Sadly, No!

Holy Mother of God! What the hell is this:

For those of you at work who can’t watch this, here is a transcript:

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more, and put more money into the economy, instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, were ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it’s got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and getting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade — we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation.

WHAT THE HOLY HELL IS SHE EVEN TALKING ABOUT??!?!!!?!!?

OK, people, I am scared to death. If any Canadian friends will take me in, I will be your official houseboy: I’ll clean up, take out the trash, wash dishes, cook meals, walk your pets, ANYTHING. Just GET ME OUTTA THIS MADHOUSE!!!!

(Via.)

Me no likey:

GOP, Democratic Leaders Reach Agreement on Bailout Plan

House and Senate negotiators emerged from a closed-door meeting today and said they have reached basic agreement on a massive financial rescue plan that they hope to pass soon.

Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee said they came to an accord on many of the issues dividing them as they negotiated the specifics of a $700 billion package proposed by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve. The package is aimed at buying up the bad debt that is clogging the financial system and threatening a meltdown, mainly because of risky mortgage loans promoted by Wall Street financiers.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said the negotiators reached “fundamental agreement” on a set of principles to guide the financial rescue plan and that Congress could pass a bill within days.

“I now expect we will indeed have a plan that can pass the House, pass the Senate and be signed by the president and bring a sense of certainty to this crisis,” Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R-Utah), the top Republican on the panel, told reporters.

I guess it’s nice that the Democrats took Hank Paulson’s completely insane plan and have made it a mere three-quarters insane. But as good as it feels to have these institutions’ CEOs’ pay reined in, and as pleased as I am to see that Henry Paulson will not be made into America’s High Finance Czar, I think the fundamentals of this plan are still crappy. Does anyone know why, exactly, we need to pick up the tab for $700 billion of garbage assets at this particular moment? Couldn’t we work a try-out deal to buy, say, $100 billion over the next three months to see how things go? Christ, even the damn Treasury Department has no idea what they’re really going to do with the money:

[S]ome of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

Well mission accomplished, genius.

Do I have any Canadian readers who would give me amnesty once American society completely disintegrates? I’m actually being serious. I’m clean, I pay bills on time and I’m a fine cook.

ABOVE: ‘Don’t panic, folks — that terrible odor is me’

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In these dark and turbulent times, when it is hard to know the dark from the light, we grasp, yes, even the most faithless of us, for the eternal. In these days, when wars rage without end, when the savings of a lifetime can be wiped out in the twinkling of an eye, when all that we thought was true and real is shown to be as changing as the tides, we beg for certainty. We long for that one unchanging thing that will serve as our rock, our shelter, when everything else is transitory.

Happily, even in these latter days, we may all rely on the fact that Mark Steyn is 100% full of shit.

Hey, Jonah, don’t let Andrew distract you from your main point: FDR put the “Great” in the “Great Depression”. Lots of other places – from Britain to Australia – took a hit in 1929 but, alas, they lacked an FDR to keep it going till the end of the Thirties. That’s why in other countries they refer to it as “the Depression”, but only in the US is it “Great”.

Well, I guess if you hang around with Jonah “Fascism Is, And Always Has Been, A Product Of Liberalism” Goldberg long enough, you can come around to thinking that black is white, up is down, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt caused the Great Depression rather than ended it. In fact, fact-checking Mark on this would be downright churlish, but we’re going to do it anyway. Say, the internet, were there any other countries other than the U.S. where the Great Depression lasted well into the 1930s?

Hmmm. Well, it looks like the Depression was over in Germany by 1936, but then again, they had a strong, dynamic leader to help them out of it, not some namby-pamby, elitist, liberal wuss like Roosevelt.

In France (where it was known as “The Great Depression“), it was still going strong in 1938, and had not fully abated the following year — 1939, known to some as “the end of the Thirties” — when the nation entered World War Two. But that’s the French for you.

In Latin America, where some called it “The World Wide Great Depression“, it lasted well into the early 1940s in some countries, particularly Brazil — but hey, you know how backward those people are.

The Netherlands were particularly hard hit by what they called “The Great Depression“; recovery didn’t begin until at least 1937, but even then, it wasn’t until after the war that things really got back to normal. But who even knows where the Netherlands are, am I right, folks?

Great Britain (which even today refers to the period as “The Great Depression“) was able to begin its economic recovery as early as 1936, which is barely even the late ’30s!

Okay, okay. So we’ve illustrated that Mark is a little fuzzy with the facts, by which we mean he has his head completely up his ass. But surely, he isn’t completely and totally ignorant of the history of his own country, right?

Wrong! In Canada, where it was known as “The Dirty Thirties” or “The Great Depression“, it took World War Two to get the country back on track; the economy recovered very slowly, and it was 1939 (the end of the Thirties) before the Canadian business cycle saw its first prosperity period since the Crash of ’29.

