Thursday, February 26, 2015

CRY ME A RIVER.

What conservative is being oppressed today? Steven Hayward of Power Line. A Congressman is investigating the financial ties between major climate-change deniers and oil and gas tycoons -- I know! I was surprised to hear about it, too! -- and to this end asked Hayward's employer Pepperdine for the skinny on Hayward's funding. Hayward announces this outrage under the title,
ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A CLIMATE SKEPTIC?
Hayward also calls the Congressman and his colleagues "McCarthyite witch hunters." He's the victim of a blacklist, see, except he's still working, and all the people who are likely to employ him consider him a hero. Other than that it's Red Channels all over again.

But what does Hayward think about Joe McCarthy himself? From a 2011 Hayward post about Eugene McCarthy:
Following a speech to the Manchester Kiwanis Club, for example, Gene McCarthy was presented the customary service club thank-you plaque with an inscription expressing “appreciation to Senator Joseph McCarthy.” (Emphasis added.) If only.
Elsewhere you can find Hayward praising M. Stanton Evans' Blacklisting History, "by far the most serious defense of McCarthy since the Buckley-Bozell book in the 1950s," and looking forward to an upcoming Evans opus containing "new details about Alger Hiss, Elizabeth Bentley, Owen Lattimore, Harry Dexter White, Eleanor Roosevelt, and especially Harry Hopkins." (Possibly just to debunk it, though!)

As for modern-day witch-hunters, Hayward's attitude toward them changes depending on the identity of the witch -- from a 2012 AP story on people who think Obama's a socialist:
Steven Hayward, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of a two-volume biography of Ronald Reagan, said Obama is not a socialist under the strict definitions of that term – central economic planning and government control of production. 
"However, socialism has a secondary meaning that is harder to explain – government regulations, supervision of the private economy," Hayward said. "The problem now with Obama is, 'What does he really think?'"
I'm constantly being asked if I hold the Voltaire defend-to-the-death position on people I disagree with, but I am seldom offered a for-instance where the subject isn't just entirely full of shit.

141 comments:

  1. dstatton11:13 AM

    McCarthyite tactics are bad but McCarthy was right. Similarly, he called Greenpeace the John Birch Society of the environmental movement, so some commenters jumped on him for disparaging that outstanding organization.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "However, socialism has a secondary meaning that is harder to explain –"Oh, come on, how hard is it to say, "Anything reactionary mendacious shitweasels such as myself don't like," Steven? You could use being forced to eat your vegetables during childhood as an example, and everyone would grasp the secondary meeting immediately.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ted the slacker11:29 AM

    "What conservative is being oppressed today?"
    All of them, Katie.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Helmut Monotreme11:31 AM

    McCarthy was right? He did have a list of communists in the state department?

    ReplyDelete
  5. "And another thing about Obama: It's disgusting how he brought his dirty 'Chicago style' politics to the White House."

    "Uh, why is that guy handing you a suitcase full of cash?"

    "OPPRESSION!"

    ReplyDelete
  6. dstatton11:33 AM

    I was paraphrasing Steven Hayward.

    ReplyDelete
  7. nicely done

    ReplyDelete
  8. coozledad11:36 AM

    "However, socialism has a secondary meaning that is harder to explain-"
    Unlike fascism, which means whatever it wants, whenever it wants.

    ReplyDelete
  9. However, socialism has a secondary meaning that is harder to explain



    remarkably, this manages to actually be the definition of "a feeling"

    ReplyDelete
  10. Ted the slacker11:37 AM

    "'What does he really think?'"
    Being a pretty conventional centrist Democrat, he surely believes that the private sector works for the most part but in certain areas is inadequate. Eg. Healthcare.
    So he believes in a typical mixed economy, where the government plays a important regulatory role in some industries. Like any president in history. The difference being that in his era, the shithead opposition is completely unwilling to engage in a good-faith discussion of which industries those are and what the appropriate regulation should be.
    So fuck off with your concern-trolling over "who Obama is". You idiots know, you simply play dumb for political reasons.

