Pity the Poor Millionaire

The Medfly: All hail our glorious corporate masters, who have ever done naught but shower us with the eternal blessings of heaven! If they have a failing, it is that they are simply too kind and decent for this wicked, wicked world.

If I was Michael Medved, I'm not sure if I would cite their manufacture of electronics that allow my columns to be widely read as one of the good things about corporations.

Life's little ironies, part XXVIII

The Man from Fuddles:

I walked into the mall, produced the Flip Video camera, and was soon welcomed to the modern world by a nice security officer. He directed me to the office, where I was assigned a minder. This was a buzzkill, as you can imagine, so I wasn’t able to shoot as much as I wanted – didn’t want to drag her all over the place, and there’s always that why are you taking a picture of that? Vibe I get all. The. Time. I hate that.

Gee, Jimmy. Just imagine if you were Arab.

Oh, John, let's just love each other

Someone at Butt Propulsion Laboratories never found out what "You don't want to know" means:

But it does prompt this thought: isn't it a bad thing for a political movement if its core members are, in large part, stark, raving mad? Wouldn't you expect people to notice, and react adversely? And if so, will this start to happen some time soon?

If y'all will excuse me, I'm off to submit this to the Encyclopedia of Platonic Ideals for use in their "Asking a question to which you might not like the answer" entry.

Hits from the Wrong

1. Map presented that would look rather different if it went back oh, say, 150 years.

2. Privileged young woman criticizes political leader for getting expensive haircut while getting expensive haircut, pretends to read book.

3. Hugh Hewitt features image of man who couldn't be bothered to serve in US military Photoshopped into group shot with man who did serve and got shit on for it.

Plessy vs. Kissmyass

The Bush Supreme Court's exciting new plan to end racial discrimination by allowing racial discrimination is just the beginning! Yes, with Brown v. Board of Education all but overturned, Alito and company will now turn their attention to other little mistakes that have slipped past the Constitutional gatekeepers due to activist judges of long ago. Here's what else we can look forward to!

Loving v. Virginia overturned: Court rules that anti-miscegenation statutes are no longer unconstitutional provided that at least a dozen neighbors testify that the couple is "tacky".

Gates v. Collier overturned: Reinstates racial segregation in prison, citing precedent of McDougal v. Weight Machines. Rules that black prisoners are violating the equal protection act by being stronger than Latino prisoners.

United States v. Virginia overturned: Court finds that "separate but equal" facilities are still unconstitutional, but "equal but separate" ones are okay.

Lawrence v. Texas overturned: Citation of Fourteenth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable invasion of privacy to eliminate laws against consensual homosexuality is struck down when Justice Scalia, in the majority opinion, writes "I never heard of any Fourteenth Amendment."

Roe v. Wade overturned: most restrictions on first-trimester abortions are still ruled unconstitutional, but a major exception is introduced, outlawing abortions where the woman in question is pregnant.

Washington v. Glucksberg upheld: Court rules that not only are laws against assisted suicide constitutional, they are "super-duper-constitutional" (Justice Roberts). Justice Alito declares that there is no Constitutional right to die, but there is an obligation to die.

Katzenbach v. McClung overturned: Court reasserts primacy of states' rights against the Civil Rights Act, ruling that interstate commerce regulation does not take precedent over the right of businesses to discriminate so long as the businesses are located in a state.

Miranda v. Arizona modified: Criminal suspects must still be advised of their rights, but those rights need not be communicated in spoken English. They may, for example, be explained to the suspect via written Sanskrit, interpretive dance, or telepathy.

Furman v. Georgia altered: Court seeks retroactive execution of all criminals given sentences of 20 years or more from 1967-1976.

Boy Scouts of America v. Dale expanded: Where previous ruling allowed that private organizations' right of expressive association allows them to expel members based on their sexual orientation, new language replaces "private organizations" with "everybody", "expel" with "stab in the neck", "members" with "fellow citizens", and "sexual orientation" with "swarthiness".

More Like Health UNfair!

The Human Steyn has been posting a lot at the Corner, I guess to prove that he can say asinine things in whatever venue he finds himself. Here's his latest.

So let me just say that I think socialized health care is the single biggest factor in transforming the relationship of the individual to the state. In fact, once it's introduced it becomes very hard to have genuinely conservative government - certainly, not genuinely small government.

