CULTURE S'MORES. Let's personalize this a little, shall we? Megan McArdle:

Let's be honest, coastal folks: when you meet someone with a thick southern accent who likes NASCAR and attends a bible church, do you think, "hey, maybe this is a cool person"? And when you encounter someone who went to Eastern Iowa State, do you accord them the same respect you give your friends from Williams? It's okay--there's no one here but us chickens. You don't.

Brushing aside this taunt from a child of privilege, let me first give a little personal background: my family never had any money. My father died when I was two. My mother lived on government subsidies, as were available before people like McArdle took such things away, and whatever extra income she could get from factory and restaurant jobs. I had the good fortune to receive scholarships -- again, in an era before McArdles slapped them out of the common people's hands -- that, along with my own labors and my mother's, put me through college.

Not everyone who works at a desk started that way. As a young adult I worked as a busboy, a waiter, a factory hand, and a messenger dispatcher. I'm not talking about a season after college -- I mean for years. I got my first writing job more than a decade after I graduated. Not everyone gets fast-tracked out of college to the Atlantic.

Throughout my adult life I've consorted with day laborers, tool and die workers, welfare cases, bums, junkies, musicians, cooks, crooks, and schnooks. And some of them -- mark it well, extra dry skim McArdle -- have been Sons of the South. I don't think this makes me special, and it certainly doesn't make me special among people who vote Democratic. Though McArdle may not have noticed it, the coastal as well as the middle states are full of people who work like dogs to maintain a decent life, and many have noticed -- despite the political sideshows and their occasional attendance upon popular sporting events -- that the order McArdle and her allies support has made things worse for them. As a Gator out of Indiana once told me, the Democrats at least will give you a little bigger piece of the pie. They may not be up on the high-level internet chatter, but they know what's what. And if I agree with them, I ain't pandering. I'm telling it like we all know it is.

To put it in terms that maybe one of her artistic friends might be able to explain to her, let me quote Clifford Odets: You call me a Red and I'll break your goddamn neck.

ANOTHER VOICE THING, this one about the preceding week of Palin Fever. It seemed like last week had the highest bullshit count of the year. Maybe it's just because of the Convention, but I don't remember it being this bad in 2004. I fear the species is devolving. When I look at this stuff it's as if I've been transported, like Dorothy, into an alternate world, except mine is peopled not by munchkins but by withered, wraithlike creatures who hide from the sun and subsist on spores and fungi, only bestirring themselves, instinctually, in the late summer and early spring of every fourth year to groan and flail their vestigial limbs.

AT LAST WE'RE MOVING ON TO ISSUES OF IMPORTANCE TO ALL AMERICANS. Ace O. Spades bellows that the Democrats were going to throw away some unused flags from Denver, which the Republicans claim to have obtained and say they'll use at a McCain rally -- after which, no doubt, a team of boy scouts will fold up each tiny flag and store it in a fallen Marine's footlocker. Spades assures his comrades, "Don't worry, this won't be one of those things only rightwing nut jobs know about," but you have to wonder: how will normal people respond to the news that the GOP has pulled flags from the trash to use as political props? Well, at least it's not as messy as when they were doing that with fetuses.

Meanwhile Obama's assurance that the Democrats "won't be bullied" by Republican attacks is portrayed as a sign of weakness by Tom McGuire. "What is Obama saying," writes Maguire, "he won't be bullied by a 44 year old hockey mom? Stand Tall, Barack -- you won't be bullied by Sarah Palin! " This seems a reductive reference to the woman Maguire and company consider the second coming of ReaganThatcher. But Obama could hardly have been talking about Palin, who since her comedy routine at the Convention has been kept under wraps, lest she be asked questions. Obama's probably talking about operatives like Maguire, who follows up with a Tourette's spasm of Republican punchlines:

OMG, is this a secret plan to assassinate Putin by making him laugh so hard he gets an aneurysm?... Man up, Barry - even though she was a state champ, you are probably a better baller, too, what with being 6' 2" and a guy to boot. 'Course there is that cigarette smoking that may have cut your wind... COURAGE! Get me Bert Lahr! Or Dan Rather... A certain type of lib likes to pretend that Obama showed courage by opposing the war in Iraq back in 2002...

