Sadly, No!

As the great Dolemite would say, “What the shit is this?”

I can’t think of one other country in the entire history of the world where right-wing pundits go on TV and pine for a devastating nuclear attack on their own country just so they can say they were right all along. Not even Iranian government officials, crazy as they are, sit around saying, “Y’know, I hope the infidels bomb the hell out of us just so we can expose the Reformists as a bunch of wimps.”

“How dare you insult my young apprentice!”

Like John, I’m rather enjoying the public spat going on between Steve Schmidt and Emperor Palpatine Bill Kristol. Here’s the good stuff:

William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and at times an informal adviser to Sen. John McCain, touched off the latest back-and-forth Tuesday morning with a post on his magazine’s blog criticizing the Todd Purdum-authored Palin story and pointing a finger at Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign manager.

Kristol cited a passage in Purdum’s piece in which “some top aides” were said to worry about the Alaska governor’s “mental state” and the prospect that the Alaska governor may be suffering from post-partum depression following the birth of her son Trig. “In fact, one aide who raised this possibility in the course of trashing Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign was Steve Schmidt,” Kristol wrote.

Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I’m sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”

“After all, his management of [former Vice President] Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away,” Schmidt continued.

It’s tough to know whom to root for in this fight, but if I had to choose, I gotta say I sympathize with Schmidt. Oh sure, he’s a sleazy GOP political operative who’s clearly trying to cover his ass for his own failings. But at the same time, Schmidt has actually had to, you know, do stuff in his career. He help Ah-nold get reelected in California. He was apparently the Bushies’ point man for getting Alito and Roberts confirmed. Of course, these aren’t admirable achievements, but they are achievements.

Meanwhile, what the hell has Bill Kristol ever done? Mostly he’s sat on his ass in the Weekly Standard office and advocated invading other countries. Christ, he even backed sending America’s armed forces to take down the damned Somali pirates — as though the Army doesn’t have enough wars to fight already.

The bottom line is this: imagine you’re Steve Schmidt. Imagine that you’ve worked your ass off to make John McCain into a semi-legitimate candidate for the presidency. And then imagine that this twerp from the Weekly Standard comes along and convinces McCain to pick as his running mate a crazy, narcissistic wingnut who is well known for stabbing her allies in the back and whose sole qualification for the vice presidency has been eating a moose. How the hell would you feel?

Invent a time machine and go back to June 2005. Make bets with people that in four years’ time we’ll have a black Democratic president with the middle name “Hussein.” Then up the ante by predicting that the Democrats will have 60 seats in the Senate. Then top if off by betting that one of those seats will belong to Al Franken.

I mean, four years ago, I would have been too ashamed to post such a prediction anywhere, even if I were anonymously trolling over at Red State. Times do indeed change.

(Of course, now that the Democrats have all this power, they should probably do something positive with it. Because as we’ve seen over the past four years, American opinion can change extraordinarily quickly. And there’s no way I’m going to be able to deal with President Jeb Bush and Senator Bill O’Reilly in 2012 if I don’t have a public health care plan to choose from. Just sayin’.)

ABOVE: Don Surber in front of his newly-remodeled
home

---

Poor Don Surber. Apparently he’s locked himself in his shack, barricading the door with various auto parts he found lying around his living room. He’s sitting in a corner clutching a .22 in one hand and three bottles of Tylenol in the other. “Obama will have to pry the Tylenol from my cold dead hands,” Surber keeps muttering to himself while pointing his rifle at the front door. Surber is certain that the FBI, the CIA, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, CNN, La Raza and The Poca, West Virginia Department of Park and Recreation are all amassed just outside his door, heavily-armed and waiting for the signal to burst through the door, guns ablaze, in order to take away his Tylenol.

Part of the reason why we keep returning to the deep well of the blog postings of this Pliny of Poca — other than to ridicule his personal appearance through the magic of Photoshop — is just that there are only a handful of wingnut bloggers who manage to maintain that perfect balance of laziness, stupidity and insanity that Surber does. In any given post, there are general only slightly fewer errors than there are vowels.

