Put it in my tight little hate-hole

A few days back, Dean Barnett on Hooty Hoo's blog noted that, in marked contrast to conservative bloggers, leading liberal talking heads were a bunch of dirty potty mouths. "I bet you could read all of us for a week," said the Dean, "and not find a single naughty word on any of our sites."

Well, surely the Dean didn't think I was going to let him slide on that without a little fact-checking. I decided to comb through a week worth of posts at the cited sites, and I was appalled at what I found: these so-called morally upstanding right-wing pundits are wallowing in a cesspool of filth, depravity and racy language. Just look:

PROFESSOR POOPYPANTS: "ball" (thrice), "sucks" (thrice), "sexual" (thrice), "sex", "pork", "guzzling", "dick", "dog doo", "Ann Althouse".

NAUGHTY GIRL: "hot" (innumerable times), "bottom", "oopsie-doopsie", "damnable" (twice), "embeddable", "yanked", "super-sized", "nuts", "Ann Althouse".

KILLING AN ARAB: "outrageous", "unbelievable", "smear-job", "disgraceful", "distorted", "murderers", "genocide", "truly evil", "repellent", "fraudulent", "just plain evil", "sick". "creepy", "offensive", "disgusting", "hate-hole", "twisted", "freaks", "tainted", "horrifying", "ghoulish", "bloodstained", "appalling".*

YO OLDE BLOWHARDE: "coming" (twice), "rocky", "draining the swamp", "diktat", "Shi'ite", "leeway", "bones", "tucchus", "bits", "lip-biting", "Phillipe Douste-Blazy".

HOOTY HOO: "secret weapon", "satisfied customer", "blunt talk", "fumblerooski", "walk back the cat", "erecting a strawman", "quarantinig [sic] its staff".

BUTT PROPULSION LABORATORIES: "armadillo".

*: That's just from the last three days! And, in the comments section of just his most recent post, I got "asshole", "crap", "fucking" (twice), "asswipe", "shitheads", "pussy", "fuckhead", "reamed their holes", and several threats to attack a young female music critic of Arab descent with a hammer and a fire hose. But hey, that's not his fault! We all know that you can't blame an entire movement for what a few of its more extreme adherents might say, right?

Then we can make all kinds of crazy laws!

Over at Pedestrian Infidel, one of the more virulent anti-Muslim hate sites, one of the mouthbreathers has posted an hilarious proposed constitutional amendment that would ban Islam. Thus making it the sort of constitutional amendment that not only openly ignores the content of the rest of the constitution, but neatly accomplishes the very goals of the people it claims to target. Let's take a look!

Whereas Religion is defined as an institution dedicated to improving social conscience and promoting individual and societal spiritual growth in a way that is harmless to others not participating in or practicing the same;

It is? Says who?

Whereas Islam includes a complete political and social structure, encompassed by its religious law, Sharia, that supersedes any civil law and that Islam mandates that no secular or democratic institutions are to be superior to Islamic law;

Of course, millions and millions of individual Muslims and many majority-Islamic states do not practice shari'a, but that's not important right now.

Whereas Islam preaches that it and it alone is the true religion

A precept completely absent from any other religions widely believed here in the US of A.

Whereas Saudi Arabia, the spiritual home of Islam does not permit the practice of any other religion on its soil and even “moderate” Muslims states such as Turkey and Malaysia actively suppress other religions;

Whereas in Russia they speak Russian and in Korea all the basketball teams are really short...

Whereas Islam includes as its basic tenant the spread of the faith by any and all means necessary

TENET, you fucking assholes, TENET, use the right goddamn word for once in your lives.

Whereas on 9/11/2001 19 Muslim hijackers acting in the name of Islam killed 3,000 Americans

Islam's name could not be reached for comment.

Whereas there is no organized Islamic opposition to violent proponents of Islam;

None! Anywhere! Which is why violent Islamism dominates in every one of the countries where Islam's 1.5 billion adherents live.

Therefore: Islam is not a religion, but a political ideology more akin to Fascism and totally in opposition to the ideals of freedom as described in the United States Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights.

Therefore, french fries taste good. (Fascism, by the way? Still legal in the U.S. Communism, too.)

Be it resolved that the following Amendment to the Constitution be adopted:

Be it resolved that I'm really impressed with myself.

Article I: The social/political/ideological system known around the world as Islam is not recognized in the United States as a religion. The practice of Islam is therefore not protected under the 1st Amendment as to freedom of religion and speech.

It's some kind of crazy new thing that allows us to ignore the fact that the rest of the Constitution expressly forbids discrimination based on religion -- or, for that matter, social preference, ideological belief, or political party affiliation.

Article II: As representatives of Islam around the world have declared war, and committed acts of war, against the United States and its democratic allies around the world, Islam is hereby declared an enemy of the United States and its practice within the United States is now prohibited.

Be it resolved that we just wrote the world's biggest enforcement problem right into the Constitution.

Article III: Immediately upon passage of this Amendment all Mosques, schools and Muslim places of worship and religious training are to be closed, converted to other uses, or destroyed. Proceeds from sales of such properties may be distributed to congregations of said places but full disclosure of all proceeds shall be made to an appropriate agency as determined by Congress. No compensation is to be offered by Federal or State agencies for losses on such properties however Federal funding is to be available for the demolishing of said structures if other disposition cannot be made.

This is super-American and democratic! What patriotic, freedom-loving American doesn't want to seize and destroy the property of innocent people?

The preaching of Islam in Mosques, Schools, and other venues is prohibited. The subject of Islam may be taught in a post high school academic environment provided that instruction include discussion of Islam’s history of violence, conquest, and its ongoing war on democratic and other non-Islamic values.

Well, this doesn't resemble the tactics of Nazis, Stalinists, or radical Islamists at ALL.

The preaching or advocating of Islamic ideals of world domination, destruction of America and democratic institutions, jihad against Judaism, Christianity and other religions, and advocating the implementation of Sharia law shall in all cases be punishable by fines, imprisonment, deportation, and death as proscribed by Congress.

I'll tell you what, I bet the founding fathers are just kicking themselves in Heaven for not having the foresight to include a Constitutional amendment allowing the death penalty for belonging to a different religion.

Muslims will be denied the opportunity to immigrate to the United States.

That way, we can ensure that all the Muslims who aren't radical extremists have to stay where they are and get imprisoned or killed! It's a great plan!

And now, the big finish:

Article IV: Nothing in this amendment shall be construed as authorizing the discrimination against, of violence upon, nor repudiation of the individual rights of those Americans professing to be Muslim.

HA HA HA HA HA, maaaaaan! And people wonder why I find this stuff so goddamn hilarious.

It takes a shocking 10 or 12 posts in the comments section for someone to suggest nuking Mecca. What tolerance! What grace! What the fuck!

Saint of Killers

Over at Volokh, David Kopel asks us to join him in celebrating St. Gabriel Possenti Day. Gabe is the gun-totin' bigamist wannabe that kill-fetishists want to have declared the patron saint of handgunners. Because, really, who needs to be protected by magical ghosts more than someone wielding a semi-automatic?

Perhaps anticipating the "what the fuck?" reaction, Kopel reminds us that there are all kinds of saints whose purview is killing people, including St. Barbara (ammo mags), St. Adrian of Nicomedia (arms dealers), paratroopers (the Archangel Michael) and Special Forces (St. Philip Neri).

However, reading further, St. Gabe might be better named the patron saint of hysterically violent overreactions to homosexuality:

This was not the only time that Possenti drew a weapon. On one occasion, the young seminarian was taking a walk when a young man came along, and began chatting and walking with Possenti. The conversation was friendly, until they came near a deserted shack, and the stranger tried to lure Possenti inside for a homosexual encounter-—a triple sin in Possenti's eyes, since the sex would be non-marital, homosexual, and a flagrant violation of the seminarian’s vow of celibacy. Apparently afraid that the stranger might attempt to rape him, Possenti drew his hunting knife, which he always carried when walking in the woods, and yelled, "You fiend! If you try to touch me, I'll stick you through." The stranger fled.

That'll learn him! A gun-toting, knife-wielding, hot-tempered, angry homophobe -- surely this is a saint for our times.

How liberals are today

Like most liberals, I take my cues on how to act from my dark master, Satan.

Ha ha, no! I'm kidding. Really, I take my cues on how to act by the people who are watching me the closest. Just as a wild chimp in the savage jungles doesn't know he's eating a banana until Jane Goodall shows him the notes she made saying so, no good liberal knows what is behind his bizarre, hateful, anti-human behavior until someone at Town Hall explains it. So we periodically check in with the Clown Royal Family, in order to know how we are. Let's see!