Lousy lunchpail-toting Johnny Wannalives. Back when the working classes had the good taste to contract dreadful diseases and perish quietly after churning out the next generation of lawn-tenders, people like me could have the non-tax-invasive governments we deserve! But ever since they caught this survival bug, they've added "basic medical care" to their list of absurd demands along with "safe workplaces" and "not being beaten with horsewhips". Bah!

In a public health care system, the doctors, nurses, janitors and administrators all need to be paid every Friday so the only point at which costs can be controlled is through the patient, by restricting access.

As opposed to in a private system, where everyone will work for free. You may think that this is the most incomprehensible thing that Steyn has to say in this post, but read on!

On the former point, the unloveliness of any British city after six in the evening - the dolly birds staggering around paralytic, the pools of "pavement pizza", the baying yobboes gagging for a shag and hurling bollards through the bus shelters to impress the crumpet - is a natural consequence of what happens when the state relieves the citizen of primal responsibilities.

Yes, before socialized medicine, there were to be found nowhere in England drunken women, vomit, loudmouthed young men on the prowl, or ruffians of any sort. In the days when you had to provide for your own health care -- say, the Victorian era -- you could travel from Penwith to Peterhead and never see such a sight. O, my England! That your pristine gentlemanly nature has been corrupted by kindness!

YOU'RE Not Real, Man!

Remember how they used to say that President Reagan had a problem telling reality from fantasy?

Well...

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. ... He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia said.

Yeah. See, though, that didn't happen. That was a television show.

"Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. "Say that criminal law is against him? 'You have the right to a jury trial?' Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don't think so.

Well, he's got a point there. No jury in this country, or any other country, is ever going to convict Jack Bauer of anything. This was proven in State of Illinois vs. Little Bo Peep, 1957.

Scalia went on to say that, while he is in favor of allowing torture in order that Jack Bauer can continue to fight terrorism, he is against repealing existing anti-vigilante legislation no matter how much it would help Batman. He says he is undecided as to whether to allow Article 2 of the Constitution to be altered so that Pepe LePew could run for President.

Tom Hanks' Neo-Zhdanovite Adventure

St. Paul at Fraters Libertas (one of the Northern Alliance muftis) brings us an exciting list of people we are no longer allowed to like because they had the temerity to donate money to Al Franken's campaign. Note especially the Alvin-Peplerish e-mail exchange at the end of the post, which manages to accomplish the unthinkable: it makes me feel sorry for Ben Stein.

Also, I cannot spell "atheist"

The D'Souzaphone: In my next book, I totally demolish atheist arguments using super cool Jesus logic that no one before me has ever thought of and which surely cannot be refuted by a dull-witted college sophomore.

Help a blogger out

I want to go to CPAC next year. I want to say something to Michelle Malkin that will make her tongue swell up. I want to get bets going on when Ann Coulter will say "faggot". I want to hear Fred Dalton Thompson talk about how he will personally execute Muslim extremists. I want to listen to a live Musclehead Revolution podcast. I want to describe to Ben Shapiro what sex is like. I basically want to liveblog the whole thing, and get drunk and rowdy with dumb-ass right-wing talking heads. And I want to do it on your dime.

Details of the exciting "SEND LEONARD TO CPAC 2007" project can be found here, and information about the exciting special premiums you will receive with your donation can be found here. If you just want to donate, click on the PayPal link below. We're already well on our way to meeting our goal of letting me mooch off you for a free hotel! GIVE GENEROUSLY! You won't regret it! Or, at least, I won't!

If the man in the moon were a Muslim-hatin' goon

Mark Steyn: I miss the old days, when immigrants were so eager to assimilate that they wrote really racist songs.

And let me tell you how ELSE you screwed up!

Oh, boy, this is going to be good! Big Boy Jammies is sponsoring a conference on the collapse of Europe. I can't wait to hear about how the dark people have ruined everything, and with seminar titles like "Are Muslims exploiting the democratic process to erode and destroy European democracy?" and "To what extent have Europeans Given Up on Their Own Civilization?", I'm sure I won't have to.

The conference, which is being held in Malibu, CA instead of Europe (presumably because Europe is already too collapsed), promises to be chock full of the sort of awesome intellectual rigor we have come to expect from Big Boy Jammies. Best of all, of the 28 featured speakers, a whopping 7 of them are actually from Europe! Wow, that's some super credibility! I'm sure that if liberals held a conference on the decline of America, and it was held on the French Riviera, and only a quarter of the speakers were Americans, Pajamas Media would cover it glowingly, but for now, I'll see you in Malibu!

