JON SWIFT ROUNDUP'S POSTED.

Batocchio, bless him, has done the usual bang-up job with the annual Jon Swift Memorial Roundup of top blog posts by your favorite fellow travelers. I found it a great opportunity to revisit writers I never get to read because I'm too busy reading idiots. I've looked at a bunch of the recent entrants and they're excellent. (I especially recommend Lance Mannion's essay on Asperger's; I used to think that I had it, but now I'm quite sure that I'm just an asshole.)  Pick a link, any link, they're all winners.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, CRY, CRY AGAIN.

Victor Davis Hanson's on his plinth again, crying "Vanitas!" while the dry ice swirls:

Obama once had mused that he wished to be the mirror image of Ronald Reagan — successfully coaxing America to the left as the folksy Reagan had to the right. Instead, 2012 taught us that a calculating Obama is more a canny Richard Nixon, who likewise used any means necessary to be reelected on the premise that his rival would be even worse. But we know what eventually happened to the triumphant, pre-Watergate Nixon after November 1972; what will be the second-term wages of Obama’s winning ugly?

Impeachment? Sure, why not -- it's not like they can beat him in elections.

But what would be the MacGuffin? This week at WorldNetDaily:

As many news sites and pundits break down the biggest stories of 2012, one story too big to miss has been resurrected by the website TeaParty.org, a story at least one national pundit believes could send Barack Obama to prison. 

The tea-party site posted a Glenn Beck video from October in which the TV and radio host insisted a case for treason could be built against President Obama for his role in the attack of Sept. 11, 2012, in which armed Libyans captured and killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others at an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi...

A two-month-old Glenn Beck rant. But wait -- WND has more! In another article they say Obama could be impeached for invading Syria -- and Charlie Rangel's on board! Actually Rangel has made common cause with Republican Congressman Walter Jones to warn the President off an intervention, which WND interprets as "NEW IMPEACHMENT THREAT, WITH DEMOCRAT 'INVOLVED.'"

Playing Lafayette to their Founding Fathers is Lyndon LaRouche. Now it's a coalition!

Much as I'd enjoy it, I don't think they're serious. At Forbes Larry Bell tips their hand:

Before I carry this any farther, let me be clear that I believe any chances that President Obama will be impeached range somewhere between nil and none. That ain’t going to happen to the historic first American black president…THE ONE…most particularly when his party controls the Senate and his fast and furious friend is his attorney general. But just for argument’s sake, let’s imagine that these conditions were different, and on top of that, he had ill winds of the liberal media blowing in his face rather than friendly breezes at his back. And what if he wasn’t “cool”…instead, being someone like Nixon, who was the un-coolest guy in almost any crowd?...

So this impeachment thing is going to be like everything else in wingnut world these days: Another excuse to piss and moan about how unfair it all is. Pretty soon they'll be telling us that Obama should have been assassinated by now, but that damned liberal Secret Service keeps protecting him.

GALT 2.0.

We got another Go-Galt guy, this one named Will Spencer, who tells us that "clearly, 'Going Galt' does not mean the same thing to all people. Going Galt is a very individual expression." That's for sure -- we've seen folks Go Galt by leaving lousy tips, by alerting local merchants that they planned to "buy nothing – other than vacations out of the country – until the president exits," by quitting smoking, etc. Or at least talking about doing it.

I had despaired they'd ever get serious about it. Spencer, though, has an impressively meticulous list of tactics, which he has divided into four sections.

It takes awhile to pick up speed. Under "Earn Less Taxable Income," Spencer lists actions I assumed entrepreneurs/hustlers would already have been doing, Galt or no Galt -- "Relocate to a state which charges lower or no income taxes," "Contribute the maximum allowable amount to an IRA," etc. Under "Reduce Expenses and Pay Less Sales Tax," his tips would not be out of place in The Dollar Stretcher -- "Repair and reuse when possible instead of buying replacements," "Buy over the Internet when possible, to avoid sales taxes," etc.

