Sadly, No!

…Or teh terrorists win!1!!

We used think we were too cool to mention when we were up for one of these things, but this time we’re in the Best Humor Blog category against IMAO (who wussily never answered our Second Photoshop Challenge), ScrappleFace, and a bunch of other right-wing sites. And if a right-wing site is allowed to go around bragging that they won a humor award, then what sort of world is this, anyway? A bad one filled with crap and sadness, and not a fun and joyous one.*

Above (l-r): IMAO, ScrappleFace

I think Brad might handicap the other categories like last year, although the roster is simply rotten with right-wing sites, much more so than last time. Michael Bérubé is, however, up for Best Dangeral Educational Blog, while Wolcott is up for Best Media Blog, and Jesus’s General is up for Just Plain Best Liberal Blog (and not, alas, Best Conservative Blog like he wanted).

Voting is a bit odd in that everyone can vote once per day per category — meaning multiple times between now and December 15th. So ‘vote early and often’ is more than just a Republican slogan this time.

Also like last year, we have Holiday presents for everyone, whether you vote or not. But wouldn’t it be a nice Holiday this year with IMAO and ScrappleFace stood up under the mistletoe and crying big right-wing tears underneath the Holiday Tree?

Update: Frank J. of IMAO says that they actually did answer the Day By Day Remix Challenge. Welp, here’s the entry. I believe no more need be said.

Double-update: P. Zizzy’s Pharyngula and Tim Lambert’s Deltoid are in the Best Science Blog category, currently in second and last place. (Brad will have to figure out how we feel about this race, since Lambert and P.Z. are equally teh roxxor, except in a numbers and a squid way, respectively.)

* One might vote for reasonable conservative Jon Swift. Although maybe not for his evil doppelganger, the ha-ha fake liberal blog, BlameBush — which could be a funny concept indeed in the right hands, except yeesh.

Whenever the calendar rolls ’round to a historical anniversary I’d like to commemorate but I’m not quite sure how, I find myself asking, WWJHD? Which, of course, stands for: What would Johnny Hart do?

All things considered, this punchline at least makes sense – unlike that weird ‘clams got hands’ gag that cracks up the cartoonist and baffles this reader.

Actually, the extent of my commemoration today was mailing off a birthday card to my ailing grandfather, who fought the Japanese through the three worst years of his life, until this last one. As a result, he still refuses to eat rice, but he gave up his grudge against Toyota and bought a truck from them after they opened a manufacturing plant in our state.

Come to think of it, I suppose his clearly defined boundaries and willingness to compromise make my grandfather something like the anti-Toby Keith. Right on.

…the V.D. Hanson Way.

As in, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself forgetting our fear, for the Eternal Muslim forever schemes and plots.”

Our Pearl Harbor
By Victor Davis Hanson

On Dec. 7, 1941 – 65 years ago this week – pilots from a Japanese carrier force bombed Pearl Harbor. They killed 2,403 Americans, most of them service personnel, while destroying much of the American fleet and air forces stationed in Hawaii.

The next morning, an outraged United States declared war, which ended less than four years later with the destruction of most of the Japanese empire and its military.

You know what’s coming next, right?

Sixty years after Pearl Harbor came another surprise attack on U.S. soil, one that was, in some ways, even worse than the “Day of Infamy.”

Shorter V.D. Hanson: “The War On Terror is directly comparable to World War II, except for being completely diff… Uh, I believe this only strengthens my point.”

Oh look, Dan Riehl is angry about something again.

Things The MSM Might Not Tell you

Well, they may, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Did you know France named a street after an American cop-killer? Sacre Bleu me, frog. I guess they reserve mass murderer names like Hitler and bin Laden for the highways.

After you, Gaston. No, after you, Alphonse:

Un dessein si funeste, S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.
posted by tbogg at 12:56 PM

Curious readers who click on the link will discover that, were it not for the hard work of dedicated citizen journalists like Michelle Malkin, no one would have ever stumbled across the AP report published in yesterday’s Washington Post.

More proof that the MSM is a bunch of blabbermouths who can’t keep a secret.

Did you know America named a street after a notorious anti-Semite and Hitler supporter — after, indeed, America’s premier publisher of anti-Semitic books, newspapers, and tracts, including the English translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

Est-il nécessaire que vous soyez si desagreable, Dan…

Yesterday was the last time the hostess at one of my favorite restaurants will ever ask me if I’d prefer smoking or non-, but at least I can look forward to regaining the right to choose leaded or unleaded gasoline:

U.S. environmental regulators are considering removing lead, a heavy metal linked to learning problems in children, from a list of regulated pollutants because past rules have greatly reduced levels of the toxin […]

The EPA said that from 1980 to 2005 the national annual lead concentrations have dropped more than 90 percent. Lead levels in air have mostly fallen because it was banned as a gasoline additive starting in the 1970s.

