NEW LEADERSHIP FOR A NEW CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT. Jeff Goldstein:

...so long as this site stays live, I’ll be talking about reclaiming our constitutional birthrights. About fighting tyranny, whether it comes in the jackboots of a leftist administrative state or little fuzzy bunny slippers looking out for my kids’ dietary needs... 

This country is, in my honest opinion — and said without an ounce of intended drama — done. Gone. But that doesn’t mean I have to stop fighting. 

I take solace in the fact that many of us are left who won’t let the conclusion of this coup come easily.

Though he thinks the country no longer exists, Goldstein approves the movement to secede from the former United States via online petitions -- "few believe anything will come of it, though I signed all that I could find" -- and claims counter-petitioners who called the neo-Confederates "mentally deficient" and advocated "more education in our state to eradicate their disease" were not just making  harmless jokes at the expense of same, but "wish to control us, take our liberties, and force us into a kind of 'progressive,' happy-faced indentured servitude... [they] offer as a solution to the disease of American exceptionalism more leftwing propaganda driven through a union-controlled, heavily leftwing education system."

William Teach of Right Wing News also thinks making fun of him and his buddies is fascist: "Progressives (read 'fascists') hate when people other than themselves are accorded First Amendment Rights."

"Given the great divide in the country, I would love to leave the liberals to their leeching ways without a host," fantasizes Freedom Eden. And don't think she hasn't thought it through: "I'd like Wisconsin to secede, but how could we leave Milwaukee and Madison behind? Milwaukee would be easy enough to drop because it's located on the state's eastern border. Madison would be more messy. Maybe we could get the Madison libs to move to Milwaukee..." See, they've learned a few things since Fort Sumter. No more waiting for war to carve out new states -- just quarantine the moochers of the major cities, and you'll have sustainable mini-Valhallas -- just like East Germany and West Berlin!

In case you were wondering what comes after Karl Rove, here ya go. See you in 2016!

AND I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO WRITE A PUNCHLINE. I Own The World found out that in some Philadelphia precincts with a nearly all-black electorate, no one voted for Mitt Romney. Havoc! he cries, and lets slip the dogs of derr: "Obama is not a legally elected president," and --

Is no one going to do anything? 

Where are our elected officials? Must we storm Capitol Hill and wake up our representatives? Are they going to force us to turn to mob rule? I’m ready.

He invents a stupid "Obama Resistance" logo and polls the delegation: "Anyone else have any ideas?" Some comedian in the comments steps up:

Um… I guess I could dress up as a giant vagina?

Raise a toast to this patriot tonight. He's got the right attitude.

UPDATE. Small edit for better set-up; thanks JennOfArk for the close reading.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the brethren's reaction to the election. All I can say is: They some wack-ass motherfuckers.

MINORITY OUTREACH, REPUBLICAN EDITION. Enraged by pro-immigrant conservatism of the Heather Mac Donald, torture enthusiast Andrew C. McCarthy starts yelling about "Islamists," then drags Hispanics into it -- leading to this:

In point of fact, Islamists, like many Hispanic political activists (think: La Raza), are statists... Islamists, like many Hispanic activists, are the vanguard of a different culture that they passionately believe is superior to the culture of individual liberty. 

There is no single-issue quick-fix to the challenge of ushering them into the Republican coalition. Rather, there is a choice to be made: either convince them that they are wrong, meaning make the unapologetic case for liberty and limited government; or fundamentally change who you are, meaning accommodate their statism.

Translation: Mooslims and Messicans can't get into this party till they prove their Americanism to Andrew C. McCarthy! I'm beginning to think John Judis and Ruy Teixeira were right.

IMMANENTIZE THE ESCHATON AND SACRAMENTALIZE THE SODOMY! I think it was Conan the Barbarian who said that what is best in life is to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the wingnuts. I'm not much on crushing and driving -- a friend to all mankind, me -- and I even sympathize with rightbloggers' post-electoral distress and despair at the turn of the tide, having felt it myself.

But I can admit to enjoying this portrayal by George Weigel of what Obama 2 portends for defiled America:

The American culture war has been markedly intensified, as those who booed God, celebrated an unfettered abortion license, canonized Sandra Fluke, and sacramentalized sodomy at the Democratic National Convention will have been emboldened to advance the cause of lifestyle libertinism through coercive state power, thus deepening the danger of what a noted Bavarian theologian calls the “dictatorship of relativism.”

It's like he knows us, right? I like the "coercive state power" bit, too -- gives it that women-in-prison movie frisson.

UPDATE. "Finally," says Leeds man in comments, "the long-awaited Rivers of Santorum speech." Dex gives thumbs-up to Ilsa, She-Wolf of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, "the most dreaded analyst of them all!"

THE LADYPARTS ELECTION. I said yesterday that I didn't know who'd win, and it wasn't because I doubted the oracle of West 43rd Street. It was because, in a weird way perhaps related to my long attention to wingnuts and the strange empathy with them that has engendered, I took one of their points: That a party with a raidable coalition whose champion presided over a weak economy had to be vulnerable.

That was why conservatives were so gloomy and doomy in 2008: They knew Bush had wrecked the party, and all the hobgoblins that emerged from the wreckage -- from Mark Foley to Sarah Palin -- made the opening for Democrats so big that they could even beat them with a black guy.

That was weird, because for years boogiemen were something GOP apparatchiks tied to the other party. I assumed that in 2012, as Obama hadn't improved things much in the here and now -- yeah, I know about all the new jobs, and they're not enough; the fundamental economic weaknesses and inequalities I've been griping about since the Bush years are still there -- the GOP would have room to Willie Horton and Al Sharpton their way into the amygdalae of enough gomers to win.

But a weird thing happened: During the campaign, instead of tying Democrats to weirdos, the Republicans generated a flood of their own. Again! And here conservatives turned out to be a big, fat liability for their cause. As Republican after Republican made crackpot comments about rape, contraception, and abortion, the GOP's rightwing brain trust unfailingly followed up and said, yeah, that's what we believe, that's what we've always believed.

And because the conventional wisdom had always been that autonomous, sexually active women and the men who love them are just a fringe constituency, instead of questioning the wisdom of attacking them, the big brains questioned the wisdom of having Sandra Fluke speak at the Democratic Convention.

I always knew this issue was a winner for the Democrats, but now I'm beginning to think that it affected everything else as well. That is, Romney's crackpot economic and environmental policies might have had more traction with voters if so many of them were not convinced that he represented and was listening to a bunch of lunatics who were totally out of touch with how human beings live. In tough times, you might go for a small-government reformer who says he has a plan to turn things around if you trust him. Americans have bought bigger grifters than Romney; a lot of them haven't even figured that the nice old man who unleashed the markets in the 1980s set them up for the hard times we have now.

Who knows what a Romney campaign might have achieved if he'd decisively cut loose the Erick Erickson contingent and run like a man trying to be governor of Massachusetts? The question was moot before the first GOP caucus vote. That was their problem.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARS, I ENJOY WATCHING FOX NEWS. It was nice to turn it on just after Ohio was called and hear that lady in white talk about how the Democrats unfairly painted Romney as a corporate raider, and the guy with the beard talk about how Americans still think the government is doing too much, and the lady in green question whether Obama can work with the House of Representatives etc. 

Best of all was Karl Rove insisting that it wasn't really over. Then, like Kurtz in Apocalypse Now talking about the Vietnamese villagers who cut off their children's arms, I saw the genius of it: To have the whole nation hanging onto the word of Karl Rove! A man who, in a just world, would be buried in unconsecrated earth, or in the dock in Den Haag. 

Thank you, Fox News. You've made my night.

