A Happy New Year To All.

And a special auld lang syne to TS's favorite blogger, SisB -- her husband is no fool.

Ingrates.

Apparently the right to vote and access to abortion is a slippery slope! Powerline -- whose one-handed output is, frankly, impressive -- breathlessly informs us that some Italian women are withholding sex from their pyro husbands.

As foretold in the third chapter of The Book of Prager.

hahahahaha!

CR:

Hopefully next week I'll be moving to the new JS-Kit commenting system. This should help with improving the quality of the comments.

Ha.

Does it screen out idiotic misinterpretations of Keynes?

That'd be a cool algorithm.

QOTD.

What can I say? I like the guy.

Speaking to reporters on Monday at Rockefeller Center as a crowd of tourists looked on, Mr. Bloomberg seemed conflicted as to what homeowners should do with their rebate money. “If you ask me for financial advice, which I should not be giving, I would say be a little bit conservative, you know, wear that dress one more season, wear the cargo one more year,” he said. “But on the other hand, if you all do that, then we’re going to have the recession that I’m trying to prevent.”

...For the record, I have no idea what Mike means by "wear the cargo." I've e-mailed my pal D-Kim, who, in addition to being a fox, is an expert in contemporary slang.

...Also, I think the rebate is a stupid, shortsighted move.

"Many contemporary women have an almost exclusively romantic notion of sex..."

"Come to Butthead Dennis."

Says Prager, who, not content with perfection, bolsters his previous case for marital rape.

Maybe in L.A., Dennis! In Brooklyn they fuck for sport!

The comments to Prager's wank -- he's twice divorced, doncha know! -- are all, in their own way, amazing, but this is my fav:

DCortez:

works for me

I've been married for almost 20 years. My wife never says no to me, I never say no to work or parenting the kids (God knows there are times I'd rather call in "not in the mood"). It works for us.

Ah, the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.

...Ow? "Dennis Prager is obviously incredibly bad at marriage, relationships, sex and quite possibly the very act of breathing, but it doesn’t mean that every woman he’s interested in is duty bound to make up for his inadequacy at existing. "

Blix.

Vanity Fair's oral history of the Bush Administration is uniformly fascinating. I particularly like this:

Hans Blix: In March 2003, when the invasion took place, we could not have stood up and said, There is nothing, because to prove the negative is really not possible. What you can do is to say that we have performed 700 inspections in some 500 different sites, and we have found nothing, and we are ready to continue.

If we had been allowed to continue a couple of months, we would have been able to go to all of the some hundred sites suggested to us, and since there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction, that’s what we would have reported. And then I think that, at that stage, certainly the intelligence ought to have drawn the conclusion that their evidence was poor.

Mr. Blix, long-derided by the wankersphere, has been vindicated by history. What, I wonder, was Putz saying about Mr. Blix back in the day?

THE DAMNING OF SADDAM: This article from The Telegraph has a nice summary of Saddam’s misdeeds, and says that Blix’s report has greatly strengthened the case for war. [1/27/03]

HANS BLIX, ON THE JOB. [2/14/03]*

If someone were trying to demonstrate the bogus nature of the inspection process they could hardly have done better than Blix himself has done. [3/9/03]

HANS BLIX THINKS GLOBAL WARMING IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WAR, which perhaps explains his lackadaisical approach to his job. [3/14/03]

It's safe to say that if history recognizes Putz at all, he will not be treated so kindly.

*Click the link. It still works!

So So Busy.

Lotsa shit to finish up before this godawfulcrappyfucking year ends. Get yer fix heya.

A quick bleg: I need a decent bar above 125^th street for an "affair" this Friday. Halp?

Larry Johnson Deserves The Wank.

Good people, please ensure he wins.

Yes, Jonah was truly magnificent this year, but he'll have a lifetime of achievements. This is LaJo's year and we ought to give him the appreciation he so richly deserves.

This guy makes a good case:

Seldom has anyone distinguished himself so famously by being both a total fool and a complete scumbag simultaneously. Larry’s website is truly one of the low points of the Intertubes. His fellow posters are all skilled practitioners in the art of character assassination, delusional group think, and flights of noxious fancy, and it would be difficult to find a more offensive crew than No Quarter’s regular commenters. At the helm of the S.S. Cesspool is Larry himself, whose supreme accomplishment — The Whitey Tape — was unchallenged this past election for its repulsiveness, lameness, idiocy, dishonesty, and in the end, non-existence. Only the Wank of the Year could have continued to promise to deliver something that didn’t exist (or that wasn’t even remotely what it was claimed to be) in the hope that something imaginary would defeat Barack Obama and deliver the nation to the profoundly unqualified and dangerous John McCain. Larry exhibited some of the qualities that have made such historical luminaries as Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Ollie North justifiably (in)famous.

In the end, the utter lack of drama in the failure of the Whitey Tape to appear and slay the Marxist villain was proof that Larry is unrivaled in his pure wankosity. I suspect that Larry will never achieve anything remotely resembling credibility or even widespread visibility. I fear that this may be the one and only chance I (or we) have to cast a vote for such a complete fraud and I can not let that opportunity pass.

If I could vote twice, I’d cast both for Larry.

And I will, as soon as I erase these cookies.

Hehindeedy!

The wankers are having a "conference."



This has the distinct whiff of PUMA puffery, in which the armchair goobers ponder the pressing "issues" of our time:

• National Security – How are bloggers covering the war on terrorism? How can new media help deal with threats of terrorism? Homeland Security – The use of Twitter now and in the future – to help with natural disasters.
  
• Free Market, Individualism – Conservatism and empowering the individual to succeed through self improvement, individual startups.
  
• Hollywood - Do politics and culture affect Hollywood or vice versa?
  

The use of Twitter now and in the future – to help with natural disasters.

Again with Twitter! The GOP got its ass righteously kicked and the wankersphere's first response is to, what? Round up the very people responsible for said ass-kicking and put them on a panel?

Pass the popcorn.

Putz Thinks You're Stupid.

