DARK HORSE. Goldberg says:

I think it would be a fun exercise -- on the occasion of NR's 50th -- for my colleagues to answer who their favorite founding father of National Review was, and why. I think we should exempt William F. Buckley because that would be too easy.

I'm not invited, but I'll play. My nominee is Joseph de Maistre.

Like Buckley, de Maistre was a far-Right Catholic repulsed by the egalitarian movements of his time. Also like Buckley, he was well-educated, even gifted, but hated Enlightenment (or what we now call reality-based) thinking and, as described in Isaiah Berlin's great essay, was not content to disdain it but "set himself to destroy" it:

In place of the a priori formulas of this idealized conception of basic human nature, he appealed to the empirical facts of history, zoology and common observation. In place of the ideals of progress, liberty and human perfectibility, he preached salvation by faith and tradition. He dwelt on the incurably bad and corrupt nature of man, and consequently the unavoidable need for authority, hierarchy, obedience and subjection. In place of science he preached the primacy of instinct, Christian wisdom, prejudice (which is but the fruit of the experience of generations), blind faith; in place of optimism, pessimism; in place of eternal harmony and eternal peace, the necessity -- the divine necessity -- of conflict and suffering, sin and retribution, bloodshed and war....

It is not a perfect fit in all cases, but a surprisingly good one in general.

It may be argued that the National Review crowd is more generous with the dispensation of freedoms than de Maistre. They certainly like to talk about freedom -- especially, these days, in the Middle East (and God knows they love the idea of wars for freedom). They are fiercely devoted to some ideas associated with freedom -- e.g., "political incorrectness," and related, baser sorts of populism. But in matters of public policy such as the Patriot Act and consensual sexual activity, they are mostly anti-freedom; as to the free-markets thing which supposedly makes all conservatives True Sons of Liberty, they talk surprisingly little about it, and seem more concerned with top-down Federal policies. Though the Little Guy, beset by regulating liberals, gets a pat on the head from time to time, the NatRev people mostly put their faith in princes.

This, I think, is because they have all been splattered with Buckley's chrism, and have absorbed the idea that man is fallen and can only be redeemed by the intercession of the One True Church, of which National Review is a branch. As they cannot announce themselves with the traditional iconography, they use Gipper and Maggie as the Joseph and Mary of their Holy Family, with the role of Jesus rotating among conservative top-guns. Bush Jr. serves at the moment, and by the NR acolytes He is routinely flattered as tough-minded and beloved of the People even when it is most clear that He is not; and they frequently read anonymous anecdotes about His goodness into the public record.

My other nominees are Hitler, Satan, Robert Welch, etc. But this one, like Judgelet Miers, is so left-field it could work.

HI, just wanted to mention to those of you who don't live in New York that the latest bomb scare is more bullshit to try and make us scared. Later!

(P.S. Of course I know an explosion right about now would make me look awfully foolish, but that is just another fear the dirtbags wish to exploit. Sentient New Yorkers -- and probably sentient individuals anywhere -- have already internalized the idea that we can all be killed at any time. A life of fear doesn't suit us. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is it to leave betimes? Get real.)

UPDATE. Some of the Simonites are mad at New Yorkers for not bein' more ascared. "WichitaBoy" writes:

I'm sure that many New Yorkers are aware of a bomb threat. I'm also sure that many are in deep denial. If they weren't in denial they'd be looking hard for jobs elsewhere right now.

Yeah, that's our dream: to move to Wichita and spend our weekend nights watching Clem and Cletus blow up gophers. Especially now that their crystal meth is drying up, I'll give Cowtown a miss and take my chances with the suicide bombers.

UPDATE 2. More on Terra here.

LET'S PLAY POPULIST! In today's New York Post (no link) Victor Davis Hanson suggests a few right-wing victories in the culture wars -- pretty thin gruel, including the opposition of some flight attendants to the hit movie Flightplan, though it is very hard to tell why he considers this a victory -- and explains how they came to be:

On the one side of all these controversies seem to be architects, curators, academics, CEOs, journalists, script writers, actors, lawyers, and judges. Their utopian view of what their fellow Americans should see, think, and feel are at odds with those of grieving families, police, firefighters, flight attendants and soldiers.

Those on museum boards, in Hollywood studios, and in the coutroom seek to fashion the intellectual landscape, in which those who put out fires, arrest criminals, serve food and shoot terrorists are to operate. The latter fight back...

Before he became America's delineator of the noble struggle of waitresses against architects, Hanson had many jobs. He was a cowpuncher in Abilene, a stevedore in Red Hook, and a roustabout in Cincinnati. He worked the oil rigs till the Doc said he'd lose his leg if he kept it up, so her startin' writin' these here columns.

