'' said Niel Golightly, a spokesman for Ford Motor Co. in Europe. [...]

AMR Corp.'s American Airlines, the world's largest airline, hasn't experienced any backlash, said Jacquie Young, a spokeswoman in Fort Worth, Texas, pointing to a 21 percent gain in passenger traffic on international routes in March. [...]

Nike Inc., the world's biggest maker of athletic footwear, said profit in the quarter ended Feb. 29 surged 61 percent and sales rose the most in six years, climbing 21 percent to $2.9 billion. Its fastest growth was in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, where revenue was up 36 percent.

McDonald's same-store sales have risen for five consecutive months in Europe, including a 7.7 percent increase in February, the company said March 5. Same-store sales in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa rose 1.9 percent in the fourth quarter. [...]

While Middle East sales of Coca-Cola dropped 10 percent in the prelude to war in the first quarter of 2003, they have since rebounded, Malik said. Coca-Cola posted record sales of $21 billion in 2003, an 8 percent increase. Volume sales in Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East rose 5 percent last year, higher than the 2 percent growth in North America. [...]

Mecca-Cola, founded in 2002 in a Paris suburb by 47-year-old Tawfik Mathlouthi, sells its soft drinks in dozens of countries including Indonesia. It sold 20 million liters in France in 2003, generating revenue of 3.57 million euros ($4.31 million). [Emphasis added]

Let's see: Mecca-Cola sold 20 million liters in France in 2003. Carbonated bevrage sales in France for that year amounted to 13.3 billion liters. Yeah, that sounds like a really big deal.

If there is a meaningful boycott going on, we sure can't find any evidence. Not that there's anything new here.

Added: French lover Pierre at the Dark Window has the goods on related NewsMax developments.

Fred Hiatt v. The Washington Post

The Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Sunday June 20, 2004 (Page A1, no less:)

Electricity generation remains stuck at around 4,000 megawatts, resulting in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes, despite pledges from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to increase production to 6,000 megawatts by June 1.

The Washington Post's Editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, Sunday June 20, 2004:

This is the irony of Bremer's legacy. A ruthlessly methodical executive, he set numerical goals for himself more than a year ago and mostly met them: electricity restored... [Emphasis added]

Met his goals Fred? Sadly, No, No, No and No!

(Hiatt quote via G.A. Cerny.)

Never mind Madonna!

Our favorite Rabbi (no, not Mister T, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach) has some odd praise for Richard Gere on his way to calling Madonna a slut:

If Richard Gere, America's most high-profile Buddhist, began doing a nude review at the Crazy Horse Saloon, surely the Dalai Lama would distance himself from his protege. Fortunately for the Dalai Lama, Gere has shown that his adherence to Buddhism has ennobled his character and he no longer plays roles like "American Gigolo."

We don't know about you Rabbi, but starring in the remake of Masayuki Suo's Shall We Dance? alongside Jennifer Lopez is the very definition of slutty.

PS: In the last ten years, you may remember Richard Gere from such movies as Unfaithful, "Rated R for sexuality, language and a scene of violence," The Mothman Prophecies, "rated PG-13 for terror, some sexuality and language," Dr. T & the Women, "rated R for graphic nudity and some sexuality," Primal Fear, "rated R for brief grisly violence, pervasive strong language and a sex scene," and Intersection, rated R.

Talk about "ennobled."

(Via World O'Crap.) [Changed title and the first sentence.]

When stuff isn't quite good enough for Men's News Daily

Amber has to post it to her personal web site. This undated essay is titled: The Irony of Leftists Brow-Beating Iran-Contra. As you might expect, Amber's never ending war on straw decides to take a whack at leftists:

As to be expected, after the death of America's greatest President of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan, the left loves to subtly mention all negative things about him that they can muster up. Therefore, while Americans mourns his death and celebrate his life, leftists slyly mention Reagan's biggest weak point during his Presidency at every chance they get: Iran-Contra.

Those no good mother fucker leftists, they make us so mad! Why you ask? Let Amber tell you:

Indeed, Iran-Contra was a major flaw in the Reagan presidency. After militant Muslims in Lebanon slaughtered American soldiers while they slept, Reagan did not adopt a get-tough policy. Instead, he negotiated and compromised with them, offering them arms for hostages. The left gleefully reminds Americans of this every chance it gets.

But isn't this exactly how the left wants us to deal with terrorists?

Amber's got you there, Mr. & Mrs. Leftist! It's right there in the Democratic Party Platform: "We shall trade arms for hostages at every chance we get. Even though this goes against our stated policy. And regardless of the fact that it violates the Arms Export Control Act. And then we will use the proceeds from those sales to secretly finance the Contras in violation of US law."

After September 11, 2001 – even before the war in Afghanistan and before the war in Iraq – the left screeched at us, “Why do they (the terrorists) hate us!?” The message being that, clearly, getting to terrorists to love us, by pandering to their needs, whims and emotions, is the solution to terrorism. So, I ask again: was Iran-Contra not exactly how the left would want us to have dealt with those savages?

Amber darling, the answer you seek is... Sadly, No!:

On December 8, 1982, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed the "Boland Amendment" to the 1983 military appropriations bill stating that none of the appropriated defense funds could be used to "train, arm, or support persons not members of the regular army for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua." This amendment made it illegal for the CIA to continue funding its anti-Sandinista army, which by then was calling itself the FDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Forces), but was better known as the Contras. [Emphasis added]

Amber's got more however:

If it were up to the left, Saddam Hussein would not have been dragged out of a hole, like the rat he was, and tried for his crimes against humanity. [Emphasis added]

Yeah, we really enjoyed that time when Saddam was tried for his crimes against humanity. Good times.

We also wouldn't have taken out one of the most ruthless, violent groups in the Middle East: the Taliban.

Of course not, those traitorous lefties in the Senate didn't want to go to war!

Verbatim: Use of Force Resolution

Following is the text of a joint resolution approved unanimously by the Senate today.

ok, but those commies in the House didn't want to!

In a 420-1 vote late Friday, the House gave final congressional approval to a resolution authorizing President Bush to "use all necessary and appropriate force" against those involved in Tuesday's deadly terrorist attacks.

So as long as Barbara Lee = leftists, you can see how Amber has a point there, can't you???

So, I want to ask leftists: would you have supported a get-tough policy against the Islamic terrorists who killed American soldiers? I’d like it in writing: I, (fill in your name), would have wanted Reagan to have killed all terrorists who killed American soldiers, and all states who sponsored them, with whatever military force that would have been necessary.

Well if there's one thing we always favor here at Sadly, No!, it is the killing of states who sponsor terrorists who kill American soldiers. And if there's anything we learned during the Reagan presidency, it's that his administration will always stay within the limits of what is reasonable and legal, so there is no reason why Congress wouldn't just let Reagan & Co. do whatever they wanted.

As Americans, we may [sic] not even have to send ground troops in to overthrow this [Iran] regime. The critical component is nothing more than to give moral support to the rebelling people of Iran. [Emphasis added]

Because you know the only thing stopping a full scale magical revolution that will turn Iran into the United States is some positive vibes sent by Jane Fonda. Amber said so!

As for Reagan, there's one thing we learned during the Clinton presidency: it's not the blowjob, it's the lying that gets you.

The truth behind the Sunday Doug Giles Quiz Revealed

Monday is here, and it's time to find out if, as some speculated, we only pretended some of the Doug Giles quotes were made up, when in fact they were all from TownHall's most popular pundit. Of the quotes listed (click here or scroll down,) the following were composed by yours truly (with the help of OxyContin, the drug of pundits:)

b) My ClashPoint is this: Every exposed nipple on TV acts like a decay agent on our morality tooth.

d) It's about time all your say-nothing, do-nothing Christians open up a can of whoop ass of faith on the intolerant liberal secular minds that won't rest until God is eliminated from our lives.

f) We've become a society so free of character that slaying a dragon is no longer a requirement to be elected to the presidency.

g) Liberals eat away at our morals, like Michael Moore set free at the opening of a new Krispy Kreme Donuts.