This mashup of Rush Limbaugh campfire tropes is basically the Republican campaign, and if it seems less than intimidating on the page, imagine it broadcast at high volume by thousands of paid propagandists, and by an even larger number of volunteers like Maguire. It's not the quality of these ideas that Democrats need guts to stand up to, but their amplitude.

DIVISION OF LABOR. The idea of the speech, so far as I can discern one, is that John McCain is a humble servant, but one with the guts to stand up to Republicans, Democrats, and also Convention delegates, who for the most part lost the frenzy with which they greeted the Palin speech when they realized that McCain was not going to feed it. Indeed, there was an audible pause when he said, in accusation, that "Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies." They knew they should boo Obama, but oil companies? (Not to mention their probable cognitive dissonance at the idea of a black man giving welfare to them.) So dismissive was McCain of their concerns that when he asked them to "fight with me," I at first thought he was challenging them to put up their dukes.

Every once in a while he worked the crowd, or rather allowed them to work themselves: he talked more about his Vice-Presidential candidate than any Presidential candidate I can remember, and with regard to drilling -- the Party's current obsession -- the delegates got it before McCain quite got to it, starting to howl at the words "700 billion dollars." But he also pledged, at length, to work with Democrats, exhorted the nonplussed suburban gentry in the hall to "feed a hungry child," and in the POW wrap-up everyone knew was coming, referred to "my selfish independence," which I see has already earned a humph from National Review's Mona Charen.

The bi-partisan rhetoric is just hooey, of course. In the 2000 Republican Convention, George W. Bush, at the outset of what was seen as an uphill battle, also filled his acceptance speech with allusions to national service, deprived children, and national greatness. Those of us who didn't know what was really on his mind then certainly know now. For the current race, Sarah Palin is employed to deliver the Buchananite boo-yahs that roil Republican blood, leaving McCain to work the crucial middle that he must attract to win the election. To this end he may have helped himself by playing the happy warrior. But after the past eight years, and the carefully-staged, full-throated blood feasts that preceded tonight's speech (and were heavily publicized by those who will now be obliged to sell the kinder, gentler McCain), some voters may wonder if this candidate, still an alleged maverick after 25 years in Washington, is simply playing good cop.

A FACE IN THE CROWD. Governor Palin's address tonight was basically Reba McEntire doing a one-woman show on the life of Phyllis Schlafly. In turning the McCain campaign toward the traditional tactics of Republican politics -- that is, fear, contempt, and patriotism -- his advisors have also returned the Vice-Presidential role to that of attacker, who does the knife work so the Presidential candidate can remain above it all. But where Dole and Cheney, for example, looked the part, the novelty here was to have it performed by a young woman who dispensed her put-downs with the cheery sangfroid of a particularly vicious sewing-circle lady. She could afford, then, to be casual in dispensing her assaults, not only because the crowd had built up a froth of hatred against her enemies (whom, from the frequency and vigor of their booing, they must imagine to be everyone except themselves), but also because a large part of the audience probably thought it was not vicious, but cute. She's certainly easier to take than the fist-clenching Giuliani, who may have been so warmly applauded in part for giving the delegates a good demonstration of how right they were not to have chosen him.

The theme of Palin's speech was, in its own way, change, but it was mostly a change of costume. I will say it was refreshing not to hear the customary palaver about the moral fall engendered by Democrats, and I thank the news cycle for it. But the crowing about the virtues of small government as demonstrated by the blessed lives of lucky white people goes back to Goldwater at least, and the flag-waving to the days before democracy was even a thought. The act went over gangbusters in the hall. How well it goes outside of it, and into November, will depend on how much Americans are willing to pay for this sort of entertainment.