GO FORTH AND AVENGE NATE SILVER! As on most Election Days, I am emotionally prepared for defeat (being a Democrat will do that for you). The merry lads of Breitbartland, being too busy with goat sacrifices to do any reporting, ask "citizen journalists" to go out to the precincts and "tell us if you see any funny business," so if you notice someone outside the local middle school screaming about Black Panthers you'll know where they came from. I wish you all a happy franchise and not too bad of a hangover, and many the best man not lose too badly.

UPDATE. At 7 am, poll opening time in Takoma Park, there are 200 people waiting to vote:

That's one end of the looping line. Here's the other:

And I hate to tell ya, haters, but it don't look like a GOP crowd.

UPDATE 2. Election Day story from the Washington Times: "Gentle' Obama wins Islamist endorsement." It's the November 6 Surprise! Quick, lads, moar voter fraud! AVENGE!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the horrible final days of the 2012 campaign. I'll sure be glad when this election's over. Well, actually, probably not, but you know what I mean.

DOINGS AROUND THE CLUBHOUSE. Frequent alicublog commenter Michael Webster has put up a slideshow of his Hurricane Sandy New York pictures that warrants your attention. As with his other work, Michael doesn't go for the Pulitzer money-shots, instead showing people and things as they mostly are, even in disasters. I think it gives a more believable picture of what South Brooklynites were suffering than most of what's out there.

On a more upbeat note, new on the blogroll is frequent alicublog commenter John E. Williams who has turned his personal music blog, Abandoned and Heartbroke, into a fun ride for fans of pop crap, posting videos you'd forgotten about (Shark Tape!) and commentating like a stoned FM DJ in the 70s. (John also designed the cover of my lurid novel.)

BULLSHITTING THE BULLSHITERS. At National Review, Jillian Kay Melchior complains that Sam Brownback's gone RINO. How?

Late last week, Kansas’s staunchly free-market governor, Sam Brownback, gave his approval to a flagrantly partisan, protectionist proposal from Democrats in the state Legislature. It’s bad policy — and an unfortunate aberration for a governor who’s been a champ for fiscal conservatism.

Last Thursday, Kansas’s Democratic leaders, the legislative minority, proposed new “buy American” legislation that would force state agencies to buy American-made products, exempting them only if there’s a domestic shortage or if it would raise project costs by more than 25 percent.

Requiring government -- not private citizens, but government -- to buy American is socialism or something, and Melchior doesn't bother to explain why, instead citing authority:

A Buy America provision “essentially increases costs for Kansans and for taxpayers, at least potentially, as opposed to promoting the best value,” said James Franko, communications director for the non-partisan Kansas Policy Institute.

The "non-partisan" Kansas Policy Institute! From SourceWatch:

The Kansas Policy Institute (KPI) is a "free market" think tank, one of many listed as members of the State Policy Network (SPN). Both KPI and SPN are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)... KPI was founded in 1996 as the Kansas Public Policy Institute and was later called the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy before receiving its current name. Kansas' Flint Hills also lent their name to the Koch brothers' Flint Hills Resources, a subsidiary of Koch Industries.

They also founded the Kansas Reporter, one in a chain of connected rightwing propaganda mills.

You may be moved to wonder, "National Review's a safe zone, why is Melchior misrepresenting KPI to her own people?" Could be she's just reading off a sheet they put in front of her. Also, it may be that even some wingnuts might recoil at the idea that buying American is treason to one's corporate masters -- which might remind them, to their horror, that their current Presidential champion is pretty much running on that as a platform.

Oh, and at the same time Romney's accusing Obama of the same thing -- thereby moving news about his own offshore activities off the front page. I never said it wasn't clever.

TUMBLR FASCISM*. At National Review:

Translation: Your popular internet meme is Hitler. The tyranny of liberal stewardesses, on the other hand, is trenchant political commentary.

* I know, Foster is alluding to Goldberg's other magnum opus, The Tyranny of Cliches, but no one on God's green earth has read that besides me and one very drunk press agent, and since unlike National Review I have to appeal to a wide audience, I went instead with its more notorious predecessor in ignominy.  T of C stinks, BTW. The theme boils down to 1.) The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, haw, fart, and 2.) Libruls suck.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WAR, CONT. Breitbart.com has published a press release under the arresting title "DELGADO'S 'HIP TO BE SQUARE' STAKES CONSERVATISM'S CLAIM TO BE COOL." This, says I to myself, I gotta see, so I did:

The press and liberal Hollywood can't stop telling us that President Barack Obama is eternally cool.

A.J. Delgado begs to differ.

The Big Hollywood contributor's new e-book, "Hip to Be Square: Why It's Cool to Be a Conservative," lays out 60 reasons why it's "right to be Right" -- each reason consisting of its own chapter.

If you're not convinced already by this show of confidence, get a load of Delgado's scholarship:

The author draws upon a wide variety of pop culture icons, celebrities, films and television shows to state her case, including:
A chapter on lifelong Republican Johnny Ramone.
An analysis of three "South Park" episodes blasting the Left (on the extremes of the anti-smoking crowd; the smugness of environmentalists and liberal Hollywood; and the hypocrisy of green activists)
"The Lord of the Rings" and its conservative message
"Team America: World Police"

Also, "Johnny Rotten, Siouxsie Sioux, and Bob Dylan defending Israel," and "the Beatles on leftist revolutions." Did you know the moptops came out against Chairman Mao? Talk about courting controversy!

The punchline:

"Square" is the culmination of six years of Delgado's research...

Thanks to Amazon's Look Inside feature, I also got some insight into Delgado's motivation.

Throughout college, law school, and living in New York, I was taught -- both directly and indirectly -- that it was shameful and wrong to be a conservative. Friends, colleagues, even career opportunities fell by the wayside.

Maybe they fell by the wayside because you wouldn't stop telling them how Yoda was modeled on Friedrich Hayek and speculating on the most conservative Bubble Yum flavor.

UPDATE. Ms. Delgado has graced our comments with "LOL" and other proofs of her preciosity. Sample zinger: "Thanks for proving my point about the general nasty tone of liberals these days." Anytime, kid!

NO SEX PLEASE, WE'RE WINGNUTS. Culture scold Lisa Schiffren at National Review is still going on about "the generally smutty, unpleasantly manipulative political ad featuring Lena Dunham," which apparently had way more hot action in it than I noticed:

In addition to the smarmy, smutty tone, the ad was an ugly, desperate attempt to manipulate young women... it was a new cultural low. Lower, even than attempting to bribe women with free contraception — or cell phones.

Obamaphones -- the one thing worse than sex! No wait, she's still bitching about sex:

...it forced normal parents, trying as hard as we can to instill reasonable morality, virtue, and common sense into our teenagers, to confront the ugliness of the hook-up culture which they have to work pretty hard to avoid. Who wants to be reminded that teenage girls now come of age in a culture in which it is common to strategize about how and where to have sex...

I missed the part where Dunham talked about how she was going to suck Obama's cock. Is that in the director's cut?

The punch line: Schiffren's promoting a GOP ad that shows two women talking, and the one who represents a disappointed Obama supporter says things like "I supported him for four years," "I miss the way he used to make me feel," etc. No political issues are mentioned at all.

In other words, it's as fanciful (to be polite) as the Dunham ad, and it personalizes politics even more than the Dunham ad. But you can say this for it: They never allude to sex, which apparently makes it dignified.

I should be grateful, having seen what they're like when they do.

UPDATE. Ha, zuzu in comments: "Virgin in the front, martyr in the rear."