The seas may boil and the heavens may fall, but Mark Steyn will always be a stupid lying shitface.

McCain to suspend campaigning to focus on economic crisis

• Barack Obama needs to stop kicking my ass for the sake of national unity, my friends!

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

The estimable Max Blumenthal does the leg work on Crazy Sarah Palin and her crazy-assed church:

On September 20 and 21, I attended services at the church Sarah Palin belonged to since she was an adolescent, the Wasilla Assembly of God. Though Palin officially left the church in 2002, she is listed on its website as “a friend,” and spoke there as recently as June 8 of this year.

I went specifically to see a pastor visiting from Kiambu, Kenya named Thomas Muthee. Muthee gained fame within Pentecostal circles by claiming that he defeated a local witch, Mama Jane, in a great spiritual battle, thus liberating his town from sin and opening its people to the spirit of Jesus.

Muthee’s mounting stardom took him to Wasilla Assembly of God in May, 2005, where he prayed over Palin and called upon Jesus to propel her into the governor’s mansion — and beyond. Muthee also implored Jesus to protect Palin from “the spirit of witchcraft.” The video archive of that startling sermon was scrubbed from Wasilla Assembly of God’s website, but now it has reappeared.

And here it is:

For those unwilling to sit through the whole thing, I will provide highlights:

5:00: “We need God taking over our education system. If we have God in our schools, we will not have our kids being taught how to worship Buddha, how to worship Muhammad. We will not have in the curriculum witchcraft and sorcery.”

5:35: “The other area is the media. We need believers in the media. We need God taking over the media in our lives.”

7:00: Holy crap is this getting weird. Palin is now on stage and being fully blessed by Crazy Witchfighter Guy to be God’s instrument in government. He’s praying that she be used as a tool to combat witchcraft.

Oh lordy is this weird-ass shit. God, if you truly do love us, you will not let this woman anywhere near the levers of power in this country.

Nominees in Need of Ideas

• Bush’s willingness to be really fucking reckless, impulsive and stupid makes him a better leader than Obama or McCain will ever be.

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

And if you don’t believe that Gerson’s actual article is as bad as my “shorter” makes it out to be, I give you this:

The financial crisis has resulted in a strange inversion of political reality. Each presidential campaign has proved less creative, interesting and bold than the administration they are both, in different ways, running against. Usually, just the opposite is the case. A sitting president normally must accept the boring constraints of real-world choices. Campaigns can inhabit the utopia of their own ambitions.

But it is President Bush and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, by proposing the massive government purchase of bad debt, who have assumed the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt. It is John McCain and Barack Obama who are playing the role of Roosevelt’s more timid, forgotten foils, “Martin, Barton and Fish.”

Except that, like, FDR taxed the living shit out of rich people in order to start up job-creation programs and the modern welfare state. Bush is using taxpayer money to bail out a bunch of dumb fucking rich people who fucked up our economy.

But other than that, spot-on comparison!

What a week for the kerners! Not only did Michelle Malkin and her stable of sedentary cyber sleuths discover /b/-tards, but through the power of a mere several hundred million fevered keystrokes, the likes of Dr. Mrs. Lt. Rusty Shackleford, Ace, Patterico and Dan Riehl were able to visit digital hell upon some unsuspecting schnook who had the temerity to publish a pro-Obama video on YouTube.

Their eyes rheumy, their carpal tunnels syndromed, the kern-wallahs of Retarda Pradesh slumber peacefully now — their mission to achieve the single stupidest reveal ever a smashing success.

And really, who can blame them? They’ve earned their rest. As Malkin put it:

The bloggers digging into the provenance of anti-Sarah Palin smears on the web got results last night/early this morning while most elite journalists were still in their pajamas sleeping.

Not technically true — it’s fairly well-known that the New York Times editorial staff sleep naked in a tangled pile of thrusting body parts, and I have it on good authority that Keith Olbermann was up all night Sunday crafting a bong out of the skull of an aborted fetus. But her point still stands, in the ‘fake-but-accurate’ sense.

So what will that crack team of kernistas do with themselves, now that Ethan Winner has been revealed as, well, ‘some guy on YouTube’ … ?

Shackleford, for one, will try not to get downsized:

I’m busy again today — as I’m going to be for the next month, sorry, but the real job calls and I spent nearly a week full time working on the Winner story at the expense of my other commitments that will not longer wait — but the best response to Ambinder’s evaluation of the scandal is from Ray Robison here.

And who is this Ray Robison, who bravely soldiers on in this downward-spiralling witch hunt? What could he possibly have to subtract from our collective intelligence that hasn’t already been manhandled out of our craniums by Shackleford et. al.?

