Sadly, No!

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Before introducing this week’s NWOTW, I want to squelch the nasty — no, hateful — rumor that I snuck into S,N! headquarters on July 4 and then sodomized and ritually murdered the entire staff so that S,N! would be mine and only mine. The truth is that it appears that they all went on a field trip to an undisclosed location — to which I was pointedly not invited — in order to drink copious quantities of tequila, hoover up several kilograms of primo Bolivian blow, kidnap a few evangelicals and force them to have gay abortions. I admit, however, that I have no really good explanation for the putrid smelling sludge that just started oozing out from under the supply room door here. I’m thinking that it must be rotting print cartridges or something.

With that out of the way, meet Duncan, who blogs over at And Rightly So! with that “baying monster” Raven. Raven, as you might recall, had her day of Internet fame when she opined that Iraq war veterans with PTSD were basically a bunch of whiners trying to cadge disability benefits from decent, honest taxpayers like herself.

Duncan hails from Texas and has this to say about himself:

I am a conservative first and foremost. …. I believe that the U.S. Constitution is the best governing document that has ever been created by man, and I believe that the liberal left (and increasingly the Big Government Republicans) have been eroding what the Founding Father’s intended, which was not a huge federal government that continuously stomps on areas reserved for individual states.

Notwithstanding his hatred for the federal government, it hasn’t dissuaded him from taking a paycheck from the federal government for his entire career:

I served in the U.S. Air Force for 8 years as a C-130 pilot and as a primary instructor. I got out and now work for the federal government as a civilian protecting our nation. I reconcile the fact I work for Uncle Sam in that both jobs I have held were Constitutionally mandated, not the creation of some politician looking to spend more tax dollars.

Please discuss amongst yourselves what civilian job that Duncan could possibly hold is “Constitutionally mandated.”

Duncan’s bio concludes with a stunningly inane mixed metaphor:

I have a wife and two beautiful children. And I want those children to grow in a country not swirling down the socialist toilet bowl of mediocrity and misery that the left seems to be pushing this country towards like little lemmings following each other off a cliff.

And now for Duncan’s award winning post:

I am really starting to get annoyed with all of the global cooling er.. global warming.. er Climate Change bull crap.

My irritation started today when I bought tickets for my family to fly out to visit me in California while I am out there for some training. There was an option on Orbitz.com for me to purchase, since I was having my girls fly on a big-bad-evil corporate airline, some CARBON-FRIGGIN-OFFSETS! I shi’ite you not. I could buy some carbon credits in order to offset the carbon emissions to make myself feel better. I honestly could not believe my eyes. I almost wanted to look elsewhere for tickets, …

Will Duncan have the courage of his convictions and find his tickets elsewhere? Or will he send an outraged email to Orbitz customer service? Will he buy the credits with a stolen credit card? Will he decide to idle his SUV in the driveway for six hours to offset the offsets? (Cue drum roll.)

… then realized that this was a pretty good deal and I could not pass it up.

Well, as those stinky-cheese-loving Socialists in that swirling toiled bowl called France say, quelle surprise!

Actually, I truly feel sorry for professional wingnuts like Duncan who can scarcely open their eyes and crawl out of bed in the morning without succumbing to outrage over this or that liberal indignity. Gays on the TeeVee! Carbon credits at Orbitz!! No more trans fats at McDonalds!!1! Al Gore is still alive and using electricity!!!111 Para español, oprima el dos!!!!!1!1!uno! No wonder Duncan probably spends his spare time in a small funky room with shades drawn reading a survivalist manual stained with Ranch dressing and Pop-Tart crumbs.

UPDATE: The fun continues.

K-Lo, who allegedly edits America’s Shittiest Website™, has a little sugar for her beloved:

Wouldn’t George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher?

Well, dude, I don’t think he’d be an awesome or even a bitchin’ high-school government teacher, although he’d probably be better at that than he has been as President.

Wouldn’t it be something if his post-presidential life would up being that kind of post-service service?

Wouldn’t it be something if K-Lo actually read and corrected what she wrote?

Who needs Harvard visiting chairs and high-end lectures? How about Crawford High? (Or wherever?)

Please, someone, think of the children. (The Harvard undergrads can probably protect themselves.)

Reach out and touch the young before they are jaded, or break them of the cynicism pop culture and possibly their parents have passed down to them.

Sure, great idea. Mr. Twenty-Nine Percent is just the guy to break high-school kids of cynicism.

Whatever you think of President Bush, he’s a likable guy in love with his country with some history and experience to share.

