FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

 

Robert Christgau informed me these guys are still at it! 

 Time has been kind.

•   Republicans are so accustomed to minority rule, and so encouraged by their conspiracy-addled looney fringe (and by the customary feebleness of Democratic resistance) to believe it can never be broken, that even after they lost a presidential election by seven million votes and were disgraced by their leader's attempt to overthrow the government they can't acknowledge that they fucked up. For example: Now that the world is seeing more of QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's loony beliefs, ham-faced pundit Erick Erickson tells his Twitter followers it's the fault of poor Republican opposition research during the primaries:

Can't be that voters in a district where Erickson and others have been vomiting rightwing poison on the radiio for years found a far-right conspiracy theorist palatable -- nah! They just didn't know what QAnon was, maybe they thought it was like a Sesame Street spelling thing or a brand of athletic shoe. At this rate I expect Vermin Supreme to cross over -- except he's probably too benign for this bunch.

•   Meanwhile the awful Salena Zito has one of her usual Republican sources explain that Trump was really not so bad -- why, Trump and Obama were practically the same:

[Tom] Maraffa says that both Obama and former President Donald Trump were equally divisive — Obama was just more elegant in his delivery. The reporters who covered him missed it because they shared his cultural values.

What cultural values does he mean? Gay marriage, apparently:

"Lighting the White House up with rainbow colors — in a way, that was just sticking a thumb in the eyes of people who disagreed rather than using it as a moment to say the Supreme Court's made its decision, we don't all agree, but this is the law, and we have to move forward together" [Maraffa says].

By celebrating gay marriage Obama was being mean to people who hate gays -- just like Biden is being mean to people who show their patriotism by storming the Capitol. Oh, and Obama gets a pass because he's black: "These reporters and Democrats instantly viewed people who did not like Obama as racists because what else could it be?" 

Then Maraffa and Zito blubber over how what's wanted is "unity" and the Democrats have to meet the gay marriage opponents halfway. Thing is, polls show 70% of Americans approve of gay marriage. And I'll bet if you made a Venn diagram of the 30% who dispprove of gay marriage and the 39% who still approve of Trump, the overlap would be nearly complete. So tell me: Why should we meet these people halfway when they're nowhere near half the people?  

•   Seriously, though, this shit goes on and on and the mainstream aka "liberal" media do nothing but enable it.  The New York Times has extended its Cletus safaris into the post-Trump era -- once they were all "Let these simple souls tell us why they gave Trump an almost-majority of the votes" and now they're all "Let these simple souls tell us why it's mean to hold Trump to account for sending lunatics to murder Congress." Axios invites Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro to predict/threaten mayhem ("'Not a sustainable moment,' Carlson added. 'Something will break'").

And the Washington Post has former GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor in to decry what his successors are doing to the country -- but adding (I assume this was part of the deal) a bothsider bit: sure, Republicans are spreading conspiracy theories to dangerously derange our politics but whatabout The Squad -- 

And to my Democratic friends who think this is a Republican problem, I say be careful. The same pattern is already unfolding on your side as progressive activists — joined by elected officeholders, including Reps. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and “the Squad,” with aspirations of higher office — tell tales of what Democrats could accomplish if only they were willing to fight and use their power.

By "fight and use their power," they mean "vote for things their constituents want," which is pretty much the same thing as sending one's goons to kill Mike Pence -- it's a form of electoral insurrection against Republican rule, without which there can be no true civility! 

Well, we always knew we couldn't count of these idiots to save us. Put your faith in Roy Edroso Break It Down instead -- one of the only Substack newsletters that's not about how its proprietor has been cancelcultured! We have a couple freebies up from this week: A Twitter beef between two Republican up-and-comers, and the real readout from Kevin McCarthy's visit to Mar-a-Lago. Enjoy, and then subscribe (cheap!).

FRIDAY AROUND THE HORN.

Happy Labor Day folks. Take it easy, but take it.

•   Rod Dreher's going on again about how the atheists are persecuting the Christians. (The casus bellow this time is, two years ago Vanderbilt University kicked a Christian student org off-campus because they wouldn't sign a non-discrimination agreement.) This is from Dreher's gloss on some other Jesus freak:

He goes on to say that Christians — the untame ones – need to learn how to deal with the coming scorn with “a disregard which quickly turns the pathetic instruments of stigmatization into jewelry and art.” Why were the martyrs joyful? Because they were confident that from their suffering, new life would emerge. So too should we be...

“Blessed are you when they persecute you and speak all manner of evil against you.” What if we lived as if that were true?

Dreher, as you may know, lives off writing and royalties and is always fucking off to Paris. Some martyr! When they send the lions after Dreher I can see him trying to throw them off the scent with a coq au vin. "But it's free range" will be his last words.

Believe it or not, though, there's someone worse on this subject. Well, we can't be too surprised, it's Erick Erickson in the tertiary stage of whatever's wrong with him:

A lot of Christians have long thought they could sit on the sidelines. Only the icky evangelicals they don’t much care for and the creepily committed Catholics would have to deal with these issues and the people who hate those deeply committed to their faith. They, on the other hand, could sit on the sidelines, roll their eyes, and tell everyone that they didn’t think it was that big a deal. They were, after all, on birth control or watching whatever trendy HBO series is on or having a cocktail or perfectly willing to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

Do conservatives never drink cocktails? Or are my cheap beers now rendered "cocktails" just because I, a filthy liberal, am drinking them? Well, I always suspected P.J. O'Rourke was full of shit.

...You may think you can sit on the sidelines. You may think you can opt-out of the culture war. You may think you can hide behind your trendy naked Leena Dunham t-shirt while you sip trendy drinks talking about trendy shows and writing columns demanding Christians be forced by the state to bake cakes, provide flowers and farms, and offer up photographs of gay weddings. But not only will you one day be called to account to your God...

Yeesh. Here's a serious question: Does this sound like a spiel you'd expect from a movement that was gaining adherents? (Also: Did someone actually show Erickson this shirt? Well, at least his friends have a sense of humor.)

UPDATE. In comments, right out of the gate, (the good) Roger Ailes: "I think Eerick Eerikson could pull off a trendy naked Leena [sic] Dunham tee-shirt. And by pull off, I mean masturbate into."

•    But I thought conservatives loved it when businesses got tax breaks to promote job growth... oh, it's communist TV shows, nevermind. Key phrases from Dennis Saffran's City Journal article: "contemporary progressivism is an upper-middle-class movement that caters to the social libertarianism of coastal elites," "crony capitalism," "corporate welfare," etc. Key missing phrase from his article: "trickle-down."

