HEED THE CRAZY JESUS LADY'S FILTHY CARDBOARD SIGN! What is this, Old Home Week? First Lileks showed up, and now comes the Crazy Jesus Lady herself, Peggy Noonan, to tell us: Skree terrorists will kill us all Obama sleeps skree.

Oh -- you want proof? Well, aside from the usual ass-coverers saying "If something blows up, don't say I didn't warn you (and if nothing blows up, no harm done)," there's this:

You can see a certain air of complacency even in government websites. On the front page of the House Committee on Homeland Security site there's a picture of Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, then, below, an area devoted to something called "Business Opportunities Model" and an area for "DHS Business Opportunities." On the Homeland Security Department's website, the priorities seem equally clear: "Find Career Opportunities," "Use the Job Finder." There's little sense of urgency; it's government as employment agency, not crisis leader.

They're actually wasting time hiring people! When they should be sending Tommy Lee Jones out to recruit Will Smith and put on dark glasses! When will the madness stop!

Why don't they just dress Noonan up as a Get-Ready Man and march her around the streets with a sandwich sign? But then I suppose her message would go unnoticed by the crucial "thought leadership" demographic, and be more visible among the sort of people who know enough to focus on something in the middle distance and keep walking .

HE HASN'T CHANGED A BIT. Emerging from the Vale of Old Matchbooks: Jim Lileks! How I've missed him! What's up, Jimbo?

My nine-year-old daughter looked at the front page of the paper, and her eyes grew wide:

The president said “ass”?

What th-- he's actually doing this? The President swore in front of my widdle girl? It's like the Clenis, only PG!

Also, Gnat managed to make it to nine without running off to join a gang? She has guts; must get 'em from her mother.

She swallowed the A-word, because it is, after all, the A-word.

My admiration for Miss Lileks' nerve grows by the minute. What a picnic is must be at that house. Swallow your ass, young lady! Boy, when she gets to Bryn Mawr the fur, so to speak, is gonna fly.

I nodded; he said that. She was silent for a while, digesting the information. Presidents, after all, are part of the great Pantheon of Authority, standing over the school principal, teachers, the pastor, police, and perhaps the mailman. To consider them using bad words reordered everything.

"Where were you when the President said the A-word?" asks Mike Huckabee, roaming the audience with a microphone as the super reads A-DAY: THE END OF THE INNOCENCE.

Barack Obama is probably the last guy you’d think would introduce “ass” into the mainstream political discourse. It’s like Spock announcing he wants to “knock boots” — a expression both crude and banal coming from someone renowned for dispassionate cool.

Well, Jimbo, Obama was working from the original Harlan Ellison script, before that bastard Roddenberry softened it up*. Does that make it easier for you to understand?

But the idea that the president should confine himself to polite terminology is one of those antiquated chocks that prohibit true, honest expression, and if the post-Boomer culture has taught us any-effin-thing, it’s that authentic people use earthy language, authentically, and only the spats-and-monocle crowd blah blah blah

Oh no, Jimbo -- surely not the beatnilks-dirtied-up-my-TV routine again? Alas, it is: And you can read the rest to find out how the beats, led by Barack Obama, Bill Maher, and Helen Thomas, destroyed civility -- and, even worse, impeded traffic:

The hero isn’t the man who invents the traffic signal, it’s Ratso Rizzo who crosses against the light, bangs on a hood of a car that dares to nose into the intersection, and yells “I’m walkin’ here!”

Just for reference:



If you've ever laughed appreciatively at Ratso's reaction, in Lileks' world, you are Ratso, one of those 70s New York skels whom he fears will crawl out of his home entertainment center at night and Death Wish his family. That's why he keeps a go-bag at the ready, so they can escape to the tall pines and join with the guys in the tricorners, with whom he will set about remaking America out of old Sears catalogues, back into a land where no pauper can interrupt the majestic parade of gas-guzzlers.

Well, at least it's good to know he can finally stop thinking about 9/11 for a while, even if it's only to think about ass.

* If coffee isn't doing it for you this morning, try Ellison's hilariously acerbic "introductory essay" to The City on the Edge of Forever: The Original Teleplay that Became the Classic Star Trek Episode. "There's only one reason I'm doing this book: Fyodor Dostoevsky..." I bet he knows how funny he is, though.

UPDATE. I should note that the illo snatched 'n' patched above is the work of famous rock star Tom Tomorrow.

