WHY DO THEY HATE AMERICA? Michael Walsh after the Supreme Court ruled on Obamacare:

It’s tough to accept that perhaps a majority of our fellow Americans would cheerfully trade liberty for a false sense of security.

Michael Walsh this week:

But if Romney thinks [Obama Alinksy blah blah is] going to enrage the good people of America, he’d better think again, and fast. Thanks to changing demographics, the Left’s relentless assault on the American educational system over the past half-century, and the Regressives’ control of the media, it’s an open question whether such folks are still a majority. 

Michael Walsh is very disappointed in you, America. But you still have a chance to get on his good side! He hasn't given up hope that you hate homosexuals as much as he does. All you have to do is find Walsh calling Rahm Emanuel "The Ballerina" hilarious, and he'll know you're regular. Why ain't ya laughing? Michael Walsh is very disappointed in you, America...

Elsewhere on the PR team, Bernard "Ask Me About Liberal Bias" Goldberg is wringing his hands about Mr. Obama's horrid Class War:

Will class warfare work?  Are there enough independent and undecided voters out there who will be seduced by the president’s arguments? 

“You’ll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” either P.T. Barnum or H.L Mencken said (even the experts aren’t sure which one said it).  The observation may be cynical, but either P.T. or H.L had a point.  So I’m not  at all sure the president’s latest foray in the war against the wealthy won’t work.

And Nick Gillespie, who was wearing black leather when you punks were in Pull-Ups, lectures the kids about the real enemy, their Boomer parents:

Take a break from getting yet another tattoo on your ass bone or your nipples pierced already! And STFU about the 1 Percent vs. the 99 Percent! 

You're not getting screwed by billionaires and plutocrats. You're getting screwed by Mom and Dad. 

Systematically and in all sorts of ways. Old people are doing everything possible to rob you of your money, your future, your dignity, and your freedom...

Except Nick -- he's the Randroid priest who can talk to kids. How can he miss with material like this: "C. Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennane put out a study for the Urban Institute last summer that should have caused far more riots than anything that happened at Zuccotti Park." Oh, and this: "You're the mark here, the chump who's believing in Bernie Madoff even after the grift has been revealed." Can he sell it or can he sell it?

People joke about Romney pandering, but with guys like this doing Bizarro World advance work for him, I can see why he's trying so hard to lighten things up.

Refresh my memory: Were we this obnoxious when we were losing?

TODAY'S CHILD OF ZHDANOV is one Lee Habeeb, who at National Review tells us all that Woody Guthrie was a commie so we all better stop liking his so-called songs. To this end Habeeb portrays a 2009 performance of "This Land is Your Land" in Washington, DC as a terrorist attack from beyond the grave:

As the event came to a close, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen led the crowd in a rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” a song most of us think we know, but don’t — a song we love, although we might not if we knew why the song was written and what the song is really about.

And what the man who wrote the song was about, too.

What most Americans don’t know is that Guthrie didn’t like Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” and wrote “This Land Is Your Land” as a rebuttal.

What most Americans also don’t know is that Guthrie didn’t like his own country and wanted to fundamentally transform it along the lines of his heroes, Marx and Lenin.

And what most Americans had never heard until that day in Washington, D.C., was a stanza that is typically left out of public presentations of “This Land Is Your Land” because it is so radical. The lines are as radical as the writer himself, who dedicated his life to the overthrow of capitalism and private-property rights.

Hope and change were in the air that cold winter day, and Seeger and Springsteen figured it was time for America to hear the rarely performed stanza.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me,
A great big sign there said, “private property”;
But on the back side, it didn’t say nothin’;
That side was made for you and me.

No wonder we’ve never heard that stanza. It changes Guthrie’s song from a celebration of America into a bitter indictment of a nation built on unjust private-property rights.

One of these days Habeeb is going to have to explain to us why no one ever sings the second, third, or fourth verses of "The Star Spangled Banner." I bet it's pretty nefarious.

Then Habeeb tells us more about how Woody Guthrie was a commie, and then the old story about how the Pilgrims learned communism was no good ("and there it ended, the American experiment with collectivism") -- at great and tedious length, maybe because,  dull as he is, even Habeeb began to sense that trying to lecture people out of liking music is totally insane.

