How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year

Having promised an appropriate celebration of passing the 1-million-visitors Site Meter threshold Friday, I will do so by sharing the secret of my success. It's the Underpants Gnome Theory of Blogging:

• Phase 1: Get a Blogspot account.
• Phase 2: ?
• Phase 3: One million visitors!

Obviously, the key here is Phase 2, which has been exceptionally disorganized. Some guys work smart. Some guys work hard. Some guys are just incredibly lucky.

The perceptive blog consumer will notice that posts here don't have all those little thingies (Digg, etc.) the way some other blogs do. This is not because I disdain such methods of traffic enhancement, but because I'm such a primitive Unfrozen Caveman Blogger I can't figure that stuff out. It's the same reason I'm still on a Blogspot platform, rather than switching to a custom-designed Wordpress format. Blogspot is so simple that even I can figure it out, and if they'd just offer a few more templates -- hey, guys, how about a template with variable-width sidebars on both sides? -- I might be able to fake that custom-designed elegance, too. I understand basic HTML, but Javascript no can do, and I'm too cheap to shell out the bucks for geek services.

Lacking advanced, sophisticated technological gee-whizzery, I have been forced to employ astonishingly crude Web 0.1 methods of traffic-enhancement, namely:

• Write stuff people might want to read; and
• Compulsively e-mail my posts to bloggers who might possibly consider linking me.

Astonishingly crude, but also surprisingly effective. And so we come to Rule 1, the Prime Directive so to speak:

• 1. Shameless Blogwhoring.

I'm amazed that Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Ace of Spades and the Hot Air crew haven't declared a fatwa against me for the way I relentlessly fill their inboxes with blogwhoring e-mails like Arnold Horshack trying to get Mr. Kotter's attention: "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!"

However, the smart newcomer to the 'sphere doesn't just suck up to big-traffic bloggers who can throw him major traffic (although he does that with a single-minded fanaticism), he also sucks up sideways and downward, to bloggers who might not be able to throw 10,000 hits a day, but who are nonetheless valued contributors to the blogging community.

Little Miss Attila is my favorite example of the "valued contributors" category. Her best recent month was 24K visits in October, but she's been around the 'sphere a long time, is much beloved, and it is bad kharma not to link her. Every so often, while on the hunt for good stuff to blog about, I'll go over to LMA, find something good she's blogging about and link it. Why? Because, among various non-kharmic reasons, she has done the same for me, which brings me to Rule 2:

• 2. The Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around

Maybe you're not a fan of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, and I'm not saying you should be. But the psychotic drill sergeant gives a notorious rant in which he colorfully expresses an important life principle: When someone does you a favor, find an opportunity to return the kindness.

Reciprocal linkage is the essential lubricant that makes the blogosphere purr with contentment. If somebody's throwing you traffic, you should either (a) give them a link-back update, or at a minimum (b) keep them in mind for future linkage. Because you don't want to end up on the wrong end of a kharmic unbalance in the 'sphere, where you're always taking and never giving.

Every beginning blogger confronts the Zero Hour. You've been blogging steadily for a week or two, sending around e-mails, trackbacking where you can, trying to develop some kind of regular traffic. And then, late one night, you think you might have finally composed your first Instalanche-worthy post and you e-mail it to Glenn Reynolds. You go to bed like a 7-year-old kid on Christmas Eve, then wake up at 4 a.m. and check your Site Meter to discover that your latest hourly traffic is . . . ZERO.

At which point, you want to swallow a handful of sedatives, wash it down with a quart of bleach, slit your wrists and stick your head in the oven. You are a complete and utter failure.

I've never forgotten the Zero Hour, and if I've become slightly less conscientious about reciprocal linkage since then, God forgive me, but I do try. In the midst of a traffic upswing, not all linkage is noticeable on Site Meter, so I check Technorati, which shows linkage regardless of traffic level. And thank you Dad29, thank you Joe Kristan, thank you, Andrea Shea King, thank you Jimmie Bise, thank you William Teach. Damn my lazy thoughtlessness, but please don't doubt my gratitude.

Now that we've scratched the surface of technique, let's address the tricky little subject of content with Rule 3:

• 3. Memeorandum

Did somebody say "lazy thoughtlessness"? The easiest place to find blog fodder is Memeorandum, which has an algorithmic formula that automatically updates to tell you what the hot topics are in the 'sphere.

I especially like their "Featured Posts," sort of a random grab-bag of stuff that will occasionally feature some lefty shooting off his mouth in pure idiotic moonbat mode. Grab that sucker by the neck and give him the Mother Of All Fiskings, with enough vitriolic ad hominem to make sure he never forgets it. Because buddy, the lefties will turn right around and do it to you if you ever rate "Featured Post" status, and there's nothing like a vicious flame war to earn your spurs in the 'sphere. Which brings me to Rule 4:

• 4. Make Some Enemies

We'll have none of your "bipartian civility" around here, you sissy weaklings. This here is the Intertoobs, and we're As Nasty As We Wanna Be. The fact that The Moderate Voice has turned into a reliable vessel for DNC talking points should tell you all you need to know about the fate of bipartisanship in the blogosphere.

At the same time, however, don't confuse cyber-venom with real-world hate. Maybe Ace of Spades really would like to go upside Andrew Sullivan's head with a baseball bat, I don't know. But at some point you understand it's just blogging about politics, and you start wondering if maybe it shares a certain spectator-friendly quality with pro wrestling. For all we know, Ace is spending weekends at Sully's beach shack in Provincetown. (Next on Blogging Heads TV: Can "Bears" and Ewoks Be "Just Friends"?)

Some readers might remember when I first kicked Conor Friedersdorf in the knee for "insufficient cynicism." Conor is, in real life, a nice guy. But he's also (a) young, and (b) as earnest as John Boy Walton. So I got into a habit, when he was at Culture11, of kicking him in the knee with some regularity. It's the Fraternity Initiation Principle: Pledges must be abused by their elders, and learn to be properly respectful, or else one day the ambitious little monsters will strangle us in our sleep. (Cf., my suggestion that George Freaking Will should be air-dropped on Jalalabad from a C-130.)

A couple days ago, hunting around for a reason to link my friend Russ Smith's SpliceToday, I happened upon a column by Russ's young minion, Andrew Sargus Klein, offering a particularly insipid argument for federal arts funding. Now, having been born and raised a Democrat, and arguably having never outgrown my obnoxious youthful arrogance, I can actually relate to Klein's insipid argument. Stupid is as stupid does, and when I was 25, I might well have written something equally stupid. But the boy will never outgrow his stupidity unless he gets whomped on the head some.

Easy as it would have been to ignore Klein, I hit upon the delightfully fun idea of laying into him in Arkansas knife-fight mode: If you're going to cut a man, eviscerate him. So I quickly composed a hyperbolic ad hominem rant, with the thoughtfully civil title, "Andrew Sargus Klein is an arrogant elitist douchebag." I forward-dated the post for Friday morning, and sent Russ an e-mail to the effect of, "Hey, hope you don't mind me abusing your office help a little bit. Nothing like a flame-war to build traffic. Don't let on to Klein that I'm just funnin' around with him."

I'd hoped to bait Klein himself into a response. However, before that could happen -- as if intent on illustrating how to make a fool out of yourself by taking this stuff too seriously -- one of Klein's friends offered up a comment:

Andrew Klein may be arrogant and elitist but he could craft logical arguments around your bumbling hypocrisy all day and night.

Of course I never bother "craft[ing] logical arguments," sweetheart. It's a freaking blog. If you want logic, subscribe to a magazine or buy a book. Pardon my double-entendre, Lola Wakefield, but people come here for the cheesecake. Logical arguments are a dime a dozen on the Internet, but sexy hotness . . . well, that reminds me of Rule 5:

• 5. Christina Hendricks

Or Anne Hathaway or Natalie Portman or Sarah Palin bikini pics. Rule 5 actually combines four separate principles of blogospheric success:

• A. Everybody loves a pretty girl -- It's not just guys who enjoy staring at pictures of hotties. If you've ever picked up Cosmo or Glamour, you realize that chicks enjoy looking at pretty girls, too. (NTTAWWT.) Maybe it's the vicious catty she-thinks-she's-all-that factor, or the schadenfreude of watching a human trainwreck like Britney Spears, but no one can argue that celebrity babes generate traffic. Over at Conservative Grapevine, the most popular links are always the bikini pictures. And try as I might to make "logical arguments" for tax cuts, wouldn't you rather watch Michelle Lee Muccio make those arguments?
• B. Mind the MEGO factor -- All politics all the time gets boring after a while. Observant readers will notice that the headlines at Hot Air often feature silly celebrity tabloid stuff and News Of The Weird. Even a stone political junkie cannot subsist on a 24/7 diet of politics. The occasional joke, the occasional hot babe, the occasional joke about a hot babe -- it's a safety valve to make sure we don't become humorless right-wing clones of those Democratic Underground moonbats.
• C. Sex sells -- Back when I was blogging to promote Donkey Cons (BUY TWO!), I accidentally discovered something via SiteMeter: Because the subtitle of the book is "Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party," we were getting traffic from people Googling "donkey+sex." You'd be surprised at the keyword combinations that bring traffic to a political blogger who understands this. Human nature being what it is, the lowest common denominator is always there, even if it's sublimated or reverse-projected as puritanical indignation, which brings us to . . .
• D. Feminism sucks -- You can never go wrong in the blogosphere by having a laugh at the expense of feminists. All sane people hate feminism, and no one hates feminism more than smart, successful, independent women who've made it on their own without all that idiotic "Sisterhood Is Powerful" groupthink crap. And if you are one of those fanatical weirdos who takes that Women's Studies stuff so seriously that you're offended by Stephen Green's sexist objectification of Christina Hendricks and her mighty bosom -- well, sweetheart, to paraphrase Rhett Butler: "You should be offended, and often, and by someone who knows how."

