COURTESY IS TREASON.

At Nelson Mandela's memorial service, Obama shook the hand of Raul Castro instead of (as William Wolfrum suggested) punching Castro in the mouth, screaming "Capitalism!!" and then eating a Big Mac. Early reaction from idiots:

When I read yesterday that both President Obama and Cuba's murderous dictator Raul Castro were both going to be speaking at Nelson Mandela's memorial service in South Africa, I knew the odds were Obama would end up greeting and shaking the blood-stained hand of the Cuban despot. I had hoped against hope (no pun intended) that Obama would somehow find the courage to fend off his proclivity to act submissive before other world leaders, especially the most despotic ones, but apparently, he simply could not resist. Once again, Obama lends credence and recognition to a vile and bloody dictatorial regime responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of innocent people.

Obama Bows To With Cuba’s Raul Castro
It’s not just a handshake, notice the tip of the head and bend of the back, it’s a bow. Notice also Castro did not bow back.

Bowing to dictators again: Did Obama just bow to Cuba’s Raul Castro?

The bowing thing is ancient wingnut catechism. Obama's about a head taller than Castro, which might explain his actions this morning if you're not too busy using Occam's Razor to carve OBAMA LOVES CASTRO into a tree.

I wonder if any of these guys has ever been to a funeral, not counting field trips with the Westboro Baptist Church.

UPDATE. For the Breitbarglers, John Nolte:

For those who believe in human rights and liberty, the sight of our president bounding up some stairs to energetically shake hands with Raul Castro, dictator of Cuba, was more than a little unsettling -- regardless of the circumstance.

But for those who believe in blahde blah and blahdeblah, the sight of Rupert Murdoch bounding off to China for his extensive dealings with the dictatorship is no big deal. In the words of Lucie Cabrol: Money can make the dirty clean! Same to Mona "shameful day to be an American" Charen at National Review, and to her colleague Otto "The Damage of a Handshake" Reich, who claims "the Castro brothers have been vying for the world to see a handshake with a U.S. president for over 50 years," which makes them sound like they're collecting bubble-gum cards  -- only bubble-gum cards that could destroy our nation!

Until now, every American president had studiously avoided this mistake: At U.N. and other gatherings U.S. Secret Service and diplomats were under orders to make sure such a “photo op” so highly desired by the Castros did not happen. 

With his action President Obama has squandered U.S. prestige and honor.

Now when the U.S. drops multi-megatons of bombs on some country, the natives will cry "Big deal, he shook Castro's hand" as they're blown to smithereens.

UPDATE 2. Now there's reams and reams of this stuff, including the obligatory Rush Limbaugh treatment and bow-truthers ("Funny, now that I think about it, I can’t recall ever seeing Obama 'bend down' to shake hands with the obviously shorter Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu"), but for our final yuks let us turn to Scott Shackford at Reason: "Oddly, though, I’m not seeing the actual faux outrage from the right." One is always least likely to notice faults in one's friends.

REPUBLICAN OUTREACH TO WOMEN CONTINUES.

Good catch, Dr. Spencer:

It's by Patrick Howley at The Daily Caller. Spencer believes it to be "officially the Dumbest Thing on the Internet. It’s like a Derp Unicorn vomited derp in a bucket full of derp..." I am more cautious only because I've seen the vastness of their derp mines. But this one is pretty ridiculous.

Howley bases his ravings on a paper, humorously titled "My Eyes Are Up Here..." (Howley doesn't seem to get the joke, however often he's heard it), about measuring men's attentiveness to women's breasts, the existence of which he links, on no basis, to a harassment suit and a "social media uproar." Presto, Liberal Fascism!

This is the kind of study MSNBC commentators can hold up when they’re talking about 'rape culture. Because men are just all Bashar al-Assad and sex is their chemical weapon... This is what the progressives exist to do. They take away our activities.

It's getting so you can't even wave a Confederate flag anymore. Well, you can wave it, but people will make fun of you. Maybe not real people, but the people in your head, like those MSNBC commentators in Patrick Howley's head who say he can't look at tits. And now that'll happen every time!

Oh, there's also this:

Ladies, how are you going to feel when the progressives prohibit men from paying you a compliment on your walk home from the bar? You know there’s always one friend of yours who waited all night for that.

Well, you can't say those How to Talk to Women for the Party lessons were totally in vain.

UPDATE. Big_bad_bald_bastard in comments:

It's weird that their compulsion to disparage women outweighs their desire to get laid by non-professionals.

Yeah. If you like tits, there are all kinds of easy and fun ways to regard and admire them. For someone who's all HEY I'M LOOKING AT YOUR TITS YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT, access to breasts is at best a secondary goal  -- perhaps a gesture of support/establishment of bond with other grudge-ridden psychos whose proudest boast is that they are Victims of Political Correctness (understandable, as "Recipient of Wingnut Welfare" and "Dateless Wanker" are far less exalted titles).

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the rightblogger reaction to Nelson Mandela's death. I was surprised to find so many of my usual subjects still condemning Mandela as a menace -- message discipline ain't what it used to be -- but for the most part the big boys made with the crocodile tears, though without much disguising that they are in fact crocodiles.

Here's a bonus for you late-night people from one of the holdouts, Some Guy at Babalu:

The MSM that is now in full honors mode for Nelson Mandela who was a political prisoner for decades, and who fought against apartheid and for freedom in South Africa would be the same MSM that would be in full honors mode if the dictator of the Cuban apartheid, Fidel Castro ... who currently holds political prisoners ... were to die.

Yeah, dead Castro's gonna be big on network. They'll get Rachel Maddow to do the eulogy and Miley Cyrus to dance.

UPDATE. Found in course of research: I wonder if these t-shirt models know to what purpose their images have been put at whiteresister.com:

"Oh hi, Marge. I saw your son modeling a shirt on the internet! Er, no, I can't remember the name of the site..."

UPDATE 2. Speaking of white resisters, at National Review today:

Former Secretary of State: Reagan Regretted Apartheid Veto

Oh, well then.

SNEAK PREVIEW.

Thanks to Nelson Mandela, I should have plenty of insane rightblogger shit for the Sunday night column. Here's a nice specimen for you from Joel Pollak of Breitbart.com, who has a few other columns up about Mandela, distinguishable mainly by the ugly dissonance between Pollak's attempted generosity toward Mandela and the repulsive gibberings of his readers in comments (Samples: "MANDELA was a communist... He and BO have lots in common," "He is hanging out with Yashir arafat and Hitler in Hell right now," etc). Perhaps out of embarrassment (look, stranger things have happened), Pollak follows up with something to get the punters on Mandela's side: an article about how Mandela makes Obama look bad -- which God knows is true, but Pollak's angle is that Obama looks bad because he doesn't share the conservative values of Nelson Mandela. (Sample: "Mandela was fiscally responsible, Obama is profligate." Funny, I've never read a conservative encomium to Mandela's economic stewardship before this.)

Pollak gets even further out in his colleague Tony Lee's interview of him, which contains this gem:

[Pollak] also said Mbeki also did not think a virus caused AIDS and denied the vaccine to South Africans because he unilaterally believed that government knows best and has intellectual and political authority. Pollak said Obama also has that tendency, thinking he can tell Americans "what reality is and what reality isn't."

And that's why Obama, like Mbeki, ignores the scientific community and supports such ignorant superstitions as anthropogenic climate change. Not to mention his wacky plan to extend health insurance to all Americans.

UPDATE. In comments, Sharculese: "Squaring the circle between their commenters' rabid hatred of Mandela and the desire not to look like total loons is going to show us which recipients are truly earning their wingnut welfare and which ones are just strapping young bucks buying t-bone steaks."

RACE TO THE BOTTOM.

