Sadly, No!

InstaPundit is upset at the Associated Press, because they make master look bad:

Meanwhile, whether or not Bush turned in a good performance during the actual broadcast, you can expect him to do badly in the post-broadcast media spin of his remarks. And that’s already underway. Consider this Associated Press report:

“Bush, who pledged after the Sept. 11 attacks to get suspected mastermind Osama bin Laden “dead or alive,” said Sunday: “I have no idea whether we will capture or bring him to justice.””

Now here’s what Bush actually said:

Russert: Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican
President Bush: Yes.
Russert: said he is absolutely convinced we will capture Osama bin Laden before the election.
President Bush: Well, I appreciate his optimism. I have no idea whether we will capture or bring him to justice, may be the best way to put it. I know we are on the hunt, and Osama bin Laden is a cold blooded killer, and he represents the nature of the enemy that we face. [Rest of non responsive response deleted]

So the AP said that Bush said “I have no idea whether we will capture or bring him to justice,” when in fact Bush said “I have no idea whether we will capture or bring him to justice.”

For the love of God will someone ever free us from that damn America-hating liberal media?!? By the way, even The Corner slammed Bush’s performance on MTP, but when “the media” does the same, it becomes evidence of bias. Maybe it’s time to wake up and smell the weapons of mass destruction related program activities instead? [Link from The Tooney Bin.]

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy (motto: like The Corner but with more degrees,) one David Bernstein writes:

Take the vaunted “lack of national health care” in the U.S. The U.S. in fact has a quasi-socialized health system, in the sense that the government pays most (yes, most!) of the health care costs […] Indeed, I remember seeing a study noted in the Economist a while ago showing that the private sector in the U.S. doesn’t account for a substantially larger share of health care spending than in many European nations

The government covers “most” of the health care costs? There is no significant difference with health care spending in Europe? Sadly, No! Since Bernstein offers only his recollections and no links, we can but guess at the source of his information. As for us, we shall offer data from the OECD, which seems like as good a place as any, and likely one of the few to have such figures available. Ready? [All figures released in October 2003, 2001 spending.]

In the US, public spending accounted for 44.2% of all health care spending. This compared with 72.1% in Belgium, 75% in Germany, 73.3% in Ireland, 68.5% in Portugal and 80.9% in the UK. (Of the EU countries listed, Greece came in with the lowest percentage at 56.1%.) That would mean that private sector spending on health care was 55.8% in the US, compared to 27.9%, 25%, 26.7%, 31.5% and 19.1%. (and 43.9%.) Not substantially larger? Yet again, we can only say Sadly, No!

So, who wants to email Mr. Bernstein?

Earlier today, John Gibson offered this “observation” on John Kerry:

He’s a typical northeast liberal, yaddi yaddi yadda, he speaks French by the way.

Well then, off with his head!

No, it’s not madman, dangerous, madman, madman. It’s not weapons of mass destruction related program activities. What is it?

These documents clearly show that the President fulfilled his duties. … those point summaries that document the fact that the President of the United States fulfilled his duties … These records verify that he met the requirements necessary to fulfill his duties. … These records — these records I’m holding here clearly document the President fulfilling his duties in the National Guard. … And we have provided you these documents that show clearly that the President of the United States fulfilled his duties. … verify the records that the President had fulfilled his duties … these documents make it very clear that the President of the United States fulfilled his duties … I think that these documents clearly show that the President of the United States fulfilled his duties. … Oh, I think these documents show that he fulfilled his duties. … He fulfilled his duties; … he did fulfill his duties … documents reflect the fact that the President met his requirements and fulfilled his duties … if you look at these records, these records document that the President fulfilled his duties … But the one thing that these documents clearly show is that the President of the United States fulfilled his duties when he was in the National Guard. He met his requirements and he was honorably discharged because he fulfilled his duties. … the point summaries have all been released to show that he met his requirements and to show that he fulfilled his duties … which document that the President fulfilled his duties … And they show that he was serving in the National Guard and that he met the requirements necessary to fulfill his duties … The President of the United States fulfilled his duties … And I think that these documents clearly show that the President met his requirements and fulfilled his duties … he, indeed, did meet his requirements and serve and fulfill his duties. These records document that the President fulfilled his duties … all the documents that are available relevant to this issue demonstrate that the President fulfilled his duties … In fact, I’m saying that these documents demonstrate that the President fulfilled his duties. … The documents clearly show that the President served and met his requirements and fulfilled his duties.

Any questions? Our heads hurt, we’ll be back later to answer them if you do.

