WORD GAMES.

Now conservatives are fighting with dictionaries and thesauri.

In June, Betsy Rothstein at The Daily Caller was outraged that a display definition of the word "bigotry" on Google included the sentence "the report reveals racism and right-wing bigotry." Rothstein demanded answers from Google, who told her they got it from Oxford Dictionaries. "We hear Google plans to reach out to Oxford Dictionary to flag the above 'right-wing bigotry' sentence as inappropriate," claimed Rothstein. (When I search the word on Google now, I get no sentence at all; perhaps Google put it on their "Dinesh D'Souza possible nuisance lawsuit/Congressional investigation" list.)

Rothstein's investigation into the liberal lexicographical conspiracy didn't end there: This week she reports, "Well, it seems Merriam-Webster also thinks conservatives are bigots." Webster's listed "liberalism" as an antonym of "bigotry" -- and as if that weren't bad enough (couldn't they have at least made it "classically liberal"?), two of their "related words" were "conservatism" and "illiberalism"! Webster's gave her a perfectly sensible answer, which the publisher tactfully began with "I apologize for the unfortunate juxtaposition," so Rothstein headlined her item "Merriam-Webster Editor Apologizes For Bigotry Association to Conservatism (Sort Of)," since conservatives love a little whiff of victory with their persecution mania.

Now at National Review Andrew Johnson is following Rothstein's lead, attacking Roget's Thesaurus: "Thesaurus Synonyms for ‘Obstructionist’ Include ‘Right-winger,’ ‘Rightist,’ ‘Tory,’" he cries. Imagine! Where'd this slanderous idea that conservatism is about standing athwart history, crying "Stop!" come from?

Next they'll denounce common sense for always making them look bad.

UPDATE.  In comments, Derelict reminds us that when conservatives didn't like Wikipedia making them look bad, they created Conservapedia. So maybe now they'll create their own dictionaries and thesauri. whetstone proposes "The Oxford Gibberish Dictionary or Reagan's Thesaurus," which would include

peace (n.); synonyms: war; ongoing futile occupation
bigot (n.); synonym: persecuted free-thinker
libertarian (n.); antonym: pants-crapping authoritarian NO IT'S TRUE SHUT UP

sharculese gets the big picture: "They get that the internet is powerful, and that they don't control it the way they'd like to, but they also fundamentally have no clue how it works, so they've invented their own personal Fairness Doctrine, enforced not by federal jackboot but by careening a metric dongload of poutrage at anyone they find insufficiently deferential."

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE GAY-BASHERS, AND I DID NOT SPEAK OUT, BECAUSE I WAS NOT A GAY-BASHER....

Columnist Josh Barro:

Fundie queen Mollie Hemingway.

Other mooks on the thread agreed: "After reading that, in my mind's eye were jack-booted thugs, enormous rallies, and broken glass." Later more of them ran to Barro's Twitter to yell, "Seig heil!" and tell him "Keep calling for murdering those who don't agree with you... don't be surprised with dissent Douch," " You can't take it? After calling for death to those who have dissenting views? Punk ass bitch. Wake up," "He's doing like other #LGBT leaders and calling for deaths," etc.

Good thing he didn't call for stamping out racism, too. Then he'd be Hitler and Mussolini.

(During the Battle of Chick-Fil-A, by the way, Hemingway was delighted to hear that she might have gotten a reporter fired for saying mean things about the chicken chain on Facebook. That's how devoted to freedom she is!)

UPDATE. Making everything dumber, Erick Erickson at RedState:

Certainly I’d like to think Barro doesn’t have extermination of the religious at mind, but then King Henry never said to kill Thomas a Becket. He just openly pondered about who would rid him of that turbulent priest.

I suppose he imagines Josh Barro openly-pondering this in an MSNBC green room, and Ezra Klein going, "Uh, so you're saying I guess kill the Christians? Because I could totally do that" while Amanda Marcotte stirs a cauldron of latte and cackles. (Oops, I forgot the armbands!)

UPDATE 2. Comments are already a joy. "First they came for the attitudes," intoned Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard, "but I did nothing, for I was not an intangible mental state." But Shakezula counters: "Attitudes are in my head. And so to stamp out an attitude you'd have to stamp on my head." Boo-yah, liberal fascists!

GIBBERISH FOR JESUS.

The University of Chicago has an online guide to "Accessing Abortion in Illinois," and Ian Tuttle, one of National Review's cadre of Jesus freaks (K-Lo's Kids, we might call them), is enraged:

...the abguide is a narrowly tailored resource: Only those determined to counsel women not to seek an alternative to terminating their pregnancy need peruse.

I wonder if women who want an abortion for themselves can peruse it, too?  This convoluted sentence is an early tip-off that Tuttle is too angry to write clearly, at least without yelling "slut" and "whore" at frequent intervals, yet he persists, determined, it would seem, to find an intellectual angle on anti-abortion discourse so it doesn't look so much like "because Jesus said so, in code" (though it is).

Tuttle's willing to work, though; he finds a reference from the guide to a "foundational document," and tears at that a while:

[The ACRJ's] “A New Vision,” with its Port Huron–era complaints (“imperialism,” “cultural hegemony,” “White supremacy”), is a twelve-page repurposing of Marx — albeit less proletariat, more Pretty Woman — except that in lieu of “liberation” and a classless society comes “justice.”

