Sadly, No!

Assrocket writes:

I called Senator Dick Durbin’s office this morning at (202) 224-2152 and, after being on hold for a while, laid out the reasons why I think Durbin should resign from the Senate.

Well, I’m sure that was effective:

“Hi, yes, this is Mr. Hindrocket of Powerline Blog, Time Magazine’s Blog of the Year. You may remember me as the guy who accused Jimmy Carter of treason and trashed Britain for not having the courage to face down Gandhi and his rabble back in the ’40s. Oh, and I also think your entire party is engaged in an effort that really is a betrayal of America. At any rate, I’m calling to let you know that I think your boss is a traitor and should resign his post in the Senate. The reason is… ooop! Sorry, I just shit my pants! Ha, ha, ha! Mind giving me a coupla minutes to wipe up? Thanks.”

Search string spotted:
http://www.google.com/search?/sourcid…

Also, due to popular confusion and the bloggy convention of upside-down sequencing, Episode 1 of An Assful of Secrets, our black-and-white film serial starring Richard Widmark as a peripatetic French-Canadian anti-wingnut detective, is here.

When I woke up, I was strapped to a zebra-patterned reclining chair in a tiger-striped rumpus room with leopard-skin carpeting. Kaye Grogan stood in front of me, dressed in a robe patterned after some cat the species of which I couldn’t immediately identify.

“What’s that, ocelot?” I said, pointing with my nose. “Jaguarundi?” My head felt like a moonwalk with bikers jumping around in it. Kaye’s goons were standing by the door. The big one cracked his knuckles.
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As I lost consciousness in the car trunk, with Kaye Grogan‘s shrieks rending the night air, I fell into a dream.
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Since SZ had an update on Debbie Schlussel today (hopefully no relation to my friend Edmund), I thought Sadly, No! should join the fun by updating y’all on our favorite Debbie, Ms. Debbie Daniel!

We’ve always known that Debbie’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but she’s been extra, extra zany lately, like she’s been simultaneously trying to steal Fred’s Fruity Pebbles while hiding boxes of Trix from wily teens. With that in mind, let’s take a look at her latest column, “Maybe we should have surrendered at Ground Zero?”

*cue orchestra* *enter Aretha Franklin*
“You make me feel,
You make me feel,
Yooooou make me feeeeeel,
Like appeasin’ bin Laden…”
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The smartest and hardest working woman journalist without a TV show writes:

The autopsy report spends three-and-a-half pages debunking Schiavo’s claim [that Teri suffered from bulimia.]

Malkin links to, but does not quote, said “three-and-a-half pages.” No surprise given the amount of space devoted to (and the nature of) said debunking. (In other words… Sadly, No!)

Some debunking. (And quite short for “three-and-a-half pages.”) But Malkin does one better when she writes:

Here’s a typical example from an article headlined, “No trauma before Schiavo collapse:”

An autopsy report on a brain-damaged woman at the centre of a long legal battle in the US has shown that she suffered no trauma before her collapse.

But on page 4 of the M.E.’s summary, what the report actually says with regard to possible strangulation is this:

Autopsy examination of her neck structures 15 years after her initial collapse did not detect any signs of remote trauma, but, with such a delay, the exam was unlikely to show any residual neck findings.”

The text that directly precedes Malkin’s quote is:

Maybe Malkin’s lack of a TV show isn’t due to media bias.

My secretary is gone for the night, and I’ve had a few pops from the bottle of Marie Brizard that lives in the big bottom desk drawer.

A man has to get his thinking done, even if it takes until daybreak with a bottle vacated and a couple of ashtrays filled.

My name is Leno. Sal Leno. Says so on the door. I don’t give out business cards — people come when they need to come.

I knew when the goth dame came in last week that it was going to be a rough job. I just didn’t know how rough.

“He’s missing,” she said, rolling her tongue piercing against her teeth. “No sign of him for months, and you could say he’d made some enemies.”

“No last name?” I said.

“No, just Pete M.” She handed me a photo.

“Good-looking guy,” I said. “Maybe there was another girl, and…”

“No, you don’t understand,” she broke in. She made the international loony-loony sign, spinning her finger around her ear with her tongue sticking out like, ‘Blar!’

“Oh, wingnuts,” I said.

“Wingnuts,” she said.

I pointed to my file cabinet. “See how those drawers are alphabetized? That top one is A through V. See the three drawers under it?”

“W.”

“Right. Then there’s X through Z. I honestly don’t do that much business with X through Z.”

“You’ve dealt with wingnuts before.”

“Sister,” I said, “You can either come to me or go to Ms. O’Crap down the hall, or P. T. Boggington if you’re looking for the quick denouement, but frankly, I come cheaper.”

Ten minutes later, my secretary was booking the flight.

