LATEST DEVELOPMENTS AT McARDLE KIDS. Courtney Knapp says hey, what's the deal with tipping? She's not talking about the traditional libertarian practice of undertipping or stiffing waiters as a way of showing one's displeasure with the election of Obama, but about one of those thought-experiments that make libertarians such a drag at parties ("No seriously, if she were poor, would you have still married your wife? I rest my case! Hey, why did you bring me my coat? It's still early!").

As you might expect, the commenters love talking about this, not because it advances any knowledge (though it does confirm my suspicion that very, very few McArdle commenters have ever waited tables), but because it allows them to tell the world what and whom they think is and isn't worthy of their rewards ("I would certainly advocate dialing back on the number and types of people you should tip [no, holding a paper cup under a tureen spigot does not earn you my change]").

Next she and the kids will discuss why Cali has plenty of peeled-orange vendors at freeway entrances but Connecticut has none, and whether statist policies are to blame.

Later Julian Sanchez writes something thoughtful and lucid about one of Jay Rosen's "What Is Media Bias" stories. The only bad thing I can say about it is: So what? Maybe some monks will uncover these discussions one day, but at present they're completely drowned out by hollers of MSM LIES! And McArdle's page is about the last place on earth they may expect traction; it's like reading The Consolation of Philosophy to howler monkeys.

Tim Lee talks about interchange rates and the prospect of new regulation of same (unsurprisingly, he's against it), observes that picking a side between merchants and banks is a mug's game. A fair point, though a public that has been serially ass-raped by banks and still ain't shitting right may feel that banks have become a public menace and should be regarded and regulated appropriately.

Lee is not sensitive to this, though; he offers in defense of the banks the fact that his bank gives him 1 percent cash back on purchases and interest free loans. I wonder if he knows that his own failure (so far) to be caught by con men doesn't mean they don't exist.

THE LAND OF MAKE-BELIEVE. Looking at the Left's coverage of the June 6th rally against the downtown mosque in New York ends with LatL's train trip back to wherever:

Immediately to my right on the train, I did see something extremely unusual. A number of passengers were staring, as was I, in utter disbelief of what appeared to be a man dressed as a moslem woman carrying a large bag over the shoulder. The more I looked the more I was convinced it was a man. To this day, I do not know if that was a man or a woman. I don’t know if anyone reported this to authorities and I will always wonder about this bizarre figure.

Not only is even a mannish Muslim woman with a large bag just about the opposite of "extremely unusual" in New York, take a look at LatL's photo -- which doesn't show "passengers staring... in utter disbelief" at all, but engaged in the usual middle-distance staring.

Well, even several weeks after hearing Atlas Pam yell for an hour, I'd probably still be a little disoriented too. But I get the feeling that this is how the guy sees everything all the time.

JONAH GOLDBERG, HARD ON THE JOB, LATEST IN A SERIES*. Monday, 10:25 a.m.: Precious minerals in Afghanistan? Awesome.

Monday, 10:54 a.m.: Here's that video everyone's looking at.

Monday, 11:42 a.m.: Top Chef was cool before it went all P.C. by giving Top Chef to Africa. But I mean he was great and it was a close call but it was also P.C. Fart.

Monday, 12:26 p.m.: You should read this thing at Commentary.

Monday, 1:27 p.m.: Pakistanis don't understand free speech. Plus they're all anti-Semites. Or was that those other guys?

Monday, 1:31 p.m.: You should read this thing at AEI.

Monday, 3:33 p.m.: These liberal dudes at The Nation think conservatives hate soccer 'cause we're racists. Dudes misspelled a word! LOL.

Tuesday, 1:15 p.m.: About that Nation soccer thing: We don't hate soccer 'cause we're racists. We hate it because liberals like it! Oh, and they only like it 'cause it's P.C. Obvs.

Tuesday, 1:22 p.m.: I'm doing a thing.

Tuesday, 3:30 p.m.: Here's a bunch of letters about soccer my intern put up.

* Inspired by compilations by Instaputz and Tbogg, among others.

FLASH! UPDATE AT CAMP McARDLE! Yeah, this is going great.

UPDATE. Har, from comments: "Whadda they have -- like 14 guest-bloggers -- and a total of one sorta-post for all of Tuesday? Even Kaus is harder working than this."