(Our favorites were b and g, not that anyone asked or cares.)

A Sunday Doug Giles Quiz

Can you guess which of the following were written by Doug Giles, and which were concocted by the twisted minds of Sadly, No!?

a) From a communication standpoint, the prophets, patriarchs, warriors and wild men of scripture were more like Bill O'Reilly.
b) My ClashPoint is this: Every exposed nipple on TV acts like a decay agent on our morality tooth.
c) I know this doesn't sound like "paradise" for those who are immoral, lazy, stupid and fat, but it was God’s and primitive man's idea of Yippee Land.
d) It's about time all your say-nothing, do-nothing Christians open up a can of whoop ass of faith on the intolerant liberal secular minds that won't rest until God is eliminated from our lives.
e) My ClashPoint is this: Listen, concerned Christian—even though the times are going to get tougher than Joan Rivers' elbows before they get any better in the United States of Liberal Acrimony, we must not acquiesce.
f) We've become a society so free of character that slaying a dragon is no longer a requirement to be elected to the presidency.
g) Liberals eat away at our morals, like Michael Moore set free at the opening of a new Krispy Kreme Donuts.
h) We've got to re-inject a mega dose of faith, character and virtue back into the personal and national mix. That is, if we want to continue to enjoy a free and just society.
i) You’ll remain a voiceless, passive facilitator of secularism who squats on the sidelines of life, sitting out the greatest ideological battle our nation has ever faced.

Answers tomorrow -- no cheating.

No one will check, so why try to be accurate?

Steven "Captain Stratego" Den Beste writes:

Europe's labor laws, which were intended to increase employment by preserving existing jobs, have instead yielded chronic high unemployment because they have discouraged creation of new jobs. [Emphasis added]

Unemployment Rate, April 2004:

United States: 5.6%
Luxembourg: 4.2%
Cyprus: 4.4%
Ireland: 4.5%
Austria: 4.5%
Netherlands: 4.5% (March)
United Kingdom: 4.7% (February)
Denmark: 5.9% (March)
Hungary: 5.9%
Sweden: 6.3%
Slovenia: 6.4%
Portugal: 6.8%

This is not to deny, naturally, the fact that the unemployment rate in several EU members is significantly higher than in the US. Yet all Den Beste provides are trite (and partly inaccurate) platitudes that only manage to reinforce his preconceived opinions (Europe sucks.)

We never met a dead horse we didn't want to beat

In one of several posts that followed this, Trying to Grok writes:

Many of those commenters from the weekend probably have kids. What if I printed out their comments and showed them to their kids. Look, Timmy, your daddy called me clueless fucktard dumb. And then I explained to little Timmy that his daddy called me that simply because he disagreed with what I had to say. That's a bad lesson to teach your kids.

My mother reads my blog. So does my first grade teacher. I try to conduct myself in a way that would make both of them proud because they taught me that showing others respect is important. It's a shame others weren't taught the same. [Emphasis added]

Trying to Grok, March 21, 2004:

To quote James Lileks: Fuck you.

Apparently, they have first grade on pirate ships nowadays.

Desperation & Facts

Over at Hairy Fish Nuts, the management provides a comprehensive review of the administration's use of the word "desperate" in describing Iraqi-based terrorists/insurgents/dark skinned heathens/etc... Summary: they have been desperate for a long time now.

Meanwhile, Uncle Horn Head sums up yesterday's White House buzzword: strategery facts.

Headlines imitate The Simpsons

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat [WTF?:]

Marion Jones: The Movie or Real Life?

The Simpsons:

MacArthur Parker: "Ever hear of Planet of the Apes?"
Troy McClure: "Uh, the movie or the planet?"

I love him, I love him not, I love him, I love him not

The Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2004:

It cites CIA Director George Tenet as saying that al Qaeda's ability to conduct an anthrax attack is "one of the most immediate threats the United States is likely to face."

The WSJ, June 4, 2004:

It's a compliment to Mr. Tenet's political savvy that he was able to leave on his own terms despite the Agency's mistakes during his seven-year tenure. The largest was the failure to penetrate al Qaeda before 9/11, and more recently the many misjudgments about Iraq, which go well beyond whether or not Saddam Hussein had WMD.

June 18, 2004:

Somehow the Commission also omitted any reference to Mr. Tenet's 2002 letter to Congress. "We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade," he wrote.

June 4, 2004:

For all of that, the CIA is still a long way from the anti-terror spearhead it needs to become. That's especially clear from its performance in Iraq, where the Agency has been consistently wrong since it told the first President Bush that Saddam would fall within two months of the Gulf War.

June 18, 2004:

And, [Tenet wrote] "We have credible reporting that al-Qaeda's leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs."

June 4, 2004:

The Agency has relied on a Sufi network of Iraqi agents that time and again proved inadequate. The CIA favored an anti-Saddam coup strategy it couldn't execute, predicted defections of Republican Guard units that never took place, and was twice wrong about having located and killed Saddam. It also failed to predict that the regime's strategy would be to melt away during the invasion and counterattack with a terrorist insurgency.

This post is dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson.

Sadly, No!

In the comments to this post, Retardo from Elementropy asks if Richard Perle's blog is one of our sideprojects.

We wish it were, but... well, you know how it goes. Do stop by Richard Perle's Musings anyway.

How did they know?

From a spam email we received today:

From: Alfaro [pfzwi@email.com]
To: Woodruff [amber.pawlik@sadlyno.com]
Subject: Re: nietzsche

So many of our emails bear that very exact subject, we couldn't tell it apart from our legitimate emails.

Gee Dick, do you never tire of repeating yourself?

Coming a close number two to the old "Iraq is doing way better than Germany was in 1945" trick, we get another serving of the Stephen "Case Closed" Hayes diet at TownHall today, courtesy of Richard Miniter:

Every day it seems another American soldier is killed in Iraq. These grim statistics have become a favorite of network news anchors and political chat show hosts. Nevermind that they mix deaths from accidents with actual battlefield casualties; or that the average is actually closer to one American death for every two days; or that enemy deaths far outnumber ours. What matters is the overall impression of mounting, pointless deaths.

Does it look at all familiar? It sure does -- indeed, it is word for word the exact same column Mr. Miniter published on TechCentralStation in September 2003.

Timeless crap.

Corrections, Retractions & Apologies

In a post earlier this week, we accused Michelle Malkin of making shit up. Unfortunately, "number errors" crept into our work (not because of a political judgment or because we decided to cook the books or anything like that,) and we were much more wrong than right. We apologize to Mrs. Malkin, and look forward to her correction about Dick Cheney's secret location.

Rich Lowry's Friday column... today!

They have research down to an art over at The Corner:

QUICK BLEG [Rich Lowry] Anyone out there have any special expertise in the post-WWII occupations of Germany and Japan, and especially the problems associated with them? Would love to hear from you (but not after 12:45). Thanks...
Posted at 10:27 AM [Emphasis added]

Gee, we wonder if Rich will run with this whole "things are much better in Iraq than they were in Germany or Japan after the war" angle. Not that anyone has done that one before.

[Added link.]

It's secure, it's undisclosed, ...

...it's going to get us a visit from the FBI, it's a day early, it's ripped from today's headlines, it's a 6MB file, it's our best Flash animation yet (or as Larry King would put it: if you only see one Flash animation this year, see this one!,) it's time you click here, sit back and enjoy.

Our thanks to Pete from The Dark Window for his help with the search for just the right wingnuttery to use.

Very special thanks to John Young from Cryptome for permission to use these pictures.