Not only does Tuttle get to make fun of Marx and hippies, he also hits on that bugbear "justice" -- why, Dinesh D'Souza agrees with him that the Left is all about this so-called justice, while conservatives are all about freedom! (That reminds me -- isn't D'Souza due before the bar of so-called justice soon, whereby he may lose his freedom? Must create a Google alert.) So Tuttle digs in:

So successfully has the Left commandeered this ancient ideal that it has become a byword of political southpaws the way “freedom” is a byword of conservatives. That dichotomy is wrong, but it is pervasive, and “justice” is regularly spliced to a variety of niche progressive concerns to give them moral purchase: reproductive justice, environmental justice, social justice.

The problem with all of these, though, is that they are fundamentally contentless.

Foolish leftists! There is no justice without the Lord, as is proven by Tuttle's quotes from Moses and Russell Kirk. And conservatives still have freedom, neener neener.

But reproductive justice does not strive to accord with any order of things outside itself — not even, evidently, biological fact. Nowhere does the ACRJ envision concretely what reproductive justice would look like, any more than Marx dwelt on the specifics of a classless society. Reproductive justice thus means nothing more than reproductive freedom,

BIG GASP. Justice is nothing but freedom! But freedom in the non-D'Souzan sense, therefore bad.

By the way, that paragraph does indeed end with a comma in the original, because why not.

If you were wondering where the Jonah Goldbergs of tomorrow will come from, look to the Bible Camps.

REAGAN IS GROOVY, KILL THE PIGS.

A.J. Delgado has an item at National Review called "It’s Time for Conservatives to Stop Defending Police." She really goes off on the fuzz, man -- she's even outraged by the recent NYPD killing of Eric Garner, which is the first time she or any conservative I can think of has expressed outrage over cops killing an unarmed black citizen. She also claims that "the Right is waking up to this reality" in part because "the Tea Party’s emphasis on constitutionalism has refocused attention on the Bill of Rights."

If I believed this, I'd book tickets for the 2016 GOP Convention so I could catch the posters of Reagan saying "Kill the pigs," and the Chicago-'68-style riots. Forgive my lack of faith, but if you know Delgado's work, and the conservatarian movement in general, you will have already guessed what really animates her: she's moving to reverse decades of rightwing law-and-order advocacy not on humane grounds, but on big-government grounds -- because the cops have "generous salaries and ridiculously cushy retirement pensions covered by the taxpayer," etc.

But Delgado's not a good enough writer to leave her hand untipped. You may notice at the bottom of the article a disclaimer: "EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece has been amended since its initial posting." In the current version, Delgado warms up the crowd thus:

For decades, conservatives have served as stalwart defenders of police forces. There have been many good reasons for this, including long memories of the post-countercultural crime wave that devastated, and in some cases destroyed, many American cities; conservatives’ penchant for law and order; and Americans’ widely shared disdain for the cops’ usual opponents. (“Dirty hippies being arrested? Good!” is not an uncommon sentiment.)

That kicker was even more interesting in the original:

...conservatives’ penchant for law and order; and Americans’ widely shared disdain for the cops’ usual opponents. (A hippie being arrested is something people from all walks of life are usually happy to see.)

So much for Constitutionalism! Still more interesting is a passage that appears in both versions:

Conservatives are rightly proud to have supported police officers doing their jobs at times when progressives were on the other side.

This is the heart of the whole wretched thing. They still want the parts of police brutality they've always wanted: Physical intimidation of their enemies, and a vicarious feeling of butchitude. They just don't want to pay for it.

UPDATE. I think I may have found some source material for Delgado's anti-cop animus: From an April 2014 edition of The Free Thought Project:

Bundy Ranch Woke Up Conservatives to Police Abuse

Cliven Bundy, role model! I'd say he's got a pretty effective anti-police posse himself -- it's called the Militia Movement.

UPDATE 2. My Cali buddy Ben Thompson sends this lovely New-New Conservative image:

He's a hippie, Hippie Ronnie; that John Birch brain, that G.E. face...

In comments, swkellogg is succinct on Delgado: "A change in embouchure will still only get one note out of a dog whistle."

A few other commenters get to a Delgado claim I skipped over: namely that conservatives are also newly-sensitized to police brutality (besides cop-on-hippie, that is, as well as cop-on-unpersons to be named later) because "cell-phone cameras are having a tremendous impact... It’s easy to dismiss eyewitness claims of police brutality, but a lot harder to ignore evidence such as a video of a man suffocating to death." Jay B ain't buying that at a discount: "Bull Connor EXISTED in real life," he informs Delagado. "The historical record of cops killing unarmed people unnecessarily is so endless... that it literally takes the world's most obtuse person to not recognize that heavily armed agents of the state OFTEN ABUSE THEIR POWER." "It wasn't being insulated from heavy interaction with the police that made it easy for conservatives like you to dismiss eyewitness claims of police brutality," adds mortimer2000. "It was, and still is, your ingrained race and class prejudice, coupled with an authoritarian desire to see harm come to people you disdain."

