NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Ben Carson's bullshit, why the national press suddenly noticed it, and how rightbloggers are now busily making MediaBias-ade of the situation.

I also reference my prediction a month ago that Carson was just about over, and stand by it -- especially since I saw this in the Weekly Standard:

But we also worried that Carson is “not yet prepared to be president,” and we averred, “he’d have to show an awful lot of growth to be ready a year from now.” What’s more, for Carson to win the general election, “voters would have to conclude that he is so extraordinary a figure that for the first time in American history, they would send a man to the White House who had neither held elective office nor served as a general officer or cabinet officer.” 

We’re less certain now than we were in September that voters couldn’t come to such a conclusion. We’re less certain we couldn’t.

Since this column is by William Kristol, the wrongest man in the world, I am putting more chips on this number.

UPDATE. Got a wonderful campaign email from Carson's 2016 Committee chairman John Philip Sousa IV (yes, really). It starts:

Dear Patriotic American,
I need your help.
Please give me your permission to put your name on the 48 page booklet shown below. It’s really important.
How can that be?
The answer is that when I put your name, and the name of your city and state on this booklet, it dramatically increases the likelihood that the person receiving it will read it.
In other words, by clicking here and putting your name on this 5” x 8” booklet it truly becomes a personal gift from you to an African American who is considering voting for Dr. Ben Carson for president.

Once signed by white people, these pamphlets become irresistible to black folk. And the content is pitched right at 'em. For instance, it includes a "transcript of Ben Carson’s dramatic foray into Harlem." Apparently he held an event last summer at Sylvia's where, The Atlantic reports, he gave attendees a Bill Cosby pull-up-your-pants speech and announced he would "restart the country’s economic engine by lowering the corporate tax rate, closing fiscal gaps, like the U.S. borrowing money from China to send aid to Pakistan, and he would replace the current tax system with a proportional income tax," which must have set the room on fire. Sousa touts this as proof that Carson can deliver African-American votes to a Republican: "The black church was the strength of the civil rights movement under Dr. King, and if it gets behind Ben Carson, you and I are truly going to see a revolution take place." More likely what you'll see is Carson at the convention, endorsing whatever schmuck runs instead of him and possibly increasing his minority margin in some purple states, in exchange for which he'll get some sinecure in the Schmuck Administration from which he can run future scams.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Yeah, one-hit wonders. But what a hit! 

•   Quentin Tarantino pissed off some cops, so David French of National Review went argh lieberal Hollyweird I’ll show you and all those so-called “critics”  how it’s done! Here French explains to Tarantino why Tarantino is “the Most Overrated Director in Hollywood.”

Your movies, however, are terrible. And I don’t mean “morally reprehensible” or “too violent.” I mean they’re simply bad.

Strong opening, surely he has a killer argument coming up.

But don’t tell the movie press. Rarely has so much celebratory ink been spilled on a director who has made such dreck. Ever since Pulp Fiction — your best movie — they believe you’re an artist, but over time you’ve proven to be nothing more than a splatter-film director who can attract top talent.

I wonder why those top actors want to work with Tarantino instead of, say, Eli Roth. Must have something to do with liberal media bias. Anyway:

And you’re the least original splatter-film director in the United States. You simply can’t stop making the same movie. Consider your recent offerings.

To sum up: A lot of his movies have a revenge plot and mayhem. Don’t anyone tell French about Jacobean tragedy. Or the Elizabethan, for that matter. Anyway:

And yes, I know that I just said that I don’t hate your movies because they’re morally reprehensible, but let’s be honest: They are pretty vile. You gotta admit, you love that N-word.

So he’s “politically incorrect.” I thought conservatives loved that.

...Everything else about your movies can be ludicrously unrealistic (think of the mighty mountains of Mississippi in Django Unchained, the fiction of “mandingo fighting,” or virtually any scene in the Kill Bill series)…

Leave it to French to fact check works of fiction. I mean, come on, Hitchcock, birds never act like that!

…And the media — mostly — is fine with it. Why? Because you’re an “artist.” But mostly because you’re liberal. So all the typical double standards apply.

When I go around yelling “nigger” and attacking people with swords, I get in trouble, but you do it and you're an "artist"! Also, liberal media bias because, come on — that's what French has; that’s the only reason why he bothered — he doesn’t give a shit about art (excuse me, “art”), he’s just throwing shit because he doesn't like QT's politics.  Indeed, from this wretched example it seems as if he’s never tried or learned how to explain what’s good and bad about a film in his life. It’s always sad when propagandists pretend to be critics, but why is it always the least qualified ones who try?

WHEN THEY SAY IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY...

You may have noticed the statistical review on white working class mortality covered by the Washington Post:

The mortality rate for white men and women ages 45-54 with less than a college education increased markedly between 1999 and 2013, most likely because of problems with legal and illegal drugs, alcohol and suicide, the researchers concluded. Before then, death rates for that group dropped steadily, and at a faster pace.

And you might have thought, as I did, well, no wonder: the white working class was doing great for decades after World War II, but in this generation it's seen its jobs offshored, then onshored at much lower wages -- and the jobs that stuck around don't pay so well either. Having excavated everything that can be excavated from the poor and the black, our system has taken to chipping at the lower end of the middle class. Between the economic and the emotional toll of this de-privileging, no wonder so many of these people are killing themselves, quickly or slowly.

National Review's David French read the same story, and of course his conclusion is that liberals are to blame:

While the economic challenges of working-class voters are well documented, the cultural challenges are just as notable. 

You may think  trying to raise kids on twenty grand a year is rough, but your lack of culchah is just as much of a problem -- and cheaper for me, so let's tackle that first!

At every turn, the cultural aristocrats cause harm. Mocking poor whites is among the last acceptable forms of bigotry.

You mean like "Li'l Abner"? Or "South Park"? French is unclear -- I assume purposefully, and that the picture he wishes to paint is of callous urban sophisticates laughing at a meth-addled cracker, rather than of salt-of-the-earth middle Americans laughing at "The Beverly Hillbillies."

Even the white working-class voters struggling with declining wages, declining health, and increasing despair are derided as somehow “privileged.” Those who speak for them are labeled bigots.

Like how they treated this fella. Obviously it was class warfare against white people.

Meanwhile, people keep dying, and families fracture. This is more than just mocking suffering, though — it’s celebrating the disease while rejecting the cure. Self-indulgence is the animating force behind the sexual revolution, and the sexual revolution is gutting the working class.

If you callous sophisticates hadn't done so much coke and had so many orgies, right out there where people could see it, Cletus and Brandine would never have took to moonshine and sex with their cousins.

As Murray notes in his book, cultural progressives flood the nation with messages celebrating hedonism and sexual experimentation even as they tend to preserve their own wealth and power through remarkably restrained and disciplined personal lives — getting married, remaining faithful, and investing in their children. They don’t practice the hedonism they so loudly preach.

Make that "if you callous sophisticates hadn't etc. etc. and nevertheless managed to live happy productive lives, etc." Why, it's like having to put up with a cheerful atheist -- it sets a bad example for the proles!

On the one hand you have wingnuts like French crying that the middle class is collapsed or collapsing because of Playboy and rap music; on the other you have wingnuts like David Harsanyi who claim that this shit economy is actually "dynamic" and you should all go get Uber jobs and feel the dynamism of a week-by-week struggle to afford a hovel and slop. Pick your confusion; doesn't matter which, so long as millionaires get all the tax breaks and we zero out welfare.

UPDATE. At The Federalist Ben Domenech gets in on it. He implies -- slightly more gently than other benefit cops like Jonah Goldberg -- that the growing ranks of erstwhile workers on disability are swollen with frauds. And natch, it's about the culchah:

As a cultural matter, the picture is even worse. The surrender to the permanent trap of disability payments is a consequence of a loss of a certain American working class stoicism, which grappled with the tragic nature of life with what was essentially a 19th-century mentality.