Maybe I’m just being a starry-eyed idealist, but it seems like a bad idea to approach environmental toxins the same way Oprah conducts her policy on, say, flourless chocolate torte.

Gavin adds: Some good might come of this, Travis. Since anti-smoking laws have reduced levels of smoking in restaurants, those laws can also be abolished.

From Mike Reed’s venerable Flame Warriors collection:

Ferrous Cranus is utterly impervious to reason, persuasion and new ideas, and when engaged in battle he will not yield an inch in his position regardless of its hopelessness. Though his thrusts are decisively repulsed, his arguments crushed in every detail and his defenses demolished beyond repair he will remount the same attack again and again with only the slightest variation in tactics.

Open Thread: Iraq Study Group
By Mark Noonan at 09:13 AM

[…The] report asserts things are deteriorating in Iraq: to me, this is just conforming the report to the phony story of Iraq produced by the MSM. I think it was more of a, “ya know, if we tell the truth about all the good things that are happening in Iraq, no one will believe us because the MSM has spent the past two years broadcasting enemy propaganda”.

Um, wow. If he… Wow. Because it…? And they…? Wow.

Watch next with astonishment as Noonan, as though sinking into a hot bath with his rubber duckie bobbing merrily beside him, consults what he has found to be a good, fair, and reliable source of information on continuing developments in Iraq — an official Department of Defense ‘information warfare’ propaganda site:

Read the rest of this entry »

While it’s a good sign that the Iraq Survey Group didn’t ask the craziest neocon ideologues for their opinions on Iraq, I think it’s useful to remember that these loons still have tremendous influence over our foreign policy. And even though the neocons have driven us straight over a cliff in Iraq, they are showing no signs of retreating or rethinking their core ideas. Take Fred Barnes’ latest piece in the Weekly Standard, for instance:

Moxie in the Executive
How not to be a lame duck.

by Fred Barnes

IN DEALING WITH the new Democratic Congress, President Bush is said to have a big choice to make. To get anything done, he either has to compromise with Democrats or ally himself with an as-yet-unformed majority coalition of Republicans and moderate-to-conservative Democrats. But there’s a third option: take bold moves on his own, based on his presidential powers.

In other words, give Congress the finger and strut around like a fucking king.

It’s nice to see that the neocons have such respect for the democratic process of checks and balances, no?

Read the rest of this entry »

I knew Hugh Hewitt’s reaction to the Iraq Survey Group’s report would be funny. But I didn’t realize it would be this funny:

Of the 43 “former officials and experts” consulted –including Mark Danner of the New York Review of Books, Thomas Friedman, Leslie Gelb, Sandy Berger, Anthony Lake, Ken Pollack, Thomas Ricks, and George Will– the ISG did not find it necessary to talk with, say, Victor Davis Hanson, Lawrence Wright, Robert Kaplan, Mark Steyn, Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht, or Christopher Hitchens.

Gee, I wonder why that is. Could it be because they are all a bunch of discredited ideologues who have been wrong about absolutely everything? Hmmmm…

Gavin adds: But they consulted Tom Friedman, right?

JK47 adds: The ISG also did not find it necessary to talk with, say, Soupy Sales, Kevin Federline, Morganna the Kissing Bandit, the Taco Bell chihuahua, Mark “The Birdâ€? Fidrych or the remaining half of my ham sandwich…

Norbizness adds:: They did talk to Hitchens, he tried to Windex the windshield of the ISGMobile while babbling incoherently on a street corner in Georgetown. I think they said “Sorry, we’re out of change.�

And they tried to get in touch with Victor Davis Hanson, but he’s officially changed his name to King Leonidas and spends 22 hours a day in World of Warcraft.

D. Aristophanes adds: Yes, well, if one were searching for alternatives to the current strategy for running the Yankees … one probably wouldn’t turn directly to George Steinbrenner, either.

Her head spinnin’ and my head spinnin’, mine from juice and gin and hers from neck and Chenin.

Shorter Michael Medved: Advocates for gay marriage say it would encourage homosexuals to be monogamous, but why hasn’t it worked for heterosexuals? Wait – that’s not what I meant! Homosexuals think they’re better than you!

Shorter Roger Schlesinger: Quit screwing around and go buy yourself a home for the holidays.

