Sadly, No!

Above: Screen-capture of RSS feed

The difference between us and TBogg is that he’s wittier, but we’re conceptual enough to have cut to a pledge drive.

From Conservapedia, the ‘trustworthy encyclopedia’ in which evolution is just a theory and George W. Bush’s presidency is an American triumph:

Conservapedia:Contest

This will be a contest with the purpose of exponentially increasing the number of well written articles. There will be several categories. Each category will have a judge who will review nominations and grant prizes.

We are pleased to add that Conservapedia is (oh baby!!!) now accepting new user accounts.

Any worthy or suitably bizarre additions or articles that we somehow manage to acquire will be posted here, with open voting as to the ones which most improve the Conservapedia experience.

Conservapedia is administering the following awards:

The Moses Award
For significant contribution to articles on the Holy Bible
Highest Possible

The Gipper Award
For significant contribution to U.S Government articles
Highest Possible

Coolidge Medal
For noteworthy contribution to U.S Government articles
Middle Award

The Clay Pin
For contribution to U.S Government articles
Lowest Award

To the extent that new account registrations stay open (hurry!) we’ll be giving the following:

The Naked Apostle Award
For Biblically-related articles, after the mysterious streaker who runs through Gethsemane in Mark 14:51-52.

The Harding Award
For U.S. Government articles, dually named after the second most corrupt and incompetent Republican president in American history, exempting Reagan as an animate cabbage, and the winner of the 1994 US Figure Skating Championships, Ladies Division.

The Noonan Medal
For any and all other topics, in commemoration of the brain-pretzeling work of Mark Noonan at Blogs For Bush. (The prize will be a used review copy of Caucus of Corruption, Mark’s new book. We’re not quite done with it yet.)

The Clay Pin
For Prosampiquitous Merit, after former Padres pitcher Clay Hensley — nearly the phonetic converse of ‘Henry Clay.’

Contestants are advised to follow all relevant Conservapedia site rules, and to cut and paste the following link for details:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Contest

Allahpundit, the professional Islam-hysteric at Malkin’s HotAir site is almost making us cry for him.

Above: Coming soon to your city?

…And then, head in trembling hands, Allah writes a post in praise of it.

‘May God forgive us for what we must now do,’ and so on and so forth. All the same, nuclear blackmail is a sort of thing that one can too easily become accustomed to. Today it’s about municipal policy on reporting suspected illegal immigrants, sure, but tomorrow you may find yourself swatting flies with a sledgehammer, so to speak.

Also, selling out America’s security to terrorists isn’t something you normally want to do on the spur of the moment, especially if your entire public career is devoted to championing American security against all threats, real and imaginary. One must choose the occasion wisely. I personally, for instance, would hold out for a pet piece of legislation plus a phat iTunes gift certificate and even some stuff from Williams-Sonoma. It can’t all be about others. We must also nurture ourselves to be fit warriors for the struggle.

That said, as with so many things, a compromise seems possible. What if (I’m just thinking aloud here) Al Qaeda starts harassing illegal immigrants in petty and mean-spirited ways, and in return they get to operate unfettered on US soil regardless of the consequences to American lives and security?

Sort of a cut-out-the-middleman thing. And Malkin and Allah can be all like, “Another terror attack! Now see what you made us make them. . .uh, let them make us do!?”

They’ll be in clover. I’m so not seeing a downside here.

The whole immigration drama, these past few weeks, has revealed quite a bit about the WingNet’s true priorities. Here’s Malkin to spell it out plainly:

A strike against Sanctuary Nation
By Michelle Malkin · June 15, 2007 07:48 PM

There was a glimmer of hope on the shamnesty landscape today in the House. Stalwart immigration enforcement proponent Tom Tancredo won approval–by a significant margin–of his amendment banning DHS funds for renegade sanctuary cities. From Rep. Tancredo’s website:

U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo’s (R-CO) amendment to cut funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Bill (H.R. 2638) for cities that employ a sanctuary policy passed the House with strong bipartisan support today; 234 to 189.

“The times, they are a changing,� said an exuberant Tancredo, who had introduced the same amendment several times in the past with far less support. “This should also serve as a warning sign to the White House and supporters of re-introducing an amnesty bill from the Senate. If that legislation makes it to the House, it is in serious trouble.�

The Amendment would prevent cities like Denver and San Francisco who employ a sanctuary policy for illegal aliens from receiving first responder funds, including law enforcement and terrorism prevention grants, among other programs.

