BITCHFINDER GENERAL.

Ross Douthat is here to run theocon Routine 12 on us -- that you heathens who don't go to his Church are not the free-thinkers you think you are, for you are merely worshiping the Golden Calf of penicillin, soap and toothpaste rather than his True God. At the top he pretends to wonder whether we've all really gone secular rather than alt-religious, and seems to dismiss the idea, because everybody needs a creed:

But the secularization narrative is insufficient, because even with America’s churches in decline, the religious impulse has hardly disappeared. In the early 2000s, over 40 percent of Americans answered with an emphatic “yes” when Gallup asked them if “a profound religious experience or awakening” had redirected their lives; that number had doubled since the 1960s, when institutional religion was more vigorous.

I have not been to an Ivy, but feel nonetheless I can explain: "when institutional religion was more vigorous" you didn't talk about having “a profound religious experience or awakening” because people would think you'd gone nuts. But once Americans started to take more drugs, travel more by camper van, and generally loosen up their sphincters, you had people describing their acid trips or bungee jumps as religious rather than sensual experiences. That did not mean they now considered rubber ropes or purple barrel to be sacraments of a New Church -- they merely had no better language to describe their experiences.  I mean if these hippie effusions were actually religious, Burning Man would have catacombs by now.

Still, Douthat thinks that at least some of the unchurched have drifted into a new pagan religions, and you will know them by their eccentric behaviors:

...ritual and observance, augury and prayer, that do promise that in some form gods or spirits really might exist and might offer succor or help if appropriately invoked. I have in mind the countless New Age practices that promise health and well-being and good fortune, the psychics and mediums who promise communication with the spirit world, and also the world of explicit neo-paganism, Wiccan and otherwise. 

Sounds like someone just got back from the Ren Faire, or Santa Fe! But why should he, I, or anyone care if some sliver of the godless go in for Tarot and Enya? Ahh, but danger and darkness for us all lie in these heresies! Hear Douthat say the sooth:

To get a fully revived paganism in contemporary America... the philosophers of pantheism and civil religion would need to build a religious bridge to the New Agers and neo-pagans, and together they would need to create a more fully realized cult of the immanent divine, an actual way to worship, not just to appreciate, the pantheistic order they discern.

It seems like we’re some distance from that happening — from the intellectuals whom [Steven D.] Smith describes as pagan actually donning druidic robes, or from Jeff Bezos playing pontifex maximus for a post-Christian civic cult. 

You assume, or at least hope, that Douthat finds these images as ridiculous as you do -- but then:

The 1970s, when a D.C. establishment figure like Sally Quinn was hexing her enemies, were a high-water mark for those kinds of experiments among elites. 

Maybe they don't have editors at the Times anymore -- I shouldn't wonder -- but why didn't anyone ask Douthat what evidence he had that Sally Quinn's voodoo dolls were not just proof that Sally Quinn is a daffy as hell old rich lady, but also part of real Satanic activity among the elites? Who else was working the Ouija boards and magic wands? And has it only gotten worse? Maybe after a couple of queries Douthat would have cracked and cried out PIZZAGATE IS REAL!

Now, occasional experiments in woke witchcraft and astrology notwithstanding, there’s a more elite embarrassment about the popular side of post-Christian spirituality. 

That embarrassment may not last forever; perhaps a prophet of a new harmonized paganism is waiting in the wings. 

SOOOOOOROOOOOOOS

Until then, those of us who still believe in a divine that made the universe rather than just pervading it — and who have a certain fear of what more immanent spirits have to offer us — should be able to recognize the outlines of a possible successor to our world-picture, while taking comfort that it is not yet fully formed.

The words "certain fear" link to a story about exorcism. Wait -- now I get it -- Douthat finally saw The Exorcist! And he knows that poor little girl wasn't randomly chosen by Pazuzu -- he was guided to her by Sally Quinn and her Georgetown coven! Who knows what other black mischief these harpies have summoned -- why, theirs may be the force that invaded and ruined the Republican Party, causing it to reject Douthat's neo-communitarian ideas and turn into the Trump mob! Finally, an explanation that makes sense!

