Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

This blog will pay for itself.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

This fight is for everything.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

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The 5 best

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Two posts down are the Five Worst.

Time for the five best posts ever. I will throw two out right away, including the #1 post:

1.) John Rogers- The Crazification Factor:

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is

Tyrone: 27%.

John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority.

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.

2.) The Cogent Provocateur- Operation Desert Snipe:

The Snipe Hunt is an American folk tradition, a rite of passage for the novice outdoorsman … an elaborate practical joke which ends with the initiate crouching alone in the woods, in the dark, literally “holding the bag”, waiting for the nonexistent Snipe.

What if we sift through all the sand in Iraq without finding WMDs? (That means hundreds of tons, as advertised … not lab samples, training rounds or inventory strays.) We’re alone in the woods, in the dark, holding the bag. Paraphrasing NYT’s Tom Friedman, we will have gone to war on the wings of a snipe.

Too early to call it a night. It’s a big desert, our last candle hasn’t flickered out, and the mocking call of the snipe still echoes hauntingly in the distance, but … the original standard WMD thesis is strictly defunct.

We need to work on 3-5, but there is one recent post by Tbogg that makes me laugh every time I read it- “…and my action figures never die.”

The mighty 101st Fighting Keyboarders turn to increasingly sophisticated methods to prove that Everything You Hear From Iraq Is Wrong. In this episode, Power Line reader Stuart Koehl goes out to his backyard sandbox and recreates the story of a “crazed Bradley driver running over a dog”:

***

Next up: Warren Commission report disproved using a Hot Wheels Terrordactyl Track.

Just throwing that out there. I am reasonably sure Fafblog and Sadly, No! have something worthy. Another one of my all-time favorites was Will Warren at Unremitting Verse- Merci for Not Expiring.

Reader Interactions

44Comments

  1. 1.

    Punchy

    Perusing Sadly, No!, easily the funniest blog on the ‘Tubes, I thought I could find the one that cracked my shit up.

    Then I found this, instead.

    Good. God.

  3. 3.

    Tom Traubert

    Good. God.

    Yeah. That’s about all you can say about that.

    For best, I’ll nominate this little gem from the same place:
    Still Standing (Technically)

    This isn’t a slam, Michelle. No, really: It’s just a critique on a few minor points of your Iraq reporting — some constructive criticism for the next time that you and your boy ward set out to demolish the liberal MSM’s war coverage during a couple of days in-country.

    * TIP: When you’re building up to your big ‘gotcha’ moment — i.e., the revelation that, like you’d said, either three or two or at least one of a certain four mosques that the liberal MSM claimed were “burned and [blown] up”* were, in fact, undamaged (or in your recent, less precise phrasing, “not destroyed”) — it’s better if you don’t go visit one and then attempt a revelatory camera pan on a firebombed mosque with a giant hole blown in it.

    It goes on, of course.

  6. 6.

    Jess

    Here’s one of my favorites from Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings (“Failures of Will,” Nov. 20, 2005):

    It’s hard to think of a management principle more basic than: plan in advance, and plan for the possibility that things go wrong. Someone who tries to accomplish something and doesn’t do that is almost incomprehensible, like an airplane designer who forgets to take account of gravity, or an accountant who overlooks the need to add up all those annoying little numbers. If you’re trying to accomplish something more complicated than ordering a sandwich, this is just not something one would think it possible to forget.

    If it’s almost incomprehensible that anyone would ever fail to plan for a tiny little detail like the occupation of Iraq, it’s completely and totally incomprehensible if we assume that the people responsible for this little oversight actually cared about transforming Iraq into a functioning democracy. I’m sure that in some sense they wanted to so transform it. Possibly they just assumed that if we invaded, the rest would somehow take care of itself, and so didn’t see any need to plan further. But that is not the kind of mistake you make when something really matters to you.

    When something really matters to you, you go over and over your thinking, trying to figure out what you might have missed, whether there’s anything you overlooked, and what you can do about it. If anyone had bothered to ask those questions seriously, the obvious lack of a plan for the occupation would have leapt out at them. And anyone who really cared about succeeding in Iraq would have stopped everything as soon as he or she discovered that lack. Because transforming Iraq into a democracy is a difficult enough task with careful planning, and anyone who cared about success would never have undertaken it without a serious, well-thought-out plan.

    I like it because it’s not just a screed against Bushie’s Big Adventure, but a thoughtful, big-picture analysis of how such things can go so terribly wrong. I think it should be required reading for anybody responsible for any big project. Or anybody who wants to lead a responsible and accomplished life in general. But Hilzoy posts so much great stuff that its hard to choose just one.

  7. 7.

    The Other Steve

    Then I found this, instead.