We were a stronger, more American America when crips were left to forage or beg.

It was hard enough to deal with such a vision before the disintegration of working class marriage in the country – notice the contrast drawn by Charles Murray between the attitudes toward marriage and the experience of divorce in the white working class versus professionals.

When we've finally turned into the neofeudal hellscape of Lang's Metropolis for real, I expect there'll be a statue of Charles Murray in every town square.

UPDATE 2. Some very fine comments here. e.g., Susan of Texas:

What is it about white culture that is destroying white Americans? 

You vote for politicians who outsource your jobs. Your own crap job, when you can get one, is hard on the body and soul- and dignity-crushing. You go to the doctor for pain-killers to ease the bodily pain and take too many to anesthetize the mental pain. You fatally poison yourself with drug and alcohol anesthetics or get a DWI and lose more jobs or drive away your family. (I'm still waiting for someone to tell us how getting married and not having kids will create factories out of thin air.)...

Worth going in and reading in full. I should add that, especially when you get past a certain age, physical labor is hard on you -- which is something you might miss even if you were a waiter at 20 but never a fry-cook at 55. Go to any actual working-class neighborhood and you'll see some people limping or hobbling from the bus to their homes -- and if they stiffen up they tend not to work it out at the yoga studio. I wonder if French and Domenech have ever seen this, or if they think it's really like the Seven Dwarves whistling to and from the mine.

THEY EAT THEIR OWN.

Byron York knows which way the wind blows. While assuring us that "I worked for National Review from 2001 to 2009 and know, like and respect many of the people involved in this matter," he nevertheless doubts his old buddies are qualified to moderate the National Review GOP debate (formerly known as the Telemundo/NBC/National Review GOP debate, before the Republican candidates went on the warpath against the Lame Stream Media and made Reince Priebus kick 'em out). Why not? Because National Review writers have been mean to the Republican front-runner, and might ask him impertinent questions -- just like those bastards from CNBC!

Trump is of course not the only candidate NR writers have criticized; just ask Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and others. But it's fair to say Trump is a special case, and he has been on the receiving end of unusually strong invective from NR. 

Lowry says that won't be a problem come debate time. "We obviously have strong opinions and don't hide them, but that won't keep us from being tough but fair with everyone," he told me in an email exchange.

That's what they all say, Mr. Media Bias.

The underlying problem here is that some of the networks have leaned so far left in the past that the RNC felt the need to insist on including someone who "speaks conservative" among the debate panelists. But some of the best conservative speakers are prominent figures at opinion publications who are 1) appalled by Trump, and 2) unconstrained from expressing their feelings about him. That makes for a lively public conversation, but is it a good idea for a presidential debate?

This is even more delicious than NR's Jim Geraghty having to explain to readers that noticing Ben Carson was running a supplement scam and lying about it isn't the same thing as working for the enemy. As I've said before, in these guys' world truth is no defense against accusations of media bias.  I'm not sure the Trump juggernaut can endure long enough to panic some of them into a Strange New Respect for Il Douche, but it would almost be worth a Trump Administration to see it. I mean, the country's fucked anyway, right?

FROM THE LADY-CONVINCING LABS OF THE RIGHT!

At The Federalist:

How To Fix Conservatives’ Single Women Problem

Author G.W. Thielman starts with thousands of econo-bot words about how unmarried American women are driven by manlessness ("low sex ratio") to become either parasitic "NISAS" ("non-independent single adults"), whores (who "obtain affection from high-status men by marketing features deemed physically attractive"), or successful career women which is just as bad because What She Really Wanted Was Children. In all incarnations they are liberals, so Thielman seeks corrective action:

Two suggestions are offered. First, we should voluntarily assist these single mothers through charities and other private agencies.

All this money we're spending on health care could be going to crisis pregnancy centers! And:

Second, because such women lack the knowledge to ground philosophical principles, we ought to convey stories about the adverse effects of intrusive government.

See, someone told him stories work better than charts, so he ran the numbers and found promise in the theorem:

Most NISAs presume that conservatives are mean-spirited ogres who plot their continued misery. The need a new target for their resentment, one that affects ordinary folk personally.

But how? Perhaps conservatives could learn to talk like normal people.... but no, Thielman proposes repeating the kind of heartless-bureaucrat tales you find in Reason magazine, which perhaps he plans to leave laying around in beauty parlors. (The worst ones are about cops killing black people, which shows how desperate he must be.) Eventually, he even considers the use of tinsel and glamour:

Cinema provides a further glimpse of government abuse of power. Titled “Changeling,” a 2008 film depicts a parent’s most agonizing fear: kidnapping by a serial killer. In 1928, Christine Collins, a single mother living in Los Angeles, discovers her nine-year-old son, Walter, missing. The police produce another boy and declare all is well, proffering excuses for the switch, and commit Collins to a psychiatric ward for insisting on learning the truth. Eventually, Gordon Northcott was caught and eventually executed for kidnapping and murdering about 20 children in Riverside County.

When I see a movie like that, my first instinct isn't, "Boy, we oughta pitch all those loafers off Medicaid," but perhaps I'm insufficiently in touch with my feminine side. If the flickers don't work, Thielman proposes direct address:

Advocates for less government must ask low-information voters, like Julia, whom the media continually remind of the state’s beneficence, one simple question that separates ordinary mind-your-own-business people who appreciate limited government and rule of law from the busybody centripetalists that micromanage our affairs: “Whom do you distrust less: your neighbor, or the state?"

Whereupon Julia closes the door, thinking "I thought the Jehovah's Witnesses were bad." Thereafter Thielman seems to lose the thread, spouting gobbledygook like this --

By contrast, tyrannical fiat resembling a once-and-future Hillary “what difference does it make?” “not marked classified” “cloth wipe” Clinton would invite transnational attack and dis­memberment from those who intend us harm while we fecklessly engage in navel-gazing.

-- and subheds like "Female Rule Won’t Mean a Better World." Geez, buddy, why don't you try bringing them some flowers and telling them they look nice?

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the CNBC debate fallout. I know it's been done to death -- really, it's like everyone in the press turned into me for a few days -- but I add a little historical perspective as well as some comic cameos from the likes of Accuracy in Media and the always-fartworthy Jonah G.

UPDATE. GOP apparatchik Ben Ginsberg has some proposed rules for the media to follow if they want to be granted GOP debates. I don't find the much-maligned temperature requirements so bad -- talk show hosts get cold studios, why shouldn't these guys? -- but there are some howlers:

The campaigns’ will use the manner in which your debate(s) are run (and changes you say you will make from your past debates), the quality and fairness of your moderators’ questions, their enforcement of the rules and their ability to achieve parity in distribution and quality of questions and time among the candidates to evaluate whether the candidates wish to participate in your future debates.

OOoooh, get her! The fringe types affect to consider Ginsberg a RINO pudding and the deal an establishment scam and sellout. But courage! A new report suggests they may get their way and fulfill my fantasy of a debate cycle that totally circumvents the MSM:

Glenn Beck’s website has a suggestion for who would be the best choice to moderate an upcoming Republican debate: Glenn Beck. 

TheBlaze reported that an official associated with one of the Republican presidential campaigns claims that Glenn Beck’s name is being considered as a moderator for one of the upcoming Republican debates. The website did not name the source...

TheBlaze writes that at least three presidential campaigns would support Beck as a moderator — Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Jim Gilmore. It goes on to say that he is liked both “in and out of the Tea Party,” and certainly at his own website.

It may be that Beck and the RNC would try to package and peddle this dog-and-pony show to whatever network is craven enough to accept it, but let us hold out hope that they'll just run it via streaming video and declare victory over the Lame Stream Media. Can't wait to see the reaction among their geriatric base! "I tried to watch the Republican debate but I wound up buying 30 ounces of gold!"

