Sadly, No!

As we returned to the offices of Sadly, No! on Thursday, we promised to resume mocking mentally retarded Canadians. (Note: Try searching for that on Google.) Well, we deliver what we promise. The internet’s most beloved mentally retarded Canadian, one Adam Yoshida, never disappoints. Let’s stop by for a visit today as he has words of warnings for the universe’s savages and primitives:

Yes, Indian cultures were “destroyed” by the arrival of Europeans. To this I say: so what? Of what practical use were they to humanity?

Sure you think — this is par for the course for our fellow Canadian (the horror!) Adam. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet:

This is an important point to consider because we are on the verge of an age of great space exploration. The cult of Indian victimhood, if it is allowed to endure, is very likely to deter our descendents from simply displacing by force alien primitives they might encounter on some far away and Earth-like world. It is only though the re-interpretation of our history (or, more accurately, the re-re-interpretation of our history) that we can make it clear to those who come after us that they have a sacred duty to conquer and civilize the lands of primitives. It would be the height of folly to abandon useful land for the sake of a few scattered tribes. [Emphasis added]

His name is Adam of Borg…

Say hello to… The All Spin Zone.

Earlier this week, 6 weeks of vacation per year and not on weekends Andrew Sullivan confided to a certain case of blog fatigue:

It can become grueling. I just checked how many words I have written for the blog this year and it’s already approaching 200,000 words. If I wrote four books in five months, I’d rightly give myself a vacation. And I’d be rolling in it.

We should leave aside, for the purposes of efficiency, the notion that if Andrew wrote books he would earn a lot of money in the process — something that, last we checked, does not necessarily happen to an author (even a good one.)

200,000 words. (Well, “approaching” anyway.) That sure does sound like a lot. Except that given the way Andrew “writes,” one’s oeuvre tends to accumulate quickly. Indeed, we were reminded of our little December surveys when we’d provided a quick estimate of the Daily Dish corpus, divided between quotes and things Andrew actually wrote himself. Our consolidated results (data here and there): 2,298 words of quotes/awards/etc, and 1,352 (37% of the total) words he can rightfully claim to have written. On Thursday and Friday, the DD featured 2,372 words. 1,093 (46%) of those were written by Mr. Sullivan, the rest are copy and paste jobs. (And we did give him credit for writing “here’s a link to x, y and z.”) That ratio of CTRL-V is, to put it kindly, pretty high for a guy who chooses to whine about all the hard work he puts in.

Should you decide to factor in Andrew’s European-length vacations, his reader-driven salary, his ability to resell some of his blogging work to The Washington Times, The New Republic and The Sunday Times, well, let’s just say we’d consider ourselves pretty lucky to have a gig like that.

Some patriots want to impose a more emphatic form of liberation on our Iraqi friends held in Abu Ghraib prison by mistake. (A Red Cross report estimates that between 70-90% of the prisoners shouldn’t be there at all.) Michael Savage Wiener reminds us what freedom from tyranny is all about:

“[T]ake their deepest fear, the pig, the dog, the woman with the leash, and use it on them to break them!”

“Use … [l]ittle, ugly women. And let ’em take big strapping Iraqis and put ’em on leashes naked.”

“Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices.”

That’ll teach ’em to fail to dance and cheer when we invaded and brutally occupied them for what has now proven to be no apparent reason! Sitting on new photographic evidence of torture temporarily allows the deluded to cling to the idea that this is a case of six or seven “bad apples”, and psychopaths like Savage Wiener to work his bloodlust. But Abu Ghraib is just the tip of the gulag. Bush has created a global network of extra-legal and secret us prisons with thousands of inmates, and the world outside the snoozy confines of the domestic Press Corpse has already seen substantial “images” of Bush-style freedom at work.

(Savage Wiener audio and more extensive quotes available at Media Matters).

Update: fixed some linkage and tidied some bad cut’n’paste.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld arrived in the Iraqi capital Thursday on an unannounced visit aimed at calming the storm over prisoner abuse and lifting the spirits of U.S. troops. He was accompanied by Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and some of the Pentagon’s most senior lawyers. (05/13/04 AP/Burns)

[Rumsfeld told troops] “We need all of you to make this thing work for our country.” Rumsfeld also held out hope to his war-weary audience that international troops may soon arrive to augment their ranks. He said U.S. officials were engaged in talks with nations “that have capabilities to bring forces in,” and those discussions were going well. “I’m encouraged. I think we’ll find that we will get additional forces,” Rumsfeld said. He did not specify which or how many countries are involved, saying only “we’re probably talking to a couple of handfuls, maybe three handfuls of nations.” (05/14/04 AP/Jelinek)

NATO: Blow me. Where are those WMDs?
UN Staff: As if!
European Union: We’re busy that night. Saturday too.
Australia: Sorry, mates.
Dominican Republic: Two words: buh bye.
France: Non.
Honduras: And tell Negroponte to eat shit.
India: Sh’yeah right.
Italy: HELP, our leader thinks he’s Il Duce!
Pakistan: HAHAHA!
Phillipines: Er, we gotta be someplace.
Poland: Don’t push it, bub.
Russia: Yeah, good luck with that.
Spain: Hold onto that massive dick with your own two hands, big guy.
Ukraine: We need to talk.
Venezuela: Don’t. Even. Think it.