THE END OF THE AFFAIR.. It was only when it came that I realized it had long been inevitable. But like all the other poor Gomers who followed her, I thought Sarah Palin was something special. Just a few weeks ago I actually found myself telling a very skeptical  labor lawyer that next summer I expected Palin to ride like a Valkyrie into the convention hall and  relieve the Republicans of whatever false idol they had put in her place.

She certainly kept a game face on to the end. Just weeks ago, when the prominent dopes of the GOP were cautiously essaying their ridiculous war on crony capitalism, Palin jumped in with both feet, and got a lot of the punters to go with. Any time a crackpot idea came down the pike, by the time it was in the public's view (thanks, Liberal Media ) Palin was at the wheel with her pedal to the metal.

But I still should have seen what was up when the more prominent apparatchiks, who are more dazzled by the prospect of re-looting the treasury than by any candidate, started bailing on Palin. Chief RedState buffoon Erick Erickson:

The ["Sarah Palin Cult"] is full of people with little prominence outside a twitter stream, a few nominal soapboxes imagined to be bigger they they are, and possessing a lot of bile and little grace inside an echo chamber of indecision 2012 dementia. About the only thing this cult lacks are thetans...

As Ann Coulter said, “Fish or cut bait.” Governor Palin has teased us long enough. Most of us are tired of it. She has harmed her own entry into the race and now, even if she got in, would only see a modest rise in polling.

Shorter'd: The Republican field has found several fresher, more exciting lunatics, we don't need you. And we of "little prominence" who followed her better get with the program, and pitch in for the big win behind someone normal Americans have not yet learned to hate.

Erickson is nothing if not a wind-sniffer, and would not have put himself out there  if he didn't think the Palin dream was really over -- though, being also a coward, he drenched it in enough don't-get-me-wrong  sauce that he could afterwards say "Oh, no, I didn't mean YOU" to every person involved who might someday be in a position to do him some good, or some harm-- from Palin on down to those campaign operatives whose ship-jumping skills were in order.

And that explicitly did not include those poor sods who carry the hods -- the salt-of-the-earth types who are now left standing at Palin Central, waiting on a train to Galt's Gulch and glory that will never arrive. 

I note this with some sadness, and not only on my own account. Most of Palin's retinue will peel off without many tears to the Perry and Bachmann bandwagons, where their thirst for blood and bullshit may be slaked. But I spare a thought for those who actually believed in Palin -- who thought this venal con woman was the real deal, their mama grizzly, their wingnut messiah -- someone who, though swimming in unearned wealth and privilege, understood their underwater double-wide lives and, though incredibly averse to responsibility, would bravely take up the Old Standard and be the backwoods Boudicca of their redneck resurgence.

She was as close to a new Reagan as the Tea Party people had -- simultaneously  sunny and impenetrable, a great grinning billboard behind which they could safely wreak their bitter vengeance on the hippies, ethnics, and paupers on whom they blamed the modern world. How long will it take for them to move on, and where to? And -- here's a strange thought, coming from someone who expected to see her crowned -- whether they did or not, are there enough of them that anyone will notice? Or was the whole idea that battalions of backwards-looking, flintlock-shouldering patriots marched with her just a scam as well? That would seem the cruelest thing for them to find: that they were doomed all along, and had only seemed close enough to victory to yearn for it because hucksters found profit in telling the world that they were.

HOW YOU GONNA KEEP 'EM DOWN ON THE FARM AFTER THEY'VE SEEN THE FARM?

Caught up in the "woke corporation" contretemps, Erick Erickson suggests that conservative red-state governments should stop kowtowing to out-of-state companies with their crazy ideas like "voter access" and "gay rights":

We must, however, begin now aggressively pushing back on corporations involving themselves in public policy and advocacy. That requires credibility from the right on these issues...

Greg Abbott of Texas has come out swinging saying Texas stands with Georgia and MLB’s All Star Game is unwelcome there. Other Republican Governors should do the same. Then perhaps the GOP should have some counter programming at the Braves Stadium the same night as the All Star Game. Maybe get Donald Trump on stage there and see who gets better ratings.

That'll establish "credibility," all right! I think these states should go further and kick out the major league teams entirely -- I mean, sports leagues been pushing the Overton Window left since the days of Jackie Robinson, enough is enough! Then they could start up their own league with unwoke in-your-face teams like the Selma Sheriff Clarks, the Nebraska Redskins Yeah I Said It, et alia. (I have already established some ground rules for them here.)

But then Erickson goes even further, and suggests reversing the decades-old Republican policy of offering tax breaks and other perks to corporations (usually paid for with service cuts to their own poorest citizens) to attract them and their jerbs:

The second thing we should do is commit to a ban on corporate welfare to attract Fortune 500 companies to red states. They very clearly are taking the corporate welfare of red states and bringing in their blue state, woke employees. Conservative states should not be engaged in crony capitalism anyway. Employ sound tax policy and fiscal management so companies want to come naturally, instead of through incentive. Promote local businesses and corporations and provide a stable, conservative environment for them to grow.

We don't need your stupid liberal tech and aerospace and retail and all those other companies -- we got what you want naturally: the black people shoved on the other side of the tracks where you won't have to look at 'em, homos and he-shes scared to say boo, the few libraries purged of radical books, and plenty of meth and hookers. Our new slogan: "Bring your business to Bumfuck where we hate you and your employees and our water smells like rotten eggs -- take it or leave it!"

This is a movement that's going places, specifically Germany in the 1930s. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Sure, I like pop-punk. Even when it's new! Thanks to Alan Scherstuhl for this.

•   OK, for you deadbeats who are not regular subscribers to Roy Edroso Breaks It Down -- and why aren't you? It's cheap, it's superb, and it offers a great opportunity to contribute to the (already in progress!) death of journalism without having to expose yourself to the cancelculture sob-stories of Substack's marquee dweebs  -- here are a couple of freebies: First, my tribute to ham-faced Erick Erickson and his much-remarked-upon plan to solve America's armed mass murder problem by literally giving everyone a gun. And let's not sleep on his prose style! Here's the lede from Erickson's latest atrocity:

Every year, I spend time on Good Friday on radio focusing on that weekend. Regardless of whether one is a believer or not, most academic and secular historians list the death of Jesus of Nazareth as one of the top five most important events in human history. Quite frequently, it is number one on those lists.

Again, regardless of the theology, when we are dealing with a day considered the most important event in human history by people who do not even believe in Christ’s resurrection, we should probably pause and not just explore it, but explore the world around us as it exists right now in relation to that event.

He makes Jonah Goldberg look like Nabokov. Also, enjoy this bagatelle about two old Republican hands confronted by the New Breed. 

