Sadly, No!

Sadly, No!’s best friend, Amber Pawlik, is happy about the capture of Saddam Hussein. (Indeed, we think she just may have gotten her first ever orgasm, but we’ll need to check with our sources.)

Amber writes that Hussein being captured is the United States’ way of sending a message to the Iraqi people:

Every American should be not only thankful but proud to be an American today. Message to the Iraqi people: Merry Christmas!

Or, as Mr. Garrison might put it, Merry fucking Christmas.

I heard there is no Christmas,
In the silly Middle East..
No Trees, no Snow, no Santa Claus,
They have Different Religious beliefs..
They Believe in Muhammad,
And not in our Holiday..
And so every December,
I go to the Middle East and say..

Hey there Mr Muslim, Merry Fucking Christmas
Put down that book ‘The Koran’
and hear some holiday wishes
Incase you haven’t noticed,
it’s Jesus’s Birthday
So get off you heathen Muslim Ass
And fucking celebrate.

World O’Crap goes to the corner and finds Rob Dreher suffering from Dizzy Dean disease. (After being hit in the head by a baseball, Dean is said to have told reporters after a visit to the hospital: “The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing.”)

And she does it in the style of Nedra Pickler!

The pledge drive is over, but the light workload continues. Today’s Daily Dish consists of:

Headlines: 34 words.
Quotes from Democratic Underground: 7 words.
Quotes for yet another whatever-award nominee: 46 words.
Quotes from newspaper articles: 330 words.
Quotes from a BBC listener in a call-in show: 61 words.
“Original” content: 765 words.

Original content: 60%, CTRL-C/CTRL-V: 40%.

Update: Likely challenged by our analysis, Andrew added many posts this morning. Survey says:

Headlines: 46 words.
Quotes from newspaper articles: 60 words.
Quotes for yet another whatever-award nominees: 959 words.
Original content: 331 words.

The award winning Festivus Caption Contest ends tomorrow.

Enter now for a chance to win some stuff.

Sadly, No!’s favorite Iraqi speaks out:

Saddam Hussein is alive and co-ordinating terror attacks inside Iraq, a leading opposition figure has claimed. May 29, 2003.

Based on information “from credible sources,” he said he believes the former Iraqi president wants revenge, and has obtained two suicide bombing vests for attacks on U.S. forces. June 11, 2003.

Chalabi has insisted that Saddam is alive, has $1.3 billion in cash and has put a bounty on U.S. soldiers. He said forces under Saddam’s control were responsible for shooting down a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter today in western Iraq. “It is not useful to deny that Saddam is coordinating these activities. I believe he is,” he said. June 12, 2003.

Chalabi said he does not think Saddam is personally coordinating attacks but had put in motion a plan to fight U.S. forces after his ouster in April. June 29, 2003.

Exile leader Ahmed Chalabi said his Iraqi National Congress believes Saddam has taken refuge in a “long and big area” about 150 miles long from northeast of Baghdad to the Euphrates Valley west of the city. June 30, 2003.

That sounds like a really long and big hole:

The soldiers found Saddam hiding in what they called a “spider hole,” six-to-eight feet deep, equipped with a rudimentary ventilation system and camouflaged with bricks and dirt. December 12, 2003.

A Fetish of Candor

The real problem with Bush’s stupid policies isn’t that they’re stupid but that he is so honest about them.

Please also see Elton’s shorter version of the same.

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

Elton at busy, busy, busy takes a look at President Bush’s dollar-related beliefs.

More embarrassing, he could not be. Yesterday, Andrew Sullivan (or as we like to call him the world’s favorite cyberbegger,) had this to say:

The only source of funding for this site is you.

To the extent that the DailyDish is recycled once a week into the WeeklyDish for the Washington Times, shouldn’t the Reunification Church and Sun Myung Moon also get some credit? As is true of the Sunday Times, printer of articles “inspired by” DailyDish entries.

When you add up the growing expenses

Please give us a moment as we yell obscenities out the window.

Wow, that felt good. Now what did we want to say?

