Sadly, No!

OH THE HUMANITY:

Joe the Plumber plunges deeper: ‘Military should decide what information to give the media.’

[…]

WURZELBACHER: You don’t need to see what’s happening every day, that’s my personal opinion, you don’t have to share it. But, you know, okay, you don’t have to see, you know, 800 dead, 801 dead. It’s like they drill that in your head. … They want you to sit there saying there are so many people dying. You know these are large, these are numbers, you know I don’t want to take away from that. Let me, uh, think about how to say that again. Just essentially, they keep drilling it into your head, newscast after newscast after newscast.

I think the military should decide what information to give the media and then the media can release it to the public. I don’t believe they need to be in the front lines with soldiers, I don’t believe they need to, uh, you know, be bothering the military for information or for access to certain areas.

Dear conservatives,

Look, as I said before, this country does in fact need to have some kind of competing political ideology. The reason your ideology has failed spectacularly over the past two election cycles is that you acted like crazy, belligerent idiots while in power. People were initially attracted to crazy, belligerent idiocy after 9/11 because they probably figured they could scare the bejeezus out of the terrorists by electing the wackiest, most incompetent government officials America has yet seen. After all, what better way to show our resolve to defeat the terrorists than by willingly screwing ourselves over in the process?

But alas, this strategy has not worked all that well, and crazy, belligerent idiocy is now on the outs. A wise thing to do would be to, you know, think about stuff and not offer more of the same stupid crap. Here’s a hint: issuing fatwas that Americans should not be allowed to learn any information that the military does not want them to learn is a step in the (wait for it) wrong direction.

Gavin adds: What I’m trying to understand — and help me out here if I’m missing something — is that Wurzelbacher doesn’t seem to be totally on top of the fact that the US and Israeli military are different things, because Israel and the US are actually not the same country…

ABOVE: Mike Laprarie

---

There’s been way too much unseemly schadenfreude in Greater Wingnuttia that Bernard Madoff stole lots of money from rich Hollywood liberal Jews. Another strain of this comes from face-mulleted ass-beanie* Michael Laprarie over at CheezWhizBang with a post titled “America’s unborn say “thank you” to Bernie Madoff.” Apparently while Mikey was surfing the net for some fresh wanking material he came across this (emphasis by Mikey):

“As with many other nonprofit organizations, Planned Parenthood has had to make staff reductions at our headquarters due to the challenging economic times facing our country,” said Maryana Iskander, chief operating officer at the agency. “While taking this action is never easy, we want to ensure the millions of women and men who rely on Planned Parenthood as a health care provider that the reductions will not impact our ability to deliver care to those in need.”

Part of Planned Parenthood’s funding declines stem from the closing of the Florida-based Picower Foundation, which shut down in December because its assets were managed by Bernard Madoff. The $1 billion foundation was one of the few major funders of reproductive rights issues. (emphasis added)

Of course, Mikey is under the impression, common among wingnuts, that Planned Parenthood is nothing but a gigantic abortion clinic that kidnaps women from the sidewalks, sedates them, and aborts their third trimester fetuses which they then send to China to be turned into hair product. So he sniffs:

“Women and men who rely on Planned Parenthood as a ‘health care provider'”? Whatever.

Perhaps we can wipe both the smirk and the face-mullet from Mikey’s face with a strong dose of facts. Abortions account for only three percent of the services provided by Planned Parenthood. Other services include screening for breast cancer and cervical cancer, STD detection and treatment, and contraception. (I suppose if condoms and birth-control pills kill unborn babies, Mikey might want to think of the millions of unborn babies that he’s thrown out on soiled tissues after each episode of 24).

But Mikey isn’t finished:

On the other hand, if the current recession is to have at least one redeeming episode, perhaps this is it.

The connection between Madoff and the recession is unclear to everyone but, perhaps, Mikey. But I think Mikey’s ultimate point is that each time someone loses a job, a fetus is born. But doesn’t that now mean that it is his religious duty to advocate full unemployment? You know, to save all the innocent blastocysts from being murdered by employed people?

*Actually Mikey likes to refer to himself as a “post-Republican libertarian/conservative & post-fundamentalist emergent Christian.” But any way you slice it, that pretty much works out to the same thing as ass-beanie.