Of course I'm teasing. Here's the guy's bio. Before a long academic career, Hanson was a "full time farmer," we're told, so maybe he gets his feel for The People from workin' the land. I wonder how much picking and plowing he did. Himself, I mean.*

I suppose one can have a sense of life without ever having worked a regular job. I just wonder where these eggheads get the moxie to describe the heroic fight of people who, if any of them ever got onto his "tree and vine farm," would have the dogs with bees in their mouths loosed upon them, versus the detestable elites of which they are obviously members.

UPDATE. Upon further review, I do realize this could be said about nearly every public intellectual. (Not me! I have done many common things, some remunerative, some just common.) It is interesting, though, how the populist dodge has been adopted, apparently with success, by conservative pencil-pushers versus the other kind. It's not like the salt of the earth are running from town to town in knee-breeches clutching the latest handbill by VDH, the People's Friend. Maybe this sort of thing is just an in-joke among the commentariat.

*UPDATE 2. Hanson describes a hardscrabble early life. I won't dispute it. Better, as always, to criticize the text than the man.

Of the four examples of plebian uprising Hanson describes, the best known is the fate of the WTC Freedom Center -- a struggle in which the principle combatants were politicians and newspapers (including the Post, which slammed the IFC for its "potential anti-Americanism"), with some 9/11 widows brought in as a secret weapon. Flightplan is primarily perceived by the public at large, if we go by the box office receipts, as a good way to spend an evening. The two Abu Ghraib citations -- one concerning the press, the other the release of photographs -- may well have outraged some soldiers, but I don't see any evidence that the American public is mobbing up to defend its fighting men and women from the exposure of an isolated torture case.

Whether Hanson bales his own wire or not, this is the sort of thing that gives populism a bad name. The only bright side is that maybe, as this sort of rhetoric moves perceptibly further from reality, people will stop buying it.

WHEN YOU'RE A SUBURBANITE, EVERY SOLUTION LOOKS LIKE A SUBURB. The Ole Perfesser tries his hand at transportation policy, and for reasons that should be obvious, it's all about cars and computers. Light rail's a non-starter, sez the Perf, because "the changing U.S. economy makes traditional commuting -- in which armies of workers flock from suburbs to downtowns in the morning, and back home in the evenings -- less significant."

There's a lot of rah-rah for telecommuting here, of the sort seen in the boosterish trade mags the Professor and his conservatarian hordes probably read ("This isn't your grandfather's workplace. We're five years into the new millennium," etc).

But if you live anywhere near a city, folks, tell me: have the highways become significantly less congested at rush hour? The Census Bureau's American Community Survey says that the "home-based" workforce was up 23 percent between 1990 and 2000 -- but that top figure represents only 3.2 million people, and a 10-year increase of less than a million. Between 2000 and 2003, the ACS reports, just another 300,000 workers went home-based.

These are not quite wave-of-the-future stats. And we don't know whether these folks are writing RFPs for big bucks, or making paper flowers at a subsistence wage. Not all home-based workers are "telecommuters."

But if you whole life has been spent in offices, classrooms, and malls, you might think that. Perhaps the Professor also believes that all those uncounted unemployed who have dropped off the unemployment rolls are actually running profitable consultancies somewhere in the Sun Belt.

But where the policy paper takes a genuinely weird turn is here:

Likewise, I think it's worth encouraging shopping from home, too. I order a lot of things from the Web specifically because it saves me the hassle of venturing out into traffic to visit stores, but when I avoid that hassle I avoid burning gas, too. True, the delivery truck burns gas -- but it's delivering to a lot of other homes at the same time it's delivering to mine, so overall it winds up using considerably less per person than if everyone shops individually.

First, given his cold-dead-hands approach to government intervention, it's hard to guess who is supposed to do the "encouraging" here. (Well, rightwing bloggers consider themselves Tribunes of the People, so maybe he thinks their endorsement will be enough to swing it.)

But it's hard to see how sending delivery trucks to consumers, instead of consumers to stores, will significantly decrease traffic -- or significantly achieve anything, really, except to bring reality more into accord with the Perfesser's fantasy. Because when you look at what he proposes, it's a suburbanite's wet dream: cities starved of transportation funding, and suburbs regnant, filled with jobs and coddled with services, their citizens exempt from the necessity of leaving the house even for an instant.

Something I think that's what really the problem with this country: too many of its most influential residents have a positive horror of human contact and physical exercise, and will do whatever they have to do -- to themselves and to the country -- to avoid it.