UPDATE 2. Not being a blowhard like me, commenter Christopher extracts the nub: "This sort of pre-emptive whining of 'I know you're going to call me a pussy for not getting the joke, but I'm not, damn it!' combined with 'You guys think you're so cool but you aren't!'"

MORE FREE ADVICE FROM A SHOW-BIZ PROFESSIONAL. From TV Squad:

The writing team who brought Superman back to TV screens in 'Smallville' are set to work their magic on the reboot of 'Charlie's Angels' for ABC.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, hit writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are replacing Josh Friedman ('Terminator: The Sarah Connors Chronicles') on the Sony Television Pictures project, which is being developed for a potential pilot order and midseason launch.

Oh, that's a mistake. After -- what was it, seven Charlie's Angels movie? That salt has lost its savor.

But there's one project that's screaming for these guys' revivalist touch: Riverdale. The world has been waiting for a moody, introspective Archie ("What's wrong, Archie?" says Veronica. "Why won't you ever let me inside?") and a Jughead with father issues ("Are you proud of me now, Dad?" he asks, forcing down another burger).

When people get sick of the primaries, Gough and Millar can zoom in on the peripheral characters. By 2013 viewers should be ready for the budding romance between Moose and Dilton.

If they have trouble getting it lit, five words: Mickey Rourke as Pop Tate.

Now, as a reward for wasting your time: Here's the entire Kurtzman/Elder "Starchie" comic. Also: their entire "Goodman Goes Playboy." And while we're at it, Goodman Beaver meets Superman! You're welcome!

ANNALS OF CONSERVATIVE VICTIMHOOD. The recent flotilla-killa mess brought us a new round of All-Youse-Liberals-R-Anti-Semites. It's not entirely fresh, but I wanted to make sure you saw Theodore Dalrymple's contribution to the genre, in his Pajamas Media defense of European banks against a Guardian columnist:

The article in the Guardian was therefore an exercise, not untypical of the genre, in scapegoating, that disregarded both the most obvious considerations and the deeper currents. In days gone by, it would have been the Jewish money-lenders who would have been blamed; to blame the banks seems so much more acceptable, generous, and liberal-minded, but the structure of the thought is similar.

So now, if you speak harsh words about anyone and some wingnut jumps out from behind a bush and yells "Anti-Semite," you'll know where he got it from.

Actually, Dalrymple's blargument closely resembles that advanced by many other conservatives this week: that if you make fun of Sarah Palin you are attacking all womankind.

It's the biggest gun in their arsenal anymore. When one of their young honkies was caught doing black dialect at CPAC, they demanded an apology -- from the reporter who pointed it out. When psychologists frowned on their gay-straightening rackets, they cried oppression. Even making jokes about them is wah, no fair.

Being a conservative these days is mostly about dishing out sob stories of your ill-treatment. They apparently intend to whine their way back into power.

UPDATE. In comments, herr doktor bimler: "So, [Dalrymple] is arguing that 'This banker-unfriendly talk makes me think of Jews and this is the fault of the liberals.' This is mendentious stuff, which is a combination of mendacious and tendentious but more intense than both."

TODAY'S RIGHTWING ALTERNATIVE HISTORY LESSON. In a post about Mitch Daniels' transparently insincere offer of a "truce" on social issues, Ramesh Ponnuru sighs over what might have been with... the Phil Gramm Presidential campaign.

I also can't help but think of Phil Gramm's presidential campaign in 1996. Like Daniels, Gramm was an enthusiastic budget-cutter. Concern about big government was running strong in the years just prior to that election. Gramm had a solid social-conservative record, but consciously chose not to campaign on it; he famously flew out to Colorado Springs to tell James Dobson, "I'm not a preacher." That approach helped to doom Gramm's campaign.

Actually Gramm's campaign was doomed by the fact that he made Boss Hogg look like John Kenneth Galbraith. I recall wondering in 1996 whether Gramm actually thought anyone outside Texas could tolerate him, or whether he was just padding his post-political resume. He was a miserable, unpleasant candidate who received a grand total of 71,456 primary votes, less than even the clinically mad Alan Keyes.

As to his stump style, I regret that I cannot remember the name of the writer who said that the bizarre rictus which overtook Gramm's face whenever he attempted to show amusement was like the stricken visage of a sufferer from gas pains.

