Sadly, No!

Gregory Djerejian becomes the latest so-called “conservative” to engage in pre-9/11 thinking:

Gregory is perpetuating the pre-9/11 fallacy that the American government bears responsibility for the wars it starts. As the administration has said repeatedly, the Global War Against Terror is not simply a military war, but a war of ideas. In this light, actually winning the Iraq war is far less important than giving people the idea that we’re winning the Iraq war. Once one has adopted this proper post-9/11 perspective (which one can easily accomplish by locking oneself away in one’s mother’s basement for months on end and reading nothing but the soothing “Heh-Indeeds” of Glenn Reynolds), it becomes clear that the MSM does indeed bear the blame for any failure in Iraq.

I ask you, Gregory: if the MSM had not reported on the insufficient troop levels, the lack of post-war planning, or attrocities of Abu Ghraib, would anybody know about them? Certainly not! And do you really think that 57% of Americans would not find the Iraq war worth fighting had the MSM not reported all those mistakes? The answer to this question begins with an “S,” ends with an “O,” and in the middle is “adly, n.” In a post-9/11 world, it is irrelevant whether or not the Bush Administration is actually competent. The important thing is that the public has the idea that they are.

Country music stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are shrill (via Hoffmania; with emphasis added):

Faith Hill and Tim McGraw — two stars who usually stay out of politics — blasted the Hurricane Katrina cleanup effort, with Hill calling the slow progress in Louisiana and Mississippi “embarrassing” and “humiliating.” […]

“To me, there’s a lot of politics being played and a lot of people trying to put people in bad positions in order to further their agendas,” McGraw, a 38-year-old native of Delhi, La., told ABC News Radio.

“When you have people dying because they’re poor and black or poor and white, or because of whatever they are — if that’s a number on a political scale — then that is the most wrong thing. That erases everything that’s great about our country.”

McGraw specifically criticized President Bush. “There’s no reason why someone can’t go down there who’s supposed to be the leader of the free world … and say, ‘I’m giving you a job to do and I’m not leaving here until it’s done. And you’re held accountable, and you’re held accountable, and you’re held accountable.

“‘This is what I’ve given you to do, and if it’s not done by the time I get back on my plane, then you’re fired and someone else will be in your place. ‘”

C’mon, Tim. Holding public officials accountable is soooo pre-9/11 thinking. In a post-9/11 world, all of the president’s appointees, no matter how unqualified and inept, are doing “a heckuva job.”

(And incidentally, I’ve always hated Tim, mostly because of that sucky song of his that they play on Monday Night Football. But his newfound shrillness makes me think he deserves some grudging respect.)

Did anyone nominate Bérubé yet? He ought to win something this season — after the disappointment of having David Horowitz’s Most Super-Worst Professor EVAR contest mysteriously turn into a ballot-stuffing fiasco, with Horowitz being all like, “No fair!” and snatching up his Parcheesi set and pedaling furiously home on his Ross Apollo bicycle.

Would everyone agree to a ‘Most Super-extra Worst Professor EVAR-INFINITY’ category? It might come down to Michael and P. Zizzy — and that would be a hell of a contest right there.

Thanks to reader Kathleen for pointing us to this Jonah Goldberg post (my emphasis):

VERY QUICK BLEG [Jonah Goldberg]

Does that Geico car insurance ad (…but there is good news: I saved a bunch of money by switching to Geico) play across the entire country? I know it does in the East. Is it in the Midwest or California? As the response to this kind of bleg is bound to be overwhelming. Send answers to [email protected]. And please don’t send any answers after, 11:00 AM. Thanks.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to send Jonah erroneous or faulty information the next time he asks for help with his research. You should concoct a series of phony facts that reinforce Jonah’s worldview, but are also fairly believable. I want to see just how ridiculous something has to be for him not to print it (see also: his BS story about how the Great Plains Indians burned down all the forests in the Midwest, as well as his ridiculous smear of Upton Sinclair).

The first person to successfully get their misinformation published in one of his columns gets to spend a day with me, Gavin and Seb inside Sadly, No!’s glamorous headquarters in Times Square.

OK, so Brad is wicked drunk right now.

But!!!

He thought of some extra-kewl definitions to add to the Wingnut Debate Dictionary. Here they are:

1.) Glennocidal Tendencies: the belief that the mass-slaughter of human beings based on their race or ethnicity can be both “unavoidable” and “provoked.”

