SHORTER JACOB HORNBERGER: Oh, you littlebrains are bitching about slavery, are you? OK, OK, slavery was bad. Now 1880 -- when poor Americans could actually starve, and striking workers could actually be gunned down, as Our Hayek intended (but there were, ahem, NO SLAVES, haters) -- that's what libertarianism is all about!

(Were the Randroids not so notoriously bad at PR, I would expect them to engage the Ole Perfesser to take pictures of black people at their cell meetings.)

UPDATE. Comments by the Reason bigbrains are lovely. Every once in a while a woman drops in to say, "1880? Not so great for me," and you can almost hear the ferocious shirt-retucking as the brethren wait for her to leave so they can get back to "Boaz is just another beltway hack" etc.

I applaud the parodist who adds, "Blacks didn't have income tax in 1880. Their money was not debased. They knew who their fathers were." Assuming, perhaps unfairly, that he's a parodist.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR, THE SEQUEL. Thank you, internet. Just when I was starting to miss New York, you snapped me out of it:



That awful Jay-Z thing, which makes "New York, New York" sound like Michael Hordern reading "Sailing to Byzantium." Conspicuous consumption. Having it all. The boredom of the privileged masquerading as dramatic conflict. Liza Minnelli. It's like ipecac for homesickness, and if that doesn't get it out of my system, there's always the unsettling feeling that, at any minute, one of their faces might cave in.

They really should have taken my advice.

UPDATE. Oh Christ no.

I WAS SO EAGER TO AVOID WORK THAT I CLEANED MY BLOGROLL. Fixed some long-wrong links and dropped moribund ones (Margaret, your late entry spared you the axe; Kia, I'll wait but not forever; Joshua, Twitter updates? Really?), despite the delightful fact that Joshua Trevino's old site is now this (NSFW, I've just been warned -- boy, only three weeks out of work and already I've become thoroughly unsocialized).

Trevino/Tacitus is replaced by Rightwing Film Geek under "Wrong But Readable." (RWFG doesn't talk about his politics much, so he probably should be under "Sui Generis" instead, but conservatives are so out of their minds these days that I have to reach to pad this section.) RWFG knows his stuff, and explicates in a way that both experts and novices can appreciate. It's worth sitting through an occasional lecture on how Vera Drake isn't really anti-abortion (no doubt, but so what?) and such like just to watch him work.

I am going to slowly and stealthily add Texas links. First is Juanita Jean. Found by accident. Hers is a charming approach.

Jesus, you never know what a mess things are until you start to clean. If anyone's interested in redesigning this site for nothing or nearly so, email me.

THESE ARE THE JOKES, FOLKS: "RECORD HEAT IN NEW YORK CITY. It’s obviously proof of global cooling. Hey, if cold weather can be proof of global warming..." -- The Ole Perfesser. Yeah, that's bringing down the house of cards that is AGW, alright.

UPDATE. Another QOTD, from Ace O. Spades: "There's an old saying that success is like a fart, only your own don't stink. So it is with political extremism, especially as practiced by paranoiacs like Charles Johnson. He lectures others on civility and moderation while sticking his face in his ass and burbling over how sweet his own farts smell." Ace really missed his calling as a copywriter for greeting cards. Bonus points for the CJ Iz a Fag follow-up.

NEVER FORGET 4/7! First those seamen were rescued from pirates, which was an Obama Administration failure. Then the crotch-bomber failed to crotch-bomb a plane, which was another Obama Administration failure.

But that was nothing. Now a diplomat -- with an Ay-rab name! (or as Founding Bloggers like to call such people, "a man with striking similarities to the profile of a potential terrorist") -- smoked a cigarette in an airborne restroom and made a snotty comment! And we had to turn him loose!