Background blog commentary from No More Mister Nice Blog, MaxSpeak, 1115.org, Wonkette, Random Mentality, and much 2002 discussion from Amygdala.

The second half of that sentence was even better

SullyWatch quotes Andrew Sullivan:

I haven’t run a pledge drive this year because I’m unsure of how long I can keep this up ...

We thought the end of the sentence even more interesting however:

... but you can help keep this blog alive by donating here.

In other words, I'm not running a pledge drive but please give me money. Is Andrew getting ready to pull the plug? Given what he announced in December, this non pledge drive drive is quite suspect:

PLEDGE DRIVE UPDATE: Here's a penultimate request for help with the site. After tomorrow, I won't bug you again in the Dish for a year, so please consider a modest donation to the site if you read it regularly and want to see it continue. It takes enormous time, thousands of bucks, and constant attention to keep this blog as content-filled and as current as it is.

Didn't raise so much six months ago, did you Andrew? Someone better give him enough money for a pair of pants, as we believe the ones he's wearing now may be on fire.

Shorter Adam Yoshida

The "Plamegate" Nonsense

Valerie Plame is a slut.

Want something even better? It's YoshiRadio®! (4 minutes of Adam's analysis of the Canadian elections, converted to MP3 from Adam's original WAV file by your faithful servants, 1.5MB file.)

$20? But I wanted a peanut!

When we had to check ourselves into the hospital earlier this year (big building, lots of sick people,) we were lucky to count on a few good men women (sorry Blair!) to keep things going while we were away. Some of you (you know who you are) have asked ever since we returned what has happened to Peanut, where is Peanut, we want Peanut, go away Sadly!, I really miss Peanut, you suck Sadly bring Peanut back. And on and on. Well shut your whining pie holes.

Peanut now has her own web site. Visit it. Add it to your favorites folder. Put it on your blogroll. (And please don't forget about us.) For now however, go have a peanut.

Around the world in 5 posts

Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog takes a look at America's non liberal university faculty:

Of course, maybe Dauber hasn't thought about this because, as Pandagon's Jesse Taylor notes, she doesn't even seem to know that abuse at Abu Ghraib consisted of more than panties on men's heads, even though she's a gen-yoo-wine Professor of Communications Studies whose "focus since September 11th has been on the performance of the media in its coverage of the war on terrorism."

Hairy Fish Nuts wonders who the bad guys are in Iraq:

US MARINES arrested six members of the Iraqi Civil Defence Corp on suspicion of involvement in a roadside bomb attack this morning in western Iraq that wounded at least five locals, the US military said.

The Liberal Media Conspiracy reports on what it calls "more good news in the war on Human Rights:"

A key investigator in the espionage case against a Syrian-American translator at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo has been charged with raping and sodomizing children, officials said on Tuesday.

We believe they may have been using sarcasm.

SullyWatch (really) argues that O.J. Simpson was innocent after all (really.) A long read well worth your time.

Jo Fish points out US taxpayers should be asking for a refund:

Hey, I don't want to be paying for that dumbass to campaign on my dollar...why is he allowed to get away with that shit, other than the fact that every agency with oversight probably lives in fear of it's budgetary existance over raising red-flags over anything these criminals do.

And now it's back to Euro2004 for us.

Something new, Something Old

New: Michelle Malkin has a blog.

Old: Michelle Malkin makes up shit:

Not every Somalian refugee or asylum-seeker is a terrorist, of course. But the system for screening out the well-meaning from the menaces is completely overwhelmed. Claims of "credible fear of persecution" are almost impossible to document but are rarely rejected.

2002 Statistics, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services:

Total -- Refugees:

This is an outrage!

No More Mister Nice Blog offers the latest White House Spin®, brought to you by Matt Drudge:

Matt Drudge says White House officials are upset because Time revealed the location of Cheney's secret bunker.

One White House officials fumed Monday night: "TIME magazine would have revealed secret the location of Anne Frank, if they knew it."

Gee, I don't recall those same White House officials getting upset when the New York Post revealed the same information a week ago...

Shameless and dumb.

Added: A reader draws our attention to this December 2001 article on Chez Dick.

Added: More outrage fun with our brand new Flash animation (6MB.)

Live to lose another day

For a while last night it looked like Sadly, No! was about to be wiped away in a bout of Dutch revenge.

Thanks to a 1:1 tie however, we get to live to post another day.

But it's only 15 days away, right?

Follow along kids:

President Bush said today that his administration was making plans to transfer custody of Saddam Hussein to the new Iraqi interim government. But he refused to be pinned down on exactly when the transfer would take place.

Saddam Hussein must either be released from custody by June 30 or charged if the US and the new Iraqi government are to conform to international law, the International Committee of the Red Cross said last night. [link]

Spanish Defense Minister Jose Bono said Monday that he does not think the Iraqi interim government will receive full sovereignty transfer from the US-led coalition on June 30, a date set by the newest UN resolution for Iraq's power handover. [link]

We also do not have to hand him over until there's a cessation of active -- cessation of active hostilities, and the repatriation doesn't begin until after that. Hostilities, unfortunately, continue. [link]

Discuss.

Up is down, down is up!

Your headlines for today:

Bring out your freaks!

Pete from The Dark Window introduces us to the wisdom of Wilson C. Lucom:

If the left wing of the Democratic Party gains control through the election of a communist-aiding president and brings communism to the United States, all you Democratic and U.S. workers could have your salaries reduced by 23 to 32 times. If this happened, Communist China would control you, not John Kerry or any other Democratic president.

Read the rest so you can be ready.

World O'Crap has dug out Debbie O'Hara:

Since the days of Nimrod and his infamous tower, people have been working hard toward creating an anti-God socialist world government.

Hide the children!

Over at The Poor Man, the increasingly shrill Editors are on a very special Star Search:

Kaye Grogan has been pretty boring recently, so I'm shopping for replacement spokesmodels for the Right for when she hits a dry patch. All contestants will be given a rating, a Kaye Grogan quotient, which will be a measure of how Kaye Groganesque they are (1.000 is Kaye herself; Dennis Prager is 0.500; Paul Krugman is 0.000).

Is John Lott working at the White House?

Typical discount seniors can expect with the Medicare Discount Card:

Savings on brand-name drugs range from 16 to over 30 percent off usual retail prices

Savings for generic drugs are even larger, ranging between 30 to 60 percent or [sic] more.

Number of Medicare Discount cardholders featured yesterday in President Bush's remarks: 4. Range of discount they received: 83 to 92 percent.

Isn't cherry picking wonderful?

He's got a Gore in his Bonnet

World, meet Shane Arthur Swing:

My brother hatched and orchestrated the brilliant scheme, threw the rock that struck the nest, and watched as the angry hornets swarmed out and unleashed their fury on me, the innocent onlooker. My brother was unharmed, and although I was in severe pain, I realized a valuable lesson that day - nobody is innocent to a provoked hornet, and, Al Gore is a nitwit.

You think Doug Giles has a way with metaphors? Assume that Kaye Grogan provides a useful reference point for lunacy? Think again:

On September 11, 2001, radical Muslim terrorists threw their rocks at America's nest. President Bush responded accordingly, by attacking anybody with rocks in their hands and anybody who thought attacking America was a funny idea. I stopped laughing the moment the first hornet stung me some 26 years ago, and I guarantee that no Muslim extremist is laughing now. Bush is the bringer of consequence to mischievous believers of the stone.

If they are laughing Shane, we bet they're not laughing with you. At least terrorism is down, so we know Bush's policies are working!

Had 9/11 occurred during a Democrat administration, the honeybees would have buzzed around wildly, flown to the United Nations for some political nectar, and stung innocent Aspirin factory workers in Pakistan. The terrorists would have laughed and attacked again and again.