BUSH IN WINTER. Republicans, as previously noted, were delighted when they thought Bush wasn't going to attend the Convention. Then Gustav blew over, and they had to face the terrible prospect of Bush endorsing McCain on national TV. So they split the difference and had him call in from whatever sports-bar the Secret Service have dragged the White House set to, and ran his speech outside of prime time, showing him only on tape delay.

It wasn't as morose as most of his late speeches have been, but it wasn't up to the level of his 2004 Convention speech, either. It was smooth, workmanlike. and very much good enough for the faithful. The few ordinary people who watched might wonder at Bush's reference to the "angry left," but most of them probably don't know why that fool was on the TV again anyway.

SPEAKING OF SILVER LININGS. I think it's terrific that Sarah Palin's evangelical supporters are "over the moon" with joy that Palin's 17-year-old daughter got knocked up. And, taking a page from our Republican brethren, for whom both everything and its opposite is always good news for the GOP -- you can see a spectacular case of one such character running this game here -- I'm going to tell you how it's terrific no matter how it plays.

First, it offers normal people a piquant reminder that fundamentalist Christians, powerful as they may be in the GOP, are deeply strange. We've heard endlessly from these folks that America is a moral basket case "slouching toward Gomorrah," and that liberalism is the cause. Now the Jesus people are celebrating a pre-maritally pregnant girl and her upcoming shotgun wedding. Rod Dreher, who called a bride a slut for showing a tattoo at her wedding, now rejoices that Bristol Palin will be showing a baby bump at hers. Americans may like God but they retain a healthy skepticism about the godly, and this case shows why.

Second, as we were also reminded endlessly that Bill Clinton taught youngsters to suck cock, we may expect a wave of rebellion among Republican teenagers now that the strict moral precepts of their parents have been proven conditional. Maybe the other Palin kids will come to the Convention stoned out of their minds, spraying the delegates with silly string and laughing uncontrollably. Why shouldn't they? It would just offer more proof of Palin's "plain folks" credentials.

Now let us dream big: maybe this event will help put an end to political bullshit about candidates' family members. Imagine our politics without slurs of the sort Michelle Obama has had to endure -- and those stories weren't even true. Perhaps we'll even hear less conservative yammering about family values in general. How nice it would be to go through even a single season without candidates taking a strong position on the Old Testament.

This is by far the least likely of my suggested outcomes, but as I said, I'm trying to think like a Republican. Maybe the Democrats should be trying the same thing.

A NEW VOICE ROUNDUP of recent rightbloggage appears here.

SILVER LINING. One reason Commentary's Jennifer Rubin finds this "A Good Sunday Indeed":

And finally due to Gustav, neither George W. Bush or Dick Cheney will be able to attend the Republican Convention on Monday. It would be impolitic to say this is a blessing for McCain. But it is.

"Impolitic" is one word for it. Rich Lowry of National Review also rejoices that Gustav is keeping Bush out. "It's sort of gross to talk about a natural disaster in terms of its political effect, but it's what everyone is doing," he says, so let the muted celebration commence! He is also pleased that the killer hurricane "creates a drama around the convention that wouldn't have existed otherwise."

They find happiness in the oddest places.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS. "Dems rally for Obama at Ohio congresswoman's memorial." Quick, call out the Republican mourners-in-absentia. The schtick they used in 2002, when they denounced Paul Wellstone supporters who paid tribute to the late Senator's political causes at his memorial, may work again. Everything's in place: Some Democratic splitters are already on it, and Free Republic and Lucianne Goldberg are roiling the swamps. All that's needed is a credible mainstream figure like Peggy Noonan to don the mantle of propriety and cry "shame." (No, this guy doesn't count, but he's got the right idea.)

The fact that the office at issue this time is not the same one held by the deceased makes no difference. It's a national election, and every little helps.