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  11. What does he really think?

    ReplyDelete
  12. Helmut Monotreme11:39 AM

    For a large plurality of these ignoramuses, they really don't know. He is the spooky Kenyan upon whom they can project their scariest paranoid fantasies.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.11:40 AM

    I bet I know where Hayward stands on the real Witchhunts. But I'm not telling. You have to figure it out for yourselves

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  14. gocart mozart11:41 AM

    "However, socialism has a secondary meaning that is harder to explain – government regulations, supervision of the private economy,"



    There are only two types of people then, anarchists and socialist. I always suspected that Reagan was a fellow traveler.

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  15. Lurking Canadian11:43 AM

    It has been wingnut Holy Writ at least for twenty years that McCarthy was right, a hero ahead of his time and unfairly maligned by the pinko press.

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  16. gocart mozart11:43 AM

    Hayward is in charge of gathering the kindling.

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  17. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.11:44 AM

    Now, now. Don't disparage anarchism by equating it with conservatism and the potheads AKA libertarians.

    ReplyDelete
  18. gocart mozart11:45 AM

    The conservatives are socialists too. The anarchists are still anarchists.

    ReplyDelete
  19. gocart mozart11:46 AM

    The dumb is not always an act.

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  20. Helmut Monotreme11:48 AM

    Well, Mr Hayward in his column wants to make it clear to America, that not only is he a proudly ignorant opponent of reducing carbon emissions and fighting global climate change, thereby potentially saving millions of lives, he isn't one of those bought and paid for shills. No, sir. He's willfully ignorant as a matter of principal.

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  21. The funny thing about this "witch hunt" is that the major accusation leveled at climate scientists is that they are perpetrating a hoax so they can line their pockets with grant money, which (given the billions in profits that the fossil fuels industries rake in) is ludicrous.

    It'll only get worse as the "National Review" libel case gets closer.

    ReplyDelete
  22. You have to figure it out for yourselvesToo easy. The real witchhunts were performed by Christians. And as the recent pigshit avalanche over the Crusades has reminded us, Christians can't do anything bad ever.

    ReplyDelete
  23. He's willfully ignorant as a matter of principal.I see what you did there.

    ReplyDelete
  24. You sure he's not the one in charge of weighing the duck?

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  25. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.12:19 PM

    It'll only get worse as the "National Review" libel case gets closer.


    Is that still the Mann vs. Steyn thing?

    ReplyDelete
  26. Tiny Hermaphrodite, Esq.12:21 PM

    That's what I' was getting at.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Like in that song "Soooooocialism...nothing more than soooooocialism...."

    ReplyDelete
  28. the major accusation leveled at climate scientists is that they are
    perpetrating a hoax so they can line their pockets with grant moneyIf f:X x Y --> X is conservative, then f(x,y) = x, because it's always projection.

    ReplyDelete
  29. My god! On top of being a dictator, a limp wristed cocaine addled homo, a floor wax and a dessert topping he's also a film screen?

    ReplyDelete
  30. This is entirely off-topic, but I need help. This week, I've been trying to help this woman through a really nasty immigration and custody dispute. I don't want to go into too much detail in public, but here's the overview: The woman is currently married to a foreign-born naturalized citizen - she has residency but isn't a citizen yet. Her husband has been manipulating and mistreating her, and now he's trying to take away her son. She reached out to me because I'm the only person she knows in this country.

    I've been doing everything I can on my end to help, but I don't think it's enough. My father is a lawyer but his experience with the INS is limited. If anyone here knows of someone who can help in any way, please have them contact me at dmjohnston AT outlook DOT com. This could well be a lost cause, but I feel obligated to do whatever I can.

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  31. Oh, I figured that. I was just showing my work.

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  32. Jay B.12:35 PM

    WHERE THE ANALOGY BREAKS DOWN:


    I have in my hand here a list of so-called Scientists, who are being paid by Exxon/Mobile to produce murky, shoddy, research that further serves the interests of their paymasters while the world burns."