So far so Horatio Alger. Then we get to section three, "Prepare for the Collapse." "Stockpile water, food, and ammunition to prepare for coming shortages" and "Fortify your home to protect your family against looters" are among Spencer's suggestions. A little crazy, but still within the normal conservative spectrum -- after all, even the big-time rightbloggers love to play at disaster preparedness.

But the tide turns in section four, "Civil Disobedience":

This is where things get serious. This isn’t just trying to escape from a corrupt society and let it collapse; many of these steps involve making active decisions and taking risks that could negatively affect your personal liberty. Nonetheless, many people feel that the hope of living in a truly free world is worth the risk.

Tremble, tyrants, at what Will Spencer has in store for you:

• Comply with government orders as slowly as possible. 

• Fill out government forms incompletely and illegibly.

• Pay all taxes and fines at the last possible legal moment.

• Make it difficult for the government to enforce all unconstitutional or immoral laws.

• As a juror, exercise your right to nullify unconstitutional or immoral laws.

• Take multiple copies of all printed government forms to increase their costs.

• Take a job with the government, and then don’t do it.

• Boycott government propaganda outlets such as PBS and NPR.

• Get your money invested offshore while it is still safe and legal to do so.

So next time some guy at the DMV fills in his license application with scribbles, then winks at you; or sneakily takes a whole stack of change of address forms from the post office; or takes a government job and, unlike any other civil servant you've ever seen, goofs off -- then you'll know the revolution is afoot. This time for sure!

UPDATE. Comments  are choice, as usual. Spaghetti Lee nominates further Civil Disobedience tips like "Address all government forms with pseudonyms 'Mike Hunt' and 'Dick Hertz'" and "Inform all government officials that you are rubber and they are glue." hells littlest angel suggests the Galt-goers "get sushi and not pay." And Jeffrey_Kramer has written a stirring Go Galt anthem:

I dreamed I saw John Galt last night
A-watchin' my TV
Says I, “So when's this strike of yours?”
“I'm on it now,” says he. 

I said “And how will sitting here
Bring down this tyranny?”
Said John, “I slay the MSM
By watching Hannity! 

“O John,” I said, “Our tax will rise,
How will you make a stink?”
“I'll write out all my forms,” John said
“With funny-looking ink.” 

“But will you pay this evil tax,
This higher marginal rate?”
“I'll pay it,” John said with a grin,
“But maybe minutes late.” 

“But John, what if the Kenyan sends
us all to FEMA camps?”
“I'll slow the trains of death,” said John
“By using two-cent stamps.” 

Then I woke up, but still I knew --
I'd take it to the bank --
Whatever came, John would be there
To cry and piss and wank.

GOD AND SINNERS RECONCILED.

Most of you have seen it, but if you haven't, this is the real thing:



All honor to Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol -- the recent replay of which was sadly truncated to remove the theatrical framing device. (Did NBC think revealing it to be a stage production starring trouper Quincy Magoo would limit its appeal? Maybe they worried somebody would find the fun over Magoo's blindness offensive.) And there are things to like in many other versions.

But this production with Alastair Sim is in a ripe melodramatic style that I imagine Dickens would have appreciated. It is decidedly not modern. Michael Holdern's Marley's Ghost is eerie as much for his Delsarte presentation as for his predicament -- moaning, keening, "Lon Chaney big." (He even presses the back of his wrist to his forehead and he's not kidding.)  The lower- and middle-class characters are perfect expressions of type, individuated only by the ingenuity of the actors, who have this sort of thing down cold.  And Sim is for me the only Scrooge. His style is big, too, but so is his insight: That Scrooge is at bottom a terribly frightened man whose unsociability and hardness were formed as defenses against pain. He spends half the film in abject terror and dejection. In some versions Scrooge seems to be educated by his Spirits, with some shocks thrown in to underline the lesson, but Sim is emotionally flayed by his, and the Scrooge that's revealed is wonderfully child-like ("I'm as light as a feather! I'm as giddy as a schoolboy!"); in fact, he's sort of a jokester. (The little fright he gives Mrs. Dilber by ruffling his hair on the staircase is one of many sublime moments.) This is redemption through repentance, and appropriate for the feast of Christ.

