Sadly, No!

I hereby dedicate this thread to coming up with honest campaign slogans that the Democratic party could actually use if they wanted to appeal to the “has actually been paying attention for the last decade” voting contingent. For example:

“Democrats: We’re marginally less likely to march the whole country down the slow road to actual fascism.”

“Vote Democratic! We’ll probably kill fewer brown people than the other guys. Maybe.”

“Democrats – for when your biggest hope for government is that they won’t use your tax dollars to violate the Nuremberg laws, the Geneva Conventions, and your own damn Constitution.”

“Isn’t it time you voted for change? Of course not! What are you, high?!? Vote Democratic this fall.”

“Democrats! Because the invertebrate community deserves representation, too.”

“If you believe democracy works, raise your hand. Now, get in the line for the exit visas to Canada. The rest of you, vote Democratic!”

Add your own in the comments.

Buddy, look, you’re totally over-thinking things.

I didn’t vote for Obama because I actually believe that he’s going to wave his magical “change” wand and suddenly make all the ugliness of the past seven years go away. I voted for him because, after some careful consideration, I concluded that he is the least likely of all the major presidential candidates to do something horrifically shitty while in office.

Yes, friends, I am that cynical. And memo to Obama: you don’t want me endorsing you in public, dude. I don’t exactly resonate with the audacity of hope.

I had been hesitant to support Barrack Obama, but now that I know he condones violent revolution in the service of a proletarian dictatorship, sign me the fuck up.

Now if only those rumors about him being a stealth Muslim candidate were true, I’d have my dream man. Nothin’ says lovin’ like atheistic Sharia Law, baby!

(Via John and Thers.)

Also, Roy points us to this astonishing piece from DoughBob LoadPants:

As I discuss at length in the book, totalitarianism was for Mussolini a way of uniting businesses, classes, regions, religions, institutions and people from “all walks of life” — in Obama’s words — in a common cause for the common good.

In other words, asking people to look beyond racial, religious and class differences is now the most fascist thing a politician can do.

Get outta here, ya maniac!

Jonah “Le Load du Pantalon” Goldberg* writes:

Not Quite Just In [Jonah Goldberg]

From the great minds think alike dept.

Cal Thomas opens his column today: “This just in: Ronald Reagan is dead and he’s not coming back.”

Here’s how I opened mine, back in October: “Ronald Reagan is dead, and he’s not coming back.”

And here’s how Philip V. Brennan (!) opened the fourth paragraph of his Newsmax column in May 2007:

Ronald Reagan is dead. He is not coming back[.]

So Jonah can claim “credit” for moving his insight from the fourth to the first paragraph. Well done, Monsieur!

Some internet dude giving another perspective in 2004:

The bastard’s dead and gone and not coming back[.].

(* Via Roy).

Y’all know that I don’t often use the Sadly wire for personal stuff (barring the annual Christmas in the City charity post), but I’m looking for some work doing Photoshop and/or writing and editing, either in the Boston area or via Teh Internet, full- or part-time.

Long story short, I’m getting married in June, and while a life of itinerancy has suited me fine up until now, life-changes are in store (and weddings are frickin’ expensive). As a useful person in many regards, I’m looking to get a bit more use out of myself.

Besides graphics like these, I also do the ordinary, technical kind; and my c.v. as a writer and editor is actually a lot more decent than you’d suppose.

Plus: Any angelic soul who can help in lining up a gig will get a Photoshop of him- or herself with the wingnut of his or her choice (possibly including Pam Atlas, Ben Shapiro, or even Warner Todd “Attend the Tale of Warner Todd” Huston), in any compromising or notionally innocent position desired — as in: supercustom-to-order.

Above: Warner Todd Huston

Um, yeesh. Actually, come to think about it, you can have something else instead, if you want.

[E = gavin(at)sadlyno(dot)com]

* Cf.

Above: Win Ben Stein’s Dignity

---

Here’s the tagline at the top of the blog for Ben Stein’s forthcoming film, ‘Expelled’:

“It’s (EXPELLED) going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant –– which means they’re going to draw in about 90% of the American market.”

-Atheist blogger and fabulist PZ Myers, on a film he has not yet seen.

What a jerk Myers is, right?

Only there’s one little thing that Stein & Co. leave out: Myers may not have seen the film … but he’s in the film. He was interviewed by director Mark Mathis, under false pretenses, for a documentary that Mathis told him was called ‘Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion’.

‘Expelled’? How about ‘Chutzpah’?

Gavin adds: This must be an informative film, because the following claim can only be news to a great many people:

We’ll take Lincoln Day over Darwin Day…any day.

Until the late 1980’s when the generic “President’s Day” became the official holiday that subsumed them, America used to celebrate the birthdays of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

As a result, “Darwin Day” has now supplanted Lincoln’s Birthday in the popular imagination; both men were born on February 12, 1809.

