NICE PANTS NERD. The election's tight, so the racket is to yell "we're winning" in a loud voice till the votes are counted. (And if you have a little lung power left over, bitch about the liberal media.) We that have free souls, it touches us not, and we take our pleasures where we can. I'm enjoying the brethren's reaction to Obama's Rolling Stone interview -- especially the Ayn Rand bit:

[Obama:] Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a "you're on your own" society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.

Yeah, you can guess. Let's start with Katrina Trinko, National Review's current delegate from the Youth of Today:

Sure, there’s a few libertarians who would love to abolish the safety net and slash government programs. But that’s not the party platform, or what Romney is setting out to do. Not to mention that plenty of conservatives would rather establish a safety net more concentrated, not in individuals’, but in other types of community: church, clubs, extended family.

You know, like in the Middle Ages.

What if Obama had faced Ron Paul or Rick Santorum? If this is your rhetoric against Mitt Romney, what the heck do you have left for those who hold positions even further right?

AKA the "hey, you should see the nutjobs we wanted to nominate" argument.

One last question: isn’t this an extraordinarily lame cover outfit/pose for the cover? 

For perspective, this appears on the same page as Kathryn J. Lopez telling Lena Dunham Republicans aren't "super uncool," she's super uncool, infinity. Man. They all still dream of being backup posers in a heavy-rotation video starring Alex P. Keaton and Der Ahnold, don't they?

Of course at libertarian stroke book Reason Brian Doherty is furious adjusting his spectacles:

Obama Thinks Ayn Rand is For Teens (For Predictably Childish Reasons)

Correction --  furious adjusting his spectacles with one hand, furiously retucking his shirt with the other.

There is nothing "narrow" about Rand's vision except in that it created moral boundaries in which most of the functions of Obama's government would be seen as illegitimate, because they use threats and violence against non-aggressors to achieve social goals.

New to America, are you, Brian?

Nathaniel Branden, Rand's ideological lieutenant in the 1960s, sums up well the problem with most people trying to blithely critique Rand as Obama does. It can be found quoted on page 542 of my book Radicals for Capitalism...

Page 542! So that's why I never saw anyone reading it on the beach this summer.

Hilarious as this is, it's not a patch on what the non-heavily-Koch-funded libertarians are dishing.  The Objective Standard argues with Obama's interpretation:

Rand utterly rejected the notion that one should live an isolated life. She recognized that a crucial way we “develop ourselves” and pursue our rational self-interest is by building strong relationships with other people, whether in business, friendship, romance, or any other kind of life-serving relationship. Rand wrote hundreds of pages about the virtues and benefits of collaborating with others to mutual advantage.

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy, don't it? It's like the Garden of Eden, except that Adam, having rationally decided that the weakling Eve is just slowing him down, kills her, wears her skin for warmth, and then demands that God produce another, worthier partner for him because this is what the genius of the marketplace demands, whereupon God decides the whole thing was a horrible mistake and obliterates the universe. Ah, what might have been.

But listen, it's not all deep analysis. Look at what I found at Objectivism for Intellectuals:

Just because they stim instead of laughing doesn't mean they don't have a sense of humor.

THE BIG TENT. Sure, Richard Mourdock's gibberish about rape babies as the will of God is so far out that conservatives won't back him up. Right?

Well, there's always Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review...

For speaking lazily and giving his opponents another cudgel with which to hit the quite genuine opponents of abortion on demand, Richard Mourdock should feel regretful this morning. But he has nothing else for which to apologize.

And The Anchoress...

It’s actually a very broad-minded question, and an invitation to talk and think about things larger than ourselves and our prideful ideas. Which is why it must be derided as a stupid, ignorant and previously-unheard-of piece of woman-hating misogyny. The narrowness of ideology and political correctness will not allow deviation from the bumperstickers. Even a couple of my more-progressive friends [!? - Ed.] are emailing appalled notes that so many in the press are so willing to immediately spin or squelch what does not fit the narrative.

And NRSC Chairman John Cornyn:

In fact, rather than condemning him for his position, as some in his party have when it's comes to Republicans, I commend Congressman Donnelly for his support of life.

And Freedom Outpost:

Nothing in Mourdock’s statement is shocking to those of us who believe what the Bible teaches. That does not diminish the emotional aspect of rape, but quite often we find out that we make the wrong decisions when they are based on emotion and as a result people lose liberty or they lose life.

DrewM at Ace of Spades takes what we might call the moderate Republican position if moderate Republicans still existed:

I strongly disagree with Mourdock's position but what's there for him to apologize for? He believes what he believes.

Etc., along with the usual liberal-media's-the-real-problem guff, e.g. "Desperate Left tries to Akin-ize Richard Mourdock."

I recall, in the dim, distant past, how as Democrats put forward ever mushier neo- and pseudo-liberal national candidates, Republicans would bring up the remaining more-liberal Democrats and go, oh yeah, what about Al Sharpton (or the recently departed George McGovern, whom we now learn was really a libertarian). For a while the Republicans had to play a little, too, disowning outliers like David Duke and (eventually) Strom Thurmond. Now, though, there's plenty of room for a Mourdock in the Grand Old Party. It's become a big tent, after all.

SUNK YOUR BATTLESHIP. The game is not really Battleship. The game is to reduce diplomatic actions and inactions that look bad to, well, diplomatic actions and inactions, which can be taken in stride if you trust the President knows what he's doing, and to make Romney look out of his depth by quoting and challenging him, and making him say "centrifuges" over and over. And, halfway through, the game is going well for Obama.

The economy sucks so who knows what it's worth.

UPDATE. The reactions at National Review suggest my analysis is correct. John O'Sullivan:

Romney is winning. Why? He is making his case on foreign policy to the American people, while Obama is trying to establish his own sense of superiority. As a result Romney, looks presidential and Obama looks quarrelsome and touchy — even when, as sometimes, Obama has the better case.

First of all, "Romney is winning" because Graham works for National Review where that's the only acceptable answer; second, the "sense of superiority" to which he refers is established by Obama observably knowing very well what he's talking about, which is not a bad thing. Mona Charen asks, "Is it just me or is Obama once again taking up way more time?" Given the results, I can see why she'd think so. Jonah Goldberg assures us that Romney wasn't as hard on Detroit as Obama said he was and conservatives wish he was. And Michael Graham is spinning so hard he doesn't realize he's made himself dizzy: After claiming there's "lots of chatter in my Twitter feed that Mitt is debating like a guy who’s winning and President Obama’s debating like a guy who’s losing" -- well, that I can believe; also that Graham's Twitter feed consists mainly of guys with names like @LiburlsSuk and @TeaPartyHotTub -- he adds, "[Obama's] got to understand that, at best, he’s 'winning' an uninspired, low-impact debate. (And I actually think he’s losing.)" This is the kind of reasoning 10-year-olds apply in their rooms after they've been sent there without supper.

UPDATE 2. Oh Jesus:

Actually, we probably don’t have fewer bayonets now than in 1916. Back then, the army was about 108,000 men strong, and the National Guard boasted about 90,000 men. There are no reliable numbers on the number of bayonets issued...

Similarly, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. [retucks shirt]

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about last week's town-hall debate and the furious spin that ensued. Yeah, it was days ago, but you know, it's for the record. And Saturday Night Live covered it yesterday.

And ugh, another debate tomorrow. Clio's a terrible boss.

UPDATE. Wrong link for a few minutes there -- fixed now. Thanks for tipping me off.