AIR RAGE. Ed Driscoll at Instapundit points to this YouTube audio from The Dennis Miller Show. Made a transcript:

CALLER: I've been a flight attendant for just about 30 years, and for years, I like to call them the 15 hour hostage crisis on these long hauls that I fly, you're together 16 hours, and for years, you know, I think all light attendants assume everyone is Democrat, and I've just listened or I just stay busy, and they're angry, angry, but as I've gotten older, it's kind of when Bush was in, I gave 'em the international stop sign, I said, "Love Rumsfeld, voting' for Romney." And talk about squelching any conversation for the rest of the 15 hours. Seriously, And over the years I've realized that the flight attendants tend to overwhelming be kind of snarky angry Democrats. However, my husband is a pilot, and they tend to almost all be Republican.
MILLER: Oh that's interesting, that's interesting.
CALLER: And I used to attribute it to them being ex-military, but we're getting more and more civilian pilots through the hearts. But I felt like I kinda had to hang with them sometimes.
MILLER: I can imagine when you first cranked up a Rumsfeld-Romney comment in front of the rest of the stews, the oxygen masks must have dropped down 'cause it decompressed.
CALLER: This one flight attendant called Rumsfeld the spawn of Satan, and I said, "Love Rummy!" I go, "Love him!"
MILLER: You should have said, oh by the way, the guy in 3A wants a Rum and Coke, doll!
CALLER: I wasn't that fast on my feet! But now I'll just go, "Love Romney."
MILLER: It's comin' around, Janet.
CALLER: You see that gal, it's like, now, Nana Jan, she is saying' it loud and sayin' it proud, and then they just, that's it.
MILLER: Listen, you gotta be your own dame. You know that. Seeing a lot more signs in yards, Janet. It's good anecdotal stuff for Romney. I didn't see any last time. People were afraid to get their house bricked. But I see a lot of signs. I think something's tectonically turned out there. Thanks for the call, Janet.

Soooo the new rightwing thing is flight attendants are prejudiced against Republicans but we're gonna show them because we have the pilots and yard signs.

I realize this is the 24-hour rah-rah stage of the campaign season but Jesus Christ, that's sad. And the worst part: Flight attendants don't take tips, so Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser and the Go Galt crew have no way to show them their disapproval.

Up next: Those damn tailors are all Obamabots, I can tell by the way they crease my trousers. But all the haberdashers are voting for Romney!

UPDATE. I should add that Miller having this on his show isn't the weird part -- air time is hard to fill, and as the rightwing talk radio form is as mysterious to me as Kabuki this just might be how they roll. What's weird is the preservation and circulation of the conversation by rightbloggers, as if there's something meaningful or uplifting in it. I'm not sure I get it. Do they actually take perverse comfort in declaring yet another area in American life (like the arts, academia, scientific research, etc.) Democrat-infested? Or do they just like the punchline that pilots are Republicans (except maybe Chesley Sulllenberger)? Maybe because pilots give flight attendants orders, they think this makes them superior...

Ugh, I have to stop thinking about it. Put on my tombstone that I got my abnormal psychology degree from the school of hard knocks.

CONCERN TROLLING. "EXODUS: INNER CITY BLACKS FLEEING BARACK OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRAT-LIBERAL AGENDA," runs the headline at Breitbart.com. The author, Rebel Pundit, quotes five black people, none of whom say they'll vote for Mitt Romney. Mostly they say stuff like this:

A resident of the Austin community, Jean Ray, says after 40 years of Democratic party control over the black community, the policies "are hurting,” and if there were Republicans willing to do the right job in her community, she would vote for them.

Well, Romney's still got a week to make the sale. Maybe he can come to Chicago and tell Ray he was only kidding about that NAACP speech.

At National Review, Rich Lowry tells us women would vote Republican if they only knew what the Votes for Women crew knew, which is that "the Lilly Ledbetter Act merely tilts the playing field against employers and toward trial lawyers by allowing lawsuits years after alleged acts of pay discrimination." If Romney offers nothing to address their unequal treatment, at least he doesn't pander to them:

The likes of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton argued that women were just as capable of rational deliberation as men. The conceit of the Obama campaign is that, to the contrary, they are quite susceptible to a few powerful dog whistles and unable to see beyond their gender.

If this doesn't convince you, you can read some of National Review's anti-birth-control classics.  That'll show you who the real feminists are!

Meanwhile at Instapundit, Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds makes a particularly pathetic post-Sandy case for abolishing FEMA:

Also, the heroic first responders you saw last night were mostly NYPD and NYFD, and their counterparts in New Jersey, etc. With the exception of the Coast Guard, nearly all the rescuing was being done by state and municipal employees, not by FEMA. The Democrats’ FEMA-worship is an insult to the people who are shouldering the greater part of the load, and the danger. 

These city-employed FDNY/NYPD responders are of course unionized, like the schoolteachers of Wisconsin whom these guys like to spit on -- which goes for the cops, too, when they think no one is watching: e.g., "Another reason why police unions shouldn’t be allowed, as if we needed one after their politicization in the Wisconsin fracas."

I don't know who's going to win next Tuesday, but long, bitter experience has shown me this: Conservatives are never content, even in victory, because they are always aware that somebody (including, in some cases, the voices in their heads) still disagrees with them. So as the reckoning comes, if they're not crying FRAUD AT POLLS! they'll be insisting whatever fraction of a percent they got over with proves not just that they won, but also that everyone loves them. In either case it's sad that their proven affinity groups (e.g., Klansmen, the mentally disabled) are never enough for them; they're always beating off over people they know would desire them if only they could admit to themselves how beautiful they are. Consider the present gibberish their preemptive stroke.

DEFINING LIBERTARIANISM DOWN. At Reason, Nick Gillespie tells us not to sweat abortion rights -- it's not really a big libertarian issue:

Over at the Washington Examiner, Tim Carney writes that when it comes to abortion, President Barack Obama - and not Mitt Romney - is the true extremist... 

Carney notes that even many liberal legal theorists (he quotes once-perennial potential SCOTUS nominee Laurence Tribe) argue that Roe v. Wade is bad law... 

Kathleen Parker had a great column in yesterday's Wash Post, where she noted that whatever else you can say about abortion and contraceptives, these are not front-burner elections but rather "the same old culture war" issues that are used to ply dedicated partisans and to spray fog over more central concerns. Interestingly (and accurately), she notes that it was Obama who injected these themes into the campaign by shoving contraceptives down the throats of folks (cough) via his health-care reform...

So never mind what Republicans say they'll do about abortion -- there's no way they'll ever accomplish anything except at the state level, where it can't harm you.  Meantime there are real threats to your liberty that you should be worrying about -- for example, the jack-booted thugs at the FDA.

This is obviously good news for Mitt Romney, etc. Best part is, it barely touches Reason's reader base, as 90% of them don't have to worry about abortion because they have girlfriends in Canada.

UPDATE. Brad Smith on "Why this libertarian is voting Romney, with enthusiasm":

Libertarians often like to say that there is no difference between the two major parties. But in my lifetime... there have been two Presidents who have substantially reduced income tax rates: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both Republicans.

And Romney will complete their work of finishing off the American economy. It's win-win!

I have never believed in a “libertarian position” on abortion... A libertarian can come down on either side. I am pro-life, and therefore give a huge advantage to Romney.

Also he wants Romney to do the Supreme Court nominations because Tony Scalia and Clarence Thomas are getting old. Oh, and:

Romney may not be a libertarian, yet Romney not infrequently launches wonderful verbal defenses of hard core libertarian views. I can scarcely imagine another major party presidential candidate who would take on leftist hecklers about the rights of individuals organized using the corporate form; or defend the value of being able to fire people for incompetence...

This makes perfect sense if "libertarian" is just a synonym for "asshole." And at this point, who knows?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Lena Dunham ad. It seems such a slight topic, yet how much rightblogger lunacy I found therein! This election must not be about much of anything.