- Mark Alexander: liberals like Al Gore even though he is a communist.
- John Kline: liberals want to destroy democracy with their so-called 'unions'.*
- Thomas Sowell: liberals are living in a crazy fantasy world where Clarence Thomas is dumb.
- Janice Shaw Crouch: liberals have created a poisonous culture that makes celebrities shave their own heads.
- David Limbaugh: liberals are gutless, terror-aiding traitors but they won't let us say so.
- Phyllis Schlafly: liberals are trying to get us to pass a wasteful law to prevent violence against women, which is totally unnecessary because American women are protected by the Virgin Mary.
- Douglas MacKinnon: liberals have doomed our country by threatening any politician who dares speak out against Islamofascism.
- Dennis Prager: liberals might sometimes be Jewish, but they're not Jewish enough.

The pursuit of happiness

A new opinion poll demonstrates how completely "Old Europe" is brainwashed by years of leftist multicultural propaganda. An astonishing 87% of Europeans consider themselves happy, with only Bulgaria -- part of "New Old Europe" and thus semi-aware of their continent's precarious position at the knife-edge of Islamoterrorfascism -- rating themselves as mildly unhappy.

Most incomprehensible of all, 97% of the stalwart Danes rate themselves as happy! For goodness sake, aren't these people reading The Darkies Are Coming? Their very existence is under attack by the dusky hordes! Why, just today, we learn of the Fritter Folk, a praiseworthy and probably-not-at-all white supremacist neo-Nazi organization in Denmark which is bravely giving speeches in front of heroic statues -- speeches which take a bold stand against the gang rapes, baby mutilations, and the inability of kindergarteners to eat pork livers!

WAKE UP, vast majority of Danish citizens! According to this ridiculous, and probably liberally biased, poll, you're more worried about petty nonsense like unemployment, the rising cost of living, and whether or not your hard-earned pensions will disappear than truly important issues like banning the Q'uran! If only you read more crazy right-wing blogs, you wouldn't be "happy", or, as I like to call it, "hurtling head-first towards inevitable cultural suicide".

The Shit

By giving this post that title, I have proven Dean Barnett's point, which is that liberal bloggers are a bunch of potty-mouths.

The top-rated conservative blogs are Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, Powerline, Captain’s Quarters, Hot Air and our own humble little Hugh Hewitt site. All of these sites eschew a “vivid vocabulary.” I bet you could read all of us for a week and not find a single naughty word on any of our sites.

Yes, indeed! You might find a whole bunch of crazy racism, sexism, and homophobia; you'll almost certainly find totally baseless accusations of anti-Semitism and claims that anyone who votes Democrat is objectively pro-terror; and you more than likely will hear calls for genocide against dark-skinned middle-easterners. There'll probably also be a defense of building concentration camps, a call for poor people to quit whining and get a job, and a comparison of someone who wants to give underpriveleged citizens health care to Joseph Stalin. There is a 100% likelihood that you will read someone typing with one hand about the future destruction by terror nuke of a minor American city and how that will be all the fault of the liberals*.

But you won't see any swearing! Well, unless you read the comments sections, where it takes about three seconds for someone to call Nancy Pelosi a cunt.

*: By the way, surely I'm not the only one who's noticed that conservatives come all over themselves at the thought of getting to blame liberals for the imaginary destruction of a theoretical American city by nonexistent terrorists, but that their reaction to the actual destruction of an actual American city has been muted at best? New Orleans is still a disaster area, but I can't remember the last time a conservative blogger said anything about it, or called for someone to be held responsible, or demanded that it not happen again, or did anything other than bitch about looters and the alleged crime rate upswing in cities with a lot of Katrina evacuees. By their works, etc.

D'Souzaphone Sounds Off

Dinesh "The Terrorists Were Right" D'Souza wants to know: what really went on at Abu Ghraib?

For one thing, Muslims didn't get mad about the whole torture thing. After all, since they are animals who only understand force, it was quite mild by their standards:

Most Muslims did not view it as a torture story at all. Muslims were not outraged at the interrogation techniques used by the American military, which are quite mild by Arab standards. Moreover, many Muslims realized that the most of the torture scenes in the photographs—the hooded man with his arms outstretched, the prisoner with wires attached to his limbs—were staged.

Note the rigorouly sourced claims that "most" and "many" Muslims weren't outraged by the torture. This is proven by the footnotes, which a careful study reveals there aren't any footnotes. No, the Muslims weren't outraged at beatings, suffocation, humiliation, mistreatment or rape: what really bothered them was the sex stuff, because like most right-thinking people, Muslims hate dirty nasty ucky sex:

The main focus of Islamic disgust was what Muslims perceived as extreme sexual perversion. For many traditional Muslims, Abu Ghraib demonstrated the casualness with which married Americans have affairs, walk out on their spouses, and produce children without bothering to take responsibility for the care of their offspring. In the Muslim view, this perversion is characteristic of American society.

You see, it's not at all that Iraqis were pissed that innocent people were beaten and tortured and had broken light-sticks shoved up their ass! Not at all. What really frosted their Islamic flakes is that the people doing their torture were having unmarried sex and carrying on affairs and bearing children out of wedlock. Which, I mean, you know, that makes perfect sense to me. Whenever someone smears me with dogshit, wraps me up in a mattress, pounds on my kidneys with a rifle butt, and takes photographs of the whole scene to send to his buddies back home, the first thing in the forefront of my mind is, "Is this guy who's torturing me loyal to his spouse? Because if not, I'm going to be very upset."

Of course, if the Iraqis who felt the illicit carryings-on of PFC England and Spec. Granier were representative of the evils of America, they were mistaken:

It reflected the sexual immodesty of liberal America. Lynndie England and Charles Graner were two wretched individuals from Red America who were trying to act out the fantasies of Blue America. Casting aside all traditional notions of decency, propriety and morality, they simply lived by the code of self-fulfillment. If it feels good, it must be right. This was bohemianism, West Virginia-style.

You see, even though England and Granier were red-state Republicans, they had somehow been brainwashed into adopting liberal blue-state values (extramarital affairs, sexual promiscuity and unwanted pregnancy being completely unknown in conservative circles). If not for the insidious influence of the cultural left, it would not have occurred to two Appalachian-Americans to have sex with one another, and the horrors of Abu Ghraib would never have taken place!

This is why we must not minimize what went on there; it was a terrible, unforgivable thing. But we must make sure that we blame the right people: not the soldiers who actually did it, or the military that allowed it to happen and then covered it up, or the government that failed to address it, or the pundits who made excuses for it, but the liberals:

In minimizing Abu Ghraib, some conservatives became cheap apologists for liberal debauchery.

It takes a lot of stones to claim that Abu Ghraib is the responsibility of the liberal left, but that's why Dinesh is a superstar.

It's a Doug's Doug's Doug's Doug's World

We haven't checked in on Doug Giles in a few weeks, and it seems that in the meantime, he's gone from worrying that his daughters might marry a Negro to someone might mistake him for a fruit.

But not to worry! Doug is a man's man -- possibly even a man's man's man -- but that doesn't mean he's a, er, man's man. In fact, he has ten simple rules so that "you the gay person, has got to help me out a little bit". Doug, you see, doesn't understand the homo mind. He doesn't understand why gay men don't like women, when they want to be women; and, in a seeming contradiction that nonetheless is right at home in his meaty brain, he doesn't understand why, if lesbians like women, they behave like men. He also, in a choice that may be more revealing than he intends, expresses a desire that gay men emulate ruff-trade leatherboy Rob Halford instead of "Jay Alexander"* But he's willing to meet the queers halfway, and has compiled a list of ten things to know about the straight man.

1. We can clean up real good.

2. That said, we don't want clean fingernails or fruity hairdos.

3. Also, Vespas are for girls and "Harley's" are for boys.

4. Little dogs are definitely fruity.

5. All straight men enjoy cavorting in the glory of a steaming pile of animal intestines.

6. Real men do not use Chap-Stik.

7. "We like boots not flip flops." (I think Doug here is confusing gay men with elderly Floridians.)

8. Real men do not like Celine Dion, especially "for the eight time". However, they are apparently powerless to change the channel when she is on.

9. We like tits.

10. It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve! Isn't that funny? He just thought of it.

*: Presumably, Doug means ANTM's J. Alexander, and not this guy.

Early mornin' Jew-hatin'

Normally, I eschew simple links to poli-bloggers more popular than myself (i.e., all of them), because it feels too much like whoring, which I already do too much of at my day job as a prostitute. I prefer to provide original content, because, well, I'm just so fucking funny.

