NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, on the Obama Phone Lady and the incredibly transparent racist bullshit her elevation by rightbloggers represents. Go look. At least the Voice hasn't changed its template. (Still workin' on that...)

And remember, pointing out the obvious is the real racism.

Oh, and by the way -- WELCOME TO DISQUS COMMENTS! You can complain about those, now.

UPDATE. Now I have to see where the old JS-Kit comments have got to, enable Disqus for the mobile version, maybe get back the Blogger comments from yesterday, etc. Technology is not an unmixed blessing.

SERVICE ADVISORY.

Our much-hated but free commenting system is scheduled to shut down on Monday, so I have finally bitten the bullet and converted from the Old Blogger Template* to the New so I can use all the gee-gaws long available to more au courant cheapskates -- including Disqus, the new commenting system, which has already pissed off longtime kibitzers Aimai and Leeds Man (this must be some kind of record).

Any of you lovely people should be able to sign up for free at Disqus with an email account, like I did. If you try the email sign-up or the Google/Twitter signup and you still can't get on, you're perfectly welcome to bitch to me about it, but I warn you, I've been running this thing like a Geocities site for years, so I'm probably not the best tech support in the world. I'd do what I can, though. 

As for the memorable japes recorded by Echo/JS-Kit over the past few years**, I have initiated the launch sequence for what both E/J-K and Disqus promise is the migration of the old comments back to this site (that is, the ones that appeared pre-New Deal). They won't tell me when this will go through and, as I am not paying any of these people cash money, I doubt repeatedly smacking the bell at the front desk is going to get me any more solicitude than a gypsy would get asking a Paris sommelier for a glass of water. Who knows, maybe when we come to,  I mean wake up, in the morning the old comments will just be there like Christmas presents.

One day when I'm rolling in dough and can get the good service, we'll all be sitting around in the holodeck chatting like Hef's guests on Playboy After Dark.  Till then I'm afraid we have to wing it with castoff widgets. Sorry. You want high tech, go talk to Matthew Yglesias.

By which I mean, thank you for your patience.

(*I think Gary Farber is the now the last old-time blogger using the original template, God bless him. Wait a minute, he hasn't posted since December 2011. Ha ha ha, I am King of the Popes!)

(** Prior to which, longtime readers will remember, we had another commenting system which went down forever when the old friend who was running it pulled the plug, whereupon the earth halted on its axis and we all froze to death.)

UPDATE. A lot of you are having trouble with avatars. Here's what Disqus says. Not helpful, right? I experimented and had no luck, and I can't find a way to send Disqus a query, Maybe I'll wait for them to tell me that the old comments have been posted (when in reality the website is in flames) and try a reply-to. Meantime, pretend it's 1998!

UPDATE 2. Have tried everything involving avatars (and gravatars) to get mine to show in comments and nothing works. Found the buried Contact Support feature at Disqus and sent them a  note.

Listen... what do you guys think about the Blogger commenting system?

UPDATE 3. You know what? I think the comments here are Blogger comments,  and that the Disqus commenting system hasn't kicked in. But I can't figure it out -- this isn't helpful -- so I'll wait to see what happens when Disqus "importing" finishes. Sorry, I'm dumb.

BIBI NETANYAHU, SUPER-GENIUS.

And I thought Colin Powell showing fake pictures of WMDs was a UN low point. In the dystopian future, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Erick Erickson will appear before the General Assembly holding up a stick-figure drawing of a guy in a turban with a word balloon that says "GRRR DETH TO AMERICA." Then, Benny Hill music!

NICE TRY. I see Ole Perfesser Instapundit is pimping Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein at USA Today and the New York Post. His basic message at the former is that the Lame Stream Media doesn't want you to know about Stein, "because talking about her doesn't fit much of the press's election-coverage agenda" -- in case you didn't get it right away, Reynolds adds, "her candidacy would pull votes from the clear favorite in the race for many in the press, President Obama."

One of the fringe benefits of this charm offensive is seeing the Perfesser praise FDR at length in the Post:

I was talking with Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee, the other day; she offered a different approach, one that harkens back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. 

Back in the Great Depression, FDR was more focused on getting people back to work than on handing out money. He set up the WPA and the CCC to provide employment for out-of-work Americans — jobs building needed infrastructure: bridges, post offices, courthouses and other federal buildings...

