THE MAGIC OF THE MOVIES. "America has had a big change! We've had a big election -- how will it effect Hollywood? Will there be a big change?" You people owe me big time for actually watching Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd discussing this in a PJTV video so I could transmit their message in a less unpleasant format.

Simon suggests that, in the wake of the election, conservative screenwriter Chetwynd should now be running a movie studio. This appears to be a joke, but Chetwynd responds, "Though there's a logic. In a logical world -- one would think that, you know, they famously once said that even the Supreme Court reads the polls, that the people in Hollywood who do control Hollywood and control half of our destinies and the films we see would look at what's going on in this country and would say, you know what, maybe it's time to perhaps spread our net towards the right of center and those people…"

…instead of producing Communist propaganda like Faster, Saw 3-D, and Megamind.

Chetwynd then attacks Danny Boyle, who made a quick crack at an opening about the Tea Party, as "an Irishman" who only knows "four blocks of Manhattan and a couple restaurants in West L.A., making statements about America, completely secure that the audience would embrace him, and in fact Variety reported it approvingly as far as I can tell. They don't change!" Expect Boyle's treatment of his own comment to be produced by a consortium of Hollyweird types and rejected by the American people.

Then there's a a loving remembrance of Sam Goldwyn and those guys, who are compared favorably by Chetwynd to traitors like Steven Spielberg, who "belong to the great artistique community in the clouds," which is why nobody goes to Spielberg movies. But Simon reasons that even the Spielbergs will be affected by what he considers the "potentially revolutionary election for the entertainment industry," which will motivate filmmakers to finally get The Joe McCarthy Nobody Knew on the Silver Screen.

Chetwynd is willing to be somewhat optimistic, only because he sees a lot of "hedge fund money" (apparently a new development) coming in from "politically committed" backers for alternative entertainments, and these worthies will steal the lunch of modern moguls who "disdain what the American electorate has done" and are as bad as the pictures of Janeane Garofalo, Keith Olbermann, and Bill Maher they then show to reignite viewers' righteous indignation.

Simon wants us to know that cultural revolutions take time, but he and Chetwynd assure us they'll be keeping track. Subscription button at right!

If you haven't had enough of this sort of thing, their colleague Bill Whittle is still offering Declaration Entertainment, where the scripts are developed by You, the Citizen Producer! So far they've given us only videos performed by Whittle himself, like What We Believe, Part 5: Gun Rights ("The philosophical substrata for gun ownership is something most gun owners understand in their bones," he says, "they don't need to be told anything I'm about to tell you," which you have to admit is a hell of a come-on), but like the guys said, these things take time.

TODAY'S OUTRAGE. Oh Jesus:

Motifs of the American flag have become a regular addition to Google's artistic repertoire celebrating patriotic holidays but today's Veterans Day doodle has sparked a measure of controversy.

In the past Google personified its doodle with red, white and blue letters but the addition of an Islamic crescent moon-looking "e" has all the Internet abuzz.

Actually it's the tail of the "e" at the end of the logo:


I suppose I should be grateful that even some commenters at Free Republic and Godlike Productions are giving this the raspberry, but wait till Jim Hoft sees it. (h/t P.A. Godat.)

At least we can count on the mainstream press to... oh hello, Charles Hurt of the New York Post:

With his feeble flame of "hope" thoroughly doused here in the United States by last week's elections, President Obama has set out around the globe in search of throngs still enthralled by his flowery rhetoric...

So that is why your president is halfway around the world instead of being here in the United States to celebrate the sacrifices American soldiers, sailors and airmen have made around the world to keep the real, still-burning flame of freedom alive.

The President is on a government mission to Indonesia, when he should be home saluting veterans. "And the White House wonders why so many people think there is something foreign about this guy," says Hurt.

This is actually crazier than the Google thing, but it's the everyday kind of crazy rather than special-occasion crazy, so people are less likely to notice.

THE WRONG MAN. One of the advantages of this sublet is that it comes with cable, and gives me the opportunity to catch up on some old movies. The Wrong Man was on TCM last weekend.

I love it, but this is probably the least enjoyable of Hitchcock's films. The photography and editing rhythm have a kitchen-sink dullness that seems influenced by television. (Hitchcock did not disdain trends -- he even made a 3-D movie -- and may have felt, in the wake of the success of Marty, that it would be okay to go more naturalistic than usual.) Though the tightening of the screws on the hero, a musician wrongly arrested and nearly convicted of robbery ("Oh, this looks bad for you, Manny"), quickens the pulse, it's a less exhilarating than depressing experience. We're even denied the pleasure of watching for Hitchcock's traditional cameo, as he appears in a sententious prologue to tell us that the story is real.

Hitchcock seriously restrained himself with this one. Usually there's something like fun going on in his movies -- sweeping camera movements, incongruous humor, an unexpected change in rhythm or point of view. In The Wrong Man, there is that amazing moment when Manny is put in a cell and the camera swims, and the quiet hysteria of the group of women when he's "identified," but other than that, there are none of Hitchcock's trademark bravura touches -- it's all small things that show how screwed Manny is, like his apparently uninterested attorney (great performance by Anthony Quayle) doodling at the defense table, and especially the way people look at and talk to Manny. Henry Fonda collaborates in this -- quiet, earnest, remarkably well-behaved. Even when his wife goes mad, she's quiet.

It isn't a question of the material or the setting -- even the physically-restricted Lifeboat has scenes, like Gus' amputation, that are practically operatic in their handling. The effect of Hitchcock's restraint is to shift the focus from the strangeness of the usual paranoid scenario and onto its believability. Now the caprice of fate is not a magical intrusion on reality, but reality itself: bleak, unrelenting, and pitilessly unjust. Suddenly the little English boy who was famously influenced by a few minutes in jail is giving us the grown-up version of his nightmare.

ALL THE BREAKS. Amy Alkon is upset that a program in a Canadian city is asking honkey citizens to "acknowledge your white privilege" as a consciousness-raising exercise. Alkon calls this a "Vile Racist Campaign Against Racism," and seems to believe it's going to have "children grow up thinking they're bad people by virtue of their skin color."

Actually, I find it useful to contemplate my white privileges, and any other privileges into which I was born, like being a citizen of the richest country on earth, and did not obtain for myself. In fact, when I was growing up, it was customary for adults to remind children of such luck as they had inherited, like the food we had and "people starving in other countries" didn't. This was meant as a spur to gratitude and humility, and to not being such a whining little shit. I guess things have changed. Everyone's a victim now, even (perhaps especially) the most privileged among us.

Alkon is also mad about this:

I'm also opposed to sexism in offering opportunities -- like this recent example by Maria Shriver:

...an event in Long Beach sponsored by first lady Maria Shriver to provide free medical, financial and educational services to low-income women.

So, if you're a low-income man, screw you, go eat out of Dumpster? Nice! Sorry, but isn't feminism supposed to be about equal treatment for all, not special treatment for people with vaginas?

Of course, there are plenty of gender-blind programs, such "Socialist Security," but Alkon is opposed to those, too. Considering her keen nose for injustice, I assume she finds such programs unfair to the Randian supermen who can take care of themselves -- The System unfairly taxes them and, adding insult to injury, gives the proceeds to paupers!

If this lottery ticket in my pocket comes through for me, I certainly hope I won't spend that much time complaining.

THE PLAYING FIELDS OF EAT ME. Linked by Ole Perfesser Instapundit and The Volokh Conspiracy, Barry Rubin of Pajamas Media, on how they tried to make a pussy out of his boy.

It‘s something of a stretch to compare a soccer game among eleven-year-old boys with the fate of the democratic world, but I’ve always managed to see big issues in small things.

No doubt! Rubin's kid plays on a soccer team, but the coach won't let him win:

The coach is a nice guy, but seems an archetype of contemporary thinking: he tells the kids not to care about whether they win, puts players at any positions they want, and doesn’t listen to their suggestions.