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I can't clean up, though I know I should.

•   This week the Department of Energy put out a Halloween press release advertising "energy-themed pumpkin patterns to help 'energize' your neighborhood for Halloween." It also reminded revelers that pumpkin waste sent to landfills creates harmful methane gas, which is part of the reason why the Department is working on technology that would instead turn it to energy, which efforts it described at tedious length. Institutional holiday pressers are silly and we can have some good fun with them, but the global-warming-hah-how-come-it's-snowing crowd instead mobbed up to denounce the Department for, in their view, criticizing people who carved pumpkins ("Energy Department smashes pumpkins for causing climate change" -- Washington Times). The RedState asshole on the case even added, "The best part in all of this is that, despite railing against the dangers of buying pumpkins, they hypocritically have jack-o-lantern suggestions in their Energyween guide" (inappropriate boldface in original); that is, he apparently noticed the presser was clearly not telling people to abstain from pumpkin-carving, realized this didn't fit the bullshit story he was bandwagoning, and decided to portray this dissonance as evidence of his subject's hypocrisy rather than of his own self-induced reading disability. All propagandists are loathsome, but the ones who try so hard to cover their tracks are the worst.

•   That little boy in the hospital begged him to write a column about how liberals are The Real Racists™ because Ben Carson, so Jonah Goldberg steps to the plate, holds his bat aloft, drops it on his head, falls on his ass and sharts home plate.

Here’s something you may not know: Dr. Ben Carson is black.

Of course, I’m being a little cute here. The only way you wouldn’t know he’s black is if you were blind and only listened to the news.

It's a liberal media cover-up to end all liberal media cover-ups! I understand MSNBC has a video filter that makes him look white.

...But what’s remarkable is that at no point in this conversation did anyone call attention to the fact that Carson is an African-American. Indeed, most analysis of Carson’s popularity from pundits focuses on his likable personality and his sincere Christian faith. But it’s intriguingly rare to hear people talk about the fact that he’s black.

So liberals aren't making a big deal about Ben Carson being black. Great! Isn't this the I-don't-see-color world Goldberg normally wants to live in? Goldberg pulls back his bat and...

One could argue that he’s even more authentically African-American than Barack Obama, given that Obama’s mother was white and he was raised in part by his white grandparents.

...spins around, collapses into the arms of the catcher, and takes a splitter to the butt. "More authentically African-American"! Next he'll be calling Obama an Uncle Tom.

...And that probably explains why his race seems to be such a non-issue for the media. The New York Times is even reluctant to refer to him as a doctor. The Federalist reports that Jill Biden, who has a doctorate in education, is three times more likely to be referred to as “Dr.” in the Times as brain surgeon Carson.

Wait, Carson is a doctor too? Who knew? That MSM really doesn't want us to know the truth!

Carson’s popularity isn’t solely derived from his race, but it is a factor. The vast majority of conservatives resent the fact that Democrats glibly and shamelessly accuse Republicans of bigotry — against blacks, Hispanics, and women — simply because they disagree with liberal policies (which most conservatives believe hurt minorities).

In other words, we're not racist because we like this black guy, and you're racist because you don't. To the showers, Jonah.

•   Oh yeah -- let's go Mets! I'm going to hang onto the myth and magic of 1986/2015 until the smoke clears and the mirrors shatter. And if it all goes south, well...

BRING BACK THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS.

I thought Trump was merely whining when he predicted last night's debate would be "very unfair." I should have known something was up when Mollie Hemingway pre-propagandized the debate with a lengthy hit on the liberalmedia credentials of CNBC moderator John Harwood.  Sure enough, when the event transpired the candidates were bitching about the liberalmedia not only after but during the debate. Talk about message discipline!

Conservatives gushed about it afterwards; "WHO HAD THE BEST ANTI-MEDIA SLAM OF THE DEBATE?" reads Newsbusters' Tiger Beat-style header over videos of the GOP's Bad Boys denouncing the liberalmedia. (For some reason they didn't include Ben Carson getting the crowd to boo when he was asked about the shady pyramid schemers Mannatech, which he insists he didn't work for despite documentary evidence including video. Truth is no defense when the charge is media bias.)

The punch line is, there will be plenty of other GOP debates this year (327, I think at last count) on networks that regularly wind up on Accuracy in Media's shitlist. Republicans will not boycott these events, nor redirect them to ideologically simpatico outlets like PJTV, because they're hoping someone besides the Foxbound will see them. But now that the precedent's been set, any GOP candidate can derail any line of questioning in any debate by crying bias -- and, given the nets' learned helplessness on this subject, they won't do anything about it. In fact, some of them may sweeten the deal by withdrawing their regular moderators and having actors dressed as rightwing boogeymen come up and take a punch -- for example, have Steven Crowder reprise his Lena Dunham bit (WARNING: VIDEO) and ask in a simpering voice, "Why won't you awful Republicans let me kill my baby?" Then, boy, the totally-unscripted zingers that would ensue!

The nets should give these shitheels the same treatment Sam Spade gave Joel Cairo and advise them to take it and like it. Failing that, they should bring back the League of Women Voters to run these things. Those ladies were tough enough to say no when necessary and might be able to turn this weak shit around.

UPDATE. It's happening already:

Republican presidential front-runner Ben Carson told reporters Thursday that he was reaching out to every rival campaign to lobby for changes to future debate formats.

“Debates are supposed to be established to help the people get to know the candidate,” Carson said at a news conference before a speech at Colorado Christian University. “What it’s turned into is — gotcha! That’s silly. That’s not helpful to anybody.”

MODERATOR: The first question is yours, Senator Paul. What's your favorite Reagan saying?

RAND PAUL: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."

MODERATOR: I think it was actually Admiral Farragut who said that, Senator.

RAND PAUL: You people are always doing this, I claim media bias.

OTHER CANDIDATES: You tell 'em, Randy! Yeah, damned MSM! Look at me, I'm crazy! etc.

MODERATOR: I'm so sorry, Senator, you now get five minutes for zingers.

RAND PAUL: Boy, that Hillary Clinton, what a bitch, huh?

REINCE PRIEBUS, in control booth: Now we're getting somewhere!

RES IPSA LOQUITUR.

Front page at National Review:

How the GOP Can Appeal to Black Voters

Right next to it on the front page:

The Spring Valley Arrest Video Isn’t Disturbing: Here’s Why

UPDATE. At Twitter, @AndrewWoods sees what they're saying here -- African-Americans "must be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the fold."

NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT NOT TO BE CRITICIZED.

On Saturday Hillary Clinton said, apparently in response to Bernie Sanders, "I haven’t been shouting, but sometimes when a woman speaks out, some people think it’s shouting." Maybe you think the jape is right on; maybe you think it's pure quasi-feminist campaign cheese. If you're National Review scold Ian Tuttle, though, you think it's a violation of your rights:

If unfettered debate about public policy is to be vouchsafed, it requires being able to criticize public officials without those criticisms being reflexively labeled “racism,” “sexism,” etc. That is a necessary condition for self-government. If getting a woman/Hispanic/transsexual into the Oval Office comes at the expense of the freedom to criticize that person without being accused of sexism/racism/transphobia, then that’s not “progress” worth making.