Did you know that Shane has a friend? His name is Swing, Buddy Swing:

While having lunch in a restaurant the other day, I witnessed a confrontation between two men concerning politics dejour. The first man was spouting Kennedy-like hatred towards President Bush and the second man was questionings the validity of his argument. The first man's tongue became twisted up with irrational logic and he finished by saying, "I don't care, I just hate the son-of-a-bitch."

Oh, we just know this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. [Lots of emphasis added.]

There's Flash by Dummies, and then...

...there's Flash by pros. This Tribute to Reagan belongs to the latter category.

So you want to read newspapers online

A friend sends us a link to Bug Me Not:

What's this all about then?
BugMeNot.com was created as a mechanism to quickly bypass the login of web sites that require compulsory registration and/or the collection of personal/demographic information (such as the New York Times).

Why not just register?

It's a breach of privacy.

Sites don't have a great track record with the whole spam thing.

It's contrary to the fundamental spirit of the net. Just ask Google.

It's pointless due to the significant percentage of users who enter fake demographic details anyway.

It's a waste of time.

It's annoying as hell.

Imagine if every site required registration to access content.

Well, that was almost accurate!

NewsMax writes (in an email:)

In September 2000, President Bill Clinton asked the U.N. to delay the opening of the General Assembly out of respect for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.)

The answer was an emphatic "No."

Clinton boycotted the General Assembly's opening day and spoke the following week.

What happened:

US President Bill Clinton is to address the session today, having delayed his address by a day because of Yom Kippur.

The United States, Israel, and the American Jewish Congress had lobbied the UN to delay the start of the assembly session, but the 188-member General Assembly refused to change the date. --Jerusalem Post, September 21, 1999.

We congratulate NewsMax on very nearly getting a story right.

We don't know what it means. Now read our analysis!

Elections for the European Parliament were held across the EU. Andrew Sullivan called the results A European Protest. (Followed by an "analysis" that looks only at Britain and Germany.) Michael "The J. means Just a Liberal" Totten titled his post European Earthquake. Here is the composition of the European Parliament following the elections, compared to the 1999 results. [Arranged from right to left, following the EP's order.]

Some earthquake. As for Schroeder's party's performance, this article does help make sense of what is going on in Germany:

The dilemma for the opposition Christian Democrats is obvious. If the economy picks up, Schröder’s chances will improve. If they refuse to cooperate and demand the implementation of their own reform proposals, proposals which are more sweeping than the government's, the electorate may well opt for the devil they know, rather than the devil they do not. Chancellor Schröder could then come out on top in 2006.

Play it again Sadly!

Yesterday, we linked to a BBC article brought to our attention by The All Spin Zone:

"Anyone out there holding - as I gather Prime Minister Blair has recently said - the prospect that, in fact, the Iraq Survey Group is going to unmask actual weapons of mass destruction, are really delusional," he [David Kay] said.

Because some things are worth hearing with your own ears, here is a MP3 file of the relevant segment (4-minute clip, 3MB file.) Things to look forward to:

Kay: "I was absolutely flabbergasted ... I was appalled based on the evidence I'd seen that anyone would think that [WMD evidence in Iraq] a slam dunk."

"Fundamentally George [Tenet] is an expert in the craft of politics, not in the craft of intelligence."

"The unwillingness to take the responsibility of saying, a few simple words: we were wrong."

I Scream, You Scream, We all scream for Ice Cream!

Via Blair and G.A. Cerny we hear of this:

Insurgents are stepping up attacks on Iraq's fragile infrastructure even as the U.S. pumps in billions of dollars to rebuild it. But with electricity in Baghdad flowing at less than half prewar levels and a scorching summer ahead, many Iraqis see the struggle to ensure adequate power as a metaphor for a U.S.-led reconstruction mission gone bad.

As G.A. Cerny notes, we have been on this beat for some time now. In our most recent post, we noted that the CPA no longer releases electricity production figures, due to "operational security concerns." Reading articles like the one above, we wonder what kind of "security concerns" prompted this change.

The high point of power production in Baghdad was 1,553MW, on May 15. Even taking half of that leaves electricity production well below Baghdad's post-war average (1,290MW, with only 7 days since August 1 below 1,000MW.) How good (or bad) are things countrywide? We have no idea. This article offers a few hints, though some of its facts are (demonstrably) wrong (and CPA-friendly:)

After a $1 billion American aid injection, Iraq's national grid briefly topped prewar levels of 4,400 megawatts in March and averaged about 3,900 megawatts in May. Baghdad's problem is that American authorities redistributed electricity evenly across the country — everybody now gets 8-12 hours a day.

The March average was (per the CPA's data) 4,024MW, with a peak (March 18) of 4,356MW. 4,356 for a day does not "briefly top" 4,400. To its credit, this US News & World Report story gets it very right:

The Coalition Provisional Authority missed its June 1 goal of raising peak generation to 6,000 megawatts from the recent level of about 4,000. Reappointed to the interim government on June 1, Minister of Electricity Aiham al-Sammarae headed home to suburban Chicago, where he owns an electrical engineering consulting firm, and to the United Nations seeking release of money due Iraq under the oil-for-food program. He's due back in Baghdad this week.

The Star Telegram (AP) story provides more information:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Wanna household lives by the timetable of the Baghdad power supply.

Bedtime is around 11 p.m., when the electricity is cut off. It returns at 2 a.m., and the streetlights shine through windows deliberately left uncovered, serving as an alarm clock for Bahija Wanna, the mother. [...]

At 7 a.m., as her bank executive husband, her children and much of the rest of Baghdad are rising, the power takes another break, and the house returns to swelter mode. [...] Suddenly, at 11 a.m., the fluorescent lights come on, the refrigerator hums to life, and the ceiling fan begins to turn.

Enjoy your summer dear Iraqis.

Unleash the hounds!

David Kay may be about to get personally acquainted with some of the finer canine members of the British forces:

Mr Kay told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that British and American leaders should simply apologise and admit that they were wrong. [...]

"Anyone out there holding - as I gather Prime Minister Blair has recently said - the prospect that, in fact, the Iraq Survey Group is going to unmask actual weapons of mass destruction, are really delusional," he said.

"There is nothing there. There is a programme there. There was an intention of Saddam Hussein at some point to reconstitute it.

(Via The All Spin Zone.)

From zero to negative credibility in 3 sentences

Following up on an earlier post (click here or scroll down,) we offer this:

The U.S. population is estimated at close to 300 million right now, and we're supposed to get worked up over what 1,230 people who are registered voters have to say? Hell, I only just registered yesterday, so I would've been ineligible. And if the margin of error is plus or minus 3%, and 53% of these 1,230 people thought war was not necessary, then perhaps only 615 people in the whole USA said this. [Emphasis added]

There's dumb (D.) There's fucktard dumb (FD.) And then there's clueless fucktard dumb (CFD.) That was somewhere below CFD.

Bonus points (added:)

The Times Poll contacted 1,477 adults nationwide, including 1,230 registered voters by telephone June 5 through 8, 2004.

Things to remember

We do have to remember that the war in Iraq ended less than five months ago, so some patience is in order.

--Saul Singer, National Review Online. September 2, 2003.

From little to zero credibility in 1 sentence

Ready? Set. Go!:

It's no lie that everywhere in the world that there's conflict, Muslims are somehow involved.

(Go here and scroll down if you want to see the post.)

Just for fun, please also see.

Do not play innocent with us!

Yes, we're back. Yes, we were gone. Well, kind of anyway. The award-winning content was still here, but we couldn't login and post new crap. To add insult to injury, you couldn't leave comments anymore. Though at least the comments were totally broken at the start. For a short period of time today, you could load the comments and type a new one, though trying to post resulted in an error. Anyway, all those problems are gone. For now.

