Blogoland

Columbia would have been much better off inviting our very good friend Pervez Musharraf to speak.

The Mets are in trouble. Willie Randolph meets with the press in his office. The beat writers compare notes:

NYP:

Five hours later, in a quiet office where the only sound was the beep-beep-beep of a computer that sounded eerily (and appropriately) like a ventilator in an ICU, Randolph tried to maintain his optimism.

NYT:

But in a cramped, crowded manager’s office, where a persistent beep from a computer made it feel and sound like a hospital room, an upbeat Randolph preached optimism.

Sounds to me like a reporter made a crack about the beeping, there was some laughter, and everyone took a mental note to use it later.

In a discussion regarding Cleveland's running away from the rest of the AL Central, we get this cringe-inducing tidbit in the hometown paper:

One key to the Indians' success is closer Joe Borowski, who entered Friday with a league-best 40 saves.

Yes, that's the same Joe Borowski who thought he had a two-year contract with the Phillies last winter. The Phils got cold feet on the deal after their doctors had concerns about the condition of the pitcher's right shoulder.

The Phillies tried to restructure the deal at lower terms, but by that time Borowski was off to Cleveland, where he has had a terrific season and looks like a lock to pitch in the postseason.

If the Phillies had signed Borowski, he could have helped on two fronts - at the back of the bullpen, and in the rotation as his presence might have allowed Brett Myers to remain a starter.

That's the lovable Phillies for you! Pass on the guy with phantom shoulder problems and pick up the guy with real, live shoulder problems.

Many years from now, I'm pretty sure, critics and fans alike will look back on the emo era and shake their heads. What were they thinking? What could have convinced millions of people to think that a bunch of whining, wounded boys could be entertaining? I say this only because emo has infected the British -- here in the form of Hell is for Heroes, a self-described "post hardcore" outfit from London. The results are embarrassing.

As an antitode might I suggest a dose of Field Music?

File this under: Things I Wish I Had Written...

[S]uch is the war in Iraq as seen through neocon lenses. Mistakes are always in the past. The current policy is always working. When the mistakes are being made, those who point out the mistakes are tarred as near-treasonous. Then, after another year or two of pointless, futile bloodshed, it's conceded that mistakes were made in the past. But now we're right on track. And the liberals, once again, just don't get it.

Read the whole devastating takedown.

This blogger, knowing vile when he sees it, calls Hugh Hewitt out for his disgusting post on Fred Thompson's cancer. Good for him.

Similarly, while I enjoy reading Tbogg's site and often laugh at his insights, I must object to this post as inappropriate and mean-spirited. What's the point? Mocking a cancer survivor's physical appearance is pretty much the lowest of the low.

Rush Limbaugh -- not an especially subtle man -- has up until now kept the treason card in his back pocket. He likes to imply treason, but generally comes right up to the T-word and punt. Here he is posing the matter as a question: Did Joe Wilson commit treason?

Well, not anymore!

What these Democrats are doing, folks, is treasonous! There's no other way to describe this. Look it up in the dictionary.

[...]

Now, in the midst of battle, in the midst of success, for a major political party in this country to come out and openly admit that they are doing everything they can to discredit the credibility, the character, the honor of the commanding general -- for whom they all voted, and whose efforts they funded! They voted to fund his efforts. This is worse than shameless. I don't know that there is a word in the dictionary to describe these people other than poltroons.

This is the new trick. Criticism of General Petraeus is simply not permitted. And is now a hangable offense if it occurs. The Weimar Watch continues.

Rush Limbaugh spends about 45 minutes telling his listeners that he is not, in fact, a self-absorbed boor:

CALLER: You talk about yourself all the time lately in the last month. I know more about you personally than I ever knew, and I ran into you 20 years ago, almost 20 years ago, at 21, and you were a simple, sweet guy, and you really still are, but it's almost as if you're taking yourself seriously, and that's not you, and it frightens me to think...

RUSH: (sigh) If I'm to fix this, you're going to have to give me some examples of the self-absorption that you're talking about.

CALLER: Well, your golf. You constantly talking about your golf and how you go to Hawaii and how your friends and you smoke your cigars with your to friends, your wealthy friends, and you're constantly talking about your private life, and, uh, maybe I'm off kilter. I'm willing to admit it, but --

RUSH: Well, what about my private life have I said recently that shocked you?

CALLER: Huh. Huh. There's too many things to talk about.

RUSH: Well, no, because I don't talk about my private life. I'm very guarded and private about my private life.

CALLER: No, you're not! No, you're not. You're not private at all.

RUSH: I most definitely am.

CALLER: You talk about the big house that you live in and all the television sets that you have, and all about your trips and your (choking) playing golf and how you have these, uh, personal cigar meetings with these, uh, important people. It's as if you have taken yourself seriously, rather than say, "Hey, this show is not about Rush Limbaugh. This show is about everything going on in the world, not around me," and I've never heard you do that, in all of the years that I've listened to you and loved you. That's all. Nothing changes. I still think you're the best person ever.

Anyway, it goes on and on and on like this.

In gearing up for the anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, Glenn Reynolds helpfully links to a fellow who reminds us that We Are At War and that We Must Prevail and other inspiring messages that may or may not have come from the deleted scenes of the Red Dawn Collector’s Edition.

Then the Professor highlights a Michelle Malkin post that insists that we must Win The War (how that lofty goal might be achieved we are not told).

And then it’s on to a petition supporting the surge -- which may or may not artificially inflate pageviews for the awesome Victory Caucus.

Thank goodness we have people like Glenn Reynolds, winner of the Armchair Silver Star, to remind us Why We Fight. And encourage us to Continue to Fight. Go, Fight, Win! Still, I wonder what 2007 Reynolds would have to say to 2005 Reynolds?

I confess that I don't blame people for being tired of the war. I was tired of the war before we invaded Iraq. (In fact, one of my early posts here at MSNBC -- now lost to this site's former archiving system, alas -- was entitled "Confessions of a Weary War-Blogger"). But people are usually tired of wars long before they're over. The phrase is "war is Hell," not "war is amusing."

War certainly is tiring from the front lines of Cyberia. We should be thankful that the Professor has been able to stick it out this long, to all of our amusement.

UPDATE: Oh, heck. Here's a link to a 2003 post in which the super-patriot Reynolds warms up his Kerry-attack antics by generically questioning the integrity of those who served in wartime:

We’ve seen journalists develop something akin to the “ticket punching” mentality that the U.S. Army had in Vietnam, where being able to say you were there is more important than the quality of work you did.

Try and fathom that a non-serving citizen actually had the temerity to say this.

Andrew Sullivan learns that his pal Christopher Hitchens is actually quite insane.

Earlier, we learned via Hitchens that the cock-up in Iraq would have been worse had we not invaded because Iraq was falling apart anyway, and I mean, who knows just how bad things would have been?

And even earlier than that, we learned that "looting" is not really looting because it's actually something else. Or something.