Town Hall schtuppdate

As amazing as the regular columnists at Town Hall are, even better are the posters. Earlier this year, Town Hall added a comments section, which has really let the shitheads out of the box; it's usually the usual veiled racism, Islamaphobia and gay-bashing you would expect, but sometimes there's more.

I've written before about how the Town Hall crowd is surprisingly reluctant to discuss economics, possibly because their economic ideas all revolve around ideas without much mass appeal. Today, Town Hall second-stringer Matt Towery wrote a sky-is-falling piece about the state of the world; in it, he made grim predictions about foreign policy, domestic stability, and, surprisingly, the economy. He made the extremely noncontroversial observation that America's destiny is linked economically with China's, and that the Asian goliath stands poised to rival or surpass us as a global superpower due to their monetary policy and massive manufacturing base.

Well, this really brought out the squeakers, man. If you thought these people were dumb about politics and policy, wait until you hear them talk about the economy. Their tiny, mommy-protect-me little minds, which operate on no principle more sophisticated than "America is always right no matter what and it's not what we do, it's that we're Americans when we do it" (hence the defense of stuff like torture and theocracy), were totally blown by the outrageous suggestion that another country might be developing a more powerful economy than ours. So they offered up some brilliant suggestions. Let's watch!

Free Trade: Don't care. In my view, no matter what China does with our debt and currency, there will only be positive long term benefit for us. If they hold our notes and funds, we can import more goods for less (acting as a tax cut), and the price of oil drops for us, acting like a tax cut.

Which is great, because this pseudo-tax cut will more than make up for wage stagnation and the loss of real-dollar value that has been steadily increasing since all of our manufacturing jobs disappeared! Apparently, the reason that no one can save money anymore isn't a lack of job stability, flat wages, or a lack of real-dollar growth, but high taxes.

If they release our notes and funds, we start manufacturing and exporting more goods (acting as an economic stimulant)

Just like that! We'll start manufacturing and exporting more goods! Easy! We'll just somehow rebuild all the factories that have closed over the last 35 years, and retrain the whole workforce, and convince all the CEOs who shipped the jobs overseas to hire American workers at the same price. And we will start exporting more goods, because our stuff will be just as good and cheap as Chinese products! Somehow!

Thank God we aren't an Asian country that must always manufacture or perish.

Yes, thank God! We can run on a service industry, which Asian countries can never do, because, uh, because they don't believe in Jesus, I guess.

We can play any part of this game better than they can.

It may appear that they're beating us in terms of manufacturing and monetary policy, but in reality, we are letting them win. We can never be defeated, because we are Americans.

If it makes you feel better, we could add a term to our notes, "FORFEIT in, from, or to China", at any time, and our embargo of Cuba proves we have the stones for it.*

If things get TOO bad, we can just make special money that says "no good if you're a Chinaman", and it will totally work and won't in any way make us a global laughingstock whose economy will collapse overnight! And if we could successfully embargo a tiny Caribbean nation from whom we got virtually no imports, that proves we could totally do the same thing to a country with a billion people who provides the majority of the world's dry goods manufaturing!

Individuals can protect themselves from currency instability by keeping some fraction of their savings in gold and silver coins.

And gasoline! And, uh, dried noodles and firearms! And then we can live forever in the mountains, and forget that we're part of a global economy!

I'm tired of the endless whining. Straighten up and get back to work.

If we just worked hard enough, that would fix the economy. Shut up, all you economist eggheads who study the incredibly complex interplay of global monetary policy and production trends! All we have to do is work harder! IT'S JUST THAT SIMPLE.

This article can be summed up in one sentence. We need another Ronald Reagan.

Boy, I tell you what! Because all the problems the article mentions -- Islamic terrorism, the loss of our manufacting base, the growing shift in global power to Asia, the energy crisis, and spiralling debt -- Ronald Reagan totally solved all those problems when he was president!

*: Seriously, this is perhaps the dumbest thing ever written. This is substantially dumber than people who say we can fix economic slumps by just printing more money.

Everything is fine! Get back to work!

Neo-conservatives don't like to talk much about money. Privately, of course, they love it; it's the raison d'etre behind all their public sentiment about security and culture. Get in office behind fags and immigrants and terror, and once you're there, lower the capital gains tax and repeal business regulations. But they're oddly averse to it in their everyday pronouncements, except for the occasional slag on Democrats who will raise your taxes. The real economic goals they follow -- enrich the rich and ignore the poor -- aren't going to get them enough votes. So they hardly ever talk about economics, which is odd, because they're supposed to be the economically conservative, rational, market-savvy, sensible party.

Town Hall columnists are especially egregious in this regard. The libertarian wing talks about money all the time, because they don't really care about winning votes; and the Wall Street Journal (aside from their editorial page) is pretty open about where their interests like. But the biggest talking heads know where the votes are: in culture war, security scares, and trashing the opposition. Hence, aside from Roger Schlesinger's downmarket mortgage talk, real discission of the economy is pretty scarce. Even Rich Lowry doesn't write about it as much as he used to, because he found himself in near-constant disagreement with the Bush administration's grotesque deficit spending. Today, though, the lights come out to shine!

First of all, Walter Williams (who tops himself by using the "Now, I know what you're saying. You're saying 'Williams!'" line not once, but twice) shows how easy it is to be a professor emeritus of economics: just use one incredibly facile analogy to make a completely unsupportable generalization about the economy.

Next up, Janice Crouse, PhD. (of the highly prestigious Beverly LaHaye Institute) has a doctoral degree, but oddly, none of her online biographies say where it's from or what it's in. I'm guessing from this column it's not economics:

Funny how CNN picks the weeks just before the election to feature Lou Dobbs leading official-looking town hall meetings somberly lamenting the “war on the middle class.” Of course, he is pushing his book by that title! No one seems to question such a far-fetched idea even though the Dow is at record highs

Which would be relevant if the majority of middle- and working-class people were invested in the Dow, but they aren't...

unemployment is near all-time lows

Which would be relevant if "more employment" was the same thing as "good jobs with decent salaries", but it doesn't...

gas prices are down about a dollar per gallon

Which would be relevant if the price of gas was what kept the middle class solvent, but it isn't...

and the time you have to wait to get a table at Outback Steak House seems longer every time you go there.

Which would be relevant if this wasn't the stupidest fucking thing I'd ever heard in my life, but it is. (Apparently, this isn't the first time Dr. Crouse has betrayed a slightly imperfect understanding of economics.)

Finally, professional asshole John Stossel tells us that getting health insurance from your employer is stupid.

Having my health care tied to my boss invites him to snoop into my private health issues

Or it would if that wasn't illegal. Also, do you know why John doesn't get his medical care from FOX? Because they pay him so much that he can afford a much better one than they offer. Maybe he should ask the people in the mailroom if they think getting health care through their employers is a dumb idea.

and if I change jobs, I lose coverage.

That's a bummer, all right. Obviously the solution is just to get your own health care, and then if you change jobs, your coverage won't be interrupted, assuming you're one of the small percentage of Americans well-off enough to afford health care when you're not working.

Employer-paid health insurance isn't free. It just means we get insurance instead of higher salaries.

Ha ha, RIGHT! Because if employers didn't have to pay health insurance, they would just raise everyone's salaries right away instead of just keeping the extra money! That's why jobs that don't offer health insurance always have such good salaries.

I'd rather have the cash and buy my own insurance.

Hey, John, try this: find out how much FOX pays per employee for their standard health care package. Then see if that amount will cover the monthly premium you pay on your private health care. If not, I invite you to eat a big turd.

These people need some ERACE bumper stickers

Town Hall really pulls out the stops today in the Racial Sensitivity department. Check it:

Walter "Williams!" Williams says black people are capable of being taught; just look at how good they are at basketball!

LaShawn Barber says that we shouldn't let Deval Patrick get away with treating homos like human beings just because he's black.

And Harry R. Jackson, Jr. says it's time for black Americans to stop being raped by baby-killing Democratic slave-masters.

The great thing is, ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE BLACK! I think Uncle Ruckus is taking over Cal Thomas' old spot next week.

You know that thing about motes and beams? It's in the BIBLE.

Dennis "My Son Has a Black Muslim Friend" Prager has written a new column in which he jumps all over the "Muslim cab drivers won't take passengers with alcohol" story as 'proof' that there is no such thing as moderate Islam and that Muslims are all dangerous religious fanatics who want to impose their values on the rest of us.

In case you haven't been following this ridiculous non-story, it seems that a few Muslim cabbies in the Twin Cities are getting lots of heat because they don't want to allow people in their taxis wits booze. Now, of course it's been grotesquely exaggerated in the telling -- to hear the Town Hall crowd tell it, it's next to impossible to get a cab in the whole Midwest if you've ever had a glass of wine with dinner. But despited the fact that the actual story focused on a small number of Muslim cabdrivers who don't want people who are openly intoxicated (not an unusual restriction, even for non-Muslim cabbies) or with open containers (which is, after all, illegal) in their rides. But the conservative talking heads have taken it as flagrant evidence of the intolerance of the entire Islamic faith, and a clear sign that they want to impose their moral and religious standards on the rest of the world.