If that's not your style, there's always Kurtzman. Or have both -- what the hell, we embrace multitudes. Merry Christmas!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP

-- reviewing 2012 rightblogger highlights. Your typical holiday special: Some familiar bits, some new material, and a happy ending. Enjoy!

UPDATE. While looking cartoons to break up the column I came across this:

I don't remember being able to bring loaded guns aboard commercial airliners even before 9/11. This gun-grabber conspiracy goes deeper than I thought.

YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE.

It is something to see Ole Perfesser Instapundit go for plausible deniability:

I DIDN’T SEE THE PRESS CONFERENCE, but reader Theo X. Rojo writes: “I’m very proud of my membership in the NRA as a ‘Life Member.’ I thought Mr. LaPierre hit it out of the park today.”

Maybe before he can endorse it, he has to watch Kindergarden Cop and see how it all works out.

The weirdest bit, though, is this:

UPDATE: Jeffrey Goldberg: “Reporters on my Twitter feed seem to hate the NRA more than anything else, ever.” I think there’s a race/class angle to that.

Race/class angle? Does he think most journalists are black? Not bloody likely. Or does he think his opponents have been mongrelized?

If you're wondering why our moderate Republican President is doing so well in the polls, look no further.

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS. Culture warriors are having a hard time churning up some actual culture of their own. Take a look at Liberty Island, an arty online pub with Ben Shapiro on the masthead. Back in August Ole Perfesser Instapundit pimped its "call for submissions." Yet four months later the project remains rather thin on content -- among the few contributions is a short story by Shapiro himself, of which we will not speak. This week the Perfesser pimped a new "call for submissions" for the thing. The fundraising ain't going so hot either.

They're probably better off claiming long-dead artists; hell, look how it worked with Orwell. At Pajamas Media, one R.J. Moeller instructs us on the proper way to read Dostoyevsky. I'll give you a hint -- it has something to do with American politics!

In the course of a number of his books – The Devils (aka The Possessed) and The Brothers Karamazov for example – he foretold of the coming socioeconomic and geopolitical nightmares that awaited 20th century societies who would adopt progressivism, nihilism, and socialism as their guiding principles... 

Dostoevsky held that the inherent weakness of the Utopian visions of socialism was a rejection of God and the institution of the family. He saw that for the Left, their politics became their religion. The members of the progressive-Left were demanding standards of Judeo-Christian morality be replaced with new (arbitrary) standards handed down from central councils and planning committees...

But this is my favorite part:

From Walter E. Williams’ August 8th column "Liberals, Progressives, and Socialists":

Well, as long as it keeps them from writing any fiction themselves, I suppose we'll all be happy.

FIGHTING WORDS. Before approving the protest of Erik Loomis' treatment, I went back to my Gabby Giffords rightbloggers column to see if I'd accused Sarah Palin of inciting murder. To my relief, I found I had not.

Maybe it means little more than that the liquor store closed early that night, but I flatter myself that in the main, though I am silly and snarky and snide, and sometimes come dangerously close to willful misapprehension of my targets (and by dangerously close, I mean I do it all the time, waving my Satirist's Immunity card), at least you can say for me that I don't gin up fake outrage over transparently bogus offenses and try to get people fired for them, as have the people who've come after Loomis for saying after Newtown he'd like to see the NRA President's head on a stick. (Hell, I didn't even agree with the drive to fire Rush Limbaugh.)

But enough about what a swell guy I am. There are real differences between the factions which, for want of better terms, I will describe as Us and Them. Though it is meaningful that we are right and they are wrong about nearly everything, how we go about defending our righteous beliefs is at least as meaningful. I suspect there are practical political benefits to not demanding apologies and retaliation like a butthurt asshole, but the main reason for not demanding apologies and retaliation like a butthurt asshole is that demanding apologies and retaliation like a butthurt asshole makes you a butthurt asshole.

