SUPERMAJORITY. I've found a possible explanation for the certainty of Tea Partiers that they represent "The People" even though their candidates lost badly in the late elections. Rick Pearcey, "Former Managing Ed of Human Events & Assoc Ed of Evans-Novak Political Report," tells readers why the recent federal court ruling on the National Day of Prayer must be resisted by any means necessary:

It is important to recognize that the defining mainstream of America -- as set forth by the Declaration and Constitution -- is that of freedom under God, not restrictions under decisions handed down by secularized courts that have lost their way...

This ruling is an example of a by-definition extremist federal court that has reached a decision in the oppressive secular mainstream but not in the liberating American mainstream. That's why courts like this, decisions like this, and organizations like the Freedom From Religion Foundation (which filed the case) must be resisted and overcome if America is to repeal tryanny and replace it with freedom.

"Oppressive secular mainstream" -- now that has potential. It suggests that there can be a "mainstream" that is illegitimate, and which must be resisted in favor of a "defining mainstream" that is definitionally more legitimate no matter what its size.

The allegedly non-existent organizers of the TPs ought to hire Pearcey to explain this to reporters, perhaps with electoral maps showing where the liberating-mainstream districts are located.

Oh, and yes, the color-codings are in the original.

Read All About It: If you liked this Pearcey piece, you may also enjoy his "‘'Faggot'’ Easy to Defend." It has Ann Coulter, a claim that since you liberals are all relativistic you can't get mad etc., and great thickets of authentic rightwing gibberish. For connoisseurs only!

UPDATE. On that note: From Sarah Ferguson's coverage of the Freedom Federation Summit (warning: sound at FFS site) --



Why do we even have elections, anyway?

AFTER T-DAY. Scanning the headlines at Big Hollywood after a long absence is kind of disorienting:

SUCKER PUNCH SQUAD: Villain in Will Ferrell’s ‘The Other Guys’ Is Friends With….Dick Cheney!

‘Glee’ Sucker Punches Republican Fans

HOLLYWOOD INSIDER: Hate the Pope, Love Polanski

Hrm…? The Leftist Entertainment Media’s Sure Excited About Will Ferrell’s New Movie

You forget that there are enough people out there with this utterly distorted sense of grievance -- this notion that Hollywood is a branch of the government and, like all the other branches, is constitutionally obliged to fulfill the desires, not of its paying customers, but of an agitated "patriotic" minority filled with alleged boycotters of its product, or be crusaded against -- to sustain a website.

But it occurs to me that this is kind of how the Tea Party operates, too. Its members' notions of their own importance come from the attention of the same MSM outlets they usually profess to hate and disbelieve. The government is not taxing most of them very differently from the way they've been taxed for years, but now that Democrats are in office they're suddenly mad as hell about taxes.

And though they're railing against officials who were democratically elected by majorities or pluralities of their constituents, they are not surer of anything than that they represent the true will of the people. It's normal for the defeated opposition to feel confident of victory in the next election, but these people seem to believe that they won the last one.

That's probably why they go for the Revolutionary War get-ups; they honestly think the elected government wasn't elected, at least by any voters they would recognize as fellow citizens, and that the people voted in a year and a half ago are usurpers -- from Kenya or wherever.

Democrats were alleged to have felt that way about the contested 2000 Presidential election results, but they never behaved anything like this.

WHO WAS TODAY'S BIGGEST ASSHOLE? Ben Domenech, gay-judge-hunter? (Or the CBS News exec who published his stuff?) Or the Cali financial planner who took to the Wall Street Journal to revive the old Go Galt schtick, only with even more whining?

Ah, let's give it to Dreher. He's always a safe choice.

JOLLY GOOD SHOW. Watching what I guess amounts to the PM Debate in Britain. The moderator is running a tight ship, but that and the jarring intro make this look too much like a game show. Will the Leaders Debate losers hug the winner at the end?

First module is on immigration, and while all three contenders agree immigration is a good thing (Mark Steyn is screaming at his telly, "TALK ABOUT THE DARKIES!"), Cameron wants a cap; Clegg says he wants to make sure hospitals and football teams can still get immigrants, and Brown says he's handling it.

Ah, Cameron's talking about "people who don't want to work." Steyn has risen! And telling stories about a homicidal burglar who "could be out of prison in four and a half years." Ooooh, was he a sooty?

Not that I know shit about shit, but I would think Brown benefits (yes, I know only his own constituents vote for him) by being called "Gordon" by the others. It does more to humanize him than the poor man can do for himself.

Anyone else watching this?