Now, I have no truck with Islam. I hate religion, and as restrictive, intolerant faiths go, Islam is in, oh, say, the top three. But what, exactly, is the problem here? Most of this fretting and fuming comes from people who are, after all, devoted religious conservatives who, when they're not derying the evils of intolerant Muslims, are railing against our permissive, decadent society. You'd think these jackoffs, who spend half their time bitching about feminism, slutty clothes on girls, and how our culture is swamped in filth and drugs, would find common cause with the madrass types, but since these guys care about names for sides more than they care about obeying the tenets of their own faith, it's all about the evils-of-Islam rap.

Anyway, here's the problem with the "Muslim cabbies won't allow booze/dogs in their taxis, therefore Islam is an intolerant religion" analogy: as anyone from L.A. to Chicago to New York will tell you, another thing, besides dog ownership or alcohol possession, that makes it hard for you to get a cab is having black skin. Does this, therefore, 'prove' that Americans are racist? I bet the cultural conservatives would say no!

The great thing about Prager's take on the issue, though, is that, taking self-ignorance to breathy new heights, he claims that Muslims want to force their beliefs on others...while denying that Christians do, or have ever done, such a thing. Let's take a look!

And in Minneapolis, Minn., Muslim taxi drivers, who make up a significant percentage of taxi drivers in that city, refuse to pick up passengers who have a bottle of wine or other alcoholic beverage with them.

He starts out with a flagrant distortion of the case. Not all Muslim cabbies refuse such passengers -- indeed, it's a very small number, because most cabbies care more about making money than they do following their religion to the dot and tittle. And it's not ones who have a bottle, but an open bottle; a pretty important disctinction, that. But that's not the fun part! Here's the fun part:

We are not talking here about Muslim fanatics or Muslim terrorists, but about decent every day Muslims. And what these practices reveal is something virtually unknown in Judeo-Christian societies -- the imposing of one's religious practices on others.

VIRTUALLY UNKNOWN IN JUDEO-CHRISTIAN SOCIETIES!

The imposing of one's religious practices on others? In Jewish or Christian societies? VIRTUALLY UNKNOWN!

VIRTUALLY fucking UNKNOWN!

First of all, let's look at a couple of minor, slight, barely noticable examples of where Christians and Jews have attempted to impose their religious views on others:

1. The ethnic cleansing of the Holy Land in the Old Testament.
2. The Crusades.
3. The Inquisition.

What's that you say? That was hundreds or thousands of years ago, and Christians and Jews don't do that sort of thing any more? Okay, let's think of a few more recent examples.

1. The Puritans.
2. Witch trials.
3. Forcible conversion of Native Americans, Asians and Africans.

Still too far back in the past, you say? Surely I can't think of any examples from the last century or two, you say? Let's see:

1. Hundreds, even thousands, of prohibitive laws based only on Judeo-Christian morality.
2. Systemic disenfranchisement of Muslims by Jews in Israel.
3. Widespread religious discrimination against Jews by Christians in Europe and the US.

But there's nothing going on NOW, right? In the 21st century, are you saying that Jews and/or Christians attempt to impose their value system on others? Maaaaaybe...

1. The attempt to remove the teaching of evolution from public schools.
2. The evangelical Christian movement, whose expressly stated goal is to remake the laws to more adequately reflect those of the Bible.
3. Innumerable restrictions on alcohol, drug use, pornography, prostitution, and homosexuality.

Now, next, Prager tries to weasel out of it by saying that a lot of people will claim that the fight to outlaw abortion is an example of Jews and Christians trying to impose their religious practices on others, but that's different! How?

There is no comparing ritual prohibitions with moral prohibitions. Christians argue that taking the life of a human fetus where the mother's life is not endangered is immoral. And so do religious Jews (and Muslims) and many secular individuals -- because the issue of abortion is a moral issue. Contact with dogs, on the other hand, is a ritual issue, not a moral issue. Which is why non-Muslims do not consider it immoral -- unlike the many non-Christians who consider most abortions immoral.

Uh huh. Nice try, Dennis. Despite trying to weasel out of it with this "moral vs. ritual" bullshit (and, I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but what difference does it make to a person who's being discriminated against whether the reason behind his oppression is moral or ritual? and do the true believers themselves make a distinction between morality and ritual, or do they believe that their rituals are informed by their morality?), it's still not true that Christians don't impose their beliefs on other based simply on ritual. Here's an example:

Blue laws.

In thousands of places all over the country, you can't buy liquor on Sunday -- and not just liquor, but in some locations, other things, like automobiles, pharmaceuticals and even dry goods -- because of laws passed to restrict commerce on the Christian day of rest. Although many blue laws have been repealed, many more have been upheld, and here in Texas there's been a major challenge to a proposed repeal on the blue law that requires car dealerships to close on Sundays. Since he spends a lot of time there smoking cigars with James Lileks, Dennis Prager surely knows that Minnesota, the very place where evil Muslim cabbies won't give you a ride if you're toting a bottle of Cabo Wabo, forbids the sale of liquor on Sundays. And there's no way this is a moral issue; if you were morally opposed to alcohol, you'd seek its complete prohibition. It's just a ritual, an observance of the Christian day of rest.

Here's another: public holidays. In the United States, employers are required by law to give full-time employees a set amount of days off, which coincide with the major Christian days of worship. Is it a moral issue that people not work on Christmas? Nope. It's nothing but a ritual, and due to public pressure from the dominant religion, it has been codified in law. Of course, I have no problem with it; but you'd be hard pressed to define this as anything more than Christians imposing their ritual observations on the society in which they live. Anyone who tried hard could think of dozens of examples of successful attempts or at least concerted efforts to impose Christian ritual belief (and thousands of examples of imposing Christian moral belief) on society.

Dennis concludes:

But such Jewish or Mormon examples [of the imposition of ritual religious observation] don't exist (and if they did, religious Jews and Mormons would regard such persons as crackpots). They do not exist because Jews and Mormons do not believe that non-Jews are required to change their behavior owing to Judaism's or Mormonism's distinctive laws. Religious Muslims, on the other hand, do believe that wherever applicable, non-Muslims should change their behavior in the light of Islam's distinctive laws.

HA HA HA. 100% pure, unadulterated, premium-grade bullshit. Dennis, my man, before you remove the mote from your neighbor's eye...

Tales of a zesty senorita

Doug Giles, the Floridian asshole who gets a paycheck from Town Hall every week, concludes his "Raising Girls Who Won't Let Colored Boys Touch Them" series today. You may recall from previous weeks that he proposed ten rules for raising daughters, then spent a week each on the first two ('teach them to fight' and 'teach them to shoot guns'); showing where his priorities are, he concludes the series by cramming the remaining eight non-violence-centered childrearing rules into one week. Let's watch!

Dad, do you want to ensure that your girl doesn’t end up broke, bulimic, married to Bobby Brown, or more bellicose than Courtney Love is after she’s run out of crack and booze? You do? Well, good for you.

Here, Doug departs from type and cites a degenerate, drug-addicted WHITE person as a negative role model. Question: how do we know how bellicose Courtney Love gets when she runs out of booze? I seriously doubt that has ever happened.

Having been personally blessed with two beautiful niñas, it’s my duty (duh) to raise these fair lassies to be large and in charge.

You mean fat, Doug? Are your daughters fat?

Which means (in today’s twisted sister culture) that as a father, I’ve got to help them strategically and energetically paddle up the heavy rapids of a stinky creek.

It takes courage to namecheck Twisted Sister as a paragon of moral degeneracy in this day and age.

Having been semi-successful with my Xena-like teenage tornadoes (and being the nice guy that I am), I want to accomplish several things with this column

I wonder two things here: first, is Doug aware of Xena's status as a big-time dyke icon? And second, what's with the "semi-successful"? It's not like this jackass to be humble, so is he actually admitting that something is wrong with his daughters? Is one of them a smoker? Do they listen to jungle music? Has one of them brought home a Levantine boyfriend? Or do they just get below-average marks in submachinegun class?

I’d also like to inform other fathers who’re groping for some moral rutter.

MAN! I know Doug is prone to misspelling big words in his attempt to sound smart, but this is just too Freudian a slip.

3. Teach Them How to Sense BS. Princeton Philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt states, “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullsh*t."

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the only time ever that Doug Giles will cite an Ivy league philosopher.

Call it non-sense, truth bending, reality styling, Mark Foley-itus, mendacity, Air America or whatever, you do not need to be the coldest beer in the fridge to recognize that lies, hype and spin are now seeing more action than Bill Clinton would at the Hooters in Little Rock.

There is a term for people who make fun of something while doing it themselves. Can anyone tell me what it is, class?

Now granted, most gobbledygook is harmless. However, some BS is disastrous. Case in point: the amorous, nauseous oozings that a Joran Van der Sloot excreted, and that were, unfortunately, bought by Natalie Holloway. Not discerning this Dutch dillweed’s depravity cost Natalie her life.

Not being as keen on the latest white-girls-in-trouble news as I should be, I have no idea what this means.

Speaking of Natalie and bad dates: Girls, if ‘red flags’ start going off in your head, your skin begins to crawl up your arm and your gut revolts against your eyes and ears—then you might want to pay attention to what your body and your intuition are telling you.