FROM THEIR WARM, STICKY HANDS. I trawl other blogs' comments sections but rarely, and almost never to approve. Others are less selective. Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds, who has reached the throw-the-gun-at-the-pursuer stage in the current gun control debate but can't bear to part with his weapon, holds this Althouse comment up for commendation:

In the olden days, when leftists wished to argue against gun owners, they claimed that guns were phallic symbols and that the excessive love of guns demonstrated latent homosexuality. Keep oiling and loading that pisstool, big boy. We know what you’re really doing….Can we not now claim that excessive fear of gun ownership indicates a streak of homophobia. They don’t want to ban guns. We know what they really want to ban.

To which the Perfesser adds:

Well, phallophobia, anyway. Which seems about right.

Looks like these guys are taking that "man card" thing a mite serious. Don't worry, fellas; as a person of the "gun" myself, I will defend to the death your right to bear that thang.

UPDATE. The Althouse post to which the comment is attached is ridiculous, too, but it does raise the fascinating possibility that Justice Scalia and Matt K. Lewis are only kidding which, if I could only believe it, would greatly elevate my faith in humanity.

NEW ON THE BLOGROLL. My old friend Joe Mackin had this idea: Write about stuff -- yeah I know, like everyone else -- but limit yourself to two grafs at a time. Thus, 2 Paragraphs. It's much better than it should be, and still better in daily doses. (Here's a prime example.)

My old boss Tony Ortega has left the Voice but continues harrying the derps of Scientology at his own scoop shack, The Underground Bunker. Tony asks the hard questions, like "How'd you like to spend New Year's Eve with Scientologists?" (Short answer: You wouldn't.)  Tony is a realer sort of journalist, and his forthcoming book on everyone's favorite nut-cult should be prime.

GO AHEAD, TRY IT THAT WAY. I'm always eager to learn what it is we liberals are really up to when we pretend to be interested in, say, preventing schoolroom shoot-'em-ups. Daniel Greenfield, "Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and a contributing editor at Family Security Matters," explains our philosophy in "Gun Control, Thought Control, and People Control":

The individual cannot be held accountable for shooting someone if there are guns for sale. Individuals have no role to play because they are not moral actors, only members of a mob responding to stimuli... 

You wouldn't blame a dog for overeating; you blame the owners for overfeeding him. Nor do you blame a dog for biting a neighbor. You might punish him, but the punishment is training, not a recognition of authentic responsibility on the part of the canine. And the way that you think of a dog, is the way that the left thinks of you. When you misbehave, the left looks around for your owner.

That's from John Rawls, right?

Individual behavior is a symptom of a social problem. Identify the social problem and you fix the behavior. The individual is nothing, the crowd is everything. Control the mass and you control the individual.

Or maybe it's from James Q. "Broken Windows" Wilson. It's hard to tell; Greenfield seems to think any attempt to change circumstances to influence behavior is a form of mass hypnosis. (I wonder if a woman ever had him over to her apartment, turned down the lights and put on some soft music. That must have really freaked him out.)

Of course I'm being unfair. Though most of the article consists of enraged, outlandish metaphors -- "You train monkeys to fetch bananas for you. That is how the enlightened elites of the left see the workers whose taxes they harvest," "The Nazis believed that they were the master race because they were genetically superior. Liberals believe that they are the master race..." etc. -- Greenfield does have one real-life example to buttress his argument:

That is how the left approached this election. Instead of appealing to individual interests, they went after identity groups. They targeted low information voters and used behavioral science to find ways to manipulate people. The right treated voters like human beings. The left treated them like lab monkeys. And the lab monkey approach is triumphantly toted by progressives as proof that the left is more intelligent than the right. And what better proof of intelligence can there be than treating half the country like buttons of unthinking responses that you can push to get them to do what you want.

Greenfield's argument is perfect in its way. Have anti-pollution laws made our air and water less foul? Proof of liberal contempt for the individualism of the polluter! Do blacks rise to heretofore unrealized positions of respect and even prominence in society? Liberal mind control techniques at work!

So if the kind of gun control people are calling for now (and which, by the way, is Greenfield's ostensible theme) were actually tried and shown to reduce gun violence in this country,  that would make it even more of an outrage.

This is the sort of conservatism I look forward to seeing more of: One where they gibber and spit over our successes.