You see, our ISP (Scott) would have you believe it was a simple technical problem. Really? Sadly, No! What Scott sometimes pretends isn't true is that he is, in fact, Dutch, while the staff of Sadly, No! lives in Germany. Germany - Holland. Mean anything to you? Of course you exclaim, Germany is playing against Holland on Monday Tuesday [thanks to Mr. Orange] in the 12th European Football Championship. Obviously, the Dutch have decided to take the first shot by temporarily disabling Sadly, No! to give their team an edge. This subterfuge will not be rewarded. On Monday, Germany will teach the Netherlands a lesson. And then, Sadly, No! will be deleted from our ISP's servers. Enjoy us while you still can.

Sorry, I broke it

Ok, I'm sure may of you thought we were being quiet to pay our respects to Ronnie, but actually someome just screwed up....

The good news is we are back, the bad news is we are back.

Who tampered with the White House Abacus?

The Corner, April 2004:

THE WAR ON TERROR - WE'RE WINNING [John Derbyshire] "There were 190 acts of international terrorism in 2003, a slight decrease from the 198 attacks that occurred in 2002, and a drop of 45 percent from the level in 2001 of 346 attacks. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969..." Much more in this State Dept. report.

InstaPundit, April 2004:

HEY, MAYBE IT'S WORKING! Both CNN and the BBC report that terror attacks are at their lowest level in 30 years.

Reuters, yesterday:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department said on  Thursday its report that the number of international  "terrorist" attacks fell last year was wrong and in fact had  risen sharply.

The Department also said the number of resulting deaths was  expected to be
higher for 2003 than the 307 initially reported,  but officials said it may
not exceed 2002's 725 fatalities. [...]

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said both totals  were
understated because of errors in compiling the data by the  Terrorist Threat
Integration Center. The interagency group was  set up last year to address
the failure of U.S. intelligence  agencies to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001
attacks. [...]

Boucher initially said preliminary indications were that  the correct data
would show "a sharp increase over the previous  year" in both incidents and
deaths, but he later said he was  not sure if the number of deaths would
exceed 2002's level. [Emphasis added]

Nice to see that, yet again, this administration has its shit together.

Thanks to Blair for the Reuters link.

Everybody Flash Now!

Well, Friday is almost here and our world renowned kindness and generosity allows us to offer this week's Flash Friday early, at the request of absolutely nobody. (Be warned however that this week's installment, while scoring a 10 on the craptacular scale, weighs in at a healthy 6MB.) We won't say what it's about, but we promise it's very good, if by "very good" you mean "shows once and for all that Sadly, No! is staffed by freedom-despising, America-hating, rape room enthusiasts freaks.")

Our thanks to Pete from The Dark Window for his help.

(For old time's sake: Last week's She Drives Me Crazy, the Chalabi Special, and the one that started it all.)

Almost like a real post

A friend of the management writes with a cry for help:

By a hilarious twist of fate, a short scholarship essay I wrote on community service was nominated by MTV as a finalist in the Choose or Lose Contest. The final winner, who receives $5000 and an appearance on TRL (HA!) will be decided by public vote all this week at:

http://www.mtv.com/chooseorlose/voting/ 

If you could take a few seconds to vote for Essay #7(look for Joshua) [...] I would be much obliged!

As we told Joshua we voted for Allison, who is in our humble opinions way cuter than he is. Should you not be as superficial and shallow as we are, we do however urge you to vote for Joshua.

These Flash Fridays are making us thirsty!

On account of today being a holiday in selected states of the Federal Republic of Germany and preparations for tomorrow's Flash Friday, you are encouraged to visit the many fine blogs listed on the right. Also Hairy Fish Nuts.

Thank you.

Flashback to more principled times...

The National Review's Reagasmic Circle Jerk is in full swing. Ronnie loved freedom and democracy you know. This Michael Novak column from 1999 lists "the spreading of democracy" as the fourth pillar of Reagan's legacy. To be sure no one makes foolish assumptions, he helpfully added:

That is a far more difficult and complicated job then it may seem.

You don't say! It was this NRO "flashback" column from 1981 that caught our eye however:

The Reagan revolution rolls forward, picking up momentum. [..] A more balanced policy toward southern Africa.

What did a more balanced policy mean? Thanks for asking:

...nuclear cooperation was a focal point of U.S.-South African relations during the Reagan Administration [...] the Reagan Administration increased nuclear-related assistance to Pretoria by approving exports of nuclear material, computers and high technology items to South Africa. The Administration also re-negotiated with Pretoria for the resumption of uranium imports, prohibited when Congress passed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act in 1978.

U.S. policy toward South Africa since 1962 has been shaped largely by strategic and economic concerns, including the preservation of access to South Africa's immense mineral resources and the protection of markets and investments. [...]

Throughout his tenure, President Reagan studiously avoided criticizing the South African government, repeatedly praising the Botha Administration for making substantial reforms despite the overwhelming evidence of the continued and extensive exploitation and oppression of the black majority in South Africa. He has directly and openly embraced the Botha Administration as "an ally and friend," demonstrating what critics saw as a callous indifference to world-wide demands for human rights and basic freedoms for the blacks. [...]

Early in 1981, the newly-elected Reagan Administration introduced its policy of "constructive engagement." As outlined by its chief architect, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker, this policy comprised two ideas: first, that change in South Africa had to be controlled and second, that the region had to be made "stable" before initiating controlled change. [Emphasis added]

There's nothing like being friends with totalitarian regimes and helping out with their nuclear program, is there?

Shorter Mark Steyn

Reagan knew why the EU won't work

The European Union is marginally better than fascism, Nazism and communism.

Time for a Michelle Malkin Moment

According to Michelle Malkin:

Skutnik jumped out of his car near the Fourteenth Street Bridge, where a crowd watched helplessly as a female passenger screamed for help in the icy waters. A helicopter rescue team had tossed her a line, but she was unable to hold on. Skutnik instinctively ripped off his overcoat, kicked off his shoes, dove into the river, and pulled 22-year-old flight attendant Priscilla Tirado to safety.

After Reagan's speech, a cynical press referred sneeringly to the "Lenny Skutnik moment." This elitist disdain for recognizing everyday heroes persists. [Emphasis added]

To the LexisNexis, hurry!

The entire audience joined in a standing ovation for Lenny Skutnik, who dived into the frigid Potomac River to rescue a victim of the Jan. 13 airplane crash here. Mr. Skutnik sat with Mrs. Reagan during the address and was hailed by the President as epitomizing the heroic spirit in the United States. --Howell Raines [!] in the New York Times, 01/27/1982.

Reagan ended his address by praising America's heroes. He singled out two men listening to him in the House chamber--Sen. Jeremiah Denton (R-Ala.), a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, and Lenny Skutnik, the young federal worker who dove into the Potomac to rescue a woman after the Air Florida crash two weeks ago.

Skutnik and his wife were guests of the Reagans, seated next to Nancy Reagan, during the speech. When the president mentioned his name, the audience rose for a standing ovation and Reagan waved up to him in the gallery. --The Washington Post, 01/27/1982.

Two weeks before the State of the Union, the Washington Post published a front page story on Mr. Skutnik:

Lenny Skutnik, who dove into the ice-choked Potomac River Wednesday to save the life of a drowning woman following the jetliner crash in the Potomac, has had little experience in the hero business. 01/15/1982

We could find no newspaper article with coverage of the SOTU that included the expression "Lenny Skutnik moment." Google produces 6 hits, including this Slate piece:

Ronald Reagan is credited with creating what is now known as the "Lenny Skutnik moment" in State of the Union addresses. In his 1982 address, Reagan pointed to Skutnik, a government worker who leapt into the icy Potomac to rescue a woman after a plane crash, and extolled his heroism. Since then, pointing to heroes in the gallery has become an obligatory SOTU flourish. And what in 1982 was a stirring moment has become a tedious gimmick. [Emphasis added]

Maybe Michelle doesn't remember her bedtime stories extremely well.