Should also include some of Delgado's commenters for balance: "Progressives have co-opted the police and soon they will do the same to the military." "They have become storm troopers for liberals. BasicLly anti Bill of Rights." Plus a bunch of them claim that if a cop shot their dog, like a cop in Delgado's story shot someone's dog, they would kill the cop. Yeah, these are useful foot-soldiers for the Cause. (Funny thing, the only time in 33 years of citizenship I ever saw one of New York's Finest cock his pistol was when some homeless lady's German Shepherd stood up and bared its teeth at him. Having been bitten by a German Shepherd, I think the cop did right.)

WHAT MAKES THEM HAPPY.

Shorter entire right wing: Paupers get their benefits yanked -- HOORAY!

They're already laughing about how Congress didn't cross their t's, giving the antis their big chance in the Halbig decision. I don't think much of Democrats, but I must say it looks like they're at least trying to bring us some relief, while the Republicans (and the conservatives whose hands are up their asses) are rooting for them to fail. Which is pretty much how things are in general, isn't it?

JONAH GOLDBERG'S LOVE GOSPEL.

Ladies: Grateful to be considered something more than an object, but nostalgic for old-fashioned romance?  Jonah Goldberg has good news: Conservatives may be willing to treat you nicer. In fact, look at the sacrifice he's prepared to make:

Political correctness can actually be seen as an example of Hayekian spontaneous order.

The guy who wrote Liberal Fascism is saying nice things about P.C.!  The need to peel some unmarried-female votes from the Democrats has been judged an all-hands-on-deck situation at Camp Conservative, I guess, and Goldberg must move with the times. But he can still keep his Hayek! Also he can portray himself as a thought-leader:

I wish more conservatives recognized that at least some of what passes for political correctness is an attempt to create new manners and mores for the places in life where the old ones no longer work too well...

Identity politics is only part of the story, and not even the most important part. Medical, technological, and economic changes are almost surely far more important than changing demographics alone...

The New Conservatives are watching their pressure gauges and tracking the New Mores. Apparently these studies are desperately needed (and possibly eligible for a grant!), because the New Conservatives are locked in a Mores Race with the liberals to see who's got the best political correctness, and Goldberg wants potentially donors to know that the libs' sexual Sputnik is still in orbit:

Democrats recognize this, which is why they’ve cynically exploited changes in family structure, female labor participation, and reproductive technology and declared that Republicans have declared war on women.

This is like saying "Democrats cynically exploited growing tolerance of minority groups to make us look like bigots."  There's a step missing there, Goldberg, can you guess what it is?

Progressives are steadily dismantling the beautiful cathedrals of traditional manners and customs, arguing that they’re too Baroque, too antiquated. They use the sledgehammer of liberation rhetoric to destroy the old edifices, but their fidelity to liberty is purely rhetorical. In place of the old cathedrals they build supposedly functional, modern, and utilitarian codes of conduct. But these Brutalist codes are not only unlovely, they are often more prudish than traditional approaches...

It's like he knows us, right? To capture chick votes we smashed the cathedrals of courtly love! Which was awkward, you know, because all those apses and semitransepts are so vaginal, but it was worth it to get rid of that meddling Christ. Then we put up a Government Fucking Center. A bit sterile, but it does the job, especially after you put down the hemp mats.

Goldberg thinks he can do better:

What I would like to see from conservatives is recognition that some of the cathedrals are outdated. But instead of arguing that they should be razed and replaced with Jacobin Temples of Reason with rites and rituals grounded in abstraction, why not argue for some long overdue updating and retrofitting? I guarantee you more women prefer a modified version of the traditional process of wooing, courting, and dating before sex than the “modern” schizophrenic system of getting drunk enough for a same-day hook up but not so inebriated to forget to get a signature on the consent form. Traditional notions of romance and respect are far better tools than the mumbo-jumbo campus feminists have to offer. The problem is that the mumbo-jumbo feminists are fighting largely uncontested.

I look forward to seeing this conservative modified version of the traditional process of wooing, courting, and dating before sex. "I'm here to read you some pastorals." "OK [continues texting]." Later: "I swear by my life and my love of it I won't cum in your mouth."

Just not being a dick was never an option, I suppose.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about recent doings in the Culture War, one of my favorite subjects and, as I admit upfront, a cheering alternative to the news from Ukraine and Israel. Couldn't we all use a little good news?

I could have spent a little more time in the column on the Archie-dies-for-gay-friend thing, but here's a little lagniappe for your late-night real people from Patheos' Mark Shea:

Good Soviets Will Now Repeat: “Archie Died For Our Sins”

Like I said the other day: I didn't know how great an idea this was until I saw how badly it pissed off the Jesus freaks.

UPDATE. Forgot to post the link earlier so here it is.

ELAINE STRITCH, 1925-2014.

She was great. (In this clip, wait'll she warms up! She begins a tad pro-forma, as if she doesn't like filling in for Merman nor the giant image orthicon cameras pointed at her -- that discomfiture is fun to observe, too -- but soon she shakes it off, and by the encore it's as if she's spotted a friend in the audience and is showing off.)

Now maybe I'll download her children's album.

UPDATE. Guess we should have this, especially if you've never seen it:



Not many people in history could be called definitive interpreters of Sondheim and Noel Coward.

U MAD BRO?

