DIMINISHING RETURNS. Conservatives have been thumping the low approval ratings of the Democratic Congress as a way of offsetting the lousy standings of the Republican Administration. Now the destroyed CIA torture tapes has been quickly followed by leaks showing that some Congressional Democrats supported waterboarding in 2002. The usual suspects have made much of it:

Lots of people who were talking tough back then subsequently changed their tunes -- out of either a sudden flowering of scruples or an unprincipled desire to go after the Bush Administration with any weapon that came to hand. But, you know, if you're going to say "it was different back then," it really has to be more than just an all-purpose excuse for politicians. It's also a reason not to hang people out to dry for doing what politicians, and the public, wanted back then, when things were so "different." Your call, but Jules Crittenden notes: "Next thing you know, someone’s going to say the Clinton co-presidency thought Saddam had a nuclear program and backed regime change."

For a Party standing squarely against moral equivalence, they expend a lot of energy telling voters that the Democrats did it, too.

I wonder if it will work. We are closer to the 2008 elections than we are to the 2006 elections that put Pelosi and Reid into power. All deserve whipping, but given the choice, whom will the voters seek to punish next year -- the Party of the wheelman, or the Party of Mr. Big?

Some Democrats are forced to say they were wrong to support the Republicans, and some Republicans happily admit that those Democrats were wrong to support them. Sometimes, when you try to reframe the issue, you find that the issue is actually framing you.

HACKWORK FOR THE LORD. As I am not into hobbits or gremlins or witches or wardrobes or any of that CGI guff, I certainly won't see The Golden Compass. I am intrigued by the weird negative criticism of the film at National Review. I don't mean it's weird that the criticism is negative -- such a result was preordained, as Compass twits the Holy Mother Church, and the Review is pretty much an Opus Dei front organization. But I thought they'd at least use actual film critics to review it. Instead, they enlist Gina R. Dalfonzo, editor of Charles Colson's ultra-Jesusy online mag, and a Review "editorial associate" (intern?) named Emily Karrs. Neither of them seem to know or care much about movies, which is probably why they were picked for the job.

Dalfonzo's employers are clearly up in arms about the movie. Colson's "director of strategic processes in the Operational Advisory Services team for Campus Crusade for Christ" -- wonder what his uniform looks like; lots of gold braid, I expect -- warns the flock that children are being taught this filth in schools and "Christian parents ought to stand guard on behalf of the next generation." And Dalfonzo cites another colleague's "take" which is basically a rundown of Compass' Bad Thoughts.

That's mainly what's on Dalfonzo's mind, too. In her Review piece she complains that the plot gets confusing, but she likes some of the acting. And that's it, as far as aesthetics go -- just enough to convince somebody (if only Dalfonzo) that it's criticism, just like in the newspapers, and not a hit piece. But most of the text is about Philip Pullman's "appalling moral relativism" and general lack of Jesus.

As for Miss Karrs, her critical method relies too much on negative adjectives, and too little on explaining what exactly went wrong:

...Scenes in the books are shuffled or invented out of whole cloth and characters are rearranged and renamed. Many of the questions that are posed by the variety of moralities among species of conscious beings in the world are swept away in the script, so the film focuses on CGI rather than substance.

Ineptly cannibalizing its own themes in a hope to be all things to all people, the film ends up an exercise in vapidity rather than a great new epic. Such is the price of seeking to adapt a book that propagandizes for an unpopular philosophy into a major motion picture. The landscape is breathtakingly beautiful, the conversation of the computer-animated daemons sparkling, and Kidman nearly shatters the screen with her icy glamour as the deliciously wicked Mrs. Coulter. Yet despite so much technical richness, the film still feels empty.

I'm still waiting to hear what was wrong with the film as a film -- That it's different from the book? That it has too little blasphemous philosophical discussion to hold a teenager's attention? -- as opposed to what her priest would think was wrong with it if he saw it.

Why not use critics who could actually explain these things well? Because, for the most part, their reactions aren't predictable. They might perversely enjoy the film, or dislike it in a way that isn't sufficiently contemptuous. And they certainly wouldn't have the appropriate talking points memorized, nor would they be inclined to devote 80 percent of a review to them.

Again, for such people art is nothing but an opportunity for or threat against their power.

A LOATHSOME DUTY. As I have frequently observed here, Mark Steyn is a useless piece of crap, a chest-thumping buffoon and a racial obsessive. But even Steyn doesn't deserve this. Such prosecutions have no place in a free society, and Steyn should be free to peddle his ignorant racist bullshit without government interference.

I feel ever so righteous, standing up for repulsive free speech! First the Danish Mohammed cartoons, now Mark Steyn. I'm a regular Nat Hentoff. Andrew Sullivan should name an award after me.

ANNALS OF GLIBERTARIANISM PART 439,062. The Perfesser approaches gun rights from the back end:

I HEARD NEAL BOORTZ holding forth on the Omaha mall shooting this morning on the way to work, and I realized I haven't posted on it. I don't really have anything to say that I haven't said before. But it's worth noting -- since apparently most of the media reports haven't -- that this was another mass shooting in a "gun-free" zone. It seems to me that we've reached the point at which a facility that bans firearms, making its patrons unable to defend themselves, should be subject to lawsuit for its failure to protect them. The pattern of mass shootings in "gun free" zones is well-established at this point, and I don't see why places that take the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed should get off scot-free. There's even an academic literature on mass shootings and concealed-gun carriage.

Perhaps we need legislation. If it saves just one life, it's worth it.

About.com spells out the gun laws in effect in Nebraska:

State requirements:

Permit to purchase rifles and shotguns? No.
Registration of rifles and shotguns? No.
Licensing of owners of rifles and shotguns? No.
Permit to carry rifles and shotguns? No.

The Perfesser being a libertarian, shouldn't he agree that weapon-enabled citizens of Nebraska who wish to tote their shootin' ahrns to shopping venues have a choice to avoid gun-free zones? If such citizens enter such zones, aren't they voluntarily taking a risk upon themselves, much as frontier gamblers who agreed to "check your guns at the door" did?

Yeah, I know: I'm assuming the Perfesser actually believes something he professes to believe. I am too childish-foolish for this world.

MORONI BALONEY. After days of anticipation pumped up by bored/desperate political reporters, Mitt Romney has told America why they needn't be scared of electing his Mormon ass to the Presidency. It pretty much boils down to this: Catholic, Protestant, Mormon -- it's all "different shit, same Deity." Let's fight the real enemy -- godlessness!

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

Damn! They found us out! Well, it was about time: I knew that when we turned that church into a disco, we were asking for trouble.

More serious critics have suggested that Romney was just trying to deflect attention away from his own crazy religion. If so, I think he missed an opportunity. Why didn't he just offer a watered-down version of Mormonism, of which no one need be scared? It sure worked for the Catholics. It might be said that the ground for JFK's election was laid by Going My Way; by 1960 most Protestants probably thought Catholics were just like themselves, only with endearing Irish dialects and funny hats, rather than the blood-thirsty death-cultists they once imagined, and which I knew from my childhood.

Romney should have taken the opportunity to forge a bland counter-narrative. No massacres, no White Salamanders -- just a bunch of nice white people doing wholesome things, like the Camp Fire Girls. In fact, Romney should have just ripped off the Camp Fire Girls, entirely. He should have sung the song: "Sing around the campfire/Join the Mormon Church!" He has a nice deep voice and could have really sold it. He could have told us that Mormonism is all about wo-he-lo, work, health, love. Who'd know the difference? If anyone tried to point out that there was more to it than that, he would have been shouted down as a bigot -- not just by hopeless apparatchiks like Hugh Hewitt, but also by decent Americans everywhere. Having adopted the Disneyland persona of the other big religions in America, Mormonism would be beyond criticism.

All would derive benefits. We'd see lots of Mormon Christmas specials on TV, like "Santa's Magic Underwear" and "The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Meets the Phantom of the Park."

A MATTER OF TASTE. Ace O'Spades, no fan of Mike Huckabee, declares that "MSM ♥ Huckabee" and that if he were to declare for Huckabee, "I think I might as well declare my party as 'Democratic' while I'm at it. Why not? Why not cut out the middleman?"

Huckabee, we remind our readers, is against universal health care, gay marriage, and abortion, and is an Iraq bitter-ender. But Mr. O'Spades supports Fred Thompson for the nomination, so Huckabee is a de facto Democrat.

As I've said before, the old lefty slogan, "The personal is the political," has been adopted wholesale by the Right. Whatever they like -- movies, football teams, choc-o-mut ice creams -- is conservative, and whatever they dislike is liberal. That makes it hard to take them seriously when they write, for example, that liberalism is fascism -- it basically just means that they think liberals, and fascists, are like some band they think is boring or some girl who frosted them at a party. The tragedy is, if they restricted themselves to suitable topics, both they and we would probably be more content.

UPDATE. In comments, Chad says that liberals do the same thing. He means the first part -- the damning of insufficiently-pure Democratic candidates as Republicans manques. I have both seen and done something like that in respect to our hated Hillary.

But to get a real equivalent to O'Spades' complaint, you'd have to find somebody who thought Dennis Kucinich isn't anti-war enough because he doesn't use the debates as opportunities to whip out a gun, take Hillary Clinton hostage, and threaten to kill her if the troops don't come home. And was a supporter of Chris Dodd.

As to the second part, I always want to believe the worst of my fellow man, but I don't see liberals doing the everything-I-like-is-liberal thing so much. I don't see Matthew Yglesias making lists of Top Ten Liberal DJs or Scott Lemieux giving space to any embarrassingly burned-out and incoherent celebrity just because of the celebrity's liberal cred. But prominent conservative outlets do this sort of thing all the time.

UPDATE 2. Q.E.D.: The Perfesser points to "December movie trailer reviews." A normal person would be hoping for something like this. Seasoned readers of the Perfesser, alas, will have their low expectations met:

No Country for Old Men - By all appearances, a twisted but well-made movie with a deficit of moral fortitude, more or less in the vein of Pulp Fiction. Which is to say, it will probably win multiple Academy Awards from Hollywood liberals.

The rest of it is basically the guy saying, "That looks good, I think I might go see that." More grist for the Konservetkult style guide.

FIXED. Interesting coverage by The Consumerist of a Senate hearing on credit card rates:

9:37: Levin is most incensed by the retroactive nature of rate increases. Take a consumer whose debt jumps from 15% to 27%. That new rate applies not to new debts, but to all incurred debts.

9:41: Bonnie Rushing has two Bank of America cards. One is associated with AAA. Both cards had an 8% rate. BoA bumped the AAA rate from 8% to 23% because Bonnie's FICO score fell. It didn't matter that her payment history was perfect. Bonnie isn't sure why her FICO score dropped, but she thinks it may be because she opened a store-branded card at Macy's to receive an immediate 10% discount on a purchase, unaware that it would affect her FICO score.

9:43: When Bonnie received the rate-increase notice, she opted-out and closed her account. BoA tried to pressure her to keep the new, higher rate, but after she complained to state and federal authorities, BoA let her close her account. BoA's president will testify today.

9:44: Capital One raises rates by looking for accounts that haven't been bumped in three years—but they don't use FICO scores.

9:44: One consumer was hit by three rate increases in three months. Oftentimes the rates doubled or tripled. The consumer was able to reduce her rates by calling and fighting the credit card companies.

9:46: Levin: "If you shop with a credit card, as most consumers do, dangers lurk."

9:46: Most people don't realize that their FICO score drops even if they approach—not exceed, approach—their credit limit.

9:47: The Committee asked who determines a FICO score, who determines when a rate jumps because of a FICO score. The answer: computers.

9:47: Issuers don't know why a FICO score drops. They have four "reason codes," generic statements like: "balance grew too fast compared to credit limit," or "balance on bank cards is too low"...

I think we should regulate the credit card industry into next Sunday, but I eagerly await rebuttal from Megan McArdle, who will probably think I just want to keep poor people from having credit.

THEY GOT WORK TO DO AND THEY DO IT. ONLY THEY HAPPEN TO BE THE BEST IN THE BUSINESS! Rupert Murdoch, patron of the Page Three* Girls and "Temptation Island," has bought Beliefnet. Rushing with open arms to greet him is Beliefnet's Rod Dreher:

This is good for Beliefnet, trust me. Murdoch is an Internet visionary, and his deep pockets will only allow this website to diversity and improve its content. I have absolutely no fear at all that Team Rupert will in any way dictate content. Murdoch's core ideology is capitalism -- for better and for worse.

Shortly thereafter, Brother Rod returns to railing at our godless "commercial culture" and expressing horror that some people hope "Muslims will be vanquished by ingesting the same degrading toxins that have so weakened the West."

To add to the hilarity, Dreher elsewhere hears a story about someone who "was prone to be stubborn and enthusiastic, take a stand, and revel in the battle," and observes, "Boy, can I see that in myself. I am prone to mysticism, ritual and aesthetics, as well as moral rigor."

If there is one person on the face of God's green earth who is the anti-Christ of Crunchy Conservatism, it's Rupert Murdoch. His commercial endeavors are a perfect synthesis of the values of what Dreher himself called "the Party of Lust" and "the Party of Greed." Yet Dreher calls him "Uncle Rupert." It's enough to shake one's faith in modish rightwing movements. Next we'll be hearing that metrocon thing was all bullshit.

Like Dreher, I look forward to Murdoch's improvements of Beliefnet content: the "Who Would Jesus Do?" photo-features, and examinations of the theologies of Jack Bauer and Peter Griffin, etc. With any luck Dreher will be commissioned to write them.

*UPDATE I haven't seen the Sun in ages and forgot where they put the topless women. Thanks, readers, for the correx. Comprehensive BBC story about the phenomenon here.

UPDATE 2. Both Dreher and Andrew Sullivan protest that Murdoch never tells them what to write. I don't see why he'd feel the need, but I am in some sympathy with their argument, having labored for people who didn't share my views many times. (There was, for example, the restaurant manager who thought I should wash my shirt, or at least the cuffs, more often because I was serving food. What an asshole!) On the other hand, Dreher affects to believe that we're in the grip of an epochal struggle with sexed-up capitalism. Were he serious about that, I would expect him to revile Murdoch, relocate to a cave, and send his messages via grainy videos filled with scriptural commentary and threats to resume film criticism if his demands are not met. As I don't expect a new Great Awakening anytime soon, maybe I'll live to see him take his beliefs to their natural conclusion.

APOCALYPSE NOW. Today, The Anchoress:

I really don’t mean to keep writing about Hillary Clinton - I really want to start thinking about Advent more...

I would use the Anchoress' "Our Hillary" tag to guide you to the treasure trove of Clintophobia at her site, but to her everything is Hillary. For example, here's a post that started out with the Big Bang Theory:

More funny money situations for Hillary, but of course, they don’t matter. The press is incurious and disinterested in these matters. they do not seem to care that the Clintons seemingly have a really interesting relationship with CNN, and Hillary, afterall, has a D after her name, which means only good news rules.

Can you imagine how different her life would be if she had an R after her name, Like Condi Rice? No magazine covers and glory, then, babe, sorry. And no money bundling problems tolerated, and hushed up, I’m sure. Yes, it is pretty tiresome. And staggeringly scandalous, if you think about it, which no one seems to want to. There is a willing suspension of disbelief, or something....

The tags on this are "Serving up hot links" and "America." It's when you start hiding bottles that you know you have a problem.

Of course, should The Anchoress and all other similarly afflicted souls decide to avail a support group, there wouldn't be a church basement in all the land big enough to hold them.

Like a surprising number of evil traitors, I don't much care for Hillary Clinton myself. A Presidential race between her and Rudolph Giuliani would be a good reason to flee the country. Yet if such a nightmare befell us, in the likely event that I am still trapped in this godforsaken hellhole, I will, with the demented glee of Christopher Walken blowing his brains out in The Deer Hunter, pull the Democratic lever. Because, with our Republic on the verge of certain extinction, there will be nothing but vengeance on my mind. I know that, before Queen Clinton 44 sends us all to concentration camps, there will be many prominent Republican suicides -- I don't see, for example, how Paul Weyrich could stand to draw breath in such a world -- and that many more such will perish in the doomed resistance of the Red Dawn Militias to the occupying forces of the United Nations. It will be some comfort to remember, as I lay dying of malnutrition in some lice-infested barracks, the look on the Ole Perfesser's face when the Blue Helmets burst into his McMansion, and his final "Heh? Indeed?"

Alternatively, we could nominate and elect some other Democrat, and spare ourselves all this drama. But, being Godless and all, I will take what I can get.

UPDATE. Commenter monkey dave: "She's not much of an anchoress if she's got a big screen TV with Fox News blaring in her hovel. What gets done is what you spend time doing, and it's her own decision to spend her time thinking about Hillary Clinton. Is there a conservative anywhere who actually takes responsibility for his or her own actions?"

JUNGLE FEVER. Ed Driscoll punctuates one of his War on Christmas ravings with this apparent non-sequitur:

(Don't miss this comment by one of Jules [Crittenden's] readers, which puts the Cold Civil War and its northern front into sharp perspective.)

And if you click over you see this:

Let me see if I understand all of this correctly. We are supposed to remain silent about a predominately black culture that romanticizes treating all women as “hos,” advocates murder, especially of police officers...

There's nothing in the Driscoll post that obviously relates to the "predominately black culture." But he lunges for it anyway, as if he can't help himself.

In my experience, this is how it usually goes with conservatives and racial matters: they'll be going on about something else, say Truman Capote and the death penalty, and suddenly, out of nowhere come the jungle drums:

Could it have something to do with who Perry killed? He killed a father, a mother, a son, and a daughter. Your basic social building block. Well, we got spares. If he’s shotgunned four Black women, would we have so much sympathy, so much abiding interest in the possibility of love between the killer and his literary confidante? No. Well, you could argue, that would be a racist act, a hate crime; killing the Clutters had no ideological component. I suppose not, although enough has been made of Perry’s own horrible family life to imagine that he might have been filled with rage at people who’d gotten it right. I'm not stupid enough to suggest that "Capote" and "Infamous" are dismissive of the Clutters because they were white and represented the social norm lib'rul Hollywood hates and wants to replace with pagan vegan polygamists - please. No. But...

...but what if they'd been black, huh? Then you liberals would get mad because you love black people.

Where does this stuff come from? The depths, friends. Many of these guys just don't have any significant contact with black people. I'm not sure that Lileks has ever seen a black person except on TV. But they know liberals love 'em, which makes black people (like France, lattes, Chardonnay, and deodorant) a thing to abjure.

Of course, they can only go so far with this. They are prevented from using racial epithets outright (that is, to the extent that they do refrain) by the etiquette of the time (and, to be fair, by whatever vestigal wisps of soul they may possess). Like all "political correctness," this bugs the shit out of them, but they can't break loose from it lest they be Lotted. So it festers deep in their souls until one day they're talking about something else and suddenly -- Jumanji!

And they go on as if nothing happened, probably remembering nothing and hoping it wasn't too bad.

Of course some of them can't let it alone. We call them "pro-science conservatives." We need not bother about them, as they inhabit their own island far, far from the mainland.

UPDATE. Brian C.B. in comments: "And, how is it that when I went to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans to help out homeowners in the Holy Cross district, and when I work with homeowners of modest means in my own town in an effort to fix up historic properties, and these folks happen to be African-American, they turn out to be grateful, polite, hard-working, well-mannered, devoted to their families, church, and community, while also being pretty sure that they deserve exactly the same treatment as what us white folk get, no more or less? Has the GOP so completely alienated itself from people of color that they construct a whole demonic culture from iTunes?"

NOT THAT AGAIN. Billy Hollis at QandO thinks Congressional term limits is a good issue to revive. It sure made a big impression in 1994 when Newt Gingrich got Congressional Republicans to commit to it. But in later years many of the Congressmen who Contracted with America to create a term-limited "citizen legislature" decided they would just as soon stay in Congress beyond the 12-year window.

