Sadly, No!

Hey, the Democrats are finally doing something intelligent:

Senate Democrats offered an amendment Monday that would demand that a pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq begin this year.

 

The plan, the product of weeks of intense negotiations between Senate Democrats and Minority Leader Harry Reid, is designed to give Democrats a unified position on Iraq as the November midterm elections near.

The amendment would:

-Begin the “phased redeployment” or pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2006.

-Require the administration to submit a plan by the end of 2006 for continued phased redeployment beyond 2006.

-Transform the role of troops left in the country to a “limited mission” of training and logistical support for Iraqi security forces, protection of U.S. personnel and facilities, and targeted counterterrorism operations.

Seems pretty reasonable to me. I’m sure the Marshall Whitmans and Joe Liebermans will freak out, but I don’t care. The Democrats needed to come up with a unified position on Iraq, and this seems like a good one. Check it:

Seems pretty reasonable to me. I’m sure the Marshall Whitmans and Joe Liebermans will freak out, but I don’t care. The Democrats needed to come up with a unified position on Iraq, and this seems like a good one. Check it:

Read the rest of this entry »

Knock knock. Who’s there? It’s Bill Whittle again, and this time he’s writing a book about how people like Bill Whittle are saving civilization from the slavering barbarians who comprise the rest of us — including Katrina-Negroes, ‘appeasers,’ Democrats, the French, and all who don’t delight primarily in owning real estate (which they can rent to serfs, etc., reducing America to a Gogol novel). Randroid, basically. But one who imagines he thought up the whole scheme himself.

L-R: Whittle, some bozo, Hugh Hewitt, some other nimrod.

His idea? Clap for Tinkerbell. No, literally. No, I’m not kidding. That’s what he says.

Now the other thing I remember is that moment in Peter Pan where Tinkerbell lies dying…dying from a lack of belief. It is at this point that Peter Pan would walk to the front of the stage, and implore us in the most desperate terms to clap as loudly as we could to show how much we believed in her, believed in magic, believed in redemption, believed in the power of our own belief. We would clap till our hands were raw, clap and stomp our feet until the foundations shook, parents and children alike, while Peter would shake his head sadly and tell us it wasn’t belief enough. Then we would clap like furies, scream like Viking berserkers, mom and dad beside us, hollering and shouting and stomping their feet, a wall of sound, a rhythmic, pulsating tsunami of emotion…and then, just then, the slightest stirring of a delicate hand…

(Read the rest if you like to see things get worse.)

Because, you know, world history is a series of conflicts between good and evil, determined by ‘us’ stamping our feet, whooping, and waving torches to defeat ‘them.’

It’s striking to realize that millennia of human inquiry can circle neatly back to the ring of stones in the Afar where a proto-Bill-Whittle leaned into the fire gnawing a gazelle bone, and yawped that the clan who lived across the mountain were bwaa-ha-haa! nasty, dirty bad people, unlike us good people, ho-ho. And we should get them! Because they are bad, and not good!

Historical tides of operatic stupidity, of course, followed, thanks to the eternal Bill Whittles who fall for any old dumb thing, who lack context and don’t understand any motivations besides their own, who have a field of reference spanning a few years at the most, et cetera and so forth. And so now the present Bill Whittle is like, “No wait, I’ve got it all figured out. Bwaa-ha-haa! stupid, dirty bad people, unlike us good people, ho-ho. And we should get them! [Insert cites from Victor Davis Hanson, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, possibly Thucydides, Gandhi, and/or the Infant Gospel of Thomas, and who the hell else knows what.] Bwahahaa.”

We have Jeff Goldstein’s cock here in a Mason jar, Bill. Thwack! Thlop! Thwack! Oh, you like that? Thlop! Thwack, Schlonk! Want more? Thlonk, Schwap (etc).

Bradrocket adds: This about sums it up, doesn’t it?

I got nothin’ to add to that astonishing backhanded compliment. What say you, Mr. Prototypical Nerd?

“Ha ha! These guys sound like they sit on the couch all day eating brownie mix and listening to Klingon-English translation tapes!”

So say we all.

Gavin adds: Would it be in questionable taste to have Dafydd ab Hugh as Scotty and, um, you-know-who as Sulu?

Or is ‘questionable taste’ a lost notion at this point?

It’s been a long time since I last checked in on Justin Darr. Happily, he hasn’t gotten any smarter since we last parted:

We told you so: the UN takes one more step toward global government

Justin Darr
June 19, 2006

For years, Conservatives have been trying to alert Americans and all freedom loving people in the world about the dangers the United Nations poses to individual liberty and democracy. Whether it was “Agenda 21,” the United Nations’ plan for global sustainable development that would void your private property rights, force you to give up your car in lieu of a bicycle, and reserve almost half of the United States as no human zones to facilitate habitat for migratory animals, or the United Nations’ plan to wrest control of the Internet away from the United States and place it under the “unbiased” control of China, Sudan, and Cuba, or NRA President Wayne LaPierre’s warning that the UN’s “Small Arms Review Conference” was nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to destroy the 2nd Amendment, Conservatives have always seen the UN as the anti-American organization it is. And, categorically, we have been ridiculed and called insane by the left as a result.

I won’t argue with that last point.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was great fun growing up in the 80s, what with the constant dread that either our senile old TelePrompter reader or their vodka-pickled Politburo hack would instantly render the Earth a cockroach kingdom. These idiot wingnuts now, they’re so worried that Ahmadenijad wants to usher in the Muslim rapture, but they conveniently forget that their Dear Leader Ronald Reagan spoke just as strongly of ushering in the Christian one — and Ronnie actually had the nukes to do it.