After National Review's Charles C.W. Cooke put up a column about how it's okay to cry over the little wetbacks he nonetheless wants to throw out of the country, I tweeted this:

Cooke took it thus:

Tbogg chimed in:

Drawing this response:

Liberal Fascism has much to answer for: It has apparently bred a generation of wingnuts who think that if you make fun of them it's the Warsaw Ghetto all over again.

UPDATE. In comments, quoting Cooke on the harsh necessity of the extirpations ("But let’s recognize, as we do so, that the tears are real"), hellslittlestangel finds the verse I'm kicking myself for missing:

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size...

Spaghetti Lee has a good one too. D Johnston chooses to freestyle: "Kids, I know we're sending you back to a place that's a virtual war zone at this point, but I hope you'll accept my sympathy as a consolation prize. You think I want to do this? You think this gives me joy? Not a milliliter. But paperwork is an important part of life, and it's best that you learn it now before you enter into the business world..."

SITUATIONAL ETHICAL LAFFS.

I am a hypocrite. I thought the idea of Archie Andrews getting killed to save the life of gay friend Kevin was silly. But then Rod Dreher walked in...

Nope, nothing overtly political here. Hey, since I was last in Riverdale, they’ve got teen lesbians, one of whom is a "fierce Latina"...

Seems like everybody is gay in pop culture today... 

Seriously, it is a fascinating question how two percent of the population can have had such a tectonic effect on a culture, and in such a short time.

...and now I think it's terrific.

P.S. On Twitter, Tristan R. Salazar notes: "That CDC study [Dreher] mentions does peg the number of LGBT in the US at about 2% -- the same percentage as that of Jews in the US, and yet (almost) no one says, 'What's with all the Jewish people in popular culture?'"

UPDATE. "Harumph!" says Jay B in comments. "Gays are one thing, but when did Jews start writing comics?"

Also, how did I forget to include this:

WHY SHEEPLE NO LIKE SHELDON?

From Reason magazine:

How to Talk to Nonlibertarians

Take a shower and don't stand so close to them when you talk. Just kidding! Do go on, Sheldon Richman:

If libertarians want to change how nonlibertarians think about government, they will need to understand how nonlibertarians think about government. By "nonlibertarians," I mean the majority of people who spend little if any time pondering political theory or what Murray Rothbard called political ethics. They may focus at times on particular government programs and actions, or on proposals for new programs, but rarely about government as an institution.

You mean normal people?

...So how can libertarians speak to these people in a way they will understand? How do we get them to question deeply held beliefs that may never have been articulated? My basic advice is to start by trying to see government as they see it. This may be distasteful, but if you want to persuade people, what else are you going to do? Without this, you might as well be speaking in a foreign language.

I have to say it's amazing they let this be published someplace non-initiates might see it. (I know, fellas, but at least technically Reason magazine is available to the public.) Richman sounds like an alien in a cheesy sci-fi story trying to figure out what is this "love" the humans speak of?

But he does try: He even acknowledges that people worry about losing their job and having no safety net to help them, which must have been a big step for him. Unfortunately:

...The libertarian job is to convince people that, on two counts, government provision is a bad way to secure a good end. First, it is morally wrong because it requires compulsion — the threat of physical violence — starting with taxation. And second, as a consequence of the first feature, state provision is inferior to private provision because it is outside the free and competitive market — a process that, unlike the political realm, ties rewards to customer service and stimulates entrepreneurial discovery, which makes products and services better and cheaper.

I see the problem here: Richman thinks that the littlebrains don't know that the power of the state is terrible. But we do know it, and nonetheless prefer to deal with the welfare state -- yes, even with police and taxes -- than take a chance on rule by corporations, because we also know that people who pitch us "customer service" and "entrepreneurial discovery" as an alternative to our current means of survival are the sort of well-manicured grifters who try to talk senior citizens into giving up their life savings for a fake stock certificate.

With a little patience Richman might be able to polish his act sufficiently that after ten minutes people won't want to throw garbage at him, but I don't think he has it in him -- really, look at this --

In other words, consumers would be safer without government protection. But that counterintuitive claim must be patiently demonstrated, not merely insisted on. (One disadvantage for libertarians is that most people are ignorant of economics.)

-- and imagine the guy trying to win hearts and minds anywhere but FreedomFest and Koch Industries. We all get tired of glad-handers, but these guys don't even seem to like people. And they certainly don't want to offer them anything except the opportunity to be smug shits like themselves -- and they think that's a great come-on because for libertarians that's the tippity-top of the Maslow pyramid. They'll give out toy guns in Harlem to make a point, and give a speech at Howard to make a point -- but it's not the people of Harlem or Howard they're trying to make their points to -- it's the people who already agree with them, and who'll get the press release and say boy, our guys really showed those people.

It's not a formula for political success. Fortunately for them, their sponsors have deep pockets and can buy politicians who'll just straight up lie to them about what they're trying to do.

NOW NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP....

...surprise, it's about the border crisis. The brethren are really tearing this up like an abused German Shepherd mauling an infant; check this World Net Daily headline:

WILL OBAMA'S BORDER CHAOS SPARK REVOLUTION?
Exclusive: Morgan Brittany on administration action: 'It is classic Cloward-Piven'

Well, you say, even at a low-rent outfit like WND, the authors don't always write the headlines --

Ah, but this is what the left and this administration wants. It is classic Cloward-Piven. Overwhelm the system, anger the populace, create chaos, and then, martial law takes over...