But no amount of my funny can compete with this post from the Poor Man, where he is attacked as a deranged anti-Semite by "What Would Charles Martel Do?"*, one of the less noticeable Exterminate-the-Brutes blogs. You really must take a look at how this unhinged, self-impressed Warhammer enthusiast goes sickhouse on one of my fellow jolly jokesters, accusing him of Alfred-Rosenberg-style Jew-hatred while claiming that his own hysterical fear of and revulsion towards Muslims is in fact "making a stand FOR TOLERANCE".

Oh, and speaking of making a stand for tolerance, what if I were to tell you that Chuckles Johnson is so blinded by his hatred of Arabs that he can't understand the most obvious sarcasm in political cartoons and completely misses who's being mocked in a one-panel strip that a dull eleven-year-old would be able to understand? You'd believe it? Me too.

*: Probably say something like "Aieeee! Giant metal bug!", or stare blankly at a Coca-Cola billboard, or cry when someone made fun of how his father was named "Pippin the Middle", or something. Maybe get a Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger, I dunno.

And the Oscar goes to..."Enter the Shrimper"!

Today's winner of the "Article Whose Entire Premise is Refuted By Its Very Existence" award is: Dick Morris!

Space-Stalin attacks!

In the "things I am going to start worrying about the minute every other problem in the world is completely resolved" department, Professor Poopypants draws our attention to the growing menace of "a vast socialist empire in space". I'm pretty sure that we need to focus on establishing individual property rights on the moon just about as much as we need to focus on establishing proper voting rights for tigers.

Thank God that's over with

After his terrifying brush with the unpleasant General Odom, who failed to appreciate his position on the front lines of terror, Hooty Hoo makes a stunning recovery by sitting down with Milosevic enthusiast Mark Time, who isn't going to do anything crazy like disagree with him or challenge his basic assumptions.

In case you don't have time to read the whole transcript, here's a précis:

HUGH HEWITT: Can you believe that general guy? He didn't know anything about the 12th Imam.

MARK STEYN: It's as if he thinks the lunatic opinions of a handful of religious fanatics are of marginal importance to our foreign policy and international strategic goals!

HUGH HEWITT: He didn't even know who Sayed Qutub was. I have to question his very competence to carry on an adult conversation if he can't identify a man who's been dead for forty years and might have been an influence on the nutty ideas of Osama bin-Laden. That would be like trying to fight the Nazis in WII without having read the complete works of the Comte de Gobineau!

MARK STEYN: How dare he try and make suggestions for global policy that are not contingent on hysterical fretting over obscure Islamist theology!

HUGH HEWITT: Clearly, he is just an ignorant Lieutenant-General in the US Army who was head of military intelligence, a former director of the National Security Agency, and a veteran of three foreign wars, and he lacks the kind of knowledge and insight that you, a Canadian former disc jockey and expert on musical theatre, and I, a prominent blogger and former overseer of the Nixon Museum, possess.

MARK STEYN: Well, that bad man is gone now, Hugh, and I'm here. Can we go back to talking about how the only way to stop the Islamist menace is through calculated genocide?

HUGH HEWITT: We sure can, Mark. We sure can.

Counterpoint: homos are gross

The Medfly doesn't want to seem like some sort of a deranged, homophobic asshole like Tim Hardaway, but he has to admit: queers are pretty yucky.

You can tell early on that the Medfly is going to bust some crazy science on us:

In response to the Hardaway controversy, several sports columnists compared his resistance to the idea of playing alongside gay teammates to the racism of previous years when white players tried to avoid competing with (or against) blacks. The analogy is ridiculous, of course. There is no rational basis for discomfort at playing with athletes of another race since science and experience show that human racial differences remain insignificant. The much better analogy for discomfort at gay teammates involves the widespread (and generally accepted) idea that women and men shouldn’t share locker rooms.

You see, science has shown us that being creeped out at hanging around with blacks is not rational -- but being creeped out at hanging around with gays? That's perfectly in line with human nature! Science and rationality totally support homophobia! IT'S IN REVELATIONS, PEOPLE

Making gay males unwelcome in the intimate circumstances of an NBA team makes just as much sense as making straight males unwelcome in the showers for a women’s team at the WNBA. Most female athletes would prefer not to shower together with men not because they hate males (though some of them no doubt do), but because they hope to avoid the tension, distraction and complication that prove inevitable when issues of sexual attraction (and even arousal) intrude into the arena of competitive sports.

Regarding the cute little jab at the man-hating lesbians of the WNBA, the Medfly seems confused. If there are a bunch of dykes in the WNBA, wouldn't the sexual tension come from showering with other women? Also, I'm not sure if he's aware of this, but there are male locker room reporters in the WNBA, but like the male locker room reporters in the regular NBA, they do not actually shower with the athletes.

But wait! The Medfly is about to reach the zenith of dumb. Let's watch!

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her.

RESOLVED:

- Homos are gross
- They're kinda like fat ugly broads
- In that no one wants to fuck them
- NBA players are like dogs that are constantly in rut
- So they would really get off on showering with hot chicks
- But not fat ugly gross ones
- Which is what homos are like (see Point 2)
- Unlike the roguish heteros of the NBA, there is nothing charming about the sexual desires of disgusting fat ladies or queers
- And decent people should not be exposed to anything like that
- Therefore, Tim Hardaway is right

The Medfly, ladies and gentlemen. Solving all our problems...with SCIENCE!

Town Hall Crapdate

Things are a bit slow at the gas station, but Town Hall is always working overtime!

Paul Greenberg writes a spirited defense of plagiarism, saying that when he does it, it's cute.

Frank Gaffney shows an admirable consistency by insisting that dirty vicious Muslims have no place on the right, either.

Janice Shaw Crouse, Town Hall's resident "oh my goodness" expert, decries our permissive society, what with its salacious airplane-toilet sex-having. Can't something be done?

Brent "Walter Peck" Bozell, who, like most conservatives, knows that Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb turned out to be inaccurate, reminds us that because someone was once wrong about something, we should never, ever listen to scientists ever again.

Little Benny Shapiro notes that Muslims are worse than asteroids, and people from other countries are no good.

Dummytude Watch

Thanks to the ever-alert Baron Zemo over at The Darkies Are Coming, we now know that Muslims are building shacks in rural Georgia. Mysterious shacks. Mysterious shacks with oddly colored roofs. Thanks to this brave hero and his comrades in the Christian Action Network, whatever that is, who actually took to the skies in a stunningly good use of their money and time, America may yet survive the deadly tanning sheds and smokehouses of these sinister Musselmen.

And they're not just any Muslims. They're Negroes!

Oh, boy!

Via LGM, it appears that everyone's favorite Bluto-intellectual, Victor Davis Hanson, is writing a novel!

Well, it's about time, is all I can say. America has surely been crying out for a novel about the great march of the Boiotians under Epaminodas to liberate the Messinian helots, and soon it will have one! If the excerpts are any indication, this thing's gonna be dynamite:

The great victory over the Spartans at Leuktra is a year past. It’s now winter, and the Boiotians are still debating whether to take the war home to Sparta. After hearing the Athenian Kallistratos and his Boiotian ally Eteokles damn the notion of a katabasis southward, the general Epaminondas addresses and wins over the assembly to march out the next day.

Wow, COMPELLING! Way to set the scene, Vic. Now, hit us with some narrative.

No one was quite sure what would next follow. No one in memory had voted to march so far for so long—and for so many others. An eerie silence followed. Would harsh Reason goad them back, back to blame others for the vote?

I DON'T KNOW! But I can't wait to find out! You never know what's going to happen with that crazy harsh Reason, and its goading!

Then Melon for the first time noticed that the old sophist Alkidamas of all people, the wine-soaked has-been of the symposia, not the Boiotarchs or once again Pelopidas, was approaching the bema.

No! No fucking way! Not Melon! Surely it's a Boiotarch. NOT MELON!!!1! Totally get that guy away from the bema!

As the assembly of the Boiotians broke up, the white-haired Alkidamas lumbered over to Melon and slapped him lightly across the face, “I think I have the beginning of a real speech some day from these words that suddenly flew into my head. Such a wild daimon came into me—it was as if the one god of ours were wagging my tongue. Still is it seems.”

That...is some A-#1 dialogue. No wonder he is the leading light of neo-conservative smartitude! I cannot wait for the release of this amazing work of fiction.

Vic also has some pointed questions for his audience today:

If one were to substitute “Muslim” for “Christian” in the rants of the Edwards bloggers, would there have been any hesitation about firing them?

That's an interesting question, Vic! I bet the continued employment of Charles Johnson, your co-columnist at Big Boy Jammies, might help answer it.

If Austrian sniper rifles really were recently sold to Iran, brought into Iraq, and used to kill Americans., what would Europeans think if American sniper weaponry were sold, under our government’s auspices, to those supplying the Basque separatists to kill Spaniards?

Uh...there's no "if" about it, Vic. The United States is the biggest arms supplier in the world and has been for decades, and has supplied arms to a number of terror organizations all over the world, and to State-Department-certified 'undemocratic states' and human rights abusers like Pakistan, Colombia, Ethiopia, Chad and Angola. People who are against these sorts of deals, unlike you, are generally opposed to the proliferation of violence in general rather than just trying to score ideological I-told-you-so points.

Hamas and Fatah have different uniforms. They have two conflicting ideologies and clear antithetical agendas. And now they are killing one another. Why is this not a “civil war,” but the senseless sectarian violence in Iraq is?

Hmmm. A stumper! I can't think of one single answer to this one! Possibly because there are many answers! Like:

- Neither Hamas nor Fatah have official uniforms

- While their ideological agendas are different in some ways, they are similar in many others

- Neither is a state actor, and the area in which they are fighting is not a recognized nation, thus disqualifying any conflict between them as a civil war on its face

- The phrase "civil war" has an actual meaning and isn't just some bullshit thing that people say, and the Hamas/Fatah conflict doesn't even remotely meet any of the standards for a civil war

- You're an idiot and nothing about your question makes any sense

It's Mr. President Man's Day!

Yes, it's President's Day, and in celebration of the great men who labored so tirelessly to make this country succeed, I get the day off work. But Mr. President Man never takes the day off; even when the rest of us are eating pizza fingers and drinking Mai Tais, he is scrambling to prove that his administration has made many worse mistakes than invading Iraq.

I thought, since I don't have to work today, this might be a good time to look back at how Mr. President Man is doing. After all, he'll be the one whose birthday we're celebrating one day!

1. MARS WATCH: Still not on Mars. But workin' on it! What else are we gonna do with all that money?

2. SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM: Still not reformed. But totally workin' on it! Look out, America! Anyway, the economy is fine. Who needs Social Security anyway?

3. DEATH TAX REPEAL: Whoops, hit a little snag there. But hopefully it won't be long before this terrible burden is lifted off the backs of our hardest-working Americans.

4. WAR ON TERROR: Hey, this is a pretty big one, right? Still, it's really not going as well as it might. But he's really talking tough about it, so start expecting results any day now!

5. BANNING HUMAN-ANIMAL HYBRIDS: Now we're talking! Werewolf attacks are at an all-time low, and we may have no idea where Bin-Laden is, but at leasts arrests are being made. Way to go, Mr. President Man!

Elsewhere at the gas station...

The Man from Fuddles writes a love letter to Big Petroleum, Janet Shaw Crouse defends virginity by comparing sex to an elephant, Mona Charen places the blame for the fall of the Twin Towers on rap music, hotel porn, Britney Spears and Two and a Half Men, and John Hawkins, the bull-necked dingaling who is rapidly becoming the pride of Town Hall, gives the ol' Stabbed-in-the-Back-Mobile another spin around the block.

Poor little naughty girl

Via the ever-sassy Bradley No, we learn that the Naughty Girl (who, yesterday, was creaming her jeans about Professor Poopypants' revelation that hard-rockin' superstars Five for Fighting are fans of right-wing Bluto-intellectual Viktor Davis Hanson) has received an adoring mash note from the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz. Sure, dear readers, you might think Michelle Malkin is a horrible, despicable human being who makes her living mau-mauing anyone whose politics are even at slight variance with her own, but in fact, she is a lonely, sad little girl who has had to suffer deprivations and persecutions that you are probably totally incapable of understanding. Why, just look at what the poor thing has had to live through!

Michelle Malkin has seen her head electronically grafted onto a photo of a bikini-clad body.

OH NOES! That's as bad as being imprisoned in a Japanese-American internment camp! Luckily, our little trouper has been able to ease her pain by constantly using Photoshop mockery of her own on her Hot Air v-casts.

She had to cancel a Berkeley book signing in the face of 200 shouting protesters.

OH NOES! Protestors? Against Michelle Malkin? What is this world coming to? Lousy democracy!

YouTube banned one of her videos.

OH NOES! YouTube banning one of your videos is a thousand times worse than the Siberian gulags, Sobibor and the Black Hole of Calcutta put together!

And she felt compelled to move after critics posted online her Gaithersburg area address and pictures of her home.

OH NOES! Of course, this only happened as retaliation for Malkin having published the address, phone number and contact information of some college students whose viewpoints she disagreed with (and which resulted in dozens of death threats from her readers to the students), but that's beside the point! No matter how many times the Naughty Girl uses other peoples' personal information as part of an ideological attack plan, no matter how many times her own readers make death threats against the people she declares the enemy, no matter even if her actions might have actually exacerbated the conditions that led to someone's suicide or actually leads to domestic terrorism, the important thing to remember is, it's not her fault, and using her own techniques against her is absolutely beyond the pale.

Malkin tells it like it is: all the attacks on her are really about racism.

"Particularly when you're a minority conservative," she says, "you get a lot of ugly, hysterical, unhinged attacks, because you're challenging so many liberal myths about what people of color should think."

True enough, some people do believe the myth that people of color shouldn't be virulent racists, that Asian-Americans shouldn't write books defending Japanese-American internment camps, and that "anchor baby" daughters of immigrants shouldn't be so quick to constantly condemn immigrants who have "anchor babies". But that doesn't excuse the fact that one out of a hundred comments on liberal blogs sometimes call her a "gook" or a "slanty"; that's the sort of unspeakable vileness that you never see in right-wing blogs, and certainly never on Michelle's own website.

After a few liberal sites posted her home address and phone numbers last year, Malkin received a wave of harassing calls. She responded with a defiant post, headlined "I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU." Malkin and her family have moved elsewhere in Maryland.

"No one likes to receive the kind of attacks she gets," [Malkin's business partner] Preston says. "She has had to take some security precautions to make sure it doesn't rise to the level of threatening her family."

Moving to a different house might seem like the actions of someone who is afraid, but in reality, she was just taking precautions against the possibilty that someday someone will threaten her family, which hasn't happened yet, but you never know.

"You have to accept that you'll never have many friends," Malkin says. "It's a lonely existence."

FEEL SORRY FOR HER, READERS. I COMMAND IT.

Be my neo-con Valentine

You know, there's more to the National Review than just Jonah Goldberg and the Corner Boys making Star Trek references. They have their romantic side, too, and they celebrated Valentine's Day by writing adorably goopy love letters to their favorite politicos.

It's always hard to judge someone's sincere declaration of love; ranking one honest, heartfelt expression of feelings against another seems almost cruel. So how can we say what's best? How can we say that Andrew Breitbart's mash note to shrill lesbian anti-feminist Tammy Bruce is better or worse than Lucianne Goldberg's adoration of Margaret Thatcher for her unparalleled ability to wear a hat? (No, really. Go look.) Bridget Johnson gets all wet at the thought of "sexy" Israeli ambassador Dan Gillerman, and Kathryn Jean Lopez finds her heart aflutter at the thought of shithouse-rat-crazy ex-Senator Bob Dornan. (They don't let Jonah play, because he just says "Seven of Nine" every time.)

The reprehensible Maggie Thatcher is, indeed, the most adored (though not always for her hat-wearing skills), with Ronald Reagan a close second, but Rudy Giuliani is a strong candidate for neo-con love. Midge (Mrs. Norman Podhoretz) Decter singles him out for his Negro-hiding skills:

Practically every New Yorker over the age of 17 knows from his own experience that [before Giuliani] our city had become a dirty, dangerous, and depressed place, with criminals and beggars vying for pride of place in its streets

But the best of all comes from pudding-sweet Danielle Crittenden, who likewise admires Rudy's courageous stance in locking up homeless people, and expresses in rhyme her love of the only man who can stand up to the Democrats who are doing such a lousy job of protecting the Kurds:

You may not be pro-life enough
for the religious right;
You may come on too mean and tough
to please every girl in sight;

While it's true your past is shady
And could spoil photo-ops;
(What with Bernie, the ex-first lady,
And that Louima stuff with the cops...)

I can't help feeling you're the man
with whom to spend the next two terms;
You're a butt-kicking Yankee fan
Who's got no time for worms.

A man who's locked out Arafat
And thrown vagrants into prison
Won't cringe before a Democrat
Or allow Iran nuclear fission.

We need you to beat Obama
Whose grand evasive words
Won't find and kill Osama
Or protect Israel, or the Kurds.

That's why I’ll board the Rudy bus
'Cause in politics as in love
Courage is what carries us
When push comes down to shove.

