FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: JUNE 9, 2023.

Was just thinking about it.

If you follow alicublog’s Friday ‘Round-the-Horn sessions, you may have noticed I didn’t manage one last week. Apologies; I was moving house, and interstate, and with a spouse who, unlike me, hangs onto every goddamn thing. 

So it was agony, and it’s not over, which brings us to our first Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie of the week, about that very thing. But if that’s too personal-essay for you, here’s another freebie – which is personal too, in that it’s based on my own actual dealings with what I’m sure is a new frontier in AI horseshit, but, you know, full of complaints about the state of the nation, as the public has come to expect under the Roy Edroso byline. 

Not sure how much this will move you now that Tubby’s under federal indictment. Like many of us I’m cynical about these things – after “Mueller Time” (not to mention “Fitzmas”) how can you not be? It’s times like these that make one sympathetic, if not forgiving, toward the crazies whose whole politics is conspiracy-based – I mean how hard can it be to nail this crook, anyway, unless The System is not so interested in justice as it is in titrating tension-and-release with these slow-moving prosecutions toward some nefarious, Bilderbergian end? Best to stay cool and see how Aileen Cannon fucks it up. 

Far greater entertainment value can be had from that daft bint Peggy Noonan, who squints at the carnage that is national politics and says, you know what, maybe a third party candidate can win it all in ’24! This is of course the sort of bullshit that got Trump elected in 2016 and Bush the Lesser elected in 2000, but Noonan doesn’t mention Jill Stein or Ralph Nader (nor the crackpot RFK Jr.) – though she does fawn over the No Labels fraudsters, and Ross Perot is her beau ideal:

Perot was a business visionary, the founder of a great company, Electronic Data Systems. He was public-spirited and blunt-talking. In June 1992 he was leading both George Bush and Bill Clinton. But his campaign was hapless and gaffe-filled, and he was unpredictable.

That’s putting it mildly; Perot was a Musk of the machine age, an ego freak who thought himself a world-beater. To this day I suspect he was in it just to fuck Bush over some obscure Texas beef, and so he did. Noonan marvels Perot got 19% of the vote even though voters “thought he might be a little nuts” – which to a normally observant person would suggest a comparison with the berserker Trump, rather than a smoldering, decades-old hunger for a third party candidate, but that’s a road Republican Peg doesn’t want to go on. So she weakly essays: 

… I can quite imagine a competent third party now getting 35% of the vote to the other guys’ 32% and 33%, say. What would happen then? Most likely, no candidate would receive a sufficient Electoral College vote. The election would go to the House, causing uncertainty that would at some point be resolved.

“would at some point be resolved” ho ho ho – I guess Noonan scared herself there, but gamely tries to wrench the fantasy back into focus:

It would be real edge-of-the-seat stuff in a nation that already has too much edge-of-the-seat stuff, but also seems to like it. 

A short while ago America elected the ancient trimmer Joe Biden because it was sick of Trumpian whoop-de-doo, and the only reason Noonan is pretending that didn’t happen is because her party’s prescription for victory is to act like trans people in beer ads constitute a screaming emergency requiring drastic measures like Mystery President. She knows as well as you do that RFK Jr. and No Labels are just cons to siphon off enough votes to put the Republicans back in power. But she made her bones peddling the Reagan fantasy, which was no less ridiculous until it happened, and I suppose she figures lightning can strike twice. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: 2/17/23.

While I produce five days a week of high-quality content at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (go over and have a look, subscribe if you like, it’s mighty good eating for the pennies it costs), productivity at the old alicublog plant has been down a while. I regret it, but between REBID and my other editorial work there’s not much room left for bodily functions, let alone the kind of funsies for which this site became known back in 1953, when “blogs” rolled off Henry Ford’s assembly line and, due to their tendency to roll rather than locomote, wound up in the dustbin of history, a short distance down the road to oblivion and turn left. 

But sometimes a red flag can get this old bull to charge. Erick Erickson, a longtime figure of fun in the alicublog rep company, has an even more ridiculous than usual item up today. The headline is:

We Cannot Reject Sabotage On Rail Lines Just Yet

Let us tiptoe past Erickson’s long preliminary yammerings about how Joe Biden is trying to blame everything on Donald Trump (though given Trump’s rollback of rail freight safety features he’s certainly blameworthy) and Biden LIED about the CHINESE BALLOONS (“The Administration that lied repeatedly about the Chinese spy balloon wants us to trust them on it not being sabotage, just Trump”), and cut to the 19th graf:

The reality is these incidents are probably not sabotage. Buttigieg, for all his whining, has a point. There are many train derailments every year. We’re more sensitive to them now because of media exposure.

This is the next best thing to “it was all a dream.” 

So why was Erickson going on about sabotage? 

But the point is that this Administration regularly tries to blame Donald Trump for everything, has lied repeatedly in the past few weeks about the Chinese spy balloon, has done such a bad job dealing with these issues too many Americans now know the Transportation Secretary’s name, and we simply cannot believe them.

And if “we” (Erickson and his tapeworm, who I gotta say has his work cut out for him) can’t trust Joe Biden, maybe we’ll trust Erick Erickson’s self-refuting innuendos. Oh, and if you took the side-bet on “Hunter Biden’s laptop” being in the story? Collect your winnings. 

But the real prize this week is Peggy Noonan, who has been on fire (regrettably not literally) with her rambling silver-alert takes. This week’s starts with snipage at Nikki Haley, who recently launched her Vice-Presidential (whoops, I mean air-quotes Presidential) campaign:

On Wednesday Nikki Haley announced her presidential campaign in Charleston, S.C. I found myself thinking not about her candidacy but about the launch itself, which was creepily stuck in the past. A horrible, blaring song from a Sylvester Stallone sequel pumped her in as she strode out in the white suit and there were adoring fans on the rafters behind her, with whom she briefly interacted before turning toward the audience and doing the point—standing there and pointing to individual members of the cheering audience as if she knew them and was being natural. An introducer said she will “lead us into the future”; she added, “America is falling behind.” It was all so tired, clichéd, and phony. It was national politics as it has been done circa 1990-2023.

1990? How about the 80s, Peggy, when as Ronald Reagan’s handler you filled his mouth with uplifting bullshit and helped engineer spectacles like Nancy waving at Ronnie on the telescreen at the 1984 Republican Convention? That's when propaganda was propaganda, you young punks! 

Speaking of bullshit, this seems to be about the only thing Noonan likes about Haley: 

In her speech she said some nice things: “Take it from me, the first female minority governor in history: America is not a racist country.” Everyone who scrambles over our border knows that; it is good when elites say it.