Putz:

NEWSPAPERS PUBLISHING “INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM” spoon-fed from a leftist advocacy group. Hey, times are tough and they get it for free!

The "leftist advocacy group" in question? ProPublica. What Putz does not say -- but a quick scan of ProPublica's officers and staff reveals -- is this:

• The EIC is Paul Steiger, former managing ed. of The Wall Street Journal
• Among the reporters is Jeff Gerth, best known for pimping Whitewater stories for The New York Times and sliming Wen Ho Lee
• The senior web ed. is Eric Umansky, who, though an excellent reporter, had the misfortune to be one of Pajamas Media's charter bloggers

Not exactly The Nation.

Another thing Putz omits? A scant two months ago, back when he was slobbering over Sarah Palin, Putz had no problem linking to ProPublica's stories.

Speaking of "Fit the Narrative"...

Putz frets:

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: TV News Winds Down Operations on Iraq War. Hey, they got Obama elected. Why stick around and maybe report stuff that doesn’t fit the narrative?

"They"? According to The Times (but ignored by Putz), one such defeatist network is Fox News Channel -- never particularly interested in covering The Glorious War to begin with -- which is leaving a mere single correspondent in Iraq. They were so totally in the tank for Obama!

Anyhoo, Putz neglects to mention a news org keeping "multiple reporters" in Iraq: The New York Times.

Must be an oversight.

Your Liberal Media, Etc.

I think G. is too hard on Politico.

This...

After ordering a tuna melt on 12-grain bread, Obama [...]

...is a major scoop. 12-grain bread! Elitist!

Heading to CT...

For The Other Holiday. Because I'm still fried from last night's date, I'ma outsource teh clever to a Curbed commenter who is not The What:

Sorry, Hoboken and Jersey City might as well be Cleveland or Terre Haute... the giant sucking sound you hear is the fact that "The City" boundaries are imploding back to the island of Manhattan, south of 96th St, and north of Battery Park. Development is dead, sprawl is out, we're going back to the core, the brain feels the cold and is sending all the blood to the torso, so the extremities will suffer the frostbite.

See: Grandeur, Delusions Of.

Scenes From a Mall screenwriter generously absolves Nobel laureate:

I will forgive Harold Pinter his political excrescences on his death.

As often happens when I dip into Pajamas Media, once again I am forced to reconsider my otherwise staunch opposition to the death penalty.

Merry XMas, Gentiles!

I got nothing, so I'll reprint part of a note from my Siberian friend K.:

We are wishing you that your vodka is never warm, your cucumbers are salted well, and your hangovers are light.

Indeed.

TNR Flashback.

Sept. 13, 2001:

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's attacks, attention has focused on terrorist chieftain Osama bin Laden. And he may well be responsible. But intelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks--whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others--were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.

Maybe It's a Joke.

Perhaps this is Collins' ode to Palin?

Meanwhile, while Obama working-vacations in Hawaii (it’s important that “working” be added in the MSM so that he’s not compared with Bush), Emanuel is off to Africa. It’s a big country, that Africa, and it would have been nice if they’d been more specific about where exactly Rahm is holidaying, but they aren’t.

Maybe if Rahm gets swept out to sea and dies, we can all have a good laugh.

Careful, Ron.

I happen to think Ron Rosenbaum is the best investigative journalist of his generation -- if you haven't read Secret Parts of Fortune from c-to-c, you're a fool -- but this line, amidst a well-deserved evisceration of Jeff Jarvis, gave me pause:

Well, Jeff, you’re known by the company you keep.

Let's note that, at this very moment, Pajamas Media is pimping the likes of Jennifer Rubin, Mary Grabar, Michael Ledeen, VD Hanson and Bob Owens -- and move on.

Buckley's Boys, Cultural Cretins.

Color me so not surprised that The National Review is wanking hard about Elizabeth Alexander, or that Frost -- a wonderful poet -- is their inaugural ideal. A poet who wrote

And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

would of course be the favorite of a publication that declared victory in Iraq three years ago.

Signs O' the Murdoch Era.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday:

Slashing rates to 4.5% for new borrowers, as the government aims to do, won't be a panacea, either. Ivy Zelman, chief executive of housing-research firm Zelman & Associates, estimates that, even with such a low rate, only about 67% of U.S. households can afford a house. Homeownership was nearly 68% in the third quarter, according to the Census Bureau, implying there is virtually no untapped demand for homes.

The Wall Street Journal today:

With mortgage rates approaching record lows, the volume of applications filed for mortgages jumped a seasonally adjusted 48% last week from the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's weekly survey.

Applications for the week ended Dec. 19 ran 124.6% ahead of the mortgage activity seen during the same week last year, the Washington-based MBA said. Its survey covers about half of all U.S. retail residential mortgage applications.

Dennis Prager, marriage counselor.

In a nutshell: women should never say no.

No doubt, Dr. Mrs. Putz would approve.

A Wanker Obsessed.

Gotta hand it to Roger: it appears he's at least attempting to keep his professional jealousy under control. Unlike Friday's stinky mess, today's exercise in finger-waggin' takes Simon a solid four and half paragraphs (third-to-last sentence!) before he mocks the Nobel Laureate.

"He had a pathetic academic career," Simon farts sagely, "even in the humanities."

Roger L. Simon is goddamn lucky that self-awareness (unlike, say, oxygen) isn't necessity to subsist.

Also?

There's much over which to chuckle in Sarah Palin's Human Events q&a, but this exchange nicely exemplifies Palin's ear-bleeding incoherence:

GIZZI: What was the biggest mistake made in the ’08 campaign?

PALIN: The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen. But I was so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that some of his people were making regarding the media contacts?

That sentence is not, as I understand it, a question?

But he's a nice guy!

The problem with Warren, for the last time, isn't that he holds disagreeable positions, though he does. The problem is that he spews hate every time he opens his mouth.

Not sure why folks don't get it.

What's wrong with the GOP, in a nutshell.

Kristol:

You gotta love Dick Cheney.