I know my fellow citizens have short memories, but I can't imagine they would greet new term-limit pledges with enthusiasm. They might instead wonder what kind of suckers the pledging candidates take them for.

I keep hearing bold ideas meant to rescue the Republicans, like Douthat's and Salam's "Sam's Club Republicans" scheme ("Above all, [the Republican party] needs to think as much about meeting the concerns of working- and middle-class Americans..."). The main problem with these programs is that you have to keep people from snorting in derision when they hear about them. In this regard the Republican candidates are currently at a great disadvantage, which is why they keep going on about immigrants and Islamofascists rather than proposing Contracts with/Morning in America. (Giuliani does offer such a contract mostly comprised of mush -- e.g., "I will increase adoptions, decrease abortions, and protect the quality of life for our children" -- but without Bernie Kerik to lean on people to sign, I doubt it will have many takers.)

Destroying Americans' faith in government worked wonders for the Republicans for a long time, but it has left them without much standing to inspire us. That's why they can't shake Ron Paul: He's the only one of them who seems to believe in something besides his own electability.

Well, actually, Huckabee seems to believe in Jesus. Maybe they'll nominate him.

BLOGGING THE ATROCITIES. More crime scene reporting from Ann Althouse:

Is that what you want in a President? Someone who feels extra confusion because she's a mother?

But I don't believe that for one minute. I think that was just what was considered a good script. I don't happen to think it is a good script, because I don't want a President to roil into a mommyesque ball of emotion when a few people are in danger. Yet that's not Hillary. The only question is why she thought a statement like that was a good one. She probably wanted to make sure not to confirm the widely held belief that she's unemotional, and, while she was at it, delight all the ladies out there who lap up emotional drivel.

Apparently Althouse thinks she's watching a TV show called "America's Next Top Democratic Candidate." If Clinton gets shot, she'll tell us it's a ploy to bring some of the old Kennedy magic to her campaign.

I've been hanging around this echo chamber a long time. I wonder what normal people think when they stumble upon this sort of madness? Say Joe or Jane Six-Pack mistypes an URL and comes across Ann Winebox (or even Roy 40-oz). What do they imagine they're looking at? Maybe they have to read a whole issue of People to get back to normal.

And we wonder why no one is interested in politics.

SHORTER ROD DREHER: See how introspective this nice Chinese millionaire is! Why can't our Negroes be like that?

(Number umpteen in a series. )

AMERICA'S LOVE OF CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM DOOMS DEMOCRAT. Tom Maguire follows the hostage drama at a Clinton campaign office:

Setting aside the human toll, my instant guess is that the political impact of this will be bad for Hillary in a way that would not be true for another candidate. This may all change when we get the perpetrator's story but right now Ms. Clinton carries the heavy baggage of a huge favorable rating and this incident will remind people that she is the candidate that enrages a sizable slice of the public.

More pathetic and politically inert details come in. Maguire's take:

It's bad for Hillary.

Interesting colloquy in the comments:

It's bad for Hillary.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I don't think it matters one bit. It looks as if this is just a poor soul and has no effect on Hillary. At least it doesn't change my view of Hillary either way.

I guess I just don't see it.
...

You don't see because you don't want to see.

Hillary is bad and therefore everything that involves -- or doesn't involve -- Hillary is bad. Bad for Hillary.

Hillary drove that man to drink and caused his life to become meaningless.

Tom understands.

I'm glad someone else has a sense of humor about this; I was beginning to think the world had gone mad, again.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: ADDENDUM. Sometimes I worry that my film reviews may not be up to snuff, so thank God Jonah Goldberg occasionally steps up to make me look like Manny Farber:

For example, I'm kind of surprised that the movie left no lasting impression on Steve Sailer. First and foremost it made me want to read the novel.

High praise indeed. I wonder if Goldberg has ever read Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask.

But more importantly, I think you can find some very rich commentary on the American character and predicament in the movie (as Ross suggests in his review in the magazine but, I think, doesn't explore enough). The fatalism, determinism (philosophically speaking), the rejection of cant and the waving away of nostalgia, were all powerful ingredients of the film, at least for me.