    "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, aren't you and your commie scientists simply being bought by Big Academia? It seems obvious from here that your peer-reviewed results are simply part of a vast conspiracy of anti-capitalist alarmism to make Al Gore emperor."

    ReplyDelete
  33. GeniusLemur12:39 PM

    Right-wingers think any questioning of their positions at all is oppression and witch-hunts because they know, deep down, that never allowing questions is the only way their positions will ever stand.

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  34. Reporting on tips, income, and bribes is McCarthyism. Obvs.

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  35. Can't give you any help with immigration but I'm wondering whether a call to someone who work with VAWA and Joe Biden might be of use. I think that some of the battered women's organizations come up against the abuse of foreign born/immigrant women quite frequently and they may know someone who has the expertise to help in this case.

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  36. GeniusLemur12:47 PM

    kon-sis-ten-see? What's that?

    ReplyDelete
  37. the major accusation leveled at climate scientists is that they are
    perpetrating a hoax so they can line their pockets with grant money


    Ludicrous, You say?! [sputter] MORE OPPRESSION!!!

    ReplyDelete
  38. BigHank5312:53 PM

    A feeling? No wonder Hayward didn't recognize it.

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  39. He CAN'T be a film screen because film screens are white!

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  40. I would like to Laplace Transform this comment.

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  41. tigrismus12:59 PM

    I'm hooked on socialism!
    I'm high on...
    economic planning via rational non-emotionalism?

    ReplyDelete
  42. It's not cash, it's fiat currency.

    Which I'm taking down to my local Fiat dealer and having converted into a snazzy new car.

    ReplyDelete
  43. I think you might be stoned on government intervention to produce orderly and predictable markets in which businesses can function with confidence.

    ReplyDelete
  44. tigrismus1:04 PM

    Duh, Joe McCarthyism is good, Gene McCarthyism isn't.

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  45. . . . an upcoming Evans opus containing "new details about Alger Hiss, Elizabeth Bentley, Owen Lattimore, Harry Dexter White, Eleanor Roosevelt, and especially Harry Hopkins."

    Boy! If THIS doesn't get the millenials all fired up and voting Republican for at least two generations, nothing will. I know my 20-year-old niece was telling me just the other day that she had questions about Hiss and thought maybe Nixon staged the Pumpkin Papers.

    ReplyDelete
  46. witlesschum1:05 PM

    OT: Anyone know what gives with Gin and Tacos' non-existence?

    ReplyDelete
  47. tigrismus1:07 PM

    Needs work, but as long as we get the Ooga-Chakas in there we're golden.

    ReplyDelete
  48. dstatton1:10 PM

    This is so they can appear to be so brave in continuing to defy the oppressors. I will not be silenced!

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  49. Gromet1:35 PM

    First they came for the scientists, and I said nothing, for I was not a scientist. Well, okay, that's not true -- I said, "My neighbor's a scientist! And my son's wife!" Scientists are barely human, and they deserve the worst they can get.


    Then they came for the rightwing bloggers, and I blew a gasket, because hey! That's me! Also when I say they came for me, I mean they toothlessly questioned an obvious conflict of interest on my part. THOSE JACKBOOTED SOCIALISTS! IT'S SECOND AMENDMENT TIME!


    Then they came for the persecution fantasists and those who cry "apocalypse!" when there is no apocalypse. It didn't apply to me, because my persecution is real, so I wasn't worried. Except about the apocalypse.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Gromet1:41 PM

    Ohhh, Fiat? Or as we call it around here, Socialist Union-Owned Chrysler.

    ReplyDelete
  51. Smurch1:41 PM

    More than a feeling?

    ReplyDelete
  52. Smurch1:45 PM

    Mister, we could use a man like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon again!

