GOON SQUAD. After all this time, I've come to think of my rightwing pets -- the Ol' Perfesser, the Crazy Jesus Lady, Jonah "Frrrt" Goldberg, et alia -- as something like real people. So I can't help but feel some embarrassment for them right now. At The Corner right now, do a search of "Ayers" and you'll get over 100 matches. Now consider that this outburst of interest in a minor New Left character is prompted by nothing other than the McCain campaign's decision to publicize him as the key to Obama's personal corruption.

These boys and girls are writers and editors at a prestigious magazine, yet they can be dragooned into this service as easily as felons into a road gang. Sic transit gloria Buckley. Even the loftier ones who try to change the subject ("I think Ayers and Wright are both fair game... But the attack that is most relevant to an Obama presidency concerns his ties to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid...") still have to submit their papers to the proctor to make sure they've repeated the name as required. In the end they're all just low-level employees of the Ministry of Truth.

Oh speaking of which, I did a wrap-up of the week in wingnuttery today. It covers stupidity, racism, and homophobia -- sort of a conservative trifecta.

THE USUAL SUSPECTS. Barney Frank used to live with a top executive at Fannie Mae. Though this had been reported as far back as 1992, conservatives are working it hard now, perhaps feeling that if their attempt to blame the financial crisis on black people doesn't work, they can get some traction blaming it on manlove.

"PART OF WHY THE USA GOT IT UP THE YOU KNOW WHAT," bellows The Astute Bloggers. "HOMO BARNEY FRANK WAS SLEEPING WITH MALE FANNIE MAE EXEC FOR YEARS." Ace O'Spades is of course on it like Lindsay Lohan on Samantha Ronson, and his commenters spray milk (at least we think it's milk) out their noses ("This sickens me on so many levels"). Dad29 assails "back-door-banditry" and asks, "Why should THEY worry about imposing a huge national debt on children?" (Please don't tell Dad29 they're allowed to adopt now, or he'll wear out his slur thesaurus.)

Musical-comedy enthusiast Mark Steyn tries to join the fun but fatally buries the lede, so his readers will probably be more incensed that "the 'gay mafia'" are "allegedly in control of 'Doctor Who' at the BBC," and burn their action figures in protest.

The next step, I suppose, will be Sarah Palin talking about Obama palling around with gay people.

COMB IT WET OR DRY? We've examined Jim Lileks' problems with haircutters before. Longtime fans will appreciate his latest attempt to find a stylist who satisfies:

Went to get my hair cut. The nasty sullen stylist wasn’t in, hoorah. The lass who cut my hair was new to me, so we had to find some common conversational ground. Settled on dogs. Then I learned she’d been a stylist on a cruise ship, so that opened up a vast rich rolling field of discursive opportunities . . . or so I thought. Turns out it’s a bit like cutting hair in a mall, except sometimes it rocks back and forth a bit. The drive home after your shift is quicker, though.

I am but a simple peasant, and even I know that if you consider your stylist a "lass" there is no way you will leave the chair with cheer unless she reaches under your bib and jerks you off, which clearly did not happen here.

Previously Jimbo sassed the local do-gooders:

The new Westin Hotel and Condo, bitterly opposed by some. Why? Because it’s tall. People who moved out here didn’t want tall buildings.

Can you imagine? Don't they know that relentless building is the engine of our nation's prosperity? But even Jimbo sees stores in his beloved Southdale Mall shutting down -- "the area next to it is the Abercrombie & Fitch, surrounded by heavy black shutters that give off the GO AWAY PARENTS vibe of a teen’s closed bedroom door." And the barberettes aren't doing it for him. Where o where is the succor of Scottsdale? We guess, like all our dreams of uplift, gone with the boom. Now Jimbo finds himself in a mall that is contracting, not expanding. No wonder lileks.com offers so few new posts these days. When you're simultaneously a fan of the go-go boom and a nostalgist, how painful it must be when future is slamming you from the front and the past, once safely secured in old matchbooks and photos of men in hats, looms to remind you that it was not just a showroom of pleasantly retro styles, but a real place where the Dow never reached 10,000 and the money was never easy, and where you may soon be forced to live.