Aargh! Blaargh! Aargh and Blaargh again! "All of that talk about making our enemies like us and forgiving us in the post-Bush era isn’t really working out for us, is it?" thunders Erick Erickson. Later he notes grimly that "speculation has moved" to what actually happened. But we will never, ever forget 4/7. (Hey, 4 goes twice into eight! 2-4-8 -- there's got to be some numerological significance to this.) (UPDATE: It was last night, not this morning -- numerology crisis averted!)

Etc. My favorite (so far -- these guys can always top themselves) is from The American Pundit, who's all like "'Diplomatic immunity!' 'BOOM!' 'Revoked!'" across the entire diplomatic corps:

We tried to have sex with a child, but we had to release him and he still leaves free because of his diplomatic immunity.

Don't ever change, American Pundit, and especially don't ever change that typo.

FROM OUR "WHERE ARE THEY NOW?" FILE -- LIKE FATHER LIKE SON EDITION. We first noticed Kieran Michael Lalor back in 2005, when he complained of being brainwashed by the liberal scum of Pace University, escaped to the Marines, and then returned to Pace to be brainwashed (and to complain of it) some more. Later we found he'd been nominated by the GOP to run against Congressman John Hall (late of Orleans) in New York's 19th District. That ended badly for Lalor.

We wondered what he'd been up to, and went looking around. Wikipedia says he "works a security position at New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York." I note with interest that the Eternal Vigilance Society, of which Lalor was Director and Michelle Malkin a fan, has shut down its website. (The price of eternal vigilance is apparently a monthly internet fee no one wanted to pay.)

I also found that Lalor's dad Gene is politically active, too. He has written for the American Thinker and American Conservative Daily, where he's been going like a house afire lately. As this excerpt from one of his recent essays shows, he shares with his son a keen interest in military matters:

Ok, you’re a normal, healthy male with normal, healthy appetites and volunteer to become one of the few and the proud. You sign up for the United States Marine Corps–not “corpse,” Mr. President. You’re assigned to Camp Lejeune to endure the rigors of boot camp and find yourself bunking next to a Megan Fox lookalike recruit.

Healthy or not, that wouldn’t be a healthy environment for any jarhead, least of all an impressionable 19 year old expecting to survive boot camp.

That’s a variation on the scenario Marine Corps’ commandant General James Conway wants to avoid if and when Bill Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, (DADT), policy regarding gays in the military is repealed. The difference would be that the normal healthy male would effectively become the Megan to the homosexual(s) in the next bunk(s).

He also says that DADT opponents don't address "the questions of what to do about heads and shower rooms or where the gays would hang their purses." With any luck, the Lalors will become the new Buckleys, and years from now conservatives will bemoan the departure of their intellectual rigor from the movement.

THE SELF-CORRECTING BLOGOSPHERE. At Memeorandum:



Also at Memeorandum:



Quick, Perfesser, more photos of black people!

UPDATE. There's something almost magical about this coincidence: at Reason David Boaz suggests (albeit gently) that maybe America wasn't more free, in the way libertarians like to think about it, back when it was full of slaves. The Perfesser reads Boaz' piece, and is much more concerned with the tragic loss of American liberties under Jimmy Carter.

Also funny: the Hit & Run commenters to the story. I especially liked the guy who says the Donner Party was "perfectly libertarian" because "they were free to make a bad decision, made it, and suffered the consequences." I couldn't have put it better myself!

UPDATE 2. Roger L. Simon: Democrats are the Real Racists, Etc. That one never gets young! He's also against "hyphenated racial groups," as John Wayne was.

Lest we think Simon prefers the simpler, unhyphenated names such people were called in olden days, he lets us know he was once a civil rights worker. You know, like John Lewis -- except unlike Lewis, Simon deserves our respect for it.

BREAKFAST TREAT. You good people, following my lame site day in, day out, deserve some candy for your trouble. Here's that asshole Rod Dreher flipping out over phalluses outside a church.