But he does eventually come back to tell us who else not to like:

Guthrie was the first musical icon of the 20th century to make it cool to sing songs about the workers’ revolution, ushering in the later tunes of Phil Ochs; Joan Baez; Billy Bragg; Jackson Browne; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Green Day; and the Clash.

It no longer shocks me that such freaks at Habeeb exist, but I'm still not sure why venues such as National Review promote them instead of locking them in the attic. Aren't they interested in attracting normal people, who would recoil instinctively from anyone who buttonholed them in real life and started yelling, "You have to stop liking 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,' it's communist -- the Pilgrims knew"? Maybe they're given up, and want only a saving remnant of loons.   

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP about the Romney speech to the NAACP and the pleasure the brethren got out of it. Special Condi Rice kicker!

I couldn't find a spot in there for this thing by Lloyd Marcus, mainly because I thought it would take too long to explain him to outsiders, even if I included this video. For n00bs, Marcus is the Tea Party's most visible black figure (and visibility is crucial to that gig), and this is what he wrote at American Thinker this week:

NAACP Furthers Mission of KKK

 In the heat of passion during a radio interview, I said, "The NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus, and Democratic Party are more destructive to blacks than the KKK!"

After the radio show, I thought my statement may have been a bit over the top.  Upon further thought, though, I concluded that my statement is true.  Before calling me crazy, please hear me out.

Or you can just call him crazy right now and save yourself some time. In case you're disinclined to get out of the boat, here's the closing:

Proudly declared as an effort to assist black America, the Obama administration announced that it has softened the penalty for possession of crack cocaine. 

I suspect the KKK cheered, "Right on brothers!  Right on!"

I would suspect Marcus of being a double agent, except he seems like the type to go up to one of his employers and say, "Wait, are you my real boss or the guy I'm spying on?"

AND PEOPLE WONDER WHY I DRINK. Apologies for the paucity of posts this week. They've piled a ton of new work on me at my job (to "compensate" they've replaced some of my writing work with editing work, which they appear to believe is easy) and I seem to have a lot of side projects going.

But I'll be frank with you -- a lot of it is just malaise. Sometimes I just can't even, as the kids say. This election seems to have surpassed the last one for stupidity already, and it's only July. I mean, look at this thing from the wingnut meth labs of Lee Stranahan:

So, someone on Facebook posted the following picture showing Barack Obama apparently dressing the same as….Ann Romney. Who wore it best?

And DANG — it’s funny. I posted it to Twitter.

The President is wearing a blue striped shirt and white pants; Ann Romney is wearing a blue checked shirt and white pants. Which turn out to have been shorts, which just makes it funnier.

"FUN! RT @Stranahan: The Vetting Of The President’s Outfit: aka Mom-Jeans-Gate bit.ly/NsrFQx | New on my blog," tweets Sissy Willis. If you look up "Obama mom jeans" on Twitter, you will see this has now become a full-blown thing ("@DurrantMark: Given how he throws a baseball and his affinity for mom jeans, I think Obama wants to make history again by becoming the 1st woman president").

It makes one long for the quiet dignity of the Bush-Gore debates.

WHITE MAN'S BURBLE. Been awfully busy. I hear Mitt Romney spoke to the NAACP. How'd it go, Darleen Click?

If nothing else, Romney has demonstrated how so many American blacks are willing to betray the work of the Civil Rights movement in order to be taken care of by Master in the Big White House.

OK, I see I didn't miss anything: Among the brethren, the preordained message is that if black folks don't like Romney, it's all black people's fault. Tom Robberson at the Dallas Morning News:

When the NAACP boos Romney as he’s speaking, they demean the political process and they send a strong message to Republicans: Don’t even try to talk to us because we’re not going to listen. That’s how you write yourself off the political agenda and guarantee that your issues receive back-burner status should the opposition make it into the White House or Congress.

Funny, in their Tea Party mode these guys are all about how We The People are in charge and those durned politicians are working for us, not the other way around. Robberson seems to think it's We the People who work for the politicians when We the People aren't white. Actually I doubt he thinks of them as We, at that. And from the general "good for him, telling off those nih[clang]"  line among the rightbloggers, Robberson seems to have plenty of company. Jamelle Bouie called it.


Oh, hold on -- Dan Riehl:

Boston black leader backs Romney at NAACP gathering

The saving remnant! That man may be lonely but he'll never miss a meal. 

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about rightblogger reactions to the death of Andy Griffith. You know the drill.

CATCHING ON. Here's the latest horseshit from BuzzFeed:

The New Obama Typeface: Revolution Gothic
A source points out that President Barack Obama's new typeface is Revolution Gothic, a style inspired by retro Cuban propaganda posters. Who vets the fonts?

So far so Drudge. But, to my delight, this is immediately followed by the Obama camp response:

(Obama press secretary Ben LaBolt emails: “Your GOP operative should have had the courtesy to stay sober before noon, and BuzzFeed should go back to labeling cat slideshows.”)

I hope this perfectly sensible and hilarious reply catches on and the Democrats eventually start responding to all this stupid shit with an animated gif of Joe Biden giving the jerk-off salute.

CHACUN À SON GOÛT.  Michael Walsh likes Paul Ryan as Romney's VP:

...he speaks in the cadences of a younger America; he’s like a Quentin Tarantino character come to life, minus the profanity. Obama’s manufactured persona extends down to his mannered way of speaking, with the dropped “g’s” and the use of the word “folks,” but Ryan’s hip, rapid-fire staccato is the real thing.

You mean this guy?



He's like a mortician who went into life insurance sales without retraining.

Why might Walsh see Ryan as more hipsterrific than Obama?

Second — the deal clincher — is that Ryan is not afraid of Obama. Born in 1970, Ryan’s not dragging around any sixties baggage or angst or animus; he came of age during the Reagan administration and radiates some of the Gipper’s Sunny Jim optimism. Plus, he’s already shown he can take a punch from the president, who clearly fears him:

In this context, the only meaning I can discern in "not dragging around any sixties baggage or angst or animus" is that Walsh believes Ryan is not ascared to be called racist because Reagan, and his example will lift the people out of their terror of the Afro overlord.

Style isn't much, but when you're reimagining GOP stiffs as Tarantino hepcats* whom people will like better than Barack Obama, you don't even know what style is.

* though I can see Ryan offering America a watch he's had up his ass for two years. 

SEX MAD. This is one of those post-modern stories where we start with the bloody, chaotic finale  --

We social conservatives hold the line on same-sex marriage not because we think it is more destructive than abortion and no-fault divorce (obviously it is not) but because all of these trends are rooted in the same destructive ideological and spiritual impulses that lead us to discard natural law, privilege adult wants over all other values, and erase even our most long-held liberties in the name of sexual desire.

-- and, working our way backwards, try to answer the question: Just how could this character, or anyone, become convinced that homosexuals and fornicators are conspiring to "erase even our most long-held liberties in the name of sexual desire"?

It's a losing battle. The perpetrator is National Review's David French, a nut. Recall him in May shaking his fist at Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the wicked Supreme Court condemned America to freely-available birth control: "Think for a moment of the awesome power of the sexual revolution over law and logic," thundered French. "Is there a single legal doctrine that can stand against the quest for personal sexual fulfillment?" Recall also his 2011 stab at Kim du Toit butchliness, in which he told us that, due to a "collaboration between radical feminism and a particularly sappy and sentimental Christianity... the ideal man becomes—in many essential ways—a woman: emotionally available, always eager to talk, never afraid to shed a tear, and ready, willing, and able to shoulder the household workload."

So we're never going to get a coherent narrative out of this. But we can at least get this frisson: It turns out French's premise is loonier than his conclusion. It's not merely or even mainly the removal of legislative chains from their straining libidos,  nor a perverse desire to destroy David French's liberty, that has all these homos and heteros getting it on with such ferocity.

The Sexual Revolution Depends on Big Government

I ain't even kidding.

Our fatherless kids are being fed breakfast, lunch, and sometimes now even a school dinner, and why not ban Happy Meals if there’s no competent parent around to say “no”? In fact, much of the apparatus of state entitlement is built around the presumption that citizens should enjoy a certain standard of living regardless of their personal choices and conduct.

If citizens were forced to bear more of the weight of their sexual decisions, would those decisions be different?

Were ours again a godly Republic, wastrels such as these would be starving, unable to summon the energy to stiffen or lubricate, much less mount. But like an indulgent parent, Big Government willfully feeds them till, fattened into strapping bucks and welfare queens, they fuck till freedom is no more. (Presumably some of them got a little extra feed, went totally nuts and demanded gay marriage.) This must be why Michelle Obama wants them to eat fresh vegetables -- once they're full of spinach, their genitals will engorge like Popeye's forearms, and their jackhammer couplings will shake America to its very foundations!

This brings to mind a lovely story told by Danny Hutton of Three Dog Night in the Brian Wilson doc, I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, about the night he and Iggy Stooge went over to Wilson's and the addled Beach Boy had them singing "Shortnin' Bread" for over an hour. Hutton says Iggy turned to him and said, "I'm gettin' out of here -- this guy's nuts!" I like to imagine Robert George saying that about French.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT AMERICA. I hope you're enjoying your Glorious 4th. Let's see how some of the brethren have chosen to commemorate it. Here's Scott Johnson at Power Line, reflecting on the Lincoln-Douglas debates:

In that speech Lincoln had famously asserted that the nation could not exist “half slave and half free.” According to Douglas, Lincoln’s assertion was inconsistent with the “diversity” in domestic institutions that was “the great safeguard of our liberties.” Then as now, “diversity” was a shibboleth hiding an evil institution that could not be defended on its own terms.

Look beyond the outrage against common sense, and you may see that when Johnson associates "diversity" (i.e., black people getting a break) with the white supremacist Douglas, that is itself a tribute to diversity. Is it not wonderful that our marketplace of ideas has room even for such humble sellers of cracked pottery as Johnson who, in a less generous society, would be shunted off to street-corners, there to gibber on soapboxes? Johnson too is part of our beautiful rainbow.

You might say the same of Breitbrats, as shown by their headline today:

GOOGLE CHOOSES COMMUNIST-ORIENTED ‘THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND’ JULY 4TH THEME

I feel for them. I went to Bing, hoping for their sake it was blasting "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue," but it showed the Empire State Building -- its lights were red, white, and blue, sure, but it's still a symbol of New York, the capital of commies. One of their commenters seems to get it:

Isn't it Bing a Bill Gates/Microsoft creation, another liberal and global government tool or fool (it's all the same to me)?

And at Forbes, where the mere fact that bankers have not hung rotting from lampposts since 2008 should be sufficient cause for holiday joy, Bill Frezza yells at the "majority of Americans" who "now subscribe to an expansive view of government as both great provider and beneficent leveler..." He goes on:

Little by little, the home of the brave and the land of the free has become a nation of rent-seeking dependents clamoring for their share of state largess. Even before the latest entitlement blowout called Obamacare, we crossed the line where more than half of Americans receive some kind of assistance from the government every month, paid for by the fewer than half that still pay income taxes. As we move into the future and the number of dependents grows while the taxpayer pool shrinks, we call the result social justice rather than its old name: theft...

If we were still a nation capable of shame with enough intellectual integrity to call things as they are, if we hadn’t debauched our language as badly as our currency, if we had the courage to look in the mirror and see how woefully we have squandered our Founders’ legacy, this Fourth of July would be a day not of celebration but of atonement.

That Frezza is comfortable spitting on the country that keeps him in broadband is further testimony to our nation's spirit of toleration. In that sense dissent truly is the highest form of patriotism -- and it's even better when wingnuts are the unwitting exemplars of it.

Ready to go, willing to stay and pay (U.S.A.! U.S.A.!) 

UPDATE. Ed Kilgore's got the right idea: "I’m no longer going to quietly accept lectures on patriotism from people who hate my country because they don’t rule it and my vote is equal to theirs."