COME ON PEOPLE NOW, SMILE ON YOUR BANKER. Got your crying towels out? Good:

Most people think of bigotry only in terms of race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation. But at its core, bigotry simply is intolerance – which all too often leads to singling people out for attack based upon their group identity... 

As the spending-driven debt crisis grows in America and among the 50 states, we would not accept such vilification toward the poor and elderly who consume taxpayer resources. We certainly would not accept such vilification toward the working class or minorities. So why do we tolerate the vilification of those most successful in America?

Oh no he di'n't? Oh yes John Tillman of Forbes di'd!

According to the IRS, the top 1 percent of earners take home 17 percent of the nation’s total taxable income. Yet they pay 37 percent of the nation’s taxes. They are paying a disproportionate share of the burden of government and yet the Occupy protestors, public employee unions and even President Obama demonize them.

One is tempted to ask: If everyone who isn't an Occupy protestor, unionized public employee, or President Obama loves you rich fucks, why you cryin'? Because you've run out of other inventive ways to use your dollar bills besides wiping your ass and lighting your cigars with them, and now you want to see how they work as Kleenex?

Tillman goes on to tell us that he did his part back in the 80s, when people used to tell him racist jokes:

...I made a conscious decision to no longer accept such prejudice in my life. Whenever someone would begin a joke that was clearly heading toward a racially focused end, I would stop them and say, "Please, I’m not interested in hearing that joke." It was very uncomfortable at first. But I did it because this was a small thing that could help create a better culture.

Despite the severe discomfort this caused him, Tillman asked somebody not to tell him racist jokes. Now you people owe him! Quit laughing at Mr. Burns!

And yet, here we are today with a new form of bigotry that is openly encouraged by people who should know better. 

So I suggest we start saying, “I’m not interested in hearing that. Please, no bigotry toward those who are successful in pursuing the American Dream.”

Of course, some folks already do that -- the rich themselves, that is. If they think a waiter failed to treat them with the respect to which they are entitled, they express their opposition to his bigotry by stiffing him. If one of their employees has a bad attitude -- say, she doesn't react enthusiastically when they tell her who to vote for -- they fire her; that'll teach her to look down on them! And if citizens commit the hate crime of resisting their austerity measures, they send in the cops -- just like Eisenhower did in Little Rock!

Because to people like Tillman, every slight they suffer is the equivalent of the great injustices of history. If you can't see that, you're just a wealthist monster.

I advise Tillman to keep his eyes on the prize. Look for small victories. Maybe one day, with the support of some righteous paupers, a one-percenter will break the money line, and get a job at 7-11 or Denny's. That may turn things around, and over time more and more of them will be able to enjoy the same living conditions, job security, and health care as the rest of us. I certainly look forward to it. The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

UPDATE. The purple mountainous majesty of our comments section today is graced by a long historical pastiche from Fats Durston:

There are those who are asking the devotees of elite rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as Richie Rich is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of people’s envy. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel in our private conveyances, cannot gain five-star lodging in the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a millionaire in Mississippi cannot vote a thousand times as much as commoners and a billionaire in New York believes he has nothing for which to spend his millions buying congressmen...

Impetuous, Homeric.

DERP OF A SALESMAN.. Rod fucking Dreher on "The American Advantage":

The other day I was sitting at lunch listening to some French and American expat friends talking about the business climate here in France. It was fascinating to hear. They talked about how rigid the situation is, how difficult it is to start a business in France, and how hard it is to get a job if you don’t have the right connections. They spoke about how so much depends on going to the right schools, and cultivating the right social connections within a tightly-circumscribed elite.

At one point I said, “Didn’t y’all have a revolution to do away with this kind of thing?” Everybody laughed, but the point was made.

The next day, a European friend who lived and worked in America some years back said, “You really do have such an advantage in America. In France, it’s awful. When we moved back to Paris from Asia in the 1990s, I thought it would be easy to get a job. I speak five languages... It took me a year and a half to find something.”

This afternoon I spent some time with an American-born friend who is now a French citizen, and is married to a Frenchman. She’s been here for 20 years. She and her husband moved back to Paris last year after some years abroad, in which he worked for a French multinational, and she told me that she’s having a hell of a time getting a job. Why? Same thing: if you’re not in the network, you are out of luck.

Not like the good old USA, where jobs are just hanging from the trees, eh? Dreher actually seems to think so:

Being here in France, and having this kind of conversation over and over with discouraged French people, has given Francophile me a new appreciation for what we have in America, despite our problems (especially our discouraging political class), and why ours is still a land of opportunity like no other. I wrote a piece about it for the November issue of TAC. I hope you’ll subscribe to the magazine to read it. You’ll also get terrific pieces like Glenn Arbery’s recent reported essay on a traditional farmer in upstate New York, and what he learned about community when his barn burned down...

Wait a second, I'm starting to smell tote-bags.

Journalism like you see in TAC’s pages, and on this blog, costs money. We’re not asking you to be charitable; we really have confidence that the reporting, analysis, and commentary we produce here every day is well worth your financial support. Please consider how much this magazine and this website means to you, especially as a voice of alternative conservatism, and consider taking advantage of our great new Election Special offer to subscribers...

And if you already are a subscriber, and want to help us even more on the mission to stand up to the welfare/warfare state, you can always make a tax-deductible donation.

To recap: After telling us that, because Freedom, the American economy is so much more robust than that of the European country he's always running off to and mooning over, Dreher tries to sell us a magazine and then begs for change.

Is there a level of self-awareness below nil?

NUMBER TWO. I expect mostly what people will remember about this "debate" is Romney trying some shit on Benghazi and making an ass of himself*. Soon wingnuts will be accusing Crowley, the fat guy with the question, and maybe Alger Hiss and Romney himself of a set-up.

And they'll remember that because the rest of this thing has been a festival of pandering and platitudes. Romney lies, of course (Mitt Romney, small businessman! Good Christ), but that's like saying the cock crows and the sun sets. Obama should have just spent the session fact-checking him, but the President seems to think the winning strategy is to blather about the middle class and families and the free enterprise system etc. until they drag him off the stage. Sigh. I miss Harold Ickes.

* John Podhoretz disputed this with a link to Fox News, which was my second favorite moment of the debate. Be sure and read the ensuing shirt-tucking Twitter conversation.

MEANWHILE BACK IN THE JUNGLE... 

Etc. Drudge's been working the old Ooga Booga, so there's a spate of these now from excitey-whiteys like the ever-reliable Angry White Dude ("Enter black thugs in America. After being stoked up by black leaders like Louis Farrakhan, 50+ years of political correctness and cradle to grave welfare, they are emboldened to make threats of riots and violence...").

The punchline: Just a ways down this list is a Mediate account of an Ann Coulter interview, in which she tells Sean Hannity, "White liberals are always threatening black riots whenever they’re about to lose an election."

The great thing about having psychopaths for a base is that the words don't have to make sense so long as you put a dog whistle in there someplace.

HELP A BROTHER OUT. Wordsmith and occasional alicublog commenter Leonard Pierce on Facebook:

This has absolutely been the most fucked-up year of my life; I lost my house, I hit the skids of poverty like a plane making an upside-down landing, I came unnervingly close to going to prison, and now I ended up in the ER.