If you see Douthat outside Comet Ping Pong with a long parcel, call the cops.

EVEN IF YOU GOT JESUS, YOU'S A EDUCATED FOOL.

Something that's both great and terrible about The Federalist is that it frequently pre-empts parody -- that is, its writers will go to absurd lengths before satirists ever get a chance. For satirists this can be frustrating, but it's on us to be more vigilant and not get caught snoozing next time.

For example, here's one Peter Burfeind on "Why You Can Expect Increased Violence When The Left Is Out Of Power." At this point of course the "Violent Democrats Will Kill Us All" thing is Routine 12 at rightwing poutlets, but Burfeind has given us a plum. I must warn you that he is one of those guilt-and-incense conservatives (Little Douthats we calls 'em 'round here) and runs a blog called Gnostic America; the first graf of his essay includes “loci theologici,” “initiation sacrament,” and “baptism of blood if you will” -- and these are all about Jon Ossoff! Further down we get “psycho-spiritual mechanisms,” “Manichaeism,” “Hermeticism,” “Neoplatonism,” etc. You can imagine what catnip this is to armies of 15-year-olds who smoke Meerschaums and are working on a Hilaire Bell-roc opera and ways of beating off without ejaculating.

But never mind, the poison theology of Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey is breeding violence and something must be done! There's all kinds of nonsense in here, e.g.:

Until we pass through this gnostic moment, and begin seeing each other as our flesh and blood neighbors with names and not through the phantasmic and archetypical lenses of Facebook, the mainstream media, pop music, and any number of other media, the violence will only heighten.  

Abandon false idols, and come ye to our MAGA rallies to be cleansed, pilgrim! But here's the bit that turned my head:

This all reminded me of my favorite quote I discovered while researching for my book, “Gnostic America,” where Donna Minkowitz claims she had sadistic lesbian sex (even calling such sex a gnosis) as a rebellion against marriage norms. On these terms we get insight into the Left’s regard of abortion as a sacred act: it’s a bloody political revolution against traditional systems of oppression created by reproductive biology in cahoots with traditional culture.

I don't know how many years and thousands of family dollars this guy spent in divinity school, but I wonder if anyone will tell him that Pat Robertson already famously came up with the feminist lesbian witch quote, and that it plays a lot better (and brings in more tithes!) when rendered in relatable argot instead of academic bullshit.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN (HOLY SH*T CHRISTIE EDITION).

That's how the pros do it, folks.

•   Ha ha ha ha ha. First they finally get Rubio to do insult comedy on Trump at the debate -- not well, but at least he was sassy, and that made the people who follow him as the GOP savior feel sassy too -- "This is fight-them-on-the beaches time. This is Agincourt," perorates National Review's imported wingnut Charles C.W. Cooke. (Yes, this was their finest shower!) Rubio even started to warm (some might say unseasonably warm) to his new role -- and then Chris Christie went and fucked it all up. Some folks are pointing to Jon Ward's "Why Christie Never Went After Donald Trump" for the explanation:

...Rubio was ascending to be the Trump alternative, a spot Christie wanted for himself. With his kneecapping of Rubio, Christie eliminated the Florida senator from the running in New Hampshire, although Rubio’s unimpressive finish there didn’t improve Christie’s standing in the race. And as a result, the non-Trump lane has remained muddled between Rubio and Ted Cruz, while Trump has won three consecutive states with less than 50 percent.

This suggests by cracking Rubio, Christie was doing what he had to do to get to Trump's level -- knocking off the contenders before engaging Mr. Big. It makes some sense. But what's missing is why Christie decided to quit. A large part of Christie's appeal among Republicans is his gift for insult comedy. It's actually sharper than Trump's, but Trump's is currently more popular -- apparently Christie's shtick is a little too intellectual for the GOP proles, who don't want to have to work hard to get the references (i.e. know something about government). So my guess is Christie doesn't expect Trump to win. (In fact it's beginning to look like no top Republicans are expecting their Party to win.) He's decided to embrace the current Sultan of Insult and wait for 2020, when Trump's act will be old and the crowds may have learned to love the Christie variation.