UPDATE. In another post, Greenfield asks:

And yet would Thomas Jefferson, the abiding figurehead of the Democratic Party, who famously wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants", really have shuddered at the idea of peasants with assault rifles, or would he have grinned at the playing field being leveled some more?

I think he would have swum to England to tell King George he'd made a terrible mistake.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the brethren's reaction to Newtown and how guns don't kill people, [fill in the blank] kills people.

CULTURE COPS, OUTREACH DIVISION. Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds offers his services as culture-war consultant to the GOP:

Which is why I think that rich people wanting to support the Republican Party might want to direct their money somewhere besides TV ads that copy, poorly, what Lee Atwater did decades ago. 

My suggestion: Buy some women’s magazines. No, really. Or at least some women’s Web sites... 

...those magazines and Web sites see themselves, pretty consciously, as a propaganda arm of the Democratic Party. So while nine out of 10 articles may be the usual stuff on sex, diet and shopping, the 10th will always be either soft p.r. for the Democrats or soft — or sometimes not-so-soft — hits on Republicans.

Two things: 1.) What is it with Republicans and women? I guess the New York Post editorial board figures their readership in 90% misogynist, so they didn't have to worry about alienating female voters by implying they're idiots. 2.) The magic of the free market -- which suggests that gal mags prosper by feeding their readers what they know they'll like, rather than indoctrinating them against their will -- always seems to disappear from the conservative theology whenever they strap on the Goebbels revolver.

For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.

Go ahead, guys, try it that way. But I know them -- they'll never let well enough alone, and soon you'll have this:

UPDATE. This is officially confirmed as a bad idea: Jonah Goldberg approves!

WELL, YOU TRIED, PART II. Ace of Spades, whom we discovered trying to engage the "culture" yesterday, is still at it: He read an interview in the Washington Post with the Pajamas Media nut Roger Simon about Simon's new play, which tells the story of, get this, Walter Duranty. The interview is conducted by Jennifer Rubin, whom Ace normally derides as a RINO wet, but all is forgiven because Ace has his beret on and is trying to look at the arts  -- let's see, how did he put it -- "simply because they're interesting, without any direct or indirect implication on our politics." Which means of course --

[Simon] says it's neither conservative nor liberal, and I believe him, but there is hardly any question that no liberal would explore the question of what happens when a large group of people begin subverting the truth for political purposes. Well, they wouldn't explore this going on in a liberal institution. I'm sure they'd explore it in, say, the conservative movement. 

And that's part of the problem right there, isn't? Liberals style themselves truth-tellers and truth-seekers, but as we're seeing yesterday and today, they embargo truths that aren't helpful to the Great Patriotic Cause of Progressivism/Marxism.

-- it's still more argh blargh liberalz blocked mah big hit play.

Ace's attempt to break into the liberal arts by sitting sullenly in the corner of a Modern Drama class and drawing superheroes in his notebook is extremely disappointing to me. I don't know why, but I keep hoping against hope that he'll live up to his putative expectations of himself, and he never does.

I guess I'm just tired of all the rightwing gabble about "culture" being such stupid bullshit. In the Ace post previously treated, he referred to an old Rod Dreher whither-culture bleat that, expectedly, is worse than useless -- Dreher too seems to intuit that if you can't drop politics long enough to actually engage your imagination, you're not going to make any art, but he also seems to believe the acceptable alternative is endless pseudo-philosophical gassing along the lines of "conservatives have names like Lenny and liberals have names like Carl." (And if you are foolish enough to follow Dreher's links, I warn you, you will be punished by Dreher and Will Wilkinson talking about country music. You'll need about a half-hour of Uncle Dave Macon to wash that out of your head.)

I have a theory about why this is all coming up now. These guys recently lost something they'd been living on for years -- the illusion that they are America, all by themselves, with no bleeding-hearts allowed. It's an illusion we liberals learned to give up on long ago, of course. But it may be hard for conservatives to learn that most voters are okay with the man they're convinced is a Maoist Black Power Chicago thug -- or at least that voters like him better than them. In their dejection they wander the streets, and finally enter the libraries and music shops, pick up the books and instruments there, and, peering at them like curious apes, wonder: Maybe pretty thing faggots like am powerful? Maybe if Ace use them him feel good?