If you want to hear the hilariously sad details you must become a Facebook friend of Leonard's (you can always read his excellent everyday material here). He might be more inclined to friend you if you sent something to his PayPal at leonard.pierce@gmail.com, but I can't make any promises.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about last week's Vice Presidential debate and Joe Biden's unconscionable lack of deference toward Paul Ryan. (I must say, James Taranto's Ann Althouse gag is pretty good. Who knew he had a sense of humor?)

FOLKS, FOLLOW YOUR INSTINCT ON THIS ONE. Paul Ryan's a punk, and Joe Biden's treating him like one.

UPDATE. Really, no matter how the Villagers react to this, it is a great pleasure to watch someone just laugh at this bullshit -- and heckle it!

I mean, when you have reactions like this...

... you know you're making the clowns sad.

UPDATE 2. I mean, Ryan's transparently full of shit. Here he is talking about "fighting seasons" and "the pass filling with snow." I guess he saw Iron Eagle once. And when he gets peppy it's just repulsive. He swings his head around like a grounded teenager who can't be-leeeeve what a douche Dad is being.

UPDATE 3. Aaaagh, Ryan is turning his puppy-dog eyes and insurance-salesman schtick directly toward the camera now. If people ain't barfing this isn't the country I thought it was.

UPDATE 4. I was stupid enough to watch this debate but not stupid enough to watch the rabid apes who do TV commentary afterwards. However, the Twitter machine tells me the GOP/Villager line is that Biden was rude to Ryan. Rude is more than Ryan deserves. He's lucky to walk out of there without a pierced ear.

I could say something substantial about the whole thing but I've already written about Ryan's granny-starving and the affection it engenders among the brethren. It's been a long hard day, I deserve a break, and TV wrestling's not what it used to be.

UPDATE 5. In comments, Batocchio:

Civility has its place, but honesty over civility, accuracy over politeness. Alternatively, if you define "civility" in part as showing respect for the truth, a liar has broken the implicit contract of the debate/discussion, and as a moral matter should be called out. (Not that that happens much in the Village, but boy, it's awesome when it does.)

Every politician -- well, every successful one -- fudges the truth a bit, but Ryan is such a three-shift lie factory that to mock and deride him is not only a pleasure but also a duty. I may be too forgiving of Joe Biden's type of malarkey, not only because I wear a Team Blue jacket, but also because it's old-fashioned (In fact I don't think I've heard the word "malarkey" spoken aloud since I was a boy), and judge Ryan more harshly (you can't judge him too harshly) because his lies are delivered with the cold efficiency of slaughterhouse machinery. But that's okay; the victory of the human is welcome however it comes; I prefer Spencer Tracy's Frank Skeffington to his Nixon manqué opponent Kevin McCluskey in The Last Hurrah, too.

ADVICE FROM A FAN. Andrew Sullivan:

Adjustment to NYC is a process. A really long, exasperating, draining process. Do you just have to harden yourself to live as if this is normal? Or will it get better? Please tell me it gets better.

No, it doesn't get better. It's always difficult and if you're used to living in a sleepy southern town where a plurality of the tiny population kisses your ass, you will find the general indifference of New York to your enormous self-regard maddening. And if you're used to dawdling along the sidewalk waiting for some Congressional aide to recognize you, you'll get knocked over by someone hurrying to get to a minimum-wage job. Now why don't you go find Martin Amis out at his $2.5 million brownstone in prelapsarian Brooklyn and talk about the damn Mooslims until you feel better? Only make sure you take the number of a car service for the ride home, because the streets are full of damned Mooslims and once they find out you're here they'll swarm you screaming Allah Akbar and saw your stupid head off.

Oh, and Sully, here's someone who had an actual hard time with her apartment in New York. But, to be fair, maybe her wireless service was better than yours.

Christ Jesus what a privileged fucking simp.

TWO, THREE, MANY LOOKING-GLASSES. As I've been noticing every time I pick her stuff up for the Rightblogger columns, Jennifer Rubin has of late lost contact with the earth's gravitational pull. Her latest column on "Obama cultists’ crack-up" (published by the Washington Post, a known liberal media truth-silencing operation) is intemperate even by her usual standards, but deep under the sea of foam and spittle is a wonderful specimen of reverse logic that should be dredged up for public inspection:

The left, as I suggested, may soon (if not before the election, than certainly after if he loses) reach the point in which Obama is trashed to save liberalism. It is not, the left tells us, the Keynesian record of failure that was to blame for the debate wipeout; rather it was Obama’s cruddy performance. It’s not that liberalism lacks a reform agenda that is both feasible and politically popular, you see. No, the problem was that Obama didn’t shout “Liar!” loudly enough.

Most of us who are over ten years old will remember George W. Bush and John McCain, the former of whom has been rendered invisible by the party he lately led (at least John Kerry got to go to conventions), and the latter of whom has been a curse on wingnuts' lips since May 2008 at least for failing to wear the corpse of Reagan and yell "Wolverines." If someone's trashing candidates for failing an ideology, it ain't us.

We've come to an especially weird phase in a very weird campaign in which the guy who claimed the Obama-leading poll results of a few weeks back were "skewed" and made up his own re-weighted polls to contradict them now says the new Romney-leading poll results are proof that he was right, as the polls "are rapidly becoming less skewed precisely because I exposed them for being skewed via my web site." As delusions of grandeur go, that's world class.

The weirdest part is, they're getting crazier when they're ahead. It's almost as if some part of them believes that even victory will not be enough -- that they could be borne through the streets of the capital in thrones made from the skulls of their enemies, and the thought that someone somewhere might continue to disagree with them will yet vex them into madness. I'm not sure it's really a political movement anymore; increasingly it resembles a mass psychosis.

COUNTERCULTURE. Press release in the mail today:

A Thrill Ride For Patriots

Spring, TX, October 8, 2012 – Sometimes you just have to take a stand. Our country first learned this through the American Revolution, and a stubborn insistence on liberty is the hallmark of patriots to the present day. Telling that story in all its many forms is bound to be exciting and inspirational. In Patriots of Treason ( AKA-Publishing), David Thomas Roberts bursts into the political thriller genre with style and passion. 

A nation in crisis. A president of division. A deadlocked Congress. The United States is on the brink of civil war — again. Only a courageous federal whistleblower, an ordinary Texan and a governor who won’t tolerate the shredding of the Constitution can thwart an evil conspiracy by the federal government. 

An incumbent minority president, losing at the polls in his re-election bid due to the economy, gas prices and scandals in his administration, pulls an “October Surprise” that swings the election. An assassination attempt creates the perfect scapegoat — the Tea Party — through a deceit so well disguised that it comes dangerously close to succeeding. 

But, like patriots before them, some won’t stand for it. Some will become Patriots of Treason. Taut and suspenseful, readers will just have to hang on and ride to the end for a surprising conclusion.

Interesting, if a little derivative. Maybe it will make Camille Paglia less gloomy about the arts.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about how delighted rightbloggers were about the Denver debate, and how sad they were that America's employment numbers had improved -- until they decided Hilda Solis Lies, and so cheered themselves up. See, this is why conservatives are happier than liberals.

NO F.A.I.R. Anne Sorock* of Legal Insurrection:

The “fact-check” segment has replaced the unbiased network farce as a way to pull for candidates without seeming to. It’s an attempt to regain the lost respect by cloaking bias by calling it fact. Do a google search for “fact check debate” and you’ll see all the news outlets in line with the same message: Politico, Huffington Post, ABC, Salon…. Quite amazing message pull-through, really.

