FOLKS, FOLLOW YOUR INSTINCT ON THIS ONE. Paul Ryan's a punk, and Joe Biden's treating him like one.

UPDATE. Really, no matter how the Villagers react to this, it is a great pleasure to watch someone just laugh at this bullshit -- and heckle it!

I mean, when you have reactions like this...

... you know you're making the clowns sad.

UPDATE 2. I mean, Ryan's transparently full of shit. Here he is talking about "fighting seasons" and "the pass filling with snow." I guess he saw Iron Eagle once. And when he gets peppy it's just repulsive. He swings his head around like a grounded teenager who can't be-leeeeve what a douche Dad is being.

UPDATE 3. Aaaagh, Ryan is turning his puppy-dog eyes and insurance-salesman schtick directly toward the camera now. If people ain't barfing this isn't the country I thought it was.

UPDATE 4. I was stupid enough to watch this debate but not stupid enough to watch the rabid apes who do TV commentary afterwards. However, the Twitter machine tells me the GOP/Villager line is that Biden was rude to Ryan. Rude is more than Ryan deserves. He's lucky to walk out of there without a pierced ear.

I could say something substantial about the whole thing but I've already written about Ryan's granny-starving and the affection it engenders among the brethren. It's been a long hard day, I deserve a break, and TV wrestling's not what it used to be.

UPDATE 5. In comments, Batocchio:

Civility has its place, but honesty over civility, accuracy over politeness. Alternatively, if you define "civility" in part as showing respect for the truth, a liar has broken the implicit contract of the debate/discussion, and as a moral matter should be called out. (Not that that happens much in the Village, but boy, it's awesome when it does.)

Every politician -- well, every successful one -- fudges the truth a bit, but Ryan is such a three-shift lie factory that to mock and deride him is not only a pleasure but also a duty. I may be too forgiving of Joe Biden's type of malarkey, not only because I wear a Team Blue jacket, but also because it's old-fashioned (In fact I don't think I've heard the word "malarkey" spoken aloud since I was a boy), and judge Ryan more harshly (you can't judge him too harshly) because his lies are delivered with the cold efficiency of slaughterhouse machinery. But that's okay; the victory of the human is welcome however it comes; I prefer Spencer Tracy's Frank Skeffington to his Nixon manqué opponent Kevin McCluskey in The Last Hurrah, too.

ADVICE FROM A FAN. Andrew Sullivan:

Adjustment to NYC is a process. A really long, exasperating, draining process. Do you just have to harden yourself to live as if this is normal? Or will it get better? Please tell me it gets better.

No, it doesn't get better. It's always difficult and if you're used to living in a sleepy southern town where a plurality of the tiny population kisses your ass, you will find the general indifference of New York to your enormous self-regard maddening. And if you're used to dawdling along the sidewalk waiting for some Congressional aide to recognize you, you'll get knocked over by someone hurrying to get to a minimum-wage job. Now why don't you go find Martin Amis out at his $2.5 million brownstone in prelapsarian Brooklyn and talk about the damn Mooslims until you feel better? Only make sure you take the number of a car service for the ride home, because the streets are full of damned Mooslims and once they find out you're here they'll swarm you screaming Allah Akbar and saw your stupid head off.

Oh, and Sully, here's someone who had an actual hard time with her apartment in New York. But, to be fair, maybe her wireless service was better than yours.

Christ Jesus what a privileged fucking simp.

TWO, THREE, MANY LOOKING-GLASSES. As I've been noticing every time I pick her stuff up for the Rightblogger columns, Jennifer Rubin has of late lost contact with the earth's gravitational pull. Her latest column on "Obama cultists’ crack-up" (published by the Washington Post, a known liberal media truth-silencing operation) is intemperate even by her usual standards, but deep under the sea of foam and spittle is a wonderful specimen of reverse logic that should be dredged up for public inspection:

The left, as I suggested, may soon (if not before the election, than certainly after if he loses) reach the point in which Obama is trashed to save liberalism. It is not, the left tells us, the Keynesian record of failure that was to blame for the debate wipeout; rather it was Obama’s cruddy performance. It’s not that liberalism lacks a reform agenda that is both feasible and politically popular, you see. No, the problem was that Obama didn’t shout “Liar!” loudly enough.

