THE VIEW FROM THE CREEP SEATS. What's more fun than a Presidential address on health care? The Corner covering a Presidential address on health care!

They started well before the speech. Tevi Troy precogs that "President Obama would tell sad tales of Americans who lack access to health insurance" and announces himself proven right because he's seen "a list of the guests in the First Lady's box." Obama spent about 60 seconds on sad takes of Americans who lack access to health care. Time for a Tevi Troy victory lap!

Jonah Goldberg also has a memorable warmup: "Maybe I'm just beholden to my own predictions, but the pre-coverage of Obama's address sure makes it sound like the White House thinks the moment requires more cowbell." This refers to his previous analogy that compared Obama's public speaking, which largely got him elected, to irrelevant noise, based on the fact that Goldberg remembered a funny bit from Saturday Night Live. I assume he didn't use "Yeah, that's the ticket!" because the cowbell thing implies familiarity with Blue Öyster Cult, which will do wonders for his street cred.

Kathryn J. Lopez obsesses on the laminated "talking points" given by Obama to GOP Congressmembers. "Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Eyes with Legislation," says K-Lo. "Trust the White House. Serve the President, If You Will." Later she repeats the outrage of Pete Hoekstra: "Handing out laminated talking points produced by the White House is tacky. This is serious business. I will not twit during speech." Sending a message by not sending a message -- surely the people will rise when they don't hear of it. To amplify, K-Lo posts a picture of the laminated document. Maybe their acolytes will bring replicas to Town Halls, and interrupt the proceedings by noisily scraping them on their unshaven faces.

The speech starts. Obama: "I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last." Goldberg: "Obama will, for all time, settle the issue of healthcare in America? He'll be the last president tackle healthcare? Ever?" Goldberg missed a similar chance when Obama said, "Credit was frozen" -- he could have rejoined, "Frozen? Like in a freezer? So all you need is a microwave to thaw it out?" But that would have sent him straight to the Hot Pockets and we would have missed his further reactions. Stephen Spruiell is similarly miffed: "Makes Obama sound foolish. Medicare and Medicaid are the subjects of constant legislative meddling. Obamacare wouldn't require frequent tune-ups/refinements/bailouts?" They must have loved these guys on Debate Team.

K-Lo: "A veteran politico" -- by which she means the dolly on her pillows with the long, grey coat -- "asks me: 'Why is he yelling so much? If Bush had done that, the press would have had a field day. How many headlines will say "an angry obama"? None.'" Obama's poor speaking skills masked by liberal media again! A pity more citizens don't have television sets.

"No matter how much the president insists otherwise, preventative care doesn't really save any money," says Mark Hemingway, quoting a Washington Post story on a study that questions the anticipated preventative care savings on... patients with Type 2 diabetes. Still, I take his point. I've thought of giving up smoking and drinking, but who's to say that this preventative program will reduce my need for medical attention? Mom wound up on an oxygen tank, but I think she was just looking for attention.

John Hood tries a Goldbergian approach: "Not to be disrespectful or anything, but I’m multitasking at the moment — watching the president on the small screen while spooling a recorded Scooby Doo movie from DVR to tape on the big screen." He and Pete Hoekstra are really showing Obama.

K-Lo doesn't believe Obama's promise that federal dollars won't be used to fund abortion because "It's open to negotiation... Who knows what those committeemen do with one bill or another. Who knows what happens in conference." This is where Jesus is supposed to walk through the wall and chide her for her lack of faith. Mark Hemingway calls Obama's promises on this and health care for illegal immigrants "foolish" because "aside from being disingenous, it's the opposite of consensus building." Better Obama should just admit he wants more abortions and wetback medicine till the cows come home, as that might build the sort of consensus Hemingway seeks.

Andy McCarthy praises the contributions of Sarah Palin, especially on the alleged death panels, in which he retains touching faith. "I can't tell you how much I love Roman's cover on the latest edition of NR," he adds, which shows Death wearing a lab coat.

John Hood doesn't like Obama's point that public care will no more kill private care than public universities have killed private universities: "Government colleges and universities have, indeed, come to dominate the higher education market not because they are better or more efficient but because of massive taxpayer subsidy." Graduates of Texas A&M will be interested to hear that their alma mater is kept alive only by the mindless largesse of Big Gummint, as will students of schools like Yale and Harvard, where I understand they burn books to keep warm in the winter thanks to declining revenues.

Goldberg lets fall the cowbell. "I don't know if this will win over the public (though I'm skeptical). But if he's actually trying to woo the Republicans in the room, I don't think this is working at all. Too many digs to placate his base and indulge hs own vanity." It doesn't surprise me that Goldberg has trouble grasping the distinction between "woo" and "embarrass." (He picks the cowbell up again, though, when he learns that Obama will follow up on this speech tomorrow. Obama just can't stop embarrassing himself by talking! Didn't he learn anything from his disastrous Presidential campaign?)

If you want more, there's always their Twitter feeds. K-Lo chirps:

delayed reax: was that an ashley madison commercial i just caught -- the MARRIAGE DATING SERVICE? Oremus. so much flipping not sure where.

Shortly thereafter:

now im screaming. back to normal, a cialis commercial. par for the course, often at 2 pm when i'm on a conference call in the office.

Maybe she's afraid Obamacare will force her into psychotherapy.

SUPER METATUESDAY! Cableless, I could not watch tonight's debate, so I will follow the example of conservatives who review movies they haven't seen and review the debate as it took place in the minds of National Review Online contributors.

Kathryn J. Lopez starts the evening's festivities:

I Never Thought I'd Say This, But... I may be angry on behalf of Hillary Clinton. This debate is starting out with Clinton on the defense. Obama bettter get treated like she is.

It would seem a little late for K-Lo to go feminist-deconstructionist, but apparently neither clocks nor spell-check exist in Rightwing World.

Mark Krikorian: "Maybe I'm not as smart as these two, but I have no idea what they're talking about." Why "but"? Both propositions are clearly correct.

"Could Hillary's problem be that no adviser can say 'save the b**ch for the second half hour'?" Wow, K-Lo, that didn't last long!

Stephen Spruiell tries to go substantive, but the whole thing's about what a b**ch Clinton is. Under the usual Bizarro-World formula, we might reasonably conclude from this that Clinton is winning decisively, but there is a Twilight of the Gods atmosphere about their savagery that renders the usual predictive mechanisms inoperative.

Mark Hemingway just admitted that Alan Keyes is a political tomato-can. Such is loyalty in the late conservative era.

"If Fox did this to Hil, the Left would go ballistic. But this is their hometown channel" -- Andy McCarthy. I don't see how I've remained a doctrinaire liberal so long without access to Wolf Blitzer's morning agenda.