He could share his theories of the unitary executive, the best “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and preferred methods for shredding the Bill of Rights into tiny little pieces. I have a better idea for his “post-service service.” He should just disappear to Crawford and STFU. Other suggestions for his “post-service service” are welcome in the comments.

My grandmother taught me that it is improper to speak ill of the dead when you can let other people do it for you.

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.

-Clarence Darrow

…

I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.

-Mark Twain

…

He died on July 4, 2008, slitting his wrists in a washtub out back beneath the pecan tree and writing “I’ve been a bad boy” in his own blood. The skins of several children were found drying in his attic, swarms of horseflies going in and out of the eaves. His wife was quoted on CNN as saying “I always wondered about Jesse’s collection of little shoes.”

–Wikipedia [h/t Roxanne]

“Well, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years,
Doctor, and I’m happy to state I finally won
out over it.”

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Let’s celebrate the Fourth of July in proper style. You know, with a little gay bestiality, a few Boy Scouts thrown in for fun, some gang-related rapes for a pinch of excitement, the ACLU, and, best of all, some pornography! And who better to preside over this orgiastic celebration of our favorite things at Sadly, No! than Ricky Santorum who has thrown all these things — and more — into an apocalyptic rant about the end of the Boy Scouts and the ensuing declaration of martial law on the streets of Philadelphia. According to Rick, former Boy Scouts will soon be running amok in Philadelphia, pushing little old ladies into the paths of oncoming vehicles, while gay activists are screwing a few pooches in the headquarters building of the Philadelphia-area Boy Scouts.

[T]he first step in addressing the horrific violence in Philadelphia is to understand that it is a symptom of a broader problem: pathologically antisocial young urban males. That’s why I just don’t understand Mayor Nutter’s jihad against the Boy Scouts. Rather than get bogged down in a dispute with the Boy Scouts, the city should be supporting more organizations like this.

You tell ’em, Rick. What every city needs is a few more organizations that discriminate against gays. It’s precisely because we don’t discriminate enough against gays that are cities are going to hell. Once you start letting Teh Gays have jobs, buy houses, and congregate together openly, the next thing you know they are roving the city in convoys of Jettas and Passats, buying expensive shoes, mocking ridiculous attire, adopting unwanted babies, and otherwise scaring the shit out of the general populace.

Liberals have largely run our great cities for the last half-century, but not many of them dare cross powerful special interests like the ACLU and the teachers unions, radical feminists or Hollywood and First Amendment absolutists (read pornographers).

That probably explains why there are pornographic book stores and dirty movie houses on every block here in DC (and in Philadelphia): both those city governments have been afraid of standing up to Hollywood pornographers.

Here in Philadelphia, the lethal threat to liberal orthodoxy and our young men is an organization whose aim is – don’t read this aloud to small children – to teach boys to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent and (shudder) to be morally straight. This, of course, deeply offends … the radical gay activists.

I could be wrong, here, but I think the offense lies not in teaching boys to be morally straight but in telling boys, with taxpayer money, that being gay is immoral.

But now the city would like to evict them via the back door. It wants to change their current agreement and force them to pay $200,000 in rent, a sum that city officials know the scouts cannot afford. The reason: The scouts insist on holding true to their moral and faith-based principles that offend some powerful voices in the gay community. … The real issue is Philadelphia officialdom’s bowing to gay special interests over the interest of the safety of the city.

To listen to Ricky, you’d think that the city was about to disband the Boy Scouts and have each scout sodomized by a gay activist before being dismembered alive and thrown into the Schuylkill River, when, in fact, all the city is asking is that the Scouts either accept gay scouts or move their administrative staff out of city-financed digs to a private location. And it’s hard to see, except in the perfervid imagination of Rick Santorum, how a relocation of the local headquarters staff for the Boy Scouts will lead to a crime wave. But then again it was always hard to see how gay marriage would lead to my developing an irrepressible urge to schtup a pooch or two.

From “A Conservative Summer: An NRO Symposium on Books“.

If there were only one book on conservatism you could recommend to a newcomer, what would it be and why?

The Complete Poetry of Robert Frost. Not very detailed at the policy level, but lots of reality. (Richard Brookhiser)

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Is there any recent book that’s made you want to buy copies for everyone you know and love?

I sent out a number of copies of America Alone. (Mona Charen)

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Are there any summer movies you’re looking forward to?

No. Maybe Hollywood is past its heyday, but can’t they at least make comedies as good as My Cousin Vinny? (Dinesh D’Souza)

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Are there any summer movies you’re looking forward to?