Most of us who are over ten years old will remember George W. Bush and John McCain, the former of whom has been rendered invisible by the party he lately led (at least John Kerry got to go to conventions), and the latter of whom has been a curse on wingnuts' lips since May 2008 at least for failing to wear the corpse of Reagan and yell "Wolverines." If someone's trashing candidates for failing an ideology, it ain't us.

We've come to an especially weird phase in a very weird campaign in which the guy who claimed the Obama-leading poll results of a few weeks back were "skewed" and made up his own re-weighted polls to contradict them now says the new Romney-leading poll results are proof that he was right, as the polls "are rapidly becoming less skewed precisely because I exposed them for being skewed via my web site." As delusions of grandeur go, that's world class.

The weirdest part is, they're getting crazier when they're ahead. It's almost as if some part of them believes that even victory will not be enough -- that they could be borne through the streets of the capital in thrones made from the skulls of their enemies, and the thought that someone somewhere might continue to disagree with them will yet vex them into madness. I'm not sure it's really a political movement anymore; increasingly it resembles a mass psychosis.

COUNTERCULTURE. Press release in the mail today:

A Thrill Ride For Patriots

Spring, TX, October 8, 2012 – Sometimes you just have to take a stand. Our country first learned this through the American Revolution, and a stubborn insistence on liberty is the hallmark of patriots to the present day. Telling that story in all its many forms is bound to be exciting and inspirational. In Patriots of Treason ( AKA-Publishing), David Thomas Roberts bursts into the political thriller genre with style and passion. 

A nation in crisis. A president of division. A deadlocked Congress. The United States is on the brink of civil war — again. Only a courageous federal whistleblower, an ordinary Texan and a governor who won’t tolerate the shredding of the Constitution can thwart an evil conspiracy by the federal government. 

An incumbent minority president, losing at the polls in his re-election bid due to the economy, gas prices and scandals in his administration, pulls an “October Surprise” that swings the election. An assassination attempt creates the perfect scapegoat — the Tea Party — through a deceit so well disguised that it comes dangerously close to succeeding. 

But, like patriots before them, some won’t stand for it. Some will become Patriots of Treason. Taut and suspenseful, readers will just have to hang on and ride to the end for a surprising conclusion.

Interesting, if a little derivative. Maybe it will make Camille Paglia less gloomy about the arts.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about how delighted rightbloggers were about the Denver debate, and how sad they were that America's employment numbers had improved -- until they decided Hilda Solis Lies, and so cheered themselves up. See, this is why conservatives are happier than liberals.

NO F.A.I.R. Anne Sorock* of Legal Insurrection:

The “fact-check” segment has replaced the unbiased network farce as a way to pull for candidates without seeming to. It’s an attempt to regain the lost respect by cloaking bias by calling it fact. Do a google search for “fact check debate” and you’ll see all the news outlets in line with the same message: Politico, Huffington Post, ABC, Salon…. Quite amazing message pull-through, really.

Yeah, it's amazing fact-checkers would come to similar conclusions. Maybe these guys got a mistaken idea of what fact-checking is from their 9/11 glory days, when "fact-check your ass" meant "the internet is a great marketing opportunity for niche vendors of bullshit."

UPDATE. Originally had the author as William Jacobson -- thanks, commenter D. Johnston, for fact-checking my ass.

MILE HIGH. The undead Jim Lehrer has made the final selections. Let the blood feast begin!

9:05. Aw, what a nice husband. Tough crowd!

9:06. "Skew toward the wealthy" vs. "Education and training." Well, I'm sold.

9:09. The economy is a tender topic. Someone asked Romney for help. Did he give them a dollar? No, it will take a different path. One with five different parts. Four million jobs with energy! And the best schools in the world! And small business! Mitt Romney hires people. So no, ladies, no dollar for you. Oh, and no abortions.

9:09. The Crypt-Keeper caught that trickle-down thing. Is Marlin Fitzwater still alive? Must be shitting a brick.

9:10. Governor Romney and Barack Obama agree.

9:11. Oh no, are we still doing the note-writing thing? Or was Romney just checking his nails?

9:12. Mitt Romney doesn't have a tax cut. On that scale. And Paul Ryan will be President, again. Now Obama's checking his nails. Bad idea to have a manicurist on site.

9:15. Aha, oil and gas are up -- but on private land! Ha ha, private wins. They'll give us all coal, but they'll wash it first, so it'll be clean, like the lettuce you buy in bags.

