Sadly, No!

Specifically, here’s what Brad is drinking tonight whilst sitting on his porch, strumming his gee-tar and listening to the Red Sox:

[WTF. I can’t upload any of the damn pictures I took. Damn this shit-ass mofoin’ server to HELL]

This is the Great Divide Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout. It’s gotten excellent reviews from both RateBeer and BeerAdvocate. And what do I think of it, you ask?

Well, it’s nice. It’s a very smooth stout, it has a deep, rich color, and a smoky odor. And oh yeah- it has a 9.5% alcohol content! Yum!

And yet… it leaves something to be desired. Personally, Brad has been very, very spoiled over the years by by Rogue’s Shakespeare Stout and Avery Mephistopheles Stout over the years. Frankly, he thinks those two stouts are the best in the entire world, and it would take an awfully special one to knocked them off their throne.

So in the end, I give the Oak Aged Yeti Stout four out five pint glasses. It’s very nice stuff, but I just can’t justifying putting it up there with the best of the best. Rock. Consider this an open thread.

Let’s Take A Closer Look At Bill’s Carrot And Hillary’s Onion Ring.

• Why dearies, it was all a little trick to make you think I’m craz. . .Graah! Zarg! Fleen! I can sue you!

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

Update: Apparently, everybody wants a piece of the action. Leo Pusateri at Blogs For Bush thinks he’s found the real secret message in the new Clinton ad:

My training in psychology has led me to ponder a few ramifications of Clinton’s choice for her little ’08 debutante preview.

Above: Pusateri pondering psychological ramifications

Was it any accident that Clinton, Inc., chose to emulate a series about a ruthless mob crime family? (I don’t think that the Clintons have ever done anything by accident).

Or was it a not-so-veiled warning to those who would cross them?

Um, yeah. And wasn’t there a guy on The Sopranos called ‘Big Pussy?’ It’s all coming together now, Leo. A few more pages of tiny, scrawled notes in your Klinton Konspiracy notebooks, and you’ll blow the roof off this shack.

Tristero finds a ‘Sensible Liberal’ essay that isn’t so terrible considering the spirit in which, and ideology for which, it is written (Jonathan Chait, say, would have larded it with many sneers toward the anti-war Left). But I am damning it with faint praise. Over and over I’ve said that a bullshit form of liberal internationalism — the ideology that fuels the essay tristero takes issue with — is the enabling device with which neoconservatives blow up the world and make messes like Iraq. It’s why good-hearted but mush-minded people fell for the Iraq War. Neoconservatives don’t actually give a shit about democracy and human rights, and never have, but they adopt the rhetoric of such concerns in order to dupe liberals into supporting their schemes. So, how does one stop being a useful idiot of neocons? Well, stop sharing with them the assumption of American Exceptionalism, for one.

Tristero says, rightly:

American exceptionalism is not something to celebrate but to strongly oppose for There Lie Monsters. Let’s not forget where this goody two-shoe-ism leads, which is usually straight into debacles. But I must admit: It’s true we haven’t had any foreign policy disasters recently trying to export Truth, Justice, and The American Way. Except for Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Darfur, Russia, Kyoto, Darfur, Mexico, Venezuela, and Pakistan. To name just a few.

Michael Lind also has much goodness to say (subscription to nation needed to access the link) in criticizing Slaughter’s position. He calls it “neoconservatism with a human face.”

Imperialism or neoconservatism, or whatever. it’s a rotten idea to think you’ve got the kind of country everyone else wants to live in, and the kind of values everyone else should have.

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Because we apparently can’t get enough vagina talk ’round these here parts, I present you with this super-awesome Jim Kouri column headline:

Judicial Watch fingers Congresswoman Virginia Foxx

And I’m sure Ms. Foxx was properly grateful.

For David Neiwert, who does good work (and especially good work explaining the beliefs and desires and tendencies of the fascistic, if not outright fascist, American right-wing), I copy-out this short essay on the nature of fascism by A.J.P. Taylor. It’s not exactly profound and I don’t agree with all of it, but it is interesting and blessedly brief:

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The Family Porkbuster

• I’m not excited by “pork,” but my daughter can’t get enough of… What?! Why is everybody laughing?

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

Note: Emily Mirengoff is a professional conservative commentator.

Dennis Prager is just saying, is all:

A question I pose to atheists and others who argue that religion is irrelevant to moral behavior has been cited by Christopher Hitchens in his national best seller, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

This is a fun one, as it shows that Prager has moved beyond arguments that don’t make any sense to arguments to which the entire concept of ‘sense’ is irrelevant. Let’s let Hitch tell it:

I was to imagine myself in a strange city as the evening was coming on. Toward me I was to imagine that I saw a large group of men approaching. Now — would I feel safer, or less safe, if I was to learn that they were just coming from a prayer meeting?

Not surprisingly, even a guy like Hitchens can see that this question is as loaded as a Florida State communications major on a Friday night.

Just to stay within the letter B, I have actually had that experience in Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade, Bethlehem, and Baghdad. In each case I can say absolutely, and can give my reasons, why I would feel immediately threatened if I thought that the group of men approaching me in the dusk were coming from a religious observance.

Ah ha!, says Prager, springing his steely trap. Gotcha!

As it happens, Hitchens did not relate my question entirely accurately, as hundreds of thousands of my listeners can attest to, and as many written sources can attest to. I have always asked the question about 10 men in a dark alley coming out of a “Bible class.” I have always specified “Bible class” because I assume that in America, anyone with common sense would in fact be very relieved if they knew that the 10 strangers, all men, approaching them in a dark alley were committed to either Judaism or Christianity and studying the Bible.

