Update: Unfortunately Mr. Billmon has left the reliable news media sphere and has given A Farewell to Journalism. We are sorry to have to see such a refreshing new media business die after just such a short time. R.I.P. Whiskey Bar Times. Your life was short but honorable. We are proud to have documented it here and pledge to continue your valuable work on the matter of fair and balanced shit to print.

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Even diligent readers of this year-old magazine may not be aware of a promising new publication now available at the virtual newsstands.

The Whiskey Bar Times is poised to deliver "All the News That’s Shit to Print" and indeed Mr. Billmon, the publisher and editor of the new daily, does not disappoint.

Cont. reading: Review: The Whiskey Bar Times

Fabulous Statistics

On June 28, 2004 Billmon made his Last Call:

So, very reluctantly, I’ve decided to turn Whiskey Bar into a commentless blog – just me and my occasional thoughts, there for anybody to read, but not for everybody to come along and throw in their two cents.

Two days later Moon of Alabama opened.

Cont. reading: One Year MoA

At this point, Americans aren’t even willing to ask those questions, much less answer them. Which is why the most likely scenario is that failure in Iraq will be followed by further setbacks in the war on terrorism, as the neocons (or their neolib counterparts) stumble from one ill-conceived fiasco to another.

Failure is an Option

Buck Turgidson Rides Again

So who did get away?

When the only way you can get a hand from a handpicked military audience is by having a ringer in the audience start clapping, you know you’re bombing (so to speak.)

Bombing Run

I do want to take a longer minute to point out a subtle, and at times bizarre, shift in the propaganda rhetoric — one that, as predicted, appears to set the stage (or at least leaves the door open) for further negotiations with some of the bad guys.

Same Old Same Old

When under pressure pimples tend to unload some nasty content.

Not tonight, yet – there is not enough pressure, yet. So the pimple will try to do what pimples always do.

"To squeeze the biggest pimple is unpatriotic as long as there is a any assumed shade of dirt on any other place."

Leave your notes on Bush’s speech here – I´ll be sound asleep when that sorry show will take place. If it’s worth a word, I`ll comment tomorrow.

"I am the grass.
Let me work."

Grass

My Kind of Democrat

.. lies and evasions are weapons that only work on the home front — and these days maybe not even there. They clearly don’t impress the insurgents/terrorists, who know weakness when they hear it.

Forewarned

Next week in the Times Science section: Creationism reconsidered.
…
Editorial independence (i.e. the freedom to tell the reader or viewer what you think they need to know, rather than what you think they want to hear) has always been a rather strange artifact in a competitive, capitalist industry like journalism.

The Red State Times

“By reducing the number of young, attractive canines out on the street, we may be able to control the epidemic of man-dog sex currently ravaging our inner-city neighborhoods,” Santorum explained.

Man Bites Dog

Thou shalt honor thy Sandra Day O’Connor

The 11th Commandment

Military Secrets

The line must be changed again. New labels must be invented and applied to those insurgents who “don’t have blood on their hands.” (Roughly the gazillionth oxymoron created by the administration in this war. But whose counting?)

Rectification of Errors

And so we arrive at the heart of the problem: To salvage any ending short of total defeat in Iraq, the Cheney administration must act like those spineless, flip-flopping liberals. They have to negotiate with the terrorists, listening to their demands, trying to understand their grievances and goals — shit, offering them therapy sessions for all I know. But at the same time, Bush also has to keep up the never-give-an-inch macho act, lest the silent majority finally grasp the dismal truth: Their sons and daughters must go on dying in the quagmire so the neocons can find a way out that doesn’t involve losing too much face.

Negotiating With Terrorists

whatever … and take a look at the older one too.

The Masque of the Green Death