2.) Glenndetured Servitude: the act of sucking up to Instapundit in the hope that he will link to your blog. Glenndentured servants often suffer from extreme Penis Glennvy and are fond of writing “Welcome Instapundit Readers!”

You may credit both entries to Brad R. of Sadly, No! Thank you… Cheers!!!! 🙂

In the comments to this thread, a reader asks:

Ok, I seriously don’t understand the hate for Instapundit. Like many blogs out there, I don’t agree with everything said on it, but by and large it is one of the most intelligently written and decently researched journals I read. I see nothing but *hyuk hyuk* stupidity when it comes to comments against Instapundit, but I have yet to see one solid accusation of any sort. Please, stop telling me I should hate it and tell me what is wrong with it.

I am only too happy to oblige this request.

The trouble with Instapundit isn’t that he’s conservative, or that he supports the war in Iraq, or that he writes things that I frequently disagree with. There are plenty of center-right bloggers out there- from the Belgravia Dispatch to Dan Drezner to the kids at Reason– whose views I don’t usually share, but whose opinions are generally based within the bounds of reality. Alas, InstaGlenn’s posts often fail to meet such criteria, which is precisely why I find his blog to be unreadable nonsense.

Now, I’ll admit that Insty is a lot more civilized than many other bloggers out there, in that he doesn’t call people nasty names like “cobag” or “cum guzzling ass-fuck monster twat.” And unlike Dale Franks at Q&O, he doesn’t fantasize about watching his political enemies being dragged naked through the streets and strung up from lamp posts. That being said: despite his “civilized” tone and pedantic pretensiousness, Glenn Reynolds is a man with some genuinely crackpot ideas.
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Soft Europe

The problem with Europe is its unwillingness to start unprovoked wars of aggression.

From Ann “Less popular than that somewhat popular blogger” Althouse:

I felt no dissonance voting for both George Bush and Russ Feingold in 2004. […] I’d rather see smart, good people who think independently.

Yeah, sure would have been nice if a smart, good person who thinks independently had been elected President in 2000 2004. Maybe next time.

Added: Reminds us of the old How non partisan is Ann Althouse? game. (Be sure to read the entries.)

Oh, my. Whoah, Nelly. Remember that Friday Video thing that I sort of half-posted on Saturday because I was slipping into the site through the mail slot, with the server and all that?

Right, well, someone asked for a Long Ryders clip, and I went looking for one, and got lost in YouTube. It’s not a place to get lost in. You start wandering through one person’s favorite-video list, and from there into someone else’s, et cetera — because often the best way to find things isn’t to do a search, but to target someone who likes things that you like, and to see where they got them. But then you get careless, and soon enough, there you are: agoggled in the deep, gloamy thick of the Infinite Vid Forest, with the ‘
Teenage guys recording themselves doing skateboard tricks and falling down a lot

And there’s this kind:

Teenage girls recording themselves dancing around and woo-wooing

And there’s also an extra 500 infinity-schmillion of these:

Song + montage from TV show = music video

That one’s actually pretty not-badly done, with the editing and the Invader Zim (never mind the Blink 182). But you know what? No Long Ryders anywhere, except for an ’04 reunion thing. And I looked. There’s this, though:

The Plimsouls – ‘A Million Miles Away’ (4:23)

It’s from the same place and historical moment. Maybe there’s some Hoodoo Gurus in there too, but I’m staying here where it’s safe for the time being.

Nominations for the 2005 Ty Cobb Awards are now open in the following categories:

The Least Humorous Award is designated to honor a blogger or team of bloggers who are Kevin Drum who prize trenchant analysis and clarity of thought over the easy cheap shot or the snarky one-liner. Nominations should follow this guideline, but may also be given as a way of making an easy cheap shot or snarky one-liner.

The Most Deserving of Less Recognition Award is essentially a way to pick on blogs bigger and/or more respected than us, and is not intended to make anyone feel bad unless they fit such qualifications. This, however, gives a wide and numerous, if not functionally infinite, field of qualified nominees.

Worst Community is designated to honor left-blogs that for some reason don’t allow comments, but also to single out for distinction blogs that genuinely have a lot of really dumb comments. Another purpose is to better enable bloggers and commenters to annoy and make fun of each other through misuse of the awards process.

Nominations are also welcome for additional categories, and it must be underlined that a strict standard will be kept throughout the awards in terms of encouraging bald-assed self-promotion and ballot-stuffing, when done with style and panache.