It's in the Netherlands, and it's done by artists, so as you may imagine, Dreher says it's the dildo-bearers who are stuck in the past, not the Catholic Church (one of Dreher's former faiths, though I can't recall whether it was his second or third). He also claims to have a Dutch friend -- perhaps his hashish connection -- who declares, "That's how it is for Dutch artists. We can't think of anything creative to say, we just throw in sex." So if Texas doesn't work out, I know where to head next.

He also finds a picture of one of his dick-wielding nemeses and decides, "He looks to be a Baby Boomer. Will we never be rid of that generation and its tired, flaccid obsessions?" He brings in a guest Jesusoid to assure us that the Younger Generation will soon overthrow sex. So what's he bitching about, then?

NO COMMENT. Some guy has been arrested for allegedly threatening to kill Senator Patty Murray over her health care vote. I'm sure conservatives are as tired of the raised temperature of the discourse as I am, and their response will be muted and supportive of Senator Murray's right to stay alive... oh wait, here's Bungalow Bill with a quick post:

The news media will go nuts tonight analyzing if the person arrested for threatening Senator Patty Murray’s (D-WA) life is a tea partier...

You just know Keith Olbermann is ready to call whoever this person is a dirty tea bagger, even without a trial to know of the person is guilty. This will be the direction of the media. Like Rush said, they could have cared less without all the threats made against Bush 43. They will make an example out of this person all in hopes of discrediting the growing tea party movement.

Here's Murray's opponent out of the Tea Party, Clint Didier, recently:

When I get to DC, there's gonna be hell to pay. When they flirt with my kids' future, their individual liberty and their freedom, there will be hell to pay... you see, when somebody gets into a fight, it's that person who's willing to die, that's gonna come out the winner. If I have any strength left in me, I will fight and die for our future, our children, and this country.

Let the "No, you raised the temperature of the discourse" fistfight commence!

UPDATE. Logistics Monster: "Waiting…waiting…waiting…any minute now the left and the media will dig something up attempting to link Charles Wilson to the Tea Parties." Wow, maybe I should call him -- sounds like he has inside information.

UPDATE 2. Oops, somebody just called the guy a "teabagger." This is officially the Left's fault! Chest bumps at Breitbart HQ!

UPDATE 3. Whoa, the guy's really crazy. And not particularly bright!

UPDATE 4. It's my default position that we should avoid making too much of these lone nuts (except for comedy purposes. Then anything goes!). I do wish circumstances made it easier for me to stick to it, though.

Gotta love this from Jammie Wearing Fool:

Naturally the usual suspects in the leftwing blogosphere are giddy and breaking out their usual juvenile "teabagger" comments. We have no knowledge that Wilson had any affiliation with tea parties, nor do we know if he's a Republican or Democrat.

A Democrat who's murderously angry about health care reform... say, I was just reading about this -- maybe he's a Tea Partier after all!

CRAIG FERGUSON DOES THE BONZO DOG BAND. I only kind of miss network TV, but if it were as full of Ernie Kovacs as this, I'd go back to watching it and never ever stop. (h/t Tuesdae.)



TECH UPDATE -- Comments seem hosed on Safari today for some reason. Not sure why except JS-Kit sux. Try Ffox.

THE CRITICS RAVE. I don't usually go in for this kind of puffery, but I have to make an exception for David Weigel, now writing at the Washington Post. His coverage of movement conservatism at the Independent and elsewhere has been extremely useful to me. He's also very funny on Twitter. (Or he was before success changed him.)

Best testimonial yet: Jonah Goldberg's extended mouth-fart --

Reading my email in response to this entirely neutral post on the Washington Post's announcement of Dave Weigel as their "conservatives in the mist" correspondent/blogger, I guess I should make it clear where I come down on this. Basically, while I guess I can think of a few folks I'd rather see with that gig than Weigel, I can think of a hell of a lot of people who would be worse...

Obviously, I'm skeptical about the whole enterprise and in particular what the Post hopes to get from him...

