THE ODD COUPLE.

I've been saying for years that libertarianism is just a way of niche-marketing conservatism, and the boys at the boutique brand are coming closer to admitting it: Rand daddy Nick Gillespie tells us "Ted Cruz Might Just Have Won the Future for the GOP" and for a "limited-government coalition" of freaks and geeks. While Rand Paul comes to the voters with libertarian cred -- that is, he "wears turtlenecks, sports weird hair, and talks about letting states decide their own laws on drugs and marriage"--

Cruz is rocking a retrograde, wet-look haircut and is unambiguously and unambivalently conservative on any social issue, including the phantom menace of Sharia law (“an enormous problem” in America, according to Cruz).

That's putting it mildly. Have a look and you'll see that Cruz is straight-up wingnut on everything, pretty much -- against gay marriage and open borders, for the death penalty, as strong a supporter of Big Oil as Texas has ever sent to the Senate, etc. (In some areas, like foreign policy, his conservatism overlaps libertarianism -- as does the conservatism of, say, Sarah Palin these days; so long as Obama is CiC, conservatives are provisional doves.)

There isn't really any difference between the two creeds except on social issues, and Cruz is totally retrograde there.  So why should libertarians support him? Because together they can win, imagines Gillespie:

As [Rand] Paul brings in fresh new blood to a broad, limited-government coalition, Cruz is locking down the tired old blood that realizes the John Boehners, Mitch McConnells, John McCains, and Lindsey Grahams of the world really don’t give a rat’s ass about them.

There you have it. The so-called social-libertarian stuff isn't such a big deal to them, as libertarians themselves are starting to admit; so long as corporations are allowed to run rampant (and for the little people, barbers don't need licenses!), they can brush all that gay/black/women stuff into a states-rights discussion, where they'll patiently Randsplain that civil liberties don't have to be the same thing in Alabama as they are in California, because that's why we have the Articles of Confederation.

It'll be like always, in other words, except the guys at Reason will be working for Republicans out in the open. Well, more out in the open.

RACE TO THE BOTTOM.

This guy Kevin Helliker is still doing triathlons at an advanced age and putting in good time. He thinks kids today don't have the stuff because they aren't fast enough to catch him. That's ridiculous, of course -- there are lots of fast, highly-trained young athletes out there who can kick his ass -- but good for him, I thought as I started reading his Wall Street Journal story; I'm an old crank too, and I hope his piss-and-vinegar attitude brings him as much comfort as it brings me pleasure.

Then Helliker went from crank to nut:

Now, a generational battle is raging in endurance athletics. Old-timers are suggesting that performance-related apathy among young amateur athletes helps explain why America hasn't won an Olympic marathon medal since 2004... 

No wonder Putin laughs at us: It's like the first half of Rocky IV all over again.

Some observers see larger and scarier implications in the declining competitiveness of young endurance athletes. "This is emblematic of the state of America's competitiveness, and should be of concern to us all," Toni Reavis, a veteran running commentator, wrote in a blog post this week entitled "Dumbing Down, Slowing Down." 

But instead of fighting back, the young increasingly are thumbing their nose at the very concept of racing.

Not that! Next they'll be thumbing their nose at game shows and fairground attractions.

Among some, it simply isn't cool, an idea hilariously illustrated in a 2007 YouTube Video called the Hipster Olympics. In those Games, contestants do anything to avoid crossing the finish line—drink beer, lounge in the grass, surf the Web. 

Yet something remotely akin to that is happening...

Yes, since some mass-attendance endurance events don't emphasize winning as much as they did during the days of the Space Race and the Cold War, America's runners are just sort of jogging diffidently anymore as they take selfies and talk in fruity voices about artisanal pickles. And the impact goes beyond sports:

Likening to communism events that promote "hand-holding over competition," [some jock] said, "How well is that everybody-gets-a-trophy mentality working in our schools?"

I had all kinds of reactions to this, mostly incoherent swears, but the best gloss on it is actually contained in the first cluster of comments to the article: A guy points out that America actually still performs brilliantly in athletic competitions (duh), and someone comes in and says,

But Kevin isn't saying that US runners are no longer competitive at the elite level. He's saying that the competitiveness doesn't extend down through the ranks of newbie runners. More people are running, but most of the newcomers take it much less seriously than they did a generation ago. That's incontrovertible.

Like a sane person who lives on the planet Earth, the original poster says, so what? And another person says that sane response "demonstrates the thesis of the story above. Hedonism outranks competitiveness and turns a race into a party."

Imagine what the Founding Fathers would think of us reducing the dignity of a footrace.

So if you're not a serious runner, but you'd like to improve yourself a bit and train for and participate in, say, your local marathon, and you make it all the way through the twenty-six point two fucking miles but you didn't leave it all on the track like the original Marathoner, you're part of what's wrong with America today, slacker punk.