…until said scramblers-over-the-border get driven back over by Greg Abbott’s vigilantes or dragged up north to use as pawns in a cruel culture-war stunt. Honestly, I can’t imagine even her Republican readers don’t immediately think this. 

Then there’s a long grumble about those horrible ads on the teevee during the Super Bowl – they made America look like “a nation of morons” (don’t bother waiting for the penny to drop, guys), whereas back in the day they had Mean Joe Greene being all nice and cuddly for Coke and that was the real America, real Ronnie-and-Nancy koochie-koo kitsch, not this nutty, noisy stuff:

I’m here to say I’ve met America and that’s not what they want. What they want is “Help me live, help my kids live, help me feel something true.” 

Sorry, lady, but would you like a new car, soft drink, or diabetes management app? These are the damn ads. I’m convinced Noonan was just turned off by all the rock and rap (“the music shifted, screamed, and the mood became discordance”). It's a miracle the Journal kept her from fulminating on Rihanna. Look, Grandma, they aren’t pitching this shit to me, either, but I know better than to Blame Society.

Oh, but her closing… man; she gets on Will Smith and starts pitching to write his Oscar 2023 speech:

Here is how to turn that moment into something helpful. It doesn’t involve “image rehab.” It involves constructive honesty. Will Smith should walk in and say this:

“It is painful in life when you embarrass yourself. It is horrifying when you do it in front of tens of millions of people. Last year I did something bad to a guy who was just doing his job, and I am here to acknowledge it from the same stage—to admit that in attempting to humiliate him, I humiliated myself. I showed a number of things, including sheer bad judgment…

Two more grafs of this! I give it five barf bags! I doubt Noonan is even expecting the call (though I love imagining her on the phone, pinching her nose, and droning “This is Miss Noonan’s answering service”); I expect the play is to wait for Smith to deliver what promises to be a perfectly anodyne and expected (though less white!) apology-like spew, and then sigh contentedly: “Ahhh, he took my advice!”

SLUMMING WITH THE CRAZY JESUS LADY. You may recall Peggy Noonan went freelance a little while back. She gave the impression that she would be heading into the shit, so to speak, because while she had worked in the White House (insert modest cough here), "There are others, however, lower down on the power pole, who might benefit from another hand on deck. I've called a few this week and they've been welcoming and I'll see if I can add to their fortunes. If I can't I'll at least try not to sink them." Bravely laughing off her unpaid leave from the Wall Street Journal, she added, "This will take a bite out of my finances but I can do it. Actually most of us, when we die, wind up with a few thousand dollars in the bank. We should have spent it! I am going to spend mine now..."

Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Visions of Peggy painting signs and churning the mimeograph in a bedraggled storefront danced in my head.

But look where I found Crazy Jesus Lady will be in a couple of weeks:

...U.S. Department of Treasury Secretary John Snow will address more than 700 restaurateurs from across the country at the 19th Annual National Restaurant Association Public Affairs Conference. During the conference, held September 13-14, 2004 at the Grand Hyatt in downtown Washington, D.C., restaurateurs will meet with members of Congress to discuss legislative issues and their impact on the restaurant industry, as well as listen to high-ranking opinion leaders, members of Congress and administration officials...

Other guests will include: Rep. Ric Keller (R-FL); Peggy Noonan, political commentator and writer...

A ticket to this conference costs $145. Oh, and there's a story on her in Time this week.

That "few thousand" in her bank account must be looking pretty damn secure right now.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Four Go-Betweens songs. Never a bad idea.

Only one Roy Edroso Breaks It Down free installment this week, the one I mentioned in the previous post about the Dobbs draft decision. Sorry, I need more subscribers and can’t be giving it away all the time. Tell ya what though -- use this link before May 10 and you get 10% off your annual subscription. It’s already absurdly cheap so if you don’t sign up now it’s practically negligence!  

A lot of other brilliant stuff has been written about the recent unpleasantness at the Supreme Court, but as you know my specialty is the crap, and that is in abundance. (I got into it a little in today’s newsletter -- subscribers know.) Basically, the Jesus-cult conservatives who don’t have to worry about alienating any heathens in their audience are ululating ecstatically; the others are just lying their asses off. Some are acting as if the leak of the decision is The Real Outrage, to misdirect attention from the massive injury to human rights the ruling represents (and the possibility that it was a conservative who did it), and to preserve their eternal victim status.  (No matter who else gets hurt and how badly, remember, it's always the conservative who is injured, offended, and cancelcultured.)

And, as previously mentioned, some are pretending that it won’t lead to other reversals the decision’s logic pretty much demands -- the end of rights to gay marriage, contraception, interracial marriage, etc. -- which is absurd enough on its face but when it’s being dished out by such as David French -- author of “Meet the New Public Face of Abortion-on-Demand: Satanists” -- it’s just ridiculous. (French even says Obergefell won’t be overturned “because Alito said so.” Oh, well then!)

But for me the absolute worst is the sort of soft-soap dished out by Peggy Noonan -- not just because, being Peggy Noonan, she is definitionally the worst, but because her passive-aggressive shtick requires she pretend that, whatever we may feel about the decision, it’s for our own good and that her slavering theocon friends will rush to succor us with Christian love:

Advice now, especially for Republican men, if Roe indeed is struck down: Do not be your ignorant selves. Do not, as large dumb misogynists, start waxing on about how if a woman gets an illegal abortion she can be jailed. Don’t fail to embrace compromise because you can make money on keeping the abortion issue alive. I want to say “Just shut your mouths,” but my assignment is more rigorous. It is to have a heart. Use the moment to come forward as human beings who care about women and want to give families the help they need. Align with national legislation that helps single mothers to survive. Support women, including with child-care credits that come in cash and don’t immediately go to child care, to help mothers stay at home with babies. Shelters, classes in parenting skills and life skills. All these exist in various forms: make them better, broader, bigger.

This is an opportunity to change your party’s reputation.

If you have ever actually met a Republican, you know this is laughable. At this very moment, the “Republican men” (and women) of Louisiana are “coming forward as human beings who care about women” by making abortion an act of murder for which women can be prosecuted. There is no concomitant rush anywhere to provide “child-care credits” or “life skills” to the unhappily pregnant. Republicans will do what they always do -- immiserate the powerless -- and their shills will deny it as long as they can, and then turn on a dime and say that’s just what they deserve.  

FRIDAY ‘ROUND-THE-HORN: JUNE 16, 2023.

Just in the mood lately.

It’s slowly feeling more like summer – hope y’all have plans for your Juneteenth weekend. (Remember when Republicans were yelling because Biden made it a federal holiday? I still think we should have given them Liberace Day to shut them up.)

