Sadly, No!

Slightly Shorter John J-Pod: Neocondescensions
Condescending

• That tiresome boy in the White House has no right to be condescending to his Republican superiors just because they are recycling debunked slogans on his cutesy-pie little universal health care hobby-horse.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

*Incredibly tasteless reference to Bryan Fischer’s claim at RenewAmerica that SeaWorld is going to hell for not having followed the biblical injunction to stone a whale to death.

When I said this was the worst music video ever made, I was probably wrong. Ya rly. But maybe you should judge for yourself. You know you want to.

When Homer and Marge listened to a “Rappin’ Ronald Reagan” tape, it was funny. This… is a fucking atrocity.

Shorter Dr. Mrs. Ol’ Perfesser, Dr. Helen
Women Suck!

• Women are weak and they suck! Memeorandum, here I come!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Above left: Kraphammer. Above right: Justice personified.

Shorter Charles Krauthammer
National Review Online
“Krauthammer’s Take”

• Ordinarily, I deeply resent so-called “rules of engagement” imposed by non-heroic civilians which, in tying one hand behind our military’s back, makes it harder for our troops to blast civilians into deliciously splattery bits. However, since the military leadership itself seems to want our troops to abide by these rules, I suppose I’ll grudgingly put up with less fapping material, but only because its decision seems to have been made for strategic, not moral, reasons.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

Our good pal Patterico lawyerly and alpaca-ly insists that I correct an old Sadly, No! post that questioned Andrew Breitbart’s claim on Twitter that Dave Weigel ‘DENIES’ that James O’Keefe of black stereotype cosplay fame ‘manned a table selling Neo-Nazi claptrap during a White-Man-Negro-Haters Club meet-and-greet held at Georgetown University in 2006.’

It turns out that Weigel, while not in fact ‘denying’ that O’Keefe may have manned such a table (I await Patterico’s insistence that Breitbart retract his tweet, perhaps in vain), later reported that though he attended the 2006 event, he could not confirm another attendee’s report of said table-manning.

So consider this an apology to James O’Keefe and a formal retraction of the part of the post in question that describes him as having ‘manned a table’. Furthermore, to my knowledge, O’Keefe is no man at all with regards to other types of furniture, physical objects in general or even concepts such as honesty and fair-dealing, so I will endeavor in the future not to linguistically associate him with masculinity in any way or form.

I am truly sorry.

I was just getting excited about the Giants’ prospects this year:

David (Florida)

Hey Joe! Who do you think is the best improved team this year?

Joe Morgan (12:02 PM)

I guess you would have to say the Giants in the National League because they have made the most moves. If their moves work out or not, we’ll have to wait and see. In the American League I’ll say Seattle. On paper both teams did a good job of improving themselves.

We’re doomed.

PS Sadly, the professionals are long since retired, but I’m guessing they’d agree that ‘because they made the most moves’ is not, strictly speaking, particularly rigorous reasoning for why you are selecting a ballclub as the most improved. The word Joe may be looking for is ‘best’, as in ‘because they made the best moves’.

Oddly, David (Florida) uses the word ‘best’ in the construction ‘best improved’, when he seems to mean ‘most’ as in ‘most improved’. There is always a bizarre kind of aphasia in Joe Chats … and this little exchange is a most best example of it.

Brad adds: The Giants are going to be competitive based on their pitching alone. Lincecum is a special talent, Cain isn’t far behind and Zito… well, he pitches a lot of innings. Offensively, Sandoval is a mid-order bat but he’s pretty much alone out there. Buster Posey will be an asset when he comes along. They’ve got enough chips to acquire another bat during the season. They should be pretty good.

Steven Pearlstein is probably the most interesting Village columnist. While he instinctively takes standard Washington positions on most issues, he does delve into policy a lot more than the Milbanks and the Sally Quinns of the world. So I was a little heartened this morning to read the following:

Dodd, Corker and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia are putting the finishing touches on a plan reflecting these judgments. As they envision it, any time a big financial institution is threatened with insolvency, the government would be authorized to take it over and close it down in a bankruptcy-like process. The government could provide temporary loans to ensure an orderly liquidation process and prevent financial panic, but only to the extent that the loan would be repaid from proceeds of the sale of the bank’s assets. Although insured depositors would be protected, creditors, counterparties and investors would all suffer losses.

This is… actually a pretty good idea, at least to my non-expert eyes. The big problem with Geithner’s absurd bailout “plan” is that is was designed primarily to benefit bank shareholders and not American taxpayers. This new proposal would wipe out the shareholders of failed financial institutions — which is perfectly fine, since investment ain’t supposed to be risk free.

On the other hand I should probably stop saying that this could be a good idea, since we all said the same thing about the Medicare buy-in and look where that wound up…

Hmm, this story seems harmless enough:

Led by Sergeant Savage, a team of officers is to spend the next year stopping drivers who flout the rules on particularly accident-heavy stretches of road.

Except:

Mr. Smith, the road safety manager, said that the campaign’s name was a homage to motorists’ endless litany of fruitless rationalizations. “I was out about a year ago and we stopped a lady who had three children in the back of the car,” he related. “The officer said, ‘Why aren’t these children belted in?’ and she said, ‘They’re not my children.'”

10-4!

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Above: Mark Steyn

Shorter Mark Steyn
Maclean’s
“THE PEOPLE vs BLAIR, BUSH AND THE WAR ON TERROR”

• Why should heroic nations like ours even need a legal reason to blow shit up, anyway? Isn’t greed reason enough? What about vengeance? Geopolitical strategery? How about just for the hell of it? No? Apparently pussified Britons, Canadians, and Americans want an Anglosphere of laws not of men. Yeah well, enjoy your suicide pact, ya namby-pamby, multi-culti, appeaser, fagg0rtz!

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

I’ve been trolling the depths of wingnut publications searching for hilarious praises of Ahmed Chalabi from the early part of last decade. Here’s the best one so far, from Max Singer writing at the National Review:

Chalabi’s strength comes not from American neoconservatives, but from the widespread support he has among Iraqis not only Shia, but Sunni and Kurd and other minorities. Not only among exiles, but among Iraqis in Iraq who have maintained contacts with the exile community.

He has such a unique degree of Iraqi support, despite the strong and well-funded efforts of the State Department and the CIA to find and promote an alternative leadership, because Iraqis recognize his integrity, loyalty, and ability.

Do you have to possess knowledge of anything to be published by the National Review? The answer, to coin a phrase, is sadly, no.