"Without condescension, with a gentle nudge, he puts her back in the kitchen" -- Kathleen Parker. Tomorrow's talking point: Obama wants to put Hil in "kitchen"! Long discussion of Obama's sexism, probably absorbed from his hateful mother.

"I don't think Russert's doing it on purpose, but..." Were I blessed with faith in a Liberal Media, I'd believe this were the trick: to avalanche on Clinton in full view of the NatRev types so that their brains fry trying to comprehend how we, pledged in blood though we are to the evil Clinton empire, could treat her so badly. I mean, it's not as if she were Alan Keyes!

Don't Use the L-Word! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I wish there were a candidate delighted to be honestly and authentically called a liberal or a conservative. I like partisanship. To paraphrase Gordon Gekko, "partisanship is good."

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "You're a stupid fucking load, K-Lo."

So rattled are the NatRev crew by this exercise that those members determined to comment on world affairs afterward lose their usual acuity. "The Washington Times has issued instructions that henceforth it will use illegal immigrants rather than illegal aliens," mourns Andy McCarthy. He completely missed the part about gay "marriage"! I don't really know what really happened in Cleveland tonight, but if it put these guys off their customary homophobic feed, it can't have been too bad.

UPDATE. Ann Althouse: "Obama is confronted with his 'most liberal' ranking. I find his talking tiresome and will need to check the transcript to see if he said anything interesting." I don't know what we'd do without the blogosphere -- probably go down to the tunnels of Grand Central and ask Mole People to extemporize. Meanwhile the Ole Perfesser recommends Stephen Green's "drunkblogging." Sample: "Hillary getting all sarcastic in not a pretty sight. Neither are her hips in that bright yellow jacket." Green gives drunkenness a bad name, and the Perfesser gives a bad name to everything else. Andrew Sullivan is freaked out that Obama only "denounced" Farrakhan, as opposed to -- what? Producing a Farrakhan doll and biting its throat open? Later, chided by correspondents, Sullivan says "I find Obama's calm distancing insufficient" and " I also think this will be used against him and worry that it will become a distracting issue" -- by which he means, "Here's what I'll bring up when I inevitably support McCain." Did you know The Atlantic used to publish Mark Twain? Sh, sh, don't cry -- soon the old crazy man will be President and then we will all join Daddy in heaven.

SAVOR THE MOMENT. McCain takes Florida, and the National Review folks try to make lemonMcCade. "'Nominee presumptive John McCa.....' Sorry, I can't say it. Not yet," weeps Michael Graham. "So it is over. Finished. In November, we'll be sending out our most liberal, least trustworthy candidate vs. to take on Hillary Clinton—perhaps not more liberal than Barack Obama, but certainly far less trustworthy... I'm off to climb into a bottle of Bushmill's." At last, something we can agree on!

"I'll shut up after this post," says Kathryn Jean Romney, "but Romney has been ON since Michigan. It may prove — it may have been proven tonight — to be too late. But this guy speaking right now, is hitting important issues, making you feel good about America, as you should..." There's some sad things known to man, but there ain't too much sadder than -- oh, what am I saying, she's hilarious. Love ya, K-Lo.

"McCain's Reading from a TelePrompTer. And he probably shouldn't. It's a stilted read and makes him look old. He's much better off the cuff." This from Jonah Goldberg, showing his usual grasp of historical events.

"At least the Florida GOP race was won and lost discussing the issues," Mark Hemingway consoles himself. "By contrast the Democratic race — where everyone seems to be marching in lockstep when it comes to policy and the arguments are superficial — seems to have an even nastier edge, especially now that Bill Clinton has injected Obama's race into the debate." This from a man who once said, "If I were John McCain right now, I would strut straight across the Senate floor and kick [Tom] Harkin in his grandfatherly crotch."

Ramesh Ponnuru is spinning hopeful analogical scatagories: "Kemp replaces Gramm/Romney, du Pont is Forbes/Giuliani albeit from Delaware instead of New York, Robertson is Buchanan/Huckabee, and Bush is Dole/McCain." Did you know that Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln, and Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy?

Mark Steyn, currently under Canadian fatwa, is naturally inclined toward more dire fantasizing: "Tonight was a big win for illegal-immigration amnesty, remorseless socialization of health care, and big-government solutions to global warming... If McCain wins in November, he'll be eager to show he can 'work' with a Democratic Congress. If Hill wins, she'll want to make a mark, fast. And, if it's Barack, ditto with bells on. A bipartisan consensus committed to change you can believe in." Well, if the frostbacks put him in prison, he'll have his imagination to keep him warm.

The one thing that would have made it perfect is a Giuliani withdrawal. Alas, he's procrastinating:

Although Giuliani did not say he was quitting Tuesday night, he drifted into the past tense during his concession speech to more than 100 supporters in a half-filled hotel ballroom in Orlando.

"Leaders dream of a better future and then they help to bring it into a reality," he said. "That capability of leadership doesn't end with a single campaign. If you believe in a cause, it goes on and you continue to fight for it."

That's still pretty sweet. I'll return to the subject after Rudy! has done the Long Goodbye in front of Ground Zero, surrounded by bagpipers playing "Amazing Grace" and editorial assistants promoting his next book, Losership.

We must take our pleasures where we can, friends: in a few weeks they'll all have remembered that McCain is a War Hero and a better human being than that Bitch/Black Guy.

UPDATE. Megan McArdle: "Giuliani concedes. The bit of the speech I saw was classy. Like most New Yorkers, I kind of think he's a maniac, but I was touched." Yeah, tonight just gets better and better.

CULTURE OF COMPLAINT, PART 83,992. At The Corner, Mark Hemingway is incensed that Obama joked in a speech to Moscow students, "I don’t know if anybody else will meet their future wife or husband in class like I did, but I’m sure you’ll all going to have wonderful careers." Michelle and Barack went to Harvard Law at different times, though Obama was at the time a student doing his summer internship at Sidley & Austin, where she mentored him. Newsweek calls the comment "a wee bit off," which is not good enough for Hemingway, who calls the publication Obamaweek.

"The statement is just wrong," Hemingway continues in a blind fury. "There is no 'technical' justification for it having any veracity that I can tell — 'in class' is quite specific. Next time you husbands embarass your wife publicly by not remembering a significant relationship detail. I bet you wish a major media organization would step in and spin it for you. Alas, you'll have no such luck." Because Obamaweek loves Obama and hates you ordinary people, whose casual statements Obamaweek will parse rigorously in order to embarrass your wives. And Obama clearly must hate his wife, too, to humiliate her thus.

Elsewhere at The Corner Jay Nordlinger flips out because a conductor at Lincoln Center said that he and his fellow Britons were "very pleased" at how things were going in America now, which Nordlinger took as a slur on George Bush. Despite a recent poll showing Obama much more popular with Brits than Bush, Nordlinger disputes the maestro's imputation: "There has been a new awkwardness in Anglo-American relations," he asserts. "Beginning with the return of the Churchill bust, continuing with DVD-gate, etc." Maybe the only Britons he knows are named Windsor. And, Nordlinger adds, "the administration has thrown cold water -- strange cold water -- on the idea of a 'special relationship.'" Strange cold water? Perhaps Obama imported it from Treasonstan.