This contradicts everything normal people know about American sports teams at any level, but I completely believe Rubin fils told him all that, though it would be much more believable in reverse order: He doesn't listen to us, and, and, he didn't put me in the right position, and, and, he disagrees with you politically, Dad!

And of course, the league gives trophies to everyone, whether their team finishes in first or last place.

Don't worry, this loathsome, un-American result will change mid-season, thanks to the Invisible Hand -- of Barry Rubin, kick-ass substitute coach!

When the opportunity came to step in as coach for one game, I jumped at the chance to try an experiment. I’ve never coached a sport before, and am certainly no expert at soccer despite my son’s efforts. Still, I thought the next game could be won by simply placing players in the positions they merited, and motivating them to triumph.

And how! Rubin moved the kids around as the Invisible Hand dictated -- "You don’t need Ayn Rand to tell you which way the wind blows" -- and gave them this pep talk:

Every week you’ve been told that the important thing is just to have a good time. Well, this week it’s going to be different. The number one goal is to win; the number two goal is to have a good time. But I assure you: if you win, you will have a much better time!

Suddenly these soccer kids, previously forced by Big Gummint to lose, were given permission to win! Imagine the result! No, you don't have to: Rubin tells us these Bad News Bears kicked ass! Not only that, they learned libertarian propaganda cheers:

One shouted from the sidelines something I thought showed real character: “Don’t let the good players do all the work!” Instinctively, he recognized that some players are better, but he wanted to bring everyone’s level up rather than down. I’m tempted to say he was going against what he was being taught in school.

And this anti-winning education Rubin perceived was traced to some of the parents:

Suddenly, I noticed that one boy’s mother was really angry at him, claiming he hadn’t showed good sportsmanship because he was too happy over the victory. Not seeing anything that might have provoked her outrage, I wondered whether this was a suggestion that one should apologize for winning. Still, the bawling out didn’t put a damper on his big smile.

Fuck you, Mom! I'll rub my crotch in the face of any stupid loser bitch I want!

Next week, of course, they will be back to losing.

Because the Invisible Hand requires Randian Supermen like Barry Rubin, "director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal," to lead them to victory. Did you get the name? BARRY RUBIN!

As I said at the start, perhaps not too much should be read into this little parable. Yet the broader question may be the most significant issue of our time: why should Western democratic societies abandon the techniques and thinking that have led to such great success, in order to embrace failure as glorious or victory as shameful

Why indeed! Failures going back to Vietnam can be blamed on statist pro-losing coaches like General Westmoreland, but with the advent of Barry Rubin, America can defeat anyone: Iran, Russia, whoever! Just try him!

Those of you who have actual children have nothing to fear, unless some political nutcake offers to take over your kids' sports teams. Then, woe unto you, because most police departments have yet to be informed that there are predators out there with something other than a sexual agenda.

11/9 WAS AN INSIDE JOB! Remember those old chemtrails conspiracy theories? The dadgum Gummint wants you to believe the vapor off Cali is nothin' to worry about. So does the gol-durned IEEE, a buncha liberal "engineers." But Chemtrails911 knows it hain't so! And so does Michelle Malkin:

“The operative word is ‘unexplainable,’” a Pentagon spokesman said.

I guess they’ll tell us the “system is working.”

Perhaps the most interesting theory: Obama was showing off to Asia while on his jaunt.

So why not just be upfront with the American people and say so?

Why won't the Gummint also explain these secret messages I been getting through the fillings in my teefs? (Malkin's "related stories" on this one are about 9/11 and Fort Hood.)

SKREEEE Patterico:

What I found interesting, though, was that if you traced it back away from the sea towards land, it became a sort of ghostly translucent dark blue color. I had never seen a color like that before on a contrail and it got my attention...

SKREEEE Gateway Pundit:

You didn’t see much of this during the Bush years…

SKREEEEEE Right Pundits:

Possibility Number Three would be a terrorist group. This would appear to be unlikely, given that our Navy ‘claims’ that there were no vessels in the supposed launch area. Any sort of decent cargo ship could be rigged for such a launch. Why would they do it? For causing terror!

SKREEE and SKREEE again! In their beginning is their end: Chasing their demons through clouds of smoke.

UPDATE. Sometimes people ask me: What's the audible model for SKREEE? It's the harpies from Jason and the Argonauts:



If nothing else you get ten minutes of that finest of Harryhausen films, and one of my favorite Hermann scores.

INDIA DINKS. I hate to bore you good people with repetition, but the Obama India trip has drawn more interesting commentary. The excursion seems, by the usual measures, to have gone well, what with the crowd-pleasing offer of a permanent UN Security Council seat, the juicy trade deals and all. It has even been praised by a writer at the American Enterprise Institute blog ("eased export restrictions on several Indian companies, and facilitated closer talks between private-sector leaders in both countries... There’s much more work to be done, but this was a good all-around effort. GRADE: A-"). If this, along with the major arms deal Obama pumped on the trip, seems ominous to regular readers, I would remind them that the President is a traditional Democrat, alas, rather than a socialist wrecker as advertised daily in rightwing blogs.

Speaking of rightbloggers, they continue to see the thing through their own special prism. Fausta's Blog sees Obama's call for Indians to "get involved in public service" as a call for "more bureaucrats," and denounces Obama's "distaste for private enterprise," which might surprise the business leaders he took with him on the trip.

Actually those leaders are part of the problem, says Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek, as their presence suggests that Obama's approach is to "bestow favors and privileges on politically connected firms." This seems a good point about partisan oligarchy, until Boudreaux explains that "these favors and privileges, such as tariffs and export subsidies, invariably oblige consumers to pay more – either directly in the form of higher prices, or indirectly in the form of higher taxes – for goods and services." The elimination of tariffs from American international trade policy would be interesting, as we haven't had such a policy since the founding of the Republic, due to the statism of the Founders. India might like it, though, since they haven't eaten enough American jobs. While we're at it we might as well stop making them irradiate their mangoes; bugs should be as free from government regulation as capital.

Next on the list of outrages is Obama's visit to the Gandhi Museum. It was hypocritical, for one thing, says theblogprof: "Was Ghandi pro-infanticide like Obama is?" he roars. (I'd be very interested to know what other Gandhi prescriptions theblogprof endorses -- it's a cinch he wouldn't approve the Mahatma's physical culture regimen.) "I knew there was something I never liked about that Gandhi guy," snarls Angry White Dude. neo-neocon agrees, though in daintier language: "History is history, and Gandhi’s is hardly all sweetness and light." She quotes: "All sense of proportion had vanished when [Gandhi] advocated non-violence not as a technique of moral pressure by a weaker on a stronger party, but as a form of masochistic surrender…" Clearly by his endorsement Obama wishes the same for all of us, and the arms sale he also endorsed was some kind of Alinskyite diversion tactic.

Obama also gave the Gandhi memorial "a piece of white stone from [Martin Luther] King Jr's memorial at Washington DC. It was set on a small black base that had the presidential seal and Obama's signature embossed on it," which Weasel Zippers reports as "Obama Gifts Gandhi Museum With Pet Rock From MLK Museum."

And of course there's the tried and true OBAMA BOWS! "Skreee," says Freedom Eden. "Skreeeeeeeee."

And so to Indonesia, about which visit National Review's Daniel Foster affects concern: "You know what seems a bad idea to me?" he says. "Publishing POTUS’s itinerary, right down to motorcade routes, during his visit to a country with a long history of Jihadist attacks on Western targets." His concern is touching.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the rightblogger fallout attendant upon Obama's India trip. The stories about the $200-million-a-day price tag -- very many of which remain on the internet, like a thousand points of misinformation -- intrigue me. Isn't India supposed to be really cheap? Even if Obama brought 3,000 people and put them up in style, what's that going to cost? I began the online booking process for a room at the Taj Mahal Hotel (one of their talking points) and found the rate was 14,500 rupees a night, or about $330 U.S. The Taj Mahal has 560 rooms, which would make a nightly sell-out rate $184,800. And I'm pretty sure Obama booked further in advance than I did, and probably got a group rate. Maybe rightbloggers are factoring in the added expense of hookers, blow, and premium video service.