Got two Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebies for you: First, a fun thing about the movie Slap Shot and why it’s a good intro to the 70s for such poor souls who missed that grubby golden era. And also fun, in its sinister way, is one of my patented “Throne Room at Mar-a-Lago” scenes, starring Tubby and a potential unindicted co-conspirator.  Enjoy! (And also, subscribe! Why miss out on five days a week of this?) 

Not that there isn’t plenty other folly to fool with. I think the Trump indictment has caused actual brain injuries to some of our top prestige press pundits. There’s Peggy Noonan, for example, declaring that hardcore MAGA disciples who have stuck with Tubby through crappy policies injurious to themselves, an attempted insurrection, and two impeachments will turn on him now because he stole government documents:

It is said Mr. Trump’s base never wavers and always rallies, and historically this has been true. When he’s accused of being a trickster in business they don’t care—it’s extraneous to presidential leadership. They don’t care if he’s an abusive predator of women—again, extraneous, old news. But endangering our national security, including our nuclear secrets? That is another matter.

What’s really loopy about this, besides the self-evident, is that Noonan begins the column by quoting herself at great length (so great that I assume she revived from a fugue state only a few hours before deadline and had to fill the page with whatever was handy) to the effect that Trump’s rise among the rabble “is not due to his supporters’ anger at government. It is a gesture of contempt for government, for the men and women in Congress, the White House, the agencies.”  [Emphasis hers.] 

Maybe Noonan has a different definition of contempt than I do, or maybe she thinks the Trumpkins’ contempt has limits based on – well, what, exactly? Respect for the Constitution, from which they only know two amendments, neither of which they understand?  Respect for the rule of law, when they watched Trump’s goon squad try to murder the Electoral College and all their sympathy was with the thwarted assassins? Maybe she doesn’t realize that no native-born American under 60 has ever had a social studies or citizenship class that might inculcate some strong beliefs about the country they live in, and that the people she expects to suddenly swell with patriotic pride and cry “hitherto thou shalt come, but no further!” actually prefer Vladimir Putin to the elected President of the United States. 

Yet someone has actually topped Noonan; Small-handed Times trimmer David Brooks, who in a bizarre “I Won’t Let Donald Trump Invade My Brain” column that actually begins, “I try to be a reasonable person. I try to be someone who looks out on the world with trusting eyes” – right off the bat, a self-contradiction! – brags that now that he realizes Donald Trump is not one of those trustworthy people (a realization to which he seems have come during the 2020 campaign!), he refuses to follow that revelation to anything resembling a logical conclusion:

And yet I can’t quite feel ashamed of my perpetual naïveté toward Donald Trump. I don’t want to be the kind of person who can easily enter the head of an amoral narcissist.

One wonders: What is the Times paying him for, then? Brooks tells us that if he allowed himself to pay close attention and learn the lesson of Trump, that would force him into a worldview in which “people are basically selfish; raw power runs the world. All that matters is winning and losing.” But this is just a childish cover for what the true lesson of Trump’s malevolence is: That it’s not all people, but a specific group of people – including not only Trump’s diehard voters but also the Republican officials and electeds who continue to excuse and defend him – who are indeed “basically selfish,” devoted to raw power and winning at all costs. This description certainly doesn’t apply to the gutless Dick Durbin Democrats, who actually rather resemble Brooks as he describes himself – which of course is the problem with them. God, between the pols and the pundits no wonder we're fucked. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I wonder if the younger readers get as much pleasure out of these Stan Freberg spots as I do.

•   Only one Roy Edroso Breaks It Down freebie this week (though why don’t you visit the archive and look at some of my previous unlocked issues -- yes, they’re topical, but also deathless): The one about Bari Weiss and yet another of her stupid cancelculture whinges. While I'm at it here’s another Wari Beiss thing from back in May; boy, that one’s still daisy-fresh, too. How do I do it? I trust in the Lord, kids! 

•   Things have changed around here since I used to fill up alicublog with reports on commentators with names like The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler and Ace of Spades. (Yes, they’re still around! Find them yourselves if you think you can stand it.) No need for that, mostly, as the crass stupidity of the old blogging days has advanced to the top ranks of conservatism, either through the direct engagement of rightbloggers (as we used to call them) or by old-school rightwing journalists like Rich Lowry aping the rabble. Among the latter is Peggy Noonan who has preserved all her old, horrible prose crotchets while dropping culture-war hankies in hopes of attracting the regnant rubeoisie. Take her latest:

What Milley Got Right—and Wrong
His preoccupation with his own image points to a larger problem, though his talk with Li was justified.

The nu-style conservatives have been screaming their heads off for Joint Chiefs chair Milley, who was reported to have assured the Chinese that then-lame-duck-president Tubby would not blow up the world, to be fired or tried for treason to expiate this offense to the former guy’s good name. Even assuming the reporting is accurate, this is ridiculous, and as eager to get “with it” as Noonan is, she can’t quite indulge it, but (maybe I should say “so”) she finds something else to score Milley for: First, vanity (LOL, c’mon), and then -- wokeness! 

… While the wars were being fought, did top brass keep the military a step apart from the damaging cultural and political swirls that have swept the nation?

It looks to me as if they have been too eager to prove they have all the right cultural and political predicates, that they want the media and political class to see this. That they’re desperate for them to see it.

Looking for proof of this claim? You don’t know our Peggy -- she's more into implications and buzzwords than evidence.

But the U.S. military is the most respected institution in the country in part because its members aren’t like the country… They are called on to preserve and protect the Constitution. They’ll die for you. They don’t make you swear to that at Oberlin.

???

…The services should be bringing in everybody—women, sexual minorities—gathering all the talent they can, because only our talent will give us the edge in future wars, which will come. Talent comes from all quarters.

But that doesn’t mean adopting the ideologies and assumptions of the leftist cultural regime that reigns in other institutions—Critical Race Theory, wokeness. Don’t let that stuff in. If in your reviews of the past 20 years you determine you have, stop. Your future and ours depend on it.

As mentioned, Noonan offers no citations to back up the implied charge, borrowed from the current rightwing avant-garde, that the military is “woke.” And I think she has some idea of what those guys are trying to communicate about it to their meathead followers (lookit, rainbow dogtags durr hurr!), which is why she coats herself with the Plausible Deniability Concealing Spray of that bit about welcoming “sexual minorities.” She doesn’t want to be held responsible for the slur, but she wants the people who love it to know she hears them, and hopes it will convince them that she’s not just an old Reaganoid priss to be dropped out of the helicopters with the libs.