UPDATE 2. Everyone else was at the Northside Festival so K. Mangu-Ward had to double up. She chooses a new trend in food obsessives' labeling, which she wants to make fun of; but she hasn't the talent for satire, so she falls back on the last refuge of a libertarian: A swipe at those jackbooted thugs at the relevant federal bureaucracy, in this case the USDA ("If there's money to be made, there are regulations to be written"). Good thing we've got people like her standing athwart food inspection. How are future generations going to develop a resistance to e coli if we insist on nannying them?

THE ATLANTIC 90210: AN UPDATE. Since introducing themselves, the McArdle guest bloggers have stirred themselves to go out for coffee, check the action at the dog run, and cover the McArdle-Suderman wedding.

I thought I'd mention another notable thing about the wedding: the promiscuous use of Twitter by the assembled guests. As you might expect at a marriage of two bloggers, we used Twitter for everything. Peter used it to announce that the deed was done...

Finally, Twitter enriched the experience in more pedestrian ways.

These kids are gonna make the whole world fall in love with Generation A equals A.

Ms. Mangu-Ward had an extra cup of Stumptown and revisited that online university education Wal-Mart is offering its drones, which had earlier excited her so much that she expressed a desire to live at Wal-Mart. She is delighted to hear that diploma vendor American Public University was willing to "go the extra mile" by customizing programs for Wal-Mart -- which "includes giving course credit for on-the-job time and training."

Mangu-Ward shows some awareness that there's a "question of whether there will be more than one employer interested in those Wal-Mart degrees." But it seems not to have crossed her mind that Wal-Mart's arrangement is designed to push workers who may, once upon a time, have expected free job training into spending thousands of dollars to improve their chances at promotion (or even at keeping their jobs). They might as well call it Company Store University.

So Mangu-Ward is bullish: "The company brings dramatic change to every industry that they touch," she says, "and higher ed will be no exception." And that's good, because colleges have gotten too arty-farty for her tastes anyway:

If we're going to push every 18-year-old in the country into some kind of higher education, most people will likely be better off in a programs that involves logistics and linoleum, rather than ivy and the Iliad. And, in contrast to an associate's degree in Japanese studies from Northern Virginia Community College, we know there is at least one employer interested in a Wal-Mart-subsidized logistics sheepskin: Wal-Mart.

Mangu-Ward knows whereof she speaks, having attended Yale, where she no doubt majored in Food Handling.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. I just called this one "The Week We Talked About Sarah Palin's Tits." I ain't proud.

From the cuttings, a nice new bit of Palin victimology from new rightwing It Girl Lori Zingrano:

They attempt to diminish [conservative women] and turn them into a caricature of some airhead bimbo. You can spot the leftist bias regarding Sarah Palin usually within a first sentence or two of an article: “former beauty queen” will be used.

Palin hasn't been much called a "former beauty queen" since 2008. But I agree if we did use it, it would be unhelpful, like calling Richard Nixon a former community theater actor.

Zingaro's a find. This is from her fist-shaker on Tina Brown and other feminazis:

Sorry, Tina Brown, but feminism is already dead. And I say, “You’re welcome.” As perpetual children, you self-avowed feminists may not thank us yet. You may continue to stomp and whine and throw your little tantrums, petulantly holding your mouths closed to the icky vegetables known as truth, personal responsibility and self-sufficiency, but one day you will thank us.

It makes one yearn for the fresh fruit of coherence.

LOOK, IT'S THE KIDS FROM FAME RENT GLEE McARDLE! While Tbogg was introducing his crack team of substitute bloggers -- which I now learn includes Athanae of First Draft, adding to his unfair advantage -- Megan McArdle was unveiling hers.

I figured she'd bring in her previous stringers, like Poulos and Friedersdorf, which would have been good for some laughs. But apparently the glibertarian blog world is like Hollywood and everywhere else -- only Xtreme youth will serve. Sorry James and Conor, welcome to the hag pit!

By way of credentials, she's had the n00bs put up their headshots. They seem to have put more thought and effort into these than into their writing, anticipating no doubt a future National Review spread in the manner of Vanity Fair. This blogging thing has certainly changed since I was a lad. I wonder if any of them already has an agent shopping the tumblr version?

Tony Woodlief declined to supply a photograph, which made me want to give him a fair hearing till I saw some of the crap he's written.

I've actually gone to change the boy after hearing one of the intestinally generated explosions that are his hallmark (explosions: another SEAL specialty!), only to find…an empty diaper. Somehow, he's able to fire a whole payload of poop over the rim of his diaper, and up his own back. The Defense Department pays, what, $2 billion for a Stealth bomber? I say this to our nation’s military leaders, with all due respect: you folks don’t know from Stealth bombing. I’ve got a Stealth bomber right here under my roof, and he only cost one dinner, half a bottle of wine, and nine months of misery to make.

Woodlief also has a book out about "unmerited, unexpected grace," which led me to believe he was born into money. But he went to the University of Michigan, so there is hope for him yet, though not much.

The other Children of the Damned include a couple of liberaltarians: Tim Lee (Princeton, Cato Institute), a repeat customer whose Randian icebreaker is "I've criticized top-down institutions, ranging from the the iTunes app store to the the Johnson administration" (but he's also a technocrat who's going to work for Google so obviously he doesn't take that shit too seriously), and the Top Chef of the Tendency himself, Will Wilkinson (University of Maryland, Cato Institute). Hey, a gig's a gig!

Working the other side of the street, there's Julian Sanchez (NYU, Cato Institute) , who was smacking down the Civil Rights Act before Rand Paul joined the family business (he is strongly against the "Care Bear Stare" of ostentatious compassion, which is no shock), and Katherine Mangu-Ward, previously described here as "the Reason author most likely to obsessively check her email for an offer from National Review." (She actually brags on this insane article, in which she professes a desire to live at Wal-Mart because they offer their wage slaves an online university education; Mangu-Ward, you will not be surprised to learn, did not graduate from an online university, but from fucking Yale.)

I don't know who Courtney Knapp is but she's already exhausted my patience.

UPDATE. Sanchez sent me an email of complaint, saying that, since his unfortunate 2005 remarks in Reason ("If some employer decides it doesn't want to hire people named Sanchez, I think it ought to be able to legally—though I'd hope for it to be swiftly punished by public opinion"), he's written in defense of the CRA, in Newsweek no less.

Sure enough, after Rand Paul ruined it for everyone, Sanchez admitted that libertarians might have to concede that in this "fallen world" their principles might not always apply in a pure form. But this wasn't just a learning experience for libertarians, continued Sanchez, but for DFHs as well:

Liberals and progressives, for their part, should also reconsider whether the civil-rights era’s expansion of federal power ought to be seen as a norm or an exception. Faced with the enormities of history, a unanimous Supreme Court stretched the constitutional power of Congress over interstate commerce to permit an attempt at a remedy. But if we recognize the circumstances of the time as exceptional -- as the exigencies of war are exceptional when we consider the scope of executive power -- we should be less eager to make it the basis of a general federal license to pursue any attractive end through the commerce power.

In other words: Okay, you guys were sort of right about Jim Crow and the power of the state, but that was just an accident of history, so don't try to get away with it again. It's similar to the classic McArdle post in which she explained that lefties were right about Iraq for the wrong reasons, but much subtler. No wonder she's godmothering him.

THE PEOPLE, UNITED, CAN NEVER BE DIVIDED. Atlas Pam Geller claims PayPal cut her off on account of the jihad. RS McCain steps up to the plate:

Some are suggesting a boycott of PayPal but — good Lord! — how else am I supposed to pay for my daughter’s wedding next month? I need that money, and since Amazon ended its online payment service, PayPal’s got a monopoly.

Let’s hope PayPal can be made to understand that they’re being used as weapons in a financial jihad against truth and will rescind their fatwa against Geller. In the meantime, those who wish to help Pamela Geller and SOIA can send checks by mail to...

Somewhere a Tea Party Patrick Henry impersonator is weeping.

UPDATE. Atlas Pam follows up with more crazed skree about Obama the Muslim. I just can't understand why McCain won't go to the mat for her -- clearly she's asking all the right questions except, "What happens if I don't take my Haldol?"