No. But I do think conservatives should start organizing — and big time — in Hollywood. Imagine, the head of the Screen Actors Guild making it all the way to the presidency and to this very day failing to attain the industry’s “life-time achievement award.” I recommend that conservatives even thinking of going to the movies, take the $10. they would have spent on movies and send them to the Reagan Ranch Foundation. (Alvin S. Felzenberg)

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Is there any recent book that’s made you want to buy copies for everyone you know and love? Did you actually make the purchases?

One of the most important books of the century: My Grandfather’s Son, by Clarence Thomas.

You know what would have made a great graduation gift? I just dusted off an old copy of Peggy Noonan’s public-speaking book. For gals who are naturally shy or men expected not to be — it’s a skill and a good read, as Peggy always is. (Kathryn Jean Lopez)

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Is there one book that you’d recommend to uplift and inspire depressed conservatives this summer?

I should probably say the Bible. In fact . . . maybe I will. (Jay Nordlinger)

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What’s the best political novel you’ve ever read? Why is it the best?

The best remains George Orwell’s 1984. Through it, fiction becomes a vehicle for expressing truth, namely, the bleak, moral wasteland of communism and Stalinism’s relentless attack upon individual liberty. The collectivist system inexorably grinds down the dignity of each person, or, in the novel’s case, its two leading protagonists. “Do it to Julia!” shouts Winston, in 1984’s macabre conclusion. In their final, pathetic meeting, Julia confesses a similar transgression to Winston: “Sometimes they threaten you with something — something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about . . . You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.”

To my mind, we can never read enough Orwell. His essays and books are like intellectual depth charges, detonating the smug operating assumptions of large swaths of our cultural elite. His masterpiece, 1984, written 60 years ago, is relevant today. “Newspeak,” the sterile official language of Oceana, anticipates the politically correct, sanitized idiom of our time, when the Department of Homeland Security has instructed its officials to refer to men like Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as “the dangerous cult leaders that they are,” but not as “jihadists,” “Islamists” or “holy warriors.” According to the Orwellian DHS press release accompanying its new guidelines, “Words matter.” George Orwell would agree, which is why, if he were writing today, he would call these fanatics exactly what they are: radical Islamic terrorists, sanguinary butchers, evil murderers.

Thankfully, elements of Western culture are starting to see Orwell’s vision more clearly; his worldview has been reflected in recent works of art, literature, and theater, including a Broadway revival of Shakespeare’s Macbeth that excoriates Stalin, a production recently reviewed by Andrew Stuttaford, NRO’s indefatigable critic of the desolate legacy of the Soviet dictator. (Joseph Morrison Skelly)

Best comment on the Hitchens waterboarding stunt

• Here in the People’s Republic of Malkinstan, we define “torture” as “bad stuff that shifty darkies do to white people.” White people doing the exact same stuff to shifty darkies is merely “aggressive interrogation” — and more to the point, torture is only torture when it causes permanent organ failure, so nyah, nyah, nyah.

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

Above: “I can singz ‘Teh Yellow Rose of Texas?'”

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Maybe Jay Nerdlinger* used to be with it, and then he lost track of what ‘it’ was. Now what he’s with isn’t ‘it,’ and what is ‘it’ seems weird and scary to him. But I doubt it. He’s always been clueless, and his brand of criticism is too fossilized for even the best carbon-dating laboratory’s efforts.

Usually, Tory art critics amount to so many tweedy and pompous Grampa Simpsons, irate old farts whose pole-up-their-ass style and ideological hackery preclude the random profanity and negativity-for-its-own sake that so often redeems the tirades of the reactionary elderly.

But Nerdlinger thinks even those guys should get off his lawn. Outdoing even Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball in bow-tied, culture-‘tarded spades, Nerdlinger complains that a Lyle Lovett concert blew his eardrums out:

[A] few nights ago, I attended a Lyle Lovett concert… As someone who has attended very, very few non-classical concerts, I have a couple of observations:

Amplification has gone crazy in America, and throughout the world. Everything is overamplified — amplified to ridiculous degrees. There is no reason for it. And it detracts seriously from musical enjoyment. At the Beacon Theater here in New York, it was like there was some mistake: The amplification was turned up as though Lyle had to reach listeners in Ohio. And the acoustics of the Beacon are perfectly fine as they are.

I just don’t understand.

Above: While others saw Lyle Lovett, Jay perceived this

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No shit. But he’s not done yet relating teh KULTUR SHOKK!!!

Do you know that no programs are given out at pop concerts (by which I mean, non-classical ones)? Do you know there is no intermission? (At least there wasn’t in this case.)