Yeah, it's amazing fact-checkers would come to similar conclusions. Maybe these guys got a mistaken idea of what fact-checking is from their 9/11 glory days, when "fact-check your ass" meant "the internet is a great marketing opportunity for niche vendors of bullshit."

UPDATE. Originally had the author as William Jacobson -- thanks, commenter D. Johnston, for fact-checking my ass.

MILE HIGH. The undead Jim Lehrer has made the final selections. Let the blood feast begin!

9:05. Aw, what a nice husband. Tough crowd!

9:06. "Skew toward the wealthy" vs. "Education and training." Well, I'm sold.

9:09. The economy is a tender topic. Someone asked Romney for help. Did he give them a dollar? No, it will take a different path. One with five different parts. Four million jobs with energy! And the best schools in the world! And small business! Mitt Romney hires people. So no, ladies, no dollar for you. Oh, and no abortions.

9:09. The Crypt-Keeper caught that trickle-down thing. Is Marlin Fitzwater still alive? Must be shitting a brick.

9:10. Governor Romney and Barack Obama agree.

9:11. Oh no, are we still doing the note-writing thing? Or was Romney just checking his nails?

9:12. Mitt Romney doesn't have a tax cut. On that scale. And Paul Ryan will be President, again. Now Obama's checking his nails. Bad idea to have a manicurist on site.

9:15. Aha, oil and gas are up -- but on private land! Ha ha, private wins. They'll give us all coal, but they'll wash it first, so it'll be clean, like the lettuce you buy in bags.

9:16. The battle of the tax cuts is very gentlemanly so far. Barack Obama's some socialist, huh?

9:17. Jim is having trouble telling the President to shut up.

9:18. He's having trouble telling Romney, too. No tax cut that adds to the deficit? I thought you were a Republican. Hmmph! But you do have five boys. And they LIE.

9:20. 54% of these people are not taxed at the corporate rate. How do they live? Oh oh, Obama brought up math. Romney will have to bring up geography, maybe recess. I see Obama's still cutting taxes. We'll all be living tax-free, eventually. Now a Clinton shout. Boy, that speech was something, huh? Ah, new "definition of small business." A socialist one. It doesn't include Donald Trump, who is calling in favors now, demanding to be allowed to attend the next debate from a giant desk at the back of the stage, with a gong or buzzer.

9:23. Romney said Obama was right about something. What a gent! But now he's telling us the President wants this guy in St. Louis to go from 35% to 40% in taxes. And that's over 50% if you're in St. Louis and you know Mitt Romney. Jobs! Jobs! Did you all catch that? Balanced budget, yeah sure, but jobs.

9:24. Obama can say "trillions" with a straight face. Oh he's good. Also, he's juuuuust starting to get into the Bush years. If Romney doesn't behave he'll bring out that Bush impersonator who used to be so popular on Leno.

9:25. Romney should have demanded a microphone. A second microphone, because he can afford it. Well, he got to talk more, and give us some more of that high-speed accounting yak that will sweep him to victory... oh wait, food stamps! You hear that, North Carolina? [cameras shows white hands crumpling transcript]

9:28. Romney has math too: Either you raise taxes, cut spending, or you "grow the economy." Surprise! There is an easy solution! He'll cut Obamacare! And Jim Lehrer! I'm kinda warming to him. AND... he's going to combine some agencies. That sounds cool. I'd like to see Defense and the National Endowment for the Arts combined into some kind of Voltron of bombs and urine-soaked crucifixes.

9:30. Obama cut stuff too, like war and ignorance. Hmm, that sounds reasonable. Oh, and Eisenhower. And look, Obama knows he's doing well in this great country of ours. He must be hoping Romney will tell us all we're 47% again.

9:31. I support Simpson Bowles for someone else. Yeah, yeah, I took care of that. Oh yeah, well you created a bunch of debt. People don't understand that I'm a tax-cutter and he's raising taxes, albeit hypothetical, and it's killing people in the future, like in 12 Monkeys.

9:34. Romney doesn't want to go down the path to Spain, unless it goes to Majorca on a private yacht.

9:36. Romney = ExxonMobil and corporate jets. And shipping jobs overseas. Romney smiles, realizing that if he loses he can bathe in the blood of his Vietnamese slaves, so who needs it.

9:38. America was not built on ten-year-old schoolbooks. If the schoolbook lobby is screwed, we're all screwed.

9:39. But that oil and gas tax tax break is an accounting thing. Obama tries to throw him -- end it! Romney's not listening, though, as has been clear throughout, so good for him, why am I listening to this shit? But Obama's cool, he smiles at the Solyndra thing. He knows 95% of us think it's some kind of a new car.

9:40. The basic structure of Social Security is sound, and Obama is sure Romney agrees. (Go ahead, Governor, after this nice grandmother story it won't sound so good.) Now Obama philosophizes that entitlements are actually things we're entitled to. I thought the Return of Reverend Wright tape was supposed to put an end to this sort of thing.

9:43. Yeah, Romney's no dummy. Social Security is sac. Ro. Sanct. Michelle Malkin and Erick Erickson hold hands and jump into the Grand Canyon. Also, Obama's cutting Medicare to pay for this Obamacare which has nothing to do with medicine.

9:45. "If you're 54, 55, you might want to listen." Gasp!

9:47. Obama's trying this Clinton-explainer thing where he tells us how vouchers are a rip-off, but he's not as good at it so he brings in his grandmother again. But he's using the AARP for support -- that's a Soviet organization committed to Early Bird anti-colonialism.

9:48. Did you hear Romney, grandpa? He's not going to kill you!

9:49. If I don't like Medicare, I'd rather destroy it and get my own high-premium plan and take ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS DOWN WITH ME.

9:51. Does it seem to you people as if this low-intensity thing is just making viewers sort of zone out? You probably don't realize I've been blogging the 1988 debate for three stanzas. Ha ha, made ya look.

9:52. Can we have an ad of Romney saying "regulation is essential"?

9:54. This guy sure likes regulations.

9:55. Well, see what you did, Romney, now Obama gets to talk about Wall Street as if he's the sheriff instead of the madame at the whorehouse.

9:56. On Dodd-Frank: Everything you want to do to punish big business hurts small business. It's like big business has a gun to small business' head. You make one false move and he'll shoot!

9:58. Well, Romney avoided saying "death panels." And he's onto small business again. This is as close to coherent argument as he's gotten. But then he says Romneycare was good because it was state-level, which is like saying The Avengers would have been better if it had a budget of $20,000 and starred Frank Stallone. (Yeah, I know.)

10:00. Obama seems to have missed this gambit and is praising Romneycare, which will allow Romney to come back if he's smart enough.

10:03. He's not smart enough. He's just praising the shit out of Romneycare. No one could believe  he's against Sociamalized Medicine on principle, so to buy his argument, you have to believe he's going to do something similar but better. He's sure not campaigning as a smash-the-state type. How's that an alternative to a sitting President?

10:06. Which is why Obama is asking what he's going to replace it with.

10:07. "Free people and free enterprise." I see Cletus and Festus at the ole Doctorin' Shack, using their wits and freedom to figure out how to remove a tumor with a whittlin' knife. (Romney's naming big hospitals, but they all take gummint money.)

10:10. I thought Obama was just vamping, but with this "details" schtick he seems to be thinking pretty well on his feet. Romney comes back with Reagan and O'Neill, which has already been played; also, the old Democratic House was full of venal grifters, God bless 'em, who could be bought -- infinitely preferable to the block-everything, scorched-earth lot we have now.