It's all choice, but here's a guy who didn't make the cut:

And King Obama claims he is just one of the Guys! Yeah right, well “one of the guys” cannot book the Taj Mahal and spend $500,000 per day on their vacation with other people's money.

Vacation?

“One of the guys” is lucky to get a freaking vacation once a year and “One of the guys” don’t eat Lobster and Caviar on vacation, “One of the guys” eats hamburgers and chicken wigs, or splurges sometimes and has a Steak with french fries.

Pity the Guys who are One of the Guys, forced by ObamaHitler to eat wigs made for chickens! I like to think this cowboy outsourced his blogging to Bangalore.

THEY LOST IT AT THE MOVIES. The damned liberals in alliance with a fifth column of damned artists have contrived to keep the sheeple in the dark, says Ed Driscoll. How so? Deep Throat said "Follow the money" in the movie but he never said it in real life.

This is good for many paragraphs, mostly quotes, about the alliance and its conspiracy to deceive the masses. (Driscoll et alia also tell us that All the President's Men failed to inform citizens that Deep Throat was conflicted in real life, but this may be disregarded, as the film shows him smoking cigarettes, which in the post-Bogart era became their traditional way of telling us a character is impure.)

But this is not the end of liberal-artist perfidy:

Even beyond All the President’s Men, a pretty fair chunk of the accepted pop culture of the 1970s was, in retrospect, often invented out of whole cloth and then repackaged as Truth — “truthiness,” as faux journalist Stephen Colbert would say — by the film, television industry, and (actual) journalists of the day.

For instance, did you know the article on which Saturday Night Fever was based was, by Nik Cohn's admission, actually based on Shepherd's Bush mods? Yet South Brooklyn mooks did not rise up in protest on this slur on their way of life, and indeed started putting Travolta posters on their walls. This was the thin end of the wedge, and liberal intellectuals delivered the coup de grace by promoting the career of Tony Danza.

Also Alex Hailey was a plagiarist, casting doubt on Roots' negative portrayal of slavery, by means of which Democrats control the black vote. Driscoll continues:

Given that much of what’s taken as The Official Narrative of the 1970s was built on useful fiction, how much of the decade we just lived will also be remembered inaccurately as well?

Then Driscoll rolls out Jim Lileks to tell us that movies like Spartacus are not true to life. Upper-class Romans didn't really sound like Laurence Olivier. If you're not sure how this deception helps liberals, Driscoll explains via Lileks: "Makes you realize that in 2000 years they’ll make movies about our era, and everyone will be half-naked and sweaty while they commit mortgage fraud." That's long-term planning, comrades! (Well, more half-naked sweatiness certainly would have improved Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.)

Driscoll recommends for further reading an expert in the field, Kathy Shaidle, who lists eight truths liberals kept from her in her youth, among them that the Japanese were the bad guys in World War II and that "Michael Moore is a liar."

These guys make Andrew Beitbart's Big Hollywood look like Sight & Sound.

HOW THE PROS DO IT. You may noticed the flurry of rightblogger reports on the bullshit story of Obama's $200-million-a-day trip to India. Snopes.com did a good job debunking it, but few of the original promulgators went to the trouble to notice, so expect to hear the fabrication repeated in an email from your grandma, and by speakers at the 2012 Republican Convention.

A notable exception, pointed out to me by Jonathan Miller, is Ole Perfesser Instapundit, who originally repeated the story. He's been in the game a long time and knows what shit will float and what won't. But that's no reason not to tie styrofoam to it as a last resort:

DEBUNKING: No, Obama’s not taking 34 warships to India with him. And the cost isn’t $200 million a day, as previously reported. On the other hand, “Near as I can tell, the mega-bombshell about Obama introducing a teleprompter to India’s parliament remains tragically, pathetically true.”

UPDATE: Reader John Campbell writes:

I am watching Anderson Cooper and CNN’s criticism of some, including Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, who reported that Obama’s upcoming trip to India was using 34 warships and costing $200 million per day.

Hard to believe on the face of it and many people certainly jumped the gun in reporting it and criticizing the President for it.

Sloppy reportage perhaps, but essentially the story had legs because it was believable, given the way the man spends other people’s money and MIchelle Obama’s expensive summer trip.

If someone reported that Charlie Sheen had been found, passed out, in a hotel room with 18 hookers, you may doubt the story, but hey, that darn Charlie, what a wild man.

Obama has a bit of a reputation too, although along different lines.

Good point.

This is less a debunking than a defense; because Obama is a taxandspend lieberal, and his wife vacationed in Spain ("While the White House has emphasized that Mrs. Obama pays her personal costs, as do her friends who flew to Spain on their own, taxpayers pick up a big chunk of the tab"), you good people can certainly see why some patriots got a little carried away, and remain so carried to this moment.

The Perfesser ain't through, either:

TIGERHAWK: Ships To India: If Only It Were True. “When a good history of the George W. Bush years is finally written, his breakthrough with India may turn out to be the most important foreign policy initiative of his administration..."

UPDATE: Obama Recasts Asia Trip As Jobs Mission. “If that’s recasting the point of the trip, what was it previously supposed to be about? And whatever the original purpose, why didn’t Obama figure out that this would be a good thing to say before the elections?”

I’m beginning to wonder if he’s as smart as people have been telling me. Or maybe it’s whether the NYT is as smart as people have been telling me. Or, to be more accurate, if either is as smart as the NYT people have been telling me . . ..

Also: "TUNKU VARADARAJAN: Obama’s India Problem. 'Two years after Bush’s departure from the White House, India is still Bush Country—a giant (if foreign) Red State, to use the American political taxonomy...'" Etc.

It's a nice variation on the old "[X] Walks on Water; [Y] Reports "[X] Can't Swim" joke. I can't say I admire it, exactly, but I appreciate the discipline involved.

LOCKDOWN. David Hirsanyi at libertarian site Reason:

No matter what happens, for now, we can look forward to two glorious years of hyper-partisan, acrimonious gridlock—Washington's most moral and productive state.

J.P Friere explicates:

Armed with subpoena power, members of the House Republicans are expected to urge President Obama not to shred any documents.

The vaunted "gridlock" of the second half of the first Clinton Administration came when the United States had plenty of money and no one thought the President was a Mooslim. Girdlock II will be more like vapor lock.

Back in the 90s people were simpler, and didn't like it when the government closed the Washington Monument. But, it would seem, things have changed so radically that, if I read the Tea Party mandate aright, they'd be pleased to see the government shut down the Post Office, so long as it sticks to what both parties agree are its real Constitutional duties -- waging a drug war and keeping soldiers in the Middle East.

Prosecuting the Kenyan Pretender comes when the bread runs out and they have to redouble the circuses.

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE... The more horrible governance I live through, the easier it gets. While it's true that there are more self-evident nuts among the new Republican crew than in the recent past, I remember Bob Dornan and William Scott. Crazy's been in the mix a long time.

The animating principle of most of our political leaders is always the acquisition of power for themselves and ROI for their major contributors, which goes a great way toward explaining which lunatic ideas they work hard for and which they just flaunt (as the Republicans have flaunted their anti-abortion credentials for decades without ever pushing through a Human Life Amendment).

The Tea Party has been a great schtick for the GOP -- a bunch of rallies, some don't-tread-on-me talk, and suddenly the people who screwed the economy are elected as its saviors! Now comes the exciting part: While Reagan restored American greatness and the fortunes of the Republican Party and its backers by looting the treasury and screwing the poor, today both the treasury and the poor are tapped out. I can make predictions about what distraction they'll come up with when that reality hits -- Impeachment? Anti-Muslim legislation? Michele Bachmann-style anti-Americanism hearings? -- but though the broad outlines are clear, the details can still surprise us.