Q.E.D.

Great Moments In Threads.

Yglesias writes some innocuous snark about how "[t]he fact that the weather has swung rapidly from unseasonably warm to incredibly cold conclusively debunks concerns about man-made climate change."

Commenters, clearly still pissed about being coddled by The Worst PR Flack in America, totally ignore MY's warnings ("OK guys, enough.") and fillet the youngster.

1. hadit Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 10:42 am

   Now we know Jennifer Palmieri’s views on the weather. Also Third Way’s official opinions.

   Just remember, Matt Yglesias is no longer writing on this blog. It’s been hijacked by Palmieri, CEO of Center for American Progress. Sad, that.

   This is really sad.

2. Adam Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 10:42 am

   This deep thought is officially approved by Jennifer and represents the views of CAP.

3. nolaboyd Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 10:45 am

   Matt, is the perfect spelling and grammar meant as a dog whistle to your regular readers?

4. snark shark Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 am

   At this point, titling a post “Deep Thought” is obviously just throwing chum in the water.

Etc. Palmieri, forgetting the second rule of PR -- "first do no harm" -- does harm.

I don't see this being resolved any time soon.

...Oh dear. This is brutal.

1. nolaboyd Says:
   December 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 am

   Good lord, Matt, Palmieri currently has your balls sitting in a jar on her desk. Readers are quite rightly concerned about if and when you plan to retrieve them, because an emasculated blog is a horrible thing.

   I think perhaps you’re not embarrassed enough about this yet, and also not protective enough of the Yglesias brand, which actually has more currency than CAP’s.

True!

Putz's Professional Hypocrisy.

Glenn Reynolds shows you it's done.

Yesterday:

MOUTH BUT NO MONEY on Proposition 8? Generally, when I “beat the bushes” for contributions, I also contribute myself. Apparently Andrew Sullivan feels differently, or perhaps there’s some mistake somewhere.

Shilling for a bigot.

ZELL MILLER CROSSES PARTY LINES AND endorses Saxby Chambliss. Much more here.

I notice that Chambliss is still pitching hard for donations.

Did he donate?












Hehindeedy!


[via G., without whose moral support this post would have been impossible.]

Michael Moore Rick Warren Is Fat.

Bill Kristol drops a bombshell:

I’m told by several key advocates of the surge that Cheney was crucial in helping the president come to what was a difficult and unpopular decision [...]

You don't say?

Sadist.

What else can you call this?

[Bush] admits he'll miss things, one of them "being commander in chief." One thing rarely mentioned about this president (and he does not bring it up to me) is that he has met with some 2,800 families who have lost loved ones in Afghanistan or Iraq. When I mention it, and how quietly he has performed these meetings, he simply responds that it was important they not be "political." He does say he'll miss doing it, because "it's always been a healing experience. The commander in chief -- the comforter in chief gets comforted. Why? Because the character of the American people is so strong . . ."

Elections, Consequences, Etc.

Putz is unhappy with the lack of Cabinet hacks:

MORE ON THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S growing diversity problem.

Good news, comrades! Republicans do support affirmative action, but only for idiots.

Teh gay is something you choose.

Aravosis points to this section of Saddleback's website.

I've heard it asked, "Isn't being homosexual something that a person is physically born with?" First of all, there are absolutely no facts to support this claim.

Doesn't the bible say anything about lying being wrong or something?

Warren vs. Wright.

Compare and contrast.

Slippin'.

When Gustave Flaubert Roger Simon begins his latest warbling

Brrr… it’s cold outside here in LA...

...it takes him nearly two paragraphs to get to the Al Gore crack:

Still the global warming dispute goes on. If there’s ever been an argument with (excuse the metaphor) more heat than light, this is it. Sometimes the whole thing reminds me of Galileo’s travails insisting the Earth revolved around the Sun, which I admit I largely know about from Brecht’s play, not a particularly accurate source, I know. But what we often seem to have here is the AWG skeptics ironically in the role of Galileo with the liberal intelligentsia playing an ultra-conservative clergy led by Al Gore. Nevertheless, as I have said what feels like a zillion times, just because Al thinks something is so, doesn’t mean it isn’t.

Yes, Roger, you have mentioned Al Gore once or twice. Please stop.

There's just no pleasing them.

Indeed.

When have Democrats not been eager to accommodate the Right, to sacrifice their ideological beliefs and partisan goals in pursuit of post-partisan harmony, to jettison the "Left" in order to attract the Mythical, Glorious Center? When haven't they done exactly that? Isn't that everything they've been doing for two decades now, what has defined the Party at its core? In what conceivable way is this new, and why does anyone expect that it will generate different results now?

FAIL.

Anything that purports to chronicle the "best journalism of 2008" and yet includes John Dickerson and Camille Paglia makes a mockery of both journalism and superlatives.

Charming.

Habeas corpus, bitches.


Since calling Obama a nigger isn't an option, Ralph Peters deploys air quotes:

Bush will have the pleasure of watching from his new Texas digs as conservatism returns to the White House - with a hip-hop soundtrack.

The Post Gets Scooped. Again.

Three years ago, The Washington Post famously got scooped on their own story -- the unmasking of Deep Throat -- by Vanity Fair.

W. Mark Felt, or "Throat", as he was known to Watergate buffs, has died, and once again The Post is late to the party. The following screencaps were taken shortly after midnight, within a minute of each other.



























As I write this, at 12:40 a.m. EST [note: IP's timestamps are CST], The Post is behind by at least 40 minutes.

I'm Proud of You.

QOTD.

“What’s the point of having a public hearing unless you allow people to annoy public officials?”

-- Stephen Millies

A Mendacious Asshole to the End.

Bush today:

I don't want to be a self-serving fellow, but I have never used my position as President to personally denigrate somebody.

From The Price of Loyalty:

"Go get me Andy Card," Bush said to one of the Secret Service agents. Card, the designee as chief of staff, entered from an adjoining room . . . Bush looked impatiently at Card, hard-eyed. "You're the chief of staff. You think you're up to getting us some cheeseburgers?"

Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room.

From Salon:

Bush's deployed his fetish for punctuality as a punitive weapon. When Colin Powell was several minutes late to a Cabinet meeting, Bush ordered that the door to the Cabinet Room be locked.

(I recommend reading the entire transcript. After all, you won't have President Dry Drunk to kick around anymore.)

Why didn't Obama ask Pat Robertson?

Really annoying.

And I find his response unsatisfying.

Reaching Smokin'em Out.

"Where's Wren?"


Until Chris Wren materializes in this thread -- I've graciously put him on the blogroll as incentive -- and thus offsets the absence of Mr. AI, Instaputz in particular and the world in general will be off kilter.

Yes.

M. Bérubé:

Instead, I’m going to ask you, on pragmatic grounds, what is to be gained here. In searching for that elusive common ground, you’ve basically courted the people from those districts that actually went more heavily Republican in 2008 than in 2004—you know, those old white people living in the Smoky Mountains and the Ozarks, the GOP’s only remaining base. The people you’re “reaching out” to here don’t respect you and never will. What’s more, many of them will be dead in a couple of years, and they’ll go to their graves clutching their Left Behind books and spitting at the sound of your name and the Muslim Marxism it stands for. And meanwhile, you’ve alienated pretty much everyone who voted for you. That doesn’t seem very pragmatic to me.

(Confidential to MB: Thank you for the kind note.)

Yuck.

Putz is on cloud nine about the Rick Warren crap. Can't say I blame him. If I were a Republican who feigned support for gay rights, I'd be in a good mood too.

No, Putz. It Really Is About Us.

MATTHEW KAMINSKI: Don’t expect global Obamania to last. “One hates to spoil a good party, but here’s a bet that’s far safer these days than a U.S. Treasury bill: Even with Obama at the White House, they won’t really like us any more than before. It’s not because America’s not a special country, a City upon a Hill, from the Pilgrims to Obama, the Blagojevich couple and other American horrors notwithstanding. It’s because it is. And as ever, our earnest assertion of our superior ontological uniqueness–not to mention its reality in and of itself–is exactly what always grated on the unfriendlies grouped together under the banner of anti-Americanism. . . . The departure of George Bush will change the mood music in America’s relations with the world, but–here’s the heartbreaker for our romantics–it won’t change how most people see America. Because, for ‘anti’ masses, it’s not really about us; it’s about them.”

First of all, what Putz sees as "Obamania" is not so much delight at his assuming the Presidency -- although there is much of that -- as unmitigated glee that Bush is vacating the office. (I'm pretty sure even a President-Elect McCain would have decent approval numbers at this point.) It's not a surprise that Putz, ever the Bush-humper, misses the distinction.

Second, after eight years of epic fail, it boggles the mind that wingnuts could see Americans' "earnest assertion of our superior ontological uniqueness" as a good thing. The sooner we strip ourselves of this fantasy, the better off we'll be. If the Bush term has taught us anything, it's that we're not really unique: we torture, we practice particularly barbaric forms of capital punishment, we blur the line between church and state, and so forth. Indeed, you're "better off being a gay male penguin in China than a gay male human in Arkansas."

Now, if Obama taking office doesn't "change how most people see America," it will not be his fault. It'll be our fault for not giving the world a reason to think we're better than the last eight years would suggest.

That said, President-Elect Obama, even when asserting America's supremacy, at least has the decency to acknowledge her myriad faults and he's been extremely reluctant to drape himself in the American flag -- an innately conservative form of American exceptionalism. (A decision which has not been without consequence.)

It's that trait of Obama's which will ultimately be to our benefit. If Putz has a problem with this, well, fuck 'em.

Flashback: Time's Person of the Year 2004.

It's all about K-Lo today.

According to K-Lo, that shoe thrower guy was actually attacking the troops.

Non-normative Behavior.

The Secret Service might want to keep an eye on this one.

When John McCain didn’t denounce his staff after the election for spreading scurrilous rumors about Sarah Palin and blaming her for the loss of the Republican ticket, I took the picture of Palin and McCain I had received from the RNC and cut McCain out of it. I called my little act of symbolic rebellion “dumping the dead weight” from the Republican Party.

Step away from the boxcutter, lady, and don't make any sudden moves.

Partial QOTD.

K-Lo:

I realized last night that Dana Perino has a black eye. In the chaos, a mic apparently fell on her over there. A small thing in the context of war and peace, but...

Buster Bluth,

TNR's newest correspondent....



Buster: My army training is telling me that this is a hot mission.
Michael: Hot mission! We're on a hot mission!
Buster: Maybe we should call it "Operation: Hot Mother."
Michael: No, no, let's try to top that.
Narrator: They never did, and later, Operation: Hot Mother was under way.

Gingrich: Blago is a "destructive distraction."

Smart.

Maybe Putz, who seems to love blogging about Blago, will listen?

Nah.

TS's Bookmarks.

I'm keeping this on ice. With the champagne.

Tax cuts!

W. outlines the key to the GOP's future.

Sullivan-Reynolds, ctd.

It's getting better and better.

I should count it as a victory of sorts that Instapundit was finally forced to read the report that proves that the techniques used at Abu Ghraib - those in the photos that Reynolds once called "torture" deserving "jail or execution" - were indeed SERE techniques authorized by president Bush as commander in chief. He then argues that these techniques can only be directly linked to Bush at Gitmo, not Abu Ghraib, or in the countless other theaters of war where war crimes took place against prisoners in US custody. The trouble at Abu Ghraib, Reynolds claims, accusing me of dishonesty, was a matter of "climate".

That he didn't read the report at all and immediately took BushCo's side reminds me of this.

Consider this: every single time Glenn Reynolds wrote "Dude, where's my recession?" -- we were in a recession.

Not to toot our own horn here, but this blog really is accomplishing what it set out to do: ridicule and discredit Putz.

Ungrateful Iraqis.