    Actually with the sound off, it’s not half bad. Certainly better than anything Malkin has ever put on video.

  9. 9.

    Enlightened Layperson

    For side-splittingly wickedly funny, I recommend Jon Swift on hypocrisy.

    Hypocrisy is a traditional American value, which is why liberals are opposed to it. Although my father smoked and drank, he always made it clear that smoking and drinking were wrong and that he had higher standards for me. I can still feel the sting of his slap when I pointed out that he smoked after he caught me with a cigarette. I have passed on these very same values to my own children. When my kids catch me sneaking a cigarette or smell alcohol on my breath, I repeat the words my father said to me, which his father said to him, “Do what Daddy says, not what Daddy does.” And someday my children will instill these same values in their children.

    For a serious post, anything Hilzoy, the queen of relentless reasonableness.

  11. 11.

    Warren Terra

    An enthusiastic second to jnfr and TenguPhile’s recent comments. The Friedman Unit is one of the few recognizeable blog-created memes that I’ve really seen obtain significant purchase in the wider world and (to some extent) cause offenders to modify their behavior.

    I’m not sure it counts as a full-fledged blog, and I can’t point to any individual posts, but Charles Pierce’s Friday letters to Altercation are a highlight of my blogreading week; I give as an example one particularly good paragraph from last Friday:

    In fact, it’s long past time for simple ridicule to become the default position on the entire Republican presidential field. Romney is deeply, profoundly, relentlessly silly; he appears to be enrolled in a course in Human Being as a Second Language. Rudy Giuliani gets crazier almost by the hour and, at any meeting of his foreign-policy advisory team, he’s the sanest lunatic in the room. Fred Thompson seems to have been unearthed a week ago in the Valley of the Kings. The second tier is populated by people like Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo, neither of whom you would hire to park your car. Ron Paul — an authentic libertarian crackpot — is treated as a serious phenomenon even by people who don’t believe that the U.N. is speaking through the fillings in Katie Couric’s teeth. This past week, we had a general all-hands-on-deck attempt to inflict Huckamania! on the general populace as good ol’ Mike announced his disapproval of Charles Darwin. And then there’s John McCain, who’s spent this entire campaign doing things he’d vowed he’d never do in the last one. I swear to God, they all ought to climb into one little black car and drive into the next debate behind jugglers, high-wire acts, and a parade of circus bears. I cannot remember a presidential field in my lifetime — not even the one that coughed up Mike Dukakis in 1988 — that is as publicly hilarious as this one is. How dare a major political party hand this collection of shills, fakes, loons, and mountebanks on the American people? And one of them is going to win. Jesus wept.

    .

  12. 12.

    Ben

    This one has to be mentioned especially given the mention of Hewitt’s howler of a post about Harriet Miers…this was a perfect response

    This one is under password protection (http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/3298458) and I can’t find any info on who wrote it, but can still be found floating around the internet:
    ———————————————
    Shit Sandwich Suprisingly Tasty; I Give It A B+

    I know what you’re thinking: “Why should I try a shit sandwich?” I might have felt the same way a few days ago, but now I’m a believer.

    I was chatting with an administration insider over the weekend. During a sidebar in the conversation, it was intimated to me that President Bush’s favorite late-night snack was a “shit sandwich” with tartar sauce on the side. That encouraged me to give it a shot with an open mind. I know the president is intuitive yet discriminating in his choices, and isn’t afraid to go against the conventional wisdom. He also needs a lot of energy to get up early and fight the GWOT each day.

    So I tried it. The verdict? Earthy, no-nonsense flavor. The tangy contrast of the tartar sauce is initially off-putting, but like Bush, I’m in this game for the long term. I’ll give it some time to grow on me. It’s easily a B+ snack.

    UPDATE: My insider friend just called me again; apparently I misheard his end of the conversation, it was a fish sandwich. Well, that shouldn’t surprise me. In addition to introducing bold new ideas, Bush has always shown an appreciation for the traditional eating values that made this country great in the first place.
    ———————————————–

    P.S. little help for a newbie..how do I do the quotes like the other posts above?

  13. 13.

    Ted

    Not within the top 5, but this one from TBogg with a little imagining of what it would be like if Michelle Malkin homeschooled here pre-school aged kids:


    M is for Muslims.
    They’ll cut off your head.
    N is for New York Times.
    They want you dead.

  16. 16.

    RSA

    Actually with the sound off, it’s not half bad.

    That’s the only way I could watch it. And it immediately brought a line from MST3K to mind: “Oh, the drunk-aunt-at-the-wedding dance.” (Also, Elaine Benis, but that’s pretty obvious.)

    Best blog post? I’ll have to think. There are so many different types of blogs. . . On the other hand, the people who give out Oscars seem to manage.