Quin Hillyer, whose buffoonery at the American Spectator helps fill my Voice columns, declares himself a victim because Jonathan Chait almost sorta-kinda called him a racist. (Chait suggests Hillyer's weird obsession with Obama's alleged "haughtiness" comports with  classic "uppity" characterizations of blacks who are thought to get above themselves.)

Hillyer thinks Chait has provided him such a large opening that he can muscle his fellow conservatives through it into racial absolution. Here are his talking points, removed from the weak broth of his prose:

Hillyer is no racist
Hillyer resisted the campaigns of racist David Duke. (Chait acknowledged this; Hillyer pretends not to notice.) He also turned on Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond when everyone else did, and has said some nice things about black people.
Hillyer does not believe blacks are "inherently racist or ill-motivated," but merely "unprepared" for the advantages of white life "when race-based government edicts stack the deck in education or access to employment."
Hillyer's father applauded Brown v. Board of Education and loved Louis Armstrong.

Liberals are the real racists
"It is leftists, not conservatives, who are obsessed with race."
Liberals pick on definitely not-racist conservatives like Jeff Sessions just because some things he said and did may look racist to the untrained eye.
Liberals think it's racist when conservatives make "Obamaphones" their new T-bone/Cadillac/welfare queen shtick (notwithstanding that the program dates back to the Bush era*), so obviously they don't know what racism is.
Liberals are in fact racist against whites because they are racist for blacks and  "see and hear no evil from their favored groups or policies even when the evils are blindingly obvious." As to what those blindingly obvious evils are, see below:

Blacks are also the real racists
Blacks vote for black people. They are arrested for most of the "hate crimes" in the United States. "At least some polls" show blacks think they're racist too, so who's the racist now?

In other words, Hillyer advances ancient arguments that will be accepted by everyone who already believes such horseshit, like Matt K. Lewis at The Daily Caller. Lewis too has some killer talking points -- like, how can conservatives be racist when they also smear white people? ("Conservatives were happy to accuse Bill Clinton off all sorts of things — of dodging the draft and [for some, at least] of having Vince Foster murdered. Was race the cause of all of that?") Oh, and Lewis is also a victim of racist liberal smears -- a black guy accused him of "deploy[ing] the very principles of white privilege" once! Him, Matt K. Lewis, who has "spoken out" against racism! It's like when hyperleftist Dave Weigel suggested resistance to gay marriage had something to do with bigotry against gays. Where do these liberals get that stuff?

Bottom line, it's 2013 and white people are still the ones who suffer the most, or at least the most publicly, from racism.

*UPDATE. Some commenters remind me that these phones come out of the Lifeline program established in the Reagan era. I'd forgotten this point has frequently been brought up to counter the racist gibberings of Obamaphone obsessives -- and missed this awesome bad-faithfest in response by W.A. Beatty at American Thinker:

The only defense offered by Lifeline Program supporters is that it was begun during Ronald Reagan's term, and expanded to include cell phones during George W. Bush's term. But so what? Circumstances change -- even Democrats are not immune. The Jeffersonian Republicans-Democrats represented those who visualized an agrarian future. Then, as the 20th century began, progressives with socialist-Marxist doctrine began to infest the Democrat Party. The result is what we have today.

Which is an elevated way of saying that when a Democrat gives you a phone it's intrinsically bad because Democrat. The whole thing is so poorly reasoned, I feel a duty to preserve it so those who come after will understand why were so easier conquered and enslaved by sentient pigs.

DA, COMRADE, PLEASE ONLY TO LAUGH AT STEVE CROWDER, RUSH LIMBAUGH, AND STARVING PAUPERS.

You know what's not conservatively correct now? Enjoying the comedy of Sarah Silverman. Kevin D. Williamson explains at National Review that Silverman thinks she's being oh so liberated but she's really "convention itself" because PC. For example:

But there are taboos and there are taboos. NBC and Conan O’Brien both apologized for airing a bit in which Miss Silverman considers the possibility of using racist sentiment to disqualify herself for an unwanted stint of jury duty by proclaiming, “I hate chinks.” Not wanting to be thought of as a racist, she instead proclaims, “I love chinks — who doesn’t?” If that was a step too far for the gentle souls at NBC, consider that that was the toned-down version; the original contained a slur directed at blacks rather than Asians.

So, I don't know -- she didn't say "nigger," so it wasn't funny? I don't get it. Well, kulturkampf, like comedy, is highly subjective, I guess.

Also, Silverman is in fact not really Jewish, because she went to an expensive school:

Miss Silverman is a kind of cultural appropriator, too, a native of New Hampshire and a graduate of the Derryfield School (this year’s tuition: $28,535) who constructed for herself a super-Jewish dramatis persona and practices a kind of postmodern Borscht Belt comedy heavy on Jewish ethnic humor.

I wonder if Williamson's seen how gentrified the Lower East Side has gotten -- oh, Christ, don't tell him, he may write another column. Where were we? Oh yeah: Silverman gave a TED talk and "the audience was less than impressed." Too bad they couldn't have booked Kevin D. Williamson for a comedy clinic instead. (Check this out, Chris Anderson: "Freud’s triune description of the human personality may be useless as a model of the mind, but it works as a method of classifying comedians." Is that Oh Wow or what?)

Oh, and guess whose name appears six times in this essay? No, it's not Molly Picon:

Barack Obama is a fan — it is not mere cultural accident that their careers are contemporaneous... 

It is only natural... that one of the more significant evangelists for Barack Obama and Obamaism would be a woman who starred in a faux French New Wave film called Féte des Pets (Fart Party)... 

...she has been as slavish a devotee of the Democratic cause generally and the cause of Barack Obama in particular... 

She makes get-out-the-vote videos that are in practice get-out-the-vote-for-Obama videos...

...Sarah Silverman, whose politics are as crass as her sense of humor, is a perfect cultural fit for the Age of Obama.

That's what we show folk call "giving 'em what they want." Sure, let him write about whatever makes him mad, just make sure it has plenty of Obama!

There are many nuggets of nonsense in the thing ("her career has been made possible by the same corrosive forces that enable the pornographer’s"), but all you really need to know is 1.) Williamson is the doofus who got mad at a lady who was using a phone in a theater and grabbed the phone and threw it, and 2.) the story is front-paged at National Review Online as "Infantile Sarah" (subhed: "A comedian for the age of Obama").

UPDATE. Jay B relates in comments that the "I love chinks" bit was performed back in 2001. Barack "Age Of" Obama and his comedy courtesan are playing a very long game indeed!

UPDATE 2. In comments also, Dr. Bethany Spencer, L.GM.: "Oh, I get it. This is one of those formulaic wingnut posts where the author lists a few things he doesn’t like then says 'because Obama' or 'because feminists' or 'because liberals.'" I believe Dr. Spencer has cracked the code.

AROUND THE HORN.

Some neat stuff on the web:

Old-timers, remember Sasha Castel? She used to be a pain in the ass. Well, she's still alive, in Australia no less, and has become funny and charming on her Self-Pollution site, talking about food, opera, and whatnot. See, there's hope for us all.

Our old friend John Williams has decided to stop laboriously pen-cil-ling and ink-ing funnies like a fucking monk, and now just zips them right the fuck out in ballpoint on his Spiral Notebook Comics blog. It's SO FREEING.

Kathleen Geier is a great writer for the Washington Monthly and others, and has decided to do Late Shows for The Real People at her own blog called Inequality Matters. She ain't wrong.

WHEN ALL YOU HAVE IS A DEATH CULT, EVERY OBAMA LOOKS LIKE A HITLER.

The White House is having a "Youth Summit"...

...offering young people from around the country an opportunity to discuss the Affordable Care Act and other issues with senior White House officials. White House Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google+ followers ages 18-35 are eligible to apply to attend this White House event on December 4.

