Sadly, No!

There are other uses for a nearly identical phrase:

Flash forward to today. Ashlee Simpson is caught red handed doing the exact same thing. Her piss-poor excuses are quickly debunked and now everybody knows that Ashlee is the untalented younger sister of her only marginally gifted sibling. Career over, right? I mean, there’s no way the public can be counted on to lap up food that’s already been shown to be tainted is there? You can’t take a gigantic shit in someone’s chocolate cake and expect them to continue spooning it into their mouths can you?

Well as it turns out, Sadly, Yes.

Though we think it should read: Sadly, Yes! Sort of like this:

Lippman: And, anyway I was just reading your final edit, um, there seems to be an inordinate number of exclamation points.
Elaine: Well, I felt that the writing lacked certain emotion and intensity.
Lippman: Oh, “It was damp and chilly afternoon, so I decided to put on my sweatshirt!”

Giddy up!

PS: Added link, oops!

Australia’s Arthur Chrenkoff is back on his “good news from some place Bush bombed” beat, with predictable results. In Australia, a roundup of the “past month’s good news from Afghanistan” means “things that are going to happen:”

[Karzai] told ministers to avoid party politics and commit themselves to helping the war-torn country rebuild. … [Karzai] says he wants all his officials to disclose their financial holdings … Dr Zeenat Karzai, the wife of President Hamid Karzai . . . [said] that she plans to come more into society … Afghanistan’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MOWA) is seeking employment opportunities for tens of thousands of unqualified women in the country. … U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has announced that Congress is planning to provide $780 million in the next few months to assist Afghanistan in its fight against drugs, chiefly to provide alternative employment opportunities for some 125,000 people in three of the country’s provinces. … European Union foreign ministers, too, have made the fighting of cultivation, production and trafficking of drugs in Afghanistan the “central priority” of the EU aid effort. … And a wheat-seed distribution program for farmers in Nangarhar Province will commence shortly

Good news, you can get Nancy Reagan to help you department:

There is also talk of establishing a government ministry to deal specifically with antidrug policy.

Good news, bizarro-world style:

For the first time, patients are being asked to pay for treatment at public hospitals in Afghanistan. Although the constitution stipulates that all Afghans are entitled to free healthcare, a pilot programme being tested in the northern province of Balkh could change all that.

That is some wicked awesome pilot program! Come today, when your free health care is 50% off!

Good news, from the department of the mathematically-challenged:

Also, Afghans who were getting remittances from their families oversees used to spend money in exile but now they spend it in Afghanistan.

Are they still sending their remittances?

Good news from The Who department:

There are increasing signs that the Taliban are becoming less of a security problem [Emphasis added.]

Are becoming less? Did we just wake up in October 2001? WTF?

Maybe it’s time to attach a disclaimer to Chrenkoff’s work: Certain information discussed in this Web site may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Bush Administration Optimistic Bullshit Generator Law. Forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions by management and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the Taliban, the importance of the drug trade, warlords, the US deficit, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, Pakistan, the PLO, internal strife.

* Dedicated to pinki.

Added: Related thoughts from James Wolcott.

Although Andrew Sullivan likes to act poor and rant about Noam Chomsky’s speaking fees, turns out he doesn’t do so poorly himself. According to a Doug Giles interview with Mike Adam (there’s a dream team circle jerk if we ever heard of one:)

We had Andrew Sullivan come out to the university [University of North Carolina at Wilmington] and speak for $10,000 in favor of gay marriage.

(MP3 file.)

Shaggy tells it like it is:

Q: USA Today says the Education Department paid a TV commentator, Armstrong Williams, about a quarter million dollars to promote No Child Left. And in a related matter, the GAO found yesterday the drug policy office broke federal law by using taxpayer money for covert, “propaganda,” with made for TV story packages. Are these practices that you condone?

MR. McCLELLAN: On the first one, that was a decision by the Department of Education, and a contracting matter. So you ought to direct those questions to the Department of Education. I know the headline said that the White House — basically implied that it was the White House, and it wasn’t. If you read the story — if you read the story, it pointed that out.

He learned from the best.

They like to dish it out at the White House Press Gaggle:

Q Can I ask one more substantive question, before we get to that?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, no substantive questions today. It’s Friday.

Q Or any other day, right? (Laughter.)

Sadly, the transcript doesn’t say who was doing the laughing.

Try as we might to offer an interesting blog product for your pleasure, some of you still complain about the fact that Sadly, No! no longer redirects to dahonger.com. (It’s true!)

In an effort to reach you good people halfway, we offer this week’s featured dahonger picture. Remember, you asked for it. Although only god (and possibly Doug Giles,) knows why.

Paul Wolfowitz speaks:

“I have been asked to stay and have accepted,” Wolfowitz said yesterday in a brief statement issued through a spokesman. “I can’t imagine life after Don Rumsfeld.”

Neither can 1,353 members of the US military, 76 members of the British forces, 75 members of “other” forces, and an estimated 15,000+ Iraqi civilians.

Thanks to Blair for the link.

Why do people bother writing if I were a [insert something they’re not,] here’s what I would do column? Besides meeting a deadline on short notice, what purpose do they serve? You don’t see us writing If we wrote a popular blog, here’s what we’d do. So why does Peggy Noonan whip up today’s serving of If I Were a Democrat, which reads like a poor man’s (no, not that one) version of If I had a brain?

If I were a Democrat right now I would think big and get serious.

And yet all the Democrats wanna do is dance… dance… dance!

Every morning I’d put my game face on knowing my party will stand a good chance of making a big presidential comeback in four years. Look confident; this will encourage victory. Or at least leave people saying you look confident, which for you will be a victory.

