Sadly, No!

The Hugh Hewitt Show, spreading infectious crazy through the airwaves:

[Hugh Hewitt]: Now I made the opinion known today that I think the New Republic is anti-military, because pro-military magazines would not publish something like this, that its intention was not to entertain, but to characterize and inform people’s opinion about the military. And is that fair, in your eyes?

This is wonderfully batshit, too:

HH: Now I have a theory, and I’ll try it out on you, which is that the anti-war left is panicked, and the symptoms of that panic are showing up all over…the attack on General Petraeus for appearing on my show, the defense of the New Republic for rushing this into print, the defense of the private who wrote it, even if it’s not fabricated, but more so if it is, and the Senate, Harry Reid blocking border security last night, coming back and allowing border security this morning, I think they’re acting as though they realize the surge is working, and they’re way out on a limb which is about to crack, Mark Steyn.

And this is just precious:

HH: Victor Davis Hanson often comes on and reminds people about the summer of 1864. Prior to that, Lincoln was in terrible shape, politically. The war was stalemated. He found a commander and turned it around quickly. Do you think we might be in that same situation a year from now?

MS: Well, I think this is slightly different in that when you’re fighting the Civil War, you know, you’re up against an enemy that are, you know, in that case, your fellow Americans. And you kind of more or less know what the rules are. A lot of the problems we’ve had in Iraq, and in this broader struggle is that faced with an enemy that is depraved, we sometimes recoil from ruthlessness.

I can remember the days when it was music that inspired headbanging.

Ever wonder how those ‘Republicans-are-tough-guys’ memes get spread? You know, the ones that have Digby, Glenzilla and the folks at Media Matters pulling their hair out on a daily basis?

Sometimes, it’s not so difficult to figure out. Faux tough-guy Fred Thompson, for example, has been the beneficiary of a running series of Chuck Norris-type jokes, called ‘The Fred Thompson Facts,’ which has trickled up from the ooze of the wingnutosphere, metastasized in the neocon press and finally found purchase with mainstream GOP leg-humpers like Chris Matthews and the editors of the New Republic.

Produced daily by I.M.A.O., that shameless hussy of a blog which stole Jonah’s heart from us, the ‘Fred Thompson Facts’ have become a classic runaway meme, helping a ‘Hey! It’s That Guy!’-class actor transform himself into the toughest of the ruff-tuff cream puffs.

Frame, set, match: Wingnuts. . .right? Well, not so fast.

Far be it from us to mess with perfection (and really, that’s probably the least of our worries here), but we think I.M.A.O.’s ‘Fred Thompson Facts’ could use just a teensy, tinsy amount of tweaking.

(Not that we don’t have a begrudging sort of respect for the I.M.A.O.s of the world. After all, it’s sort of mulishly courageous to tackle humor as they do, from the opposite end of what is actually funny. Very few humorists can find comedy in the violent victimization of the marginalized by the overclass, largely because there isn’t any. But points to I.M.A.O. for trying. And even if their output isn’t — how shall we put it? — ‘funny in the slightest,’ at the very least it makes for a nice sort of homage to the Golden Age of Beer Hall comedy. . .a kind of living monument to the jackbooted stylings of those brownshirted stand-ups who, once upon a time, quite literally ‘killed’ at venues across Europe.)

So. Our new project, ‘Fixing the Fred Thompson Facts’, begins below, with a few that require our sprightly touch. After which we will take them one at a time, fixing each new ‘Fred Thompson Fact’ as it is produced by I.M.A.O., until they quit doing them out of shame, or Fred gets elected president, whichever comes first.

Fred Thompson Fact: Fred Thompson has on multiple occasions pronounced “nuclear” correctly.

Fixed Fred Thompson Fact: Fred Thompson has put on makeup on multiple occasions and done a line-reading of “nuclear” correctly.

FTF: Fred Thompson has blasted more people in the face with a shotgun than even Dick Cheney.