Translation: I know there's something I don't like about honest coverage of myself and my friends, but I can't think of a way to say it that doesn't make me look like a wanker. Oops, I've been wanking the whole time!

(For fans of this sort of thing, here's a classic Goldberg vacuous assertion - colleague rebuttal -- fart bomb escape trifecta from yesterday.)

SOMETHING I MISS ABOUT THE NORTHEAST. This gladdened my heart:



This is wrong-right on a few levels. First, to repurpose Herb Brooks' 1980 speech to the U.S. Olympic hockey team -- made as they were about to upset the Soviet Union team -- for the millionaires of Major League Baseball is not just a stretch, it's a sprain. Second, allowing 5-year-old Joshua Sacco to recreate his cute little YouTube trick from the field of Fenway Park was probably not the best parenting move; I imagine Sacco a dozen years from now, ego irreversibly swollen and ruptured by its premature exposure to the limelight, showing this on a broken-down iPad in Southie dives to cadge drinks. Not to mention the mild swear near the end.

But then: if anything in life compares to the relationship of the U.S. to the old Soviet Union, it's Sox-Yankees. Now, we have rivalries down here, too, and the Aggies-UT one (Saw 'Em Off) is legendary. But it's a polite rivalry. You see folks in College Station walking around in UT shirts unmolested, and the Longhorns emblem in car windows that remain unsmashed. This, as the old folks at home know, is not how they roll around the NE. They will kill you for that shit. There is neither friendliness nor courtliness in the Mets-Phillies or Sox-Yankees rivalries, and barely any sense of perspective. (Also check out this lovely story by one of my former colleagues, a Sox loyalist, about how she made a Yankees fan cry.)

Seen through that prism, pimping out a poor little boy (from Tennessee, as it happens) to whoop up the Fenway faithful's murderous hatred of the Yanks makes perfect sense. God knows there are forms of tribalism in Texas, too, some of them quite ugly, but nothing so wonderfully ludicrous as this -- at least, not that I've found yet. But it's only been a few weeks. Maybe you guys know different.

Oh, and icing: The Yankees lost. W00t, FUCK YOU DOUCHEBAG YANKEE FANS! My Mets are 1-0, and I'm ready for another heartbreaking September choke and the ensuing violence.

I ain't switching to the Astros. Fuck them. Clemens played for them.

SHORTER MARK HEMINGWAY: Sure, he's no Mark Steyn, but what the hell, I'll say nice things about Nelson Mandela if I can use him against Obama. Hey, folks -- Unlike Mandela, Obama consorts with criminals!

FREAKS. National Review's John J. Miller on a family vacation:

I took the family to Luray Caverns on Friday, in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. I haven't visited enough caves to say how this one compares to others, but it did make this top-ten list and I recommend it highly. It's also a private business that sells tickets and souvenirs, not a public park that consumes taxpayer dollars. Luray Caverns may not be a model for balancing tourism and conservation at every natural wonder in the country, but it's probably a better one than most people realize. Americans can perform a lot of wonders on their own.

It's not really their politics, specifically, that makes these people so awful, but the fact that they think it's every goddamn thing in life.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the recent rightwing claims that the alleged misbehavior by Tea Partiers against black Congressmen has been debunked -- in part by the fact that nobody taped it.

I don't think it's impossible or out of the question that Representative John Lewis is mistaken about his experience, nor would I insist that everyone take him at his word. But it's interesting, to say the least, that rightbloggers are inclined to denounce him as a "lying bastard" rather than letting this roll off their backs, as they might have done in simpler times.

I think this is less suggestive of racism than of a general uptick in conservative belligerence, whereby any attack will draw a violent response, whether such a response is politically advisable or not. They seem to believe anger is good for their cause, and see no reason to moderate it, ever, even when it makes them look a little crazed. It's a tonic for the troops, no doubt, but I wonder what it does for the camp followers.