DOGS AND CATS, LIVING TOGETHER! Some Dutch people have staged a marital three-way, and the Values brigade, clad in togas, is crying "Vanitas!" which is Latin for "Damned fags."

To be fair, Tacitus' contempt, being classicist is style and Biblical in scope, reaches further back than the gay-nups thing: "No-fault divorce opened up a Pandora's box of easily-broken families... those wishing to pretend that a homosexual coupling constitutes marriage... decay of Western Civilization," etc. Then the dry-ice machine was revved up and he floated, one bony finger raised in reproach, back into his Temple.

For the rest, it's solely about the homosex -- and those of us who are presumed to have supported gay marriage solely as a sort of malicious prank on Decent People. "When asked why they opposed gay 'marriage' last spring, many conservative trotted out the 'polygamy and farm animals' response, subjecting them to guffaws and derogatory remarks," recalls No Man's Land. "'As if,' snorted the left, and that was that. Or was it?" (Cue ominous multisex music.)

I know not what course others may take, but I have never sought to console nervous Kulturkampfers with promises that the very thought of gay marriage (which is really all we have of it now in the U.S.) would never lead to, or at least precede, three-ways, man on dog, etc. I have laughed at their fears, not because the things they feared could never happen, but because they are fools to fear it.

We live in a country where, despite all the Jesus-chatter, Mammon rules. Citizens are invited -- nay, commanded, lest they fall into a socially ostracized category called "Loser" -- to accumulate as much money as they can, and given only the barest of moral guidelines within which to pursue this hunt. Even disregarding outright crime, the amount of bad behavior this invites -- ranging from the pocketing of too much change at the deli, to the completely legal crushing of lives, hopes and dreams daily practiced by our bankers -- would cause the angels to weep if they existed.

Yet I never see these guys worry too much about the decay of Western Civilization into an orgy of rapacious capitalism. That's not the sort of orgy that gets their attention.

Well, whatever floats your boat. Our money-lust, like our freedom-lust (and our just plain lust) is part of who we are. I give less than a rat's ass whether some polyamorous cluster wants to celebrate its love in legal language. If you think our Empire will be toppled because of that, when there are so many other, much weaker spots in our underbelly ripe for tearing, then I honestly don't know what to tell you.

ALL RIGHT! WE'LL GIVE SOME LAND TO THE NIGGERS AND THE CHINKS -- BUT WE DON'T WANT THE IRISH! Old news, I know, but let's run the tape again:

But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.

Defenders of Bill Bennett's statement, ranging ideologically from Matthew Yglesias to Jeff Goldstein, maintain that Bennett was not in fact advocating the abortion of every black baby. Which is of course obvious, and not the basis of any reasonable objection.

The actually offensive part of Bennett's statement was his assertion that mass black fetuscide would, of necessity, cause crime to drop. Bennett's defenders do not dispute this idea -- in fact, they appear to consider it beyond dispute.

It's strange that so many public intellectuals think the condition of black folks will not improve in another generation. In a way I am more surprised by the conservatives than by the eventheliberals. We are constantly assured by them that Iraq will swiftly improve, indeed, will soon flower into an oasis of democracy. If that shitstorm can subside, why not black crime stats?

But stranger still is the insistence of Bennett and his supporters that his comment be celebrated as part of an honest effort to "talk about race and crime" -- something we are, alas, "not allowed" to do, due to PC pressure.

Any discussion that begins the way Bennett began his is not going to evolve into anything very edifying. If you tell someone his mama is ugly, it does not matter whether his mama is indeed ugly, or pretty, or of debatable appearance; you should not be surpised if he responds, not with a reasoned defense of his mother's appearance, but with his fists.

Whatever statistics may show, and however reasonable your inferences from them may seem to you, ordinary people will take it amiss when you tell them that their children are predestined to be criminals. This feeling is natural, indeed primal, but it is not ill-informed or delusional. It is based on a bit of ancient wisom: that the sins of the fathers need not be visited upon the sons. (This idea also corresponds with common sense.)

Still Bennett's defenders seem to think that black folks should endure -- and even agree with -- the proposition that their children are prison-bound, else they are not sufficiently interested in an honest Dialogue on Race.

In the late 19th century, people frequently said that for the Irish-American, criminality was in the blood. We think these statements rather crude now -- but imagine how much different things might have been if we had defined these utterances as part of our Dialogue on Race.

Samuel D. Burchard would still have insisted that the Democrats were the Party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," for example, but no one would have disavowed or been alarmed by it (except, of course, race-card-dealing Democrats); rather, social scientists would have rushed forward with charts, and perhaps phrenological diagrams, to defend his analysis as something no thinking person could dispute. The Republican Party would have prescribed for the troublesome "Romanist" immigrants covenant marriages and government-funded classes on matrimony (and maybe a drawing class with Thomas Nast).

If prominent Republican Irish-Americans protested this slur, they would probably be told something like what Goldstein tells black Republican Robert George -- that they are "shifting their condemnation toward the linguistically corrupt notion that the signifier, divorced from intent, is nevertheless the responsibility of the utterer" -- though without, of course, all the semiotic trappings, which would have left the sentiment somewhat earthier.

ADDENDUM. Charles Murray, whose previous contribution to our Dialogue on Race was The Bell Curve, drops some winger science on New Orleans. He goes on about the underclass, based on Katrina's revelations of "looters and thugs, and those of inert women doing nothing to help themselves or their children." This sounds an awful lot like that MSM overreaching the Perfesser has been complaining about, and which caused some of his acolytes to call the press racist. "Behaving self-destructively is the hallmark of the underclass," says Murray. Well, not only of them, apparently.

THE SQUARES DON'T GET ME, MAN. Professor Althouse:

I'm not saying that the great artist adopts a right wing political ideology. If fact, I agree with you that the great artist needs to separate himself from politics and certainly to get it out of his art. I'm saying there's something right wing about doing that.

This is not a paradox or a Zen riddle -- this is plain nonsense. Go examine the Professor's explications, and you'll find that they illuminate nothing except the strength of her determination to blame her own lack of clarity on her readers.

I'm not enjoying this post-literate age, but what I really dread is the post-sensible age toward which we seem to hurtle.

UPDATE OCT. 5. Late as it is, I should mention that the Professor finds my comment boring. Fair enough. There's only so much creativity I can pour into explaining the obvious: if someone comes stumbling down the street, screaming that chocolate is not only a flavor, but also a moral choice, I don't feel obliged to play Stoned Grad Student with him or her. I will, though, warn other members of the community that the Fever has claimed another victim. It's my civic duty.

THE FUDGE NEVER STOPS WITH THE FUDGE FACTORY. As previously observed here, conservative writers are going mad, and the newer ones lack basic compositional skills. Todd Buchholz seems to have been knocking around for some time ("an economic adviser in the White House of George H.W. Bush"); maybe he was working mostly in a language other than English. Get a load of this:

We are in a global race for IQ points. Not useless Mensa meeting points but applied IQ points. Brains put to work. Those countries that best harness IQ will prosper most. The U.S. produces about half the annual patent filings in the world. That's an outstanding number. But new ideas are not enough if we do not have a motivated, educated work force to exploit them. Despite improved high-school graduation rates, our kids are the Jamaican bobsled team of education, to judge by international test scores. They lose to the Slovenians. If we don't buck up our schools, the next generation could end up with white collars and pink slips.

This is a clumsily padded non-idea -- Chamber of Commerce rah-rah blather about how ideas and education will win the race for fill-in-the-blank. That's why it stinks so bad. Take somebody with a strong motivation to obfuscate rather than illuminate a subject, feed him on cliches and Mark Steyn, and this is this sort of thing he squeezes out.

Buchholz does have one idea -- that because white collar and blue collar workers are equally at risk of losing their jobs, the line between these old employment categories is blurred (or, in his odd usage, "fuzzed up"). But this idea might lead a more assiduous author in a direction not likely to win a hearing at OpinionJournal.

Fortunately for his career, Buchholz comes up with plenty of sunny images to make the shared doom of suits 'n' brutes look like something fun and futuristic. "How many executives still dictate to a secretary?" he demands, and while you are too stunned to ask what the hell that has to do with anything, he informs us that "my local UPS guy is carrying not just my cardboard box but a sophisticated inventory control device," and that today Archie Bunker could buy a really big Philippe Starck bathtub if he had the money (which, given Archie's age and skillset, he almost certainly would not). So you see, the future is an exciting challenge (rather than a desperate, exhausting race to the bottom) filled with lots of glossy images from a corporate training video, of which Buchholz's article is the journalistic equivalent.

WEAK BENCH. With the regulars succumbing to mass psychosis, National Review is bringing up raw talent from the minors, and we do mean raw. Sample Windsor Mann on rock stars who are mean to the President:

Though modern-day antiwar music spans many different genres, one common thread unites the musicians: They are all aging, fading, and facing imminent decline. This is not to say, however, that the Rolling Stones do not still command a massive following or that the Material Girl is eternally devoid of material to sing about. Nevertheless, it is probably safe to assume that those who today are "rocking against Bush" are not too far off from the day when the only rocking they'll be doing is in rocking chairs.

