Sadly, No!

P-Swank is on a roll today:

It is sad that the US has lost one of its major political parties, the Dems, to the Muslims murderers global. And we have long lost our mainline newsfeeds to the Islamic fanatics. Nevertheless, such is fact.

Yes, it’s fact that half the country has converted to the killing cult Muslims global murderers religion.

However, in the face of all that, Mr. Bush and team continue “to stay the course,” though I noted a liberal panelist the other day deriding the repeated use of that phrase.

Oooooh, bad move. Don’t ever mock George W. Jesus when Pastor Swank’s around.

I wanted to say: “Don?t you realize that using that phrase will in fact by the definition of that phrase itself mean repeating the phrase?”

Why this man doesn’t have his own cable news show is anybody’s guess.

Staying the course is staying the course and staying the course is to continue to use the phrase “stay the course.”

Hey, FOX News? Think you could fire Greta and give Pastor Swank the 10 o’clock slot? You could call it “The Swank Report,” and it’d a full hour of zaniness featuring musical guest Dr. BLT and fashion reporter Kaye Grogan. Oh, and we could also have Marie strut around in a PePo classic thong- that’d totally bring in the ratings.

So it is that Mr. Bush must be encouraged. He and his colleagues get this information, knowing full well that it is this strength that will win over the Muslims murderers global. (Do not refer to them as “insurgents” or “terrorists.” These are terms the liberals use to mask the true identity of the slaughterers. Call them what they are: Muslim murderers global and Islamic killers international.)

How about “Muslamic slurdillers intercontinental?” Or is that too wordy?

In the spirit of Bay-Rue-Bay Day, I had originally planned on writing a lengthy essay on the role of ecopostfemimarxistdeconstructionist theory found in the greater works of Derrida and Foucault. But since that would have required actually reading Derrida and Foucault, I decided to take my usual cheap shots at right-wing crazies instead. Enjoy!

Via Agape Press, we see that there’s a big controversy brewin’ down in Alabama:

Several voices are raising objections to a bill in the Alabama legislature, HB 58, which would require local school districts choosing to offer a Bible literacy elective in grades 9 through 12 to use a new, untested textbook that many critics view as controversial.The bill sponsored by Alabama House Majority Leader Ken Guin and House Speaker Seth Hammett would allow schools to offer a course based on the book The Bible and Its Influence, which is published by the Virginia-based Bible Literacy Project (BLP). However, Dr. Dennis Cuddy, who has taught in public schools at the university level and served as a senior associate with the U.S. Department of Education, believes the book contains blatant errors and misleading information.

You mean it teaches children that the world was created 6,000 years ago? That women can bear children without ever having had sex? That humanity was based on incest?
Read the rest of this entry »

More at Sadly, Non!

PS: Keep voting for us at Michael [ahem] Bay-Rue-Bay Online, as usual, because he we are in a dead heat with Austin Bay (conservative columnist, bad).

…And here’s another thing. Yes. It might be important to consider that the intellectual clubbiness and involution within the humanities that was exposed, as his champions not-unjustly claim, by Sokal and his Alan Sokal Project,* was in a certain regard pre-caricatured by the clubbiness and consanguinity of Social Text itself. The journal was indeed a very social text.

But let me illustrate. I was pleasantly surprised one day in 1996, in New York, to run into Elaine Scarry on the street, and as a quick round of cocktails led to another, and so forth, we found ourselves at the loft of Bruce Robbins, the Social Text editor, who must then have been in the process of commissioning the Sokal piece. A cry came from above. “Bath time!” yelled other-editor Andrew Ross, actually (and I mean ‘actually’ in the literal sense) sliding into Robbins’s apartment on a bat pole, wearing nothing but a towel. “Oh, pardon me,” he said, hieing himself off to the hot tub shared by the two bachelors. An attractive young woman with tattoos slid down after him, and the duo closed the door after themselves. There came a sound of water running.

“He lives upstairs from you?” I asked. “He’s like my sitcom neighbor,” Robbins explained. “Or vice versa!” came a shout from the tub.

More later after I finish drafting this monograph on Veselovsky. Russian is a slow-go in the morning, and the blamed thing is due at 3 this afternoon, along with a sample chapter of the next book (about which more anon).

