Sadly, No!

Somewhat Shorter Snidely Kirsanow, America’s Shittiest Website™
Let Them Eat Cake

• Instead of going to Martha’s Vineyard for vacation, Obama should give the cost of that trip to the U.S. Treasury to help pay off the deficit he created.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Four other equally compelling reasons Obama shouldn’t take a vacation on Martha’s Vineyard:

1. Obama is needed in DC to prevent late blight from destroying the tomatoes in the White House garden.

2. Obama needs to reprimand Maxine Waters for calling some Republican senators opposing the public option “Neanderthals.”

3. Obama has to be in DC to handle the fallout from his “Dick Panels” which will determine which newborn infant boys should be forced to have mandatory circumcisions.

4. Obama could help Brian Dotart find the chihuahua that a man with a Britney Spears tattoo stole from Dotart in a gay bar in South Beach.

Tea parties again. When will they lose their appeal? After conviction but in advance of sentencing, one imagines, if the piss-eyed craziness and the visible firearms continue to rise in tandem.

The Blogprof, theblogprof:
Report From The Birmingham, MI Tea Party Protest – August 22, 2009

I took a few of my kids and headed down to Birmingham today, anticipating a good turnout at the tea party protest against unconstitutional government expansion.

Oh, is that the new thing they’re basically against? It used to be health care reform of any sort whatsoever, while taxes and unions and carbon regulations and immigration and other things have sort of drifted in and out of prominence, depending on what the lobbyists have had on their plates that week.

I wasn’t disappointed either. A crowd of about 750 were already there at noon, and swelled to over 1,000 by 12:30pm.

There are pictures and some YouTube video. The numbers as usual seem inflated, but whatever.

If you notice the signs, they are all home made. No professional looking signs like what the SEIU and ACORN bring to their events. Note that a large number of the protesters were seniors. So much for the AstroTurf accusations hurled by the left.

Yes, that certainly outweighs the evidence of the emails and memos from the Astroturfers, and the screen-captures of disappeared web pages, and all the planning materials and Internet chatter including actual training documents and videos, that we have lying around over here, just sort of scooped up laconically from the passing flow of data without serious exertion. Homemade signs, you say? Senior citizens? Thank God you’ve investigated this, sir! There had been…accusations.

Aah, not crazed enough yet. What’s this?

Van Helsing, Moonbattery.com
Birmingham, Michigan Tea Party

No state has suffered more from moonbattery than Michigan, which has been sucked by the black hole known as Detroit — America’s most liberal city —

[heh heh] Woo! ‘The black hole known as Detroit’ — that makes us snigg…erm, chuckle sharply. The best part is that if anyone says anything about this colorful, I say, colorful metaphor, it means they’re playing the race card and showing who are the real racists, because whoah man, what kind of racist must you be to even think that he was referring to race?¹ Yeah, that one always works.

It’s a creepy night here in Cambridge, by the way, a city that joins San Francisco in wondering what we’ve been doing wrong that a devastated blue-collar, meatloaf-and-beer town like Detroit could vault ahead of us on an index presumably factored for LGBT parades, numbers of universities that are responsible for Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. or whoever UC Berkeley is responsible for, the integration of Southeast Asian cuisines into daily life, public streets and monuments named after labor history figures, the civic nurturance of a population of genuine moonbats, a habit of voting overwhelmingly for liberals, and 2005 studies of ‘most liberal cities’ with surprising results whose methodologies weren’t available, that were done by a think tank so sketchy that its founders later literally sold it on Ebay — which, uh, it’s okay to use that because it says right there Detroit Most Liberal blar-har-hardy-har liberals! …Er, [ahem] excuse me.

It’s a creepy night here because Gates has been driving around the block in his van tossing beer cans on people’s lawns, as he does, apparently casing the neighborhood again, and the police not only refuse to do anything, but have also started literally pulling squad cars out of the area as soon as someone phones in a report of a man prowling around on their porch. “A man of unspecified ethnicity?” they say. “If you don’t know his race, then how do you know it isn’t his house?”

If you were to reply like, “Um, gee, if it was his house, I guess he wouldn’t need to break in, now would he?” then it would be unclear who in this anecdote was supposed to be learning a lesson. Actually, it’s none of us. It’s him:

…to the brink of an economic abyss, with the help of Berkeley-trained moonbat governor Jennifer Granholm. Michiganders do not seem pleased that Detroit-style politics are now being imposed at the federal level.

Although liberal enough by voting habit to make Detroit the most la-la-liberal city ever in history, the voters of Michigan seem also to be very anti-liberal, for otherwise why would ordinary citizens be spontaneously impersonated by right-wing zealots at ‘tea parties’ organized by Washington lobbyists?

The Blogprof provides an eyewitness report of a highly successful Tea Party today in Birmingham. A few sample pictures:

Angry empty-nest woman is good at skull art! But in the end, no matter how awesome one would have been at drawing the sleeves of historic Detroit-area hardcore punk EPs, had one not been someone’s mom at the time, protest signs are about three things: getting the point across, getting the point across, and being the change that you wish to see. And what comes super-across here totally geniusly are the expressionistic spook lines that spell the word, ‘hell.’ They make it go ‘Woo-woo-woo!’ with a scary-wavery sound, such as things do when they’re lit starkly from the bottom and there’s a Theramin around. Suggestion: jungle lettering for OBAMA. What are they going to do, show who the real racists are by playing the race card?