•   Speaking of old alicublog recurring characters -- well, first, check out this recent scene from Sesame Street where Elmo asks Russell why his skin is brown and Russell says it's melanin and Russell's dad says, "The color of our skin is an important part of who we are, but we should all know that we all look different... many people call this race, but even though we look different, we're all part of the human race."

Sounds simple enough, even corny -- something you'd think would be non-controversial, right? Well, here's what Rod Dreher thinks, in a post called (I'm not even kidding) "Segregating Sesame Street": 

I hadn’t realized how deeply the new progressive racial obsession bothered me until I saw that clip above, and realized that woke Sesame Street is now setting out to undo all the work that had been accomplished in the generations the show catechized. You know who taught my generation of children to see color? White people who longed for segregation’s return, and black people who lived in fear of white people who longed for segregation’s return.

Now kids can get that from Sesame Street. Good job, progressives; you are the most regressive force in American society today. I guess somebody has to teach the kids why it’s good to have segregated college graduations... 

 If you're thinking, how the fuck did Dreher get that from this video? the obvious answer is he only absorbs outside stimuli after it's bounced off the fascist funhouse mirror in his skull a few times, and he thinks everything would be hunky-dory if only black people would stop making a stink. But I should note also Dreher's alleged love of earlier Sesame Street, back before all the woke-SJW "we're all part of the human race" stuff:

I was born in 1967. Sesame Street was born two years later. I don’t remember a time before Sesame Street. It was my window into a world beyond the rural South. In 1999, when my wife and I moved to brownstone Brooklyn, I remember thinking, “I live on Sesame Street” — this, because the streets there reminded me of what I had grown up with. 

Aww, that's nice. Wanna know why Dreher left Brooklyn? As early as 2001 he was lamenting that his young son "won't have taken in the smell of tobacco, bourbon and dried gumbo mud flaking off hunting boots that is my father's aroma," and would instead grow up in "an urban culture dominated--indeed, in my social and professional milieu, overrun--by men without chests" and "a permissive culture that corrodes the moral structure his mother and I will try to build." Guess he found out Sesame Street was populated by he-shes, Black Panthers and moral relativists! Then he wrote at National Review in 2003, after he had split:

...all it takes is riding the NYC subway daily, and having to live with fear and loathing of the violent, profane and altogether anti-social teenagers who make public spaces here their playpens, to understand why middle-class people get fed up and move the hell out of town to raise their kids.

Now Dreher's blubbering that the TV show version of New York he claims he thought he was living in when he briefly career-moved there has been spoiled by a couple of African-American puppets. Yeesh, what a freak. 

SERIOUS AS CANCER, BUT MUCH FUNNIER. Some of us are happy to hear Ted Kennedy's cancer is in remission because we're human beings. And some of us are happy to hear it because they are Erick Erickson, Beastmaster of RedState, with the ability to make turn anything into a homily on the socialist menace.

The sad and tragic irony is that when Senator Kennedy returns to work, he will actively work to deny you the access to treatment he himself had.

What, he was treated by wizards? That must be it. Even I can see a doctor, which is what I thought Ted was doing, but I damn sure as hell can't see a wizard when I'm sick. Not unless he's in-network.

Actually I'm not that far off -- turns out Erickson's talking about an imaginary health care system:

Given media reports of Senator Kennedy’s health, we can postulate that, had Senator Kennedy had access to healthcare under the system he intends to design, he would not have gotten the treatment that put his cancer in remission.

We can also postulate one other thing — when Senator Kennedy does design the Democrats’ healthcare system, they will make sure people like Senator Kennedy are not subjected to it.

We can also postulate that this evil Obamacare will shoot lasers from its fingertips that will be designed specifically to attack pre-borns, elderly priests, and Iraq War veterans. And that it will be homosexual, and drive a Prius.

Coming up: When Ted Kennedy gets home, he'll have a nice hot meal -- the kind Americans will never get if Obamagriculture passes!

UPDATE. Turns out Kennedy's cancer may not be in remission after all. More proof that government healthcare doesn't work!

NOTHING BUT A MAN. When Erick Erickson tells you "the left was right," you know there's got to be something funny going on.

The left, when it decided Bristol Palin was fair game, went after Levi Johnson for being a thug and redneck. He was not interested in college -- only in scoring with the Governor’s daughter. The classic tale of the high school jock who is, in essence, a low life loser in it for a good time. The left and media regaled the rest of us with tales of what a loser the Palin kid slept with.

The left was right. Now, though, they can’t be bothered by it.

Actually, the people who were "bothered with it" -- that is, Levi Johnson as a subject, or object -- during the late campaign were the folks who spent some days spinning Johnson and his knocked-up girlfriend into a holy family for political purposes. That bloom faded pretty quick and they abandoned him. Now he's out there taking care of himself as best he can.

Erickson imagines Johnson "will be greeted as a hero by the left because boosting him hurts Sarah Palin." Like David Brock, I guess, or Mother Kusters. But I'm not -- nor, I guess, are most of us -- interested in Johnson as a political football, to be intercepted and carried toward the goal line. The poor guy has been used enough by his so-called friends.

THE LONG-AWAITED END OF #NEVERTRUMP.

So Il Douche went to Mexico, couldn't get them to pay for the wall, and slunk back home -- and changed from being a fearless advocate for America in the Trade Wars to an advocate for our "hemisphere."

Seems to me like just another olio in the Trump vaudeville -- but look at the heretofore Trump-skeptical conservatives who think it was fantastic:

I mean, sure, you expect auto-sellouts like Byron York, who got on the Trump train last year, to suck up ("Mexico Gamble a Huge Win"). Ditto Hindrocket from Power Line ("TRUMP'S TRIUMPHANT TRIP TO MEXICO"). But what about Legal Insurrection's Kimberley Kaye? Back in January she was trembling like Lucy in The Searchers over the Trump invasion:

Watching the rise of this new populism, one of my many concerns is whether the charlatans wearing the cape of Conservatism will damage its value, diminish its meaning, and in general, confuse those who know no difference. But then I see people like Sen. [Ben] Sasse and I’m somewhat relieved.

Today Kaye's a lot more fair-and-balanced ("WATCH LIVE: DONALD TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION SPEECH... Did they talk about the wall or didn’t they? THE MEDIA WANTS TO KNOW" -- haw haw, that stupid media!), and her commenters are even easier to read ("I can hear the Jacobin Rags head exploding now").

Let's visit Erick Erickson -- surely this #NeverTrump leader ("it is important to go on record now, while he can be stopped, that we will play no part in his rise") sees through this nonsense?

Two Things Donald Trump Got Absolutely Right

GTFO.

First, Donald Trump and Mike Pence went to Louisiana. In the midst of terrible devastation, while President Obama was on vacation and Hillary Clinton was fundraising, Team Trump went to Louisiana. They drew positive media exposure and looked Presidential.

The Play-Doh that Proved a Presidentiality!

Second, Trump went to Mexico and Hillary did not. I think the positives of the trip outweigh the negatives. The Mexican President’s refusal to contradict Trump on stage about whether they discussed the wall only made him look petty and meek afterwards.

Clearly in a Presidential runoff between Trump and Enrique Peña Nieto, Trump has the edge.

Trump’s speech this evening has, I think, done him no favors outside his base, but going to Mexico today worked.

To paraphrase Sam Houston, Erickson has all the qualities of a prostitute, except hard limits. But surely there's someone at erstwhile #NeverTrump HQ National Review who can at least face up to Trump's failure? Not so far! Jim Geraghty:

Part One of Donald Trump’s busy Wednesday is complete and the meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto went pretty well...

The headline is that Trump and Pena Nieto discussed border security and building a wall, but didn’t discuss Trump’s frequent pledge that Mexico would pay to build the wall. But the brief press conference between the two men was cordial, and no shoes or rotten fruit were thrown. Trump may have read aloud his prepared statement with all of the sincerity and comfort of a hostage tape, but all in all, it looked like any other meeting of an American leader at an international summit.

In other words, Trump didn't seem to know or care what he was saying, but we grade Republicans on the curve and that gets a "P" for Presidential! Also, why would Geraghty acknowledge that Pena Nieto called Trump a liar?  It's not like they're paying him for updates.

I know there are still a few poor minor-league souls out there acting like resistance is anything but futile, but let's face it: There is no #NeverTrump movement left to speak of. Not that you'll see any "I was wrong about Trump" essays from them -- at the moment they can afford, and would understandably prefer, to spare one another that embarrassment -- unless Trump gets elected, in which case they'll start accusing each other of apostasy and some will be forced into ritual confession.

And to think, just months ago we were talking about them as if they might have some principles! Well, you always want to be scrupulously fair to them, despite all experience. Otherwise you might as well be a Republican.

THE GUN NUTS ARE NOT SENDING THEIR BEST.

An extremely mild gun control bill is on its way to being further watered down by Republicans and their Blue Dog Democrat enablers in the Senate. That it may pass even in this weakened state is evidence that, post-Uvalde, people who normally wouldn’t challenge gun nuts are convinced that our Business As Usual approach cannot stand.  

So conservative pundit Erick Erickson has rushed to explain that if we pass red flag laws, liberals will be mean to conservatives, and that’s worth any number of shot-up children. He starts with three anecdotes he seems to think will sway his readers, though if you haven’t been soaking in rightwing grievance culture for years you might not be feeling it:

In 2020, while in New York’s Central Park, Amy Cooper called 911 to report an “African-American man” was threatening her. The man, a bird watcher, had asked Ms. Cooper to leash her dog. She refused and called 911. The man, whose last name was also Cooper, recorded the incident, which went viral and cost Amy Cooper her job. She also got charged with a crime, though it was later dismissed at the urging of Mr. Cooper, the bird watcher.

This is an interesting opening, as everyone knows the story and that the woman was clearly trying to sic the cops on the “African-American man” who was not doing anything illegal, for reasons anyone who has lived more than a few years in America will understand. And her firing is not his fault, nor that of Cancelculture Run Amok, but rather an ass-covering move by her employers, empowered by employment laws that no conservative ever challenges.   

Late last week, in Raliegh [sic], NC, Wye Hill, a restaurant and brewery, canceled a reservation for a group of conservative moms who were going to get together at the restaurant. An online progressive activist who calls herself “Katherine 4 Justice” went online to take credit for pressuring the restaurant into canceling the reservation through the use of vague threats.

The “group of conservative moms” is Moms 4 Liberty, an overtly political organization that has been successfully pushing “Don’t Say Gay” laws and book-banning across the country. If Masterpiece Bakery can’t be forced to make a gay wedding cake, I don’t see why a restaurant has to cater to an openly anti-LGBT group. I don’t know what “vague threats” Erickson is referring to but Moms 4 Liberty’s supporters are now calling the restaurant owners and staff “groomers” on Twitter, which given the hair-trigger lunacy of that crowd can be considered an actual threat.

Yesterday, Rep. Eric Swalwell took to Twitter to suggest Ben Shapiro is a lunatic and that a red flag law could be used to stop Shapiro from purchasing a gun.

Swalwell made a very good joke about Half-Pint (“Please tell me this lunatic does not own a gun. Reason 1,578 America needs red flag laws”) that anyone over the age of 12 should understand, but which conservatives, due to misguided political priorities or maybe brain damage, pretend to believe is not a joke but rather an assault on Shapiro’s rights.

The Senate is currently considering red flag laws as part of its measures on gun control…

I am deeply concerned that such laws are going to start being used to attack people because of their political opinions. The left has concluded words are violence. I fear red flag laws will be weaponized by partisans over differences of political opinion.

Given our present politics, people’s willingness to view opponents as enemies, and people’s willingness to use the state, private enterprise, and the mob to exact retribution on those they disagree with, I think we should fundamentally resist a federal red flag law or a federal incentive to embrace red flag laws.

So, to nutshell it: Liberals are so depraved that they will disagree with conservatives, and make jokes about conservatives, and even choose not to voluntarily associate with conservatives, so we should let conservatives of whatever mental state have AR-15s to defend themselves from them.

The NRA must be awfully desperate if this is the shit they’re paying for now.

THEY GOT THEIRS -- DON'T WORRY ABOUT YOURS.

Today’s Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie was inspired by some bullshit, of a sort you may have also been seeing, where some very serious commentators explain that the overturn of Roe v Wade and the end of a presumed Constitutional right to self-determination/control of one’s own body is nbd actually and you libtards are just being dramatic. 

This line of BS is most evident among rightwingers who, no shock, are frightened by the strong negative reaction to the draft ruling and worry that it will affect the midterms. Ham-faced pundit Erick Erickson, for example, has been swearing up and down, in such fragments of his newsletter that I can read without giving him the encouragement of payment, that no one cares about this silly old abortion thing (“abortion does nothing to help an economy that is stalling and on the verge of a recession”) -- but he keeps repeating it, more like a mantra than analysis; his recent titles have been “Abortion Meltdown,” “Hysteria Rules the Day,” and (I’m not making this up) “Roe v Wade Ending Really Won't Change Anything. That's Reality, Not Downplaying Dobbs.”  