*”I am the maker of rules/ Dealing with fools/ I can cheat you blind” (Alan Parsons Project – ‘Eye in the Sky’)

As we learned earlier, there’s a best-of-the-blogs award thing going on this week. How we survived the nomination process is anyone’s guess, and once that happened, simply everything started going to hell, such that we’re currently in the opposite of last place, in the category of ‘blogs that are less popular than Firedoglake, but more popular than The Iowa Voice.’ Or, in their parlance, the ‘top 251-500’ — according to that Truth Laid Bear blog-ranking ecosystem that, well, whatever that is. We’re something like a Skateboarding Aardvark, according to them.

It’s unclear whether the Best Blog banner rights are transferable (i.e. can be sold on Ebay), and we plan to find out about this, assuming we win, which is, like all things, up to King Jesus.

But as we know, the important thing in life isn’t so much winning, but making conservatives lose and feel bad. And in this regard, the one result that absolutely must not come to pass — whatever Jesus might have to say about it — would be to have conservative author and columnist Austin Bay, of the Austin Bay blog, gain second place over Michael B?rub?, of Michael B?rub? Online.

Austin Bay (bad)

Briefly, Bay must lose. Furthermore, there isn’t even any such place as Austin Bay, since Austin remains, to all recollection, an inland city. His is a name outmatched in geographical malapropism only by that of author Camden Joy — and it will likely remain so unless the German customer-service representative Virginia Urban marries and hyphenates with a man named ‘Planning.’

Therefore, we here at Sadly, No recommend that ev

Therefore, please continue voting for me, Michael, and this blog right here, just as you have been doing. And don’t vote for Sadly, No until l say so. Thanks!
-Michael

…And Rightly So!

Me, Brad and Seb do this all the time too, with the towels.

Drat, they’re married. It would never have worked, though. ‘Sex’ is such a raw word — we prefer to call them ‘offenders of love.’

Dep’t of, But it’s all about helping one another:

“Several years ago, Holland became the first country to legalize the mercy killings of adults. Now, this European nation, known for its liberal ways, has announced that in ‘certain circumstances’ it will also allow babies to be euthanized.”

They?ve crossed over the slippery slope. Like the Netherlands. [link]

The Netherlands and Holland are considered different countries? And Rightly So! Sadly, No!

[Quizzical Sunday doesn’t-deserve-its-own-post addendum: How in tarnation are we getting referrals from here?]

Lotsa good games this week. I predict the Pats will defeat the Bills by 10 and clinch the division. Even though I hate Peyton Manning, it’d be cool to see another team go undefeated, so I’m rooting for the Colts to beat Jacksonville. As much as I love the Eagles, they’ve lost four effing Pro-Bowlers, and will get crushed by the Giants. The Steelers need to beat DAAAAAAAA BEARS to stay alive. And just because Yosef is my homey, I’ll pick Carolina over Tampa by a touchdown.

Update: That was a very nice touchdown run, Mr. Brady. But please, please, please don’t do that again.

Conservative humor site Six Meat Buffet offers holiday gift ideas for liberals.

Ooh, the burn.

Say, that reminds us.

Item 630-41-319 ‘Holiday Yule Log’

Ho-ho-ho! Yule be the one laughing when you spark up a cheery blaze with one of our logs of bundled Conservative Book Club overstock. Yes, Mellon-Scaife and other wingnut billionaires* buy up mass copies of gaping howlers like Malkin’s ‘Unhinged’ and John O’Neill’s ‘Unfit For Command’ to make them seem popular and mainstream (also note the telltale † in the NYT bestseller list to mark sneaky bulk orders from retail stores). And the billions they spend comes out to mere pennies-per-dollar on the other end — all to help subsidize the right-wing propaganda machine your Holiday heating bill!

All Holiday Yule Logs are guaranteed unread, and come attractively bundled and scented with a sticky aromatic pine resin.**

Also available (see inset): Item 630-41-322 — ‘Holiday Bible Yule Log.’

*As Neil Diamond sings, “Sun Myung Moon/ Everybody knows one…”
**Or specify cat urine.