Above: “For God so loved the world, namseen?”
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Our pal Instaputz caught Ann Althouse having one of her whizzy-biffy ideas.

Ann Althouse looks at the new Hillary Clinton ad and writes:

Bill says “No onion rings?” and Hillary responds “I’m looking out for ya.” Now, the script says onion rings, because that’s what the Sopranos were eating in that final scene, but I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the “O” of an onion ring is a vagina symbol.

By all means, Ann, let me be the first.

And Ann, so long as you’re discussing symbolism: what does your facial expression in the above photo — which is kinda reminiscent of the fifteenth letter of the English alphabet — represent?

I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that this is an intriguing question.

Not I, sir! Indeed, every good question leads to another:

Above: Michelle Malkin

On second thought, OMG, ew.

Knock-knock. Who’s there? It’s Charles “Chuck Amuck” Johnson of LGF.

Hamas Murders Peace Demonstrators

Last Thursday, completely ignored by the world’s media, Hamas thugs opened fire on a peace demonstration, killing two people.

Imagine the sustained outrage that would pour out of the media if Israel had done something like this.

Before noon, two civilians were killed during a protest held in Gaza City under the banner “Stop the Killing.� Some 1,000 Palestinians marched in the city, calling for an end to the fighting, but when they approached a Hamas position, militants fired at the protesters, killing two.

Oh, Israel would never do that. And if it did, sustained outrage would certainly pour out of the media.

Land sakes. Heavens to Betsy.

There’s an odd trend in the wingnut community toward these ‘imagine-if’ items.

Above: Blar-har, would the terror-loving MSM have
backed the aliens? One can only speculate!

…But somehow, despite a heavy and schedule of getting facts wrong and touting zany conspiracy theories, right-wing solons such as Charles keep whiffing even these attempts at low-content bong-hit archness. Charles credits his own readers for finding this story, but in fact it’s (ahem) sourced from Tom Gross of the NRO’s Media Blog, who phrased it this way yesterday:

Did Anyone Say Double Standards?

If Israelis machine-gunned protesters at a peaceful demonstration, I think we can safely say that the BBC, New York Times, and others would cover it in a major way.

From Ha’aretz:

Before noon, two civilians were killed during a protest held in Gaza City under the banner “Stop the Killing.” Some 1,000 Palestinians marched in the city, calling for an end to the fighting, but when they approached a Hamas position, militants fired at the protesters, killing two.

Charles isn’t even crafting his own off-the-cuff sneers!

Then again, to his credit, he didn’t keep the made-up detail about a machine gun. That’s the self-correcting right-wing blogosphere they’re always talking about.

Update: Quod Juan Cole:
 

The Haniyah Hamas government had come to power in free and fair elections, but was immediately boycotted, starved of resources, and actually often simply kidnapped by the Israelis; and is now being put out of office in a kind of coup. The people of the Arab world are not blind or stupid. If this is what the “Greater Middle East” looks like, it will too closely resemble, for their taste, the colonial 19th century[…]

…But perhaps the real question is this: If Hamas had taken over the world in the 19th Century, slaughtering millions and breeding a race of ape-slaves, would Juan Cole even exist?

We find the following at Blogs For Bush:

A Word to Our Lefty Readership

Woo, I think he means us!

At times lefty comments here state that the Multi-National Force Iraq news sources we use are unreliable – essentially telling us that our story is worthless because it is anchored by a MNF-I news report.

This is the second time in a few days that Mark has tried to explain why he uses raw government press releases as his primary source of information on Iraq.

This is unnecessary, because we’ve known for quite some time that Mark is thicker than a whale omelet — i.e., that he thinks Soul on Ice is a musical revue, thinks ‘astute’ is a sound produced by digestive gas, is coasting on square heelies. That is, that he thinks ‘aspic’ denotes a hygienic tool — i.e., that he is like doy.

Just for the record: if MNF-I says one thing, and the NY TImes/WaPo/LA Times/CNN/CBS/NBC/ABC/MSNBC say different, I’m gonig with the MNF-I story. The MSM has all too often been proven liars – meanwhile, the soldier-reporters assigned to MNF-I are under orders not to lie…and they’ll get in a lot more trouble if they do than, say, Dan Rather got with his “fake but accurate” news…MNF-I is just more worthy of our trust.

Actually, on the ‘soldier-reporter’ tip, a lot of this work was originally outsourced to John Rendon and his firm, and has since last year been handled by these PR hacks. ‘Under orders not to lie’ is a nice twist of reasoning, but it reminds us of the time Mark tried to start an Asian fast-food chain called Phở King. …Where customers had to stand in line in the Phở queue. I’m actually not sure where I’m going with that one.

But ‘ordered not to lie’ suggests a brief example. James Bamford did a profile of John Rendon, ‘The Man Who Sold The War,’ that won a 2006 National Magazine Award. The Rendon Group responded with a very strong, detailed rebuttal of the article, which included statements such as the following:

For the record, the Rendon Group (TRG) had no role whatsoever in making the case for the Iraq war, here at home or internationally. Mr. Bamford’s contention to the contrary is flatly untrue.

To which Bamford in turn replied, reminding the group that they, for instance, founded, funded, and directed something called the Iraqi National Congress.

Then again, maybe it was Backwards Day.
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