DEBATE! I'm gonna try drunk live drunkblogging this thing from the Voice site. As a mainstream media website, it's not as easy to use as Blogger, so I may have to come back here, but please check it out anyway.

UPDATE. Made it! Both combatants were obviously coached: Biden to refrain from smiling or condescending and to focus on McCain, Palin to be perky, drop her g's, and rattle off talking points wherever possible. Biden solemnly made his case, and Palin gosh-doggonily evaded hers. I can't say how Americans will take this, but I do think it will have something to do with whether or not they think this election is important. If they do, nothing can help McCain, and if they don't, nothing will stop him.

UPDDATE II. Ann Althouse: "On the split screen, when Biden is speaking, Palin looks like she's brimming with ideas she's just waiting to express." Advantage: Bughouseosphere!

I'M THE ONE WHO DROVE HER OUT OF HER SEAT. I'M THE ONE WHO PROVOKED THE LETHAL BARRAGE OF T-SHIRTS... BUT THERE'S NO POINT IN PLAYING THE BLAME GAME. Some days back Kathleen Parker wrote at National Review that Sarah Palin should depart the Republican ticket for the good of the party. Parker is a reliably conservative writer who sometimes takes a mildly contrarian angle, presumably to preserve her marketability.

With the Palin column she went a little far, though, and to hear her tell it (at the Washington Post -- mission accomplished!) got a predictable response:

I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should "off" myself...

I'm familiar with angry mail. But the past few days have produced responses of a different order. Not just angry, but vicious and threatening.

Some of my usual readers feel betrayed because I previously have written favorably of Palin. By changing my mind and saying so, I am viewed as a traitor to the Republican Party -- not a "true" conservative.

These columns tend to run long, and seasoned fans of the genre will have already guessed where she goes from here, but let's pull a quote anyway:

The mailbag is about us, our country, and what we really believe.

That we have become a partisan nation is no secret. This week has provided a vivid example of where rabid partisanship leads with the failure of Congress to pass a bailout bill vitally needed to keep our economy from unraveling.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave a partisan speech, blaming the credit crisis on the Bush administration (omitting the Clinton administration's role in launching the subprime lending debacle). Republicans responded by voting against the bill.

Everyone's to blame, by the way.

This reminds of me of something Menachim Begin said about the outcry over a massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians, allegedly with the complicity of the IDF: "The goyim kill the goyim, and then run to hang the Jews."

For conservatives, everything is the fault of liberals, except when there is no possible alibi for conservatives. Then it's everyone's fault. These days, even bipartisanship is mostly an angle, something to be tried when all else fails. No wonder it didn't take them long to warm to Maverick John McCain.

UPDATE. Here's the lesson Crunchy Rod Dreher took from Parker's column:

If liberals are concerned about this -- and they should be -- then they should urge the Obama campaign to stop mobbing radio show phone lines to stop discourse when Obama critics appear on talk shows.

If one of those Freepers throws a brick through Parker's window, I suppose Dreher will call for the arrest of David Plouffe.

UPDATE II. Commenter Jay B says, "You know, other than coming to the near-certain realization that we'll soon be in a depression and i'll probably lose my job and my family will be destitute -- this has been one of the best weeks in awhile."

I take his point, though I wouldn't say it was objectively "good" in any way. I think what makes us bomb-throwers and objects of opprobrium among our right-wing brethren is the fact that we can see the justice of something that may harm us. Again, I don't wish for collapse, just as I don't advocate "surrender." But when our country does something stupid it's just going to catch up with us. That's not a happy result, it's just the one you can expect when you pretend that what isn't so is so. If there's any upside to what's happening, it's that revelation is a good thing, however dearly purchased.

But asserting that up is up and not down makes you a traitor among those who have made a career out of denying the existence of gravity, centrifugal force, and other forms of objective reality, and made common sense a form of treason.

It's not so new -- Malcolm X, I believe, said something about chickens coming home to roost and got a hard time for it -- but I don't remember it being so complete as it has become in recent years. No wonder when Paulson comes to Capitol Hill demanding a bribe for the good of the country, they're so confused. The last bit of sense they had left was in their wallets, and now they're being asked to give it up.

VOLUNTARY CONSERVATION OF HOUSEHOLD ENERGY IS LOOKING PRETTY DAMN GOOD ABOUT NOW. Well, looks as if they heard me. But there's no point in celebrating -- some version of the "crap sandwich," almost certainly with extra crap, will pass this week. Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, Jose Serrano and a few others may be dissenting in earnest, but I'm sure most of these guys are just working angles.

Playful as I have been on this subject, I don't really want things to get worse even to get better. I'm still convinced that a big bath is coming, and the current shenanigans will only postpone the inevitable, but I honestly appreciate and sympathize with the candor of Ross Douthat when he says, "If the defeat of the bailout is a victory for liberty, it's a victory whose costs I'm not prepared to bear." Maybe that's because, like Douthat (though for different reasons), I'm accustomed to read the crackpot millenarian Rod Dreher, whose hope for a brotherhood of godly paupers after the collapse of the world economy usually stirs me to reactionary consumerism. If our dysfunctional politics has made it impossible to strike a balance between the good and the bountiful, I'd rather reform the politics than celebrate the collapse as a way of getting back to neutral. (Interestingly, I see Dreher now wants us all to "pray for stability.")

The problem with the payoff plan is that it allows an end run around reform. To this moment, conservatives are more dedicated to the go-go economy than to the citizens who are supposed to be its beneficiaries. Megan McArdle compares the anti-bailout movement to the mice of fable who resolved to bell the cat, but had no means to do it. That's a hell of an analogy: the citizens of an alleged republic are mice and the economy a monster that will kill them if they attempt even the slightest modification of its lethal power.

I'm sorry FDR isn't around to get a laugh out of it. Hell, maybe I should send it to Jimmy Carter -- and include some of the columns in which McArdle tries to scare us with stories of 70s inflation -- to whom it may give at least a rueful chuckle. After all, he was the guy we blew off in order to embark on our long binge of deregulation and market-worship. Maybe the spectacle of an MBA President vainly trying to get fellow Republicans to support a Wall Street bailout has already got him doubled over. At the very least he must be thanking God for allowing him to live this long.

I have no faith that the current batch of Democrats can put even a little more muscle in the bill, but I wish they'd try. Conservatives are reduced to trying to convince people that the system is in collapse because Democrats made banks give money to Negroes and hire homosexuals. If not now, when?

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED... A recent rightwing outrage du jour was Obama's soldier bracelet, mentioned during the debate. Apparently the soldier's mother had asked Obama not to use it in the campaign. But it turns out Mom was okay with Obama's citation of the bracelet in his reply to McCain.

A million all-caps emails have probably already been circulated, but these guys have to make a gesture in a public forum, so Jonah Goldberg avails one of those "reader emails" that occasionally spice up The Corner:

Since the mother is an Obama supporter, I expect right about now Obama is contacting her and instructing her to say he had permission to mention her son's name in the debate. It's a total lie, but, as always, he'll get away with it.

Damn Obama and his dark power to cloud grieving mothers' minds! Oh well, back to calling him a Muslim.

DEBATE CLUBBING. I have a new Voice column today wrapping up rightwing blog reactions to Friday's debate. We already got a head-start on this subject here, but as you might imagine, Obama's post-debate poll jump has just made things more entertaining.

DEAL ME OUT. In a brilliant New York Times front-pager, Gretchen Morgenson shows how an AIG subsidiary called AIG Financial Products created "collateralized debt obligations" that provided a further layer of insulation between the global insurer and the increasing debt it was covering:

Because the underlying debt securities -- mostly corporate issues and a smattering of mortgage securities -- carried blue-chip ratings, A.I.G. Financial Products was happy to book income in exchange for providing insurance. After all, Mr. Cassano [AIGFP's head] and his colleagues apparently assumed, they would never have to pay any claims.

AIGFP saw huge, apparently insubstantial gains from these debt packages, and their shakiness seems to have somehow gone unnoticed by the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision, whose duty it was to monitor them. When AIGFP's packages came a-cropper, AIG found itself called upon to make good, which precipitated its downward spiral.

Morgenson reveals also that Goldman Sachs had a fat hand in AIGFP's dealings, which the more cynical among us may suspect influenced the willingness of Treasury Secretary and former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson to move quickly to pick up AIG, as a straight bankruptcy would have left the Goldmanians with pennies on the dollar.

Now both Democrats and Republicans -- some of the latter dragging their feet for whatever slim plausible deniability it may give them -- are getting the big Bush bailout rolling, with only a few Congressmen resisting. And from what I'm hearing, in order to pass it bipartisan-like, the Democrats couldn't even keep in a provision that would give homeowners some relief.

They say it's necessary, and in this atmosphere of panic there's no one reliable who can tell us whether it is or isn't. But fuck it. This financial system is rotten and nothing about the bill (including whatever "oversight" provision they come up with) is going to change that. As an old man I'm in sympathy with the urge to postpone the inevitable, but in this age of internet speed I doubt the inevitable will tarry as it did in olden days. Either use the $700 billion tide to lift all boats, including those of mortgage holders, or keep it in the bank and let the free market wreak its creative destruction at the top end of the food chain for a change.

UPDATE. The House server is slow, but I got the sectional summary of the current plan (the full plan pdf shows up blank for some reason). Section 110, we are told, "Requires federal entities that hold mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, including the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the FDIC, and the Federal Reserve to develop plans to minimize foreclosures. Requires federal entities to work with servicers to encourage loan modifications, considering net present value to the taxpayer." It will be interesting to see how this requirement and encouragement is supposed to work and be enforced.

NEWMAN'S OWN. Paul Newman has passed after a long and productive life, and his philanthropies and political activism are as worthy of celebration as his titanic film career, if not more so.

What stands out for me about Newman on screen was his knack for revealing the intelligence of characters who were not always book-smart. Actors like Brando or DeNiro would submerge themselves into incoherent characters, and let their brutal energy carry them; even when playing Rocky Graziano or the young Fast Eddie or Cool Hand Luke, Newman made a point of showing the wheels turning in their minds, and it may be that his anti-heroes were so popular because he made them appear reasonable. (Played another way, Luke's will might have looked like a tragically uncontrollable force, but Newman's Luke had made friends with his own rebelliousness, which invited others to make friends with it, too.)

Of course those characters were also charming, because Newman had charm, buckets of it. That part came effortlessly, but I never noticed him coasting on it. At worst (e.g. the end of The Towering Inferno), he sometimes used it to rescue scenes that had no other hope of salvation.

In fact, in my favorite Newman performances -- Nobody's Fool and The Verdict -- he played the trick of submerging his charm early on and letting it creep out as the character made progress. The beginning of The Verdict is so brutal because you see a Paul Newman who has lost his charm, squandered his gifts and become a miserable legal grifter, surviving on the vestiges of his good manners and skills. His pursuit of a hard, righteous cause is genuinely thrilling because you can see that accepting it hasn't turned him into a superman -- he makes foolish mistakes and actually has a humiliating panic attack when Charlotte Rampling strikes at his still-soft center -- but has forced him into the confrontation with himself that he's been avoiding his whole life. Once again Paul Newman has walked into harm's way, but not breezily, and with everything on the line. In his quietly amazing summation ("Act as if ye had faith, and faith will be given to you") he is both reduced to his humblest essence and ennobled.

Imagine some other stars in the role. There have been many actors who, like Newman, could seduce the audience just by presenting themselves to it, but few who could at any stage of their careers draw us into a journey like that. He really was more than just a pretty face.

PLAYING PARTISAN WHEN POST-PARTISANISM DOESN'T WORK. At the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan says she wants McCain and Obama to explain to people why they are respectively a Republican and a Democrat. I expect Noonan is influenced by the current bailout situation, in which Republicans who built and prospered from the go-go, lightly-regulated economy are positioning themselves for the moment as rebels from its bailout -- though, as tipped by McCain's remarks tonight, they will cave as soon as they think they are sufficiently covered politically. It's standard-issue Noonan jiu-jitsu -- to call for something that can't possibly happen because of her own party's tactics, and hope the uninformed will find her lofty and wise rather than disingenuous.

Of the many things that are ridiculous about this, a few scream to be mentioned. First, as we just saw, the Presidential debates, which McCain lately endeavored to evade, are meant to explain this -- or, more usefully, to explain why the parties are properly represented by them. Second, I recall that Noonan used to swoon over George Bush, who was allowed to distance himself from his party as a "compassionate conservative" before he went on to embody Republican principles so thoroughly as to discredit them for all time, and even force Noonan to renounce both Bush and the Republicans (though I think their refusal to hire her had something to do with it).

Both parties have evolved, not to say been shifty, and their candidates have prospered by playing for them and against them as they see fit. I can't imagine Noonan, who despite the paucity of her paying gigs with the GOP of late is still a reliable tool, would be suggesting this party-identification program if McCain were leading strongly. Then, as always, she and her colleagues would be doing the identifying -- Democrats treasonous and spendthrift, Republicans butch and economically sound, and so forth.

It must also be mentioned that Noonan wonders at Obama's slim lead, and attributes to it to Obama being "unusual, singular," "not your basic Dem," and "exotic," without ever mentioning that he's black. This too is audacious, but only in a familiar way.

MORE REACTIONS FROM AROUND THE BUFFOONIVERSE. Megan McArdle's pretense of support for Obama notwithstanding -- I think it has/had to be some sort of social networking gambit -- she's really bending over for McCain tonight. She gave Obama a hard time for momentarily stumbling over McCain's name ("Who's having senior moments again?"), but when McCain couldn't quite get the name of the President of Iran, whom he wishes to bomb, she "thought it was rather charming." Chalk it up to the soft bigotry of low expectations.

"Obama Implodes in Debate," says Confederate Yankee, which is the sort of ooga-booga you have to expect from someone who calls himself Confederate Yankee, I guess. The myth of Obama's black rage is strong with these people, and impervious to such externals as the evidence of their senses.

The Ole Perfesser, as usual in situations where there is no believable talking point for his side, punts, sighing that "it's hard to believe that these two are the best that a country of 300 million can produce." Even reliable partisans are reduced to making fun of Obama's pronunciation of "Pakistan." It seems only paid operatives and religious maniacs are sufficiently motivated to tell themselves and anyone else who'll listen that McCain was the overwhelming victor. But in a national contest in which one of the candidates is black, that may be enough.

DEBATE FOLLOW-UP. As we might expect, McCain's conscript army of conservatives are engaging in wishful thinking, describing Obama as "angry" when anyone with eyes will have seen, in the frequent flashes of that bizarre, toothy McCain grin that appears only when he is challenged, the grill of a cage that barely restrains a dangerous rage.

It's easier to judge the candidates if we can credibly imagine their objectives. I imagine McCain thought he would get away with the usual flag-waving bullshit, but in the context of the wordy debate, these ploys just seemed like bizarre, maudlin, and possibly senile episodes. McCain tried hard to make Obama look naive (he in fact called Obama naive), and that clearly didn't work against Obama's detailed answers. McCain was mostly effective at portraying himself as a "maverick," if only by calling himself that, by running away from his own record, and by having an opponent who, oddly, did not challenge this absurd idea much.

Obama seemed to want to accurately portray his own views to the American people (the fool) and to avoid sighing and rolling his eyes Al Gore-style as McCain seethed, blinked, and flashed his teeth. That I think he achieved, and much good may it do him.

The talking heads after the event are horrible buffoons. And what's with Mike Murphy's Vulcan mullet?

FIRST THOUGHTS. This country's fucked.

Actually what I mean is:

At the 70 minute mark, this is simultaneously an information-heavy debate and an incoherent one. It's nice that the candidates get time to talk at length because that provides the best opportunity for candidates who have been cleverly and consistently slandered by liars (hint hint) to lay out their side of the story. On the other, it's an opportunity for endless filibustering, especially on matters like the Wall Street bailout where both candidates, I regret to state, are more interested in misdirecting our attention from the massive heist their parties are about to engineer than in explaining the situation.

If Obama isn't overwhelming (and given who and what he's running against he should be), at least he has managed by his patient and even tone to put into perspective McCain's bizarre hot-button issues. McCain now seems like a Speaker's Corner nut on the "League of Democracies" and "preconditions," and for that at least we should be grateful.

More later.

AN ECHO, NOT A CHOICE. There's no place in a rational campaign for the kind of tabloid crap that's been making the rounds today. Of course I'm not the only one who thinks so, but some parties, such as My Pet Jawa and Jules Crittenden, have come around late, having been more excited when a Democratic candidate was getting the treatment. Now MPJ is more dismissive and Crittenden, well below the fold, insists "who's gonna care." Well, wisdom is welcome whenever it comes.

But it's hard for a citizen to know what does qualify as relevant. The President goes on TV to plead for for a massive Wall Street bailout, and gets oddly distracted readings from his advocates. Kathryn J. Lopez wonders if Bush's speech "wasn't a wasted opportunity to convince the unconvinced (including worried conservatives)." Larry Kudlow, usually reliably energized in his cheerleading, claims without force of logic or argument that "ironically, this huge government action will be solved by free-market auctions and private sector loan workouts that will pay us back." He adds that he doesn't really like the plan, but "When I spoke to Alexander Hamilton last night about this, he told me it was the right thing to do. Like he did in the 1790s." Sadly he did not supply quotes, reminding me of the old story of a young reporter wiring from the Johnstown flood, "God looks down upon a desolate Johnstown tonight..." to which his editor wired back, "Forget flood. Interview God. Rush pictures."

Meanwhile the Republican Vice Presidential candidate reassures Americans worried about a new Depression that "Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on," and won't take a stand either way on the bailout, while her running mate bails out himself.

But Obama doesn't want to get stuck either, and has joined McCain in a non-denial denial, though without endorsing the Republican candidate's more spectacular plan to avoid the storm by retreating into its calm Congressional eye. It may be that Obama's cautiousness supports McCain's claim that electoral politics is not at present meaningful, but the impending deal seems not to have much real drama in it either: that will come afterwards, when the shouting heads debate winners and losers.

Bukowski used to say that in America money was more serious than death. It would appear to be more serious than politics, too. It may be that after the hurlyburly's done some of us will begin to wonder whether all our political shouting is worth more than the baying of wolves at the moon.

THE VOICE COLUMN IS UP. Less Palin than usual! But not as much Wall Street as I'd expected. A lot of rightbloggers went to great lengths to minimize that story -- which is of course the opposite of their usual method.

WHY I'M NOT A LIBERTARIAN, AND NEITHER ARE YOU. The magazine Reason and its blog Hit & Run are libertarian outlets. Of course, purity being not our lot in this life (to paraphrase Jake Gittis, they have to swim in the same water we all do), some contributors might reasonably be called left-libertarian -- that is, devoted to personal liberty to an extent that mostly pits them against the law and order obsessions that are the turf of today's conservatives; and some might with justice be called right-libertarian -- that is, devoted to economic liberty to an extent that mostly pits them against the social-equality obsessions that are the turf of today's liberals.

Brian Doherty I have long considered one of the latter class. He's the author of Radicals for Capitalism (from descriptions a celebration of Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman's dynamic I-got-mine-ism), as well as of Reason items on the corruption of Al Gore, censorship among foreign Muslims, Cathy Seipp, the joys of fast food, comics as capitalist signifiers, and contempt for Kurt Vonnegut, teachers' unions, and old hippies, and of reliably anti-Obama articles -- in other words, a good resume for an editor at National Review but for the occasional off-message message which, given his overall tendency, could be handled in orientation training.

But Doherty had the other day a revelation on the recent short-selling ban that must be shared:

As someone who had been saying for the past few years that things like Nixonian wage and price controls would be considered beyond the pale in a world that, I thought, understood and appreciated some basics of free markets more than it did 35 years ago, well, it's a good thing my jaw has dropped so much on the past week's news that I have room to fit a lot of crow.

As someone who has for years heard gags about liberals "mugged by reality," I have to wonder how many more cycles of this it would take before we got similarly used to hearing jokes about right-libertarians mugged by conservatism.

If you involve yourself in national politics, however tenaciously you hold an alterna-indie-position, you will inevitably be drawn into what simply is. And in that horrible place there is not much room for libertarianism.

It reminds me of New York during its crime-crisis days. When Giuliani confiscated 90,000 guns there was no visible groundswell of opposition, because it was perceived to be the medicine New York needed. Liberal and libertarian civil-liberty arguments were swept aside by the demands of the moment.

In the recent Presidential campaign, crime was not a pressing issue and Giuliani saw his previously popular gun-authoritarian argument become a liability in the provinces. He tried to suck up, but to no avail, and he was rebuffed by people who saw no reason to give up their own guns, and apparently could no longer understand why anyone else would.

Does that mean the country turns out to be more libertarian that Giuliani anticipated? Sure, when it doesn't cost anything. The candidate who had become "America's Mayor" and the long-time front-runner for the nomination went down because his authoritarianism no longer captured the public's imagination, but it had worked, and worked well, for him in a climate of fear and reaction that dwindled before he could ride it all the way to the White House.

Now we have a new crisis. I notice this has not brought new attention to the libertarian policies of Bob Barr and Ron Paul -- though Paul was on TV this morning advocating a "return to sound money" to which no one is likely to listen. America's finances and priorities badly need reorganization, but from what I can see, the energy is all on putting some expensive patches on the tires of the economy we have and pushing it back on the road.

Doherty thought he was living in a libertarian country where "price controls would be considered beyond the pale." But most voters are not devoted to concepts, and I doubt many of them worried that the market was less pure than it might be when it was giving them a good return. When panic strikes, they'll accept the fastest route out of danger. Shock therapy may be alright for Chile, but not for us.

Much was made of Obama's comment about Americans "clinging" to guns and religion. But Americans are clingy in lots of ways, and it would take a lot to pull them away from a system that has been rewarding many of them handsomely for decades. If you're a libertarian, you might consider this a kind of false consciousness, and believe that Americans yearn for a truly free market which none of them has ever really seen, and would prefer to a money machine which has long been rigged in their favor.

But most of us, to say the least, are not libertarians, at least not when it comes to this. Maybe when the wheels come off the economy entirely we'll consider it, but more likely something resembling a second New Deal -- one not limited to large financial institutions, I mean -- will be what we go for.

If the spit and sealing wax hold, we'll go on calling our market a free one, and holding it up as a signal blessing of liberty. We are after all Americans, and freedom is important to us, at least until the next hard time.

THE EMERGING REPUBLICAN MINORITY. The Ole Perfesser directs us to the long-disregarded maniac Bill Whittle at National Review:

When I first got to college, back in the last few weeks of the Seventies, I finally got a chance to see an ordinary game of Dungeons and Dragons. My immediate inclination was to play as a Paladin...

Normal people will be tempted stop right there, but we'll follow a little while:

I sit with others in darkened rooms, watching films like Redacted, Stop-Loss, and In the Valley of Elah, and see our brave young soldiers depicted as murderers, rapists, broken psychotics or ignorant dupes -- visions foisted upon me by bitter and isolated millionaires such as Brian de Palma and Paul Haggis and all the rest.

Foisted? Good God, man, you have free will! Or are you a captive of the Hollywood smear machine? Blink twice for yes!

No wonder they must be destroyed. Because -- Sarah Palin especially -- presents a mortal threat to these people who have determined over cocktails who the next President should be and who now clearly mean to grind into metal shards the transaxle of their credibility in order to get the result they must have...