UPDATE 2. On the other hand, conservatives don't like it when someone else does the dissenting -- like Chris Rock, who tweeted, "Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren't free but I'm sure they enjoyed fireworks." That charmer Robbie Cooper at Urban Grounds responds, "You are free to pack you shit and move back to Africa at any time," and quotes a bunch of white people who also don't appreciate Rock's lack of gratitude. At least Cooper is clear -- I'm still trying to figure out Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft's response: "Without the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and Declaration the United States would be a completely different country today." Indeed them was!

UPDATE 3. I don't know why, but I got the feeling I should look in on Jeff Godlstein and see what he was doing for the 4th. This, it turns out:

July fundraiser [sticky; new posts below; JULY 4 UPDATE]...

update: Thanks again to all who’ve contributed. I’m about half-way to my goal this month — which, with my pittance from Google ads, means I’m about half-way to the pistol I’ve decided on, the FN FNP 45 Tactical (with a Trijicon dual illumination amber MOA 7 sight)...

On Independence Day, it’s heartening to think that I’ll soon be taking advantage of one of our true remaining rights and arming myself and my family.

Again, thank you all for your continued support of the site. If you can manage it this month, I’d appreciate the consideration, because this arming the family thing is not cheap, and — despite what Obama might say — I’m not one of the “rich.” I just don’t collect government money. And there used to be a difference…

Can't wait for the next announcement! Maybe it'll come from the local PD.

DON'T LOOK. Following up of the loony rightwing reactions to the Obamacare decision, I see the CBS story about it has engendered a new outrage -- over the fact that John Roberts reads newspapers. National Review's Avik Roy:

Did Roberts Cave To Left-Wing Media Pressure?...

Perhaps, the next time a Republican president nominates a Supreme Court justice, he should make the candidate swear to never pick up a newspaper.

The bottom line, if Jan Crawford is right, is that conservative justices can be blackmailed by left-wing editorialists. It’s not a pretty picture.

I'm often amazed by the superhuman powers conservatives ascribe to the media -- corrupts our youth, brainwashes the sheeple, etc. -- but this is the first time I've seen one of them describe the mere viewing of contrary opinions as "blackmail." Roy really seems to think that if the Chief Justice of the United States sees an op-ed in the Times he'll not only be so confused he can't rule straight - he'll also feel as if he has to do what the op-ed says or something terrible will happen. Maybe this is how that alleged Obama threat against Roberts' children was supposed to work: Through coded messages in newspapers. We're through the looking-glass here, people!

Epistemic closure? We didn't know the half of it.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, several hours early because our power went out and I have to do all my internet at safe houses out in the sticks. (Thanks, Kia's cousin Felita!) As some of you have already guessed, it's on the Obamacare decision, and it's extra-long and packed with stupid.

I still had to cut stuff, so here are some outtakes. First, one of the more fevered contributions to the mass rightblogger analysis of John Roberts (Is he Benedict Arnold, or Bill Holden in Stalag 17?), from Start Thinking Right and called "Why Did John Roberts Play Brutus In The Shakespearean Tragedy Of ObamaCare?" (Update: Aw, shoot -- that one's actually in the column. Oh well, relive those glorious seconds here!) 

Chief Justice John Roberts, to his great personal disgrace, put the 'reputation' of the Supreme Court ahead of the law, the Constitution, and the nation... Call it the Stockholm Syndrome, which amounts to the desire for a captive to please the terrorists in order to stay alive.

So that's why Roberts blinks so much -- it's Morse Code hostage messages! (This 2,446-word item ends, "the beast will come.  When he does America will vote for him.  And then worship him.  And then take his mark.  And then burn in hell forever and ever.")

On the more housebroken tip, there's Jeffrey H. Anderson at PJ Media, telling us "Obama Distorted the Obamacare Ruling" by referring to it as the Affordable Care Act -- not because this  elides the full name of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but because everyone Anderson knows calls it Obamacare. I expect Anderson also complains when the Democrat Party calls itself the "Democratic Party." I mean, who do they think they're fooling?


UPDATE. Since I gave you a repeat here I guess I owe you another outtake. Andrew C. McCarthy:

Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court decided that Americans have no right to due process. Indeed, the Court not only upheld a fraud perpetrated on the public — it became a willing participant. 

Whereas if the Court decided that they could instead haul the American People off to secret prisons and torture them, that would be fine by McCarthy.  He's a cop who plays by the rules, so long as they're not in the Geneva Conventions. 