ABOVE: Rep. Don Young reacts angrily to Crest’s
decision not to use him as spokesman for Whitestrips

---

Sometimes I get past being offended long enough to appreciate our national clowns for their own sweet sake. I mean, sure, there’s always a part of me that gets embarrassed that we have so many crackpots representing us and so many bugfuck-crazy nutjobs soaking up the spotlight, but at the same time… well, that’s entertainment.

But Bush took it a little too far. A brain damaged dry-drunk busy bombing and torturing and hyuk-hyuking his way through the whole process just took the fun out of things for everyone else. I was so busy crying — or more precisely, so busy trying to manage my blood pressure from so much sun-surfacey infernos of anger and disgust erupting in my soul — that I was unable to enjoy the many other abject morons and doddering asshelmets whose antics deserved attention or even appreciation. Distracted by the auto-da-FAIL of the lead, I’d forgotten the zany antics of the bit players.

The political element is so much more important than the human one — by which I mean, the one about character and personality. In a certain way, it was George Bush’s luck that crisis was S.O.P. during his presidency; else he would have ended up as a more pathetic, 12-step version of Gerald Ford, with his Segway follies and mysterious facial carpet-burns getting far more attention than they did. In point of fact, George Bush was possibly the biggest verbal and physical klutz ever unleashed on the Republic (which considering Harding, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Daddy Bush, is really saying something); sure we noticed the malapropisms, the ‘Bushisms,’ the neologisms, the wtf-eries, the cluelessness, the gracelessness, the clumsy physicality, the fly-open faux pas, but we, distracted by his political antics (also more than a little klutzy), failed to truly appreciate his performance. Tant pis.

Well, no more, I say. Bush is soon to be gone, but some of the bit players remain — and, being Republicans in a minority bloc, they’re soon to have a lot more things to complain (which is to say, be funny) about. We gotta pay attention to them. I for one will keep my eyes on Representative Don Young of Alaska. It’s true he’s just a character actor as it were, but his mastery of comedic timing and his ability to say just the wrong word or phrase illustrates his true talent. Consider:

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when Sen. John McCain proposed that Young redirect his prized pork money to help rebuild New Orleans, Young accused his detractors of “ignorance and stupidity.” The victims of Katrina, he suggested, “can kiss my ear!”

Such coarseness is a Young hallmark. He once called environmentalists a “self-centered bunch of waffle-stomping, Harvard-graduating, intellectual idiots” who “are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans.”

[…]

As for his pork projects, Young — who tried his hand at gold mining in Alaska before realizing that the real riches lay in Congress — apparently feels no shame. When someone suggested that Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska had outdone him in bringing home federal dollars, Young just laughed. “If he’s the chief porker,” the congressman said, “I’m upset.”

That’s pretty good, but it gets better; like with all great performers, a grander venue inspires Young to a greater show. From Cockburn and Silverstein’s Washington Babylon:

Don Young of Alaska, first elected to the House in 1973, is still its most exuberant practitioner of Dada politics. Head of the House Resources Committee, Rep. Young is best known for his rabid attacks on ecologists. Animal rights advocate Mary Tyler Moore once read a poem about the cruelty of steel-jaw leghold traps before the Merchant Marine subcommittee, where Young previously served. Accompanying Moore was Cleveland Amory, who periodically inserted a pencil in a trap, causing it to snap shut.

The moment was highly charged and Young, as a hunter, trapper, and taxidermist, realized dramatic action was required to turn the tide. His solution was to place his hand into a trap he had brought along to the hearing, and then begin to calmly question a witness as though nothing unusual had happened. “I never told anyone, but it hurt like hell,” Young later confided to a staffer.

Young also made use of a visual aid during a 1994 hearing during which he waved an 18-inch oosik — the penis bone of a walrus – at Mollie Beattie, director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Beattie had suggested that Alaskan Natives should be able to sell oosiks only as handicrafts, not uncarved, a posture which Young derided as a frontal assault on the Native economy. Beattie is the first woman to head the Service, and the hearing marked her debut on the Hill.

In early 1995, a group of students in Fairbanks invited the Alaska wild man to speak about the GOP’s Contract With America. Young expounded on a number of favorite topics, including the need to slash federal funding of the arts. The government, Young said, has funded “photographs of people doing offensive things” and “things that are absolutely ridiculous.” One student asked Young what sort of things he had in mind. “Buttfucking”, the congressman succinctly replied, refering to a 1990 exhibit, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs in Cincinnati. Young said he was merely “trying to educate” the inquisitive youngsters.