If Obama gets his way and the system collapses through illegal immigration or financial means, if he succeeds in confiscating our guns and ammo so that no one but the government has them, then we the people will be at their mercy, and the sad thing is that many people will welcome their control. At that point the American people will be helpless against a totalitarian state, and they will have succeeded in the full transformation of this country.

She forgot the bit where a leering Nicaraguan lights his cigar with a dollar bill and sneers, MUCHAS GRACIAS SEÑOR OBAMA! HA HA HA HA! as your sons and daughters are herded off to work as poolboys and tequila-bandolero waitresses in Aztlan, but otherwise it's perfect.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN... DELAYED AGAIN!

Yeah, I know, it's like when network TV was a thing and they took a show you liked and moved it around the schedule chaotically and you were too young to know that meant they were going to kill it. (Except they not going to kill me! No sir, if anyone's gonna kill me it's gonna be me! That or cirrhosis!) So I'm guessing Monday night, maybe Tuesday morning. Sorry for the delay.

I don't think I'm killing the surprise when I tell you it's about the border controversy. There's an aspect I didn't get to, though, that you might enjoy:

Chicago Slams Obama: ‘Worst President Ever Elected’ 

Amid the daily grind of poverty and violence afflicting Chicago’s South Side, black residents spoke up Friday to express their disgust with President Barack Obama. 

“Barack will go down as the worth president ever elected,” one man told Rebel Pundit. 

“Bill Clinton was the African-American President.” 

Residents gathered in front of the Chicago Police Department headquarters to protest, questioning why federal dollars were being spent on immigrants while native Chicagoans suffered. 

Some called for Obama’s resignation.

This is it! Helter skelter she's coming down fast! It's sort of like when conservatives used to tell us black people were going to turn on Obama because they hated gay people -- and it's almost as long-lived: Take William Jacobson, whose current headline is "Black Chicago activists: Why are illegals at border getting aid while we suffer?"; back in 2012, he was telling the world about the "Media blackout of black Chicago protesters marching against Obama," which news he got from Rebel Pundit, who seems to specialize in this sort of thing. The 2012 item appeared four days before the election; perhaps Jacobson thought it would turn the tide for Romney. Well, it's worth trying again, especially since there'll be no more Obama elections to reveal how little this shit matters. Plus it gives conservative whites a chance to make fun of black people, as a trip through the Free Republic thread demonstrates, and that always seems to cheer them up.

Oh also:

Even Chicago is fed up! Furious black protesters call Obama ‘worst president ever elected’... 

‘He has to resign!’ Chicago residents FED UP... 

This video is about Chicago residents fed up with President Obama...

It's a thin line between message discipline and just plain laziness.

UPDATE. In comments, satch reveals he's done a little reading on the Manchild Movement folks who appear to be running this protest, and finds they are concerned with the male seed:

Be a part of the Manchild Movement as we voyage to the bottom of the wounded hearts of men. You will experience the transforming power as it challenges the frustrations and afflictions that have caused many men to become silent as a lamb and have lost their stand to roar like a lion. 

Manchild allows you to be an overcomer of the plot through the world system to destroy the male seed which many have become increasingly emasculated by tragedies, traumas and abuse.

Or, as commenter DocAmazing puts it, "the same old Iron John with a blue steel finish."

FRIDAY ROUND-THE-HORN.

• The tension was thick as the President, accompanied by his unsmiling Secret Service retinue, entered the Clintons' living room. The Secret Service took up strategic positions as the current President weakly and unconvincingly shook the 42nd President's liver-spotted hand. On a nearby loveseat Hillary loftily pretended to read the latest New Yorker, a magazine she didn't really enjoy, as she had never really warmed to the biggest city in the state she had adopted for purely political reasons.

"Looking good, Mr. President," Obama lied with his customary ease.

"You, too, Mr. President," said Bill, going him one better in the easily-lying department, though secretly he was concerned that, away from the carefully-orchestrated spotlights, the Leader of the Free World looked so haggard, and reeked of cigarettes. He wondered if the AIDS rumors were true.

"I merely came by so our friends in the media can accurately report that I visited my 'biggest fan' and my 'former Secretary of State,'" said Obama. There was a stunned pause before the Clintons and Obama all burst into maniacal laughter, terminated by Obama's coughing fit.

"Hillary, you're looking wonderful," said Obama, not bothering to try. Hillary smiled cynically. Though they despised one another, she and the bumbling President had shared so much -- that night of drunken passion on Air Force One, the Benghazi Deception -- that she was almost charmed by his nefariousness.

"OK, fellas, let's go," Obama told the Secret Service, and instantly they vanished like goblins on midnight at Halloween.

"That fucking bastard," roared Hillary, hurling her magazine to the ground. "Where the fuck does he get the balls to come in here and jerk me around like that? Fucking faggot." She jumped up, went to the sideboard, and filled a crystal tumbler with expensive bourbon.

"Now, Hillary," said Bill, pretending as he had so many times, in and out of office, to conciliate, "he may be a deviate but he sure ain't no faggot."

"Oh yeah?" said Hillary, her throat burning from the hefty slug of top-shelf liquor. "Then how come all the whores he sneaks into the Oval Office are flat-chested?"