And age hasn't improved him any:

PATIENCE MY ASS -- I'M GONNA KILL SOMETHING. "The incompetence of the Mexican government to handle corruption and criminality along the border has led to 'corrective action' before. The Mexicans need to get their house in order before a 21st Century America determines another punitive expedition is in order, and finds their own Patton to to cheer." -- Confederate Yankee on that kid the Border Patrol killed. (Later he says, "I find myself having less and less sympathy for Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka and his family..." which would be quite a trick.)

When they get back in power, though, I suppose Mr. Lost Cause will content himself with the Iran war he'll get instead.

SHORTER HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Obama and his Big Gummint are making the oil spill worse by usurping the authority of the Fritters, Louisiana Baywatch. The obvious solution is to get Big Gummint out of the way, and bring in the Burkean "little platoons" of the Dutch Government. Oh, and more offshore drilling, of course! (Pockets check.)

INVASION OF THE BULLSHIT SNATCHERS. Obama's approval rating hovers around 46 percent -- about where Reagan's was at this point in his first term. Naturally the Reagan-worshippers consider this disastrous for Obama. At the Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz hears "deepening notes of disenchantment," and attributes them to American's growing awareness that Obama is an alien.

An illegal alien, does she mean? Sort of.

Rabinowitz explains that people are not disappointed that Obama has not fixed the oil spill, but that he did not drape himself in the flag while hollering "Glory, Glory Hallelujah" (or maybe crooning "the oil has slipped the surly bonds of earth") as the poison spread:

For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill.

And there's a reason he didn't, and never could have done so, says Rabinowitz: Because Obama is not a true American:

What he lacked was that voice—and for good reason.

Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.

See? Obama learned to talk purty, all right, but he can't say the magic words "tax cut," "states rights," or "Rumpelstiltskin."

A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.

That last bit is very cute (though we could expect no less from a master propagandist who raged and blubbered over victims of 9/11 but, when their widows stopped cooperating with the program, ignominiously cut them loose).

Not for Rabinowitz the trap of Birtherism, or even Birtherism With An Explanation -- for those rely upon phantom proofs which adherents believe reside in some undiscovered vault. No, better to say the President is an alien, which can never be proved or disproved.

You just have to sidle up to such weak-minded marks as read the Journal editorial pages, and say things like "Why do you suppose Obama didn't want the bust of Churchill in the White House?" and "Did you notice that Obama never says anything bad about Islam?" and "Why does he like those Mescans so much?" Never make a direct accusation that couldn't be explained away as a metaphor, should anyone call you on it.

But the marks whose minds have been roiled by this bullshit will take it as was intended to be taken. So what if no Kenyan birth certificate can be found? They'll know it explains the unsettled feeling they've had since they saw that un-American-looking guy take the Oath of Office.

True, the uninitiated won't get what they mean when they say Obama is an alien, but at least no one will call them a racist. (At least, no one who doesn't know them will.)

ARGUMENT FROM PATERNITY. Power Line:

William Shawcross is the son of Winston Churchill's lawyer, the prominent former Nuremberg prosecutor and Labor MP Sir Hartley Shawcross. He thus provides something of a living link to Churchill whom we are especially proud to claim as a friend of our site.... [skree, libs hate Jews, etc]

Two words come to mind: Paris Hilton.

I've always known that, though they like to pretend they're anti-elitist, they really just prefer a different kind of elitism. But I hadn't realized they meant it to be hereditary. Now cometh the time of the Reagan Grandchildren!

NEW VOICE COLUMN UP, about the flotilla killa mess. My main insight is that the rightbloggers are even crazier than usual about this, Because Israel, which I think is a subset of Because Jesus.

You'll have to click over to get the full effect. In any case, they're sloppier than usual, throwing accusations of Israel hatred at Obama in the ripest terms and on the flimsiest pretenses.

I don't think they're even paying attention to what they're saying anymore. It's like that scene from Bukowski's Post Office:

One night I was assigned to the stool next to Butchner. He didn't stick any mail. He just sat there. And talked. A young girl came in and sat down at the end of the aisle. I heard Butchner. "Yeah, you cunt! You want my cock in your pussy, don't you? That's what you want, you cunt, don't you?" I went on sticking mail. The soup walked past. Butchner said, "You're on my list, mother! I'm going to get you, you dirty mother! You rotten bastard! Cocksucker!" The supervisors never bothered Butchner. Nobody ever bothered Butchner. Then I heard him again. "All right, baby! I don't like that look on your face! You're on my list, mother! You're right there on top of my list! I'm going to get your ass! Hey, I'm talking to you! You hear me?"