Ok, so he’s not Bob Dornan, a comic genius whose perhaps most hilarious routine was when he’d sincerely flirt with Kathryn Jean Lopez; but then the Bob Dornans of the world are condemned to burn brightly and then burn out, to exit the great stage of Congress and end up at some dump subsidized by the Heritage Foundation, surrounded by even crazier people. So it goes. But if Young is more subtle in his batshit-insanity than was Dornan, it doesn’t mean we should appreciate him any less. I for one am a fan.

As usual, when Israel starts blowing things up, the wingnut reaction proceeds in three stages.

First, stand on an upended bucket and honk a horn in glee. Then, in glee presented as worry or sadness, accuse those who question Israel’s actions of anti-Semitism and support for terrorism (or whatever else you can think of).

And then when the discourse is appropriately smoked up and confounded, it’s time to proceed to the attacks on journalists, relief workers, NGOs, civilian victims of military actions, Americans with ethnic and cultural ties to the country being blown up, and Juan Cole, not to mention Jimmy Carter and the criminally unstrewn bones of Edward Said — the grave of whom is chronically undug by steam shovels and insufficiently spattered with raging asparagus pee.

Last week while I was physically located roughly here, they took advantage of the lull in futile gainsaying and launched one of their joyously outraged, evidence-lawyering attacks on a medical doctor working in Gaza.

Shame on you, Dr. Mads Gilbert

Yeah, Dr. Mads Gilbert, you accused radical-Marxist Hamas associate of terror crimes! The deranged perfidy of your questioned behavior, as caught on several seconds of video, eradicates all credibility of leftist-liberal Muslim treason apologists, who lie through their media mouthpieces about so-called “civilian casualties” of Israel’s defense of civilization in the Long War against the Muslamofascist terror Holocaust!

I’ve been watching Israel’s attempt to stop Hamas’ terrorist attacks against it…

Okay, wait. Because in case you haven’t been following these narrative threads over the years, Israel is being threatened with literal extinction by Hamas and its homemade terror rockets for no reason in particular, except for the fact that, as fair and bipartisan analysts have long cautioned, Hamas is an evil murder/suicide pathology that is driven by the hate-maddened death cult of the Islamic moon devil. Furthermore, liberal fool-traitors who are blinded by the historic liberal/leftist hatred of the Jews do not realize — or perhaps realize all too well — that Hamas also “wants to kill us,” which makes them and their lackeys a literal threat to the continued physical existence of the US, not to mention Europe, which continent their terror allies are already literally controlling through a secret invasion conducted via the planned generational outbreeding of white people.

Where are we? Oh, right. Also, Iran is known to be able, with or without the testimony of objective evidence, to develop a nuclear power plant, ahem, totally equals doomsday weapon, within perhaps some number of years — meaning that just to be sure, we should immediately exterminate the entire Muslim population of the world, perhaps in a general nuclear sterilization of the entire Middle East except for Israel, with the concomitant rounding-up of all Semites of non-Jewish affiliation into camps, along with all the illegal aliens and so on. Also, Jimmy Carter is a traitor for confirming the well-known fact that Israel has for decades had nuclear weapons, and in order to ‘send a message,’ we should kill him.

Excuse me for not linking to an example of each of these points, but I’ve been doing that habitually for years, being of no particular talent and having nothing else to do but work hard at dumb things, whereas all day long Abe Foxman of the memorably reputed Anti-Defamation League goes biddy-biddy-bum.

But fine, yes, I’m just mad because when I was growing up, there used to be a group in America called “the Jews,” who converted the lessons of political oppression into a moral imperative toward justice, a light of universalism unto the world. Yet here are all these people going ya-ha deedle-deedle, bubba-bubba deedle-deedle-dum.

I’ve been watching Israel’s attempt to stop Hamas’ terrorist attacks against it…

We were told there would be. . .Oh, never mind.

