Sadly, No!

Hahahahaha.

Critical mass? A Gladwellian “tipping point”? Something’s up, something fucking wonderful: The left blogosphere is rejecting, in a projectile-vomit-followed-by-many-a-dry-heave sort of way, “Sensible Liberals” and “Technocrat Centrists”.

Naturally, Nyhan in the link paints himself victim of left-wing, überpartisan apparatchiks, but then he projects his own failings on others just as well as he engages in bullshit even-handedness. But then again, false equivalencies (or “bullshit even-handedness”; a better phrase than the poisoned-by-neocons phrase “moral equivalence”, which they stole from Orwell) inevitably come from those who espouse a bullshit centrism which is not objectively centrist at all.

Also notice that Nyhan most predictably bemoans the downfall of The New Republic which …yes, he blames on partisan attacks by Kos and Atrios. I’m sure Marty’s check is in the mail, Brendan. Anyway, this is completely backwards just as Nyhan’s estimation of his own predicament is backwards. TNR’s nemeses aren’t the real apparatchiks any more than Nyhan’s are. TNR and Nyhan are the real ideologues, insisting that anyone to the Left of their “center” is just as wrong, just as bad for the country, as anyone to their Right. You may be as far Left [sic] as the DLC, but no farther! Yeah, well fuck that shit.

The wingnuts of course don’t care what ‘centrists’ think, only that until now they have been a brake on a real Leftwing opposition, which is why Doughy Pantload is taking Nyhan’s side. But more importantly, the ‘centrists’ know that the wingnuts don’t care what they think, but they attack Left and Right with ‘equal’ measure anyway. Which, in turn, means they …Ahhh, are useful and willing idiots for the wingnuts. (Apparatchik-talk is contagious; you purge us, we’ll purge you.)

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Why oh why can’t we have a citizenry like this?

The political crisis continues in Hungary as police and demonstrators calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany clashed for a second night in Budapest.

Up to 50 people were reported injured as riot police used tear gas to disperse demonstrators early today near the headquarters of the ruling Socialist Party.

Gyurcsany has been at the center of a scandal that threatens to throw Hungary into a political crisis. The 45-year-old politician, seen as one of the most successful young leaders in postcommunist Eastern Europe, has admitted to lying for years to Hungarians about the state of their country’s economy to win reelection.

So the Hungarians are demanding that their prime minister step down because he lied about economic data.

Meanwhile, our president proudly and overtly commits war crimes, and we’re still too cowed to demand that Congress even consider censuring the bastard. What’s more, we think it’d be a nifty idea to pass laws that enable him to commit more war crimes.

What happened to the America I grew up with, and how can I get it back?

UPDATE: Maybe there’s hope after all- Bush is still stuck at 37%, according to the latest NYT/CBS poll. I’ll leave it to Atrios to provide the obligatory “WHEEEEEEEEEE!”

BTW, sorry for being so shrill and unfunny lately, but the fact that Bush is using legalized torture as an election issue just pushes every one of my anger buttons.

Something about the way you taste makes me want to clear my throat. There’s a method to your movement that really gets my goat.

Shorter Michael Medved: Clash of civilizations, my foot. Islam is to the West what the Red Sox were to the Yankees, circa 2003.

Shorter Maggie Gallagher: What the pope was trying to say is that the West, by relegating the Christian faith to small subgroups, enters into dialogue with other cultures at a distinct disadvantage.

Shorter Brent Bozell III: It’s not fair that the media show fealty to heathen Muslims, but not Christians.

Shorter Terence Jeffrey: If Muslim governments wish to prove the pope wrong, they would allow their citizens to convert to Christianity. By choice, of course.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Our apologies only embolden radical Muslims. Same goes for the blacks.

Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I’ve noticed that the Bush administration seems more interested in getting its own way than getting things done.

Shorter Walter Williams: If a tiger knocked on my door, I would not answer. Does that make me a racist?

Shorter Michelle Malkin: Corporate policy and relevant laws should not prevent the Associated Press from providing me with details about one of its employees, so I can make a huge deal about his alleged terror ties before an investigation is completed.

Shorter Kathleen Parker: Muslims, like a recalcitrant Beaver Cleaver, would benefit from a stern talking-to.