As a bonus for you Late-Night Real People, here's the Photo of the Day, which I found at Legal Insurrection, where they're trying to make people think the Obama campaign dumped a bunch of nails in the parking lot of a Tea Party rally in Wisconsin. (Jim Hoft, not being too bright, just flat out says, "A truck affixed with Obama stickers drove through the parking lot outside of a tea party rally in Racine, Wisconsin on Saturday and dumped nails." Mongo only pawn in game of life!) The LI description is lovely:

A man caught the license plates of a van covered with Obama stickers leaving the scene, but police reportedly refused to take the information because there was no evidence of the van actually being connected to the incident. 

The Tea Party attendees picked up as many of the nails as they could, although many of their tires had been punctured, and left the pile for all to see.

But the photo is magnificent:

The foam cup plainly says "evidence" yet the police refused to act! Clearly ObamaHitler has corrupted all authority.

Oh, go read the Dunham thing, it's a pisser, too.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WINGNUTS. The lights were off at the National Review offices, and Jason Lee Steorts was having a long dark night of the soulless rightwing apparatchik. Just as he was digging the sharp spear of his Bic pen cap into his thigh to chase unbidden thoughts of Katy Perry in a ballot dress, Steorts was suddenly seized with an epiphany and, in a fevered ecstasy (or an ecstatic fever, whichever is less sexual), composed this:

Do these guys even know any normal people?

THEY'LL DO IT EVERY TIME. I enjoyed Tbogg's roundup of conservatives enraged at Lena Dunham's ad (and was surprised to see that, even after eight weeks of strangling a sex doll with Elizabeth Warren's picture taped to its head, Professor Jacobson had enough jam left to contribute). But it was missing a crucial element -- the element of overt Ooga Booga -- which RedState has been kind enough to provide:

There seems to be no low to which President Obama will sink in his desperate attempt to win reelection. One has to wonder, is there any point at which the main stream media and the public get some self-respect and toss out this loser? First he asked for your wedding gifts, then your yard sales and now he has asked for your daughters.

One pictures the brethren holed up in a shack under assault by the forces of Barack Obama, ready to dash out the brains of Lillian Gish ere she be breached.

AND THAT'S WHERE YOU SLIPPED UP! At Legal Insurrection, Anne Sorock tells us the liberals are all prejumadissed against Mormons. This is because there are half a dozen less than respectful articles about Mormons at Salon (including this ex-Mormon's reminiscence -- no fair telling, apostate!), an "anonymous man" said Romney's "promise to obey the Mormon 'Law of Consecration' disqualifies him for the White House," and Lawrence O’Donnell made fun of Joseph Smith's completely ridiculous founding myth.

Best part:

And of course, the left-dominated world of pop culture has embraced the bigotry. From the “Book of Mormon” musical to numerous Obama supporters’ ridiculing art, the mass of collective intolerance is overwhelming.

Yes, you read that right -- Sorock thinks Trey Parker and Matt Stone are liberals, and the "ridiculing art" of somebody you never heard of is the proof of "collective intolerance" that ices the case.

But there's one thing missing -- where's the standard issue rightwing complaint in cases like these about filthy liberals not having the guts to make fun of Islam? Didn't 20 years of fist-shaking since "Piss Christ" drill that one hard enough into their heads that it would come second nature?

Well, that's only common when they're defending the One True Religion or its adjuncts. Could it be that Sorock considers Mormonism too exotic to be similarly defended? Bigot! (Hey, I can play that game as good as they can! Too bad it doesn't give me the same pleasure. Well, we can't all have been raised in Skinner boxes.)

NICE PANTS NERD. The election's tight, so the racket is to yell "we're winning" in a loud voice till the votes are counted. (And if you have a little lung power left over, bitch about the liberal media.) We that have free souls, it touches us not, and we take our pleasures where we can. I'm enjoying the brethren's reaction to Obama's Rolling Stone interview -- especially the Ayn Rand bit:

[Obama:] Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a "you're on your own" society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.

Yeah, you can guess. Let's start with Katrina Trinko, National Review's current delegate from the Youth of Today:

Sure, there’s a few libertarians who would love to abolish the safety net and slash government programs. But that’s not the party platform, or what Romney is setting out to do. Not to mention that plenty of conservatives would rather establish a safety net more concentrated, not in individuals’, but in other types of community: church, clubs, extended family.

You know, like in the Middle Ages.

What if Obama had faced Ron Paul or Rick Santorum? If this is your rhetoric against Mitt Romney, what the heck do you have left for those who hold positions even further right?

AKA the "hey, you should see the nutjobs we wanted to nominate" argument.

One last question: isn’t this an extraordinarily lame cover outfit/pose for the cover? 

For perspective, this appears on the same page as Kathryn J. Lopez telling Lena Dunham Republicans aren't "super uncool," she's super uncool, infinity. Man. They all still dream of being backup posers in a heavy-rotation video starring Alex P. Keaton and Der Ahnold, don't they?

Of course at libertarian stroke book Reason Brian Doherty is furious adjusting his spectacles:

Obama Thinks Ayn Rand is For Teens (For Predictably Childish Reasons)

Correction --  furious adjusting his spectacles with one hand, furiously retucking his shirt with the other.

There is nothing "narrow" about Rand's vision except in that it created moral boundaries in which most of the functions of Obama's government would be seen as illegitimate, because they use threats and violence against non-aggressors to achieve social goals.

New to America, are you, Brian?

Nathaniel Branden, Rand's ideological lieutenant in the 1960s, sums up well the problem with most people trying to blithely critique Rand as Obama does. It can be found quoted on page 542 of my book Radicals for Capitalism...

Page 542! So that's why I never saw anyone reading it on the beach this summer.

Hilarious as this is, it's not a patch on what the non-heavily-Koch-funded libertarians are dishing.  The Objective Standard argues with Obama's interpretation:

Rand utterly rejected the notion that one should live an isolated life. She recognized that a crucial way we “develop ourselves” and pursue our rational self-interest is by building strong relationships with other people, whether in business, friendship, romance, or any other kind of life-serving relationship. Rand wrote hundreds of pages about the virtues and benefits of collaborating with others to mutual advantage.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, don't it? It's like the Garden of Eden, except that Adam, having rationally decided that the weakling Eve is just slowing him down, kills her, wears her skin for warmth, and then demands that God produce another, worthier partner for him because this is what the genius of the marketplace demands, whereupon God decides the whole thing was a horrible mistake and obliterates the universe. Ah, what might have been.

But listen, it's not all deep analysis. Look at what I found at Objectivism for Intellectuals:

Just because they stim instead of laughing doesn't mean they don't have a sense of humor.

THE BIG TENT. Sure, Richard Mourdock's gibberish about rape babies as the will of God is so far out that conservatives won't back him up. Right?

Well, there's always Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review...

For speaking lazily and giving his opponents another cudgel with which to hit the quite genuine opponents of abortion on demand, Richard Mourdock should feel regretful this morning. But he has nothing else for which to apologize.

And The Anchoress...

It’s actually a very broad-minded question, and an invitation to talk and think about things larger than ourselves and our prideful ideas. Which is why it must be derided as a stupid, ignorant and previously-unheard-of piece of woman-hating misogyny. The narrowness of ideology and political correctness will not allow deviation from the bumperstickers. Even a couple of my more-progressive friends [!? - Ed.] are emailing appalled notes that so many in the press are so willing to immediately spin or squelch what does not fit the narrative.

And NRSC Chairman John Cornyn:

In fact, rather than condemning him for his position, as some in his party have when it's comes to Republicans, I commend Congressman Donnelly for his support of life.

