An abbreviated Carnival this week thanks to my laziness and and general blog ennui which has gotten in the way of promoting the event properly. For that, I apologize to my regular submitters. Also, it would probably help if I got back to a set day for the Carnival and then stick to it. However, this would necessitate a level of ambition and energy that, at the moment, is lacking. In short, I’ve developed a simple formula for my life as it is right now; if it gets in the way of nappy time, faggettabouit!

Since I’ve already nominated myself once for Cluebat of the Week, doing so again would prove the old adage “trying too hard for a laugh” although goodness knows I deserve it. And surprisingly, the list of usual cluebats who could be counted on for some total outrageousness were busy doing other things this week. This proves that the Hall of Famers now have to work extra hard to get noticed by our sharp-eyed cadre of bloggers who scour the internet to bring you the best of the worst in clueless behavior.

While we generally frown on group awards for the Carnival, this week we’ll make an exception in awarding the coveted Cluebat of the Week to the Mainstream Press. Glenn Reyonolds wrote today “Katrina taught the media that if they all swarmed Bush at once they could do harm even if—as turned out to be the case—much of what they reported was outright false.” Truer words have rarely been uttered by the Blogfadda. It’s the worst I’ve seen since Nixon. Within the past week, we’ve seen the MSM wrap up their coverage of one of the biggest non-events in American history with the story of Dick Cheney’s hunting accident trailing off into nothingness (a sure sign there was nothing there in the first place.) No grand wrap ups. No penetrating think pieces on “What it all Means.” The press simply stopped, almost as if on cue, in covering a story they couldn’t get enough of for two weeks.

Then there was the Iraq Civil War that wasn’t. Clearly there was serious sectarian violence following the destruction of the Samarra Shrine. But the breathless reporting from the media – very little of it first hand and, as I pointed out here, some of it surely driven by al Qaeda in Iraq propaganda cadres fanning out and spreading rumors – was so over the top as to approach the comedic. On the very day that most of the authorities in Iraq declared the worst of the violence over and lifted the curfew, a New York Times editorial warned of the probability of civil war between Sunni and Shia Muslims. There appeared to be a concerted effort to make the event Bush’s “Tet Offensive” which refers to the slaughter of Viet Cong irregulars during the 1968 Vietnamese New Year attacks on every province in the South. The American army dealt the Cong a blow from which it never recovered but the media twisted it into a defeat. It appeared something similar was happening with the destruction of the Shrine.

Then, if you woke up and looked at what the number one story in the MSM was today you could be forgiven if you believed you had fallen asleep last September and failed to arise until this morning because the story was exactly the same. Bush was briefed about the severity of Katrina prior to landfall. We knew this. The response by the federal government was slow and ineffective. We knew this. Bush was told the levees would probably be overtopped causing massive flooding. We knew this. Bush said on September 1, two days after the hurricane, that no one expected the levees to be breached. We knew this. There is a difference between “overtopping” and “breaching” a levee. We knew this.

The only “news” about every single aspect of this story is that it was caught on tape. That, plus the media obviously didn’t think the American people were sufficiently outraged at the time they first reported all of this. So by treating this as positively new information, the media believes they can get additional mileage out of the destruction of a major American city by an Act of God. As I said today, no word on similar briefings given even earlier to the disaster tag team of Blanco-Nagin by the same Director of the National Hurricane Center, Dr. Mayfield who begged them to evacuate New Orleans on Saturday.

With Bush’s poll numbers plummeting – even among Republicans – it is pretty clear that the media smells blood in the water and will, from here until the mid terms, make it their personal quest to see that Democrats take over the Congress so that the expected impeachment hearings against the President can start almost immediately.

For this surreal kind of cluelessness, the MSM is the winner of the Carnival’s Cluebat of the Week. Check out the rest of the entries for our usual jaw dropping idiocy brought to you by some of the best and brightest on the web. Ladies and Gentlemen: Start your Clicking!