Shorter John Stossel: Looks like those clowns in Congress have done it again. What a bunch of clowns.

Shorter Tony Blankley: One can only hope that recent remarks by Pope Benedict XVI and Henry Kissinger will promote the moral clarity required to preempt our enemies’ use of nuclear weapons.

Shorter Linda Chavez: The pope was right about Islam, even though that’s not what he meant.

Shorter William F. Buckley: The great unanswered question in modern political thought is: Who speaks for Muhammad? Since Islam lacks a hierarchical structure, we shall assume it’s those who most appeal to our sense of grievance.

Shorter Donald Lambro: The GOP agenda of fear will produce victories both at the polls and in the war on terror.

Shorter David Limbaugh: Every time you kneel down to pray, there is an urbane, and possibly homosexual, liberal mocking you.

Shorter Austin Bay: We should ignore Muslim sentiment, because their feelings are a lie.

Shorter Roger Schlesinger: LOOking for BeST mORTGage RATTes? aSK eM hoW?

Shorter Rich Galen: POLLS SHOW REPUBLICANS MIGHT WIN THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS. Also, I had minor hernia surgery.

Shorter Carol Platt Liebau: It would be wrong for the United States to condone behavior that routinely transgresses the boundaries of humanity and the traditions of civilized warfare. But we dismiss that option at our own peril.

Shorter Jerry Newberry: I recently arrived in Afghanistan, but that’s all I can tell you. (Military policy forbids the use of descriptive adjectives.)

Shorter Chuck Colson: The pope was right about Islam, even though that’s not what he meant.

Shorter Bill Lauderback: A shadowy consortium of investigative reporters, ultraliberal politicians and trial lawyers are conspiring to deny Texans electricity and harm the environment. Also, they hate football.

Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, Marijuana, Ecstasy and Alcohol!

C-c-c-c-c-Coach Dave:

Rosie Is the Radical

Warning: May offend sugary-sweet Christians. Read at your own risk.

Allow me to be brief. I think my head is about to explode. I am sick and tired of the way our language is being misused. Our schools aren’t educating our kids, parents are glued to Desperate Housewives, and our churches spend all of their time catching angel fish in an aquarium rather than confronting the sharks swimming in the streets.

How in the world can Rosie O’Donnell get a TV show? How can anyone take her seriously? Won’t anyone call her on her idiocy? She said “radical Christianity� was as serious a threat as Islam. She should be thrown off of TV and her deviant rear-end should never be seen again.

In Coach Dave’s house, it’s only cool to watch deviant rear-ends when they appear on a computer screen and are under the age of 18.

She sleeps with women of all things!

The nerve! What kind of pervert wants to sleep with women?

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So it seems that Deval Patrick is going to be the Democrats’ nominee for governor of Massachusetts.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On the one hand, I think Patrick is a master statesman who has the charisma and intelligence to restore optimism and hope to an electorate that has become deeply cynical from watching the disastrous fiscal mismanagement of the Big Dig.

On the other hand, I think he may just be too nice of a guy to campaign effectively against the Republicans.

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We interrupt this blog to bring you a special announcement: One Gavin (The Big G) M. has been called away on important, yet non-Sadly, No! related, business. He has asked that we let you know that the Day By Day contest is still on. We now leave you with this Deep Thought:

If conservative views make you a Rottweiler, what do liberal views make you? A French Poodle?

Leave your answer, or a comment, in the comments.

Swank Heil:

‘LET HIS BLOOD BE ON US AND OUR CHILDREN’

J. Grant Swank, Jr.

Why have Jews suffered especially since the first century?

They killed God in Christ. And in doing that, they publicly cried out :�Let His blood be on us and our children.�

Say, does this count as anti-Semitism? I mean, sure, he hasn’t accused anyone of being a neoconservative yet, but this strikes me as pretty bad all the same.

So it has occurred. After all, one does not crucify God incarnate lightly.

You don’t say.

But what about the Roman soldiers who likewise had a part in the crucifixion? They did not cry out: “Let His blood be on us and our children.� That is the crucial difference.

To summarize the pastor’s theological argument: it’s OK to crucify Christ as long as you don’t take personal responsibility for it.

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An artist’s rendering of Lee Siegel’s interview with Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine.