    ReplyDelete
  53. RogerAiles1:55 PM

    Douchebag also has a secondary meaning that is harder to explain. You have to click on powerlineblog.com to get the gist.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Helmut Monotreme2:03 PM

    "I'm constantly being asked if I hold the Voltaire defend-to-the-death position on people I disagree with, but I am seldom offered a for-instance where the subject isn't just entirely full of shit. "

    Roy, when I read about this new "Climate Change McCarthyism", it brings to mind this other quote from Voltaire:

    "I always made one prayer to God, a very short one. Here it is: "O Lord, make our enemies quite ridiculous!" God granted it."

    ReplyDelete
  55. Hayward Jablomee2:16 PM

    "almost certainly Greenpeace, the John Birch Society of the environmental movement, is behind this)."

    ReplyDelete
  56. Dog Whistle Jones2:17 PM

    "Let’s start by axing a simple question"

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  57. ohsopolite2:23 PM

    If there is a more effective guaranteed laugh line than "resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute" I have yet to hear it.

    ReplyDelete
  58. I was just about to post my own guffaw.
    ~

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  59. JennOfArk2:45 PM

    "However, socialism has a secondary meaning that is harder to explain - "


    How about "anything that doesn't allow GOP donors to skim a profit"?


    Or we could go with "anything that a liberal supports, updated daily."


    Or "anything that provides any type of benefit to anyone I don't like."


    I could go on....

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  60. Cal-Gore, Superman's older cousin.

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  61. Jonah Goldberg. I rest my case.

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  62. JennOfArk3:00 PM

    OT, but just wanted to let everyone know the website for our awesome foot-stink fighting powder is now up and running: www.stompoutstink.com. And to ask you good people if you would help promote our facebook thingy and twitter feed to help us get the word out. And of course, to buy some of our awesome foot powder if you or someone you live with needs it.


    Thanks for indulging this shameless pimping.

    ReplyDelete
  63. gocart mozart3:05 PM

    Ducks can be used as kindling because they are made out of wood. How do you think they float?

    ReplyDelete
  64. I've got a socialism, a socialism deep inside, oh yeah

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  65. ohsopolite3:34 PM

    Your case is already resting after an encounter with a Costco-sized bag of Cheetos.

    ReplyDelete
  66. ohsopolite3:34 PM

    I am prepared to offer this comment six of one and a half dozen of the other.

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  67. satch3:36 PM

    "However, socialism has a secondary meaning that is harder to explain –"


    These guys wouldn't know an actual socialist unless one jammed a Hammer and Sickle up their asses while singing "The Internationale".

    ReplyDelete
  68. Helmut Monotreme3:38 PM

    To do list:
    1. Buy hammer
    2. Buy sickle
    3. Learn to sing "The Internationale"

    ReplyDelete
  69. Recommended by Dustin Toes!

    ReplyDelete
  70. dstatton4:20 PM

    "almost certainly", i.e, "I'm pulling another turd out of my ass."

    ReplyDelete
  71. Hey. He's back in action.

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  72. gocart mozart4:30 PM

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g#t=13

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  73. M. Krebs4:41 PM

    I hope this helps.

    http://youtu.be/fNn-v5u1sNM

    ReplyDelete
  74. M. Krebs4:45 PM

    And what's happened to Spaghetti Lee? I hope's he's not having an affair with another blog.

    ReplyDelete
  75. M. Krebs4:47 PM

    Let's make it the Official Foot Powder of Alicublog.

    ReplyDelete
  76. satch4:49 PM

    My personal favorite version:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2MpX2GhPZA

    ReplyDelete
  77. Gromet5:29 PM

    Why should we listen to Gore?? His planet was destroyed!

    ReplyDelete
  78. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity?"

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  79. I liked it in this scene from "Cradle Will Rock." Bill Murray can sing it without moving his lips...
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rggCCyDB8V8

    ReplyDelete
  80. Ubu Imperator5:52 PM

    Modified to Ooga-Boogas in deference to house style.

    ReplyDelete
  81. satch6:14 PM

    "Buy", Comrade? What are you, some kind of lackey running dog capitalist tool?