You know where this is coming from: The same well of desperation that recently gave us the claim that leftist teachers are strangling the competitive spirit of young males by making them play the feminizing game of freeze tag. As it becomes clearer to these idiots that a large number and possibly a majority of Americans have figured out that the economy is fucked, and anyone offering a thumbs-up, can-do, elbow-grease solution that, oh by the way, involves cutting entitlements is obviously a grifter who wants to steal what's left of your savings, the grifters are getting pissed. So they drop the smiley-sunshine pitch and hector us that we don't have the stuff, that they're wasting their time talking to the likes of you, and stalk off to find some fresh suckers.

And they're running out of those.

BIRTH PAINS.

William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection complains that evil RINOs Tucker Carlson and Charles Krauthammer (!) were making fun of Ted Cruz's Canadian heritage:

Tonight on Special Report with Bret Baier both Tucker Carlson and Charles Krauthammer were excoriating Cruz over the issue of Obamacare defunding. That’s fine. 

If you think he’s wrong or foolish or whatever, make the case. 

But as part of their arguments each brought up that Cruz was born in Canada. Carlson mentioning that there were questions as to whether Cruz could be president and Krauthammer joking that Cruz could be Prime Minister of Canada. 

What did that have to do with anything? The topic was defunding Obamacare and Senate strategy. 

...You can make the case against Cruz’s tactics, if you want, without going where you went.

Jacobson seems to find the subject of birth status and eligibility far beneath the dignity of our political discourse. Well, he does now, anyway --here's Jacobson, April 26, 2011:

The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump is doing damage to Republicans by raising the birth certificate issue. I think it’s way too early to tell, but it is just as likely that Trump is doing major damage to Obama. 

Obama may be winning in some circles, but the polling indicates that increasing percentages of Americans — including substantial percentages of independents — do not believe Obama was born in the U.S. or are unsure. I’ll have more on the polling tomorrow, but you never hear about the numbers for independents, you only hear about the numbers for Republicans.

Hint, go out to dinner with four independent voters; then try to guess which one of them thinks Obama was born elsewhere. Because if the polls are accurate, one of them does. 

Worse than that, the release or not of the original birth certificate now has become a test of wills. The dispute has morphed from “where was he born” to “why doesn’t he just release the damn thing, we have to do it.” It has become a metaphor for the overall image of Obama as viewing himself as above the rest of us, as reflected in his now-famous line about people in small towns clinging to their guns and religion...

You may also see Jacobson's later post announcing that the White House had released -- or, as Jacobson had it, "purported to release" -- Obama's long-form birth certificate, which Jacobson claimed made the media look foolish and vindicated him.

I was going to call this post "Christ, What an Asshole" but really, I could call any of them that.

ALSO, CHOC-O-MUT ICE CREAMS IS CONSERVATIVE 2. (FART.) THIS IS CENTRAL TO MY POINT.

The key line from Jonah Goldberg's latest is:

[Breaking Bad] is the best show currently on television, and perhaps even the best ever. Moreover, it deserves special respect from conservatives.

Thereafter ensues an extended mouthfart to this effect:

• Breaking Bad includes many wise observations about human behavior.
• Conservatives r grate.
• Therefore Breaking Bad is conservative.

Actually maybe this is the key line:

And that is why great novels are, by nature, conservative.

I'm not surprised that there's a market for telling conservatives that everything good is conservative, but sometimes I'm amazed that Goldberg has been doing it so long and still sucks at it.

UPDATE. In comments, lots of conservative classic fanfic in Goldberg's honor, e.g. from J. Neo Marvin: "Stately, plump Jonah Goldberg came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of Cheetos in which two Star Wars figurines lay crossed..." Much farting, too.

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Starbucks' new guns-in-the-store policy (basically: you can still bring them, but Starbucks wishes you wouldn't) and how the brethren inevitably find it a violation of their right to menace people in fast food restaurants.

UPDATE. Commenter mortimer2000 looks forward to future expressions of "the oppressed minority victimhood of white gun nuts," including the documentary Red Dots on the Prize.

Also a comment at the Voice (yes, they do get a few, despite their ridiculously unwieldy comment technology) reminded me that I hadn't checked Jeff Godlstein on the subject. Here is his reaction:

I hope for [Schultz's] sake — and for the sake of his “anti-gun customers” who are so offended at the sight of others’ weapons that they will protest what is a Constitutionally-protected right — that no nutjob decides to take Joe Biden up on his advice, buy her/himself a shotgun, and go Grande Caramel Macchiato hunting in all these newly-declared gun free zones. The irony would be too tragic to stomach.

For me, the clumsily-masked desire to see people who don't completely agree with him slaughtered isn't the saddest aspect of this; it's the fist-squeezing someday-you'll-be-sorry pre-teen rage, and the fact that Godlstein has retained it into middle age and found, apparently, thousands of other emotionally stunted readers to share it with. I wonder what the overlap is between Godlstein readers and Men's Rights crybabies.

WE PLAY ALL THE HITS.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Now that it's painfully clear that nobody cares, let's have a Benghazi Bullshit clips show!