Ah yes:

First, growing expenses? Like what? As we’ve shown before, Sullivan’s traffic is not growing, it is at best stagnating, but more likely declining. That it does so at a high level (compared to Sadly, No! at least) is besides the point. Sullivan wants us to think that more emails means more work, when in fact the more emails he gets the more he posts them as “entries” on his blog. As far as writing work is concerned, that sounds to us like less work, not more. As for costs, as Harry pointed out in the comments to this post, between bandwidth on a text only site and registration costs, Sullivan is being taken for a “colossal ride” if he spends thousands of dollars running the technical side of andrewsullivan.com. (And yes, blogger sucks!)

a blog that reaches well over 400,000 people a month

Wow. Just, simply, wow. As in, well, wow. Such a brazen lie, this spin point could only have been learned from the British government. Sullivan’s numbers are here. In the 21 months for which information is available, how many times did his blog reach well over 400,000? In March of this year (445,150.) This was followed by 340,987 in April, a drop of over 20%. (We won’t count February, because 400,265 is not “well over” 400,000.) [For those who care a lot, Alexa’s numbers are here.]

and the time and energy spent putting it all together, it’s not cheap.

We’ll concede that even Sullivan’s time and energy are worth something, even if what he does with both (e.g. the DailyDish) turns out to be essentially worthless.

In fact, it has largely displaced a large amount of my paid work.

As though (to beat that horse just one more time) all of his paid work isn’t largely derivative of his blog. And as though staying on top of current events (not that he really does that mind you) wouldn’t be expected of a writer in his position whether or not he has a blog. Besides, if we raised $75,000 in a single year, we would not refer to Sadly, No! as unpaid work, as opposed to our other work. (Whatever the hell that is in our case.) But to Sullivan a blog that raises $75,000 in direct contributions, runs ads and sells his books is unpaid work. This is the man that wants your money. (By way of contrast, this is the man much more deserving of your “blog money.”)

If you care about the site, the viability of blogging as a professional enterprise, and want to be a part of it, please throw a little change into the tip-jar.

Hey sparky, do you think we can care about the viability of “blogging as a professional enterprise” without giving you money? If you care about the site (Andy’s that is,) then by all means give him money. If you care about the “viability of blogging as a professional enterprise,” there are lots of things you can do. Helping to maintain Sullivan’s lifestyle isn’t one of those.

And it will keep the site alive for another year.

Promise to stop if we don’t give any more money?

Earlier this week we saw a reference to the Koufax awards. We paid no attention, assuming it was just some other pointless award of no interest to us. Learning that they are awards for the “best of the left” blogs did little to change our interest (that’s how we are, what can we say.) And so we continued not caring, until (wait for it!) we noticed that someone had nominated us for “best new blog” and someone else put us down for “best writing.” Then we started caring a lot.

Once we completed this trifecta by nominating ourselves for funniest post (The Dickification of the Western Female) our level of interest skyrocketed.

There are many (much more deserving) blogs nominated, but if we learned anything in 2000 it’s that sometimes the less deserving, less articulate, unelectable, miserable failure of a candidate wins. With your help, Sadly, No! can become the George W. Bush of the Koufax awards.

Blair sends us this Washington Post article about the Secret Service’s Muslim community outreach program:

The Secret Service took responsibility yesterday for sending an Arab American waiter home from his job at a Baltimore hotel before a presidential fundraiser last week. But it said the decision resulted from confusion over his work schedule, rather than from ethnic or religious discrimination. …

Pharoan, a Syrian-born Muslim who immigrated to the United States in 1992 and became a citizen in 1996, was told to go home shortly after he arrived Friday morning at the Hyatt Regency at the Inner Harbor, where he has worked for seven years.

He had expected to help serve lunch to 550 people at a banquet at which President Bush raised $1 million for his reelection campaign. Instead, he says, he was given a few minutes to change clothes and was escorted off the premises after a manager asked him one question: “Is your name Mohamad?”

Last week, the Secret Service denied that it had requested the hotel’s management to dismiss Pharoan for the day. But a spokesman said yesterday that after further review, the Secret Service found it was responsible.

“Mr. Pharoan was dismissed when the Secret Service learned he was not among the employees that we were aware were scheduled to work that event,” said the spokesman, John Gill. …

Moreover, Pharoan said, the Hyatt Regency’s security staff told him that his name was on the list given to the Secret Service for background checks. “I was one of the employees allowed to come to work that day, and my name was checked off when I arrived,” he said. “It’s not true at all, what they say about ‘not scheduled’ or confusion.” [Emphasis added]