9:16. The battle of the tax cuts is very gentlemanly so far. Barack Obama's some socialist, huh?

9:17. Jim is having trouble telling the President to shut up.

9:18. He's having trouble telling Romney, too. No tax cut that adds to the deficit? I thought you were a Republican. Hmmph! But you do have five boys. And they LIE.

9:20. 54% of these people are not taxed at the corporate rate. How do they live? Oh oh, Obama brought up math. Romney will have to bring up geography, maybe recess. I see Obama's still cutting taxes. We'll all be living tax-free, eventually. Now a Clinton shout. Boy, that speech was something, huh? Ah, new "definition of small business." A socialist one. It doesn't include Donald Trump, who is calling in favors now, demanding to be allowed to attend the next debate from a giant desk at the back of the stage, with a gong or buzzer.

9:23. Romney said Obama was right about something. What a gent! But now he's telling us the President wants this guy in St. Louis to go from 35% to 40% in taxes. And that's over 50% if you're in St. Louis and you know Mitt Romney. Jobs! Jobs! Did you all catch that? Balanced budget, yeah sure, but jobs.

9:24. Obama can say "trillions" with a straight face. Oh he's good. Also, he's juuuuust starting to get into the Bush years. If Romney doesn't behave he'll bring out that Bush impersonator who used to be so popular on Leno.

9:25. Romney should have demanded a microphone. A second microphone, because he can afford it. Well, he got to talk more, and give us some more of that high-speed accounting yak that will sweep him to victory... oh wait, food stamps! You hear that, North Carolina? [cameras shows white hands crumpling transcript]

9:28. Romney has math too: Either you raise taxes, cut spending, or you "grow the economy." Surprise! There is an easy solution! He'll cut Obamacare! And Jim Lehrer! I'm kinda warming to him. AND... he's going to combine some agencies. That sounds cool. I'd like to see Defense and the National Endowment for the Arts combined into some kind of Voltron of bombs and urine-soaked crucifixes.

9:30. Obama cut stuff too, like war and ignorance. Hmm, that sounds reasonable. Oh, and Eisenhower. And look, Obama knows he's doing well in this great country of ours. He must be hoping Romney will tell us all we're 47% again.

9:31. I support Simpson Bowles for someone else. Yeah, yeah, I took care of that. Oh yeah, well you created a bunch of debt. People don't understand that I'm a tax-cutter and he's raising taxes, albeit hypothetical, and it's killing people in the future, like in 12 Monkeys.

9:34. Romney doesn't want to go down the path to Spain, unless it goes to Majorca on a private yacht.

9:36. Romney = ExxonMobil and corporate jets. And shipping jobs overseas. Romney smiles, realizing that if he loses he can bathe in the blood of his Vietnamese slaves, so who needs it.

9:38. America was not built on ten-year-old schoolbooks. If the schoolbook lobby is screwed, we're all screwed.

9:39. But that oil and gas tax tax break is an accounting thing. Obama tries to throw him -- end it! Romney's not listening, though, as has been clear throughout, so good for him, why am I listening to this shit? But Obama's cool, he smiles at the Solyndra thing. He knows 95% of us think it's some kind of a new car.

9:40. The basic structure of Social Security is sound, and Obama is sure Romney agrees. (Go ahead, Governor, after this nice grandmother story it won't sound so good.) Now Obama philosophizes that entitlements are actually things we're entitled to. I thought the Return of Reverend Wright tape was supposed to put an end to this sort of thing.

9:43. Yeah, Romney's no dummy. Social Security is sac. Ro. Sanct. Michelle Malkin and Erick Erickson hold hands and jump into the Grand Canyon. Also, Obama's cutting Medicare to pay for this Obamacare which has nothing to do with medicine.

9:45. "If you're 54, 55, you might want to listen." Gasp!

9:47. Obama's trying this Clinton-explainer thing where he tells us how vouchers are a rip-off, but he's not as good at it so he brings in his grandmother again. But he's using the AARP for support -- that's a Soviet organization committed to Early Bird anti-colonialism.

9:48. Did you hear Romney, grandpa? He's not going to kill you!

9:49. If I don't like Medicare, I'd rather destroy it and get my own high-premium plan and take ALL YOU MOTHERFUCKERS DOWN WITH ME.