At its peak, the WPA employed over 3 million men and women who would’ve otherwise been jobless. 

And the Civilian Conservation Corps put the unemployed to work improving national parks and other pieces of federal land. 

When I hike in the Smokies, it’s often on trails that were built by the CCC — and of course we’re still using many of the buildings and bridges that the WPA built...

Don't be surprised if the Perfesser doesn't follow through with a call for a new WPA. He's just looking for those voters who admire FDR but believe that Obama "would rather have you sit at home, depressed, with a check" than build government buildings and put on Living Newspaper shows... oh wait, those would be the Reagan Democrats, and they're all either dead or filling out early ballots to keep Paul Ryan from stealing their Medicare.

Well, at least the folks back at HQ will credit the Perfesser's initiative. Maybe next he should interview Ralph Nader.

WORKING THE REFS. When people began pointing out that the disastrous NFL replacement refs are only out there disgracing the game because the owners locked out the union, it was just a matter of time before the great conservative thinkers of the 21st Century came out swinging in defense of right-to-work stadia. Take it away, Donald Douglas:

Plus, I guess it's no surprise, but the despicable progressives are trying to score political points on this, and over unions too... 

For some reason I don't think there's an accurate comparison between the NFL officials' union and, say, public sector teachers unions. But then again, folks like Steve Benen and the Think Progress anti-Semites probably back public teacher sexual predators over abused children and their parents. Because that's what's happened to the public unions these days.

Forget about being out of bullets and throwing the gun; this is like throwing the gum and then throwing the wrapper.

Some of the brethren can't even say the word "union," and instead displace their rage upon their traditional fantasy hate-objects. The Conservative Review:

The NFL has gone over the top with Breast Cancer Awareness (pink ref shirts, anyone?), Hispanic Heritage Month (announcers yelling GOAL for a touchdown…I wish I was kidding), female announcers everywhere and male announcers rapidly disappearing, announcers explaining after every hard hit why it’s still legal to (occasionally) hit someone hard in professional football, and now this.

It's not the end result of rapacious capitalism -- it's bitches and Messicans! Rush Limbaugh can't say the u-word, either; per the Daily Caller: "Doesn’t Obama, and the left in general, don’t they promote the advancement of the incompetent based on the fact that they’re incompetent? Screw standards in testing. We don’t need to go find the best..."

The Lonely Conservative at least engages the issue in the best rightwing victim-blaming tradition:

I just wonder why the mob isn’t mad at the regular refs who refuse to agree to a deal and come back to work... 

Unions ruin everything, now they’ve ruined football.

I kind of hope the lockout continues a while, so these patriots can have ample time to share their theories of workers' rights with the nation.

UPDATE. In comments, Chuckling:

One would hope the NFL referee lockout helps wake more people to the realization that plutocracy is ugly and getting uglier. The issue isn't about money. The retirement contributions in question aren't even pocket change for the billionaire NFL owners. No, they don't feel their employees deserve a good retirement. They don't feel their workers efforts are worth even a smidgen of their enormous net worth. They want it all not because it buys them anything extra, but in order to punish the lesser folk for their failings. It's a bizarro meritocratic thing for people that don't have a lot of merit.

Stunts like this do tempt me to think that sometimes they go after a union just to demoralize everyone else. That certainly seemed to be the case with the teachers, who went from being admired public servants to commies pariahs PDQ. Maybe if they win this one, they'll lock out the NFL players and replace them with bouncers and dock workers. Yes, I see the silver lining, but it'll be less funny when the boss demands that your bare-knuckle-box for your right to a job. The race to the bottom enlists us all whether we have numbers on our shirts or not.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the rightblogger reaction to Romney's bad fortunes -- i.e., liberal media argh blargh. Like Jimmy Hatlo said, They'll Do It Every Time.

Related: A spillover thing from Warner Todd Huston on how the media got so gosh-darned liberal:

 In fact, there was a time when American customers of the news knew exactly which newspapers sported which point of view. It was taken for granted that one newspaper supported one side and another newspaper a different side. 

But in the late 1950s and early 1960s that all changed. Suddenly the folks in the news media began to present themselves as unbiased pursuers of “the truth.” Gone was the out-in-front bias and instead the media cloaked itself in a new air of detachment, a new just-the-facts mien. 