AAAAAAAAAAAAWWWW.

Iran, So Far Away

But not so far away that we shouldn't invade it! Come on, this is a great idea and everybody knows it. Of course, Mr. President Man says we aren't going to do it and that his only goal is to protect our troops, but then again, he managed to protect them twice before by ordering them to invade a country that hadn't attacked us. I mean, really, he is protecting the motherfucking shit out of our troops. As always, we should listen to the cave bear grunts issuing forth from the trachea of Dick Cheney to know what our real plans are: to make a nice, tidy little line-up of Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. No one likes to start on a collection and end up missing one piece! Just ask our well-protected troops, many of whom are now themselves missing pieces: they sure don't like it!

Hearts and minds, everybody...

Hearts and minds...

Death of a Salesblob

With Kansas inexplicably taking steps to surrender its crown as dumbest state in the union, Tennessee is bolting right for the opening.

Under this proposed legislation, death certificates would have to be filled out for all aborted fetuses within ten days of their demise. This might propose a bit of an administrative problem, as an aborted fetus does not have a name, address, Social Security number, place of birth, or any other kind of identifying feature of the sort that is normally recorded on a death certificate. This makes the resulting document slightly less useful than a blank piece of paper except for its actual purpose, which is providing a means to facilitate the harrassment of women.

I look forward to Tennessee's next bold legislative proposal, which I'm guessing will be requiring funerals for every chicken eaten within the state lines.

(Thanks to Maud for the tip.)

Even in India, they know these guys are assholes

Group Portrait with Rabies: Mukul Kesavan, a columnist for the Calcutta Telegraph, reads Christopher Hitchen's glowing review of Mark Time's new book, and detects in it a gleeful naughtiness, an adolescent's joy at saying something shocking. When Hitch gives a thumbs up to slaughtering those undesirable demographics you cannot outbreed, argues the author, you may think you're just playing to the South Park conservative crowd, the folks who think you're being delightfully un-P.C., but what you're really doing is making room at the table for the worst elements of your ideology. India is a country that knows a bit about real, honest-to-goodness fascism -- there's more than a few fascist parties with sitting members of parliament -- and the opinions of their observers should be given a tad more weight than those of an expat Orwell-stroker and a Canadian gloomsayer. Give it a ride...

Becking News!

Glenn Beck, who previously took a brave stance in demanding that Keith Ellison prove he was not a terrorist babykiller, tells everybody to just calm down, because Barack Obama isn't actually black.

We are awaiting the arrival of Alan Keyes with a paper bag to confirm or deny this claim.

Junk-in-the-trunk science

On the topic of global warming, you have to admit, the conservatives are just fighting the good fight for truth in science, the same way they do with creationism "Intelligent Design". All they want are the facts, verifiable and testable; they have no other reason to oppose this crazy left-wing cult called "global warming". And if you think they do -- if you're one of those small, suspicious people who suppose there might be an ulterior motive behind their noble opposition to this so-called "scientific fact" that is allegedly "unquestionable true" according to a bunch of self-appointed "researchers" and "experts in their fields" -- well, then, I just feel sorry for you.

(Courtesy the Poor Man, who, in an excellent post on the subject of global warming denial, notes that this ain't the first time Exxon-Mobil has tried the pay-for-play approach.)

Slaying the Pandagon

Hmmmm, let's see. Largest federal budget deficit in American history? Nope, that's still there.

Disastrous, go-nowhere war in Iraq that managed to make a bad situation even worse for all parties involved? That's still goin' on.

Near-total destruction of a major American city through compounded human error? Already done, so we can move on to totally botching the reconstruction.

Shameless war profiteering and fraud amounting to the biggest financial scandal in U.S. history? Nope, nothing really being done there.

Systematic winnowing away of Constitutional rights under the guise of protecting us from largely nonexistent threats? No progress on halting that.

Continued income disparities between rich and poor exacerbated by a tax system that flagrantly favors the very wealthy? I don't think we wanna speak out against that.

But mau-mauing the press into forcing the resignation of an aide to an opposition political candidate for the crime of having personal opinions? Mission a-fucking-ccomplished!

It's a hilariocaust!

Dennis "My Son's Black Friend Has a White Friend Whose Father is a Jew" Prager has some stern words today for Ellen Goodman and George Soros.

Goodman (whose father was a Holocaust survivor, but will never be as great a Jew as Dennis Prager, who has written a bunch of columns about how Jews are better than anyone else except Christians) was impolitic enough to say in a recent column that " global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers". What she meant, of course, is that to deny the existence of global warming is comparable -- indeed, even worse -- than denying the existence of the Holocaust, because of the massive weight of evidence to support both events. But Prager being Prager, he turns it into a sterling example of the moral midgetry of liberals and the covert anti-Semitism of everyone who disagrees with him, even if they are Jews.

With a few exceptions, those on the Left tend to view their ideological adversaries as bad people, i.e., people with bad intentions, while those on the Right tend to view their adversaries as wrong, perhaps even dangerous, but not usually as bad.

Well, who can argue with that? I can't remember the last time a right-winger portrayed their political enemies as bad people. It can't possibly have happened more than, say, five hundred kerjillion times in the last month and a half. Hey, Dennis: seeing as your reputation is inexplicably that of a moderate intellectual, try not to lead off your column by saying something that is contradicted by 80% of the content of the site on which it appears, including the comments section of your own post.

The belief that opponents of the Left are morally similar to Nazis was expressed recently by another prominent person of the Left, George Soros, the billionaire who bankrolls many leftist projects. At the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, Soros called on America to "de-Nazify" just as Germany did after the Holocaust and World War II. For Soros, America in Iraq is like the Nazis in Poland.

Of course, what would Soros know about the signs of encroaching distatorship? He was just in a Nazi concentration camp and a Soviet prison camp. It's not like he's on the front lines of terror the way brave heroes like Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt are.

Third, the equation of global warming denial to Holocaust denial trivializes Holocaust denial. If questioning global warming is on "a par" with questioning the Holocaust, how bad can questioning the Holocaust really be?

Well, of course! It's not that they want to point out that there's something pathological about denying things for which there is so much evidence. It's not that they want to alert us to an approaching environmental catastrophe that might well have far worse repercussions than the Holocaust; it's that they want to trivialize the death of millions! Even the ones who were their relatives! If they truly cared about the legions of Jewish dead, they would never complain about anything ever again. Shut up and don't worry, that's the ticket -- after all, it worked so well in Germany in the 1930s.

Just imagine if, for example, an equally prominent Christian figure had written that denying America is a Christian country is on a par with denying the Holocaust. It would have been front-page news in the mainstream media, the individual would have been excoriated by just about every major liberal individual and group, and the ADL would have cited this as an example of burgeoning Christian anti-Semitism and Holocaust trivialization.

Boy, it sure would have! Lucky for us this didn't happen, and that saying that America is a Christian nation isn't even remotely the same as saying that there's global warming!

Finally, the Ellen Goodman quote is only the beginning of what is already becoming one of the largest campaigns of vilification of decent people in history -- the global condemnation of anyone who questions global warming

Why...it's almost like a second Holocaust, the way these people are being treated!

It would not be surprising that soon, in Europe, global warming deniers will be treated as Holocaust deniers and prosecuted. Just watch. That is far more likely than the oceans rising by 20 feet. Or even 10. Or even three.

How likely is it that, 20 years from now, when the effects of global warming are even more apparent than they already are and global warming deniers, while not prosecuted, are widely mocked for their asinine beliefs, we all get to punch Dennis Prager right in the nuts? Not very.

Town Hall: A Trialogue

FRANK PASTORE: Contrary to what most of our columnists have been saying non-stop for the last five years, I believe that Islam is not the enemy.

DINESH D'SOUZA: I agree with you, Frank. In fact, it is obvious that liberals are the enemy.

BURT PRELUTSKY: I like candy!

NOONAN!

If you only know one thing about the Flower of Christian Womanhood that is Peggy Noonan, it is that she thinks airport security embarrasses the angels. If you know two things, the other one is that she has a crush on Ronald Reagan's shoes. But if you know three things about her, like I do, you also know that she really, really, really hates Hillary Clinton.

Peggy hasn't blasted ichor at Hillary for a few weeks, so her latest column seeks to make up for lost time. It's a real doozy, too: she contrasts snooty, stuck-up rich-bitch Hillary with her opposite number, the unassuming, working-class man of the people Rudy Giuliani. (She starts out by referring to Rudy's campaign momentum as "Giuliani time", a phrase which his staff would do well not to adopt, conjuring as it does in the minds of many voters the image of a policeman sodomizing a black immigrant with a plumber's helper.) She compares the possibility of having New Yorkers as the two parties' leading candidates with the 1920 election, when both were from Ohio; the Democrat, she scolds, was James Cox, a "dreamy Wilsonian who thought America wished to hear more about the League of Nations" and received a sound drubbing at the hands of the "sprightly" Warren Harding, who correctly thought that America wished to have the White House turned into the personal piggy bank of the most corrupt administration in history.