PLEASING THE AFFILIATES. Stop the presses: "Ross admits he's rooting for Palin to succeed. I should admit it too: I can't think of the last time I've wanted a politician to succeed more. She may turn out to be a disappointment one way or another. And I think I've been evenhanded about the political risks here. But just so folks know, lest they can't figure it out, I really want her to pull this off. " -- Jonah Goldberg, National Review

Who on God's green earth wondered whether Goldberg wanted the Republican ticket to win? His assurance comes right after a post in which he actually argues that "Alaskan governors deal a lot more with international and national security issues than, say the Governor of Arkansas. There are all sorts of treaty issues, missile defense stuff, bases, etc up there." (His source points out that Palin has negotiated placement of a gas pipeline through Canada and is "commander of the Alaskan National Guard," and that her state is located near Russia.)

This is certainly part of National Review's constituent service -- that is, a show of responsiveness to the right-wing nuts who write them letters. The magazine is a lightning rod for folks who have become aware that some high-end vendors of conservative guff -- including a few in the Review's own pages --have decided to defend their own long-term prospects as such by complaining about the decision to nominate Palin.

Populism is a tough gig, whoever's doing it. The mob, sometimes dignified with the name "base," recognizes Palin as a right-wing folk hero in the mold of Dale Evans, and wants no message diversity from the pointy-heads allegedly in their camp. When they see posts in friendly precincts that are not full-throated roars of approval for the new Queen of the West, they sense wetness and man their mail applications.

It is soothing for them, and instructive for the rest of us, to be reminded that these journalists owe their first loyalty to movement troops, and not to anything like independent judgment. The Review writers have insulated themselves from the base's complaints against the insufficiently on-board McCain with regular assurances that they share them. But the Palin nomination opened a window of what-the-fuck that shows just who rules that particular roost.

A CHICK ON THE SIDE. Well, so much for the end of identity politics.

The Anchoress, having previously complained that Democrats are too solicitous of race and gender distinctions, now complains that the Obama campaign lacked "generosity of spirit" because they didn't acknowledge the allegedly historic nature of Palin's nomination as McCain had noted that of Obama.

But the Obamans were clearly in the right: seen from the perspective conservatives are constantly claiming to take, Palin's nomination is an insult to Obama, Biden, and the electorate. Obama muscled his way to his nomination against a sharp-elbowed opponent; Palin has been gently placed in hers as a lure for Hillary Clinton voters. She isn't even the first woman to run for the office and, from the speech she gave today, her primary qualifications are that she has a nice family and doesn't put on any airs. Yet the same people who said Joe Biden's vast experience would make people think of Obama's lack of experience ("a presidency-on-training-wheels") are now saying that Palin's slim credentials -- as the former Mayor of Wasilla and first-term governor of a state with a population about half that of The Bronx -- will have the same effect.

We'll see if voters fall for it. Meanwhile, among the perpetually falling-for, my favorite so far is Noah Millman, who races all over the map to justify a candidate he frankly admits is "totally unqualified to be President" -- even suggesting at one point that "If McCain were to die in February 2009," Palin should "appoint someone who is more ready to be President to be her Vice President," and then arrange to switch places with him or her. Imagined laughter already roaring in his ears, he explains that this would obtain under a Parliamentary system of government. Then he suggests that, if McCain's heart can hold out till February 2012, Palin might then be ready to execute her Constitutional duties. Then he says of the Vice Presidential office itself, "arguably, it's not for anything at all," then decides that it can serve as "on-the-job training" for the Presidency. He also seems to believe blogs are for publication of rough drafts. In the end, Millman finds Palin "an excellent choice" for this mysterious office, and the Democratic argument against her nomination "suicide." For added comic value, Millman says he's "undecided in this election." I guess he figures that as long as he's telling us things we can't possibly believe, he might as well go all the way.

UPDATE. You just have to imagine Rod Dreher singing "FETUS" like Flo & Eddie singing "PENIS" in 200 Motels.

UPDATE II. Also glad to learn via no less an authority than Matt Welch that "libertarian" means "devoted to making abortion illegal." I knew there was something I didn't like about those guys. Besides the constant stimming, I mean.