So if the next few years promise nothing else good, at least it'll offer a great show. It would have been nice to live in America's glory days, when gas was cheap, the living easy, and the top tax rate 91 percent, but this was not our lot, so we must make the best of what we've got. The old curse about interesting times has fallen on us, but at least they're interesting.

UPDATE 2. Also on the bright side, Tony Avella seems to have won his race against Frank Padavan. Avella was one of the few city council members who fought back at all against the Bloomberg crap, and he's a decent, honorable guy. The state senate is badly in need of people like him.

Oh, and my change in jurisdiction allowed me to vote for Charlie Rangel. I really enjoyed filling in that oval.

I'm glad Jerry Brown won, too. He's one of the few well-known American politicians who are intrinsically interesting. Maybe he'll cut ties with Washington and negotiate trade agreements with the Far East.

UPDATE 3. I see Staten Island Democrat Michael McMahon, who had Vito Fossella's old seat and is as conservative a Democrat as ever drew breath, was beaten by a Tea Party nut. Across America, actually, it seems that conservative (aka Blue Dog) Democrats are doing badly. It may be that the end of moderate Republicanism is followed by the end of moderate Democrats.

UPDATE 4. Watching msnbc, I see S.E. Cupp telling the folks that she doesn't understand why Nevadans voted for Reid, or why Catholics voted for Obama. There is much she doesn't know, which makes her perfect for television, as does her recent tendency to dress and make up like a Japanese schoolgirl.

GOTV, PART 2. We'll be getting a tidal wave of bullshit from conservatives today, so we might as well start with Jay Nordlinger. The insufferable rambler looks back, through clouds of Glade Mist, to his first voting experience:

We were all lined up, and a professor walked by — very left-wing (obviously). And from Texas. Therefore, triply left-wing. You know the type? If you’re from the sticks — or what others perceive as the sticks — you have to be the most left-wing guy around. Something to do with an inferiority complex, I guess.

How often must the phrase Get on with it! run through the minds of Nordlinger's associates.

Anyway, he remarks to the person walking with him, “There they are, everyone exercisin’ his right.” It came out, “. . . everyone exercisin’ his raaaahhht.” He said it in an incredibly snide tone: a tone that said, “Aren’t they silly, thinking they are doing something genuinely democratic? They’re just pawns in a system controlled by money.”

That's some fucking eloquent drawl, isn't it? (Then again, Le Petomane could make his farts sound like talking.) (Which I suspect is how Jonah Goldberg writes his columns.)

You will be unsurprised to learn that Nordlinger is enraged that in New York (where he moved to escape the liberal Texans, presumably) voters may receive their instructions in Spanish. "Why would anyone who can’t handle the voting experience in English even want to vote?" he asks. "Have I just committed hate speech? (Come and get me, copper.)" What a scamp! But he must have felt nervous about it, because he follows immediately with a tale of his bravery in insisting on bilingual rather than Spanish-only trash receptacle signage:

I talked with our Hispanic janitors, who said, “They think we’re so dumb. They think we don’t speak any English at all. Even if we didn’t speak English, don’t you think we’d know what ‘trash’ was, after working as janitors for all this time?”

Condescension, thy name is White Liberalism; White Liberalism, thy name is Condescension.

The message is clear: When Spanish-only speakers enter a polling place (as several did mine this morning), the workers should refuse to assist them in Spanish, lest they be thought condescending. It should do wonders for their self-esteem, especially the elderly ones.

Also, Nordlinger wonders, what's the point in having sign language interpreters at large events? He supposes it "simply makes others — hearers — feel good." More liberal condescension! Maybe he thinks handicapped seating is a plot to keep the infirm from standing. Comes the revolution, those Tea Partiers in their Hoverounds are in for a rude shock from the Nordlinger Corps.

GOTV. New York GOP Gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino is a fucking asshole, but I sympathize with his Halloween blackface drunkery. It must be very hard to be one of the few nuts who even in this age of Teatard debacle is too crazy to be voted into office, and I must defend (though not with my vote) his retreat into the warm arms of Bacchus. I recall that the GOP sacrificial lamb against Ed Koch, Diane McGrath, was shown on TV at her "victory party" in 1985 dancing like Elaine on Seinfeld and slurring her words during her concession speech. And good for her. Why should she have given a shit? (McGrath, later McGrath-McKechnie, got hers during the Giuliani administration as chair of the Taxi and Limousine Commission. New York politics is endlessly forgiving, except to the voters.) In our horrible Tea Party future, Paladino will also have a government sinecure, and he can shoot heroin for all I care. It's just how we do in the Empire State.

Now the local Democrats are playing the anti-government game. "I can't believe what's happened to New York's government," says Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. "Congress is broken," says Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Well, fuck it, any port in a storm. Fox News is at this moment, as at every moment, pushing Republican candidates against decent Dem Congressman like John Hall and Scott Murphy by tying them to "Nancy Pelosi." Basically, in such cases True Sons of Liberty are obliged to vote against the psycho wingnut consensus as they might dig up a petunia bed to build a firebreak.

As a smug lieberal elitist, of course, I make exceptions for myself, and will vote for Howie Hawkins of the Green Party for Governor. He impressed me in the debate, and Jimmy McMillan, for whom I voted last time, is overexposed, and as an aging hipster I just can't follow that bandwagon. Also, as I said when I voted for Jimmy, I can't endorse a prosecutor. That's how Giuliani and Spitzer got into office, and I don't have to wait for such monsters' public downfalls to know what a menace such people can be when they achieve power.

Outside of that it's the straight Democratic ticket for me. Obama is a trimmer and a pudding, but the Republicans are Satan's emissaries on Earth, and if I have little hope of making a difference I can at least, at the Final Trump, answer my Maker that I spurted my spitball against the hull of the Dark Lord's deathship when duty called. Go thou and do likewise!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Rally to Restore Sanity and the responses on the right. In addition to the Cat Stevens thing, our subjects were exercised about the lack of black people (yet another breakthrough in the great rightblogger affirmative action program), and a few other things. One guy was very strong on the subject of weed at the rally, and personally proved the efficacy of second-hand smoke:

I have been reading the stories about this rally all morning, and still I cannot find out what all these people are so determined to do? Oh wait! I found a sign in an image at the Boston Globe – they want moderation – Eureka. “Now pass that joint over to me my friend.” Never in my life have I wished more I were a radical Black Panther type or a stoic conservative war monger – anything but human spaghetti ready to fade into a cloud of hashish smoke for another decade.

The last time “Make Love Not War” was the cry the money lenders took over the nation completely – and cast America down with Sodom and Gomorrah – good Lord.

Well, they can't all be good trips.

DC TODAY. I'm in one of those goddamn Huffington buses on the way to that Jon Stewart thing. Being broke, I appreciate the free ride, but I gotta tell you, when Ms. Huffington came out to Citifield in the pre-dawn dark, surrounded by camera and lights, and people were yelling "thank you" at her, I felt like telling them, "That's right, dogs, lick your mistress' ass!" I, a true son of liberty, might have been grateful to ride in Arianna's limo, within reach of her knee, but not for being piled onto a stinking bus with a lot of other slobs so she can look good to her rich friends.

Now in Delaware. If you have something you want me to yell at Sheryl Crow, let me know in comments.

UPDATE. A little touch of Ari in the night:


I didn't get anywhere near Sheryl Crow, and this time it wasn't the restraining order, but the size of the crowd that prevented me. I shimmied through the hordes for about an hour before giving up and calling an old friend for lunch.

Attendees seemed cheerful, mostly young, and not too concerned with the paucity of jumbotrons and relatively quiet audio. Many wore costumes, some carried signs ("This Sign Is Making My Arms Hurt"); there were some of those goofy top hats associated with lordly hippie misrule, and why not? The spirit was mostly unserious, which could be taken either as a sign of defiance or of resignation in the face of national madness, depending on how one's mood swings. In either case it was a nice day to walk among them.