And Freedom Outpost:

Nothing in Mourdock’s statement is shocking to those of us who believe what the Bible teaches. That does not diminish the emotional aspect of rape, but quite often we find out that we make the wrong decisions when they are based on emotion and as a result people lose liberty or they lose life.

DrewM at Ace of Spades takes what we might call the moderate Republican position if moderate Republicans still existed:

I strongly disagree with Mourdock's position but what's there for him to apologize for? He believes what he believes.

Etc., along with the usual liberal-media's-the-real-problem guff, e.g. "Desperate Left tries to Akin-ize Richard Mourdock."

I recall, in the dim, distant past, how as Democrats put forward ever mushier neo- and pseudo-liberal national candidates, Republicans would bring up the remaining more-liberal Democrats and go, oh yeah, what about Al Sharpton (or the recently departed George McGovern, whom we now learn was really a libertarian). For a while the Republicans had to play a little, too, disowning outliers like David Duke and (eventually) Strom Thurmond. Now, though, there's plenty of room for a Mourdock in the Grand Old Party. It's become a big tent, after all.

SUNK YOUR BATTLESHIP. The game is not really Battleship. The game is to reduce diplomatic actions and inactions that look bad to, well, diplomatic actions and inactions, which can be taken in stride if you trust the President knows what he's doing, and to make Romney look out of his depth by quoting and challenging him, and making him say "centrifuges" over and over. And, halfway through, the game is going well for Obama.

The economy sucks so who knows what it's worth.

UPDATE. The reactions at National Review suggest my analysis is correct. John O'Sullivan:

Romney is winning. Why? He is making his case on foreign policy to the American people, while Obama is trying to establish his own sense of superiority. As a result Romney, looks presidential and Obama looks quarrelsome and touchy — even when, as sometimes, Obama has the better case.

First of all, "Romney is winning" because Graham works for National Review where that's the only acceptable answer; second, the "sense of superiority" to which he refers is established by Obama observably knowing very well what he's talking about, which is not a bad thing. Mona Charen asks, "Is it just me or is Obama once again taking up way more time?" Given the results, I can see why she'd think so. Jonah Goldberg assures us that Romney wasn't as hard on Detroit as Obama said he was and conservatives wish he was. And Michael Graham is spinning so hard he doesn't realize he's made himself dizzy: After claiming there's "lots of chatter in my Twitter feed that Mitt is debating like a guy who’s winning and President Obama’s debating like a guy who’s losing" -- well, that I can believe; also that Graham's Twitter feed consists mainly of guys with names like @LiburlsSuk and @TeaPartyHotTub -- he adds, "[Obama's] got to understand that, at best, he’s 'winning' an uninspired, low-impact debate. (And I actually think he’s losing.)" This is the kind of reasoning 10-year-olds apply in their rooms after they've been sent there without supper.

UPDATE 2. Oh Jesus:

Actually, we probably don’t have fewer bayonets now than in 1916. Back then, the army was about 108,000 men strong, and the National Guard boasted about 90,000 men. There are no reliable numbers on the number of bayonets issued...

Similarly, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. [retucks shirt]

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about last week's town-hall debate and the furious spin that ensued. Yeah, it was days ago, but you know, it's for the record. And Saturday Night Live covered it yesterday.

And ugh, another debate tomorrow. Clio's a terrible boss.

UPDATE. Wrong link for a few minutes there -- fixed now. Thanks for tipping me off.

COME ON PEOPLE NOW, SMILE ON YOUR BANKER. Got your crying towels out? Good:

Most people think of bigotry only in terms of race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation. But at its core, bigotry simply is intolerance – which all too often leads to singling people out for attack based upon their group identity... 

As the spending-driven debt crisis grows in America and among the 50 states, we would not accept such vilification toward the poor and elderly who consume taxpayer resources. We certainly would not accept such vilification toward the working class or minorities. So why do we tolerate the vilification of those most successful in America?

Oh no he di'n't? Oh yes John Tillman of Forbes di'd!

According to the IRS, the top 1 percent of earners take home 17 percent of the nation’s total taxable income. Yet they pay 37 percent of the nation’s taxes. They are paying a disproportionate share of the burden of government and yet the Occupy protestors, public employee unions and even President Obama demonize them.

One is tempted to ask: If everyone who isn't an Occupy protestor, unionized public employee, or President Obama loves you rich fucks, why you cryin'? Because you've run out of other inventive ways to use your dollar bills besides wiping your ass and lighting your cigars with them, and now you want to see how they work as Kleenex?

Tillman goes on to tell us that he did his part back in the 80s, when people used to tell him racist jokes:

...I made a conscious decision to no longer accept such prejudice in my life. Whenever someone would begin a joke that was clearly heading toward a racially focused end, I would stop them and say, "Please, I’m not interested in hearing that joke." It was very uncomfortable at first. But I did it because this was a small thing that could help create a better culture.

Despite the severe discomfort this caused him, Tillman asked somebody not to tell him racist jokes. Now you people owe him! Quit laughing at Mr. Burns!

And yet, here we are today with a new form of bigotry that is openly encouraged by people who should know better. 

So I suggest we start saying, “I’m not interested in hearing that. Please, no bigotry toward those who are successful in pursuing the American Dream.”

Of course, some folks already do that -- the rich themselves, that is. If they think a waiter failed to treat them with the respect to which they are entitled, they express their opposition to his bigotry by stiffing him. If one of their employees has a bad attitude -- say, she doesn't react enthusiastically when they tell her who to vote for -- they fire her; that'll teach her to look down on them! And if citizens commit the hate crime of resisting their austerity measures, they send in the cops -- just like Eisenhower did in Little Rock!

Because to people like Tillman, every slight they suffer is the equivalent of the great injustices of history. If you can't see that, you're just a wealthist monster.

I advise Tillman to keep his eyes on the prize. Look for small victories. Maybe one day, with the support of some righteous paupers, a one-percenter will break the money line, and get a job at 7-11 or Denny's. That may turn things around, and over time more and more of them will be able to enjoy the same living conditions, job security, and health care as the rest of us. I certainly look forward to it. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

UPDATE. The purple mountainous majesty of our comments section today is graced by a long historical pastiche from Fats Durston:

There are those who are asking the devotees of elite rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as Richie Rich is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of people’s envy. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel in our private conveyances, cannot gain five-star lodging in the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a millionaire in Mississippi cannot vote a thousand times as much as commoners and a billionaire in New York believes he has nothing for which to spend his millions buying congressmen...

Impetuous, Homeric.

DERP OF A SALESMAN.. Rod fucking Dreher on "The American Advantage":

The other day I was sitting at lunch listening to some French and American expat friends talking about the business climate here in France. It was fascinating to hear. They talked about how rigid the situation is, how difficult it is to start a business in France, and how hard it is to get a job if you don’t have the right connections. They spoke about how so much depends on going to the right schools, and cultivating the right social connections within a tightly-circumscribed elite.

At one point I said, “Didn’t y’all have a revolution to do away with this kind of thing?” Everybody laughed, but the point was made.

The next day, a European friend who lived and worked in America some years back said, “You really do have such an advantage in America. In France, it’s awful. When we moved back to Paris from Asia in the 1990s, I thought it would be easy to get a job. I speak five languages... It took me a year and a half to find something.”

This afternoon I spent some time with an American-born friend who is now a French citizen, and is married to a Frenchman. She’s been here for 20 years. She and her husband moved back to Paris last year after some years abroad, in which he worked for a French multinational, and she told me that she’s having a hell of a time getting a job. Why? Same thing: if you’re not in the network, you are out of luck.