Nordlinger finds this further evidence that there are no "safe zones" left where a decent, Obama-hating citizen can enjoy himself in peace. If you can't evade mildly liberal sentiments among artists at Lincoln Center, where can you evade them?

And they say liberals are touchy.

UPDATE. The Ole Perfesser catches Nordlinger's outrage. "I’m sorry," he says, "but the only way to fix this is to be an asshole, complain loudly, and make things even more unpleasant for the perpetrator than for you." This of course has been the Perfesser's modus operandi for years. He and the Missus must be a real ornament to the local arts scene. Maybe we should all pitch in and send them to a Decemberists concert.

MEAN FAKE NUN DEMANDS YOU BEHAVE. The Anchoress says the right is being nice to President-elect Obama and his supporters and, in a spirit of Christian charity, demands that Obama supporters return this alleged kindness to her and her kind (while assuming that we won't).

It appears she doesn't read the rightbloggers on her own blogroll. (And those are just from the "A"s.)

During the campaign The Anchoress called Obama a "presumptuous" man who "thinks he’s already been enthroned," "a construct" and "a put-together illusion" about whom "I had my doubts he even wrote [his own] books," who "jeer[s] at his country and countrymen" and suffers from "ambiguity about his own citizenship" and "megalomania." And that's just gleaned from my own coverage of her work; dip into her archives for accounts of Obama's "inconsistency, naivete, relativism... and a tendency toward suppressive and vengeful behavior to those who do not fall in line," and thoughtful analysis like "Obama is a fraud on legs. If he gets elected, and the house increases its left-hold, we’re not going to recognise this country in two years," etc.

Not to speak of what she says about us.

I'll take my lessons in humility from the Dalai Lama. That's 'cuz I'm an elitist!

UPDATE. I see this passive-aggressive routine is getting around. Mark Hemingway refers to From 52 to 48, a site from Obama voters being nice to McCain supporters; his readers howl for blood. Hemingway says, "it's probably necessary that we be the adults here... there's no reason to adopt the left's Alinsky tactics." Who does he think is extending him the olive branch -- Obamacons? Hemingway should really send his message directly to From 52 to 48: "Thanks, guys, we'll be the adults here and refrain from adopting your Alinsky tactics." Then, when he receives a disagreeable response, he can get on with the I-didn't-leave-reconciliation-reconciliation-left-me phase of the program.

Other reactions to From 52 to 48: "Love notes from the winners. You know, the ones who’ve had Bush Derangement Syndrome for eight years and Palin Derangement Syndrome since August... Upchuck warning." "I suppose it would all depend on just how many of these people didn’t spend the past eight years calling people like me racist fascist babykilling warmongers." "Well, this is a nice change from disclaiming the President and half your country to foreigners."

And people wonder why I'm such a sourpuss.

UPDATE II. More rightwing conciliatory gestures here.

UPDATE III. Twisted Spinster (click "it would all depend above) reacts: "Check all the links alicublog uses as examples of the right’s intransigence, and tell yourself this is the way gracious winners behave." Pointing out their intransigence proves that me and my buddies are unwilling to accept their fists of friendship! It's hard to play Gandhi when the other side is playing Attila the Hun.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN (HOLY SH*T CHRISTIE EDITION).

That's how the pros do it, folks.

•   Ha ha ha ha ha. First they finally get Rubio to do insult comedy on Trump at the debate -- not well, but at least he was sassy, and that made the people who follow him as the GOP savior feel sassy too -- "This is fight-them-on-the beaches time. This is Agincourt," perorates National Review's imported wingnut Charles C.W. Cooke. (Yes, this was their finest shower!) Rubio even started to warm (some might say unseasonably warm) to his new role -- and then Chris Christie went and fucked it all up. Some folks are pointing to Jon Ward's "Why Christie Never Went After Donald Trump" for the explanation:

...Rubio was ascending to be the Trump alternative, a spot Christie wanted for himself. With his kneecapping of Rubio, Christie eliminated the Florida senator from the running in New Hampshire, although Rubio’s unimpressive finish there didn’t improve Christie’s standing in the race. And as a result, the non-Trump lane has remained muddled between Rubio and Ted Cruz, while Trump has won three consecutive states with less than 50 percent.

This suggests by cracking Rubio, Christie was doing what he had to do to get to Trump's level -- knocking off the contenders before engaging Mr. Big. It makes some sense. But what's missing is why Christie decided to quit. A large part of Christie's appeal among Republicans is his gift for insult comedy. It's actually sharper than Trump's, but Trump's is currently more popular -- apparently Christie's shtick is a little too intellectual for the GOP proles, who don't want to have to work hard to get the references (i.e. know something about government). So my guess is Christie doesn't expect Trump to win. (In fact it's beginning to look like no top Republicans are expecting their Party to win.) He's decided to embrace the current Sultan of Insult and wait for 2020, when Trump's act will be old and the crowds may have learned to love the Christie variation.

I'll add one more thing. I remember when Ann Coulter said during early days in the 2012 campaign, "if the Republicans don't nominate Christie... then Romney will be the nominee and he will lose." Coulter is now a reliable Trump booster, and her ravings may suggest to some that immigration is the reason for her devotion. But Christie was never focused on immigration. The real unifying factor among these three parties is faith in rage and vituperation as the way to the hearts of the people. In fact, it may be all they believe in.

•   At The Federalist, Mark Hemingway has an online aneurysm some poor editor could only think to call "Bernie Supporters’ Hatred Of Work Is Why Trump Supporters Are So Mad." It starts with Hillary's emails (or as the Bowery Boys/rightbloggers call it, Routine 12) and thereafter spatters like a rotten tomato across a broad barn door of sub-topics. But you can smell something solid coming at this point:

The odd thing is that people are voting for Bernie Sanders overwhelmingly for kind of the same reason as Trump supporters, in that they don’t want larger economic issues forcing them to change their culture or lifestyle. However, the motivations of Sanders supporters are much less sympathetic.

This is an interesting way to look at the pressing economic issues of the day: Voters aren't worried about money to live on, replace a worn-out car with, save to send a kid to college, etc. -- they're worried that money will "change their culture or lifestyle." What's that even mean, and why are Sanders supporters' concerns worse than those of Trump's? Apparently it has something to do with the Sanders kids wanting to have a job, a good job, one that satisfies their artistic needs; Hemingway is here to tell these puppies they "can’t 'do what they love' without financial realities being such a killjoy." And what does he use as examples of their foolish utopianism? Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn -- the places in America, in other words, where you're most likely to make a living "doing what you love," rich cities that are in fact getting crowded because the market has spoken and youngsters prefer those places to such Republican Valhallas as Topeka, Kanas and Fritters, Alabama. Listen to him:

Portland’s celebrated “artisanal economy” is basically a result of overeducated hipsters who want to live in Oregon because the cost of living is relatively cheap and it’s beautiful, but there are no traditional jobs with opportunities for advancement. 

So they’re all starting craft businesses and restaurants. When you have one food truck for every 1,000 people, as Portland does, that is a result of desperation, not necessarily the kind of enterprise and initiative you want to celebrate.

Whereas they could be churning out rightwing propaganda like a real man! The rest is near-incomprehensible, but it seems Hemingway thinks work is only real when it's difficult and unrewarding and being done by someone besides him.

SHORTER MARK HEMINGWAY: Sure, he's no Mark Steyn, but what the hell, I'll say nice things about Nelson Mandela if I can use him against Obama. Hey, folks -- Unlike Mandela, Obama consorts with criminals!

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. The stark unreality of this campaign is starting to get to me.

An alleged member of anti-Scientology group has hacked Sarah Palin's email, and conservatives blame Obama supporters.

At National Review Mark Hemingway cites a report quoting McCain as saying he didn't anticipate the subprime mortgage mess -- and then asserts that he did, too, and says the reporter should have "googled a little harder" to help McCain look better than he portrayed himself.

Palin gives a content-free answer to a question her handlers inadvertently allowed her to answer about AIG, and Hemingway proclaims, "Palin Gets the Financial Crisis," and explains why she's "exactly right" in a paragraph longer than her answer. It's like a scene out of Being There.

The United States is a shuddering wreck, and the top conservative spiritual advisor complains that a black guy disrespected the Star-Spangled Banner, the top conservative mystic resurrects an old, incomprehensible slur on Obama, the top conservative economic blogger calls commenters who disagree with her idiots, then admits she doesn't know what's going on, and the Ole Perfesser tells readers that the economy isn't worth worrying about, pay attention to the 527 commercials.

I thought five-plus years of covering this kind of gibberish had inured me to it, but here it is only September of a Presidential election year and every time I step even into the foot-washing pool of the political scene I feel as if I have been fatally poisoned. The degeneracy of political discourse in the internet age has been my subject, but I feel as if it is getting away from me, screaming beyond my capacity to keep up. Is it really so much worse than it has been, or am I getting soft?

DR. MACPHAIL GASPED. HE UNDERSTOOD.

Well, it's been a great vacation (not over yet; no column on Monday), but it's winding down so I better take a look-in on the brethren -- huh, seems Mark Hemingway is at The Federalist talking about a pornstar lady who got some angry emails because she wouldn't work with a gay pornstar guy, then killed herself. (scratches chin) Something tells me this won't be the usual fist-shake against Our Promiscuous Society, but will instead seek to pit gay rights against women's rights. OK, let's read:

Well, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that a mob that would tell [August] Ames to kill herself if she won’t have sex with someone who has sex with other men would also happily pass a law requiring porn stars to be subject to penalties for discriminating in who they sleep with. Certainly, trans activists are already pushing the idea that you’re transphobic if you won’t sleep with transsexuals. You really have to marvel at how fast we’ve progressed from “Bake the cake, bigot” to “Take off your dress, bigot.”

(Polishes nails on lapel) Ya still got it, Edroso!

Hemingway's story and yet another one about August Ames are The Federalist's #1 and #2 most popular stories at the moment. I guess one part of that crowd is Ames fans who welcome the opportunity to mash up their appreciation of her oeuvre with their homophobia ("Thanks a lot, fags, now the world will never see Bang Bros Invasion 18!") and the other part is fundamentalists who would love to do a Reverend Davidson on a porn star themselves, preferably but not necessarily before she dies. I wonder how much traction they'll be able to get from this idea that LGBT activists seek to force porn stars to have sex against their will. Say, maybe that'll be a hot damsel-in-distress scenario for Bang Bros Invasion: In Memoriam!

Wish I could say it's good to be back.

YET ANOTHER NEW LOW. You know, it's amazing to admit that I "expect better" from National Review on -- well, anything. But Mark Hemingway's link to a bottom-feeding winger site -- by which Hemingway seeks to demonstrate that Keith Olbermann's girlfriend is a "hypocrite" because ZOMG HERE ARE PICTURES OF HER DANCIN LIKE A SLUT -- seemed to me at first like something even they wouldn't do.

After a few moments' thought, though, I realized: what's to stop them? Buckley's dead -- not that they paid much attention to him anyway -- and Kathryn J. Lopez, the publication's putative online editor, does not to any observable degree provide oversight (aside from policing Star Trek references). There's no indication that NRO actually has standards -- just a general instinct as to what they can and can't get away with. And as they seem to be getting some traction, or at least a hard-on, from the whole white-people-rise-up-against-black-racism thing, it's no shock that they would be feeling a little expansive right now.

By the election, it'll be like Ace O. Spades without the elfin wit, or maybe this without the dissents.

THE NIGHT THEY DROVE CHICK-FIL-A DOWN.

I'm opening to the general public (that's you guys!) the latest issue of my newsletter, about Rod Dreher's extended shitfit over Chick-fil-A's disinvestments. Longtime readers may recall my writing at the Village Voice in 2012 about how a couple of colleges booted the fast food chain for its president's homophobic sentiments and conservatives went nuts, making special "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day" trips (or saying they did) to gorge on waffle fries and show the gays and gay-lovers that nobody out-grievances the Right. Sample:

“Tastes Like Liberty,” said Doug Ross. “Tasted like freedom,” said Mollie Hemingway. They must have changed the formula since we ate there. 

“80% of the folks at the tables [at the food court] were sporting Chick-fil-A bags. Taco Bell and Sbarro’s shared the rest of the tables, it seemed, with Five Guys, a very popular Washington area burger chain,” reported Robert Morrison of the Family Research Council. “‘I’ve had enough of those ‘gaystapo tactics,’ we heard one diner say.” 

“The Chick-fil-A controversy has no doubt been polarizing in some corners of the country,” said Mark Hemingway of the Weekly Standard, “but the undeniable success of yesterday’s nationwide rally to support the fast food chain means we’re likely to remember August 1, 2012 as Silent Majority Day.” 

It was a watershed (or a Diet-Mr.-Pibbshed) for late-stage homo-haters, and the news that CfA had removed some investments in gay-averse charities hit several of them hard, though few as hard as Rod.

Astonishingly, Dreher is not the author of the stupidest thing written on the subject. This is from John Hinderaker of Power Line:

I won’t stop eating at Chick-fil-A on account of this retreat, but I won’t do it with the same enthusiasm, either.