UPDATE 2. Rightbloggers, it seems at the stage, mostly saw only Fatwa Stevens. A shame they missed Ozzie!

UNCLEAR ON ANY CONCEPT. National Review Fartmaster General Jonah Goldberg is upset because someone used irony on him. (Short version: Goldberg thinks the CIA is not so tuff because they haven't killed Julian Assange; Gawker's John Cook suggests, then, that liberal fascists aren't so fascist because they haven't punched Goldberg out.)

The bucket-footed Goldberg responds exactly as you would expect: He calls Cook "Brainiac" and "a jerk" and affects to believe Cook actually called for him to be beaten up:

And if he thinks I need to be punched in the face, I invite him to give it a whirl himself. If memory serves, it could lead to a fun few minutes for me.

Don't expect to hear much from Goldberg today; he'll be practicing his Vulcan nerve pinch. Though I expect that, like all his kind, if there's any trouble (real or imaginary), he'd prefer to send the U.S. military to handle it for him.

UPDATE. Of course there's the whole issue of Goldberg's casual endorsement of extralegal execution, but who has time to catalogue, let alone denounce, all the different varieties of Goldberg's awfulness?

UPDATE 2. Alex Pareene provides a very serious, thoughtful, response to Goldberg's post that has never been made in such detail or with such care: "Why hasn't a piano ever fallen on Julian Assange's head? After all, cartoons tell us that this happens all the time!"

ELECTION 2010: THE ENFRAUDENING! You have to admire their discipline. When they're not beating their chests and claiming they'll win 100 seats, they're preparing for a less than optimal result with predictions and/or claims of fraud.

Ole Perfesser Instapundit does his part:

READER KIM SOMMER WRITES: “Poll watching. Ubiquitous cameras. Remind ‘em.” Ok. Done!

Related: Voter Fraud Watch Video Exclusive: Poll Watcher Witnesses Misconduct in Houston...

Video exclusive? They've already got evidence? Someone went into a polling place with a flip-cam and documented fraud?

You go to the site the Perfesser links, and it turns out the video does not show any actual fraud, but an interview with a poll watcher named "Toni" who claims she saw a clerk "taking somebody's hand, putting it on their arm, and actually voting for the person." When asked if the clerk had done that because the voter had asked for help -- a safe bet, since apparently the voter didn't protest -- "Toni" admits she doesn't know, but "maybe she wasn't voting the way she wanted her to." It must have taken all their strength not to go to high-contrast, slow-mo, and sinister music right then and there.

The Perfesser also complains:

Plus, University of Texas at Brownsville asks faculty to end class early and walk students to vote.

Encouraging students to vote on Election Day -- why, that's what Hitler did! No doubt the profs will stand over the kids chanting "Illy-beany chilly-beany" and using their arms to push the kids' hands toward Obamasocialism.

Oh, he's got another one -- "election complaint filed in Nevada." And what a complaint! The complainant, Babette Rutherford (of ResistNet, "home of the patriotic resistance," just so you know where she's coming from; her mouthpiece is a former Republican Congressional aide), says that "union members have gone far beyond merely busing union members to Early Voting polling locations" and are actually using their union brethren as zombie voters! For example:

a. personally escorting members from each bus directly to each polling location's entrance, in order to prevent members from attempting to go somewhere else instead (i.e., a store in a mall that contains an Early Voting polling location)...

Not only is this clearly coerecive, it's also bad for the local economy! Rutherford also says she saw union goons "surrounding the perimeter of polling locations to conspicuously monitor members' activities from a variety of angles and prevent members for leaving..."

You'd think there'd be a kidnapping charge in there, wouldn't you? But I suspect freeing these poor vote-slaves from the clutches of their captors is less important to these guys than piling up a bunch of claims so it looks like they're battling the SS in a cage match for democracy itself -- a tonic for the troops with which they hope to rally the base.

UPDATE. You'll be hearing plenty more about this kind of egregious Democrat criminality as Andrew Breitbart has come aboard ABC's election news team! The liberal media does it again!

THE OCTOBER CLASSIC. I still have loved ones in Texas and am rooting for the Texas Rangers, though the Giants are friggin' murdering them. Politics has nothing to do with it; this is baseball, which is far more important. And only a total moron would.. oh, hello, Aaron Goldstein of the American Spectator:

While the Rangers are very aggressive on the base paths with their propensity towards stealing bases; the Giants are very conservative in their approach to running the bases.

That might well be the only thing that makes San Francisco more conservative than Texas these days. Because perhaps the most fascinating thing about this year's World Series is the political and cultural divide that exists between the two cities.

You can guess the argument: One of the Rangers loudly thanked God, which San Francisco Democrats never do, George W., Nolan Ryan, etc. Also:

After the Giants clinched the NL pennant, Giants General Manager Brian Sabean had a more temporal source of inspiration. Sabean explained his team's success by invoking Hillary Clinton stating "we've gotten to a point where it 'takes a village,' it takes a whole team to win a series." I cannot imagine that would have gone over well deep in the heart of Texas.

Of course, as an AmSpec commenter points out, and even Forbes acknowledges, the Rangers are major mooches off the taxpayers, whereas PacBell Park was built without any public funding. Maybe Goldstein would have done better to identify the Rangers with the Tea Party. (Oh, God, now they've got me doing it...)

At least The Last Tradition doesn't beat around the bush:

Steers Against the Queers...

This year’s Fall Classic is more than a contest to determine who takes home the World Series Championship trophy. Not by along shot. This baseball series will determine the future path of the United States.

It’s a competition between those who like to take up the saddle and ride a horse on the open range against those who like to take it up the ass and yell, “We here, we’re queer and so are some of you!”

Either way I'm content: The Yankees lost.

UPDATE. "I thought Real Americans (TM) had abandoned traditional team sports altogether as part of decadent elitistm and were devoting themselves instead to NASCAR and MMA," says bgn in comments. "Or is Charles Murray wrong again?"

THE ROD DREHER MYSTERY SOLVED? Some of you have actually written to me, asking if I'd noticed that Rod Dreher -- who had been recruited away from Beliefnet to the Templeton Foundation to write longer versions of his crap posts for something called Big Questions Online -- on August 20 suspended comments at the Templeton site "pending the outworking of some technical and editorial issues," and on August 23 announced:

With respect to this blog, we are reconsidering a style and format that will be more in tune with Sir John's forward-looking, positive, constructive ways to engage the Big Questions. We hope to fine-tune things to make BQO better for you, our readers. So, please be patient, and thanks for reading.

Dreher hasn't posted since then. Weirder still, some of his posts were scrubbed from the site. In September Bluegrass Up noticed a quoted email and a comment by Dreher about his "blog hiatus."

What happened? Someone noticed he'd copped out on a September Religion Newswriters Association forum at which he was supposed to appear. So I went to listen to the audio, and heard the moderator announce this:

Rod Dreher, who has gone to the Templeton Foundation to work on their Big Questions Online magazine, is not going to be able to join us -- the magazine just launched about a month to six weeks ago and he was buried alive there...

My God -- buried alive! Was he ritually murdered? I knew Catholics were weird, but during my time in the Church we never got into the Opus Dei shit.

THEY CALL ME MAD, BUT ONE DAY, WHEN THE HISTORY OF FRANCE IS WRITTEN, THEY WILL MARK MY NAME WELL -- SIDNEY APPLEBAUM! That guy from HillBuzz has decided it's time he made his big Dick Morris move. In an earnest plea to Rush Limbaugh, he announces that he and his fellow Hillary Clinton supporters (who all got together at an Applebees and elected to give HillBuzz Guy the talking stick) will be endorsing Sarah Palin for President, and that the people who crossed him and his buddies are on "a Hillary 'enemies’ list', or just 'The List' as we call it in HRC supporter circles."

