NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the Crimea crisis and the rightblogger angle that a real man/President would be kicking Putin's ass right now-- you know, like we did to Saddam, only rhetorically! It brings to mind the old saying: Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to commit U.S. troops to a highly unpopular foreign war.

UPDATE. Oh God, I have to transfer a comment from my Facebook feed from Bill Alexander: "In Yakov Smirnoff voice: 'In Russia we have Pussy Riot; in America, Dick Armey!'"

AFTER THE BALL.

The remainder of my Raw Story CPAC dispatches are here, here, here, here, and here. It was a grueling three days, and I didn't even attend the after-hours festivities like Reaganpalooza -- you can go to Wonkette for that stuff. I also recommend Charlie Pierce's dispatches, which are full of fierce indignation, unlike the measured, just-the-facts reporting for which I am known.

Overall I'd say the event was a success for its people, in that they seemed energized by it and optimistic about their chances on the hustings. Of course they had every reason to feel that way in 2012 too, and we saw how that turned out. But though CPAC is for true believers and, as you may have gleaned from the coverage, some of what they true-believe is crazy, the folks I spoke with and overheard were serious about success.

And I think for them the libertarian schtick is where it's at. The youngs who have driven the Paul-heavy straw poll results in recent years were there already; I believe the growing conservative tendency these days of portraying, for example, their opposition to mandatory insurance coverage of contraceptives and gay rights as religious-liberty issues, instead of merely denouncing birth control and homosexuality as tools of the Devil, shows that the elders are also ready to talk the talk, at least.

Also, consider: The American Conservative Union reported that in this year's straw poll, 62% of respondents said marijuana should be legal in at least some circumstances (21% approved for medical reasons, 41% in all circumstances) and only 33% said it should remain illegal. ACU also claimed that all age-groups but the oldest were broadly pro-legalization. I haven't seen any cross-tabs -- and moldy fig Patrick Brennan thinks the wording of the questions makes the survey "push-polling for libertarians" -- but I wouldn't be surprised. The Republican voters who might be turned off by a pro-legalization policy aren't going anywhere except to the grave, while there are a lot of independent voters who might be pleasantly surprised to hear conservatives want to free the weed while Democrats like Jerry Brown are much less enthusiastic.

I predict whoever gets the GOP Presidential nomination in 2016 will preach marijuana legalization and abortion bans. It may seem incongruous to you, but national politics is about coalition-building.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOLOR.

But you're a good girl, the way you grab me, must wanna get nasty...

I dragged my ass through CPAC again today, and Raw Story posted it here, here, here, here, and here. I must say that I liked all the people with whom I spoke, notwithstanding that they're trying to destroy the country; we all have our faults. I particularly liked the Duggars, maybe because, after my long acquaintance with show folk, their cheerful cooperation with a humble member of the press charmed me. Trust me, I've been treated worse.

Tomorrow we do it again. [retch]

SERVICE ADVISORY.

Raw Story's running my live-and-in-person dispatches from CPAC. So far they're here and here. If you know anybody at this thing you think I should talk to, please let me know; I'm just running catch as catch can.

I have to say that the CPAC scene, such as it is, isn't too different from other conventions I have been called on in various professional capacities to cover, except that the overheard conversational snippets occasionally slide into politics. Things like, "they can't name one thing Hillary achieved as Secretary of State. Not one!" Kind of like the bitching one used to hear at the New Music Seminar about bands that were not to the speaker's liking. Except everyone's got money, it seems. They want more, and power besides, but who at a convention does not?

BRINGING A KNIFE TO A SHOTGUN WEDDING.

Shorter Dennis Prager on bringing together social and fiscal conservatives:




Money shot:

The entire American experiment in smaller government — and even in secular government — was based on the presumption that Americans individually would be actively religious. Unlike Europeans of the Enlightenment era — and unlike the Left today — the Founders understood that people are not basically good. That is a defining belief of Judaism as well as of Christianity. Therefore, to be good, the great majority of people need moral religion and belief in accountability to a morally judging God. In other words, you will have either the big God of Judaism and Christianity or the big state of the Left.