I'll add one more thing. I remember when Ann Coulter said during early days in the 2012 campaign, "if the Republicans don't nominate Christie... then Romney will be the nominee and he will lose." Coulter is now a reliable Trump booster, and her ravings may suggest to some that immigration is the reason for her devotion. But Christie was never focused on immigration. The real unifying factor among these three parties is faith in rage and vituperation as the way to the hearts of the people. In fact, it may be all they believe in.

•   At The Federalist, Mark Hemingway has an online aneurysm some poor editor could only think to call "Bernie Supporters’ Hatred Of Work Is Why Trump Supporters Are So Mad." It starts with Hillary's emails (or as the Bowery Boys/rightbloggers call it, Routine 12) and thereafter spatters like a rotten tomato across a broad barn door of sub-topics. But you can smell something solid coming at this point:

The odd thing is that people are voting for Bernie Sanders overwhelmingly for kind of the same reason as Trump supporters, in that they don’t want larger economic issues forcing them to change their culture or lifestyle. However, the motivations of Sanders supporters are much less sympathetic.

This is an interesting way to look at the pressing economic issues of the day: Voters aren't worried about money to live on, replace a worn-out car with, save to send a kid to college, etc. -- they're worried that money will "change their culture or lifestyle." What's that even mean, and why are Sanders supporters' concerns worse than those of Trump's? Apparently it has something to do with the Sanders kids wanting to have a job, a good job, one that satisfies their artistic needs; Hemingway is here to tell these puppies they "can’t 'do what they love' without financial realities being such a killjoy." And what does he use as examples of their foolish utopianism? Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn -- the places in America, in other words, where you're most likely to make a living "doing what you love," rich cities that are in fact getting crowded because the market has spoken and youngsters prefer those places to such Republican Valhallas as Topeka, Kanas and Fritters, Alabama. Listen to him:

Portland’s celebrated “artisanal economy” is basically a result of overeducated hipsters who want to live in Oregon because the cost of living is relatively cheap and it’s beautiful, but there are no traditional jobs with opportunities for advancement. 

So they’re all starting craft businesses and restaurants. When you have one food truck for every 1,000 people, as Portland does, that is a result of desperation, not necessarily the kind of enterprise and initiative you want to celebrate.

Whereas they could be churning out rightwing propaganda like a real man! The rest is near-incomprehensible, but it seems Hemingway thinks work is only real when it's difficult and unrewarding and being done by someone besides him.

SELDOM IS HEARD A DISCOURAGING WORD.

A lot of liberals are laughing because Cliven Bundy, the cowboy at war with the U.S. government and secessionist poster boy of the Right, made some of those insane comments about black people that have become a conservative specialty ("I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro... They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves...").

Don't laugh too soon. Insane comments about black people became a conservative specialty for a reason.

At Raw Story the headline on Arturo Garcia's story says "Conservatives begin backing away after Cliven Bundy’s remarks disparaging 'the Negro,'" but Garcia himself merely asserts that "Republican politicians began backtracking on their support" -- which is wise, because conservatives as such are mostly keeping quiet about it.

A couple have taken the opportunity to embarrass themselves; Dana Loesch, for example, is all over the place, softening Bundy's comments ("big government has negatively affected not just the black family, but all families regardless of ethnicity"), then implying Bundy was misquoted ("it’s justified to have a healthy suspicion of the New York Times"), then trying to change the subject ("what exactly does that have to do with the BLM?"). But mostly the brethren seem to hope we can get past this unfortunate business, and back to the war on the U.S. government, which they think is a winning position.

