‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
*Yeah, I know the column is really titled “A Matchup Starts to Take Shape,” but “It Could Be McCain vs. Obama” is how it was billed on WaPo’s front page and it suits the shorter’s comedic purposes better.
It seems that eventually politics gravitates towards the liberal side of the aisle. I think it’s because in our society there are so many rewards for thinking like a Democrat–mainly because of the media–and coming up with liberal solutions to problems, and so few rewards for being in the conservative camp.
Nope, there are no rewards for being in the conservative camp. None at all. Really, what could be less lucrative than being a conservative?
Above: Self-representation of The Anchoress
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
Carey “I love you Marie Antoinette” Roberts hears that the American Heart Association is organizing a National Wear Red Day whose goal, according to the AHA, is this:
By wearing red and making a donation, you’ll help the American Heart Association support ongoing research and education about women and heart disease.
Which, if you’re Carey, prompts you to pose the following questions:
1. Why does the Heart Association want to deprive aging women of the main source of their financial support?
2. Why does the AHA want to send more elderly women to nursing homes?
So there you have it. Want more? Wondering, where’s the beef loony? On your marks:
Ladies, when was the last time you visited a nursing home? Did you wonder why nearly all the residents were women? The reason is simple — men meet their maker 5 years sooner than the fairer sex.
Set:
A few years ago Dr. Verbrugge did a study on elderly women[.]
GO!
She found that compared to their married counterparts, single elderly women are four times more likely to end up in a nursing home. Which means after your husband dies of heart disease, you are four times more likely to be removed from your home and taken to an institutional setting[.]
Yes, if you’re a single elderly woman whose husband dies of heart disease, you’re gonna end up in a nursing home.
It seems we’ve lured Andrew Longman over here after we ridiculed his lunatic post in Wingnut Daily on CFL bulbs. And he dropped by not once, but twice.
In our original post we said that Andrew Longman, the author of the Wingnut Daily piece, had also invented a system to use cell phones to detect nuclear bombs. Several days later we got an email from someone named Andrew Longman who said that he is the inventor of the cell phone system, and that he is not the author of the Wingnut Daily article. That emailer then asked us to remove the entire post to avoid the confusion. Instead, we deleted references to the cell phone invention, since if indeed this inventor was a different Andrew Longman, it’s easy to understand his not wanting to be associated with the Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman. For reasons that will become obvious below, we’ve returned our reference to the cell phone system to the original post.
Not long afterwards, an “Andrew L” posts a long, and ridiculous, reply in the comments section to the CFL bulb post. The Andrew L in the comments refers to the Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman in the third person and purports to be someone else defending Andrew Longman’s thesis. Yet “Andrew L” adopts many of the same arguments that the Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman made, including the bit about the feminine emotional thinking of squishy liberals and the manly logical thinking of real scientists. That is suspicious, of course, but not conclusive.
Gavin adds:
Above: Clif starts walking away, then turns around again
Except for one thing.
Both the email and the comment originated from the same Purdue University IP address. And Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman has posted a bio which says that he has two degrees from . . . you guessed it . . . Purdue.
Now, it is, after all, remotely possible that there are three different Andrew Longmans at Purdue (the inventor, the commenter, and the author) and that they all just happen to be using the same IP address. But if the inventor Andrew Longman isn’t the Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman, then why did the inventor want us to delete the entire post and not just the reference to his invention? And if commenter Andrew L and Wingnut Daily Andrew Longman are different folks at Purdue, there seems to be no reason why the commenter would feel compelled to post such a long comment defending a post by the, er, “other” Longman. Looks like we have a little Fumento-esque sock puppetry from Mr. Longman, who apparently is unaware that we can figure out his IP address. So let’s have some fun with Andrew Longman’s sock puppetry shall we?
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
Gavin adds: You know, life’s short, and I haven’t been able to grasp what he’s trying to accomplish here without paying that most precious of tithes (i.e. attention), but the argument seems to be like this: If you take the highest estimates of Hezbollah fighters killed, and pair them with the lowest estimates of civilian casualties, you end up with only about half, and not exactly ‘most’ of the casualties being civilians. …In direct contradiction to an AFP wire story that clearly says ‘most.’ If I got that right, he’s even more loop-the-loopy than we suspected.
Brad responds: Yes, that’s exactly his point. Now you see why I try to avoid reading him whenever possible. I don’t know how you have strength to do this on a regular basis.
Gavin explains: I keep trying to pick up more constructive hobbies, like that bottle cap collection I was nurturing for awhile — and I’m talking two (count-’em, two) VG++ Figgy Fizz caps. But really, nothing seems to stick.
UPDATE: Oh man, this old interview with Sr. Yanqui in the Washington Post is too hilarious to pass up:
What one issue do you think readers should be most concerned about, and what’s your position on that issue?
The most pressing issue for the world right now should be Iran’s apparent goal of acquiring nuclear warheads. I sincerely hope that diplomatic pressure brought to bear against the Iranian regime will work, but at this present time, that does not appear to be in the cards. Iran appears intent on triggering a war. Whether it is a nuclear war or not depends on how fast we act.
I think he left something out of there. He should have said, “Iran appears intent on triggering a war that I think the United States should launch NOW, NOW, NOW!!!”
Y’know, there are days when I wish the Republicans would heed Michelle Malkin’s advice, if only to ensure a resounding and humiliating defeat in the 2008 elections. Michelle seems to think the GOP can take back Congress and hold onto the White House by telling voters to go eff themselves. Sure, waving a giant middle finger at your own citizens is a rather novel and untested way of getting them to vote for you, but Michelle really seems to think there’s a large constituency of Americans out there who like it when their government tells them to go screw. Check this out:
Who says bipartisanship is dead? From President Bush to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, to Mitt Romney and John McCain, virtually everyone in Washington agrees: The government must Do Something to stop home foreclosures across the country. These leaders agree on the total presumption of homeowner innocence. The borrower-as-victim and lender-as-predator storylines are etched in stone. Can’t let reality get in the way of election-year pander-monium.