Erickson is as close to someone just posting the talking points (under the thinnest palimpsest of the shittiest prose) as you can get, so clearly the idea is that the result conservatives have spent decades screaming and salivating for is a matter of no real importance to them (though they usually manage to sneak in somewhere that they are of course happy for the “pre-borns”) and that opposing the upending of this heretofore Constitutionally-protected right is some sort of pique or mania.

This talking point went meta today with the Washington Times headline, “Not there yet: Pro-lifers subdued despite promise of biggest victory in movement’s history.” Reporter Valerie Richardson features anecdotes that suggest the anti-abortion movement is subdued because they have not finished God's work -- for example, in some states and for the moment women will not be forced to bear their rapists’ children. But the obvious intended effect is to back up the Republicans’ “the real outrage is the leak” misdirection -- to make it look as if what is actually happening is not happening.  

But my real inspirators, referenced in the graphic, are Orin Kerr and Megan McArdle, whose glibertarian hand-waving is as annoying as it is expected. The only difference is it usually takes a while for their bullshit to be proven bullshit; in this case, the very horrors they tell us not to worry about -- abortion criminalized in blue states via a national ban, re-criminalization of gay marriage and other rights -- are already being advanced by prominent conservatives who, despite the propaganda to the contrary, are not subdued but emboldened to further immiserate the people they despise. (Which is most of us, BTW.) 

TWEETS ERICK ERICKSON HAD TO SCRAP AFTER HE GOT IN TROUBLE: "The podium hides Rahm's light loafers #SanFrancisoDemocrats" "Lily Ledbetter's vagina is Dems #Ashheap of History" "Patrick's sweating like they found his gay porn stash #AlsoBlack" etc.

But I think it's a mistake to try and get Erickson fired over this, as some have proposed. I didn't see the advantage in getting Josh Trevino kicked off the Guardian either. Let the world see who they are and what they represent. If people are more impressed than appalled by them, then the cause is lost anyway.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Bob Luman was a little much, but I've always loved this. Check that piano!

•   Holy shit, in the event Trump gets the needed delegates, conservatives are really up for stealing the nomination from him. I mean, I've thought so all along, but now they're coming close to saying it out loud. At National Review, Kevin D. Williamson (now credited there as NR's "roving" correspondent, which must be a misprint), reminds us for the second time this month that this is a republic not a democracy, and denounces Trumpers who think "'We the People' are getting screwed by 'Them'" as unconservative  -- though this has been conservatism's selling message to the rubes since World War II. And so:

Yes, there are people in power maneuvering to frustrate the will of “We the People” on a dozen different things, ranging from economic and national-defense policy to the specific matter of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. That is prudence and patriotism, and the constitutional architecture of these United States is designed to prevent democratic passion from prevailing. Have your talk-radio temper tantrum. Have your riots. Our form of government, even in its current distorted state, was designed to handle and absorb your passions. You may dream of a dictator, but you will not have one.

That's telling the rabble, buddy. Also interesting: The despairing John Adams quote Williamson uses here (“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes...") was previously used by him to blast President Obama in an article calling Obama "the front man for the permanent bureaucracy, the smiley-face mask hiding the pitiless yawning maw of total politics... For all of the power that Congress legally has given the president in this matter, he feels it necessary to take more — illegally... he has no intention of being limited by something so trivial as the law," and other such standard-issue rightwing ObamaHitler crap. Yet in this new article, Williamson says Trump threatens "a presidency a thousand times more imperial" than Obama's. That's some mega-imperialism right there; to come up, I guess Trump will have to revive NASA and colonize the solar system.

•  Meanwhile Williamson's colleague David Harsanyi is even more forthright:

The GOP Should Steal the Nomination from Trump 

...Voters don’t decide the nominations; delegates do — preferably in smoke-filled rooms where rational decisions about the future of a party can be hashed out.

Failing this, Harsanyi would be content to see a True Conservative third party, of which such as Erick Erickson dream, elevate a sacrificial nominee who would "sink Trump and elect Hillary Clinton," on the theory that "electing a weakened and corrupt Democrat that Republicans would unite against in Congress is a far better reality than allowing a charlatan to hollow out a party from within." Republicans united against a Democratic President! That's bound to lead to better results than the love-fest we've got going on now! I begin to wonder if someone (perhaps super-tyrant Trump) is putting something in these guys' drinking water.

•  Tell ya how bad anti-Trump fever has gotten at National Review: Heather Mac Donald is actually complaining that a white guy (Trump) is getting a pass that black guys (Obama, Sharpton) would never get. That's right -- Heather Mac Donald! Don't worry, though -- John Derbyshire's still hanging in for Trump and racism. And I'm sure Mac Donald with go back to her old ways forthwith -- hell, even Marco Rubio wasn't pro-cop/anti-BLM enough for her.

•  Peggy Noonan is trying to talk reason to that bad boy Trump! With a talent like his, why must he resort to hooliganism?

Why does he speak so carelessly and irresponsibly about things such as violence and protests at his rallies? Does he not understand American politics is always potentially a powder keg? 

He has enough imagination to have invented Donald Trump. Why doesn’t he have enough to understand the potential impact of a leader’s remarks? Does he understand the power he would have if he were a person of normal comportment?

After blowing her off Trump will get home and find she managed to tuck her business card into his jacket pocket. Meanwhile Instapundit Glenn Reynolds has gone full Stormtrumper on a David Brooks doll:

The Tea Party movement — which you also failed to understand, and thus mostly despised — was a bourgeois, well-mannered effort (remember how Tea Party protests left the Mall cleaner than before they arrived?) to fix America. It was treated with contempt, smeared as racist, and blocked by a bipartisan coalition of business-as-usual elites. So now you have Trump, who’s not so well-mannered, and his followers, who are not so well-mannered, and you don’t like it.

You'd think Reynolds would be too smart for this guff, but Trump really has him feeling the feeling: In an adjacent post, Reynolds actually revives an Obama "lightworker" gag from 2009. I can imagine him smashing protesters with a club and yelling BOO-YAH! UNDER THE BUS! (On his holodeck, of course.)

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

and what is it about again? Oh yeah, Hobby Lobby. I know, no one remembers. Special thanks to Nick for being my cat's-paw as the Voice publishing tool's still verkakte.

Anyway this late edition includes a particularly snide bit of Ross Douthat; if you haven't had enough of him after that, you can go to today's Times and see him take thousands of words to explain that he agrees with Erik Erickson. Anyone got a Thomas Aquinas facepalm gif?