UPDATE. Aw Jeez, Clegg tells a story about a guy whose house was burgled while he attended his father's funeral. He should have brought out a little music box and played sad music.

UPDATE 2. Liveblogs! Libs here. Funny Socialist Scots here. WSJ here. Dr. Samuel Johnson (in period drag!) here.

UPDATE 3. "Right of recall"? "A House of Lords that is elected rather than hereditary"? What a wrecker this Brown is! Has he ever held office before?

UPDATE 4. Ha! "I met a young lady the other day who said she was sick of being used in madeup anecdotes."

UPDATE 5. Dear God: Gordon Brown talks for two minutes about supporting the troops. First the pubs started selling Budweiser, now this! America ruins everything!

IT'S A FAIR COP. BUT SOCIETY'S TO BLAME!

You know I'm the last person to want to cut the Catholic Church any slack over clerical child sex abuse.

Says Rod Dreher. Yes, that Rod Dreher.

But it must be said, especially these days, that it's not only Catholic bishops who have failed to halt the sexualization of children. We are all complicit. As awful as the Catholic bishops have been on protecting kids, children would be far better off in a culture run by the moral convictions doctrines of the Catholic bishops than the one we have, run by the moral convictions doctrines of commercial interests.

If only we had the theocracy Dreher desires, priests would stop raping little boys.

Oh, wait, it gets better:

As awful as the 1950s church was, with abuse of children going on behind a veil of sacred secrecy, is it really true that kids back then were worse off than kids today, in terms of the moral environment?

You know, he's got a point. Even if your little boy was caught by one of the chickenhawk priests and fucked in the ass, he still wouldn't have heard a single rap record.

Better still, the update: After the expected, "Don't you n00bs know I was personally agonized over this thing, and that trumps any number of tore-up little-boy anuses?*" he gets to the money shot:

We sexualize our children, then are shocked, shocked when people treat them like sexual objects.

Why he didn't just call the post "Whores! You're all Whores of Babylon!" I'll never know.

(* Not a direct quote.)

UPDATE. Commenter Aaron Baker correctly points out the similar and similarly idiotic argument of Ross Douthat, ably plunked by Henry Farrell here. The Right's Catholics and Catholics Emeritae are accustomed to pin all sex crimes on Dirty Fucking Hippies. And they don't bother to change strategies when the fault obviously lies closer to home. Infallibility will do that for you.

SHUT-INS. For a bunch of people who claim -- and have claimed every year since the invention of blogs -- that the Main Stream Media is in its death-throes and soon everyone will get their news from Instapundit and Jeff Goldstein, they sure do spend a lot of time harassing newspapermen.

My favorite part of the post is Scott Johnson's straight-faced observation, "If you have been following the underlying controversy with any care, you know that Mr. Farrell has the better of this exchange," which is rather like saying, "You will notice that no one has refuted the arguments of the homeless man yelling at Fifth and Main." Also amusing are the entreaties of the poor Washington Post ombudsman, trying to get Farrell to recognize that he is not talking to a gigantic straw man named MSM but a real person with a specific job ("The McClatchy story is of no interest to me. As ombudsman for The Washington Post, I am concerned solely with the journalism of The Washington Post").

Forget journalism -- if you've ever worked in customer service of any kind, you will probably recognize Farrell's type. It was once hoped the internet would rechannel the energies of such people from the phone lines of working people to the electronic void, but it appears their need is, like the universe, ever-expanding.

SHORTER MEGAN McARDLE. Government is not the solution, it is the problem, unless traffic is making my customary bike route less pleasant, in which case government is the solution.

(Or to put it another way, "As a resident of DC, I'm certainly overjoyed to hear that violent crime has fallen to a level where we can spare valuable police resources to fight the silent scourge of . . . unruly traffic circles.")

UPDATE. Commenter mds summarizes: "Previously, she attacked the sanctity of contracts, because one of the parties thwarted her. Then she seemed to imply that affirmative action was needed for conservatives in academia. Now she's demanding that the heavy boot of the government security apparatus be deployed to smooth her way. 'Are you sure you're reading that libertarianism manual correctly?'"

FYI. You probably already had some idea of this:

A growing number of conservative groups are bankrolling startup news organizations around the country, aggressively covering government and politics at a time when newspapers are cutting back their statehouse bureaus.

The news outlets usually receive their money from right-leaning, free-market organizations...

"If you have a laptop, a wireless card and a flip cam, you're as powerful as The New York Times," said Jason Stverak, a former North Dakota Republican Party director who runs the year-old Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity in Bismarck and advises news outlets like those in Harrisburg and Boise.

The AP story is timely, as we have a big story from Now!Hampshire called "Source: State Dems scrambling to deploy tea party ‘crashers.’" Their nameless informant -- who, like the jiu jitsu practitioners who used to advertise on the backs of comic books, "sought anonymity for fear of reprisals" -- allegedly told N!H that former Democratic State Party Chairman Kathy Sullivan -- who, the website reminds us, "has been attending meetings of the [Mancester] Board of Mayor and Aldermen to glower at Mayor Ted Gatsas" -- is "heading up" a tea party infiltration scheme.

This is not the self-admitted CrashTheTeaParty operation of Josh Levin they're talking about, but an alleged false-flag operation run by a prominent Democratic attorney known mainly for pursuing unremarkable legal action on her party's behalf.

Nonetheless the story is immediately and unquestioningly believed by the sort of people who would find this sort of thing immediately and unquestioningly believable ("Setting the Stage For An American Neda" -- Confederate Yankee).

Now!Hampshire, by the way, was started up by Patrick Hynes, described by National Review as "one of the bright minds behind CrushKerry.com, now AnkleBitingPundits.com." He has also worked as a political consultant; Andrew Cline of the Union-Leader describes some of Hynes' prevarications in that role ("Hynes identified himself as 'executive director of Responsible Environmental Policy for New Hampshire'... Turns out the group did not exist").

Hynes was previously head of something called New Media Strategics, which attempted to manipulate blog chatter in less direct ways. But hell, why bother with middlemen? The great thing about the internet is, no one knows you're an operative, particularly if you take pains not to let them know.

UPDATE. SIster Toldjah finds more liberal perfidy in a North Carolina ordinance prohibiting the TP People's Gadsden flags from being mounted on long poles:

That’s strange, because the only times I ever see flags used as weapons is when radical leftists set fire to them.

How did I miss this flaming-flag weapon? It sounds rilly cool, and should be in a 3-D movie.

UPDATE 2. Sullivan denies it.

FOTO FUNNIES. Back when President Bush tried to give German Chancellor Andrea Merkel a shoulder rub she clearly didn't want, The Anchoress wanted to know what all the fuss was about:

(And btw, just as an aside, that one-second shoulder-squeeze by Bush? He should have kept his hands to himself – that’s always the smarter thing to do – but I think Merkel’s reaction had more to do with not expecting a the squeeze than her feelings of being “violated and almost raped” as some hysterics are carrying on.)

Today she saw a picture of Obama pointing in the general vicinity of Canadian PM Stephen Harper, and three guesses:

The look on Harper’s face, I can’t read. He’s either cowed or repressing his own anger. He appears to be looking directly at Obama’s finger. He is making a fist. Anyone want to supply a caption?

I miss the swaggering cowboy. He may have been tongue-tied; he may have screwed up with an errant backrub, but the didn’t boy to royalty, he didn’t give embarrassing gifts to allies, he didn’t show the Dalai Lama the back door. He never said to a visiting ally (paraphrased) “I’m gonna go have dinner with Laura, and if you decide to obey me, I’ll be around.”

He didn’t shove his finger in the face of another country’s prime minister.

But he was considered the boor.

She doesn't have the slightest idea what's actually going, but instead of just making jokes about the picture as custom dictates and as even rightwing frostbacks are doing, she grimly denounces Obama for humiliating the guy. Then, as if suddenly noticing the audience giving her the old Springtime for Hitler look, she springs to an impassioned defense of Bush, before ending:

Oh, puke.

This, I believe, we can take literally.

UPDATE. The rest of the brethren, meanwhile, are trying to unravel the mystery of the President's daughter's soccer game:

Even three days later, there are still no pictures of the president from Saturday's game. The USA just disarmed to Russia, Poland's president and 95 others were killed hours before, and there were many international leaders in Washington, D.C. for the nuclear summit set to begin on Monday, April 12.

And we shouldn't raise even more questions on his whereabouts? According to the MSM, the answer is yes.

But that's okay, comrade! The lousy MSM is dead, and it's up to Citizen Journalists like you to pore obsessively over Google Maps and girls' soccer league schedules. Track the coordinates of Castro, Chavez, and Michael Moore, too, and never, never give up! Write when you strike gold; we'll be waiting at the bar.

SHORTER JONAH GOLDBERG: I can plausibly-deniably see why my fellow conservatives are pissed at Obama's nuclear policy. Sure, no President has ordered a nuclear strike since Truman, but what about Bill Pullman in Independence Day? Plus I'm too lazy to read this, but from what little I know it makes Obama worse than Bill Pullman. And this was his senior year in college, the apex of a man's intellectual development! Faarrrrrrrrrrt*.

