Home-Schooling Works:Fencing Champion Dakota Root, 17

One of the questions every home-schooling parent hears is, "What about extra-curricular activities?" OK, even with six kids, I'm still five kids short of a varsity football squad, but my 16-year-old twins sons, for example, are excellent swimmers who just completed YMCA lifeguard certification.

Lots of home-schooled kids not only compete in sports, they excel. The Las Vegas Review-Journal just featured one such athlete, 17-year-old Dakota Root:

"Every time you fence, you have to keep changing your game," Dakota said. "You can't just rely on your skills. You have to rely on growing within the bout. You don't do that in most other sports."
Dakota has been in the sport only four years, but she is considering attending college at Ivy League fencing powerhouses such as Harvard and Columbia as well as Duke, Northwestern and Notre Dame. There appears to be reciprocal interest. . . .
She has achieved scores of 2,240 on the Scholastic Achievement Test (Dakota still hopes to break 2,300) and 31 on the American College Test. . . .
Last November she traveled to Germany and Austria for 16-and-under World Cup tournaments. Dakota fenced especially well in Germany, making the fourth round of pool play.
Showing that performance was no fluke, Dakota in April won under-19 epee at the Pacific Coast Championships in Long Beach, Calif. She was second in the senior epee, which was open to all ages.
That's a head-turning rise through the ranks for a relative newcomer. It's also a rise that could continue, perhaps even to the Olympic Games, with 2016 as the likely target. . . .

You can read the whole thing. Dakota is also a refutation of the stupid claim that home-schooled kids aren't "socialized" adequately. You want to see poise? Watch this C-SPAN video as Dakota Root (then just 16) nominated her father, Wayne Allyn Root, for president at the 2008 Libertarian Party convention:

I covered the 2008 LP convention, where Wayne made it to the fifth ballot of the six-round "Dogfight in Denver" nomination battle, and then was chosen as Bob Barr's vice-presidential running mate.

When I saw Wayne at the Georgia LP state convention last month, he spent most of his time bragging on his daughter who -- and I hope I'm not spoiling any scholarship negotiations here -- is leaning heavily toward Columbia. (She likes the big city.) Wayne also brags on Dakota in his new book, The Conscience of a Libertarian:

To illustrate the remarkable talent, creativity and intelligence of home-schooled children, I offer Exhibit A: My 17-year-old daughter Dakota Root. She is beautiful; well mannered; disciplined; articulate; poised beyond her years; treats adults with respect; maintains a straight A+ average in her studies; scores in the 99th percentile of every national test she takes; devours as man as a dozen books a month (because she wants to, not because she has to); has achieved a black belt in martial arts; and is a world class fencer who has participated in Junior Olympics, Fencing Nationals and World Cup events internationally. . . .
Many adults that have had the pleasure of meeting Dakota have made the comment, "Is your daughter home-schooled?" I always answer, "Yes, but how did you know?" The reply is always the same, "In my experience, only home-schooled kids are this focused, disciplined, well-mannered and respectful of adults."

It's true. Hearing one's children praised for being poised, well-mannered and respectful is one of the joys of being a home-schooling parent. Wayne writes:

Dakota has had the advantage of being taught one on one literally since birth, by people that love her . . . praise her . . . motivate her . . . and expect the very best of her.

The official publication date for Wayne's book The Conscience of a Libertarian is the Fourth of July (when else?) but you can order it now at Amazon.com.

UPDATE: Hey, Wayne's not the only home-schooling dad who can brag on his kids. And remember, I'm an expert.

Oh, this won't trigger a storm of protest

by Smitty (h/t Jillosophy)

According to WorldNetDaily,

A San Diego pastor and his wife claim they were interrogated by a county official and warned they will face escalating fines if they continue to hold Bible studies in their home.
The couple, whose names are being withheld until a demand letter can be filed on their behalf, told their attorney a county government employee knocked on their door on Good Friday, asking a litany of questions about their Tuesday night Bible studies, which are attended by approximately 15 people.
"Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say 'amen'?" the official reportedly asked. "Do you say, 'Praise the Lord'?"
The pastor's wife answered yes.
She says she was then told, however, that she must stop holding "religious assemblies" until she and her husband obtain a Major Use Permit from the county, a permit that often involves traffic and environmental studies, compliance with parking and sidewalk regulations and costs that top tens of thousands of dollars.

I would be tempted to sarcasm: "Pardon me, I thought that The Sopranos had finished its run." Even for California, you don't see this nonsense carrying on much longer.

Against the Politics of Niceness

At the library Friday, I picked up Naftali Bendavid's book, The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution.

It's an excellent insider account of the 2006 congressional campaign, with DCCC chairman Rahm F---ing Emanuel as the protagonist. This outburst, from a May 2005 meeting between Emanuel, DSCC chairman Chuck Schumer and DNC chairman Howard Dean, is typical:

"You're nowhere, Howard. Your field plan is not a field plan. That's f---ing bulls---. . . . Look, Chuck comes from Brooklyn. I come from Chicago. It's not Burlington, Vermont. . . . I know your field plan -- it doesn't exist. I've gone around the country with these races. I've seen your plan. There's no plan, Howard."

The old adage that nice guys finish last is quite true in politics. Some people have a 10th-grade civics class concept of "democracy" as something pure and noble, but if you've spent much time close to the process, you understand that "democracy" is a brutal, ugly business. It is not for fainthearts and starry-eyed dreamers.

So when Rod Dreher gets sniffy about Mark Levin or people act horrified by an implied slur in an RNC video, I just want to pound those weenies on the head and scream: "Wake the f--- up, you clueless dingbats! The Democrats are eating Republican babies for breakfast, bankrupting our grandchildren, and giving major industrial corporations as gift-wrapped presents to their labor goon buddies! If you want to award gold stars for 'plays well with others,' go be a kindergarten teacher and leave politics the hell alone!"

Maybe when the grown-ups are through beating the Democrats, then we'll have time to mind our manners like we were eating watercress-and-endive finger sandwiches at the Ladies Cotillion Society luncheon.

This is fight time, and the neurasthenic wussie-boys need to shut the f--- up with their ceaseless whining. Meanwhile, anyone who's interested in actually fighting the Democrats needs to read this book. We've got to find a way to reverse-engineer Emanuel's take-no-prisoners approach to politics.

UPDATE: Stogie calls our attention to his post about Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, a book I read more than 10 years ago. It's very insightful in terms of basic principles of political organizing.

I think Stogie would enjoy The Thumpin' , because it gives excellent detailed accounts of various aspects of practical politics. One of the things I hate about intellectual-type pundits is their habit of "trendmongering," where they're always offering a "Big Picture" idea of where the country is going. But if you know anything about actual politics, you know that it doesn't work that way.