Whilst preparing for the annual Darwin Day white sales, we hasten to add that “Adolf Hitler Day” threatens to replace “Carmen Electra Day” in the popular imagination (both were born on April 20).

The title of Charles Darwin’s book is not “The Origin of The Species.” The full title seems shocking: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.”[*] That last half of the title, often overlooked, sounds like it could come straight out of a Ku Klux Klan manual – which is precisely why Big Science rarely quotes the full title (even though Darwin was not referring specifically to “man” in his use of the words “favoured races.”). Big Science is uncomfortable with even the suggestion that evolutionary theory might favor politically incorrect thinking.

Additionally, the title of Charles Darwin’s book is not “The Descent of The Man,” but “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex.” That shocking last half of the title, often overlooked, sounds like it could have come straight out of a spicy late-’60s comedy movie, perhaps featuring Elliott Gould and Julie Christie (even though Darwin was not referring specifically to “making whoopie” in his use of the word “sex”). This is why Big Science rarely quotes the full title, often referring to the book, cryptically, as “ibid.”

* Since 1872, when the book’s sixth edition was published, its title has in fact been The Origin of Species, with no colon or anything else appended to it.

Newsflash: Cable TV Filled With Jerks

• What really upsets me about the rude, sexist, yammering, insipid, vain, clownish, fraudulent hypocrites who appear on cable TV news is that I’m no longer one of them.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

And as TBogg noted a while back, I think this clip best exemplifies Michelle’s completely professional approach to responsible television journalism:

So I started watching Dexter tonight. For those who don’t know, it’s a really good show about a serial killer who has a moral code to only kill evil people.

This made me curious about the typical serial killer psychological profile, so I decided to enter Ted Bundy into Wikipedia. This is what I found (my emphasis):

After his discovery, Bundy became a more focused and dominant person. In 1968, he managed the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller’s Presidential campaign and attended the 1968 Republican convention in Miami as a Rockefeller supporter. […]

Bundy graduated in 1972 from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology. Soon afterward, he again went to work for the state Republican Party, which included a close relationship with Gov. Daniel J. Evans. During the campaign, Bundy followed Evans’ Democratic opponent around the state, tape recording his speeches and reporting back to Evans personally. A minor scandal later followed when the Democrats found out about Bundy, who had been posing as a college student.

Dear George Soros:

Please, please, please hook me up with a book deal so I can write a 500-page masterwork showing how all Republicans are really serial killers. I swear to God it’ll be better-researched than Jonah’s crappy book. Hell, just by using Wikipedia, I’ve already drawn upon more credible sources.

Wouldn’t you have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meetings for ‘Expelled’?

INT. PRODUCER’S OFFICE

The DIRECTOR and the WRITER are shown in. The PRODUCER motions for them to be seated.

PRODUCER: Hi guys. Coffee? Mineral water? Something else?

DIRECTOR: Coffee would be nice.

WRITER: Coffee. Thank you.

PRODUCER (buzzing intercom): Sasha, be a doll and bring us two cups of coffee … cream and sugar?

DIRECTOR: Yes, please.

WRITER: Just a splash of soy, please.

PRODUCER: Cream and sugar in one, splash of soy in the other. Thanks, babe. Okay, fellas, what have you got for me?

DIRECTOR: Okay, it’s a comedy …

WRITER: About Intelligent Design.

PRODUCER: But you repeat yourself.

Awkward silence.

PRODUCER (buzzing intercom): Sash, hold those coffees until further notice.

Awkward silence.

DIRECTOR: We open with Ben Stein dressed as a little schoolboy …

PRODUCER: Get the fuck out of my office.

EXT. STREET OUTSIDE PRODUCER’S OFFICE

DIRECTOR: We could always self-finance.

WRITER: Indeed, this is central to my point.

Hanxxors: Moxie in comments.

And neither is Michelle Malkin, commenting on something that somebody said about something, somewhere:

So, Britain takes a step away from self-immolation. Perhaps too little, too late–but as least an encouraging sign that not they’re not all ready to submit completely. Not just yet, anyway …

Like Michelle, I am all for having massive freak-outs whenever and wherever Muslims are recognized as existing or having concerns. Nor am I unwilling to beat a strategic retreat from a Race War battleground country when it becomes clear that the Mullahs have gained the upper hand. But I must agree with Michelle that Britain is just not there yet, unlike countries like France, Sweden and Iceland, which are quite simply Caliphates as far as I’m concerned.

That said, I’m sympathetic to Judeo-Christians who draw a sharper line than I do on these matters. Current statistics put the U.K.’s Muslims at 2.7 percent of the overall population. That’s a nudge or three under the ‘magic number’ of 3 percent that I generally look to before declaring a country a lost cause to the Musselman hordes.

Still, I have heard compelling arguments from 2.5-percenters who urge me to move my threshold downward … and I remain willing to be convinced, as I’m sure does Michelle.