Giuliani's people are "old-style New Yorkers", she says, "pugnacious" charmers who cajole and argue you around to their obviously correct viewpoint, while Hillary's campaigners are "like a captain from an army about to crush you". This sort of militarism looks good on a dreamboat like W., but coming from a woman? Peggy knows a woman's place, and it's not acting in a confident manner. She also notes that she once met a journalist who wrote to Hillary's campaign with a neat idea, and Hillary never wrote her back! Who does that high-toned bitch think she is? Happily, at a recent dinner Peggy attended, the crowd was subdued, showing Hill the high hat she deserves.

Not that Giuliani is perfect: his new wife is too much of a loudmouth, daring to say at a recent press engagement that the race for the presidency is one that she and her hub will make together. Goodness, says the very proper Peggy! She may be willing to forgive having three wives, but enough is enough: doesn't this brassy dame know that "the proper attitude of a third wife is modesty"?

Peggy then goes on to engage in a distinction between the working-class Giuliani and the cossetted, isolated Clinton (never mind that Giuliani is a multimillionaire whose wealth is well in excess of that of Bill Clinton's when he became President; Peggy doesn't cotton to that kind of class warfare); Hillary can never understand what it is like to be a real New Yorker, says Peggy, because her existence is filtered through a veil of "aides, drivers, cooks" who protected her from "crime, the cost of things, the culture". "Her life has been lived within a motorcade", Peggy sadly concludes, shaking her head in shame at this elitist millionare who cannot understand our struggles.

She says this, if I may be allowed to remind you, on the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal.

What the people who are better at this than me have been up to

1. Sadly, No! has the cast-iron stomach required to keep up with Bill Kristol. Big Daddy Neo-Con is thrown into a tizzy by Barack Obama's presidential bid (as, apparently, are most Democrats, who prefer to lose the election with a pretty lady than a scary Negro), but rather than seizing the juicy cokehead story, allowing him to kickstart the inevitable "Obama is a Crip who will gun down your baby for money to buy a new crackpipe" campaign that will debut in eight southern states around November 3rd, he chooses to focus on the surprising claim that, were he alive during the Civil War, Barack Obama would have been pro-slavery. I would think that if he had been alive during the Civil War, Barack Obama would have been an actual slave, and thus likely anti-slavery, but what do I know? If I was smart, I would have founded the Weekly Standard.

2. TBogg gives us plenty to chew on about the Minutemen -- not the good ones, who wrote "I Felt Like a Gringo", but the bad ones, the actual gringos who heroically defend our borders against impoverished Mexican terrorists. Apparently, one of their largest chapters is having internal strife, and can't seem to shake it no matter how many times their founder calls people "lying commie bitch" or "Korean anorexic slut". Who cries for our heroes?

3. The Poor Man stuns us with the revelation that not only is Head Gasbag In Charge Rush Limbaugh still alive, but he's still hung up on what color our quarterbacks are. He rushes to the defense of Rex Grossman, who apparently doesn't suck but is merely the victim of the racial discrimination so commonly used against white people. Rush thus sheds the totally baseless accusation that he's only concerned when black athletes are undeservingly promoted by the liberal sports media*; clearly, he is also concerned when white athletes are undeservingly criticized by the liberal sports media.

*: HA HA HA HA HA

Right Behind

Interesting interpretation of the (literally) God-awful Left Behind books, courtesy of Lizabelle:

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of the last book in the Left Behind series, Glorious Appearing, and publish it across the Middle East, Americans would go beserk. Yet tens of millions of Christians eagerly await and celebrate an End Time when everyone who disagrees with them will be murdered in ways that make Islamic beheading look like a bridal shower.

Around the Corn

- Butt Propulsion Laboratories pats itself on the back for getting the Yale Daily News to pay attention to its asinine theory that a small downwards fluctuation in admissions is punishment by an outraged American public at the university having admitted a former Taliban member to a special program.

- The corner boys, who should have spent yesterday in quiet contemplation of what a jackass their leader Jonah Goldberg is, spent the whole day sniggering about ethnomusicologists. Hooty Hugh Hewitt has a pointless recap here, or you can read the whole thing, which comes off as a bunch of frat boys playing smear-the-queer, over here.

- The Naughty Girl snatches victory from the jaws of defeat: having failed to get Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan fired from the Edwards campaign, she claims that keeping them on is a win, because "the best way to fight the nutroots is to raise their level of exposure. Edwards helped do that." One expects, then, that Malkin's site will start carrying front-page adds for Daily Kos and Eschaton any day now.

- Likewise, as the Sadly, No! gang hint at, the vapor brigade are doing a lot of pissing and moaning at the continued employment of a woman who made some snotty remarks about Christianity considering that basically all they do all day is make fun of Islam, slander and defame the very foundation of the Muslim religion, and call anyone who objects a whining crybaby. You can go right now and look at the front page of a dozen blowhard websites, from Crazy Pammy to Little Green Footballs to Gates of Vienna, and see things said about Islam a hundred times more intolerant and inflammatory than anything Amanda Marcotte every typed. Is Malkin going to do after Ann Coulter next? Is Allahpundit going to set his sights on Debbie Schlussel next? Because that would be great! I can use all the help I can get.

- Norbiz is able to make the Iraq fraud scandal a lot funnier than I can.

Q'ash Q'ow

The only hearing we'll ever have about the greatest fraud in American history is at its peak of media exposure, and as usual, the public, which is busy preparing to give the Bush administration the dumbest second chance imaginable, has reacted with yawns. "What else is on?", says Mr. & Mrs. This Time For Sure, as Henry "Voice in the Wilderness" Waxman wonders exactly what happened to the literally hundreds of tons of cash we sent to the Iraqi provisional government.

Superlatives like "greatest fraud in American history" and "most egregious misuse of funds since the nation's founding" are easy to toss around in this atmosphere of madness and corruption; numbers that, even adjusted for time and inflation, make the works of Warren Harding's Ohio Gang look like the boosting of a corner bodega, are repeated ad nauseam, but don't seem to carry much heft when propped up against bodycounts. Waxman is grimly aware of this; he knows that this grotesque theft and mismanagement will never compare in the public imagination to the bloodstained ink dedicated to dead American soldiers. And so he tries to tie this indefensibly criminal theft of taxpayer money into the only story anyone cares about, wondering if the stunning lack of oversight given these gargantuan sums of money might have resulted in some of it ending up in the hands of insurgents. The loathesome Paul Bremer, in his own defense, blames the Iraqis: it was they who asked for the money; it was their corrupt system that the money entered (as if there was no opportunity for an occupying military power to enact oversight and control procedures); it was they who stole it.

The focus on Iraqis -- their requesting the funds, their theft of same, the question of whether their white-hats or black-hats ended up with it -- is, to say the least, a complete dodge. The sums were arrived at by the American provisional authority; the money was, at every point, handled by, kept by, and disbursed by, Americans, many of them young neoconservatives (a bunch not known for their fiscal prudency with other people's money, and saturated in the profit-above-all ideology handed down by their god-man, Ronald Reagan) drafted by Heritage Foundation skill-set searches, culled from the ranks of right-wing think-tank interns. While it may well be the case that Iraqis plundered the lion's share of the money, the blame lies squarely with our own: the occupational government had innumerable opportunities to institute controls and did nothing, meaning that billions of dollars passed through the hands of the callow and greedy with no particular structure preventing them from putting it in their pockets. Hundreds of millions in Iraqi cash no doubt are back in the U.S. now, awaiting disposition at the hands of clever accountants and tax lawyers and financial professionals, as Paul Bremer points the finger of blame at the rapacious brown hordes and their culture of corruption. Nothing has been done, nothing is being done, and nothing ever will be done to punish these basest sorts of war profiteers, and it's not as if it's over; despite coerced assurances from our government's lead auditor, Stuart Bowen, that American corruption is a minor and managable (unspoken: and perfectly acceptable) component of the U.S. presence in Iraq, the theft and fraud continues. Already the G.O.P. is turning the lone hearing over the greatest mismanagement of government funds in world history into a political football, accusing Democrats of using it as a partisan club to beat on an unpopular president. Indiana Republican Dan Burton knows what side his bread is bloodied on: "We are in a war against terrorists. To have a blame meeting isn't, in my opinion, constructive," he says.