"Follow your intuition"? That's Doug's brilliant fathering advice, "do what you think you ought to do"? How about "learn how to balance your checkbook"? Geez.

4. Teach Them How to Rebel. Dad, having a girl with a well whetted BS detector is not enough. Sometimes, when the twaddle is egregious, you’ve got to teach your little darling to revolt against the purveyors of it. I think the greatest need for rebels with a cause is within the homes of families who have traditional American values.

Wh...what? I honestly don't get this. Doug is a preacher. He's a fundamentalist Christian conservative. He makes his living espousing the dominant cultural, political and religious belief of most of the country. He's obviously not telling people to rebel against that kind of bullshit, is he? Maybe we'll find out what exactly he means in the next section!

Nice dad, if you’re going to send your daughter to a state run university, then you’ve got to teach your lass to not just sit there in class being a good girl and taking whatever the secular “progressives” shove down her throat.

Oh, I see! She should rebel against the CRAZY COMMIE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS taught by a few thousand college professors which has pretty much nothing to do with how the real world works and which needs rebelling against about as much as Flemish automatic writing. Makes perfect sense now, that's exactly the kind of rebellion the world needs all right.

You must teach to her to deftly defy defunct dogmas and not turn a blonde eye to bad ideas.

Defunct dogmas like...Christianity? NO! Not that. Also, HA HA BLONDES R DUM

Yeah, traditional father, teach your girl to feel proud and comfortable with not being a communist, with believing in God, with our nation’s spiritual heritage and with not having her genitals turned into a campus Jiffy Lube.

Man! A conservative capitalist Christian! That's rebellious. PUNK AS FUCK! Also, that last metaphor? Maybe a tad too pungent.

5. Teach Them How to Be Classy (That’s mostly my wife’s job.) Look, I’m all for girls being Tom-boy rough around the edges. I like an earthy woman. My youngest daughter can burp so loud that it shakes a whole restaurant. It is quite amazing.

Uh. I, I bet it is.

That said, dad, keep your girls from being as gross as men are allowed to be. Men are supposed to be semi-vile beasts.

Why? WHY? God fucking forbid Doug writes an article where he tells men not to be pigs, or to behave like civilized human beings. No, better to relegate us to our comically stone-age mores, and shrug our shoulders and say "do as I say, girls". Note also that in Doug's world, the important thing is to teach girls to kill their would-be rapists, not to teach boys not to treat women badly.

Girls have now been liberated to be just as vulgar as men are.

That's what women's lib is all about, really. Farting.

Girls, don’t try to be as base as us. We suck. It’s the feminine difference that keeps us in line. Your grace and mystery keep us in balance. Therefore, be prettier, daintier and more honorable — and we’ll conquer the planet for you.

[killing self, others]

Let your girl know, however, that not being a gross, rowdy and disgusting slut might cause her to not get invited to every keg party. But she shouldn’t sweat it, because her tastefulness will cause her to excel in life and land her a worthy man.

That's important, catching the right fella. Don't burp, ladies.

6. Teach Them to Despise Anti-Intellectualism.

Oh, boy, this should be good!

The Beatles are credited with mainstreaming drugs more quickly than anyone else within the West.

...what? Seriously, what?

I credit Paris Hilton and the rest of her lockstep, anti-intellectual, ogling ilk for making it cool to be a credulous clod.

Yeah, stupid behavior was never in vogue in these United States before Paris came along. Certainly isolationist religious conservatives who constantly rail against the evils of higher education have not contributed one iota to the growing anti-intellectualism of America; no, clearly, the problem is Hollywood celebrities.

Young girl, listen: Paris can afford to own dumb. Paris is filthy rich and has a lot of lawyers retained. If you follow her moronic lead and stay daft, well . . . all I can say is, “I hope you like eating government cheese and living in a van down by the river.”

Dear Doug Giles,

YOUR ENTIRE CAREER IS PROOF THAT ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM CAN BE PROFITABLE.

not yours,
Jumbo

Dad, provide your girl with a killer library covering a variety of topics.

But not "defunct dogmas" by "secular progressives".

Start with the easy to read version of the Bible.

Why "easy to read"? If you're raising an intellectual, why dumb it down? It's already pretty dumb.

Then get her everything R.C. Sproul’s written on Theology. After that, line the shelves with biographies of productive world shakers.

Okay, religion and capitalism, good starts...

Then get a good tome that overviews the major philosophers/philosophies.

Except commies. And Europeans. And anyone who makes her doubt the existence of God. So that gets rid of a good 75% of major philosophers.

If you provide these pithy works and encourage your girl to imbibe deeply on them, I guarantee you won’t have to worry about your daughter drinking bong water with Tara Reid while clubbing on South Beach.

Because, of course, well-read intellectuals never, ever get involved with drugs or sex.

7. Teach Them to Be Visionaries. Teach your daughter to dream big and not to settle for personal, national, cultural or ecclesiastical mediocrity. Teach her, by faith, to see what is unseen and to work her disciplined butt off to achieve what she desires versus that which culture or others have prescribed for her.

Okay, this is pretty good, but again, being a visionary/rebel/intellectual/etc. often means rejecting your traditional upbringing. Which, in your case, Doug, would mean you're encouraging your daughters to explore atheism, postmodernism, liberalism, etc. You don't really wanna do that, do you, Doug?

8. Teach Them How to Party. Teach your girls that if they go out partying, to be aware that lame guys with hackneyed existences

"HACKNEYED EXISTENCES"?

have found ways around having to get a life before they try to get your girl. It is called, as you all know, date rape drugs. With the advent of roofies and ecstasy, losers are able to work around a girl’s brain and body (if they can lace your drink) by getting you so smashed that you throw off any inhibitions (or go unconscious) so they can try their ham-fisted moves on you. So, to avoid being French kissed, raped, impregnated, kidnapped or murdered by these slugs:

1. Don’t take a drink from a stranger. Receive your drink only, only, from the bartender; watch him make it, and then have him hand it directly to you.

2. Don’t leave your drink lying around where Goofy can drop a roofie in it.

3. Don’t party with brain-dead buddies. Hang out with friends who keep their wits about them when they’re having a good time, who will not let you leave with three local peons or get ridiculously wasted, who have well-honed BS detectors and who will not let you get behind the wheel of your 330I if you’ve had seven shots of Cabo Wabo.

So, in brief: go out and have fun at parties, but beware, because the world is filled with creeps who will drug your drink and rape you. MAN THAT'S SOME GOOD PARENTING RIGHT THERE!

9. Teach Them the Value of Hard Work. Tell your daughter and show her by example that the harder she works, the luckier she’ll get. Make sure she doesn’t have an entitlement mentality towards you, a sugar daddy, church or our government.

ZzzzzzzzOH sorry, I nodded off there.

10. Teach Them the Importance of Traditional Convictions. You do not have to be a tongue talkin’, “on fire,” Pentecostal father to teach your little girl the importance of faith in God, how to pray and the value of biblical values.

HOW CAN YOU DO THIS IF YOU WANT HER TO BE A VISIONARY INTELLECTUAL REB oh, never mind.

This often ridiculed biblical infrastructure just happens to be a major part of why the west is the best.

Ha ha! SUCK ON THAT, BUDDHISTS!

And dad, don’t pass spiritual training off to your wife. She’s only part of your girl’s spiritual picture.

There! That's it! That's the end! Go to it, all you fathers.

Vom of the week!

How I wish I was making this up: Feminists are the moral equivalent of man who raped and murdered Amish schoolgirls.

When you're done cleaning up after that, my new hero, Doug Giles, has Part Two of his "How to Raise Girls Who Won't Date Negroes" article up. Let's watch!

Hey, Dad—would you like to ensure that your daughter becomes an inept, stressed out, unconfident young woman who hates her body, gets easily depressed, has no self-esteem and who will probably have critical weight problems?

YES! TELL ME HOW! I like how he starts this out with "inept", implying that if you have self-esteem issues or weight probems or depression, it's probably your fault.

What about making certain that she’ll flaunt herself to get the attention of some Darwinian throwback, gold-toothed, rapping, Murphy’s-Law-personified thug so that she can be the chief hoochie in his up and coming booty video?

Whew, I was worried, because we had to wait until the third paragraph for the I-hate-niggers stuff. One thing, though: does Doug know what Murphy's Law is? Because it would seem like if you're making an up-and-coming video, you're not subject to it.

Or...or...would you like to greatly increase the odds that she’ll become a teenage sexual beastess, who (obviously) will have a better shot at becoming an STD wagon or a pregnant teen, who will then (in all probability) do a lot dope and drink booze like Ted Kennedy?

1. "Beastess"?
2. I keep trying to get something off the STD wagon, but it never comes by my house.
3. Does Ted Kennedy "do a lot dope"? Also, nice out there, with the in-all-probability.

You would?

YES! I said, YES. Come on already.

Well, then I’ve got some advice for you: You must detach from your daughter (like, right now), stay away from your home and let her know (by your actions, showing her no, or minimal affection) that you don’t really care about her life.

Boy, if only I had known it was that easy. Whereas, of course, nothing could go wrong by being a domineering, creepy, marginally psychotic, overbearing jackass who micromanages every aspect of his daughter's existence!