It was too much. I threw my mail down. "All right," I told him, "I'm calling your card! I'm calling your whole stinking deck! You wanna go right here or outside ?" I looked at Butchner. He was talking to the ceiling, insane: "I told you, you're on top of my list! I'm going to get you and I'm going to get you good!" O for Christ's sake, I thought, I really sucked into that one! The clerks were very quiet. I couldn't blame them. I got up, went to get a drink of water...

Buk had a point. Why am I letting them get to me like this?

UPDATE. Maybe this is why: "The latest ship to be stopped by Israel's blockade, the SS Rachel Corrie, was escorted to an Israeli port without incident. Too bad Israel doesn't have a seagoing bulldozer." I'm always a little surprised at people who are proud of being douchebags. See also celebrity douche RS McCain.

EVERYBODY'S A TERRORIST! The Pixies have cancelled their scheduled Israel concert -- presumedly, though not announced to be, in reaction to the flotilla mess.

Well, their body of work, their choice, one supposes. The rightbloggers have been surprisingly slow to react, but an Israeli promoter is instructing them in the appropriate victimhood schtick:

Israel is falling victim to "cultural terrorism," a top music promoter charged on Sunday, after US alternative rock group The Pixies cancelled their first-ever gig in the Jewish state.

Promoter Shuki Weiss also says the Pixies and other cancelled acts are "robbing" Israeli music fans "of a handful of hours of joy, adrenalin, and culture."

I almost approve, because I assume Weiss is motivated not by politics, but by a healthy, cynical desire to exploit the situation to get big acts to sign with him to make a contradictory political statement, thus generating income from the foolishness of others.

Oh, wait a minute -- maybe that's the same thing as politics, these days.

UPDATE. A GayandRight commenter moans, "Why not perform in Palestine where HAMAS live or are they too Chichen sh*t to do so." Maybe they can't get enough electricity over there to power their amps.

THE NEW WAVE IN REPUBLICAN SEX SCANDALS. I see that Michael Gerson has taken up the Republican sex-scandal defense championed by David Frum and others during the great imbroglios of 2006 -- that is, that hypocrisy is okay if you're a Jesus Republican, because Jesus.

Yet moral liberals have something to learn as well. The failure of human beings to meet their own ideals does not disprove or discredit those ideals... I would rather live among those who recognize standards and fail to meet them than among those who mock all standards as lies. In the end, hypocrisy is preferable to decadence.

The problem with making this argument to "moral liberals" (whatever the fuck he means by that -- since I'm a liberal with a mean streak, I'll take it to mean me) is that we have been watching Republicans and their co-conspirators in the evangelical Christian movement run their Moral Majority bullshit for years, and have coldly recognized it as bullshit from Day One. This is because we have some understanding of human nature, from the works of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Somerset Maugham, and from direct experience, and we know the randy preacher routine backwards.

When that scam devolved into a pile-up of naked and sometimes wet-suited or diapered Republicans a few years back, we did not mourn that these awful people had failed to live up to their "standards," because we knew that they never really had any standards, except "don't get caught" and "never give a sucker an even break."

At first I couldn't figure out why Gerson even bothered, except as a favor to his old friend Mark Souder. But then it occurred to me that he had been inspired by the Nikki Haley case.

In that case we have seen something remarkable but little remarked upon: a political sex scandal in which the controversy does not fit the Moral Majority template. Haley is either the victim of opponents' smears, or has had extramarital affairs, or both. Most of the reaction from the liberal side has been ha-ha, but as Haley is being man-handled, not by Democrats, but by her fellow Republicans, it is the GOP reaction that is most relevant, and so far I haven't seen many of them burbling on about the Sanctity of Marriage. Haley's opponents are mainly saying that she lied, and Haley is saying that her opponents are lying. It's a plain political media power struggle, with no hint of Jesus in it -- which may be why one SC Republican douchebag called her a raghead like President Obama: He was frustrated that the punters weren't going Biblical on her, and sought to stir their religious mania by other means.

But that doesn't seem to be working either. And how awful this must be to Christian types like Gerson, whose whole schtick depends upon people acting (and voting) like extras from Inherit the Wind.