Special guests at the State of the Union address are usually extraordinary heroes, entrepreneurs or citizens who’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. On Monday night, one of those guests was an Indiana woman whose claim to fame is that she called a 1-800 number and was assisted by the “Hope Now Alliance,” a group Bush convened, which, according to him, “is helping many struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure.”
Subprime victims are the new heroes. Welcome to the politics of foreclosure.
This is terrific stuff, Republicans. I encourage you to base your entire 2008 campaign on lustily attacking people who have lost their homes. And heck, if you guys started publicly condemning the families of 12-year-old car-crash victims, you’d have the election wrapped up by May! Go, GOP! Follow Michelle’s playbook!
If you want to know how well Bush did with something involving coordinated movement, speech, human metabolic processes, or any of his other challenges, go check Assrocket — that’s what I always say.
Mr. John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog (and the Claremont Institute) places his fingers ponderingly on his chin, nips his pen cap between his teeth, and emits wisdom:
State of the Union, Origins of the Surge
I missed President Bush’s State of the Union speech tonight; we tuned in just in time to see Chuck Schumer standing and applauding.
This is like if you ran into Christopher Hitchens on the street, and Hitchens was like, “I forgot to have a drink this afternoon, but I nipped into a bar just in time for the 10-cent Buffalo wings.” You’re inclined to believe him just because it’s so slappingly unlikely. Goebbels knew all about this human tendency. Regardless, I genuinely think we’re learning something here.
By then the speech was about over, but even the last five minutes were a useful reminder of the President’s power, even in the last year of his administration.
I.e., Bush said various things, and audience members, at times, stood up and applauded as though they knew they were being watched and judged on national television by voters and tee-vee pundits — proving that unlike Obama and Hillary, Bush is in fact president, as opposed to not-president. He is, as a pure fact-on-the-ground, special in that way. Proving his specialness, et seq.
We didn’t live blog the speech tonight, but a number of our readers did, here. Their running commentary (including some by a handful of liberals) gives a pretty good sense of the evening.
I feel a bit guilty, by the way, because a number of referrals tonight came from Google searches on “live blog the state of the union.” I trust that those Googlers figured out they had linked to another year’s speech.
Unfair, because what about all those Googlers searching for ‘dude shooting a rocket out of his ass?’ Also, no quotes means false-positive results on possible Powerline phrases, “I live in a hell of my own making,” “2004 blog of the year!” “the state of my penis is quite more detumescent these days than before, actually,” “beauty contests such as the Miss America pageant are the pinnacle of the lively arts, circa 2008 AD,” and “I’m hip to the popular music: Like, oh, what’s that song the kids were listening to awhile ago? The telegram force and ready, the fine line drawing? The union of the snake, it’s on the climb?”
If you’re looking for an alternative to SOTU commentary, check out Fred Barnes’ cover story in this week’s Weekly Standard: “How Bush Decided on the Surge.” It’s a riveting account of what was probably the most important decision of Bush’s eight years. Here is the conclusion:
Verdict: Bush flopped like a floppy flopping-thing, and was not Hindy’s champion and personal Stretch Armstrong toy last night. There was teeth-gritting and muttering, soul-searching, even. Shallow, shallow soul-searching of the papery-thin Powerline kind.
The 20-minute speech on January 10, 2007, was not Bush’s most eloquent. And it wasn’t greeted with applause. Democrats condemned the surge and Republicans were mostly silent. Polls showing strong public opposition to the war in Iraq were unaffected.
But the president, as best I could tell, wasn’t looking for affirmation. He was focused solely on victory in Iraq. The surge may achieve that. And if it does, Bush’s decision to spurn public opinion and the pressure of politics and intensify the war in Iraq will surely be regarded as the greatest of his presidency.
It’s fascinating stuff; check it out.
Translation: Bush sucks and everyone, in some measure, knows it. His hat is hung on a bendy-straw. This, since other casuistries are unavailable, must certainly be Bush’s very strength: Sucking. Plus, of course, any program or idea that isn’t currently destroyed, on fire, or leaking toxic spew. E.g., the surge.
A fitting end for their kind — if their kind ever gave up, which they totally freaking don’t.
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
Lord, please save us from the Quiet Americans. They are entirely too loud.
UPDATE: Oh lord, the wanking — it never stops:
Both Matthew Yglesias and The Nation’s Ari Berman are appalled at two of the endorsements contained in our “TNR Primary;” those of liberal intellectual Paul Berman and law professor Alan Dershowitz, both of whom endorsed Hillary Clinton. […]
Yglesias, as per usual, doesn’t have anything to offer other than snide remarks, referring to “Paul ‘al-Qaeda is totalitarian so we should fight it by invading Iraq’ Berman” and “Alan ‘everyone who disagrees with me is an anti-Semite’ Dershowitz.” These penetrating insights from the namesake of the laughably titled, “Yglesias Award,” bestowed upon individuals “who actually criticize their own side, make enemies among political allies, and generally risk something for the sake of saying what they believe.” This is actually a fitting descriptor for men like John McCain, Paul Berman and Alan Dershowitz.
Heaven knows where the Left’s moral compass would turn if we didn’t have Alan Dershowitz around to tell us how we should embrace torture. Clearly, his is a profile in noble contrarian courage.
Stimulation-palooza: Why are we extending unemployment benefits?
‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.
