Sadly, No!

Above: Cheats at ‘Risk’

Hey gang, Charles Krauthammer has some unsolicited advice for Democrats:

During our 1990s holiday from history, being a national-security amateur was not an issue. Between the 1991 death of the Soviet Union and the terror attacks of 2001, foreign policy played almost no part in our presidential campaigns. But post-9/11, as during the Cold War, the country demands a serious commander in chief. It is hard to imagine that with all the electoral tides running in their favor, the Democrats would risk it all by nominating a novice for a wartime presidency.

It is hard to imagine that, with all the electoral tides running in their favor, any Democrats would consider foreign policy or campaign advice from someone as serious as Charles Krauthammer.

Michelle Malkin is pretty het up over Glennzilla’s examination of her hate-filled comments sections on MichelleMalkin.com and HotAir.com.

“But…but…but… People I regularly call ‘unhinged treasonous moonbats’ are mean to me! Waaahhh! Ping-pong balls!”

We have to admit she’s got us on the ping-pong ball thing, because it’s stupid, racist, not funny and stupid. But of course, by “us” we mean a couple of random jackasses in various comment threads and that one guy on Wonkette.

We also find it astonishing that a woman who writes something like this:

Update: Looks like this is Scott Thomas’s MySpace page. Yes, his theme music is the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killers.” The first line of the song: “I can’t seem to face up to the facts…”

…Doesn’t anticipate being ridiculed on a regular basis. (Additions to the Scott Thomas saga we anticipate in the near future: Update: Allah is hot on the trail of a Scott Thomas ‘slam book’ reportedly compiled while he was in the seventh grade … apparently while Thomas may have ‘a killer butt’, he is without a doubt ‘a total man-slut’. Telling. Update: Ace reports that Thomas is a big drinker of Diet Dr. Pepper. At least nine empty cans were discovered in the recycling bin outside his house. Isn’t that drink usually associated with butch ‘Rosie O’Dimbulb’ types? Update: Milbloggers weigh in on the Diet Dr. Pepper angle. Apparently only ‘weak sister’ types drink it, they say.)

Meanwhile, Michelle’s comment thread moderator, Rick Moran, explains how they scrub comments the wingnut way over at her twin hate sites:

I read every comment made on the site and Michelle scans most of them as well. We are pretty ruthless in weeding out the vile, the threatening, the hateful remarks made by both right and left.

See, this is what I don’t get. Sites like this one (or Atrios or a dozen lefty blogs) don’t scrub comments, except in extremely rare circumstances (like when some jerk was posting Malkin’s home address in threads, fr’example). But over at Malkin’s sites, comments are apparently scrubbed all the time. It’s a difference in philosophy — they want to exert iron-fisted control over the message, we say, let the community police itself and let the transparent chips fall where they may. Much has been written about how this phenomenon neatly sums up the differences between an authoritarian mindset and a liberal one.

But the more granular point is, how can you compare hateful comments on a blog that claims to regularly scrub them (like Malkin’s or O’Reilly’s) to hateful comments on a blog that doesn’t (like DailyKos)? Especially when just as many show up on the former as on the latter? It’s like if a guy accusing another guy of being an alcoholic gets found the next day face-down drunk in the gutter, and when the second guy (who only has a couple of beers with dinner) points this out, the first guy is all, “I’m in AA! I am pretty ruthlesh in my dedication to shtaying shober! P-p-ping pong ballsh! Unhinged! Whereshafugginbloodymarysroundhereanywaysh?

Seriously, Michelle and Rick, if you’re scrubbing all the hateful comments out of your threads … shouldn’t it be really, really hard to find any hateful comments in your threads? Yet they’re everywhere! I mean, we’d hate to conclude that much of what is truly hateful on your guys’ sites is stuff that, in your severe misanthropy, you don’t find hateful at all, or cynically feel serves your political purposes.

Actually, we wouldn’t hate to conclude that. We concluded that at like, two ticks past Year Zero of the Intertubes*. You utterly disgusting cobagz.