This new era in media conceit coincided with the advent of a liberal mindset that took on the weight of the world, a new era in which liberals felt that their ideals rose above God, tradition and country.

Suddenly a journalist’s work was divorced from the trade in local news and became a profession increasingly assuming a national and ideological agenda, one fueled by journalism schools and professors that began to disgorge university trained “journalists” with a left-wing agenda. These people then went forth to replace the grizzled local reporters that were wedded to their local political culture. This new wave of “journalists” did not want to report what was going on in their local news as much as they wanted to “save the world.”

To recap: Nothing bad ever happened in America worth noticing: Once upon a time reporters were fun hacks, and then suddenly they were all shipped to snooty Eastern colleges and came back liberals.  Maybe Huston once suffered a traumatic brain injury and presumes that's the only way anyone ever changed his mind about anything.

SHORTER MEGAN McARDLE: It's absurd to think you can help poor people by giving them money; they'll just spend it on cell phones and TVs and food and stuff. What they really need to do is live in better neighborhoods. It worked on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

UPDATE. Ermagerd.

THAT'S WHAT THE NEW BREED SAY. Media Research Council:

‘Liberal Media In Full Advertising Mode for Obama Reelection’ [NewsBuster's Tim] Graham Tells FNC’s Cavuto

It sounds a lot like the conservative durn-liberal-media schmaltz we've been hearing for decades -- probably because it's short and suggestive; a relatively staid, simple reference that's meant to trigger a dream world of dark conspiracies in the minds of the targets.

But this here's the internet age -- the consumers have turned into producers, and they're not content with dog-whistles. They want to tell you all about their dreams.

The Anchoress:

The headlines having to do with anything touching the president or his party (with one profoundly heartening recent exception) simply blare the official line, which is often “that thing you just saw wasn’t what you saw” and then — after the first thrust of a story has died down, or a shiny scandal has been generated to divert attention and energy elsewhere — the corrections and clarifications come, but not on the frontpage, not on the broadcasts...

World Net Daily:

STATE-RUN MEDIA'S FAKE POLL NUMBERS...

Ever since the skewed CNN poll a few weeks ago (CNN’s president recently resigned due to lack of ratings), voters have looked at the methodology of polling companies with much skepticism, and rightfully so. Evidence recently came out that confirms voters’ suspicions. NumbersCrunchers, an anonymous poll analyst, tweeted a graph that shows the degree of oversampling of Democrats employed by the recent presidential polls, all of which show Obama in the lead. Polls were conducted by CBS/NYT, ABC/Washington Post, Tipps, Reuters … and even Fox News.

Yes -- even Fox News! Elsewhere you can read how Obama and the media are willfully turning America over to jihad and "the coordinated attack on the First Amendment threatens the lives of Americans who dare to criticize Islam and organize to expose Muslim Brotherhood operations on U.S. soil..."

Graham had better get with it. If you want to make it in right wing world these days, it's not enough to cynically use stupid ideas to stir up the lunatics -- you have to be a lunatic yourself.

ANOTHER COUNTY HEARD FROM. I see the Crazy Jesus Lady is selling herself to Mitt Romney as a campaign consultant. (That worked so well last time.)

Wake this election up. Wade into the crowd, wade into the fray, hold a hell of a rally in an American city—don’t they count anymore? A big, dense city with skyscrapers like canyons, crowds and placards, and yelling. All of our campaigning now is in bland suburbs and tired hustings. How about: New York, New York, the city so nice they named it twice? You say the state’s not in play? It’s New York. Our media lives here, they’ll make it big. How about downtown Brooklyn, full of new Americans?

Yeah, they'll love Mitt in downtown Brooklyn. "Good morning, moochers! Here's five bucks, someone bring me a coffee."

Time for the party to step up. Romney should go out there every day surrounded with the most persuasive, interesting and articulate members of his party, the old ones, and I say this with pain as they’re my age, like Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush, and the young ones, like Susana Martinez and Chris Christie and Marco Rubio—and even Paul Ryan...

Surrounded! It'll be a chain gang of charisma! Maybe they should all wear running suits with "Mitt" on the back. I can see it now: "Screw this, I'm going back to Florida, Christie ate all the donuts again." Oh please oh please oh please...

Forget it. Not even Romney's that dumb.