It’s a step in the right direction. The Democrat support for the bill–234-189, with no fewer than 49 Democrats voting in favor–is a good sign. Is it a sign of things to come as the second Senate showdown looms next week?

We’ll see.

In the meantime, sanctuary cities are on notice: Defy immigration law, risk your homeland security funding. Too bad the White House refuses to send that message.

Try to imagine that the doyenne of right-wing security paranoia, our shrill chanteuse of the Terror Threat of the Week, can say, in plain English and to a clear sky, that counter-terrorism funding including first-responder grants should be taken away from cities (the list also includes Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Portland, and Long Beach) that allow illegal immigrants to speak to the police without being reported to immigration authorities.

As in, if something were to happen, too-bad-so-sad, and it seems we’ve learned an expensive lesson, haven’t we?

Above: 2006 called. It wants its looming threat of terrorist Armageddon back.

Somewhere, as well, there must be an issue that would have Malkin gaily suggesting that undocumented Hispanics be allowed to flood over the borders if her wishes aren’t gratified. We’ve seen what she is; we’re only curious about the price.

Shorter Little Green Footballs

More Terrorist Propaganda from Reuters

• Ah, but the strawberries — that’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, with geometric logic, that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox did exist…

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

Update: Ol’ Chuckles Johnson has blocked us again. Copy and paste the link (instead of clicking) for details on the International Muslim Conspiracy to Sneakily Move Furniture Around, which is certain to hasten the arrival of the Global Caliphate, praise Allah.

D. Aristophanes adds: Chuckles always trends towards cognitive dissonance, but this post’s brain-splodey quotient is off the charts. Really, the heads-I-win-tails-you-loseism on display is staggering.

Consider that Johnson originally accused a Reuters stringer of helping a subject arrange the background for a photo shoot:

Again we see the Reuters wire service being exploited by terrorist groups, as their Palestinian stringer Mohammed Salem apparently participated in arranging the background of a photograph in Gaza, replacing an image of dead terror leader Ahmed Yassin with one of a smiling Ismail Haniyeh …

Reuters apparently takes people like Chuckles more seriously than they ought to, because they replied:

Photographers from Reuters and other news organizations were at the house taking pictures when one of Haniyeh’s sons decided he wanted a picture of his father on the wall, so he put it up in place of the one of Sheikh Yassin, in mid-photo shoot. We did not censor our shots by, for example, only using the pictures with Haniyeh’s photo in them, and we can’t very well stop people from rearranging their homes as they see fit. Indeed, both of those photos went out, side by side, to our photo clients: GBU Editor

Game-set-match, Reuters, one would think. But recall that we’re playing Charlesball, where the goalposts don’t so much move, as they disappear and reappear randomly, the field pitches and yaws with sickening violence, and every so often, hidden trapdoors release a troop of purple-assed baboons flinging poo.

Thus, Charles replies to Reuters’ explanation with this:

… Of course they can’t “very well stopâ€? these people from doing it; they’ll get shot if they try.

[Gavin adds: So true. Sometimes Islamic Muslimists get a yen to move the couch where the recliner is, and vice versa, and when they ask you to move your feet, the life you save may be your own.]

Yeah! What sort of jackass would suggest that Reuters photographers are rearranging the furniture in the homes of “terrorists?” What kind of numbnuts would ever publicly say such a thing on his public blog, which goes out to the public on the publicly accessible World Wide Web and is conveniently reached by members of the public possessing computers by typing “www.littlegreenfootballs.com” in their browsers, clicking their heels together three times and repeating, “There’s no place like dumb!”

[Gavin adds: Not only that, but he really hates when we make fun of him. It bruises his dignity or something.]

I turned on the faucet and water came out. This has proven a reliable test as to whether there’s something ridiculous going on over at Blogs For Bush.

Is There a Right to Privacy?

Most infamously, it was in the Supreme Court’s asinine Roe decision that a “right to privacy” first really caught the public eye.

Um, I usually like to get a few sentences into his pieces before Sadly-Noing poor Noonan, but it was actually Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark contraception case.

People often ask how we do it. We’ve found that typing phrases into certain Internet sites can produce answers to things, as though the Internet somehow knows you’re asking it a question. Although this might be one of those things that doesn’t work for everyone, like when the guy found the singing frog.

Fundamentally, Roe says that we have such a right to privacy that any interference in any sexual or reproductive matter is a violation of the right to privacy.

Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal…

This, on the face of it, is stupid – daily we interfere with peoples’ sexual and reproductive activities – but the concept has lodged itself into the public mind and I believe that not even one in a thousand Americans doubts that among our self-evident rights is a right to privacy. But is there really such a thing?

This is funny, because a couple of days ago we were trying to interfere with Mark’s sexual and reproductive activities by doing Davey and Goliath voices outside his window, and he got mad and chased us away.

Then again, I’ve read ahead a bit, and [spoiler alert!] what Mark is really getting at is that the government (i.e., a Republican government, but of course not a potential Clinton or Obama regime) is inherently entitled to know every detail of its citizens’ lives and actions. One can immediately spot some issues arising from such a notion. The first of these is that it’s two in the freaking afternoon, and I want to go to bed and dream thickly of nothing.

But the next is that we find ourselves, at last, arguing not against sly and elliptical conservative gestures toward totalitarianism, but against literal totalitarianism of a no-kidding, letter-and-spirit fashion unfreighted by ambiguity or Godwin.

In fact, one of the things that’s so fascinating about Mark, and that keeps us coming back time and again to his commentary, is his grounding in pre-fascist ideologies — royalism; irrationalism and disdain for logic and science; a rigid, nearly Medieval sense of social order and an idealization of the pre-modern. He shows the cod-Nietzschean, vulgar-Spencerian impulses of what some pre-war German author (maybe Heinrich Mann) called ‘the eternal petite bourgeoisie,’ and (not least) a vision of perpetual national crisis, of powerful enemies ever-scheming to destroy our natural greatness and superiority. He replicates the mindset in which fascism arose — and sure enough, ding-ding: Here it is!

Lately, everyone has been talking about Brad DeLong’s excellent and useful taxonomy of conservatives, in which he uses the following formulation of Žižek’s (which referred originally to life under Soviet Communism):

Of the three features—-personal honesty, sincere support of the regime, and intelligence—-it was possible to combine only two, never all three. If one was honest and supportive, one was not very bright; if one was bright and supportive, one was not honest; if one was honest and bright, one was not supportive…

Mark seems honest, pretty much, and he certainly supports the Bush program. But indeed, as we’ve seen many times, and are about to see again, he’s about as bright as the inside of a cow:
Read the rest of this entry »

Shorter Michael Medved

Why TV Addiction Links to Liberalism

• My gosh, folks, there’s much to learn about liberals in this, uh, objective study from Brent Bozell’s propaganda mill and a Republican polling firm uh, some respected media thingy-professionals.*

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

*Knowing Bozell and his numerous schemes, the opposite finding — that conservatives, in some defined way, watch more TV than liberals — would have been grist for his standard (indeed infinitely sky-hooted) claim that the biased lefty-liberal media is out of step with America, and that conservative thought should, on principle and by rights, dominate the airwaves. On the other hand, we’ve learned today that evidence of a liberal-leaning audience only suggests all sorts of pathologies, and in no way implies that networks should broadcast toward liberal sensibilities. This discrepancy is compounded by the fact that Bozell looks like the prick in Ghostbusters who turned off the power on the ghost prison.

Shorter Dick Morris

Republicans need to attack earmarks and stop wasting taxpayer money

• Say, here’s one: Republicans can atone for their. . .uh, twelve-year spending rampage that many have so recently noticed, by (heh heh) taking a crap on the Democrats. No, these ideas just come to me; I consider myself merely a vessel.

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

OMFG. This has to be read to be believed (my emphasis, and thanks to J. Smith for the tip):

More educated people think more like economists; in fact, more educated people pretty much have more reasonable views across the board. Furthermore, by a happy coincidence, more educated people are more likely to vote. Once my book gets to policy implications, these facts inspire a number of shocking suggestions:

* Stop trying to “get out the vote” – higher turnout reduces voters’ average competence.
* Give college grads extra votes, as Britain did until 1949.
* Require would-be voters to pass a test of economic literacy.

When he says that voters should be “economically literate,” of course, he means that they should be literate in the economic ideas that he finds valuable. Ignorant populist filth such as Robert Reich and Joe Stiglitz need not apply.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Paper Trail Toward Chaos?

Above: David “The Dean of Washington Journalism” Broder

• I say, dear reader, I am most roused of all things this week to proclaim that this initiative toward verifiable ballots is simply an unworkable idea, and might damage the Republican Party’s prospects for 2008 uh, thingy.

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