Jonah Goldberg, whose only claim to fame is being the offspring of Clinton stalker Lucianne Goldberg, has for the last several years been working on an utter load of frequently-retitled crap called (currently) Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

As the series of excerpts from Sadly, No! and Spencer Ackerman make clear, Goldberg's magnum dopus is just as awful as you'd suspect from the title.  It deserves every bit of mockery that it has (and will) collect.

One such piece of mockery is this post by internet satirist Jon Swift, a lolcats version of Liberal Fascism.  I think you can see where I'm going here.

(to be continued)

President Bush today cited the growing cholera epidemic in Iraq as evidence that the troop surge is succeeding.  He was echoed by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and a spokesman for General David H. Petreus, commander of Coalition forces in Iraq.

Yesterday saw the death of Majida Hamid Ibrahim, a 40-year-old woman from Baghdad's southern outskirts who became the first confirmed cholera case in the Iraqi capital from an outbreak spreading around the country.

(more below)

Journalism is a serious profession, just like being a doctor, or a scientist, or an accountant.  We know this, because the journalists themselves tell us so.  And even though doctors, scientists, and accountants belong to professional organizations that police their members to ensure that they maintain the highest ethical standards, and journalists don't, who are we to question them?

So you'll understand that not everyone is cut out to be a journalist.  You can't just show up at a White House press briefing claiming to be from some news outfit nobody ever heard of, and expect to be taken seriously.

Do you have what it takes to be a Serious Journalist?  Take the test beyond the jump, and find out!

In a statement released today, the Daily Worker has announced that it has reached an agreement with the Nevada Democratic Party and the Western Majority Project to have the venerable news operation host a Democratic presidential debate in Reno in August.  Daily Worker editor Terrie Albano stated:

"The Daily Worker is proud to be a leader in coverage of the 2008 campaign season and a co-host of this important presidential debate. We look forward to working with the Nevada Democratic Party and the Western Majority Project."

(more after the break)

Dear Abby,

An unfortunate incident occurred yesterday, and I'd like your advice on how to proceed.

My neighbor George (we share a duplex) asked to borrow the car so he could drive blindfolded to the 7-Eleven and buy a smoke alarm, because he was worried that our duplex might catch fire.  My wife, who is very shrill and swears a lot, told me I shouldn't do it because George would just get into a terrible accident and might kill somebody, and anyway they don't sell smoke alarms at the 7-Eleven.

(story continues)

A.P. NEW YORK 3 February 2009
Billionaire George Soros announced today that he has purchased former president George W. Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch for an undisclosed sum.  Bush announced the sale of his Prairie Chapel Ranch – actually a pig farm -- to an unnamed buyer two days after the end of his term of office.

Soros has stated that he intends to transform the property into a theme park and museum called the WorstPresidentEverland Ranch, featuring Bush-themed carnival attractions and artifacts from Bush’s eight years in office.

(continued on p. 2)

What went wrong in Iraq?  Well, for one thing, the whole notion of trying to use military force to create political change was fatally flawed.  Even so, there were specific conditions in Iraq that guaranteed the occupation's failure and contributed to making a bad idea into a worst-case scenario, and they can all, ultimately, be traced to the state of the Republican Party.

There were several factions within the Republican Party going into the invasion, each with its own goals and methods, and they were operating at cross-purposes.  Each interfered with the goals of the others, and together they succeeded in transforming a brutal but stable dictatorship into a cesspool of chaos, violence, and civil war.

(details of the train wreck below the fold)

William Donahue's Catholic League is not a mainstream Catholic organization.  It's a right-wing fringe group whose views are not representative of the majority of American Catholics.  How to get this point across?

"350,000 Mel Gibsons"

Gibson did us the favor of making himself the world's best-known anti-Semitic Catholic bigot.  It's time to make use of that fact.  So, the next time someone asks an Edwards campaign spokesperson whether they're worried about offending Catholics, the spokesperson should say, "We're not worried about offending 350,000 Mel Gibsons."  P.R. problem solved.

(If there's a member of the Edwards campaign reading this, no charge.  This one's on the house.)

Welcome to the Sunday edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.  Today's question comes to us from Jeff Jacoby, the house concern troll over at the Boston Globe.  Jeff asks:

Are women giving up on marriage?

No.

This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.  Tune in tomorrow as we answer the question "Will the Surge lead to victory in Iraq?"

From fellow Rhode Island blogger Eileen Spillane comes this post on the swearing-in ceremony in the Senate.  Spillane was in a hearing room on the third floor of the Dirksen Office Building, watching on a big-screen TV as our newly-elected Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was sworn in.  Eileen writes:

At high noon the big screens went on.  V.P. Dick Cheney convened the Senate. Senators then went up four at a time (with the other Sen. not elected this cycle) & were sworn in. Whitehouse was last & was called up individually with Jack Reed. A huge cheer went up from the guests. My teenager lately told me that he noticed Sen. Clinton was the only one that Cheney did not shake hands with.