This lack of mental, physical and spiritual input from you, Daddy-O, will exponentially boost the odds that your young daughter will grow up to be more lost than Jenna Jameson sitting in on a Reformed Presbyterian symposium discussing the differences between supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism.

How about "more lost than Jenna Jameson sitting on her ass collecting gigantic royalty checks and laughing at all the suckers at the symposium"? Just wondering.

Conversely, if you do not wish an Anna Nicole existence upon your daughter and would instead like to raise a sharp, solid and smart senorita, then you, Father, must get off your beer-enlarged butt and get caught up in your chica’s life.

Boy, Doug likes the cod-Spanglish almost as much as he likes making fun of Anna Nicole Smith. At least he didn't say "zesty senorita" this time.

Listen, mentally-challenged man, your lady cannot raise your daughter alone—and even if she could, she doesn’t bring to the table that which a masculine man does. Period.

HA HA HA, yeah, what woman could raise a daughter by herself? THAT NEVER HAPPENS! And even if she could -- which she can't -- the kid will grow up totally screwed up because of the absence of your dick.

Period. I don’t care what any splooge-brain sociology teacher at Columbia says or what rancid Rosie propagates. Single moms (as great as some of them are), and/or a couple of lesbians (no matter how mannish they look and act) do not afford that which an involved, non-metrosexual father does.

Thank goodness he managed to slide in some fag-bashing there.

Raising girls that rock isn’t rocket science. So relax, Dad. You don’t have to start watching Oprah, Rachel Ray or the Bravo Channel in order to assist your girl. Simply let loose your natural, masculine instincts in their provisional and protective qualities on your little lady.

Whew! Thank goodness I don't have to do anything hard like watch TV. I don't have any idea what that last sentence means, though. Doug now reiterates his ten things to do to raise girls right; last week, we covered #1 (Teach Them How to Fight) and now it's #2 (Teach Them How To Shoot Guns, which seems like kinda the same thing, but it isn't).

With demoniacs now boldly going into Amish Schools and shooting innocent little girls, and with insane, should-be-dead-and-roasting-in-hell perverts and pedophiles prowling our parks and picking on our chicks, I’m a zealous advocate for women getting packed, stacked and ready to whack.

Man, I love the dudes who think the entire world is populated with sexual predators and that if you let your guard down for five seconds you'll end up stuffed in a drainage culvert. That's gonna produce some healthy children, that attitude! You bet!

Fathers, I wouldn’t have your girl learn how to just barely use a weapon; I would be aiming for her to be able to emulate Angelina Jolie’s character in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Uh...what?

Yeah, I would teach her to be proficient in all forms of death dealing with all types of guns.

I mean, seriously. Again, I am very pro-gun, and I am all for women, or even teenagers, learning to use them. But tell me this sentence is not maximally creepy.

A mild .38 Special revolver, or a .380 automatic pistol plus a .22 rifle and a nice 20-gauge shotgun that fits her well (very important), is a good way to get the party started. A year of you and her regularly hammering targets down range should set her up to be a girl no one wants to get PO’ed.

What, no brand recommendations?

Finally, make sure she gets a “concealed weapons” permit as soon as she can.

AS SOON AS SHE CAN! Note that Doug recommends you get your daughter shooting at age ten, so I'm guessing he'd lobby for a concealed-carry tag by, I dunno, twelve.

The final 8 nuggets next week...

This is my FAVORITE PART OF THE ARTICLE. Because, see, what he's done is, he's written ten rules for how to raise a daughter. And to the first two rules -- fighting and shooting a gun -- he's devoted an entire week each. And to the next EIGHT rules, he's going to give maybe a PARAGRAPH! So, you know his priorities are right. You're the best dad ever, Doug Giles!

Round up the clowns!

Tim Chapman: If the Democrats win in November, we will all be nuked by North Korea, because they will stop pouring money into the nonfunctional Star Wars program.

Lorie Byrd: The increase in terrorism is actually the fault of Democrats and the media, for not giving us more good news.

Mona Charen: Okay, maybe Mark Foley is bad, but CLINTON DEMOCRATS LIBERALS DEMOCRATS CLINTON CLINTON CLINTON!

Jonah Goldberg: I'm not excusing what Mark Foley did, but CLINTON DEMOCRATS LIBERALS DEMOCRATS CLINTON CLINTON CLINTON!

David Limbaugh: Really, we shouldn't even be talking about Mark Foley, because CLINTON DEMOCRATS LIBERALS DEMOCRATS CLINTON CLINTON CLINTON!

And now, it's time for WHAT IS JAMES LILEKS TALKING ABOUT?

Funny, I don't remember anyone talking like this during the Clinton impeachment:

I don’t know about you, but I have an instant aversion to anyone trying to make a general political point about this. I know they’re there, but it’s just an instant turn-off, as the Playmates say. The point I tried to make in the column was the general uselessness of extracting evidence that undermines your opponent’s ideology from situations such as this.

Yeah, I guess it is pretty useless to point out that a man whose party has won elections for the last 15 years on a platform of moral scolding knowingly shielded a would-be pederast for half a decade.

The charge of “hypocrisy” is usually leveled, but that sin, for all its juiciness, is overrated.

For fun, go back and find how many times in the last five years the man from Fuddles attacked liberals for hypocrisy because they condemned human rights abuses or government intrusion by the Bush administration while allegedly ignoring the sins of Third World dictators. Then come here and read this sentence again.

I expect groups of people will uphold a principle in general but fail to uphold it in specific examples; the latter does not argue against the former, and certainly doesn’t call the truth of the general principle into question. If one pervy goat talks up Family Values one day and regards the page-pool as diddle-fodder the next, it doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as “Family Values.” (Whatever that means.)

I'm glad he added the "whatever that means" so I didn't have to, but really, the point people are trying to make isn't that occasionally an organization promoting a particular set of values finds within its membership an individual who pursues a contrary set of values. It's that when the organization knows that individual is pursuing the contrary set of values and (a) covers up for him and (b) makes excuses for him when his behavior is discovered, that rather seriously calls into question their commitment to the ideals they not only expect everyone else to live up to, but actually legislate for. The reason the charge of hypocrisy bears weight against the Republicans more than the Democrats is that the GOP is the party of values and morals, the party of scolds and martinets. They're the ones out there making lists of forbidden behaviors and compiling catalogs of outrage. So now, when one of their own -- and a particularly loud-mouthed advocate of what behaviors are simply never acceptable -- not only gets caught with one hand in his pants and the other typing naughty messages to teenage boys, but also is the benificiary of a cover-up and subsequent set of high-toned excuses by that party, well, yeah, that does say something about them. Just as with the Catholic Church, it's not the sin of an individual; it's never the sin of an individual, which is always forgivable. It's the reaction to the sin. It's the cover-up, the excuse, the "but when WE do it, it's okay". But wait, Lileks has an even better capper than this 'what's the big deal?' bullshit:

Anyway. I’m tired of the subject, and it gives me an unnerving recollection of the Gary Condit story. That was the lead story on the cable news on September 10, 2001, if I remember.

We have to stop talking about the Foley scandal, because otherwise, THE TERRORISTS WILL ATTACK! Sadly, Lileks isn't the only one making this argument.

Just talkin' 'bout Doug!

Doug Giles, the beefy he-man preacher who leads an NFL-and-fagbashing-style church out of a Holiday Inn in Florida, has a new column up at Town Hall. I know it's cheap and easy to pick on guys like this, rather than, say, making arguments about why a flat tax or deregulation aren't good ideas; it's the equivalent of conservatives picking on the hippies at peace marches with big flaming Bush puppets. But honestly, I can't let this guy NOT get a wider audience: he provides me with some of the best laughs I get.

For fun, count how many times he clearly wants to say 'nigger'. Also, ask yourself this: whose daughter do you feel more sorry for? James Lileks' or Doug Giles'?

I was channel surfing the other day when I landed on an idiotic Reggaeton music video. It was your emblematic Stooge-a-Palooza reel.

Now, I'm going to spend a little more time on this paragraph than it warrants, because as far as I can tell, it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Leaving aside whether or not Doug actually knows what reggaeton is, what does that last sentence mean? "Emblematic Stooge-a-Palooza reel". Let's consider.

1. I think the word Doug wants is "typical" rather than "emblematic". Because, otherwise, what is the reggaeton video emblematic of? What emblem or symbol is being invoked? The Three Stooges?

2. I guess I can forgive the suggestion of the video resembling the Three Stooges; later in the piece, it seems like he's attacking it for being degrading and sexist, but he'd probably agree that it was clownish, too, so the Stooges reference could be apt. But why "Stooge-a-Palooza"? Does he think it sounds better, rather than simply being confusing?

3. "Reel"? What is this, 1952?

Anyway:

The scene was typical: the “musicians” and their homies were wearing T-shirts that would be too large for Sasquatch

Thanks for the reminder that rappers can never, ever be considered musicians! I don't think Town Hall's readers can hear that often enough. Also, do we know for a fact that their t-shirts would be too large for Sasquatch? I think fact-checking is called for here.

they sported baseball caps pull downed over their ears like some Fat Albert character.

I can't figure out if he means Rudy or Dumb Donald. Some dumb ghetto Negro, at any rate.

Along with the above, these hoodlums donned the Dennis Rodman multi-necklace starter kit, cubic zirconium earrings and, of course, tennis bracelets.

Man, a Dennis Rodman joke! In 2006! That's brave, Doug.

Y’know, nothing screams, “I’m a bad ass” more than stud earrings and costume jewelry.

Unless it's wearing camouflage to deliver sermons to your congregation in the Key West Room of the Orlando Best Western.

With all their bracelets and necklaces in place, the creative geniuses launched into waving their 96-oz. beer bottles in the air like they just don’t care as they rapped/“sang”/spoke their song (?)

Doug is so confused by this jungle gibberish that he lists every possible permutation of human vocal communication, and then puts in a question mark just so we understand he doesn't get it! Man, that's writing.

The thing that floored me was not the musical gruel these dasypygals peddled, but all the gorgeous girls that were a part of the helix-missing miscreants’ music video.

Ooooh, "dasypygal"! Someone's got a word-of-the-day service.

Yeah, dozens of beautiful teens and twenty-something girls were wearing Victoria Secret boy shorts and tiny tube tops as they writhed on the ground and upon the hoods of cars as these “artists” poured beer on them, slapped their butts and simulated sex acts with somebody’s daughter.

Every time you have sex, Doug, it's with somebody's daughter. Hopefully not your own.

Which left me thinking, “Where the heck are these girls’ parents?” In particular, where are their dads?

Probably at home, reading your column and thinking, damn, I wish my daughter wasn't a legal adult, so I could force her not to do that shit".

Father, if your daughter is doing extra work on soft porn music videos, or posting sex pics on mySpace.com, or bearing it all for a Girls Gone Wild DVD, or inflating their chests to ocean buoy size proportions to appeal to the most appalling, pusillanimous pigs on the planet, then you have clearly not done your job as a father.

Does it have to be EXTRA work? What if it's just her regular work? Also, the word is "baring". I've never seen a Girls Gone Wild DVD, but my understanding is that the hook is girls taking their tops off, not carrying around heavy weights. And let's hope you're not speaking too soon, Doug; your kids still have plenty of years to abreact to your jackass parenting.

Hey sperm donor—if you bring a little girl into this world, then it is your job to make certain she’s grounded.

Uh, isn't it sort of counter-productive to argue that men have a responsibility to raise their children while using reductive terms like "sperm donor"?

I’ve got two daughters. One is about to go to college, and the other just turned 15. When these little female charges popped out of their mommy’s belly several years ago, I felt this thing called “responsibility” hit me like a nun chuck regarding their upbringing.

I...I don't even know where to begin with this batshit paragraph. Should I focus on "little female charges"? Or the disturbingly cutesy "mommy's belly"? Or how Doug thinks 18 is several years? Or the bizarre spelling of 'nunchaku'? Or just the overall clumsiness of the whole last sentence? I wish he'd get back to making fun of niggers, this is just too much.

I didn’t sluff off my role in their lives onto my wife, my church, government schools, day care, a nanny, other relatives, TV, Sesame Street, or “the village” to fill my boots.

The word is "slough", Doug. How do you know "dasypygal" and not this? Anyway, none of that should get in the way of his important point, which is that if you accept the help of others in raising your child, you are a pussy and a loser and probably a communist.

I, along with my lovely wife, got them here, and dammit, it’s our job—especially my job as Alpha male of the Giles castle—to set them up internally and externally for greatness.

I'm pretty sure that Doug doesn't use phrases like "Alpha male of the Giles castle" ironically. Also, how do you set someone up externally for greatness? Buy them a hat that says I AM GREAT?

Living in Miami I knew that I would have to pony up and be a major player in their lives if they were going to escape being part of the local teen fart cloud; I would have to instill principles in them in order to keep them from teenage wasteland.

Jesus, Doug, do you fingerbang your wife with the fingers that type "teen fart cloud"? Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but even if you don't live in Miami, it's pretty common knowledge that teenagers get up to no good.

In other words, I’m going to have to be a dad in the traditional sense of the word. Isn’t that weird?

I guess it would be, if I had any idea what you were talking about.

Having been pretty successful, heretofore, with the upbringing of my righteous and rowdy girls, here and now I will unveil my secret recipe for raising my zesty señoritas.

MAN, SHUT UP, DOUG GILES.

1. Teach Them How to Fight.

That's lesson #1! The first one! Teach them how to fight.

2. Teach Them How to Shoot Guns.

Lesson #2! The second priority! Make sure they're armed.

3. Teach Them How Sense BS.

Maybe even how to sense BS.

4. Teach Them How to Rebel.

But, you know, not too much. You don't want them to rebel against, say, you. Or Christianity. I mean, one assumes that the topless sorority sisters in the Girls Gone Wild videos are rebelling, too, right?

5. Teach Them How to Be Classy (That’s mostly my wife’s job.)

And man, nothing spells classy like a brawling, rebellious, gun-toting rowdy from Miami.

6. Teach Them to Despise Anti-Intellectualism.

Wait, what? Doug Giles is the biggest anti-intellectual I can think of. Does he mean intellectualism? Or does he mean 'espouse' instead of 'despise'?

7. Teach Them to Be Visionaries.

As long as they remain fundamentalist Christian conservative visionaries.

8. Teach Them How to Party.

Ha ha, MAAAAAN DOUG GILES! Hey, girls, Daddy's gonna teach you to paaaaaaaarty! As long as you never dress slutty or get naked or go with boys or drink or dance around like an idiot or listen to popular music. SOUNDS LIKE FUN, DOESN'T IT?

9. Teach Them the Value of Hard Work.

No one knows how to party like a Puritan.

10. Teach Them the Importance of Traditional Convictions.

Which, one would think, is incompatible with being a rebellious visionary, but what do I know? I don't have children. Note that not on the list of how to raise good daughters are "teach them to be decent human beings", "tell them you will support them no matter what they do", and "emphasize intelligence and education".

Here’s numero uno on my to-do list for raising girls that pimps and thugs will hate:

"Pimps and thugs", eh? What do you mean by that, Doug? I can't see through your veiled language.

Teach Them How to Fight. With etiquette having flown out the window a solid 20 years ago and our neighborhoods now seeing perverts and pedophiles a plenty, young and old men are now extremely embolden to be groping, brutish and offensive horn dogs.

"Aplenty". "Emboldened". For someone who despises anti-intellectualism, Doug has scorn for copy editors. And, I mean, I'm all for teaching girls to fight -- I'm a tireless advocate for it, in fact. But doesn't making learning to fight the #1 priority for a girls' education put the burden on her? Doesn't it sort of send the message that society is fucked and men are all vicious sexual predators and there's nothing we can do about it, so you might as well learn to fight or you deserve whatever you get? Anyway, it's good to know that 1986 was the year etiquette flew out the window.

Since I would never ever want my darlings to be at the mercy of one these palm pilots, I have made certain that my girls know how to severely disable a bad guy and, if need be, kill him.

Keep talkin' tough, Doug. Real threats don't speak.

Not even out of their teens, both my daughters are Gracie Jui Jitsu assistant instructors and have extensive training with knives and guns, both in using and removing them from idiots who might have to die in order to learn something.

Okay, way to close it out, big man! I realize this whole schtick is motivated from a my-girls-know-how-to-protect-themselves viewpoint, which is admirable, but this paragraph makes him sound less like a caring parent than a dangerous sociopath. I can't wait for the next column where he explains the rest of his dipshit rules for keeping blacks away from his daughters!

And now, another installment of TORTURE IN THE NEWS!

See, you go and post something sarcastic about how torture isn't always so bad, and along comes Jonah Goldberg to moot your whole point.

Consider killing. In every society in the world, murder is punished more harshly than non-lethal torture. If I waterboard you, or lock you in my basement with Duran Duran blasting at you 24/7, even if I beat you for hours with a rubber hose, my punishment will be less severe than if I murder you, simply because it is worse to take a life deliberately than to cause pain, even sadistically.

Well, no. As Jonah himself will point out below, we make all sorts of exceptions for killing, because we tend to believe that sometimes it must be done; whereas we never believe torture is necessary. We allow and even encourage killing during wartime; we never encourage torture of our enemies. The police killing a criminal is a tragic but sometimes unavoidable event, while the police torturing a criminal is a scandal; many people believe we should be allowed to kill prisoners, but hardly anyone believes we should be allowed to torture them. We allow for the possibility of accidental killing; there is no such thing as accidental torture. Even within the framework of murder, torture is an exacerbating factor: a woman who shoots her philandering husband will rightly be punished, but a man who tortures a woman to death is far worse. Goldberg is engaging in sophistry at its worst, pretending he doesn't know how universal an evil torture is -- even worse than killing -- in order to defend the indefensible. (Also pretty repulsive is his citing mild-sounding tortures like waterboarding -- or even comical ones like being forced to listen to Duran Duran -- to lessen the gravity of the debate. Note that he doesn't cite actual tortures used against Iraqi detainees, like being wrapped in a carpet and beaten nearly to death, or having a light stick crammed up your ass, or being raped, or having your genitals electrically shocked by car batteries.)

Would you rather take some lumps in a dungeon for a month, or take a dirt nap forever?

Well, gosh! When you put it that way, I guess torture is fine!