10:12. Okay, I'm gonna use my own bipartisan President -- Abraham Lincoln! Who was a tax-and-spend liberal. Math and science teachers, blah blah... that pained grimace Romney's been working isn't working for me. He seems to be waiting for a wind machine.

10:17. Romney loves teachers -- they're in the Constitution! So too are other unfortunates. And here, with Obama, we have trickle-down socialism. Say, that's good, trickle-down socialism -- why didn't Romney think of that? Call me! My rates are reasonable!

10:19. Obama's filibustering, because he thinks we haven't heard enough about his successful programs yet. But I suspect average Americans are tuning that out; it doesn't matter how other people are faring. Poor Romney, he wants to know why Obama's sacrificing education to the environment. Who cares about the environment if we're not well-educated enough to enjoy it? Better we have a firm scientific foundation for our global warming denialism as we're drowned by molten icecaps.

10:24. "You've been great, Jim." What a suck-up!

10:25. Oh Christ, bi-partisanship? Isn't Romney's speech the same one Bush gave when he came out of Texas? Obama punts and talks about the middle class, which is probably smart, considering everyone now believes if the guys in The Defiant Ones were a Democrat and a Republican instead of black and white, they would have killed one another in the first ten minutes.

10:30. Obama: Detroit! Loopholes! Fight every single day! Vote for more of the same! Romney: I'm concerned about America! Middle-class squeeze! 12 million new jobs! Romneycare not Obamacare! Don't worry, I'll preserve the military-industrial complex!

Can they both lose?

UPDATE. I see by the Internet that media people think Romney won this debate, by which I assume they mean that they are smitten with his boyish charm. I have as low an opinion of my fellow Americans as the next rootless cosmopolitan, but even I can't see them falling for this. That leaves only one alternative: Roseanne Barr for President. Hey, at least I can live with myself!

UPDATE 2. Shots fired! Commenter mds: "That's Rosanne Arnold. As far as I know, she still hasn't released her long-form divorce certificate."

OK, JUST A PEEK. Let's see what Hindrocket of Time's Blog of the Year 2004 is on about today:

IS OBAMA INTRODUCING NATIONAL SOCIALISM TO THE UNITED STATES?

In the immortal words of Curly, "Ngggnnyahh!"

Hinderaker, which I guess is what Hindrocket's calling himself these days, compares Obama to Lenin and Mussolini because 1.) They all had posters that showed them looking serious ("It is ironic that Mussolini looks downright modest compared to The One"); and 2.) wingnut email-from-Grandma fodder like "the Obama family costs U.S. taxpayers something like twenty times what the British Royal Family costs its subjects," which is so lame Doug Mataconis has debunked it.

I still think Romney has a good chance to win, so I don't see why these guys have descended so precipitously into madness -- oh wait, maybe that's the reason: They're anticipating the crushing disappointment of National Romneycare ("Better Than Obamacare, Because Not So Much Abortion!"), and for these guys that's like waiting for Cthulhu to eat them.

If that's not enough crazy for you, you can read Roger L. Simon's "We Live Under a Media Coup d’État." Apparently it all started with Adolph Ochs, or Woodward and Bernstein; whatever, now the Rule of Katie Couric is so oppressive that "this year the Republican Party allowed the coup plotters to control the debates, even those that determined their own nominee."  Maybe Simon and his like-minded souls will start a resistance movement, and call it "Bathrobe Media" or something. But will it sell?

IN THE REMAKE, IT'LL BE AMANDA MARCOTTE. Matt Lewis at The Daily Caller:

As you probably know, The Atlantic’s Hanna Rosin is out with a new book, called “The End of Men: And the Rise of Women.” 

Rosin and I recently chatted about the book, and we, of course, discussed all the usual topics (including how a “war on women” can be plausible when they are clearly winning the future). 

But toward the end of our conversation, talk turned to sex.

Never have I been more grateful to learn that this was merely a journalistic convention. But not for long! Rosin tells Lewis about this unemployed guy with a well-employed wife who got into rough sex with the missus because "he needed to work out some of his lost dominance... he used to feel entitled to certain things at home because he was the breadwinner. And the truth was, [now] he wasn’t."

Lewis turns thoughtful, or at least looks offscreen, dreamy-eyed, as the shot turns hazy:

Could it be that two recent and successful literary trends — the amazingly popular S&M-themed “50 Shades” series — and the plethora of new books on the rise of women (see my recent interview with “Manning Up” author Kay Hymowitz) — are the product of a similar development?

Whatever gratitude I had for the earlier sex joke was totally dispelled by the conflation of kinky sex and Kay Hymowitz.

I swear to God he ends with this:

Could synergy be at work here? Just as History’s “American Pickers” arguably helps create more of A&E’s “Hoarders” (there is a fine line between a “collector” and a hoarder!), isn’t it possible the same phenomenon that Rosin and Hymowitz are chronicling might also be feeding sales of the “50 Shades of Grey” series?

This reminds me of a scene from the magnificent D.A. Pennebaker doc Town Bloody Hall chronicling Norman Mailer's disastrous feminism debate in that New York venue in 1971. At one point Anatole Broyard hectors Germaine Greer, asking what women want. "Listen," says Greer, "you may as well relax because whatever they're asking for, honey, it isn't you."

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, on the Obama Phone Lady and the incredibly transparent racist bullshit her elevation by rightbloggers represents. Go look. At least the Voice hasn't changed its template. (Still workin' on that...)

And remember, pointing out the obvious is the real racism.

Oh, and by the way -- WELCOME TO DISQUS COMMENTS! You can complain about those, now.

UPDATE. Now I have to see where the old JS-Kit comments have got to, enable Disqus for the mobile version, maybe get back the Blogger comments from yesterday, etc. Technology is not an unmixed blessing.

SERVICE ADVISORY.

Our much-hated but free commenting system is scheduled to shut down on Monday, so I have finally bitten the bullet and converted from the Old Blogger Template* to the New so I can use all the gee-gaws long available to more au courant cheapskates -- including Disqus, the new commenting system, which has already pissed off longtime kibitzers Aimai and Leeds Man (this must be some kind of record).

Any of you lovely people should be able to sign up for free at Disqus with an email account, like I did. If you try the email sign-up or the Google/Twitter signup and you still can't get on, you're perfectly welcome to bitch to me about it, but I warn you, I've been running this thing like a Geocities site for years, so I'm probably not the best tech support in the world. I'd do what I can, though. 

As for the memorable japes recorded by Echo/JS-Kit over the past few years**, I have initiated the launch sequence for what both E/J-K and Disqus promise is the migration of the old comments back to this site (that is, the ones that appeared pre-New Deal). They won't tell me when this will go through and, as I am not paying any of these people cash money, I doubt repeatedly smacking the bell at the front desk is going to get me any more solicitude than a gypsy would get asking a Paris sommelier for a glass of water. Who knows, maybe when we come to,  I mean wake up, in the morning the old comments will just be there like Christmas presents.

One day when I'm rolling in dough and can get the good service, we'll all be sitting around in the holodeck chatting like Hef's guests on Playboy After Dark.  Till then I'm afraid we have to wing it with castoff widgets. Sorry. You want high tech, go talk to Matthew Yglesias.

By which I mean, thank you for your patience.