If we were World O’Crap, now’s the time we would post a quote by Jack Handy and ask you if you could tell the difference. And the answer would be Sadly, No!

You need someone who makes the Democratic Party look nonsleazy, nonmanipulative and nonweak on TV.

We’ll agree to the non weak part — but for the rest girlfriend, do you think you might be projecting just a little bit?

The Groups–all the left-wing outfits from the abortion people to the enviros–didn’t deliver in the last election, and not because they didn’t try. They worked their hearts out. But they had no one to deliver.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Or as we like to say, Sadly, No!

Democratic turnout increased by nearly three times in battleground states (up 3.6 percentage points) as compared to 1.5 percentage points in the other states, pointing to the concentration of resources the party devoted to the battlegrounds. (PDF)

No matter how you feel about abortion, no one likes pro-abortion fanatics; no one likes mad scientists who cook environmental data. Or rather only rich and creepy people like them. Stand up to the Groups–make your policies more moderate, more nuanced, less knee-jerk.

Well that is fucking rich! You want to see scientists cook up the books, Peggy? Why not stop by TechCentralStation, which regularly puts on a cooking display that would Emeril to shame. (Start here, and don’t stop ’til you get enough. Then get back to us.)

Don’t reflexively oppose President Bush on Social Security reform. […] Don’t do “sound bites for blue heads in Dade County,” be serious. People can tell when you’re not. They just punished you at the polls again because you weren’t.

So that old woman, she’s just a liar, right?

Hold a big public party meeting on taxes and spending. I am serious. Everyone knows where the Republican Party stands on both: they’re against the former, and–in theory if not practice–against the latter.

Peggy, you forgot to say that the Republican Party is also against large deficits. Remember, be serious, and don’t do talking points for empty heads in Texas.

Go at a group. How about junk scientists? With Michael Crichton’s manifesto doing well and getting praise, and with the natural disaster of the tsunami having left everyone brushing up on their wave trains and tectonic-plate knowledge, the time is right.

We’d vote for a go at Michael Crichton, how’s that?

That’s what the Swift Boat ads did to him; they didn’t make him look like a coward but a liar.

Ads by a bunch of liars made Kerry look like one. Well, we agree with Peggy that there’s a problem there, though we disagree about its nature.

The Bush administration has stood for cutting taxes, allowing high spending, and being tough in the world.

Allowing? No — it has stood for advocating and engaging in high spending. By that logic Bill Clinton stood for allowing Monica Lewinsky to put his penis in her mouth. And there’s more to being tough than going around the world and blowing shit up.

On all of these points they can be truly competitive. If they choose to get serious.

If they choose to get serious? How’s this for serious?

Fuck you. That’s my name. […] You stupid fucking cunt. Hey, Williamson, I’m talking to you, shithead. You just cost me $6,000. Six thousand dollars, and one Cadillac. That’s right. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it, asshole? You’re fucking shit. Where did you learn your trade, you stupid fucking cunt, you idiot? Who ever told you that you could work with men?

* Crazy Jesus Lady is a registered trademark of Alicublog?. Used without permission.

In no particular order:

As though The Editors don’t inflict enough suffering on innocent kittens as it is, we bring you Steve Hernan:

Once upon a time, practically every boy grew up in a real neighborhood.

And what was so great about that neighborhood?

…boys always enjoyed one key advantage. They could alienate every other kid in the neighborhood and still never have to play alone. Why was this? Because every household had at least one dog. And every dog was readily available to any boy who lived in the neighborhood.

Yet this was before gay marriage was “forced down our throats,” right?

In these long-forgotten days, the world was truly a boy?s world. There were no such things as “leash laws.”

You know Steve, your parents are lying to you if they’re telling you they have to keep you on a leash.

People would let their dogs out in the morning and not see them until supper time (if even then). During these ten or so hours of unstructured liberty, the dogs operated with one purpose in mind ? to have as many adventures as possible and to engineer as much mischief and havoc while doing so.

Steve’s purpose?

In other words, they [dogs] acted just like boys.

Well ladies and gentlemen, what would you do if Steve came into your house and started licking at your face and sniffing at your crotch?

In fact, they [the dogs, we think] reveled in the feeling of accomplishment that accompanied any especially arduous or grimy task. So, quite naturally, all of us boys gleefully sought out the companionship of these “kindred spirits.”

This is getting more and more disturbing by the minute.

To put it bluntly, if you forbid roughhousing (or forego spanking, for that matter) you will be left with a maladaptive dog. And the same can be said for boys as well.

All those in favor of spanking Steve, please raise your hand.

In the “pre-leash law” days, every so often two of the neighborhood dogs would get into a little scrap. But this was actually quite rare. They all generally got along quite well once they had established their “companionate hierarchy.”

Steve knows this because he kept copies of News for Dogs, along with the News for Parrots:

Good evening. Here is the News for parrots. No parrots were involved in an accident on the M1 today, when a lorry carrying high octane fuel was in collision with a bollard … that is a bollard and not a parrot. A spokesman for parrots said he was glad no parrots were involved.

As well as News for Wombats:

The Minister of Technology met the three Russian leaders today to discuss a ?4 million airliner deal. None of them were indigenous to Australia, carried their babies in pouches or ate any of those yummy eucalyptus leaves. Yum, yum.

Back to Steve’s dogs:

It’s the same with boys. You coddle them at your risk ? and at theirs.

So next time you see Steve, please resist the urge to cuoddle him.

Unless you’re prepared to deal with a very jealous dog.