UPDATE. Bad links fixed.

DON'T BLAME ME, I VOTED FOR SINGLE PAYER. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for the ACA, a dog's breakfast of industry bribes that enables minimal coverage for all Americans, I have been enjoying the weeping of the wingnuts. I'm keeping my powder mostly dry for Sunday night's Voice column, but here's one of my current favorites: Paul Krugman wrote a typically reasonable column about the ACA, calling it "an act of human decency that is also fiscally responsible. " Near the end he says,

But what was and is really striking about the anti-reformers is their cruelty. It would be one thing if, at any point, they had offered any hint of an alternative proposal to help Americans with pre-existing conditions, Americans who simply can’t afford expensive individual insurance, Americans who lose coverage along with their jobs. But it has long been obvious that the opposition’s goal is simply to kill reform, never mind the human consequences. We should all be thankful that, for the moment at least, that effort has failed.

This is how libertarian T.P. Carney, whose sad case we have considered before, reacted:

The butthurt is strong with this one.

SHORTER NICK GILLESPIE: How about if we call them "Food Stamp Queens" instead? Maybe then people won't notice we're assholes.

IT'S A SMALL WORLD. At National Review, Kevin D. Williamson snarls at the proles and their déclassé leader:

Could somebody please get Barack Obama to shut up about “outsourcing” until some undergraduate aide has explained to him what the word means? As it stands, the president is showing himself an ignorant rube on the subject, and that is to nobody’s advantage. 

The Obama campaign, as you probably know, has been running ads denouncing Mitt Romney’s role at Bain Capital, in which Romney made various business deals that had the effect of making a whole lot of money for Bain’s customers while also allowing a lot of dirty foreigners to eat, and God knows the world would be better off if a billion-some Chinese were hungry and desperate, that being an obvious recipe for global stability.

I think there must be some small, special sub-audience at rightwing publications, possibly comprising Megan McArdle and a couple of her commenters, who think that normal Americans watching their jobs and their whole economy circle the drain should give a shit about the Chinese the way rich investors do.

Because the Obama campaign knows that one of its most important constituencies is economically illiterate yokels — a demographic to which the president himself apparently belongs — it is on the airwaves claiming “Romney’s never stood up to China — all he’s ever done is send them our jobs.’’ (Whose?)

"Whose?" You know, to people like this, Americans today are like Mau Maus, Apaches, or any other dispossessed indigenous peoples; when they demand back what was theirs, the Williamsons snort and wonder how these wretches could possibly claim such a right --  was it they, after all, who built this perfectly lovely foreign office, pavilion, and fountain? Well, maybe their labor built it, but the thinking was all the colonizers' -- all the wretches did before was live on it, fulfilling in no way the demands of global capital. "Whose?"

What Williamson's defending is well-explained in BusinessWeek, where they don't have to try as hard to bullshit anyone. The magazine discusses the trend away from sending jobs to India (you will note they use "offshoring" and "outsourcing" more or less interchangeably):

[Latin America and eastern Europe] are challenging the subcontinent’s dominance in outsourcing as American corporations increasingly ship higher-level jobs offshore. India had substantial advantages in offshoring’s first phase: plenty of English speakers to staff call centers and enough tech talent to run remote data-processing and computer support centers—all at about a 60 percent discount to stateside workers. But having wrung substantial costs out of back-office functions, U.S. companies are exporting skilled white-collar jobs in research, accounting, procurement, and financial analysis. 

Because these jobs aren’t mass-processing functions, India’s forte, there are greater opportunities for countries such as Argentina and Poland, which have higher labor costs than India. Using an outsourcing firm to hire an entry-level accountant in Argentina, for example, costs 13 percent less than a similar U.S. worker, while an Indian worker would cost 51 percent less. But many employers moving higher-end jobs offshore care about more than just getting the lowest wage. “The higher-value outsourcing jobs require a greater understanding of business context and a higher amount of interaction with clients,” says Phil Fersht, chief executive officer of HfS Research, a Boston outsourcing research firm. 

Cities such as São Paulo have large groups of young people with engineering and business school degrees who speak English and are capable of doing everything from developing video games to analyzing mortgage defaults for U.S. companies...