NONE DARE CALL IT NUTS. The economy sucks, so Mitt Romney should be blowing it out, but he keeps coming up with ways to keep things close. It's been hell on my nerves, so I can only imagine how it is for rightbloggers -- oh, here's some indication:

Washington, DC – The Obama agents, through the DHS and other assorted colluders, are plotting a major ‘Reichstag’ event to generate racial riots and produce the justification for martial law, delaying the November 2012 elections, possibly indefinitely, a DHS whistleblower informed the Canada Free Press on Tuesday.

The ‘Reichstag Event’ would take the form of a staged assassination attempt against Barack Obama, “carefully choreographed” and manufactured by Obama operatives. It would subsequently be blamed on “white supremacists” and used to enrage the black community to rioting and looting, the DHS source warned.

If this bit of Ooga-Booga is too strong for you, you can follow instead the moderate camp, who have declared Nakoula Basseley Nakoula the new Elian Gonzalez, believe the White House press pool plots to protect Obama, and oh yeah, think the Democrats actually put out the anti-Muslim movie themselves for reasons no doubt to be revealed by an upcoming crayon scrawl on a piece of cardboard.

American conservatism is turning into one big conspiracy theory.

UPDATE. Gene Healy of the Washington Examiner finally sees the loony 1933 Gabriel Over The White House. His reaction:

A presidential drama that flirted with fascism this earnestly would be laughed off the screen today (which may be why TCM lists Gabriel as a "comedy"). But as the "Cult of Obama" shows, many of us still believe in authoritarian powers for the president.

Even their pennysaver columnists are getting in on the ObamaHitler thing. Romney must be fucking up worse than I thought.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Middle East riots and the avalanche of bullshit the brethren brought to it. Enjoy!

WE'LL BUILD A WORLD OF OUR OWN THAT NO ONE ELSE CAN SHARE. Zombie, a site best known for generating wingnut outrage over gay street fairs, does Rightblogger Routine 12:

Memo to non-leftist bloggers, reporters, and culture-shapers: TAKE THE GODDAMN GLOVES OFF.

We need hardly bother with the frankly silly notion that Zombie's fellow crap-and-spittle merchants suffer from reticence, but I'd like to know what brain-fart led to "culture-shapers."  Maybe the author was leaning toward "culture warriors," in honor of the ancient conservative rite of yelling at TV shows, then realized nobody takes that seriously anymore. "Culture-shapers" may have seemed a good modification, suggesting that the brethren can go out under cover of darkness and slip some Spanx on the culture to force it into the shape they prefer.

How to do it? The title of the post is "Narrative Wars: Slap the Honey Boo Boos with Truthaganda." Zombie is talking about "last remaining undecided voters in America," and bases his characterization on the fact that a reality TV show about hillbillies beat out some reality TV shows about rich politicians making promises to America.

That seems like a reasonable preference to me, but Zombie believes those people are dumb -- "If candy canes and wreaths start appearing in store windows and a few notes of muzak 'Jingle Bells' remain audible above the screaming toddlers, then the Honey Boo Boos figure Christmas must be coming up soon" -- and "get their information through a sort of unconscious osmosis of the general national zeitgeist."  So here's his plan:

The goal is to create an enveloping data matrix which gives the Honey Boo Boos a sort of half-aware impression that the narrative we’ve concocted for them is not simply a partisan narrative fighting for their allegiance but rather is simply the way things are. 

To that end, the headlines need to be as unsubtle as possible, but still hewing to reality — reality through our lens. 

I call this approach “truthaganda"...

I'll spare you: It mainly means recreating rightwing talking points like "OBAMA TEAM TWEETS COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA" in oversize red letters. "Even a Honey Boo Boo can get through those headlines," he says; "they’re short enough to survive the three-second attention span."

That someone actually thinks this about his fellow citizens doesn't surprise me, but I am a little surprised that he would say it out loud in a public forum. It suggests to me that Zombie is not actually concerned with influencing those voters. He's like a teenage boy who doesn't have a girlfriend and declares it's because girls prefer jerks, and so he'll be a jerk himself, and then they'll all come running. Having been a teenage boy myself, I recall that such a person is usually not seriously mapping out a seduction strategy, but looking for sympathy from like-minded loners.