With what software was this translated into English? But I'll say this for Mann -- he's stylistically consistent. Here's a bit from the only other Windsor Mann article I could find:

Whatever one calls it, time off allows us all to refocus our energies on more important things. It is during times of recess that we can follow the trial of the King of P-O-P rather than the judicial nominations of the G.O.P., shop for gas grills instead of appropriations bills, watch "The Wedding Crashers" instead of the Bolton bashers and learn the name of a summer flame so long as it is not Valerie.

I like to imagine Mann throwing gang signs as he recites this to his horrified editors.

The decline in conservative writing proceeds apace. As a youth, I could enjoy the style if not the sensibilities of Ernest van der Haag and W. H. von Dreele ("Theopompous claims that God is dead/His congregation's comforted"). I never thought much of P. J. O'Rourke, but at least his shit had some snap to it, so even to this day professional O'Rourke impersonators maintain a certain level of freshness.

Those days are gone. Now, apparently, the sole requirements for conservative authorship are adherence to party dicta and semiotic signifiers of Humor (like the cute rhymes, showing, in lieu of an actual joke, awareness that a joke would go well there).

Soon it will all be Haw haw, Michael Moore shore is fat! The blogosphere offers plenty of potential recruits.

SPEAKING OF LITHIUM. "The worst part of TV in the hurricane coverage was the nonstop, wall-to-wall, relentless hammering of the viewers about the danger they were in if they were in . . . the path of the storm... they also try, when they get the chance, to terrify you. They try to terrify you into watching." -- Peggy Noonan, September 29, 2005.

"Imagine that there are already 100 serious terror cells in the U.S., two per state. The members of each cell have been coming over, many but not all crossing our borders, for five years... they will set off nuclear suitcase bombs in six American cities, including Washington, which will take the heaviest hit. Hundreds of thousands may die... a half dozen designated cells will rise up and assassinate national, state and local leaders. There will be chaos, disorder, widespread want... Think dark." -- Peggy Noonan, August 25, 2005.

We could put the Lithium in her coffee. The Jameson would cover up the taste.

THE CRACK-UP CONTINUES. The next time Jonah Goldberg does the bit about how conservatives "tend to be more dedicated to their principles" than to the Republican Party, we should recall the alarmed-meerkat response at National Review's The Corner to the indictment of Tom DeLay. From the moment K.Lo sounded the tocsin to this writing, there has been much nervous chatter, including meta-analysis of a reporter who announced the news in a manner offensive to people who are conservatives first and Republicans only coincidentally.

A few Cornerites remain stuck too hard on their own trip to join the party. Stanley Kurtz freaks the fuck out that Neil Young is making the President look bad on CMT, the George-Jones-who's-that-but-we-do-have-lotsa-Toby-Keith country TV station. I have observed Kurtz' insanity before, and it seems only to have gotten worse. "CMT is owned by Viacom, the same company that owns MTV and VH1," raves he, "Up to now, they’ve been reasonably separate operations. But it’s beginning to look as though the cultural left has decided to use CMT to try to proselytize the South." This is millimeters from Little Green Men territory. Kurtz should be forcibly restrained.

Whither the usual right-wing reasonables? Here's Richard Brookhiser telling us how liberals are going anti-Semitic. He saw some kaffiyehs at the Washington march, apparently.

Looks like I was onto something yesterday. To paraphrase The Confession: Hayek, wake up, they are going mad!

UPDATE. Kee-rist, the Cornerdwellers further descend! Jonah Goldberg whips out his iTunes: "my #1 iTunes tune is Fee by Phish (181 plays), followed by Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel, Into My Arms by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and then several songs by the Pietasters and then The Kinks and The Who." Compare this collaboration between Goldberg and his youthful intern ("What're you listening to? I can hear 'em through your headphones. They're rilly good! What's their name?") with the last Norbizness joint and ask yourself: what was that South Park Republican thing about again? Then scroll up for John J. Miller ("'Zero,' by Smashing Pumpkins -- all me, dude") and ask yourself: if I shoot into this computer monitor, will I hit the guy who wrote this? And if not, what good is the internet?

Then Iain Murray takes the sensible position that Google Print oversteps copywright law but, perhaps troubled by the unaccustomed feeling of solid ground beneath his feet, leaps off into a funnycon non sequitir: "That sort of approach, cutting corners with people's rights in order to reduce inconvenience to your operations, is, I think, the sort of thing that governments tend to do. Google needs to act more like Amazon and less like the EPA." Haw haw! See, Google's a megacorporation lookin' to make buttloads of money, and the EPA is -- haw haw! Ted Kennedy shore is drunk!