(*Note to syndicators: If space is an issue, this sentence can serve as the Shorter.)

WHERE I'M CALLING FROM, PART 2. Oh, yeah, Junior Brown at Gruene Hall was excellent. I assume his hot-dogging on the guit-steel, rolling his eyes back in his head, etc., are a thoroughly customary schtick, but the crowd seemed very happy to see it however many times they'd seen it already.

I love his tunes and his Ernest Tubb voice. I also admire that he has his missus in the band -- great way to double your share, guy! -- and that they've managed not to kill each other. (Years ago I played briefly and traumatically with my former life partner; when Junior started fiddling with Mrs. Brown's equipment mid-show, I flinched, expecting flying debris.)

The opener was A.J. Downing and the Buick6, who seemed to be taking it easy, which was fine as it made it less daunting for Mary and I to practice our two-step. (She reported later that a woman in the ladies' room told her, "You two are just learning, aren't you? That's so cute!" Terpsichore was never my stock in trade, but as a veteran showman I was stung to the quick.)

We had to miss the Chilifest in Snook for this, but that's just as well, as the event generated 41 arrests and 167 citations, according to our delightful local paper, the Eagle -- DWI, disorderly conduct, public intoxication, etc. The local PD "had judges on call to issue warrants for people who refused to give breath samples after being pulled over on suspicion of driving drunk." That's worse than Saint Patrick's Day on Staten Island!

The Eagle has provided me with a great window on Texas folkways. Just before Easter it carried a story from the Corpus Christi Caller-Times about a local megachurch's membership drive:

Bay Area Fellowship, the largest church in Corpus Christi, is giving away flat-screen televisions, skateboards, Fender guitars, furniture and 15 cars -- yes, cars -- at its Easter services next week...

“We’re going to give some stuff away and say, ‘Imagine how great heaven is going to be if you feel that excited about a car,’ ” lead Pastor Bil Cornelius said. “It’s completely free -- all you have to do is receive him.”

This whole thing is wonderful, but I would like to give reporter Denise Malan a special Pulitzer just for her rendering of this expert-opinion section:

Michael Emerson, a sociology professor at Rice University and co-director of its Institute for Urban Research, said “Wow” several times as Bay Area’s giveaway was described to him.

Rice, locals will have you know, is the Harvard of the South.

I have also been talking to people, all of them so far as nice as pie. Last weekend I got to talk to a machinist about his trade, the fortunes of which ebb and flow with the oil industry; his company makes parts and devices used in drilling. He showed me a ring he'd made on the job out of titanium. And he told me about things he'd seen as an amateur pilot, including a training flight in which his instructor pulled down hard on the throttle to keep the craft in which they were riding from striking a tree -- not due to operator error, but because the engine was balky. (An experience like that would keep me out of airplanes and possibly daylight for quite some time.) We discussed pets and he told me about how a raccoon had gotten the better of one of his dogs. "If a dog fights a raccoon and it's near the water," he had heard, "the raccoon will win every time." We had no occasion to talk at all about politics or the internet, which was a great relief.

SHORTER MEGAN McARDLE: I and my fiance wanted to buy a home and there were these paupers renting it. And they refused to leave! Said they had "rights"! What is this, Russia?

UPDATE. R. Porrofatto goes through McArdle's list of real estate demands in comments, making the jest even creamier: "...she finally found one house in an urban area with little traffic and no public schools, teeming with nightlife but very safe, from acceptable housing stock and isn't a condo, with such visible access to the Metro that she doesn't have to look at a map to know about it, and the damn unicorn who lives there refuses to let her see it."

ROBBED AGAIN. The awful Kathleen Parker has won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. You may read some of her anodyne, conservative-MoDo columns here.

Kathryn J. Lopez enthuses and disingenues:

I know many readers here frequently disagree with her. I do too! I know she has been unfair to conservatives — and the truth — at times. But she has also been open to us and it. She has a perch at the Washington Post that she has undeniably used to highlight issues and views that wouldn't otherwise get attention there.

Lopez fails to mention that prior to her mainstreaming, Parker was a commentator at the National Review, where she speculated that Obama related to Reverend Wright's anger at honkies because he was mad at his own white grandmother, and engaged in other such gibberish, including Delphic utterances like this:

The bottom line is Barack Obama is a cool cat. That's it. He is the saxophone.

This awkward pass at the President-to-be was, to those who can smell such things, a warning that she would be going semi-rogue in defense of her own career, briefly spelling David Brooks and Michael Gerson as the conservative conservatives love to hate with mildly disapproving statements aimed at Republicans, before settling into her niche as a vendor of formless and gormless soft-right editorial mush.