And God go with him. Political blogging is fun, sort of, so long as you don't take it too seriously. If you start thinking it has an impact on actual events, that's when you're in trouble.

SHORTER WILLIAM A. JACOBSON: The fact that even Republicans think we're idiots proves that we're winning.

GOING UP PAST NINE-ELEVEN. Ole Perfesser Instapundit told such people as listen to him twice to go see this thing by Sarah Hoyt about 9/11. So I figured it would get eventually to where it got to:

On the one hand, part of me wants to laugh at the terrorists. They thought they could break us. They thought they could scare us. They underestimated both the size of our territory and the mettle of my people. 

And part of me thinks of the psychological twisting that has taken place since then: people who blame their own country for the actions of barbarians; people who kowtow to the barbarians and claim to be multiculturalists because that sounds so much better than vile cowards; people who think that a country the size of ours, as wealthy as we are should do nothing to deter attackers because we’d be protected by our halo of purity and goodness...

And I thought as I read it: So, somebody's still doing this -- using 9/11 as a long stick to beat people who didn't have anything to do with it, but whom they never liked. It brought me back to 2001, and the many years thereafter when this was a popular shtick -- the decadent left and the fifth column and all that.

And today: Not so much. Nobody calls himself a warblogger these days; nobody thinks "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" is a foreign policy statement. Even the excitable Jim Lileks is subdued, having abandoned his former dreams of annihilation for mysticism ("Now, as ever, we live between the sharp notes. Gather them all together, and you have the melody of the centuries"), like a former Weatherman who, when it all came down, went up the country and today raises watermelons and gets stoned and talks to Gaia.

In their ratholes and caves, some holdouts still practice the dark craft, but their former sympathizers have ceased to follow, occupying themselves instead with Clint Eastwood's chair and other Western novelties.

And Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Whattaya know: In the long run, freedom works.

UPDATE. Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner:

9/11 bumped by gay flag, Michelle money plea on Obama site

September 11th turned out to be just another day on the Obama-Biden campaign website: A fundraising memo from first lady Michelle Obama, a pitch for gay rights including a rainbow-colored American flag, and a campaign picture under the headline "Photo of the day--September 11th, 2012."

Oh, there were two tweets to commemorate the 9/11 attacks, but finding them was hard.

By comparison, the Romney-Ryan campaign features two blog entries, one from Mitt Romney and the other from Paul Ryan, and a 9/11 news release. The Romney campaign homepage featured a tweet and Facebook note about 9/11.

Two blog entries, a tweet and a Facebook note! Never forget!

Now Romney's burnishing his foreign policy cred by blaming Obama for the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya. My sources tell me his next step will be to accuse the President of not wearing big enough flag pins.

It's enough to make a fella miss Quemoy and Matsu.

UPDATE 2. It's redundant at this point to say comments are great, but here's a taste: Big Bad Bald Bastard tells our subjects, "To paraphrase Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction, 'You've lost your 9/11 privileges";  KC45s examines Lileks' poeticisms and remarks, "Finally, we know who writes Sting's lyrics"; and Fats Durston redoes St. Crispin's Day:

...Then shall their names,Familiar in the mouth as freeper handles--
Jonah the Whale, D'Souza and Douchehat,
Erick son of Erick, Juggs and Ace--...
But we in it shall be remembered--
We few, we fappy few, we band of botherers... 

Nice.

JESUS. I guess sticking God in the Democratic platform defused that issue, huh?

Also, Some Guy at Wizbang has a post called "Confirmed: Democrats Love Killing Babies, Hate God and Jews" -- and he's not kidding. At first one can hold out faint hope that he is: "If a man who happens to be white talking to an empty chair is a dog-whistle for racism," he says, "it’s pretty obvious from the last few days that Democrats love to kill babies but hate god and Jews." This seems to at least struggle toward some sort of irony, however weak -- but then he comes roaring back:

What percentage of voters approve of taxpayer funding of partial birth abortion on demand? Less than 15%. That’s a horribly extreme position. Yet it’s the centerpiece of the Democratic convention. If Republicans run from this battle they are fools. It’s slam dunk victory. 

It’s time for some major league push back on the media when they call republicans extremest. Big time.