I’ve been watching Israel’s attempt to stop Hamas’ terrorist attacks against it with even more than my usual interest because of…

Oh heck, because that reminds us: Last night we were watching part of the Baltimore Ravens’ attempt to stop the Tennessee Titans’ unjustified and malicious attacks against them, but eventually it got boring, and so we got to hitting a dog with a stick saying “Stop hitting yourself!” over and over. And long story short, we were forced to call Animal Control to have this brutal mad dog euthanized before it got loose and attacked an innocent child.

When they got there we had the dog in a cage and it was making us poke it with the stick again between the bars, and it was then, by their radical pro-rabid-dog complaints and anti-child accusations, that we realized that so-called Animal Control and the ASPCA are actually anti-Semites trying to bring back the Holocaust.

…with even more than my usual interest because of an…

Also, none of this is funny in the least, and your personal moral failure in not denouncing it is literally causing Auschwitz to happen in the past as we speak. When will you stop hitting yourself?

…upcoming speech at the 9th Annual Herzliya Conference on Strategies & Leadership for Times of Crisis in Israel next month.

Watching NBC Nightly News the other night I had my first visual introduction to Dr. Mads Gilbert:

According to Fox News, Dr. Mads Gilbert is a high-profile Norwegian doctor who has said the September 11 terrorists were justified in their attack and is now treating patients in Gaza.

Well, he said something, certainly.

Dr. Gilbert is accused of presenting “hard-core propaganda” to TV interviewers in his telling of the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

Dr. Mads Gilbert has become an unofficial advocate of the Palestinian cause, his critics say.

On this particular NBC News story, Dr. Gilbert was presented as just an ordinary doctor trying to help Palestinians in Gaza. I didn’t think much more about it until I ran across this story on Newsbusters:

They Never Learn: CNN Withdraws Apparently Fake Video of CPR Attempt on “Dead” Palestinian Child:

Not that it ever really went away, but fake news is back in Gaza, and the…

By the way, in case you hadn’t clicked the ‘speech’ link above, our New Wingnut of the Week™ is Michael Brown, now apparently a professional public speaker, but formerly the Judges and Stewards Commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association, and in the interim the Federal official most closely associated with the destruction, by criminal neglect and incompetence, of the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas.

The video is both funny because it is so fake, and infuriating because Dr. Mads Gilbert, shown on NBC Nightly News as this caring physician just trying to help the Palestinian people, is part of the fakery. All you have to watch is the first 45 seconds of the chest compressions on the child to see the…

He is ‘fisking’ a medical relief worker in Gaza. The title of his post is reproduced again:

Shame on you, Dr. Mads Gilbert

Shame on many of us unto history.

OH THE HUMANITY:

Joe the Plumber: Ban media from war

‘Joe the Plumber’ Wurzelbacher told a group of journalists covering the conflict in Israel and Gaza that he didn’t think the media should be allowed to report on war.

“I think media should be abolished from, you know, reporting,” Wurzelbacher said. “You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, ‘well, look at this atrocity,’ well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media should have no business in it.”

Wurzelbacher arrived in Israel on Sunday to start a 10-day assignment for pjtv.com, a Web site run by the conservative media outlet Pajamas Media. The plumber-turned-foreign correspondent said he wanted to cover Israel’s side of the conflict, because he thought the media was slanting the story to make it look like “Israel’s being bad.”

In his first day as a reporter, Wurzelbacher described the hardships of daily life in the southern Israeli town of Sderot.

“I’m sure they’re taking quick showers, I know I would,” Wurzelbacher said. “So you can’t plan your day, you can’t take a picnic.“

Wurzelbacher said he thought Israel should have attacked Gaza sooner. He told a group of reporters that he was a “peace-loving man,” but that “when someone hits me, I’m going to unload on the boy.”

He got a first-hand taste of reality in Sderot, when his group heard sirens warning of a rocket attack. With cameras rolling, Wurzelbacher and his group ran into a shelter.

“I’m in the bunker, I’m sitting there angry, outright furious, that I’m letting this terrorist dictate what I’m going to do because they’re firing missiles,” Wurzelbacher said. “It was fear at first, then outright anger, and then me wanting some kind of retribution. I’m not a person that runs from things, but when it’s a missile, you run.”

I had hoped — honestly, I had really hoped — that completely losing their grip on power might have pushed our conservative countrymen to take a more, shall me say, introspective view of politics and to not embrace stupidity so forthrightly. Being a pro-democracy kind of guy, I would like to see some kind of competing ideology for liberalism in this country that rises above the intelligence of your average Ford Truck commercial.