And some people think John McCain was a hero!

UPDATE. Yikes, Dreher's got a third Chick-fil-A post:

About Chick-fil-A, I know you liberals are laughing at us, drawing comparisons between Thomas More and a chicken shack.

Yep! Bye!

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, MAKE VENOMADE. Let's see how they're reacting to Obama's speech at National Review's The Corner. First up: Greg Pollowitz.

U2's "Beautiful Day"... is playing at the Barack Obama rally. No Americans write music Obama likes?

Ooooh, the pickings are gonna be mighty slim. K-Lo:

John McCain seriously needs some of these screaming girls behind him.

Maybe A. Jerrold Perenchio can hustle some up. Class clown Jonah Goldberg says Obama wanted to say "I will appoint Hillary Clinton my Secretary of Health Human Services, no matter what opposition that invites." One is tempted to respond that Obama sounds pretty good for a guy who doesn't dare say what he feels, but let's leave Goldberg the floor.

He adds that Obama's claim that "the United States isn't afraid to let any petty dictator know where America stands and what we stand for" is "the legacy of Roosevelt, and Truman, and Kennedy" is "just plain stupid and dishonest." Hopes that Goldberg will explain how FDR, Truman, and JFK were afraid to let any petty dictator know where America stands are cruelly disappointed.

Also: "Why not force oil companies to invest in perpetual motion machines, dogs that don't poop and free holodecks for every American." This is Goldberg's point of comparison to Obama's call for oil companies to "invest their record profits in a clean energy future" and "an energy policy that will create millions of new jobs." Considering that ExxonMobil, for one, constantly promises clean energy and more jobs, this seems unfair to the oil companies, especially coming from a spokesman for a movement that lavishly tongue-bathes them at every opportunity.

Goldberg stays on duty, but his heart isn't in it: Obama "crushed" McCain's earlier speech, he concedes, "substance aside." Lack of substance is of course Goldberg's wheelhouse, but he doesn't do much with it, muttering that "this country doesn't need 'remaking'" and wandering off to the snackbar.

Late-coming deadender Lisa Schiffren tries to hold the line, sniffing that this was "Not his finest speech" (without suggesting which speech was), merely a "painful agglomeration of liberal cliches and ringing, if tired quotes" (how does one ring a tired quote?) when Obama's "A-team speechwriters should have honed original phrases and put them in thematic order." America is of course thirsty for original phrases in thematic order, and one would expect Schiffren to haul out the Smith-Corona and get straight to work on them, but she instead sticks with her spin: "When Obama says that his party won't use religion as a wedge or patriotism as a club, that is a way of saying that those topics are out of bounds," she says. "It's always a mistake when Democrats do that." I guess she means that the wedge and the club have worked before and will work forever, which is the Republican version of keeping hope alive. Later she attacks Obama with the words of demotivational speakers Brit Hume and Billy Kristol, under the heading "Wasp Understatement." At least, and at last, someone at The Corner is hauling out the old ooga-booga.

Reinforcements are called; Amy Holmes, no doubt rubbing sleep from her eyes, grabs an early version of the talking points and lets fly: "Dems love them some Bono, even though U2's best anthems are long behind them. I went to a U2 concert years ago at the MCI Center (is it called that anymore?)..." Finally she recalls that on that event, "all of the black people at the stadium are outside scalping tickets." I'm not sure what this is meant to demonstrate, but I bet it has something to do with black people.

Poor K-Lo can't let bad enough alone:

While watching Michelle Obama's body language — fist-pounding and seemingly giving Barack last-minute prep work, then vigorously leading him offstage. Imagine the commentary if she were one Jeri Thompson.

Yeah, let's imagine ole Fred shocked awake by the pounding of his wife's fist, shaking off his confusion as she shouts instructions into his good ear, and submitting to her "vigorously leading him offstage." It's good practice for the McCain campaign.

As the chairs are upturned upon the tables and the sound system blares white noise, Mark Hemingway dazedly invokes McCain's Maverick! credentials ("In what way are Obama's policies going against the Democratic grain?"), but his colleagues have retreated to the toilets to vomit or score coke from Larry Kudlow. Meanwhile I'm watching Brian Williams on MSNBC wondering aloud how the folks at Montana's Gallatin Speedway (translation: white people) will react to Obama. Williams also talks tremulously about McCain's war record. With liberal media support like that, I don't see how Obama can lose.

BLOWING THEIR COVER. Alan Keyes has been a prominent conservative for a long time. Ronald Reagan ("I've never known a more stout-hearted defender of a strong America than Alan Keyes") appointed him to the UN and to the State Department. The National Review used to be cool with Keyes, too: he has been interviewed and even written for the magazine.

In 1999 Jonah Goldberg called Keyes "the most intelligent, articulate, impressive guy to run for president in any party in years." It is interesting to see how he qualified this statement:

But I just can't shake the notion that he'd bring back the guillotine. As a friend of mine put it, if you drew a venn diagram of crackpots and great political minds, he would be one of the few people in that area where the circles overlap. Still, I find it befuddling that I can't articulate why he isn't getting more respect.

Back then, for this crowd, a Republican could be a "crackpot" and a great candidate at the same time. Why not? The GOP had Congress and Reagan Revivalism was in the air, and if some of its avatars were raw like Rush, that only added a fun frisson of political incorrectness to the proceedings. (Later Goldberg praised Keyes because "He doesn't believe that an idea or a fact is more or less true depending on whether it will make a feminist cry.")

But this year Keyes got on Wednesday's Iowa Republican Presidential debate, and spouted much the same gibberish as usual. This time the National Review crowd is incensed. "I Wish the Des Moines Register Had One More Republican Debate This Cycle," says Kathryn Jean Lopez, "so I could demand a place on the stage. It makes as much sense as Alan Keyes being there." Rich Lowry said Keyes "shouldn't have been on the stage." Mark Hemingway suggested Keyes be pushed off future debate stages with sticks.

Only Goldberg tried to maintain to old-school funtimes, saying "I kind of dug Alan Keyes' crazy guy on the bus routine." Elsewhere conservatives were uniformly angry at Keyes' presence, despite his commendations from the Gipper.

What changed? Well, for one thing, the Republicans aren't doing so hot, so the hijinks of olden times have to be kept on the down-low. The "mainstream" Republican candidates, knowing what a tough slog they have ahead of themselves, are making strenuous efforts to look and sound normal for the cameras. Conservative commentators play gamely along, talking about their debates as if they were business as usual, though were a soul innocent of the current GOP's bizarre standards of normalcy to happen upon one of these scenes, it would probably fill him with confusion and horror.