For conservatives -- and we're talking about the not-totally-insane contingent that acknowledges the existence of racism -- the subject is kind of an eat-your-vegetables thing. The ooga-booga stuff is so much more fun, and keeps the troops energized. Normally I don't like to drag rightblogger commenters into these things because of the high noise-to-signal ratio in their portrayal of conservative consensus, but it is depressingly expected that when National Review's Michael Potemra criticizes a racist rant  (of the passive-aggressive, what's-wrong-with-racism, "humans like to be among their own kind" variety -- you know, Rod Dreher stuff), nearly all of his commenters defend the racist (e.g., "an article saying what is essentially common sense and well known to be true by pretty much everyone is somehow considered out of bounds in our Orwellian culture"). These are the bitter-enders to which most of the top-shelf conservative writers aim their pep talks, and most of them know better than to get on their wrong side.

UPDATE. In what I expect will become a model for the genre, National Review's Kevin D. Williamson points out that sometimes liberators such as Gandhi have foolish ideas -- which is common sense, except that he seems to think Bundy is such a liberator. He also compares the Bundy standoff to John Brown at Harpers Ferry, which under the current circumstances is especially funny. Why Williamson isn't at the Ranch with a musket if he really believes all this -- wait, I think I answered my own question.

UPDATE 2. I was wondering when the libertarians would come stumbling in. Jonathan Chait having noticed that Where Secessionists Go, Racist Trouble Follows, Reason's J.D. Tuccille first assures everyone he's no racist, then:

[Bundy's comments are] contemptible stuff. It was also contemptible when progressives merged pseudo-scientific racist notions with their ideology...

Yes, Tuccille goes straight for "Woodrow Wilson was a liberal fascist, your argument is invalid." Also, Robert Byrd was a Klansman, just like all statists! After the history lecture, Tuccille goes for Routine 12, aka Blame the Media:

"Why do all these people with strong antipathy toward the federal government turn out to be racists?" asks Chait. Maybe it's because the cameras and journalists focus on one loudmouth on horseback, even as representatives of nine state governments meet in Salt Lake City at the Legislative Summit on the Transfer of Public Lands.

Maybe it was because the summitteers didn't threaten federal agents with guns, which has long been a sure-fire way to get in the papers. Come to think of it, why didn't the rest of Bundy's live-free-or-kill squad announce "Screw it, Salt Lake City is where the action is" days ago? Could it be that the promise of separatist violence is a big part of the draw?

UPDATE 3. Bryan Preston, I think you have a little spittle in the corner of your mouth:

Wanting people to be free, independent and self-reliant, and hoping for a government that fosters those values, equals racism now? Today it does, tomorrow it won’t, as soon as some prog hero talks good about working their way up from nothing without even having to resort to fake claiming to be a minority to further their academic career, or falsifying a wartime military career.

Libtards are all born rich and spend their days lying and draft-dodging. Say, maybe I've had George W. Bush wrong all this time!

Bundy’s remarks will have fewer real-world consequences than many uttered by Margaret Sanger, yet today she’s a progressive hero...

Again with the liberal fascism history lectures. Someone invent a time machine so these guys can feel superior somewhere besides the holodeck.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the latest Obamacare outrage -- that some people had their old policies cancelled, an event that could not have been foreseen unless you had been paying attention to the news when the ACA was passed three and a half years ago or at any time since. I'm thinking they have these things on a rotation schedule -- next week, I'm told, Routine 12 will be that your new Obamacare plan will have fewer providers than the one you have now. The week after that, it'll be that the laminate will wear off your plan ID card more easily than your old one. Eventually, it'll be "Benghazi" and "skree." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I call this approach “truthaganda"...

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

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

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

OK BOYS, ROUTINE 12. I must be slipping; I had to read this John Kass column twice before I could be sure it wasn't satire:

All the signs suggest that Obama is in immediate danger of a rabbit attack. It would ruin what's left of his presidency. And it would horrify Democrats by ushering in, say, a President Bachmann.

It might happen while he's on that ridiculous vacation of his. Obama is chilling at some exclusive multimillion-dollar estate on Martha's Vineyard...

"I think it's a little too early yet for the president to be attacked by a rabbit," cautioned a veteran Chicago Democrat wise in the ways of Obama. "But it's close. Real close."