FFTF: Fred Thompson is not a fan of Maybelline products. . .but then, not everyone has the naturally plump eyelashes of Fred Thompson!

FTF: The reason Fred Thompson didn’t want to stay in the Senate for long is because all the extra scrutiny kept him from doing his favorite hobby: Prowling the streets at night killing drug dealers.

FFTF: ‘OMG! LETS TTLLY GO GT MAKOVRS!’ is a typical text by Fred Thompson to his BFF after a hard day of prancing about on a Hollywood set pretending to be tough.

FTF: Every night before going to sleep, Osama bin Laden checks under his bed for Fred Thompson.

FFTF: Fred Thompson recommends La Roche Posay Rosaliac Gelee Micellar Make-up Removal Gel for older men who struggle with pore clogging, followed by a light application of Rosaliac Anti-Redness Moisturizer. But be careful! warns Fred. Rinsing with soft water may actually be counterproductive. . .better to use a splash of one of the better bottled mineral waters available!

FTF: Fred Thompson took over what was Al Gore’s Senate seat, thereby dramatically reducing the Senate’s carbon footprint. Fred Thompson then created carbon offset offsets by wastefully burning hippies.

FFTF: Fred Thompson will be the first to say that not all cosmetic solutions have to cost an arm and a leg. . .just a few inches of belly flab! That’s right, Fred’s first choice in girdles is the relatively inexpensive High-Waist Control Nylon Panty Girdle from Emmuelle. And the best part? It’s also available in Spandex!

FTF: Fred Thompson once ended a filibuster by ripping out a Senator’s heart and showing it to him before he died.

FFTF: Fred Thompson once pretended so hard on a Hollywood set that he went through at least a fifth of a Cover Girl Honey Brown 515 eyebrow pencil during mid-scene touch-ups.

FTF: All your base are belong to Fred Thompson!

FFTF: All your base and eyeliner and lip gloss are belong to Fred Thompson!

Remember the David Kane paper we mentioned that supposedly refuted the Lancet study? The one that Malkin published and did that little dance about, and that Glenn Reynolds linked to, and so forth?

If you hit control-F9 on any of our computers, it pops up a list of phrases meaning ‘Malkin has egg on her face.’ F-9 is one of those keys with a shiny center and a dirty ring around the outside, like ‘S’ or ‘R’ or F-12 (which sends a bot to Bartleby.com and pops up title puns on Mark Noonan’s name). It saves us time that can be spent on life’s worthy pursuits, such as gourmet cooking, Frisbee-catch at the dog park, and GTA: Scarface, not to mention making fun of Glenn Reynolds.

Over at Crooked Timber, Daniel Davies lacks our technical resources and has had to respond to the Kane paper by hand.

Shorter Daniel Davies

Alice in Wonderland and the Lancet study

Above: Normally quite civil

• Holy God, I have had it with this cargo-cult nonsense. Among other problems, this extremely bad paper literally assumes a negative Fallujah where everyone is immortal and the dead can come back to life.

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

In comments there, we’re treated to the spectacle of Malkin’s anointed statistical debunker, one Shannon Love of the blog, Chicago Boyz, displaying that he’s bone ignorant of any difference between the notion of ‘a drop in the rate’ (e.g., of deaths) and that of ‘a negative rate’ (e.g., of deaths), and then pratfalling into the argument that people who are dead can totally come back to life in a lot of different ways without actually, you know, so-called “returning” from the dead:

You appear to be arguing that the failure to observe mass resurrection in Iraq invalidates the [Lancet] study

No, I am arguing that study as outlined in the paper could have detected whether the mortality rate improved, stayed the same or worsened. If the study could not do this, then it could never detect whether mortality had improved.

If you think real hard, I am sure you can think of way that people come to be alive beyond return from the dead. Les Robert et al were in fact smart enough to structure their study to capture this somewhat less than mystical effect.
Posted by Shannon Love · July 27th, 2007 at 11:49 pm

The next commenter suggests that it might be zombies, although we’re not well-versed in stats and haven’t read Les Roberts‘s epidemiological work on zombie infestation.