Which is why Europe went up in flames and to this day is used exclusively for guano farming -- oh, wait, no, actually they get two months of vacations a year, socialized medicine, and Gothic cathedrals, and make us look like shit.

The thing is: Prager's probably addressing this appeal (if that's the word for it) to bullshit libertarians like David French who already don't give a shit about any freedoms that don't apply directly to themselves and their employers, and whose libertarianism is a Jedi mind trick that only works on people like Dennis Prager. And if it won't make any difference to them, try and imagine how it will be read by normal people who only seem to be hanging in with the Democrats because they're afraid the Republicans will destroy all safety nets and do away all public positions except Witchfinder General, Corporation Bagman in Chief, and Keeper of the Rapestick. It's like Prager is saying, "Everything you hate about us? That's the part that's non-negotiable!"

THE MIGHTY WURLITZER, PLAYED BY MONKEYS.

Sometimes, when you're a busy professional propagandist like John Fund, the week's talking points sort of slosh together in your mind and you wind up with analogies like this:

Last week, New York’s ACORN mayor Bill De Blasio announced he is evicting Success Academy, a widely praised charter school from the Harlem public school building it occupies. Two other charter schools will be blocked from opening. He claims elementary-school kids wouldn’t be safe in a building with high-school students. His excuse is as absurd as the propaganda Vladimir Putin is using to justify the occupation of Crimea.

I understand his first draft included "stuck on stupid" and the Dark Enlightenment, but was trimmed for space.

Try to imagine a normal person reading that and thinking, yes, I see the connection. There's plenty to say about why most political writing is so incredible shitty, and one important reason is that the apparatchiks thus engaged aren't trying to clear a path to truth; they're just sticking pebbles in pieces of shit.

UPDATE. Hmmph! I wished to talk about style, but some commenters insist on addressing the charter schools issue, in which conservatives who squawk any time taxpayer money feeds a starving bum will suddenly burst into tears if a city refuses to use that money to prop up a charter school. Susan of Texas quotes from Fund, who complains that "charging the rent Mayor de Blasio’s backers envision [for the charters] would result in 71 percent of the city’s charters running deficit." "The free market fails again," Susan observes. She also observes that the charter in question isn't necessarily delivering value for money -- as does Diane Ravitch, via commenter mds: "When the New York State Comptroller attempted to audit Success Academy’s use of public money, Success Academy sued to prevent the audit..." I've seen some good charters, but this kind of thing ain't helping.

Also commenters are at least as interested in the "ACORN Mayor" sobriquet as they are in the Putin/Crimea analogy, which is what caught my eye. ACORN we will have with us always -- as a wingnut curse-word, if not as an actual living organization -- but comparisons of local expenditure issues to geopolitical military crises are as of yet rare, unless you count the Third Reich.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the religious freedom bills that were supposed to protect citizens from gay brides and grooms, and how as usual the brethren took their enthusiasm so far that ordinary observers might just think they were also rooting for repeal of the Civil Rights Act. (Which some of them were, of course, but no fair reading anything bigoted into it.)

WE SURE COULD USE A LITTLE GOOD NEWS TODAY.

Happy Friday. Let us turn from the sad news of the world and nation, and toward the Mt. Gox Bitcoin disaster. I am generally agnostic on the Bitcoin phenomenon. I know libertarians like Bitcoin, which you'd think would dispose me against it; but then, libertarians also like Frank Zappa and that hasn't spoiled his music for me.

But it's an ill wind that blows no one some good -- the Gox thing has roused a stirring peroration at Business Insider by Erik Voorhees, calling on his libertarian comrades, many of them dispossessed Bitcoin billionaires, to be brave and not give up the dream, and it has warmed my heart with the gift of laughter. Here's the fiat-currency shot:

And finally, the lesson is not that we ought to seek out "regulation" to save us from the evils and incompetence of man. For the regulators are men too, and wield the very same evil and incompetence, only enshrined in an authority from which it can wreak amplified and far more insidious destruction.

If only man could throw off the chains of regulation, I wouldn't have to pay these speeding tickets. I'd own my own damn privately-run toll road!

Let us not retreat from our rising platform only to cower back underneath the deranged machinations of Leviathan.

We're never going back to your so-called economy! The internet has freed us to recreate the barter system without having to lift anything heavy, and we're going off the grid forever without leaving the comfort of our subdivisions!

The proper lesson, if I may suggest, is this: We are building a new financial order, and those of us building it, investing in it, and growing it, will pay the price of bringing it to the world. This is the harsh truth. We are building the channels, the bridges, and the towers of tomorrow's finance, and we put ourselves at risk in doing so...

Except in the physical sense, for any of that, though my Eames chair could probably use some readjusting.

So why do we do it? Why do we build these towers that fall down upon us? Why do we toil and strain and risk our precious time, which is the only real wealth we possess?

Because the world needs what we're building. It needs it desperately. If that matters to you, as it does to me, then hold to that thought. You will see through the smoke, and your wounds will heal.

And that right there is the tell.  Whenever a libertarian -- raised on the Virtue of Selfishness, and inclined to believe that the dismantling of society will inevitably benefit "producers" such as himself, and is therefore a good thing whatever happens to the sheeple -- starts talking about how the world needs whatever racket he's got going, hold onto your virtual wallet.

Somewhere out there, at the crossroads of Narnia, Galt's Gulch, and the Floating City, there's a world where the dream will never die. And when Voorhees and his pals finally all go there, maybe we can have some peace and quiet around here.

(h/t @M_DiPaola)

UPDATE. Lots of good comments, some suggesting new names for the freedom currency: "I propose that we call 1/100 of a bitcoin a 'rand,'" says PulletSurpise, "1/20 is a 'ron,' 1/10 is a 'hayek,' 1/4 is a 'friedman,' 1/2 is a 'galt," and five bitcoins is one 'weimar.'"

My favorite comes from @benzero: douchemarks.

FIGHTING THE LAST WAR.

Jan Brewer said no to Butch Crow and Rich Lowry is sad. After many paragraphs of "Gay? What gay? No mention of gay in this bill," Lowry finally gives it up and gets to the money shot:

The market has a ready solution for these couples: There are other bakers, photographers and florists. The wedding business is not exactly bristling with hostility to gay people. If one baker won’t make a cake for gay weddings, the baker across town can hang a shingle welcoming all couples for all types of weddings.

Which is how it works for other kinds of people, too: If someone says "we don't serve your kind here," you can always go somewhere else. What's the big deal? Look. it's their lunch counter; who are you to say you have a right to be served there?

These guys are often accused of not seeing the connection, but make no mistake, they see it, alright. That's why they're working so hard to convince people that the folks forced to offer equal service to homosexuals are the wronged parties here. This is the best chance they've had since 1964, and they hate to see it slipping away.

UPDATE. In comments -- which are as usual way better than the post -- chuckling points out the relevant statute, in which the U.S. proscribed on the ground of "race, color, religion, or national origin" what conservatives are hell-bent on sticking to gay people.

"It's unfortunate, I think," says chuckling, "that that argument is not front and center in the professional liberal counterattack against this recent spate of 'religious freedom' bills." Then it's up to us amateurs -- just like in the Bowery Boys movies! Actually there's a pretty pro effort at Think Progress by Ian Millhiser, reminding us that in addition to states' rights and freedom of association, the brethren have often cited God in favor of separate-but-oh-who-cares-if-it's-equal. That's why religious-liberties bills are suddenly all the rage throughout the neo-Confederate diaspora.

And in a brief cheeky post I can't get to all the tropes conservatives are using to disguise their efforts here -- that may be work for the weekend. One that comes up in comments is the whole "'but it won't make much practical difference!' card," as Daniel Björkman describes it. It's a common tactic -- just give us this little piece of your rights and we'll go away! -- and Kia is very eloquent on how it works:

It looks stupid until you realize that if you concede the point you have in effect let him decide the value, to you, of what he wants to take from you. He wants to deprive you of the protection of a principle, so he pretends there is no principle at issue. So while you and he are in the living room discussing hypotheticals like two seekers of truth who happen to disagree, his lawyers are throwing your possessions into the street.