Sorry, buddy, there's no "freedom to criticize that person without being accused of" anything. I prefer to believe, like any other other internet blowhard, that anyone who criticizes or characterizes me negatively is wrong. But I never think -- it never would even occur to me -- that if someone calls me racist, sexist, SJW, cuckservative, totalitarian, milquetoast, Albigensian, ne'er-do-well, feller-me-lad, or any other names that I find unfair, they have made self-government impossible, much less trampled on my freedoms. Because I'm not ten years old or a conservative.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Benghazi-hearing Hillary and (in keeping with the Warner Brothers theme) the status of our friends the rightbloggers thereafter:

One thing I didn't get into much was the committee's Sidney Blumenthal fixation. As I noted Friday,  even Byron York called it a "near-obsession" because "his name was mentioned 60 times — before the first questioner had even finished." Yet Blumenthal's name was mentioned five times in York's own 865-word column, where York called him "notorious for his role as a Clinton acolyte... a provocateur and master of misdirection" -- as if to say, well, can you blame them?

Blumenthal's up there with Saul Alinsky now as a demonic figure whose name conservatives jump out from behind a bush and yell as if it will scare the voters, most of whom don't know who the hell they're talking about. Why did the committee fall for it? In part because rightbloggers made Blumenthal part of movement mythology -- hell, your grandma who gets those emails from scamsters with "Liberty" or "Freedom" in their titles has probably heard more about Sidney Blumenthal than you have.  And when it was revealed Blumenthal had an interest in a military contractor that might get work from a future post-Gaddafi government in Libya (where currently you're more likely to make money selling tourniquets), National Review announced that Blumenthal was "using his close ties to the then-secretary of state to profit from the 2011 American intervention," as if he were seen running from the scene of the crime with bags marked "$."

It's weak beer, and somewhere Dick Cheney is laughing his ass off; but guys like RedState author Moe Lane take it very seriously and, in their role as tribunes of the sheeple, demanded the committee react:

This is, in the end, about people dying. And not just Americans; Sidney Blumenthal allegedly profited off helping to start a civil war. The Democrats are focused on the absolute essentials in this situation: do the same, or you will lose. And you will have lost stupidly. We have no more time for stupid. 

Thus commanded, the committee manfully marched into the guns of derision, then went home to tell the boys they'd done their duty and collect campaign contributions. Don't forget to read the column.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Am I the only one left who loves Hank Thompson? He's ridiculous,
and this song is just absurd, but it fills me with delight -- especially 

"None of the animals had a clock/But everybody knew it was time to rock."

•    Byron York -- one is tempted to call him "poor Byron York" in this instance, but fuck him -- does his best with the exploding cigar that was the  Benghazi hearing, but his best is a passive-aggressive sulk that will convince nobody except other conservative Pity Partiers. First, in order to avoid being laughed out of all cognizance, York has to acknowledge up front that things worked out better for Clinton than for the Republicans. Then he starts making excuses: "The Benghazi Committee has made incremental advances in the public's knowledge of the circumstances of the death of four Americans in Libya on September 11, 2012," he claims. "But incremental advances — nuggets of information — don't make for dramatic hearings." Of course I, like any other subscriber to wingnut publications, have been getting BENGHAZI BOMBSHELL emails for years -- e.g., from high-end vendors like from Sharyl Attkinsson at the Daily Signal ("Benghazi Bombshell: Clinton State Department Official Reveals Details of Alleged Document Review") to "BENGHAZI BOMBSHELL COMING OUT ANY DAY: THERE IS BOUND TO BE A TREASON CHARGE!" -- so there was always drama aplenty if you consider Clinton to be Snidely Whiplash.  Similarly, York admits that the committee members' "near-obsession" with Sidney Blumenthal was a little weird, but then rushes to remind us that Blumenthal is pure evil -- indeed, "a master of misdirection" who is "probably happy to be the villain of the day, to the extent that it ensures Hillary Clinton will not be the villain of the day." See, he set it all up himself to make Republicans look bad -- O why won't anyone believe us! York finally says "the committee did find some good nuggets..." Again with the nuggets! This is exactly how you would expect someone who considers the hearings a serious inquiry into the death of four Americans to portray it. Well, on to Congressional hearings over the harsh treatment of Marine Todd.

•    Bonus Benghazi: Clinton sent out a fundraising letter based on the hearings, and at National Review Jim Geraghty sniffs this is "in poor taste." Where to begin...

•    It's at National Review and it's by Mona Charen, which is two strikes right off the bat, but I thought you might enjoy the first graf:

"It’s about what these women will let guys get away with.” You may not expect to hear commentary like that at your garden variety think tank panel discussion, but it got pretty lively at the American Enterprise Institute discussion on the topic “Do Healthy Families Affect the Wealth of States?”

Hot stuff indeed! But wait for the punchline:

Megan McArdle of Bloomberg View is author of the above comment.

Siddown! The rest is the usual Marriage-Makes-You-Rich gibberish, with only a few Charen pratfalls  to brighten it up. e.g.:

Life ain’t fair, and cannot be made perfectly fair. But it almost seems a conspiracy of silence among the college educated to keep from the working class the key secret to their success.

Rich Liberal 1: Isn't being married just the best?
Rich Liberal 2: I know! Look at this Tesla I bought with my marriage coupons!
Rich Liberal 1: They weren't going to let us refinance our mansion but I just slapped that marriage certificate down on his desk and dude was like why didn't you say so?
Bum (sidling up): Hi guys whatcha talking about.
Rich Liberal 1: Umm, Hillary Clinton.
Rich Liberal 2: Yeah we like her.
Rich Liberal 1: Def not about being married which sucks.
Rich Liberal 2: Yeah don't even man.

•    Speaking of Congressional hearings, yeah, this'll work great.

ALL IT LACKS IS A REFERENCE TO LIBERAL ELITISM.

This is the sort of thing you can just see David Harsanyi writing on a bet. "David," says his friend over the brandy and cigars at the Club, "you know how everyone wishes it were still possible to make a good living in this country with your hands and without having degrees out the yin-yang? $1000 says you can't write a column that'll convince them they don't really want that."

Sure thing! says Harsanyi:

For starters, isn’t it a bit archaic to act like assembling a car is more honorable or useful than being a teacher, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, or an engineer; working in finance; or making a living in the service industry? Perhaps there’s something about the tangibility of seeing a widget being put together by a line of workers that offers voters some affirmation that, indeed, things must be going well. But it doesn’t work that way...

Maybe he thinks the folks clamoring for these jobs are all hipsters looking to dabble in manual labor during their gap year.

In the 1950s, these kinds of jobs may have offered the security and pensions that people sought — considering the other options. Today, Americans have easier access to education and far more vocational diversity. There is no need romanticize a far less dynamic time in American history...

You may not be able to afford to send your kid to college or a new car every five years like your grandfather did, but he didn't have dynamism!

When politicians says we’ve outsourced manufacturing jobs, they mean the labor has become too expensive. Most voters probably understand that China, Mexico, Malaysia, “steal” jobs because American workers can’t compete with someone making a dollar an hour...

At least not yet!

Fact: robots are better than humans at assembling things...

It is over, puny humans! Do not struggle!

We have no clue what new industry will emerge a decade from now. The more we innovate, though, the more it seems we need human creativity and ingenuity — at least until the post-scarcity world of singularity.

When they can finally upload my brain into a globe I won't need food and shelter -- too bad for you flesh-and-blood suckers!

I can see Harsanyi handing this to his friend and asking, "Do I win?" and the friend pulling a sheaf of C-notes from petty cash and saying with a gentle smile, "Well, I'm convinced."

HEIMAT ASSHAT.

At National Review Kevin D. Williamson says there are racist nationalist parties, and there are non-racist national parties, but it's all good because they're all nationalist:

I’m not sure how I feel about the Swiss People’s Party. Some of their advertising and rhetoric makes me think that they don’t seem like an entirely splendid bunch of guys: Their most famous poster depicts a bunch of white sheep literally kicking a black sheep over the border. One detects some nasty undertones. But are they wrong for liking the Swissness of Switzerland? I like it a great deal, and it seems strange to begrudge them the same feeling about what is, after all, their country.