(*I think Gary Farber is the now the last old-time blogger using the original template, God bless him. Wait a minute, he hasn't posted since December 2011. Ha ha ha, I am King of the Popes!)

(** Prior to which, longtime readers will remember, we had another commenting system which went down forever when the old friend who was running it pulled the plug, whereupon the earth halted on its axis and we all froze to death.)

UPDATE. A lot of you are having trouble with avatars. Here's what Disqus says. Not helpful, right? I experimented and had no luck, and I can't find a way to send Disqus a query, Maybe I'll wait for them to tell me that the old comments have been posted (when in reality the website is in flames) and try a reply-to. Meantime, pretend it's 1998!

UPDATE 2. Have tried everything involving avatars (and gravatars) to get mine to show in comments and nothing works. Found the buried Contact Support feature at Disqus and sent them a  note.

Listen... what do you guys think about the Blogger commenting system?

UPDATE 3. You know what? I think the comments here are Blogger comments,  and that the Disqus commenting system hasn't kicked in. But I can't figure it out -- this isn't helpful -- so I'll wait to see what happens when Disqus "importing" finishes. Sorry, I'm dumb.

BIBI NETANYAHU, SUPER-GENIUS.

And I thought Colin Powell showing fake pictures of WMDs was a UN low point. In the dystopian future, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Erick Erickson will appear before the General Assembly holding up a stick-figure drawing of a guy in a turban with a word balloon that says "GRRR DETH TO AMERICA." Then, Benny Hill music!

NICE TRY. I see Ole Perfesser Instapundit is pimping Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein at USA Today and the New York Post. His basic message at the former is that the Lame Stream Media doesn't want you to know about Stein, "because talking about her doesn't fit much of the press's election-coverage agenda" -- in case you didn't get it right away, Reynolds adds, "her candidacy would pull votes from the clear favorite in the race for many in the press, President Obama."

One of the fringe benefits of this charm offensive is seeing the Perfesser praise FDR at length in the Post:

I was talking with Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee, the other day; she offered a different approach, one that harkens back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. 

Back in the Great Depression, FDR was more focused on getting people back to work than on handing out money. He set up the WPA and the CCC to provide employment for out-of-work Americans — jobs building needed infrastructure: bridges, post offices, courthouses and other federal buildings...

At its peak, the WPA employed over 3 million men and women who would’ve otherwise been jobless. 

And the Civilian Conservation Corps put the unemployed to work improving national parks and other pieces of federal land. 

When I hike in the Smokies, it’s often on trails that were built by the CCC — and of course we’re still using many of the buildings and bridges that the WPA built...

Don't be surprised if the Perfesser doesn't follow through with a call for a new WPA. He's just looking for those voters who admire FDR but believe that Obama "would rather have you sit at home, depressed, with a check" than build government buildings and put on Living Newspaper shows... oh wait, those would be the Reagan Democrats, and they're all either dead or filling out early ballots to keep Paul Ryan from stealing their Medicare.

Well, at least the folks back at HQ will credit the Perfesser's initiative. Maybe next he should interview Ralph Nader.

WORKING THE REFS. When people began pointing out that the disastrous NFL replacement refs are only out there disgracing the game because the owners locked out the union, it was just a matter of time before the great conservative thinkers of the 21st Century came out swinging in defense of right-to-work stadia. Take it away, Donald Douglas:

Plus, I guess it's no surprise, but the despicable progressives are trying to score political points on this, and over unions too... 

For some reason I don't think there's an accurate comparison between the NFL officials' union and, say, public sector teachers unions. But then again, folks like Steve Benen and the Think Progress anti-Semites probably back public teacher sexual predators over abused children and their parents. Because that's what's happened to the public unions these days.

Forget about being out of bullets and throwing the gun; this is like throwing the gum and then throwing the wrapper.

Some of the brethren can't even say the word "union," and instead displace their rage upon their traditional fantasy hate-objects. The Conservative Review:

The NFL has gone over the top with Breast Cancer Awareness (pink ref shirts, anyone?), Hispanic Heritage Month (announcers yelling GOAL for a touchdown…I wish I was kidding), female announcers everywhere and male announcers rapidly disappearing, announcers explaining after every hard hit why it’s still legal to (occasionally) hit someone hard in professional football, and now this.

It's not the end result of rapacious capitalism -- it's bitches and Messicans! Rush Limbaugh can't say the u-word, either; per the Daily Caller: "Doesn’t Obama, and the left in general, don’t they promote the advancement of the incompetent based on the fact that they’re incompetent? Screw standards in testing. We don’t need to go find the best..."

The Lonely Conservative at least engages the issue in the best rightwing victim-blaming tradition:

I just wonder why the mob isn’t mad at the regular refs who refuse to agree to a deal and come back to work... 

Unions ruin everything, now they’ve ruined football.

I kind of hope the lockout continues a while, so these patriots can have ample time to share their theories of workers' rights with the nation.

UPDATE. In comments, Chuckling:

One would hope the NFL referee lockout helps wake more people to the realization that plutocracy is ugly and getting uglier. The issue isn't about money. The retirement contributions in question aren't even pocket change for the billionaire NFL owners. No, they don't feel their employees deserve a good retirement. They don't feel their workers efforts are worth even a smidgen of their enormous net worth. They want it all not because it buys them anything extra, but in order to punish the lesser folk for their failings. It's a bizarro meritocratic thing for people that don't have a lot of merit.

Stunts like this do tempt me to think that sometimes they go after a union just to demoralize everyone else. That certainly seemed to be the case with the teachers, who went from being admired public servants to commies pariahs PDQ. Maybe if they win this one, they'll lock out the NFL players and replace them with bouncers and dock workers. Yes, I see the silver lining, but it'll be less funny when the boss demands that your bare-knuckle-box for your right to a job. The race to the bottom enlists us all whether we have numbers on our shirts or not.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the rightblogger reaction to Romney's bad fortunes -- i.e., liberal media argh blargh. Like Jimmy Hatlo said, They'll Do It Every Time.

Related: A spillover thing from Warner Todd Huston on how the media got so gosh-darned liberal:

 In fact, there was a time when American customers of the news knew exactly which newspapers sported which point of view. It was taken for granted that one newspaper supported one side and another newspaper a different side. 

But in the late 1950s and early 1960s that all changed. Suddenly the folks in the news media began to present themselves as unbiased pursuers of “the truth.” Gone was the out-in-front bias and instead the media cloaked itself in a new air of detachment, a new just-the-facts mien. 

This new era in media conceit coincided with the advent of a liberal mindset that took on the weight of the world, a new era in which liberals felt that their ideals rose above God, tradition and country.

Suddenly a journalist’s work was divorced from the trade in local news and became a profession increasingly assuming a national and ideological agenda, one fueled by journalism schools and professors that began to disgorge university trained “journalists” with a left-wing agenda. These people then went forth to replace the grizzled local reporters that were wedded to their local political culture. This new wave of “journalists” did not want to report what was going on in their local news as much as they wanted to “save the world.”

To recap: Nothing bad ever happened in America worth noticing: Once upon a time reporters were fun hacks, and then suddenly they were all shipped to snooty Eastern colleges and came back liberals.  Maybe Huston once suffered a traumatic brain injury and presumes that's the only way anyone ever changed his mind about anything.

SHORTER MEGAN McARDLE: It's absurd to think you can help poor people by giving them money; they'll just spend it on cell phones and TVs and food and stuff. What they really need to do is live in better neighborhoods. It worked on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

UPDATE. Ermagerd.