Not to mention no place to rest one’s opera glasses. Amazing, isn’t it, the degradations that one must endure in order to be entertained at these so-called “pop” concerts!

I am a Lyle fan, and long have been. He’s a little country, a little indie, a little “roots,” a little gospel — a little of a lot of things. Call him a fusion musician.

No, Jay, he’s eclectic. Calling his music fusion is kind of confusing, because to most people the term is short for jazz fusion — a genre you’ve also probably never heard of since it was invented just recently in the 1960’s by that young whippersnapper Miles Davis.

[Lovett] seems an interesting fellow — respectful of religion, which is very interesting. Fans would holler out to him, and he’d just say, “Thank you, thank you,” in an understated way.

No wingnut’s kulturkrit is complete without the Zhdanovian hackery. Lovett respects religion and assumes a modest demeanor, so Commissar Nordlinger approves! Nichevo, tovarish!

That’s it for music. Then, something else: Jay shares his up-to-the-second awareness of Internet traditions:

You know what “WTF” means, right? It’s e-mail and text-message shorthand for “What the Fig” (only not “Fig”). Mighty, mighty handy initials.

YA RLY, Jay! Or, in Nordlinger’s target audience’s terms: Indeed, what a labor-saver of an apposite riposte! I say, good sir, I should like to learn more of these rather crude yet convenient phrases you acquire in your effortless interactions with the young and trendy! Then they begin to envy Nerdlinger’s easy rapport with young hipsters (e.g., Jonah Goldberg!) and wish that they were half as cool as that cat Jay.

* Otherwise imperfectly named as ‘Nordlinger.’

Larry Kudlow recently met with George Bush, Caudillo de Estados Unidos de América, to discuss issues of great economic import and snort vast quantities of cocaine. How do I know drugs were involved? Because only Tony Montana-sized mountains of coke can explain this kind of hilarity:

When asked about the dollar, the president stated clearly that he is for a strong dollar. But he hinted that the non-intervention policy would remain in place.

[…]

He also believes the European banks have done far less to repair their balance sheets than the American banks. And he hinted that our financial and economic position is stronger than Europe’s, another factor working to strengthen the value of the dollar.

Above: Strong dollar

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Uhhh. They must have had some really primo shit. But then,

President George W. Bush was strong and in good spirits… Topics across the board were discussed… [though] some of the juiciest stuff is off the record.

I dunno what Kudlow means by off the record because short of reporting the actual sound effects — the snort sound, the reflexive “ahhh,” the hard gulp of the snotty drain-down, and perhaps the sharp slapping noise that a particularly harsh line might inspire the dope fiend to produce on the nearest hard surface* — relations of intoxicated monologues don’t get much more graphic and obvious than this:

Instead of intervention, he felt that free-trade policies to open markets and expedite the free transfer of capital would send positive signals that would strengthen the currency. He said the Columbia free-trade debate in Congress has undermined the dollar, and he continues to believe that passage of Columbia free trade is a “no-brainer.”

Of course. Like I said, primo shit.

*In the WH glory days, of course, this would have been Jeff Gannon’s ass. Nowadays it could be Laura’s face, but then, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

This 3,800-word AlterNet blockbuster on the 10 worst moments of the Bush presidency took me around two months to write. The damn thing was a literal labor of hate, as I could only do so much research on things like Abu Ghraib and the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina before pounding down a bottle of Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale and calling my friends to bitch about how terrible the last eight years have been.

Here’s the intro:

The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency

By Brad Reed, AlterNet.

In a lot of ways, choosing the Bush administration’s 10 greatest moments — disastrous failures, all — is about as pointless as picking out your 10 least favorite hemorrhoids: There are entirely too many of them, and taken together they all add up to a throbbing mass of pain. But unfortunately, history demands that we at least make the effort so that future generations will understand why we perform voodoo rituals cursing Bush’s memory before we go to bed every night.

Please do read the whole thing — it’s long, but I promise that it will be worth your time. And if you’ve got a Digg account and want to promote it that way, then be my guest 🙂

Thanks, everyone!!!!!

We’ve been neglecting Nooners lately. That’s mostly because we’ve run out of puns like ‘High Noonan,’ ‘Noonan World Order,’ and ‘Darkness at Noonan.’ But as you can see, we just thought of another one. Let’s see what he’s getting up to lately.

Failure
June 28th, 2008 at 09:33am Mark Noonan

Well, it’s been a long time coming. You know, ever since they changed the site’s name from Blogs For Bush to Blogs For Victory, things have seemed. . .wait, no. That’s not a Mark title. Indeed, it’s a cut-and-paste error.¹ Drat, let’s try this again.