NOW SHE TELLS US. Peggy Noonan used to love Donald Rumsfeld ("these days he seems, as leaders go, a natural... As a communicator he's clear as clean water," etc) but now she's mad at him because he seems to have spent his recent memoirs deflecting blame from himself for the clusterfuck in Afghanistan. In fact she wants to take that book of memoirs and "break its stupid little spine."

It's not her last violent thought. Eventually our Crazy Jesus Lady gets around to talking about why we are in Afghanistan, despite our citizens' disgust at the enterprise. Followers may recall that Noonan was as recently at 2009 telling us that "Afghanistan is a great American undertaking," but was very unclear as to what the goal of that undertaking might be; she talked about what other people were thinking and saying (actually, mainly that they were thinking and saying indeterminate things), and implied of course that Obama had it all wrong, but didn't give us her own view on the subject, other than it was great and American and an undertaking.

Well, in today's column Noonan offers a little clarity:

If you asked most Americans why we went into Afghanistan in the weeks after 9/11, they would answer, with perfect common sense, that it was to get the bad guys—to find or kill Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda followers, to topple the Taliban government that had given them aid and support, to destroy terrorist networks and operations. New York at the time of the invasion, October 2001, was still, literally, smoking; the whole town still carried the acrid smell of Ground Zero. The scenes of that day were still vivid and sharp. New York still isn't over it...

Yeah, yeah, cut the bagpipes and get on with it.

...America wanted—needed—to see U.S. troops pull Osama out of his cave by his beard and drag him in his urine-soaked robes into an American courtroom. Or, less good but still good, to find him, kill him, put his head in a Tiffany box with a bow, and hand-carry it to the president of the United States.

It wasn't lust for vengeance, it was lust for justice, and for more than justice.

As you may have noticed long before now, that box was never delivered, and now Noonan says:

The failure to find bin Laden was a seminal moment in the history of the war in Afghanistan. And it was a catastrophe. From that moment—the moment he escaped his apparent hideout in Tora Bora and went on to make his sneering speeches and send them out to the world—from that moment everything about the Afghanistan war became unclear, unfocused, murky and confused.

I wish someone had told us at the time that we were just there for the head of Osama Bin Laden and that, once we had established that we weren't going to get it, we could split. Oh well, too late now.

CUE THE CRAZY JESUS LADY. I see that the President has made his speech, and the apparatchiks are working the Wellstone Maneuver -- the time-dishonored schtick in which conservatives pretend to be outraged at the upbeat tone of memorial services held by their mortal enemies.

Of course, it ain't over till the Crazy Jesus Lady sings -- by which I mean Peggy Noonan, who stuck the Triple Lutz of the Wellstone Maneuver back in 2002, actually pretending to be Senator Wellstone, and condemning his friends and family from heaven for their insufficient solemnity.

It was one of the lowest performances it has ever been my misfortune to witness, and it worked like a charm, helping to elect the horrible Norm Coleman to Wellstone's old seat. So Noonan must be greatly tempted to go for the hat trick. I can almost see her words crawling across the page:

Why can't I speak? My God, this must be what Terry Schiavo felt like! If I ever get out of this accursed bed, I'll mend my abortionist ways and fight for the rights of all God's children. And a balanced budget! And there's something else I'll do: Denounce everybody who didn't spend that memorial service blubbering like John Boehner at a supermarket opening. The very idea of those Demonrats cheering -- and that Kenyan pretender presuming to speak -- I'll tell you, the doctors think I'm fighting for my life, but I'm actually quivering with rage!

Etc. Of course, there's a danger, in that while Wellstone was dead, Giffords is not. If Noonan does go for it, there's a good chance Giffords will return to good health, fly up to New York, and kick her Crazy Jesus ass up and down Fifth Avenue.

Well, I'm convinced. Go for it, Peggy! I'm sending a bottle of Old Overholt and a scapular to your office for inspiration.

SPEAKING OF LITHIUM. "The worst part of TV in the hurricane coverage was the nonstop, wall-to-wall, relentless hammering of the viewers about the danger they were in if they were in . . . the path of the storm... they also try, when they get the chance, to terrify you. They try to terrify you into watching." -- Peggy Noonan, September 29, 2005.

"Imagine that there are already 100 serious terror cells in the U.S., two per state. The members of each cell have been coming over, many but not all crossing our borders, for five years... they will set off nuclear suitcase bombs in six American cities, including Washington, which will take the heaviest hit. Hundreds of thousands may die... a half dozen designated cells will rise up and assassinate national, state and local leaders. There will be chaos, disorder, widespread want... Think dark." -- Peggy Noonan, August 25, 2005.

We could put the Lithium in her coffee. The Jameson would cover up the taste.

I CRY THEE MERCY THEN, FOR I HAD THOUGHT/THAT THOU HADST CALLED ME ALL THESE BITTER NAMES. Some time back, Meryl Streep told the press that to prepare for the evil political mom in The Manchurian Candidate, she watched tapes of Karen Hughes and our own Crazy Jesus Lady, Peggy Noonan.

Catching wind of this, rightwing operatives from the backwoods of Tennessee to the closets of Los Angeles to the lowliest Internet tide-pools came out to insist that Streep was playing Hillary Clinton. Some normally astute people got fooled as badly by this disinformation as did the usual retards.

When operatives were reminded in public forums of Streep's comments, they said Streep was actually wrong about herself, or just pretended not to hear.

The masterpiece of the mobilization is in today's column by Streep's study subject herself, Peggy Noonan, in which she claims "People think the evil woman Meryl Streep plays in 'The Manchurian Candidate' is Hillary because, well, they've seen Hillary make a speech."

This is pure evil genius, friends, right up there with Richard III's turnaround on Margaret ("'Tis done by me, and ends in 'Margaret'"). If I didn't hate the bastards so much, I'd give 'em a golf clap.

CHRIST ON A CRECHE. Peggy Noonan is telling us about bad people again, this time the folks who want to ban nativity scenes:

They think that if only people would stop being religious, we wouldn't have religion around roiling people's emotions and making them violent. (If you say to them, "Man is prone to violence, and one of the things that tends to make his heart gentle is faith in God," their eyes widen in shock: That couldn't possibly be true!)

Ms. Noonan meets such interesting people, and says such interesting things to them. I wonder if she also sees leprechauns, and asks them where they keep their pots o' gold.

Her solution to anti-crechism is "to fill the public square with the signs and symbols of faith. It is not to banish them from the schools, it is to teach them in the schools... display a menorah and explain what it is... to display a crucifix or a cross and explain what it means to Christians. And, yes, the answer is to show a Koran and explain what it is." The kids should also sing Christmas carols and "other religious songs that are not Christian."