With a flashlight under his chin, he promises said traitors woe & tribulation:

If you voted for Obamacare, you are politically dead but may not know it…and it is your own fault. Being intensely stupid is no defense. If you were a YES vote on anything related to Obamacare you are going to be defeated…if not in 2010, then in the primaries in 2012. If you survive those, you will be taken down in the 2012 general election. Your political career is over…dummy.

Hope your time on the Obama Kool-Aid bandwagon was worth ruining your life over.

Strangely, though this bat signal has been up a while, Hillary Clinton herself has not appeared on the ramparts to quit her throne as Secretary of State, denounce the evil pretender Obama, and lead the revolution.

I'm trying to take a charitable view: Maybe this is just an experiment by social scientists to see whether wingnuts are so hot for converts that they'll take one who's clearly out of his goddamned mind.

UPDATE. Jay Tea of Wizbang takes HillBuzz Guy at his word, imagines that the "hardest of the hardcore Hillary! supporters" are being delivered unto the Cause. Then, comparing the Hillary People to the Russians in World War II (but first walking across the room and talking in a whisper, so HillBuzz guy won't hear it and take offense), he counsels caution to his collection of Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls representing the American People:

But bosom buddies? Absolutely not. In the long run, the Soviets proved to be a greater existential threat to the US and the world than the Nazis were -- largely aided and abetted by their allies. Some people even took up their cause and gave them highly sensitive military secrets -- especially the keys to developing nuclear weapons. And even during the war, the Soviet espionage efforts in the West were tremendous -- but downplayed, as they were "on our side" anyway.

What we need to do with these PUMA folks is not embrace them, but use them. Give them kind words and gestures of support, but under no circumstances accept them fully into the fold. Common cause does NOT mean common values, and shared enemies are NOT shared ideals.

Cherish the image -- a lunatic offering millions of votes which, when it comes time to produce them, will turn out to be a trunkful of his mother's old Green Stamp books; and another lunatic plotting to get the best price for them. It's like Moliere performed by chimpanzees.

UPDATE 2. Not being a follower of his ravings, I didn't realize HillBuzz Guy is one of those enraged stalker types who track down people who make fun of them. But Mrs. Polly reports in comments that when she sassed him with what he called "libelous claims of RAAACISM!," he called for her personal details, and his followers scurried to look for them. Yeah, he's someone you want to give real power.

SHORTER VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: We white people must rise up against our black, Mexican, and homosexual overlords.

UPDATE: For aesthetic reasons, I left out a few of Hanson's other honkey-oppressors, which include Muslims, of course, and college professors who are not Ann Althouse and Glenn Harlan Reynolds.

Hanson's pumping the bilge extra hard today. In the midst of a typical peroration about how everything Obama does disgusts him, he delivers this classic line:

Obama’s awkward efforts to appear hip have resulted in Jon Stewart calling the president of the United States “dude” and a general diminution in the dignity of the office.

Yeah, imagine if Hanson caught Obama doing something like this:



With white women, yet!

RETROFIT. Theodore Dalrymple claims "The Tea" -- as in Tea Party -- "Started Brewing Under Bush." " The important point," he says, "is this: many who now comprise the Tea Party were not Bush die-hards, but disapproved or largely disapproved of the Bush administration’s big-government tendencies."

If you were expecting videos of men in tricorners yeling about 1773 and taking one's country back circa 2002, you will be disappointed. In evidence Dalrymple offers contemporaneous negative comments about the Big Government tendencies of the Bush Administration made by such notable future Tea Party leaders as... David Brooks, Fred Barnes, and Richard Viguerie. He also notes the pre-Obama activities of FreedomWorks, the "grassroots" organization run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

I guess he figured no one would read further than the headline.

RICH HIPPIES REDUX. Some kid at the Starbucks must have given Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds some attitude, because the simple country lawyer from Yale is on about the "elites." He finds an article by fellow Tennessean Jack Neely who reports:

A Nashville man was convicted of ramming his SUV into a car purely because it had an Obama sticker on the bumper. A colleague of my wife’s endured a barrage of insults from men in a pickup truck on Pellissippi Parkway.

You will be unsurprised to learn Neely follows up by trying to understand the root causes of these gentlemen's anger, and that race is only mentioned, dismissively, about halfway down. More prominent reasons for the Vols' violent Obama rages include this: "He’s the first son of an immigrant to be elected president since 1832; Andrew Jackson was the last one." Yes, I'm sure the boys set around at night, denouncing Obama because he's the son of an immigrant like that bastard Andrew Jackson.

Ridiculous as this is, Perfesser Reynolds goes further with his own particular reading, which is that Obama is one of them no-'count elitists who look down on simple law-perfessin' folk such as himself:

Obama was also the favored candidate of the Gentry Class. Southerners and the Gentry Class don’t get along well, since...

...y'all lost the War?

...one of the key aspects of Gentry Class membership is looking down on Americans from Flyover Country in general, and the South in particular.

Yeah, I thought so. The Perfesser also throws in a link to one of his old baw-haw-Howell-Raines posts, about how Southerners who were liberalized by the civil rights struggle suffer from a "neurosis."

And to think, this guy was only a short time ago trying to convince us that the Tea Parties are racially integrated. The election must be getting close.

The Perfesser's got another, too, in which he asserts that "the main problem with the 'new elite' is that they’re not an elite at all. That is, they aren’t particularly smart, or competent." Though in an earlier, similar rant he mentioned Nancy Pelosi and David Brooks, here he doesn't say who specifically he means by this -- I guess "person who also lives in a big house but disagrees with me politically" probably covers it. (I haven't seen the Perfesser say anything positive about a liberal in years. Remember when he used to be nice to Oliver Willis? No more; the groovy TP revolution is too important.)

Later he adds a reader email which he presumably thinks makes his point:

I am an elite anti-elitist Tea Partier and I made my first protest signs way back in March 2009. I’m a Yale [BA, Philosophy], Columbia [MA, International Affairs] former Wall Street trader and risk manager who is just about done getting another masters...

The salt of the earth, the common clay! This fella explains that though he is flush with cash, degrees, and a string of poloponies, he's still cool because while the bad elitists "think (erroneously) that they know better what we should be doing with our time," he's the right kind of elitist, because he's going Galt, he's "ornery," and he wants to elect Republicans who won't try and tell people what to do, man. Then we'll be free!

Once upon a time a rich guy had to dress like a dirty hippie and otherwise conceal his wealth in order to insinuate himself with the groovy revolution. Now he can just send the rabble an email of support from his penthouse. Well, if we can't have honesty or consistency, at least we can have a more streamlined hypocrisy.

UPDATE. "I can't wait for the next NRO cruise," says monkey.dave in comments, "when we can listen in while grizzled men of toil Glenn Reynolds and John Derbyshire discuss 'Dale Earnhart Jr vs Jimmie Johnson' over a gruelling round of shuffleboard."

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the Juan Williams thing. Imbecilic rightblogger reactions were so plentiful as to constitute an embarrassment of riches as well as a plain embarrassment, so I had no room for, say, Freedom Eden denouncing Saturday Night Live for not making a conservatively-correct joke about it. ("There was absolutely no criticism of the outrageous move by NPR, and Williams' remarks were mischaracterized... I think it would have been more appropriate to approach the subject from the angle of how much Leftists hate FOX News." Thanks for the comedy clinic, FE!)

It'd be more enjoyable if it didn't include so much pernicious, willful misreading of events ("Should the public then assume that NPR's editorial standards demand that journalists ignore Islamic extremists who declare jihad...") and overt racism. But we must take what we can get.

THE WORST DEFENSE OF JUAN WILLIAMS, SO FAR. The prize goes to Eric Scheie of Classical Values -- though he gets a big assist from fellow buffoon Clayton Cramer, whom he quotes:

A friend works for TSA, and tells me that under certain conditions, TSA screeners will be taking actions that ordinarily involve dinner and a movie first--including patdowns to the genital area for explosive devices hidden there. He is not thrilled at this prospect--actually, he is absolutely horrified.