Every "trend" is a function of mulitple distinct events. The objective of the political activist is to make those events happen or, as the case may be, to capitalize on events that happen beyond his control.

The defeatist attitude of Republicans toward MSM bias is an example of how people surrender the initiative because they see a "trend" -- something beyond their control -- rather than looking for ways they can make something happen to change the trend.

Another example is how Republicans allow themselves to believe that certain groups -- minorities, women, gays, academics -- are effectively off-limits to them as potential voters. Look, if only 4% of black voters are Republican, that's still hundreds of thousands of voters. If you could identify those voters, organize and train them as activists, and support them in an effective outreach program, there's no telling what you might achieve. But you're never going to accomplish anything if you accept the "trend" and surrender the initiative.

A defeatist mentality guarantees defeat, because that mentality always counsels doing nothing and accepting the status quo. If the enemy is winning, and you do nothing, the enemy will continue to win. But even if you're winning, if you content yourself with a do-nothing approach of defending the status quo, the enemy will sooner or later seize the initiative -- as Rahm Emanuel did in 2006 -- and then you'll be forced to fight with an army grown weak and lazy by years of do-nothingism.

BTW, I also recommend Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms by veteran Republican campaign operative Ed Rollins. It gives you lots of detailed stories about individual campaigns, including the 1994 Senate campaign of Michael Huffington, where Rollins' efforts were effectively sabotaged by Huffington's idiot wife, Arianna. She's typical of a certain type of dilettante who turns to politics as a fasiohable hobby, but can't be taught anything because she is too arrogant to think she has anything to learn.

Isn't she extraordinarily clever?

Carol at No Sheeples Here, I mean:

In college, I minored in art with an emphasis on commercial design. Carol's site has such a distinctive look, and she tries to use artwork in every post. I appreciate that in a blog.

But 'Pussy' is only implied!

The RNC released this video about Nancy Pelosi's attacks on the CIA, using a James Bond theme and finishing with the tagline, "Lack of Leadership. Democrats Galore." This is a play on the name Pussy Galore, the evil woman in the 1964 Bond flick, Goldfinger. As Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom says, "all kerfuffle breaks loose."

Try to read Taylor Marsh's hissie fit (this term is a derivative of hysteria, whose Greek roots remind us that the patriarchy has been oppressing womyn for 3,000 years) and never forget the accusation: It's Republicans who don't have a sense of humor.

Too bad this happened too late for National Offend A Feminist Week. But thanks to the RNC for keeping alive the festive holiday spirit.

(Hat tip: Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Excuse me, but Allah is just wrong:

I’d love to know who among the Republican brain trust thought this was a good idea. Even if their motives were pure, after seeing what happened to Limbaugh’s “I hope he fails” comment, they simply have to be more attuned to how their message will be received and whether they’re giving their opponents easy opportunities to distort it.

No, this is brilliant. Get your enemy to promote your message, and do it in such a way that everybody who clicks will sit through the whole video in hopes of seeing -- "Pussy!" -- what the Left tells them they're going to see.

The joke is on the critics, of course, since the same term is a common substitute for "wimp," and "Democrats Galore" rather cuts to the heart of what the GOP is really trying to say about Democrats' approach to national security, eh?

Lighten up, man. Jimmie Bise has more on Pelosi-palooza, and Donald Douglas shows the vastness of Pelosia's gaping idiocy.

(P.S.: Note that when feminists are promoting The Vagina Monologues, it's "empowering" to shout this from the rooftops. Only when Republicans try it does the Left suddenly become as prudish as a Victorian schoolmarm.)

Update II: by Smitty
Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice delivers unintended comedy:

But it’s indicative of the continued lowering of the bar of American political discourse: even by the increasingly sleazy standard of political ads utilized by both sides, this ad is a particularly smelly one.

I'm not sure what clip you watched, Joe, but the one I saw was roughly as sleazy as, say, a Police Squad episode. Recommend good diet and excercise, Mr. Gandelman.

Scrappleface brings the perspective

by Smitty
Scott Ott, in his inimitable style, puts the Mancow waterboarding in perspective with a full 9/11 allusion:

Like the waterboarding experiment, the simulated 9/11 attack will occur under controlled circumstances, with firefighters and paramedics standing by to rescue him once he makes the choice of death by inferno or death by sidewalk impact.
"I just want to find out if being trapped in a burning skyscraper is as bad as that horrible waterboarding was,” said Mancow. “It’s hard to imagine anything worse than waterboarding. I’m pretty confident that I can withstand the searing heat of jet fuel combustion as I cling to a window frame 900 feet above the street."

Read the whole thing.

Will Texas Fight?

(BUMPED AND UPDATED) This question occurred to me as I was writing about the "fight for the soul of the GOP" in Florida:

Which brings us back to Texas, home state of Republican Sen. John Cornyn. Remember the fight over the stimulus bill? Remember the key vote where Cornyn had a “prior committment” with wealthy donors in New York City? That caused Mike Wellman to remark: “I am from Texas. I was already angry at Cornyn’s vote on the Treasury Secretary. I will not vote for him again.”
Now as NRSC chairman, Cornyn supports Charlie Crist in Florida, putting the knife in Marco Rubio’s back. This prompts the question: “Are Texans OK with this?”
Does Texas GOP chairwoman Tina Benkiser (512-477-9821 ) approve? What about Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry (512-478-3276)? Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (214-361-3500)? Texas RNC members Bill Crocker (512-478-5611) and Cathie Adams (972-523-8551)?
One would think that Texas Republicans might want to ascertain, with all the charm and courtesy for which Texans are famous, whether the Lone Star state’s GOP officials support Cornyn’s decision to have the NRSC decide the Florida Senate primary in favor of Charlie Crist.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Two Florida newspapers, the Tallahassee Democrat and the Fort Myers News-Press, weigh in with editorials criticizing the NRSC's intervention. Pat Austin writes:

The danger of the NRSC endorsement is that it removes the Florida voters from their own primary. . . . Let Floridians pick their own candidate.

And Florida law student Tommy Jardon has started a pro-Rubio blog called Run Marco Run.

Dr. Sanity: How do you feel about the POTUS?

by Smitty

It's simply not clear, amidst all the spin and ambiguity:

  Understand that I listen to people for a living. I hear various degrees of honesty, sincerity, and real emotional pain being expressed on a regular basis. I also hear some of the most self-serving, dishonest and completely irresponsible utterings that it is possible to imagine. Yet, in my professional career, I have to freely admit that I have heard nothing like the deceitful and self-aggrandizing utterings of Barack Obama, which seem to get more and more pathological with every speech he gives. His most recent scam, in the National Archives in front of a fake copy of the U.S. Constitution just about takes the cake. This is not irony, so much as it is the grandiosity of tyranny.
  Bill Clinton--who I actually liked for the most part; even his amusing narcissism, which seems so childishly innocent in retrospect--was completely harmless compared to the sociopathic statist that is our current POTUS.

Finally, My Joy Returns. Ahhhh!

by Smitty

This week's Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around is once again brought to you by Technorati, which seems to have recovered some of its mojo. No, I did not unleash some sort of virus to cover my flaking off the last couple of weeks. The cover was convenient, however. Back on task, the Porch Manqué brings the linky-love.

• We'll start off at the Sundries Shack. He linked us on the Maureen Dowd cut-and-paste triumph. Hey, I just realized: Maureen Dowd and Arianna Huffington are distinct people. You may all envy the quality of my liberal nitwit filter. He didn't hesitate to join the Not One Red Cent movement.
• No Runny Eggs printed the full memo to Senator Cornyn: No Endorsy Jackass.
• Right of Course linked a Green Room post on the Obama conquest of Notre Dame. In a follow-up, RoC breaks out the "C" word

  I just wanted to add one more point about the whole forced diversity idea. One more consequence of this type of policy is a sort of defacto communism.

  . Finally, RoC linked the Cheney Tortures Pelosi post.
• Perennial favorite Donald Douglas brings the linkage. The Larry Summers reference in Diversity Through Homogenization caught his eye.
• Dad29 endorsed Rubio of Florida, allowing that "Not One Red Cent" is more polite than he'd have been. He hat tipped the Weaver post, likening bad political strategists to Taking Medical Advice From Musicians. Now, Brian May is a Dr., and Queen certainly rocks that progressive utopianism. So what's not to like?
• Obi's Sister got on the Not One Red Cent Bandwagon. We also made another roundup of hers, which has the nearly sacrilegious line Marco Rubio is the Anti-Crist. But we like it edgy like that.
• Another blog-buddy, Carol got into the 8 random facts meme. She had a rather sports-centric entry, I thought. And she has a formidable FMJRA post of her own.
• This blog made a Paco roundup. He also appears to have approved of my entry in his Michael Moor caption contest, though I think I missed a verb in there.
• Dustbury linked us explicitly to shame us for not having added him to the blog roll. As his post was on the topic of attractive ladies, the Clever S.Logan seemed good company.
• Jules Crittenden linked in the Cheney Tortures Pelosi post amidst a sizable roundup on the topic.
• William Teach had a fine Instapundi-ism: "They said if George Bush Barack Obama was elected president, sex ed would be taught at the kindergarten level. And they were right!", and he linked the Girl Scouts post. Hope, change, and rainbow-defecating unicorns for all my friends!
• Pamela Geller was right there for the Not One Red Cent moment. I, for one, would pay to see that lady on The View. I'd even TiVo the twisted piles of human wreckage Gellar would leave in her wake.
• This blog got linked by DavidL in celebration of Stacy's gas guzzler. Eric Florack at the same blog asked to get on the
  Not One Red Cent list. One of the nice aspects of this is that, contrary to Connecticut, Rubio is not about substituting a rich goon for a Senator.
• Moe Lane heaped abuse on Stacy's taste in beer:

  Corona is the beer-flavored beverage of choice for your giggly coworker who hasn’t gotten over the fact yet that the bartender always makes a big deal out of putting a lime wedge in her bottle.

Thanks to the power of YouTube, we can link in the (NSFW, language) Monty Python take on American Beer, which probably applies North or South of the Rio Grande:

• Oraculations is on the Not One Red Cent bandwagon.
• Pat in Shreveport also celebrated the viral nature of Not One Red Cent.
• Sparty at Political Bear seems to have a problem with the new fuel-efficiency standards. Something about 'we are losing our freedoms'. I don't remember what they were.
• We made back to back installments on Canada's Steynian blog.
• The Blogstitution links the Green Room/Diversity Through Homogenization pieces. These cultural observations are dead on, but they are built upon a foundation of historical ignorance and disregard for the Constitution. The net effect is that we are headed for feudalism. The brilliance of the collectivist movement is that they have tricked the voters into asking for it, vampire style.
• Kathy Shaidle appreciated the amazing professional value of a bad reputation. Which begs for a Joan Jett break:

• The Political Castaway floats the idea of an Obama-Hannan debate:

  I would pay good money to watch Hannen take Obama in a debate. Eloquence vs. Uh....; Extempranous vs. Telepromter.

  I'm sure the sycophants would think it 'unfair'.
• The Political Bear noted Stacy's disinterest in fuel efficiency, and even trotted out the F word. *gasp*.
• Allahpundit did link Stacy on the Newsweek downgrade, even if Stacy hasn't made top billing on HotAir yet. So at least that's something.
• Mr. Kat over at Jumping in Pools noted that Stacy had linked Robert Smith Jr. (no relation) while Stacy was wondering aloud if the general Democratic case of cranial-rectalitis might be starting to abate, at least in Michigan. It's just too early to tell.
• Gabriel Malor is less negative on the Newsweek strategy shift. But at least he quoted this blog.
• The Patriot Room also picked up the When Democrats Start to Doubt in a roundup.
• Monique appears to have been close to the epicenter of the blog pox.
• We get some lefty love from Up Yer Noz:

  i just can't get over how quickly and completely the GOP has fallen. and i can't get over how what's left of the party base simply doesn't tolerate any effort to make them electable again.

  What's fascinating about the Left is their non-grasp of the fundamental Constitutional issues at stake.


• The Poliblogger also takes Stacy to task

  And there’s more along these lines, all in post entitled “RINO-ism and the Demographics of Defeat.”
  There are two rather major problems with his “analysis.”
  

  • First, the party isn’t losing its base, it is losing everything else.
  
  
  • Second, the Rove strategy, especially in 2004, was a base mobilization strategy, not a treat the base like doormats strategy. Indeed, the Bush/Rove years were not exactly exemplified by the GOP going out and forming a party based on what McCain would call RINOs–indeed, it was just the opposite.



• Stop the ACLU picked up on “Future Femi-Nazis of America!”
• Veloicworld linked a Rubio post, and included a Dennis Hopper clip from Blue Velvet, I think, that is more than a little disturbing.
• Generation Patriot links the Ah, The Joys Of Guilt By Association post. And is this not true for all conservative bloggers?
• Lance honors the neo-Confederate white supremacist xenophobic bigoted nativist hatemonger, but his Wordpress site is either not properly registered on Technorati, or there is some wardrobe malfunction occurring between the two sites. Technorati may be the more likely culprit. So we're not always getting the links through the Army of Clonebots. Of course, they could be at fault, too, but admitting this would involve something like objectivity. And the Porch Manqué got his from Andrew Sullivan, so you're all beat there. Cutting to the chase, if I've omitted you, it's not a sin of commission. Please deliver an SMTP flogging to smitty to amend any oversights.