Determinism, philosophically speaking! No Country For Old Men is an excellent chase film with twangy talk about the persistence of evil inserted at puzzling intervals. Something that's more like what Goldberg is imagining is John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. Everyone in it speaks a mannered pulp argot, which gives them enough rhetorical headroom to comment in high style on their own "predicament" whether at rest or in action. This keeps the highflown thoughts wedded to character and threaded into the plot.

In No Country, Chighur's conversations are a little in that vein, but the pronouncements of Sheriff Bell and Ellis are closer to the tedious lecture Commissioner Hardy gives the reporters near the end of The Asphalt Jungle: an insertion that is supposed to radiate meaning onto the action from the outside. In Jungle this comes off as a quick gloss or a way of getting around the Hays Office, and is followed by a more appropriate, though downbeat, spurt of narrative; in No Country the Hardys just hang around the periphery being premonitory until near the end, when they surge to subsume and kill the story. This is the real "dismal tide": geezers talking about good and evil (and what do they say, exactly, besides good sure is good and evil sure is evil?) till their chatter drowns out a perfectly good action picture.

Of course Goldberg ends with his own dismal tide:

Anyway we can revisit later. But one last quick point: I've been surprised more people haven't compared it — favorably or unfavorably — to A Simple Plan which I've long argued was one of the most conservative movies made in recent times. The plot alone is remarkably similar (though hardly identical).

Like anything that made Goldberg forget his popcorn for a moment, it has something to do with his politics. I wonder why he goes to the movies at all: doesn't he have a "Star Trek" boxed set and a microwave?

UPDATE. Today's No-Prize goes to Scott C.: "For Goldberg I believe [ars gratia artis] translates literally to farts for farts' sake."

With respect to the Coens, I must say it is rather cheap of me to associate cosmic readings of No Country with Goldberg. For a much worthier essay, see Glenn Kenny.

BACK IN MY DAY... James Poulos on some new movie where a shrink convinces several young stars to get it on:

What’s a blogger to say? Forget gay marriage, frazzled Christian soldiers. This is the door to doom. The pathetic and preposterous conceit of having therapeutic authority set this ‘plot’ into motion is, of course, unnecessary, as many of the LA Times’ own readers must know... Now the authority of monstrosity has been replaced by an authority vacuum. Our orgies today are lame attempts to patch up the cracks in the psyches of damaged little emotional orphans by collective ‘friend incest’. The latchkey aesthetic reaches its nadir...

I admit I am so confused by this passage that I had to check three times to make sure it wasn't written by Reihan Salam. I can say with some certainty, though, that Poulos has never heard of The Harrad Experiment. But doesn't he even remember the porno film Travis took Betsy to see in Taxi Driver ("My parents were very strict...")? The therapy-driven sex romp seems to have endured as a cinematic form. Aren't conservatives supposed to revere tradition? God bless America, I say, and bring on the nubiles!

UPDATE. In comments, ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© wins Spot the Reference. I go hot and cold on the Stranglers. Here's my favorite, via a video in which Cornwell kind of looks like Hugh Laurie:



.

THE NEW FRONT. Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette:

This is not to say that Iraq is a safe place - just that it is fast becoming one. But make no mistake about it, if the troops were brought home tomorrow all hell would break lose, in a manner as yet unseen even in this part of the world.

So that's what victory looks like! He goes on:

The next crucial step in creating the world where many of those troops can come home is exactly this - a steady inflow of folks with skillsets other than combat arms who can help create an environment where fewer guns are needed. We are at the entry point of an upward spiral; increased security sets the stage for improved quality of life for Iraqis which means less need for security forces to maintain that quality of life; without despair people have less incentive to sow chaos.

Guess what specific "skillset other than combat arms" he's talking about in this post? Diplomacy.

I admit that when I first heard the stories (recounted by many of my fellow milbloggers, in fact) of [Foreign Service Officers] wetting their pants at the thought of serving in Iraq I was deeply concerned - but one thing I reminded myself at the time is the ability of journalists to find exactly the one quote from some maladjusted member that isn't representative of the majority of the group to which he can only pretend to belong and trumpet said quote as exactly that which it isn't. After all, they do it to the military all the time.