"Swissness" means "whiteness," apparently, and who could be against that except someone who isn't white or what mah pappy used to call a nonwhite-lover. Williamson also compares love of Swissness to the desire of the Japanese not to have Frenchness get in their Japaneseness:

If you were to visit Tokyo and go looking for some Roppongi-style adventure and maybe one of those weirdly delicious curried cutlet things or a visit to a Shinto shrine, but arrived to find nothing but sallow men in black turtlenecks sipping espresso in smoky cafes and reading Baudelaire, nothing but pate and baguettes and Gothic cathedrals and everybody speaking French, you’d surely be feeling that something had been lost, and that that something was Japaneseness.

So that explains the Japanese skinheads! Well, as long as they keep the stink of Gauloises out of the Shibuya Crossing.

Williamson also predicts that he will be called racist for this, which these days is a badge of honor among his kind, to which he is welcome, though I think his problem is more an overeager and ill-considered contrariness, i.e. being an asshole.

UPDATE. Booman thinks I'm being too generous, and he's got a point:

The Swiss and the Japanese don't have the same history with immigration [as the U.S.], and they haven't historically had the same labor needs. But, here's the key, if they need immigrant labor then they need to adapt their cultural expectations rather than form nationalist parties based on the idea of preserving their cultural identity. It's okay to be proud of your Japaneseness or Swissness or Frenchness, but once your country has to become diverse for economic reasons, you lose the right to expect that everything will remain as before. 

What happens is that some people always figure out that there's political power to be had in representing and stoking people's discomfort with change. Racism is how this manifests itself... 

So, yeah, it's kind of a natural human response to immigration that some percentage of people will feel very uncomfortable, but the people who live off and heighten that discomfort are worse than mere contrarians. They're sociopathic manipulators whose net effect is basically evil.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the recent Democratic debate, and the odd reactions of the rightwing press -- including the puzzling insistence of some that Hillary Clinton is every bit the socialist Bernie Sanders is.

Whenever "Clinton" and "Socialism" are mentioned, Jonah Goldberg is summoned, like a Candyman who actually wants candy and keeps running his hook uselessly through bins of Smarties going "STUPID HOOK." Goldberg starts by making a wan joke about what a drag it was having to watch the debate ("I really resented watching the Democratic debate. I watched because it’s part of my job") when he could have been, oh, seeing if lying on three mattresses is more comfortable than lying on one, and if that maid weren't such a lazy little Mexican he could have found out.

Then Goldberg complains Hillary didn't have it hard enough because Chafee, Webb, and O'Malley were "like Mohammed, Jagdish, Sidney, and Clayton from Animal House." (The foreigners, the nerd, and the blind cripple, remember? Hyuk!) He compares Bernie Sanders to Alec Guinness in The Bridge Over the River Kwai because, Christ who can tell, maybe his Metaphor Butler was in the hospital this week and all he could remember was Guinness looked rilly beat too, just like Sanders, and fart. And of course Goldberg is mad that Sanders helped Clinton out with her email mishegas.

But he's especially pissed that Clinton called for a "new New Deal." Aha, he cries -- these liberals always want a new New Deal. See, Peter Beinart once called Obama a new New Deal! And in the few nanoseconds Obama had sufficient Congressional support to pass it, he gave us Obamacare, and that didn't solve everything (look, here's Megan McArdle telling us that it's a disaster -- whoops, that was years ago: Now she just says that it's not all that) so ob-viously "The New Deal is just a talisman in their undying faith in their own ability to guide society and make decisions for others better than people can make for themselves."

Finally Goldberg cries "it's all just so exhausting" -- Facilities! This stupid pen made my hand all crampy! -- and throws himself on his farting couch, murmurring:

And I guess what I resent most of all is the fact that I will spend the rest of my life arguing with people who not only think that their faith in progressivism and the State is smart and modern, but that their opponents are the ones who are stuck in the past. And in the process, they’ll keep making the country worse, with every failure providing the latest evidence that now, now, is the time for a new New Deal.

He doesn't know why he bothers. Oh, right -- legacy pledge!  Brightening, Goldberg muses that "pledge" reminds him of Lemon Pledge, which reminds him of Country Time Lemonade Mix and how good it tastes poured over a quart of sherbet. Goldberg triumphantly scrawls a shopping list for Carmelita. The struggle continues!

Oh, if you got distracted, please still read the column.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I found this wonderfully crabby Richard Lloyd interview and

it reminded me to listen to three hours of Tom Verlaine.

•   You may not have noticed because it's such a small state, but Lincoln Chaffee's performance Tuesday's debate has left Rhode Island mortified  -- from the Providence Journal:

Former Gov. Lincoln Chafee’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination imploded on national television Tuesday night with a number of stunning gaffes, said several political observers Wednesday, and he’d be wise to bow out now or risk embarrassing himself. 

“I’m hoping that somebody he really trusts sat him down either last night or this morning and convinced him to withdraw, otherwise his candidacy will become a laughing stock if he remains,” said Joseph Cammarano, a political science professor at Providence College... 

State Democratic Chairman Joseph McNamara defended Chafee, to a point.
“I give him a lot of credit for participating and a lot of people who criticize him are people who have never stepped into the battlefield of public discourse.”

Still, McNamara said he was relieved Chafee didn’t bring up the advantages of the metric system, a point he raised when he announced his run. 

“I was afraid he would start quizzing the others about how many kilometers they had traveled.”

Now I don't know shit about Little Rhodie, so maybe the Journal has it in for Chaffee like the New York Post has it in for de Blasio, and one needs to go to the Woonsocket Call for the real truth. But I am beginning to feel for the guy. Not only did he put in a truly disastrous performance -- so bad that, on recollection, I'm not sure that when he referred to himself twice as a block of granite, it wasn't because the drugs had kicked in and he literally thought he was a block of granite -- but now he has to slink back to his small-town-with-Senators, headlines like "You thought his debate was bad? Wait till you see what Wolf Blitzer did to Lincoln Chafee" and "John Chafee loyalists anguished over Lincoln Chafee’s White House run" ringing in his ears. Also, since he seems to be a decent guy, he is probably capable of shame, unlike such Republican shitheels as Rick Perry, who responded to his national humiliation with four years of fundraising and fifteen minutes of campaign. If you care at all, politics is a hard dollar.

•   But fuck that noise. How 'bout them Mets?

•   Jonah Goldberg, man. The National Review legacy pledge claims that while Republican Presidential candidates got "tough" questions in their debates-slash-personal-marketing-events ,"The Media Tossed Softballs at the Democratic Debate." Here is literally the first question Anderson Cooper asked Hillary Clinton on Tuesday:

You were against same-sex marriage. Now you're for it. You defended President Obama's immigration policies. Now you say they're too harsh. You supported his trade deal dozen of times. You even called it the "gold standard". Now, suddenly, last week, you're against it. Will you say anything to get elected?

Some softball. Goldberg claims in evidence that Cooper never asked the Democrats questions like "would you be okay with Planned Parenthood then selling that healthy fetus’s brain and heart?” The simple explanation is that they're saving this kind of thing for the two-party Presidential debates next year, to heighten the element of surprise when the Republican candidate (odds-on favorite: a brain-damaged street preacher who will storm a demoralized GOP convention, speak in tongues, and be nominated by acclimation) screams MURDERER at Hillary Clinton and splatters her with a jar of goat's blood.

•   Maureen Mullarkey at The Federalist  thinks abortions happen because we want to live forever. The madness started, apparently, with organ transplants ("celebrated technical successes, born of biomedical refusal to accept mortal limits, encourage us to view our bodies as machines that can be rebuilt"), and now we're trying to cure Alzheimer's with dead babies.