Yet, according to the torture prohibitionists, there must be a complete ban on anything that even looks like torture, regardless of context, even though we'd never dream of a blanket ban on killing.

Hmm. Could that be, maybe, because TORTURE IS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THING THAN KILLING? Could it be because there's an element of moral evil in torture so indefensible that no one thinks it can be done with any moral justification whatsoever? I mean, for Christ's sake, if you pose in a Goldberg's Choice way -- "Would you rather get slobbered on for five minutes, or take a dirt nap forever?" -- then clearly, killing is far worse than rape. But you don't hear anyone going around saying that we should make exceptions for rape, or that the complete ban on rape is stifling and doesn't allow for legitimate exceptions. Because there aren't any! Good grief.

Anyway, next Jonah admits that there are reasons to kill, but not to torture -- not because there are no good reasons to torture, but because we just haven't given enough thought to finding them:

One reason for this disconnect is that we've thought a lot about killing and barely at all about torture. Almost no one opposes killing in all circumstances; wars sometimes need to be fought, the hopelessly suffering may require relief, we reserve the right to self-defense. Indeed, the law recognizes a host of nuances when it comes to homicide, and the place where everybody draws an unambiguous line on killing is at something we call "murder." But there is no equivalent word for murder when it comes to torture. It's always evil.

Clearly, we just haven't tried hard enough to find reasons to support torture! Really, when you think about it, people oppose torture because it has a bad name. If it was called 'puppy-flowerism', everyone would love it! We just need to work hard to come up with situations where sticking a flashlight up a guy's rectum and smearing shit on his face and bashing his fingers with gun butts is acceptable, and then call it 'proactive pre-terrogation', and all of the sudden it will be morally justifiable.

Yet that's not our universal reaction. In movies and on TV, good men force evil men to give up information via methods no nicer than what the CIA is allegedly employing. If torture is a categorical evil, shouldn't we boo Jack Bauer on Fox's "24"?

Well, there you go, folks. There's Jonah's hole card. There's his big reveal. There's his "AHA, GOTCHA!" moment by which he proves that torture is okay: because some people think a fictional character on a TV action show is neat. This would be a jackass argument even if you ignored the fact that lots of people do boo Jack Bauer.

There's a reason we keep hearing about the ticking time bomb scenario in the torture debate: Is abuse justified in getting a prisoner to reveal the location of a bomb that would kill many when detonated?

Actually, the reason we keep hearing about it is because people like Jonah Goldberg constantly dredge it up in order to have a tiny thread on which to hang their repulsive pro-torture agenda. We certainly don't keep hearing about it because it keeps actually taking place.

We understand that in such a situation, Americans would expect to be protected. That's why human-rights activists have tried to declare this scenario a red herring.

Another reason is that IT NEVER FUCKING HAPPENS.

I tell you, man: there's a lot of shit I can't believe I'm hearing these days. There's a lot of things going on that I honestly can't believe is taking place, that it just doesn't seem possible is allowed to happen with little to no public outcry. It's stunning to me that health care in the world's wealthiest country gets more and more inacessible instead of less and less; it's absolutely shocking that a major American city was basically allowed to vanish while the government sat on its hands. And I continue to be obsessed by the total lack of public outcry over the massive looting, fraud, misappropriation and corruption in Iraq by American corporations and government agencies. But more than anything, the fact that any day of the week I can turn on the radio, TV or computer and hear my fellow Americans, from everyday citizens to blowhard pundits all the way up to the President of the United States, demanding the right to torture people, is beyond unreal. America-hating comsymp traitors like me are constantly being accused of harboring feelings of shame over what is the freest country on earth, but it's pretty goddamn hard to be proud of your country when its leadership is bitching and moaning about how they aren't allowed to torture prisoners.

TORCHA!

Everybody likes to talk about torture. All of the sudden, torture is the bad guy. Like there's no such thing as GOOD torture! Come on, you liberal hippie freaks! What happened to 'there is no such thing as a man with no good in him"? But once you talk about our old pal torture, it's like he never accomplished anything! What about the Spanish Inquisition? Torture did a good job then, saving who knows how many thousands of souls. Without torture, all those forcible conversions would now be damned to Hell instead of eating Pizza Rolls in Heaven with John Wayne and Jesus! the Bush Administration is pro-torture, and you know how big they are on moral clarity. Even when they're against it, they're for it, kinda. And torture works as an anti-terror tactic, no matter what a couple of mean-spirited dissidents say; we have no less an authority than popular TV show 24 saying it's so!

How else can we tell that torture is a good thing? Well, the United Nations says that torture is worse now in Iraq than it was under Saddam Hussein, and the administration keeps telling us that there's lots of good news in Iraq, so maybe this is it. Maybe this is one of those things-getting-better we never hear about in the biased liberal American media! Thanks, BBC, for hipping us to one of the frequent victories in the new, democratic, peaceful Iraq. Torture also creates jobs, and that's good for the economy, so that should put an end to the discussion right there, but some people just love to complain.

Not complaining are leading lights like Rep. Lynn "I Voted for Torture" Westmoreland (R-GA), Thomas "Moral Courage" Sowell, John "Nobody Hated America in the '70s" Yoo, and the always-reliable Wall Street Journal's editorial board. If those people are in favor of torture, why aren't you? The WSJ is America's paper of record, people! And speaking of America, this country is widely hailed as the advance-guard of freedom and democracy, so if we are the first nation ever to officially authorize violations of the Geneva Conventions, maybe the problem isn't us, but the stupid Conventions.

As if any more proof were needed that torture is A-OK, no less august a body than the Traditional Values Coalition has come out in favor of it, and in opposition to those who would restrict it. TRADITIONAL VALUES, folks! That's what they're all about! If torture wasn't a traditional value, they would naturally oppose it! What more do you need to know? GO GO GADGET TORTURE

As long as I'm floundering...

...it's been a while since we did a Town Hall Roundup.

Michael Medved: Television is taking over our lives! Learn more on my daily three-hour radio show. Also, don't listen to that crazy Al Gore.

Mike S. Adams: My boss is a stuck-up bitch. Also, my deranged story about raiding a crackhouse proves that liberals are racist, somehow.

Walter Williams: I am Uncle Ruckus.

Brent Bozell, Ben Shapiro, Kathleen Parker, Debra Saunders, and Cal Thomas: Boy, that Clinton sure is an angry nut! Not that we're obsessed with him or anything! It's just that he is like Charles Manson!

Andrew Tallman: You should always stand up for what you believe, unless what you believe is that the President is an asshole.

Michelle Malkin: Charlotte Church is a skanky cunt because she uses sex to sell herself. Also, don't miss my weekly video blog at hotair.com, which often features me wearing skimpy outfits and jumping on a trampoline!

At last, the truth

The man from Fuddled, MN, in defense of his claim that his is not a political blog, finally explains himself.

I have zero objections to homosexuality but balk at redefining marriage.

I don't mind homos, as long as they don't ask for the same rights as regular people.

I recycle and abjure waste and live light as possible and dislike Hummers but I’m unimpressed by environmental scaremongering.

I like environmentalism as long as nobody tries to convince me that it's important.

I believe women are the intellectual equal of men but emotionally and psychologically different.

You know, because of the "curse".

I don’t want to outweigh the firefighter who attempts to carry me down the steps, and I don’t want a 37-year old man leading my daughter’s Girl Scout troop. No Harvard jobs for me!

HA HA SNOBBY INTELLECTUALS

I would rather hang out with Iggy Pop than Frank Sinatra.

Even though both of them would call me a tweedy nerd and flick cigarettes in my face.

I love the 50s but, if I lived there as a 20-something I'd be the sort of person who annoys me now, railing against the very symbols of artifice I prize today.

I am barely capable of recognizing what a profounding irritating person I am, but that won't stop me from complaining about the kids today with their rock and roll and their hair.

I hate the 60s, but know full well I would have been a pretentious stoner antiestablishment wannabee until the pose cost me money.

I would have pretended to be a hippie until it started to interfere with my income. I am a poseur and proud of it!

I think light rail is a money pit sinkhole beloved by New Urbanists, but support public subsidies of large-scale bus systems to move inner-city people to wherever the jobs may be.

I think public transport is a great idea for the poor and other people who aren't me.

I dearly love the inner city but don’t care if people move to the burbs for nice houses and good schools.

I hate the symptoms, but I am not interested in the cause.

I support the public schools. I support school choice.

I make no sense.

For that matter I support the New Urbanists, except when they get high-mindedly pissy about people’s free choices.

I am in favor of progressivism, as long as it doesn't try to get people to do something they don't want to do, or point out that it might be harmful to do the things they're already doing.

I believe in God, but I’m not throwing away my Coop books because he had a hot time at a Black Mass.

I...what?

I can’t stand everything Islamicists stand for, despair of the tide that seems to swamp a religion for which I have, despite my efforts, no empathetic connection whatsoever, but I celebrate the first Muslim in space.

I hate Muslims except when they remind me of Star Trek.

I dislike most TV, most modern music, and most movies, but love the big messy hot throbbing blob of Western pop culture, partly because I connect with part of it like a dog biting on a live wire, and partly because the loud rude crass mess spells freedom, and that is the root word at the heart of the American experiment.