Shorter Paul Wolfowitz

The Road Map for A Sovereign Iraq

According to bloggers, we the UN picked a wicked awesome Interim Iraqi Government.

Brian! Brian! Brian!

It was only three weeks ago that we launched Brian Cherry on the path to internet stardom he so richly deserves with this post. Brian has a new column out, and given that we are the number one result on Google for Brian Cherry, we feel it is our responsibility to see what he's up to. What literary sticks is he going to use in order to poke us liberals?

Let's find out, as Brian takes us on a journey through The New Inquisition:

Separation of Church and State, regardless of how it is worded in the constitution is a reasonable way to run a country. [Emphasis added]

Is it reasonable? Yes. Does it matter what it says in the constitution? No. Is this pretty rich coming from a conservative, given how often conservatives complain about liberal judges inventing rights? Oh yes.

Inquisitors were charged with eliminating heresy wherever they could find it. People whose views were contrary to the Churches were either excommunicated (basically a form of exile), or tortured and killed.

Not only that, but most people didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition! Right! If that's the way you want it -- Cardinal! Poke her with the soft cushions!

This continued till an uppity monk named Martin Luther nailed a parchment with 95 reasons he believed the Catholic Church was wrong to the front door of the Wittenberg Castle Church then presumably ran for his life.

So we see that little has changed in Germany in the last 487 years -- Germans are still going around being uppity and upsetting the world's moral leaders.

In hindsight we all agree the days of Inquisitors and the Catholic rule of Europe was a dark period in world history.

And thank God we do -- after all, at the time it seemed like such a brilliant plan to everyone involved. Especially those evil Atheists:

Today Atheist leaders are manipulating constitutional verses to serve their own needs in an attempt to perpetrate acts of educational genocide against any idea that conflicted with their teachings.

Luckily, it doesn't matter what it says in the constitution, so there is hope after all.

We have seen it time and time again. The institution of precedent law means one decision builds on another.

To which we say: fuck the institution of precedent law! (Though we give Brian credit for inventing the expression.)

By trying to eliminate this idea from the public school system with the excuse that it is unconstitutional, not only do we improperly instruct the children about the document that sets this nation apart from all the rest, but it is an attempt to rob them of opportunity to make a choice about God but attempting to deny them knowledge of his existence.

Those damn unconstitutional excuses! If God is outlawed from our schools, then only outlaws will believe in God. If you want to help Brian we can only recommend one thing: shine your headlights from now until Independence Day.

Because sometimes KIS is better than KISS

Our arch enemy Pete of The Dark Window has the latest on WorldNetDaily's plans to honor President Reagan:

I've been wondering how best to honor Ronald Reagan and so was very happy to come across this well-thought out plan proposed over at World Net Daily.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – Residents of Simi Valley, Calif., have the Reagan Library, and denizens of Washington, D.C., will be able to attend the various observances this week honoring Ronald Reagan. But what can the rest of America's citizens do to personally honor him, other than watch the events unfold on their television sets?

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.

And even if they're not the best, well, they're still the simplest.

Aren't you the least bit curious to find out what the plan is?

I got my dime set on you, revisited

Over at the Liberal Media Conspiracy, renato gives us an update on the attempts to stick Reagan on just about every paper bill and coin the U.S. government prints:

Oy. If they succeed in getting his image on paper money, I'm going to go out and purchase an ink stamp and stamp every one of those fuckers that passes through my hands. It'll be a cartoon balloon that will say, "I gave arms to Iran!" or "I helped massacre thousands of Central Americans!" or "Your grandchildren will be paying off my deficits!!!"

So this seems like a good time to plug a Sadly, No! classic: our December post on the proposed Ronald Reagan Dime Act.

As you recall isn't as it was

Atrios links to this snow-moon post that debunks some National Review supplied bunk:

According to Deroy Murdock writing in The National Review:

"President Reagan's February 6, 1986 State of the Union address included this specific passage where he says the word 'AIDS' five times:" [...]

A transcript, as delivered by Reagan, is here:

Reagan never mentions AIDS in the 1986 SOTU address, delivered on February 4, 1986.

Is that the only fact-like item included in the article? Sadly, No! Murdock also has this whopper:

"As I recall, from 1984 onward — and bear in mind that the AIDS virus was not identified until 1982 — every Reagan budget contained a large sum of money specifically earmarked for AIDS," says Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speechwriter and author of How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life.

Oh Pete, whatever shall we do with you? AIDS spending per year, starting with FY1982 (PDF file):

FY1982: $8 million.
FY1983: $44 million.
FY1984: $103 million
FY1985: $205 million
FY1986: $508 million
FY1987: $922 million
FY1988: $1,615 million
FY1989: $2,322 million

Some (yes, we're looking at you Andrew Sullivan!) would give Reagan credit for spending $5.7 billion on AIDS during his presidency. What Andrew won't say (or acknowledge) is that barely half (56%) of this was discretionary spending, the bulk of the remainder the result of entitlements (primarily Medicare & Medicaid.) In 1984, Robinson's "large sum of money specifically earmarked for AIDS" was a whopping $60 million. Discretionary spending on AIDS did not exceed $1 billion until FY1989 (at $1.3 billion.)

So you want to vote in Germany

Better bring a calculator and set a few hours aside... Germany's elections are governed by complex rules, and the multitude of parties and proportional representation makes for much fun filled time. We've copied below the ballot for the upcoming state elections in Baden-Wuerttemberg. [see correction below] There are 12 parties, and each has up to 60 candidates on its list. You have a total of 60 "votes" which you are free to distribute as you wish. Each candidate may receive up to three "votes."

If you can't be bothered to worry too much, you may bring in your preferred list on election day, in which case every candidate on your list gets one vote. Or, you can give some votes to your favorite list, and round it up with a few votes for other lists by copying the names and numbers of those candidates onto your preferred list.

One result is that election advertising is done not only by the parties, but also by specific candidates "Vote for me, I'm number 47 on the SPD list!"

Should this seem like too much trouble, you may be better off registering for an absentee ballot for the upcoming Canadian elections. The absentee ballot is there is, well, much simpler.

Added: A German reader points out that the elections are city/council, and not state, elections. (We lazily noted that the elections are held across the federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, and ran with that. Jetzt koennen unsere deutsche Freunde sich ueber uns lustig machen. :-( )

Life imitates Seinfeld imitates art

Or something like that anyway. From Seinfeld episode 135, The Foundation:

George: What were you saying to the Rosses over there, anyway?
Jerry: Oh, I don't know. I told them her death takes place in the shadow of new life. She's not really dead if we find a way to remember her.
George: What is that?
Jerry: Star Trek II.
George: Wrath of Khan!
Jerry: Right. Kramer and I saw it last night. Spock dies, they wrap him up in a towel, and they shoot him out the bowel of the ship in that big sunglasses case.
George: That was a hell of a thing when Spock died...
Jerry: Yeah...

Rush Limbaugh, June 7, 2004:

Ronald Reagan lives on in my heart, as he will live on in all of your hearts as well. I never met him, but it wasn't necessary to have met him in order to love him, which I do.

That's what we call getting to the point

Last week, we quoted a Tim Lambert post on the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute's "research." Tim has an update that nicely sums up AdTI:

Yes, ADTI are anti-Linux, pro-tobacco and anti-global warming shills.

There's plenty more, so read the update and follow the links...