Interested in joining? Sign up for your chance to join other White House social media followers at the #WHYouth social.

This anodyne event has me halfway between "good for them" and "so what." But among my usual subjects, it's Hitler. No, really -- The Right Scoop:

White House youth. I think it has a certain ring to it…don’t you?

Jim Geraghty of National Review:

It's Springtime for Obama. #WHYouth

Bryan Preston of PJ Media:

We Have a ‘White House Youth’ Now?... It’s about the cult, not the country, with this administration.

(Preston also complains Obama's "hosting this 'summit'" -- Scare quotes! So-called! -- "not to talk about our nation’s history or anything that all Americans could get behind. It’s hosting this summit to transmit its talking points about Obamacare." To appease the right -- always a big concern with Democratic Administrations, alas -- I advise the President to say "Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred and ninety-two" before launching into his explanation of national policy/fascist propaganda.)

It's a sign of the times that, while normal people would be embarrassed to be associated with this nonsense, rightbloggers are actually reveling in this comparison of a bunch of kids visiting the White House to Nazi bund meetings. "The hashtag #WHYouth prompted all sorts of Hitler Youth-related mockery," giggles Breitbart.com. "The Photos ‘shop themselves and the tweets roll on," whoops Mary Katherine Ham at Hot Air. My favorite is RedState's Moe Lane:

Somebody in the Obama administration had an opportunity to say You know, fellows: perhaps we shouldn’t describe this upcoming young person summit thing in a way that could be heard as “White House Youth” – only he or she didn’t, and so here we go again.

It's not his fault -- they keep making him compare Obama to Hitler! Just like all those people on the internet who wouldn't be wasting their weekends Photoshopping a toothbrush mustache on Obama if he weren't always going around annexing the Sudetenland and gassing Jews.

I've been joking about this for years, but it's worth noting that Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism has had a powerful effect on modern conservatism -- mainly by lowering the brethren's reading levels, but also by convincing them that slapping a swastika on anything they don't like is analysis, and inspiring a million puke-streams like "Top 50 reasons people keep comparing Obama to Hitler" (and no, that cowboy's not kidding, nor taking his meds, apparently).

It's been going on long enough that I wouldn't surprised if it were damaging the conservative brand. Or maybe just clarifying what it stands for.

UPDATE. Meanwhile, for upmarket conservatives, James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal:

ObamaCare and the Totalitarian Mindset

That's how the toffs do it: Don't say Hitler, use abstractions. Less messy.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

about the latest round of Ooga Booga over the Knockout Game. Well, nothing to do now but sit back and wait for the racist comments to roll in!

UPDATE. Some late-breaking nuttery:

Knockout game is preview of the chaos coming to America...

In this day and age, it has become much more important for all of us to learn how to defend ourselves. As the US economy spirals downhill, people are going to become increasingly desperate. And desperate people do desperate things. The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is beginning to disappear.

It sounds like Confederate Yankee, but it's actually something called "Islamic Invitation Turkey" and appears to be what the brethren like to call an Islamofascist site. Well, I figured these two teams would find each other someday.

This one's pretty good too: "Is the Knockdown Game the Work of Government Agent Provocateurs to Start a Race War?" It's from something called The Lone Star Watchdog, but I found it via The Daily Paul, a Ron 'n' Rand EVOLution site. Who says the GOP doesn't have a deep bench?

BECAUSE YOU CAN'T SPELL THANKSGIVING WITHOUT LIBERAL FASCISM.

In his Morning Jolt thing he sends around to subscribers (here's a heavily-edited version some guy put on the internet), Jim Geraghty makes fun of the OFA PR campaign encouraging liberals to tell relatives about Obamacare at Thanksgiving dinner. Fair enough. I myself wouldn't bring it up, though if one of them came at me with some bullshit I would say, "that is some bullshit" and take it from there.

As often happens when a conservative has half a point, Geraghty keeps going until he has negative-a-point-and-a-half:

Our friend Jonah gets a lot of grief over Liberal Fascism, usually from people who have never read the book, and who usually go on to insist they don't need to in order to criticize it.

(I have read it; it's a piece of shit.)

But there is a creepy quasi-fascist vibe in this effort to turn families' holiday gatherings into an opportunity to dissuade critics of the president's policies...

When you say the word 'fascist,' people usually picture Mussolini speaking from a balcony and his high-booted goons marching around in public squares. Because we don't see those images in American society today, a lot of people recoil from labeling anyone in our modern politics with the term "fascist." 

Also because a lot of people aren't nuts.

But Mussolini wrote, "for the fascist, everything is in the state, and no human or spiritual thing exists, or has any sort of value, outside the state." Among the Organizing for Action crew, there seems to be some irresistible compulsion to take something outside the state -- Thanksgiving dinner -- and co-opt it for the purposes of the state -- or its leader, or its agenda.

Meanwhile over at his National Review blog, Geraghty encourages his readers to send out Thanksgiving cards devised by the Heritage Foundation with messages like "Let's be thankful Kathleen Sebelius isn't coaching our football team." This isn't a fascist use of the holiday at all, though, because, as Professor Goldberg has taught us, faaaart.

UPDATE. The remainder of Geraghty's thing is even worse, in a way: When a fellow wingnut suggests that maybe income equality on the massive scale we're seeing in this country isn't good for democracy, he sorta sees the point ("All societies have winners and losers, but modern America's winners are separating from the rest of us rather rapidly"), but retreats into victim-blaming:

A big question that is likely to dominate our politics in the coming years is: How much are the "losers" of modern America responsible for their circumstances?... if most of our countrymen getting the short end of the stick are folks who "worked hard and played by the rules," some significant chunk of them exacerbated their problems with bad decisions: They dropped out of school, had children before they were ready, abused alcohol or drugs, pursued unrealistic career paths... 

If most of you who are punished by inequality are blameless, comfort yourselves that your suffering also touches the nation's whores, junkies, and MFAs!

Obama has talked in the past about a “culture of irresponsibility,” but he’s mostly used that phrase in the context of Wall Street, and in fact pledged to “protect consumers from bad mortgages and greedy credit-card companies.” In his world, it’s always the big powerful corporations making trouble for the person in debt, not the person who actually ran up that debt. 

Quite a few Americans want to hear that we ourselves are most responsible for the quality of our own lives. If we could overcome that, the rest of the problems would fall like dominoes.

I guess Geraghty had to satisfy himself that income equality, like everything else, is not Wall Street's fault before he could really enjoy sending out his Heritage Foundation Thanksgiving cards.

Again I have to ask: Do these guys even know any real people?

LOL WTF OMG.

Sometimes all you have to do is quote them or, in the case of Twitchy, Michelle Malkin's alternative-universe Twitter, screencap them:

I will add, though, that it's about time for another Jonah Goldberg essay on how conservatives haz all the intellectual traditions.

UPDATE. Amy Lutz' twitter feed is a gem, too.

UPDATE 2. cleter, in comments: "Wait, is she criticizing Fluke for all the hashtags? Has she ever seen conservative kooks on twitter? With all the #tcot this and #BENGHAZI that? There's hardly room to squeeze in 'President Blacula Sucks!' or 'Hilary Pooped her pantsuit' for all the hashtags."

True, which may lead to the next wave in conservative social media floated by D Johnston: "a short sequence of letters and numbers corresponding to whatever outrage is going around. After more refinement, they will shed text altogether and become a soundboard with nothing but howls of rage." Wait, isn't that The Five?

YOUTH CULTURE STOLE HIS CHAINSAW.

If you did not know that Kanye West was the singer of the background music, by the quality of the lyrics and beat, you might think that a fourth grader was spewing rhymed obscenities...