I'm all for it! The children can lift their voices in tribute to Buddah, and Zoroaster, and Lord Mahavira, and Gaia. And in the spirit of true ecumenicanalism, we can tell them about the worship of Satan, and crank some Black Sabbath.

Later comes my favorite line from the whole exercise:

"So I took Mary into the house, and she lived for three years in a closet. "

So that's what happened to her. Ms. Noonan also talks about the wonderful panoply of religious artifacts visible in her neighborhood, just down the road apiece from me in Cobble Hill, unmolested by the atheists who apparently all live on Park Avenue in the dark borough of Manhattan. "May the world in 2004 be more like Brooklyn," she concludes, "and may its arguments over religion and the public square be solved the Brooklyn way."

Here I must agree. Just a short distance from the madonnas and menorahs are several very nice gay bars, which coexist harmoniously with Mary Star of the Sea and the other neighborhood places of worship. If Ms. Noonan is okay with those, I'm okay with the little religious theme park she wants to set up. Just so long as she doesn't use my tax dollars to pay for it. Compassionate and conservative -- what a solution! Why, I'm feeling more Brooklyn already!

comments please

A FIRST CLASS STRANGE-O. Once again, a mortal enemy of the Democratic Party (not to mention the democratic way of life) offers it collegial advice. She does so, predictably, by first asserting that her own Party is so interested in the health of the nation (which it has brought, unassisted, to near-ruin) that it must come pleading to the cursed Others that they not place a madman within polling distance of the Command in Chief:

Our No. 1 question used to be: Can we beat this guy easily? But now we feel the age of terrorism so profoundly challenges our country, and is so suggestive of future trauma and national pain, that our No. 1 question has become: Is he?.?.?. normal? Just normal. Is he stable and adult and experienced?

In this latest fever dream of the Wall Street Journal's resident mystic, Peggy "it was what it am and that's all that it am" Noonan, the specimen so lacking in normalcy, stability, adulthood and experience that it must not be exposed to the electoral light of day is... General Wesley Clark.

Her professed concern with America's well-being might be to the uninitated touching, but seasoned Noonan-watchers will know it for an affectation meant to bestow upon her own partisan scribblings an unearned loftiness.

She only recently visited similar slurs upon the erstwhile Democratic frontrunner Howard Dean ("Odd... immature... ungrounded..."); it's only a matter of time before she brings such like, with the same maudlin air of a duty painfully performed, against whatever other contestant seems to have a chance against her beloved Leader.

For now, Clark is her target, and she brings to his demolition all the sharp tools of her tenure as the Riefenstahl of Reaganism. "A first class strange-o," she proclaims Clark, "void of purpose beyond meeting the candidate's hunger."

On what grounds are these damning indictments delivered? These:

• Clark was dismissive of John Kerry before Noonan had her chance;
• Clark bragged of leading the U.N. mission against Kosovo (a defeat of totalitarianism in which Noonan's beloved Leader can claim no part);
• Clark changed his mind about the war (watch for this in her coming jihad against Kerry);
• Clark was mean to Brit Hume;
• Clark was nice to Michael Moore;
• Clark favors abortion rights (Jesus wept!);
• Camille Paglia doesn't like him.

Noonan spends many column inches on this last bit, which is hilarious, considering that Paglia has explained her "Italian pagan Catholicism" thusly: "I'm pro-prostitution -- I mean really pro, not just pro-prostitute and against prostitution. I'm pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality, pro-drag queens, pro-legalization of drugs" -- whereas Noonan's non-Italian, non-pagan Catholicism is explained mostly by her lies about Pope John Paul's endorsement of the new Mel Gibson movie.

It has been demonstrable for some time that this miserable harpy is nuts -- the question remains, why does a major outlet like the WSJ continue to avail her ravings? Perhaps the question answers itself.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Often, when one is king of the divan, one just has to go for the easy lay-up, n'cest pas?
• It's nice that they let McCain be the maverick this time! But don't forget: Republicans are a zombie death squad, lumbering forward at the behest of sociopathic Randroid donors. Don't imagine that any of them mean you anything but ill -- and that includes the so-called moderates. I know a lot of intelligent people like John Kasich, and are juiced that he was against the skinny repeal. But let us look at his premises -- from his New York Times Op-Ed, July 19 [emphases mine]:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Washington’s approach to health care over the past decade is yet another example of our lawmakers’ increasing distance from the rest of America. First one party rams through a rigid, convoluted plan that drives up costs though unsustainable mechanisms that are now unraveling. Then the other party pursues fixes that go too far the other way — and again ignores ideas from the other side.  

Neither extreme is cutting it, and the quick opposition that doomed the Senate plan reflects how unacceptable its idejas are to so many.

As a responsible centrist I'm opposed to this inadequate response to the Big Gummint Statist Commie Health Disaster. But unlike that baaaaad man in the White House, I'm a nice guy and will soothe your aching health care needs with “tax credits” and “transitioning to a block grant or per-capita cap.” Oh, and:

After two failed attempts at reform, the next step is clear: Congress should first focus on fixing the Obamacare exchanges before it takes on Medicaid. If we want to move Americans off Medicaid, there must be somewhere stable for them to go.

This is hilarious. "Fixing" the exchanges just happens to have been Mitch McConnell's announced Plan B for when the repeal-and/or-replace plans failed to pass. And I suspect if Kasich and his less-"moderate" buddies actually "move Americans off Medicaid" -- the heart's dream of generations of wingnuts -- the "stable" surface they alight on will be the pavement. Fuck all of ‘em; we won't be safe till the last hard-liner is strangled with the entrails of the last moderate.

• Speaking of people who seem to be your friends and aren't, Peggy Noonan stamps her foot and says, know what the problem is with that awful Trump fellow? He's not an old-fashioned movie-star sort of man like Ronnie Reagan!

The way American men used to like seeing themselves, the template they most admired, was the strong silent type celebrated in classic mid-20th century films—Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Henry Fonda. In time the style shifted, and we wound up with the nervous and chattery. More than a decade ago the producer and writer David Chase had his Tony Soprano mourn the disappearance of the old style: “What they didn’t know is once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings they wouldn’t be able to shut him up!”

She had a clear shot to cite someone that her sub-70-yr-old readers might have heard of to support her love of antique butchness, and she picked Tony fucking Soprano.

The new style was more like that of Woody Allen. His characters couldn’t stop talking about their emotions, their resentments and needs. They were self-justifying as they acted out their cowardice and anger.

 Man, she's channeling Life magazine circa 1969. These hippie film stars with their pot and their whatchacall new-roses! Just shoot the fucking injuns, kid!

But he was a comic. It was funny. He wasn’t putting it out as a new template for maleness. Donald Trump now is like an unfunny Woody Allen.

Who needs a template for how to be a man? A lot of boys and young men, who’ve grown up in a culture confused about what men are and do. Who teaches them the real dignity and meaning of being a man?

I bet Noonan thinks that now when she talks about how those lads in the ghetto lack positive male role models, hipsters and black folk won't make that shut-up-old-white-lady face, because they'll know she's talking about Trump -- everyone hates him! And no one will remember what long, luxuriant tongue-baths Noonan was giving Trump up until, oh, a few weeks ago--

Mr. Trump is taking a clear stand against the kind of gauzy globalism and vague multiculturalism represented by the worldview of, say, Barack Obama and most contemporary Western intellectuals, who are willing, even eager, to concede the argument to critics of the West’s traditions.

From Bismarck to a bum, in as short a time as it takes for Noonan to lick her finger and put it up in the air.

THE PEGGY NOONAN CHAIR FOR APPLIED McARDLE.

Now that Sanders is surging, NeverTrumpers are freaking out. Max Boot:

Please, Democrats, do the smart thing and coalesce quickly around one of the three moderates—Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, or Michael Bloomberg—who are still standing after the first two contests. The future of our democracy may depend on it.https://t.co/C1v8r2m9n4

— Max Boot (@MaxBoot) February 12, 2020

Jennifer Rubin:

If you are running for the Democratic nomination and there is any chance you might change things for the better, @JRubinBlogger hates your fucking guts pic.twitter.com/EPVAoATPVa

— Roy Edroso (@edroso) February 14, 2020

Still better and worse, as Ophelia said, is Megan McArdle. Months ago she declared she would support any Democrat, even Sanders, which was very clever of her -- she probably figures if he's nominated he'll be trounced, so she won't have to either do a last-minute "Save Our Oligarchy" column or pretend the day after he's inaugurated that she suddenly realized what a disastrous mistake America had made.

I'll say this for her: unlike Boot and Rubin, McArdle manages to keep the panic out of her voice. Her method is very close to that of the conservative shero whose manner she has come to adopt, Peggy Noonan: A touch toffee-nosed, civility-insistent, passive-aggressive. Here's the headline:

For good or ill (probably ill), at least Bernie Sanders is sincere

People always say it's unfair to blame columnists for the headlines their editors foist on them, and I agree: McArdle probably would have left off the parenthetical, and allowed her reader to infer it. Maybe her editor is a greenhorn who made the mistake of portraying what she read.

Look, I know that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a socialist. I’m aware that the engine of his campaign is breathtaking hubris well-lubricated with monetary snake oil, and that the ideas it spits out would, if enacted, catapult the United States into a fiscal crisis.

I mean, everybody knows that, right? If someone asks for proof just yell "Venezuela" and start throwing rocks.

And while I doubt it was politically savvy for Hillary Clinton to say so out loud in a new documentary, I understand that Sanders has trouble cooperating with his senatorial colleagues, which means he’s doomed to disappoint even his ardent supporters, should he get elected.

Not sure what "politically savvy" means in reference to someone who will never again hold public office (thank God). The rest of it sounds like some Northeastern office lady imitating bless-your-heartisms she saw in Steel Magnolias: unfortunately, in translation that means sewing organdy to a basic "your friends are stupid to like you" formulation.

But then McArdle decides to pull a fast one!

But darn it, I just like the guy.

Ha ha ha ha, no really, imagine Megan McArdle liking Bernie Sanders. He's everything she hates! He cares about poor people! He's popular despite being messy! If Suderman tried to interest him in his cocktail recipes he would probably not be able to pretend interest! He's the anti-McArdle.

So no one who knows what she's really about believes this shtick. But let's play along a while.

I don’t mean that I like Sanders the way Democrats “liked” Donald Trump in 2016, in the misguided belief that his nomination would allow Hillary Clinton to stroll unhindered into the White House. For one thing, I want the Democrat to win — only, please, let it be a less radical candidate.

Bernie's radical not "rad," people!

Yet even as I wish failure on his campaign, I still like Sanders himself. I’m a sucker for sincerity.

[Not gonna touch that]

And so are a whole lot of New Hampshire voters I’ve talked to, including quite a few who were planning to vote for someone else.

Over and over, nearly word for word, they basically said, “I like him because he’s been saying the same thing for 40 years.” They may disagree with this or that part of Sanders’s agenda, but at least they know he means it.

I wasn't there but I'm willing to bet New Hampshire Bernie Sanders voters were not telling Megan McArdle they liked her candidate because he hadn't changed his patter since the Reagan Administration. Perhaps they said they agreed with what he'd been saying for 40 years? But no, that'd be too much to bear.

Which may explain the strange “Freaky Friday” demographic inversion among supporters of the septuagenarian Sanders and the precocious Pete Buttigieg.

McArdle says the youngs don't like Mayo Pete even though he's young too, whereas they love old Bernie, and the reason is they think Pete is fake while Bernie

appeals to the sincerity caucus, with his undeniably authentic Brooklyn accent, his utterly unpolished speaking style and an unshakable commitment to socialism that could never, even in 1968, have seemed like a good career move.

So, see, it's all personality -- nothing really to do with principles or policies (because who really could want universal health care and a wealth tax? LOL get real, kids!).  Plus which sincerity has a downside, says McArdle:

I suspect that the sincerity appeal may also explain how Trump secured his nomination in 2016.

And you don't want to be like Trump supporters, do you, hipsters?  But wait, how exactly is Trump like Sanders?

The things Trump says are often untrue, sometimes awful and occasionally incoherent. But by that very token, you know his speeches haven’t been carefully focus-grouped...

And Bernie says stuff like "Not me, us!" Which is just as wacky! Not convinced yet? McArdle unsleeves her ace:

Mao Zedong’s Red Guards no doubt were plenty sincere, but I’d still rather be ruled by a used-car salesman from the seediest lot in town. 

[Photoshop of Kate McKinnon as Hillary's last-minute pitch: HE WILL CADRE US ALL.]

Then again, look back over the past two decades of politicians who promised that everything would be different, then delivered more of the same, only somehow worse.