Not like the good old USA, where jobs are just hanging from the trees, eh? Dreher actually seems to think so:

Being here in France, and having this kind of conversation over and over with discouraged French people, has given Francophile me a new appreciation for what we have in America, despite our problems (especially our discouraging political class), and why ours is still a land of opportunity like no other. I wrote a piece about it for the November issue of TAC. I hope you’ll subscribe to the magazine to read it. You’ll also get terrific pieces like Glenn Arbery’s recent reported essay on a traditional farmer in upstate New York, and what he learned about community when his barn burned down...

Wait a second, I'm starting to smell tote-bags.

Journalism like you see in TAC’s pages, and on this blog, costs money. We’re not asking you to be charitable; we really have confidence that the reporting, analysis, and commentary we produce here every day is well worth your financial support. Please consider how much this magazine and this website means to you, especially as a voice of alternative conservatism, and consider taking advantage of our great new Election Special offer to subscribers...

And if you already are a subscriber, and want to help us even more on the mission to stand up to the welfare/warfare state, you can always make a tax-deductible donation.

To recap: After telling us that, because Freedom, the American economy is so much more robust than that of the European country he's always running off to and mooning over, Dreher tries to sell us a magazine and then begs for change.

Is there a level of self-awareness below nil?

NUMBER TWO. I expect mostly what people will remember about this "debate" is Romney trying some shit on Benghazi and making an ass of himself*. Soon wingnuts will be accusing Crowley, the fat guy with the question, and maybe Alger Hiss and Romney himself of a set-up.

And they'll remember that because the rest of this thing has been a festival of pandering and platitudes. Romney lies, of course (Mitt Romney, small businessman! Good Christ), but that's like saying the cock crows and the sun sets. Obama should have just spent the session fact-checking him, but the President seems to think the winning strategy is to blather about the middle class and families and the free enterprise system etc. until they drag him off the stage. Sigh. I miss Harold Ickes.

* John Podhoretz disputed this with a link to Fox News, which was my second favorite moment of the debate. Be sure and read the ensuing shirt-tucking Twitter conversation.

MEANWHILE BACK IN THE JUNGLE... 

Etc. Drudge's been working the old Ooga Booga, so there's a spate of these now from excitey-whiteys like the ever-reliable Angry White Dude ("Enter black thugs in America. After being stoked up by black leaders like Louis Farrakhan, 50+ years of political correctness and cradle to grave welfare, they are emboldened to make threats of riots and violence...").

The punchline: Just a ways down this list is a Mediate account of an Ann Coulter interview, in which she tells Sean Hannity, "White liberals are always threatening black riots whenever they’re about to lose an election."

The great thing about having psychopaths for a base is that the words don't have to make sense so long as you put a dog whistle in there someplace.

HELP A BROTHER OUT. Wordsmith and occasional alicublog commenter Leonard Pierce on Facebook:

This has absolutely been the most fucked-up year of my life; I lost my house, I hit the skids of poverty like a plane making an upside-down landing, I came unnervingly close to going to prison, and now I ended up in the ER.

If you want to hear the hilariously sad details you must become a Facebook friend of Leonard's (you can always read his excellent everyday material here). He might be more inclined to friend you if you sent something to his PayPal at leonard.pierce@gmail.com, but I can't make any promises.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about last week's Vice Presidential debate and Joe Biden's unconscionable lack of deference toward Paul Ryan. (I must say, James Taranto's Ann Althouse gag is pretty good. Who knew he had a sense of humor?)

FOLKS, FOLLOW YOUR INSTINCT ON THIS ONE. Paul Ryan's a punk, and Joe Biden's treating him like one.

UPDATE. Really, no matter how the Villagers react to this, it is a great pleasure to watch someone just laugh at this bullshit -- and heckle it!

I mean, when you have reactions like this...

... you know you're making the clowns sad.

UPDATE 2. I mean, Ryan's transparently full of shit. Here he is talking about "fighting seasons" and "the pass filling with snow." I guess he saw Iron Eagle once. And when he gets peppy it's just repulsive. He swings his head around like a grounded teenager who can't be-leeeeve what a douche Dad is being.

UPDATE 3. Aaaagh, Ryan is turning his puppy-dog eyes and insurance-salesman schtick directly toward the camera now. If people ain't barfing this isn't the country I thought it was.

UPDATE 4. I was stupid enough to watch this debate but not stupid enough to watch the rabid apes who do TV commentary afterwards. However, the Twitter machine tells me the GOP/Villager line is that Biden was rude to Ryan. Rude is more than Ryan deserves. He's lucky to walk out of there without a pierced ear.

I could say something substantial about the whole thing but I've already written about Ryan's granny-starving and the affection it engenders among the brethren. It's been a long hard day, I deserve a break, and TV wrestling's not what it used to be.

UPDATE 5. In comments, Batocchio:

Civility has its place, but honesty over civility, accuracy over politeness. Alternatively, if you define "civility" in part as showing respect for the truth, a liar has broken the implicit contract of the debate/discussion, and as a moral matter should be called out. (Not that that happens much in the Village, but boy, it's awesome when it does.)

Every politician -- well, every successful one -- fudges the truth a bit, but Ryan is such a three-shift lie factory that to mock and deride him is not only a pleasure but also a duty. I may be too forgiving of Joe Biden's type of malarkey, not only because I wear a Team Blue jacket, but also because it's old-fashioned (In fact I don't think I've heard the word "malarkey" spoken aloud since I was a boy), and judge Ryan more harshly (you can't judge him too harshly) because his lies are delivered with the cold efficiency of slaughterhouse machinery. But that's okay; the victory of the human is welcome however it comes; I prefer Spencer Tracy's Frank Skeffington to his Nixon manqué opponent Kevin McCluskey in The Last Hurrah, too.

ADVICE FROM A FAN. Andrew Sullivan:

Adjustment to NYC is a process. A really long, exasperating, draining process. Do you just have to harden yourself to live as if this is normal? Or will it get better? Please tell me it gets better.

No, it doesn't get better. It's always difficult and if you're used to living in a sleepy southern town where a plurality of the tiny population kisses your ass, you will find the general indifference of New York to your enormous self-regard maddening. And if you're used to dawdling along the sidewalk waiting for some Congressional aide to recognize you, you'll get knocked over by someone hurrying to get to a minimum-wage job. Now why don't you go find Martin Amis out at his $2.5 million brownstone in prelapsarian Brooklyn and talk about the damn Mooslims until you feel better? Only make sure you take the number of a car service for the ride home, because the streets are full of damned Mooslims and once they find out you're here they'll swarm you screaming Allah Akbar and saw your stupid head off.

Oh, and Sully, here's someone who had an actual hard time with her apartment in New York. But, to be fair, maybe her wireless service was better than yours.

Christ Jesus what a privileged fucking simp.

TWO, THREE, MANY LOOKING-GLASSES. As I've been noticing every time I pick her stuff up for the Rightblogger columns, Jennifer Rubin has of late lost contact with the earth's gravitational pull. Her latest column on "Obama cultists’ crack-up" (published by the Washington Post, a known liberal media truth-silencing operation) is intemperate even by her usual standards, but deep under the sea of foam and spittle is a wonderful specimen of reverse logic that should be dredged up for public inspection:

The left, as I suggested, may soon (if not before the election, than certainly after if he loses) reach the point in which Obama is trashed to save liberalism. It is not, the left tells us, the Keynesian record of failure that was to blame for the debate wipeout; rather it was Obama’s cruddy performance. It’s not that liberalism lacks a reform agenda that is both feasible and politically popular, you see. No, the problem was that Obama didn’t shout “Liar!” loudly enough.

Most of us who are over ten years old will remember George W. Bush and John McCain, the former of whom has been rendered invisible by the party he lately led (at least John Kerry got to go to conventions), and the latter of whom has been a curse on wingnuts' lips since May 2008 at least for failing to wear the corpse of Reagan and yell "Wolverines." If someone's trashing candidates for failing an ideology, it ain't us.