  19. 19.

    mk

    Ben,

    P.S. little help for a newbie..how do I do the quotes like the other posts above?

    I believe the tag you’re looking for is blockquote. It works the same as other tags. Insert it between the angle brackets (less than and greater than symbols). No slash in the first, add the slash to close at the end. I’m not sure whether you used “i” or “em” to produce the italicized text in your comment, but to make a paragraph that is shaded and blocked, like above, you substitute the tag, blockquote.

  22. 22.

    Tom Hilton

    Okay, this is blogwhoring, which I know is bad and wrong, but it’s actually sort of meta-blogwhoring, and it’s even (very broadly) on-topic, so maybe it’s excusable: I’m inviting people to post links to the Best Post Ever from their own blogs (or, in the case of those without blogs, their own Best Comment Ever). Everyone is welcome (even TIDOS Yankee). Here’s your chance to have your best work rescued from complete obscurity, so it can shine in the dim light of semi-obscurity at a Z-list blog with literally several readers.

  24. 24.

    chopper

    If we’re talking about top 5 best posts ever, I think Kung Fu Monkey’s Bar Talk certainly deserves a nomination.

    seconded.

  27. 27.

    ImJohnGalt

    I can’t remember it exactly, but I think the Poorman wrote a post about not being able to un-shit the bed that moved me.

  29. 29.

    John Cole

    Well. Since The Editors has come up I suppose a shout should go out to “enormous, mendacious, disembodied anus” (see the last line in the post) featuring our own host, Mr. Cole, discussing the esteemed Ms. Sheehan…

    Those were good times. He used to bait me and I would give him what he wanted.

  30. 30.

    ImJohnGalt

    VidaLoca, I had forgotten that thread. It was also the ne plus ultra comment by Floyd Alvis Cooper that launched his career and reputation as the trolliest troll on the internets.

    To wit:

    I know this isn’t going to popular on this website, but may I just point something out?

    A soldier’s #1 job is to stay alive. If you die, you can’t accomplish the mission, and you weaken your team and put your buddies in danger.

    Obviously Sheehan’s son, I forget his name at the moment, didn’t die on purpose, and he may well have have had no control over the circumstances that let to his death.

    BUT.

    In war, there are no excuses. You find a way to stay alive, whatever it takes — if you’re a good soldier. Sheehan’s son didn’t do that. He paid the price. but he als failed the mission and let down his buddies.

    As a soldier, he was a failure. He was brave (maybe), but he was also incompetent.

    So, really, how much exactly are we supposed to grieve over this guy? Isn’t a certain amount of disapproval in order for the guy — and by extension his mom, for making such a fuss over a person who was, in the last analysis, by definition a loser?

    So shouldn’t Mrs. Sheenhan be showing a little more shame about the situation and maybe not wanting to get her son and his shortcoming splashed all over the media?

    Something to consider, anyway.

  32. 32.

    Jess

    VidaLoca,

    That is one hilarious post! It should be a finalist for the last lines alone:

    Am I a bad person because I am singing “enormous, mendacious, disembodied anus” to myself to the tune of the Beach Boys’ smash hit single “Kokomo”? Or am I a bad person in spite of it? Discuss.

    too fuckin’ funny!

  34. 34.

    jcricket

    Regnery is advancing me $2.25 and some irregularly shaped pork rinds (unflavored).

    Doesn’t Regnery sound like some sort of new pharmaceutical out of a “SciFi” movie?

    Lose your arm? Regnery will grow it back

    Something like that.

  35. 35.

    jcricket

    Anything that Gen. JC Christian, Patriot, posts at Jesus’ General, though the comments/Reports to the General aren’t far behind.

    The whole operation yellow elephant was just about brilliant.

    Heterosexually yours,

    jcricket.

  36. 36.

    jcricket

    John – the comments to the TBogg post are really great. Obviously you’re one of the sane ones (“Hmm, I look around me and all I see is shit and a giant hole. Perhaps I should stop digging, climb out and take a shower”), but this comment is ringing especially true:

    [This[ proliferation over the last six months or so of transparently pathetic attempts to prove the mainstream media is not merely spinning but fabricating stories out of whole cloth suggests to me that the strain has finally become too much. The whole Jamil Hussain frenzy, particularly the shot of Malkin standing in front of a destroyed mosque while insisting that it hadn’t been blown up, sealed the deal for me.

    It’s classic paranoid schizophrenic behaviour – constructing a fantasy world around a few precious but counterfactual axioms and going to extraordinary lengths to dismiss contradictory evidence. The way these fantasies are becoming more and more frequent and elaboriate, to paper over the most trivial of stories, is really telling.