Parker also wrote a book about how America has "produced a new generation of children tattooed, pierced, angry, depressed, obese" by its discrimination against the beleaguered minority known as men.

About the best you can say for her is that she once inspired Dan Riehl to one of his more repulsive emissions.

I would have given the prize to former New York Times reporter, now homeless person Mark Hawthorne. (If you enjoy his recent work, by all means read this 1991 Times article on him, discovered by a Gawker reader.)

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the rightbloggers who ran with an obviously bullshit story about Sarkozy calling Obama insane. This is a study in miniature of how they do, all of the time. If some fact-shaped object appeals to them, they'll bite it no matter how bad it smells. One almost gets the impression that truth doesn't matter to them.

UPDATE. When you follow stuff like this all the time, you get a humor bonus when rightbloggers pretend to be mortally offended that McClatchy reported the Republicans at SRLC are "unified by hatred of Obama. "All it claims is some alleged hate for Obama by Southern Republicans with no explanation for it at all," says Riehl World View. "So, where’s the proof of this 'unified' GOP 'hatred'?" says Obamaganda, etc.

Yeah, where are they getting this outrageous accusation that Republicans hate Obama? it's like those cartoons where dogs chase cats. How can they be so sure? Where is their data?

WHERE I'M CALLING FROM.



Last weekend we took in the Grit 'n' Groove Festival in Luckenbach. Among the entertainers: Hayes Carll, Slaid Cleaves, James McMurtry, and our host for the evening, Ray Wylie Hubbard, who sorta struck me as the David Peel of Austin.

The only one I wasn't crazy about was Chris Robinson, yeah that one. Nice voice, but it was like Linda Rondstadt singing "Party Girl." (The crowd was much more polite toward him than we would have been back in the Old Country. I don't know whether that was because Hubbard is friendly with him, or because Texans are courtly, or because Robinson is actually good and I don't appreciate it because I, like all New Yorkers, am an asshole.)

Had bratwurst and Shiner Bock, and plenty of it. Tonight, Junior Brown at Gruen Hall. Looking forward, but I'm kinda sorry to be missing the Chilifest.

Aw hell, this Texas ain't half bad.

AS I WAS SAYING. Maybe I was too hard in the previous post on bloggers with pretenses to journalism. Take the recent death of the Polish President in a plane crash at Smolensk, for example. Many rightbloggers are soberly compiling the facts as --

I THINK IT LOOKS VERY MUCH LIKE PUTIN IS EXPANDING RUSSIA'S GLOBAL POWER WITH NO FEAR OF OBAMA.

IT LOOKS LIKE OBAMA IS PUTIN'S BITCH.

AHMADINEJAD AND MAHMOUD ABBAS MUST BE GETTING JEALOUS.

Never mind.

DEFINING JOURNALISM DOWN. Cleaning the mailbox (amazing how clogged it can get even when I'm not working my ass off) and found a note from Mr. Miller of Blogoland about a TechCrunch story from last week entitled, "52 Percent Of Bloggers Consider Themselves Journalists" -- this number representing a four-percent increase from the year before. (Note: I'll only add his remarks on the subject if he permits me, as they were part of a private conversation.)

At first I wondered: Why would anyone want to be considered a journalist if he could possibly avoid it? Everyone hates journalists. They certain don't trust them.

I considered that, for many of these fools, the title might still be a step up. Then a better explanation came to me.

First, a general answer: These days an unprecedented number of people in several fields want cred for something they can't or won't actually do. To some extent 'twas ever thus -- administrators who do not practice nor know anything about the sort of work they supervise, for example, have existed since before the dawn of management theory. But management theory sure increased their number.

And technology has done the same in other fields. How many more musicians, for example, do we have now than before who can't actually play an instrument? I don't mean as in, "You don't play no guitar, boy!" I mean they just program machines to do it for them.

Now, a lot of them get great results, so it's not a bad thing in and of itself. But it also gives a lot of less-capable people the idea that, with the right equipment, they can do just like the big boys do. too.

Similarly, because they have the electronic wherewithal to publish as news sites do, a lot of bloggers consider themselves "journalists" even though they've never covered an event, nor engaged any information (whether first-, second-, or third-hand) with anything like journalistic rigor.

That may explain why they think they're entitled to be called journalists, but it still doesn't explain why they would want to own it, given journalists' low status.