For example, I'd like to hear more from:

• accountingbum
• caffeinatedthoughts
• kurulounge
• myiq2xu
• pfbblog
• pugsofwar
• riverdaughter
• sistertoldjah
• the-classic-liberal
• theblogprof
• thesins
• tigerhawk
• westernexperience
• nationalcenter
• neptunuslex
• redstate
• shirasmane
• therudenews

And do hit the tip jar, so that I can get some better table scraps. And have a blessed Memorial Day weekend.

Update:
Pundit and Pundette are helping with the technical difficulties. Technorati thinks they are chopped liver, apparently. But chopped liver doesn't care much for the decay of schools and organizations like Girls Scouts.
They also proudly linked the Mark Rubio clip, never forgetting the Greatness of America. We still have another 42 months to go?

A little help for Insty

by Smitty

  The Instapundit is an educated, high-frequency blogger. So when he's piling on the Wicked Witch of the West, as one does,

you can overlook Insty saying "Until they felt the fierce moral urgency of change!" and completely missing the military-style acronym joke:

    Until they felt the moral, Fierce Urgency of Change Katharsis.

  Insty has done well for himself, but this blog will continue to see it as a duty to help out where necessary.

New frontiers in political correctness

As Dave Barry says, I'm not making this up:

Mayor quits job for gay
illegal immigrant he loves
. . . Only two weeks after being elected to serve his fourth term, Mayor J.W. Lown of San Angelo submitted his resignation letter Tuesday from an undisclosed location in Mexico. . . .
What made it stunning wasn’t the status of Lown’s office, which pays $600 a year, but the status of his lover.
Lown fell for an illegal Mexican immigrant.
A man.
Lown told the San Angelo Standard-Times he had fallen for the man in March, after he had already filed for re-election. The man came to the U.S. five years ago to study at Angelo State University.
It was unclear whether he had a student visa, but if he did it apparently had expired.

Go read the whole thing, if only to prove to yourself this isn't from Iowahawk. A couple of thoughts:

1. To quote our hero Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, "Only two things come from Texas," and Mayor Lown is definitely not a steer.
2. If this doesn't get Mayor Lown a Profile in Courage award and a "genius" grant from the McArthur Foundation, it will at least get him a six-figure book deal, appearances on "The View" and "Oprah," and either a HBO movie deal or a reality series on VH-1.

Via Memeorandum.

UPDATE: Linked by Moe Lane at Red State and Jimmie Bise at Sundries Shack, both of whom are trying to beat the low-traffic Memorial Day weekend blues.

The Geek at the Prom vs. Mark Levin

"Having spent about 15 unpleasant minutes listening to this creep, I cannot imagine why anybody pays attention to him. Seriously, where is the pleasure in listening to this kind of trashmouth?"
-- Rod Dreher, May 22, 2009

"You're always ranting against any conservative who is actually popular with Republicans. Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin, et cetera. . . . You're like the geek at the dance, complaining that the prom queen and the quarterback are so popular."
-- Robert Stacy McCain, May 17, 2009



Do yourself a favor. Buy the No. 1 New York Times bestseller by the founder of the Landmark Legal Foundation, the nationally syndicated radio host recently ranked No. 11 in the nation by Talkers magazine, "the Great One," Mark Levin.

Ed Driscoll reminds us of a line from The Three Amigos: "In-famous is when you're more than famous."

UPDATE: I must address something my friend (shhhhh!) Joe Marier says in the comments:

The smash-mouth style is a traditional part of talk radio, granted. It takes its cues from the Don Rickles - George Carlin brands of comedy. In the DC market, though, WTOP has been killing it with more of an NPR style, and that's the style Rod Dreher (and Frum, for that matter) has been pursuing.

Joe, neither Dreher nor Frum is a professional talk-radio host, and I'm guessing neither one of them would last six months in the medium if they tried it.

People who've never done talk radio, or who've never been in a studio and seen how it's done, have no idea how extraordinarily difficult it is to fill so much as a single hour, much less three hours a day five days a week. Now, consider how difficult it is to do it well, so as to attract a commercially viable nationwide audience. For Dreher (and his source) to disdain Levin is for them to sneer at someone who has succeeded exceptionally in a venue they've never even tried.

This is the arrogance of the intellectual elite, to imagine that their particular specialty -- the expression of abstract ideals via the written word -- is the only ability that matters, qualifying them as experts on anything and everything they choose to write about.

Written expression is an ability, and an important one, but it is not synonymous with intelligence. I don't give a damn what your SAT score was -- and I've been knocking the tops off standardized tests of verbal reasoning since I was in elementary school -- an 800 verbal does not qualify you to dictate to the rest of the world what they should do, what they should say, or what they should think.

Despite my frequent and scathing criticisms of George W. Bush, I never mistook his verbal awkwardness for stupidity. The man was a fighter jet pilot and holds a Harvard MBA. Even if his syntax and delivery are atrocious -- and even if he inherited the family trait of disastrous political instincts -- George W. Bush is not less intelligent than Conor Friedersdorf.

A disdain of blunt expression is natural among those who make their living in the wussified environment of contemporary elite journalism. To be a journalist in Washington is to live one's life surrounded by men who have never driven 110 mph, never spent a night in jail, and never won a fightfight in their lives.

The upper echelons of American journalism have become the exclusive monopoly of former teacher's pets, who as children were never sent to the principal's office, who as teenagers were never suspended for showing up drunk for chemistry class, who as college students never woke up at 6:30 a.m. on the porch of the ATO house, who never played in a rock band or sold a pound of weed or dove from a 50-foot cliff into an abandoned rock quarry.

Washington journalism is like some kind of perverse alternative reality where the Beta males are dominant.

It is therefore not surprising that the effete elite of American journalism sneers at Mark Levin. What Levin possesses -- and what the typical 21st-century journalist never has possessed nor ever will -- is the double-dog-dare-ya boyish audacity that the Ordinary American naturally admires.

Levin's insult to the woman who called him up was perfectly understood by his audience. The woman was engaged in an essentially dishonest tactic that every succesful talk-show host knows too well: Lying her way past the call-screener and then attempting to hijack Levin's show to disseminate a pro-Obama message.

Levin insulted her because she deserved to be insulted, and for every Conor Friedersdorf who was shocked -- shocked! -- by Levin's abrasiveness, there were at least a hundred normal guys driving home from work who reflexively slapped the dashboard and said, "Hell, yeah! You tell 'er, Mark!"

"One of the basic principles of military strategy is to reinforce success. If you see a man who fights and wins, give him reinforcements, and bid others to emulate his success."
-- Robert Stacy McCain, March 21, 2009

Mark Levin is such a success, a man who fights and wins. He has achieved his success independently, by his own merit and relentless labor, and I am not fit to tell him what he should or should not say on his own radio show.

One more thing: Mark Levin is a big man. His nasal tenor voice might lead the uninformed listener to picture him as a diminuitive nebbish. He is not. He's the size of a Big 10 linebacker and I'd bet dollars to donuts Levin could take out Rod Dreher with a single punch.

UPDATE: Reply to Dreher.

UPDATE II: 'In the famous words of Rahm Emanuel . . .'

Founding Bloggers: 1; CNN: -4,275,4332

by Smitty (h/t: Insty)

  CNN's shameful suppression attempt of the Susan Roesgen clip has been rolled back. This clip is a good one to review, with six weeks to go before the next round of Tea Party protests. We need to stay fresh on how thoroughly disconnected members of the media seem to be from anything resembling the rest of the country.
  Wikipedia notes that Roesgen won an Emmy. So, while Stacy is no fan of metal, this blog feels obligated to slip Roesgen a Lemmy:

Ah, the joys of guilt by association!

So, I walk into the Reason magazine party Thursday evening and the first person who greets me is my old buddy David Weigel. "Hey, your girl got the deal!"

Eh? And then he told me that Lynn Vincent, with whom I co-authored Donkey Cons, had been signed to collaborate on Sarah Palin's book. Son of a gun, it's true, it's true, it's true.

And as we have come to expect, the usual suspects launch the usual smear attack, complete with recycled idiocies about me.

After I clocked my first million hits here, one of the things I decided to do was to write a proper "Who is" bio, and in that bio I included this:

The "racist" smear. A long, long story that began on May 9, 2000, when I published a news feature with the headline, "Researchers Say 'Watchdogs' Exaggerate Hate Group Threat." When the smears started, my bosses decided that the best response was a non-response. The smears were thus elaborated year after year on the Internet, errors compounding on lies with additions of libels and distortions, like a metastasizing cancer.
Had I been permitted to respond initially in my own defense . . . well, "if" is the largest two-letter word. Trying to unravel it all at this late date would be a waste of time and energy.
Along the way, I've discovered the amazing professional value of a bad reputation. Being notorious is not the same as being famous, but it's better than being anonymous. The harm to my career and my reputation was more than recompensed by the acquisition of virtuous character attributed to A Man Who Has The Right Enemies -- the same parasitical assassins who attack me have also attacked inter alia Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, Mark Steyn, Kathy Shaidle and other worthy souls more eminent than myself.
At this point, if it pleases anyone to think of me as a neo-Confederate white supremacist xenophobic bigoted nativist hatemonger, the accusation is too delicious to deny and if anyone wants the full explanation, they can pay me for it. (I write for money.)

So there you go. Now, let me defend Donkey Cons against my friend David Weigel:

It was an uncomplicated book, its thesis being that if you compared the number of Democrats who’d committed some sort of crime and the number of Republican lawbreakers, the Democrats were, objectively, the more criminal party.

This is an underestimation of the book. It is the most comprehensive chronicle of Democratic Party corruption ever published. In Chapter 2, "Rap Sheet," Lynn took on the task of counting every serious charge of corruption or criminality involving members of Congress since 1976, and found 46 Democrats to 15 Republicans. So it's certainly true that Democrats are the more criminal party -- by a 3-to-1 margin!

Critics of the book simply couldn't get their heads around this immense disproportion. Even some conservative radio talk-show hosts who interviewed us were skeptical. Ever since Watergate, Democrats have benefitted from the notion that somehow it is the GOP that is more corrupt -- even while dozens of Democratic congressmen were either convicted of felonies or censured for ethical violations: Jim Trafficant, Mel Reynolds, Robert Torricelli, Jim Wright, Corrine Brown, Barney Frank and Alcee Hastings to name a few.

That the Democrats would win a congressional majority in 2006 based on their promise to clean up a "culture of corruption" in Washington is a testimony to how little public awareness there is of the extensive tradition of corruption in the Democratic Party, a tradition traceable in a direct line all the way back to the party's co-founder, Aaron Burr.

"Uncomplicated"? Check out Chapter 4, "The Gang's All Here," about the Democratic Party's long association with organized crime, Chapter 5, "Look For the Union Label," about labor union corruption, and Chapter 8, "Scene of the Crime," about the tragic consequences of liberal urban policy.

"Uncomplicated"? A serious accusation! Unfortunately, Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

UPDATE: Over at the American Spectator, I congratulate Sarah Palin on her choice:

Congratulations, Governor. If you didn't hire the best writer in the business, at least Lynn is very close to the best writer in the business. She's also got an excellent sense of humor,

Kathy Shaidle also has an excellent sense of humor. I've found a sense of humor indispensible to dealing with this kind of "scandal," because the nature of the accusation is so manifestly absurd. As I explained:

However much I sincerely admire beauty, there are few things that interest me less than who wins beauty contests. Yet in the case of Miss Prejean, we see a perfect example of the totalitarian thought-control impulse of modern liberalism, which marginalizes dissent by coercive approval: Disagreement with the liberal agenda disqualifies one from any position of social prestige, and invites the accusation of mala fides.
In the case of the liberal agenda on gay rights, those who disagree are diagnosed with “homophobia,” a mental illness apparently afflicting a majority of the electorate in 30-odd states which have approved measures prohibiting same-sex marriage. Beyond its implausibility as a psychological disorder -- conservatism as a species of insanity being a favorite theme of the Left at least since Theodor Adorno’s “scientific” study of The Authoritarian Personality -- the problem with the “homophobia” smear is that this allegedly dangerous tendency does not correlate with any actual evil.

Read the whole thing. By the way, I am still the blog king of the "Carrie Prejean nude" Google-bomb (among others of relevant interest that need not be explained here). I mean, you wouldn't want liberals to monopolize that traffic, would you? And because I'm a giver, I shared this valuable knowledge with Marie Osmond's lesbian daughter.

Je suis un bloggeur capitaliste. I'm also a "top Hayekian public intellectual." I write for money. See Rule 5.

How Dare These Men Honor Tradition!

by Smitty

  Two congressmen today announced that they will seek to prevent the District from recognizing or performing same-sex marriages.
  Introducing the bill are Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio, pictured top) and Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla., bottom). It’s important to note that the legislation would define marriage in the District as between a man and a woman. It is not a resolution specifically disapproving the city’s action this month to recognize gay marriages performed out of state.

  If only my local piece of work, Jim Moran, would join with his Democrat colleague on this bill.

Does the California Situation Seem Familiar?

by Smitty

  California For Sale, by Llyd Garver, sure does sound familiar, for old comic book geeks:

  Governor Schwarzenegger's suggestion to help get California back on its sandaled feet. He recently proposed that the state sell off some of its most famous properties: San Quentin Prison, the Los Angeles Coliseum, the Cow Palace, Del Mar Race Track, and various state buildings. He explained that it's just like some people in the current recession having to sell their homes or luxury items like boats, second cars, and motorcycles. He wants to have a big garage sale, and even sell the state's garages.