Obama camp denies link to Palin smear; smears McCain

The investigation discovered that the Palin video had been distributed to left-wing fringe blogs by executives with the Winner PR firm. Ethan Winner, an executive at the firm later admitted it had originated with him and denied that anyone else had a hand. The question then became “was anybody else involved?”

Ethan Winner, PR firm, executive. Got it.

It was noted that the methodology involved in posting and distributing the ad was similar to a process called “astroturfing”. It was also noted that Obama media advisor David Axelrod is a recognized authority of this PR tactic. This raised the question of David Axelrod’s involvement in the matter.

‘Astroturfing’, you say? I was not familiar with this term, so I wiki’d it: ‘Astroturfing in American English is a neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising which seek to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.’

Shocking! And you say that ‘Obama media advisor David Axelrod is a recognized authority of this PR tactic’? Who else would PR firm executive Ethan Winner, a noted executive at a PR-producing PR firm where he serves as a PR firm executive, turn to for expert advice on matters PR-related?

Game, set, match, if you ask me. But there’s more:

Yes, everyone with photo shop and a video editor application has million dollar contracts to churn out high quality political adds [sic], right? The truth is, it takes skill, time, money, and connections to make ads like this. …

Good point. Does Ethan Winner of ginormous modern PR firm Winner and Associates really expect us to believe he has the skills or the tools to make a short video spot? Even if we were to swallow the notion that this n00b knows how to blogwhore a YouTube link without Axelrod holding his hand every step of the way … how’d Ethan Winner get his hands on Barack Obama’s pirated Jakarta black market copy of Photoshop? Hmmm?

If like me, you suspect that this video was an Axelrod production, it leaves you with two reasonable theories. First, the ad was possibly produced by Axelrod before The New York Times retracted the claim carried in the video. Then Axelrod shelved it. At that point, Winner probably had the ad from Axelrod and was either told to sit on it and he disobeyed or told to release it as a viral video.

Well, grammatically speaking, that’s really only one theory that has two options at the end. So here’s another to make it two whole theories: After Axelrod produced the video, he had it sent by bike messenger to Winner. Later, that same bike messenger was physically unable to pedal a bicycle — because as per Winner, it would be inconceivable for someone to perform a skill for which they are actually paid money to do every day, absent the perfidious tutelage of David Axelrod.

Oh. My. Effing. Goodness. America’s Worst Advice Columnist™ has waded once again into the shit moat with another of her rants claiming that the real racists are the ones that won’t let her make wildly inaccurate and demeaning generalizations about black people because she is white. It starts with her harassing some poor guy in a Starbucks:

Yesterday, I debated a guy I started talking to in Starbucks about the big problem in the black community. He said it was poverty and unequal schools. I said it was daddylessness. I also think there’s a huge problem with victimhood.

Poor guy. Here he was checking his email and trying to enjoy his latte when this crazy chick, who looks for all the world like John Cusack in bad drag, starts ranting about the n****rs in LA. He probably should have dialed 911 on his mobile phone when he saw her coming but, like most Angelenos, he improvidently gave a potentially crazy person the benefit of the doubt.

“But, ma’am,” he probably said while trying to pack up his stuff and get the hell out, “what you’re complaining about is more a factor of socioeconomic status than skin color.”

“Nuh-uh,” retorts Amy, waving her finger at him:

I brought up the case of an ex-assistant of mine who was Korean and a first-generation American, who grew up poor and went to Santa Monica college to save money and earned a scholarship to Northwestern. She didn’t grow up privileged: She grew up Asian.

“So, why can’t more brown people be like yellow people?” Amy asks, as she follows her victim into the parking lot.

“Back off, lady, or I’m calling the cops and getting a restraining order!”

So, Amy goes back into the Starbucks, stands up on a table and starts shouting to the remaining customers.

What I don’t understand is why people who criticize people … for not being black enough to criticize black people don’t see how race-separatist … that is.

Another Starbucks customer starts muttering “racist” under his breath and heads for the door. “I’m not a racist,” Amy shouts, reaching into her oversized man-purse and pulling out a dog-eared paperback dictionary:

Also, I think people should think a little before tossing around the word “racist,” which is defined like so:

rac·ism /?re?s?z?m/ -noun
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
2. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

Well, I guess that settles that.

Before making that accusation, consider whether it’s reasonable to think a person making a criticism can really be thought to hate a group of people due to skin color or some other characteristic. Or…does the person making the criticism merely have antipathy toward a problem that seems somewhat common to a number of people who look a certain way or have something in common?

What bothers Amy about black people isn’t that they are black; what bothers her is that they’re so effing stupid. See, that’s not racist at all. The dictionary said so.

At this point a manager asked to get off the table and leave.

I know, it’s easiest to just dub everybody who disagrees with you a hater and be on your way.