GREAT ITEM BY LANCE MANNION in answer to that stupid shit David Brooks, who sought to turn the presumed disappointment of an accomplished woman into an indictment of modern life as lived by anyone but his own manicured self.

Meryl Streep and her husband have been married for thirty-two years, Bridges and his wife for thirty-three. Maybe Brooks didn’t watch the Oscars so he didn’t hear Michelle Pfieffer gush about what a great family man Bridges is or hear Bridges himself make part of his acceptance speech a valentine to his wife...

Meanwhile, what about Sandra Bullock?

The answer to that is Tom Hanks.

Or Paul Newman.

Neither of whom managed personal happiness through a happy and stable first marriage.

Things didn’t work out for Bullock with Jesse James but that doesn’t mean that tomorrow she won’t meet someone who is not a sleezeball with whom she will live as happily ever after as anyone ever does with anyone.

Though I generally spend my time here beating on fools for being plain wrong, I must spare a thought from time to time for the possibility that guys like Brooks have been raised in veal pens or Skinner boxes and simply don't know what life is like.

The sad thing is, such writers are so plentiful and their poisonous work so pervasive that we need people like Lance to remind us of simple reality.

THE NEW THING IS TO CARE PASSIONATELY, AND BE RIGHT WING. Remember the palmy days of South Park Republicanism and South Park Conservatism and all that? The Right hasn't had a comparably ridiculous youth fad for a while, but good news! Their labs have turned out a beta version of something called Jason Mattera.

Mattera is best known for delivering a comedy routine at CPAC and then working his victim status when people had the gall to criticize it. He has also written a book called Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation, and has been making the rounds of the Bizarro World press to promote it.

Things have changed since the days when South Park Cons declared the culture war over and won for their side. Now Mattera tells Right Wing News "our generation is made up of a bunch of circus animals, spoiled brats who aren't thinking for themselves -- and they're prime targets to be labotomized by liberalism." But there is hope! Mattera explains how even these sub-humans may be educated unto conservatism:

Young people don't get social justice. Young people don't get redistribution of wealth. Talk about redistribution of grade point averages and they will sure get that. Show them how fair it would be if we gave part of that A or that B+ they worked their tails off to get to help some person who has that C, get that up to a B -- and it's all in the name of fairness as Obama would say. It's all in the name of making everyone happy. If you want to talk about Cap and Tax, tell them how their iPod and their internet use...

They're sure to go for that. Also, try telling them that Big Government is like Jughead eating burgers that Archie paid for.

Mattera also calls "John" Stewart "a moron," perhaps because he doesn't know Stewart is supposed to be funny.

THE WORST PEOPLE ON EARTH. Today's Times article about the scumbag banks ("Pay Garnishments Rise as Debtors Fall Behind") has stories of predatory lending and dunning practices so disgusting that I'm surprised Megan McArdle hasn't risen to their defense yet*.

One of the names of the banks' factota rang a bell, so I googled HSBC spokeswoman Kate Durham and found she'd appeared in this Chicago Tribune story I'd noticed a few days back:

When he died July 17, Elmer Duncan left a $2,361.04 balance on his Carson Pirie Scott credit card, which is administered by HSBC bank.

Since her name was never on the account, Ruby Duncan sent HSBC a copy of her husband's death certificate and assumed the debt would go away.

Instead, HSBC sent a new bill -- with her name on it...

In November, HSBC sent the account to collections in Ruby Duncan's name...

[Kate] Durham said she could not discuss the specifics of Duncan's case, citing privacy concerns. But she said the company's goal is to ensure "all of our customers receive a positive card experience with each and every interaction."

Helluva way to make a living, isn't it? Sometimes, though, Durham gets to report that HSBC has taken mercy on some of its victims -- when a newspaper threatens to publicize the situation. Other times, she updates the press on the legal disposition of the bank's crooked schemes ("HSBC spokeswoman Kate Durham confirmed the bank settled the case and said it admits no wrongdoing") and does straight-up stonewalling.