In other words: Since "Nobama and Hitlery murdered Christopher Stevens for Saul Alinsky" isn't catching on with normal people, it'll be repurposed as a mantra for conservative basement services until 2016, by which time it might be retro enough that people will find it cool.

UPDATE. May I quote me? From those days of Republican Hope and Change, when they thought Obama might be impeached over Benghazi:

"It was the cover-up, as history records, that eventually brought about Nixon's resignation in disgrace," said WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh. "Now, Congress is investigating an alleged cover-up of the terrorist attack Sept. 11, 2012..." Unruh cited some prominent conservatives, including Mike Huckabee and Ted Nugent, who predicted Obama's impeachment. Plus in a separate column Unruh revealed WorldNetDaily's exclusive poll showed 44 percent of Americans wanted Obama impeached -- and that was back in March! The numbers must be off the chart by now...

"The last time something of this magnitude happened, a U.S. president stepped down," said Susan Brown of Right Wing News." "Is Benghazi Becoming a Watergate, or Iran-Contra, or Both?" asked Victor Davis Hanson at National Review. "May be the biggest federal cover-up since Watergate," said his colleague Deroy Murdock. And in case the association didn't sufficiently excite, there was the all-purpose slogan: "Nobody died in Watergate."

Where are the snowjobs of yesteryear?

UPDATE 2. With Goldberg it never rains but it pours -- or, since it's him, I guess we could say it never farts but it sharts. He has a new Goldberg File column out (no link, I get the wretched things by email), in which he gets philosophical and explains how (I swear to God) Curly in City Slickers was wrong that you should find one thing in life that matters because life requires "balance." He makes several lunges at apposite metaphors for this, finally collapsing into the following:

As you get older you change the mix in your portfolio, in the same way people near retirement move more heavily into bonds and away from stocks.

There's a man from whom you want to take life lessons. But why did he even bother?

Now I could swear there was a real point I was building up to... Oh, right, politics isn't everything and everything isn't political.

This he demonstrates by telling us liberals suck:

The true danger of progressivism is that it is "one thingism" hiding in the camouflage of diversity talk. Every institution is free to do its thing, so long as its thing is defined in progressive terms and guided by the State. Diversity means lots of people with different skin colors and dangly bits, who all think the same way... For conservatives, diversity actually means different people, individually and in communities, pursuing different things. 

I don't know why he didn't just say "My name is Ima Liberal, I'm a big four-eyed lame-o and I wear the same stupid sweater every day." I guess prominent conservative intellectuals just can't use that kind of shortcut. Farrrt.

GEN McME.

I see there's a little crop of inter-sub-generational warfare growing, with "Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy" answered by "Fuck You. I'm Gen Y, and I Don't Feel Special or Entitled, Just Poor." I'm sure there are other respondents out there, but they may as well forget it because Megan McArdle has, as is her wont, already stunk the whole thing up:

Let’s take a hypothetical woman who graduated from college in 1994. Call her, oh, I don’t know, “Megan McArdle.”

Oh holy jumping Jesus.

Megan basically hit the demographic and educational lottery: She graduated from an Ivy League school with no debt. Unfortunately, she had a degree in English, so her first job paid only $19,000. Double unfortunately, she was laid off. She went to work for a startup, where she was laid off when it folded...

As the drunk said to Stony Stevenson in Between Time and Timbuktu, that's the saddest story I ever heard. Long story short, McArdle's tale of whooaaa is meant to convince... well, nobody; she compares complainers to children, and throughout her chronicle (which might make a nice ebook entitled "Down and Out at the Koch Institute") never misses a chance to tell the kids, in her own sorry-notsorry way, you think you have it rough? It's just a way to fill column inches, and for some people the best way to fill column inches is to offer oneself as an example of grit and determination, a Horatio Alger of the Thermomix set, for the littlebrains to emulate.

Is the job market unusually bad right now for millennials? It sure is, and believe me, millennials have nothing but the deepest sympathy from me and our hypothetical. Life seems scary, and y’all don’t deserve this. 

But here’s the funny thing: When I was moving out of my parents' home and into the 435 square feet of paradise where I spent my last years in New York, I was seriously panicking...

My mother took me for a 32nd birthday drink, which I had a hard time enjoying, given that I was freaking out.

Down at a stinking blind tiger, no doubt, and out of a growler. And not one of those artisanal ones neither! Then up six flights of stairs to the cold-water flat they shared with the Delaneys...

Be sure and catch up with the earlier column to which she refers, containing advice to the people she would later hector, including:

Let this [economic catastrophe] open you up to things you’d never have considered. I had no plans to be a journalist; I stumbled into it. And if I’d had better-paying options, I might not have dared to take that job at the Economist, because financially, it was a huge struggle: My disposable monthly income, after loans, rent and taxes, was in the low hundreds. But I love journalism more than any other possible career I could imagine. It may end up being a good thing that the Great Recession shocked you out of “normal” and into “scramble” mode...