Ah shaddap Gramps -- also known as Victor Davis Hanson, who in his latest essay regales his readership with the kind of kids-today yap that used to pad out middlebrow magazine essays. Only instead of blaming permissive parents or the Bomb, Hanson blames aesthetes:

Once classical canons of artistic, literary, or musical expression were torn down, and once those classically trained rebels who ripped them apart have passed on, we are left with the ruins of trying to shock what is perhaps beyond being shocked...

In other words, once you have rebelled against hexameters, quarter notes, or realistic representation, and after you have rebelled against that rebellion with crucifixes in urine, obscenity-laced rap, and peek-a-boo nudity on stage, what are you left with? The 20th-century rebels who knew what they did not like have been replaced by the anti-rebels who don’t know that there was ever something against which to rebel. Again, we are left with the 21st-century of Lady Gaga giving birth to a blue sphere, Miley Cyrus probing body orifices with a foam oversized finger, and Kanye West humping on a motorcycle while reciting obscene nursery-rhyme ditties.

I think general idea is that the Moderns ruined everything, but it's hard to be sure; the rebellion against "hexameters," for one thing, would seem to mean most poetry after the ancients -- when Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter, was Party in the U.S.A. the inevitable result? Also, if culture fell when "realistic representation" ceased to be an aspiration, where does that leave Agamemnon? It's less representational than Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Maybe everything really went downhill after ring shouts and cave paintings.

I wondered why Hanson was even bothering with this Andy Rooney schtick, and then found to my horror that he thinks it has something to do with Obamacare.

Why would a culture that canonizes a Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, or Lady Gaga have the discrimination to determine whether their chief executive tells the truth or lies? Obamacare is a great program in a way that West, Cyrus, and Gaga are great artists, in a way that more iPads will mean more geniuses.

Well, in a way he's got a point -- would stuff like Hanson's even be tolerated if we hadn't been inured to it by decades of absurdism?

Next week: The curse of Instagramsci!

UPDATE. In comments, Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps: "It's like one of those Oliver Sacks patient histories: classics expert Victor H. has woken up every day since about 1964 to be shocked anew by the existence of pop culture."

Also, for newcomers, here's the referent for the title.

UPDATE. Whetstone, in comments: "Oh, horseshit. Ask someone who actually pays attention to contemporary popular music—rather than just railing about whatever YouTube video happened to pop up on PJ Media—whether there are 'hierarchies.'" It's one of the institutionalized absurdities of the Culture War that guys like Hanson believe pop culture represents some refutation of values. Pop fans actually have much more rigid formal demands than high art fans at this point; in the dimmer ones, they're made even more rigid by sentimentality, and if you don't believe me get a load of this Star Wars dork who's also a National Review writer -- though I warn you, you may throw your action figures away after reading it. Sample: "And why would Disney go to the bother of globe-trotting in search of future celebrities if not to brazenly drum up publicity? If that’s true, it totally worked, with Exhibit A being the article you’re reading right now." Next she'll do a story where she realizes actors don't make up their own lines.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about two events last week -- the filibuster vote and the Iran deal -- that seem to have thrown the brethren for a loop. They'd gotten used to just piling abuse on Obamacare, and I think they genuinely believed they'd never have to work hard for a dollar again. No wonder they're pissed!

Not that they haven't quickly developed some tropes for the occasion, but they're kinda lame. For example, after referring to the "Obamacare train wreck" -- man, that one never gets old --  Doug Powers of the Michelle Malkin site refers to Obama's attempts to seat judges on the D.C. Court of Appeals, which the GOP filibusters was blocking, as "court stacking." This comes straight off the Republican Party boilerplate, which would embarrass Powers if he had any pride, but worse that that, how's that supposed to motivate voters? Maybe they think it sounds enough like "court packing" that some elderly voters will get outraged and storm the voting booths in 2014, thinking they're turning out for Wendell Willkie.

UPDATE. On the Iran tip, I missed this bit from Power Line's Paul Mirengoff, claiming that Obama and Kerry "grant concessions to regime that don’t like America because they themselves don’t like America all that much" and want to surrender it to Islamic fundamentalism, which totally rocks. Mirengoff cites as back-up the fact that after serving in Vietnam, Kerry said he thought the war was a mistake. (Mirengoff, uncontaminated by experience of combat, presumably thinks it was great.) Most Americans seem to share Kerry's opinion, which means they also don't like America, which is why they reelected the America-disliking Obama in 2012, which leaves Mirengoff to wait patiently, as a representative of the Saving Remnant, for Jesus to reincarnate Reagan and reclaim his people. At least that's the charitable explanation; it may just be that Mirengoff's an idiot.

FORCED INTO HEALTH CARE: A MOTHER'S LAMENT.

Joining John Birch and Joe McCarthy in the pantheon of conservative martyrs is Nicole L. Hopkins' mom, who is forced by the Kenyan Pretender to have free health care via the hated Medicaid -- disguised as Washington Apple Health, "the mawkish rebranding of Medicaid in Washington state," but everyone will know she's reduced to taking poor-people medicine, especially since she complained about it in the Wall Street Journal:

"How has it come to this?" she asked in one of our several talks over the past few weeks about what was happening. When she was a working mother and I was young, she easily carried health insurance for our whole family. "How have I fallen this far?"... 

"I just don't expect anything positive out of getting free health care," she said. "I don't see why other people should have to pay for my care, whether it be through taxes or otherwise." In paying for health insurance herself—she won't accept help from her family, either—she was safeguarding her dignity and independence and her sense of being a fully functioning member of society.

I sincerely do not get this. If Uncle Sam decided to send me food stamps, notwithstanding that I have a job, I wouldn't look for a national newspaper to amplify my cries of outrage. This is not because I am a moocher or a socialist, it's because I'm not nuts. Free food? Thanks, Obama!

But Mom is outraged, her daughter says, that she's been "in effect, ordered to take a handout." Well, we've all got our problems. Maybe don't use it, I guess? What am I missing here?

UPDATE. At RedState, Some Guy takes a study showing no significant change in measured health outcomes over two years of Medicaid to mean that nobody who was sick got better under treatment (bet Some Guy got his MPH at Trump University), and suggests we just get rid of the damn thing and put all paupers on the Pay or Die system. Well, at least Nicole L. Hopkins' mom would be spared some indignity.

HIS PERFECT RECORD OF WRONGNESS IS INTACT.

I've been living in DC for a couple years now, and I don't talk about it much because, well, you know me -- if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything! Kidding, slightly. Our Northeast neighborhood is pretty chill and friendly, except for the white people, and DC certainly has world-class museums and a couple nice bars. But let's be frank: This is no New York. For example, the entertainment "corridor" to which we are closest, the fabled H Street, is a joke. Most of the venues are pitched at kids -- that is, the brown-nosing little climbers who throng DC's "corridors" on weekends -- and since DC's small scale allows rapacious developers to completely overwhelm whatever strip they choose to devour, it has made the street into a Disneyland of crap. Last year some schmo invested what looks like at least half a mil to erect a shiny, art-directed new joint here that sells -- I swear to God -- cheesesteaks and flavored ices. It's a Bennigan's bohemia.

I could go on, but why should I -- Isn't the fact that Andrew Sullivan prefers DC to New York proof enough for you? Apparently he has a long thing about it in the Times of London, to which I'm not going to subscribe but the bits that have been quoted are probably all I should read for my heart's sake:

Every journey to any other place in the city is a battle of wills with everyone else; no one ever steps aside or evinces the slightest shade of civility on the pavement. There are no queues, just teeming masses of selfishness and hostility...

Picture Sullivan pausing to contemplate the muse of centrism on a Midtown sidewalk and getting knocked on his ass by people who have to get to fucking work. It improved my day!

If you think you’ll find intellectual stimulation you’re thinking of another era. The conversations are invariably about money or property or schools.