But most of us are not so well-protected, and are by now kind of inured to the Jesus-infused, torture-happy madness of Republicans. Their best chance is to keep a straight face over the course of the remaining 732 debates, and get us all acclimated to their insane ideas once more. Then Keyes comes along frothing at the mouth. Under ordinary circumstances, his competitors might see this as an opportunity to look more normal by comparison. But their supporters, at least, are wrapped too tight at the moment to see it that way. They see the rampaging id of Republicanism let loose upon their stage, and they are terrified that his mania might be catching. They had just learned to live with Ron Paul, and now this!

No wonder Keyes drives them bonkers. He's blowing their cover.

SHORTER MARK HEMINGWAY: I'm not eating shit, you're eating shit! And BTW you're lowering the tone of the debate!

SNATCHING DEBACLE OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEFEAT.

I'm sure there's some wheels-within-wheels strategy behind the House Republicans dropping Fetal Pain like it's hot, but it doesn't look good, especially with female members forcing them to drop it:

In recent days, as many as two dozen Republicans had raised concerns with the "Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act" that would ban abortions after the 20th week of a pregnancy. Sponsors said that exceptions would be allowed for a woman who is raped, but she could only get the abortion after reporting the rape to law enforcement. 

A vote had been scheduled for Thursday to coincide with the annual March for Life, a gathering that brings hundreds of thousands of anti-abortion activists to Washington to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. 

But Republican leaders dropped those plans after failing to win over a bloc of lawmakers, led by Reps. Rene Ellmers (R-N.C.) and Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), who had raised concerns.

This makes hard duty for conservative propagandists, and even such practiced hands as Mollie Hemingway are showing strain. She blasts the female Life-traitors for changing their minds (I thought that was a woman's prerogative, der hur hur), and rages that the bill, which from its title on down reads like something out of The Handmaid's Tale, is actually "easy legislation that is broadly popular (outside of American newsrooms, at least)," as if the will of the people for federal anti-abortion laws had been thwarted by the awesome power of America's increasingly-unread newspapers. (Sometimes I think the only thing keeping our Fourth Estate alive as a totem of soft power is the right wing's endless need for strawmen.)

But my favorite part of Hemingway's column is this:

Even if you’re not one of the majority of Americans who want to protect these children in the womb, this debacle should concern you.

Such exquisite concern-trolling hardly needs explaining but basically Hemingway thinks we can all agree it's bad when the GOP trips over its dick because "if Republicans can’t pass wildly popular legislation protecting innocent unborn children, what’s going to happen when they face difficult legislative battles?" Why, the Anti-Witchcraft Amendment may never make it out of committee!

RAISING THE LEVEL OF DISCOURSE. "I'm pretty sure this is photoshopped, but either way it says volumes about Obama's vapid sloganeering..." -- Mark Hemingway, The Corner.

I just drew a picture of McCain dropping a load in his pants. (puts thumbs under lapels) I await our worthy opponents' rejoinder.

JUST WHAT MAGA V. TAYLOR SWIFT NEEDED: A LITTLE TOUCH OF DREHER!

It can’t last, so let’s all ride this MAGA Declares War on Taylor Swift thing to clicksville while the iron’s hot, shall we? Here’s a rare midweek freebie from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, with a ripped-from-today’s-headlines account of the anti-Swift nerve center at Mar-a-Lago. Strictly for laffs! 

As I repeatedly remind you folks, conservative politicians and political writers have entirely abandoned policies and even normal constituent service in favor of lunatic culture war crap like this. Entertainers most of us think of as That Guy In that Movie or That Girl on Spotify are to them as demons sent to Make Everything Woke. This goes for the rightwing intelli-ma-lectuals like Victor Davis Hanson as well as humble clickbait farmers (“The Top 5 Most Overrated Liberal Comedians”), but also for bigtimers like the New York Times' David French, one of those conservatives who liberals simps think is OK, and author of a hair-raisingly weird Prince obituary (“For conservatives, Prince was ultimately just another talented and decadent voice in a hedonistic culture. He was notable mainly because he was particularly effective at communicating that decadence to an eager and willing audience…”).

I didn’t think this Swift thing could get any nuttier but I hadn’t counted on Rod Dreher. I’d more or less stopped paying attention to him since his nervous breakdown and departure from The American Conservative, but my attention was called to his latest Substack item, “Among the Swifties” – and if you sense a reference of Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs there, claim your prize because Dreher does indeed compare the young female fans of Taylor Swift to the soccer hooligans in Buford’s book:

Here is Buford himself, reflecting on what he learned about crowd dynamics by watching a thug leader he calls “Mutton Chops” at work…

This is interesting. It says that we cannot entirely blame Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, or any other “leader” who holds sway over a crowd; the crowd’s latent desire for someone to create them manifested in those individual figures being propelled to leadership. Don’t misread Buford here; he’s not absolving crowd leaders of their actions…

Someone should ring Buford and ask him if he absolves Taylor Swift of her crimes. 

To put it in Buford’s terms: there was a huge crowd of young females who shared a common emotional experience (“the collective female unconscious”) that settled on Taylor Swift, a supremely gifted creator of pop songs, as their leader. Taylor Swift played her role, of course, but Buford would say that Swift was summoned by the latency within the crowd that would later become Swifties.

I bet Dreher imagines “Swifties” as rampaging Valkyries doing Wokeness to the innocent. The thing’s full of howlers, with patented Dreherisms like his regret that he cannot experience the “liberating pleasure of ego death” he imagines sports, Swift, and Trump fans enjoy – “The only time I’ve ever had that experience as part of a crowd was at the U2 concert in Baton Rouge…” The jokes just write themselves! Nonetheless I had a go at REBID, if you can use a chuckle, however mordant. 

UPDATE. Finally realizing that maybe this has all been a terrible mistake, some of the conservative Shuck Troopers are trying to turn it around. Washington Times:

We're not nuts, you're nuts! Well, on their readership it could work. Also Erick Erickson is trying his insufficient best:

Never mind that it hurts Donald Trump. Never mind that it makes the Republicans look deeply unserious. Never mind the political fallout. On a day that Cori Bush has been targeted by the Justice Department, a Democrat progressive targeted by Joe Biden's Justice Department, we're all having to talk about the Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce thing because of what these idiots have done online. 

Oh, I'm sure none of them will mind that the Swift Purge is distracting from the fact that the DOJ, which conservatives constantly accuse of being politically weaponized against Republicans just because they did some so-called "crimes," is investigating prominent Democrats like Bush and even charging Democratic Senator Robert Menendez as well. Screening out inconvenient facts is as important to their whole paranoid vision as the manufacture of lunatic fantasies.

UPDATE 2. Lol, I forgot that conservatives have been raging at Swift for at least ten years now. Here's my 2013 post on the Power Line proto-Catturd Hindrocket doing close analysis of Swift wearing a onesie -- is it a comment on Pajama Boy?? And get a load of all the anti-Swift articles at rightweing rat's nest The Federalist: Imagine going to an editor with a pitch like "Taylor Swift’s Disappointing Arc Is Generationally Representative" and having her slam the desk and cry, "THAT'S GOLD, JASHINSKY! GOLD!" Finally, lest we forget: Mark Hemingway's sad boomer review of Swift. Now that's funny! 