***

Chuck Colson’s latest Townhall column is quite a doozy. Here’s my favorite line:

These psychiatrists found out, indeed, that human nature can’t be manipulated, that the Bible was right all along: We are made male and female in His image.

Doesn’t this make God a hermaphrodite?

Here’s my second favorite line:

You see them at night in big cities: men dressed up as women, complete with makeup, jewelry, and high heels. Despite their best efforts, it’s not a pretty sight.

Uhm, you might wanna tell that to Ben Shapiro…

Looks like someone just soiled their armor and has decided to run away:

The autopsy of Terri Schiavo – particularly the findings that she had irreversible brain damage and was blind – left Republicans who had pushed so aggressively for federal intervention struggling on Wednesday to defend their argument that she should have been kept alive.

Senator Mel Martinez, the Florida Republican who pressed the case most, said he has since had second thoughts about Congress’s involvement.

“I really probably come to the view this has to be more resolved at the state level, seems like the kind of issue the state courts deal with,” Mr. Martinez said.

Senator Martinez, March 16, 2005:

Terri is severely brain-damaged ? of that there is no question. However, many media reports have indicated that she is in a persistent vegetative state. There is evidence to the contrary.

She is not on a respirator or other 24-hour-a-day medical equipment. She responds to voices, touch, and the presence of people. She can smile, cry, and establish eye contact.

Last week, I introduced my first piece of legislation in the Senate: The Incapacitated Person?s Legal Protection Act of 2005. This bill would ensure that incapacitated individuals ? like Terri Schiavo ? would have their due-process rights of habeas corpus when a court orders their death by removal of nutrition, hydration and medical treatment. My colleague from Florida, Congressman Dave Weldon has introduced identical legislation in the House of Representatives. […]

In essence, this legislation would give incapacitated individuals like Terri, who have been given what amounts to a death sentence by the courts, federal habeas corpus protections to ensure that she receives the same due process protections as convicted murderers given the death penalty. [Emphasis added. — Good thing he didn’t refer to Florida hospitals as the Gulag of our time. –S,N!]

Back to today:

The case has also given Democrats ammunition to use against the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, a transplant surgeon who, on the Senate floor, voiced his opinion about Ms. Schiavo’s condition based on videotapes in which she appears reactive to some stimuli.

Aides to Dr. Frist, a likely presidential candidate in 2008, angrily said he had never made a formal diagnosis and thus had nothing to retract.

Dr. Teardrops of AIDS, March 19, 2005:

Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a renowned heart surgeon before becoming Senate majority leader, went to the floor late Thursday night for the second time in 12 hours to argue that Florida doctors had erred in saying Terri Schiavo is in a “persistent vegetative state.”

“I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office,” he said in a lengthy speech in which he quoted medical texts and standards. “She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli.”

As someone else said at the time:

Laurie Zoloth, director of bioethics for the Center for Genetic Medicine at Northwestern University, said she was surprised to hear Frist weigh in, given that he has not examined Schiavo. “It is extremely unusual — and by a non-neurologist, I might add,” Zoloth said in an interview.

So it all goes back to Seinfeld:

ELAINE: Wow! That is unbelievable. The pain is totally gone!
JERRY: What’s even more amazing is his formal training is in paediatrics.

A car door slammed, then another. The gravel road crunched with footsteps. My head felt like one of those giant balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, only filled with Ow! instead of helium.

Rubber cement could mean only one thing: Kaye Grogan. I had plans to visit Ms. Grogan later, but some rat must have squealed. The footsteps had nearly reached the back of the car.

“Duh, the boss is gonna like this one!” a thick voice said. “Do you think we’ll get a special reward?”

“Shut up, Mugsy!” said a smaller, nasal voice. “And get your hand out of your pants — that’s really disgusting.”

The trunk opened and two henchmen stood there, decked out in matching tiger-stripe velour suits with bouffy Bon Jovi hairdos that they were about twenty years too old to get away with, assuming anyone ever really does.

It was dark and a fat moon hung over the horizon — I’d been under for hours. I’d smuggled a pistol past the incompetent, minimum-wage private security at the airport, but the holster was empty. My flash-bang grenades, Taser, hat with a razor-sharp brim, CS gas canister, and tiny, radio-controlled drone aircraft were gone too. There was also no sign of my suitcase.

One henchman was shaped like a 7-foot bowling pin with its hand down its pants, while the other was what you’d call runty — except not to his face at the moment, because he was holding an automatic rifle. Behind them was a McMansion painted in leopard spots with an enormous, spotlit flag flying in the yard. Topiary jungle cats lined the front walk.

“Out of the car, bub!” said the runty, nasal one. “And that ain’t ‘just my opinion,’ see?”

A shriek came from the house. “Get in here, you jerks!” Grogan screamed. “I have some beautiful poetry to get out of my system!”

Suddenly I realized what was happening. The world spun, and I fell back into sweet, black unconsciousness.