But see, here’s what we were saying before. Ever on cue, Michael Fumento dons his wicker headphones:

Above: The Basil Fawlty of right-wing junk science

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This week on What’s Your Problem?, a.k.a. ‘The Boringest 10 Minutes On Teh Intertubes’, we learn once again that watching the video file download is infinitely more entertaining then witnessing the Jonah and Peter Show itself.

In Thursday’s episode, Doughbob and the Gap-Toothed One hold forth on the state of political comedy, which is sort of like having Ace O’ Spades and Ben Shapiro share their thoughts on the collection of a pap smear. Unsurprisingly, the Pantload plays the role of the one-eyed man in this gathering of the comedically blind. After all, he has shown some small awareness of humor’s ‘Rule of Three’, where the third item is invariably ‘the French’.

And so, after inexplicably declaring that “humor right now, still is, in many respects, the way we live our social lives, more of an asset for conservatives,” Jonah trumpets his own prowess at teh funny, going so far as to offer this word of caution to struggling comedy D-lister Jon Stewart:

“I think Stewart can get into trouble, and I’ve seen little bits of this already, where he tries too hard to make the leftwing bloggers happy. Because once it seems like he’s got a political agenda rather than a humor agenda, he’s going to lose a lot of the sort of sympathetic audience that disagrees with him on politics but just thinks he’s, you know, equal opportunity about things.”

To which Beinart retorts, quite effectively: “But isn’t his audience overwhelmingly liberal?”

That shuts Jonah up for three seconds, during which time he tries to process the concept of demographics. And with the load completely taken out of his enormous pants, he’s forced to begin squeezing out a brand new doughy concoction.

But all this happens well past the halfway mark of Jonah and Peter’s project to suck all that is funny out of life, so let’s look at an earlier proclamation by the man who has been by far the most consistent subject of ridicule by lefty bloggers over the past five years:

“I think some of the funniest humor blogs are on the right. I don’t know, maybe there are a lot of funny humor blogs on the left, I just don’t know about them. … Like Iowa Hawk is very funny, and there’s a blog called I.M.A.O., which is short for ‘In My Asinine Opinion’, and James Lileks, I think is hilarious …”

Well, that just hurts. He doesn’t even know we exist! [Gavin adds: Oh, I think he just ‘can’t hear’ us, what with the fingers in the ears and the feckless braying of Yellow Submarine, and so forth.] And God knows what Tbogg and Roy Edroso must be thinking … not to mention The Editors, Norbizness, World O’ Crap and Jesus’ General. Pinko Punko is on suicide watch.

[Comic pic heisted from Malkin(s)watch]]

Note: The following quotes are all from today, July 28th., 2007, and are cited verbatim and in sequence.

Above: Top right-blogger Charles Johnson

Newsweek Shills for Radical Islam (Again)

Newsweek has become the public relations arm for radical Islam.

Arming Our Enemies

[…]

The Saudis are infiltrating our educational system.

Kos and MoveOn Harass Fox News Advertisers

Retaliating against Bill O’Reilly for criticizing their hate speech and anti-Americanism, far left group MoveOn.org and hate site Daily Kos are joining forces in a thuggish effort to harass and pressure advertisers into dropping Fox News.

Outrage of the Week: Arrested for Desecrating a Koran

[…]

It’s now officially a mindcrime in the United States to violate Islamic law.

Robots are eating my car keys.

Partisans Gone Wild
By Anne-Marie Slaughter

Above: Dean of Princeton’s Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

• Let me tell you about my imaginary fairytale gumdrop kingdom.

