World O’Crap reports on the latest adventures of everybody’s favorite private dick, Peggy “V.I.” Noonan. Was it the Pope with a hacked computer in the bedroom? Mel Gibson’s producer? The New York Times? Find out here!
We’ve done our own Afghanistan news summaries in the past — but The Snarky Cat has a very comprehensive one here which should be read in its entirety.
Writing in the National Review Online, Lawrence Kudlow jokingly seriously asserts:
This [Kerry & Edwards’ performances in Iowa] is why the stock market opened the day after Iowa on a less-than-gleeful note, despite booming earnings reports left and right. The market knows what the new Democratic front runners seem not to know…
Granted, we’re not professional investors like Larry, but we have to wonder. Prior to the Iowa caucuses, Howard Dean was thought to be the front runner. He has advocated repealing all of Bush’s tax cuts. Kerry and Edwards, who favor the repeal of only some, defy expectations and finish first and second. The market’s reaction to better than expected news (from a tax policy point of view) is a decline? Did investors not know about the Iowa caucuses until they actually took place? That seems somewhat unlikely.
Encouraged as we were by World O’Crap true VH-1 story Behind the Ineptitude — How Meghan defied the odds and managed to find herself a husband, we decided to take a look at Mr. Meghan Cox Gurdon, i.e. Hugo “Quackenbush” Gurdon. Gurdon [The poor man’s John Stossel as best we can tell] isn’t just his children’s absent dad, he was also last year’s Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow at the competitive enterprise institute (CEI.)
Bonus points: Michelle Malkin was once a Warren Brookes Fellow.
The people at CEI (which it turns out is the poor man’s TechCentralStation) are concerned about those no-good environmental activists. Also, did you know they are extremely powerful? Hugo says:
In a recent National Post article, Hugo Gurdon of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noted that “The 12 biggest environmental pressure groups in the United States enjoy combined annual revenues of $1.95 billion, according to the latest Internal Revenue Service figures. Only 725 of the United States? 20 million companies can boast such magnificent cash flow.”
Did you get that? Only 725 companies in the US have a cash flow as great as that of the 12 biggest environmental pressure groups combined. Scary stuff! What about the really big organizations though?
“Among the green dozen are some?Nature Conservancy ($731 million) and theWildlife Conservation Council ($311 million)?that are merely left-of-center. But there are genuinely extreme organizations?the World Wildlife fund ($118 million) and the Sierra Club ($73 million)?that militate aggressively against the free market and attack property rights to the detriment of the economy and the majority of ordinary people,” said Gurdon.
So there you have it — the “genuinely extreme organizations” have a (combined) cash flow under $200 million, but still we should all be really scared. Because if there’s something the ordinary people don’t want, it’s clean water or the protection of national forests. Besides, we all know what the logo of the World Wildlife Fund is, don’t we? Yes, a Panda of Mass Destruction. You have been warned.
Katherine Jean Lopez, an older, female version of Ben Shapiro, comments:
I don’t like the president having to use the word “sexually.”
In other news:
Search whitehouse.gov by keyword
Results for: sexually — 42 results found
Yet Bush managed to redeem himself:
AT LEAST HE SAID IT, EVEN IF HIS POLICY DOESN’T REFLECT IT [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
“I oppose amnesty, because it would encourage further illegal immigration, and unfairly reward those who break our laws. “
Sure, his policy is a form of amnesty (says Lopez) but as long as he says he opposes one, that’s ok. Just like Bush says he’s against big government and large deficits, while his policies accomplish both. And some people thought liberals forgave Clinton too easily.
Professional Virgin Ben Shapiro (?, TBOGG Industries) wants you to know that blacks hate Howard Dean. Even Dean’s former college roommate does:
For Howard Dean, blacks and browns are interesting to watch as a social experiment. Literally. In college, he specifically requested a black roommate, wanting to learn what black people were. His roommate, Don Roman, didn’t know about the request. If he had, he says, it “would have been the kiss of death.” As Roman put it, he didn’t want to be “some white liberal’s” social experiment.
What is Don Roman doing now?
He was placed in a four-person suite, with two of his roommates being African-American, one of them Ralph Dawson of Charleston, S.C., now a New York labor lawyer who, like Roman, has become active in the Dean campaign. [Emphasis added]
Don Roman featured in a Howard Dean campaign video.
Ben also combines the ability to read Howard Dean’s mind and get his facts wrong:
[Dean] didn’t want any black people on his Vermont gubernatorial staff
Sharpton said that Dean had appointed no blacks to his cabinet (true,) not on his staff (false.) Even Nedra Pickler had to concede the fact:
Dean pointed out during the debate that he had hired as a senior staff member a black woman.
This is Nedra Pickler however, so she had to add this:
He did not mention that Bonnie Aten-Johnson worked part time while keeping a job with the Burlington, Vt., schools.
Ben and Nedra, we believe, get paid for this.
Addendum: Matthew Yglesias with the definitive account of Nit Picklering.
Andrew Sullivan concludes his SOTU commentary with this bit of nonsense:
If you’re a fiscal conservative or a social liberal, this was a speech that succeeded in making you take a second look at the Democrats. I sure am.
Does the man not realize we all laugh hysterically when he writes such crap? Wesley Clark is out because he’s a Rhodes scholar (and you know how those people are!) and because Michael Moore endorsed him. Howard Dean? Do we need to say anything? As for the rest, here is Andy back in May 2003:
And so far, alas, the Democratic field looks particularly forlorn. Between Massachusetts Senator John Kerry’s pious hauteur, Vermont governor Howard Dean’s mean streak, Senator John Edwards’ boyish callowness and former Gore side-kick Joe Lieberman’s lugubrious tedium, it’s not looking like a great future for the Dems.
Yet now he acts as though he might vote for one of these guys? At this rate Sully will be writing he’d consider marrying a woman if Bush pushes for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He may be able to fool even himself, but he’s quite mistaken if he thinks anyone else is going to be taken in.
Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog takes another look at the Pope’s “endorsement” of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ:
The Vatican makes it official — Peggy Noonan is a liar[.]
It’s enough to make us consider going to church again.
We, along with a bunch of much better blogs, have been nominated for Best New Blog in this year’s Koufax Awards.
We’ll be voting for the truly deserving, freeing you to vote for us.
Thank you.
I should have trusted my instinct: Al Gore is always political death.
Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. (born 1948:)
1976: Elected to the US House of Representatives (95% of the vote)
1978: Re-elected (ran unopposed)
1980: Re-elected (79% of the vote)
1982: Re-elected (ran unopposed)
1984: Elected to the US Senate (61% of the vote)
1990: Re-elected to the US Senate (70% of the vote, won all 95 counties)
1992: Elected US Vice-President
1996: Re-elected US Vice-President
2000: Ran for the US Presidency — Results:
Candidate Votes Vote % States Won Electoral Votes Gore 50,996,116 48.38 % 21 266 Bush 50,456,169 47.87 % 30 271
Yeah, what a fucking loo-zer that Al Gore is.
Update: Jo Fish, who offered his thoughts on the matter here, adds this in the comments: