BLAME AMERICA FIRST. "Dear Wisconsin -- You’re my home state, and I love you like a brother... But you’ve let yourself become total suck, politically." -- Protein Wisdom

"The American people embraced the party of cut and run — oops, sorry 'responsible redeployment' — during a war." -- Jonah Goldberg

"The terrorists turned the Spanish election by the deft placement of a few bombs days before an election. They turned ours by killing 100 soldiers in Iraq in one month. (I know, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s how our enemies will interpret it.) That American voters would send such a message is deeply dismaying." -- Mona Charen

"Liberals blame voters for their decisions. I don't want to do that. But if politicians have to live with the consequences of losing their voters, voters have to live with the consequences of losing their politicians, too." -- Ace of Spades (Winner, Richard Nixon Memorial Passive-Aggressive Trophy)

"...if I were an Iraqi I wouldn’t necessarily be booking a spot in the line to the embassy roof, but I’d be checking price and availability." -- James Lileks

"Our job of saving the world just got a little harder, with the appeasement and anger party in control of the House (and possibly the Senate too). Over at the New York Times “political blog,” they’ve picked a few comments from our open thread #4 to illustrate what they call “Sour Gripes,” and completely misrepresented the overall tone of that thread." -- Little Green Footballs

I should talk. I get cranky when my team loses, too. But I'm a fancy-pants Jew York City lie-beral -- I'm supposed to have contempt for the rubes, yahoos, and slack-jawed yokels that mostly comprise our citizenry. (I exclude you, gentle reader, of course.) Republicans, conversely, have been pandering their asses off to Cletus and Brandine for so long that their spasms of America-bashing have a special piquancy, like an Archbishop jerking off in public.

To be fair, a lot of conservatives looked for silver linings, and took comfort that America still hates homosexuals.

ELECTION DAY MESSAGES FROM AMERICA'S LEADING IDIOTS.

The Ole Perfesser: This country has a serious problem with voting fraud -- except when the Democrats complain about it, heh.

Michelle Malkin: This country has a serious problem with voter fraud -- all caused by Democrats! (Except the robocalling -- that's bi-partisan.)

Ann Althouse: If you win you lose. You hear that, Democrats? I said if you win you lose. Dogstar! Stagecoach!

Kathryn J. Lopez: I'm the leader of the show, keepin' you on the go, but I know I can't live without my radio... (as the door slowly opens, screams and curls up in a corner)

Ace of Spades: Imagine the Democrats' defeat! Taste the tears of Chris Matthews! Ahhhh, that's good, yes that's good you little bitch... (as the door slowly opens, screams and curls up in a corner)

James Lileks: Gee, I love old crap. Old people, on the other hand, can go fuck themselves. Muslims will kill us all in the end, thanks to Democrats. I take comfort in memories of telling off that little socialist bitch... ooh, that little bitch... (as the door slowly opens, screams and curls up in a corner)

Brendan Miniter: To become competitive nationally, Republicans have to spend more money in Albany, New York.

Neo Neo-Con: The Democrats must be defeated, because they won't follow the honorable withdrawal methods of Richard Nixon, which led to this Cambodian anecdote I will now use against the Democrats.

The Anchoress: Jesus Eurabia lampost stagecoach Bobby brickbat wahoo abba dabba dabba doo cabbage.

UPDATE. I am much too ill, unfortunately, to drunkblog this year's festivities. And fever delirium and codeine are much too precious to waste on politics, anyway. I look forward to waking up on a different planet, whatever the agency of removal.

UPDATE II. Just woke up! What'd I miss? The grotesque electronic head of the Perfesser crying, "Where are my robowhores? Bring me my robowhores!" And Ann Althouse:

... I just realized I'm on camera... looking like a blogger blogging about the election, but I'm blogging about Britney Spears, ha ha, no one knows...

The cameraman startled me when I glanced over and saw the camera a foot and a half from my face. He's really good at sneaking into a space and getting a shot. Either that or I'm so absorbed while blogging that I lose touch with the real world.

Well, now that she's on TV, I guess the 21st Century has found its Mrs. Miller.

STOP THE PRESSES! Althouse goes Republican! Who saw that coming?

Her commenters are a joy, especially when they're riled by dismissive Democrats. My favorite, so far:

As I've said countless times before, even if we'd done everything according to Monday-morning quarterbacks like you, we would have made a whole new set of mistakes...

Now, without the benefit of hindsight whats the Democrat plan?

Being right is just being wrong in an alternate universe! And no fair peeking at current reality when composing your bogus "plan," Demonrats!

I suppose I'd look pretty funny, myself, if I'd had such unmerited electoral success for so long that my argumentation skills had become totally vestigial. So, by the commenter's logic, I have no right to laugh at him. Yet I do -- further proof of Democrat perversity!

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING. Although tracking the fever chart of American Conservatism can be tedious work, there are compensations. Such as laffs. For example, Orson Scott Card is pulling his ancient "As a Democrat, I hate Democrats" routine, with the assistance of the Ole Perfesser. We remind readers that Card's distinguishing characteristic As a Democrat is his announced belief that "Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books... to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society."

But wait, it gets better. The Perfesser, perhaps showing a heretofore unnoticed sense of humor, points us to one of the few commentators still taken in by Card's masquerade: gay American Eric Scheie. Scheie is inspired by Card's post, and says

I'll vote for the Republicans despite their alleged closets. I'll take their closets over the Democrats' closets. Closets are based on shame, and while I don't think homosexuality is worth being ashamed of, defeat in a war is very definitely worth being ashamed of.

When Scheie is notified that Card doesn't just want to put him in a closet, but in a prison cell as well, he shrugs, "hearing more about him makes this process more interesting. (Whether I agree with him on other issues is irrelevant.)" There's a patriot, folks -- a man who believes in the cause so deeply that he'll stand shoulder to shoulder with someone who, placed in such proximity to him, would take the opportunity to grab his arm and shout for a policeman.

It may be that Scheie has a sense of humor, too. Just a week ago, he said, "anti-gay bigots deserve same sex marriage in pretty much the same way that the Republican Party deserves to lose the election." Who knew at the time that this meant, "not at all"?

Is it any wonder that I can't stop watching them work, despite my best instincts?

ASSHOLE BUDDIES. As the rats exeunt the flotation-challenged U.S.S. Mission Accomplished, we hear by way of a horrifying Vanity Fair article their excuse that no one could have expected shipwreck with such fine men at the helm. Kenneth Adelman:

I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional...

I've worked with [Rumsfeld] three times in my life. I've been to each of his houses, in Chicago, Taos, Santa Fe, Santo Domingo, and Las Vegas. I'm very, very fond of him, but I'm crushed by his performance. Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don't know. He certainly fooled me.

Over at The American Scene, Ross Douthat is similarly puzzled by the performance of the Best and the Brightest:

If you had asked me, circa 1999, to pick out a group of senior GOPers who I would have wanted at the table in a national-security crisis - well, I'm not sure I could have done better than Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, with (in theory, though of course it didn't turn out that way) Brent Scowcroft whispering in Condi's ear, and George H.W. whispering in his son's. This is how the Bush Administration was sold to people, on foreign affairs at least, and I remember watching television after 9/11 and being so relieved to have Powell around, and Cheney, and Rummy, instead of, say, Anthony Lake or Madeleine Albright.

In the immortal words of "Seinfeld"'s Elaine Bennis: well, that's because you're an idiot.

I am but a shabby poetaster who don't know nothin' about nothin', yet I've had a bad feeling about this thing from the beginning, and continued to express that bad feeling throughout the days when the current former war fans were calling us all traitors.

So what did I catch that these geniuses missed?

I like to think that it was mainly common sense. Rome could subdue, enslave, and Romanize far-flung populations for decades. On the other hand, America's style has mostly been to cut and run and let the United Fruit Company sort things out. A great exception was World War II, which was run by a crew very different from the lot that has presided over the Iraq debacle.

Vanity Fair's neocons grumble that their dream of pacifying the Middle East at the point of a gun was deferred by mere screwups. Yet Cheney, Rumsfeld, et alia are not screwups -- on their own terms, they've been marvelously successful. They have made the GOP a War Party exuding strength, confidence, and animal vitality. This has won a few elections and may win another on Tuesday. Perhaps more importantly, they have managed to siphon from the U.S. Treasury a considerable amount of cash for their buddies, and they are in the process of kicking over their traces so that We the People will not get a chance to take some of it back. When it's all over, Rumsfeld will be able to buy himself five more homes, at least.

So maybe, despite my failings, I have managed to obtain in the course of a long and checkered life some skills that these professors and pundits failed to pick up: I can spot a scumbag at ten paces. I can smell bullshit. I know that the laws of the universe will not necessarily be reversed because I so very badly want them to be. And though I sometimes find that I have left a store counter with short change, I certainly know better than to patronize that establishment again.

Hopefully a few voters out there have acquired the same skills.

NOTHING'S SHOCKING. "Astonish me," Diaghilev told his auditioners. Would he were alive today! We are lately seeing such breathtaking leaps (albeit of logic) as would send him into raptures, and make Nijinksy step back with his hands on his hips and go "Day-um!" or whinny jealously or whatever he did.

As Thatcher once told us there is no such thing as society, David Frum now tells us there is no such thing as hypocrisy. Read his essay on Ted Haggard if you have time to waste and a strong stomach. It floored me; I am still on the floor, typing from there, so forgive any misspellings. Frum's opening made me think he was just going to show sympathy for a fallen sinner; later, I thought he would be content to tag on some contempt for a liberal media pile-on; but eventually I realized to my horror this man, a professional writer who had once been employed by the President of the United States, was rejecting a taboo as old as human society:

Consider the hypothetical case of two men. Both are inclined toward homosexuality. Both from time to time hire the services of male prostitutes. Both have occasionally succumbed to drug abuse.

One of them marries, raises a family, preaches Christian principles, and tries generally to encourage people to lead stable lives.

The other publicly reveals his homosexuality, vilifies traditional moral principles, and urges the legalization of drugs and prostitution...

...the first man may well see his family and church life as his "real" life; and regard his other life as an occasional uncontrollable deviation, sin, and error, which he condemns in his judgment and for which he sincerely seeks to atone by his prayer, preaching, and Christian works.

Yet it is the first man who will if exposed be held up to the execration of the media, while the second can become a noted public character - and can even hope to get away with presenting himself as an exemplar of ethics and morality.

How does this make moral sense?

Because, you hoser, human society depends upon at least a rudimentary concept of justice. We can forgive inconsistencies, and even admire trying and failing, but when someone amasses power from us based on his personal superiority, and is proved a fraud, he has broken the basic bargain of leadership. We mock him not out of meanness, but out of a communal survival instinct.

When such a concept is assimilated, Tartuffery of Reverend Haggard's sort* is immediately and viscerally perceived as unjust. And hilarious.

It's not possible that a functional adult could be as ignorant as Frum portrays himself here. I have to believe that he's just desperately trying to defuse a worrisomely familiar culture bomb. For big-time conservatives on the eve of a big election, it may be that the Haggard case makes a sinister bookend to the Foley case: both instances of sexual scandal that are not really germane to any political issue, but which may excite feelings among the rest of the tribe that our leaders, with their Family Values crests and credos, are not everything they claim to be.

In such circumstances, an outrageous moral lecture on behalf of a hypocrite could be worth a try. If you confuse or cow them, they might stop giggling.

*UPDATE. I hadn't noticed this before, but while Frum and many of his fellow travellers have talked about all this as if it were proved that Haggard had sex with Mike Jones, this is not the case, though Jones insists it is. So I don't know that Haggard has been hypocritical, and apologize for even peripherally carrying the imputation forward. I should know better than to follow NRO's lead on anything.

SHORTER CRAZY JESUS LADY: To lift America above the rancorous partisanism of our time, we need more true progressives like Rick Santorum.

A NEW LOW. The New York Times reports on the Government's attempts to leverage Iraqi documents on the internet to its own advantage. The report mentions some old documents about Saddam Hussein's pre-1991 attempts to gain nuclear power.

The immediate response from the right is that the Times report proves, in some way not discernible by ordinary logic, that Saddam was on the verge of wiping us out in 2003, and that the Times only printed this information (which, if it actually existed, would be injurious to their beloved Democratic Party) because they are crazy and/or stupid.

They don't know which dark desire they want to indulge more -- their hatred of the Times or their wish to be vindicated on Iraq -- so they try both at once, which works as well as would an attempt to sing opera while eating a pie. Actually, I guess it does work, in the sense that this sloppy performance will yet stir traditional enmities and ardours in the people such guff usually works on, though it leaves the rest of us wondering why we ever bothered learning to read.

UPDATE. More detailed analysis than I have time or talent to make by David Weigel.

FIGHTING THE LAST CAMPAIGN. I'm actually disappointed that The Big Stiff apologized. I took him at his word as to the meaning of his jest, but even if he had a different one in mind, he had a right as a veteran to make it -- God knows we've heard more pointed cracks from men who served. For a while I thought he'd tough it out, but once a soldier always a soldier, and he did his bit for the higher echelon. In 2004 he expected as much from others, as I noted at the time:

In a day of tactical evasions, John Kerry talked down a MoveOn.org anti-Bush ad, apparently in solidarity with John McCain, who had talked down the Other Swift Boat Guys' anti-Kerry ad. I see the political usefulness of this for the Big Stiff, and invite him to denounce my own ravings as well if it will help him defeat the fascist scumbag space-alien freak Illuminatus Bush.

Now Kerry himself takes one for the team. Were I of a cynical turn of mind, I might suspect that this was the idea all along. Now Kerry, who is not running for office, has become the heat sink that draws all the savage denunciations ("a man who remembers everything and learns nothing," "Mister Nuance," "forlorn loser," etc) that might otherwise be expended upon those who are.

In fact, I don't know why I bother to provide post-specific links, as the folks at The Corner and other such blather outlets will be hammering this into the next decade. Remember, the blogosphere thing is just a bubble, and its skin, like that of the paramecium, is only semi-permeable: news may enter, but outrage mostly stays inside, which is of course the secret of both the blogosphere's growth and its ineffectuality: it swells without discharging.

"Folks," roars The Corner's current rookie dead-ender, "I do NOT agree with letting Senator Aristo-Slacker off the hook for his plainly delivered insult to the troops." That's fine, Mario: keep the old standard aloft, while the busy world bustles without.

I still think this will all end badly, as the Republicans have rigged the voting machines, but as far as the old-fashioned politics go, this is only today's news, and tomorrow is upon us. Let us keep our keep our eyes and ears open for the latest meaningless outrage.

UPDATE. In the discussion, some commenters object to the allegations of a fix, and Steve notes that "the utopian fantasy where every vote gets counted once and only once has never existed." Quite so. I have been rereading with pleasure Luc Sante's Low Life, and have just come to the Tammany boss' directions for getting four votes out of a single vagrant by shaving bits of his facial hair between trips to the polling station.

While Republican fixers currently enjoy the advantages of electronic voting machines, it may be that, by the time the wheel of fortune turns the Democrats' way, they will have the benefit of wi-fi-assisted cerebral cortex jamming devices.

Hopefully I won't be so depraved by then as to defend them. The whole time I've been operating alicublog, the Democrats have been a disorganized rump; should they obtain something more than the power to harass, I may have to start paying more attention to them. That may cure me of politics for good, which is as fine a reason as any to root for them.

NEXT: HOW HERBERT HOOVER WAS ACTUALLY AN ANARCHO-SYNDICALIST. If Kerry really did say, "I hate idiots like me who served in the military," then I suppose Rick Santorum can be a libertarian, right?

Fresh from explaining how her sex-loathing somehow made her unpopular with her "fellow" libertarians, Jennifer Roback Morse explains at National Review why Senator Man-on-Dog -- a guy who actually said out loud that Democrats are "anti-responsibility" because "their entire agenda is, 'I should be able to do whatever I want to do as long as no one gets hurt'" -- is the logical choice for Pennsylvanian libertarians.

After all, she tells us, Santorum likes tax cuts -- you guys love tax cuts, right? -- and he is beloved of the Family Research Council, who loves a lot of the same things libertarians love, including parental notification for abor-- um, tax cuts!

Morse acknowledges some libertarians may reject Santorum because of the whole make-sodomy-illegal thing -- but:

If you’d vote for Bob Casey Jr. over Rick Santorum because of their respective positions on gay rights, you’re not a libertarian. You are a single-issue gay-rights voter.

Or, to use the colloquial: you're not a libertarian, you're a fag! And here endeth the lesson.

I have speculated more than once that many National Review articles are written on a bet -- you know: Hey, Lowry, two large says you can't write a thousand words on how a billion-and-a-half dollars for marriage lessons is "conservative"! But even in these bagatelles, there is normally at least a collateral benefit to the conservative movement. Morse's piece, outside of its bookmaking potential, is perfect in its uselessness. Who at the Review gives a damn about pleasing libertarians anymore? Haven't they all caught on by now?

Things must be going worse for them than I thought. (Still holding onto my bet, though! Diebold, people!)

THE GOP'S HAIL KERRY PASS, AND MY COMING ANOINTMENT AS A POLITICAL GENIUS. They must think Kerry's remarks will help them in the election, to judge by the way their most reliable web propagandist is beating it to death.

And also by how they beat their own when they don't get on board. At The Corner, John Derbyshire takes the perfectly reasonable view that Kerry was, as he claims, insulting Bush, not Our Fightin' Men, and his mates turn ugly. "You're just wrong, wrong, wrong," says John Podhoretz. "Guess when Senator Kerry was talking about dimwittery he should have been talking about me too then," says K. J. Lopez. (Yeah, guys, I know, but I'm in a hurry.)

But such blog-froth is, after all, good only for a few days, and affects only the hotheads and shut-ins who regularly avail this medium. That Bush himself has gone front and center to attack the Kerry remarks indicates that the national Party has been prepared for a last-minute offensive on similar themes, but has accelerated its schedule, and shifted its specific target, to suit events.

This and the President's recent references to gay marriage support my prediction that, in the last ditch, the Republicans would paint the opposition as gay traitors to win the election.

My casual slur having been proved prophetic, I will go further and predict that in this final week of campaigning, you will see many otherwise incomprehensible attempts by Republicans to -- well, not even associate; to juxtapose Democrats with notorious sodomites and turncoats. "Harold Ford wears a shirt and slacks -- just like the men who raped and murdered Jesse Dirkhising!" "Hillary Clinton gives a regular radio address -- just like Tokyo Rose!" You can take that to the bank.

As for the election results, I see no reason to prognosticate, because everyone knows it's fixed.

UPDATE. Lileks, of all people, takes Derbyshire's view, though by the time he gets to it he has exhausted himself in rage against that damned snot-nosed punk Mort Sahl.

THE SIMPLE TEST, DEFEATED. I recently ran one of my Ole Grey Perfesser Tests -- that is, I took a page of Instapundit at random and analyzed each post on it for evidence of centrism, libertarianism, and other alleged nutrients. The results vary but little from reading to reading, and show the Perfesser to be a reliable Republican shill with statistically insignificant trace elements of contrarianism added to appeal to young and/or unsophisticated consumers.

Since Ann Althouse has been talking up her credentials as a centrist Democrat, I figure she's about due for a test, too:

Oct. 25, 9:10 am: Lawsuit over penis! Gross!

9:27 am: That Corker ad with the white girl is shameful and perhaps plays to racist feelings.

9:44 am: I like Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

9:50 am: Don't you think we should have sexually segregated schools?

10:19: James Cavaziel, Michael J. Fox -- a plague on both your houses!

3:10 am: I think this court decision in favor of the gay-marriage side is a big mistake. I always say that, of course, which is why I always have to remind you that I'm pro-gay-marriage, too.

Oct. 26, 5:11 am: Bob Dylan Broadway show. Hmm.

5:55 am: Ugh! What a bad poster! Why isn't the hand wearing pants?

6:32 am: Ha ha, Ted Nugent is funny. Why doesn't anyone else write about it? Oh, someone else wrote about it.

6:50 am: Why did I do this on a school night! Now the sun's coming up and I still can't get to sleep.

7:03 am: Mickey Kaus said the gay Jersey court was playing politics. Hmmm.

8:10 am: Those people who say Corker's ads use racism against Ford are being dishonest. I think Ford's people are just as bad!

8:41 am: Now Simon Cowell has me thinking about marriage. I wish I could sleep, or feel my tongue, or stop thinking about not feeling my tongue.

9:13 am: David Brooks says the midwest is the future. That would be awesome.

11:24 am: What's your favorite Supreme Court Justice! SCALIA! He's so fine, he's so fine he blows my mind Scalia! Why don't you like Thomas? It is because he's black? Can I serve you and Barbie some more tea?

8:30 pm: O God it was good to sleep... still tired though... uh, I guess there's something to those dirty stories Webb wrote... politicians always do that you know... Omigod, I wrote a lot of crap! I better add some factual material.

10:07 pm: Ha ha, Camille Paglia sure gave it to those Democrats! What? The thing about Studds is wrong? Ugh, what a drag. I gotta start saving this shit for the weekends.

11:11 pm: If I blog about my radio show tomorrow morning maybe I'll remember it when I wake up, and not just turn off the alarm and go back to sleep like last time.

Oct. 27, 6:18 am: That Bob Dylan show sounds awful.

6:50 am: If I were Kevin Barrett, here's how I would have handled that protest.

7:10 am: It was bad, what the Muslim cleric said about rape. "Clean out the White House" doesn't mean get rid of Bush! God! You're so stupid!

7:36 am: Ha ha! Canada! Ha ha!

8:04 am: Okay I'm about to go on the radio. UPDATE: I was on the radio.

10:01 am: I take pictures.

1:38 pm: Some people have trouble with the blog in their browser. Foxfire! O God that's funny! Fox-Fie-Err. Fox-Fie-Err. Wow.

4:16 pm: Reading about TV is kind of like reading and kind of like watching TV. So maybe we should just read about TV. But then we'd need TV shows to have something to read about. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

4:46 pm: Bes-tial. Bes-ti-al. BESSSSSSSSSSSSssstial. Bes. Ti. Al.

6:06 pm: Wow. This place is awesome.

7:25 pm: No, wait. Wait. No, was it cool to laugh at that? No, because yeah, if it was Hitler because of the Jews. Steve Irwin didn't kill any Jews.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

8:05 pm: You know? Because, you know?

Oh, I can't stand this anymore, I quit. Some things just don't bear close examination.

SHORTER TIGERHAWK. You're in the managerial class? Me too! Boy, don't non-salaried employees suck?

SHORTER JOSH TREVINO. Liberals have BDS so bad it turns them against their own mothers, according to this lifestyle story in the New York Times which I suddenly trust unreservedly. And they say they're for "privacy," whatever that is, but they really just mean Ess Ee Ex. I would pity them if they weren't about to kick my ass.

WITHOUT ALL OF YOU MY CAREER COULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN THIS FAR.

I'd like to see the Democratic Party become centrist. If they win because they found moderates to run in key districts, I think they'll have a special obligation to please people like me. I'm going to hold them to the bargain.

What bargain? Who are you? Why, it's Professor Ann Althouse, who normally speaks only of Democrats as anti-feminist, whiny losers, to the cheers of her largely right-wing readership. But now that the Democrats stand a chance of winning, Althouse considers herself as indispensible to their success.

Having followed her work a while, I don't see this as simple bandwagoning. I think Althouse believes she actually has something to do with the Democrats' anticipated victory. It's sort of like Divine giving her acceptance speech from the electric chair in Female Trouble: deluded, yes, but with the saving grace of hilarity.

OR A SPORTS CAR. THAT WOULD BE NICE. Fooled by our ignoble retreat from Daylight Savings Time, I wound up watching some of the Sunday morning gibberish. Ben Stein (Ben Stein!) recited a speech he'd written for George Bush, admitting Iraq was a mistake. Then Michael Steele (Michael Steele!) explained that the difference between himself and his Democratic opponent was that he'd wait an extra 60 to 90 days to pull our troops out "if the Iraqis don't want us."

And there's this:

Meanwhile, even as Bush was praising Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as "a smart, tough, capable administrator," endangered Republicans like Kentucky Representative Anne Northup and Ohio Senator Mike DeWine have been joining the increasingly loud chorus of calls for the secretary's ouster.
And pressure for change is not coming only from the desperate and the wobbly. Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison -- a Bush loyalist well ahead in her bid for re-election -- is expressing regret for her vote to authorize the invasion and is advocating partitioning Iraq along ethnic lines. "We have to step back and stop trying to put our American ideas onto this problem," she told the Houston Chronicle.

I should be glad to see the consensus moving the right way, but on the other hand, what the fuck? Many of us have been hearing for years that we were traitors to express skepticism about this adventure, and now I hear Republicans coming out with this shit. Don't we get an apology or a fruit basket or something?