  Didn't Howard Chaykin do this a while back?

  The Plex has formed the Tricentennial Recovery Committee, to get America "back on track for '76", but the TRC is in reality a plan to sell the United States off to the new superpowers and to leech off the remaining inhabitants before gaining true self-sufficiency. As a result, the Plex has outlawed non-combat related education, organized sports such as basketball and personal aircraft, restricted media to only one outlet, the Plex itself (although it has multiple channels), and advocates and glorifies the use of political violence amongst independent policlubs by providing money and firearms for its hit TV show Firefight All Night LIVE!, and covertly sterilizes the population by using a combo contraceptive and antibiotic called Mañanacillin to reduce the population.

  Chaykin was much closer to Bladerunner than The Terminator in feel. But a classic, nonetheless.

Amp This Up

by Smitty

Thank heaven for the Randy Barnetts of this country who merge the passion with the stature and the courage to fight to alter course away from Socialist Shoals.
It'll take Randy and a cast of thousands, like the readers of this blog, and that shy, introverted little churchmouse Stacy McCain, but we'll git 'er done. Failure is a lefty-only option.
This Bill of Federalism is a sine qua non, friends.

Track-A-'Crat Missed the Obvious

by Smitty


What other conclusion can there be to 22 cover appearances in two years?

Marco Rubio on Immigration:'We must secure our borders'

Beth Reinhard reports in the Miami Herald:

In response to a question about immigration, Rubio dropped his previous pleas against harsh attacks on illegal workers. He said he would not have voted in favor of the legislation -- backed by Crist and Sen. Mel Martinez -- that would have allowed illegal workers to earn legal status, which he called "blanket legalization."
"Nothing is more disruptive to legal immigration than illegal immigration,'' he said. "We must secure our borders."

Read the rest. Meanwhile, a press release from "Not One Red Cent":

[John] Hawkins says the NRSC made a strategic blunder by backing Crist over former Florida Speaker of the House Marco Rubio, a GOP conservative who is also seeking the Senate seat in 2010.
"The leadership of the Republican Party keeps saying we need to get back to our principles and talking about how important it is to attract more young voters and Hispanic Americans," Hawkins said. "Then, we get a viable, young, conservative, Hispanic candidate running for Senate and they arrogantly try to shove him aside to make way for a better connected, moderate pol who's more acceptable to the GOP establishment. This cuts to the core of what's wrong with today's Republican Party."
After [Erick] Erickson reported that he was under pressure from Republicans "begging" him to shut down the anti-NRSC Facebook group, hundreds more conservatives joined the group.
"The NRSC endorsing Charlie Crist, the man Barack Obama calls his favorite Republican, sends a strong signal that the NRSC believes it can take the GOP base's money, then tell them to shut up," Erickson said. "It is an admission that the Senate Republicans, after two back to back disasters, have yet to properly diagnose their problems."

Get the latest updates at Not One Red Cent.

(Cross-posted at Hot Air's Green Room.)

UPDATE: Charlie Crist was for Keynesian bailouts before he was against them. (Via Memeorandum.)

UPDATE II: Club for Growth asks, "Will Crist Pull a Specter?"

"Charlie Crist has shown he's willing to say one thing and do another," said the Club's resident, Chris Chocola. "Voters deserve to know just how far he'll go for the sake of political expediency."

Pundette has excerpts of Rubio's interview with NRO.

ALSO SEE:

• American Spectator: Texas, Florida Rumbling About Cornyn's NRSC Move
• Not One Red Cent: The Rebellion Goes Viral!
• Hot Air: Video: What Charlie Crist Is Up Against
• Green Room: Behind the 'Not One Red Cent' Rebellion
• American Spectator: Video: Interview With Florida Conservative Candidate Marco Rubio
• American Spectator: Florida Conservatives Slam NRSC Crist Endorsement

Cheney tortures Pelosi

Dick Cheney is just now delivering the most devastating indictment of Nancy Pelosi -- and the general Democratic Party stance toward terrorism -- I could ever imagine.

Here is the text:

In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.
Our successors in office have their own views on all of these matters.
By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public's right to know. We're informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.
Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.

I'm watching MSNBC, where Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell and that horrible woman (whose name escapes me) take turns reciting DNC talking points and calling Cheney a liar.

Next time some liberal starts lecturing me about "civility," I'm going to play them video of O'Donnell's reaction. Pat Buchanan -- the only Republican allowed on "Hardball" -- grinned and said, "Larry's reaction tells you that Cheney's speech worked."

Texas, Florida Conservative Grassroots Fight GOP Elite Over Crist Endorsement

The grassroots revolt went viral yesterday, the Florida GOP Chairman was forced to back down from his Senate endorsement for Charlie Crist, and now the fire spreads to NRSC Chairman John Cornyn's Texas:

Key Republicans in Texas are alarmed by Sen. John Cornyn's decision, as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to endorse Florida Gov. Charlie Crist in a contested Senate race 15 months before the GOP primary.
"If they're going to do it in Florida, what's to stop them from doing it everywhere?" a Texas Republican source told me late Wednesday. "It's absurd that the NRSC is doing this. It's an insult to the base."

Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, for your amusement, I had a little personal score to settle:

When a Georgia boy with a degree from Jacksonville (Ala.) State University comes to Washington as a journalist, he becomes accustomed to a steady diet of insults from the snobs of the Beltway media elite.
Some insults rankle worse than others, however. So it was impossible to resist the impulse to rub that insult back into an arrogant Ivy Leaguer’s face: "Of course, conservative bloggers never do reporting because, as liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias says, 'What the right lacks are people with the skill to do the job'' And since Yglesias went to Harvard, he knows everything."

Read that whole thing, too. 'Cause I'm the King of Rock 'n' Roll. Thankyuhvurrrmuch.

BTW, I just realized I've been working continuously since 7 a.m. Wednesday morning. After 24 hours, I figure I could use three or four hours sleep, don't you?

UPDATE 12:50 p.m. ET: Now a Memeorandum thread, as Erick Erickson reacts to Greer's walkback, saying the Florida chairman ""is glossing over the fact that he tried to use party rules to get Rubio knocked off the ballot. He is also ignoring the fact that he made clear at the RNC meeting that the Republican Party of Florida would be supporting only Crist in the Senate race and only McCollum in the gubernatorial race."