THAT'S WHAT THE NEW BREED SAY. Media Research Council:

‘Liberal Media In Full Advertising Mode for Obama Reelection’ [NewsBuster's Tim] Graham Tells FNC’s Cavuto

It sounds a lot like the conservative durn-liberal-media schmaltz we've been hearing for decades -- probably because it's short and suggestive; a relatively staid, simple reference that's meant to trigger a dream world of dark conspiracies in the minds of the targets.

But this here's the internet age -- the consumers have turned into producers, and they're not content with dog-whistles. They want to tell you all about their dreams.

The Anchoress:

The headlines having to do with anything touching the president or his party (with one profoundly heartening recent exception) simply blare the official line, which is often “that thing you just saw wasn’t what you saw” and then — after the first thrust of a story has died down, or a shiny scandal has been generated to divert attention and energy elsewhere — the corrections and clarifications come, but not on the frontpage, not on the broadcasts...

World Net Daily:

STATE-RUN MEDIA'S FAKE POLL NUMBERS...

Ever since the skewed CNN poll a few weeks ago (CNN’s president recently resigned due to lack of ratings), voters have looked at the methodology of polling companies with much skepticism, and rightfully so. Evidence recently came out that confirms voters’ suspicions. NumbersCrunchers, an anonymous poll analyst, tweeted a graph that shows the degree of oversampling of Democrats employed by the recent presidential polls, all of which show Obama in the lead. Polls were conducted by CBS/NYT, ABC/Washington Post, Tipps, Reuters … and even Fox News.

Yes -- even Fox News! Elsewhere you can read how Obama and the media are willfully turning America over to jihad and "the coordinated attack on the First Amendment threatens the lives of Americans who dare to criticize Islam and organize to expose Muslim Brotherhood operations on U.S. soil..."

Graham had better get with it. If you want to make it in right wing world these days, it's not enough to cynically use stupid ideas to stir up the lunatics -- you have to be a lunatic yourself.

ANOTHER COUNTY HEARD FROM. I see the Crazy Jesus Lady is selling herself to Mitt Romney as a campaign consultant. (That worked so well last time.)

Wake this election up. Wade into the crowd, wade into the fray, hold a hell of a rally in an American city—don’t they count anymore? A big, dense city with skyscrapers like canyons, crowds and placards, and yelling. All of our campaigning now is in bland suburbs and tired hustings. How about: New York, New York, the city so nice they named it twice? You say the state’s not in play? It’s New York. Our media lives here, they’ll make it big. How about downtown Brooklyn, full of new Americans?

Yeah, they'll love Mitt in downtown Brooklyn. "Good morning, moochers! Here's five bucks, someone bring me a coffee."

Time for the party to step up. Romney should go out there every day surrounded with the most persuasive, interesting and articulate members of his party, the old ones, and I say this with pain as they’re my age, like Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush, and the young ones, like Susana Martinez and Chris Christie and Marco Rubio—and even Paul Ryan...

Surrounded! It'll be a chain gang of charisma! Maybe they should all wear running suits with "Mitt" on the back. I can see it now: "Screw this, I'm going back to Florida, Christie ate all the donuts again." Oh please oh please oh please...

Forget it. Not even Romney's that dumb.

NONE DARE CALL IT NUTS. The economy sucks, so Mitt Romney should be blowing it out, but he keeps coming up with ways to keep things close. It's been hell on my nerves, so I can only imagine how it is for rightbloggers -- oh, here's some indication:

Washington, DC – The Obama agents, through the DHS and other assorted colluders, are plotting a major ‘Reichstag’ event to generate racial riots and produce the justification for martial law, delaying the November 2012 elections, possibly indefinitely, a DHS whistleblower informed the Canada Free Press on Tuesday.

The ‘Reichstag Event’ would take the form of a staged assassination attempt against Barack Obama, “carefully choreographed” and manufactured by Obama operatives. It would subsequently be blamed on “white supremacists” and used to enrage the black community to rioting and looting, the DHS source warned.

If this bit of Ooga-Booga is too strong for you, you can follow instead the moderate camp, who have declared Nakoula Basseley Nakoula the new Elian Gonzalez, believe the White House press pool plots to protect Obama, and oh yeah, think the Democrats actually put out the anti-Muslim movie themselves for reasons no doubt to be revealed by an upcoming crayon scrawl on a piece of cardboard.

American conservatism is turning into one big conspiracy theory.

UPDATE. Gene Healy of the Washington Examiner finally sees the loony 1933 Gabriel Over The White House. His reaction:

A presidential drama that flirted with fascism this earnestly would be laughed off the screen today (which may be why TCM lists Gabriel as a "comedy"). But as the "Cult of Obama" shows, many of us still believe in authoritarian powers for the president.

Even their pennysaver columnists are getting in on the ObamaHitler thing. Romney must be fucking up worse than I thought.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Middle East riots and the avalanche of bullshit the brethren brought to it. Enjoy!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I call this approach “truthaganda"...

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

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

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

SHORTER WILLIAM A. JACOBSON: The fact that even Republicans think we're idiots proves that we're winning.

GOING UP PAST NINE-ELEVEN. Ole Perfesser Instapundit told such people as listen to him twice to go see this thing by Sarah Hoyt about 9/11. So I figured it would get eventually to where it got to:

On the one hand, part of me wants to laugh at the terrorists. They thought they could break us. They thought they could scare us. They underestimated both the size of our territory and the mettle of my people. 

And part of me thinks of the psychological twisting that has taken place since then: people who blame their own country for the actions of barbarians; people who kowtow to the barbarians and claim to be multiculturalists because that sounds so much better than vile cowards; people who think that a country the size of ours, as wealthy as we are should do nothing to deter attackers because we’d be protected by our halo of purity and goodness...

And I thought as I read it: So, somebody's still doing this -- using 9/11 as a long stick to beat people who didn't have anything to do with it, but whom they never liked. It brought me back to 2001, and the many years thereafter when this was a popular shtick -- the decadent left and the fifth column and all that.

And today: Not so much. Nobody calls himself a warblogger these days; nobody thinks "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" is a foreign policy statement. Even the excitable Jim Lileks is subdued, having abandoned his former dreams of annihilation for mysticism ("Now, as ever, we live between the sharp notes. Gather them all together, and you have the melody of the centuries"), like a former Weatherman who, when it all came down, went up the country and today raises watermelons and gets stoned and talks to Gaia.

In their ratholes and caves, some holdouts still practice the dark craft, but their former sympathizers have ceased to follow, occupying themselves instead with Clint Eastwood's chair and other Western novelties.

And Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Whattaya know: In the long run, freedom works.

UPDATE. Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner:

9/11 bumped by gay flag, Michelle money plea on Obama site

September 11th turned out to be just another day on the Obama-Biden campaign website: A fundraising memo from first lady Michelle Obama, a pitch for gay rights including a rainbow-colored American flag, and a campaign picture under the headline "Photo of the day--September 11th, 2012."

Oh, there were two tweets to commemorate the 9/11 attacks, but finding them was hard.

By comparison, the Romney-Ryan campaign features two blog entries, one from Mitt Romney and the other from Paul Ryan, and a 9/11 news release. The Romney campaign homepage featured a tweet and Facebook note about 9/11.

Two blog entries, a tweet and a Facebook note! Never forget!

Now Romney's burnishing his foreign policy cred by blaming Obama for the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya. My sources tell me his next step will be to accuse the President of not wearing big enough flag pins.

