Sadly, No!

…to resuming our normal posting duties.

After several hours in assorted planes, trains and automobiles we are finally back (to our temporary) home.

We were lucky to find some emails in our inbox featuring links to all new wingnuts, and look forward to sharing them with you. Sadly, we find ourselves in a bit of a jam, trying to catch up with work while simultaneously trying to get more time off (we’re not even making that up!) in order to travel 450 miles to go to a job interview (and back) on the same day.

So go read the many fine blogs listed on the right, relax, and rest assured that you’ll get our comments on the first presidential debate as soon as we watch our taped copy of it. Because Sadly, No! must live up to its reputation as the less funny and not as timely alternative to every other blog out there.

Le Management

Besides the obvious, (offers addressed to Amber Pawlik with promises of a larger penis,) the Sadly, No! mailbox is a pretty quiet place. Every now and then however we receive a note of support and encouragement (like when we heard from David Frum.) Earlier this week we received an email from Jenny* who suggested that we take a look at one Tony McKee, a staff writer for The East Carolinian. According to Jenny, Tony is an “all-around cockwipe who needs a serious smacking.” Having received no replies to her emails from TBOGG, Jenny wrote to us. We’re glad she did, because in Tony McKee we found a man who can singlehandedly return this great nation to the high level of political discourse so many pine for. A man who debates issues — not personalities. A man who puts us, ever so quick to reach for a fucktard or moron, to shame:

First, John Kerry is an idiot and should never be allowed to govern a Scout troop let alone the United States.

And he’s off.

The one lie that the press helps Kerry, the Democrats and the press spread that really bothers me though is that President Bush’s tax cut go only to the “rich”. Let’s look at their definition of “rich”, shall we?

According to IRS figures, the top 50 percent of wage earners pay over 95 percent of income taxes. The yearly income range for this top 50 percent is from around $27,000 and up. The lower 50 percent of wage earners, those making less than $27,000 a year pay less than five percent of income taxes.

Tony, we don’t know if you noticed but the press (nor Kerry) are not the ones defining “the rich” the way you do. We’ve heard Rush Limbaugh make that argument though (here and there.) If Tony can find a reference for his “quote” of Kerry arguing that the Bush tax cuts went only to the rich, we invite him to share it with us. Otherwise, we suspect that Kerry’s more likely complaint is that the tax cut a) benefited “the rich” disproportionately and that b) the government can’t afford it. Indeed, there is no shortage of irony in seeing that Tony celebrates Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility while criticizing Kerry for voting against a Balanced Budget Amendment. Much like the old Quebec joke about sovereignists who want “an independent Quebec in a strong Canada.” Figure out which one you want, asshole, and let us know then.

For all of Tony’s talents however, you may be surprised to know he gets few emails from his readers:

Last week I challenged everyone to give their opinion on where all the liberals had gone. The response was somewhat disappointing. I don’t know if very few people read the paper last Tuesday or if the question was just too hard.

Or if maybe no one really gives a fuck what you think? This, of course, is just a random guess. If we ran across someone who can’t separate Iraq and 9/11, we’d probably not want to bother writing either:

Fifth, Moore shows scenes of Iraqi insurgents after Saddam was thrown out dancing around destroyed equipment and dead bodies and calls them proof that we were not wanted. He even had the temerity to show pictures of the mutilated and burned victims hanging from that bridge. He does not show the planes slamming into the World Trade Center killing thousands of Americans but he does show that. He also does not mention the innocent people brutally murdered by these insurgents, most of whom were over there trying to help the Iraqi’s. Typical.

Oh it’s typical alright.

* Her real name is actually Patti.

Ah yes, here we are. You may think that we’ve forgotten all about you. We haven’t. Stay tuned for lots of shrillness and snark.

Why? Because Kerry L. Marsala is back, that’s why! Kerry’s new adventures are titled Grab Your Keyboards and Pajama’s. Frankly, if the thought of Kerry in her pajamas doesn’t get you excited, there really is no hope for you. Kerry writes:

When you sign up today with the P J Club (pajama club) you’ll get full rights to espouse your ideals, opinions and investigations via the World Wide Web. The P J Club is open to all that love the free flow of information and value what our founding fathers valued and that is- freedom of speech.

Hey everybody — Kerry is writing a blogger in pajamas column, and it only took her two more weeks than everyone else. Frankly, we hate to be the ones to tell Kerry this but one can’t become the internet’s hottest young conservative writer on the web by recycling jokes that were only marginally funny in the first place.

It would seem bloggers, ezine journalist, and editorialist via the net are causing a wave of elitist fit throwers to spin their large craniums of, how dare anyone else have an opinion who hasn?t attended the school of stuck up journalism, into a bit of a quagmire.

ok, so Kerry says her poor spelling is meant to annoy us (among others.) Who is supposed to be annoyed by her total fucking lack of any coherence and sense?

Now personally as a card-carrying member of the P J Club, and most others like me, subscribe to several newspapers worldwide.

In Kerry’s world, does “several newspapers worldwide” mean all the regional editions of USA Today?

Those who belong to the P J Club don?t pretend to have all the answers. We can’t and we never will. So who is it that makes up the P J Club? Well, many of us have master’s degrees in a wide range of subjects. Most of us hold down regular jobs and drive a compact car. Many of us have families and are happily married.