UPDATE 1 p.m.: John Hawkins analyzes why GOP leaders are so freaking clueless:

[T]he leadership of the Republican Party keeps saying we need to get back to our principles and talks about how important it is to attract more young voters and Hispanic Americans. Then, we get a viable young conservative Hispanic candidate like Marco Rubio running for the Senate in Florida and they arrogantly try to shove him aside to make way for a better-connected, moderate pol who's more acceptable to the GOP establishment.
Our party leadership goes on "listening tours" where they don't talk about hot-button issues, say the base needs to get over Reagan, and don't seem do any real listening.
We get "moderate" Republicans who provide the crucial votes for the Democrats on every key issue. . . .
What it all comes down to is that the Republican establishment is out of touch, doesn't respect the people who put them in office, and has no principle they wouldn’t compromise for little more than a few kind words from the media.

Read the whole thing.

The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You!

"If you want people to respect you, never ever apologize for who you are or where you are from."
-- Mike LaRoche

Ah, the Iron Law

by Smitty (h/t Hot Air)

You can nearly feel bad for Arnold, after watching that Reason.TV clip.
Two points:

• California has been the Iron Law of Bureaucracy in action. The Unions seem to bring out the brittle in the Iron Law, no?
• Arnie is just another moderate:

  Think of the the American political landscape as a valley, with moderates milling about in the middle, which is also a no-man's land, and the ridges on the left and right are populated by some deeply committed partisans. John, you have no friends, and you're likely to be more welcome on the left ridge than the right, with the rest of the lousy sell-outs. I'm guessing you have enough dodge/weave skills to survive. As for the right ridge: Tea Party.

The sooner we quit listening to the parade of leftist nitwits, and set about restoring fiscal sanity, the sooner we get on the road to actual recovery. The Kings of the Soul Punk Swing have a video that sums up the collectivist policies nicely:

Thankfully, the hate crime isn't racist

by Smitty (great bit hat tip: Fausta)


The questioning of the Holy Narrative, is, of course, a reprehensible hate crime.
Since the singer is black, it is only racist if you are of European extraction and smile at any of the lines. So take this one as a serious, contemplative meditation, folks. At least it's safe for work, unlike The S & M Man.

Working hard, trying to master the mental gymnastics

by Smitty (h/t Michelle Malkin)

  Last night, I was on about Barnett Frank's broken record approach to repeating "Bush funded ACORN" while on CNN with Michelle Bachman. Moving forward to the Obama Administration, the Senate voted down GITMO closure funding.
  Somebody refresh my understanding: Congress appropriates and authorizes the money, whether the topic is ACORN or GITMO, correct? I expect nothing less than technical correctness from Barnett on his point, in the same sense that every ship is a mine sweeper--once. Still there seems something...inconsistent in the way Barnett un-courageously manages never to be anywhere near assuming any sort of responsibility for anything. (Yes, Barnett serves in the House, and the GITMO vote was in the Senate, but I don't feel that diminishes my point about his pattern of non-leadership.)
  Note to MA-4: if Barnett is a representative sample, you're a strong contender for the Three Dimensional Loser Award, Community Goat-Rope Category:
  Request you put anyone on the ballot instead of BF. Even Carolyn Kennedy would constitute an improvement. Maybe in the sense that diabetes trumps leukemia, but we'll take any improvement we can get out of the Bay State.

'Day By Day' Going PG-13?

Perhaps as a coy commentary on the "Carrie Prejean Nude" goldmine -- dude, I own that Google bomb -- Chris Muir's beloved "Day By Day" gives new meaning to the phrase "comic strip":

Tuesday

Wednesday

Yes, folks, believe it or not, Republicans get naked and have sex, as Jon Henke recently proved.

On hears rumors that, for a generous contribution to his tip jar, Chris Muir will provide the benefactor with an original painting of their favorite "Day By Day" character nude. And the cool thing is -- according to the kind of unreliable second-hand gossip that circulates among bloggers -- Chris will customize those features which, otherwise, would be left to the cartoon reader's lascivious imagination. (Igbay Inkpay Uffiepays?)

Also, since Muir did the artwork for Little Miss Attila's blog, you could have her in full-color art, anyway you want her -- or, at least, that's what sources say.

Hmmm. What would they pay for an artist's rendering of what's beneath the notorious Speedo?

St. Obama of Notre Dame

Commonweal anoints The One:

Barack Obama:
The second Catholic president?

I am reminded of John Zmirak and The Amazing Catholic Bulls*** Generator:

Catholic journalist Philip Lawler shows how The Generator enabled various bishops to write earnest thank you notes to pedophile priests, praising them for their "ministry," and vague reassuring letters to anguished parents that spoke of "compassion" "therapy” and "legitimate concerns." The pastoral letters of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony . . . seem to have been entirely produced by The Generator -- which must be running day and night in the basement of his extraordinary new cathedral.

The sort of "Catholicism" preached by Commonweal (and Cardinal Mahony) is merely a variant of The Theology of Niceness, where euphemism and platitudes are employed as erzatz substitutes for faith and obedience.

VIDEO: What Charlie Crist Is Up Against

Moe Lane is becoming a believer. As I said at the Hot Air Green Room, everybody who has seen this video is asking the same question: Why in the world would John Cornyn and the NRSC back Charlie Crist against this guy?

Hat tips to Pat and Carol.

BTW, the Not One Red Cent rebellion is growing rapidly: 3,400 visits in the first four days, including nearly 1,400 yesterday, with a boost from Conservative Grapevine.

UPDATE: Now front page at Hot Air, and John Hawkins has just published the petition to the NRSC. If you're a blogger who wants to sign the petition, e-mail John.

Meanwhile, Matt Lewis reports on the movement, linking to Erick Erickson's latest "Not One Red Cent" message at Red State.

UPDATE II: Now a Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE III: Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent and Eric Zimmerman of The Hill both report the story. Blogged by Dan Riehl of Riehl World View and at Hyscience.

UPDATE IV: John McCormack at the Weekly Standard offers side-by-side comparison of Rubio's speech with video of Crist introducing Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Townhall's Greg Hengler is now a Rubio fan, as is Fausta Wertz.

UPDATE V: K-Lo has a new poll on the Florida Senate race, showing Crist with only 49% favorable among Republicans. Compared to that, Rubio's relatively low name-ID is inconsequential. How many Americans had heard of Barack Obama 15 months before the 2008 Iowa caucus?

UPDATE VI: The Rebellion Goes Viral! Meanwhile, Matt Lewis sees the video and says:

To be sure, the NRSC's premature endorsement of Governor Crist would have evoked some negative reaction -- even if his primary opponent were some right-wing nobody . . . or a squishy liberal Republican. But with Rubio, the Republican establishment has essentially pushed aside a young, attractive, conservative, Hispanic, highly-qualified, experienced leader.

BTW, you know who has a man-crush on Charlie Crist? Republican "kingmaker" Fred Malek. NTTAWWT.