What else would one talk to Andrew Sullivan about? They were trying to do you a favor, schmuck. Or maybe themselves -- just imagining Sullivan trying to talk about art, for example, makes me cringe.

If you bring up any political subject you are engulfed by a smug liberal consensus that borders on outright bigotry and brutal intolerance towards dissent.

"Oh, so you're that asshole Andrew Sullivan, huh? Well let me tell you something...." -- Overhead at the 92nd Street Y. After years of having his ass kissed, Sullivan probably ran into people who don't care who Andrew Sullivan is. No wonder he fled.

Oh, Sullivan earlier referred to DC as a "Second Brooklyn." This is probably based on brunches in the Heights with Martin Amis. "And over there, Andrew, is where Norman Mailer used to live." "Rather small, isn't it? Have I mentioned my DC apartment? 1500 square feet of a school classroom I got for a steal in 1991?" "Many times."

AAAAANNNNND... SCENE.

My thanks to mortimer2000 in comments on a previous post for alerting me to this job listing:

Bestselling author and columnist, Jonah Goldberg, writes on U.S. politics and culture as a fellow at AEI. One of the most prominent conservative political commentators today, Goldberg frequently appears on television and radio shows, and his syndicated columns are circulated widely across the United States. Interns will conduct research on a large range of policy-related topics to assist Mr. Goldberg with his columns, lectures, and media appearances. The ideal candidate will possess strong research and writing skills, as well as a demonstrated interest in U.S. politics, culture, and the media. 

Job Location
Washington, District of Columbia, United States 

Position Type
Intern 

Salary
0.00 - 0.00 USD

Doesn't that suggest a scene --

JONAH and K-LO in the NR breakroom; JONAH thumbs through a pile of resumes.

JONAH. (through a mouthful of Hot Pockets) Lookit all these resumes from old guys! (pulls one out) "Mark Gauvreau Judge." God, why can't they get their moms to get them jobs! Losers. (wipes mouth with resume)

K-LO. (sniffs) Something smells -- (gasps, stands) Mother of Christ! Jonah, not again! (gags, pulls her wimple across her nose and mouth) Do you have Satan inside you?

JONAH. Better call a exorcist, K-Lo, 'cuz I just shotgunned a can of these.

JONAH holds up an empty tube of French's French Fried Onion Rings, and simultaneously farts, knocking over a ketchup bottle and two wastebaskets. K-LO flees.

JONAH. If ya can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Hey, I should put that in the ad! (pulls a resume marked BEN SHAPIRO out of the pile, reads aloud as he writes on the back with eyeliner pencil) "Candidate must have high level important eh-pee-see-mo-lotical discussions with his boss,  Jonah Goldberg." (wraps one of his hands with the resume, talks to it) So, you went to Harvard, huh? (shakes hand wrapped in resume, speaks in a falsetto) "Yes I did, Mr. Goldberg, I'm a very smart man and I'm 40 years old and I write for free on the internet." (normal voice) Oh, I see. Well, tell me, Mr. Harvard Man, can you tell me what is happening now? (farts, knocking down a set of venetian blinds. Sirens are heard in the distance.) "Oooooh, Mr. Goldberg, you made a very bad fart!" Is that so? Well perhaps they didn't teach you at Harvard that HE WHO SMELT IT DEALT IT! "Ooooh noooo!" Oh yes! "Ooooh noooooo!" Oh yes! (JONAH pushes the resume-draped hand between his legs) Ha! "Ack! Oh no! P.U.! It stinks in here! Lemme gooooo!" No! "Lemme gooooo! Lemme --"

TWO FIREFIGHTERS in Hazmat suits burst in and lay hands on JONAH.

FIREFIGHTER. Methane levels are beyond the safety limit, sir! We're taking you out of here!

JONAH: LIBERAL FASCISM!

He lunges and grabs an industrial-size bag of Tostitos Hint of Jalapeno Chips as they carry him away.

OTHER THAN THAT, PERFECT ANALOGY.

James Taranto, comparing Obamacare to the Iraq War:

One of the strongest critiques of the Iraq effort--as this column acknowledged in September, in a different context--is that it took hubris to suppose that the U.S. could simply export democracy to a distant land and expect it to have a quick, benevolent and transformative effect on the entire region. That was frequently characterized as the "neocon" view. If so, isn't ObamaCare the perfect example of "neocon" hubris in domestic policy?

Because it's hubris to think you can implement a national health care system -- just ask most of the civilized world -- whereas invasions are always cash money.

Taranto also addresses the Katrina-Obamacare analogies that have been a key element of current wingnut schtick, and attacks Joan Walsh for saying most of the dead in Katrina were black; in one estimate, they were only 44%, "well short of 'most,'" says Taranto, and in another they were 51%, but Walsh is still wrong because "it was a bare majority." Plus which, three-fifths of 51% is 38%.

Taranto also accuses Walsh of racism against white men. I can see why this would upset him.

AND THEN DE BLASIO MADE OUT WITH SUKHREET GABEL AND KILLED YANKEL ROSENBAUM.

Bob McManus at City Journal:

History may not repeat itself, but sometimes it whispers warnings. The wise will pay heed. 

Whether the ice-rink shooting at New York City’s Bryant Park, an arduously restored urban jewel at 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, was an aberration or a harbinger remains to be seen. But the gunplay prompted unhappy recollections of the not-so-distant past, when the enclave was known as Needle Park and the New York Times described it as “a cesspool of crime and vice” only sporadically patrolled by police, if at all.

...memories linger of a time when New York had truly lost its way, when it couldn’t summon the will to resist dysfunction or even articulate a right to self-defense—to say nothing of self-respect.

Soon Bill de Blasio will be mayor...

Bill de Blasio is six weeks from inauguration as Mayor, but he's already on the hook for a mini-crime wave and junkies from thirty years ago. Is it right that one man should have such power?

Things like Bernie Goetz on the Downtown No. 2 train, on Dec. 22, 1984—the night he opened fire on four black teenagers who he said were menacing him with a screwdriver. The episode touched off a debate on race, crime, and the right to self-defense that seethed for years. Nobody was neutral on Bernie Goetz. He was the man who refused to be victimized, or he was a racist gunman—pick one. Goetz did eight months on Rikers Island, then drifted off into semi-obscurity. But there he was last month, smirk and all, back in court on a minor drug-peddling charge. He’s no longer a threat of any sort, just a timely reminder, as the debate over the future of Pax Giuliani in the age of de Blasio gains energy.

If Bernie Goetz sees his shadow, we get four more years of John Lindsay.

Things like Sonny Carson, an architect of the racist boycott of a Korean grocery in Brooklyn that shamed the city for six months in 1990—an event that then-mayor David Dinkins couldn’t bring himself even obliquely to criticize. Ugly stuff, not to be repeated. But there was the beyond-bitter entertainer Harry Belafonte, channeling Carson in a Brooklyn church the Sunday before Election Day. Conservative political contributors Charles and David Koch, he said, are “white supremacists . . . men of evil . . . [similar to] the men who would belong to the Ku Klux Klan.” Americans are entitled to their views, of course, even haters in their dotage. And this outburst would have scant significance—except that soon-to-be-mayor-elect de Blasio sat smiling as Belafonte sputtered on. Much as Dinkins, with his silence, encouraged Carson’s racist rants.

You see the connection: Carson instigated a boycott of Korean delis, and Belafonte talked shit about two of the richest men in America. It's practically the same thing.

Now, some pathologies never go away, which doubtless explains the city’s just-concluded Banksy carnival—the media celebration of an anonymous, high-end graffiti vandal who may or may not be a competent artist, but who sure knows how to turn a buck off defacing property. Banksy, a Brit, recently returned home after a month in the city creating “art” that sold for six figures (perhaps boosting de Blasio’s argument that some people just need taxing.) It was all harmless fun, except that the city has been there, done that, and doesn’t need a return trip...