Actually conservatives try this sort of thing all the time. "Alas, as with Jimmy Carter's unfortunate tangle with a killer rabbit, the Bush socks episode became a metaphor for the Bush presidency," wrote Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator in October, 2009. "...The Bush and Carter episodes come to mind watching this Obama jaunt to Copenhagen for the Olympics." Almost simultaneously, Robert Foster quoted Frank Luntz to the effect that the failed bid "has the potential to do to Barack Obama what the ‘killer rabbit’ incident did to Jimmy Carter.” When it comes to restating talking points, these guys are pros.

No one, except some prospective 2012 GOP Convention attendee seeking a fresh angle for his handmade sign, cares much about Obama's failure to secure the Olympics now; in fact, given their new conflation of flash mobs and the London riots and their assignment of blame for them to Obama, I expect a new story is being percolated as I write, suggesting that Obama threw his Olympic bid to London*, so that it would be harder to tell that he alone was behind the international chaos.

Well, at least it gives the troops some variety in their ordnance. And it may be as much American history as they'll learn in a season.

*UPDATE. That Rio has the 2016 Olympics, while London has them for 2012, just goes to show that the Kenyan Pretender has in his incompetence allowed events to get far ahead of him.

OK, BOYS, ROUTINE 12! Thanks to Eric Boehlert for doing the grunt work:

The specifics in the case that [Byron] York highlights today are almost irrelevant. Or at least they're irrelevant to the Obama-hating bloggers who will link to York's insipid attack. But for the record, York's gotcha is based on the fact that when honoring a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner, Obama made reference to the the fact that, last year, he was honored with a Nobel Peace Prize.

Yes, Obama stressed that he was not nearly as deserving of the honor as this year's recipient. But the mere fact that Obama briefly mentioned the connection between himself and this year's honoree proved (are you following along?) that he's arrogant and can't stop talking about himself.

So it goes. I wonder if, amongst themselves, they call for these routines by number, as the Bowery Boys did.

FREEPERS SEE RED. When Paul Godat told me about this, I assumed it was some kind of hack. Even the mouthbreathers at Free Republic, I thought, couldn't be so deranged as to get after Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan for putting free tampons in the Harvard Law ladies' rooms when she was Dean.

But they are, Blanche, they are:

Nothing is "free." Someone always has to pay for it.
Whether it be health care, food, your mortgage, coffee, or tampons.

What a nightmare this woman is.

Excellent post. Thank you.
This Communist needs to be stopped

Free Tampons! Someone tell Rahm (”Take out your f****** tampon . . .”) Emannuel.

Lots of talk about her being a "bulldyke" and such like, too.

Kagan hasn't been my favorite nomination, but the wingnuts' internal combustion over her may make it so.

UPDATE. They also reference the bullshit ban-speech story. I used to think they all got morning memos, but now I think it's more like Slip Mahoney yelling "OK fellas, Routine 12!" at the Bowery Boys.

JUST AS LONG AS THEY SPELL THE NAME RIGHT. The tiresome work of heaping blame for everything on the media never ends. Today's weary shovelman is Patrick Ruffini. He claims that the "3-to-1 ratio" of Obama-only to McCain-only stories on Google News proves Routine 12, aka media bias in favor of Democrats ("the media made an in-kind contribution of tens of millions of dollars in 'free' media to Obama"), with an online-media-spend angle to add both a modish sheen to the old gambit and a hint of quid-pro-quo corruption.

Stories easily found at Ruffini's Obama-Google link include "Obama's policy pirouettes lead him toward the center," "Michelle Obama Receives Lukewarm Reception for Lukewarm Position on Gay Marriage," "Obama-Clinton joint appearance faces skeptics," "Muslim Americans Feel Shunned by Obama," articles that call Obama "opportunistic," and editorials by such devoted Obama supporters as Charles Krauthammer (who, hilariously, talks about how the press is giving Obama a free pass).

We should also consider that many seemingly neutral Obama stories, such as the ones about Obama's support for gay rights, may be perceived negatively in some jurisdictions (cue "Dueling Banjos").

If Obama is paying money for this treatment, I hope he also gets a heavy damaged-merchandise discount.