UPDATE VII: Dad29 and Sundries Shack applaud the Rubio video, Pundette says, "The last two minutes made me cry," and St. Blogustine says, "It's Payback Time!"

The subject was Ross Douthat

"It’s an intelligent thought that has only one defect, namely that of being wrong."

Because all cool bloggers drink Corona

Longtime readers know that Budweiser was once the Official Beer of The Other McCain. But then negotiations with Anheuser-Busch for a lucrative endorsement deal fell through, just about the same time I discovered that Budweiser is made with horse urine and has been shown in laboratory tests to cause penile cancer.

Well, the cheapskates at Anheuser-Busch had their chance. But now the federal government is stepping in to make sure they won't have that chance again:

[B]ack-scratching endorsements could become tougher under a coming set of Federal Trade Commission guidelines designed to clarify how companies can court bloggers to write about their products. This summer, the government agency is expected to issue new advertising guidelines that will require bloggers to disclose when they're writing about a sponsor's product and voicing opinions that aren't their own. The new FTC guidelines say that blog authors should disclose when they're being compensated by an advertiser to discuss a product.

So I'm cashing in while there's still time. Drink delicious Corona Extra Beer, because it's guaranteed to be free of horse urine and won't make your winky fall off.

(Hat tip: NewsAlert.)

UPDATE: By the way, Moe Lane, it's been a while since I've gotten any blogola from you. I don't want to say you're in danger of losing your status as the World's Sexiest Blogger but . . . well, I don't want to say that. Also, it would be a sad thing if Jules Crittenden lost his status as Marie Osmond's lesbian daughter.

'The corrupt bastards . . .'

Being unlinked by Allah sucks bad. But when I'm tempted to think I've got it bad, there's always Jules Crittenden reminds me that at least I don't live in Massachusetts:

Massachusetts’ one-party government just passed a veto-proof sales tax hike … up 25 percent from 5 percent to 6.25 percent. The corrupt bastards did not care to do any heavy lifting on pensions, bennies or do-nothing jobs. Too traumatic. Better to chisel it out of people – voters or taxpayers if you like, around here you might as well call them saps — who are also taking hits on … pensions, bennies and jobs. We will never pry their fingers off that 1.25 percent … which they have now also applied to pre-taxed booze, so the beleaguered taxpayer can't even drink himself into oblivion without being dunned.

That sucks. Bad.

Thank you, Christopher Orlet

He says what a lot of conservatives have been thinking:

I have a question for all the moral equivalency experts out there. Isn't hiring Bristol Palin to be the spokeswoman against teen pregnancy a bit like appointing Tommy Chong drug czar? . . .
Ms. Palin's public appearances are awkward, cringe-inducing balancing acts. . . . Motherhood is wonderful and a blessing. Here, just look at these adorable photos! Oh, but unplanned teen babies will also ruin your life. The fact is Ms. Palin is sending more mixed messages than a Blackberry in a blender. . . .

Read the whole thing, especially the conclusion. Orlet is perhaps too hard on teen mothers, and not hard enough on unwed mothers -- nor on the sperm-donor scoundrels like Levi Johnston who evidently feel no remorse or embarrassment over their selfish abandonment of the mothers of their children.

Absolutely Starkers

by Smitty (h/t Insty)

VDH:

Perhaps the media doesn't get it that the American people can more easily take the bias of an attack-dog, go-for-the jugular media that claims it is the watchdog of the public trust and therefore must skin the president, far more than such carnivores suddenly becoming sheepish and obsequious, as ministers of truth, rephrasing and repackaging the party line. How odd that just six months ago we had screaming reporters and columnists talking about the near-end-of-days with Bush — and now doing contortions to assure us that things suddenly aren't that bad after all, or that we must give Obama flexibility and time to sort out the prior mess. Quite scary, all this chest-thumping about tough journalistic integrity of 2001-8 suddenly devolving into, "Hey everyone, we can reassure you that the Emperor really does have clothes on."

I never thought I'd see the day when these purveyors of 30' Smurfs would be characterized as prophetic:
Stacy: when do we do this one at the karaoke bar?

Most Cynical Blog Post Evah

In the Hot Air Green Room:

My blogging sucks worse than Meghan McCain. I am a worthless, pathetic excuse for a human being, undeserving of any praise or reward. Everything I do is wrong, and if I were Allah, I wouldn’t link me, either.

I'd tell you to go read the whole thing, but you won't click the link, because I suck so bad.

UPDATE: Hat-tip to Hot Air Headlines, because Allah read my mind:

Embittered people are typically good people who have worked hard at something important, such as a job or a relationship or activity, Linden says. When something unexpectedly awful happens — they don’t get the promotion, the wife files for divorce or they fail to make the Olympic team — a profound sense of injustice overtakes them.

"When something unexpectedly awful happens," like Allah not linking me, you see, or Ross Douthat getting an op-ed column in the New York Times at age twenty freaking nine . . .

UPDATE II: In case you are one of the two or three unfortunate souls who tried to read it, my Post Of Profound Suckitude is about top-down "boss"-style management and dysfunctional organizations (like the Republican Party), an expansion on the long post I did yesterday.

But while being unlinked by Allah is horribly destructive to a blogger's self-esteem, it's a walk in the sunshine compared to the unrelenting misery being inflicted on The Washington Times newsroom by their new management:

From: John Solomon
To: [Washington Times newsroom]
Subject: Accuracy and Fairness
Folks:
Accuracy, precision, fairness and balance are our essential coins of credibility in the marketplace. As we expand our product line and our workload, we cannot allow these pillars of journalism to be compromised by shortcuts, sloppiness or deadlines. To ensure we all live up to the promise, I am instituting the following reforms effective immediately:
1) Any reporter or editor who makes an error in a story that requires a published correction must submit a letter to the Executive Editor and Managing Editor explaining the mistake and what corrective actions were taken. These letters will be placed in your permanent personnel file.
2) Any reporters or editors who submit stories or content without fair comment or adequate balance will have their stories bounced from the lineup until they are corrected.
3) All reporters who have had stories with published corrections in the last year and any editors who inserted errors into copy will be required to take a mandatory class on accuracy and precision to be held the first week of June and led by Carleton Bryant.
John

So, your newsroom is already understaffed and demoralized, its grim survivors hanging on by their fingernails under the increased workload heaped upon them, and your solution is to require the staff to submit more paperwork and attend a mandatory class on "accuracy and precision."

See? In a functional organization, you'd just chew people out when they screwed up, and fire them if they screwed up once too often. Instead, it is necessary to issue this blanket threat of Kafkaesque humiliation, where adult professionals are compelled to go through the journalistic equivalent of Maoist "self-criticism."

It's sheer sadism. By God, I'm not sorry I quit.

UPDATE III: The Washington Times should hire Dave Burge.