FIRST TIME AS FARCE, SECOND TIME AS FARCE.

First Ole Perfesser Instapundit says Americans sitting on their asses is the equivalent of the Ukrainian uprising, and now we have Roger L. Simon:

After Ukraine, We Need an American Spring... 

We need some government, obviously, but at this point in American history, in order to save our nation, we need to get the state as much as possible out of our lives, to cut its functions with a meat cleaver to release our better impulses, to have the renewal of Spring.

I wonder whom Simon hopes to wave into action with his cleaver. Are there enough wingnut preppers to take down Obama and deliver our nation into the hands of the European Union? Probably not, so Simon is ready for outreach:

Those already convinced of our cause — small-government conservatives, Tea Partiers, libertarians — should put aside their squabbles for now, join together and seek to be as inclusive as possible.

With Nick Gillespie and that guy in the Ben Franklin get-up on board, how can the Boehner Orange Revolution fail?

UPDATE. Comments are very good. To Simon's ""The [American] people aren’t the problem. It’s the state," Chairman Pao responds, "Which is run by who or what? Loki? AD-45 Riot-Bots? Care Bears?" Nyet, comrade, the election was stolen, the people are with us and will rise at the signal of the meat cleaver! At Simon's Strange New Respect for libertarian convert/election loser Joe Trippi, Halloween_Jack muses, "Now if we can only pass Mark Penn off on them..." Shhhh don't tip 'em off!

THEY ALSO TAKE UP ALL THE GOOD SEATS AT THE PIANO BAR.

At National Review Quin Hillyer has a fairly classic "Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock" essay. There's plenty of laughs in it, including Hillyer's suggestion that gay people want only to be left alone "but the activists and media chorus won’t let them," and a climactic lament over the degraded culture as represented by Beyonce and Shirley Jones.  But here's the best part: Hillyer's denunciation of "figure-skating announcer Johnny Weir":

His antics are appalling. The problem is not that he’s homosexual; it’s that he advertises his sexuality to the extent that it makes him (his choice of makeup, jewelry, and extravagant dresses or furs) more of a story than the athletes he is supposed to cover.

Can't Hillyer enjoy his ice dancing without some flamboyant homosexual getting in the way? Next Olympics let's get Terry Bradshaw.

UPDATE: Quin dumbles down!

I think if I were a figure skater, I would want the focus to be on my athleticism.

Yeah, that's what keeps ice dancers up at night -- the thought that audiences will somehow get the impression that their punishing routines don't require athleticism, but are merely the icebound version of mincing, because the booth announcer doesn't resemble Dave Madden.

And if you’ve got somebody– I mean, who cares if he’s homosexual? The question is, by dressing as a woman and bringing that image of femininity to the sport, does that feed the image of it as somehow less than a fete of athleticism?

"Fête of athleticism" is how I'll think of ice dancing from now on. I wonder if he'd have the same problem with Martina Navratilova?

THE BATTLE OF SIT-ON-YOUR-ASS.

Ole Perfesser Instapundit's waving the stars and bars at USA Today under the title, "Americans rising up against government." The column is accompanied by a picture of someone poking a Gadsden flag out of a bunch of umbrellas -- maybe them folks under the umbrellas is all a-decked out like Ben Franklin and the Tea Party is back!

"America's ruling class has been experiencing more pushback than usual lately," the Perfesser commences. "It just might be a harbinger of things to come." How so, Perfesser? Three things:

• "First, in response to widespread protests last week, the Department of Homeland Security canceled plans to build a nationwide license plate database." Funny, I don't remember any such protests -- oh, the Perfesser means widespread  in the press and among "lawmakers and privacy advocates," not Ma and Pa Tricorn marching on Washington.

• The FCC's Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs, which was going to question newsroom personnel, went down because "the blowback was sufficient to stop it for now." Again, this was not achieved by a popular uprising, but by the press, with its paranoid conservative wing and normal-people wing united in defense of its own interests.