But no. You guys insist on getting stupider and more embarrassing and you are hurting our democracy in the process. If the Democrats become too drunk and corrupt on power, will you guys have anyone whom you can promote as credible replacements? Because watching you guys right now is a lot like watching this video, only less funny and more tragic:

In short: please please please please, for the love of God, stop being ridiculously stupid. Just, like, read a book or something. Maybe listen to Bach’s Brandenberg concertos a few times. Take a sculpting class. I really don’t care at this point: you must do something to make yourselves marginally more intelligent than you are right now. The fate of our nation may very well depend upon it.

ABOVE: Erick “The Dim” Erickson

---

Via John Cole, it seems that Erick the Dim is getting a funny feeling in his pants thinking about Jack Bauer (my emphasis):

Screw Obama. Pardon Everybody.

Obama refuses to rule out investigating crimes by Bush administration officials.

This is precisely what I was blogging about the other day. Obama’s most dangerous game — a leftist intelligence and war agenda — will see the intelligence community collapse and American citizens die. By his unwillingness to use definitive language against prosecution of Bush administration officials, Barack Obama puts in jeopardy the future successes of this country against terrorism.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. Those rough men might hesitate knowing their commander-in-chief just might not stand behind them if their actions become known. Their hesitation will lead to American deaths.

Feel free to insert jokes on your own about Erickson’s comically repressed homoeroticism in the comments. I’d make some here, but let’s be honest: Erick’s basically written them for us.

ABOVE: Comrade Noel Sheppard

---

Hey, has anybody heard from NewsBusters lately? Are they still exposing liberal media bias? Let’s go see.

Hey, what’s this? Noted climatologist and assistant associate Newsbuster Noel Sheppard certainly has a catchy headline:

Global Warming Update: ‘Earth on the Brink of an Ice Age’

Oh dear, do you think I ought to run out an buy a heavier overcoat? And where did NewsBuster Noel get this alarming news?

Such was reported by Russia’s Pravda Sunday, and it not only goes quite counter to the junk science being espoused by folks like Nobel Laureate Al Gore and his accomplices James Hansen and Gavin Schmidt, but it has also been regularly proffered by many of the real scientists and climatologists around the world that global warming loving media not only refuse to cite and/or interview, but also disgracefully ridicule as deniers and flat earthers.

Ahem. Pravda? As in the Pravda of St. Ronnie’s “Evil Empire”? The state-run newspaper of a country controlled by a bunch of former Commie KGB officers? Yes, indeedy, the one and the same. Indeed, the same old Pravda that recently ran an article called “The mother of all paradoxes, the American social model” and which says this

Ah, the American Dream! To the degree the model appears to the rest of the world as honeycombed and as full of holes as Swiss cheese, the more America’s ideological operation morphs into a contest between good (the US model) and evil (the rest). America’s private struggle between good and evil becomes in turn the ideological platform and the inspiration-justification of puritanical, individualistic and greedy America’s age-old universal crusade against the rest of the world. Moreover, lest one forgets or believes the crap, the American social system is all the more insidious for human society today because it has become the social model for the world of capitalist globalization.

Surprisingly, Comrade Noel makes no mention of this shameful, Commie-inspired diatribe. Why do Noel and all his fellow NewsBusters hate America? Why do they like a socialist newspaper better than good old American newspapers?

Not surprisingly, however, the evidence for this impending Ice Age is familiar. It’s snowing outside.

It now appears that the current Northern Hemisphere winter of 2008/09 will probably equal or surpass the winter of 2007/08 for both snow depth and cold temperatures.

Without having to explain to these yo-yos yet again the difference between climate and weather, let’s play a game. Let’s play find “La Niña.” The rules are simple. See if you can find any reference to La Niña in Noel’s post or the Pravda article. Then come back when you’re finished.

Couldn’t find it, could you? Because you see La Niña years, like 2008, are typically colder but this La Niña has been the warmest yet that was not offset by El Niño conditions.