Don't worry about it, Mr. Burton. A few pesky nobodies will continue to complain, but they won't be listened to. Soon enough, the American public will have something new to think about.

Doesn't anyone know how to play this game?

American soldiers are sent to win hearts and minds by handing out soccer balls to Iraqi children. Unfortunately, soccer balls are deflated and no pump is made available. Balls* are handed out anyway.

Army spokesman insists that dwelling on the negative (i.e., pointing out that the soccer balls were unusable) is to undermine American generosity and miss the point of giving them out.

*: Reminder: balls do not have corners.

Inside the Goldberg days of missing you

I.

Earlier today, we noted that corner boy Jonah Goldberg, the author of a book in which liberals are compared to Hitler right on the front cover, scolded left-wing bloggers for their tasteless incivility. Matthew Yglesias reminds us that today is the perfect day for pondering how completely full of shit this Star Trek nerd gone wrong really is.

II.

Glenn Beck recently opined that "I don`t have a lot of African-American friends, and I think part of it is because I`m afraid that I would be in an open conversation, and I would say something that somebody would take wrong, and then it would be a nightmare." I know exactly what he means; I'm terrified to open my mouth around the coloreds who mow my lawn and hand me my Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger, because I might say something totally innocent that they would take out of context. Like, I dunno, I might sit down with one of them and say "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies", or I might say that I hated them and thought they were a bunch of attention-hungry scumbags for surviving a natural disaster. Anyway, Glenn might want to take the issue up with Dennis Prager, who knows a thing or two about befriending Negroes.

III.

Speaking of those touchy, touchy Negroes, the Medfly would like them to stop complaining and cheer up -- look at all they have accomplished, after all, in the fields of sports and entertainment! The Medfly urges optimism, saying that blacks may well sweep the Oscars this year and this will be widely celebrated and not at all the source of another Ann Coulter column about tokenism; in fact, he suggests that being a mopey-puss is just another example of black-on-black crime:

Could persistent black fears of racism contribute to lower African-American life expectancy...?

Once again, it is not white racism and discrimination that's the problem: it's black people's reaction to white racism and discrimination, which doesn't even really exist in the first place. Now cheer up and sing us a happy tune, Buck!

This clown car stops at all railroad crossings

It's been a busy couple of days at the monkey gas station. Amanda Marcotte got shitcanned from the Edwards campaign, causing many a tut-tut in high places; frankly, that a woman losing her job for making intemperate and inflammatory remarks on a blog could be engineered by Michelle Malkin makes you wonder if Dean Martin used to go around getting people fired for drinking on the job. As further proof that metal is the only thing you can trust, Blue Oyster Cult's Donald Roeser has outed himself as a devoted fan of Butt Propulsion Laboratories. I know how you feel, Don: I get all my news from Varg Vikernes. And while his corner boys were waiting for a re-up, Jonah Goldberg gave them a high-minded lecture on civility in blogging. Offering in his own defense the fact that he hardly ever does the "French-bashing stuff" that he cribbed from The Simpsons anymore, Jonah notes, "I ignore most of the lefty bloggers" because of their "tasteless" and ungentlemanly behavior, and just to prove that he's nonpartisan in his distaste for overblown rhetoric, he says he doesn't like "say, Michael Savage (assuming he's still alive)". How can you accuse him of ideological blindness in light of this revelation that he not only doesn't read the majority of left-wing blogs, but also one right-wing blog that may not exist anymore? Three cheers for you, Jonah!

As usual, though, the best stuff comes from Clown Hall. It's only their Scaife money that can pay for the top-shelf journalism that keeps us informed every day about what a bunch of marginal right-wing shitbags are thinking. Where else can we learn that the Anntichrist thinks Joseph Wilson is a latter-day Joseph Goebbels? Only by guessing. We'd also miss out on the stunning news that if we listen to the propagandists of MSNBC, we'd think Joseph McCarthy was a bad man, humans are causing global warming, and the war in Iraq is going badly. FORGET YOU, MSNBC! Elsewhere, Mike S. Adams starts a column with "Complaining about the leftist domination on college campuses isn’t a worthwhile activity", but, unfortunately, does not end it there, introducing his exciting new program of creating 'Morals Week' on college campuses. I guess 'Jackass Week' is already a trademark of David Horowitz's outfit. Finally, the new kid on the block is a bull-necked ex-convict named John Hawkins, who delivers the stunning revelation that an adjunct professor at a community college once said something controversial about the Iraq War and that, therefore, liberals are traitorous cowards who want all of our Marines to die. You know, money really isn't enough to thank the brave heroes of Town Hall for whatever it is that they're doing.

Atlas glugged

It's all very easy to make fun of Crazy Pammy Oshry, the mentally unstable drunk who runs the Atlas Shrugged blog. It's also easy to make fun of her occasional attempts at videoblogging, being as they are incoherent, stupid and incomprehensible by turns. And something that easy just has to be fun.

But maybe you can't watch her latest demented video diary. Maybe all the people linking to it all over the internet are doing you a disservice, because, for whatever reason, you can't look. Maybe you're at work. Maybe you have a net-nanny that disallows inebriated ramblings. Maybe you have a low nausea threshhold. That's where I come in. This is the only weblog on the internet that actually provides you with word-for-word transcriptions of Crazy Pammy's video diaries. I realize the transcript leaves much to be desired -- it does not capture her bizarre physical tics, her obnoxious Long Island accent, or the clear signs of overindulgence in her eyes -- but it's a start. Only I am willing to expose myself to this toxicity for the good of the nation. Only I can provide this service.

Thank me later.

***

I'm just gonna try and…(Pammy waves her hands about breezily, as if trying to conjure a gin and tonic out of thin air)…boil everything down to its essential oils. Mmmmmm.

(A strange cartoon, possibly from an eastern European propaganda film about hoarders, appears on the screen. It is the face of a man, in whose mouth, instead of teeth, are the letters I-R-A-N.)

Yeah, time for a quick chat, whattya say? It's that time again. Because it's a crazy week. Things have been nuts. The new Congress…it's breathless. You wouldn’t believe it. You would not be able to suspend your disbelief if you were watching it on television. They are coming up with a resolution…a reso-lution (Pammy tosses her hair back in an extravagant gesture that recalls the Sextette-era work of Mae West.) that the President can use his powers against the number one Islamic enemy in the world, funding terror for corner to corner of this great big ball of a globe. (Editor's note: balls do not have corners.) Iran. The top Senate Democrats…top…top of what?

(At this point, Pammy seems to become lost in some sort of erotic reverie, and we cut to a picture of the president of Iran, followed by a cartoon of fanatical Muslims cheering for John Kerry for no adequately explored reason.)

…have, uh, introduced legislation that can't take action on Iran. (Editor's note: no American legislation can take action on Iran.) Now, let me tell you something. I mean, just today – every day, I could do, if I had, maybe if I had a little, a little producer, a little helper, a little researcher, a little this, a little…but it's all me. Okay? Um…just today, they were, I were…Iranian weapons experts in Gaza! I, we, Ira..we..Iranian weapons experts in Gaza…can't even say it! (Pammy laughs at her own inability to communicate clearly.) And one killed himself! Oooooh! Check that out. Killed himself. I mean, he must have had such an extraordinary package. (Editor's note: what?) He must have had some intel. Like, "I gotta get out of here, they gotta…they gonna get hold of me, man, aaccckh!" Now, they started their 3,000 centrifuges. They're in Iraq. They're in Syria. They're in Lebanon, funding Hezbollah, funding Hamas, but your top Senate Democrats say (Pammy makes a scary lion noise and begins speaking, I guess, like a Senate Democrat who is also an Iranian, or something.) "Rrraah! We will help pave the road into Iran for the Twelfth Imam!" Now, why did the poison dwarf have to be…repave that road anyway, huh? I've often wondered about that. I mean, is…is the Twelfth Imam, he's the Mahdi, he's got, like, the soft tuchus? The road was bumpy, he'd be like, "Ooh hoo hoo". I'm just curious why he had to repave the road. I don't know, that's always struck me as, well, curious. But, I guess, nothing's good for the Mahdi.