WHO'S NEXT.

The end of O'Reilly's TV show means nearly nothing to me. Big-ticket rightwing rageclowns like him are like blockbuster movies and reality shows, just gargoyles for gawkers, and we who have free souls it touches us not.

I'm more interested in the conservative pseuds who try to explain it all on the internet, and so far their take seems to be that the preferred viewing choice of your aged relatives who send you pictures of Obama with a bone through his nose doesn't have anything to do with conservatism.

"He Was a Centrist, Not a Conservative," claims Joel B. Pollak at Breitbart. But look where Pollak's baseline is, via his approving quote of some wingnut chin-stroker:

What if we could magically remove the metaphoric glass and see, face-to-face, the average American, once his political views are no longer distorted by media bias? What would we see? 

The answer, basically, is Ben Stein.

Tell your aged Obama-hating relatives that their avatar is Ben Stein and they'll smack you. I won't even accept that slander on them! Hell, if the average American were the chinless Stein, we'd have receded into the primordial ooze years ago. (Try to imagine Ben Stein without money. He'd be raving next to an overpass. Or at least whining loudly.)

The others are worse. I include the worthless Chuck Todd who, seeking to impress Hugh Hewitt for some reason, "agreed" with him according to this Daily Caller report that O'Reilly wasn't a real conservative, that is, not a fancy intellectual like Hugh Hewitt:

“He was — to me, what he did — he was the tone-setter,” Todd continued. “He was sort of that anti-political correctness.” 

[facepalm]

“He was the opening act that brought the crowds, but he became almost more fun to watch than the concert itself, sometimes, but he was the entertainer, probably more entertainer than any of the others.”

Similarly, gameshow buffoon Trump isn't conservative either -- he just pumps out rightwing policies self-identified conservatives eat up, but he ain't got good taste so when the smart guys stand around in cigar bars with snifters and talk about the Glooory of the Mooovement & Burke & Hayek &tc they shove Trump into a coatroom and blame the smell on the dog.

Plus there's Mark Judge at Splice Today -- "The left is cheering the demise of O’Reilly, but liberals have nothing to boast about," he says, because someone got raped at Occupy and what about that bitch who said she was raped but wasn't, huh libs? And Scott Lehigh at the Boston Globe: "Bill O’Reilly types aren’t just a conservative problem," because all those liberal TV hosts are sexual harassers too and the only reason we don't have proof like with O'Reilly is because chicks lie to protect libtards to keep their precious abortions.

At National Review Ian Tuttle tries a variation: Sure, the old-fogey conservatives go for O'Reilly, but we youngs are modern and a-go-go and we think O'Reilly's trad, dad:

This rough-and-ready genealogy might even include a third generation, emerging now — one whose world was shaped by September 11, Iraq, economic recession, and the hyper-partisanship of the Obama years. These conservatives are not Bill O’Reilly; they’re Ben Shapiro, Mollie Hemingway, and Mary Katharine Ham. Their media are podcasts and Twitter, and while they’re certainly combative, they are more interested in a savvy, cosmopolitan conservatism that goes toe-to-toe with progressivism on its own turf (consider Shapiro’s popular campus-speaking events) than in the countrified, bigger-government, populism-tinged conservatism embodied by Mike Huckabee.

"Ben Shapiro, Mollie Hemingway, and Mary Katharine Ham??" cry the youth of today. "That's all I needed to hear. Direct me to the scene of their symposia, where I will vape, denounce socialism, and maybe beat up some antifa chicks!"

At least Tuttle's got enough sense to be ashamed, but not enough to see that O'Reilly isn't the problem. You still need someone; that someone could be younger, and maybe even female (sexual harassment is a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have for this gig!) or non-white (the murderous psycho Sheriff David Clarke might even do). But you will need someone to summon the clans, and he or she will have to be a scumbag -- and, since this is the age of Trump rather than the age of Reagan, that person also has to let the slavering masses know he or she is a scumbag. Because St. Ronnie wouldn't make it today; they'd see through his unctuousness right away and despise him for thinking them dumb enough to believe he's a nice guy. Shit, even conservatives don't believe in "trickle down" or "law and order" or any of those magic words anymore -- you can imagine what the marks they've been bilking for decades think!

No, for them only the Savage Messiah will do. And if the prissier among the Movement Conservatives have to stand off the side, look as innocent as their careers as childhood snitches taught them, and say oh no this is not what we meant at all, well, they can afford to pretend it's strategy instead of self-deception -- after all, they still get paid.

THE YEAR IN BULLSHIT, PART THREE.

(Here's the third installment of a year-end bottom-ten of the lowlights of 2014, culled from my archives and elsewhere. The previous installments are here and here. Read 'em and weep!)

4. The Eternal ObamaHitler. In January Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit addressed some Obama conspiracy theories: “…that the NSA may have been relaying intelligence about the Mitt Romney campaign to Obama operatives, or that Chief Justice John Roberts' sudden about-face in the Obamacare case might have been driven by some sort of NSA-facilitated blackmail.”

Yeah, you might shrug, there are plenty such crazy notions out there. But Reynolds went on: “A year ago, these kinds of comments would have been dismissable as paranoid conspiracy theory. But now, while I still don't think they're true, they're no longer obviously crazy. And that's Obama's legacy: a government that makes paranoid conspiracy theories seem possibly sane.”

Reynolds’ main theme was the IRS “scandal,” one of a long series on alleged wheels-within-wheels Obamaspiracies that have not gotten the traction he and his colleagues think they deserve. But it’s his idea that crackpot theories about Obama are somehow legit because of other crackpot theories about Obama that’s really interesting. There are many conservatives on the internet who sound as if they’re writing from survivalist treehouses where they wait, gun at the ready, for UN troops to try and put them in FEMA camps; you expect such people to peddle every daffy Obama story that churns up. But Reynolds’ theory may help explain why the ones who manage to hold down jobs in the non-tinfoil world also circulate them; perhaps they do so more in sorrow than in psychotic rage, clucking (as Reynolds did recently, in a column speculating that a Congressional spending billing passed “because NSA has ‘dirt’ on John Boehner”), “Sad what this country has become under the Obama Machine.”

Or it may be that they’re just political operatives who’ll throw any shit that comes to hand. But I try to be generous.