BT's masterful post on uberwanker Jules Crittenden, who wonders why the Iraqis aren't kissing more American ass, reminds me of the urtext of genre. (In case you had a doubt, Iraqis have never been sufficiently grateful that we destroyed their country.) Since not everyone was wiling away the hours reading Putz in '03, I figure it's worth revisiting one of his, and his fellow travelers', uglier moments.

In November 2o03, at which point a mere 450 Americans had perished in Iraq, an Iraqi blogger named Salam Pax wrote the following in The Guardian:

Dear George,

I hate to wake you up from that dream you are having, the one in which you are a superhero bringing democracy and freedom to underdeveloped, oppressed countries. But you really need to check things out in one of the countries you have recently bombed to freedom. Georgie, I am kind of worried that things are going a bit bad in Iraq and you don't seem to care that much. You might want it to appear as if things are going well and sign Iraq off as a job well done, but I am afraid this is not the case.

Listen, habibi, it is not over yet. Let me explain this in simple terms. You have spilled a glass full of tomato juice on an already dirty carpet and now you have to clean up the whole room. Not all of the mess is your fault but you volunteered to clean it up. I bet if someone had explained it to you like that you would have been less hasty going on our Rambo-in-Baghdad trip.

To tell you the truth, I am glad that someone is doing the cleaning up, and thank you for getting rid of that scary guy with the hideous moustache that we had for president. But I have to say that the advertisements you were dropping from your B52s before the bombs fell promised a much more efficient and speedy service. We are a bit disappointed. So would you please, pretty please, with sugar on top, get your act together and stop telling people you have Iraq all figured out when you are giving us the trial-and-error approach?

Anyway, I hope this doesn't disturb you too much. Have a nice stay in London, wave hello to the demonstrators, and give my regards to your spin doctors. I bet they are having a hell of a job making you look good.
Regards,
Salam Pax
The Baghdad Blogger

Not particularly objectionable, right? Mr. Pax was nothing if not prescient about the degree to which President Bush just did not give a shit about the country he'd upended.

As you can imagine, the wingnuts -- or "warbloggers," as they liked to be called -- went crazyier. Sgt. Jim Lileks threw the first stone, writing:

Hey, Salam? Fuck you. I know you’re the famous giggly blogger who gave us all a riveting view of the inner circle before the war, and thus know more about the situation than I do. Granted. But there’s a picture on the front page of my local paper today: third Minnesotan killed in Iraq. He died doing what you never had the stones to do: pick up a rifle and face the Ba’athists. You owe him.

"Indeed he does," preened Putz. "I just think that Salam has lost a bit of perspective hanging out with Guardian types in London."

(Reread that sentence, just in case you ever forget what sanctimony looks like.)

Roger L. Simon, who is no doubt ashamed of his output from this period and has purged his archives, wrote:

Salam Pax should be ashamed of himself. What a moral twit! I used to think he was a shill for the Mukhabarat and took a good deal of heat from my fellow bloggers for it. I was probably wrong, but I wasn't wrong about the character of the man.

You get the idea. As Putz's post suggests, the only conservative blogger to see how ugly this was was Daniel Dezner, who, to his immense credit, wrote a honey of post stripping the bark off Lileks.

My point? Only that Putz, Simon, Lileks, et al, have always been, and will always be, worthless.

Andrew Sullivan: Glenn Reynolds is a "hack."

For those following at home, Putz responded to Sullivan's earlier beatdown by saying "Nyah-nyah-nyah, Andrew liked Bush once too." A passive-aggressive masterpiece, even by Putzian standards.

Now this response from Sullivan:

Reynolds, in contrast, has never provided an ounce of accountability for his own support for Bush and Cheney and Rove and their entire legacy these past few years. Nowhere is this clearer than on torture, a position that reveals that his alleged libertarianism is simply a cover for a defense of raw power and brute, often vicious, force and brutality.

Remember: back in 2004, his position was that what happened at Abu Ghraib was torture, period, and that those responsible should face jail or execution. His position now is that no legal sanctions should be applied to those responsible for the torture, let alone jail or executuion. In fact, he opposes even further investigation of these war crimes. And what he once called torture, he now defers to Jack Goldsmith's judgment thus:

The people in government who made mistakes or who acted in ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate have been held publicly accountable by severe criticism, suffering enormous reputational and, in some instances, financial losses. Little will be achieved by further retribution.

So Jack Goldsmith and Glenn Reynolds believes that the techniques revealed at Abu Ghrain seemed reasonable at the time? To whom? Certainly not to Reynolds. And bringing torturers to justice is now "retribution"? And notice the kind of justice this law professor supports: Lynndie England is thrown in jail but the man whose orders she was following remains untouched? What England did was a crime but what those who ordered her to do it were merely making mistakes? Sometimes the corruption of justice fomented by Bush and dutifully echoed by hacks like Reynolds is really brought into the light.

That's gonna leave a mark.

Quintessential Putz.

That conservatives reproduce at all is a miracle.

FALLING IN LOVE with a robot dinosaur. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

This scenario is basically Sarah Palin's creationist wet dream made flesh.

W: Iraqis love me.

I'm pretty sure the one country that hates Bush even more than the US is Iraq.

Fess up.

Was this an Instaputz reader?

SO I’M GETTING SPAMMED from a dating site called Mate1.com, which I had never heard of. Do they spam like this in general, or has some joker set up a fake account in my name?

In any case, I approve.

Sullivan smacks Glenn Reynolds around on torture.

Good questions, which will no doubt go unanswered:

Perhaps Reynolds has discovered something since Abu Ghraib that has led him to change his mind and now allows him to endorse the very methods he once denounced. We can all change our minds in the face of new data. But doesn't he owe his readers an explanation for why what he once found worthy of the death penalty is now something he actually favors? It couldn't be that he changed his mind as soon as he realized president Bush authorized it, could it? If the president does it, it's not illegal?

I Can't Quit You, Codpiece.

Roger Simon is a dumbass.

If there’s one thing many can agree on about [President Bush], it’s that he doesn’t take insults too personally...