Obama’s Housing Failure

The Catholic View on Torture
June 28th, 2008 at 09:33am Mark Noonan

Can be read here, Torture is a Moral Issue, A Catholic Study Guide (PDF). While I have not considered the document in its entirety, nor spent any long time in contemplation of what it teaches, I’d like to put out a few observations of my own.

Sounds good! We’ve got a copy of Darius Rejali’s Torture and Democracy that we haven’t read or spent much time thinking about, what with all the basketball that’s been on in recent weeks, and we’d like to put out a few observations of our own, seeing as the physical presence of the book is irradiating the room with quantum wisdom particles.

I also spy an unread copy of Brian O’Nolan’s Myles na Gopaleen 1940-45 on the bookshelf, so this post promises to be more nippingly funny in a playfully ornate Irish style even than usual.

And while we’re on the subject, the Catholic study guide on torture is pretty good, but missing some key points. Anyone who wants to read it will see that I’m right — or better yet, just download it to your desktop like I did.

Above: Name change may cause misunderstanding

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In what will surely please the critics of the Bush Adminisration, the document says we must stop using euphemisms in our discussion – no more “enhanced interrorogation” when we really mean something quite harsh. This will please the left – but only up to such time as they actually start thinking about it and realise that this means we’ll also have to stop using “pro-choice” as a euphemism to cover up “pro-abortion”.

Did you notice that that Mark is typing ‘terror’ automatically, as in ‘enhanced interrorogation?’ It’s strange, if true, that the Catholic Church is attempting to do away with all euphemisms. What will the Holy Ghost be called now? Anyway, we can all find satisfaction in the fact that terms such as ‘enhanced interrogation’ will no longer be… Oh my God, I just thought about it — we’ll have to stop using the term ‘pro-choice’…

Slipping Mark’s mind at the moment is that, unlike himself, ‘the left’ doesn’t follow the spiritual leadership of the Vatican. But experienced fans of his work — Noonanites? Noonanschanz? — have seen this line of reasoning before. Arguments against official violence and cruelty (the death penalty, military adventures, bombings of civilians, indefinite detentions, torture) always seem to be dismissed by the observation that abortion is legal in the US, whereupon the whole mess is shifted onto ‘the left’ for not supporting a ‘Culture of Life’ — indeed, for supporting a Culture of Death.

We’re dealing with a man who believes that Enlightenment notions of universal rights and the primacy of reason helped ruin the perfect Christian civilization of 12th-century Europe, but it’s been something of a subtext to our brutal, years-long mockery of Mark that we kind of like him personally, and that we suspect he’s capable of a higher moral calculus than, for instance, unnh, or muuuh. Watch the gears turning here, for instance:

This is an important thing to keep in mind, because at bottom the issue of torture is a life issue, and thus intrinsic to the whole debate on whether or not human beings have an inherent dignity which must be respected at all times, no matter what the particular human being has done.
If we have an inherent dignity then we can’t torture – but we also can’t kill the unborn or, indeed, allow such things as the degradation of pornography to continue unabated (side note: when you start getting into Catholic teaching, dear readers, you’re going to get a lot of things like this: “narrowly focused” is not something which applies to Catholic teaching…the Church isn’t universal for nothin’, ya know?).

See, by invoking Enlightenment concepts like inherent human dignity, he’s on the verge of something interesting. It’ll all end in ruin and tears soon enough (SPOILER ALERT: Ad exstirpanda), but let’s leave things on an up cadence as we finish Part I of our inquisition and look forward to Part II, the one that portends to be smarter and with more citations (not to mention even more nippingly funny in a playfully ornate Irish style). Here’s a sprightly cadence now:

Can Obama Win the White Vote?
June 30th, 2008 at 01:23am Mark Noonan

[…]

Right now, the only reason Obama has a shot is because President Bush and the GOP are so very unpopular – if President Bush’s approval rating were even 45% right now, this election would be in the bag for McCain; but its not, so Obama is ahead and still has to be considered the inside favorite to win in November…

And imagine how close it would be if Bush had a 50% approval rating. Or what about 55 or even 65 per cent? In fact, imagine if all of Bush’s policies had been successful, so that McCain could promise to continue every one of them. Imagine how the election would be in the bag if… If… Hmm-mm, did you ever hear of a wish sammich?

Above: The Chips – ‘Rubber Biscuit’ (2:09)

¹ Not as shown, but es verdad.