SALESMANSHIP. Everyone expected a strong speech from Obama, but its unexpected and best quality was confidence. He sold the package -- traditional Democratic values with a dash of new-generation pizzazz -- without any trace of doubt or apology, as if the Republicans hadn't been going ahead of him for months, doing negative advance work. Though he was energetic, he was also unusually sober in his demeanor: He didn't flash that famous smile much, probably because he wanted to defeat any sense that he was trying to sell himself rather than the package, which salesmen sometimes do when they're nervous. In fact he more often went with a small, are-they-kidding grin when describing his opponent's inferior product. He looked like he expected to make the sale, because what he was offering was clearly better suited to the customer. Despite the grandiosity of the setting, he did the job like a real pro, and when he mentioned Kennedy and FDR, it was as politicians rather than statesmen that I recalled them. In other words, he did exactly what he needed to do.

As for the policies, we'll see. (I hope.) But he did one thing that was both transcendent and canny. When he said American troops had "not served a blue America or a red America, they served the United States of America," I thought: How long have we waited to hear something like that from a Presidential candidate, or for that matter, a President? At the 2004 Republican Convention President Bush didn't spare even a line to speak to the divisions in this country. Of course, he was working from a script written by Karl Rove, whose strategy relied on division. It's nice to hear some political speech that suggests there's more to be gained by pulling people together than apart.

Conservatives are already sweating the small stuff ("What about those food stamps? Was it once? Was it for a month? For a year? How long?"), and pretending to have watched disinterestedly so their disappointment will seem genuine, though on whom they imagine they're putting it over is hard to fathom. That's how they keep their spirits up. They'll be doing a lot of it in the days to come.

FIRST READ. New rightwing site Culture11 is open. In the current edition: Conor Friedersdorf lashes out at a DJ who played L'il Jon (aka Lil John) at his friend's wedding. Friedersdorf listened to Snoop back in that day, which raises the question: "Is gangsta' rap uniquely degraded?" Some posts are fun, which is I guess an essential feature of New Toryism; on the other hand, they let Rod Dreher write long, which is pretty much the opposite of fun: It's as if H. Allen Smith had gone totally mad and joined a back-to-the-land cult. They also have a video of Bill Bennett lecturing on the Great Books, which I couldn't bring myself to watch, though I did scan it and heard "canon" and "furniture of the mind" and saw that the producers had chosen to enliven it with a picture of Allan Bloom. I do look forward to his promised discussion of Macbeth, which I expect will be full of references to the Clintons.

CONVENTION, CONT. I wrote about Hillary Clinton's speech here. Bill Clinton, well, he did his thing, a little rougher of voice than in years past, and maybe with less native energy, but he's been at this a long time and he's good at it. I hear he would have preferred to talk about economic rather than foreign policy, and no wonder: his arguments in those matters wouldn't make as simple a sale as his pitch at the 2000 Convention, when he ran down the economic disasters Republicans said his Presidency would create, and then said with a little grin, "My friends, time has not been kind to their predictions." But tonight Clinton craftily focused on Obama's policies and defended those rather than his own, mainly comparing his own youth and inexperience at their time of nomination (of which their critics, in both instances, tried to make an issue) and his place "on the right side of history" with Obama's. Till this year, Bill Clinton has been very fortunate in his enemies, and his best gift to Obama was let him share them.

If John Kerry had been this energized in 2004, he might be President today. It's interesting that he mentioned Karl Rove, into whose box Kerry put himself when he stuck to a statesmanlike tone in that last election. "Talk about being for it before you were against it" was a very good line, though not as startling as hearing old, droney Kerry asks the crowd, "Are you kidding me, folks?"

Biden was surprisingly telegenic. The characteristic flashes of righteous anger were studiously tamped down, though at times, when he was denouncing some Republican injustice or other, and with his hair so carefully slicked back, he made me think of Jerry Brown's bullet-headed conviction in 1992. But he also spoke with quiet urgency about the problems faced by citizens, bringing a much-needed sense of dynamics to a heretofore declamatory event. And the "Not change, more of the same" and "McCain was wrong" chants he led had the advantage, for viewers like me anyway, of being old-fashioned political guff that is actually related to the issues, in contrast to the idiotic "flip-flop" chant of the last Republican Convention.