Update: More below, as requested by Steve from the Modulator…
Read the rest of this entry »

The Council of Economic Jokers Advisors unleashes this forecast:

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – The White House forecast for job growth this year is even more optimistic than it first appeared — a source says the Bush administration expects about 3.8 million new jobs in 2004, as opposed to the 2.6 million widely reported on Monday.

A White House source said Tuesday that the President’s Council of Economic Advisers expects an average of about 320,000 new jobs to be created every month in 2004, or about 3.8 million in total.

This is the same outfit, for those keeping score at home, that forecast many yet to be seen jobs for last year. Would we like to see that kind of job growth? Hell yeah. Does it seem like a reasonable prediction? Sadly, No! Over to you Brad DeLong.

Scott emails the management and reports on the latest theft of our greatest (and lone) line:

Signs of life on Mars – but don’t get excited
By Stephen Cauchi, Science Reporter
February 11, 2004

Evidence of life on Mars? Sadly, no. The two objects in the centre of the photo are clearly artificial – the parachute and backshell discarded by NASA’s rover Opportunity just before it bounced down on January 25. [Emphasis added]

In unrelated news, we were watching I’m engaged to Jonah Goldberg My Big Fat Obnoxious Fianc? last night and it was actually quite funny. We wonder how much longer it will be before “contestants” realize that the “game” they are told they’re playing is likely not actually the game that is going on.

Curious to read Richard Perle and David Frum’s The Ultimate Guide to Kicking Some Terrorist Ass An End to Evil, we accessed our library’s online catalogue earlier, and did a search on “Richard Perle.” The result?

Well, that does seem just about right.

David Frum explains what makes a good mating partner in some circles:

Yet even as they grumbled at the results of [Peter] Brimelow?s advocacy, his habit of snapping to his feet whenever a woman entered the room established him as the beau ideal of two generations of Worthington women.

This man. Right.

At Sadly, No! Enterprises, we are nothing if not a blog of cheap gimmicks, predictable jokes, and gratuitous below the tits shots at Amber Pawlik. So it should come as no surprise that we are proud to introduce The Real Problem game, version 2. The earlier version, called The Real Scandal Pronouncement, involved disputing the importance of a serious issue (say blowing the cover of a CIA employee) while playing up a trivial and unrelated one (Joe Wilson’s political leanings.)

This new version is different, though somewhat similar, if by somewhat similar you mean pretty different. It was inspired, as so many great things are, by the woman alicublog called the “Crazy Jesus Lady,” Peggy Noonan. The new game asks that, in trying to identify the real problem with a given person or policy, you overlook the obvious and single out a non existing fault that no sane person would ascribe to said policy or individual. Sound complicated? Sadly, Yes! But see how Nooners does it in her article about President Bush’s interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press. Does Bush suck at interviews? Yes. Does he mostly suck at giving speeches? Yes. Is it because he’s dumb? Is it because he has no clear policies besides war, tax cuts, war, war, madman, tax cuts, man + woman? Noonan’s argument boils down to:

The real problem with George W. Bush is that he’s too philosophical.

Now you see why Peggy Noonan is a professional writer, while you (and we) are not. It takes courage and dedication to come up with a diagnosis like that. Other qualifying entries for this game might include things such as:

You are invited to add your own suggestions in the comments. Chances are no prizes will be awarded, but we’ve been known to change our mind in the past.

President Bush sends a little conservative compassion in Andrew Sullivan’s general direction:

Paraphrasing the president’s remarks, Mr. DeMint said: “He said he was not going to condemn anyone, that the need to have various types of agreement does not mean we need to redefine marriage. ‘If people want to have contracts on hospital visitation and benefits, that’s O.K.’ ”

Responding to questions on Sunday about the Time article, Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said:

“States, through their contract law, have the ability to address some of the issues that advocates of gay marriage are raising, such as hospital visitation rights and insurance benefits and the ability to pass on one’s estates to another. What the president has said is that he strongly believes in the sanctity of marriage, so that’s what he is saying.”

So, that’s what he is saying. Along with madman, terror, madman, September 11, threat, madman, terror, madman, war, what’s the difference?

Conservative groups are lobbying the White House to endorse a constitutional amendment defining marriage as something that can take place only between a man and a woman. At the same time, the White House wants to appear empathetic to gays who tell of hospitals forbidding them to visit partners on their deathbeds. [Emphasis added]

We think even Andrew Sullivan, the Maginot line of support for Bush in the homosexual community, isn’t going to be fooled much longer by this little production. How does that old line go again? Fool me once, shame on, shame on, the fool can’t get fooled again. Right, something like that.