    The Malkin/mosque thing reminds me of the Monty Python parrot sketch.

  38. 38.

    VidaLoca

    ImJohnGalt,

    Ah yes — Floyd Alvis Cooper. A master of the genre and that was a classic, one of his best efforts. He just pops up out of nowhere on that thread and lays down a line of total insanity — and everybody participating mounts up on their high horse and goes frothing off after him. With a few brief lines he completely highjacked the thread.

    Peter Johnson,

    are you listening?

  40. 40.

    Dave Shepherd

    Can easily think of five Rogers posts that would qualify (Lions Lead by Donkeys was my introduction), but in deference to our host, I will go in a different direction and give a nod to the now-sadly-defunct How To Write ScreenPlays. Badly. by Jeremy Slater and Dan Whitehead.

    http://jerslater.blogspot.com/

    Loads of great stuff, including a couple that are no longer up- “On French Films” and the infamous “Rapebear”. I’m going through a horror film revisit phase at the moment, so I’ll nominate this one:

    http://jerslater.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-horror-films.html

    TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2006
    On Horror Films
    … critics will attempt to break the horror genre down into smaller subgenres, such as Zombie Horror, Supernatural Horror, Mutated Porcupine Horror (that one is ours; don’t you steal it), etc. While this is a logical approach, it also seems like a lot of work, and we don’t think we’re getting paid by the page here. So in the interest of laziness, we’d like to propose a different way to categorize horror films: PG-13 versus R-rated. Let’s take a look at the way these two categories break down.

    PG-13 HORROR:
    Our heroine is a sexy young (Librarian / Virgin / One Tree Hill Actress) who discovers a (terrifying plot / horrifying plot / mildly upsetting plot) to destroy her hometown, which happens to be populated strictly by (eccentric stereotypes / offensive stereotypes / Veronica Mars actors). The threat is finally revealed to be (A Haunted Dorm Room / Dripping Wet Japanese Kids / A Hairbrush That Makes You Kill Shit), and everybody dies (Offscreen, Quietly / With the Camera Rushing Toward Their Screaming Mouths / On the Inside, Just a Little), except for our heroine and her studly new boyfriend, who defeat the malevolent presence using (Their Blossoming Love / The Old Voodoo Lady’s Necklace / Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start). The end.

    R-RATED HORROR:
    Our heroine is a sexy young (Stripper / Rocker / Nun, With Whorish Qualities) whose idyllic weekend of (Screwing, Drinking / Drinking, Screwing) is cruelly interrupted by a murderous (Hillbilly / Satan / Mutated Gopher), who quickly dispatches her friends using his (Power Tools / Demonic Abilities / Gophery Rage). As soon as our heroine finishes (Taking a Shower / Taking a Shower / Taking a Shower), she manages to defeat her foe using only a simple (Machine Gun / Bible That Shoots Lightning / Clump of Lettuce, Poisoned). The end.

    Also Dennis Perrin’s “The Savior of the Men’s Room”
    http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2007/08/savior-of-mens-room.html

    Somewhere, in the bowels of MSNBC, Tucker Carlson explains his interviewing technique to a pair of female interns.

    CARLSON: So then I said, Senator Clinton, if I want to know about the women’s vote, I’ll ask one.

    INTERN 1: (chuckles) I get it. ‘Cause Hillary’s ugly and looks like a man.

    INTERN 2: Yeah, and she talks like a man, too, like most lesbians.

    INTERN 1: Gosh, Mr. Carlson, it’s no wonder why you’re one of the hotter cable news personalities!

    CARLSON: Now, girls, take it easy. Remember, I’m married.

    INTERN 2: Yeah — married to funny!

    BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

    INTERN 1: What’s that?

    CARLSON: Err, umm, it’s a special MSNBC inner-office cell. Probably Scarborough, looking for an opening to his show.

    INTERN 1: You help him and do your own show? Wow! You’re really amazing!

    CARLSON: Yeah. Uh, excuse me, ladies.

    Carlson finds an empty office, closes the door, and takes the call.

    CARLSON: Yes commissioner?

    POLICE COMMISSIONER: Straight Man! Thank God I found you. We have an emergency situation at a men’s room next to the Bissell Park soccer field. Looks like Leather Chap’s back in town.

    CARLSON: Up to his old tricks, eh? Well, it’s time to flush that fruit once and for all.

    PC: Are you familiar with that men’s room?

    CARLSON: Yes. It’s the same place where cable news celebrity Tucker Carlson takes his son.

    PC: Good Lord!

    CARLSON: No need to panic, commissioner. I’ll handle it. Better send along a SWAT team for support, just in case it gets messy.

    PC: Anything you want, Straight Man!

    CARLSON: Good. I’m off!
    …

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