You may know that GM had an ignition-switch problem that it handled badly, possibly causing dozens of deaths. But did you know, as PJ Media’s Bryan Preston reported, “the Obama administration may have been covering up union shop GM’s deadly ignition switch flaw”? Wake up sheeple! Fox News’ Eric Bolling went so far as to suggest that the Obama White House “bankrupted GM" -- that is, bailed them out -- "...to make sure that the old GM was responsible for these deaths because they knew they had a problem and the new GM could go on with business as usual and then they would look like heroes.” “Did GM Bailout Cost Lives?” asked wingnut foundation the National Legal and Policy Foundation. “Congress needs to take a very close look at this — and perhaps the newly-Republican Senate will do so after January,” said Ed Morrissey of Hot Air. Maybe they can work it in between #Benghazi hearings.

But it’s not all tyrannizing and murdering in this Obama alt-reality universe: There’s also Obama playing pool, which became a thing (“WHILE THE WORLD BURNS, OBAMA FIDDLES, GOLFS, AND SHOOTS POOL”). Also Obama saluting a Marine with a cup of tea in his hand, ditto (“speaks volumes about President Obama, not only concerning his underlying disdain for our military, but also as regards basic decency”). And that tan suit business which, Jesus, I’m looking at it now and I still can’t figure it out. And golf, but that’s sort of an evergreen with them by now.

As seen by the brethren, Obama’s villainy informs everything he says and does; it’s so complete it’s mythic, like the strength of Paul Bunyan or the wiles of Br'er Rabbit. If Obama skips a military funeral, for example, it suddenly becomes unprecedented, even though other Presidents have done it. The most outrageous statements may be attributed to Obama and they will be believed, even without evidence. When his friends celebrate his birthday, Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist explains, it pollutes the very institution of birthdays (“One, it’s childish. Birthdays are for kids”). Why, he commits treason even when he frees an American P.O.W. — that’s how twisted he is!

Despite this superhuman power, it goes without saying that Obama is also wrong about everything — for example, he says “horseshit” when he clearly should have said “bullshit” (this from Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff, a master of both).

Given this view, it should come as no surprise that their rhetoric verges on the hysterical when they discuss him — see National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy (“So now Obama, like a standard-issue leftist dictator, is complementing lawlessness with socialist irrationality”) and Deroy Murdock (“Obama now rules by decree… Obama’s predecessors have signed executive orders and, more or less, left it at that. But Obama pounds his chest as he does so”), Politico’s Rich Lowry (“Barack Obama, American Caudillo”), the Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen ("Is Obama considering surrendering to the Taliban?”), Rod Dreher ("as far as the Obama administration is concerned, traditional Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are vestiges of barbarism”), former Texas GOP Senate candidate Darren Yancy (“a 6 year reign of terror against Christianity, liberty, the Constitution, self responsibility, employment, and economic opportunity”), actual Congressmembers Rep. Mark Meadows, R-NC (“he has declared war, and not just on Congress but the American people”) and Rep. Randy Weber, R-TX (“On floor of house waitin on 'Kommandant-In-Chef"'... the Socialistic dictator who's been feeding US a line or is it 'A-Lying?’”), et alia.

Pundits like to tell us that political mudslinging isn’t anything new — look at Adams and Jefferson, etc. But with all respect to James Callender, the Founders lived in a simpler time before rapid-response teams, social media, and vast armies of citizen journalists who have turned what used to be quadrennial mudslinging into a constant, suffocating shitstorm.

3. Torture as an American value. I’m not sure how old you have to be to remember when torturing prisoners was something the United States simply didn’t do. As a lad I, like many Americans, was shocked to learn about the My Lai massacre; if I had been then told that Lt. William Calley also waterboarded and hung from chains his Vietnamese victims, whether they were Viet Cong or not, I’m sure I would have been even more shocked. Maybe Dirty Harry did that shit, but not John Wayne.

I am old and jaded now, but I must admit, when after the Senate released the torture report in December a number of Americans, including a former Vice-President of the United States, told us that torture was great and it was actually the citizens who balked at it that were anti-American, I was still a little shocked.

It’s not that I expected better of the cheerleaders. The Republican response to the Senate Report, for example, was just the kind of ass-covering that could have been predicted from members of that august Party. “The rendition, detention, and interrogation program [the CIA] created, of which enhanced interrogation was only a small part,” they said, “enabled a stream of collection and intelligence validation that was unprecedented.” That is, we haven’t been attacked since, so it stands to reason everything we did, including the 13th Century barbarities, must have helped.

And I can’t say I was exactly surprised by those conservatives who don’t belong to any Congressional committees who nevertheless jumped up and said torture, what’s the problem? Like Commentary’s Max Boot, who seethed that “the release of the Senate report will only aid our enemies who will have more fodder for their propaganda mills” — as if the torture weren’t worse than people finding out about it; as if in fact the citizens of the nations we conquered weren't already well aware and we, the American people, weren’t the last to find out.

There was the libertarian perspective from Reason’s Scott Shackford: The torture itself wasn’t the problem — the problem was Big Gummint. “Strip out the torture and terrorism and you've got any other troubled government program,” Shackford shrugged, and offered what he must have thought was a brilliant correlative: “Was the Department of Health and Human Services honest with those charged with oversight about the state of Obamacare health insurance exchanges prior to their launch, and has it succeeded in providing affordable health insurance? It's the same argument.” Obamacare is torture too, basically, but you don’t see Democrats complaining about that!

About the attempted deep thoughts on the subject by Jonah Goldberg (“In other words, we have the moral vocabulary to talk about kinds of killing — from euthanasia and abortion to capital punishment, involuntary manslaughter and, of course, murder — but we don’t have a similar lexicon when it comes to kinds of torture”), the less said the better.

There were also straight-up psychos like the person who wrote “Yes, Christians Can Support Torture” for The Federalist. (Depressingly representative quote: “Prolonged torture designed to crush the spirit of an individual is different from interrogation techniques, even ones that inflict pain.”) Probably the nadir, though, is represented by internet tough guy Steve Hayward of Power Line, who snarled at “the handwringing of the media and liberals” and suggested in future we just take the detainees (whom he took care to call “terrorists,” although a significant number of them had no proven connection with terrorism — that’s how professional propagandists work, folks) out of CIA custody and “hand them over to the Hells’ Angels,” haw haw.

The most interesting (in the clinical sense) part of Hayward’s essay addressed the reasonable conclusion that if we torture, we’re not better than other totalitarian regimes; nonsense, Hayward huffed, American exceptionalism “does not and has never meant that the United States is above or immune to the basic rules of political life, especially the basic instinct to defend itself against enemies. The fact that we do so without apology (except from liberals) is a good part of what makes the U.S. exceptional today…” So this is the conservative defense of a practice condemned by civilization for centuries: That we torture, but we’re still better because we do so with an all-American sneer on our faces.

The surprise wasn’t that these people would lie about torture and, when the lie was exposed, just laugh about it — I’ve known that about these people for a long time. I guess what shocked me was the confidence they showed that ordinary Americans would agree with them, and that their confidence might be justified.

(More later.)