    ReplyDelete
  82. Naw, Nixon tried to sell secrets to the North in the Silver War.

    ReplyDelete
  83. JennOfArk6:50 PM

    Awesome, dude! I had just seen that a sale came in and wondered, "which of the alicuratti was good enough to order?" We'll get it shipped out tomorrow - thanks!


    (apologies to the rest of you - I'll not sully the comments thread with talk of personal commerce again)

    ReplyDelete
  84. Tailgunner Ted even looks like him.

    ReplyDelete
  85. I would absolutely buy some but since we don't wear shoes in SoCal I don't need any.

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  86. And people call natives from my lands (Kentucky) backwards hillbillies.

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  87. Hey!! We put on flip-flops for formal functions.

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  88. Ancient Chinese comment, huh?

    ReplyDelete
  89. redoubtagain9:10 PM

    Unlike fascism, which means whatever it wants, whenever it wants.


    It wants what it wants but almost always gets the gallows.

    ReplyDelete
  90. redoubtagain9:19 PM

    (Joe McCarthy is [at least in my opinion] the worst American this side of Jefferson Davis, and for many of the same reasons.)

    ReplyDelete
  91. Jeffrey_Kramer10:05 PM

    That seems to cover it. I was going to suggest, "anything which threatens to result in a downward distribution of money or resources." Which means that Milton Friedman and everyone else who supported the Earned Income Tax Credit was a socialist. So Reason magazine is full of reds.

    ReplyDelete
  92. AGoodQuestion10:13 PM

    Steven Hayward is a hero. Sure, laugh now. Tomorrow, you and I might not be able to funnel millions of dollars toward scientists so that they'll parrot our favored conclusions either.

    ReplyDelete
  93. AGoodQuestion10:20 PM

    Well, my feelings would be best expressed in a monologue, from the made-for-TV movie "Long Island Lolita: The Amy Fisher Story".

    ReplyDelete
  94. AGoodQuestion10:26 PM

    All the more reason for good conservatives to lock themselves in the bomb shelter with the canned goods and "2nd Amendment Hotties" magazines.

    ReplyDelete
  95. mgmonklewis10:37 PM

    Where does Jenny McCarthy fit into all this?

    [adjusts tinfoil hat]

    [crinkle]

    ReplyDelete
  96. AGoodQuestion10:42 PM

    So he's still an amateur. Someone alert the International Olympic Committee.

    ReplyDelete
  97. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9FBQ1O5F8k

    ReplyDelete
  98. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:44 PM

    Played in the biopic by Victor Buono, because Al Gore is, you know, fat...

    ReplyDelete
  99. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person11:50 PM

    Onliest "scientist" (another engineer, natch) lining his pockets climate-wise seems to be ol' Willie Soon...

    ReplyDelete
  100. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:02 AM

    ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A CLIMATE SKEPTIC?

    The man who was talkin' to Hayward looked at Hayward an' he said: (sort of staring in desbelief) "You can't say that!" he said: "It doesn't, 'n you can't! I won't, 'n it don't It hasn't, it isn't, it even ain't, & it shouldn't...

    Seriously, has exhuming the corpse of Irony and skullfucking it on the courthouse steps at noon become more or less a rightwing hobby? Or is there extra pay involved...

    ReplyDelete
  101. Meanie-meanie, tickle a person12:06 AM

    I always think of Dobie Gillis when I see those words. Although Maynard might be more appropriate.
    OK, that was a lie, I always think of Zelda Gilroy...

    ReplyDelete
  102. M. Krebs12:06 AM

    That's because you all you do is sit in a tree playing the flute.

    ReplyDelete
  103. JennOfArk12:25 AM

    My feelings can only be expressed through a modern interpretive dance performed to Jethro Tull's Aqualung in front of a screen showing the Hiroshima explosion on a repeating loop.

    ReplyDelete
  104. mrstilton1:26 AM

    Then Hayward can't be a racist, see, because Obama is half a film screen.