The bottom line: Don't believe in anything, be cynical -- not like those awful hippies who were cynical about the Iraq War, ugh, but like everyone on the Fox Business Network is: Believing in nothing but money, comfortable with anyone who has lots of it, and contemptuous of anyone who has little. That's cynicism you can believe in -- and that wins Pulitzers!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the TSA tsimmis. As I mentioned before, while I'm pleased that conservatives are standing up for their civil rights, they seem far less interested in those of people who do not resemble them. How far we've come, though, from the time when Peggy Noonan complained about airport security in 2008 and Scott Johnson of Power Line sighed, "Better to bash Bush from the perspective Noonan imputes to the weary travelers at Gate 14 than to help readers understand Bush's predicament as a politician constrained by the consent of the governed... . Included in the actions that Bush has taken to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States since 9/11 are those Noonan mocks in the column." Johnson is now much less inclined to defend the President of the United States on airport security grounds. Something has changed -- must be a new respect for civil rights!

UPDATE. For some reason I'm reminded of this.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN: MEMORIAL DAY 2023 EDITION.

He had no one to fall on but me.

What was once a somber tribute of our fallen men is now, whee, a three-day holiday weekend! This strange dichotomy plays on my mind and I write about it now and then; here’s the latest iteration. Whatever it means to you, I hope you get to enjoy it.

Also unlocked from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (my premium site, and subscriptions make a lovely gift!) is another dispatch from Bolt Upright and Received Opinion, celebrating the Republican Vice-Presidential I Mean Presidential Candidates of Color. As I’ve said many times, the as yet unannounced Rep. Byron Donalds is only national-profile GOP POC who’d be an asset to the inevitable Trump ticket – he’s as evil as Scott, Haley, and Ramaswamy, but unlike them competently emulates normal human behavior. Scott in particular is a beaming, slow-witted goofus – exactly the sort of person Trump would hate too much to entertain – so naturally Peggy Noonan thinks he’s swell: 

“He is a breath of fresh air,” former Sen. Rob Portman told me by phone.

And he should know! 

…[Scott is] from South Carolina, a frisky conservative state, and watched his fellow senator, Lindsey Graham, be batted about for independence on various issues and early opposition to Mr. Trump. It left Mr. Scott cautious. 

Or “cowardly.” That works, too. Noonan on DeSantis is even worse:

On transgender issues, it is hard to resist a destructive ideology while maintaining, in public ways, respect and affection for those who are wrong. And who don’t necessarily want your respect and affection. But you have to try anyway. Because it’s right and nice, and we’re human beings, and people can see good faith, sometimes in time and often reluctantly. And because it keeps those you’re opposing from arguing, persuasively, that you’re just playing a culture-war card and they’re only road kill on your highway to victory.

Maybe I’m not giving the old bat enough credit – maybe she knows full well that DeSantis is definitely not going for “right and nice,” nor “human being” nor “good faith.” He has never said a good word about LGBTQ people and never will, because he believes that what the Republican base has been missing is overt permission to hate those people and slur them out loud. That’s what the whole trans thing was about, and why it segued so quickly and smoothly to attacks on drag queens (who are not by and large trans) and why MAGA shitheads are now smashing up Gay Pride displays at Target. Like smart people have long been saying, they were never going to stop with trans people. 

So it’s possible Noonan is trying to be ironic. Haha, who’m I kidding? Her real kung fu is describing the lives of trans people as a “destructive ideology” while insisting Republicans act nice to them. There’s the Riefenstahl of Reaganism in action. 

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Longtime favorite.

•   I have one free Roy Edroso Breaks It Down item for you this week -- the one on the Chauvin verdict. I recommend a subscription (cheap!) so you get this stuff fresh five days a week. But if you won't spend money on me, and even if you will, maybe throw a few bucks to the family of Lance Mannion, the great internet writer who passed on unexpectedly the other day. Lance (real name David Reilly) was writing at such a high level for so long that I tended to take him for granted, though some of his essays -- like this one unsentimentally explaining Asperger's Syndrome from the perspective of a parent -- have stuck in my memory for years. But it was always a good idea to look in on him, because he was a serious thinker whose considerations of a wide range of topics were just what I would have wished for my own -- attentive, perceptive, and generous. It's terrible to lose a voice like that, and it comes at a disastrously bad time for his family. So, you know, if you can.

•   No conservative I've seen so far has had the grace to say yes, the people have spoken and the Chauvin verdict seems just, and leave it at that, the way smart conservatives used to do. Many take the Tucker Carlson position that Chauvin was railroaded by a Woke Mob, notwithstanding the extraordinary video evidence of his crime. Some, like Andrew C. McCarthy, try to have it both ways but essentially take the same position. 

Others said, yes, okay, maybe Chauvin's guilty but how dare you blacks and liberals question the death of Ma’Khia Bryant, she had a knife, that was a clean kill and proves that You're the Real Racist™. The apotheosis of this is Peggy Noonan's column, which starts out congratulating America for the verdict, proceeds as per current rightwing protocol to Bryant, and then swerves into this: 

If you are a cop you know that in the current atmosphere you are going to be assumed by the press and others to be guilty whatever you do, because the police are the Official Foe now. Everyone talks about the blue wall of silence, but do police officers think anyone reliably has their back?

There are people who looked at last summer's protests and saw hundreds of incidents where the cops beat the hell out of people for nothing and wondered if perhaps reform were needed, and others who looked at it as ARGH NEGRO RIOT BURN. Noonan appears to be in the latter camp, and to believe we're all thinking too many bad thoughts about Mr. Policeman.

We aren’t being sufficiently sensitive to the position of the police after decades of being accused of reflexive brutality and racism. We should be concerned about demoralization—about officers who will leave, about young people who could have become great cops never joining the force, about early retirements of good men and women. We should be concerned that more policemen will come to see their only priority as protecting the job, the benefits, the pensions for their family, so they’ll quietly slow down, do nothing when they should do something.

Imagine thinking this isn't happening already, in cities where the cops don't even live in the jurisdictions they police and come to think of their inhabitants as skels and saps. And if you're thinking of defunding the police, Noonan has a comeback:

If I ran the world, we wouldn’t be diverting funds from the police...

[Which we aren't, but it's rightwing protocol to talk as if we were.]

...we’d be spending more to expand and deepen their training—literally lengthen it by a year or two, deepen their patience, their sense of proportion, their knowledge. Because they are so important to us.

A year or two! No doubt she means give them more money and call it "training" or whatever, just so they know whose skulls not to crack when the time comes. Later she trails off into gibberish about how "hypermedia and videogames" have ruined society. It almost makes the more straightforward white supremacist articles feel refreshing for their honesty.

FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Jah Wobble has a remix/redo of this out now, but I say
you can't go wrong with the classics.