On being the change that one wishes to see, what about sending all the Swazis back to Swaziland?

There’s one now! Pack it up and send it to Geneva!

Ha ha! Now wait, here’s what we did: First you Do Not See a Swastika in the photo, and then we drew one in there, and now look again and it is a Doozy of a Nazi Swastika.

Oh, it’s just fun and jestery from every extreme on the political spectrum. From casefile: Every Picture Tells a Story:

Because the…

Turnout was over 1,000. Astroturfers? We all know better.

After thinking it all through again, I must say I’m convinced.

Shorter Dr. Brent Bozaius the Third, NewsFlustered.org
A Porn-Pop Summer

• Jungle music on the radio is why our young children are fucking so goddamn much. Also, will Negroes ever learn to spell their names correctly?

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit:
POST-PARTISAN, POST RACIAL?

• An actor asks whether Obama is making us launch a guerilla insurgency. Yes, and slowly. One thing is for sure: We’re the biggest babies since ’70s hippies.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

ABOVE: Don Bob Surber

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Don Bob Surber has been reading the first couple of graphs of a newspaper article above his reading level and gotten himself all wee-weed up. Thing is, of course, if Don Bob had been able to read to the end of the article … well, then we wouldn’t be able ridicule this moon-pie muncher yet again for yet another risible post. So thanks, Don Bob, for that. We really don’t acknowledge often enough how much easier you make our jobs here at Sadly, No!

In the Don Bob post in question, Don Bob has decided that the recent transportation of a Lebanese citizen from Afghanistan to Virginia is exactly like, no, worse than the extraordinary renditions performed under Bush.

After nearly 8 years of holier-than-thou scoffing at President Bush’s desperate attempts to avoid another 9/11, liberals are using anti-terrorist techniques to catch white-collar criminals.

Hey, 53% of the country, nice job… fewer rights, less liberty.

Oh dear. Hello, Mr. Apple. Meet Mr. Orange. Mr Orange, meet Mr. Apple

The case in question involved the transportation of a Lebanese citizen accused of bribing U.S. army officials in Afghanistan to Virginia for 3 months of waterboarding and confinement in a two-by-six foot hole trial.

Now if the effort Don Bob has to exert in moving his lips while reading hadn’t prevented him from reading beyond the lead paragraphs of the newspaper story, this is what he would have found:

[This] case is different from the widely criticized “extraordinary renditions” carried out after the Sept. 11 attacks. In those cases, CIA teams snatched suspected Al Qaeda members and other alleged terrorists overseas and flew them, shackled and hooded, to prisons outside the United States without any arrest warrants or other judicial proceedings.

The FBI arrested Azar and Cobos with warrants signed by a federal magistrate. And the State Department, Talamona said, asked the government of Afghanistan “for its consent in advance to take these two individuals into custody and return them to the United States to stand trial. They consented to our request.”

If West Virginia would like to start doing something to counter the stereotype that all of its citizens are illiterate, it could start by snatching Surber from his office at the Charleston Daily Mail, shackling him, and stuffing him into the back of a Cessna headed for Mississippi.

Bruce McQuain, QandO:
Obama Says 95% Won’t See Taxes Go Up. 68% Don’t Believe Him

• Disbelief in Obama’s tax pledge is just another sign of why his approval numbers are falling among frustrated Democratic health-reform supporters due to Republican lobbyists organizing right-wingers to pretend they are ordinary Americans spontaneously protesting an imaginary tax hike.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

So here I am, back from the swamps of DC, thinking that maybe … just maybe … those health care town hall freaks are something to be concerned about. Maybe the real pulse of real America had been on display this summer when prune-faced old crackers shouted gibberish at candyfloss ghouls. Then, this:

Who’s Crazy Now?

A series of posts at Reason illustrates that the liberal rage at right-wing loonies is starting to sound, well, a little loonie:

[Blah blah blah, yada yada yada]

Democrats appear to think that blowing those people up into the totality of the movement will help them win the PR battle on healthcare. I suspect this will do more harm to the Democrats, and their ability to effectively deliver their message, than it will to the conservatives.

To which … phewwww. Wipes sweat off brow, gives guttural sign of relief, etc. Folks, when Megan McArdle predicts something will happen, you can be assured that the precise opposite is fixing to come down the pike. So lay back and relax … we’re about to get the government option.

There’s a tendency here at S,N! Headquarters to assume that wingnuts, and the websites they run, slowly disappear once we start paying attention to them. It’s happened to your Justin Darrs, your Amber Pawliks, your Kelly Marsalas. The same cannot be said of TechCentralStation, America’s shittiest astroturf site, which for whatever reason is still kicking, presumably as proof that when corporate money is involved, there’s always enough around to find new manure to put onto the Internets. Even good old Astroturf King James Glassman, whose car is pictured below, is still “contributing.”