* Which, incidentally, is the precise moment that the very first packet containing an appeal to the authority of Ludwig von Mises was switched over the proto-Arpanet.

July, 20th, 2007

What A Pullout Might Mean to the Market [Larry Kudlow]

Dan Dorfman wrote an excellent piece in today’s New York Sun on the bearish-market implications a quick U.S. pullout in Iraq might engender. (“Iraq Pullout Could Give Markets an Anxiety Attack”)

I’ll weigh in on this very important subject on tonight’s Kudlow & Company. As I recently wrote, U.S. and world stock markets are standing with President Bush. They have confidence in his wartime policies. The remarkable global stock market surge since 2003 is testimony to this and represents a stern rebuke to al Qaeda.

Today’s news:

AP
Stocks Plunge; Dow Falls More Than 300
Thursday July 26, 4:22 pm ET
By Joe Bel Bruno, AP Business Writer
Stocks Plunge on Lending Worries, Dow Industrials Plunge More Than 300 Points

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street suffered one of its worst losses of 2007 Thursday, leading a global stock market plunge as investors succumbed to months of worry about the mortgage and corporate lending markets. The Dow Jones industrials closed down more than 310 points after earlier skidding nearly 450.

Larry today:

The Pause that Refreshes [Larry Kudlow]

In the midst of this hurricane-strength gale force wind of stock market pessimism, permit me to offer a very basic, positive view of stocks.

Corporate profits are the mother’s milk of stocks and the economy. They are also the ultimate backstop and guarantor of the quality of credit.

Amidst this panicked obsession about market downgrades of corporate and housing debt, the fact is that with 50 percent of the S&P 500 companies reporting (as of the close of business last evening), market cap-weighted profits are up 15.3 percent.

[…]

The moral of the story is that intelligent investors should be shorting toxic bonds — whether they are corporate or mortgage backed — and buying valuable stocks as they correct lower. The dynamic U.S. economy is on solid ground as is much of the global economy. Goldilocks is alive and well, so long as Congress doesn’t muck it up.

As for corrections, they come and go. This one is the pause that refreshes.

Of course it is, because he hasn’t found a way to blame it on Democrats. Yet.

Above: Author of seminal 1981 jeremiad, “BILLY SQUIER:
TODAY’S SELF-ESTEEM YOUTH VOICE CHAMPION
DEMANDS HARD ROCK STROKING”

This reminiscence by Pastor Grant Swank about his time as a teacher at Regional Educational Alternative Learning school (sample quote: “It was real all right. More raw than real, however.”) displays many hallmarks of exemplary writing:

For instance, there was a meeting of staff with the assistant superintendent of schools. She was to talk to us about something psychological, that is, the psychology of this and that.

Good writers avoid jargon and other technical terms.

That subject matter really doesn’t matter, however. What did matter was that Ray, the director imported from Australia, introduced her with what he thought was a hardy-harhar chuckle intro. It had to do with masturbation. I can’t type out the exact detail in this article, but it had to do with masturbation.

Good writers sometimes employ repetition to humorous effect.

Read the rest of this entry »

1) WingNet accuses soldier/journalist of being an impostor.

2) WingNet proven wrong.

Above: TNR contributor Pvt. Scott Beauchamp

3) WingNet backfills, engages motorized goalposts, attacks with redoubled fury.

3.5) Developing: WingNet completely loses narrative; forms digital lynch mob; redefines success to mean utterly destroying the targeted person by any means available, short of leaving the safety of their heavily-farted computer chairs.

4) Upcoming: WingNet brags about triumphant victory over forces of anti-American calling-them-wrongness which are blatantly in league with the terrorists, enjoys brief period of tumescence, finds new victim.

Another week, another awesome video:

Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour from huffpost and Vimeo.

Just listen to that opening statement from Tom DeLay, peeps. He actually says that the Second Coming of Jesus is “what I live for and I hope it comes tomorrow.” He then says that “obviously we have to be connected to Israel to enjoy the second coming of Christ.” Consider that this man used to be majority leader of the House of Representatives and weep for our nation.