TALES OF ORDINARY MADNESS. We hear today, after a blessedly long hiatus, from Camille Paglia, whose anger at liberal colleagues has made her a surprise hit with folks who would otherwise never listen to a humanities and media studies professor say anything, unless she were reading back their fast-food order. Paglia is still mad at other intellectuals, even when she agrees with them:

The feckless behavior of the Bush administration has been a lurid illustration of Noam Chomsky's books -- which I've always considered half lunatic. Chomsky's hatred of the United States is pathological -- stemming from some bilious problem with father figures that is too fetid to explore. But Chomsky's toxic view of American imperialism and interventionism is like the playbook of the rigid foreign policy of the Bush administration. So, thanks very much, George Bush, you've managed to rocket Noam Chomsky to the top of the bestseller list!

Chomsky's "toxic" view, as explicated by Paglia, has been fulsomely borne out by actual events, yet Chomsky is "half lunatic." In fact, to hear Paglia tell it, President Bush himself is more than half lunatic:

...I've become concerned about Bush's mental state in the past few months. Sometimes in his press conferences or prepared statements (which I listened to on the radio), I heard a sort of Nixonian tension and hysteria. His vocal patterns were over-intense and his inflections impatient, lurching and sarcastic. There was this seething quality to his speech that worried me and that seemed to signal that something major is being planned -- perhaps another military incursion.

Interestingly, despite this startling accusation of incipient Presidential lunacy, Republicans are linking to it.

Lord Nazh is phlegmatic: "Granted she has her hang-ups like any good lefty does... scim the lefty parts if you must." This guy says "A liberal Democrat tells it like it is!"; Fraters Libertas is tickled that Paglia "opines on liberal talk radio." In a long post, one Dr. Melissa Clouthier says of Paglia's warning of a Bush mental breakdown that "If I were him, I might be paranoid. I've mentioned this before. I'd be paranoid because everyone does seem out to get me..." One hopes her Doctorate is not in psychology.

Apparently you can get big play from the right by talking smack about liberals, even if you simultaneously suggest that George W. Bush is one sleepless night away from blowing up Iran to still the voices in his head. This suggests a new definition for the term Bush Derangement Syndrome.

THESE COWS ARE VERY SMALL, BUT THOSE COWS ARE JUST VERY FAR AWAY. I see Republicans are bragging about their poor reading comprehension skills. This is a Virginia election, however, so it might just work.

Here's my favorite report of Webb's novels so far, from noted rightwing news aggregator CNS:

Virginia Senate hopeful Jim Webb was taking flak Friday for what sounded like a child sex scene in his 2001 novel, but critics who have examined the books he wrote over a two-decade period also see a pattern of discriminatory and offensive characterization of women and racial minorities...

But, [Mychal] Massie ["national chairman of the conservative African-American group Project 21"] added, "Speaking as a writer, a person tends to write what they believe in. Even in presenting a fictional writing the author writes from a core philosophy -- an intrinsic philosophy."

Don't tell these people about Nigger Jim or they'll haul Mark Twain's body out of its grave and throw it in the Chemung.

It'd be annoying if an important election turned on this bullshit, but I gotta be honest with you: sometimes I feel as if I've been a little unfair to conservatives, portraying them as illiterate clods and such like, and it's nice to be reminded that I have if anything understated the extent to which their cause relies on plain pig-ignorance.

UPDATE. Of all people, Michelle Malkin shows a grasp of basic literary concepts.

COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN. I got to an advance screening of Babel this week. I've never seen Iñárritu's other movies (Amores Perros, 21 Grams), but I can see why he's a big deal. He's really good at showing the undramatic ways in which dramatic events develop. Two brothers, each jealous of the other's claims on their father, wind up shooting a tourist; a young deaf girl seems perfectly well-socialized within her peer group, but when she is casually reminded of the doors that are closed to her, she begins to act out sexually; a Mexican nanny wants to go to her son's wedding and takes a risk that has a good chance of working out -- until her nephew takes a risk of his own that turns everything into a nightmare.