Take the “Obama is going to take my Tylenol” post that has Surber stockpiling Tylenol and guarding this stash with the .22 that he usually employs to shoot frogs in the crick behind his house when they get too noisy. Almost everything about it is just, well, wrong.

President Obama’s administration is weighing restrictions on buying Tylenol, Excedrin and other over-the-counter medications. More over-regulation by the government. If a prescription is required to get a Tylenol, that will up the cost of health care.

Just like Don, we’re only a few keystrokes away from the FDA document detailing the proposals under consideration. Unlike Don, we’re not too busy eating moonpies and swilling RC Cola to retrieve and read the document.

Now, lookie here, here’s a fascinating little tidbit in the report. The proposals that the Advisory Panel is considering were developed by the FDA’s Acetaminophen Hepatotoxicity Working Group in a report they released on February 26, 2008. And who was President then? Not Obama. So this really isn’t a reason to take a jab at Obama. Strrrrrike One!

And is one of the proposals under consideration requiring a prescription for Tylenol or taking it off the market? Nope. Strrrrrrrrike Two!!

There are about 200 acetaminophen-related deaths each year, Fox News reported.

Does the Fox News story that Surber links report that? Not so much. It doesn’t say anything at all about acetaminophen-related deaths. Strrrrrrike Three!!!

Okay, let’s have a heart and use the Beep Ball rules used for the visually impaired. That way Surber can have one more strike before he’s out.

Are there 200 acetaminophen-related deaths per year? Let’s roll the film of the FDA report in question:

Summarizing data from five different surveillance systems, there were an estimated 56,000 emergency room visits, 26,000 hospitalizations, and 458 deaths related to acetaminophen-associated overdoses per year during the 1990-1998 period.

Batter out.

I think it’s safe to say, yet again, that this will be another year in which the Pulitzer committee will take a pass on Surber.

We connect the dots, you deduce the conspiracy:

June 8: David Letterman tells a joke about the Palin family, forcing conservatives to divert precious blogging resources away from Obama-bashing to defend the plucky Alaskans. A trial run of the diversionary tactics the MSM will soon use to help squash Iranian freedom?

June 13: Protests against the Iranian elections begin.

June 16: Obama refuses to credit America for Iranian uprising, proving once again that it is all about him.

June 24: South Carolina governor Mark Sanford admits to Argentinian affair, kicking off major MSM operations against Iran’s Green Revolution.

June 26: Michael Jackson dies. Liberal media blitzkrieg is now in full swing as unending wave of Jacko chyrons effectively trample the corpse of Neda into the dust.

June 28: Death of infomercial pitchman Billy Mays. Nascent Iranian democracy successfully nipped in the bud by media thugs.

There are times when I wonder what, exactly, conservatives mean when they say they want to “promote democracy” in other countries. Now, via the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page, we have our answer: it involves supporting military coups against democratically-elected governments:

Honduras Defends Its Democracy: Fidel Castro and Hillary Clinton object

Hugo Chávez’s coalition-building efforts suffered a setback yesterday when the Honduran military sent its president packing for abusing the nation’s constitution. It seems that President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking.

But Honduras is not out of the Venezuelan woods yet. Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States, having ignored Mr. Zelaya’s abuses, also wants him back in power. It will be a miracle if Honduran patriots can hold their ground.

This reminds me of Ralph Peters’ recent declaration that the American military should start actively slaughtering members of the American media in order to procure more favorable coverage:

Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media. Perceiving themselves as superior beings, journalists have positioned themselves as protected-species combatants. But freedom of the press stops when its abuse kills our soldiers and strengthens our enemies. Such a view arouses disdain today, but a media establishment that has forgotten any sense of sober patriotism may find that it has become tomorrow’s conventional wisdom.

Do you guys even understand what “democracy” means? Because to my way of thinking, it doesn’t involve military coups and violent censorship of the press. But that’s just me.

ABOVE: Pajamas Media’s new bathroom innovation keeps people from
pissing all over the bathroom floor.

Shorter Power Stooges:

John Hinderaker, Powerline:
First Tommy Lee, Now John Edwards

• Pay no attention to Mark Sanford. Andrew Young says he found a tape showing John Edwards doing it doggy-style with Rielle Hunter

Paul Mirengoff, Powerline:
Update

• John, you ignorant slut. Who the fuck would believe somebody who stole a kid’s baseball cards?