    ReplyDelete
  105. mrstilton1:29 AM

    Of course, the same is true of everybody else in the world.

    ReplyDelete
  106. mrstilton1:31 AM

    Revisionist.

    ReplyDelete
  107. Gabriel Ratchet2:14 AM

    Isn't this just another one of their standard rhetorical tropes? That is, [Wingnut outrage du jour] is the functional equivalent of [slavery, genocide, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, whatever]. even though [slavery, genocide, Jim Crow, McCarthyism, whatever].were not that bad or even net positives and only stupid liberals ever get upset about them.

    ReplyDelete
  108. Suttree3:30 AM

    Schrodinger's Mc cat theism?

    ReplyDelete
  109. Suttree4:24 AM

    Yay! Ed is back up!

    ReplyDelete
  110. smut clyde6:15 AM

    No, no, Joahn Goldberg has *consistently* defended the Spanish Inquisition.

    ReplyDelete
  111. "It's all cool, man."

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  112. God is at once both alive and dead.

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  113. And Pere Ubu.
    Too many of us missing in action!

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  114. That's exactly what he's doing.

    He's been commenting recently on The Dissolve and the A.V. Club. (call me a snitch!)

    ReplyDelete
  115. Suttree7:38 AM

    Is there a god or no god. This damn box won't open and give me the secret decoder ring.

    ReplyDelete
  116. They were laughing about the guy earlier on The Majority Report, saying that this "Harvard astrophysicist" isn't actually an astrophysicist who isn't actually at Harvard.

    "Oh what a tangled web we weave,
    When first we practise to deceive!"

    ReplyDelete
  117. coozledad8:42 AM

    If it's David Hasselhof, it's gotta be National Socialism!

    ReplyDelete
  118. Halloween_Jack9:48 AM

    Huddled in a corner, covered in red spots, shrieking, "It's better this way!"

    ReplyDelete
  119. BikeCrasher1:34 PM

    DNS issues, I think.

    ReplyDelete
  120. freq flag10:11 PM

    Didn't the Coulter Creature actually claim authorship of a book-type publication that was about this very thing?

    (I'm too lazy to provide a link-y thing to the Bezos site of book-type products.)

    ReplyDelete
  121. freq flag10:18 PM

    Aw, c'mon...where's your school spirit?

    ReplyDelete
  122. freq flag10:19 PM

    Witchcraft!

    ReplyDelete
  123. M. Krebs11:13 PM

    The bastard!

    ReplyDelete
  124. mommadillo9:08 AM

    I'm always amazed at the ability of conservatives to denounce all efforts against them as McCarthyism while simultaneously considering the real McCarthy a hero and public benefactor. How the fuck does that work?

    ReplyDelete
  125. StringOnAStick10:37 AM

    Let's change that to "always", and keep it that way.

    ReplyDelete
  126. StringOnAStick10:41 AM

    I've been saving that batch of popcorn for a long time, knowing how wonderful it is going to be.

    ReplyDelete
  127. Damn. I am stealing the shit outta this one. Without permission, but with attribution....

    /fires up new text document, copies comment, and link to same.
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  128. I'll dispense with the coy innuendo and cut to the chase: Will you marry Me?
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  129. Congrats, and good luck.

    As I neither suffer from stink-o'-toe or do the facebook, that is all I got.

    :-)
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  130. I can hit the site at least...
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  131. Nice site, good copy, cool logo.....

    Rock on...

    You might have made a killing at CPAC.
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  132. Also at LGM...

    /did not say that....droids, looking, not these...
    ....

    ReplyDelete
  133. Mnestheus3:38 PM

    I'd feel better if UNEP's revolving door turned more slowly than those connecting the Hill and the Pentsgon to K Street.


    Folks outside of Vermont may think it unseemly to install a former President of the Socialist International to run UN environmental regulation .

    ReplyDelete
  134. Mnestheus3:45 PM

    Silly rabbit: Al just wants to be Imperial Planetologist.

    ReplyDelete