The surprise guest thing was a clever appetizer for the big speech. It was nice to see him effortlessly light up the hall for a few minutes before taking his act to the giant stage at INVESCO Field. It's like the Stones playing a club gig before one of their stadium shows.

AMATEUR HOUR. I have the show on, but I haven't been paying close attention. The first night of Convention is usually a loss anyway, and the recent Republican onslaught has had the desired effect of making politics tiresome to me.

What those operatives, and the speakers themselves, can't manage to ruin, TV commentators make up for. After Nancy Pelosi's dazed homilies, I saw David Brooks explaining that what he wanted to hear was a clear message about who exactly Barack Obama is, and that Nancy Pelosi hadn't done it for him. First of all, I hadn't previously imagined that even Brooks was dumb enough to seek counsel from Nancy Pelosi about anything, except maybe how to make his eyes look fresh after a long night out. Second, who on God's green earth believes David Brooks is open to any such argument as he describes, or that his lively curiosity about Obama -- still unsatisfied after dozens of speeches and interviews, and reams of commentary -- resembles that of the average citizen? Maybe Brooks imagines that he has been among ordinary Americans enough for research purposes that he can pass for one: has he not explicated the inadequacies of the Bobos, and thereby earned some down-home cred? I mean, I have to admit that George Will knows a lot about baseball, but who would want to go to an actual game with him?

It was nice to see Ted Kennedy vertical, and able to repeat the tropes and cadences, and achieve the volume, that made his reputation as a speaker, but his performance was the oratorical equivalent of Hitchcock's Family Plot. Jesse Jackson Jr. is a good amateur speaker, but he started high and stayed there: he ran the gamut from Y to Z.

The wife of a Presidential aspirant need only resemble a likable human being, and this Michelle Obama achieved. She was also complicated enough to hold interest. She too is only an amateur speaker, but she has just enough poise to draw our admiration, and not so much that we don't appreciate the effort she expends in maintaining it. I was aware that her address was crafted to appeal to a wide audience, but the patriotic tells didn't bother me, because I could see that she wasn't there for her own sake, or even just for her husband's or her family's. The harsh necessity of countering the ugly stories that have been circulated about her may have forced her into a speech more programmatic than she, or even we, would have liked, but it would take more than a little boilerplate to conceal that she knows both how fortunate and how worthy of fortune she is. People tend to like a person like that, even if they first encounter her when she's giving a speech at a Rotarian dinner.

Outside of that, I heard that we're going to give the middle class a break and end the war in Iraq. Not ideal, but it'll have to do.

THE NEVERENDING STORY. I'm back to doing that thing, you know, that weekly rightwing wrap-up thing at the Voice.

CONVENTION IN FLAMES, REPORT RIGHTWING COMMENTATORS. Jammie Wearing Fool says of the Clinton die-hard presence at the DNC, "Just imagine if you had massive amounts of Republicans defecting from the GOP and declaring they'd be voting for Barack Obama. You'd have a nonstop deluge of Obamacan stories flooding the media." He cites the New York Post and Politico in defense. Clearly the MSM isn't spiking stories like it used to.

The Ole Perfesser approves JWF's comment, cites the Washington Times, Politico, CNN as further evidence of media blackout.

Meanwhile over at Google News:



Other citizen journalists in Denver see mostly demonstrations, and when things are too quiet on that front, their powerful friends try to liven things up.

Special correspondent Jim Lileks is also in Denver; has found Starbucks, but no Target. Feel the excitement!

UPDATE. I didn't mean that Lileks reported the absence of a Target, but that he didn't report finding one, which he would certainly have done if he had.

BIDEN FOR VEEP. Obama picks Biden -- liberal media reacts (via memeorandum):


No one said it would be easy, but you'd think Obama would get some traction out of having a white guy on the ticket.