SEVEN COME ELEVEN, SNAKE EYES WATCHING YOU.

Oh, thank fuck, there’s a transcript, I don’t have to listen to her psycho Tupperware party pitch. Though from what I did hear on C-Span, I have to say Sarah Palin's delivery today was a lot more focused and easier to follow than it was at CPAC ’14, where she performed Kabuki versions of ancient wingnut tropes. Well, of course, Palin’s a pro — she knew this time the audience was not those weary shock troops of the movement, looking for a little pep talk, but the restless masses who might follow Trump — people who have the same bitterness in their souls as the CPAC attendees but don’t know the cues and need a little more reason-why. Sure, she hauled out the “weak-kneed, capitulator-in-chief” routine, and shouted hopey-changey; she had to remind the crowd who she was. But the heart of her speech came out of a slightly different tradition:

He’s been able to tear the veil off this idea of the system. The way that the system really works, and please hear me on this, I want you guys to understand more and more how the system, the establishment, works, and has gotten us into the troubles that we are in in America. The permanent political class has been doing the bidding of their campaign donor class, and that’s why you see that the borders are kept open. For them, for their cheap labor that they want to come in. That’s why they’ve been bloating budgets. It’s for crony capitalists to be able suck off of them… 

Look what’s happening today. Our own GOP machine, the establishment, they who would assemble the political landscape, they’re attacking their own frontrunner. Now would the Left ever, would the DNC ever come after their frontrunner and her supporters?…

It’s a little too easy to say “stabbed in the back,” though Dolchstoßlegende is certainly part of what she’s peddling. The “crony capitalists” bit is the tip-off. What do you do with a Party of Business that, eight years after they left the economy a smoking ruin, still can’t bring themselves offer anything better than tax breaks for the rich and Social Security cuts? You talk about the betrayed ideal of true capitalism, not crony capitalism but the real deal.

This is not so much an indictment against the nameless other as an excuse for previous Republican disasters: Last time was fucked up, but this time we’re going to make it work! Capitalism is, in the ideal, a hit or miss proposition, at least if you believe (as Republicans must) that your current losing streak is something that's gotta break because baby needs a new pair of shoes. And as a cartoon capitalist of the old school, Trump is just the man for this approach: His career may have been, in its own small way, as much a bankruptcy-prone disaster as the Bush economy, but look at him with his expensive suits and his swagger, he came out smelling like a rose!  Despite their famous optimism, Palin and Trump aren't offering a sure thing; they're just telling voters they may as well put their chips on them, so at least in the interval before the croupier sweeps those chips away you can enjoy the promise and presence of a winner.

UPDATE. Comments are, as ever, a joy. Hearing La Palin cry, "the permanent political class has been doing the bidding of their campaign donor class," redoubtagain adds, "whereupon she pledged to donate all of SarahPAC to Trump. (Oh, that's not in the transcript? Never mind.)"

Even better are the conservatives whining, like Neil Young on "Tired Eyes," it wasn't supposed to go down that way! At The Federalist, Robert Tracinski:

We have been tempted into embracing as our leaders and spokesmen a series of media personalities whose main selling point is that they are outrageous and controversial and like to stick a finger in they eye of the Mainstream Media and infuriate “the Establishment” and the “PC Left.” 

All of which is well and good, if it is in pursuit of a coherent pro-freedom ideology, by which I mean a coherent view of the world and of the role of government as embodied in a broad and consistent political agenda. That’s what Rush Limbaugh used to do.

Remember when it was all about the mega-dittos, man?

But when we embrace these media personalities, the danger is that we will end up just having the outrageous and flamboyant personality, without the coherent ideology...

...namely, tax breaks for the wealthy and persecution of minorities! And Trump and Palin had to spoil it! You and I may not deserve what's happening, brothers and sisters, but at least the pig-fuckers are getting a bit of agita as well.

UPDATE 2. OK, here's the line of the day, and possibly the decade, from former CNN correspondent Erick Erickson:

Sarah Palin gives Trump legitimacy.

They'll be putting us in camps soon enough, but for the time being this is really fucking funny.

UPDATE 3. National Review's David French is upset that his fellow conservatives are piling on his wife's former meal ticket:

I’m not saying she’s beyond criticism or that one should support Trump because of her endorsement.. but perhaps we should consider that the combination of her personal relationship with Trump, her personal experience suffering from years of the most vicious and personal attacks directed at any current or former politician in the United States, and her deep convictions regarding policy priorities for the next president have led her to this decision. In other words, she’s not simply hunting for headlines — she’s doing what she thinks is best for the country she loves.

You can almost see the looks of incredulity on readers' faces, ratcheting from bemusement on "personal relationship with Trump" to squinting disbelief on "suffering" to gaping incredulity on "deep convictions" until finally, at "best for the country she loves," they explode in laughter. Well, everybody gotta eat.

JUST A REMINDER. Happy March for Life day! This is from Kathryn J. Lopez' recent anti-abortion observance:

“Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe v. Wade] was decided,” Ruth Bader Ginsburg told The New York Times Magazine, “there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” Now that’s something that should raise alarms: She let the eugenics slip show...

I am showing you Lopez's transparently willful misrepresentation of what Ginsburg was talking about, which has nonetheless become wingnut gospel, to remind you that these people really do think it's murder, and therefore feel justified in doing anything to stop it. Lying's not their limit, either, but except for a couple of rogues, most of them have not yet seen Jesus drop the hanky for Killing Time.

But given the times we live in, how long do you figure that will last? I see RedState is looking for loopholes:

We will not endorse any candidate who will not reject the judicial usurpation of Roe v. Wade... The reason for this is simple: once before, our nation was forced to repudiate the Supreme Court with mass bloodshed. We remain steadfast in our belief that this will not be necessary again, but only if those committed to justice do not waiver or compromise, and send a clear and unmistakable signal to their elected officials of what must be necessary to earn our support.

But if they don't do like Erick Erickson says -- bang bang! all bets are off. Also interesting: The post's attempt to compare Roe to the Dred Scott decision:

And thus the Supreme Court drew a line and declared that those humans on the “person” side were entitled to the right to life, and those on the “non-person” side (as defined by the Court) were not. The combined effect of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton was that a line was drawn at physical location within a woman’s womb.

Amanda Marcotte says it best: "Anyone who calls a woman a 'physical location is a misogynist, full stop." (What, you mean your uterus isn't on foursquare?)

In case you sheeple aren't swayed by the moral crusade, Robert W. Patterson attempts an appeal to your pocketbook with "How Roe v. Wade aborted America's economy." Apparently before you killed them, Jesus had meant for all those unborn victims to create jobs! So this depression isn't Lehman Brothers' fault or even Obama's, it's William J. Brennan's.