It's enough to make a fella miss Quemoy and Matsu.

UPDATE 2. It's redundant at this point to say comments are great, but here's a taste: Big Bad Bald Bastard tells our subjects, "To paraphrase Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction, 'You've lost your 9/11 privileges";  KC45s examines Lileks' poeticisms and remarks, "Finally, we know who writes Sting's lyrics"; and Fats Durston redoes St. Crispin's Day:

...Then shall their names,Familiar in the mouth as freeper handles--
Jonah the Whale, D'Souza and Douchehat,
Erick son of Erick, Juggs and Ace--...
But we in it shall be remembered--
We few, we fappy few, we band of botherers... 

Nice.

JESUS. I guess sticking God in the Democratic platform defused that issue, huh?

Also, Some Guy at Wizbang has a post called "Confirmed: Democrats Love Killing Babies, Hate God and Jews" -- and he's not kidding. At first one can hold out faint hope that he is: "If a man who happens to be white talking to an empty chair is a dog-whistle for racism," he says, "it’s pretty obvious from the last few days that Democrats love to kill babies but hate god and Jews." This seems to at least struggle toward some sort of irony, however weak -- but then he comes roaring back:

What percentage of voters approve of taxpayer funding of partial birth abortion on demand? Less than 15%. That’s a horribly extreme position. Yet it’s the centerpiece of the Democratic convention. If Republicans run from this battle they are fools. It’s slam dunk victory. 

It’s time for some major league push back on the media when they call republicans extremest. Big time.

It turns out that what seemed like irony was just a sulky abdication of responsibility for his own loony claims -- if liberals get mad when we call out their godless, baby-killing ways, it serves them right for calling Clint Eastwood's chair racist. (I sense that wouldn't be bothering him if Eastwood's sad routine had become a chair d'coeur rather than a national laughingstock.)
 
It's time for Obama to namecheck the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a press conference and end this. Given the horrible associations Republicans have brought to the Almighty, he'll probably gain a couple of points.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the convention. Enjoy.

THE LIBERTARIAN REACTION TO OBAMA'S SPEECH:

Libertarians are supposed to be socially-liberal beards for conservatives -- you know, "I'm not for gay marriage but my libertarian boyfriend is." When they start talking about Obama like Rush Limbaugh talking about Sandra Fluke, it may be time for the Koch Brothers to consider some new investments. 

UPDATE. You will hear in the days to come many libertarians and conservatives bitching about the Democratic convention's hyperpatriotism -- why look, here's David Harsanyi, who is both, doing so at Reason -- which just goes to show that they don't have a sense of humor. After forty years of star-spangled lawn-order Republicanism, this convention's turnabout was a grand joke. That Obama's warm-up act was Biden, who basically broke the GOP's Neverforget spell with "a noun, a verb, and 9/11," and that the Obamas totally did the Reagan-Mommy thing, only spices the jest. It's not as good as having them all die screaming in a fire, mind, but it's pretty good for a Thursday night. Four stars! 

NOT JUST A FLUKE.

The numbers show that females aren’t fooled by the phony “war on women.” In 2008, 57 percent of women voted for Barack Obama; 43 percent voted for McCain. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a substantial shift: Fewer than half of female registered voters now support Obama—he’s at 49 against Romney’s 43 percent. Polls of registered voters, rather than likely voters, tend to skew Democratic.
In his acceptance speech, Romney urged, “Now is the moment when we can stand up and say, ‘I’m an American. I make my destiny.’ ” Women can say the same. Wasn’t it Democrats who used to argue that biology isn’t destiny?

-- "Desperate Democrats," Kelly Jane Torrance, The Weekly Standard

Tonight on Twitter:

Etc.

You know, you assholes aren't fooling anyone.

P.S. Bill Clinton just kicked your ass.

TWEETS ERICK ERICKSON HAD TO SCRAP AFTER HE GOT IN TROUBLE: "The podium hides Rahm's light loafers #SanFrancisoDemocrats" "Lily Ledbetter's vagina is Dems #Ashheap of History" "Patrick's sweating like they found his gay porn stash #AlsoBlack" etc.

But I think it's a mistake to try and get Erickson fired over this, as some have proposed. I didn't see the advantage in getting Josh Trevino kicked off the Guardian either. Let the world see who they are and what they represent. If people are more impressed than appalled by them, then the cause is lost anyway.

I DREAMED I SAW J.P. MORGAN LAST NIGHT... What'd you do for Labor Day weekend? Lexington Green of Chicago Boyz did this:

We should have an annual Creators Day as a national holiday. We have a “Labor Day” to celebrate workers paid salaries and wages. That is fine, and there are historical reasons for it.

Among those "reasons": A centuries-long struggle against slavery and feudalism. Surprised he didn't mention it.

But it is not enough. We also need a national day celebrating the people who make those jobs possible and bring them into existence in the first place. Otherwise the day appears to be a glorification of “workers” in opposition to a faceless someone or something that signs the paychecks, some unnamed “other” that is not “the people” but nameless bag of money. That is morally and factually wrong and needs to be rectified.

If you're tempted to dismiss this as a fringe Randroid fantasy, please note that it's Instapundit-approved. Also, that conservatives have been going on like this for years. Their traditional hatred of unions and collective bargaining has metastasized: They now think people who work for a living are just another special interest group, mooching off the libertarian magic of management. They sulk over this, and demand the peons show them respect.

No wonder Romney's leaning on his business credentials. The public at large may or may not believe that a corporate raider can do the trick for America (and that the returns he may produce will somehow go to them, rather than -- as is traditional -- to his investors). But the conservatives who once denounced Romney certainly need a better reason to be excited about him than his renunciation of his own RINO past. His identification with the C-suite gives them that: They can trust that when it comes time to stomp some fingertips clinging to the lowest rung of the middle class ladder, he won't hesitate. In that, at least, he's one of them.

READY FOR HIS CLOSE-UP. Every possible gag has been played on it, so I will only try to imagine what was going on in Clint Eastwood's mind. I like to think he went back in reverie to the 1972 Academy Awards, when he was shoved onstage to cover as MC for a tardy Charlton Heston and, after a Sergio Leone standoff with the cue cards, hissed at the cameras, "This ain't my bag, man."

Eastwood has better acquitted himself at the Oscars since, but he may have been thinking lately that, back in '72 when the hippies were taking over Hollywood (and he was talking like a hippie himself, to his shame), he really had a chance to turn things around, to tell the longhairs where to get off, but he lacked the skills and hell, maybe the guts to do so -- all those people, watching at the same time! No retakes! -- and wilted under the pressure.

Since then, however, he had been elected Mayor of Carmel, and attended many dinners where critics pantheonized him; the world still laid roses at his feet, even though his voice was now just a husk and when he got all action-heroic for the cameras he looked like he was taking a stress test at a cardiac clinic. Part of him knew better, but another part of him -- the Hollywood part -- thought that if they loved him that much, he could do this thing and make them buy it. Never mind the script. He only had to do ten minutes. And hell, it was just television. He'd been a TV star before most of these punks had been born. Now that he was a living god, not only a star but an auteur, he could glide out there like Orson Welles doing Carson and everything would just fall into place. And if it didn't, well, there was always jazz piano.

I mean, I don't care, do you? If he makes Gran Torino: The Early Years I'll still go see it. Politics is bullshit, and it deserved what he gave it.