A Singularity of Shrillness...

Andrew Sullivan's shrillness exceeds all bounds of possibility:

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: Yglesias Award Nominee: I think this Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century. The good news about it, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's almost over," - George Conway, National Review.

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: A Bush Collapse: Once Bush's passivity, indolence and arrogance were put on full display, once it was apparent that the government was not working, and that Bush was the reason, people figured out why the war in Iraq was such a shambles. And so the mystique required to sustain patriarchal authority was shattered. I think this is largely irreparable because it's about a basic assessment of a single man. What worries me is that we have almost three more years. If we face a confrontation or a crisis, this president will not be able to carry Americans with him. Our enemies will take comfort from this. Which is why re-electing him was such a terrible risk.

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: Why Rummy Will Stay: In this war, the president has essentially delegated all key decisions to the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis. The fact that these two are manifestly incompetent, have trashed the military, destroyed its honor, and turned Iraq into an early chapter in Hobbes is irrelevant. The president doesn't trust anyone else sufficiently to replace them. And he's too out of touch to make the key decisions himself.

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: Quote for the Day: "Can anyone doubt that matters are just as serious today, on the American right, as they were for the left in 1947? In much the same way that liberals felt torment over disowning the monsters on "their side," so we now see decent conservatives writhing and twisting, like pretzels, in order to make excuses for rapacious kleptocrats, incompetent thugs, moronic armchair warriors, cynical spin doctors, conniving feudalists and screeching fanatics.Are they truly loyal to such monsters? Are they kept in rigid lockstep out of some misplaced fealty to a ridiculous "political axis" that was insipid even when the French invented it, in 1789? A left-right axis that offers no relevance or insight or utility for an agile and sophisticated Third Millennium?" - David Brin, on his blog

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: Hamill on Bush: A reader sent me a piece by Pete Hamill from January 2001.... Hamill laments Bush's crippled 2000 election victory and predicts the ensuing presidency. I found the following passge disturbing: "[W]e should be prepared for armed melodrama. Bush is not a worldly man. His father was head of the CIA, ambassador to China, and president of the United States. The son stayed home. During the Vietnam War, he hurried into the Texas National Guard, defending the skies over Houston. He has visited only two foreign countries, one of them Mexico (the other seems to have slipped his mind). He was the first presidential candidate in memory who needed briefings about geography. But he knows where Iraq is, and is completely aware of what his father failed to do in that country: remove Saddam Hussein. A son in rivalry with a father can be a very dangerous man. To show 'leadership', the new President Bush might defy the European allies of the United States, and risk another oil crisis, by seizing on some slight--real or imagined--to finish off Saddam Hussein. He would thus force his father to admire him and get a boost in the public opinion polls." I didn't see it coming. But it behooves me to acknowledge those who did.

But where's the public apology to Paul Krugman for being a shrill, unbalanced critic of George W. Bush when it might have mattered for the country? That's way overdue...