I don't begrudge Ruffini the Google journalism per se -- in fact, I've used it myself, when I pointed out that the top rightwing bloggers much prefer to talk about Obama than McCain. Clearly Obama is more interesting to everyone, including his mortal enemies, than the old fart he's running against. If that's media bias, Ruffini's next job should be to rip the mask off the press' corrupt bargain with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

WE'RE ALL DRIVING ROCKET SHIPS/AND TALKING WITH OUR MINDS/AND WEARING TURQUOISE JEWELRY/AND STANDING IN SOUP LINES. At the Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore resurrects the Megan McArdle theory that the economy is doing great because we have the internet, cell phones, and other mod cons.

As borrowers must, Moore throws in some modish touches: the college brats he attempts to lecture are "almost all Barack Obama enthusiasts." And Obama complains that workers are getting screwed. But while Mr. Hope & Change talks about downers like pillaged pension plans and lost jobs, Moore looks on the the sunny side: "The single largest increase in expenditures for low-income households over the past 20 years was for audio and visual entertainment systems -- up 119%." And Drew Carey found a cop who has jet skis. And we have diet pet food and the damn students all have iPods ('Well, duh,' one of them scoffed, 'who doesn't have an iPod these days?'), case closed.

Moore picked a hell of a time to try this routine -- and a hell of a venue:

The US economy has already fallen into a recession, according to a majority of economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal published Thursday.

“The evidence is now beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Scott Anderson of the bank Wells Fargo. Anderson was among the 71 percent of 55 economists asked to assess the state of the economy who agreed it is already in recession.

The survey conducted from March 7 to March 11 demonstrated a shift in the views of economists from a survey that took place five weeks ago. The economists now believe the economy will only add an average of 9,000 jobs monthly over the next 12 months, down from 48,500 in a previous survey.

Twenty economists said they expect pay rolls to shrink.

Of course, as they desperately search through a decreasing number of job opportunities, the kids can avail the free wi-fi offered in many of our public parks.

LIE HARDER. Rudolph Giuliani's pals at the National Review are worrying about him. After a June GOP debate, Rich Lowry said, "If any pro-choicer can win the Republican presidential nomination, it's Rudy Giuliani. His abortion answer was bad, but what people will remember is his joking around about getting struck down by lightening during it." Apparently Lowry now thinks the lightning is getting closer:

Over the weekend, Giuliani went to Florida to try to relaunch his campaign with a speech focused on his forward-looking “12 commitments” as president. He didn’t mention the one about reducing abortions... Huckabee’s rise shows that social conservatives are still animated by their traditional issues, and Giuliani has little to say to them.

Meanwhile Giuliani spoke in Durham, New Hampshire, apparently hoping to pick up a little ground in an early-primary state he'd taken for granted (he's only now opening an office there). The result was predictable. "At Durham Event, Former Mayor's Swagger Is Gone," reported the New York Sun. Giuliani told local reporters, while pledging fealty to the Second Amendment, that he "used the gun laws aggressively in New York" because "I had to" and "it worked well." A gun-owners' group official sniffed, "If Giuliani's gun control agenda was really limited 'only' to big cities, that would be disturbing enough..."

Clearly his big-city rightwing friends had earlier advised him well to finesse these issues while on the hustings. In the lovely Live Free or Die town of Durham, pop. 12,664 -- the lead news item of its website currently states that "The chiller tube replacement" at Churchill Rink "is complete, there is a good foundation of ice, and the rink is now OPEN" -- Giuliani might have done better to explain that as Mayor he ruled over eight million snarling degenerates much like the ones his auditors saw on TV cop shows, and had he not disarmed them, they might have murdered him and his ex-family. Self-defense is an argument they would have understood.

Likewise, when Giuliani talked to the L.A. Daily News about his bizarre Pat Robertson endorsement, he shouldn't have just said Robertson believed "I would be the best in appointing judges" and left the abortion angle hanging. He should have brought and fingered a scapular, or perhaps a rosary, and denounced the slaughter of millions in the womb. Had the News reporter tried to pin him to policy specifics, he could have talked about his close personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That usually shuts them up.