Longtime followers of Whittle's insanity may wonder: where's this popular rightwing buffoon been the past year? Last we paid attention, he and his friends were building as of May 2007 a shining city on a hill:

I believe -- utterly -- that this ability for the common person to communicate with other common people, this internet, will allow us to end-run the cycle of civilization. I believe it in my bones.

My friends, Western Civilization is not on its last legs.

Western Civilization is going to the stars. Count on it...

This City-State of Virtue we desire does not exist.

Let’s build one.

And so Whittle did, at least in his all-powerful mind. Comparing his new "City-State" to Disneyland, Whittle declared:

What we are trying to do right now is to get a functional version of Ejectia! up and running as soon as possible. Whatever we have in place on Day One will simply be a starting point for the improvements we are planning on Day Two. Ejectia! -- like every city -- will be built on the foundations of what it was yesterday. It will never be finished.

Then Whittle started publishing pictures of his new Jerusalem:


Whittle then wrote:

Above are some early test renderings I have done to play with some of the overall look of the place. Now here's something interesting: everyone views this City-State differently. Some people would like it to be a collection of Greek buildings in a verdant valley. Some want it on a tropical isle. Some want a Rivendell-esque hidden valley surrounded by waterfalls, and some people even want a medieval village in the middle of a forest.

That was in June 2007. In July Whittle wrote:

The hardcover books are finally -- FINALLY -- dropping into the print queue. They should begin shipping in three to four days... Finally, there has been some speculation -- and I have received a few phone calls -- concerning my reaction to the recent explosion up at the Mojave... I grieve for the loss of friends and family members and for the irreparable hole they have left behind them. But at the same time, I am comforted and encouraged by two points that I think bear mentioning in this or any other case where people die doing the one thing they love more than anything else in the world.

Thence Whittle went off the grid till November, at which point he told his followers:

So while I am sure by this point it comes as a surprise to no one but myself, I have reluctantly put aside any hope of building Ejectia until my financial status changes dramatically, at which point I will no longer care about what it costs.

Since then he has only written a few pages of gibberish before being picked up by the nation's most prominent conservative magazine as a suitable spokesman for the McCain campaign.

I frequently tell you folks that our opponents are totally insane, but rarely does one of them leave so egregious a pixel trail of his psychosis. That the National Review would avail such a crackpot for its purposes is of course no surprise at all.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. The stark unreality of this campaign is starting to get to me.

An alleged member of anti-Scientology group has hacked Sarah Palin's email, and conservatives blame Obama supporters.

At National Review Mark Hemingway cites a report quoting McCain as saying he didn't anticipate the subprime mortgage mess -- and then asserts that he did, too, and says the reporter should have "googled a little harder" to help McCain look better than he portrayed himself.

Palin gives a content-free answer to a question her handlers inadvertently allowed her to answer about AIG, and Hemingway proclaims, "Palin Gets the Financial Crisis," and explains why she's "exactly right" in a paragraph longer than her answer. It's like a scene out of Being There.

The United States is a shuddering wreck, and the top conservative spiritual advisor complains that a black guy disrespected the Star-Spangled Banner, the top conservative mystic resurrects an old, incomprehensible slur on Obama, the top conservative economic blogger calls commenters who disagree with her idiots, then admits she doesn't know what's going on, and the Ole Perfesser tells readers that the economy isn't worth worrying about, pay attention to the 527 commercials.

I thought five-plus years of covering this kind of gibberish had inured me to it, but here it is only September of a Presidential election year and every time I step even into the foot-washing pool of the political scene I feel as if I have been fatally poisoned. The degeneracy of political discourse in the internet age has been my subject, but I feel as if it is getting away from me, screaming beyond my capacity to keep up. Is it really so much worse than it has been, or am I getting soft?

IRRATIONAL EXUBERANCE. Rich Lowry thinks the current financial collapse makes a good time for McCain to start talking about the economy. I do hope to see that; it's been a while since I heard the words "Keating Five" mentioned in connection with his name.

Republican operatives are already preemptively defending against such a strategy with the hot news that Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made contributions to Democrats. Of course, those contributions were legal.