OK, folks, you’ve only got a few days left to vote in the 2005 Weblog Awards. While these awards were originally intended to be the ultimate in right-wing circle jerkery, many lefty blogs are either in the lead or are close to leading in several of the major categories. [G-Love adds: In fact, we’re blowing the right-bloggers out of the water in category after category — but as we know, if the WingNet is good at one thing, it’s launching a coordinated, unified response to stuff just like this. It would only take one organized Freep to turn sweet victory into bitter ashes for many of our mutual pals here. (And the rules are that everyone can vote once per day, in all categories.) So we find ourselves in the unusual position of acting as a positive force in the blogosphere. Forgive us; we’re usually much worse than this, really. Let’s left-blogpile ’em, peepz!]

Here are my personal endorsements:

–Best Weblog: In an ideal world, I’d say to vote for Kevin Drum. But since he doesn’t stand a chance of winning, I gotta go with Kos, who is already kicking some serious ass. So por favor, send a vote his way, or else Michelle Malkin, a.k.a. the Most Despicable Person in America, will win. *shudder*

G-Love adds: I’m voting Atrios, because if we don’t suck up to him, he’ll keep linking to The Poor Man all the time, and not us. The pain of that is immeasurable.

–Best Group Blog: I’m actually a fan of Reason’s Hit & Run, but since I’m being a hack today, I’m gonna vote for our buddies over at Pandagon.

–Best Humor/Comics Blog: It’s gotta go to General JC Christian. Every day the General writes pants-pissingly funny letters to America’s most prominent right-wing kooks, and he deserves recognition for his valor in the War Against Wingnuttery. (Plus, I don’t want that creationist douchebag who draws Dilbert to win.)

G-Love adds: I’m down with Fafblog on this one. He doesn’t stand a chance of winning, but if he can beat the ‘conservative humor’ site IMAO, the world will be that much righter.

–Best Liberal Blog: World O’Crap, baby. S.Z. somehow summons the strength to read more hard-core wingnuttery every day than most of us do in a month. We salute her brilliant efforts.

G-Love adds: TBogg also deserves a prop, although he won a Koufax awhile back and it’s all been a swirl of red-carpet receptions and armored limousines since then. It’s not about the Benjamins for S.Z.

–Best Video Blog: Crooks and Liars. Is there any doubt?

–Best Canadian Blog: None of them. The winner should be Adam Yoshida.

–Best Religious Blog: Again, none of them. The winner should be Pastor Swank.

–Best of the Top 250 Blogs: There are some fine choices here, but Jane at FireDogLake deserves mad props for her work on the Plame affair.

G-Love adds: And Digby is rocking the totals as well — a tough decision, even Pyrrhic. Moving right along, we find ourselves at the…

–Best of the 501-1000 Blogs: Sadly, No! ally Roger Ailes.

G-Love adds: And also Needlenose, currently in second place — another tough decision since their styles are so different. I’m splitting daily votes between them, but it’s good to see Ailes with such a massive lead over the rest of the field (of thirteen right-wing blogs and one that’s apparently about optical illusions).

Best LGBT Blog is a much tighter race and a total must-win, with Pam’s House Blend in the lead and a right-wing tag-team of Gay Patriot and Brat Boy School close behind. (Thanks, D. Sidhe!)

One vote per-day, per-voter means a volatile field that could change at any time, so even in the categories where we’re romping on ’em, this is one occasion where it really is good to vote early and often.

Added: In the Best European Blog (non UK) category, we would strongly suggest voting for No Pasaran, for no other reason than to prevent the insufferable David’s Medienkritik (Germany’s equivalent of Brent Bozell) from winning. –Seb

Via Tom Maguire, we find this Editor & Publisher preview of Michael Crowley’s latest article in the New York TImes Magazine. His thesis is that right-wing blogs are generally more effective than left-wing blogs:

(Crowley) explains that ?Democrats say there?s a key difference between liberals and conservatives online. Liberals use the Web to air ideas and vent grievances with one another, often ripping into Democratic leaders?.Conservatives, by contrast, skillfully use the Web to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates.?

In other words, they’re mindless hacks who never criticize their own party. (I should note that this doesn’t apply to conservative blogs like Maguire or John Cole- I’m mostly thinking of our friends at Powerline.)

Crowley then comments that what really makes the conservative blogs allegedly more effective is the infrastructure provided by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and others–“all of which are quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere.”

So wingnut hacks in the blogosphere make up a bunch of nonsense and then spread it to the general public via wingnut hacks on radio and cable news.

Wow.

This circle has gotten so much jerkage that it’s starting to resemble a figure eight.