UPDATE. In the Washington Times, Robert Knight helps prove my point. He is stung to the quick that George F. Will and Charles Krauthammer -- no one's idea of bleeding hearts -- have abandoned, on behalf of mainstream Republicans, the word of the Living God when it comes to gays in the military. Knight raves about the "Creator of the Universe" and "God's moral code that has undergirded Western society for more than 3,500 years." And he suggests at the end that they and all infidels will be sorry one day when they end up in the Lake of Fire:

Perhaps the answer lies in the Book that they now find quaint: "Professing to be wise, they became fools ... who exchanged the truth of God for a lie." (Romans 1:22, 25)

Someday, the smartest folks in America will wonder how they could have been so foolish.

Damnation -- the Hail Mary pass of all moral hucksters who have discovered that Bible-waving no longer has a hypnotic effect on their subjects.

IT'S ALWAYS SOMETHING WITH THESE PEOPLE. Wingnuts are super-excited because, in addition to it being National Doughnut Day (when they have a National Cheetos Day, there'll be riots), Paul McCartney insulted George Bush. So they're having a contest to see who can get the most worked up and say the stupidest thing about it. So far, by several lengths: Warner Todd Huston.

This from a guy whose entire songwriting career is well known to be as deep as a thimble philosophically speaking. And this is not to even mention that this is from a guy whose country voted Neville Chamberlain into office once upon a time!

Plus Macca is also a traitor to his own Hitler-loving country, which his boyfriend Obama grievously offended by giving the Queen "discs that cannot play on a British DVD machine" and other similar indignities.

And Beatle-wise, Huston pretends to be more into "John Lennon's dark cynicism." I can easily imagine him bellowing "Sarah don't go/Reagan come home" in the middle of the night with his shirt off, which is one of the drawbacks of a fertile imagination.

It'll take a lot to beat Huston. Dan Reihl tells McCartney to die, but that's just him being his usual lovable self.

UPDATE. "To quote Mr. Darcy: My good opinion once lost, is lost forever," says Nice Deb. As if that weren't newsworthy enough, she further reports that "large numbers of Americans are reeling in disgust by his behavior," though sadly she doesn't post video evidence. That'll show that rich British peer.

Does the CDC keep statistics on delusions of grandeur?

SHORTER JONAH GOLDBERG: There's this guy who wants to cure millions of Americans of depression, chronic pain, and sleep disorders. This is exactly what I was warning against in my book Liberal Fascism.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? A PEEK IN AT ACE O. SPADES. It's like blogger drunkdialing! Hadn't paid attention to the site in months, so I looked today and saw some guy posting a map of the places where English is the official language, then commenting:

So when you're choosing your apocalypse bolt-hole, you might want to consider which lingua the locals sprechen. And yes that little blue speck in Central America is Belize which speaks English thanks to its history as a British colony. Here's some info on fleeing retiring to Belize as an American. Of course there's also Guyana to the south, but it seems a little far from the US and a little too close to Venezuela. Next best options would probably be some of the Caribbean islands.

Belize. The guy thinks he's going to Belize. I doubt that Delta allows customers to pay for their flights with Cheetos proofs of purchase.

Ace really hasn't been the same since he went softcore.

DON'T CHANGE JIM JOYCE'S CALL. Apparently the Commissioner is considering changing the umpire's call that cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game.

No. Human umpires are part of baseball, and if you're going to have them, you're going to have blown calls. And human though they are, their rulings have to stand. Why? Because to challenge their authority is to throw the whole premise of baseball into chaos.

Baseball is not supposed to be a quasi-mechanical Thunderdome affair like football, with everything from the players' muscle mass to the video review delegated to state-of-the-art science. It is, as George Carlin memorably observed, a game played in a park. The vagaries, oddities, and lapses in judgement -- and there are plenty in a 162-game season -- are part of the pleasure. I once saw Benny Agbayani take a fly ball he'd caught and toss it into the stands, thinking he had made the third out; he had in fact made the second, and the ground-rule double cost the Mets the game. That sucked, but nobody thought the result should be reversed because that wasn't what he should have done.

Umpires fuck up too, yet we've decided to treat them like God: Their word rules even if everyone in the park disputes it. And only the ump himself can reverse the call. Maybe you would prefer that there should be Baseball Courts of Appeal or The Guardians of the Universe or some shit, but them's the rules, and games without rules are only fun for people who've taken too much acid.