I am an old crank.

We can always learn from others, but they’ve much to learn from us.

America is the best.

Unless they have a 200+ year track record of expanding rights and unimaginable prosperity as well.

America is the super-best.

SNORE BOBO COLUMN SCHMUCK IN INK SHOP SHOCKER

My arch-nemesis James Lileks is on vacation at a cabin up by the Boundary Waters. He has not only updated his (free) website twice, but has done a half-hour audio blog and also redesigned the site. While on vacation. With his family. At the Boundary Waters.

SCHMUCK.

Speaking of schmucks, I can't link to the whole thing since it's NYT premium content, but uberschmuck David Brooks, who actually makes a fat living writing on political and cultural trends in America, has just written a column in which he notes that getting a tattoo isn't really very rebellious, because a lot of people have them now. WHAT A STUNNER! Only about fifteen years behind the rest of the country comes D. Brooks with that dynamite observation. Next up from the keen eyes of this trend-hawk: 'punk rock' is actually sorta reactionary and conservative! Also, ad agencies are now using images of '60s rebellion to sell products!

Banana Republican

The man from Fuddled, MN is on vacation this week, but that doesn't mean I can't still be outraged by him! Somehow, last week, I missed one of his high-larious "Screedblogs", this on the subject of Castro, the Demon in Human Shape who even today menaces Boca Raton. Lileks goes for one of his little flights of fancy and imagines Uncle Fidel being visited by 'The Angel of History'.

Eventually it will come down to this, my friend: history will note that the people in the American jails at the tip of this island ate better than the average Cuban.

Which, of course, has nothing to do with nearly 50 years of sanctions, blockades and embargos by the world power just up the street, but is entirely due to Fidel's Stalinist treachery and greed. When you think about it, those illegally held torture victims at Guantanamo are really kinda lucky!

Odd, really: in this democratic, egalitarian nation, the only man you saw fit to follow happened to be your brother. What are the chances of that, eh? Most people in America don’t know a thing about him. ‘Another Castro?’ the Americans think. ‘They had a spare?’

Hmmm. That seems so oddly familiar to me. As if something similar had happened here, recently, maybe eight years ago. Something that made leftist observers comment on the banana-republicity of it all, to the silence or scorn of conservatives. But I simply cannot remember what it was!

Eh, probably wasn't important.

If you're having war problems, I feel bad for you, son

So, how's the war going? You know, the war! The war in Afghanistan.

Oh, wait, let's not talk about that one. We won that one, and everything's fine, and shut up. What I mean is the war in Iran Syria Lebanon.

Actually, you know what? Forget that one. I know some people call it a "proxy war", but what does that mean? That word is confusing. It's just Israel, and they're cleaning house in Palestine or Lebanon or Hezbollanea or one of those dirty countries, and it's not our business, so forget it. Let's get to the important war: North Korea.

Ha ha ha! Oh, I'm kidding, of course. I mean the war in Iraq. Technically, the war in Iraq is over; what's killing our soldiers by the hundreds and their people by the thousands is an insurgency. Or a terrorism. Or something like that. Whatever it is, we have to win it, unless we don't, but the important thing to remember is, it's very difficult.

Everybody wants to say that. The president reminds us that it's hard, in that voice that isn't so much the "don't patronize me" voice of a man who's being accused not knowing something he really does know as it is the "okay already" voice of a man who did something wrong and is trying to cover. The Republicans say we can't 'cut and run', which I guess means we stay in the house we set on fire so at least we go down with it. The Democrats, who are doing a bang-up job of cleaning every last vestige of matter out of their collective nutsack, keep saying that we have a difficult job ahead of us and there's no easy answers, but at the very least we can't keep doing what we've been doing, whatever that is. (The Democrats say this because they know that actually putting forth an idea might allow the Republicans to criticize them, and they can't have that, because they might lose the five or six 'swing' or 'center' voters that we are assured exist somewhere in the Big Sky states.) What nobody wants to say, what nobody has the nerve to say, what this whole fucking country is deathly afraid of admitting before the whole war just like we were in Vietnam because, I don't know, it'll make us look like pussies in front of that girl at the Hot Dog on a Stick, is that we fucked up. We did something really wrong and stupid, and it just keeps getting worse, and maybe we ought to get the fuck out while the the-fuck-out-getting is good.

I was, for a while, one of those well-meaning numbnuts who said, "Well, okay, yeah, the whole thing was a goddamn disaster from Day Zero, but we can't just leave, because what will happen to those poor people?" But you know what, me? Whatever's going to happen to those poor people, it's either already happened, or it's happened, or it's going to happen, regardless or whether or not PFC Antoine Huckleberry of Young America, MN is getting his face blown off while it's happening. I'm having a hard time thinking of a worst-case scenario that will occur if we pull up stakes and go the fuck home. Civil war? Already happening. Religious fanatics in power? Already happening, and has gone on in (our enemy) Iran and (our ally) Saudi Arabia for decades without the world coming to an end. A brutal dictator taking over? Iraq, as a nation, has been to that there and done that that. A partitioning of the country? Even elements of the neoconservative right are talking about this like it's a good thing. A humanitarian crisis? We passed that road sign about seventy miles back, kid. If worse comes to worst, and we end up with a few hundred thousand people dead, well, just throw 'em on the pile, right? We can have our own citizens over there getting aced for fuckin' nothing, or we can put them to some decent use.

The Bush adminstration has sold us all on the idea that it's a very complex and difficult situation, and we can't just walk away from it. But you know what? Sure we can. History is already being written along the lines that, hey, we got into this war, and yeah, it's "controversial", being completely predicated on lies since before it even started, but it's really hard, and who knows what the right thing to do would be? I do. The right thing would be to fucking stop. It may be a complex and difficult situation to tell your son to stop beating his kids, because after all, you beat him, and he's used to it, and wouldn't that make you a hypocrite?, and besides, maybe your grandkids enjoy being beaten, or if you didn't toughen 'em up with a few slaps now and then some kid at the schoolyard would beat them up twice as hard, and who's to say if you didn't discipline those fuckers right, they would have turned into a bully themselves? But telling your son to stop beating his kids is still the right thing to do.

As far as I can tell, the worst things that will happen if we pull out of Iraq are (a) we'll look like schmucks, which, I mean, mission already fucking accomplished there; (b) we'll have to abandon our precious hard-won democracy, which, you know, hey! it's working out so well, plus, fuck that! That's nothing but fucking pride. That's the guy who completely fucked up building his house, and there's no electricity so the food is spoiling and the insulation is mislaid so it's freezing cold in the winter, and the plumbing doesn't work so his kids have to piss and shit in old coffee cans, but he won't move the family into an apartment, because goddamn it, he did a good job on the bannister, and he's not going to leave that behind; and (c) the horrible scumbags doing business over there won't be able to loot the country anymore. Which, I not-so-secretly suspect, is the real reason we're sticking around, and, hell, maybe given how fucked our economy is -- like Frank Sobotka said, we used to make things here, but now we just pick the other guy's pocket -- is a good thing. If we pull out of Iraq the whole system might collapse and someone will decide to collect on all the debt we can't pay off. So maybe it's our patriotic duty to support war profiteers, instead of stringing them up.

Anyway, how's the war going? I've been busy.

Meat the Press

The less obnoxious of the Two Bolts of Bush (chief of staff Josh Bolten, not UN excoriator John "Mustache Pete" Bolton) was on Meet the Press yesterday. He was actually pretty solid on the situation in Lebanon (even I, who am ready to bite people's throats out merely for suggesting that my views on Israel are not 104% correct, didn't find much to complain about other than his hilarious statement that America's support of Israel is nothing more than a manifestation of our support of the right of all people everywhere to be free); he was a little more at sea on Iraq, claiming to the lack of any supporting evidence that there is ample cause for optimism and dismissing in an extremely creepy fashion that hectoring statements by the (democratically elected!) Iraqi foreign minister were "just what you'd expect" from...well, he didn't say "those people", but he came as close as the law will allow. Still, it wasn't until Tim Russert started bird-dogging him on stem cell research that his little ship sailed away into the lonely empty waters of Indefensibilia. Russert showed Tony Snow's dingbat press conference where he explained that the President's position on stem cell research is that it's murder; he (Russert) then asked Bolten if, given that Bush's primary spokesment says stem cell research is murder, that means that the president in so many words is completely fucking out of his mind. Bolten, who looked like he'd been caught putting his dick in the caviar at Daddy's dinner party, did his level best to hem and haw and change the subject, but he ended up echoing Bush's "it's hard work!" claim about the Iraq war, saying stem cell researcn was a "very difficult, very complex issue", and that was why the President's policies made no goddamn sense whatsoever. The best moment was when Russert quoted Karl Rove as saying that adult stem cell research had shown more promise in medical research than embryonic tissue research -- a claim which no scientist whatsoever has made, as far as I can tell. Bolten agreed with this patently ridiculous statement, and Russert asked him how he could agree when there was no scientific research to back it up. At this point, the following hilarious exchange took place:

BOLTEN: "Well, I'm no scientist."

RUSSERT: "Neither is Karl Rove."

BOLTEN: "Oh, he knows a lot of things."