I have several reactions:

1. Please explain why such an intimate search is preferable to ethnic profiling.

First, you've seen Clayton Cramer, right? I totally believe a genital patdown is what he's accustomed to expect after dinner and a movie.

Second, if patdowns vs. profiling is really the choice Cramer sees here, I imagine he's a real treat on flights: "Sit by the wing? I'm not a terrorist! Why don't you make that Arab sit by the wing?"

Thanks CC, Scheie will take it from here. First he quotes himself:

If we're going to talk about giving up some rights for the safety of everybody, doesn't it seem logical that the fewer people who have to give up rights, the better?

That's delicious. I'm going to dress up as a Libertarian for Halloween, and use Scheie's argument to defend antebellum slavery. "Hey, no reason why EVERYONE hadda be slaves!"

Instead, there seems to be growing tacit acceptance of an absurd proposition -- that it is better to let people who want to blow themselves up fly and look up everyone's butthole than look up the buttholes only of people who want to blow themselves up.

Yes, the butthole bit's bolded in the original, perhaps so your mind's ear might hear it in a big, tuff voice, convincing you that, yes, Eric Scheie is that awesome, he can figure out which passengers want to blow themselves up ahead of time so we can just probe them (plus a bunch of other Arabs, but come on -- when did they get rights?)

Or maybe the bold buttholes are just part of an anal obsession:

Is the goal to move toward a world where people who believe in religious suicide have a right to fly, and to better facilitate this we will all bend over to accommodate them?

Why say ye, citizens? Shall we bend over, and open ourselves to the dusky intruders? (You usually don't hear this sort of thing from gay people, even from gay Republicans; it's usually the more excitable straight ones who go all tough-guy-tension-reliever on you. Maybe Scheie's trying to pass.)

The worst aspect of this, is that if you are in any position of responsibility, you're not allowed to say what I just said.

Wait for it...

As a perfect example, Juan Williams was fired by NPR today simply for speaking his mind.

Aaaand scene. Williams is too busy celebrating his cash firing bonus from Fox to be bothered, but this is rather like getting a personal recommendation from a local schizophrenic that begins "Cabbages, knickers, it's not got a beak" and ends "a man after my own heart!"

As for me, since everybody seems to be asking each other this, no, I wouldn't have fired Juan Williams, because I would never have hired Juan Williams in the first place. He makes Alan Colmes look like Alexander fucking Cockburn.

CROCK THE VOTE. Everyone hates the Democrats. Especially the liberal media! Look:

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank is facing what may be the toughest re-election fight of his 30-year career as he holds onto a double-digit lead over Republican challenger Sean Bielat, our exclusive WPRI 12 poll shows.

Apparently in Massachusetts they spot the challenger 10 points, and Barney has to concede if he doesn't cover the spread.

Dont blame 'em -- they're just trying to keep up with opinion leaders like Republican advance man Byron York, who predicts Nancy Pelosi will go down to ignominious victory:

It's a long, long shot -- Pelosi has won her last three re-elections with 72 percent, 80 percent, and 83 percent of the vote -- but it appears [challenger John] Dennis is making progress.

Making progress! The election's in a week and a half. Dennis should have the Big Mo by Christmas. Also:

Dennis cites internal polling from a few months ago showing that roughly 35 percent of independents and Democrats in the district are growing tired of Pelosi's leadership, and the Dennis campaign is conducting a new poll that they hope will show support growing.

Plus he's got funny YouTubes about Pelosi ("wicked witch of the left") that have "got a lot of Internet attention." Did I say Christmas? Make it Thanksgiving!

OK, I admit it: I buried the lede --

Dennis won the endorsement of Sheehan -- who pulled 17 percent of the vote when she ran against Pelosi in 2008 -- because he opposes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq... Dennis wants to see the United States begin pulling out of Afghanistan even earlier than President Obama's July 2011 goal. He's also against the Patriot Act and would like to see a U.S. military drawdown worldwide.

In short, he's the kind of candidate York would be calling an only-in-San-Francisco-(swish-swish) moonbat, were he not part of the Glorious Tea Party Revolution schtick that's been wowwing the punters this season.

I expect the Democrats to do badly this election, but when I see the Republicans laying it on this thick, I wonder if maybe they're overcompensating a little.

ANTI-ASSIMILATIONISTS. Megan McArdle talks about gentrification, which she is currently performing as a new homeowner in "what is euphemistically known as a 'mixed' neighborhood" in DC. Perhaps to get her cracker fans interested, early in the piece she presents an exciting new variation on that rightwing voice-of-the-people schtick Ideologically Sympathetic Cab driver -- the Id Symp Bus Rider:

Yesterday, I rode the bus for the first time from the stop near my house, and ended up chatting with a lifelong neighborhood resident who has just moved to Arizona, and was back visiting family. We talked about the vagaries of the city bus system, and then after a pause, he said, "You know, you may have heard us talking about you people, how we don't want you here. A lot of people are saying you all are taking the city from us. Way I feel is, you don't own a city." He paused and looked around the admittedly somewhat seedy street corner. "Besides, look what we did with it. We had it for forty years, and look what we did with it!"

In my many years of transitional living, I've never had a conversation like that. But then I probably don't have McArdle's winning ways with the locals.

McArdle says she and her husband "want to live in a place that's affordable, and economically and racially mixed." But, sigh, science says she can't, at least not for long. She quotes Benjamin Schwarz at great length on how gentrifying areas don't hold to that magical transitional stage for long, and that the new people inevitably squeeze out the old. McArdle is resigned and, it would seem, content: "I want the services, but I don't want this to price out all the people who already live there. Unfortunately, it's a package deal." It's natural selection!

The Schwarz quote is pretty snotty, but one passage especially leaps screaming from the page -- Schwartz mocks some other researchers who would prefer to see the new people and the old people coexist in harmony (which makes them "sentimental progressives" in his view); he describes their favored enclaves:

Such neighborhoods still contain a sprinkling of light industry and raffish characters, for urban grit, and a dash of what Zukin calls "people of color," for exotic diversity. Added to the mélange are lots and lots of experimental artists (for that boho frisson)...

As a longtime (and recently returned) city-dweller, I often reappraise my own view of city life to make sure I'm not just trying to wrap a Sesame Street bedsheet around reality. But though I have my own sentimental progressive side, I know I've never wished for "people of color" to supply "exotic diversity" to my experience. And if I appreciate "urban grit," it is not because I view people as mere ingredients in a cultural stew -- I guess I should say "ragout," to better conform to Schwarz's stereotype of prissy bohemianism -- but because I find places with some connection to their past healthier than those that have had their past wiped away. If someone wanted to live in proximity to their grandparents, would Schwarz accuse them of seeking "geriatic diversity" as some sort of effete seasoning?

And the changes are neither uniform nor inevitable. McArdle and Schwarz must know that while the East Village has been gentrified beyond recognition, and some waves of gentrification came quickly, there are still sections where old-time Puerto Rican and other settlers are still hanging in, thanks in part to city housing projects, and living in relative harmony with the newer people decades after they started arriving. Up in Harlem, gentrification is widely advertised -- sometimes with ludicrous aggressiveness -- but only really exists in slivers; up where I am, in Sugar Hill, gentrification basically means "some white people observed between subway and apartments." (The people I've talked to are nice, though, even if none of them have said that they foolishly destroyed their own neighborhood and are glad I am here to revitalize it.)

Despite their characterization, this is not Plymouth Rock and the originals aren't Indians. It is not absolutely necessary that, once honkies and money come to a previously disadvantaged neighborhood, all the poor people have to disappear. It has come to seem so, however, because policy and prejudice have conspired to make it so.