It turns out that what seemed like irony was just a sulky abdication of responsibility for his own loony claims -- if liberals get mad when we call out their godless, baby-killing ways, it serves them right for calling Clint Eastwood's chair racist. (I sense that wouldn't be bothering him if Eastwood's sad routine had become a chair d'coeur rather than a national laughingstock.)
 
It's time for Obama to namecheck the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a press conference and end this. Given the horrible associations Republicans have brought to the Almighty, he'll probably gain a couple of points.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the convention. Enjoy.

THE LIBERTARIAN REACTION TO OBAMA'S SPEECH:

Libertarians are supposed to be socially-liberal beards for conservatives -- you know, "I'm not for gay marriage but my libertarian boyfriend is." When they start talking about Obama like Rush Limbaugh talking about Sandra Fluke, it may be time for the Koch Brothers to consider some new investments. 

UPDATE. You will hear in the days to come many libertarians and conservatives bitching about the Democratic convention's hyperpatriotism -- why look, here's David Harsanyi, who is both, doing so at Reason -- which just goes to show that they don't have a sense of humor. After forty years of star-spangled lawn-order Republicanism, this convention's turnabout was a grand joke. That Obama's warm-up act was Biden, who basically broke the GOP's Neverforget spell with "a noun, a verb, and 9/11," and that the Obamas totally did the Reagan-Mommy thing, only spices the jest. It's not as good as having them all die screaming in a fire, mind, but it's pretty good for a Thursday night. Four stars! 

NOT JUST A FLUKE.

The numbers show that females aren’t fooled by the phony “war on women.” In 2008, 57 percent of women voted for Barack Obama; 43 percent voted for McCain. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a substantial shift: Fewer than half of female registered voters now support Obama—he’s at 49 against Romney’s 43 percent. Polls of registered voters, rather than likely voters, tend to skew Democratic.
In his acceptance speech, Romney urged, “Now is the moment when we can stand up and say, ‘I’m an American. I make my destiny.’ ” Women can say the same. Wasn’t it Democrats who used to argue that biology isn’t destiny?

-- "Desperate Democrats," Kelly Jane Torrance, The Weekly Standard

Tonight on Twitter:

Etc.

You know, you assholes aren't fooling anyone.

P.S. Bill Clinton just kicked your ass.

TWEETS ERICK ERICKSON HAD TO SCRAP AFTER HE GOT IN TROUBLE: "The podium hides Rahm's light loafers #SanFrancisoDemocrats" "Lily Ledbetter's vagina is Dems #Ashheap of History" "Patrick's sweating like they found his gay porn stash #AlsoBlack" etc.

But I think it's a mistake to try and get Erickson fired over this, as some have proposed. I didn't see the advantage in getting Josh Trevino kicked off the Guardian either. Let the world see who they are and what they represent. If people are more impressed than appalled by them, then the cause is lost anyway.

I DREAMED I SAW J.P. MORGAN LAST NIGHT... What'd you do for Labor Day weekend? Lexington Green of Chicago Boyz did this:

We should have an annual Creators Day as a national holiday. We have a “Labor Day” to celebrate workers paid salaries and wages. That is fine, and there are historical reasons for it.

Among those "reasons": A centuries-long struggle against slavery and feudalism. Surprised he didn't mention it.

But it is not enough. We also need a national day celebrating the people who make those jobs possible and bring them into existence in the first place. Otherwise the day appears to be a glorification of “workers” in opposition to a faceless someone or something that signs the paychecks, some unnamed “other” that is not “the people” but nameless bag of money. That is morally and factually wrong and needs to be rectified.

If you're tempted to dismiss this as a fringe Randroid fantasy, please note that it's Instapundit-approved. Also, that conservatives have been going on like this for years. Their traditional hatred of unions and collective bargaining has metastasized: They now think people who work for a living are just another special interest group, mooching off the libertarian magic of management. They sulk over this, and demand the peons show them respect.

No wonder Romney's leaning on his business credentials. The public at large may or may not believe that a corporate raider can do the trick for America (and that the returns he may produce will somehow go to them, rather than -- as is traditional -- to his investors). But the conservatives who once denounced Romney certainly need a better reason to be excited about him than his renunciation of his own RINO past. His identification with the C-suite gives them that: They can trust that when it comes time to stomp some fingertips clinging to the lowest rung of the middle class ladder, he won't hesitate. In that, at least, he's one of them.