As if you needed any more proof that The Up Side of Down is going to be the biggest inspirational best-seller since The Five People You Meet at a Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein Shooting Match. When life gives you lemons, make Avocado Wasabi Ice Cream!

My sympathies are with people who have to live with this shit economy. I'm sure I don't have to convince you good people but here's a little something from USA Today anyway:

U.S. workers were more productive from April through June than previously estimated, while labor costs were unchanged. 

Productivity grew at an annual rate of 2.3% in the April-June quarter, up from an initial estimate of 0.9% growth, the Labor Department said Thursday. Unit labor costs were flat in the second quarter, less than the 1.4% rise the government had initially estimated. 

Keep working, slaves, or we'll have to cut the budget on our corporate image campaign.

The combination of stronger productivity and less of an increase in wages should provide assurances to the Federal Reserve that inflation is not a threat.

Oh yeah, about that:

Fed downgrades its outlook for US economy... 

The Fed predicted Wednesday that the economy will grow just 2 percent to 2.3 percent this year, down from its previous forecast in June of 2.3 percent to 2.6 percent growth.

Add to that the traditional "job creators" not actually creating jobs and you'll see that, whether you're Y or X or Boomer or Whatever, you're fucked and you have a right to complain. And like all your rights, it's something the McArdles of the world want to take away from you.

UPDATE. Post mildly edited for clarity. Comments are understandably hot on this one, mainly concerning the absurdity of McArdle's self-presentation as a struggling youth. We should keep in mind that even privileged people have real troubles, and sometimes may share them out of a yearning for fellow-feeling -- to show that down deep they're the same as you. McArdle, unfortunately, shares them only to show that she's better than you, because she knows some readers will believe it and buy her book so they too can learn how to do "scramble" mode well enough to achieve Meganhood. Look, if Donald Trump can get away with this shit, why not her?

MEET WHIPLASH WILLIE.

All longtime readers need to hear is the title...

7 Examples of Discrimination Against Christians in America

...and that the author of it is nonsense volume dealer John Hawkins (who also wrote "I Agree With the People Who Yelled 'Yes,' We Should Let Him Die at the [GOP] Debate"), to know we have hot stuff.

To boil it down:

When the government tells the Christian Service Center it has to give up on Christ or quit using USDA food to help the poor, that’s religious discrimination.

I want 1,000 pounds of government cheese so I can use it to lure paupers to my Satan is Lord multimedia show. What! You dare dispute my right to that cheese? Well, you're in luck -- Satanists don't have much of a lobby.

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association: Obama’s IRS Was “Targeting and Attempting to Intimidate Us"

Because why would anyone suspect a TV preacher of trying to cheat?

A court has said that a pair of Christians were ‘allowed’ to read the Bible aloud outside the Department of Motor Vehicles in Hemet, California... Yes, there were actually Americans arrested for reading the Bible on public property.

The yahoos in question were reading the Bible to people in line at the DMV -- which in any civilized jurisdiction should be a "Stand Your Ground" offense. Alas, they were let off.

Colorado Baker Faces Year In Jail For Refusing To Make Cake For Gay Wedding

Forced to accept the business of homosexuals! Why, next Big Gummint will make them serve Negroes!

Airforce Veteran Faces A Court Martial For Opposing Gay Marriage

The Air Force disputes his account, and the airman is in fact only charged with lying about his superiors. Stories about how the Obamamilitary is trying to throw Christians out of the service have become a staple of wingnut propaganda.

Government Forces Churches To Get Permits For Baptisms... the Park Service recently began a new policy requiring churches that wished to hold baptisms in public waters to apply for a special permit at least 48 hours in advance of the baptism...

...and then rescinded the policy. Some persecution.

Florida Professor Demands Student Stomp On Jesus

Oh Christ, that thing again. As with the airman's story, Hawkins' account is far less than complete -- you'd never know the complaining Christer got in trouble for threatening the teacher, not for failing to stomp on Jesus (which he was not required to do). But like the airman, this kid apparently saw an opportunity to engage in some ratfucking for Jesus, and a bunch of rightwing politicians saw a chance to benefit from his bullshit, too.

Hawkins and the rest of these guys are not the new breed of Christian martyr. They're the new breed of ambulance chaser -- telling every Christian who slipped on a banana peel not to get up, they'll make a mint in the Court of Public Opinion, now what was the name of that heathen who hit you?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...on two subjects. First I follow-up on the Syria story, in which rightbloggers go from "Give peace a chance" to Obama weakling skree. The second is on that batshit crazy Michelle Obama water thing, for which I think I see another motivation besides general Obama hatred -- though I may be giving them too much credit.

REPUBLICO AD ABSURDUM.

Michelle Obama is encouraging people to drink more water.

Wait for it...

Regardless of the wisdom of public-health campaigns launched by the first lady in general, this one is silly in its own right: There isn’t good scientific evidence that people should drink more water. The first lady’s claim that one more glass of water per day will “make a real difference” for “your energy” and “how you feel” is homeopathy, not public health. (Who’s the party of science, again?)