“Stupidity is without anxiety.”
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

Yo Johann! Does that mean all those Hollywood liberals aren’t sweating the Oscars?
(Me)

*********************************************************

Fausta has the latest from Hugo Chavez who is so clueless that if he didn’t exist as the perfect Castro clone, someone would have to invent him. Check out the formerly bad hair one’s new digs – looks very nice and not a split end to be found.

Fred Fry gives us an interesting lesson in port etiquette, pointing out it is impolite to diss the UAE while we have the Saudis guest hosting ports out west. My beef over this always had much less to do with security and much more to do with the pinheads in the White House who dumped this on the party, the Congress, and the American people causing needless damage to their political street cred.

Our favorite hippie chick Peace Moonbeam had an interesting dinner date with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. I don’t want to give anything away but what happened after the lights went out was reminiscent of some scenes from Brokeback Mountain. Read it all for some out loud laughs.

On a much more serious note, Cao of Cao’s Blog is one of the only people on the web who covered the Afghan prison riots. Cluelessness abounds here from the Afghan authorities all the way to the US State Department. This is the first installment. Here’s the second update. And here’s the an interview with American patriot Jack Idema being held in the prison and under constant threat of death.

The Finnish Canadian blogger at Sixteen Volts has a fascinating post looking at past newstories to glean perspective on the present.

Jack Cluth has a picture of the world’s fattest cat and it’s clueless slave who apparently doesn’t realize that the obese feline will probably die before its time.

The much more svelte and smarter cat Ferdy sends us this piece about my home state governor whose name no one can pronounce and whose ideas about how to create jobs no one can fathom.

The lovely Pamela takes us to the surreal Islamic paradise of Iran where executions are carried out by the fine art of hanging.

Kender is rappin’ some ‘toons and jivin’ the MSM for their cowardly lion act regarding the publishing of the Mohamed-ahmed-ding-dongs.

Beth takes apart another blogger who shall remain nameless since she apparently has the litigation bug if you cross her. Well…Beth crosses her. And slices her. And dices her. And puts her in a blender and makes a Pina Colada out of her. Classic takedown of the clueless.

Josh Cohen has been eating at Taco Bell for ten years (and he’s still alive?). The kind of cluelessness he found at the drive through should make all of us check our orders before we drive away.

Adam wonders what the Democrats are complaining about in the statehouse in Idaho. They whine about being “bullied” by Republicans – who control a whopping 80% of the seats. Maybe they should be complaining about being too closely identified with Hillary Clinton.

Those Pixie-like Pachyderms from Elephants in Academia are tiptoeing through Kofi Anans disastrous Sudan leadership that has failed miserably in the Security Council. Get. A. Clue.

DL at Bacon Bits has an eyebrow raiser about the effect of trees on the environment and how that seems to have thrown a monkey wrench into the plans of the eco-theists (tree huggers).

Pat Curley, who has been all over the comparison between donations made to Republicans and Democrats to sleazeball Abramoff (to the point that he got a nice mention in NRO) has some more Democratic cluelessness on the issue.

Orac has the jaw dropper of the day: FLASH! From Iran, we get the news that the lovable cartoon characters of Tom and Jerry are not the innocent, fun loving cat and mouse we’ve always been led to believe. Instead, they are a dark, menacing plot of the Joooos.

Mark Coffey does an admirable job taking down one of the “rising stars of the lefty blogosphere” (Hotline Blogometer) Glenn Greenwald’s whose shallow, incoherent screeds against Bush and the Republicans have become easy targets of late.

Bill Teach has more on the ports imbroglio with “Republicans Gone Wild.” There may be nothing more nauseating than clueless politicians pontificating on stuff they know absolutely nothing about.

What’s going on in Canada? If you ask Wonder Woman, not much that is good. She points us to this frightening story of someone being denied medical care in Quebec because they couldn’t speak French.