The Citizen Journalists it has been my curse to contemplate most are the rightbloggers, so I mediated on them for an answer, and came to this:

They want to be journalists not so much to elevate their own reputations as to lower that of journalism.

I've talked a lot here about the seemingly contradictory self-image of rightbloggers: on the one hand, all-powerful and poised at any moment to destroy the MSM with the awesome force of their Citizen Journalism; one the other, helpless victims of media malfeasance.

Clearly the big papers and networks are losing money, but it isn't like Joe Wingnut's House o' Slander is getting rich off that. People can still tell the difference between the Daily Bugle and some guy yelling about Nobama socialism.

But they have reason to hope that this situation won't last. As more papers fold or diminish, it may be that people will notice that the journalistic conventions to which they were once used are going away, as the old ice-wagons and Fuller Brush Men did, and mentally abandon their expectation of them, as clearly no one has the money to keep that coming anymore.

To help speed this transition along, we have bloggers increasingly delivering in breathless tones the BREAKING news that something that didn't happen happened, or vice-versa. This, their confidence announces, is the new journalism -- braying and blarghing, 24/7. It only remains for the punters to admit it.

It's possible that these guys actually don't understand that what they're doing is substantially different from what, say, reporters at the Washington Post do. I doubt they miss that fact -- but they may at least intuit that, if they keep yelling loud enough, maybe other people will.

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...

JIVE. How do you get the kids to listen to Bill Whittle? The same way you get anyone else to listen to him -- with tricks.

"Every now and then I'll run into a hipster," says Whittle in his latest PJTV entertainment. Knowing how tightly-wound the guy is, I was hoping the crew would bring in actual hipsters of the sort I used to see in my perambulations around Williamsburg*, so Whittle could denounce them for (to use a previous Whittlism), "sipping six-dollar coffees as they complain about capitalism on $2,000 Apple laptops," and maybe even criticize their grooming and shitty music. That could have been as good at the C.P.O. Sharkey episode where they go to a punk club.

But then Whittle tells us, "These hipsters, and many of them are in their 50s and 60s..." and shows us a picture of what looks like Wavy Gravy. Also, he says these alleged superannuated hipsters "are always so proud of being progressive, they're open-minded, always ready to try new ideas..." and affects to hear from these hipsters, "Don't be such a square man."

He's not even trying! Couldn't he have thrown in something about Micachu and the Shapes, or goatse? Regrettably, the reverse-hip act continues with Okie from Muskogee passive-agression: "They're not rigid and fear-driven like me... stuck with prehistoric ideas like individual responsibility and the right to keep and bear arms..." The Founders were "the worst kind of squares" -- which is, in case you haven't tumbled to Whittle's brand of irony, a big compliment.

Having trapped us in his bogus sideshow, Whittle lectures us about how Moses is better than Zeus and all those shitty little gods, "Greco-Roman philosophy" (that is, two falls out of three), and other boilerplate about why the West is the Best -- hardly remarkable, controversial, or difficult to grasp, but Whittle still insists it's dynamite to the longhaired punks: "At this point the hipster usually goes 'huh?'" He's not the only one.

* We don't seem to have hipsters around College Station, though Mary swears she saw some at a Starbucks once. I did recently see what appeared to be hipsters in Austin, but those specimens were of a softened form, more relaxed than the ones back in Brooklyn. Maybe that's because the coffee 'round these parts isn't so hot.

WE ARE ALL INTERESTED IN THE FUTURE, FOR THAT IS WHERE YOU AND I ARE GOING TO SPEND THE REST OF OUR LIVES. If I understand this hallucinogenic video aright, McMegan thinks that the recession will cause moral looseness as well as puritanism, and end in libertarianism, as everything does. Because the people far away from us won't matter so much, you see.

I would assume she wrote and directed the whole thing, but the folks on the breadline didn't have arrow-tags that said "looters."

GO AHEAD, HIT MY HAND AS HARD AS YOU CAN. Sometimes you just can't improve upon the simple juxtapositions provided by Memeorandum. Alongside a link to Steve Benen's Washington Monthly article about how red-state conservatives are screwing up their Congressional apportionments by denouncing the Census, Memeorandum provides another to the wonderfully apposite ravings of Sister Toldjah:

Why does one side of the Census postcard say it’s “required by law” to fill out but on the other side it says “you’ve been sent a *request* to fill it out”? No wonder the Census return rate is down at this point from the 2000 Census return rate. That and the fact that more and more people in this country are simply fed up with the federal government, a government that laughably suggests via their many Census ads that filling out the Census gives ordinary Americans the power to bring their “fair share” of federal tax dollars to their respective communities. Of course, they don’t mention that the more federal tax dollars poured into the community the more than community is answerable to Washington, DC. This is supposed to be “empowering”? No thanks.