This technical morality horrifies us when we see it at work on the abortionist’s operating table. Yet we want it both ways. We want to hold the moral high ground by condemning the “Moral Rot at the Core of Planned Parenthood,” as one headline shouted. At the same time, we assent to the spoils of advanced bio-technical research and those laboratory procedures that employ fetal tissue.

If it ever sinks in that they can't win without female and minority votes, I suspect Republicans will become the anti-science party in earnest.

THE LONG CON GOES ON AND ON.

In this week's Voice column I predicted the Ben Carson campaign couldn't last much longer, which was a gutsy move on my part since, for one thing, Carson's super-PAC (the guys who were advertising a Draft Carson movement back at the 2014 CPAC) raised $3 million in the third quarter. But what may really screw up my calculations is that Carson's who-gives-a-shit approach to running for President goes even further than his rhetoric: He's taking two weeks off from the campaign to do a book tour.

Carson's campaign staff will not travel with him while on tour, noting that it’s better to stay off the trail for fear of being accused of using campaign assets to sell books. 

“It’s a question of co-mingling from the corporate standpoint to the Federal Election Commission standpoint so it’s just better to avoid any bad appearance,” spokesman Doug Watts told ABC News.

I like to imagine James Madison taking time off from standing for President to tour in support of a deluxe, commemorative edition of The Federalist Papers (Bound in calfskin! Comes with a free slave!) -- except everyone believed Madison would be President one day.

So, on the one hand Carson could decide, screw this, politics is tiring, I'll just quit and take that Fox News sinecure. But on the other, he could just keep dipping in and out of campaigning as income-generating opportunities demand. It'll help keep the act fresh!

Here's my favorite part of this report:

The book proceeds are personal, and are not connected to Dr. Carson’s presidential campaign, however the campaign does note they are indirectly making money off the book and views its release during a time when he is polling so high as beneficial.

You have to appreciate the nerve. Once upon a time the ancillary merchandising of Presidential campaigns was left to hucksters who cranked out buttons, bumper stickers, and Teddy Bears. I think the killer sales of Dreams for my Father during the 2008 campaign (not to mention the money-making post-resignation career of Sarah Palin) changed the game, and that the kind of shitheels who are running the Carson scam would not only consider the merchandising more important than the Public-Service bullshit, but would choose to be open about it, so no one could say they were being sneaky about making beaucoup bucks off the poor saps who think Carson's serious about the leading the nation. It's proof that what Rick Perlstein called The Long Con not only endures but evolves to keep pace with our increasingly degenerate political culture.

MASTER DEBATERS.

Real quick, because I had to miss a bunch of this because of family stuff: Bernie Sanders grows on you. He's obviously not like the other candidates, in that he's not blow-dried or even (let us be honest) possessed of traditional political-theatrical gifts. But he handles very well the challenges thrown at him -- like the shady attempts to fault him on racial justice. His explanation on guest workers -- a solid laborite position based on the rights of both old and new residents -- was more granular and much, much more convincing than the other candidates' I am for a more generous and compassionate America bullshit. (Though when Clinton said let's stop and compare this conversation to what the Republicans are emitting, that was excellent -- as it was every time it happened.) I started by cringing at him, but after an hour I was looking forward to seeing him back on screen. You know why I think that is? Because he's honest. No, I'm not kidding. You don't see him changing the subject or scrambling to get around his own positions. He explained himself very clearly on gun control and it was to my satisfaction. Now, while I'm softer on gun control than most liberals, I'm not totally in agreement with his position --but at least I can respect his position because he respected me enough to tell me why he held it.

By the way, Anderson Cooper and his acolytes were very tough on the candidates -- and boy, what a difference from the Fox News tongue-baths the Republicans got! -- and while at first I was annoyed by the imbalance -- reminding me as it did of the old IOKIYAR dynamic -- over time I came to appreciate it. For one thing, it made Clinton defend her votes for garbage like, say, the Patriot Act -- and she did a lousy job of it. And that allowed Sanders to say, hell yeah, I'd get rid of mass surveillance, and make the case for it. It's nice, isn't it, to be treated with some respect as a citizen for a change?

Jim Webb has a hard time representing the Blue Dogs, but fuck him, he deserves a hard time; I'd hoped he'd try to invite the party toward a greater understanding of rural and exurban poverty and the voters Democrats are leaving behind because they can't figure out how to address it. But he wound up talking about how he'd fight the expansion of executive power and other crap Republicans who like to pretend they're smart complain about.  Really, fuck him. Lincoln Chaffee's a fucking idiot who isn't good even in the rare moments when he's right and should just kill himself.  Martin O'Malley has some good ideas but how the hell did he ever get elected to anything? Does he have gunmen working for him? Also he has a terrible habit of, whenever the others are talking among stuff like inequality, breaking in with WE NEED GREEN ENERGY!

All in all, any of these people, or their congenital fetuses in fetu, or the sweat off their balls, would make a better President than any Republican.

UPDATE. The National Review guys weigh in. Kevin D. Williamson:

The nurses all told basically the same story: They are doing fine for the moment, with a good union that secures for them good paychecks and good benefits. But they worry that the day after tomorrow something could suddenly change, that their hospitals and clinics will go under or be sold to evil hedge funds and that the terms of their employment will change radically for the worse, that their houses will for some reason be foreclosed on even though they’re current on all their payments, that college tuition will triple between now and the time their kids finish up at UNLV, that something bad is going to happen. That’s the Sanders voter, and, I think, the Democrat at large: terrified.

Stop and consider that for a moment. You know, because the author is conservative, that he thinks this is a knock on Sanders on his supporters. But really take a moment and focus on the fact that he thinks people with families who are in fear of losing their livelihoods, in a country where this can happen at the drop of a hat (or at the whim of a venture capitalist), are worthy of his contempt.

Now see with whom he compares them:

It isn’t just them. I was speaking with Sanders supporters almost literally in the shadow of a giant gold tower bearing the name “TRUMP” on the side—it is something of an achievement to create one of the tackiest things in Las Vegas—and the Trumpkins, like the Sandersnistas, are terrified: The big Mexican is gonna come and get them, the scheming Chinaman is gonna take their jobs, the surly Negro is leering at the white women. At both ends of the spectrum, we see terrified—terrified—Americans praying that Big Daddy will provide for them and smite their enemies. With sometime messiah Barack Obama having failed to deliver the goods, they’re turning to Government As God the Father Himself.

People who fear the loss of their jobs and therefore vote Sanders are the same as people who hate Mexicans and therefore vote Trump. Again, I ask: Do these guys even know any normal people?

UPDATE 2. In comments (which are great), a nice summary by ChrisV82:

Here's what we've seen after 1 Democratic and 2 Republican debates: Democrats are deeply committed to fixing climate destruction, fighting wealth inequality, and making sure people are not discriminated against based on superficial (skin color, gender, etc.) reasons. Republicans are Neanderthals who bang stones on the ground to celebrate the sky god and show deep concern that foreign tribes will attack under the glow of the war moon to steal their furs, burn their huts and rape their birthing wives.

Just go in and roam around, with special attention to erstwhile Baltimorean dex explaining O'Malley.

ROCKET TO RUSSIA.

At National Review Matthew Continetti says when it comes to Russia Obama's a pussy ("the problem isn’t our capabilities. It’s our lack of will," mrrowrr), so let's get back to a Reaganite foreign policy -- like for example arming battalions of psychos in countries we don't understand:

Except for sanctions imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the occasional scolding, President Obama has been uninterested in retaliating against imperialism and deterring further aggression. He holds the view that history will expose Putin as a pretender and fool, and that Russia will be bogged down in a Syrian quagmire just as it was bogged down in Afghanistan long ago. What Obama forgets is that the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan came about because the United States financed and equipped anti-Soviet forces — a course of action he has rejected since the Syrian uprising began in 2011.