Shorter Mike S. Adams: One of my young Sigma Chi brothers got in trouble for violating university policies, but those policies are bullshit, man – bullshit!

Shorter Austin Bay: We can win the war in Iraq much the same way Reagan won the Cold War.

Shorter Paul Greenberg: Oh, the times we had back at the copy desk…

Shorter John Stossel: The most generous Americans are the God-fearing, salt-of-earth working poor, who are also more authentically American – from the east coast to the west coast, down the Dixie Highway back home.

Shorter Walter E. Williams: Did you hear that Milton Friedman has died?

Shorter Ben Shapiro: We must embrace paranoia and bloodlust to eliminate fundamentalist Islam.

Shorter Kathleen Parker: Southerners prefer their politicians to be authentically racist, like George Allen, instead of phonies like Joe Biden.

Shorter Michelle Malkin: Gwyneth Paltrow, like most liberal elitists, cherishes nothing more than the right to flounce around Europe and New York City, trashing our way of life.

Shorter Terence Jeffrey: Since Arabs seem inclined to elect anti-American leaders, we need a Plan B in spreading democracy throught the Middle East.

Shorter Linda Chavez: President Bush may have screwed up Iraq, but his courts are a marvel to behold.

Shorter Brent Bozell III: Although I support ethnically profiling airline passengers, it completely creeped me out when a black man and an obvious Muslim didn’t act surprised when they were ethnically profiled before our flight.

Shorter Tony Blankley: Barack Obama might make a fine presidential nominee – that is, if Hillary’s goons don’t finish him off him first.

Shorter Rich Galen: Criticism by some of John Bolton’s colleagues lacks credibility, because they’re from poor countries in areas wracked by genocides that they could’ve stopped if they weren’t so busy criticizing John Bolton.

Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I welcome technologies that permit families to protect themselves, if they wish, from the scourge of Janet Jackson’s breast and Cher’s mouth.

Shorter Dennis Prager: America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles because those are what has made America great.

From Ye Nuttes of Winge at Powerline:

Errors, omissions, inventions and falsehoods

A reader writes that he received the email message below sent by Professor Kenneth Stein of Emory University and the Carter Center. Professor Stein’s expertise lies in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Our reader writes that when he was an undergraduate student at Emory in the mid-1990’s, Professor Stein was one of the most revered, respected professors on campus, and that Professor Stein had a long-standing association with the Carter Center in his capacity as an expert in Middle East politics and history. Professor Stein was in fact the first director of the Carter Center (1983-1986).

Professor Stein is apparently terminating his association with the Carter Center, solely as a result of Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid. The reaction of Professor Stein — a formerly close associate and collaborator of Carter — to Carter’s new book is, as our reader thought it would be, of great interest to us:

[…]

From AlterNet:

Right-wing hysteria over Carter, Israel

Time’s 2004 Botch Blog of the Year, Powerline, has suggested more than once that Jimmy Carter is a traitor. Conservatives from Michelle Malkin on down applauded a nasty C-SPAN caller who slung insults at the president on-air recently, and cries of AHA! have arisen over an email from a former Carter colleague who’s breaking with him over the president’s latest book on Palestine.

[…]

The email came from Dr. Kenneth W. Stein, professor of Israel Studies at Emory University, partner of the Carter Center. It will be promoted as proof, PROOF!, that Carter’s latest book is some anti-Israel screed, to be ignored and the president castigated.

Leaving aside the fact that Stein’s departure is admittedly a hollow gesture (Many still believe that I have an active association with the Center and, act as an adviser to President Carter, neither is the case… Since I left the Center physically thirteen years ago, the Middle East program of the Center has waned as has my status as a Carter Center Fellow.) this email may more appropriately be seen as the book’s seal of approval.

Stein claims in his email that the book “is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments,” though he declines to cite them. I don’t doubt that he’s found his differences, but those remain to be seen.

On the other hand, although Stein and Carter did coauthor a book some years ago, their approaches to the Israel/Palestine conflict have diverged markedly since then. Stein now sits on the board of editors for the Middle East Quarterly, a journal published by the fanatical fantasy-plagued neocon, Daniel Pipes, who also heads up a McCarthyite site called CampusWatch. The Middle East Forum, another associated project, boasts among its experts, neocon William Kristol and Joseph Farah, editor of rightwing yes-mag WorldNetDaily.

You know, stop me if I’m totally out of line here, but it’s almost as though every new right-wing cause célèbre, one after the next, turns out under examination to be some kind of sneaky attempt to fool people….