I used to work in public relations myself, and may again, but if things get so bad that I have consider a job like Durham's I may have to do the honorable thing and start breaking into church poor-boxes. God, is there anything lower than a banker?

* McArdle was apparently too busy being outraged at the post office -- which has outraged me in the past, too, but leave it to McArdle to put me in sympathy with the P.O.:

Now, I have no idea whether this is regulation run amok, combined with Soviet-level distributional inefficiency; or whether she simply didn't feel like dealing with my wedding invitations, and started making up rules to force me to take my damn business elsewhere.

Oh, what are the odds?

UPDATE. The comments are all about Megan McArdle! Banks, people! Don't you care about -- oh, the hell with it, she's appalling, isn't she? Next she'll complain that she has to pay money for the marriage license, which will just be used to subsidize looters and wreckers. Or has she done this already? I'm scared to look.

NOT SUITABLE FOR TREATMENT. Haven't looked in on The Anchoress in a while. Guards, can you open the hatch?

Disgraceful.

Arrogant

Unstatesmanlike

Breathtakingly rude, willfully insulting

Contemptible

Bookworm asks: Has their ever been a more ungracious man in the White House?

Nope.

What an appalling Putz.

Sounds like putsch, a little, doesn’t it.

There, I’ve broken my own rule about referring to the American President in respectful tones, due to my respect for the office...

Sigh. Wait'll she finds out who Doctor Sheehan really is.

UPDATE. Oh, and:

It’s sickening. I cannot believe what is happening to my country. We all suspected we were in trouble, with Obama, but it’s worse than we realized.

I hope someday she explains how, if we all had such suspicions, Obama managed to get all those votes. I'll bet it has something to do with Satan!

DEAR NATIONAL REVIEW: I NEVER THOUGHT IT COULD HAPPEN TO ME! It's nice to know that, even in this age of Tea Parties, conservatives will still clap for a Nanny State when it comes to porn. Anonymous, "a psychologist [!] who lives with her children in Virginia," says "Congress should fund a long-term, multidisciplinary analysis of the effects of porn addiction on marriage and family life. The National Institutes of Health are granted billions of taxpayer dollars for research on a wide variety of public-health problems, and yet pornography addiction is not among them."

If you're one of those rad libs who think swine flu has a better claim on the NIH's attention than porn studies, hear Anonymous' sad story:

By his own account, my husband of 13 years and high-school sweetheart, was first exposed to pornography around age ten. He viewed it regularly during high school and college — and, although he tried hard to stop, continued to do so throughout the course of our marriage. For the past few years he had taken to sleeping in the basement, distancing himself from me, emotionally and physically. Recently he began to reject my sexual advances outright, claiming he just didn’t “feel love” for me like he used to, and lamenting that he thought of me “more as the mother of our children” than as a sexual partner.

Then one morning around 2am he called, intoxicated, from his office to announce that he had “developed feelings” for someone new. The woman he became involved with was an unemployed alcoholic with all the physical qualities of a porn star — bleached blond hair, heavy makeup, provocative clothing, and large breasts. After the revelation, my husband tried to break off his relationship with this woman. But his remorse was short-lived. Within a few months he had moved permanently out of the home he shared with me and our five young children. In retrospect, I believe he succumbed to the allure of the secret fantasy life he had been indulging since his adolescence.

So, to recap: this rightwing scold's husband dumped her for a blonde with big tits who likes to drink. Yeah, what besides a psychological malady could explain that?

UPDATE. Forgot to hat-tip K.Lo, whose pimpage of this article at The Corner offers wet spots of its own:

When I recently went to a press conference for a Witherspoon Institute study on [porn's] social costs, a man walked in, stayed a few, and announced, "I expected to be much more titillated by this than I am." And there we are. It's dangerous stuff...