"Meanwhile, in Connecticut a massive new gun-registration scheme is also facing civil disobedience." Ah, now we're getting somewhere! Tell us about it, Perfesser:

• "As J.D. Tuccille reports: 'Three years ago, the Connecticut legislature estimated there were 372,000 rifles in the state of the sort that might be classified as 'assault weapons,' and 2 million plus high-capacity magazines. ... But by the close of registration at the end of 2013, state officials received around 50,000 applications for 'assault weapon' registrations, and 38,000 applications for magazines.' This is more 'Irish Democracy,' passive resistance to government overreach..."

Really? Sounds to me like a bunch of people sitting on their rear ends. In fact, none of this "uprising" involves... anyone doing anything.

And yet here's how the Perfesser characterizes it:

Though people have taken to the streets from Egypt, to Ukraine, to Venezuela to Thailand, many have wondered whether Americans would ever resist the increasing encroachments on their freedom. I think they've begun.

Us and the guys at Tahrir Square and Maidan Nezalezhnosti! We just have different styles: Furriners do uprising by putting their bodies on the line in lethal mass demonstrations, whereas American patriots sit on their asses and wait for the heroism commendations to roll in.

The timeline of conservative derangement is long and complicated, but I think I can trace this particular strain of gibberish back to Human Achievement Hour, in which conservatives portrayed Americans who did not change their normal everyday energy-use patters as implicit supporters of their anti-environmentalist cause, and the Battle of Chick-Fil-A, in which conservatives showed their hatred of homosexuals (or love of freedom, whatever) by gorging on fast food and deputizing everyone they saw at the mall as co-conspirators. It's the perfect form of activism for a movement largely composed of agitated geriatrics, shut-ins, and people who think they're entitled to everything, including revolutionary status, without raising a sweat for it.

UPDATE. From commenter Fats Durston:

The Revolution Will Be Sitting In Front Of The Television
You will be able to stay home, brother.
You will be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will be able to lose yourself on Xanax and
skip out for beer during commercials, if you haven't DVR'd
Because the revolution will be sitting in front of the television.
The revolution will be sitting in front of the television
Brought to you by Xbox...

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about the proposed minimum wage hike, and the way rightbloggers reacted to the CBO report on it. They could have kept their mouths shut about this very popular plan, in short, but the bait was too good. They think the possibility of half a million jobs lost is a good talking point against the raise, but they don't understand that they're the last people on earth anyone would trust on the matter; hell, they could be reading straight from the Holy Bible and no one would believe them -- which, come to think of it, is how they got in this predicament in the first place.

I keep hearing that some of the more adventuresome conservatives might go for a guaranteed income, but I'm old and remember when they were saying that about slavery reparations.

FINALLY, A JIM CROW THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH.

Conservatives finally have something to celebrate -- a wave of laws to deny public-accommodation relief to gays who've been discriminated against, so long as offending business remembers to cite the Lord or His equivalent. There's a bunch of it out there but National Review's Kevin D. Williamson will do:

Barry Goldwater, who set the great precedent for Arizonans’ shocking liberal sensibilities, had been an instrumental figure in the Phoenix desegregation effort but opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because he believed that by expanding the federal mandate it would lead to cumbrous and byzantine federal micromanagement of social affairs, and about that much he has been proved correct. The concept of “public accommodation” has been so inflated that as a practical matter no private sphere exists outside the home when the question of discrimination arises. That situation does not inculcate mutual toleration and respect, but the opposite.

And that's why there's still racism -- because Big Gummint won't get out of the way and let businesses say, "Keep walking, nigger, we don't serve your kind."  (Or "faggot," whatever.)

It's like they don't want any more votes, isn't it?

THAT'S WHAT THE NEW BREED SAY.

Hey guys it's Nick Gillespie, the fighting libertarian priest who can talk to kids, spreading the good word about libertarian dreamboat Rand Paul:

He’s called for major, across-the-board cuts to federal spending, pushed back against the Great American War Machine, and punked the D.C. establishment’s love of drone attacks and secret surveillance in a kidney-busting, 13-hour filibuster that set Twitter afire like a Miley Cyrus twerkathon.

OK, forget what I said about being able to talk to kids. But Gillespie and his posse think Rand can, because he's down with their values:

“The younger generation is probably the most libertarian and sort of tolerant, and has more libertarian values, I'd say, than any generation in American history," [Joe] Trippi recently told my Reason colleague Todd Krainin. Paul and others like him are engaging issues – drone strikes, drug legalization - that terrify old-line establishmentarians but energize disaffected voters that might include everyone from Glenn Beck to Occupy Wall Streeters.

 Glenn Beck to Occupy Wall Streeters! Consider this about Paul:

• He had to be frog-marched back from asserting that the Civil Rights Act is anti-freedom, and followed up on this outrage with a transparently self-promotional speech at Howard University.
• Not that he's totally insensitive to African-American-related issues: He has compared food stamps to slavery. (Universal health care, too!) 
• He introduced in the Senate a "fetal personhood" bill to ban abortion (but, you know, reproductive rights just aren't a big libertarian issue).
• Currently Paul is shoring up his youth cred by raising an alarm about Bill Clinton's decades-old blowjob. 

So you tell me: Who's more likely to back Paul -- Glenn Beck or "Occupy Wall Streeters"?

For libertarians, selected social issues are the come-on, but what's really important is getting rid of the safety nets to create a neo-feudal future where moochers must sweat or starve.  Just because we occasionally share a platform with Paul doesn't mean we identify with what's currently called libertarianism but remains, like I've been saying all along, merely conservatism for people with status anxieties.

LAW OF THE JUNGLE.

Here's another innovation from conservatives. You know how fond they are of guns. I'm pretty soft on gun rights myself, and wouldn't mind beginning a new round of Second Amendment negotiations with the right of Black Panthers to march on the State Capitol with loaded weapons and seeing where it goes from there. Not far, I expect. Anyway, as it happens the latest big gun news has been the Michael Dunn case (angry nut shoots black kid to death for loud music) which has made some folks nervous about firearms. In response comes National Review's David French to defend shootin' ahrns, but with a twist:

The protected class has a different view. The protected class is a dependent class — not economically dependent of course, but dependent on the state in perhaps a more fundamental way (for their very lives) – and like members of other dependent classes, they are terrified of flaws in the state’s protective apparatus. Walled off from gun culture, they read the occasional, aberrant story of (legal) gun-owner stupidity or recklessness and cower in fear of a nonexistent threat.

That's a new one on me: people who don't go around packing are a "protected class" -- that is, they rely for protection on police and armed forces. Apparently French considers such forces a socialist aberration like welfare, and those who rely on them yet another species of moocher. In his ideal world I suppose such things would be privatized, as they were in the days before that dark statist chapter in world history called Civilization.

These people bitch when some gay people want to make them bake their wedding cake, yet when they win a few gun rights court cases their instinct is to try and turn society into some neo-feudal hellscape.

YOU'RE GONNA TAKE A WALK IN THE RAIN AND YOU'RE GONNA GET WET -- I PREDICT!

Heritage apparatchik Mike Gonzalez has a long yap at The Federalist about how New Media will lead to conservative triumph, hooray. I don't know whether it's the billionth iteration of that story I've seen, or the ka-billionth; but it does distinguish itself by offering what I take as a hint of the next Conservative Victimization Theme:

Gonzalez notes a Brookings paper suggesting "digital firms should be encouraged to add criteria to their search engines that highlight information quality as opposed to mere popularity" -- that is, "high-quality coverage or providing diverse points of view." Dream on, dorks! But though a "Google official" (the one assigned to angry nuts, one imagines) assures Gonzalez they're not planning to do anything like that -- cat videos forever! -- Gonzalez seems unconvinced, and lays out an ominous scenario:

It would be dangerous if Google, Facebook or the other major players were to follow [Brookings'] advice, or if they’re already giving undue weight to liberal opinion... Both Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt are well-known liberals who support President Obama’s key policy initiatives. If they were to let their political proclivities dictate what’s promoted on their platforms we could start slipping back the age of Uncle Walter.

In Soviet Obamaland, cat videos you!

Now, other conservatives have asked similarly paranoid questions before -- for example, "Does Google Filter Out Controversial Conservatives From Search Suggestions?" ("Here's a video put together by my brother Tim Carney demonstrating the Google Suggest anti-Buchanan phenomenon. Full disclosure: I worked for Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign in 1996.") But as The Federalist is full of hungry outcast wingnuts looking to make a big splash, I predict that the next time a story conservatives think should be a big deal fails to become one -- like the 26th or 27th rerun of #Benghazi -- you'll see this idea hauled out. Because the failure of the American People to adopt their current top storylines -- for example, that Barack Obama is a dictator -- needs a better excuse than plain ol' media bias anymore. And "because our ideas are batshit crazy" won't do!

(Title inspiration here.)

UPDATE. "So," says JennOfArk in comments, "what they want is a Fairness Doctrine for internet search engines?" Now, now. I bet these guys would really get pissed if someone tried to tinker with pop-up ads for Goldline.

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...sort of a survey of modern trends in rightblogger imputations of tyranny to the Obama Administration, and how it's kind of become a mainstream conservative POV. I don't remember Clinton getting this kind of treatment, but maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention at that time; wasn't "criminal hillbilly" their schtick back then?  I suppose now, with nuts like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz representing the future of the Grand Old Party, it was inevitable that the language as well as the thinking would deteriorate to Bircher-pamphlet levels.

I just hope I haven't done too good a job of familiarizing the public with this stuff -- I'd hate to think I was normalizing it sufficiently that the citizens might no longer gave these guys the Springtime for Hitler look. You know, "seen too oft, familiar with her face" etc. Wouldn't that be a dramatic irony!

UPDATE. In comments, D. Johnson takes a trip down memory lane:

I remember the furor over Bush's executive orders. After reading dozens of blog posts on the topic, I became convinced that it was even worse than I thought. It was the start of a dictatorship, I reckoned; the administration would either declare martial law and suspend elections, or simply refuse to step down after the elections took place... 

I was fifteen years old at the time. What's their excuse?

Yeah, I only called Bush a fascist to be funny, but I was an old man even then. Christopher Hazell skunks the picnic by bringing up the droning: "Obama really gets a bum rap. I mean, you use your illegally massive secret surveillance network to track down and kill your own citizens without trial, and all of the sudden people start calling you a 'tyrant'!" Fair enough, I'm against that too, and will endorse actions against it even by transparently duplicitous conservatives. But I notice we hear fewer accusations of Obamatyranny over that these days than we do over fiddles with Obamacare and such like. Why do you suppose that is? Maybe it's close enough to 2016 that they're imagining their own asses in the CiC's seat.

UPDATE 2. Also in comments, Aimai, regarding Clinton: "Clinton the drug runner? The clinton hit list? Hillary accused of murdering her lover vince foster to cover up the fact she was a lesbian?" Ahhh yess, early innings in the right's attempt to capture the "have you ever really looked at a dollar bill, man?" market. There's a whole generation of wingnuts who think they learned "skepticism" from the Mena airport.

UPDATE 3. As usual, apposite posts turn up after my column is published. Today's Deroy Murdock propaganda job-o-work contains several ObamaHitlerisms such as "Obama now rules by decree," as well as a very Breitbartian complaint against Obama's executive orders: "Obama’s predecessors have signed executive orders and, more or less, left it at that. But Obama pounds his chest as he does so." If only Murdock had footage of this!

My favorite part, though, has nothing to do with ObamaHitler:

Also, Earth’s sole superpower is sagging where it should be No. 1. America has slouched to No. 12 on the 2014 Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom.

That's like saying America has regrettably fallen on the NAMBLA index of Places with Cute, Friendly, Unattended Kids.

LOVELESS.

Ever notice that while nearly every publication in the Western World sees Valentine's Day as a chance to indulge is some harmless romanticism, wingnuts take it as an opportunity to tell you love's just a scam and you should just get down to the miserable business of breeding?  Get a load of the cold open on Susan Patton's V-Day downer at the Wall Street Journal :

Another Valentine's Day. Another night spent ordering in sushi for one and mooning over "Downton Abbey" reruns. Smarten up, ladies. Despite all of the focus on professional advancement, for most of you the cornerstone of your future happiness will be the man you marry...

Apparently Patton is afraid some of her female readers (I know but look, anything's possible) have no mothers to call and tell them if they want ever to get hitched they better forget this "love" horseshit:

An extraordinary education is the greatest gift you can give yourself. But if you are a young woman who has had that blessing, the task of finding a life partner who shares your intellectual curiosity and potential for success is difficult. Those men who are as well-educated as you are often interested in younger, less challenging women.

So does Patton wants schoolly ladiez to date down? That'd be too easy:

Could you marry a man who isn't your intellectual or professional equal? Sure. But the likelihood is that it will be frustrating to be with someone who just can't keep up with you or your friends. When the conversation turns to Jean Cocteau or Henrik Ibsen, the Bayeux Tapestry or Noam Chomsky, you won't find that glazed look that comes over his face at all appealing...

You're probably beginning to catch on, from this oooh look at you with your stupid "education" you dateless hag schtick that Patton isn't here so much to help as to hector.

So what's a smart girl to do? Start looking early and stop wasting time dating men who aren't good for you: bad boys, crazy guys and married men. College is the best place to look for your mate...

Because by the time he sobers up it'll be too late. Also, Patton nags her lady readers that "men won't buy the cow if the milk is free," which I assume means you shouldn't indulge his lacto-porn urges till he puts a ring on it.

Not all women want marriage or motherhood, but if you do, you have to start listening to your gut and avoid falling for the P.C. feminist line that has misled so many young women for years.

Yeah, happy Valentines to you too, Miss Manners. Next, Matt K. Lewis at The Week --

Valentine's Day somehow manages to turn voluntary acts of kindness and warmth into perfunctory gestures, and romantic candlelight dinners into onerous burdens — all in the name of "love" (read: commercialism).

Lewis must have sensed that his readers might at this point mistake his POV as anti-capitalist and write stern letters to the editor, so he goes for sure-fire conservative signaling devices -- first, whining about Our Degraded Culture:

Just as Valentine's Day seems utterly harmless, much of the "wholesome" music we grew up listening to fostered this pernicious worldview. 

The Righteous Brothers, for example, sang: "Without you baby, what good am I?"

 Then, C.S. Lewis and Jesus! Finally, he tells us,

And if you do marry, forget about all that love at first sight nonsense. Find someone you'd be willing to go into battle with — or, at least, go into business with. That's not romantic, but it's wise.

Celebrate your exclusive rights tender with some coffee and donuts in the break room and then back to work! Does anything about Valentines Day bring joy or at least non-misery to these people? Well...

Obama's Valentine's Day gift to himself; dinner with royalty without Michelle

...no, actually. Nothing does. It's like even the specter of normal positive human feelings either gives them a sad or fills them with rage. I like to think of them as human beings, but I'm beginning to believe with Charlie Pierce that they are in fact the Mole People.

HOW JONAH GOLDBERG FILLS THE IDLE HOURS BETWEEN 9 A.M. AND 5 P.M.

Repeated verbatim:

TMI
By Jonah Goldberg

I have no problem with a gay man playing in the NFL. I have no problem with Michael Sam coming out of the closet. Good for him if that makes him happy. I even understand why it’s considered such a big deal, even if I suspect there’s more public relations spin at work here than an eager media will acknowledge. But I still can’t bring myself to care all that much. I certainly didn’t need to know that Sam told his father he was gay via text message. Nor did I need to know that his father helped one of his other sons lose his virginity in Mexico. Why is this any of our business?

I am tempted to call it a perfect Goldberg post -- it has several classic attributes, including the breathless eight-year-old-explaining-a-broken-cookie-jar tone,  a piss-dance between two contradictory points of view (I guess it's newsworthy, also I guess it's non-news planted by the gayist media), and a lengthy profession of disinterest in which you can almost hear his rising squeal. That it lacks a request that readers do his work for him should not be counted against it, because Goldberg's recent work shows absolutely no need for even second-hand research.

I guess we can just give it the traditional rating.