If you want to put in video review -- an abomination, I still believe -- then you can avoid these kinds of problems in future games of the thing you will call baseball and I will call bullshit. But only then.

UPDATE. Let me add something else: A ballgame is not a court of law. Our judicial system is convoluted because human lives are at stake. In Major League Baseball, the only thing at stake is some millionaires' future trade value.

I think Billy Martin said it best.

UPDATE 2. And if me and Billy haven't convinced you, be aware that one of National Review's biggest idiots -- John J. Miller, sort of Jonah Goldberg on training wheels -- wants the call overturned.

Speaking of National Review idiots, Daniel Foster:

In a weird way, it is like the BP spill. Those of us who oppose instant replay in baseball, like those of us who support domestic drilling, correctly (I think) point out that catastrophic failures of the status quo are so unlikely that worries about them shouldn't guide our policy thinking. But then Deepwater Horizon blew up and Jim Joyce blew a perfect game.

I've never seen Foster so maybe he really is 10 years old and a lot of things in life that we adults take for granted are brand new to him.

THEY DON'T MAKE CAPITALISTS LIKE THEY USED TO.The Anchoress interrupts a rant about Obama Hitler socialism for a personal complaint, which she believes is relevant to her point:

I feel like my relationship to my son’s college is a microcosm of our relationship to the government. Every year tuition goes up appreciably, even though our salaries have gone stagnant. There are union workers on campus, you see, and they must get their raises, even if services to the students must be cut to ensure them. So, it’s cut services or bleed the students, and either way the cafeteria has too many carbs. The scholarships don’t go up, but the tuition does. We’re trying to keep his student loan debt down to about $30,000, so our contribution, year after year, just gets bigger and bigger.

I think I see the relevance: A degree from the college of her choosing is something The Anchoress believes she should have, and if the price goes up to what its administrators think the Free Market will bear, this is not capitalism in action, as it might seem to the uninitiated, but socialism, because all the money over and above what The Anchoress wishes to pay for this sheepskin will be going to communist union janitors; she just knows it.

If only she could strike a bargain with the professors -- have them come over to the house and teach Buster, free from the constraints of the unions! She could in recompense bake them a pie. They could call it Galt's Gulch Community College!

It's astonishing that these people achieved adulthood without ever realizing that the Invisible Hand is not Casper the Friendly Ghost.

UPDATE. The Anchoress amplifies in comments that her husband (who already has a profitable engineering degree) and her sons agree that university educations are worthless, which makes it even harder for me to understand why she hasn't taken the kids out of school yet and used the savings to buy gold, shotguns, and a generator in preparation for the End Times, and maybe some church raffle tickets. Also, why in the first place is she exposing these innocent young minds to the evil liberal professors who, her commenters assure her, will just try to convert them to Marxism? They'll be safe from that kind of brainwashing at barber college.

Using the kind of fantasy problem-solving she also exhibits in her subsequent, why-isn't-Obama-doing-this-thing-I-heard-about-in-the-Gulf post ("Is this something that is possible? I have no idea, but let’s find out! Seems like something the government ought to already be aware of"), The Anchoress dreams up (via the medium of one of her children) an alternative educational regime -- sort of a rightwing Montessori:

My Elder Son has made a very strong case for the de-emphasizing of degrees in favor of true competency certification (based not on education credits but true proficiency) for educators, the social sciences and business degrees, and artists--whether in fine arts or music--should be able to study as apprentices, journeymen, etc.

These certificates, which I'm sure would be covered with gold stars, would also no doubt be accepted in lieu of diplomas from accredited colleges by the Bigbrain Randian Wealth Producers who have Gone Galt. And aren't they the only sort of people by whom Buster and Boomer or whatever his name is would consent to be employed? Don't dream it, The Anchoress, be it! Let your Galt schools be the monasteries of the new Dark Ages!

SHORTER ABIGAIL THERNSTROM: Why did Artur Davis lose in Alabama? Because he defied Obama. Or because he's good friends with Obama. Something to do with Obama, anyway. But whatever it was, it certainly had nothing to do with race.

JONAH GOLDBERG, HARD ON THE JOB, LATEST IN A SERIES*. 9:21 am: Look, funny video!

9:40 am: This flotilla thing -- anybody know anything about it? Cuz you can't trust the lamestream media, y'know. They hate Jews.

5:31 pm: W00t, wingnut welfare gravy train now boarding! Come on, it'll be fun, like college.