Well then, it's a pity he didn't do it

According to Lee Edwards of the Heritage Foundation:

On the two epic events of the last 50 years — the waging of the Cold War and the growth of the welfare state — Ronald Reagan was indisputably correct. Communism was evil and had to be defeated, not merely contained. And the welfare state had grown dangerously large and had to be rolled back, not simply managed efficiently. [Emphasis added]

According to Robert Rector of... The Heritage Foundation:

There are repeated claims that Ronald Reagan "slashed" welfare spending. But in reality, Rector claims, welfare spending grew during the 1980s, after adjusting for inflation. In 1993, per capita welfare spending in constant dollars was 43 percent higher than when President Reagan took office in 1980. [Emphasis added]

We sure hope not

The Ronald Reagan Memorial Foundation quotes Ronnie:

Whatever else history may say about me when I’m gone, I hope it will record that I appealed to your best hopes, not your worst fears; to your confidence rather than your doubts.

Some of us remember different things:

REMEMBER THE BEAR in the woods? It was featured in the most devastating of President Reagan's TV ads in the 1984 presidential race. An angry, menacing bear was shown prowling through a forest. "There's a bear in the woods," the narrator said. "For some people the bear is easy to see. Others don't see it at all. Some people say the bear is tame. Others say it's vicious and dangerous. Since no one can really be sure who's right, isn't it smart to be as strong as the bear--if there is a bear?" Then a man with a gun appears and the bear takes a step back. The final words on the screen: "President Reagan, prepared for peace."

On a related note: one of our favorite Sadly, No! posts.

Well, his own alternate reality at least

WorldNetDaily's Hans Zeiger's new column is available. According to his editors:

Exclusive: Hans Zeiger says Gipper never ignored reality

In other news:

The charge has been made that the United States has shipped weapons to Iran as ransom payment for the release of American hostages in Lebanon, that the United States undercut its allies and secretly violated American policy against trafficking with terrorists.... Those charges are utterly false.... We did not--repeat, did not--trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we. --President Reagan, television address, November 13, 1986

Four months later...

A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.
--Reagan in a television address is forced to acknowledge "the facts and the evidence" uncovered the Tower Commission, March 4, 1987

Oh yeah, like that

The Rant's Frank Salvato is his generation's William Safire:

Al Qaeda knows that the best and most sensational way to bring about their fanatical revolution is to strike out like a poison-toting viper at the shining light of freedom and democracy that is the United States.

Oh Frank, we bet you're about to give us a free boatload of common sense, aren't you?

This being said, the sad truth is this, if George W. Bush is defeated in November al Qaeda will claim his defeat as a victory. This victory would only serve to further empower al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations around the world. This isn’t a scare tactic but a boatload of common sense as mandated by the not too distant past; mandated by the escalation of terrorism after the defeat of Spain’s former Prime Minister and partner in the War on Terror José María Aznar.

You just know Frank had a hard time facing that all too sad truth -- but what can you do? Not only is voting for Kerry the same as voting for Osama, but it's just God's way of punishing Kerry because he said bad things about US soldiers in Vietnam:

Besides, perhaps this is karmic payback for the “over the top” language Kerry used in disgracing the US soldiers still fighting in Vietnam when he was testifying before Congress. Stranger things in Heaven and earth…

So there you go!

Some things just have to be kept secret

We have written much, very much, about electricity production in post-war Iraq. (Here, here, there, here too and over there.) For those late to the party, the short version is that the CPA has struggled to equal, let alone surpass, electricity production levels from pre-war Iraq. Unable to meet their original target (6,000MW by June 1,) they updated their web site to state a target date of July 1 for 6,000MW.

It used to be that one could stop by the CPA's web site and download regularly updated information. After not seeing updates for two weeks, we emailed the CPA to ask why the data was no longer being updated. Their response?

Sir due to operational security concerns the numbers were no longer posted on the internet site.

They apparently do send some information by email now. We asked [Friday] to be added to the distribution list. We'll let you know when we receive something, but this doesn't seem like a positive development.

What's below the bottom of the barrel?

When one who brags about being a blogging pioneer resorts to the same line of argument as Adam Yoshida, the game is over. [For those who choose not to click on the links, both Andrew Sullivan and Adam link to Democratice Underground threads where some posters celebrate Reagan's death.]

We very rarely link to Free Republic threads here, and when we do we think it proves little about "the right." (Besides, why bother with the Freepers when we have access to The Corner?) Watching Andrew Sullivan regularly link to DU -- when he could quote Atrios, DailyKos, MaxSpeak or Pandagon (to name a few,) is like watching a one-trick pony that's forgotten its only trick.

Checking in on those freaks we love

The Liberal Media Conspiracy offers up a triple quadruple dose of nuttery, courtesy of Kim du Toit, Adam Yoshida, the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, and Ricky Vandal. Read the whole thing (if you dare.)

Corrected the number of freaks.

Readers of Sadly, No!: Adam Yoshida needs your help!

Adam has an idea that's so crazy, it might just work:

What I propose is this, in the near future, representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand should be invited to Washington [...] to develop and sign a treaty which provides for a formal Alliance between these countries and creates a common market for all. All tariffs and virtually all labour mobility restrictions between citizens of these nations would cease to exist.

Adam's venture needs a name however, as he himself recognizes:

I’m not sure what to call this alliance. The "League of Good Nations" was one that quickly came to mind before being discarded.

Indeed, some have been quick to criticize Adam's suggestion. Liberal Media Conspiracy's renato offered the following:

"Oh, sure Adam, and would it be governed by the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?"

Instead I would like to humbly suggest the name "Oceania" for your latest product of eating too many Cheesy Poofs and Twinkies before beddy bye time.

It's a tough crowd out there, which is why we think you can help. Please post your suggestions in the comments, and we promise we will send the best ones to Adam. ok, we will send all of them to Adam.

Some lies will never become true, no matter how often you repeat them

We've covered this one before, but Rich Lowry obviously needs a reminder:

In the matter of Abu Ghraib, Sen. John Warner called three generals back from a war zone to testify before his committee...

As we said last time... sadly, no!

Mr. Warner made public a letter he sent to Mr. Rumsfeld last week offering to hear witnesses by video teleconferencing if necessary. The Pentagon told him, the senator said, that Gen. John P. Abizaid, the overall commander of operations in Iraq, was already in Washington and that the two other senior officers scheduled to testify Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, were on their way here for a series of meetings.

[NY Times link now abstract only, sorry.]

Shorter Charles Krauthammer

It's time for some rational thought in the media

A quick review of the new government of Iraq shows that Yassir Arafat is a thug and a terrorist while the PLO is a tyrannous kleptocracy.

Added link.

Oh please no, not that again

Oh yes! It's Friday, and it's time to Flash. Previous installments included our Ode to the War, and a Chalabi-inspired masterpiece.

Take a look at this week's She Drives Me Crazy [4.2MB file] and see how quickly a gimmick can become tired and predictable.

Au revoir George!

George is getting... upset!

WASHINGTON (AP) - CIA Director George Tenet, who weathered storms over intelligence lapses about suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has resigned, President Bush said Thursday.

"I will miss him," Bush said.

F-U-B-A-R...

...is how you spell Afghanistan:

The international relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres has suspended operations in Afghanistan after five of its workers were killed in an ambush.

The country's former Taliban rulers say they carried out Wednesday's attack in the north-west of the country.

Correspondents say it was one of the deadliest since the radical Islamic
militia was ousted in late 2001. [Emphasis added]

Which just goes to show: you can have your picnic and your Taliban remnants too:

Three government soldiers have been killed in attacks by Taliban remnants in the southern Afghan province of Zabul even as NATO-led forces in the country announced plans to expand their presence beyond the capital city.

And now, a word from our leader:

I'd like to also go to Afghanistan. And, by the way, the reports from Afghanistan, at least the ones I get, are very encouraging. [...] And they report people have got a sparkle in their eye. And women now all of a sudden no longer fear the future but believe that we're there to stay the course and we will help a free society emerge. [Emphasis added]

Sparkle... like a bullet.