UPDATE: OMG. Lieberman is effing nuts. Can we please get a recall election up and running for this SOB?

We’ve been hearing ah-oogahs, boings, and sawing noises coming from Malkin’s place lately. Let’s see what it’s about.

Document drop: A new critique of the 2004 Lancet Iraq death toll study
By Michelle Malkin • July 25, 2007 11:01 AM

One of the most useful roles of the blogosphere is its service as an open-source intelligence-gathering medium. You can draw on the expertise of people around the world at the touch of a button. We saw this with typography experts during the Rathergate scandal; Photoshop experts during the Reutersgate debacle; and military experts during the Jesse Macbeth unmasking.

Oh, it’s that whole thing again. Indeed, let’s sum up their accomplishments of the past three years:

1) Having apparently been spoon-fed information by Republican campaign operatives, they announced that several documents obtained by CBS regarding George Bush’s military service were inauthentic — and have been bwaa-haa-haaing ever since, claiming this as proof that the mainstream media is hopelessly corrupt and obsolete, and that the right-blogosphere represents the future of journalism.

2) After showing that a photographer crudely added extra smoke to a Reuters photo of the bombing of Lebanon, and after Reuters summarily fired the guy, they whooped and yelled endlessly that the wire services are in league with Arab terrorists, that any photograph representing something they don’t like is potentially a conscious forgery perpetrated by enemies of America, and that the right-blogosphere represents the future of journalism.

Above: Slightly-More-Smokegate

3) Some sucker MC claimed to be an Iraq War vet when he really wasn’t, and told some hair-raising stories of atrocities, not only in several alternative-media videos, but also via a number of Kos diaries. Having unmasked him as a fraud, they integrated that fact seamlessly into their fulsome years-long victory dance that everyone is a liar except them, that everything is phony except stuff they agree with, and that, oh right, wait, now that you mention it, the right-blogosphere represents the future-uture!-uture! Of journimalism-alism!-alism!

Because when you have one fool trying to solve a problem, foolishness results. But get 10,000 idiots on the case, and somehow one of Rupert Sheldrake’s morphic-resonance fields comes zonking into the is-ness, radiating quantum smartrons.

…As, you know, their track record amply demonstrates, with these three monumental achievements towering out of the daily whooping wrongness and mortification of everything else they ever say, practically down to the level of words such as ‘and’ and ‘the.’

Now, it’s the statisticians and math geeks’ turn.

Yippee!
Read the rest of this entry »

Apparently, Jamil Hussein has struck again, supplying the Associated Press with a memo that contradicts Alberto Gonzales’ testimony before Congress regarding the March 10, 2004 ‘Gang of Eight’ briefing on the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Basically, the memo (signed by then-National Intelligence director John Negroponte) says that the briefing was about the TSP, as do briefing attendees Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), John Rockefeller (D-WV), then-senator Tom Daschle and then-deputy AG James Comey. On Monday, Gonzales told Congress that the briefing was about some other, heretofore unknown intelligence activity that, if known, would cause Glenn Greenwald’s eyes to bleed in a delicate pattern of 1’s and 0’s arranged in such a way as to form the HTML code for five years’ worth of 10,000-word blog posts.

Somebody is clearly lying. My money’s on the memo being correct, but before we break out our Ronco™ brand Junior Kerning Kits*, we’re going to need some damage control.

Above: “When the truth is out,
And you need some spin,
Who ya gonna call?
ASS-ROCKET!”

Leaking Against Gonzales
Posted by John at 09:05 PM

Okay, ewww. I really don’t want to know about “leaking against” Alberto Gonzales. But we do this out of duty, so carry on:
Read the rest of this entry »

There are some of you who believe that James Lileks, bane of Minnesota’ s least helpful Target clerks, is a gifted humorist and cultural commentator who only goes astray when he pops his head out of his ostrich hole and notices that there are people in the world who think differently than he does about the need to saturation-bomb the dark hordes of the East. This is a terribly short-sighted attitude. In fact, Lileks is capable of being wrong about all sorts of things: pop music, movies, children’s cartoons, fine dining, sports and recreation. I’m not sure if Jimbo has ever written a column about double-entry bookkeeping, but if he has, he was probably wrong about that too.