Gee, we hate love to be rude but who the fuck died and made Kerry Captain Blogger? Most bloggers have M.A. degrees? Drive compact cars? Isn’t it easy to write when you can just make up shit as you go along?

There will be times those of us in the P J Club will be wrong, but when we are wrong it will not crush us and cause us to run, hide and lie our way out.

Yeah, it really was nasty of that Dan Rather man to lie and refuse to apologize for that 60 Minutes story.

The union of elitist journalism is dead, the P J Club is here to break the bonds of tyranny the elitist journalist have tried to ink blot this world into believing. Our pens, typewriters, and computer keyboards have become the tools needed to expose the biased skewed print of the media.

Sign on today, the P J Club is open to all that love free speech and the freedom to exchange ideas, investigate, and espouse truths.

And if that isn’t enough, remember that the P J Club will mow your lawn, do your laundry, educate your kids and cuckold your husband for you (and no, we don’t mean subliminally.)

Thanks to SullyWatch, we find out about Naomi Wolf’s latest offering of Grumpiness in a can:

The charges are sticking because of Teresa Heinz Kerry. Let?s start with ?Heinz.? By retaining her dead husband?s name?there is no genteel way to put this?she is publicly, subliminally cuckolding Kerry with the power of another man?a dead Republican man, at that. Add to that the fact that her first husband was (as she is herself now) vastly more wealthy than her second husband. Throw into all of this her penchant for black, a color that no woman wears in the heartland[.]

To SullyWatch’s (and Jim Capozzola’s) comments we’d only add this: a column that simultaneously praises Republicans for going all Oprah (with great success,) written by the woman who launched the earth tones debacle of 2000, should be a bit more careful to realize that black, well, it isn’t always that bad really. Seriously you guys.

We’ll throw in, just for fun, that in the few hours we spent here earlier today there were countless women wearing black pants, black jackets, and many other things black. It surely wasn’t the heart of America, but there sure was plenty of land.

Steve Gilliard writes:

Blogs make money and are cheap to run, compared to what came before. By going small and doing most of the work yourself, you can make money. The real hero in this is not any blogger, but Henry Copeland of Blogads. The first truly honest ad broker. I don’t think Kos, Atrios or Jerome Armstrong would disagree. Copeland makes blogs possible, along with generous readers. Those two make this more than the hobby of the frustrated.

We hate to disagree, but frankly that’s just a bit much. More than a bit really. How many blogs make real money? It’s great for their respective owners if DailyKos, Atrios or MyDD make money, but are there more than 10 blogs out there that bring any kind of meaningful revenue stream? (Let’s define meaninngful as anything that works out to more than minimum wage once the expenses are paid.)

According to Blogads, the average blogger makes $50/month. We don’t know if Henry is the first honest ad broker out there, but we’d wager that the big blogs who do make money could easily afford to work out the ad selling part of their business without him. Blogads certainly does make it possible for small time bloggers to raise some money — but those blogs that do make money are not the ones “going small” — they’re the ones who have gone big. Good for them — but Blogads deserves little of the credit for that.

Bush Twists Kerry’s Words on Iraq

More please!

Campaigning by bus through hotly contested Wisconsin on Friday, Bush sought to counter recently sharpened criticism by Kerry about his Iraq policies:

* He stated flatly that Kerry had said earlier in the week “he would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today.” The line drew gasps of surprise from Bush’s audience in a Racine, Wis., park. “I just strongly disagree,” the president said.

But Kerry never said that. In a speech at New York University on Monday, he called Saddam “a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell.” He added, “The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.”

Justin Darr, one of our favorite hottest young conservative writers on the web today, shares his concerns in this week’s column:

Personally, I am always worried while on a business trip that some corporate auditor will show up in my hotel room while I am sleeping and try to harvest my internal organs for sale overseas just so they can hit their quarterly projections.

When he’s not scared however, Justin is busy painting a picture of the new conservatives, a proud and courageous bunch of people (young and old) who make America what it is:

No, we (new conservatives) place our faith in the small business and entrepreneurs who struggle under an ever increasing government tax load.

Funny how that happened with Republicans controlling Congress and the White House.

New Conservatives have no time for racism. We are too busy trying to live our dreams than to worry about what color your skin is or what your religious beliefs are.

Become a new conservative: a political movement of none.

The last time I checked, freedom still meant freedom even if it was said in Spanish.

Funny thing that, because we noticed the same thing about wingnut.

No, we’re not talking about ourselves (though we too had been missing around here of late.) The new arrival we are happy to note is that of Miles. Just think of this as Friday newborn blogging. Aaaaaahhhhh…

According to Fox News, that’s a distinct possibility.

Critics of the Diebold touch-screen voting machines turned their attention Wednesday from the machines themselves to the computers that will tally the final vote, saying the outcome is so easy to manipulate that even a monkey could do it.

Uh oh.

And they showed video of a monkey hacking the system to prove it.

Monkey, eh? This being Fox, of course, they’re not actually kidding.

In the minute-long video produced by Black Box Voting, Baxter the chimp is shown deleting the audit log that is supposed to keep track of changes in the Diebold central tabulator, the computer and program that keeps track of county vote totals.

So we have a test in which it is shown that even a Rove-less chimp is capable of manipulating the outcome of the election.

Can we learn anything from this?

Well, I’d hate to speculate but right next to the bit about the monkey there’s a little box that reads “Only On Fox” and has this photo (with the words “Bush Approval Rating”):

Fox News. They report. You decide.