Word?

There's some support for the dynastic reading that George W. Bush intended to invade Iraq from the outset of his presidency to avenge his father. "After all, this is a guy that tried to kill my dad at one time," Bush declared at a political fund-raiser in Houston in September 2002. Considerable doubt has since arisen around the incident Bush was referring to, a supposed plot by Saddam to blow up the former president with a car bomb on a visit to Kuwait in 1993. But there's little doubt that Bush himself believed what intelligence officials told the family after that incident: that Saddam planned to murder not just George W.'s father, but the other family members visiting Kuwait with him: his mother, Barbara, his wife, Laura, and his two youngest brothers, Neil and Marvin. The incident cast a long shadow in the family. According to family intimates, the Bushes felt they were at risk so long as Saddam remained in power.

BREAKING: Jules Crittenden is even stupider than previously thought.

Some angry Iraqi threw his shoes at Commander Flightsuit today, and here's what Jules had to say:

Iraqi journalist throws his shoes at Bush. “Here’s a farewell kiss, you dog!” Big Arab insult.

Not exactly what we consider to be within the bounds of free speech in this county [sic], Bill Ayers’ take on that notwithstanding.

What does Bill Ayers have to do with in Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at Commander Guy? And it gets worse.

I’m pretty sure no one, including this ill-mannered lout of a scribbler, ever did that to Saddam. Not counting when they did it to that statue Bush knocked down.

Yes, no one dared throw his or her shoes at Saddam because it would've likely resulted in their death. (Sarcastic applause).

I suppose what Jules is suggesting is that Iraqis should be grateful that Bush only killed a few hundred thousand of their fellow citizens, displaced millions and tortured a bunch along the way in his completely fucked up invasion of their country, while destroying their infrastructure in the process and fomenting a religious war to boot.

But hey, at least they have the right to throw shoes at people. Sort of.

And it's funny Jules brings up that Saddam statue, which was a staged propaganda photo-op, just like "Mission Accomplished."

Dumbass.

UPDATE

Jules doubles down on teh stupid, reaffirming that:

A) Bill Ayers has in fact, nothing whatsoever to do with this story
B) He doesn't know what he's talking about with regard to Iraqi casualties
C) He's a moron

Jules, I know you hate the Iraqis because they hate Commander Guy even more than most Americans, but try not to blog angry. It'll save you a lot of embarrassment.

¿Como se dice, "permanent minority"?

Hilarious.

HH: ...Ken Blackwell, Latino vote, we lost it. How do we get it back?

KB: Well, we’ve got to go and we have to place the order. Latinos, they love education, they love, they are a religious people, they are a family-oriented people. We just have to speak to them. We don’t have to abandon our conservative and fundamental principles. We just have to articulate them so that people understand that our principles can produce policies to help change their lives.

Totally! If only the GOP would talk sloooowllllly enough, really enunciate, they might get the Latino vote. My unsolicited advice? Deep-six phrases like "place the order." The Latinos are, potentially, a voting bloc. What they are not is a taco stand, you damn goobers.

Make it Stop.

Putz:

MICHAEL GREENSPAN WRITES: “I was reading through old posts (mine, not yours — I’m a big Instapundit fan, but I’m not insane) and found this: ‘It seems to me that the best hope for the Democrats is for Bush to be so successful at foreign affairs and national security that by 2008 nobody cares anymore.’”

Heh. It did kinda work out that way.

I confess, that's a new one. Usually getting thrashed in two election cycles reflects epic fail, but whaddya I know?

My theory: Putz must've caught a pernicious, brain-eating STD during his Caymans vakay, because this is even nuttier than his usual output. Or maybe, per Mr. Occam, lipstick libertarians don't care about dead people.

Rah Rah.

Oh my.

I think the Internet might have stopped – or at least forestalled long enough for an Allied victory – the Holocaust. I can imagine fuzzy cell phone pictures of the ovens at Auschwitz, or videos of the Warsaw ghetto, or train schedules across Poland, somehow making their way to Allied servers and from there by-passing the mainstream media to explode on the pages of blogs and websites all over the world. Secrecy – and Allied indifference – were crucial to the Final Solution. The Internet, even an underground one, would have made both impossible.

I know it's wingnut gospel that Rathergate was, like, the great thing EVAR! and our asses are factchecked and advantage blogosphere, etc., but for real? This counterfactual triumphalism wherein goobers who are only now figuring out Twitter might actually prevent a genocide -- that, Mr. Michael Malone, is a trifle unseemly.

Being nice to the gays = fireable offense.

Lovely.

There really is a special place in hell for these people.

Shorter Elizabeth "Anchoress" Scalia.

We must erase the separation between church and state in order to preserve our American values.

Hersh Was Right.

Seymour Hersh, May 2004:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Today:

WASHINGTON — A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.

The Mind of the Wingnut.

You'd have to be a wingnut blogger to think the right to an abortion and the right to blog as Sprezzatura are analogous:

ESTHER DYSON: Internet anonymity is like abortion. “I’m pro choice, but I think abortion is an unfortunate thing. I think the same thing about anonymity: Everybody should have the right to it, but it’s not something one wants to encourage.”

The Next Four Years Will Be Fun Fun Fun!

I'm pretty sure this isn't a parody:

Memo To All Talk Radio Show Hosts Re: Twitter and #hhrs
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 8:03 PM

Dear Colleagues:

If you are the business, you need to sign up at Twitter.com asap, and establish a "hash tag" which is just shorthand for a call sign of sorts. Mine is #hhrs for "Hugh Hewitt radio show." Michael Medved's could be #mmrs. Dennis Prager's #dprs etc.

I assume Limbaugh's will be #ftass.

Jim DeMint tells the truth.

For once.

I always figured Putz was a bottom.

Wine Cooler To Be Named Later.

Dear Wingnuts -- where are you on Fitzgerald?

Because I remember where you were during the Libby trial.

A Center-Left Nation?

The Corner once expressed surprise "that Atrios can evidently put together a sequence of words longer than "It's Tuesday. Here's an Open Thread."