Given that he competes against world-class fraud artists for the nomination, and isn't such a stickler for truth himself, I don't know why Giuliani hasn't dropped this "what you see is what you get" routine yet. Maybe he's waiting for Easter, or Super Tuesday week.

DUDE, WHERE'S MY LOGIC? Well, Satch, it's Routine 12: An article about a rawknroll type guy with "a flowing mane of hair" who lends his hipster cred to the Republican Party because he imagines they're all about protecting his rights:

...the thrasher’s day job consists of running a string of adult bookstores christened "The Moonlight Readers."

...Contradiction? Hypocrisy? Paone doesn’t see it that way.

“The commies have closed more porno stores from us than the Bible thumpers ever did,” he said authoritatively. “There are people on both sides that want to take away everyone’s fun, whether it’s for the kids or the environment or whatever. They’d have no porn stores and we’d all be riding horse-drawn buggies to work if it were up to them. Still, nobody believes me, but the Republican party really is the party of tolerance these days."

Here's why they don't believe you, dood:

The FBI is joining the Bush administration's War on Porn. And it's looking for a few good agents.

Early last month, the bureau's Washington Field Office began recruiting for a new anti-obscenity squad. Attached to the job posting was a July 29 Electronic Communication from FBI headquarters to all 56 field offices, describing the initiative as "one of the top priorities" of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and, by extension, of "the Director." That would be FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III...

And it's not records of grossly illegal actions, like child porn, the Bureau's after, but explicit pictures of consenting adults, for no other reason than that they're dirty and, like gay marriage, hurt my widdle fambly by their very existence:

...Gonzales endorses the rationale of predecessor [Ed] Meese: that adult pornography is a threat to families and children. Christian conservatives, long skeptical of Gonzales, greeted the pornography initiative with what the Family Research Council called "a growing sense of confidence in our new attorney general."

Since this Paone guy apparently runs a porn business, you'd think he'd be more sensitive to this sort of thing. Unless he's paying off cops and politicians to make sure his joint never winds up on the big list. In fact, this personal endorsement for the GOP might be part of the deal.

Or maybe he's just a dumbass. Yeah, I think that's probably it.

(And wait till the Pandagon anti-obscenity trolls find out that Paone "swears like he’s in a Make-the-Sailor-Blush contest" -- then he'll really be in trouble!)

NOTES FROM LOUIE'S SODA SHOP. Logically Leapin' Lileks (gave up permalinks, it seems, until Terri Schiavo and the Pope rise from the dead; update labeled April 8) finds a professor mad as hell about a Brit Muslim chick who won the legal right to wear the body-covering jilbab to school. Lileks notes: "Odd how 'women’s rights' are now defined to mean 'covering up every possible indication one might be a woman,'" which is so wrong that I hardly need explain why to such super-genii as my readers. (Oh, ok, briefly: Brit judge ≠ all feminists everywhere; dress code relaxation ≠ endorsed subjugation of women; etc.)

From Lileks' inspirator:

No expressed desire by a child or young woman to wear traditional clothing such as the jilbab can be taken as arising from free choice -- even if, in any given instance, it is the result of such a choice -- because of the oppressive nature of the subculture.

My first reaction to this was: Does this mean that now you guys will throw that anti-evolution crap out of school? Because I'm pretty sure no child comes to school really wanting to become even more of a dumbass, despite the oppressive nature of his subculture.

Of course, the endocrine storm soon passed and I recognized that this was merely, to borrow the Bowery Boys nomenclature, Routine 12: The Dusky Hordes Advance (see Footballs, Little Green for backgrounder), with a Bullshit Feminist Angle added -- not because the practitioners subscribe to any recognizable feminist priciples, but because the Angle can be used to give (for those crucial seconds before the thinking apparatus can be engaged) the impression that Western feminists don't care about women.

One day I have to classify all these Routines, and publish my taxonomy under the title Leave Us Regurgitate.