Bill shrugged. "He does like 'em skinny," he said in the appraising tone of a practiced whoremonger. "And white. Guess he wants the opposite of Michelle."

Hillary laughed raucously, bourbon dribbling down her chin. "Christ on a fucking crutch, who wouldn't? That fucking beast. She should be in a diorama at the Museum of Natural History. No wonder 'Let's Move' is such a success. Shit, if I was trapped in a room with her I'd move through the fucking wall!"

Bill was laughing so hard that he winced; the excitement was putting a strain on his heart. Hillary noticed this, and considered administering the coup de grace by showing Bill her secret photos of Michelle and Elizabeth Warren having lesbian sex; if that didn't do it, she could show him the even more secret pictures of herself and Mary Landrieu having lesbian sex. But no, she thought, let's save that for the 2016 primaries. Playing the loving wife, she went to him, smiled, reached into her pocket, and offered him a soothing dose of heroin.

"Man," said Bill after snorting it up, "I sure hope these witnesses who always seem to be nearby when we act like this don't ever talk to Ed Klein."

ADVICE TO CONSERVATIVES (OFFERED NOT IN KINDNESS, BUT BECAUSE THEY'RE TOO STUPID TO TAKE IT).

Don't use "orphanage" in a headline. It reminds people of why they hate you. (See also "widows.")  Geraghty goes on:

We may help out these kids because we’re kind-hearted souls...

Sorry, had something caught in my windpipe.

...some will say it’s the Christian thing to do.

Sorry, same thing. Okay:

...But we’re not obligated to do this. This isn’t our responsibility and this isn’t our fault. The parents of those kids are the ones who should be taking care of them – feeding them, clothing them, sheltering them and educating them. And I don’t think it’s cold-hearted to ask whether our immediate effort to take care of these kids – because they so desperately need care – is setting us up to be their long-term caretaker.

Geraghty supported the idea that we should devote $2 trillion and thousands of lives to invading and occupying Iraq to bring them freedom. But that was different, of course: We got to kill a bunch of them, which made it butch. Also we didn't have to hang around with them. Huddled masses yearning to breathe free are the worst!

Sometimes I wonder what these people think America is all about, but it's becoming clearer every day that their vision resembles an endless loop of Three Stooges shorts with Sousa marches playing in the background.

WITH A CAPITAL T, AND THAT RHYMES WITH P, AND THAT STANDS FOR PISSANT WINGNUTS BITCHING ABOUT OBAMA PLAYING POOL.

Guess pool is the new golf, as raged-up rightbloggers go after the President for playing pool with the Governor of Colorado instead of picking off Messicans with a shootin' ahrn at the border

"This is a sign that the bubble around the White House is much thicker than people think,” [Jonah] Goldberg said. “Obama’s always liked to cultivate the idea of the ‘No Drama Obama.’ Maybe they think this shows him as an every-man kind of thing.”

Said Goldberg as he completed a round of Fudge Pong.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Obama shoots a little pool while his nation crumbles.

Hey, a classical (or at least Classics Illustrated) allusion! Who else saw Quo Vadis or Roman Legion-Hare?

And not only that he can then go to Colorado, swill beer, play pool and pretend all is well. Beer and pool – the modern version of Nero’s fiddle.

WHILE THE WORLD BURNS, OBAMA FIDDLES, GOLFS, AND SHOOTS POOL

AND WEARS MOM JEANS AND EATS ICE CREAM AND EATS DOGS AND AAAARRRRGH [SPLURT]*

WHO IS IN CHARGE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA’S p/r? PLAYING POOL WHILE OUT WEST? (and not going to the border! yikes!) Click to see who tweeted the pic!

This headline-salad was tossed by Greta van Susteren, and "who tweeted the pic" was the Governor, who is apparently is not sufficiently nuts to worry about the effect of the President playing pool on the nation's security, unlike Andrea Mitchell. Susteren added, "Pic tweeted by Colorado Governor….with all the problems going on, the President finds time to play pool (BUT NOT CALL AND HELP SGT TAHMOORESSI?)" (peculiar capitalization, color scheme in original). I don't see why Obama should bother freeing any more sergeants after the way the brethren treated the last one.

Here’s What Obama Is Doing Instead of Visiting the Crisis-Stricken Border 

...Between this and his conscious decision to avoid the disaster on the border, for which he is at least partly responsible, he’s basically daring Republicans to join Sarah Palin’s call to impeach him. “So sue me!” was yesterday’s taunt. 

That would be a foolish thing to do. They should run against his policies and portray him as what he is — a slacker who doesn’t care about the damage that he is doing to the country.

That ought to cut a lot of ice, coming from the most work-shy Congress in history. National Review has also gotten into it with its usual dickishness ("Images of President Obama playing pool amid the border crisis aren’t going over well..." Andrew Johnson, you'll never miss a meal). Soon, in addition to accusing him of fritterin' away his noontime, suppertime, chore-time too, the brethren will recirculate that Photoshop of the President smoking what they will now characterize as Bevo or Cubebs.

Before they add that to the impeachment bill of particulars, however, they better scour the internet of this.

UPDATE. * I really wanted to link that bit to the scene in 1900 where Donald Sutherland gets his dick sucked while raving about the fascist revolution ("They will pay in money and land and cows and cheese and blood and shit and AAAGH!") but I can't find it online. Anyone else?