Wise Words From Knox Pooley

Fred Dalton Thompson: "What do you think America would do if Canadian soldiers were firing dozens of missiles every day into Buffalo, N.Y.? What do you think our response would be if Mexican troops for two years had launched daily rocket attacks on San Diego -- and bragged about it?"

Gee, Fred, I don't know! What do you think America would do if Canada occupied all of New England and killed thousands of Americans every year? What do you think our response would be if Mexican troops for 57 years had kicked San Diegans out of their homes, imprisoned them, put them in camps, denied them the ability to work or get an education, forbid them to vote, and subjected them to constant martial law -- and then told anyone who complained to get bent? Just asking.

What's new in Fuddles?

Let's see:

- Jimbo is "mostly full of meat". He doesn't say what the other thing he's full of is, but I think we can guess.

- Jimbo gets a zinger over on Michael Moore; the filmmaker -- who have we mentioned is fat? -- wants to get rid of privatized health insurance, so Lileks says, oh yeah? How about we also get rid of completion bonds for motion pictures, smart guy? HO HO HO not so clever now are we. But you know what? I bet Moore would make that deal in a second.

- Jimbo once again (sort of) confronts the plague of rude teenagers that so harry our semi-urban areas. Lileks, who is to a tough guy what a squirt gun is to a Magnum, says that he knows he filled the young lout with anger and shame, because "I read him in a second". We can only hope that someday Jimbo does not have to read the writing on the knuckles of some hoodlum in even less time.

History, Schmistory!

Over at Butt Propulsion Laboratories, Chuckles Hindraker endorses an approach to immigration similar to that of the founders on slavery. Which was, essentially, to whistle a wee jolly tune and say oh look there is not the foliage in our fair capitol radiant at this time of the year. It's an attitude that produced one of our most memorable presidents, plus of course it worked out super-well in the end.

Come on, guys. Three degrees from Dartmouth and one each from Harvard, Stanford and UMinn, and this is the best you can do?

Her point, and she does have one...oh, no, wait, she doesn't

The Naughty Girl, with the kind of stunning Malkinacious point-missing that can only be rivalled by her utter hypocrisy, gives the AP what fer. Noting some of that legendary liberal media bias in a wire report claiming that the GOP candidates for president number very few women and no blacks among their advisors, Michelle hits back with a devastating one-two multimedia barrage, in which she decisively proves that the board of the Associated Press, which is not running for President, sports only four women and one black! Take that, mainstream media!

Selected readings from the crankocracy

Butt Propulsion Laboratories: When conservatives say "support the troops", what we mean is, you know, help them win the war. Not actually support them or get them medical care or wimpy stuff like that.

Fuddles, MN: The world would be a much better place if it was just like Disneyland. Unless the government ran it, in which case it would be a dystopian nightmare.

Dean Dean the Ranting Machine: If only there were a candidate who could deftly speak of his love for Dale Earnhardt and George Strat! Now there would be a man eminently suited to lead our nation.

The Human Steyn: For some reason, Americans are not doing everything possible to support the war against Iraq or Terror or whatever it is we're supposed to be fighting.

Naughty Girl: ABC News totally ripped off a story that I did a year ago and passed it off as their own scoop! Of course, I do that all the time, but when we in the "New Media" do it, it's cute!

Get a Job

Horror of horrors! The Man from Fuddles, who once hit the financial skids so hard when his wife was temporarily between high-paying corporate lawyer gigs that he was forced to dismiss the scullery maid who tended to his woodwork, has lost his job!

Well, okay, not really. What has actually happened is that Lileks, who is lucky enough to have had a cushy gig as a daily humor columnist in an age of belt-tightening for the newspaper business, has been told, basically, to shit (that is, do some actual work to justify your massive salary) or get off the pot (that is, find employment elsewhere). Is the Strib trying to get Jimbo to quit his job? Almost certainly, say people who have been in the same position; in a lean business, you have to do something to make the fattest employees earn their salaries. For most people, this would probably be a good thing -- after all, all Jimbo has to do is drop the folksy homilies and start cranking out the rag-bashing in quantity and he'll be on the Scaife gravy train for life. And it's not as if some horrible injustice has taken place; he wasn't censored, or fired for his ethnic origin, or accused unjustly of sexual harrassment, or framed for a crime he didn't commit. He's merely been shunted to a job he's too picky to do in an attempt to unload his massive salary. It happens to millions of people ever year, and you never hear boosters of our fabulous capitalist system say boo about it.