•   The ride down the post-Roe sluice is getting faster. Peggy Noonan has a even-more-than-usually dishonest column about it, with an "aw look at the cute little fetus pics" section and a pretense of sympathy for both sides ("the idealism of many on both sides who were actually trying to make life more just") which is going to seem very quaint when all the baby-killers are marched off to jail and the recalcitrant mothers are penned in birthing barns. I was struck by this passage:

But the court is a political body, because it is a human body that inevitably reflects reigning political currents. Roe too reflected them: Justices wanted a thing to happen in the name of justice for women and found a way to do so by spying previously unseen “penumbras, formed by emanations” (a clause from an earlier case) from the law.

It can be argued that it would increase our faith in our institutions to see that serious objections that lasted half a century, and would have lasted longer, were finally heard.

As is usual with conservatives, Noonan treats "penumbras" as a joke -- can you imagine such a thing in a legal decision! But you know what "earlier case" Noonan is very deliberately not telling you it's from? Griswold v Connecticut, which established a right to privacy and thus to birth control -- which you, I, and they know is their next target. 

If you don't believe it, take it from the bullshit artist formerly known as Jane Galt:

McArdle's twitter feed is currently indistinguishable from that of your average clinic protestor with a thesaurus, and in the Washington Post today she does her bit for the cause by arguing that no one will give a shit when Roe is overturned except silly liberal knowledge workers:

But it’s also possible that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, and throws the issue back to the states, the subsequent legislative wrangling will reveal that the answers to those questions rest less on gender than values — or lifestyle. Are you a college-educated professional who must time pregnancies exquisitely to optimize a career, or are you a low-wage hourly worker for whom other considerations matter more?

Tee hee "exquisitely," these people I've posited are so effete! And it stands to reason (or Reason, I should say) that your average "low-wage hourly worker" will be delighted to take weeks of unpaid leave (months, if they have a public-facing low-wage job and the boss doesn't like the look) to have a kid they may not want but who cares what they think, it owns the libs, who are effete. I can't wait 'til they're overturning Obergefell and McArdle asks, "How much does it bother low-wage hourly workers whether Adam and Steve are married or civilly-united? Unless the lwhw in question is gay but lol what are the odds?"

THE USUAL GANG OF IDIOTS. I feel I must apologize again for the paucity of posts, and this time admit that it's not all because I'm worked to death (though I am) or sick (better, thanks). I am also suffering from a lack of interest in my usual subjects. Maybe the emotional discharge of the post-election has affected them, or me.

I mean, what could anyone do with this? It's as mawkish and maudlin as any earlier Peggy Noonan joint, of the sort I used to enjoy, but now she provides no burr to catch the imagination. That she believes the economy can't be too bad because she can't see, from her dirigible high above Fifth Avenue, its effects ("Everyone is dressed the same... The mall is still there, and people are still walking into the stores...") is highly provocative; a few minutes' research might have revealed to her, for example, that crops are bad and crop insurers are defaulting, which in the current situation might discomfort any sensible person, and that things aren't so hot in the cities, either. Also, as I've said before, in our first stages of decline Americans naturally try to keep up appearances, not giving up the outward appearance of sociable, solvent life until it's absolutely unavoidable. What do you think was fueling that great credit surge before the bust?

But just as you're getting ready to pounce, Noonan decides she doesn't really mean it, but it doesn't really matter: things "will roughen," but "we've gotten through roughness before." Of course her model for getting through is the hands of Jesus guiding her jet liner to safety ("Lord, thank you for our previous safety, and get us through this turbulence"), and her coda a mention of a book with vodka in the title, which was probably to Noonan a sign from God that she should have another.

It's like that scene in Post Office where Bukowski's finally had enough of that co-worker who's always muttering insults, and wheels on him only to realize that the guy is lost in a private fog and has no awareness of him or anything else around him. It takes a lot of the fight out of you.

Likewise Lileks is moonier than usual and hard to grasp, as here, where he mourns (after some broken-field running to disguise the vapidness of his theme from readers, and possibly himself) the godlessness that has left our Modern Arts shallow and brittle, unlike the works of the Immortal Beethoven etc. All I can think to say is: so where's your cathedral, pal?

Maybe I'll start jabbing my leg with a penknife like Gide's Lafcadio until these guys start giving me more to work with.

LA RECONQUISTA. Though conservatives are trying to reconcile, or maybe just concile, with John McCain, some are not yet completely on board. Mark Steyn at National Review Online:

I'd say McCain definitely papered the house. I arrived at CPAC just before Mitt began to speak and was struck by the number of young student-ish types milling about in McCain T-shirts. While my minder went off to check her coat, I was loafing around the lobby, heard a conversation in Spanish, and noticed it was three of the McCain T-shirted students. Which struck me as odd: you don't hear a lot of Spanish at CPAC.

Wait -- Michelle Malkin was there, and she couldn't sense the Mexican presence? Either she's slipping or they're disguising their scent with an all-Arby's diet.

[Cue sound effect]

OUR TIME IS NO. Meanwhile some liberals take the opposite tack from Steyn's: trying to talk themselves out of supporting a candidate they support. Publius at Obsidian Wings:

Although I remain an Obama supporter, I do fear that I’m allowing myself to be enchanted in an intellectually juvenile way. Of course, like you I suspect, I think of myself as more sophisticated than the crowds that vacillated mindlessly from Brutus to Marc Antony. But the truth is that I’m not all that different. I too am all too human, and thus susceptible to the same types of appeals, even if they come dressed in different clothes.

Michael Dukakis isn't doing anything. Why don't we draft him and spare ourselves all this charisma?

[Cue sound effect]

MOPPING UP AT SHOW WORLD. But hold on folks -- there's another viable candidate in this race. I speak of course of Mike Huckabee. He picked up the all-important James Dobson endorsement ("Dobson emphasizes that when he endorses candidates, he is doing so as a private citizen and not as a representative of Focus on the Family, a tax-exempt organization"). This cements Huckabee's position as the heat-sink for such evangelicals as remain committed to the Party, and assures a grand spectacle at the Republican National Convention. Mark your calendars: September 3, Snake-Handler Night! First three rows may get bit.

Oh yeah, Clinton. In the Wall Street Journal her candidacy receives the healing touch of that great conciliator, Peggy Noonan. She calls the former First Lady "lethal" and compares her to Rasputin. Then Noonan bats her eyes, adds, "That is how reporters see Hillary," and takes the high road:

And that is a grim and over-the-top analogy, which I must withdraw. What I really mean is they see her as the Glenn Close character in "Fatal Attraction": "I won't be ignored, Dan!"

Normally the withdrawals come after the slurs are done. But after many years of Bushmills and Old Ronnie, I am surprised that Noonan can face withdrawal at all.

[Cue sound effect]