9:51. Does it seem to you people as if this low-intensity thing is just making viewers sort of zone out? You probably don't realize I've been blogging the 1988 debate for three stanzas. Ha ha, made ya look.

9:52. Can we have an ad of Romney saying "regulation is essential"?

9:54. This guy sure likes regulations.

9:55. Well, see what you did, Romney, now Obama gets to talk about Wall Street as if he's the sheriff instead of the madame at the whorehouse.

9:56. On Dodd-Frank: Everything you want to do to punish big business hurts small business. It's like big business has a gun to small business' head. You make one false move and he'll shoot!

9:58. Well, Romney avoided saying "death panels." And he's onto small business again. This is as close to coherent argument as he's gotten. But then he says Romneycare was good because it was state-level, which is like saying The Avengers would have been better if it had a budget of $20,000 and starred Frank Stallone. (Yeah, I know.)

10:00. Obama seems to have missed this gambit and is praising Romneycare, which will allow Romney to come back if he's smart enough.

10:03. He's not smart enough. He's just praising the shit out of Romneycare. No one could believe  he's against Sociamalized Medicine on principle, so to buy his argument, you have to believe he's going to do something similar but better. He's sure not campaigning as a smash-the-state type. How's that an alternative to a sitting President?

10:06. Which is why Obama is asking what he's going to replace it with.

10:07. "Free people and free enterprise." I see Cletus and Festus at the ole Doctorin' Shack, using their wits and freedom to figure out how to remove a tumor with a whittlin' knife. (Romney's naming big hospitals, but they all take gummint money.)

10:10. I thought Obama was just vamping, but with this "details" schtick he seems to be thinking pretty well on his feet. Romney comes back with Reagan and O'Neill, which has already been played; also, the old Democratic House was full of venal grifters, God bless 'em, who could be bought -- infinitely preferable to the block-everything, scorched-earth lot we have now.

10:12. Okay, I'm gonna use my own bipartisan President -- Abraham Lincoln! Who was a tax-and-spend liberal. Math and science teachers, blah blah... that pained grimace Romney's been working isn't working for me. He seems to be waiting for a wind machine.

10:17. Romney loves teachers -- they're in the Constitution! So too are other unfortunates. And here, with Obama, we have trickle-down socialism. Say, that's good, trickle-down socialism -- why didn't Romney think of that? Call me! My rates are reasonable!

10:19. Obama's filibustering, because he thinks we haven't heard enough about his successful programs yet. But I suspect average Americans are tuning that out; it doesn't matter how other people are faring. Poor Romney, he wants to know why Obama's sacrificing education to the environment. Who cares about the environment if we're not well-educated enough to enjoy it? Better we have a firm scientific foundation for our global warming denialism as we're drowned by molten icecaps.

10:24. "You've been great, Jim." What a suck-up!

10:25. Oh Christ, bi-partisanship? Isn't Romney's speech the same one Bush gave when he came out of Texas? Obama punts and talks about the middle class, which is probably smart, considering everyone now believes if the guys in The Defiant Ones were a Democrat and a Republican instead of black and white, they would have killed one another in the first ten minutes.

10:30. Obama: Detroit! Loopholes! Fight every single day! Vote for more of the same! Romney: I'm concerned about America! Middle-class squeeze! 12 million new jobs! Romneycare not Obamacare! Don't worry, I'll preserve the military-industrial complex!

Can they both lose?

UPDATE. I see by the Internet that media people think Romney won this debate, by which I assume they mean that they are smitten with his boyish charm. I have as low an opinion of my fellow Americans as the next rootless cosmopolitan, but even I can't see them falling for this. That leaves only one alternative: Roseanne Barr for President. Hey, at least I can live with myself!

UPDATE 2. Shots fired! Commenter mds: "That's Rosanne Arnold. As far as I know, she still hasn't released her long-form divorce certificate."

OK, JUST A PEEK. Let's see what Hindrocket of Time's Blog of the Year 2004 is on about today:

IS OBAMA INTRODUCING NATIONAL SOCIALISM TO THE UNITED STATES?

In the immortal words of Curly, "Ngggnnyahh!"

Hinderaker, which I guess is what Hindrocket's calling himself these days, compares Obama to Lenin and Mussolini because 1.) They all had posters that showed them looking serious ("It is ironic that Mussolini looks downright modest compared to The One"); and 2.) wingnut email-from-Grandma fodder like "the Obama family costs U.S. taxpayers something like twenty times what the British Royal Family costs its subjects," which is so lame Doug Mataconis has debunked it.

I still think Romney has a good chance to win, so I don't see why these guys have descended so precipitously into madness -- oh wait, maybe that's the reason: They're anticipating the crushing disappointment of National Romneycare ("Better Than Obamacare, Because Not So Much Abortion!"), and for these guys that's like waiting for Cthulhu to eat them.

If that's not enough crazy for you, you can read Roger L. Simon's "We Live Under a Media Coup d’État." Apparently it all started with Adolph Ochs, or Woodward and Bernstein; whatever, now the Rule of Katie Couric is so oppressive that "this year the Republican Party allowed the coup plotters to control the debates, even those that determined their own nominee."  Maybe Simon and his like-minded souls will start a resistance movement, and call it "Bathrobe Media" or something. But will it sell?

IN THE REMAKE, IT'LL BE AMANDA MARCOTTE. Matt Lewis at The Daily Caller:

As you probably know, The Atlantic’s Hanna Rosin is out with a new book, called “The End of Men: And the Rise of Women.” 

Rosin and I recently chatted about the book, and we, of course, discussed all the usual topics (including how a “war on women” can be plausible when they are clearly winning the future). 

But toward the end of our conversation, talk turned to sex.

Never have I been more grateful to learn that this was merely a journalistic convention. But not for long! Rosin tells Lewis about this unemployed guy with a well-employed wife who got into rough sex with the missus because "he needed to work out some of his lost dominance... he used to feel entitled to certain things at home because he was the breadwinner. And the truth was, [now] he wasn’t."

Lewis turns thoughtful, or at least looks offscreen, dreamy-eyed, as the shot turns hazy:

Could it be that two recent and successful literary trends — the amazingly popular S&M-themed “50 Shades” series — and the plethora of new books on the rise of women (see my recent interview with “Manning Up” author Kay Hymowitz) — are the product of a similar development?

Whatever gratitude I had for the earlier sex joke was totally dispelled by the conflation of kinky sex and Kay Hymowitz.

I swear to God he ends with this:

Could synergy be at work here? Just as History’s “American Pickers” arguably helps create more of A&E’s “Hoarders” (there is a fine line between a “collector” and a hoarder!), isn’t it possible the same phenomenon that Rosin and Hymowitz are chronicling might also be feeding sales of the “50 Shades of Grey” series?

This reminds me of a scene from the magnificent D.A. Pennebaker doc Town Bloody Hall chronicling Norman Mailer's disastrous feminism debate in that New York venue in 1971. At one point Anatole Broyard hectors Germaine Greer, asking what women want. "Listen," says Greer, "you may as well relax because whatever they're asking for, honey, it isn't you."

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, on the Obama Phone Lady and the incredibly transparent racist bullshit her elevation by rightbloggers represents. Go look. At least the Voice hasn't changed its template. (Still workin' on that...)

And remember, pointing out the obvious is the real racism.

Oh, and by the way -- WELCOME TO DISQUS COMMENTS! You can complain about those, now.

UPDATE. Now I have to see where the old JS-Kit comments have got to, enable Disqus for the mobile version, maybe get back the Blogger comments from yesterday, etc. Technology is not an unmixed blessing.

SERVICE ADVISORY.

Our much-hated but free commenting system is scheduled to shut down on Monday, so I have finally bitten the bullet and converted from the Old Blogger Template* to the New so I can use all the gee-gaws long available to more au courant cheapskates -- including Disqus, the new commenting system, which has already pissed off longtime kibitzers Aimai and Leeds Man (this must be some kind of record).

Any of you lovely people should be able to sign up for free at Disqus with an email account, like I did. If you try the email sign-up or the Google/Twitter signup and you still can't get on, you're perfectly welcome to bitch to me about it, but I warn you, I've been running this thing like a Geocities site for years, so I'm probably not the best tech support in the world. I'd do what I can, though. 

As for the memorable japes recorded by Echo/JS-Kit over the past few years**, I have initiated the launch sequence for what both E/J-K and Disqus promise is the migration of the old comments back to this site (that is, the ones that appeared pre-New Deal). They won't tell me when this will go through and, as I am not paying any of these people cash money, I doubt repeatedly smacking the bell at the front desk is going to get me any more solicitude than a gypsy would get asking a Paris sommelier for a glass of water. Who knows, maybe when we come to,  I mean wake up, in the morning the old comments will just be there like Christmas presents.