Conservatives come out with popguns blazing. Jonah Goldberg criticized the Obama campaign for issuing its cellphone update at 3 am. Michelle Malkin noted that Biden had earlier "said he 'wasn't the guy.' Starting his VP candidacy off with a lie." They'll be getting on his hair plugs soon... UPDATE: As usual I am way behind the curve.

But I'm not the only one: the more general argument that longtime Senator Biden does not represent the sort of "change" represented by the Obama cause is absurd, given that we are in the thick of a campaign already wholly devoted to meaningless symbolism of a more traditional kind -- military cred, elitism, populist blather, etc. Conservatives who have been dunning Obama for portraying himself as an alternative can't seriously believe that choosing an ideologically appropriate running mate from the old school -- instead of, what, a female or Hispanic politician, or someone even more new to politics than Obama -- is a betrayal of anything except the caricature of Obama they've painstakingly crafted. But they've been working with that to good effect lately, so I guess it's worth a try.

Last year I noted that in the Democratic debates Biden was "difficult to follow when he is being genial, but extremely lucid in his bursts of anger" on subjects (mainly in foreign policy) that animate him, and wondered if this were "the kind of behavioral mix voters trust with the football." Certainly Biden is gabby, and we'll see how voters react to his style of discourse now that they have to pay attention to him, more or less, for the next eleven weeks.

Me, I owe Biden a vote for helping to keep the dangerous lunatic Robert Bork off the Supreme Court.

UPDATE. Now here's a new one: Biden "should be named an honorary soldier in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps" because he once voted no on a "sense of the Senate" resolution that would have named the IRGC as an official terrorist organization. Also, Biden "threatens a sitting president of the United States with impeachment" and "warns against striking Iran." This appears in the Canada Free Press, so we may consider it an out-of-town tryout for some new right-wing ordnance in case the hair plugs thing doesn't work out.

IN THE LAST DITCH. Indeterminate Number of Star General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters continues his bilious streak with an unusually brief and at least more-than-usually incoherent rant on Georgia:

WAR doesn't change anything! How many times have we heard the claim from self-righteous leftists protected by their betters?

Tell the dead in Georgia.

Pausing, even only for a moment, ruins nearly all of the General's arguments, and in this case even interventionists would have to wonder upon reflection what righteous act of war would have saved the Georgians from their fate. The one Truman et alia were too chicken to declare on Red Russia, back when only America had the Bomb? Or the one Bush is too chicken to declare now?

Attend: the answer is blowin' in the General's wind. Condi Rice doth "huff and puff," NATO dithers. But the "hardcore Left," without any of Rice's and NATO's power, is always worse, for one thing because it mocks the General:

Over the years, as I've tried to explain the human reality I've encountered, the leftist response has been "Shoot the messenger!" (presumably, with a water gun). When I wrote that a dangerous minority of men enjoy tormenting and killing others, the response was that I obviously believed killing was good.

I've never even kicked a cat.

This is a startling admission from an author who has never, in my experience, seen or heard of a difficult situation that he didn't think would be improved by a whole heap of killing. (Or maybe he's just saying that he's fond of cats, the way Patton was of Willie.)

When the General asks, "what solutions does the war-doesn't-change-anything Left bring to the party now, in Georgia?" he's just offloading his own disgust with the current Administration, whose huffing and puffing he obviously considers no more efficacious that whatever the Berkeley City Council would propose (or Barack Obama, whom the General fantasizes "gobbled up in one bite" by Putin -- as opposed to Bush, whom one imagines would take longer to digest, at least when Putin got to his liver).

Maybe, because Bush's and NATO's officers don't wear distressed denim or love beads, the General feels protective of them. Or maybe he's just protecting himself. "I don't think a military response at this point would do any good," the General admits, "only more harm." What then does the General bring to the party? Only a deep-seated faith in force, regardless of its usefulness in the present situation, and an equally profound lack of faith in, or perhaps understanding of, anything else.