And don’t you love the “non-invasive” Census questions, oh, like asking you for your name, birthdate, and phone number? [Emoticon]

It's official, these people are insane. The Census is in the freaking Constitution. You'd think folks who like to dress up as Revolutionary soldiers and have Tea Parties would approve of it. But apparently even the least objectionable and longest-lived requirements of the Federal Government are too much for wingnuts. Next they'll be talking about the Bill of So-Called "Rights" and the tyrannical Library of Congress.

Maybe they think it was all downhill after the Articles of Confederation, or when civilization itself interrupted the natural Randian state of nature.

I am very fond of my new home, but I'm glad I sent my form in while I was still living in Brooklyn and before I moved to Texas, so I could accommodate these morons in their quest for electoral irrelevance. Nydia Velazquez, bitches!

Jesus -- they're really totally abandoning normal democracy and just betting everything on hopes of a popular insurrection, aren't they?

GOLDEN BOY. Tom Tomorrow alerts me to Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser's latest, in which the eminent psychologist, documentarian, and non-tipping restaurant patron argues that liberals are mean to conservatives. We've heard this sort of thing many times before, often from Dr. Mrs. herself, but this time DMOP has picked herself a doozy of an exemplary victim: Jeff Goldstein.

Yes, that Jeff Goldstein (and this one), the belligerent proprietor of rightwing bile-shed Protein Wisdom. Goldstein is known for the viciousness of his own attacks on others -- including physical threats -- yet rightbloggers are accustomed to rally to his defense whenever liberals are mean to him.

I could never figure out why they're so protective of this bully, but I have a theory: Goldstein's always bragging on his academic credentials, so maybe the rightwing community, like any family that sees itself as coming up in the world, considers him their frail, schoolly child, and thus are prone to coddle him, and to be willfully oblivious of the fact that when he's not in his room studying he's out hitting the other kids in the back of the head with rocks.

DMOP's essay supports this theory. In this case the affront to Goldstein is even slighter than usual: He recently got a message from one of his former mentors, who requested that his name be removed from Goldstein's site. Goldstein, with his characteristic equanimity, described this as censorship. Goldstein's account is almost entirely rageaholic blargh-blargh, but DMOP, like an aggrieved parent, hears only her boychik's pain and sorrow:

Initially, Goldstein says he was hurt by his professor’s intolerant attitude, but then, his hurt rightly turned to anger.

Here I imagine Goldstein dressed up like the Mean Widdle Kid, peering from behind Dr. Mrs.' skirts and sticking out his tongue.

Inevitably it comes time for her to tell us that the boy is fine, it's those meddling social workers who are crazy. DMOP's reaction formation: Liberals are, like psychopaths, incapable of understanding the suffering of conservatives.

So just remember that next time a liberal treats you poorly, it may not be his or her fault. Like the psychopath who has no empathy for his fellow human being, liberals may have a blind spot when it comes to having any empathy or understanding for their conservative brethren. It often makes a psychopath worse to show empathy for him, as he will take advantage of it.

As that weird last sentence suggests, DMOP is ready to dish out prescriptions for the treatment of liberals -- but her aim is not to help the patients:

...expanding right-leaning media, getting more people involved, and making sure consequences are dealt out to those liberals who lie and treat conservatives with disrespect. Yes, this means all of us speaking up wherever we are when we hear false, inflammatory, or just plain mean remarks made about conservatives. And finally, clamoring for more diverse educational topics and literature in the schools and media would be helpful.

Conservatives shouldn’t back down on any of this, ever. For it is persistence and consistency that will eventually win the day.

From this it would seem that Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser is accustomed to practice on involuntary patients directed to her by the state, toward the end of neutralizing their threat to society, and that's also how she would like to deal with liberals who say mean things. If you were thinking of retreating to the Gulch with her, you should know that's the kind of libertarianism she believes in.

SHORTER NORMAN PODHORETZ. So, people have forgotten I'm alive, eh? I'll just whoop up Palin like I did Reagan, and remind these young punks that Norman Podhoretz always goes full retard!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the weird tendency of some rightbloggers to embrace the loonier fringe figures out there -- including the Hutaree Jesus militia nuts. Some, like Dan Reihl, are content to make incoherent innuendoes and leave their commenters to explain how the sheeple will rise up just like they did after Ruby Ridge. But some -- like the Perfesser, who I thought would know better -- take the position that the government is making false arrests to cover for Obamacare.