“No, lady, you need to be on your way. Come back in this Starbucks again, and I’m calling the cops. You can finish your pumpkin spice half-soy half-skim decaf latte in the parking lot.”

UPDATE: The inevitable meltdown by Amy.

Read the whole thing in all its demented glory, but pay special attention to her claim that because of Sadly, No! she couldn’t get a Bank of America grant for her program to tell black kids to stop fucking each other. Oh, and bonus points to Amy, who complains about how all blacks suffer from “victimhood,” for playing the victim card herself and comparing Sadly, No! to the folks who used to write “Dirty Jews” on her garage with shaving cream. Amy isn’t just comedy gold, she’s the comedy Hope diamond.

Dr. Mr. Rusty Shackleford, Esq., after what looks to be about 70 to 80 straight wingnut-hours of old-fashioned manual kerning, has successfully proven that a supporter of Barack Obama uploaded a video supporting Barack Obama on YouTube.

Nailed.

Later, Herr Doktor Shackleford’s kern-wallahing would cause the Palin-bashing perp to abscond with the evidence:

UPDATE: Within 1 hour of posting, “eswinner” has removed all videos from YouTube and began removing any traces of his activities. But we have the video and all relevant websites backed up.

If “eswinner” isn’t Ethan Winner of the Publicis Groupe, then why did “eswinner” yank the video so quickly? Or if this was just an innocent homemade ad, then what does he have to hide? You’d think he’d want more attention for it.

So what DOES Ethan Winner have to hide? What POSSIBLE reason could there be for him to remove his video from YouTube? Well, Ethan?

Some people have asked why I have pulled the video from the Internet. The reason is simple. Following the posting of personal information about me by the Jawa Report, my family began to receive threatening and abusive phone calls and emails.

Oh. Um. Okay, then.

ABOVE: Bob Owens wants to put you in a Monte
Carlo!!

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Just this morning used-car salesman Bob Owens, aka the “Confederate Yankee,” had a fleeting moment of clarity and admitted that he wasn’t “qualified to comment meaningfully on the [bailout] in any way, shape, or form.” Of course, if Owens restricted his commentary to things he knew something about, his blog would be confined to a discussion of the relative merits of the 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo versus the 1995 Dodge Neon. (“I wooden sayuh that one of them tiny Neons makes a whole lotta seyense foh fokes who is wearin’ lotsa fried chicken an’ eye-us cream ovuh the tops uh thay-ere britches, if you know what I mean.”)

So, of course, sooner than he could say “gimme somuh yoh muhnay foh a new chah-kole greeyul,” Owens was up to his old tricks and blogging about shit he knows absolutely nothing about — in this case, whether or not Sarah Palin’s town of Wasilla charged for rape kits. And, of course, you know, Bob’s answer: she “nevah, evah, evah” charged for a kit and any claim that she did is yet another liberal lie:

[C]urrent [Wasilla] Police Chief Long’s statement of, “A review of files and case reports within the Wasilla Police Department has found no record of sexual assault victims being billed for forensic exams” would seem to stand on it’s own, would it not? … The entire “scandal” seems to have been manufactured around September 9, when stories began to run through the progressive blogosphere, seemingly out of nowhere.

Well, one might also want to speak to the person who was, you know, police chief during the time in question, before jumping to any conclusions, something which Owens admits for a moment and then just as quickly dismisses:

I’m attempting to clarify if that means that no rape victims were ever billed for rapes in Wasilla from 1996 to mid-1999 … despite the fact then Police Chief Charlie Fannon reserved the right to do so, but Fannon has declined multiple media requests for comment, and I doubt he’ll start with me.

Gee, I wonder how we could find out what Police Chief Fannon had to say about whether the city charged for rape kits or not?

And what do you have for us, Great Gazoogle? An article from 2000 in the Wasilla newspaper, you say? Why, how interesting is that?

While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.

Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon does not agree with the new legislation, saying the law will require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams.

In the past weve charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just dont want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer, Fannon said.

According to Fannon, the new law will cost the Wasilla Police Department approximately $5,000 to $14,000 a year to collect evidence for sexual assault cases.

Up next, Owens examines Alaska state government employment records and determines that Sarah Palin didn’t fire Public Safety Chief Walt Monegan but instead showered him with bonuses and gave his daughter a Shetland pony.

UPDATE: Hmmm. I see that while I was writing this post, commenter Skylark was on Owens’s case about this in the comments to Jillian’s great post. Great minds, you know, and all that.

Another conundrum: Pammycakes cites an urtext of CY’s second post on this subject which now seems to have changed and not contain the language she cites. In the Pammycakes version, CY basically calls Fannon a liar and then apparently revises his post to eliminate that charge. What’s up with that, I wonder?