In comments some smart alecks bring up the previous President ("Now watch this drive"). I also enjoy dex's contribution: "SAVE US KENYAN IMPOSTER SAVE US." And Tom Hartley reminds us that while it hasn't been such a good idea for a Democratic President to visit Texas since 1963, going to the parts where armed crackers are currently congregating would be an even worse one.

THE THIRD REICH 'N' ROLL SWINDLE.

Dinesh D'Souza, his publicists, and their factota think, or pretend to think, that D'Souza's new movie is being suppressed by Google. The Hollywood Reporter:

Lawyers representing Dinesh D’Souza’s newest film, America, have fired off a letter to Google demanding that the search engine correct problems that they say are hampering the ability of consumers to figure out where the movie is playing. 

The letter claims that Google has been confusing America with 2016: Obama’s America, which was D’Souza’s first movie and has been out of theaters for two years, while Lionsgate released America on July 2 and it is currently playing in about 1,100 theaters nationwide.

This is my favorite part of the whole thing:

While Google did not respond to multiple requests for comment, some potential moviegoers are accusing the search company, or others, of engaging in a plot of misinformation. "This mixup is likely being coordinated by those in the film industry who hope the film fails at the box office," one wrote at the film’s Facebook page.

Say this for D'Souza's team: Getting mainstream press to take this seriously is impressive, but getting The Hollywood Reporter to put Facebook comments by "potential moviegoers" in their story is even more impressive. Best of all, they got action from Google:

“Our systems have unfortunately confused the title of the movie America, because it’s a common term and appears in many movie titles,” a Google spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday. “We’ve updated the Knowledge Graph, our database that stores this type of information, but it will take some time to display showtimes and other details for this movie. We’re always working on improving our systems, and we appreciate the feedback.”

The squeaky wheel gets the publicity!

The complaint is of course bullshit -- any "potential moviegoer" who can't remember the full name of the movie he wants to see, nor think to check with his local theaters, is probably too developmentally disabled to go outside alone. And you can imagine what kind of "update" Google is doing based on one complaint, even one sent by lawyers.

But for D'Souza's purposes it doesn't matter: If box office receipts go up, the D'Souzans can say it was because they broke the Google-Commie logjam; if they don't go up, they can claim Google is stonewalling them, just like the IRS!

As anyone can see by the steady stream of paranoid emails (and Reason videos) that they churn out, pitchmen for conservative products believe their audience are suckers for anything that stokes their persecution mania. On the evidence, it seems they have assessed that audience correctly.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

and what is it about again? Oh yeah, Hobby Lobby. I know, no one remembers. Special thanks to Nick for being my cat's-paw as the Voice publishing tool's still verkakte.

Anyway this late edition includes a particularly snide bit of Ross Douthat; if you haven't had enough of him after that, you can go to today's Times and see him take thousands of words to explain that he agrees with Erik Erickson. Anyone got a Thomas Aquinas facepalm gif?

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN... DELAYED!

There's a problem with Movable Type, so I can't get in to publish, so the column goes up tomorrow. What an interesting experiment in publishing a regular column in an unaccustomed time/date slot with no prior warning!

Anyway, to pass the time of day here's a little something from the culture war desk, from Adam Bellow -- yes, I thought he was doing alright too; not only does he have his dad's name and money and a related career in publishing, he's also got a stake in Liberty Island, the wingnut welfare arts site covered here a few times. Sounds cushy, but every so often I guess he still has to rattle the tin cup. Here he is at National Review:

We need to invest in the conservative right brain. A well-developed feeder system exists to identify and promote mainstream fiction writers, including MFA programs, residencies and fellowships, writers’ colonies, grants and prizes, little magazines, small presses, and a network of established writers and critics. Nothing like that exists on the right. 

This is a major oversight that must be urgently addressed. We need our own writing programs, fellowships, prizes, and so forth. We need to build a feeder system so that the cream can rise to the top, and also to make an end run around the gatekeepers of the liberal establishment.

Ca-chunk! Ca-chunk! The clot of coins bangs inside the can. Keep a brave front, Adam; Richard Mellon Scaife is dead, we have to hustle.

Conservative leaders are more concerned with raising money for political campaigns than supporting the new cultural creators.

It's a point he can sell: Even the rubes are catching on that the big outfits to which they've been entrusting their donations are not delivering bang for buck. But no one knows what will: You can't trust those tea party guys, either.  So maybe put money in conservative art? Their pig eyes narrow: Do I have to dress up for galas? It is abstract, or done by fags? It would take too long to explain, so he goes straight for the Iron Curtain -- you boys remember that! The fellas who invested in samizdat, they really cleaned up, morally speaking! You don't want to miss this opportunity to take down Commissar Obama:

Today’s conservative fiction writers are not in danger of having their fingers hammered in a labor camp. But their self-publishing efforts do represent a modern analogue to the dissident samizdat movement, and they are deploying the same weapons in defense of your freedom of conscience. Can we really afford to ignore them?

They're grabbing their coats! Quick, wheel out the big gun:

I know what Andrew Breitbart would say if he were here:

Okay, some of them are staying -- maybe they're passed out, or just wondering if you have any coke, but they're here, so they're half-in: Now all you have to do is establish the connection between that wad of cash their financial manager advised them to throw down a sinkhole (as long as the papers are in order) and that country they love so well:

What good will it do to write a novel? May as well ask what good it did to show the revolutionary flag at Bunker Hill (a battle we lost, by the way).