It’s hard to know which of Lee Siegel’s petulant, verbose variations on “I know you are, but what am I?” is most obnoxious:

Siegel on self-aggrandizement: [I]t never occurred to me at the time that I was doing something wrong. There are other people who appear anonymously on Web sites; they do battle with their detractors. Anonymity is a universal convention of the blogosphere, and the wicked expedience is that you can speak without consequences.

Ah yes, if only we knew the names of such shadowy fringe characters as Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds, Michael Bérubé, Michelle Malkin, Steve Gilliard, Andrew Sullivan, Juan Cole, Jeff Goldstein and Glenn Greenwald. That is, if only we knew their real names. Their anonymous missives betray the honorable tradition set down by such courageous writers as Silence Dogood, Publius, Voltaire, Mark Twain and Ibn Warraq. And it certainly is an outrage that no blogger has ever faced real-life consequences for their online shenanigans.

Siegel on self-awareness: Everyone seems to be fleeing from the responsibilities that come from being who you are. I think that is why the blogosphere is thriving. It allows people to develop a fantasy self.

Alas, you should see the life I hide behind my clever screen name. You would fantasize about being me, too.

Siegel on self-control: [A]s Sprezzatura, I wasn’t practicing criticism. I was indulging my temperament and abandoning my intellect. Look, putting a polemicist like myself in the blogosphere is like putting someone with an obesity problem in a chocolate factory.

To her great credit, Deborah Solomon asks the most perfectly natural follow-up question: “What are you talking about?”

Siegel on self-pity: At least for those who practice incessant character assassination, which represents a good portion of the blogosphere, they vent out of the pain of being unacknowledged.

I can speak only for myself and my four esteemed colleagues, but I wouldn’t say our character assassination is “incessant.” Hell, this is the first thing any of us has bothered to post today. And no one’s heard a peep out of Seb in who knows how long. “Incessant” sounds a bit hyperbolic and self-serving, Lee. (PS-Call me. Ringy-dingy. Please?)

Gavin adds: I feel you’re unacknowledged, Travis.

(Hugely updated below)

Hmmm:

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

By the time Bremer departed in June 2004, Iraq was in a precarious state. The Iraqi army, which had been dissolved and refashioned by the CPA, was one-third the size he had pledged it would be. Seventy percent of police officers had not been screened or trained. Electricity generation was far below what Bremer had promised to achieve. And Iraq’s interim government had been selected not by elections but by Americans. Divisive issues were to be resolved later on, increasing the chances that tension over those matters would fuel civil strife.

To recruit the people he wanted, O’Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.

Smith said O’Beirne once pointed to a young man’s résumé and pronounced him “an ideal candidate.” His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.

O’Beirne, a former Army officer who is married to prominent conservative commentator Kate O’Beirne, did not respond to requests for comment.

Hmm

[A]s he prepared to leave Iraq, Mr. Bremer listed reduced tax rates, reduced tariffs and the liberalization of foreign-investment laws as among his major accomplishments. Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time — but we’ve given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.

If the occupiers often seemed oblivious to reality, one reason was that many jobs at the C.P.A. went to people whose qualifications seemed to lie mainly in their personal and political connections — people like Simone Ledeen, whose father, Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative, told a forum that “the level of casualties is secondary” because “we are a warlike people” and “we love war.”

Still, given Mr. Bremer’s economic focus, you might at least have expected his top aide for private-sector development to be an expert on privatization and liberalization in such countries as Russia or Argentina [some ‘expertise’ that turned out to be, Paul; but, yes, in principle better an expert or even an ‘expert’ than a hack -Retardo]. But the job initially went to Thomas Foley, a Connecticut businessman and Republican fund-raiser with no obviously relevant expertise. In March, Michael Fleischer, a New Jersey businessman, took over. Yes, he’s Ari Fleischer’s brother. Mr. Fleischer told The Chicago Tribune that part of his job was educating Iraqi businessmen: “The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review.”

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This story about the Bush administration’s shameless cronyism and incompetence isn’t exactly breaking news. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t fun to read. Check it out:

After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans — restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O’Beirne’s office in the Pentagon.

O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.

No biggie. They can just pray and ask God to give them advice for rebuilding the stock market. Third awakening, baby!

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