The pharmaceutical companies must have developed an aerosol form of Lithium by now. Wouldn't this be the best place to try it out?

A MILD DISAPPOINTMENT. "SURE SIGN OF A LIGHT TEACHING LOAD" -- headline by Jonah Golderg. I thought for sure it would introduce a portrait of Perfesser Reynolds, even though the hyphen was apparently missing between "light" and "teaching."

I really should just stop reading this shit and put all this negative energy into political assassination.

UPDATE FOR FEDERAL AGENTS: I'm kidding.

O THE HARD TIMES IN OLD WINGLAND/IN OLD WINGLAND VERY HARD TIMES. Is the conservative brain trust having some sort of collective meltdown? Mind you, even at high tide these guys don't make much sense, but at this odd and parlous time -- when poll numbers plummet and skeletons tumble from closets and even the Administration seems to know the jig is up and devotes itself to funneling swag to the Fredos of the family -- the blog-trotters skittishly shift their focus to some heretofore undetected real enemy; in this case, President Geena Davis.

At the Corner, where operatives usually tear energetically if irrationally into issues of great pitch and moment and devote only about 40 percent of their work to pop-art burble, it has lately been all flotsam all the time: they go on about the aforereferenced Commander In Chief (current count at 1,702 posts and rising), basketball players, a nanosecond-long reference to carpentry skills on some TV show, liberal children's books, and of course, pleas for pledges (PBS Commies only give you tote bag -- for $500, NR comrades get to find out how George Will eats without lips).

But elsewhere the fever rages, too. General Ralph "Blood and Guts" Peters, after a long absence from our radar, tells off those damned stinking hippies at the Washington march:

Were we able to psychologically profile the demonstrators, we'd find that most of them have a great deal in common: Disappointing lives, failed relationships and the desperate need for a cause of any kind. If we weren't at war, they'd be marching to save pinworms from drug-company aggression.

The General has an invigorating style, especially when you imagine his words shouted in Lee Ermey cadences, but if you ever watched any NBC Bob Hope Specials between 1966 and 1970, you already know the message.

Even in their usual rages against the hated MSM they have taken new lines of attack not ordinarily dared by even the most ambitious dragon-slayer. John Podhoretz finds the press responsible for making ordinary, salt-of-the-earth Americans believe that their economy is no good:

…Since the middle of 2003, the U.S. economy overall has been in terrific shape, growing at a yearly rate of more than 4 percent with little inflation and an unemployment rate hovering around 5 percent.

Yet in one of the strangest disconnects between fact and perception we've ever seen, the American people tell pollsters they think the economy stinks. Some of that may be due to high gas prices. But it's also surely the result, to some degree, of the negativity of the news coverage.

Great is the power of the MSM! It can poison the minds of honest American citizens, even as they roll in piles of wealth like Zasu Pitts in Greed, against the evidence of leading economic indicators. (To be fair, Podhoretz also blames Bush for talking about "the coming insolvency of Social Security." Yes, best keep that one under one's hat, along with the credit card bills.)

I suppose it was inevitable. For years these guys have been saying the craziest shit and getting away with it. Now that things are slipping a little, it's no shock that their first impulse would be to say even crazier shit. Each short, stunned moment the punters spend trying to digest the new and more bizarre talking points is another moment they won't spend catching on.

DOWN AT THE ROCK 'N' ROLL CLUB. Played one of the CBGB benefits this weekend. I was against doing it in principle, and in favor of doing it in sentiment. On the one hand, why should we play a benefit for a businessman, even a landmarked one like Hilly Kristal? The fucking guy made money every time I (or anyone else) ever played there. We might as well be passing the hat for Richard Branson. On the other, more compelling hand, I hadn’t been inside the place, let alone on its stage, in years. So I eschewed my principles for easy access to Memory Lane. If you’ve ever slept with an old girlfriend, you know the reasons don’t have to be noble.

All the bands were advertised by their association with old bands (ex-TELEVISION! ex-STRAY CATS! Ex-REVERB MOTHERFUCKERS!) The surprisingly large crowd was, by my reckoning, mostly tourists taking in the last days of punk rock Disneyland, in which we served as the Country Bears, pickin’ and sneerin’. Patrons kept coming out into the street and taking digital photos of the fabled CB’s awning, sometimes dragging us into the frame (that’s whatshisname! He was in some band!). When we played, the patrons were very attentive. We were the last of a dying breed. We probably should have brought down a buffalo and cut its throat.