One day when I'm rolling in dough and can get the good service, we'll all be sitting around in the holodeck chatting like Hef's guests on Playboy After Dark.  Till then I'm afraid we have to wing it with castoff widgets. Sorry. You want high tech, go talk to Matthew Yglesias.

By which I mean, thank you for your patience.

(*I think Gary Farber is the now the last old-time blogger using the original template, God bless him. Wait a minute, he hasn't posted since December 2011. Ha ha ha, I am King of the Popes!)

(** Prior to which, longtime readers will remember, we had another commenting system which went down forever when the old friend who was running it pulled the plug, whereupon the earth halted on its axis and we all froze to death.)

UPDATE. A lot of you are having trouble with avatars. Here's what Disqus says. Not helpful, right? I experimented and had no luck, and I can't find a way to send Disqus a query, Maybe I'll wait for them to tell me that the old comments have been posted (when in reality the website is in flames) and try a reply-to. Meantime, pretend it's 1998!

UPDATE 2. Have tried everything involving avatars (and gravatars) to get mine to show in comments and nothing works. Found the buried Contact Support feature at Disqus and sent them a  note.

Listen... what do you guys think about the Blogger commenting system?

UPDATE 3. You know what? I think the comments here are Blogger comments,  and that the Disqus commenting system hasn't kicked in. But I can't figure it out -- this isn't helpful -- so I'll wait to see what happens when Disqus "importing" finishes. Sorry, I'm dumb.

BIBI NETANYAHU, SUPER-GENIUS.

And I thought Colin Powell showing fake pictures of WMDs was a UN low point. In the dystopian future, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Erick Erickson will appear before the General Assembly holding up a stick-figure drawing of a guy in a turban with a word balloon that says "GRRR DETH TO AMERICA." Then, Benny Hill music!

NICE TRY. I see Ole Perfesser Instapundit is pimping Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein at USA Today and the New York Post. His basic message at the former is that the Lame Stream Media doesn't want you to know about Stein, "because talking about her doesn't fit much of the press's election-coverage agenda" -- in case you didn't get it right away, Reynolds adds, "her candidacy would pull votes from the clear favorite in the race for many in the press, President Obama."

One of the fringe benefits of this charm offensive is seeing the Perfesser praise FDR at length in the Post:

I was talking with Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential nominee, the other day; she offered a different approach, one that harkens back to President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. 

Back in the Great Depression, FDR was more focused on getting people back to work than on handing out money. He set up the WPA and the CCC to provide employment for out-of-work Americans — jobs building needed infrastructure: bridges, post offices, courthouses and other federal buildings...

At its peak, the WPA employed over 3 million men and women who would’ve otherwise been jobless. 

And the Civilian Conservation Corps put the unemployed to work improving national parks and other pieces of federal land. 

When I hike in the Smokies, it’s often on trails that were built by the CCC — and of course we’re still using many of the buildings and bridges that the WPA built...

Don't be surprised if the Perfesser doesn't follow through with a call for a new WPA. He's just looking for those voters who admire FDR but believe that Obama "would rather have you sit at home, depressed, with a check" than build government buildings and put on Living Newspaper shows... oh wait, those would be the Reagan Democrats, and they're all either dead or filling out early ballots to keep Paul Ryan from stealing their Medicare.

Well, at least the folks back at HQ will credit the Perfesser's initiative. Maybe next he should interview Ralph Nader.

WORKING THE REFS. When people began pointing out that the disastrous NFL replacement refs are only out there disgracing the game because the owners locked out the union, it was just a matter of time before the great conservative thinkers of the 21st Century came out swinging in defense of right-to-work stadia. Take it away, Donald Douglas:

Plus, I guess it's no surprise, but the despicable progressives are trying to score political points on this, and over unions too... 

For some reason I don't think there's an accurate comparison between the NFL officials' union and, say, public sector teachers unions. But then again, folks like Steve Benen and the Think Progress anti-Semites probably back public teacher sexual predators over abused children and their parents. Because that's what's happened to the public unions these days.

Forget about being out of bullets and throwing the gun; this is like throwing the gum and then throwing the wrapper.