Of course, Noel and his comrades at Pravda still need to explain away the carbon dioxide business and for that they come up with what I’ll call the Coke bottle theory:

The reason that global CO2 levels rise and fall in response to the global temperature is because cold water is capable of retaining more CO2 than warm water. That is why carbonated beverages loose [sic] their carbonation, or CO2, when stored in a warm environment. We store our carbonated soft drinks, wine, and beer in a cool place to prevent them from loosing their ‘fizz’, which is a feature of their carbonation, or CO2 content. The earth is currently warming as a result of the natural Ice Age cycle, and as the oceans get warmer, they release increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere.

You see the extra carbon dioxide in the air comes from the ocean, not from SUVs. Cars and power plants don’t emit carbon dioxide. They apparently emit pixie dust and ice crystals.

Just when you thought Comrade Sheppard couldn’t go any further off the deep end, he puts on his tin-foil-lined Russian fur cap, flicks a booger or two from his fingers, and types this

Vladimir Putin may have cut supplies of gas from the Ukraine to Europe because he believes the globe is about to go into a cooling phase, and controlling natural gas will give his country a great deal of added power on that continent. Maybe Putin was aware of this article about to be published by Pravda?

So much for your European vacations, liberals, unless you like skiing down the Spanish Steps.

UPDATE: Just when I thought assistant associate adjunct Newsbuster Noel Sheppard had reached peak ridiculous, he delivers yet more hilarity. Somebody pointed out to NewsBuster Noel that the author of the Pravda article is a 9-11 Truther, which you might think somewhat destroys the author’s credibility on pretty much any subject from global climate change to how to boil water. But, ooooh nooooo:

How delicious that an America-hating Truther who contributes to Pravda has a firmer grasp of climatology than Nobel Laureate Al Gore, James Hansen, Gavin Schmidt, and most of the folks at the IPCC. Now THAT’S entertainment!!!

You have to think that if Noel learned that the Pravda author admitted he made up his Ice Age post completely out of whole cloth and that not one single word of it was true, Noel would say it was delicious that a totally-fabricated lie was more accurate than anything that ever came out of Al Gore’s mouth.

From Noel’s bio at NewsBusters: “Noel welcomes feedback at [email protected].”

ABOVE (left to right): Jack Bauer, Rev. David R. Stokes.

Leon Panetta, Jack Bauer, and the Bad Guys

• Obama should replace Leon Panetta with Jack Bauer as CIA chief. And another thing, what’s the big whoop about torture? As I say to my congregation, Jesus would have tortured Pontius Pilate given half the chance.

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

Shorter Stephen “Senior Economics Writer of the Wall Street Journal” Moore:

Above: Allusive composition

‘Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years

• Our rightness is evident, for as we can see, the incorruptible titans of business are now being parasitized by the inferior masses and their regulations.

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

2008 Weblog Banner (Fixed)

---

Oh dear. I just visited the 2008 Weblog Awards and, judging from the Cheeto dust and Vaseline jars I found everywhere, an army of wingnuts with nothing to do on a Friday night invaded the place and started voting for some truly preposterous bloggers. So, SadlyNauts, when the haze of your hangover clears and/or when you finish your part-time job today performing gay abortions, you need to go over to the Weblog Awards and avert tragedy.

To make your job easier, I have a few suggestions.

In the Best Individual Blogger category the loathsome fake nun and über-hypochondriac who blogs as The Anchoress is in the lead. Lindsay Beyerstein, who blogs at Majikthise, can whip the Anchoress’s wimple if you’ll go vote for Lindsay. [UPDATE: Driftglass has now pulled ahead of Sister Hypochondria, so a vote for Driftglass is now in order.]

In the Best Humor Blog category, the totally awesome Jon Swift is running behind some loser in Baltimore who sits around in his underwear all day reading the comics page and trying to think up teh funny about Dick Tracy and Mark Trail. Go give the loser from Baltimore the flying monkey treatment and vote for Jon Swift.

In the Best Major Blog category, two Sadly, No! friends — John Cole and TBogg — are running behind an obsequious Mormon mommy-blogger who blogs as “cjane enjoy it.” I don’t know what is worse — cjane’s e.e.cummings schtick, her saccharin posts or her portrait of herself in her banner as a friggin’ angel, with wings, halo and the whole business. Please, please, please, I beg you to go vote for either John or TBogg, whoever has the best chance of catching cjane at the time you vote. [UPDATE: Tim F. at Balloon Juice has asked that all Balloon Juice voters vote for TBogg to prevent splitting the vote.]