Also, says Patterson, abortion "gutted America's exceptional marriage culture, which Adam Smith noted was vital to our economic prospects.... by sanctioning a new 'choice' for an unmarried pregnant woman, the Court also gave the unmarried father the choice to 'op out' of the previously unavoidable consequences of his actions: marriage and child support." Who knew the shotgun wedding industry was that important to America's economy? There's still hope, though, in my Xtranormal video campaign to convince paupers to "get hitched and grow rich." Fund me lavishly, wingnuts, and I will make it happen! (photo via.)

UPDATE. Some disagreement in comments as to whether these people do in point of fact believe what they're saying. "If they did," says zuzu, "they wouldn't be so squeamish about 1) making exceptions for rape and incest; and 2) holding women criminally responsible for murder." Plus, adds BigHank53, if you put a convicted abortion-seeker's "demonstrably fertile ass in jail, somewhere there will be an empty kitchen without her bare feet in it, and the baby Jesus will cry."

There is also much speculation as to what the antis are really motivated by: A desire to subjugate women, or a desire to subjugate poor women, or a desire to subjugate poor people in general -- take your pick, I can believe any of it. There are also references to race suicide loons like Mark Steyn, and BryanD lectures the ladies on their reproductive responsibilities. This thread has everything!

UPDATE 2. Just had to add this -- Kathryn J. Lopez tells us what she did Sunday evening:

Speaking on — I kid you not: “The Virgin Mary, Saint Monica, and Sarah Palin: Embracing a New Feminism” at Georgetown’s beautiful Cardinal O’Connor Conference on Life yesterday...

I think it's cute that she told us she wasn't kidding; I never would have doubted it for a second. I also wonder that she didn't include a martyr-saint in her Palin presentation -- maybe she thinks Palin herself fills the bill; Palin seems to think so -- but it makes sense that she did include the world's biggest nag.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Holland. Dozier. Holland.

•  Did a little something at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down on that shit-bonkers trend among prestige media clowns of, first, reporting in tones of outrage that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran ads telling Republican primary voters how conservative their most conservative candidates were, and then blaming the DCCC rather than Republican voters when those candidates were nominated.

Megan McArdle is first among equals in mendacity here, dudgeoning that Democrats are willfully making it more likely that the worst Republicans (that is, the ones that are 5% worse than the second-worst) might win if the Democrat loses, and that this shows -- say it with me now -- Both Sides Are The Same ("Democrats can stop asking how Republicans could have sold out their principles and their country in a pathetic grab for some evanescent political advantage. Because now they know"). This will come in handy when McArdle inevitably pimps Yang's Forward Party as the Choice of People Who Want Clean Hands When DeSantis Becomes Dictator.

I complained about this trend a few weeks back when it first rolled out, and noted it then as a clear example of Murc's Law: Only Democrats can have any agency or causal influence over American politics; Republicans are as little children, buffeted hither and thither by Democratic actions, and so cannot be held responsible for anything they do or say. McArdle is apparently a believer:

Which leaves us only with the common deflection: Why blame Democrats instead of the Republican voters who chose a candidate aligned with Trump? I think those voters are grievously mistaken, and should stop supporting the treasonous oaf, or his imitators. But at least they think they’re doing the right thing.

It's like she's chastising Democrats for picking on their slow-witted older brother. The McArdleites on Twitter are even worse, sometimes hilariously so:

Sometimes I feel like Chris in All My Sons. Don't you live in this world? What the hell are you?

•  It's not yet at 8,000 cases but monkeypox is a declared public health emergency in the U.S., which is good because, given how this stupid country has handled COVID, it's clearly going to take all the feds' power to keep idiots from spreading it around. Sadly they can't protect us against weaponized bigotry, which we must expect because of the association of the current outbreak with gay sex. Though monkeypox is mainly spread by physical contact with skin and objects that have come in contact with skin -- like clothing, towels, and furniture -- some assholes are already using it to promote their hoary homo-hate. The loathsome Erick Erickson: 

It really is time to stop trusting the public health establishment.

How could anyone ever trust their claims on vaccine integrity when they lack the integrity to speak truthfully about the spread of monkeypox and demand the necessary actions to stop its spread? They want to bar your kids from school if they don’t take the COVID vaccine with which they’ll still get COVID but could not bring themselves to cancel the kink festival in the actual epicenter of monkeypox for the nation wherein gay hedonists could actually and probably did spread monkeypox. Heck, they even screwed up vaccine distribution for monkeypox.

There follows an absurd misinterpretation of California state senator Scott Wiener's comment on the decision not to close the annual Folsom Street Festival (an ancient rightwing rage-equity), and then:

Wiener, of course, was fine with closing churches, mandating masks, and banning people from going to the beach. He was not fine with people making “their own decisions about their own risk levels” with COVID.

Not being able to abstain from sex for two weeks is a damning indictment of the social order of the left — their pleasure trumps your health and safety. We’re governed by pagans worshipping Moloch and participating in Ashtoreth’s orgies.

Just be ready, because this pox is definitely going to spread faster from this pig-eyed piece of shit to his fellow scumbags than monkeypox. 

I'M NOT GAY, BUT MY BOYFRIEND IS.

The New Yorker did an extremely generous profile of Rod Dreher this week. If that profile were the only thing you'd ever read about him, you wouldn't know he was nuts. The profile sympathetically tells Dreher's life story as a metropolis-hopping journalist whose heart is really in the holy boondocks (where for some reason he just can't seem to sink down roots) and his apotheosis as an author of easy-reading religious books. Profiler Joshua Rothman lauds Dreher's in-stores-now Benedict Option as a friend-of-Jesus-in-a-chartreuse-microbus plea for Christians to "consider living in tight-knit, faith-centered communities, in the manner of Modern Orthodox Jews," and seems not to have noticed the apocalyptic lunacy of his long public trail of magazine columns. Speaking of which, here's one from this week, responding to a poll that shows 62% of liberals belong have a religious affiliation, down from about 85% in the 1990s:

There Will Be No Religious Left... 

More broadly, we could say that many of the things liberal Christians believe in and advocate, in contradiction to normative Christian orthodoxy, already exist outside the church, period. Liberal Christianity often appears as a somewhat desperate attempt to sanctify modern beliefs...

There will be no religious left in the long term because the religious left, as it is currently constituted, doesn’t even believe in its own religion.