Schwarz himself notes the decline of manufacturing in the city; he sneers that the progressives are "wistful for the higgledy-piggledy way manufacturing was scattered throughout New York (diversity! mixed use!)" but are "compelled to make clear that they don’t miss the sweatshops and the exploitative, horrible life that went with them." But after social agitation and progressive legislation chased away much of the sweatshop trade, 20th Century New York developed enough thriving port and factory work to grant a middle-class life to hundreds of thousands of people who had no more than a high school education. In our current enlightened offshore economy, however, that type of person is now more than likely to be working poor -- heads of families laboring long hours at crap jobs with little opportunity for advancement. (Oh, and we still have sweatshops.)

This is not the result of white people liking old buildings, but of social policy. And it's going to get worse. Rent control's a thing of the past, rent stabilization is dying off, and I assume that, as everything gets even more rightwing than it already is, affordable housing schemes will pass into history. Life will get tougher, and the poor will be driven to an even greater extent into what used to be called ghettos. And writers at the Atlantic will tell you it was meant to be.

UPDATE. If McArdle's post doesn't disgust you enough, you might try her commenters; when you weed out the outright racists (a full day's work right there - "I think taller and blonder is generally nicer looking -- and if you watch Univision, you'll see that many 'Hispanics' seem to as well"), you're mostly left with glibertarian sophists ("Wanting to live in a racially mixed neighborhood is as racist as wanting to live in a neighborhood with no racial mix") and other species of asshole.

I TOOK A SHITTY HEALTHCARE PLAN FOR YOUR SINS! Obvious pseudonym Max Borders:

My family and I have chosen a health savings account (HSA). I have a “catastrophic” plan to go with my HSA. So instead of putting all my money towards an insurance premium each month, I put money aside for out-of-pocket care and pay a lower premium. In other words, I pay for most of my basic healthcare needs from my HSA--that is, instead of shifting the cost of my care onto you.

Hear that, libtards? He didn't take the kind of pussy healthcare plan the rest of you are grateful to get! No, he and his family chose to get the Republican plan! Totally not because that's all he could get! He's hardcore!

Don't walk away! He wants you to know what a favor he's doing his employer you:

This helps keep your premiums from going up. Why? Instead of going to the doctor and getting a $100+ prescription of Nexium - the cost of which would be dinged to the insurance pool - I go to Target and by a very similar over-the-counter drug called Prilosec. It costs me $15. It costs you nothing. If I didn’t have the HSA, I’d be passing everything beyond the copay onto the insurance pool--that is to you. And I’d probably get Nexium instead. The copay is $15--same as the Prilosec OTC, after all.

And your share of that savings -- well, we don't have room here for all the zeros after the decimal point, but it's a real number!

Similarly, when he gets a melanoma, he saves you money by eschewing the wasteful doctor visit and treating it himself with Clearasil.

Right now, my incentive is to save us money.

I'm kinda guessing your incentive is that you couldn't get a better plan, Max Powers, or so my experience of real life among real people tells me, but I'll play along.

But guess what? Thanks to Obamacare, saving you and me money ain’t going to be quite so easy:

Blah blah new restrictions on health savings plans, upshot of which is:

HSAs have just become far less attractive and less valuable.

Your $0.0000000...0001 savings goes up in smoke! And Max Frost is forced by Big Gummint thugs to take prescription medicine! God damn black socialist President!

The lobbyists, drug companies and overpaid doctors win. You and I lose (again).

WHY AREN'T YOU JOINING ME IN OUTRAGE!!!!! BUT OF COURSE -- I BET YOUR MOTHER IS PROBABLY SUCH A LIBTARD BITCH SHE ACTUALLY CASHES HER SOCIALIST SECURITY CHECKS, LIBTARDS!!!!!MILTONFRIEDMAN!11!

Do these guys actually know any human beings?

NOT JUST PAPERWORK. I only just saw Megan McArdle's post on the foreclosure mess, which easily could have been Shortered, "Won't someone please think of the banksters?" McArdle wonders why everyone's feeling sorry for people who were perhaps improperly foreclosed upon, when bankers and their agents stand to suffer from attempts to redress their grievances. (And some customers, too: Why, McArdle herself has a new home, and may have to delay her renovations until the whole thing blows over.)

She endeavors mightily to keep focus on the relatively benign-sounding "notary fraud" involved, I suspect because it makes the whole thing seem picayune. But the real issue isn't some document-management whoopsie, it's the unseemly haste of banks and their subsidiaries to grab people's houses.

McArdle:

I heard someone on the radio saying that this all could have been avoided if banks had modified loans with generous principal reductions, like they ought to have. I find this remark puzzling. If a loan servicer doesn't have sufficiently clear authority to foreclose, then presumably they also don't have any authority to modify the loan. In fact, shouldn't banks be stopping their modifications, too, until clear lines of ownership are established?

Har de har har. But that's not how criminals think. Back in 2008, Graham Rayman at the Village Voice examined the activities of a mortgage servicer owned by Lehman Brothers called Aurora:

[Aurora's website claimed]: "We routinely work with customers who are having difficulty in making their mortgage payments to explore alternatives to foreclosure that would enable them to stay in the home."

Despite these rosy assertions, an industry survey in 2007 by Moody's found that companies like Aurora were only modifying a tiny percentage of their loans. The Center for Responsible Lending reported in January that foreclosures were outstripping modifications by 7 to 1, and 13 to 1 among subprime loans.

Aurora wasn't reticent to modify loans because they were unsure of their authority. They just preferred to grab property as fast as they could, and they weren't scrupulous about how they did it:

The letter that Aurora sent to Grant said he was behind on his payments, and the company was going to foreclose on his four-family house in Bed-Stuy.

Grant was indeed behind—but only by a few weeks, he says. Moreover, he had already mailed in the payments that would bring him up to date.

He contacted Aurora to plead his case, but, incredibly, the company refused to accept the payments. Instead, company officials moved ahead with the foreclosure. No matter what he did, Grant says, Aurora would not work with him to resolve the debt.

"I had the money, and I sent them the money, but they didn't want it," he says. "It's like they would rather have had the house back."

Rayman has more horror stories; you may read others here. Some of those people are suing; I wouldn't be shocked if Aurora's paperwork were discovered to be faulty. And that's just one servicer, flying under the banner of a major financial services company.

You know me, I don't like to think ill of anyone, but under the circumstances I have to suspect that the people who are crying "Whoa, let's not go overboard" with respect to this crisis are not really trying to protect the innocent.

EMPIRE STATE OF MIND. I'm watching the New York State Gubernatorial Debate, and I must say it's fascinating to see seven candidates with a wide spectrum of viewpoints represented -- hell, I'm even enjoying the Libertarian, and I think libertarians are full of shit.

Of course, the libertarian, Warren Redlich, has competition in the Cut Mah Gummint sweepstakes from the Republican Paladino and the Anti-Prohibition Kristin Davis. (It's fun to hear them defend hydraulic fracking in the teeth of public opposition.) And they also have to countenance something resembling actual leftist positions from Charlie Barron, Green Howie Hawkins, and the man I voted for last time, Jimmy McMillan, bravely demanding "my own cable company." So unlike at the tea party Republican events, there's a wide cross-section of populist ideas here -- not just the screw-the-poor POV, but also the screw-the-rich. It's very refreshing!

By and large, if anyone is watching it, this is going to help Cuomo -- whose MOR viewpoints are at least familiar to voters -- more than Paladino, who appears as usual to be in the middle of an unsuccessful anti-depressant switch. Also Redlich is funny, promising to solve the problems of the state with a couple of guys with "a six pack and a pizza," making him a more attractive Cut Mah Gummint candidate than Paladino. He's even stumping for the Republican candidates whom Paladino's campaign is hurting (bless him, there's one libertarian who's not even pretending there's a difference!) Sorry, Carl, that's show biz.

UPDATE. It sort of delights my cynical old heart that National Review's Brian Bolduc is trying to capitalize on McMillan's sudden popularity by noting his admiration for Ronald Reagan and his antipathy to the "business-as-usual crowd." Look, he's a Tea Party person -- except black! I doubt McMillan's demand for a rent freeze fits with their small-gummint philosophy, but the important thing is that he's angry, and angry is in this season.