Yessir, our self-appointed Vice President is one classy guy.

Is Spillane's son right?  Can anyone confirm the Cheney snub?

UPDATE: In the comments, dougymi says that there were a number of Democrats who didn't shake hands with Cheney, and that Cheney shook hands with anyone who offered.

Cross-posted at Newport 9.

The December 14 issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran an editorial titled "Not-so-curious George" on the subject of Chimpy's "listening tour".  There's a lot of good stuff there on how pathetic it is that Bush has to crank up a major publicity campaign just to let us know he's actually listening to other people, but here's the money quote:

The impetus for the listening tour was the release last week of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations for policy and goal changes, which coincided with a CBS poll that said only 21% of the public shares the president's "stay the course" policies in Iraq.  This is roughly the same percentage of the public that, in another poll, said it believes crop circles are caused by UFOs.

Serious analysis below the fold.

No, I'm not trying to steal some of Delaware Dem's glory, like some latter-day Prometheus stealing mojo from the gods.  It's just that, for some reason, I can't post a comment to DD's diary, and it makes me feel so sad.

So, for anyone else out there who can't make it on to the Nondeletable Daily Kos Roll Call, here's another chance.  Post your:

user handle
age
sex
location
college you attend/attended
occupation
political stance
current preferred presidential candidate
pie you had for Thanksgiving (for non-USAians, the last pie you had will do)

UPDATE: it turns out jeffinalabama, who was also having a real hard time posting to DD's diary, made his own Roll Call Annex, so go ahead and follow the link and post to his diary instead.

Yeah, I'm talking about the Republicans, and it does my heart good to know that Zell Miller is still around to see his new friends in the GOP take it in the neck.

At any rate, one of the most notable aspects of the midterm elections is that the Republicans lost a lot of seats in what we might call the Old North: the states that made up the Union during the Civil War.  It isn't obvious looking at the usual maps, because a lot of those districts are too small to see clearly.  So, as an aid to clarity, I've created a series of charts showing what really happened on Election Day 2006.

(charts and analysis below the fold)

Thirteen days before the election, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that under the New Jersey Constitution, gay couples were entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples.  Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. was quick to denounce the decision, stating:

"I do not support the decision today reached by the New Jersey Supreme Court regarding gay marriage. I oppose gay marriage, and have voted twice in Congress to amend the United States Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. This November there's a referendum on the Tennessee ballot to ban same-sex marriage - I am voting for it."

That's what the Iraq hawks keep telling us, anyway.  You know what?  They're right.

The truth is, the Vietnam War was different from the Iraq War in many important respects, not least of which was the fact that the Vietnam War actually made a certain amount of sense.  After all, the point of the Vietnam War was to fight Communism, and there were actually Communists in Vietnam.

Follow me below the fold as I create a precise 1960s analog to Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

Word on the street is that the GOP House leadership's last-ditch attempt to avoid taking the blame for the Foley scandal will be to blame it all on a cabal of gay congressional staffers.  I'm not going to deal with questions of whether it's actually a good idea for the GOP to tell its whacko fundy base that it's been infiltrated by a camarilla of homosexuals, or whether the idea will actually work.  I'm not going to give the Republicans strategy tips, because A) I'm hoping that they do, in fact, go down in flames and don't recover for at least the next 25 years, if ever; and B) they're not going to take my advice anyway.

Instead, I'm going to offer them a humble suggestion that ought to help them ferret out all these dastardly homosexuals that are eating away at their Grand Old Party from within.  This is not strategizing: this is a workable way for them to take concrete steps to identify and deal with any hidden homosexuals in their midst.

Details below the fold.

In the middle of the blizzard of Foley news on Monday, Kos posted about
this Mason-Dixon poll of the top ten Senate races, two currently held by Democrats, and eight by Republicans.  The poll shows the Dems either leading or tied in all ten races!

Back before the RI Republican primary, the RNSC announced that if Laffey beat incumbent Lincoln Chafee, they'd pull out of the race.  Well, Chafee pulled out a victory, so the RSNC is still here in the Ocean State.

But for how long?

The Providence Journal ran an editorial on Friday cheering on President Chimpy's torture bill.  Naturally, I couldn't let that lie, so I took the opportunity to fisk the wretched thing on my blog.  And if it's good enough for my tiny Rhode Island audience, then it's good enough for the good people here at the Orange Mothership.

For those of you not in the know, the Projo (as we call it) is owned by the Belo Corp., the same company that owns the wingnut Dallas Morning News, and every so often they prove it with an editorial like this one.

It's pretty obvious that one of the higher ups at Belo sends the editorial board of the Projo orders from time to time about what their editorials should say.  This is clearly one of those times.  So, if you'll follow me below the fold, you can witness "The Fisking of the Projo":