Above: “We must lock up the homeless! So says…THE LEADER!”

Today, he’s wrong about criminology. Of course, he’s so overprotective of the Gnat that he just can’t help being wrong, and it’s hard to fault a guy for being worried about his kid. Still, it’s fun to watch:

But this is nonsense, right? The fears of roaming predators are overstated. Not exactly. We’ve had two cases in towns of evil men trying to lure children into their cars, and I’m tempted to suggest that ought to draw mandatory life.

Wow! Two cases! And Jimbo’s hometown of Fuddles, MN, has a population of only three and a half million people! A 1,750,000:1 ratio of normal citizens to potential child-lurers is entirely unacceptable and certainly a good reason to propose mandatory life sentences to, uh, “evil men,” I guess. But wait, there’s more!

Read the rest of this entry »

Since we last checked in with him, Dafydd ab Hugh has certainly been a busy little badger. Let’s see what he’s been up to:

Executive Energy
Hatched* by Dafydd

One of the reasons I’m not entirely thrilled with the current bunch of presidential candidates… wait, a detour: Many animal-nouns have associated words for collections of that animal; for example, a gaggle of geese, an exhaltation of larks, a bay of hounds, a bale of turtles, and a murder of crows. Since most politicians are more or less barnyard animals, it makes sense that they have their own collection term. I propose “a corruption of politicians” and a “smarm of candidates.”

How utterly unsurprising that Dafydd is an expert on collective nouns for animals. Our suggestions: ‘a basement of wingnuts,’ ‘a chafe of furries,’ ‘a dodge of chickenhawks,’ ‘a virginity of Star Trek novelization enthusiasts,’ ‘a sammich of cod-Welsh ComicCon exhibitors’ (etc., etc., ibid., op. cit., write your own).

We live in dangerous times. I believe that our candidates need to focus like a laser beam on national security, but not just in the form of mass invasions of enemy countries …

OMG! Is Dafydd going soft on us?!?!?

… (though that is clearly one element that should never be taken off the table).

Whewww. For a second there, it seemed. . .whewww. So let’s review the Ab Hugh Doctrine:

1. Mass invasions of enemy countries
2. ?
3. Holodeck!

Actually, it turns out that the second step in the doctrine is “destroy nature”:

… the best — and most readily apparent — method of increasing the world supply of oil is to drill more. If we were to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, off the California coast, and of course in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the northeast corner of Alaska, we could reduce our own need to buy foreign oil so dramatically, it would likely drop the price of oil for everyone else, too.

Okay, drilling for oil in more places doesn’t actually increase the world supply, because we’re already sucking it out of the ground faster than the dinosaurs are dying and turning into more oil (everything I know about fossil fuel formation, I know from old Chevron ads). But that’s just quibbling.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll post a few more examples of how a principled theme of “boosting national security” can lead to a surprising number of foreign and domestic policies …

Because the entirety of the 21st century thus far has not been about ramming through extremist foreign and domestic policies under the guise of “boosting national security.” Right now, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove are reading Dafydd ab Hugh and thinking, “Shit, why didn’t we think of that?”

So where is the GOP candidate willing to step forward and forcefully make this case? Where is the Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani who will seize this strongest of all electoral themes and beat Hillary and Barack over the head with it?

I even have his slogan: “Defund al-Qaeda by drilling in ANWR!”

We like where Dafydd is going with this. But let’s tweak the slogan a bit:

“Why should bin Laden have all the sludge? Vote ab Hugh in ’08. . .or I’ll mass invade your country! On the Holodeck! Plus: Free platypus orgies for all! Livelongandprosper!”

Gavin adds: “…And more skin on HBO! This is L.H. Puttgrass signing off and heading for the tub.”

* A furry who lays eggs? Oh, we get it … Dafydd’s not a badger, he’s a platypus!