I sat drinking at the bar after the show until I recalled what it was like to sit drinking at the bar after the show. Then I walked up through the East Village toward the train, till someone called out, "Hey, I know you!" It was an auld acquaintance, wearing a wedding dress and holding a beer in a bag. She and a bunch of other oddly dressed people were coming from the premiere of "Corpse Bride." They were going to the Raven, I had to come. At the Raven some guy was playing acoustic guitar, copying the Sabbath song the DJ was playing. Patrons bounced around the place like hot water molecules. After a while I left and walked to the subway. The night was soft and all along the way people were enjoying their night out. In a few hours I had to go to work, but that didn’t matter. The bass was strapped securely to my back. I had just played a show at CBGB. Hilly had made money off us again. My cut wasn’t generous, or even adequate, but at the moment it seemed to be enough.

TRICKY DICK KNEW SOMETHING. The Ole Perfesser does his usual "Never mind those thousands of traitors, dozens of true Americans held up signs across the street" schtick.

I think the tenured radical ought to forget about protestors and concentrate on the silent majority.

SHORTER DANIEL HENNINGER. New Orleans would be so much better if it were Phoenix, AZ.

UPDATE. Henninger's reaching his audience, alright. From the reader responses: "It is unfortunate that Pesident Bush has a guilty conscience and has succumb to pressure from the likes of Jesse Jackson and the black caucus. The fact of the matter is that New Orleans is a bad place... The children relocated to Utah, Vermont and Rhode Island have a chance at a descent education. In addition, it seems that many of the refugees have criminal backgrounds..." Wait -- Bush has a conscience?

SHORTER JAMES LILEKS: Listen you moral relativists: there is Art, and there is Aaaaarrrrrt, and the latter is all that counts because it's wicked hard to do. I defend the superiority of Aaaaaarrrrt against philistines like Thomas Hoving! Now I must go watch "Lost" and scan some matchbooks.

THE RIGHT WING. Daily Pundit, seconded by the Ole Perfesser:

Liberal media promote ABC's 'Commander in Chief'

Screening & Discussion with Members of the Commander Writing Team, Eleanor Clift, Gwen Ifil, Helen Thomas, and President of The White House Project

Yes. I'll be on pins and needles waiting to watch a tv series about a woman President written by Eleanor Clift, Gwen Ifill, and Helen Freaking Thomas.

How about a series about a President who actually has brains and leadership qualities, written by Jonah Goldberg, Roger Simon and, well, me?

The froth was on him, I guess, and clouded his perception so that he didn't realize that Clift et alia were participants in a discussion, not the actual writers of the show. Or maybe he's just hostile toward objective reality, which has so often been shown to contradict his many opinions.

Nonetheless his idea for Prez porn written by the blogosphere's foremost numbskulls is an intriguing one:

DER PRESIDENT

Scene 1: Der Oval Office.

PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER: (relaxing with a cigar) Ahh! I haff tekken a piss on ze piczure of Clinton! Life iz good! Ha ha ha ha!

CHIEF OF STAFF GOLDBERG: That was sweet, Mr. President! You know what would be cool? If you could work some quotes from Animal House into the State of the Union! (Turns to SECURITY ADVISOR SIMON) High five!

PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER: (thoughtfully) Zat has grossed big -- but too old! I know! Ve use quotes from Ze Exorcism of Emily Rose! Vat vaz lines zey remember?

CHIEF OF STAFF GOLDBERG: Oooh, I know! "Once you see the darkness, I think you hold onto it the rest of your life."

PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER: Vat ze hell iz dot? It don't mekk senze! Vat is zis, a gurly picture for ze Academy Avards? I piss on zem too! Ach! I know! We get CGI to make ze funny faces I remember from ze ad on ze TV! Zen ve make der Democrats verr zem! Ah ha ha ha! Life iz good.

SECURITY ADVISOR SIMON: CGI? I don't think we have the capability, Mr. President...

PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER: (Grabbing SIMON by his ample lapels) Zen you make it zo! You little scheiss, before I raize you up, you make ze gurly moviez wiz ze Woody Allen und ze Paul Mazursky, and write ze books! But now you play in ze big leagues! You get me ze Induzrial Light und Magic! Schnell! (To GOLDBERG) Und you get out too! You dribble ze Cheetos crumbs on ze cahpet!

SCENE 2: SIMON and GOLDBERG Steadicam through endless West Wing hallways.

GOLDBERG: Once you get past the insane rages, he's rilly awesome.

