Nothing Changes On New Year's Day

Yes, 2003 has come and gone, and Clownhall is still a cesspit of bigotry. Today's Townhall.com homepage links to this lovely comment on Howard Dean's faith:

Howard Dean's comments place him squarely in the "Jesus of convenience" camp. His wife and children are Jewish. Cool. But I have to wonder: if Howie's faith in Jesus Christ is so important to him, why didn't he marry someone with the same faith? Why didn't he insist on raising his children in that faith? Say it with me, on three: because what faith Howard Dean has in Jesus isn't central to his life.

I wonder how the Jews linked by Clownhall (Krauthammer, Goldberg, Shapiro, et al.) feel about sharing their little corner of cyberspace with bigoted dickwads like Matt Grills.

William Safire's Next Column

I hear Bill's trying to regain credibility.

Person Of The Year

The 2003 Roger Ailes Person of the Year is:

An entrepreneur.

A caregiver.

A compassionate conservative.

A champion of law and order.

She has been vilified by the powerful and the well-connected.

She has been targeted by the haters and the partisan hacks.

And she will be vindicated.

My friends, I give you the 2003 Roger Ailes Person of the Year:

Ms. Wilma Cline

Linking Without Thinking

It must be something in the blog. Daniel Drezner fills in for Sully Joe and immediately laspes into Sully's habit of linking without reading. Drezner asserts that this Los Angeles Times article is "trying to predict the 2004 election" by "roll[ing] out th[e] fact" that since 1960, "'the party in the White House lost when the unemployment rate deteriorated during the first half of the year.

In fact, the article doesn't try to predict the election. The article is about jobless rates. It cites the fact, and then cites an author of several books who says that it's not a coincidence that the President loses when unemployment increases before the election. But there's nothing in the article predicting the outcome of the 2004 election, or even suggesting the outcome in 2004 will follow past history. The Times article doesn't say it, and it doesn't quote the author as saying it either.

Next time, Daniel, "[r]ead the whole thing -- yes, even if you need to register." And don't pick up Sully's bad habits.

"I've got some news for Howard Dean ... The primary campaign is a warm-up compared to what George Bush and Karl Rove have waiting for him. . . . He's going to melt in a minute once the Republicans start going after him."

Melt? You mean, like this:

LIEBERMAN.... I think if you asked most people in America today that famous question that Ronald Reagan asked, "Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?" Most people would say yes. I'm pleased to see, Dick, from the newspapers that you're better off than you were eight years ago, too.

CHENEY: I can tell you, Joe, the government had absolutely nothing to do with it. (LAUGHTER) (APPLAUSE)

MODERATOR: This question is to you.

LIEBERMAN: I can see my wife and I think she's saying, "I think he should go out into the private sector."

CHENEY: I'll help you do that, Joe.

Little Mickey Kaus, who demonstrates his intellectual cred by referencing theorist "Milton-Friedman" (you know, of the Stanford Milton-Friedmans), blasts Senator Hillary Clinton for criticizing the administration's "artificial timeline" for leaving Iraq. He then says "[i]f the timeline needs to be pushed back, it can be pushed back." But doesn't that make the timeline artificial, in the sense of meaningless or false? Sure, every timeline is artificial in the sense that it's human-made. But certainly saying that a timeline with drop-dead date is okay because the drop-dead date can be changed at will is not an endorsement of the timeline.

Kaus is also perusing Free Republic for Michael Jackson commentary. You know, Kaus and "Hillary's Lovely Legs" have never been seen in the same room together.... or maybe they are always seen together.

The Bad Prose Zone or, Who's Licking Out For You?

A reminder that the nation's leading basic cable moralist is not only a sack of crap, but crap in the sack as well. And a bad writer:

"Ashley was now wearing only brief white panties. She had signaled her desire by removing her shirt and skirt, and by leaning back on the couch. She closed her eyes, concentrating on nothing but Shannon's tongue and lips. He gently teased her by licking the areas around her most sensitive erogenous zone."

Uh, wouldn't it be more effective to lick the erogenous zone, rather than the areas around it?

Sully: I Invented Blogging

B.B. also links to Brad DeLong but, again, fails to link directly to Brad's blog. At least he's expanded his horizons from last year's trinity of tripe (Joe Sully, Little Mick and Egg Boy).

Words/Phrases of the Year

Mayberry Machiavellians.

Hillbilly heroin.

Whistle ass.

(Of course, it's also given us the execrable "embedded," a euphamism for government propagandist.) Add your nominations for the word or phrase of 2003 in the Comments section below.

All Cretins Great and Small

Dr. Bill Frist on veterinary medicine:

The zoo has more than 2,600 specimens. The only thing most of them have in common is that they can be injured or sick, often because of old age, because animals in captivity usually live much longer than those in the wild. Not a single one can tell its caretakers what is wrong. In fact, nature teaches many animals to hide their infirmities from predators.

Shorter Dr. Frist: It's not my fault, the kittens never said "don't kill us."