Some of the brethren can't even say the word "union," and instead displace their rage upon their traditional fantasy hate-objects. The Conservative Review:

The NFL has gone over the top with Breast Cancer Awareness (pink ref shirts, anyone?), Hispanic Heritage Month (announcers yelling GOAL for a touchdown…I wish I was kidding), female announcers everywhere and male announcers rapidly disappearing, announcers explaining after every hard hit why it’s still legal to (occasionally) hit someone hard in professional football, and now this.

It's not the end result of rapacious capitalism -- it's bitches and Messicans! Rush Limbaugh can't say the u-word, either; per the Daily Caller: "Doesn’t Obama, and the left in general, don’t they promote the advancement of the incompetent based on the fact that they’re incompetent? Screw standards in testing. We don’t need to go find the best..."

The Lonely Conservative at least engages the issue in the best rightwing victim-blaming tradition:

I just wonder why the mob isn’t mad at the regular refs who refuse to agree to a deal and come back to work... 

Unions ruin everything, now they’ve ruined football.

I kind of hope the lockout continues a while, so these patriots can have ample time to share their theories of workers' rights with the nation.

UPDATE. In comments, Chuckling:

One would hope the NFL referee lockout helps wake more people to the realization that plutocracy is ugly and getting uglier. The issue isn't about money. The retirement contributions in question aren't even pocket change for the billionaire NFL owners. No, they don't feel their employees deserve a good retirement. They don't feel their workers efforts are worth even a smidgen of their enormous net worth. They want it all not because it buys them anything extra, but in order to punish the lesser folk for their failings. It's a bizarro meritocratic thing for people that don't have a lot of merit.

Stunts like this do tempt me to think that sometimes they go after a union just to demoralize everyone else. That certainly seemed to be the case with the teachers, who went from being admired public servants to commies pariahs PDQ. Maybe if they win this one, they'll lock out the NFL players and replace them with bouncers and dock workers. Yes, I see the silver lining, but it'll be less funny when the boss demands that your bare-knuckle-box for your right to a job. The race to the bottom enlists us all whether we have numbers on our shirts or not.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the rightblogger reaction to Romney's bad fortunes -- i.e., liberal media argh blargh. Like Jimmy Hatlo said, They'll Do It Every Time.

Related: A spillover thing from Warner Todd Huston on how the media got so gosh-darned liberal:

 In fact, there was a time when American customers of the news knew exactly which newspapers sported which point of view. It was taken for granted that one newspaper supported one side and another newspaper a different side. 

But in the late 1950s and early 1960s that all changed. Suddenly the folks in the news media began to present themselves as unbiased pursuers of “the truth.” Gone was the out-in-front bias and instead the media cloaked itself in a new air of detachment, a new just-the-facts mien. 

This new era in media conceit coincided with the advent of a liberal mindset that took on the weight of the world, a new era in which liberals felt that their ideals rose above God, tradition and country.

Suddenly a journalist’s work was divorced from the trade in local news and became a profession increasingly assuming a national and ideological agenda, one fueled by journalism schools and professors that began to disgorge university trained “journalists” with a left-wing agenda. These people then went forth to replace the grizzled local reporters that were wedded to their local political culture. This new wave of “journalists” did not want to report what was going on in their local news as much as they wanted to “save the world.”

To recap: Nothing bad ever happened in America worth noticing: Once upon a time reporters were fun hacks, and then suddenly they were all shipped to snooty Eastern colleges and came back liberals.  Maybe Huston once suffered a traumatic brain injury and presumes that's the only way anyone ever changed his mind about anything.

SHORTER MEGAN McARDLE: It's absurd to think you can help poor people by giving them money; they'll just spend it on cell phones and TVs and food and stuff. What they really need to do is live in better neighborhoods. It worked on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

UPDATE. Ermagerd.

THAT'S WHAT THE NEW BREED SAY. Media Research Council:

‘Liberal Media In Full Advertising Mode for Obama Reelection’ [NewsBuster's Tim] Graham Tells FNC’s Cavuto

It sounds a lot like the conservative durn-liberal-media schmaltz we've been hearing for decades -- probably because it's short and suggestive; a relatively staid, simple reference that's meant to trigger a dream world of dark conspiracies in the minds of the targets.

But this here's the internet age -- the consumers have turned into producers, and they're not content with dog-whistles. They want to tell you all about their dreams.