We've come to an especially weird phase in a very weird campaign in which the guy who claimed the Obama-leading poll results of a few weeks back were "skewed" and made up his own re-weighted polls to contradict them now says the new Romney-leading poll results are proof that he was right, as the polls "are rapidly becoming less skewed precisely because I exposed them for being skewed via my web site." As delusions of grandeur go, that's world class.

The weirdest part is, they're getting crazier when they're ahead. It's almost as if some part of them believes that even victory will not be enough -- that they could be borne through the streets of the capital in thrones made from the skulls of their enemies, and the thought that someone somewhere might continue to disagree with them will yet vex them into madness. I'm not sure it's really a political movement anymore; increasingly it resembles a mass psychosis.

COUNTERCULTURE. Press release in the mail today:

A Thrill Ride For Patriots

Spring, TX, October 8, 2012 – Sometimes you just have to take a stand. Our country first learned this through the American Revolution, and a stubborn insistence on liberty is the hallmark of patriots to the present day. Telling that story in all its many forms is bound to be exciting and inspirational. In Patriots of Treason ( AKA-Publishing), David Thomas Roberts bursts into the political thriller genre with style and passion. 

A nation in crisis. A president of division. A deadlocked Congress. The United States is on the brink of civil war — again. Only a courageous federal whistleblower, an ordinary Texan and a governor who won’t tolerate the shredding of the Constitution can thwart an evil conspiracy by the federal government. 

An incumbent minority president, losing at the polls in his re-election bid due to the economy, gas prices and scandals in his administration, pulls an “October Surprise” that swings the election. An assassination attempt creates the perfect scapegoat — the Tea Party — through a deceit so well disguised that it comes dangerously close to succeeding. 

But, like patriots before them, some won’t stand for it. Some will become Patriots of Treason. Taut and suspenseful, readers will just have to hang on and ride to the end for a surprising conclusion.

Interesting, if a little derivative. Maybe it will make Camille Paglia less gloomy about the arts.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about how delighted rightbloggers were about the Denver debate, and how sad they were that America's employment numbers had improved -- until they decided Hilda Solis Lies, and so cheered themselves up. See, this is why conservatives are happier than liberals.

NO F.A.I.R. Anne Sorock* of Legal Insurrection:

The “fact-check” segment has replaced the unbiased network farce as a way to pull for candidates without seeming to. It’s an attempt to regain the lost respect by cloaking bias by calling it fact. Do a google search for “fact check debate” and you’ll see all the news outlets in line with the same message: Politico, Huffington Post, ABC, Salon…. Quite amazing message pull-through, really.

Yeah, it's amazing fact-checkers would come to similar conclusions. Maybe these guys got a mistaken idea of what fact-checking is from their 9/11 glory days, when "fact-check your ass" meant "the internet is a great marketing opportunity for niche vendors of bullshit."

UPDATE. Originally had the author as William Jacobson -- thanks, commenter D. Johnston, for fact-checking my ass.

MILE HIGH. The undead Jim Lehrer has made the final selections. Let the blood feast begin!

9:05. Aw, what a nice husband. Tough crowd!

9:06. "Skew toward the wealthy" vs. "Education and training." Well, I'm sold.

9:09. The economy is a tender topic. Someone asked Romney for help. Did he give them a dollar? No, it will take a different path. One with five different parts. Four million jobs with energy! And the best schools in the world! And small business! Mitt Romney hires people. So no, ladies, no dollar for you. Oh, and no abortions.

9:09. The Crypt-Keeper caught that trickle-down thing. Is Marlin Fitzwater still alive? Must be shitting a brick.

9:10. Governor Romney and Barack Obama agree.

9:11. Oh no, are we still doing the note-writing thing? Or was Romney just checking his nails?

9:12. Mitt Romney doesn't have a tax cut. On that scale. And Paul Ryan will be President, again. Now Obama's checking his nails. Bad idea to have a manicurist on site.

9:15. Aha, oil and gas are up -- but on private land! Ha ha, private wins. They'll give us all coal, but they'll wash it first, so it'll be clean, like the lettuce you buy in bags.

9:16. The battle of the tax cuts is very gentlemanly so far. Barack Obama's some socialist, huh?

9:17. Jim is having trouble telling the President to shut up.

9:18. He's having trouble telling Romney, too. No tax cut that adds to the deficit? I thought you were a Republican. Hmmph! But you do have five boys. And they LIE.

9:20. 54% of these people are not taxed at the corporate rate. How do they live? Oh oh, Obama brought up math. Romney will have to bring up geography, maybe recess. I see Obama's still cutting taxes. We'll all be living tax-free, eventually. Now a Clinton shout. Boy, that speech was something, huh? Ah, new "definition of small business." A socialist one. It doesn't include Donald Trump, who is calling in favors now, demanding to be allowed to attend the next debate from a giant desk at the back of the stage, with a gong or buzzer.

9:23. Romney said Obama was right about something. What a gent! But now he's telling us the President wants this guy in St. Louis to go from 35% to 40% in taxes. And that's over 50% if you're in St. Louis and you know Mitt Romney. Jobs! Jobs! Did you all catch that? Balanced budget, yeah sure, but jobs.

9:24. Obama can say "trillions" with a straight face. Oh he's good. Also, he's juuuuust starting to get into the Bush years. If Romney doesn't behave he'll bring out that Bush impersonator who used to be so popular on Leno.

9:25. Romney should have demanded a microphone. A second microphone, because he can afford it. Well, he got to talk more, and give us some more of that high-speed accounting yak that will sweep him to victory... oh wait, food stamps! You hear that, North Carolina? [cameras shows white hands crumpling transcript]

9:28. Romney has math too: Either you raise taxes, cut spending, or you "grow the economy." Surprise! There is an easy solution! He'll cut Obamacare! And Jim Lehrer! I'm kinda warming to him. AND... he's going to combine some agencies. That sounds cool. I'd like to see Defense and the National Endowment for the Arts combined into some kind of Voltron of bombs and urine-soaked crucifixes.

9:30. Obama cut stuff too, like war and ignorance. Hmm, that sounds reasonable. Oh, and Eisenhower. And look, Obama knows he's doing well in this great country of ours. He must be hoping Romney will tell us all we're 47% again.

9:31. I support Simpson Bowles for someone else. Yeah, yeah, I took care of that. Oh yeah, well you created a bunch of debt. People don't understand that I'm a tax-cutter and he's raising taxes, albeit hypothetical, and it's killing people in the future, like in 12 Monkeys.

9:34. Romney doesn't want to go down the path to Spain, unless it goes to Majorca on a private yacht.

9:36. Romney = ExxonMobil and corporate jets. And shipping jobs overseas. Romney smiles, realizing that if he loses he can bathe in the blood of his Vietnamese slaves, so who needs it.

9:38. America was not built on ten-year-old schoolbooks. If the schoolbook lobby is screwed, we're all screwed.

9:39. But that oil and gas tax tax break is an accounting thing. Obama tries to throw him -- end it! Romney's not listening, though, as has been clear throughout, so good for him, why am I listening to this shit? But Obama's cool, he smiles at the Solyndra thing. He knows 95% of us think it's some kind of a new car.

9:40. The basic structure of Social Security is sound, and Obama is sure Romney agrees. (Go ahead, Governor, after this nice grandmother story it won't sound so good.) Now Obama philosophizes that entitlements are actually things we're entitled to. I thought the Return of Reverend Wright tape was supposed to put an end to this sort of thing.

9:43. Yeah, Romney's no dummy. Social Security is sac. Ro. Sanct. Michelle Malkin and Erick Erickson hold hands and jump into the Grand Canyon. Also, Obama's cutting Medicare to pay for this Obamacare which has nothing to do with medicine.