Bonus Paul Mirengoff, Powerline:
The Roots of an Incoherent Policy

• Reality is a vastly over-rated foreign policy

Scott Johnson, Powerline:
Yo! Don’t Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ Foshizzle

• When Chief Justice John Roberts was in his twenties and working in the Reagan White House, he already saw the dangers of Negro “music” from the likes of Michael Jackson and Prince. How cool is that?

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

*Cf. (no. 91)

Shorter Doughy Pantload:

Above: Bathos, Portly F’artagnan

“It May Be Pointless, But at Least It’s Expensive”

• So, like I was saying, (mmmm, double fudge Yoo-Hoo) isn’t it funny how (glug glug) liberals are all like, ‘wah waahhh stop it!’ when America blows up Iraq and (farrrrrrrrrt-rt-t) tells its people how to live, but when it comes to (glug fart waft sniff nod smile) true imperialism — stuff like the Waxman-Markey bill inspiring other countries by example to do something about so-called “global warming” — liberals are all like, “yes, more please”. What a Double Stuf Ore — er, double standard!

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

Frau Debbie Schlüsselschtuck, www.muslimscanbitemybutt.com
Feel Old?: “Animal House” Turns 30

• Animal House may be a classic, but it would have been better with less drinking and rule-breaking.

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

Sadly, No! regular, kidney expert, the embarrassment of the Hoohah Institute, the poor man’s Robert Guillaume, the one and only Thomas Sowell begins his latest column by being mystified:

In a country with more conservatives than liberals, it is puzzling — in fact, amazing — that we have the furthest left president of the United States in history, as well as the furthest left speaker of the House of Representatives.

Next up, terrified:

Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.

Oh no he didn’t — oh yes he did! Not to worry though, Tommy’s about to take a whack at it like Andres Galarraga at a 55-foot curve ball:

The glib pieties in Barack Obama’s televised sermonettes will not stop Iran from becoming a nuclear terrorist nation. Time is running out fast and we will be lucky if it doesn’t happen during the first term of this president. If he gets elected to a second term — which is quite possible, despite whatever economic disasters he leads us into — our fate as a nation may be sealed.

See, Iran just started working on a plan to become a “nuclear terrorist nation” and Obama’s televised sermonettes are providing them with exactly what had been missing until now (aka Step 2). Step 1: Chant ‘Death to America.’ Step 3: Nuclear terrorist nation. In case you thought Tommy was done however, you have no idea what it takes to become a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution:

Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War II. It is hard to believe that it would take much more than that for the United States of America to surrender — especially with people in control of both the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running in Iraq just a couple of years ago.

Read that again if you need an excuse to have a drink: Tommy considers it a possibility that Iran will develop two nuclear weapons, acquire the means to get them over here (alright, I live in Germany, so over there — so long, suckers), detonate them, and that the original Party of Shrill’s response will be: well, that’s it for us (goodnight Vegas, you’ve been great!). In what kind of fucked up, bizzaro, upside-down universe would this even be considered anything better than the ramblings of a very crazy frozen caveman? (Yes, frozen.)

A quadrupling of the national debt in just one year and accepting a nuclear-armed sponsor of international terrorism such as Iran are not things from which any country is guaranteed to recover.

There would be no guarantee indeed as far as that first thing is concerned: if it were true. I wouldn’t cancel afternoon school to bury that little shit! What you say? (PDF, see page 22). Is the projected gross Federal debt by 2019 (!), 23,140 US bn, quadruple the actual debt in 2008, 9,986 US bn? Sadly, No!? But Tommy is an economist! Maybe sharia law stole his calculator.

One good thing about Tommy is that he does have a good sense of humor:

That is why [the Republican party’s] internal squabbles are important for the rest of us who are not Republicans.

Ha ha ha. That Thomas, he looks just like an independent. Yeah… looks like.

Bonus points for the note at the end of the column:

EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece has been amended since its initial posting.

Probably a case of verschlimmbessert. [Thanks to cw for the link.]