SIMON: We have to get him to focus. This morning I gave him 12 countries to invade. He just kept spinning around in his chair and saying, "Ja, ja, I keel efferybody." How am I supposed to take that to the Joint Chiefs?

GOLDBERG: 'Member when he peed on Clinton? That was rilly awesome.

SIMON: Goddamn it! (yelling to 3,000 nearby junior staff) Has anyone seen my fedora?

SCENE 3: Some other impressive looking room.

PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER meets with the Democratic Leadership, played by inanimate blobs of cookie dough.

DEMOCRAT 1: neener neener nee nee neener nee neener, nee neener neener nee nee ner.

DEMOCRAT 2: neener nee! (attempts to stand up, fails)

PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER: Ah ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha! (shoots them all to pieces with a potato gun)

SCENE 4: Some little room with people running around outside the windows, their brightness silhouetting GOLDBERG and PRESS SECRETARY COULTER within.

GOLDBERG: Oooh, I wanna kiss you, wanna kiss you so bad. You're blonde!

COULTER: Uh huh.

GOLDBERG: Der President called me Goldberg today. Usually he calls me Goldstein, or Untermensh! I bet he lets me run with him next time! Picture it -- Vice President Goldberg! Or Smith. I may have to change it. (stentorian voice) "Nothing's over until we say it is! Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America!"

COULTER: Have you seen my hand waxer?

GOLDBERG: 'Member when Otter and the guys went to that black club? That was rilly awesome.

SCENE 5: PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER yells at the piss-soaked portrait of Clinton.

PRESIDENT SCHWARZENEGGER: You giff me a raw deal! Nobody giffs me a raw deal! (bares his teeth to the skies) Poppa! Can you hear me? Poppa, can you hear me? (to Clinton) Nobody giffs me a raw deal! (Unzips his pants)

(Aaaaand... scene.)

NONE DARE CALL IT PARANOIA. Bloggers are flogging Able Danger now that the Pentagon is stonewalling. Many have arrived at the interesting conclusion that George W. Bush is covering up for Bill Clinton, but hardly know what to do with this synapse-freezing idea.

Commenters at Captain's Quarters seem particularly stunned, even wounded, e.g: "I am disappointed in the extreme by DOD's decision yesterday to silence the Able Danger team and astounded at the Bush Administration's continued attempts to cover for its lice infested predecssor."

Hard Starboard speculates that perhaps the Bush Administration

agreed to help cover up the [Clinton Administration's] criminal negligence in leaving the nation so nakedly vulnerable to the 9/11 attacks. And in exchange for what? Manipulation of the Democrat side of last year's presidential primaries to help ensure an opponent Bush could beat? Letting the Democrat party be run into the ground by the Sorosians and moveon.orgers, leaving the GOP with a majority almost by default? Or maybe nothing at all - just the ultimate extreme of Bush's "New Tone" paradigm.

This is a gorgeous example of the genre, from the Rube Goldberg election-fixing scheme resulting in an extremely narrow Bush victory (couldn't they afford a landslide?) to the final suggestion that Bush is committing this treason because he's just too darned nice to his enemies.

I am sympathetic to the PermaGovernment cast of this story, but I decided a long time ago that down that X-Files path lay madness, and decided to let certain sleeping dogs lie. But for the sort of commentator who generally believes that liberals run everything from faculty lounges and newspaper offices and that's why Clinton was never hanged, such recourse is probably difficult to avail.

NOT EVERYONE IS AN IDIOT. "The subway car was hot, smelly, and crowded, and the humidity at street level was so high that I felt as though I were being garrotted by a vicious odalisque in a Turkish bath." -- Terry Teachout.

"Scotland is the most violent place on earth, give or take the Sunni Triangle and Brazil’s prisons. A Scot is 7% more likely to get chibbed than an English person, and 15 times as likely as an Italian. Their Justice Minister blamed the 'booze and blade' culture, though many attacks may simply reflect Scottish people's understandable dislike of each other. Either way, it's a non-problem. If mutually-consenting drunks wish to beat each other to death in the privacy of Edinburgh town centre, that is surely a matter for them." -- Harry Hutton.

"Unlike this guy, I didn't coin the term 'blogosphere,' but I can lay claim to creating the following: The Virgin Ben, Jenna and NotJenna, The 101st Fighting Keyboarders, and America's Worst Mother™ ...which will be my Canticle For Leibowitz when Internet historians under President Dancin' Jack Roberts survey The Great Blogging Paradigm and try to understand why the people of the era never noticed what a wanker Hugh Hewitt was." -- TBogg.

There ain't half been some clever bastards, eh? Garland their sites with patronage.