Except, of course, when it happens to one of their own. Horrified at the prospect of a fellow ideologue actually having to earn a living in a competitive job marked like the rest of the rabble, the Northern Alliance of Greater Wingnuttia has gone berserk, rallying around the fallen hero who has been tragically forced to do his job. Accusations of liberal treachery are all around; commands are being issued to Missourians and Californians to cancel their subscriptions to a newspaper based in Minnesota. As far as I know, no one has yet managed to detect the blood-soaked hand of al-Q'aeda in all of this, but over at Hooty Hoo's, there are serious accusations that the treacherous Jew Soros has conspired to buy off the free press so as to silence the brave voice of James Lileks. Without his massive salary, the terrorists will no longer have to fear the scanning of old postcards and the tut-tutting about insufficiently deferential Target clerks!

Would that all of us were lucky enough to have such friends in high places. More than once, that ol' invisible hand of the marketplace has pushed me out on the street and into the unemployment line, and never was Hugh Hewitt there to make sure I bounced back better than ever. Now that's what I call welfare! To Lileks' credit, he has the good grace to be ashamed of all this.

Well, almost.

I didn't even know vodka came in gum form

What is censorship? Some would say that censorship is when a privately owned company, responding to complaints from its customers, disallows use of its services. Others would argue that's not censorship at all. And there are those, known throughout the far reaches of the internet for their shameless hypocrisy, who decry that sort of behavior one minute and then immediately turn right around and and praise it.

But we're not here to call Michelle Malkin a base, unprincipled charlatan. At least not right now. We're here to deliver on the most unique service this blog provides: word-for-word translations of the drunken ramblings of Pamela Geller Oshry Finkel Trump McChicken, proprietrix of the "Atlas Shrugs" blog. This is a service we provide because we believe it is necessary to expose as many people as possible to the vital insights of this important thinker, and there are those who find it difficult to understand what she is saying in her video blogs due to the high concentrations of Captain Morgan's and ladyfingers she must ingest thanks to her unique metabolism. This service – which no other website, even Crazy Pammy's, can offer – is more necessary than ever, due to a concentration of evil jihadi terrorists who have conspired to have her v-logs taken off YouTube, knowing that it is only the inebriated, disjointed gibberings of a Long Island housewife that stands between civilization and chaos. Let's see what dire fate Pam warns us against today in her most explosive flatulation yet!

[Pam stands in front of a mirror, looking a bit puffy and with some gin blossoms blooming around her cheeks, a sure sign of the loveliness of encroaching spring. She holds up a digital camera and begins to impart her wisdom upon us, only slightly blunted by the huge wad of chaw she seems to have in her mouth.]

Hey! I know what you're saying – what are you doing, Atlas? I'm doing a vlog and I got nobody to film it. So this is an experiment. Are we loving it? I am! Um…going…I'm backing away from the computer tonight. You got a beautiful open thread there, with ze French girl, yah. She's not wearing the char-dor, so you know she's retro. I'm backing away from the keyboard, because I can't take it anymore.

A stream of decontextualized photos of soldiers, imams, and destruction appears on the screen, followed by the caption "FLIPPING THE BIRD TO THE PRESS".

Oh, wait a minute. Did you love Hillary saying the war on terror is not a partisan issue?

A photo of Bill Clinton with an attractive woman appears on screen, to remind us that Bill Clinton cheated on his wife and therefore nothing he or anyone associated with him ever says should be believed.

The war on terror is not a partisan issue? You made it the complete partisan issue. Pulling outta Iraq, you made a partisan issue. Not fighting the jihad, you made a partisan issue. The mainstream media, your tool.

A photo of several news magazines, including the liberally biased MacWorld, appears on screen, followed by a picture of Rosie O'Donnell making a funny face.

Your propaganda tool, made it a propa…uh…a partisan issue. Your inability to say that A is A, that…your, uh, is, Islam in America, plotting the jihad, and we're not allowed to say it. We're not allowed to names, if it's a lone jihadi. We're not allowed to say it.