Anyone in the mood for further rumblings about politics is advised to check out James Wolcott's posts of the last few days. He's been on a roll lately, both with links and original thoughts, and for the most part, his views of the Israel/Lebanon crisis are my own.

Oh, also, this.

Here's something about good political humor:

Most of it basically writes itself. Like, for instance, this transcript of an obviously drunk-off-her-nut Crazy Pammy recording her latest video blog. I really don't have to add anything to it to make it high-larious; just reading it, with her dynamite threesome of alcoholism, insanity and the biggest persecution complex on earth, is enough.

I THINK THEY CHANGE HATS

Hey! How you doin’? Um…but first I have a spec…special message for Nash…Nasfrallah…Nasrallah of Hezbollah, or Hamas, or Islamic Jihad, or the Revolu…the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, or al-Q’aeda, whatever hat they’re wearing today. This is special, man. This one’s for you.

YOU'RE LUCKY YOU'RE JUST READING THE TRANSCRIPT, I HAD TO WATCH IT

[lip-synchs to “Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me” while dancing and alternating making orgasmic faces, holding up an empty cocktail glass, and waving around a picture of a veiled Islamic woman.]

WORST WAR CRIMINALS ARE THOSE WHO DON'T WANT WAR

Nostril Man! Okay, enough of that. A couple quick things, quick quick things, because, uh, we’re being…it’s an onslaught. It’s an onslaught of media, and, uh, we have to hit the biggest criminals first. Uh…the peace conspirators. You know who the peace conspirators are? [Sings] “All we are saying is let’s kill the Jews.” I mean, really. Who wants war? Nobody wants war, okay? But war was declared on us, and I like the media’s attention to each individual: “three civilians were killed, four civilians were killed.” Oh, that’s nice. Are these the same innocent civilians that strap suicide belts to their babies? Are these the same, uh, suicide, uh, uh, are…innocent civilians that, uh, photograph their children with these, uh, big strapping guns? And, and teach them to k…to die? How…is this the innocent life? The culture of death?

HE DIDN'T EVEN GO TO AN IVY

You know, I notice this Syr…you ever notice this Syrian ambassador, this Assad the chinless, you know, optometrist? Did he make it to ophthalmology? Nah. No, he’s not even an ophthalmologist. Never got to medical school. I’ll bet you he’s an optometrist. Um…they only come out from under their rock when they’re killing the Jews. [Adopts a faux-Arab accent] “Oh, why is a Jew life better than our life?” First of all, who even said that? What are you, hung up on that? [Holds up empty cocktail glass] Oh, that’s right, you’re not allowed. Um, why are you hung up on that? Nobody said that. Don’t teach your children death and maybe you’ll feel better about life.

NO, YOU'RE DRUNK

You like my fish tank? 350-gallon saltwater tank. Everything in here is alive. Live and uncensored.

FEMINISTS EERILY SILENT ON ISSUES OF GENITAL MUTILATION, OVERDRESSING

So, we have the peace…peace conspirators in America, and, and the feminazis, who, who say nothing about clitorectomies, say nothing about wrapping girls up from head to toe [shows photo of veiled woman again; begins dancing and singing to “Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me”].

THESE CRAZY MILITANTS! WHAT'S UP WITH THEM?

Also, what’s with the militants? The Palestinian militants?

ISRAELI TOENAILLESS IN GAZA

There’s nobody in Gaza. Nobody. ‘Cause…there’s not an Israeli toenail in Gaza, okay? It’s…it’s not militants. They are soldiers, okay? When you hear “humanitarian crisis”, it’s called, it, it is, it…it is the buzzword for “it’s okay to kill the Jews”, okay? Um…it is unbelievable.

A SINISTER CABAL OF CONSPIRATORIAL JEWS MUSLIMS CONTROL OUR MEDIA

And the funny thing is, about the media, is that al-Q’aeda and Islamic Jihad and, and Islam, right? Let’s call it Islam, has the, you know, entire Arab media, wh…that doesn’t say that is what it’s told. And they have our media. And let me tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, if you don’t think that is a powerful tool in the arsenal of war, you’ve got to be crazy in 2006.

PRESIDENT ACCUSED OF HAVING SPINE

For Bush, I, I, I tip my hat [bows], I say thank you very much for having a spine, thank you very much for standing behind, uh, in the struggle, uh, between good and evil, for standing for good. Because that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a value system. And, um, and the culture of life. And that’s another interesting thing: I don’t know if you noticed, but, uh, they’re, uh, I get…what they want to do, “Oh, they’re just for two soldiers”. First of all, they keep bringing up the two soldiers. What happened to jihad? They keep bringing up the two soldiers. What happen to the eight they killed when they took the two? Nobody talks about them. And they want the…the, the Jews to day “All right, it’s just two soldiers.”

NOW, I'M NO JEW-OLOGIST

But…what they don’t understand, what they’re trying to do, is they’re trying to twist. They’re trying to change the Jewish soul. Because the J…in the Talmud – and I don’t know anything about this, so you…those guys in Israel, if you wanna correct, to correct me, be my guest – is, um, you know, you save one life, you save the world entire. That’s, uh, that’s how it is.

THIS SEGUE BROUGHT TO YOU BY STOLICHNAYA VODKA

So, the, uh, if we have to change what is our essence and our soul, uh, [long pause] we can’t. We go on top of Masada and kill ourselves. I could, I can see all the Jew-haters: “Yay! Yeah! Atlas finally got the answer!” [Begins dancing to “Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me” again] This is gonna be a short one, I can’t help it.

DON'T YOU WISH YOUR ZYGOTE WAS HOT LIKE ME

Oh, and President Bush, would you please treat the Jews the way you treat the, the, the zygotes? Those little, little, those embryos? [Begins dancing to “Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me” again]

JUICY LEADER-ON-LEADER ACTION

Oh, the funniest! The funniest. The funniest is blame Bush for mideast. Clinton, Clinton had a terrorist! What, what foreign leader, had, uh, wha…did Clinton have at the White House more than anyone? That’s right. Yassir Arafat. Bastard. And who was making out? What two women? What Sapphic session was going on? Arafat’s wife and, uh, Cl…Hillary. [Begins dancing to “Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me” again] Did you see my pictures on my website?

AND I MEAN LOTS OF INFIDEL JUICE

Anyway, just wanna say, Israel, we stand with you. I want you to know that. We love you. And, um, we’re in solidarity with you. That’s it, folks! It could have been longer, but, uh, I gotta go have a drink of, uh, of, uh, infidel juice. See ya!

Now I get it

Town Hall's 'The Funnies': still not funny.

I mean, seriously: politics aside, these guys have a kind of amazing knack for telling jokes that are not only identical to one another, but not funny the first time you see it. This week's "the U.N. are sissies, HAW HAW" is mildly more amusing than last week's "Islamic terrorists are everywhere, HAW HAW I guess", but not enough to justify the same joke being repeated four times in one day. (Plus, a special repeat of the "Islamic terrorists are everywhere" joke, in case you really liked it last week!) I'll admit that liberal cartoonists are often equally simplistic and unfunny, but Christ, at least they're capable of telling more than one joke at a time. It's like these guys are getting a Theme Of The Week from some yutz over at the Mellon-Scaife Foundation.

Still, I guess it's better than this article by the inexplicable John Stossel, who uses his conservative bully pulpit to argue in defense of cousins marrying.

In which I break my own rule not to discuss this issue

Lileks today uses Toontown to illustrate to his daughter why the Palestinians are wrong.

No, really.

Polly ticks

Hey, how about those Israeli airstrikes? GOOD PLAN! Only four dozen civilians dead so far, that's acceptable. I can't believe they didn't think to bomb Lebanon before! Or, at least, recently, before, again, since the mid-'80s! This will surely make Israel safe and secure forever and ever.

James Lileks today says that he got peevish at a Krispy Kreme employee for offering him a free refill, because their stock price is too low and they can't afford to do that sort of thing. He was, please God above, joking.

Did you know that Town Hall now features a cartoon section? No, really! It's called 'The Funnies', even though, as any number of examples show, they are not, in fact, funny. Not only not funny, but not funny in a nearly identical fashion to one another. HAW DE HAW!

This is a job for...

Debbie Schlussel -- who was once in training to become Ann Coulter's understudy until everyone noticed that she wasn't pretty enough to step into the Arab-bashing hag role and it fell to the more exotic Michelle Malkin to pick up the slack -- has seen the new Superman movie. And she has used it as a springboard for her crazy, sexist anti-PC ravings. Por ejemplo:

* Lois Lane is a "slut"

* Superman is too politically correct, which inspired Debbie to craft this hilarious and incredibly skillful bit of PhotoShop humor

* Evidence of Superman's PC nature is found in the fact that Lex Luthor doesn't team up with al-Q'aeda to promote Islamofascist (no, really, she actually says this)

* Also, Hollywood's dirty commie pro-terror stance can be found in the fact that some advertising for the film doesn't feature the phrase "truth, justice & the American Way", and the fact that other advertising for the film DOES feature the phrase, plus huge American flags, just proves what hypocrites the people in showbiz are

* And to top it all off, Superman's cape is entirely too muted a shade of red, which illustrates the national malaise the media would like to convince us we are undergoing (no, really, she actually says this too)