One good thing about this racket: If they do go for it, you don't have to worry about them coming to their senses later.

UPDATE. At the Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg tries to be helpful, suggesting that if conservative novelists would just use their "aesthetic powers" they might get somewhere. I imagine Bellow, tipped to the presence of upscale attention, checking his cup for folding money. Look, lady, when a beggar asks for money don't give him a lecture!

UPDATE 2. Making everything worse as usual, Jonah Goldberg tells us the liberals who run Hollywood actually make lots of conservative entertainments because that's what sells ("Most Hollywood liberals probably oppose the death penalty, yet they make lots of movies where the bad guy meets a grisly death to the cheers of the audience"). A sane person might ask: if Liberal Hollywood is making the bloodthirsty entertainments conservatives like, what is Goldberg bitching about? See Bellow, Adam: They may fantasize about being treated with the respect due an artist, but what they really want is their names above the titles and (especially) on the checks. All the rest, as someone once said, is propaganda.

WONKS PROPOSE AND MOBS DISPOSE.

As part of the mainstream media campaign to drown America in liberal lies, the New York Times prints Sam Tanenhaus' long, loving article on "reformicons" -- the Republican New Ideas grifters I wrote about a month ago at the Village Voice. This excerpt will give you some idea:

On Jan. 8, the day before the reformers met for their brainstorming session, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida stood in the Lyndon B. Johnson room at the Capitol — it was the 50th anniversary of Johnson’s declaration of a war on poverty — and announced a plan to create a “revenue-neutral flex fund” that would disburse federal funds to the states to spend as they wished on antipoverty programs. The response was mixed. A Brookings Institution scholar said the idea was workable, but liberals warned that bloc grants give too much power to the states. At the same time, a scholar at the Heritage Foundation argued that collecting money at the federal-government level and handing it out to states is the “exact wrong way to produce conservative policies.”

But for reformers, it was a breakthrough.

[Pause to reflect that these people have ridiculous life priorities, and need to be shaken like paint cans in old-fashioned department stores and told to 'reform' their own dork asses, starting out by taking some drugs and jumping into a fountain]

The plan wouldn’t save a dime in the short run — in fact, it would most likely increase costs — but it met the bigger ideological goal of “incentivizing” work, a pet theme on the right since the days of [Irving] Kristol and his liberal ally Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Mmm, that's some good reform right there! But since so many white people are falling out of the middle class into poverty, will it be as easy as it was in Moynihan's time to convince them that the poor need bootstrappado?

The punchline to this reform bullshit is what conservatives are actually doing these days, as you can see just by reading the news:

• Celebrating a Supreme Court decision that yanks birth control coverage from women because Jesus;
• Blocking buses of immigrants from entering a California town;
• Calling for America to go back to Iraq.

So while reformicons play patty-cake, the people they will allegedly lead into an enlightened new age are dancing around the same anti-contraception, anti-immigrant, pro-war bonfires that exercised them in decades gone by. Meanwhile in Texas, which conservatives like to point to as a laboratory of Republican ideas, the state GOP has endorsed repealing the Voting Rights Act, among other boob-bait. Reform is just something to make the starched-collar crowd feel better about themselves.

UPDATE. "Reading through the comments, I see many of us hit on the 'incentivize work' nugget o' shit," says Derelict, and I can see how that particular bit of awfulness would give most normal people pause. The actual Room to Grow manifesto Tanenhaus and his subjects are pimping contains several similar New Ideas, like this, written by Michael Strain:

The federal minimum wage requires that potential employers take a $7.25 per hour risk on long-term unemployed workers -- workers who are already seen as quite risky compared to applicants who are coming from other jobs or have been employed more recently. The government should lower the risk associated with hiring long-term unemployed workers by temporarily lowering the minimum wage that firms must pay them.

Now, now, he did say "temporary":

Temporarily lower minimum wages for the long-term unemployed should be coupled with a temporary subsidy (through an enhanced Earned Income Tax Credit or a wage subsidy) to ensure that no one who works full time and heads a household lives in poverty.

Instead of subsidizing the peons, let's subsidize businesses so they can pay them less -- that's one beauty part. And there another: A hint of how long that "temporary" subsidy would last comes in another part of the same section written by Michael Strain, in which he bitches about Obamacare and its subsidies:

The law gives subsidies to households with income up to 400 percent of the federal poverty line (this year, that would mean up to $94,200 for a family of four) in order to help with the cost of purchasing health insurance. The more money you make, the smaller the subsidy you receive. Because a little extra work results in losing some of the benefit workers receive from the government, the “subsidy phaseout” operates as a tax that discourages work.

Were his EITC plan ever to pass into law, how long do you think it would take for Strain the Cutter to confront Strain the Giver and tell him his "subsidy phaseout" was making people workshy -- that sub-minimum wage workers were declining to bootstrap themselves to higher wages because their cushy government-subsidized jobs had deincentivized them -- and that it has to go? So it would -- and the workers would stay at their starvation wages, because why would Republicans restore a minimum wage they'd always hated and which their Reform scam had finally enabled them to kill?