9:45. "If you're 54, 55, you might want to listen." Gasp!

9:47. Obama's trying this Clinton-explainer thing where he tells us how vouchers are a rip-off, but he's not as good at it so he brings in his grandmother again. But he's using the AARP for support -- that's a Soviet organization committed to Early Bird anti-colonialism.

9:48. Did you hear Romney, grandpa? He's not going to kill you!

9:49. If I don't like Medicare, I'd rather destroy it and get my own high-premium plan and take ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS DOWN WITH ME.

9:51. Does it seem to you people as if this low-intensity thing is just making viewers sort of zone out? You probably don't realize I've been blogging the 1988 debate for three stanzas. Ha ha, made ya look.

9:52. Can we have an ad of Romney saying "regulation is essential"?

9:54. This guy sure likes regulations.

9:55. Well, see what you did, Romney, now Obama gets to talk about Wall Street as if he's the sheriff instead of the madame at the whorehouse.

9:56. On Dodd-Frank: Everything you want to do to punish big business hurts small business. It's like big business has a gun to small business' head. You make one false move and he'll shoot!

9:58. Well, Romney avoided saying "death panels." And he's onto small business again. This is as close to coherent argument as he's gotten. But then he says Romneycare was good because it was state-level, which is like saying The Avengers would have been better if it had a budget of $20,000 and starred Frank Stallone. (Yeah, I know.)

10:00. Obama seems to have missed this gambit and is praising Romneycare, which will allow Romney to come back if he's smart enough.

10:03. He's not smart enough. He's just praising the shit out of Romneycare. No one could believe  he's against Sociamalized Medicine on principle, so to buy his argument, you have to believe he's going to do something similar but better. He's sure not campaigning as a smash-the-state type. How's that an alternative to a sitting President?

10:06. Which is why Obama is asking what he's going to replace it with.

10:07. "Free people and free enterprise." I see Cletus and Festus at the ole Doctorin' Shack, using their wits and freedom to figure out how to remove a tumor with a whittlin' knife. (Romney's naming big hospitals, but they all take gummint money.)

10:10. I thought Obama was just vamping, but with this "details" schtick he seems to be thinking pretty well on his feet. Romney comes back with Reagan and O'Neill, which has already been played; also, the old Democratic House was full of venal grifters, God bless 'em, who could be bought -- infinitely preferable to the block-everything, scorched-earth lot we have now.

10:12. Okay, I'm gonna use my own bipartisan President -- Abraham Lincoln! Who was a tax-and-spend liberal. Math and science teachers, blah blah... that pained grimace Romney's been working isn't working for me. He seems to be waiting for a wind machine.

10:17. Romney loves teachers -- they're in the Constitution! So too are other unfortunates. And here, with Obama, we have trickle-down socialism. Say, that's good, trickle-down socialism -- why didn't Romney think of that? Call me! My rates are reasonable!

10:19. Obama's filibustering, because he thinks we haven't heard enough about his successful programs yet. But I suspect average Americans are tuning that out; it doesn't matter how other people are faring. Poor Romney, he wants to know why Obama's sacrificing education to the environment. Who cares about the environment if we're not well-educated enough to enjoy it? Better we have a firm scientific foundation for our global warming denialism as we're drowned by molten icecaps.

10:24. "You've been great, Jim." What a suck-up!

10:25. Oh Christ, bi-partisanship? Isn't Romney's speech the same one Bush gave when he came out of Texas? Obama punts and talks about the middle class, which is probably smart, considering everyone now believes if the guys in The Defiant Ones were a Democrat and a Republican instead of black and white, they would have killed one another in the first ten minutes.

10:30. Obama: Detroit! Loopholes! Fight every single day! Vote for more of the same! Romney: I'm concerned about America! Middle-class squeeze! 12 million new jobs! Romneycare not Obamacare! Don't worry, I'll preserve the military-industrial complex!

Can they both lose?

UPDATE. I see by the Internet that media people think Romney won this debate, by which I assume they mean that they are smitten with his boyish charm. I have as low an opinion of my fellow Americans as the next rootless cosmopolitan, but even I can't see them falling for this. That leaves only one alternative: Roseanne Barr for President. Hey, at least I can live with myself!

UPDATE 2. Shots fired! Commenter mds: "That's Rosanne Arnold. As far as I know, she still hasn't released her long-form divorce certificate."

OK, JUST A PEEK. Let's see what Hindrocket of Time's Blog of the Year 2004 is on about today:

IS OBAMA INTRODUCING NATIONAL SOCIALISM TO THE UNITED STATES?

In the immortal words of Curly, "Ngggnnyahh!"

Hinderaker, which I guess is what Hindrocket's calling himself these days, compares Obama to Lenin and Mussolini because 1.) They all had posters that showed them looking serious ("It is ironic that Mussolini looks downright modest compared to The One"); and 2.) wingnut email-from-Grandma fodder like "the Obama family costs U.S. taxpayers something like twenty times what the British Royal Family costs its subjects," which is so lame Doug Mataconis has debunked it.

I still think Romney has a good chance to win, so I don't see why these guys have descended so precipitously into madness -- oh wait, maybe that's the reason: They're anticipating the crushing disappointment of National Romneycare ("Better Than Obamacare, Because Not So Much Abortion!"), and for these guys that's like waiting for Cthulhu to eat them.

If that's not enough crazy for you, you can read Roger L. Simon's "We Live Under a Media Coup d’État." Apparently it all started with Adolph Ochs, or Woodward and Bernstein; whatever, now the Rule of Katie Couric is so oppressive that "this year the Republican Party allowed the coup plotters to control the debates, even those that determined their own nominee."  Maybe Simon and his like-minded souls will start a resistance movement, and call it "Bathrobe Media" or something. But will it sell?

IN THE REMAKE, IT'LL BE AMANDA MARCOTTE. Matt Lewis at The Daily Caller:

As you probably know, The Atlantic’s Hanna Rosin is out with a new book, called “The End of Men: And the Rise of Women.” 

Rosin and I recently chatted about the book, and we, of course, discussed all the usual topics (including how a “war on women” can be plausible when they are clearly winning the future). 

But toward the end of our conversation, talk turned to sex.

Never have I been more grateful to learn that this was merely a journalistic convention. But not for long! Rosin tells Lewis about this unemployed guy with a well-employed wife who got into rough sex with the missus because "he needed to work out some of his lost dominance... he used to feel entitled to certain things at home because he was the breadwinner. And the truth was, [now] he wasn’t."

Lewis turns thoughtful, or at least looks offscreen, dreamy-eyed, as the shot turns hazy:

Could it be that two recent and successful literary trends — the amazingly popular S&M-themed “50 Shades” series — and the plethora of new books on the rise of women (see my recent interview with “Manning Up” author Kay Hymowitz) — are the product of a similar development?

Whatever gratitude I had for the earlier sex joke was totally dispelled by the conflation of kinky sex and Kay Hymowitz.

I swear to God he ends with this:

Could synergy be at work here? Just as History’s “American Pickers” arguably helps create more of A&E’s “Hoarders” (there is a fine line between a “collector” and a hoarder!), isn’t it possible the same phenomenon that Rosin and Hymowitz are chronicling might also be feeding sales of the “50 Shades of Grey” series?

This reminds me of a scene from the magnificent D.A. Pennebaker doc Town Bloody Hall chronicling Norman Mailer's disastrous feminism debate in that New York venue in 1971. At one point Anatole Broyard hectors Germaine Greer, asking what women want. "Listen," says Greer, "you may as well relax because whatever they're asking for, honey, it isn't you."