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

Of all the great things about your typical Wankers of the Day® is that they always end up providing material for lots of people. So while Atrios had all sorts of good reasons for linking to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s op-ed (!!!) in the Washington Post, and Jim Henley wisely added his thoughts later, we were struck by this passage in Slaughter’s piece:

In the blogosphere, pillorying Hillary Clinton is a full-time sport. Her slightest remark, such as a recent assertion that the country needs a female president because there is so much cleaning up to do, elicited this sort of wisdom: “Hillary isn’t actually a woman, she’s a cyborg, programmed by Bill, to be a ruthless political machine.”

Ah, what one finds in the blogosphere… We’re always curious about unattributed quotes, so we fired up the old Google, which produced this link, except that the link to the post in question is dead (as we write this post). So we have to rely on the old Google cache to figure who said that:

1. Marti Kennedy Says:
June 30th, 2007 at 3:57 pm

Okay, she _really_ said this??? Well, this just confirms my sneaking suspicion…

Hillary isn’t actually a woman, she’s a cyborg, programmed by Bill, to be a ruthless political machine. “Better elect a woman, we’ve got some cleaning to do!” The gods help us. No woman in her right mind…oh, never mind.

You know Slaughter did her homework by quoting a comment, better yet, the only comment, to a blog post with a dead link. To make this even more spectacular, one should note that the blog in question (Donklephant) dates all the way back to the end of June, meaning that when Ann-Marie found said comment it was but a few days old. In addition to providing evidence for the fact that she uses the same search engine employed by the beloved Howie Kurtz. Yet she found it, managed to spot a comment which is obviously a joke (hello?!?) and decided to save it so she could pass it off as evidence of excessive partisanship. (Where’s my Partisol?!?) [RCP points out in comments that Donklephant is, in fact, old — or at least older. We’d based our age assessment on this page].

Would you be surprised to find out that Donklephant describes itself in the following manner:

Tired of the rhetoric, bomb-throwing and partisan hackery? Here we offer a respectful, honest forum for people who want to have a conversation about politics, the world and beyond.

Great — another ode to bipartisanshipt.

Note to Ann-Marie “Slaughter’s my name, and slaughter’s my game!” Slaughter: When you decide to call John Negroponte one of your “seasoned moderates,” our only (partisan) response is pretty much go fuck yourself.

Above, Steyn under the influence of Heineken and amyl nitrate:
“Chief Ho-mo Ind-i-an! Hunkpapa! Little Bighorn! It is to larf!!”

‘The internal contradictions of multiculturalism’

• Behold the self-serving inconsistency of Charles Merrill (a gay atheist artist who regularly blasphemes monotheist religions) saying that he admires faggy polygamist Native American cultures because of their tolerance of faggotry! What a faggy fag-lover who loves fag-loving fags!!

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

Plus: Nice try. Steyn struggles with his own inconsistencies. Notably for this piece, how does he degrade Native American religions and homosexuality, defend monotheism (and its homophobia), yet remain the numero uno Islamophobe of world wingnuttia? How indeed: by implying that Islam alone among the “Abrahamic” religions has ever endorsed polygamy. Oooo-kay. On the other hand, Steyn exhibits amazing reticence in not calling Merrill a “ninny“.

PS: It’s worth noting that the hysterically homophobic Steyn is an expert on and huge fan of Broadway musicals.

PPS: Remember your neocon 101: Homosexuality saps morale, appeases Islamocommiefascists, has always formed an integral part of America’s fifth column.

Above: Lost on Jeopardy, baby

‘Rich Man, Boor Man’

• The real problem with the new Gilded Age is the startlingly bad manners of retail drones and waitresses.

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

She took my heart away:

Smoking mirrors . . . or a real firestorm?

She said, I’ve had it comin’ to me

But for the sake of argument, and to put a little testing water between the hideous sandwiched proposal of a third-world nation, let’s look at some of the downers associated with this type of so-called union.

But I wanted it that way

Our governing body can’t correctly decipher or enforce our own existing laws — much less take on the added burden of two more unsettled crime-laden countries.

I think that any love is good lovin’
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