Regular readers surely remember our January launch of the Real Scandal Pronouncement? Game!, in honor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial on Senate Democrats’ blocking of some of Bush’s judicial nominees. If you missed it the first time around, the WSJ provides us with an excellent opportunity to play the game again. Writing on the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture abuse consensual pornography scandal, the WSJ argues:

Never mind that US troops abused Iraqi prisoners, the real scandal is that the Red Cross didn’t help keep the abuses secret.

Five months having passed since their latest entry, WSJ editors are eager to up the ante and proceed to create a brand new game in the process: The You Know What the Real Shame Is Histrionics:

We say this with regret, because it would be a real shame if the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) became just another left-wing advocacy group along the lines of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International. This would ruin its long-held status as trusted and neutral guardian of the Geneva Conventions around the world, but that’s the path it is now on.

Can you come up with more implausible expressions of regret? Post in the comments and win something.

PS to Norbizness: We keed.

Update: Added links to Norbizness in order to remove injury and preserve only the insult.

Update 2: Roy Edroso asks who the WSJ will go after next.

According to The Washington Times:

Some in the press and Congress ? repeating the propaganda line of the terrorists ? assert that Mr. Berg’s killing was committed in revenge for the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees by American guards that has dominated the news in recent weeks. This is absurd.

Our pal Jeff:

We are at war with a vicious enemy, and propaganda in wartime is a weapon whose consequences can be deadly. Nick Berg lost his life because the Abu Ghraib pictures were turned into a worldwide media event.

Jeff Jacoby is an absurd America hater. QED.

Update: It turns out that Jonah Goldberg is also an absurd America hater:

Well, CBS’s scoop has gotten someone killed and there will be more deaths, on both sides, as a result of this story before it becomes history.

Strong words from a WorldNetDaily reader:

Calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation over the abuse by a few soldiers is like calling for the head of the CEO of a major corporation if some of the cleaning crew is found stealing or using the computers for porn. Corporate America wouldn’t stand for it, nor could they afford to. It would be considered completely absurd.

Because if there’s anything that closely resembles downloading porn from the internet, it’s this:

Spec. Jeremy C. Sivits, one of the seven members of the 372nd Military Police Company facing charges in the case, told investigators in a sworn statement that other prison guards forced detainees to strip, masturbate and pile on top of one another. Staff Sgt. Ivan L. “Chip” Frederick II forced two detainees to punch each other, Sivits told investigators, according to a transcript.

In another instance, he said, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr. put a sandbag over a detainee’s head and “punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that the detainee was knocked unconscious.” […]

Davis, 26, then stomped “on either the fingers or toes of the detainees,” he said, causing them to “scream loudly.” Sivits said Frederick later hit a detainee in the chest “for no reason.” […]

At another point, he said, a detainee with gunshot wounds to his leg was handcuffed to a bed. Graner then apparently picked up an object and struck the man’s wounds “with a half baseball swing,” Sivits said. The detainee begged Graner to stop, saying, ” ‘Mister, Mister please stop,’ or words to that effect.” [Emphasis added]

On dictatorships:

It should have become obvious on 9-11 that we simply cannot have dictatorships laying around over the world.

Freepers and their friends give us a look into their fantasy world:

I have seen something similar before, although I can’t remember where. But it sums up my personal views very well. The entire speech is in the extended post area below if you’re not interested in viewing comments over at Free Republic.

It is really about time for our President to say something similar, especially in regard to Mexico and the UN.

What if President Bush gave this speech?

My fellow Americans:

As you all know, the defeat of Iraq’s regime has been completed. Since congress does not want to spend any more money on this war, our mission in Iraq is complete.

[…]

Before me, I have two lists. One list contains the names of countries which have stood by our side during the Iraq conflict. This list is short. The United Kingdom, Spain, Bulgaria, Australia, and Poland are some of the countries listed there.

The other list contains everyone not on the first list. Most of the world’s Nations are on that list. My press secretary will be distributing copies of both lists later this evening.

Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those nations on List 2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs of the Iraqi war. [Emphasis added]

US Foreign Aid, 2002: US$12.9bn

Cost of the Iraqi war so far: US$113.6bn