I think they're less interested in art than in art therapy.

WELL, YOU TRIED. Hey guess what -- Ace of Spades is getting into the conservative-culture thing!

A film is usually about something a little bit more complicated and a little more human than a seven-word bumper-sticker sentiment. A good film always is, a good novel always is. This sort of reductivist approach just isn't interesting or worthy. At least not to me. 

Don't we do some things just for fun? Or read some things simply because they're interesting, without any direct or indirect implication on our politics?

This is so promising -- not profound, just unusually thoughtful for Ace -- that I began to think he was serious. I'm such a naïf! Some paragraphs later:

I suppose I'm suggesting a sort of Invisible Hand in imagination or intellectual inquiry -- a free market in ideas should wind up producing the best ideas, and if it doesn't, the market is rigged to guarantee bad results. 

I think the market is so currently rigged -- first, by a venal monopoly which uses its market position in one market (the media, culture, the academy) to leverage a dominant position in another (the political realm)...

Back to the bitch-bunker, boys! George Clooney can rest easy.

MISTER, I MET A MAN ONCE. At National Review, David French tells us how Big Gummint done in his ole buddy Rob (not his real name) in Tennessee, who "supported himself and made his child-support payments on time" until the Obama Recession of '09:

In early 2009, Rob was laid off from his latest job and immediately began receiving unemployment benefits... He looked for work, but he looked less and less diligently with each passing week. Benefits were extended — then extended again. While unemployed, he lived a far more sedate lifestyle and quickly began gaining weight — eating foods purchased with government assistance — and as he gained weight, his health deteriorated. His joints ached, his blood pressure rose, and he became extremely anxious. 

Knowing friends on disability — and realizing that the benefits were roughly equal to the pay he received at his last job — he applied, claiming that his muscular-skeletal problems combined with his anxiety prevented him from working. Within months, he was approved, and he stopped any effort to look for work, knowing that if he found a job his benefits would cease. His sedate lifestyle continued, his health deteriorated even further, and — soon enough — he was truly "disabled" by any objective medical measure.

In other words, we safety-netted Rob into chronic illness and long-term dependency.

In the old America, Rob might have starved, but he'd have starved proudly and wouldn't be having no fat-people problems. And if Rob should get the diabeetus, I bet Big Gummint'll give him medicine for it, thus denying him a dignified early death.

As a liberal, I'd say Rob's sad case calls for federal Bowflex subsidies.

THUMBS DOWN. I hate to get on Glenn Greenwald's bad side but his claim that he isn't really reviewing-without-having-seen Zero Dark Thirty, when his hostile non-review contains phrases like this --

That this film would depict CIA interrogation programs as crucial in capturing America's most hated public enemy, and uncritically herald CIA officials as dramatic heroes, is anything but surprising.

--and--

...the film's glorifying claims about torture are demonstrably, factually false.

--and--

What this film does, then, is uncritically presents as fact the highly self-serving, and factually false, claims by the CIA...

-- is extremely disingenuous. Greenwald's points about some of the journalism surrounding the film are valid, but his characterizations of the film itself are ridiculous. Zero Dark Thirty isn't a shadowy political figure whose hidden movements you track by eyewitness reports. It's a fucking movie. Have your editor buy you a ticket.

This is still more proof -- as if more were needed -- that you shouldn't bring your political obsessions to the temple of art. It is both more personally edifying and more pleasing to the Muses to approach a work of art as a work of art, however obnoxious it may be to you on other grounds, than to approach it as a political phenomenon. Because when you do the latter, you get into company you really don't want to be keeping.

If the thing you've actually seen, heard, or read is a piece of shit, then fire away.

I would explain further, yet again, why this is so, but I'm busy and I assume adults already know this.

UPDATE. Lotta pushback in comments. Like I said, what people are saying about the movie may be stupid, but the movie itself will make or not make its own case. Right now the whole thing's reminding me that once upon a time the big issue with Citizen Kane was supposed to be whether or not Welles had been fair to William Randolph Hearst.

