Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This post is in: War
When the anti-war (at all costs) movement and Saddam have lost the entire WaPo editorial board, including Mary McGrory (“I’m Persuaded“), your time is limited.
When you have lost the NY Times editorial board, it is time for Hussein to start thinking about exile. Or, as Matt Yglesias puts it:
As America’s slow-motion rush to war appears to be reaching it’s final steps, the Times editorial board shows up, limping about one step behind.
This post is in: Excellent Links
For some reason, every time I need a laugh, I go check out this vintage fisking of Ted Rall. This was written over a year ago by Anne Coughman (of the defunct Protein Wisdom– how we miss you), and it is still, by leaps and bounds, my favorite fisking of all time. Hell- this was the best fisking before we even called it fisking. Here is some of it:
Just because I find his work so remarkably irritating, I’ve “responded” to Ted Rall’s latest offering, “Snappy New Jeer” — another shallow dish of fetid word salad that’s light on the lettuce and heavy on the crumbled cheese. Actually, I suppose I haven’t so much responded to him as I have “reacted” to his bilious twaddle — by way of smarmy rejoinders of my own. Rall’s bunk will be block quoted, whereas mine is free to sniff the margins. You’re welcome to add your own mental observations…
Go read the whole thing.
This post is in: Excellent Links
Will Warren. Please come out of retirement. Pretty please?
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
Ted Barlow has some good links up about the bloated piece of crap known as the Bush budget proposal.
This budget is scandalous, and the Dems could have the high ground if they didn’t have 9 million issues they wanted to spend MORE money on. The best comment from Ted’s links actually comes from Mark Kleiman (who I have just added to the permalinks):
The good news is that the bad news is finally getting through. I got a phone call last night from a hard-core conservative friend, now doing a non-political job in Washington that puts him face-to-face with the budget numbers. “I hate to say it,” he said, “but these people are completely out of control.”
Yep- and they will have to be held accountable if they do not regain some control. Soon.
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
The clearest signs that Colin Powell changed a lot of attitudes in D.C. is that the usual suspects are not dissecting the speech looking for any angle to bash Bush. It has been almost 12 hours, and neither Tapped nor Josh Marshall have made an attempt to call the administration liars. Perhaps the DNC phone lines are down- or they are waiting for the NY Times spin.
This post is in: General Stupidity
Sean-Paul at the Agonist unleashes this ill-tempered, short-sighted, and generally idiotic screed after determining that perhaps a War in Iraq might be necessary:
I believe that the proposed invasion of Iraq is a necessary evil. I feel very reluctant about it in just about every aspect. The president and his cabinet have pushed for this war with a host of lies that reek like the Gulf Of Tonkin Incident. Their constantly shifting rationale and secrecy have brought me to the edge of opposing the war just on the basis of their methods. However, I am a serious student of International Relations and I try to be objective and look at the facts. I am not going to do that now. I have done it before. I do not want this war. No one should ever want war. Sometimes it is very sadly necessary.
What I do want to say is that all of you warbloggers out there are fucking pathetic. Young American men and women are going to die very soon. And like the poem I quoted in the previous post you are all “smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by” and you mother fuckers better “sneak home and pray you’ll never know/The hell where youth and laughter go.”
People like Andrew Sullivan and countless others are sickening. Your asses will never be in the firing line. You’ll never have bullets whizzing around your head. You’ll never see bloated, distended and putrefying flesh. You will never smell death on the battle field. So how fucking dare you sorry ass chicken hawks root for war. You are the worst of the worst. You are worse than those stupid fucking A.N.S.W.E.R. people. Why?
Because all you will do is sit at home and watch the bombs drop on Fox News and think it is all like a video game. You people make me sick.
It gets worse, and by worse, I mean sillier. By far, the best response to this nonsense was offered in the comments section of the post:
My, that was an awful lot of bile to unleash on people, for the minor offense of figuring something out a year or two before you did.
This one was tasty too:
Your problem, it appears, is that you have been casting those who have favoured action in the Gulf as evil, craven people for so long that you have been caught in your own trap. Now that you have reluctantly come to the same conclusion that others did long ago, you are trying to distance yourself from your own criticisms of the past. That’s both hypocritical and intellectually dishonest.
As unpleasant as it is for you to admit, you are *not* very different from the majority of the people supporting the war. You have seen the same issues, and come to the same conclusions (albeit later) as the people whom you hold in withering contempt. You just like to think you’re better than they are. That’s not morality, it’s arrogance.
Such a nice site design, too. Just goes to show you any idiot can get a website (as if I wasn’t proof enough). The worst thing is- I have read Sean-Paul before- and I sometimes like him. Maybe he just got drunk and wrote up that nastiness- the blog equivalent of a 2 at 10 looking like a 10 at 2. Hopefully he regrets it now.
This post is in: Humorous