In other words, having laid waste to American blue-collar jobs with cheap equivalents overseas, they plan to do the same with executive and even lower-management functions. (C-suite types, of course, needn't worry.) You have to spend a bit more up front, but in the long run it's worth it! 

The same people who used to bitch about foreign aid are now telling us we should be happy that our livelihoods have been wealth-extracted, because some of the skim went to workers in other countries. Are these fuckers still wearing American flag pins? The things should be setting their lapels on fire.

UPDATE. Some commenters recognize Williamson's POV as a libertarian schtick. Yes, it is -- see McMegan Junior Grade Katherine Mangu-Ward sneering at protectionists who "make the case that American jobs are intrinsically better or more valuable than Chinese jobs" and their "skewed, provincial view of the world."

Bonus it-figures from Mangu-Ward's item: "Matt Yglesias blogs about the story here, and his analysis is spot on." Yglesias, whom Chuck Gilligan more recently finds defending Apple's $22,800/yr as the correct wage for "geniuses" (those of us who are not geniuses will of course have to make do with less), will in the Romney Administration join the New York Times as its token liberal columnist.

SHORTER ROGER L. SIMON: Home? I have no home. Hunted, despised, Living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I will show the world that I can be its master! I will perfect my own race of people. A race of conservative filmmakers which will conquer the world! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, following some of the more miserable rightblogger Pride Week posts. The Rod Dreher one is a pip -- a long passive-aggressive whine about how unfair it is that the New York Times is nice to gay people, and Rod Dreher has to put up with it week after week because the New York Post is a piece of shit. I couldn't get too deep into it, or I would have included this:

The point is, even though its fortunes have been diminished over the past decade, as have the fortunes of all newspapers, the Times has unparalleled power because it has the attention of elite opinionmakers. Media bias exists not in telling people what to believe, but in framing the context for which an event or phenomenon can be understood. A paper as powerful as the Times may never tell its readers that America should go to war with Freedonia, but if it devotes hugely disproportionate coverage to the wickedness of Freedonia, and the noble efforts of anti-Freedonia Americans, then we should not be surprised when public opinion moves steadily in favor of war with Freedonia. All decent people support war with Freedonia, right? What kind of unpatriotic Americans oppose war with the wicked, liberty-hating Freedonians? You see how this goes.

That's one hell of an example. I know the Times has supported imperialism in its own way many times, but given that at the start of the last big war, when you could at least hear some dissenting voices at the Times, Dreher was all in for the big win, that takes balls, or whatever Dreher has instead of balls.

SHORTER BYRON YORK: Obama didn't like the dull, soul-sucking corporate job he briefly held before devoting his life to public service, whereas Mitt Romney loved the choice gigs to which his status as the son of a governor entitled him, and firing people. I think we know which candidate Americans will relate to. [pushes in nose, rolls out lower lip, sticks out tongue]

JESUS, FREAK. Mmm, that was a nice dinner. Wonder if there's something about the Terrible Obamatyranny of Birth Control for Catholics at National Review this evening... Oh, here we are, Michael Potemra:

The U.S. publication of the new biography Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel, by John Guy, could not be more fortunately timed: The recent controversy over the changing of HHS rules in a way that erodes previous protections for religious freedom has put the issue of church-state conflict near the top of the American agenda.

I wonder if they'll use this as a book cover blurb.

We all grew up with the story of the angry King Henry II thundering to his associates, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” As Guy points out, this phrasing is apocryphal. More reliable reports render what the king said as follows...

I see Potemra's a student of Amity Shlaes' "when in doubt, pad it out" journalistic method.

King Henry’s men got the message. (Which, incidentally, makes the assassination of Becket the first recorded instance of an executive-ordered drone strike against a domestic opponent.)

Seen a certain way, the graduation of Potemra from Catholic torture enthusiast ("Was it appropriate for a Catholic TV network to provide a platform for a torture advocate? In my view, the answer is yes") to opponent of drone strikes would be an advance. But that would presuppose you could believe anything Potemra says about morality.