CLOSET CASE. Ace of Spades:

Conservatives who live in liberal areas, or move in liberal circles, on the other hand, tend to either be pretty quiet about politics or, if trying to suss someone else out, employ shibboleths to see if the other party is a member of the tribe. 

I don't have a go-to shibboleth for this purpose. I suppose that something noncomittal and sneaky, like "Are you a fan of David Mamet?," might work. Hey, you might just mean his movies and plays. Alternatively, you might mean his recent political conversion to conservatism. A member of the tribe might pick up on that last bit and say something like, "I've become a bigger fan lately."

Maybe they should just go with a hanky code.

(There's a whole Vince Vaughn section at the link, for those of you who like it rough.)

THE TRUTH REVEALED! You heard that Obama has to take the Second Inaugural Oath on January 20, but it's Sunday this year so he's doing a private oath then and a public oath on Monday, right? OK then --  Alana Goodman, Commentary:

Politico reports that Obama’s second inaugural oath for the “most transparent administration in history” might be administered privately, without any media present... 

...Obama hasn’t exactly followed through on his vow to run a more transparent administration. It’s about time the press finally started calling him out on it. Maybe now that he’s won reelection the media will actually do its job and report critically on his presidency. At the very least this is a sign he’s not going to get the kid-gloves treatment he had during the election season.

Would you be surprised to learn Goodman's not the only nutcake making a thing out of this?

Andrew Malcolm, IBD: "So Obama, who promised once to have the most open administration in history, will take the presidential oath in private on Sunday, Jan. 20."

Michael Fletcher, Bearing Drift: "Conspiracy or not, it’s quite odd that the 'most transparent administration in history (TM)' doesn’t want the country to see the second term begin."

Rick Moran, American Thinker: "Maybe Obama wants it private because he wants to be sworn in using the Koran. Perhaps he's changed the oath, taking out 'faithfully' ('execute the office') and that last bit about preserving the Constitution... "

Dammit, Moran stole my joke! But thanks to my connections in the Administration I can at least show you the planned staging for the event:

It's just a rough; in the actual performance, Obama will trample the Constitution Gangnam Style.  And if you really want to see it, of course, they'll be showing it later on BET.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the GOP's new attitudes toward John Boehner and Jim DeMint. Boehner, formerly their enforcer, is now a horrible RINO tyrant, and DeMint, (soon to be) formerly a U.S. Senator, is now more powerful and relevant than ever as a think tank hack. It's all part of the New Way.

A fun sidelight is the brethren's excitement that Nikki Haley might name black conservative Tim Scott to replace DeMint. Matthew Vadum at FrontPageMag makes the case:

Unlike President Obama, Scott has an inspiring life story that happens to be true. Unlike Obama he was not a “red diaper baby” surrounded by Marxists from his first breath. Scott was actually born poor and unlike the president embraced the American Dream, running a business and achieving upward mobility before entering politics.

In the quest for power, racism can be tabled but slander and bullshit never sleep. At least Vadum doesn't mind he's black; check out the commenters at American Renaissance -- they get really mad at Republicans when they're not supplying them with white candidates.

UPDATE. My favorite part of the whole thing is the Reasonoids telling us what a libertarian DeMint secretly is, but they have been outdone by Timothy P. Carney at the Washington Examiner, who headlines, I swear to God, "Jim DeMint was the libertarian hero of the Senate."

For libertarians, Christian conservative pro-lifer Jim DeMint was the best thing to come through the Senate in decades. DeMint, quitting early to run the conservative Heritage Foundation, embodied an underappreciated fact of life in Washington: The politicians who most consistently defend economic liberty are the cultural conservatives.

Other prime quotes: "the big-government side in today's abortion battles is the 'pro-choicers'"; "DeMint opposes gay marriage, but again, the U.S. Senate hasn't had much to say on the issue"; and "Traditional morality and limited government aren't enemies. They're friends." Your chucklehead buddy who thinks he's kind of a libertarian because he wants to free the weed and misses the Drew Carey Show is going to be disappointed to hear that it was really all about tax breaks for the wealthy.