SULLY'S STRAWMAN

I'm starting to notice that the past week has been "Brendan Fucks Up Various Conservatives" week.

Let's see, since sunday, I've dispatched Luskin, Drudge, Instapundit, Kaus, James Taranto, Instapundit again, O'Reilly, and Limbaugh.

I've been holding back on Andrew Sullivan, possibly the easiest target of all of them. Yesterday morning he weighed in on Dean's Hardball appearance:

THE REAL GAFFE: I'm on the road so forgive me for not elaborating further on Dean's "Soviet Union" gaffe. No, it's not the end of the world. But it's hard to come down hard on the president's linguistic difficulties while ignoring Dean's. But what is serious is that Dean seems to think that we can prevent proliferation by buying the stuff from North Korea, Russia, or whoever. But what's to stop rogue nuke states selling to Iran and to us? Is Dean that naive? And isn't it true that the real source of Iran's nuclear material has recently been Pakistan anyway? My bottom line: I don't care if a presidential candidate commits a gaffe in foreign policy. I do care that his instinct is to buy off enemies, rather than confront them; and that he's not on the ball about where the real threats are coming from. Dean is making me more nervous about his foreign policy ideas, not less. (emphasis TFM's)

Yeah! That would make me very nervous about Howard Dean.

As tempted as I am to take Sully's word for it, I feel compelled to take another look at the Hardball transcript:

MATTHEWS: Joseph Nye heads the Kennedy School. Of course, everybody here knows that. But...

JOSEPH NYE, DEAN, KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT: Governor, let me take you back to foreign policy.
You’ve been critical of President Bush’s going into Iraq over weapons of mass destruction. But there are two countries that are much closer to nuclear weapons than Iraq ever was. And one of them is North Korea and the other is Iran. If you are elected president, how will your policy toward North Korea and Iran differ from the administration’s?

DEAN: Well, first of all, we’ll have bilateral negotiations with the North Koreans.
The idea that the most powerful nation on the face of the world is somehow going to be blackmailed if we don’t agree on the size of the table, which is essentially what the present argument is about, is ludicrous. This president has wasted 15 months, or more, doing nothing about the fact that North Korea is almost certainly a nuclear power, that we can’t tolerate North Korea as a nuclear power. We need to work with the Chinese, the Japanese, the South Koreans.
But we also need to engage in a deal that I think the North Koreans want to make, which is, let them enter the community of nations. In turn - and, in turn, they will disarm, verifiably, and rid themselves of nuclear weapons. They don’t need nuclear weapons. We can make them-make that problem go away if we’ll do certain things, such as, perhaps, sign a nonaggression treaty, if it allows us to fully protect our allies such as South Korea and Japan, and of course, ours. There is a solution to North Korea. We need a president who believes in negotiation and not simply posturing.

I dunno, but it sure sounds to me that by saying Dean wants to "buy stuff from" North Korea, Sully is grossly mischaracterizing what Dean said. In fact, that's being polite; he's simply making shit up. Giving Russia an incentive not to sell stuff to NK is, well, a good idea, and all Sully can do is mischaracterize it as buying stuff from NK. And last I checked, bilateral negotiations, as well as working with neighboring nations, are both good ideas. This is willful deception on Sully's part.

And if Sully has a beef with Pakistan, I'm sure Bush would be very responsive to his concerns, right? Oh, and a LexisNexis search of "Iran, nuclear, Pakistan" reveals a string of articles stating that each side denies working with the other, but hey. Iran wouldn't possibly have considered building nukes as a response to security concerns involving their next-door neighbor Pakistan's possession of said weapons, would they?

Hmm, I have a little extra time, so here's one more Sully entry. Of all his cutesy awards, I think his "Poseur Alert"'s are the dumbest:

POSEUR ALERT: "One of the reasons I live here is that I really feel like New York needs me right now. New York is not the center for American culture and art that it once was because of the forces of conservatism. Giuliani, capitalism - and then there was 9/11. I really believe that if I leave, it will suffer! Maybe that's why I love it here, because I feel wanted." - singer Rufus Wainwright, The Observer, October 12. I love Wainwright's music. Pity he can say idiotic things like this.

Sully, as usual, displays his blind spot when it comes to other people's employment of irony, sarcasm, humor, etc, for all to see. The Observer's Kitty Empire, who wrote the article that included the quote, did happen to pick up on this:

It's a typical Wainwright outburst - full of playful self-regard, erudition, humour and drama. Rather like his music, in fact. He's a compelling songwriter, witty and honest, inspired by his own life. His three albums to date have combined orchestral arrangements and ragtime, topped off with his scuffed-molasses vocals.

I do, however, agree with Sully on one thing: I love Wainwright's music.