The fate of the four assassins offers a cautionary tale about power and loyalty. Far from rewarding their deed, King Henry soon turned on them, and they ended their lives in exile; in the words of a chronicler cited by Guy, they “spent out their lives” in the East, “in fasting, vigils, prayers, and lamentations.” Just two decades after their assassination of Becket, a visitor to Jerusalem found their graves there, with the epitaph “Here lie those wretches who martyred the Blessed Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury.”

Like I said, these guys are all about wish fulfillment. The Administration moves heaven and earth, so to speak, to provide contraception to non-observant employees of Catholics without requiring the Church to pay for it, and Potemra, having expanded this in his mind to an assault on his religion, warns by dire insinuation that all who serve the tyrant Obama -- yea, even unto Kathleen Sebelius! -- will be exiled and buried in unconsecrated ground.

Well, to each his own historical fantasies; I would rather fast forward some centuries to the day Henry VIII finally threw the Whore of Babylon out of England. Good times!  And Harry the Eight lies in St. George's Chapel, Windsor.

DO WE HAVE TO BRING HIM? It's charming that Chris Christie likes to go to Springsteen concerts, and it speaks well of him that he can enjoy the concerts despite disagreeing with Springsteen on matters of politics, an admirable trait well beyond the reach of Max Boot and a million other miserable kulturkampfers. Where it all goes wrong in Jeffrey Goldberg's essay is here:

Christie believes fiercely that Springsteen would understand him if he only made the effort.

As would Princess Leia, no doubt.

But here’s what I told him I imagine Springsteen might ask: “Governor, do you really believe it’s a level playing field? Do you really believe that marginalized people even have access to opportunity?”

“Look,” Christie said to the imaginary Springsteen...

I have an overactive, indeed feverish, imagination, but I stopped pretending to challenge my artist heroes like this when I was a little boy. The "I bet if I said to him" style is not exalted by application to rock stars. I love Evelyn Waugh and even if given the opportunity (e.g., in hell) would not dream of trying to talk him out of being Evelyn Waugh so he could reform and spread the good word about single payer. There really is a difference between a nerd and a dork.

Much as I dislike Christie, I blame Goldberg for this. He's insufferable. He seems genuinely hurt on the Governor's behalf that "Springsteen studiously ignores Christie at shows" and that Springsteen "doesn’t seem to care that Christie is the sort of Republican many Democrats find appealing." He bets Springsteen is "confused" that his fans vote for Christie, as he does not have the sophisticated electoral analytic skills of Jeffrey Goldberg at his disposal. (Here's his resume, though!) Plus this:

I asked him if he thought Springsteen was a hypocrite. This suspicion has scratched at me ever since my discovery, a dozen years ago, while visiting Boston to interview one of his guitarists, Steven Van Zandt, that Springsteen and his band had parked themselves at the Four Seasons.

Christie tells him off there, and probably enjoyed having a straight man set him up for his subsequent rant about bootstrap economics. Which, along with Goldberg's opportunity to get funky with a rightwing heartthrob, is really the only reason why this extended bro-hug exists.

UPDATE. Lovely comments. whetstone asks why I disliked Goldberg's article: "I thought rich asshole boomers Jeffrey Goldberg and Chris Christie having a Civics 101 dialogue with Invisible Bruce Springsteen while waiting, pining for their hero to toss a sweaty bandana their way was exactly the Waiting For Godot 21st-century America deserves." You know, I can't argue with that.

Several commenters share Keith's intuition that "so many Republicans have this unspoken assumption that all rich people should vote for them, and that the ones who don't are hypocrites or class traitors." Well, yes. The other latest culture-war boohoo is that Jon Stewart is rich yet he "openly criticizes, condemns and mocks rich Americans," which of course is hypocrisy. I don't know why these guys don't choose literacy as their standard for hypocrisy instead: "Jon Stewart knows how to read and write, yet he attacks Mitt Romney, who also knows how to read and write. What a phony!" That would leave Jonah Goldberg as the only one above suspicion.

I could fill the page with your genius, but No More Mister Nice Blog also had a good swipe at Goldberg's essay and his commenter Victor's reaction should be backed up:

"I compartmentalize," Christie says.

I guess that's what happens when you have 4 stomachs.