That's Patrick Brennan, who apparently picked the short straw at National Review.

Next up: Michelle Obama tells us to breathe deep, and National Review warns of the "unintended consequences" of hyperventilation.

UPDATE. In comments, tinheart: "'h2Obama? No thanks! Give me a cool class of Chromium (Cr). Ted Cruz 2016!'"

Several commenters suggest the First Lady start other common-sense drives, such as Don't Stick a Fork in a Light Socket and Don't Whack Yourself in the Crotch, so conservatives will stick forks in light sockets and whack themselves in the crotch. No, no, it would only end up hurting the little people --  Brennan would write about it, but in the end it'd be those poor saps in the tricorner harts and knee breeches who'd be contusing and electrocuting themselves. I realize my lack of ruthlessness goes to the heart of the liberal dilemma.

But then, this may be happening regardless: Commenter D Johnston tells me Brennan's commenters are actually talking about how you can hurt yourself by drinking too much water -- a ridiculously remote possibility that these doofuses now treat as a clear and present danger ("without clear guidelines this is actually a dangerous suggestion") because Moochelle. I can imagine them fainting in the hot sun, their last coherent thought "can't let the socialists overhydrate me," a LIVE FREE AND DRY banner clutched in their blistered hands.

BOTH ENDS AGAINST THE MIDDLE.

Last week conservatives were mad that the tyrant Obama was rushing us to war; now they're mad that he isn't ("PEACE IN OUR TIME: OBAMA CAVES TO PUTIN, ASSAD, IRAN"). A call appears to have gone out among the brethren for new ideas. I think Bridget Johnson of PJ Media has a winning entry:

Game-Changer: Signs of the al-Qaeda-Assad Alliance

...The Iranians aren’t taking countermeasures against al-Qaeda forces supposedly threatening their brother Assad, yet continue to offer haven to the terror group’s leaders. But then again, Assad isn’t taking countermeasures against the al-Qaeda strongholds, either.

It’s just one omen that has alarmed Syrians about an unholy alliance being overlooked by the West.

Long story short: These guys all love each other (and jihad), and are only play-fighting (albeit realistically) to deceive us and protect Iran.

It's brilliant -- whatever Obama does, as long as he doesn't nuke Syria and/or Iran he's still wrong!

At this point the impeachment proceedings are going to look like a scene from The Crucible.

UPDATE. Mark_Bzzz, in comments: "I think they're overusing the 'game changer' meme. The game has been changed so many times in their minds they don't know if they're playing tiddlywinks or Go Fish." I think it's Calvinball.

I MEANT TO DO THAT.

Megan McArdle contributes to the latest conservative Syria tantrum, calling the President "stumbling" and "tin-eared" (Yeah, I know! Megan McArdle!) and piling up several other insults before coming to her teeth-gritted point that if Obama's ploy works out the way some people think it's going to, it won't count because no fair:

Keep that in mind as the revisionist history begins emerging from some quarters -- i.e., our patiently brilliant president once again demonstrates his mastery of n-dimensional policy chess. This may end up coming out “right,” in the sense that the U.S. will have been delivered a face-saving way to back down from a threat on which Obama never seriously intended to make good, and Syria may give up some of its chemical weapons, forcing the government to rely on unreliable methods such as bullets to slaughter thousands of its own citizens.

But if it does turn out “well,” this will be because the president was lucky, not brilliant...

Human beings tend to judge failure or success by outcome, rather than process. It’s an easy heuristic, but as in so many things, the easy way out is often disastrous.

Hmmm, where I have I heard this argument before? Ah yes --"Jane Galt," January 2007*, talking about Iraq not going the way she expected:

This has not convinced me of the brilliance of the doves, because precisely none of the ones that I argued with predicted that things would go wrong in the way they did. If you get the right result, with the wrong mechanism, do you get credit for being right, or being lucky?

Everyone gets a little peeved at pundits who are spectacularly wrong and proceed blithely as if they hadn't been, but after this, I'm actually grateful that they don't take the time to explain why other people were only right because of luck, or why right is wrong, etc.

(*Sorry for the indirect link -- McArdle has wisely memory-holed [or, as we like to say around here, Sullivaned] her old posts.)

HOW YOU KNOW YOU'RE WINNING.

My old home town is having a Democratic mayoral primary today, and it looks like Bill de Blasio has it in a walk, notwithstanding that he plans to tax the rich to fund pre-K education. The rich don't like this at all, of course, and have engaged their servants at National Review to rouse the people to their side.

The result is what you might expect, only funnier. The pre-K plan is actually "pure resentment-driven, Occupy-style hate," says National Review, unleashed upon a vulnerable minority: "New Yorkers earning $500,000 a year or more."

Sensing perhaps that sympathetic tears are unforthcoming, the Review appeals to the citizens' self-interest, claiming that taxes on the rich are what cause high crime rates, graffiti, squeegee men, and the Crown Heights riots:

The last time a man of Bill de Blasio’s political bent was entrusted with the mayoralty of New York, the city experienced 2,000 murders a year, anti-Jewish riots, economic stagnation, and a general sense of ungovernability.

If only, instead of begging money from Gerald Ford, Abe Beame had just cut Nelson Rockefeller's taxes! That would have fixed things up in no time. Ultimately they produce a passage athwart which some editor should have stood crying "Stop":

The centerpiece of Mr. de Blasio’s campaign agenda is a mugging — a multibillion-dollar forcible wealth transfer from New York taxpayers to the public-sector unions that constitute the backbone of the city’s Democratic machine.

Yes, the affable de Blasio skulks in the alley, sap at the ready, waiting for Mrs. Toffeebottom to return from the opera. Well, didn't Bloomberg warn us his wife and child are black?

From there it actually degenerates, with the editors complaining that de Blasio is from Massachusetts (!), and lives in Park Slope, where there are vegetarians. Oh, and that he doesn't have private-sector experience, a charge which proved decisive, you will remember, in the 2012 Presidential election.

I am a horrible person and I love seeing them so flustered.

UPDATE. Looks like there may be a runoff, but I do prophesy the election lights on de Blasio, after which the forces of capital will pull out all the stops to block him. I'm not a morning person but that New York Times headline, "Lhota Hopes to Capitalize on Elite Dismay Over a Liberal Tilt," really lifted my spirits on the way to work today.

Some of you were rough on Chuckling in comments, but you know de Blasio's not perfect: He went all in for the Atlantic Yards reno, after all. Still, it's important why people vote for candidates, and good to see New Yorkers might at last be growing sick of rich fucks.

UPDATE. On the other hand, as the astute Josh Greenman points out, most Democrats still say Bloomberg has done a good job. They could mean, though, that he's done a good job of running the giant food courts that large swaths of the city have been turned into, which may temper but not slake the citizens' thirst for some stronger liberal initiatives than vice laws now that Big Nanny is on his way out.

AT NATIONAL REVIEW, THE DREAM WILL NEVER DIE.

Shorter John O'Sullivan: Well, at least they still hate fags in Australia!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about rightbloggers and Obama's Syria push. I'm opposed to bombing Syria -- my bets against American intervention have been good for years and I'm inclined to let them ride. Rightbloggers make bad allies, though, for reasons I lay out in the column -- the nutshell is, they're obviously not against half-assed foreign adventures, and only oppose this one because they see a political opening.  They'll bomb the shit out of Iran first chance they get.

Maybe their ill wind will blow some good in the Congressional vote. But you can't forget what they are. They're a little like Hyman Roth, except you can't respect them.

UPDATE. Ur-neocon Norman Podhoretz dodders out of Hell's vestibule to tell us Obama is trying to make warmongering look bad on purpose because he hates America. Far from being "incompetent and amateurish" as all the other conservatives are saying, Obama is in Podhoretz's estimate "a brilliant success as measured by what he intended all along to accomplish." And what is that? Weakening America abroad!

As a left-wing radical, Mr. Obama believed that the United States had almost always been a retrograde and destructive force in world affairs. Accordingly, the fundamental transformation he wished to achieve here was to reduce the country's power and influence...

Podhoretz knows it doesn't look like that to you, but he knows Obama's kind -- no, not the schvartzes, at least not this time; he means socialists. Like all good one-worlders, Obama's willing to use trickery to destroy the U.S. -- even pretending to be pro-war when in fact he's secretly tickling the "war-weariness of the American people" by, among other things, "using drones instead of troops whenever he was politically forced into military action." (How can we sustain Americans' fighting spirit without American casualties? What's a bloody shirt without blood?)

In fact, though his fellow wingnuts are always talking about how arrogant Obama is, Podhoretz knows that in fact Obama is selfless -- such a zealot, in fact, that he'll willingly sacrifice himself for his cause:

For this fulfillment of his dearest political wishes, Mr. Obama is evidently willing to pay the price of a sullied reputation. In that sense, he is by his own lights sacrificing himself for what he imagines is the good of the nation of which he is the president, and also to the benefit of the world, of which he loves proclaiming himself a citizen.

Norman Podhoretz can't believe how blind you all have been not to see it. Up next: How Obama drags American to socialism while presiding over an unprecedented stock market rally. Oh wait -- they say that all the time! Maybe Podhoretz isn't senile after all -- maybe he's actually a conservative thought leader. But how would anyone tell the difference?

THE LIBERTARIAN RACKET IN A NUTSHELL.

Ole Perfesser Glenn Reynolds likes to call himself a libertarian. Now, his libertarianism is effectively anti-abortion, but that's no contradiction because, as libertarians constantly tell us, libertarians don't have to support a woman's right to choose -- and, considering what a sausage fest the movement is, that's got to be a big part of the attraction for guys who like their Maximum Freedom to come with an exemption for chicks.

(If you're a fan of this sort of thing, do check out the new Reason story assuring wingnuts that "Conservatives are wrong to worry that libertarian policies will lead to libertinism." The author, like all these guys, describes herself as pro-choice, but reports with excitement that "support for unregulated abortion is declining, with a slight majority now describing itself as pro-life, a startling reversal from a decade ago," and it's all because of Freedom. Whether you like abortion rights or think they're murder and must be banned, you're sure to love the new libertarian future!)

In this weird era of wingnuts pretending to be peaceniks, libertarians are reaching out -- but not to the liberals who've sided with them on Syria. This month CPAC will have a regional conference. The last national CPAC conference, you may remember, had a panel on bridging the gap with black people, which worked out terribly. This one will feature a panel which should go a lot better, called "Can Social Conservatives and Libertarians Ever Get Along?" American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas thinks they can: "At a time when President Obama is leading the country off the economic, social, and foreign policy 'cliff,' I am confident that libertarians and social conservatives can find enough common ground to save the United States of America," he says.

Makes sense. As National Review has told us, Rick Santorum and libertarians have a lot in common, and what do liberals stand for that libertarians should approve? Besides abortion rights, which, we have established, have nothing to do with freedom.

How about overturning stop-and-frisk laws? That should be an easy libertarian lay-up, and indeed Reason has several articles critical of the practice and supportive of its overturn in New York -- though, if you make the mistake of looking into the comments, you'll find the punters are mostly anxious to tell each other that it's actually liberals who are for stop-and-frisk because Bloomberg hates soda freedom.

But while their magazine is good on the subject, out in the wide world you don't hear a lot of big-time libertarians complaining about the practice (like Rand Paul -- and he's their director of minority outreach!), though they and other conservatives have been ceaselessly enraged about airport scanners since, oh, about January 20, 2009. In fact you'll find some professed libertarians who support stop-and-frisk.

The reason for the difference is self-evident: Stop-and-frisk is generally not a White People Problem. And if it's not a White People Problem, it's probably not going to do much for the libertarian/social conservative alliance.

Reynolds usually keeps his mouth shut about stop-and-frisk, too, though sometimes he uses it as part of the anti-urban shtick that excites his base. This week he came up with a classic of the genre:

Speaking of urban agony, by the way — if folks on the right were truly Macchiavellian, they’d be joining the critics of stop-and-frisk. The big Blue enclaves are where the crime and racial strife mostly are; letting those get worse would probably benefit folks on the right. Luckily for the hipsters, righties are too principled for that sort of “heightening the contradictions” thing.

You have to admire the density of it: He not only gets in knocks on effete city folks and "hipsters," and  the obligatory Ooga Booga, but he ends by suggesting that conservative support for stop-and-frisk is "principled" rather than reactionary.

When I criticize people like Reynolds as glibertarians or bullshit libertarians or whatever, don't get me wrong -- it's not out of respect for genuine libertarians. It's that the only libertarianism we're ever likely to get is the kind that conservatives have been giving us all along.

UPDATE. @SAHenryKrinkle tips me to FreedomWorks blogger Kemberlee Kaye. The tea party outfit says it's all about the "fight for less government, lower taxes, and more freedom" but Kaye is still pissed that a judge ruled against New York's stop-and-frisk, because that only looks like Freedom to the untrained eye:

The ill-written decision (quite literally the most poorly written, constructed and reasoned federal decision I've ever read) veiled as a Fourth Amendment win, appears to be nothing more than political correctness brokering... Neither is it appropriate to use the Fourth Amendment to push baseless diversity initiatives.

Clearly the Fourth Amendment is spoiled for them if they catch black people using it.

UPDATE 2. At LGM Scott Lemieux gives Reynolds' "Ultimate Conservatarian Post " much more thorough treatment than I did.

In comments, FMguru complains, "I thought we were all in agreement that 'Libertarian' was essentially a tag that down-the-line conservatives adopt when they want to distance themselves from some element of the Republican/conservative coalition." Well, sure, but there are inevitably some hardcore types who actually believe in the stuff; don't forget, once upon a time people painted their faces for Adam Ant. History is full of cults.

Also in comments, nomoremister reminds me that one of the Crazy Jesus Lady's most memorable rants was actually inspired by the indignity of white people having to be scanned just like Muslims.

UPDATE 3. I'd like to thank our libertarian advocate in comments for the many lengthy "args" he has encouraged us all to "grok" ("Did you not catch, that TECH IS GOING TO SOLVE THIS whether you and I like it or not?"). Cool stories, bro, but can you just get to the "Buy Gold" pitch already?

UPDATE 4. Sorry, commenters who were having fun with him, I had to remove several of the transhumanist troll's comments, and blacklist him -- I hadn't noticed, but he's basically a scamster running a "Be Your Own Boss" racket, and was planting his links just as less imaginative spam artists do, but with libertarian palaver to keep it interesting. Should have known -- that's <i>the libertarian racket in a nutshell</I> (curtain). UPDATE 4.2. Oops, I just looked again and Arg Grok's site is not, at least on the surface, a commerce site -- his "GUARANTEED INCOME & CHOOSE YOUR BOSS" pitch made me think it was, not to mention his fevered pitchman manner -- you know: never really listen and always be closing. But his hustle seems to be ideological.  I'm leaving him blocked, nonetheless, because I'm sick of him.