5:36 pm: More video!

5:40 pm: I got to judge a conservative beauty contest! Fart. I mean, "Fart."

7:55 am: Ooooh, I got in trouble lookin at the purty girls. Fart. Speaking of which, wingnut welfare!

8:00 am: That big hole in Guatawhatchamacallit sure is big. Like something out of a scary movie! Haw! This is almost as good as Hurricane Katrina.

Etc. * Compiled by Instaputz and Tbogg, among others.

HOW YOU GET A BP. What I and perhaps many of you have been grumbling under our breaths for years, Nancy Nall eloquently lays out in complete sentences, in the course of a lengthy gripe about her shitty bank:

Oh, why bother with this? You all have your own tales of pain and woe, if not with banks, then with health insur­ance com­pa­nies, mort­gage hold­ers or whomever. Here’s what amuses me most about them — how, in our allegedly per­fect market-based sys­tem, our cus­tomer expe­ri­ence should be improv­ing year to year. In some ways, it has, although I credit tech­nol­ogy (the ATM) more than man­age­ment. But mostly, bank­ing — and many other allegedly service-based busi­nesses — has only become more Soviet with time, more mono­lithic, less sen­si­tive to cus­tomer com­plaint, more frus­trat­ing to deal with. Yes, I enjoy check­ing my bal­ance online or over the phone. No, I don’t like being nickel-and-dimed — or ten-dollared and thirty-dollared — to death over every lit­tle thing.

I still hope to get past the muttering stage on this important topic someday, but Nance has it good and broken down already.

I will add this: Any of us, if we think about it for more than a few minutes, can see that our largest and most powerful institutions are increasing treating us, their customers, like sub-humans.

They do it in Washington, with monstrosities like the nightmarish 2005 Bankruptcy Bill, and they do it in the day-to-day, by socking us with every hidden fee, added surcharge, delayed payment, automatic renewal, and designed-to-discourage phone tree they can dream up to separate us from more of our money.

I don't suggest there was ever a golden age when businesses didn't try to get more of our money, but I've been walking around this civilization for quite a healthy span of years, and I've never spent as much time as I do now fighting with corporations to keep or get back my money. I don't recall, in the allegedly less enlightened past, a bank insisting that I still had a credit card with them years after I paid off the balance and told them repeatedly to close my account. I don't recall being told that it didn't matter when I sent in my payment, it only mattered when the bank decided to accept it, and if it wound up being late they could raise my rate and fuck up my credit. (BTW thank the Democrats for fixing at least some of this shit.)

It's true that in the old days, I didn't have internet, and I often had to physically approach a service desk to get satisfaction. But those desks were clearly marked and manned. If they were run like the byzantine "support" features at many company websites now, they would be available only by rope ladder at the bottom a 30-foot shaft, and their agents would fend me off with pikestaffs.

Yet as plain as this is to us normal people, conservatives and libertarians (but I repeat myself) are insensible to the situation. They generally tell you, hey look, you got iPods and diet pet food, you never had it so good. And if you're suffering, it's your own damn fault for being a littlebrain. If you go through, say, a typical Megan McArdle post about bank shenanigans, you'll find the comments filled with the counsel of Randian supermen who have never had any troubles getting loans themselves, and don't understand how any decent person would ("When it comes down to it, if a person lives responsibly, chances are they won't have to worry").

And there's always someone like Cassy Fiano to blubber that the banks are the ones getting screwed by their customers and how dare they etc.

Which brings us to the depraved indifference shown by those BP ratfucks toward actually cleaning up (as opposed to covering up) their disastrous pollution of the Gulf of Mexico. For a while I was actually in sympathy with them -- when you fuck up that bad, you might be forgiven for using a psychological strategy to distance yourself from the enormity of your guilt, if only just so you can function. But after watching them at work awhile, I have decided that they are incorrigible. To put it politely.

And why shouldn't they be? See it their way: In this country, in this time, if you want the big money you don't give the suckers an even break. You brass it out. Fuck the regulators, fuck the press, and fuck the paupers who think they have some say in what washes up on their beaches -- we got people, we got money. And most of all, we got the right of way. Because for decades now, wherever some herkimer-jerkimer objected that our business was coming on a little too strong for their precious "community," we had the answer that never failed: Step aside, buddy, you're standing in the way of the Free Market.

It never failed before. Why should it fail them now?