What could go wrong?

Also, we should return to nuclear brinkmanship, because back when we were still doing that Wall Street was booming and America was in love with a dashing young man named Alex P. Keaton:

We forget we hold nuclear cards, too. This is a fact Reagan did not lose sight of. “The two strategic decisions which contributed most to ending the Cold War,” writes Kissinger, “were NATO’s deployment of American intermediate-range missiles in Europe and the American commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)"... 

Not only would a revitalized and advanced nuclear force, coupled with increased funding and enlargement of strategic defense, assert U.S. supremacy, deter adversaries, and develop innovative technologies. It would also bring political benefits to whoever proposed it.

Political benefits! He buried the lede.

Quoting liberally from such unpunished war criminals as Henry Kissinger and Robert Kagan, Continetti's whole rant is rancid, but the ending's especially nuts:

“The Reagan Doctrine proclaims overt and unashamed American support for anti-Communist revolution,” [Charles] Krauthammer wrote in 1985. “The grounds are justice, necessity, and democratic tradition.” Replace “anti-Communist” with “anti-authoritarian,” and what has changed? If we are to reestablish American ideals, American interests, and American pride, we must hurt the bad guys, and overtly and unashamedly revise the Reagan Doctrine for a new American century.

It's hard to believe that "anti-authoritarian" isn't an inside joke on Continetti's part. Anyone here remember Reagan's U.N. Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who believed that in order to defeat totalitarian states like the U.S.S.R. we should tolerate authoritarian states like Roberto d'Aubuisson's El Salvador, Pinochet's Chile, and other factories of murder and torture that happily profited from and advertised our support? The idea of a neo-Reagan policy that's “anti-authoritarian" is absurd, though I can believe if Continetti and his buddies got their hands on power, they might revise Kirkpatrick's totalitarian-vs.-authoritarian formula into authoritarian-vs.-double-plus-nogoodnik or some shit.

Obama made a big mistake not calling Den Haag the moment he was inaugurated.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the unlikely candidacy of Dr. Ben Carson and the likely coming end of it. It would be nice to say that Carson's campaign will founder because Republicans will come to their senses and realize he can never be elected, but it's more likely that the outrages he keeps emitting will become tiresome even to the hometeam crowd. Unlike the mighty Trump, Carson doesn't seem in control of what he says -- it just seems to leak out, like the stuff your poorly socialized uncle starts muttering after a few drinks, or a Jay Nordlinger column. Plus he doesn't bellow like Trump, which among the brethren is a sign of authority. And at the risk of being The Real Racist ^® I would also guess that when the brethren do fully consent to a black Presidential candidate, that person will be a practiced politician like Mia Love or Tim Scott -- in other words, someone more like Barack Obama and less like Professor Irwin Corey.

UPDATE. This is very funny, from The Hill:

Donald Trump says he was ready to go after Ben Carson for questioning his faith, but decided to hold back after his GOP primary rival apologized. 

“I was all set to go wild, now I can’t go wild,” Trump said on Fox News’s “MediaBuzz” on Sunday. “I’m actually saying, ‘I wish he had hit me.’ No, he’s very smart. I wish he had hit me.”

Trump knows it would be good business to keep Carson around awhile. His schtick might pale faster if he were the only overt lunatic in the field, but with Carson out there, Trump looks like part of a larger nutcake constituency, one he's better equipped than Carson to serve as spokesman. I don't think Trump will be able to prop Carson up much longer, though.

UPDATE 2. I predict this guy will run in 2020.

KEEP F*CKING THAT CULTURE-WAR CHICKEN.

This is it! The break in the deadlock! A network show about fuck who knows has a character who thinks we should "'Hit reset' -- pound Raqqah into a parking lot." This is significant, Mark Tapson of Truth Revolt tells us, because it's on TV, and because Homeland has heretofore "largely wallowed in moral equivalence between the West and Islamic terrorism," but mostly because it's on TV.

He's not the only excitee -- feel the humidity from Ace of Spades:

For the White Urban Liberal Women who watch Premium Cable Dramas and otherwise don't really know what's going on in the world (except that Obama is Awesome and we're losing the #WarOnWomen), this character's assessment of the current strategy in the War on Terror -- that there isn't one -- will be pretty surprising. 

Haw, wait'll those bitches hear this! It'll be like a load of my hot cum in their faces -- in HD!

Worth a watch. "Hit Reset," indeed. 

Then again, maybe dumb people will assume that this is made up. Dumb people have a habit of assuming that true things are fiction, and fictitious things -- like Obama -- are true.

Comes the revolution, the CPAC Blogger of the Year 2012 has that Ministry of Culture job in the bag, man. IN THE BAG.

I wonder what would happen if, instead of talking all the time about Taking Back The Culture, these guys tried making culture. Say, that reminds me -- whatever happened to Bill Whittle's Declaration Entertainment, which back in 2010 announced it was going to do just that -- and sold subscriptions starting at $9.99 and proceeding to $100,000, to support what Whittle promised would be "a movement... a revolution"? Well, they made one movie -- and good for them! -- but they've decided to go another way:

...we have learned something during this process: making a feature consumes so much time and money that there is very little to show for it until it is finished. So rather than continuing a feature film company that also produces political videos, we are going to become a political video company that also produces feature films...

If you have an annual membership to Declaration Entertainment, we would be delighted to arrange to transfer your membership, with a bonus month, or we will refund the pro-rated balance, by check, on an individual basis.

Videos about how liberals suck -- well, they gave culture a shot, now it's back to a more traditional business model.

I'M NOT NUTS, YOU'RE NUTS!

At National Review, Jim Geraghty laments that President Obama is making Republicans look bad. I know, but hear him out:

Mickey Kaus characterizes the approach as “gaslighting” – giving your opponent a legitimate reason to get angry, then turning around and pointing to their anger as evidence they’re unhinged, obsessed, incapable of governing responsibly, et cetera.... 

Free community college? Hey, it’s never going to become law, so why not propose it and make Republicans look mean for not enacting it? Goofing around with a selfie stick? Go right ahead. Chewing gum at an international summit? Hey, what are they going to do, impeach him? 

In this atmosphere, it’s no wonder Republicans are furious. A midterm election victory that was supposed to constrain President Obama’s ability to enact his agenda has only emboldened and liberated him.

So, to sum up: Obama does things within the power of his office that his political opponents don't like. (Geraghty hints at "blatant disregard for [Congress'] roles under the Constitution" but, surprise, provides no examples, probably because he feels he's been laughed at enough for one day.) Also, Obama seems to have fun doing it. Wingnuts are therefore furious.

Jim, have you ever seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon with Yosemite Sam? Which of those characters do you think the audience is siding with?

Say this for  Sam, though -- he never resorted to anything like this:

The insanely imbalanced media landscape ensures that almost any expression of Democratic anger is portrayed as justified (or ignored if it’s too obviously outrageous) while almost any Republican expression of anger is portrayed as irrational, deep-seated hatred.

Imagine YS turning on the camera and snarling, "Quit makin' me look like a eedjit, yuh gol-durned liberal media!"

This is as good a time and place as any to enjoy one of my fa-vo-rite Friz Freleng numbers:

UPDATE. Commenters are fun; Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard says, given what's really pissing these guys off, Kaus should have called it "blacklighting." 

GIRL POWER.

In the last Presidential debate, Carly Fiorina thrilled anti-abortion Republicans with her audiobook version of Silent Scream and got a big poll boost. But what does she do for an encore? On all the other issues, the GOP mandidates are just as crazy as she, so her femaleness is no advantage.

What then to do? Brag on her sabotage, I mean stewardship of Hewlett Packard? Tell voters she'll deny benefits to the malingering poor as ruthlessly as she denied a final paycheck to the family of her dead campaign manager?