The good news is the new wave of graffiti will be done by rich British performance artists, so no one can call conservatives racist when they complain.

The reviews are in:

And yet 74% of them voted for de Blasio. Must have a... Death Wish.

Tune in a few weeks from now, when the increased imminence of Mayor de Blasio causes 9/11.

UPDATE. Commenters are performing at a Broadway level. "Boy, they'll jump at any shadow, huh?" says Batocchio. "But it stands to reason, since shadows are black."

Many notice the commenters at McManus' page who, unlike our own, tend to destroy rather than restore one's faith in humanity with their gibberish about "Liberals and Black race pimps," etc. "It's not exactly like a bathroom wall," notes Hob, "it's like a cross between a bathroom wall and the letter column of some mimeographed Klan zine..."

"Let me know when the full DeBlasio effect has kicked in so I can take the Acela and go wilding on reactionaries," says Cato the Censor. You and me both, comrade! Time to get some jumbos and cheap rents back up in this bitch.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Obamacare keep-your-plan fix and how, rightbloggers insist, it can't possibly work. All players in this game -- insurers, rightbloggers, and Obama -- are doing everything they can to get the most they can out of it; but while the insurers are trying to supplement their already massive payday, and rightbloggers are trying to win future elections, Obama seems to be trying to get a national health care system to work. How he became the villain in all this will be a fruitful study for future generations, if we have any.

IN WHAT SHOULD BE THE NADIR...

...of the current wingnut skreefest over Obamacare, the legal expert who told Bush he could torture prisoners says Obama's insurance fix is unconstitutional. Can't someone just give Yoo a "screams of pain" relaxation tape and send him away, preferably to Den Haag?

That should be the low point, but this is the kind of situation in which the brethren are actually expected to earn their wingnut welfare with a higher order of bullshit, on the double! So they're more energized and, if such a thing can be imagined, less scrupulous. Here's today's brow-slapper from Megan McArdle:

Some of the left-wing commentators I’ve seen seem to be under the impression that health insurers make fabulous profits...

Whereas one quick look at tar-paper shacks that house these humble businesses will show they're merely scraping by.

And this just in -- Roger L. Simon demands Obama resign over Obamacare: The headline begins, I swear to God, "Was Benghazi Not Enough?" My question is: If incompetence is a reason to resign, why is Simon still running PJ Media?

OKAY, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR SHITTY HEALTH CARE PLANS. HAPPY?

I didn't think so. Charles C.W. Cooke:

Looking wounded and, at times, even broken, President Obama this afternoon addressed the ongoing disaster that is the implementation of his healthcare law. "I will work with Republicans and Democrats to make this work better,” the president announced generously, before moving quickly onto familiar territory and explaining that he would in fact just direct the executive branch to ignore the law...

Once again, Obama explained that he had no idea that the website’s was going to be so calamitous. Once again, he carefully chose his words when explaining why he promised something that was so clearly undeliverable. “You can’t blame me, I thought that the law would work!” he appeared to be saying. Rambling at times... 

...Obama’s expansive and inchoate comments were gifts for an opposition that has long characterized him as being out of his depth and unaccustomed to the real world.

This has two of the three essential ingredients for a wingnut Obamacare story: An assertion that, six weeks into enrollment, the program has already failed; and a portrayal of Obama as simultaneously a ruthless master criminal and a simpleton who can't run anything.

What's missing is the heretofore-traditional feigned concern for citizens who would be forced to transfer from their current plans to something with so much more coverage that it would suffocate their freedoms. Obama's latest plan removes this possibility, and they're really going to miss it. It had gotten to the point where the brethren were complaining Obamacare was forcing new plans on a "historically black college" (and what high-fiving must have gone on over this opportunity to show harm by overcoverage to black people! Who's a racist now, Kenyan Pretender!). Now they're reduced to prosecuting a crime without victims. Expect more yelling.

Obama better fix that fucking website, though.

CHEAP SHOT, NOT SORRY.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: I'm okay with living in a social media panopticon because you can't Instragram a fart.

UPDATE. Some commenters go to the source, read Goldberg's essay (about how it's great that behaviors can be recorded forever on the internet and employers and schools can use them against you, because character), and come back gagging. "Jonah," asks BigHank53, "you do understand that the Enlightenment was not, in fact, primarily concerned with self-expression?"

For me the most fartworthy aspect of the essay is Goldberg's assumption that if something you did gets you in trouble with a prospective employer or school, it must reflect your bad character, so you had it coming. I doubt Goldberg has ever heard of Hispanics United of Buffalo, Inc. v. Ortiz, a case in which five employees were fired for complaining about their jobs on Facebook, or any of the many other cases like it, but one of the morals of the story is that employers will penetrate as far into their employees' private lives (and that of their prospects) as society will let them, and cheering for further intrusion as a character-building exercise is... well, exactly what I'd expect of him.

#DEBLASIOSNEWYORK WATCH

Chicago's bond rating was downgraded by Fitch; Michael Haltman reacts:

If this is the potential future fate for a city controlled by a democratic machine, what will happen in New York City now that it will be led by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his socialist beliefs?

Fitch didn't mention socialism, but you have to learn to read between the lines in #deblasiosnewyork! (Linked by the Ole Perfesser, natch.) Meanwhile, Samuel Gonzalez of The Last Tradition:

In the past few weeks since the election of Bill de Blasio New York City has suffered an increase of gun violence.

The criminal element in the city have been given a unofificial green light to carry their guns as a result of de Blasio's promise to abolish Stop and Frisk.

I didn't know street criminals followed politics so closely. That free library at Occupy Wall Street really had an impact.  Also:

So de Blasio faces a crisis even before he's taken his oath as mayor. He either carries through with his campaigne promise to dismantle Stop and Frisk or he renigs on his pledge and leaves it in place.

A typo? Sure, that's what Fred Hiatt said.  And at The American Spectator, Paul Kengor:

New Yorkers have elected their first Red Diaper Baby Mayor to go with their first Red Diaper Baby President, who they likewise gleefully elected in landslides. 

So, to repeat my friend’s plea: “What the HELL is going on???”

The answer: Communist brainwashing in our classrooms! Don't blame Kengor, he's doing his part:

Many times I’ve given a speech titled “Why Communism Is Bad,” often sponsored by the excellent Young America’s Foundation. Frustrated college students, captive to the likes of the aforementioned Maoist, beg me to come to their campus: “S.O.S. Please help!”

From Cambridge to Berkeley, millions of college students blinked out cries for help to Paul Kengor from their reeducation centers, yet New York still elected the Red and Black Menace! Weep, eagle, weep!

UPDATE. In comments, Slocum:

As a university professor who actually does run his class like a reeducation camp, including vicious guards... I really wish these right-wingers would stop diluting my brand by using the reeducation camp trope to talk about the time Backwards-Baseball-Cap Bobby had to hear that women don't typically make as much as men for the same work in a sociology class.

SUCCESS IS NOT AN OPTION.

Shorter Megan McArdle: It's impossible to fix the Obamacare website. I should know -- employers put me in charge of a website once, and I was up all night swapping floppy disks.

Here's my favorite part:

Adding bodies is even more problematic; you have to spend time showing the new people how the system works, and then more time managing all the interactions between the extra people. Think of the difference between trying to arrange girls’ night out with a few friends, and trying to throw a sit-down award dinner for 200, and you’ll get some idea of the ways in which adding people can actually slow things down rather than speed them up.

Astute analogy, Hostess with the Mostest. In Megan McArdle's America, anything more complicated than a podcast goes into Why Bother territory, at least if it has Democratic cooties. Thank God she wasn't around for the construction of the Hoover Dam.