Considering there are still millions of liberals going to church or shul or whatever, this seems rather hysterical. To the extent Dreher bothers to explain why he thinks liberals are doomed to atheism, rather than spew hot gas and adjectives, he mainly cites sex. His sources rail against "a church unwilling to say that all homosexual genital relations are morally wrong; a church which at least makes some allowance for abortion when necessary to assure a mother’s freedom"; Dreher howls that the lib-godly "futilely try to update their doctrines to accommodate the modern world — especially regarding sexuality..." and are about "the legitimization of homosexual desire and the approbation of sexual permissiveness," etc.

Those of you who've read my criticisms and others' of Dreher will know this is SOP for Dreher, who is obsessed with sex, especially homosex (gay "persecution is coming" and you should "prepare for resistance"; gays are coming to kill him, just like they did black people in the days of Jim Crow) and double-definitely trans sex (the he-shes are taking over the multiplexes, even in Texas!). But those who only know him from The New Yorker will get only the merest hint of this when Rothman delicately broaches the subject -- and boy do I mean delicately:

I told Dreher that his life story seemed very similar to those of many gay men I knew... Surely, I said, he must have sympathy for gay Christians.

Snrrk.

Like many orthodox Christian intellectuals, Dreher holds labyrinthine views on homosexuality. He is opposed to same-sex marriage but in favor of civil unions...

Labyrinthine, he says! And in the last ditch Rothman finds a Gay Friend to defend Dreher. Want to guess who that might be?

The writer Andrew Sullivan, who is gay and Catholic, is one of Dreher’s good friends... 

“There is simply no way for an orthodox Catholic to embrace same-sex marriage,” [Sullivan] said. “The attempt to conflate that with homophobia is a sign of the unthinking nature of some liberal responses to religion. I really don’t think that florists who don’t want to contaminate themselves with a gay wedding should in any way be compelled to do so. I think any gay person that wants them to do that is being an asshole, to be honest—an intolerant asshole. Rod forces you to understand what real pluralism is: actually accepting people with completely different world views than your own..."

It's perfect in a way: Sullivan, onetime king of the gay conservatives who made his movement bona fides by pimping The Bell Curve to polite company (and only just recently showed how easy that was for him by wondering aloud why black people can't be more like those nice Asians), now steps up to protect America's cuddliest homophobe by telling us the hundreds dozens couple of gay people who give florists a hard time are the real bigots. He may get that crown back from Milo yet!

Now if someone has the bad taste to notice Dreher raving "We are all Brendan Eich" and predicting gaymageddon unless the Elect mount the battlements,  he can just wave his pass -- in such fancy type, too! -- and go on about his Crusader business.

Soon enough we'll be hearing about Erick Erickson's misunderstood pluralism.

THURSDAY MISCELLANY.

How're conservatives reacting to Chris Christie Is An Asshole-gate? James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal:

Worse, the Christie administration's evident abuse of the Port Authority is reminiscent of the Obama administration's abuse of the Internal Revenue Service...

I already checked, guys -- no mention of Benghazi. For that you have to go a few rungs down the ladder to Greta Van Susteren, or to the sub-basement that is Michelle Malkin's alternate-universe Twitter.

Or maybe Breitbart.com -- hang on, this article by Joel B. Pollack is from November. Yet it may be relevant!:

Chris Christie Really Needs Benghazi
Benghazi is Hillary Clinton's most important weakness, no matter whom she faces in the 2016 presidential election. Among Republican contenders, only Chris Christie can claim it as a strength. That's because of his performance during Superstorm Sandy. Whatever his mistakes--i.e. heaping praise on Obama and backing a pork-laden relief bill--his performance was a sharp contrast to Clinton's dereliction of duty during Benghazi.

Has this bullet become any less magic? Then Christie should save himself by demanding a Benghazi investigation at once. It's not like he doesn't have the nerve.*

If you have 11 minutes to spare, this is what Christie's bit about being "misled by a member of my staff" reminds me of:



I guess National Review sent Kevin D. Williamson to Appalachia just so he'd have white welfare cases to harsh on, and thus escape charges of racism. Charges of stupidity will be harder to evade. Williamson admits there are few opportunities for the unfortunate residents of Owsley County, and can't even make the usual specious case that marriage would make the hillbillies rich. So his anti-government-assistance case boils down to 1.) some people have defrauded the system, something you never see investment bankers and other such higher-order beings doing, therefore the system has failed; and 2.) whatever this is supposed to mean:

In effect, welfare has made Appalachia into a big and sparsely populated housing project — too backward to thrive, but just comfortable enough to keep the underclass in place. There is no cure for poverty, because there is no cause of poverty — poverty is the natural condition of the human animal. 

Which Kevin D. Williamson evaded by luck, pluck, and virtue. The rest of you can go fuck yourselves. Liberty!

...The lesson of the Big White Ghetto is the same as the lessons we learned about the urban housing projects in the late 20th century: The best public-policy treatment we have for poverty is dilution. But like the old project towers, the Appalachian draw culture produces concentration, a socio­economic Salton Sea that becomes more toxic every year.

Maybe he means we should evacuate and demolish these poor hill towns, as if they were urban projects, and "dilute" their populations. Maybe send them to Mexico? They better hurry, the authorities may start to get strict about who they let in.

*UPDATE. I should add that I don't think this will negatively affect Christie's Presidential push. That he's an asshole is a large part of his appeal, and there's a whole country full of suckers who, like the folks who hire a hitman, are inclined to believe he'll restrict his viciousness to people they don't like.

UPDATE 2. Ah, here's the libertarian-branded response to Christie from Ed Krayewski at Reason:

The petty, retaliatory nature of the lane closure reminded me of something the Obama White House might do, something like closing down open-air spaces or websites because of a partial government shutdown or even getting Tea Party groups audited.

Refresh my memory: I seem to recall that libertarians were once perceived to be something different from conservatives. Anyone remember how that got started?

UPDATE 3. I'm even more convinced now that Christie will skate, notwithstanding his refusal to accept my Benghazi advice.

Meanwhile we have this from the Daily Caller:

As liberals support Christie during scandal, conservatives abandon him

The evidence: Guys like Erick Erickson who consider Christie a RINO continue to bay for his blood, "Democratic mayors in New Jersey who endorsed Christie’s re-election are also defending Christie," and David Axelrod thinks Christie will skate -- like me, so I guess I'm also part of Christie's liberal love-wave. I assure you it's inadvertent!

UPDATE 4. Meanwhile from the other side of the bullshit rainbow, The Washington Free Beacon:

U.S. Attorney Probing Christie Has Donated Thousands to Democrats

I tell ya, guys, we gotta get our story (as told by rightwing operatives) straight.

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."