Sadly, No!

Sadly, No! favorite (sorry Amber) Brian Cherry has a new column out, Our Bodies Ourselves, Kind Of. Sadly, the column is quite unremarkable and, if we did that sort of thing, would likely score quite poorly on the Poor Man’s Kaye Grogan Quotient?. Brian argues that while feminists say the government can’t tell them what to do with their bodies, in fact the government tells lots of people they can’t do certain things with their bodies, which means (logically) that it’s ok to ban abortions. So far, so good. (Well, not really but who cares, this is Brian “Literary Sticks” Cherry, so it’s a sliding scale as they say.)

Yet there was one passage that caught our attention:

For example, my body and all the organs that lay below my warming layers of blubber are theoretically mine to control. Reality would soon come crashing down around me if I tried to sell one of my kidneys to the highest bidder.

Sound familiar? Of course it does! Thomas “Kidneys ‘R ‘Us” Sowell strikes again:

We should let people sell their kidneys if they want to. Damned liberal nanny state!

Brian does add a few interesting details about the federal law that prohibits organ sales:

Under a 1984 federal law the sale of organs is a felony that is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $50,000.

Gee, we wonder which President signed this bill into law? Could it be… Reagan?

As for the rest: Brian dear, you’re going to have to work a lot harder than that.

In totally unrelated news: Fuck you.

All Hail Moore

It’s Michael Moore’s fault that I said something inaccurate in my last column.

or:

The release of Michael Moore’s film gives me an excuse to string together a series of incoherent points to show that Moore is fat and dumb.

Shorter concept inspired by busy, busy, busy from an idea by D-Squared.

Ever so reliable Blair sent us a link to this surreal Bush interview broadcast on Irish TV yesterday.* (Streaming video, 11 minutes and 45MB.) For those lacking the patience, Uppish has an all too accurate summary:

Bush: Guess what? I’m a snide, arrogant, asshole who can’t wipe the smirk off my face because I’m so gosh darned proud of myself for getting through that last sentence without screwing it up.

Reporter: Mr. President, back to the war in Iraq…

Bush: Let me finish! I keep telling you how to do your job and you keep not doing it right. Guess what? I’m not done reciting empty phrases about freedom-loving ‘mericans.

Continued…

Because we love you, our faithful readers, we’ll try to have an edited, “best of” shorter version up later this weekend.

* Click here and then click on “Carole Anderson Coleman* talks to the President.”

Edit: Full interview in RealMedia format for download. (8MB file.) (No image for the first 5 seconds or so, but on our machine things settle down after that.)

* Thanks to Mimiru for pointing out the error.

John, of 77002, previously known as Logan Circle Guy, reports that some people will go so far as to complain about their own stupidity:

The NY Times did a piece today on Houston’s record-high rate of collisions between cars and the new light rail trains. Now, if you read this article, and had not been here and seen the places where these accidents are occurring, you might think the drivers had some valid points.

You’d be wrong.

More…

(Via Sullywatch.)

More along the lines of this week’s other, unrelated isolated incidents:

BAQOUBA, Iraq June 26, 2004 ? Insurgents attacked two political party offices and a government building Saturday, killing three people and wounding two, the latest in an upsurge in violence just days before Iraq’s interim government takes power.

Also Saturday, a car bombing wounded a Kurdish government official and killed one of his bodyguards in the northern city of Irbil, according to police and a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Reagan Jr backing Kerry

He said he could never join the Republican party because it “tolerates members who are bigots … homophobes, racists” and revealed that he would vote for Democrat John Kerry on November 2.

Are you listening, Andrew Sullivan?

The George W. Bush blog is getting upset:

John Kerry yesterday launched a new round of divisive, partisan attacks, including one aimed at the economic record of President Ronald Reagan

The article they link to quotes Kerry saying the following:

”I was part of that effort in the 1990s that had the courage to do what Ronald Reagan, for all his rhetoric — and God rest his soul, we loved him for his strength in many things — but I don’t recall vetoes of major appropriations bills. I recall a lot of talk about deficits; I don’t recall balancing the budget. I recall deficits getting larger.”

Not only is this hardly an attack, it happens to be totally accurate. Yet this “you’ve attacked Ronnie” line is ripped from today’s playbook (same link:)

He [Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt] also blasted Kerry for criticizing Reagan’s fiscal record. ”Kerry’s attack on President Reagan is beyond the pale, and will be very troubling to most Americans,” he said.

So now, if you say that Reagan presided over increasingly large deficits, you’re attacking the man. Is Alzheimer’s contagious?

This week’s Flash Friday is Sadly, No Love! (6MB of pure comedy genius. Or as close as we’ll ever get anyway.)

Good thing this happened during the Clinton years:

…the German ambassador to the United States, Wolfgang Ischinger, recently disclosed a long-kept secret from his diplomatic career. Ischinger was a frequent participant in late-night teleconferences that Madeleine Albright held with European officials while she was U.S. secretary of state. While listening to a tape of one conference, officials in Germany’s Foreign Ministry were particularly amused by the sound of someone snoring on the tape, but the culprit remained in the dark for a long time. At a recent meeting of the Robert-Bosch Foundation transatlantic exchange program, Ischinger confessed that it was he who had fallen asleep, aided he said by a hearty meal and a glass of heavy red wine.

Iraqi’s interim Prime Minister is apparently a graduate of the Ari Fleischer school of public relations:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s interim prime minister has vowed to crush Baathist die-hards and foreign militants he blamed for killing 100 people
in a day of suicide bombings and attacks meant to sabotage next week’s move
toward Iraqi rule.

“These are isolated incidents,” said Iyad Allawi. “We are going to defeat them…We have been expecting this escalation and we are expecting more escalation in the days ahead.”

Here is your isolated incidents scoreboard for yesterday:

Attacks: