Looks like ol’ Chris Muir is still getting in trouble over there. Case in point: This recent effort:
Above: Original Day By Day strip
Let’s do what we do best — i.e., help provide solutions:
Above: Enhanced Day By Day strip
Yay, all better!
…Although, maybe a better procedure with these Gaggle strips is just to add frickin’ punchlines to them:
See, that’s not genius work or anything, but…
Okay, wait a sec. That method doesn’t fit with the spirit of the strip at all. Hang on:
There. It needed a certain, you know, gratuitous incoherency.
It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another wokka-wokka-wokka-hoo-hee-hoo column from Charles Krauthammer. There’s lots of good stuff here, but this is particularly juicy:
Maliki is not just weak but unreliable. Time is short. We should have long ago — say, when national security adviser Stephen Hadley wrote his leaked memo last November about Maliki’s failure — begun working to have this dysfunctional government replaced.
Even the French foreign minister, upon returning from a recent fence-mending trip to Iraq, called for Maliki’s replacement. (One can discount his later apology as pro forma.) Such suggestions are often denounced as hypocritical and contrary to democracy. Nonsense. In a parliamentary system, a government serves only if it continues to command confidence.
But, like, if, uh, we’re “working to have his dysfunctional government replaced,” and not the people who have been elected by the Iraqis, isn’t that a de facto coup? And how are we going to force the Iraqi parliament to have a no-confidence vote?
Does anyone imagine that Maliki enjoys the confidence of the majority of Iraqis? If he does not, parliament, representing the people, has the perfect right to vote no confidence and bring down the government.
And then? Rather than seek a new coalition as a shaky substitute, the better alternative is new elections. And this time we must not repeat the mistake of election by party list, a system almost designed to produce warlord leadership and unstable coalitions.
New elections. Lovely. Everyone loves those picture-perfect purple finger moments. Makes everyone feel warm’n'fuzzy about waging a pointless war that’s ruined millions of lives. Just as long as the Iraqis vote for someone we approve, is all. And to do that, we’ll likely have to ban every legitimate candidate save Allawi and Chalabi.
Democrats, can you please, please, please, please get us out of this? I’m tired of watching my country slowly commit suicide. Thanks.
‘A Time for Grace:
America needs unity in dealing with Iraq. That means the president must lead.’
Above: Quit taking the paper years ago
Quiddity over at Uggabugga asks:
… saying that there is little progress in Iraq, is a stab in the back. Right?
Let’s go ask Dan Riehl.
Playing Politics With Terrorism And War
While Hillary Clinton continues to take some flak for playing politics with terrorism, will there be a sound about the obvious playing of politics concerning war, given these quotes below from a WaPo article on the leaking of a draft GAO report designed to undermine support for the war in Iraq? And isn’t leaking potentially classifiable material before it has an opportunity to be classified basically as criminal as leaking it after the fact?
So yes, in Dan’s America, it doesn’t matter whether information is actually classified or not: If it’s potentially classifiable, it’s a criminal act to leak it. And since negative information about the war is never value-neutral, but is ‘designed to undermine,’ such a leak is also a moral crime, and a stab-in-the-back (i.e., a dolchstoss).
…That is, if the information treasonously makes Republicans or their programs look bad. Otherwise, you know, ‘free speech.’
Here’s how Dan brings it home (emphasis his):
The person who provided the draft report to The Post said it was being conveyed from a government official who feared that its pessimistic conclusions would be watered down in the final version — as some officials have said happened with security judgments in this month’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.More likely said government official feared recent polling and reporting suggesting a general increase in support for our efforts in Iraq.
Cowardly saboteurs are forever scheming, etc.
From the Larry Craig arrest tape:
Craig: “I sit down, um, to go to the bathroom and ah, you said our feet bumped. I believe they did, ah, because I reached down and scooted over and um, the next thing I knew, under the bathroom divider comes a card that says Police. Now, um, (sigh) that’s about as far as I can take it, I don’t know of anything else. Ah, your foot came toward mine, mine came towards yours, was that natural? I don’t know. Did we bump? Yes. I think we did. You said so. I don’t disagree with that.”
Sergeant: “Okay. I don’t want to get into a pissing match here.”
Indeed not! Then again, who doesn’t love a challenge?
Via Newsbusters.
I think the strip is actually getting better. It’s less driven by bizarre non-sequiturs than it used to be.
Dear Red Sox,
All you had to do was not get swept by the Yankees this week. That’s all you had to do. And now you’re going to get swept. Jesus Christ, I hate you. I hate you all.