UPDATE. In comments, Dr. Hunky Jimpjorps: "That's funny, I can think of a time when Megan McArdle was all for throwing manpower at a problem, back in those mystery days in the pre-Obama before-times." To be fair, that was in furtherance of a much more important goal than national health care -- that is, fixing it so all those lucky anti-war people would no longer be right.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the recent election and how bummed it made the brethren. It's extra-long!

Here's an outtake I'll share with you late-night Real People -- from the Washington Times, "A side of Cuccinelli voters don’t get to see; reluctant politician fan of ‘Rapper’s Delight’":

After record millions spent on TV advertising in Virginia’s governor race, Republican Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II finds himself in the unenviable position of knowing there’s a side to him voters haven’t experienced. 

Portrayed by his opponents as a rigid social ideologue, he nevertheless can rap his own rendition of the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and is an unapologetic Monty Python fan.

Funny, I'd thought his whole approach to women's issues was kind of a "is your wife a goer" hommage.

UPDATE. In comments: To the news that Cuccinelli loves  "Rapper's Delight" and Monty Python, Haystack reasonably adds, "Him and 100,000 other annoying fratboys." Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard thinks Cuccinelli's favorite joint is actually "Raper's Delight." And smut clyde reacts to Walter Russell Mead's prediction, noted in my column, that "the real middle class will be driven out of the city bit by bit" under de Blasio: "Leaving behind the *spurious* middle class, who can recognised by the tell-tale trait of not agreeing with Mead. But the departure of the real middle class will make room for all those True Scotsmen."

...AND WHEN I WOKE UP, I WAS ON THE FUNDAMENTALIST-BIGOT SIDE OF A VOTE TALLY. WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

Erik Loomis notes that True Son of Liberty Rand Paul voted against ENDA. Well of course. For the libertarians, Scott Shackford of Reason:

Libertarians who believe that hiring policies – even discriminatory ones -- fall under the First Amendment’s “freedom of association” provision may end up getting lumped in with the religious right on this one (not that this is a new thing).

Poor, put-upon fellows, always getting lumped in with the people they always vote with! Look on the bright side, bros -- maybe this vote shows Paul's getting the courage of his convictions back, and will call for the overturn of the Civil Rights Act. Dare to dream!

NOBODY GOES THERE, IT'S TOO CROWDED.

Blah blah blah:

Historically, progressives were seen as partisans for the people, eager to help the working and middle classes achieve upward mobility even at expense of the ultrarich. But in California, and much of the country, progressivism has morphed into a political movement that, more often than not, effectively squelches the aspirations of the majority, in large part to serve the interests of the wealthiest. 

Primarily, this modern-day program of class warfare is carried out under the banner of green politics...

Before we go on, let me note a few things: First, this author, Joel Kotkin, is an alleged urbanist who seems to hate city people: Some years ago he was predicting that sad, city-bound blue states would wither and die while the fecund, corn-fed red-staters would rise to rule.

He's still at it, though in a grumpier and more defensive tone, telling readers that everyone's running screaming from California because it's so horrible and green. The population's only rising a little, so soon you Left Coast hippies will be eating the dust of population gainers like Washington, D.C. -- whoops, we mean North Carolina -- um, still not quite the idea -- ah, yes, here we go: North Dakota, the new Republican paradise, thanks to fracking no long settled exclusively by people on the run from society/the law!

Yet in real life, Cali's political health is vastly improved under Jerry Brown. After the disastrous tenure of Rainier Wolfcastle, Brown engineered a budget surplus and the business interests are happy. He's also merrily passing liberal social policies and telling Republicans to go call a cop if they don't like it.

And it appears the state is with him: He not only gets decent approval numbers for himself -- currently he's at 49% -- he has also managed to get them for tax-hikes-to-pay-for-shit-we-need, which is something Republicans regularly tell us can't ever happen as long as there's one pauper to take food stamps away from instead.

Does Kotkin acknowledge this? Sort of:

Sadly, the opposition to these policies is very weak. The California Chamber of Commerce is a fading force and the state Republican Party has degenerated into a political rump. Business Democrats, tied to the traditional industrial and agricultural base, have become nearly extinct, as the social media oligarchs and other parts of the green gentry, along with the public employee lobby, increasingly dominate the party of the people.

Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed! Inevitably comes the tear-stained, fist-shaking you'll-be-sorry story, of the sort we saw when Bill di Blasio won:

This may constitute an ideal green future — with lower emissions, population growth and family formation — for whose wealth and privilege allow them to place a bigger priority on nature than humanity. But it also means the effective end of the California dream that brought multitudes to our state, but who now may have to choose between permanent serfdom or leaving for less ideal, but more promising, pastures.

You fools are throwing away a great opportunity to become North Dakota on the Pacific! Sure, the creative destruction that comes with fracking is having some unfortunate social effects in ND, but least they're not serfs! Enjoy your world-class culture, dining, and enslavement, San Francisco parasites!

Really, this kind of thing will make sense when Love Canal becomes a tourist attraction.

FINALLY: A USE FOR LIBERTARIANS!

Moving away now from the New York City mayoral election results -- with sincere thanks for all the laffs! -- I direct your attention to my favorite aspect of the Virginia governor's race: The suggestion by some of the brethren that Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis was planted by the Democrats to fix the election for McAuliffe. The Washington Free Beacon:

A donor to the Democratic Party of Virginia and bundler for Barack Obama funded a political action committee that provided Virginia Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis with a crucial campaign contribution that helped get him on the ballot.

Whoever heard of someone contributing to more than one party? Why, it's like betting on more than one team at a time -- too complicated to be real!

Polls suggest Sarvis didn't affect the outcome, but they would, wouldn't they? Let's hear from the unskewed! Stephen Green at PJ Media:

But let’s not forget my Libertarian friends, who delivered 7% of the vote to phony-balony Libertarian Robert Sarvis. Thanks to them, McAuliffe was able to win with a 48% plurality.

Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary:

Democrats had a huge financial and demographic advantage in Virginia as well as a divided GOP and a false flag Libertarian candidate that might have taken votes away from the Republicans.

False flag -- Tobin's taking lessons from Alex Jones, it seems. And ever-lovin' Jeff Godlstein:

First, we have to remember that not everyone follows politics as closely as we all do — and yet they would probably tell you that they are politically well-versed, reading the Washington Post, where both conservative George Will and “conservative” Jennifer Rubin were busy writing “a pox on both their houses” columns that, as was the case with Rubin, saw her endorsing the “Libertarian” candidate who it turns out was largely bankrolled by an Obama bundler, and who couldn’t get the support of libertarians Rand or Ron Paul, likely because his support of legalizing marijuana was about the only thing libertarian about the guy...

Wheels within wheels, sheeple!

The beautiful thing about this conspiracy and cover-up is that it implicates Gary Johnson and the libertoids at Reason, including Nick Gillespie, writing for liberal media truth-concealer Time magazine. No, wait -- the beautiful thing is that Cuccinelli apparently thought Sarvis was such a menace that he brought Ron Paul to Virginia to scare off some more moderate voters on the eve of the election. (After the fall, Paul blamed it on the kulaks.)

Actually, the really beautiful thing is this: I've been telling you good people for years that libertarianism is basically a niche brand of conservatism -- a political Converse to their Nike. Libertarians protest this isn't so, but conservatives know it is. And nothing shows it more clearly than the way conservatives celebrate the libertarian movement when it works for them, and flip out when it doesn't work to their advantage. You can't get mad at a dog for biting you -- unless it's your own dog.

SAVOR THE MOMENT.

Since de Blasio's Communist putsch, I feel as if conservative commentators, whether sad or enraged, are just sending me gifts. At AIM, Cliff Kincaid is still crying about a media conspiracy -- which now apparently includes Rupert Murdoch:

If you think Barack Obama has gotten a free ride from the press, consider the case of Bill de Blasio. 