It's not my way to put anything past the Gol-durned Gummint. But it's a sucker's bet to make such accusations without evidence. It doesn't do the presumed-innocent arrestees nor the cause of justice any good, and it makes you look like a fucking nut.

But that seems to be a new tactic among the belligerati -- to make common cause with the most deranged political actors. Can it be what they really believe, or are they so desperate for new alliances that they'll take whatever they can get?

UPDATE: Oy. From a $100 victim of the National Review begging squad:

We have to take a stand against creeping totalitarianism. I'll take the risk that the regime will somehow get the NRO donation list and use it to round up the freedom-loving counterrevolutionaries

I think I have it figured now: These people want to think it's dangerous and brave to be a Republican, instead of just sad. And they're willing to pay, in money and IQ points, for the privilege.

RE-UPDATE: They actually pulled the "freedom-loving counterrevolutionaries" post. Bad conscience, or did this cowboy threaten to stop payment on the check?

RE-RE-UPDATE: Ann Althouse provides the worst "this proves Bush right" angle of all time. Several Althouse commenters have laffs about Detroit, proving that armed mobs of white people can declare war on the government and some people will still be more concerned with the Black Menace.

THE LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE. From RedState:

I had sworn off movies for the past year and a half, as my small contribution in the boycotting of Hollywood.

However, this week, when months of swelling, sustained, dedicated opposition to ObamaCare from this nation’s citizenry was answered by its passage with an iron gavel, and then followed by mockery and taunting, a particular movie scene immediately came to mind. I decided to temporarily lift the boycott, dust off an old favorite, and give it a watch.

Watching the final battle scene in “The Patriot”

Aaaaaugh! OK, continue:

was cathartic as I believe this scenario closely parallels where we are right now in this contemporary battle to protect our liberty from an over-reaching, arrogant, and corrupt government.

Try to imagine, in the early days of the Reagan Administration, some recalcitrant hippie saying that whenever the James Watt Department of the Interior got him down, he overcame his usual boycott of bourgeois entertainments and played a tape of The China Syndrome, and this inspired him to resistance.

That'd be pretty pathetic, wouldn't it?

THE GILLIBRAND LESSON. I am pleased to see credentialed deep-thinkers like Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM discovering, as I did months ago, that Kirsten Gillibrand is one of the safer reelection bets among Democratic Senators. But McMorris-Santoro says:

She may have earned herself a second term simply by not being the controversial figure many in the Democratic party thought she would be.

Close, but "many in the Democratic Party" don't know what the fuck they're talking about. What could be controversial about her? She's as managed a candidate as I've ever seen. From the get-go Chuck Schumer and some other smart Dems have been packaging Gillibrand brilliantly:

• Lots of Listening Tours in the hinterlands (whence she came -- it's not just for carpetbaggers like Hillary);
• Unashamedly going "ahem" to the White House any time some rogue Democrat challenged her;
• Association with high-profile clean-water, safe-baby, and anti-gun legislation.

That last bit is the most interesting and, I think, has the widest applicability. I recall when Schumer pulled Gillibrand off the NRA gold-star list and handed her a typical New York liberal gun position -- namely, anti. It was supposed to be too radical for those anti-statists upstate -- and actually a little too anti for me. (Thank God I'm in Texas now, where I can easily get guns and drunk as God intended!)

But it's all in the way you spin it, and along with her other palaver, the gun stuff helps present Gillibrand as a goo-goo, family-friendly type, which position turned out to be formidable enough to scare away Giuliani and several other contenders.

The moral of the story is: When you read how them Tea Parties is sweeping the nation, look at your local theater listings; look at the anodyne, MOR crap that's popular. Look at your grocery aisles, your department store shelves, etc. How much has changed there in a year? It's rare that people stray very far from the models they're accustomed to follow, in politics or in anything else -- especially when the other side isn't making a good argument for change.

Considering the complete and almost unprecedented collapse of the Republican Party from 2006 onwards -- recession, sex scandals, and all -- Obama should have carried fifty states in 2008; as it was, he only got over at all because the GOP got on the wrong side of a real watershed. And a watershed is not the sort of thing you reverse quickly. Hell, the Democrats even got over all right in the 1978 Congressional elections.

This isn't an argument for the moral superiority of Obama or Gillibrand or anyone, but a caution against any lazy assessment of any incumbent as "weak" just because the papers are now full of anti-incumbent talk. Given all the big Democrats like Evan Bayh recently quitting and such like, a lot of people expect big Democratic losses this year. Most of them certainly don't deserve to hold their seats. But as Clint Eastwood once said, deserve's got nothing to do with it.