Above: James Glassman’s wheels.

The latest comes from Dr. Gilbert Ross M.D., so you know it’s going to be good. Will the government kill your grandma? Will Aspirin become the only treatment available for cancer? Maybe — but first Dr. Ross has an Amazing Wingnut Fact: The USA does not import any (prescription, we assume) drugs:
Read the rest of this entry »

Badley Whacko pipes up, for a second time, on John Mackey’s GaltCare proposal over at Reason magazine’s blog. Mackey gives money to Reason, so it’s not surprising that Badley, er, Radley, a “Senior Editor” at the magazine, rolls over on his back, sticks his paws in the air, wags his tail madly and asks Mackey to give him a big old belly rub. Radley also takes a swipe at Sadly, No!, presumably still stinging from our having pointed out that his glam shot for the Cato Institute and for Reason Magazine pretty much looks like a publicity still from “Shaun of the Dead.”

I guess the outrage here is that [Mackey] actually had the temerity to express his opinions in public. … [T]he consensus lefty position seems to be that CEOs should just shut up, even if advocating, as Mackey did, some ideas they’ve tested at their own companies and found to work.

Just in case you had forgotten that a libertarian is simply a Republican who does drugs, Radley drags out the tired old right-wing saw about how liberal criticism of lunatic right-wing ideas is an attempt to silence the right wing. Listen, Radley, old chum, when liberals start showing up at political rallies with semi-automatic assault weapons and pistols strapped to their pants and shoulders, then we’ll talk about who is trying to silence whom.

Nor is Radley even close to right when he says the Mackey was advocating ideas he had tested at his own company. Only one of the points in Mackey’s GaltCare proposal was something he’d tried, which was having the company pay less and the employees pay more for their health care. Needless to say, regardless of whether that idea works from an employee’s point if view, from Mackey’s point of view it was the best thing to happen to his company since he discovered you could actually sell lettuce at $14.99 per pound and get away with it.

But his other ideas were not things he tested. He hadn’t tested the pass-the-hat plan for his own uninsured employees, even though they are about 15 percent of his own workforce. Other of his ideas were ones he couldn’t even test himself, like his proposal to deregulate the insurance industry and let them exclude coverage of whoever-the-fuck they wanted to exclude. (Buh-bye COBRA.) See what I mean about libertarians simply being right-wingers on crack?

Whole Foods is unfailingly listed among the most employee-friendly, environmentally-conscious, animal-friendly, and generally socially conscientious companies in the country. Remember, this is the same company that nearly cracked the subtitle of Jonah Goldberg’s book as an example of liberal fascism. The left’s tantrum in reaction to Mackey’s op-ed implies his health care ideas are so offensive, they make all that “good corporate citizen” stuff obsolete.

It’s hard to believe that Balko thinks that because Whole Foods doesn’t test its shampoos on bunny rabbits (which is a better deal than it gives, say, cows and chickens, both of which would be delighted to exchange the beauty parlor for the abbatoir), Mackey should be given a pass for saying that the way to handle uninsured Americans is a tax-form tick-off for charitable contributions to pay for their cancer treatments. Unless, of course, in Balko’s looney-tunes universe bunny rabbits count more than sick people.

And WTF is this nonsense about Jonah and his book? Because Jonah doesn’t (or at least didn’t) like Whole Foods, liberals are supposed to like Whole Foods no matter what crazy shit its CEO says? I’m sorry, but it’s not really the liberals who judge their ideas based on how much they annoy conservatives.

I think we can now say that Reason is even more oxymoronically titled than “The American Thinker.”

Postscript: All Randroids and Reaganatics start any discussion of health care reform, and Radley is no exception, with a hushed and reverential invocation of the free market followed by a deep genuflection and a solemn kiss of the ring on the “invisible hand” of the market. Neither group appears to have any awareness that it was the failure of the free market with respect to elder health care that was both the policy and politics behind the adoption of Medicare.

The elderly are a high risk population that require substantially more health care than younger populations. Free-market insurers are unwilling to insure these populations at all or to insure them only at premiums that equal or exceed the anticipated cost of care. As a result, prior to the adoption of Medicare, fewer than half of retirees had any health insurance.* So the government had little choice but to take over or, eek!, “socialize” the task of providing a program that would reimburse the elderly for health care costs.

If we really want to talk about who wants to kill Grandma, it’s not the people advocating government reimbursement of Grandma’s medical expenses. It’s the tiresome and tireless free market idealogues who, if given their way, would offer nothing but an “invisible hand,” this time carrying a knife, to handle Grandma’s needs for medical care.

*Jonathan Oberlander, The Political Life of Medicare, at 23.

Lori “Movin’ On Up” Montgomery and Perry “Obama Not Muslim?” Bacon, Jr., The Washington Post:
Key Senator Calls for Narrower Health Reform Measure: Republican Grassley Cites Town Hall Anger

• Verizon has “less HD on demand,” a Comcast executive concluded Wednesday, saying the outpouring this month of tuneless young women into computer-generated isometric cityscapes filled with cartoon characters has fundamentally altered the nature of the debate.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™