Actions from folks like Brian Heath confirm my impression, and give me renewed hope that we can and will make that charge.

First, it is strange to hear Greyhawk admit that his "fellow milbloggers" are as credulous as other journalists when it comes to the treasonous meme of the Wet-Pantsed Diplomat. Second, I look forward to the exiting combat troops and the entering diplo corps reenacting the final scene of Battleground, with added dialogue:

"Awright, you diplomugs, we done our part -- now it's up to you!"

"Agreed in principle; we'll draft a preliminary resolution. Where's the tennis court?"

NO THIRD WAY. I've been too busy to climb ladders and must content myself with low-hanging fruit. Gates of Vienna is always easy pickings. Here's a review of Robert Spencer's Religion of Peace? What Christianity Is and What Islam Isn't, which review, before it gets to the attacks on Islam any fan of the blog may expect, takes a good deal of time to dispense with some unfortunate myths about Christianity. The reviewer repeats the Goldbergian story that the Church was actually very nice to Galileo all things considered. Our Gater can't let bad enough alone, and goes on to say that the Spanish Inquisition was also pretty mellow:

The Inquisition wasn’t a proud chapter in Christian history, but it should be remembered that its number of victims has been wildly exaggerated, and pales in comparison to the evils of modern totalitarian movements...

One thing you have to understand about these guys is that they don't even really like Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- because, notwithstanding her frank condemnations of Islamic fundamentalism, she's an atheist with an understandable aversion to all religious schooling, including the Christian variety. One of the Gatesians has even gone so far as to say that Ali be denied Dutch protection from local Islamic thugs, ostensibly on the grounds that her cooperation with Theo van Gogh's Submission invited such thuggery ("Actions have consequences, and this one is hers").

That defenders of the satirical Mohammed cartoons would abandon Ali to lynching seems odd until you consider that the Gaters really do think we're in a "clash of civilizations." But it's not about the West vs. the East. In their view the combatants are Islam and Christianity, period, and they expect the unchurched to either take up the cross or go down with the other heathens. No wonder they're working on a new spin for the Inquisition.

UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT. Ken McCracken says the fact that John Ashcroft was willing to be waterboarded proves that the practice doesn't constitute torture because "no one ever volunteers to undergo real torture."

I assume he believes being nailed to a Volkswagen or having one's hand roasted isn't torture either. And that suicide proves there's no such thing as murder.

Why do these people have such difficulty with the concept of consent?

ANOTHER SUCH VICTORY AND I AM UNDONE. The new idea is that the War in Iraq has been won. Actually that war was won in May of 2003. The subsequent occupation has been a dicier proposition. This too is supposed to be going much better, but we can see the problem in one of the victory declarations:

Do the Iraqi’s like us? Hard to say, but so long as they’re not killing us, let’s be thankful for these small victories and let's pray that the trend continues.

The emphasis, here and elsewhere, on the Iraqi citizens' turn toward the U.S. Armed Forces for protection from militants does not suggest a state of democratic equilibrium, but a Mexican standoff.

It is certainly good news that fewer people are being killed. But Petraeus wants to withdraw the surge troops by July 1. We are still down for a lengthy and (thus far) slow reconstruction, and Administration supporters are downplaying the role of democracy in keeping the lid on. How is that supposed to work?

The aforementioned author says: hearts and minds, and let's take it to Afghanistan (where, we are informed, things ain't going so hot). It seems strange to put such faith in propaganda when the only demonstrable positive effect so far has been achieved by increased force of arms, especially as we are preparing to reduce them.

The Vietnam echoes that Bush resurrected when he announced the surge persist. No one wants a helicopter rooftop scene, so we adjust troop levels, first higher, then lower, in hopes of finding a Goldilocks mean. Conservatives are enraged by the Archbishop of Canterbury's assertion that the U.S. just isn't very good at imperialism. There's a backhanded compliment in there, but I'm afraid the fiddlers of our occupation don't know how to take it.