No, she needs something better, something that stirs conservatives as reliably as mangled fetus fan-fic. To the rescue rides Rich Lowry, a veteran GOP female fluffer who in 2008 proved his skills by professing his starbursts over Sarah Palin, and is ready to do his duty here:

Carly Fiorina is a no-nonsense former business executive who is showing she can play — and throw elbows — with the big boys in the Republican nomination battle.

Feminists have noticed, but their admiration is tinged with dread — and it should be. An eloquent, fearless critic of abortion, the latest outsider to climb in the Republican race is a clear and present danger to what feminists hold most dear...

Fiorina got the feminazis ascared! Come on, boys, isn't this everything you've been dreaming of?

The novelist Jennifer Weiner told The New York Times for a story about the conflicted feelings of feminists, “It’s so weird — she looks like one of us, but she’s not.” Another feminist writer said, “There’s an excitement and a horror.” The managing editor of the feminist website Jezebel tweeted the night of the debate, “I’m in love with and terrified of her.”

Yes, be afraid, very afraid...

Frightened femmies shrieking and running for their safe spaces -- gotta admit, for a certain audience (i.e., MRA creeps) it's a compelling story -- so compelling that after a few days Politico picks up the thread:

Carly Fiorina says she thinks she is "distinctly horrifying to liberals" because of the prospect that she could beat Hillary Clinton in a general election, hours after a poll was released showing her besting the Democratic front-runner in a hypothetical general election match-up in Iowa. 

A Clinton-Fiorina matchup! That's about as likely as a Carson-O'Malley one -- maybe the respondents took it in the appropriate Bon-Jovi-vs.-a-blade-of-grass spirit. Whatever, it's a hook, so:

During an interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly on her Monday night show, Fiorina responded after Kelly read part of a New York Times story from last week in which one woman remarked of the former Hewlett-Packard executive that, "It’s so weird — she looks like one of us, but she’s not."

Jennifer Weiner again! She's got "four new books for adults and a middle grade trilogy" in the works, maybe she can do something with the publicity. The question is, can Fiorina? She'd better act fast: if the new PPI survey, which has her running behind such losers as Jeb Bush, is to be believed, her miraculous rise may be over, leaving her vulnerable to a challenge from Olivia Newton-John or The Lucha Dragons or the dog from Air Bud or whichever celebrity hasn't had his or her turn to run for the GOP nomination yet.

Maybe Fiorina's campaign team can troll Lena Dunham into making an answerable remark about her --  we know anything with Dunham ups the ante for the brethren. Of course, she could go an entirely different way and start talking about how female candidates are ill-treated by men and only taken seriously by them when they talk about so-called women's issues, and then only if they totally agree with them. But she might have to switch parties to see the benefit.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP....

...at least until advertisers get it pulled. This one's sort of a recap, since the column was down for a year, and assesses the behavior of the conservative movement and the GOP's Unholy Three in light of the Umpqua shooting.

UPDATE. Thanks, all, for your generous comments.

As to the mainstreaming of Trump to which I allude in the column, National Review has just provided an excellent example. NR is in the main anti-Trump and the feature article by Ramesh Ponnuru and Rich Lowry is, too, sort of  -- but what large concessions they make to him:

But while Trump is not a conservative and does not deserve conservatives’ support, Republicans can nonetheless learn from him. Most politicians cannot hope to match Trump’s flair for the dramatic and should not try to compete with him in displays of narcissism or contempt. But politicians have been known to cultivate excitement and glamour — think of Reagan, or Bill Clinton, or Obama. These qualities have been missing from Republican politics for a long time. Republicans could, without going the full Trump, stand to be a little less apologetic and defensive under media criticism.

But didn't the Republicans already have someone "less apologetic and defensive under media criticism" -- i.e. a practiced asshole -- in Chris Christie? There's a reason Trump displaced Christie, and the authors' confusion about this is evident in the paragraphs just before and just after this one. First:

Trump responds to this kind of criticism by casting himself as a brave dissenter from political correctness. Here, too, he discredits a worthy cause. Conservatives and some honorable liberals have stood up against the oversensitivity and censorship of legitimate political viewpoints that has spread from college campuses over the last three decades. Trump appears to confuse simple decency with PC. Republicans should not embrace this confusion by cheering him on.

But they are cheering him on, possibly because they too "confuse simple decency with PC" and don't appreciate either, but certainly because they appreciate Trump's panache -- which is where he blows Christie away: Christie at least makes a feint at being interested in the non-vendetta aspects of governance -- Trump clearly doesn't give a shit, and that's much of his charm, as it were, for the Republican voters who endorse him. This is a point that Lowry and Ponnuru sail right past in a later paragraph:

For weeks, Trump simultaneously stayed on top of the polls and promised to raise taxes on rich people. His eventual proposal on taxes bore no resemblance to that promise, which is a good thing: The federal government needs to slim down, not be given more sustenance. But the fact that Trump’s polling did not suffer even a modest drop after his soak-the-rich comments should tell other Republicans that the priorities of the donors they meet at fundraisers are not the same as those of the voters whose support they need. Cutting taxes is generally desirable, but Republicans need not base all their economic and budget policies on slashing tax rates on the highest earners.

They're pretty much admitting that it's all about bullshitting the electorate and making them like it. But Lowry and Ponnuru are so bought into the conservative program that there's no trace of the nod and wink that would have humanized their own bullshit. Clearly Trump still has much to teach him!

VOTE FIORINA -- SHE DID THE BEST SHE COULD.

I'm still stunned that Carly Fiorina -- aka Wendell Willkie If He Sucked at His Job -- is doing so well in GOP Presidential polling. It's hard to imagine that many people saying, "That's who I want running the country -- someone who wrecked a big company and has an inspirational backstory."

I do understand her appeal to rightwing factota, though, as a female conservative in the Age of Hillary, so I'm not shocked that Fiorina campaign talking points would appear in outlets like National Review under reporters' bylines ("Secretariat also had what’s called the 'x-factor,' a gene located on the X-chromosome that causes an unusually large heart. Fiorina says she identifies with this").

But by and large these don't take a lot of effort -- just put the press release in the Hackit app and you're done!  Megan McArdle, bless her, seems to have expended some effort to explain why Fiorina's horrible record is no reason to count her out, and that makes it all the more poignant:

Critiques of Fiorina’s tenure seem excessively focused on the outcome.

Look, if you guys bailed right now, I wouldn't be upset.

People are far too prone to confuse outcomes with good decision-making. Surgeons who do everything right will sometimes see patients die anyway -- and many doctors who fail to wash their hands send a happy, healthy patient home at the end. The important thing is to know whether you followed a process that gives you the best odds, not what happened in an individual case. Too many of Fiorina’s critics pointed out that the company lost shareholder value, then settled back with a satisfied QED.

How can we ever really know whether bad outcomes mean bad decisions? By daring to judge her, we risk being unfair to this person who has never held elective office and ended her biggest job in the center of a flaming crater, holding a burnt match. Look at the situation from her point of view -- not that of a citizen whose future will be strongly effected by the outcome of a Presidential race. Think of someone besides yourself!

It's like that Iraq War thing: Just because McArdle was wrong and you were right ("...do you get credit for being right, or being lucky? In some way, they got it just as wrong as I did...") doesn't mean you should be the Bloomberg columnist. Hmmph!

UPDATE. In comments (always read the comments! Here, I mean; elsewhere, never), mortimer2000 pulls out this bit from McArdle's column...

But there’s another point to be made, too, which is that I’m simply not sure how much this matters. Fiorina could be the best CEO in the world, or the worst, and that wouldn’t give us much insight into how she’d do as president.

...and asks, "So Fiorina is running for president based on her background and experience as what? A person?" No, silly, as a Republican. Credentials not necessary!