While the Corner lacks Dr. Black's poetry, they make up for it with teh funny.

That in mind, I'm delighted that the GOP's nerve center seems aware of all some internet traditions and has succumbed to the pleasures of the thread.

DFH!

Ew.

A Bit Rich.

After eight years of wingnuts parsing words like "imminent" and "threat," these dumb-as-bricks motherfuckers suddenly care about the particulars of the English language?

O rly? How very convenient.

Pace Yourselves, Wingnuts. You Don't Wanna Be Burnt-Out By the Inauguration!

I was gonna write something about Roger Simon's latest literary queef, but John Cole basically took care of it:

Now look, neocons. I know it must upset you that this Blagojevich scandal as of yet has failed to taint Obama, because I understand how excited you were to continue your guilt by association high from the election. The letdown is always rough after a binge, so a little hair of the dog is understandable.

But let me break this down for you. Sometimes, elected leaders are asked to show real courage, and vote against the will of the people to do something that is unpopular, but the right thing to do. They will pay a political price, but as leaders, that is what they have to do if they have the best interests of the nation at heart. In these cases, there is no reward other than knowing they have done the right thing, and there is a short-term political price to pay.

Other times, elected leaders get no-brainers- political gifts, if you will. They get to do the right thing, and they will be rewarded by the electorate for doing what is best for the country, and it really is a “gimme”- they get to do the right thing and will be given credit by the media and the voters. This case, with Obama pushing for the passage of this legislation, appears to be one such occurence.

This is just how it works out, and I know this is going to be hard for you to understand. After all, we have just spent eight years with George Bush and his third way, in which Republicans do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons and suffer huge political costs. I know that you have confused yourselves into thinking that is political courage, but in reality, it is just stupid, bad for the country, and for politicians, untenable. Unless, of course, you like the new heights of electoral success that the Republicans have achieved in 2006 and 2008.

Fortunately for everyone involved, Barack Obama is no George Bush.

Can I get an amen?

Ackerman has the funniest take on Blogo.

Freaking hilarious.

Is it wrong to have, on some level, respect for just how gangster Rod Blagojevich is?

W's not so sure about this whole Bible thing.

Phony.

"KEEP THE PRESSURE ON GROPERGATE!"

The crazos, reports Weigel, have not only refused to kill themselves go away, but are actually trying to get Jon Favreau shitcanned.

Naturally, Ms. Pale Death herself, Darragh Murphy, is leading the charge.


















The young man will probably keep his job, but certain spinster PUMA factions have already found another target. Watch your back, Whoopi Goldberg! Why? Who cares? It's funny!

lilibet 12.09.08 at 12:17 pm

I just wrote to Whoopie to tall her what I thought of her. I had to do it in two parts because they limit how many characters you can use. I ended with:”Whoopie, if you want to know what BITCH looks like, look in the mirror and you will see a colossal bitch!”

69

TexasTigress 12.09.08 at 12:19 pm

lilibet

lol - good one !

That's comedy gold.

Burn.

Damn this is a good post. It makes me feel a bit inadequate, but BT's shoes are very very large. I do my best!

Hopefully I'll be a bit more productive today.

In the meantime, can anyone explain why I should like Mad Men? Please?

Glenn Reynolds: Let's outsource critical government functions to Walmart!

Talk about a stale take.

A LOOK AT WAL-MART VS. FEMA in response to Katrina. So which approach will the Obama Administration emulate?

Several months ago, I saw Newt Gingrich on some talking heads show babbling about how he'd rather have Walmart take care of federal emergencies than the stupid, inefficient government.

What's missing here, obviously, is any mention that FEMA is part of something called "the Bush administration" and is led, staffed and funded by that entity. It's not some natural, pristine element that exists in nature and never changes.

You wouldn't know this if you had "gubmint bad, private sector good" blinders on, but you get good government by having good, competent people in charge and you get really shitty government when you have sycophants and career hacks in charge.

It's not complicated.

Just what is it with Republican writers who think their limited knowledge of American politics makes them qualified to cluelessly opine on... everything?

Everyone is Obama-crazy in Germany; every shopkeeper, beer-hoister, and pretzel-monger wanted to give a shout-out to the New Messiah.

Translation: Not only will I peddle dumb stereotypes after a country and its people apparently embraced me warmly, having government officials meet with me, but I will then explicitly mock the beliefs of their general populace. Nonetheless, if any foreigner says anything unfavorable about America, I will instantly whine endlessly about foolish anti-Americanism abroad.

Seems to me that when a rich country is worried about noise pollution, their major environmental problems are solved.

US population density: 31 people/km. German population density: 231 people/km. Given that Germany still has functioning heavy industries and manufacturing, often in densely-populated areas, something that the US has apparently given up on, it's both callous and a sign of sheer ignorance of the country you're talking about to dismiss noise pollution. Not to worry, though, this is roughly the level of intellectual rigor to be expected from someone who got both his graduate degrees from the Claremont Graduate School. Remember, this is the man who argued that SUVs aren't great polluters because, um.. because.

MTP.

This is probably my favorite part:

MR. BROKAW: You still have some appointments to make coming up, and there's also a good deal of consideration here in Illinois about who will replace you in the Senate. But in New York this weekend the big buzz is Caroline Kennedy in the United States Senate, perhaps as the appointment to fill the seat that Hillary Clinton is expected to vacate if she gets confirmed as secretary of state.

PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: And?

That's Obamaspeak for "Don't be an ass, Brokaw."

Also, He Should Eat Glass.

Putz offers Obama what is arguably the worst advice ever given to anybody ever:

Barack Obama, by the way, would be well-advised to take a break from reading books about FDR and read Feith’s War and Decision.

I occasionally entertain the possibility that Putz doesn't really exist and is actually an elaborate practical joke perpetrated by the University of Tennessee and WordPress.

This is one of those times.

Namechecked.

The white Christian party.

Both GOP frontrunners for '12 are biblical literalists.