This shows great storytelling craft, but Iñárritu wanted something bigger than a mere story, and mashed a bunch of them up into some sort of thread-crossing statement picture. Unfortunately I don't know what the statement is supposed to be. Communication is obviously a big part of it -- language barriers, deafness, "Babel." But if you want to say that communication breakdowns are the cause of all the problems in the film, you have to define both "communication" and "problem" so broadly that they barely mean anything. If the Americans have wound up in Morocco because they can't talk to each other, does that mean getting shot is a communications problem? And do the boys get to the point of target practice because their conflict resolution skills are imperfectly developed, or because they're boys and have a gun?

Also, the film slows way down at the end, so that we may more fully experience, or wallow in, the agonies of the characters -- but at that point they were still strangers to me, and in fact I cared much less about all but one of them than I had at the outset. Only the deaf girl's story held me -- partly because Kikuchi Rinko's performance is so amazing, but also because her story had suffered the least from distractions: her deafness, and her adolescent simplicity, made it necessary for Iñárritu to focus intensely on her, and we could read a world of details into her silence. Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett just can't compete with that, no matter how photogenically they suffer.

It occurs to me that this sort of multi-thread strategy breaks down dramatic interest of necessity, and that it only works if the multiple plots and casts coalesce to suggest a community that we can care about, as in Nashville or Dodes'ka-den. God knows Altman's stars, wannabes, and innocent bystanders chronically talk past one another, but their town still lives because their blind, groping need holds them together; Kurosawa's dump-dwellers have communications problems, too, and there's even a character who doesn't speak (well, maybe because he's really a ghost), but that's just what you expect from people who live so close to one another that each man must jealously guard his identity, or the private pain that is all he knows of it. (Though spouses are interchangable. Damn, that's a beautiful movie; I wish I could watch it right now.)

If there's a community in Babel, it would seem to be The World. That may have been a little too big a target for Iñárritu, at least at this point. But he's got great skills, and he makes Morocco, Tokyo, and Tijuana feel so real in the short spaces devoted to each of them that I wonder what he could do for one place over an hour or so. Let me know when he makes a simpler movie.

ALSO, THEY FUCK DOGS TO MAKE HIPPIES. One of the madmen at Gates of Vienna has written hundreds of words complaining that black people are prejudiced against white people.

So, everybody is supposed to keep their culture, except people of European origins? All cultures are equal, but some are more equal than others? Why is colonialism always bad, but not when my country, which has no colonial history, gets colonized by Third World immigrants?

Also, a bunch of dark people moved into his country, and they steal and rape white women. No word yet on whether they drive Cadillacs to pick up their welfare checks.

I seem to remember hearing stuff like this when I was growing up in a Northeastern American city that was growing less white. (Bridgeport now has a minority majority, I believe, though it's still run by white people). Still, I don't recall hearing, in my childhood or in my adult visits there, that the solution was to wage global war against Southern Baptists, lest we all be absorbed into Dixietude.

The prior post is about the Swedish integration and equality minister, Nyamko Sabuni, who sounds terrific. The author then starts raving about black people who call other black people "oreos" (though there is nothing remotely about that in the text about Sabuni), Jesse Jackson, etc.

The post before that is about veiled women in Europe, and somehow drags in the ACLU and "ghetto gear" ("baggy pants and exposed boxer shorts").

One gets the impression that these soldiers joined the Keyboard War Against Islam to get away from themselves, and are not having much luck.

UPDATE. Comments are... well, here I am reduced to twirling my index finger next to my head:

Fjordman, I think it is time for Swedish and Norwegian patriots to set up governments in exile, just like occupied countries did in WWII...

It seems, at this point, that the choices are between following democracy until it kills us all or, eventually, going for the jugular and staging a coup in (at least) France...

For things to change, whites must strengthen our racial consciuousness, which, reports to the contrary, does exist -- though it is suppressed. And once we act, once we liberate ourselves... I have no doubt whites are waking up, slowly but sirely, but we need to take the thinking to the next step.

Might I suggest we start by issuing our own "fatwas" against Muslim clerics inciting hatred... If the authorities have decided to destroy our countries for whatever reason, they have no legitimacy, and must they not be overthrown?...

So, if any of you white folks out there want to stay alive and have a future for your children... know your enemy and start taking steps to defeat your enemy...

Gates of Vienna appears on the blogroll of Armed Liberal and other fine moderate bloggers.

UPDATE II. At Dean Esmay's site, Mary Madigan says Gates of Vienna is "often maligned as being 'Islamophobic.'" I'd say Islamophobia is the least of their problems.