(Thanks to Blair for the BBC link.)

It is very likely we will have to change our story again

The Stop Hillary PAC, March 2004:

It is very likely that Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to run for President of the United States in 2004.

The Stop Hillary PAC, May 2004:

It is very likely that Hillary Rodham Clinton is going to run for Vice-President of the United States in 2004.

For all the America haters who read Sadly, No!

Fellow America hater and reader Blair sends us this link to the trailer of Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11.

The logic certainly is flawless

One Republican explains why his party lost the special election held in South Dakota this week:

"If you take out the Indian reservation, we would have won," said Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), former chairman of the NRCC.

If you exclude the people who didn't vote for us, we would have won! This type of insightful election analysis, for those not familiar with it, was first brought to our attention by the good people of Monty Python:

Palin: Well pretty much as I predicted, except that the Silly party won. Er, I think this is largely due to the number of votes cast. Gerald.

Conservatives told us Marc Racicot is a liar

Don't blame us, blame David Warren. (Linked to by Donald Sensing and InstaPundit, bien sûr.)

The Bush administration has handled the transfer of power in Iraq more cleverly than anyone expected, including me. The summoning of the U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, looked like very bad news (a poisonous old Arab League chauvinist who brokered the sell-out of Lebanon to Syria in 1982). In grim moments, I believed the Bush people were cynically using him to wash their hands of Iraq, and as it were, dump the quagmire back in the swamp of the U.N. Instead, they froze the ground beneath Brahimi's feet, and skated rings around him, haggling behind his back with Iraq's new political heavyweights to leave him endorsing a fait accompli. If it were not vulgar, I would say the Bushies suckered the U.N. into signing on to the New Iraq through Brahimi. [Emphasis added]

Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc Racicot, on May 28:

Now, wait a minute. We're not picking the people. The United Nations is picking the people. They're designing the structure and picking the people, so this is a international effort to provide a transitional government until elections can be held. [Emphasis added]

What happens if you find out you're wrong?

If you're Mike S. Adams, the answer is: act like a total asshole. To wit:

Recently, I wrote an article called “Summer Reading,” which was intended to motivate my readers to take some time to read classic literature over the summer. While mostly apolitical, it did close with the following line, which was deemed offensive by one of my readers: “(Go out and) pick up a great work of classic literature and enjoy the reading. You know, like the kind they used to assign in college when English professors taught English instead of homosexuality and feminism.”

The offended reader, from Ithaca, New York, called my above assertion “sexist, heterosexist, and gratuitous.” So, naturally, I apologized. No, I’m just kidding. Instead of apologizing, I decided to search the webpage of the nearest university English department to see what I could find. Naturally, I went looking first on Cornell.edu. Here is a summary of what I found out about the English faculty at Cornell University:

Mike then goes on to list several members of Cornell's faculty, along with their research interests which, he presumably thinks, supports his assertion. (That, by the way, is his entire column besides the two opening paragraphs quoted above.) Can you see where Mike used some creative editing? According to him:

Laura Brown is an expert in feminist criticism, Marxist criticism, and cultural critique.

According to Cornell's web site:

Scholarly and Professional Interests: Restoration and eighteenth-century English literature, especially matters of generic history, ideology, and form; feminist criticism; Marxist criticism, cultural critique.

Another one? Here's Mike:

Mash Raskolnikov is an expert in feminist and queer studies.

Here's Cornell:

Scholarly and Professional Interests: Middle English literature, allegory theory, medieval philosophy and rhetoric, contemporary critical theory, feminist and queer studies.

Not only did Mike edit out the content of the web site that didn't support his thesis, he added "...is an expert in..." to everything, although that text does not appear anywhere on Cornell's web site. Everything he quoted comes from the "research interests" section of the faculty.

Even that, however, is somewhat off topic. Mike claimed they don't assign great works of literature anymore. So what do they assign at Cornell? A lot of the classics, it turns out. Imagine that.

PS: Fixed link (merci Blair.)

Fun with a virgin

Last week, reader J Edgar mentioned The Virgin Ben Shapiro's appearance on KGO-AM's Ronn Owens show. For your pleasure and convenience, our favorite quotes are presented here. (And yes, there went one hour of our lives we'll never get back.) [Note: The Virgin Ben is a registered trademark of TBOGG GmbH, used without permission.]

On abortion, why Ben should be able to tell a woman she cannot have one:

The Virgin Ben: You chose to have sex and mistakes were made...

On sex:

The Virgin Ben: What's the difference between a 14-year old having a sex with a 12-year old, and a 30-year old having sex with a 12-year old.

On sex, again:

The Virgin Ben: What you need to procreate is a man and a woman.

On morality:

The Virgin Ben: The prevailing ideology that is being taught on the campuses is moral relativism, with the absence of moral absolutes.

On getting ready to be bitch slapped:

Ronn Owens: If you're a moral absolutist, it's wrong to murder, correct?
The Virgin Ben: Yes.

After Ronn gives the example of a beaten woman who one day murders her husband:

The Virgin Ben: Obviously, uh, ah, murder is a complex law. Moral absolutism doesn't mean there aren't complexities... but there are degrees of wrongness. [This sentence originally read "...there are complexities..." Our apologies for the error.]

On getting double bitch slapped:

The Virgin Ben: ... what I do in my book, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth.
Ronn Owens: Hang on... Did your publisher tell you to do that [...] say "in my book, and then give the title?"
The Virgin Ben: My publisher told me.
Ronn Owens: Don't do that again.

Bonus Trivia: Ben's mom is a reality TV producer, and her company has produced America's Funniest Home Videos and "the cop show in Los Angeles."

Things that make you go WTF???

Tim Lambert gives John Lott a day off and turns his attention to Philip Morris, the Clinton Health Care Plan, Bruce Bartlett, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute and Microsoft:

As part of the Tobacco Settlement Agreement Philip Morris (PM) agreed to release millions of documents about their operations. These detail how ADTI was hired by PM to conduct a public relations campaign against the Clinton health plan in 1994. ADTI provided PM with regular progress reports to prove that PM was getting value for its money, so they also let us see how these campaigns are conducted.

We hate to say "read the whole thing" -- but you really need to.

Added: In the comments, Bruce Bartlett writes:

Read the document. ADTI only ASKED for money from PM. To my knowledge, it never got any.

This PDF document posted by Tim Lambert seems to indicate the opposite however. Updates to follow...

Bring out your dead!

No More Mister Nice Blog links to this NRO piece by Mark R. Levin posted yesterday and writes:

At National Review Online, Mark R. Levin reproduces excerpts from four dire stories that ran in The New York Times after the end of World War II (e.g., "Germans Reveal Hate of Americans") Meanwhile, Jessica over at Kultursmog reproduced the cover story from the a postwar issue of Life: "Americans Are Losing the Victory in Europe."

Steve has some things to say about this argument, to which we'll add this: that Maginot line of defense wasn't any better last fucking year when the very same articles were quoted by countless bloggers. After raising $50,000 one would think NRO could at least afford to publish pieces that aren't recycled shit. Zum Beispiel:

One sentence, two lies

From a Q&A; with Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc "Mom, the other kids are being all negative and stuff" Racicot last week:

The actual job loss began before this president became president. The recession actually started before this president became president. ... Well, the official celebration [sic] of the recession is March '01 but the job loss began before '01.

Close, but not quite. (IOW: Sadly, No!)

Thanks to Blair for the link to the Racicot interview.

And now deep thoughts, with...

We'll let you guess the author of this line:

Eminem's politics, and the politics of HSAN, are Leftist, but we're talking the Left side of hell.

That's our boy alright!

Last month, we wrote about what some have called the "archeological find of the century," one Brian Cherry.

While Brian hasn't written any new articles since (as far as we know,) we are happy to report that our efforts have now been rewarded by Google itself.