So, you have the Dems doing that – it's also interesting how the Dems are just exploding left and right. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Remember those bimball…what did they call them? Bimbo explosions? There was a word for them. There was a, uh, uh, uh…(Pammy snaps her fingers rhythmically to a beat only she can hear.) A buzzword for them under, um…bimbo eruption. Clinton. Yeah, he was good for so many things. The, er, the, um, ah…so many Democrat, uh, eruptions. Uh, you see, they're so used to having such a free hand at the press that they say anything. Anything. And now that there's, uh, blogs, and there's accountability – not through the media, through the maverick media, as I like to consider myself – that a guy like Biden, the Chief Plagiarist, okay? He actually stole somebody else's life. Cribbed somebody else's life to write about. This was a presidential candidate? This was a top senate Democrat? This is, uh, judging Bolton? It's unbelievable. Um, Ellsworth Toohey, Ayn Rand, uh, bloooobloooblooobloooo! (Pammy makes a scary "I AM HYPNOTIZING YOU!" gesture.) It's her birthday! (Pammy sings "Birthday" by the Beatles.) Love you, Ayn! To Biden…so, okay, yeah! Did you hear what he said about Obama? Or as Ted Kennedy would say, "Oh, Obama bin-Laden, Oma…Soma…Osama bin-Laden, buh buh buh…"

(Cut to news footage of Ted Kennedy mispronouncing Barack Obama's name, proving that since he is incoherent and mispronounces things, no one should pay attention to him.)

Um…yes, he said he's…clean. Articulate and clean. Wow. As opposed to what? As opposed to those caveman commercials?

(Cut to footage of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, with Biden's comments played slowed down to make him sound like the Devil.)

What up with that? All the time. They get caught with stuff like this all the time now. And on the other side, the Republicans, who have been on…who have been under such an acute microscope, so tight they can't talk! They can't tell the people "We're at war! A second and a, uh, new nuclear arms race is on now! There's a great catastrophe coming!" They can't speak because they've been so – by the thought police – monitored. Look at Trent Lott! You say one wrong word…no! But, up…uh, apologize, you, all you…doesn't matter. (Pammy makes a cut throat gesture.) Mmm. No pun intended. (Editor's note: none delivered.)

So, it's interesting to watch the Democrats implode. It is not interesting to watch them vote against what we are doing in Iraq. I am telling you for the ten millionth, eight hundred ninety-third time, I don't care if it's not going well. Wars don't go well until they're won. Then everybody feels really good and really happy and they all run around into town square and the man kisses the girl and everybody's like "Yeah!"

(Cut to the famous shot of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square.)

But until such a time, it's a war! Now, why can't my peeps get out there and say it? What's wrong with the conservatives? Why can't we explain this to the American people? Alls you have to do is look at the newspapers. Uh…suspected lovers in Pakistan. (Editor's note: while surveys show that, for the most part, the American public is actually aware that we are at war, they correctly believe that we are not at war with Pakistan, which is our ally.) They were suspected lovers. What did they do? They stoned them to death. It's a hail. A hail of fucking bricks. Can you imagine? A delicious love. They said "No, we, we…" – they denied it, denied it, denied it – I mean, I would have denied it too. I mean, ha ha…yeah. U.K. more radicalized than ever. You saw this, this week's, this week's fresh hell? This week's fresh hell was, we're gonna kidnap a soldier – a Muslim soldier. And we're gonna torture him on camera, and we're gonna…you know, they behead…lemme tell you about the, if you ever watch one of the, um, beheadings, which I really believe every America should watch so they know the enemy, they don't take this gorgeous sharp knife, chhhhhup! (Pammy makes a beheading gesture, perhaps to suggest that Americans would be more forgiving of Muslim terrorists who behead innocent victims if only they did it with an attractive and properly sharpened weapon.) They take, like, this rusty, raggedy instrument – hkkk-koo! hkkk-koo! hkkk-koo! (Pammy makes a "sawing a guy's head off with a rusty, raggedy instrument" gesture, so that we all know how terrible Muslims are.) You gotta watch it! You gotta know what you're dealing with.

Anyway, that's my story, I'm stickin' to it. I'm gonna give you a little night music, tonight – I'm gonna be sufficiently chilling. (Editor's note: few would argue that Pammy was not already sufficiently chilling.) Have a glass of wine. Enjoy, you know, the last days before (Pammy tattoos a drumbeat on her thighs) before the big one! My prediction, 2008 – even though I don't even wanna talk about 2008, I'm tired of 2008, it's too early for 2008, my candidate even hasn't arrived yet, how about that? This is what I have to say about 2008. The Dems take it. House. Senate. White House. Okay? And they do Neville, Neville, Neville. You know Neville. Just like in 1938. Neville. Appease, appease, appease, appease, appease, appease – that's gonna happen. And then there's gonna be a catastrophe. And that's gonna…and, and that's it. And trust me: Bush – Bush is a victim of his own success. (Editor's note: HA HA HA HA HA) There's no attacks, so he was fearmongering! There was really nothing to fear! You see, there was no attacks! And if there was an attack? You see, he wasn't on the job! If he was on the job he would have connected the dots! If he'd connected the dots, there wouldn't have been an attack! If there wasn't an attack, there's be dah, dah dah blah, daah daah bluh! (Pammy lapses into an apparently feigned incoherence.) The barking dogs of insanity. And blame Bush? When they blame Bush they just blame me. And they're blaming you. And they're blaming anyone who voted for him. Because Bush is an icon for American choice.

(An inexplicable star-wipe occurs.)

And "Bush lied, people died. Bush lied." We're at war. It's really scary. It's really scary. Everybody's talking about nothing that's anything and everything that's nothing. Global warming. Brrrrrr! A-ha! So, they changed it now. It's not – you're not allowed to call it global warming anymore. Al Gore'll come to your house and talk to you. Now if that's not punishment enough…yes. Not global warming. It's climate change. Boom boom boom. (Pammy makes a mustache out of her hair.) It's climate change. Well, what do you say…what does climate do, anyway. And I want to say something about climate change. Can I say something about climate change? Can you say it with me? Oh, I know that…it's, that's totally junk science, junk science dot com, and it's total bullshit. "Oh, but look, it really is down a degree! Look!" Let me tell you something, all right? Okay? Ah…here's a tip. The Earth is gonna be fine. The Earth is gonna be really fine. We'll be dead! Yeah. Oh yeah. But the Earth is gonna go on long past us. I would't worry about us. I'd worry about the fookin' jihad. You see what's going on all over the world? In Iran? Global, uh, roundup. Take, take, take a look at it. Global jihad roundup. You'll be assaulted here in America by CAIR, by Impact…they're approaching this country differently than they've approached France, because in France, they have the first radical Islamic president. His name is Shit-rac. (Pammy begins speaking in an accent that is somewhere between French and east L.A. cholo.) "Well, ees okay if Iran has, oh, one or two nukes, I don' know… (Pammy begins sucking her index finger.) I didden mean it!" Wink wink, nod nod. Wink wink, nod nod. "I didden mean it!"

(Another wipe that Pammy learned in adult education class occurs for no reason.)

Anyway, on that note, send me your thoughts, your letters, your love…you could hit the tip jar. No one's hit the tip jar! What, what do you think, I'm made of money? Trust me. Not. And, um, see ya on the uptake.

If you can't stand the heat, stop pouring on the gasoline

Things are getting ugly this week in the right-wing buggosphere. One of my favorite loopy bloggers, The Anchoress, is close to calling it quits; the Flower of Christian Womanhood simply cannot take all the ugly, small little people who make fun of her for saying things like 'global warming is a myth', and she's retreated back behind her parapets to spend the rest of her days in quiet contemplation of the grace of our Savior, and also YouTube videos. Silent Running has become so unhinged by Hitlery and her fellow "Kleptocrats" that he has started posting things that appear to have been badly Systranned from the original Klingon. The Naughty Girl has been reduced to quoting doggerel ("Want to slam our soldiers, Arkin?/Well here is one to slam./I got used to Lefty slamming/When I came back from Vietnam." BRILLIANT!) The Gray Man has been driven from the internet by the actions of a football-playing cartoon alligator. And even Hugh Hewitt's flunkies are still too hung up on the Aqua Teen Terror Force thing to realize they've been made chumps of.

Luckily, there's always Crazy Pammy.

She's got a blockbuster today: Musselmen are being arrested en masse in the US of A, for crimes ranging from buying explosives and land mines to playing paintball in a sinister fashion, but we haven't heard about it, because law enforcement agencies have been "purposely downplaying and in some cases lying outright to the public" about it. "We have been told what to say, and more important, what not to say", quotes Crazy Pammy just as if she weren't making it all up, and the "big boys in Washington DC" are "killing morale" with this "politically correct shit".

Naturally, Crazy Pammy can't identify her source ("whose father was an agent during the 1960s racial problems"), but she assures us that it is true, and the word of a raving Long Island racist alcoholic is good enough for me! Prepare for blood-drinking darkies to fire rocket launchers at our childrens' school buses any da now, but don't expect to hear about it from the cowardly MSM. Crazy Pammy is your only pipeline to truthiness!