UPDATE 2. So funny in so many ways, Five Pounds of Racism in a Two Pound Bag Feet of Fury:

Those who trumpet the advent of YouTube, Google etc as tools that have "permanently changed the media landscape" and will make it easier for right thinking people to get their messages past the legacy media blockade, take note:

These sites are all just tools, privately owned by individuals with fears, weaknesses and a perfectly commendable desire to make money.

That "perfectly commendable" is great -- it's like all that quivering anger she was showing at the weak, fearful tools at YouTube and Google had to get sucked up once the Free Market police showed up. But sir, they love jihad -- Quiet, soldier! They're part of the Invisible Hand Alliance, and God damn it, we can't touch 'em!

The follow-up's even better:

These tools belong to people who are not like us and don't like us in many ways; we must develop our own independent YouTubes and Googles to ensure that developments like these will have minimal impact in the future.

Don't they already have those? Pajamas Media? QubeTV? People's Cube? I guess they have to develop new versions -- powered by whining! When they're ready, please send the press releases here -- I can always use a laugh.

Apparently the cries of "dying MSM dinosaur lamestream media" will henceforth apply to YouTube and Google as well. Somehow I don't think they've thought this one through.

UPDATE 2. Gates of Vienna:

Conservatives and libertarians and Jews live in a world whose default is leftist and under-the-radar anti-Semitic and anti-black.

GoV makes the common mistake of imagining that, because they are conservative-libertarians and sympathetic to Jews, all conservatives, libertarians, and Jews are therefore as paranoid as they are. Well, if I were them I'd imagine myself a bunch of fellow-sufferers, too.

Inevitably, the Old Perfesser:

YouTube’s reputation, on the other hand, takes another hit. Perhaps the perception is inaccurate, but people on the right are beginning to feel that YouTube can’t be trusted. If I were YouTube, I’d be trying to address that somehow.

I was going to say this is another category error, but maybe by now "on the right" is a straight-up synonym for paranoid. As to the Perfesser's references to what YouTube should do to get back in his peeps' good graces, I think he overestimates his power. Or maybe he just wants his readers to believe everyone's clamoring to duplicate the success of his sponsored Amazon links. Makes sense -- we all know what a credulous bunch Instapundit readers are.

UPDATE FINAL. Oh, yeah -- I must say that, of course, their YouTube thing should be protected under the fair use parody exemption. Defend to the death their right to say, and all that. But it's awfully funny to see wingnuts clamoring for their rights under the example of 2 Live Crew.

SHORTER DOUG POWERS: Hey Limeys, when I said your boys weren't dying for our cause in Afghanistan, I didn't mean nothing by it. Now let's put it all behind us, blame Hollywood, and unite for a common purpose: Getting that bastard Obama.

WHERE I'M CALLING FROM, PART 4: DINNER AT SODOLAK'S ORIGINAL COUNTRY INN, SNOOK, TEXAS.









That, friends, is chicken fried bacon. As prepared by the fine people of Sodolak's Original Country Inn, it is as light as chicken fried bacon can be, or so I assume, though the white gravy adds ballast.

I ate nearly all of it, which may be why I couldn't finish my 16-ounce ribeye. Or maybe it was the salad. Yes, I'm sure the salad was a mistake.

I've been putting this sort of stuff on my tumblr of late, but I wanted to make sure you folks heard about the chicken fried bacon.

GOOD, MORE FOR ME. Tbogg's taking a long vacation to relieve "burnout." Ha! Maybe Mr. California should go take a few mud-packs and be doused in healing weeds at the spa! [rolls eyes, flaps hands limp-wristedly]

I understand his fatigue and disgust with the whole sorry business of blogging, and frequently share it; but when I have nothing in the tank, I don't tell people to stop paying attention until I'm feeling better -- I just keep writing. Not always at fever pitch, of course; during my Runnin' Scared tenure, I had to slow down here, because I was producing 2,000-3,000 words a day (and that was quality prose, too -- not always accurate, but quality!), which led not to burnout in the creative sense (at least not that I noticed), but to plain physical incapacity. By the end of the day I couldn't even write a grocery list. Why, some nights I couldn't even talk, and at the bodega had to mime the ingestion of a six-pack and the resulting drunken collapse so they knew what I wanted. (Actually I think they knew anyway, but just enjoyed watching me do it.)

If there's one thing I've learned during my mottled career as a pro writer, it's that if you keep going you get better. But Tbogg probably doesn't worry about that because he's already pretty near perfect. The big sissy. [rolls eyes, flaps hands limp-wristedly]

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT UPDATE: Holy shit, in T's absence Jay B -- onetime CEO of lamented Brooklyn maudit imprint Contemporary Press, advertising legend, and ace alicublog commenter -- is picking up the slack! Now you can get him without having to go through me! It's win-win. First installment here.

WHA-A-A-UPDATE? Susan of Texas is also on board. She too is a friend of ours, if you know what I mean [winks archly, readjusts green carnation]. A door closes, a window opens, and genius vomits out of it!

HEED THE CRAZY JESUS LADY'S FILTHY CARDBOARD SIGN! What is this, Old Home Week? First Lileks showed up, and now comes the Crazy Jesus Lady herself, Peggy Noonan, to tell us: Skree terrorists will kill us all Obama sleeps skree.

Oh -- you want proof? Well, aside from the usual ass-coverers saying "If something blows up, don't say I didn't warn you (and if nothing blows up, no harm done)," there's this:

You can see a certain air of complacency even in government websites. On the front page of the House Committee on Homeland Security site there's a picture of Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, then, below, an area devoted to something called "Business Opportunities Model" and an area for "DHS Business Opportunities." On the Homeland Security Department's website, the priorities seem equally clear: "Find Career Opportunities," "Use the Job Finder." There's little sense of urgency; it's government as employment agency, not crisis leader.

They're actually wasting time hiring people! When they should be sending Tommy Lee Jones out to recruit Will Smith and put on dark glasses! When will the madness stop!

Why don't they just dress Noonan up as a Get-Ready Man and march her around the streets with a sandwich sign? But then I suppose her message would go unnoticed by the crucial "thought leadership" demographic, and be more visible among the sort of people who know enough to focus on something in the middle distance and keep walking .

HE HASN'T CHANGED A BIT. Emerging from the Vale of Old Matchbooks: Jim Lileks! How I've missed him! What's up, Jimbo?

My nine-year-old daughter looked at the front page of the paper, and her eyes grew wide:

The president said “ass”?

What th-- he's actually doing this? The President swore in front of my widdle girl? It's like the Clenis, only PG!

Also, Gnat managed to make it to nine without running off to join a gang? She has guts; must get 'em from her mother.

She swallowed the A-word, because it is, after all, the A-word.

My admiration for Miss Lileks' nerve grows by the minute. What a picnic is must be at that house. Swallow your ass, young lady! Boy, when she gets to Bryn Mawr the fur, so to speak, is gonna fly.

I nodded; he said that. She was silent for a while, digesting the information. Presidents, after all, are part of the great Pantheon of Authority, standing over the school principal, teachers, the pastor, police, and perhaps the mailman. To consider them using bad words reordered everything.

"Where were you when the President said the A-word?" asks Mike Huckabee, roaming the audience with a microphone as the super reads A-DAY: THE END OF THE INNOCENCE.

Barack Obama is probably the last guy you’d think would introduce “ass” into the mainstream political discourse. It’s like Spock announcing he wants to “knock boots” — a expression both crude and banal coming from someone renowned for dispassionate cool.

Well, Jimbo, Obama was working from the original Harlan Ellison script, before that bastard Roddenberry softened it up*. Does that make it easier for you to understand?

But the idea that the president should confine himself to polite terminology is one of those antiquated chocks that prohibit true, honest expression, and if the post-Boomer culture has taught us any-effin-thing, it’s that authentic people use earthy language, authentically, and only the spats-and-monocle crowd blah blah blah

Oh no, Jimbo -- surely not the beatnilks-dirtied-up-my-TV routine again? Alas, it is: And you can read the rest to find out how the beats, led by Barack Obama, Bill Maher, and Helen Thomas, destroyed civility -- and, even worse, impeded traffic:

The hero isn’t the man who invents the traffic signal, it’s Ratso Rizzo who crosses against the light, bangs on a hood of a car that dares to nose into the intersection, and yells “I’m walkin’ here!”

Just for reference:



If you've ever laughed appreciatively at Ratso's reaction, in Lileks' world, you are Ratso, one of those 70s New York skels whom he fears will crawl out of his home entertainment center at night and Death Wish his family. That's why he keeps a go-bag at the ready, so they can escape to the tall pines and join with the guys in the tricorners, with whom he will set about remaking America out of old Sears catalogues, back into a land where no pauper can interrupt the majestic parade of gas-guzzlers.

Well, at least it's good to know he can finally stop thinking about 9/11 for a while, even if it's only to think about ass.

* If coffee isn't doing it for you this morning, try Ellison's hilariously acerbic "introductory essay" to The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay that Became the Classic Star Trek Episode. "There's only one reason I'm doing this book: Fyodor Dostoevsky..." I bet he knows how funny he is, though.

UPDATE. I should note that the illo snatched 'n' patched above is the work of famous rock star Tom Tomorrow.

UPDATE 2. Not being a blowhard like me, commenter Christopher extracts the nub: "This sort of pre-emptive whining of 'I know you're going to call me a pussy for not getting the joke, but I'm not, damn it!' combined with 'You guys think you're so cool but you aren't!'"

MORE FREE ADVICE FROM A SHOW-BIZ PROFESSIONAL. From TV Squad:

The writing team who brought Superman back to TV screens in 'Smallville' are set to work their magic on the reboot of 'Charlie's Angels' for ABC.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, hit writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are replacing Josh Friedman ('Terminator: The Sarah Connors Chronicles') on the Sony Television Pictures project, which is being developed for a potential pilot order and midseason launch.

Oh, that's a mistake. After -- what was it, seven Charlie's Angels movie? That salt has lost its savor.

But there's one project that's screaming for these guys' revivalist touch: Riverdale. The world has been waiting for a moody, introspective Archie ("What's wrong, Archie?" says Veronica. "Why won't you ever let me inside?") and a Jughead with father issues ("Are you proud of me now, Dad?" he asks, forcing down another burger).

When people get sick of the primaries, Gough and Millar can zoom in on the peripheral characters. By 2013 viewers should be ready for the budding romance between Moose and Dilton.

If they have trouble getting it lit, five words: Mickey Rourke as Pop Tate.

Now, as a reward for wasting your time: Here's the entire Kurtzman/Elder "Starchie" comic. Also: their entire "Goodman Goes Playboy." And while we're at it, Goodman Beaver meets Superman! You're welcome!

ANNALS OF CONSERVATIVE VICTIMHOOD. The recent flotilla-killa mess brought us a new round of All-Youse-Liberals-R-Anti-Semites. It's not entirely fresh, but I wanted to make sure you saw Theodore Dalrymple's contribution to the genre, in his Pajamas Media defense of European banks against a Guardian columnist:

The article in the Guardian was therefore an exercise, not untypical of the genre, in scapegoating, that disregarded both the most obvious considerations and the deeper currents. In days gone by, it would have been the Jewish money-lenders who would have been blamed; to blame the banks seems so much more acceptable, generous, and liberal-minded, but the structure of the thought is similar.

So now, if you speak harsh words about anyone and some wingnut jumps out from behind a bush and yells "Anti-Semite," you'll know where he got it from.

Actually, Dalrymple's blargument closely resembles that advanced by many other conservatives this week: that if you make fun of Sarah Palin you are attacking all womankind.

It's the biggest gun in their arsenal anymore. When one of their young honkies was caught doing black dialect at CPAC, they demanded an apology -- from the reporter who pointed it out. When psychologists frowned on their gay-straightening rackets, they cried oppression. Even making jokes about them is wah, no fair.

Being a conservative these days is mostly about dishing out sob stories of your ill-treatment. They apparently intend to whine their way back into power.

UPDATE. In comments, herr doktor bimler: "So, [Dalrymple] is arguing that 'This banker-unfriendly talk makes me think of Jews and this is the fault of the liberals.' This is mendentious stuff, which is a combination of mendacious and tendentious but more intense than both."

TODAY'S RIGHTWING ALTERNATIVE HISTORY LESSON. In a post about Mitch Daniels' transparently insincere offer of a "truce" on social issues, Ramesh Ponnuru sighs over what might have been with... the Phil Gramm Presidential campaign.