Above: A.O. Spades
Bonus Shorter Ace Of Spades HQ:
An Open Letter of Sorts to New Orleans:
That they never really learn (dadun-dun duh-duh)…
[…]
I confess that I have a much greater tolerance for these sorts of creative approaches to national sovereignty and democratic change when I have any confidence the puppeteers have a clue what they’re doing. But, that said, it would seem Mr. Allawi may be the coming man to continue Iraq’s democratic revolution.
(Via.)
Yes, yes; I know. I’m an asshole and a purist, what with my insistent refrain that ‘it’s the Imperialism, stupid.’ Yes, Marshall is an excellent reporter. Yes, he is anti-Bush. Blah-blah-blah. I’m just saying: That’s not nearly enough. Marshall confirms that while he may never be pro-war again in a time of a Republican presidency, he’s still willing to play neocongames if the puppeteers identify as Democratic (which, with foreign policy centrists like Obama and Clinton in the running, is a likely scenario). So, while it’s great that our Serious Liberal Journalists are now — after all that’s happened — suspicious of crusades that might be instigated by, say, Bill Kristol and Max Boot, they’ll still be up for those instigated by, say, Ivo Daalder and John Ikenberry. In other words, they’re against silly imperialism, but still more than open to ’smart’ imperialism. Yeah, goody goody.
John “Chicken” Hawkings at Right Wing News has licked the Andy Capp’s Hot Fries dust from his fingers for some serious typing.
Above: “Red Six standing by…”
A Public Bathroom Is Not A Gay Pick-Up Bar
Amazingly, Larry Craig’s arrest has prompted more than a few people to come out and imply or outright say that you should be able to legally use public bathrooms like a gay pick-up bar.
As in, to get a low-key drink at a place with a witty bartender and Amy Winehouse on the jukebox? Put us down for that! (It’s all been trending upward in the airport-men’s-room arena since the changing tables started appearing.) What follows, though, is two quotes from Garance Franke-Ruta and Slate’s Jacob Weisberg saying that tapping your foot in a certain way in a bathroom doesn’t, in fact, seem to be against the law. But Hawkins is flummoxing onward like a steam train made of angry veal, and will not be stopped by puny words.
What? Is the cop supposed to have let Craig into his stall so that he could whip his Johnson out in the middle of the public bathroom? Because obviously, that’s where it was going. He was sending what is, apparently (I have no idea what foot signals gay men use to show interest in bathroom stalls and don’t want to know) a sign that he wanted sex from the officer. That’s not much different than handing a prostitute her fee in my book and we accept that as being good enough for an arrest.
As to Garance Franke-Ruta’s assertion that turning a public bathroom into a dating service is fine by her, all I can say is that she’s morally retarded. There’s a time and place for everything and a public bathroom in an airport is neither when it comes to sex.
‘When it comes to sex’ is becoming a long wait indeed for Hawkins, but it’s good to know that he can still be philosophical about it.
Upcoming at Right Wing News:
“A Gay Pick-Up Bar Is Not a Public Bathroom!”
“A Public Bathhouse Is Not a Private Gay Bedroom!”
“A Pirate Barroom Is Not A Public Gay Bed Bath And Beyond!”
“My Gay Pickup Truck Isn’t Your Private Snickers Bar!”
“Blixa Bargeld Is Not a Public Gay Hiccup Room!”
Like something else we can think of, he can milk this for a long time.
Above: Hewitt
Rebuilding New Orleans: A Continuing Mistake
Above: Southern culture on the skids
Bonus Shorter Confederate Yankee:
Dennis Prager explains what he’s learned in his attempts to understand leftist positions:
Many people who hold them are personally decent, some very much so — yet they hold positions that I believe increase cruelty (e.g., advocating withdrawal from Iraq); increase criminality (e.g., more lenient attitudes toward punishing criminals); hasten the decline of Western society (e.g., pushing multiculturalism); and undermine liberty (e.g., expanding government, passing more and more laws, taking away ever larger percentages of citizens’ money).
Gosh, when you lay it out like that, I feel grateful for Prager’s generous assessment of my personal decency.
They also panic easily (e.g., heterosexual AIDS in America, carbon dioxide emissions leading to global catastrophe); and the further left one goes, the more morally confused they are (e.g., the inability to label the Soviet Union an “evil empire”; the exaggeration of America’s flaws — it is sexist, imperialist, racist, homophobic — and the undervaluing of its virtues).
If I were a prayin’ man I’d get down on my knees and thank God that I live in a country that allows me to hold such dangerous viewpoints and express them publicly.
A lot of countries wouldn’t grant me that luxury, y’know. I mean, not during a time of war.