A photo of Cho Seung-Hui, who no one on the planet but Crazy Pammy thinks was a Muslim, appears on screen before we return to Pam herself, still chewing her cud.

Who made the war on terror a partisan issue? You made the war on terror a partisan issue. They are voting…Pelosi's meeting with Assad.

A photo of Nancy Pelosi meeting with Assad appears on screen, just as if it proved something

She wants to meet with Ahmadinahitler.

A photo of Holocaust victims appears on screen.

I'm gonna throw my head back tonight. I'm not gonna think about it! 'Cause you know what? I'm just giving you the blow-by-blow, ladies and gentlemen.

A photo of Nancy Pelosi meeting with, I dunno, Stalin or somebody appears on screen.

They're voting to withdraw to a, a specific date. Why don't you just hand the keys to the White House to Osama? Osama, who today said he was responsible for the bombing that, uh, almost knocked off Cheney? I can just see the lefty liberals, going "Yeah, yeah! Knock off our vice-president!" You dumb shits. Um…how could you not say you're not, um, on the side of terror? How could you not say you're, um, not on the side of the terrorists? You're rooting for Cheney's death. Just look at the PuffHo. Just look at all those posts on the Kos kids. You're rooting to destroy our leadership that we sent, duly elected…"No you didn't! He didn't really get, get in there! He wasn't dul…" Oh, shut up. He did so! He did! Now let's be honest, with all those registered illegals and those dead Democrats, who really is stealing elections? We won't go there, because the Republicans are so much better than that. So much stupider than that.

Um…they're firing rockets into Israel. Have you heard about that? Yeah, I didn't think so. I think…I would do this so you could see how I do a vlog. This is the machine, it's a Sony Shiber…CyberShot. Sony, I want some props! I want some checks! Yeah, send 'em my way! This does it all. This takes the pictures when I go to events, this records it, this does everything. Um, yeah, so there we are, watching the disintegration of the system…the American system…the greatest political system in the history of man; capitalism, the kindest, most humane system in the history of man; the Constitution, the greatest document ever written in the history of man; you're seeing it in your lifetime, ripped to shreds. Ripped to shreds. And do you remember those newsreels they used to show before WWII in the movie theatre, and they would show the marching Nazis and the goosestepping, and the people getting ready in Britain? Well, when they were…when they reflect back in a hundred years, if the jihad allows such technology or such in…you know, uh, when they're inside these little tunnels where they'll be sneaking, the war videos of our pre-war years will be Anna Nicole Smith, Scott Peterson, and, uh, whatever really tacky, tawdry crime of the day was. That's what we are, America.

So I'm outta here! Gonna put on…fix my lipstick, looking in a mirror as I do this vlog I see what I need to do – and, uh, I'll be back at it tomorrow. See ya.

The Constitution, whose fundamentals Pam often calls for ignoring when it is ideologically advantageous, appears on the screen.

Around the Corn

I haven't been around much lately, because I have work to do that people pay me for and the ol' Scaife checks aren't rolling in like they used to when I made my living telling people that Hugo Chavez was a gay terror commie. I note with great interest that the Naughty Girl, in between noticing that political leaders sometimes visit foreign countries, has developed an entertaining conspiracy theory involving megapowerful global dictator Harry Reid's sinister attempt to silence the military, none of whom are able to contact the outside world except with blogs. The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has jumped all over the utterly meaningless Akon non-controversy, and in doing so, becomes only the eighty millionth person in thirty years to make the high-larious observation that it's not RAP music, it's CRAP music! Professor Poopypants is so intrigued by second-rate Harry Turtledove fanfic that he will even forgive communism, and the Flower of Christian Womanhood asks if, maybe, possibly, since he hasn't been president for seven years and all, it might conceivably be time to stop blaming Bill Clinton for everything bad that ever happens. (She arrives at the answer "no".)

But most important of all, Baron Davis over at The Darkies Are Coming has finally announced that, for only a buck fifty American, you too can wear your prejudice, racism, and mindless fear RIGHT THERE ON THE FRONT OF YOUR HAT! Or whatever! Watch for his "I'm not too sure about black people, either", "White Danish Pride 4 Ever", and "Homos make me feel icky and uncomfortable, and I'm okay with that" series, coming soon.