I also can't help but think of Phil Gramm's presidential campaign in 1996. Like Daniels, Gramm was an enthusiastic budget-cutter. Concern about big government was running strong in the years just prior to that election. Gramm had a solid social-conservative record, but consciously chose not to campaign on it; he famously flew out to Colorado Springs to tell James Dobson, "I'm not a preacher." That approach helped to doom Gramm's campaign.

Actually Gramm's campaign was doomed by the fact that he made Boss Hogg look like John Kenneth Galbraith. I recall wondering in 1996 whether Gramm actually thought anyone outside Texas could tolerate him, or whether he was just padding his post-political resume. He was a miserable, unpleasant candidate who received a grand total of 71,456 primary votes, less than even the clinically mad Alan Keyes.

As to his stump style, I regret that I cannot remember the name of the writer who said that the bizarre rictus which overtook Gramm's face whenever he attempted to show amusement was like the stricken visage of a sufferer from gas pains.

And age hasn't improved him any:

PATIENCE MY ASS -- I'M GONNA KILL SOMETHING. "The incompetence of the Mexican government to handle corruption and criminality along the border has led to 'corrective action' before. The Mexicans need to get their house in order before a 21st Century America determines another punitive expedition is in order, and finds their own Patton to to cheer." -- Confederate Yankee on that kid the Border Patrol killed. (Later he says, "I find myself having less and less sympathy for Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka and his family..." which would be quite a trick.)

When they get back in power, though, I suppose Mr. Lost Cause will content himself with the Iran war he'll get instead.

SHORTER HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Obama and his Big Gummint are making the oil spill worse by usurping the authority of the Fritters, Louisiana Baywatch. The obvious solution is to get Big Gummint out of the way, and bring in the Burkean "little platoons" of the Dutch Government. Oh, and more offshore drilling, of course! (Pockets check.)

INVASION OF THE BULLSHIT SNATCHERS. Obama's approval rating hovers around 46 percent -- about where Reagan's was at this point in his first term. Naturally the Reagan-worshippers consider this disastrous for Obama. At the Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz hears "deepening notes of disenchantment," and attributes them to American's growing awareness that Obama is an alien.

An illegal alien, does she mean? Sort of.

Rabinowitz explains that people are not disappointed that Obama has not fixed the oil spill, but that he did not drape himself in the flag while hollering "Glory, Glory Hallelujah" (or maybe crooning "the oil has slipped the surly bonds of earth") as the poison spread:

For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill.

And there's a reason he didn't, and never could have done so, says Rabinowitz: Because Obama is not a true American:

What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.

Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.

See? Obama learned to talk purty, all right, but he can't say the magic words "tax cut," "states rights," or "Rumpelstiltskin."

A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.

That last bit is very cute (though we could expect no less from a master propagandist who raged and blubbered over victims of 9/11 but, when their widows stopped cooperating with the program, ignominiously cut them loose).

Not for Rabinowitz the trap of Birtherism, or even Birtherism With An Explanation -- for those rely upon phantom proofs which adherents believe reside in some undiscovered vault. No, better to say the President is an alien, which can never be proved or disproved.

You just have to sidle up to such weak-minded marks as read the Journal editorial pages, and say things like "Why do you suppose Obama didn't want the bust of Churchill in the White House?" and "Did you notice that Obama never says anything bad about Islam?" and "Why does he like those Mescans so much?" Never make a direct accusation that couldn't be explained away as a metaphor, should anyone call you on it.

But the marks whose minds have been roiled by this bullshit will take it as was intended to be taken. So what if no Kenyan birth certificate can be found? They'll know it explains the unsettled feeling they've had since they saw that un-American-looking guy take the Oath of Office.

True, the uninitiated won't get what they mean when they say Obama is an alien, but at least no one will call them a racist. (At least, no one who doesn't know them will.)

ARGUMENT FROM PATERNITY. Power Line:

William Shawcross is the son of Winston Churchill's lawyer, the prominent former Nuremberg prosecutor and Labor MP Sir Hartley Shawcross. He thus provides something of a living link to Churchill whom we are especially proud to claim as a friend of our site.... [skree, libs hate Jews, etc]

Two words come to mind: Paris Hilton.

I've always known that, though they like to pretend they're anti-elitist, they really just prefer a different kind of elitism. But I hadn't realized they meant it to be hereditary. Now cometh the time of the Reagan Grandchildren!