The New York Post revealed at the last minute that the Marxist frontrunner for mayor of New York City visited Communist Russia in 1983. But the paper’s bizarre cover headline, “Back in the USSR,” complete with a hammer-and-sickle, seemed to make a mockery of the discovery. 

International communism, which claimed more than 100 million lives, is not a laughing matter, nor just the subject of a 1968 song by the Beatles.

The reason the Posties "seemed to make a mockery of the discovery" is because none of them was dumb enough to believe it would make the slightest bit of difference; calling de Blasio a commie in 2013 has about as much resonance as calling him an Albigensian. They're just throwing boob bait to out-of-town wingnut true believers. While Kincaid suspects counter-counter-revolutionary tendencies, I'm sure most of them are just adding a few more guns to the dens of their McMansions and lighting an extra candle to Joe McCarthy.

UPDATE. Jonah Goldberg phones it in:

But for those of us born and raised in pre-Giuliani New York, he can also conjure images of Charles Bronson in Death Wish, the gritty vigilante flick that symbolized the city in that era...

Hollywood may have exaggerated the extent of New York’s Stygian gloom, but you can only exaggerate the truth. And anyone who lived in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s can recognize that while Death Wish may have been a caricature, like any good caricature it captured the likeness better than the subject would have wanted.

If you need to explain the quality of Goldberg's writing to anyone, remember this: Rather than describe his own actual experiences, Goldberg mentions a shitty old movie. Which he also can't be bothered to describe.

In case you weren't already assuming this, Goldberg also can't explain why New Yorkers would embrace a candidate like de Blasio. Here's his running jump:

A city with a better memory would still surely be liberal, but it would not be defrosting someone like de Blasio.

If only New York had been taking its gotu kola, it would have elected Christine Quinn.

[di Blasio] would be impossible without the successes of the Giuliani administration (and Bloomberg’s willingness to sustain them), just as Giuliani would have been impossible without the accumulated failures of his predecessors.

This is like saying that the socialists couldn't have won in Spain were it not for the years of Francoist repression that came before. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good analogy!

AS IF YOU NEEDED ANOTHER REASON TO VOTE FOR HIM...

(h/t Josh Marshall) Go, New York comrades -- avenge Stalin, Lenin, Billie Boggs, Larry Hogue, and me! I can't be with you, but after the victory's won and the city collapses I will visit and toast you all in crack and Champale.

UPDATE. The really crabby ones are going in for that you'll-all-be-sorry-someday bit. Daniel Greenfield:

And next time one of the innocent victims of Stop and Frisk is pounding your face into the sidewalk with one hand while digging through your pockets with the other, wave to the pair of beat cops sitting in the window of the coffee shop. And they'll wave back without getting up. Because you voted for this. And you're getting what you deserve...

I think a bum sneezed on this guy once and he shit himself.

And that experimental art gallery, the one with collages of world leaders made out of broken glass as a statement against capitalism? It's a burnt out abandoned building again. The owner who used to want 10 million bucks for the building would give it to you in exchange for paying the tax bill.

Hallelujah!

But you won't take it. You voted for De Blasio, but you're not that stupid. No one buys real estate in De Blasio time.

The fuck they don't! That's when the pros buy. Buy cheap, sell dear. What kind of a capitalist are you?

Oh, Greenfield also predicts there'll be terrorist attacks because of di Blasio:

They say ten thousand people died. But a hundred thousand were affected by the gas pouring through the subway tunnels all the way down to Times Square. Some of them may die. A lot of them have scarred lungs...  

The NYPD could have stopped them. It would have stopped them under Giuliani and Bloomberg. But the terrorists were smarter than you. They waited for De Blasio time...

He closes with de Blasio voters trying to fly out of town but being blown out of the sky by Ay-rabs ("But you shouldn't complain. This is what you voted for..."). The whole thing demands to be read aloud in an Angry Masturbator voice.

UPDATE 2. Fire up the tumbrels!

MY EYES... ZE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!

The election's not till tomorrow,  and one should never count one's chickens etc., but let's start early celebrating the reign of Mayor de Blasio just because it makes wingnuts so mad.

I want to focus a minute on their Big Bill's a Red thing, which they seem at one point to have thought would stop the juggernaut. Wall Street Journal:

Bill de Blasio Should Ask Me About the Sandinistas 

The New York mayoral candidate still fondly recalls a regime that I fled in terror for my life.

Yelling at di Blasio for "fondly recalling" the Sandinistas makes as much sense as yelling at someone for saying he liked The Motorcycle Diaries.

Twenty-five years is a long time, and people change. But on this subject, Mr. de Blasio has made clear that he has not.

Clearly! He's always demanding people call him El Caudillo and brandishing a machete.

Cliff Kincaid at Renew America:

The media whitewash Obama-backed Marxist candidate

...Incredibly, De Blasio says he still supports the Sandinistas and remains influenced by liberation theology, which was manufactured by the old KGB to dupe Christians into supporting Marxism.

Tell it to Pope Francis. National Review's resident pencil-neck Jay Nordlinger:

The man who will probably be our next mayor, Bill de Blasio, is almost a perfect leftist. He and his wife even honeymooned in the Castros’ Cuba. This reminded me of Pierre Trudeau, of whom it has been said, “It tells you everything that he honeymooned in the Soviet Union"...

Here is an uncomfortable question, liable to be damned as McCarthyite by those who don’t want to address it: If the likes of Trudeau and de Blasio were born under Communist dictatorship, what would they do in their adult lives?

Those of us over a certain age will recognize the tropes, including the "So how about that, Mr. Smarty-Pants Communist?" bit at the end that just assumes de Blasio's Communism (he's just like that Trudeau, you know), done with confidence that it'll get the citizens pulling their chins and going, "Say, 'de Blasio' does have sort of a Red sound to it!"  Ditto Deroy Murdock:

... the ad reinforces the fundamental mythology that fuels de Blasio’s campaign: The filthy rich refuse to pay what they should in taxes, and must be shaken down to benefit poorer New Yorkers, whom these dandies have stiffed.

It’s a truly touching narrative — worthy of Charles Dickens or perhaps Karl Marx.

We got rid of the Commies, and it's only a matter of time before we get rid of literature and empathy too. Then the conservative revolution will be complete!

But as de Blasio has racked up the points, even Kincaid has had to catch on that his red-baiting was getting him nowhere -- "But there's more to this story than Marxism, which most people think is a dead ideology that has no relevance today," he sighs -- and switch to the new attack line about di Blasio inviting hoodie-hood boys to bum rush the show and take your daughter to Plato's Retreat.

It looks like that's not working, either.

Quick, there's only a day left -- someone tie de Blasio to Obamacare!

UPDATE. I was kidding about Obamacare, but on Twitter Mike Di Paola informs me that the New York Post's Bob McManus actually went for it in August with "De Blasio's Big ObamaCare Problem." di Blasio had complained about the winnowing of New York's hospitals (e.g. St. Vincent's), and McManus informed him that it was his own fault, and Obama's, because

New federal, state and local laws and regulations — soon to include ObamaCare, with a vengeance — are vaporizing the financial incentives for unneeded and extended hospitalizations, for example. Hospitals are now sharply penalized for such practices. 

The changes have slashed patient populations — and so pushed many financially marginal institutions straight over the edge. (See above, Long Island College Hospital.)

Meanwhile, both the government and insurers have been heavily incentivizing “wellness initiatives” — quit-smoking and diet programs and so on — meant to dramatically cut hospitals out of the picture.

Trying to improve healthcare ruins everything! There are also some ravings about how di Blasio wants hospitals to stay open so he can funnel phoney-baloney jobs to his pals at SEIU, but really, it's just the typographic equivalent of someone throwing whatever rock, mudball, or candy wrapper he can find at a target he can't hit.