Read the rest of this entry »

NewsMax, a.k.a., “News for the Inbred and Illiterate,” has released yet another spiffy poll:

Ann Coulter’s new book “Godless: The Church of Liberalism” has created a storm of controversy, but an online poll sponsored by NewsMax.com reveals that Americans overwhelmingly support Coulter and strongly disagree with her critics.

A Sadly, No! poll reveals that most Americans believe typical NewsMax readers spend their days lying on sidewalks and eating their own earwax. Furthermore, 89% of Americans surveyed said NewsMax readers “shampoo their hair with Crisco and Mountain Dew” and “probably don’t have teeth.”

1) TBogg
2) Scotsman.com
3) Bush appointee in effect

Shuttle Launch to Go Ahead Despite Risk of ‘Catastrophe’

JACQUI GODDARD AT CAPE CANAVERAL

NASA managers have rejected last-ditch pleas from their top safety officer and chief engineer to scrap next month’s shuttle launch, saying that they will press ahead despite potentially catastrophic risks.

The head of the US space agency, Dr Michael Griffin, overruled warnings that there was a “relatively high” chance the shuttle’s external fuel tank could shed some of its solid foam coating when it launches on 1 July, carrying seven crew including Briton Piers Sellers, an Edinburgh University graduate.

In 2003, falling foam knocked a hole in Columbia’s wing, causing the craft to break up as it returned to Earth, resulting in the deaths of seven astronauts. Last year, Discovery came within inches of disaster when a chunk rattled loose from the tank and nearly struck the orbiter seconds after lift-off.

During a weekend meeting at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida, Dr Griffin gave the final nod for next month’s mission, despite what he called an “intensive and spirited exchange” with senior colleagues who recommended a “no-go”. “We have elected to take the risk,” he said.

If the mission ends in disaster, NASA’s multi-billion dollar shuttle programme will be scrapped, leaving construction of the International Space Station unfinished and marking the end of an era in human spaceflight.

Bush appointee Michael Griffin

Tech lesson of the day: What is a slingbox and a slingplayer

by John in DC – 6/18/2006 04:52:00 PM

I simply do not understand what they are and how they work and what they let you do. So please enlighten me, and all the rest of us who love our TVs, love technology, but are slightly clueless.

Thanks, JOHN

If only there were some way to search for things on the Internet.

Above: Sling video is a must-have for the stylish left-blogger on the go.

Next, Aravosis asks:

“Help, someone turned the lights off, and now I’m trapped in here. Can someone deliver food and water (something nice please, no fast food), or explain how to make doorknobs light up or make a noise?

“Thanks, JOHN”

Dick McDonald writes:

Ronald Reagan cut taxes drastically, doubled government tax revenues and what happened?

Some jackass went Sadly, No! on his blog board? Ping! Sadly, No!:

From 1981 to 1989 real federal revenues climbed by 20 percent. […] In 1981 income tax receipts totaled $347 billion; in 1989 they totaled $549 billion, a 58 percent increase. In fact, income tax collections grew only slightly slower in the 1980s than in the 1990s despite income tax rate reductions in the Reagan years and increases in the Bush-Clinton years.

Please, please, please don’t give us that nominal crap either. From 1982 to 1989 federal revenue went up by a non-inflation adjusted 60%. But as long as we’re on that topic, why not pay attention to what Mr. Moore (quoted above) writes:

Hence, if we define the beginning of the Reagan years as the first full year when the policies were in effect, the eight years in which Reagan’s policies were in effect were 1982-89. This latter approach seems to provide a more accurate gauge of the economy’s reaction to the change in policies Reagan enacted in 1981, and for this reason we adopt this as the standard for analysis in this study.

Unless, you know, we need to sex things up, like here: Read the rest of this entry »

Gary Ruppert said,
June 18, 2006 at 18:30

I wonder what the leftist blogs will mention first

a) That Jerome Armstrong is a crook who shilled worthless stocks
b) That John Murtha advocated cutting and running from Somalia, which emboldened Bin Laden, and he says that running from Somalia was a good thing. Just imagine what would happen as a result of America adopting the Murtha plan to run from Iraq.

A good question, and one we’re happy to answer.

We’ll downplay the New York Post hit piece on Jerome, mentioning in passing that his offense, some years ago, seems to have been posting things in comments at websites without mentioning that he was being paid for doing so. This juxtaposition of recent stories will afford a measure of snark, which we’ll wring from the topic as vinegar from a sponge.

Otherwise, honestly, we don’t know Jerome. Maybe he’s a super-villain bent on world destruction, like Aravosis. But it looks like he got caught up in a petty stock-trading thingo back in the loose, zesty ’90s; and honestly, if we had to choose, we’d rather be in Jerome’s shoes today than those of certain other people.

Re: Murtha and Somalia, and that cunning rutting, rut-and-cunning cut-run business, which boings up like a jack-in-the-box every few weeks or so: Don’t make us get up out of this chair.

Immediate withdrawal from Somalia was the official Republican policy. If Bin Laden was ’emboldened’ by it, then you’d have to be a pretty big dummy indeed to ignore the howls and denunciations of the intervention by the GOP, which are all over the public record, and instead try to pin it on Murtha for supporting a GOP-sponsored Foreign Affairs Committee resolution.

[headdesk headdesk] [pulls t-shirt over head] [moaning piteously]

Whatever they pay you, Gary, it ain’t enough!

Inappropriate! Along the same lines:

For more than 17,000 years, the bestiary of the Lascaux cave in southwestern France survived the ravages of history, unseen and undiscovered. […]

“They tell us the cave’s condition is stable,” says a member of the Scientific Committee of Lascaux Cave, which the French Ministry of Culture set up in 2002 to deal with the problem. “But that’s what they say about Ariel Sharon.”

That’s not gonna be good for business.

* Please someone tell us this reference won’t be lost on everyone. Please. [PS: Thanks to Chuckles for the link.]