I remain unconvinced that they've learned the lessons of '06 and '08 and thus will double down on the crazy for '12.

Testify!

Layne read Noonan too and does not want.

George Bush Junior will be remembered for many things, for a very long time. But the witless clown who jacked off at his pretend ranch in Crawford while freaked-out FBI agents were frantically begging for White House help in stopping an organized plot unveiling itself within the United States for foreign hijackers to crash passenger jets into high-profile American buildings will certainly the fuck not be remembered by anyone as the guy who “kept us safe.”

I see TS's Noonan post, and raise him.

I think she's drinking with Althouse now.

Nazi.

Peggy Noonan:

By the way, [Obama] should both reorder the Department of Homeland Security, that hopeless bureaucracy, and change its name. Homeland is a Nazi-ish word, not an American concept at all.

Pope John Paul II:

[I kiss the soil] as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly mother.

...For the record, I, too, agree with Nooners. Had she not written a kissyface book about the Pope, I'd probably not have mentioned it at all.

At Least He No Longer Stalks His Ex.

Dan Collins (yeah, that one) asks:

What is the matter with me, that this makes me laugh?

By 'this' he means this.

NESKOWIN, Ore. – A romantic marriage proposal on the Oregon coast turned deadly for the bride-to-be when a wave swept her out to sea. Scott Napper had taken 22-year-old Leafil Alforque to Proposal Rock near Neskowin Beach to pop the question at a place that got its name from couples ready to marry. Napper and Alforque had been dating since they met on the Internet in 2005.

But Alforque had arrived in Oregon on a visa from the Philippines just three days before the fateful trip to the coast.

Napper said the tide had receded around Proposal Rock on Saturday when the couple began to walk to it. He planned to propose and give her the ring he carried in his pocket.

About 10 feet from the rock, a wave about 3 feet high suddenly came toward them.

“I turned into it to keep from getting pulled under it,” Napper said.

By the time he turned to find Alforque, only 4-foot-11 and 93 pounds, she had been caught by the receding waters.

“She was about 30 feet away, getting swept away,” Napper said.

The 45-year-old Silverton man tore off his jacket to get rid of any extra weight, and when he looked up again she was gone.

“That’s the last I saw of her,” he said in an interview Wednesday, breaking into tears.

I couldn't even begin to answer the question.

Worst Analogy Ever.

Powerline, of course:

As to Bush's war time leadership, the best Eggen can offer is Bush's statement in an interview with ABC that he wishes "the intelligence had been different" on Iraq. Bush added that this intelligence failure is his "biggest regret." But Bush didn't collect the intelligence; he simply relied on the intelligence collected and analyzed by others. The fact that he wishes the intelligence community had served up better intel is not much of a mea culpa. I regret that the restaurant where I had lunch today didn't serve up a better meal, but I mostly blame the restaurant.

[via]

The Bedwetter Brigade Salivates.

Roger L. Simon asks a stupid question, follows it up with a dollop of duh, and tops it off with a smattering of the fuck, you say?

Does Mumbai give the Israelis license to bomb Iranian nuclear installations? That thought certainly want [sic] through my head in the last few days. And I imagine I am not the only one.

I imagine he is not. It's on days like this during which I support forced sterilization for, say, everyone on this page.

K-Lo, Human LOLCat. (update)

She says,

I immediately flashed back top my first trip to West Palm Beach, this fall. I remarked at the time to a dear friend there: “Now I know why you’re always so optimistic. How can you not be happy here?” If I grew up in Florida, I highly doubt I could ever leave.

But if you’re country calls …

I know I'm missing the forest for the trees here, but the fact that Editrix Lopez still hasn't mastered the fourth-grade art of pronoun-verb contractions is troubling. Or not troubling, so much as deeply comforting.

These are, after all, the very people who picked Palin.

Permanent Democratic majority, anyone?

...She's gone and corrected herself. Perhaps someone with more googles savvy than I can find a screencap.

Dept. of Worthless Headlines.

Truly this is unprecedented.

Hehindeedy!

It's so gratifying to see that dyed in the wool wingers are such cheap bastards. Consider: A year ago, GOS raised $50,000 for Bill Harnsberger in a matter of days.

The moral of the story? It helps not be a flaming wanker, since you may one day need a handout.

Erick Erickson: Palin beats Obama!

Still an idiot.

Sullivan smacks Glenn Reynolds around on Plaxico Burress.

Indeed:

A good point:

Where is the statement expressing outrage from the NRA that a humble American gun owner like Plaxico, who was just trying to protect himself and his family by carrying a hand gun, is being mercilessly persecuted by The Man and his Draconian gun control laws?

Shouldn't Glenn Reynolds be outraged as well? I mean: if you cannot take a loaded gun into a nightclub in your sweat pants with impunity, isn't America as we know it finished?

I think we know why there's crickets.

In Fairness to Bush Pere...

It all comes down to the comma. Jane takes this quote...

"I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived," he said.

...to mean that Bush blames his father for the Wall Street mess. I don't think so. Granted that Bush is a near-illiterate drunken fool, but if this is transcribed accurately, he's actually referring to the Clinton presidency -- as in, that was a decade ago, which was before Jr. done fucked up the country.

Now, sans comma, then he'd surely be talking shit about his dad.

TS Iz Sory.

I'm not sure whether I should apologize for the lack of posting today or what. I've been busy. In my absence, read this.

One of the myriad reasons I could never be a conservative? None of their ilk write half as well as Michael Bérubé and I, for one, cannot belong to a movement whose best writer is Mark Steyn.

Romney Rising Fool.

I think Obama's victory has had a desiccative effect on Hewitt's brain, because he appears to view a terror attack on American soil as a "told you so" moment:

Perhaps after terrorists strike the U.S. with WMD, media critics will begin to wonder whether the self-anointed guardians of the truth within the MSM were really serving the public's interest or their own.

Ha ha. All that's missing is a plea to buy his crappy books.

Palin in Georgia.

Vapid and incomprehensible as always.