JUVENAL HAS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.

So Rod Dreher was reading Dante and it made him repentant over some harsh things he said back when he was "deeply impressed by SPY magazine, and its way of savaging the rich and the famous with extremely clever, lacerating prose" -- which style he claimed to have emulated (though I've been reading him since he was a New York Post movie reviewer and I don't remember him producing a single intentionally funny line):

I wrote some pretty funny stuff for the first half of my career, and I’m not going to say I was inaccurate in all my judgments. But I was thoughtlessly cruel... 

Over the years, I’ve heard from people I hurt with my words... and I’ve regretted what I wrote. Again, it’s not necessarily that I made an incorrect judgment in assessing a politician, a movie, etc., but that I did so inhumanely. I find now that the kind of criticism that I used to admire now strikes me as having the overriding quality of malice. 

To speak in Dantean terms, if I am granted to pass to Paradise through Purgatory, my misuse of the gift of language and writing will be the thing about me that most merits the purifying fire.

Snif. Seems like only yesterday -- in fact, it was yesterday. Here's Dreher today:

Ariel Castro & Other Cretins Who Deserved It

...There are lots of people I feel sorry for in this world. These are four I cannot pity. There is some atavistic part of me that doesn’t object to the rough justice they have received, though in Castro’s case, it is truly regrettable that he did not repent and die a natural death. My pity in that case is a function of my religious belief. I said a prayer for mercy on his soul, but my heart wasn’t really in it, I’m afraid.

So, I guess what Dreher really meant was, he was going to continue to be "thoughtlessly cruel" -- he's just going to stop trying to be funny about it.

It's an interesting type of Christianity: One that allows contempt for one's fellow men as long as it's solemn. Pleasure (except for the sneaky pleasure of moral superiority) is the thing that makes it wrong.

That's okay. Dreher was never made to write satire; he was born to be its subject.

TIME FOR RAND PAUL TO MAKE A SPEECH ON FIRE ISLAND.

Shorter libertarians: Next thing you know, Big Gummint will make us sell wedding cakes to black people!

More libertarian gay rights fun here.

UPDATE. "The homofascist rainbow-shirts are at it again," says Matt Barber about the case at Catholic Online. "They've unsheathed, once more, their anti-Christian long knives." He must be one of those religious libertarians. Barber also finds a black preacher who rejects the civil rights argument: "Don't compare your sin to my skin!" Maybe Reason can make a t-shirt out of that.

WHEN THEY LET UNPROPERTIED WHITE MEN VOTE, HE KNEW IT WAS ALL DOWNHILL FROM THERE.

As I've noted before, whereas once upon a time they felt the need to at least pretend they liked Labor Day, conservatives now openly express contempt for the holiday, the socialistic innovations it celebrates (such as the 40-hour week and paid sick leave), and basically anybody who has managed to win wages enough to decently feed and house a family without employment at a think tank or megachurch.

Still, Kevin D. Williamson at National Review lays it on a bit thick. His "Red Monday" column (subtitled "We don’t need this quasi-Canadian, crypto-Communist holiday") reads like some bright kid tried to forge a P.J. O'Rourke column but couldn't manage the humor part. "Highly paid union men," for example, are hypocrites because they shop on Labor Day while retail workers must punch the clock; I guess Williamson's never heard of RWDSU.  And his big payoff is that "as a terminus of summer, Labor Day is disappointing," because it's still hot outside. I don't think Jerry Seinfeld in his prime could have put that one over. But the really creepy bit is this:

The Canadian typographical workers had been demanding a 58-hour work week and the repeal of anti-union laws. Parliament obliged, and of course the unions’ immediate response was to press for a 54-hour work week, and then a still shorter one, and so on, until everybody was French.

I mean,  at least when they used the slippery slope argument against gay marriage, it led to some juxtapositions that were actually humorous.

They must have some idea how normal people would react to this if they saw it. But, come to think of it, how would that ever happen?

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about rightbloggers' reactions to Miley Cyrus. Usually they turn something serious into something ridiculous, but I think I like them best when they turn something ridiculous into something bugfuck crazy.

UPDATE. Whittle seems to be a fan fave in comments. Kia:

He seems to hate [Kurt] Weill even more than the Nazis did, and for the same reasons. That he totally misses that irony is, of course, only to be expected. But to invoke the music of Kurt Weill--composed during a period of total political and economic collapse-- as the source of the political thuggery that hounded him out of Germany, well, that takes some doing...

AGoodQuestion wonders why Whittle didn't even bring up Bertolt Brecht, whose lyrics he must surely find as "dark, dystopian and depressing" as Weill's music, and went instead for Lost in the Stars, with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson. I'd love to know what Whittle thinks of Weill's collaboration with Ogden Nash and S.J. Perelman. "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" always makes me want to smash the state!