The Anchoress:

The headlines having to do with anything touching the president or his party (with one profoundly heartening recent exception) simply blare the official line, which is often “that thing you just saw wasn’t what you saw” and then — after the first thrust of a story has died down, or a shiny scandal has been generated to divert attention and energy elsewhere — the corrections and clarifications come, but not on the frontpage, not on the broadcasts...

World Net Daily:

STATE-RUN MEDIA'S FAKE POLL NUMBERS...

Ever since the skewed CNN poll a few weeks ago (CNN’s president recently resigned due to lack of ratings), voters have looked at the methodology of polling companies with much skepticism, and rightfully so. Evidence recently came out that confirms voters’ suspicions. NumbersCrunchers, an anonymous poll analyst, tweeted a graph that shows the degree of oversampling of Democrats employed by the recent presidential polls, all of which show Obama in the lead. Polls were conducted by CBS/NYT, ABC/Washington Post, Tipps, Reuters … and even Fox News.

Yes -- even Fox News! Elsewhere you can read how Obama and the media are willfully turning America over to jihad and "the coordinated attack on the First Amendment threatens the lives of Americans who dare to criticize Islam and organize to expose Muslim Brotherhood operations on U.S. soil..."

Graham had better get with it. If you want to make it in right wing world these days, it's not enough to cynically use stupid ideas to stir up the lunatics -- you have to be a lunatic yourself.

ANOTHER COUNTY HEARD FROM. I see the Crazy Jesus Lady is selling herself to Mitt Romney as a campaign consultant. (That worked so well last time.)

Wake this election up. Wade into the crowd, wade into the fray, hold a hell of a rally in an American city—don’t they count anymore? A big, dense city with skyscrapers like canyons, crowds and placards, and yelling. All of our campaigning now is in bland suburbs and tired hustings. How about: New York, New York, the city so nice they named it twice? You say the state’s not in play? It’s New York. Our media lives here, they’ll make it big. How about downtown Brooklyn, full of new Americans?

Yeah, they'll love Mitt in downtown Brooklyn. "Good morning, moochers! Here's five bucks, someone bring me a coffee."

Time for the party to step up. Romney should go out there every day surrounded with the most persuasive, interesting and articulate members of his party, the old ones, and I say this with pain as they’re my age, like Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush, and the young ones, like Susana Martinez and Chris Christie and Marco Rubio—and even Paul Ryan...

Surrounded! It'll be a chain gang of charisma! Maybe they should all wear running suits with "Mitt" on the back. I can see it now: "Screw this, I'm going back to Florida, Christie ate all the donuts again." Oh please oh please oh please...

Forget it. Not even Romney's that dumb.

NONE DARE CALL IT NUTS. The economy sucks, so Mitt Romney should be blowing it out, but he keeps coming up with ways to keep things close. It's been hell on my nerves, so I can only imagine how it is for rightbloggers -- oh, here's some indication:

Washington, DC – The Obama agents, through the DHS and other assorted colluders, are plotting a major ‘Reichstag’ event to generate racial riots and produce the justification for martial law, delaying the November 2012 elections, possibly indefinitely, a DHS whistleblower informed the Canada Free Press on Tuesday.

The ‘Reichstag Event’ would take the form of a staged assassination attempt against Barack Obama, “carefully choreographed” and manufactured by Obama operatives. It would subsequently be blamed on “white supremacists” and used to enrage the black community to rioting and looting, the DHS source warned.

If this bit of Ooga-Booga is too strong for you, you can follow instead the moderate camp, who have declared Nakoula Basseley Nakoula the new Elian Gonzalez, believe the White House press pool plots to protect Obama, and oh yeah, think the Democrats actually put out the anti-Muslim movie themselves for reasons no doubt to be revealed by an upcoming crayon scrawl on a piece of cardboard.

American conservatism is turning into one big conspiracy theory.

UPDATE. Gene Healy of the Washington Examiner finally sees the loony 1933 Gabriel Over The White House. His reaction:

A presidential drama that flirted with fascism this earnestly would be laughed off the screen today (which may be why TCM lists Gabriel as a "comedy"). But as the "Cult of Obama" shows, many of us still believe in authoritarian powers for the president.

Even their pennysaver columnists are getting in on the ObamaHitler thing. Romney must be fucking up worse than I thought.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the Middle East riots and the avalanche of bullshit the brethren brought to it. Enjoy!