So, there you have it: Five Rules For Getting a Million Hits On Your Blog. There are probably another two dozen rules, but I'm too lazy to think of what they are right now. And to be honest, if it weren't for that old picture of me in a Speedo, I'd probably still be 20,000 hits shy of the million mark. Some of us are just . . . blessed with exceptional modesty. And some guys get the steak knives.

UPDATE: Probably special mention should be made of Kathy "Five Feet of Fury" Shaidle, who never heard of a fair fight. She's one of those people you don't want angry at you. A ninja blackbelt in Rule 4, when she goes at an antagonist, it's a knee in your groin and an elbow in your eye. However, she also keeps the customers satisfied with some naughty pinup hotness. (Rule 5!) That rare creature: A Canadian we like.

UPDATE II: Linked at Conservative Grapevine.

Actually a little bit funny

Dan Ackroyd's John Boehner impression is good -- he's got the gravelly pack-and-a-half-a-day voice down cold -- and while the political content is obviously distorted, it's serviceable as parody:

Of course, the sketch is grossly unfair to Eric Cantor -- a very smart politician -- but unfairness in humor is part of the game at "SNL."

The fiscal trap of Hope

The Washington Post reports on the fiscal bind into which we have been led by the neo-Keynesian "stimulus" approach to the recession:

The nation can't sustain trillion-dollar deficits without driving up the debt owed to private investors to dangerous levels that could undermine the nation's global economic dominance. That debt now stands at nearly $6 trillion.

A tax hike to pay for all this "stimulus" would certainly make matters much worse, yet the bond market -- a subject I referenced this morning -- must calculate the likelihood of repayment, and it's not just "global economic dominance" that is at stake, but rather the fundamental integrity of the federal government's "good faith and credit."

The Post article goes on to cite the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security, and Jennifer Rubin comments:

The president and his spinners declared this all to be a "long term" problem that had to take a back seat to the short term "solution" for the recession. But little they have done in the short term will improve the economy, which by their own calculations would have begun to bounce back on its own by the end of 2009.
The "long term" problem is now. The first act comes with the next major auction of Treasury debt. Are we going to start printing dollars ourselves to buy up Treasury paper? Raise the interest rate on bonds to keep Chinese and other investors in the game?

Rubin hits the nail on the head. The fiscal fantasies of Hope are about to slam head-on into the economic realities of the bond market. Economic reality is an unmovable object, and liberals are about to discover that Hope is not an irresistible force.

Or, in fewer words: It Won't Work.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

SPLC vs. Ann Coulter

Note how Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center lays on the modifiers:

Rabid far-right commentator Ann Coulter is known across America for sliming everyone and everything she disagrees with. . . .
Coulter has generally avoided bolstering white supremacist hate groups. Until now, that is.
In her latest foaming-mouth tome -- Guilty: Liberal "Victims" and Their Assault on America, released on Jan. 6 -- Coulter spends the better part of three pages defending a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), which The New York Times had described as a "thinly veiled white supremacist organization." Coulter begs to differ. The CCC, Coulter opines, is "a conservative group" that has unfairly been branded as racist "because some of the directors of the CCC had, decades earlier, been leaders of a segregationist group."

"Rabid far-right" -- in what sense can that term be applied to Ann Coulter but not to, say, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Mark Steyn, Michelle Malkin or Mark Levin? And "her latest foaming-mouth tome" -- her sixth bestseller, which you can buy right now and see for yourself whether it merits that description.

Beyond Potok's frothy prose, what is worth examining here is the application of what a friend of mine who's been smeared by the SPLC (we are legion) has called their "ransom note method" of quotation: A phrase here, half a sentence there -- the words are cut and pasted together like a kidnapper assembling a ransom note from cut-up magazines, with the SPLC's own interpretative comments helpfully interlarded to tell their readers exactly what to think about the target.

The fundamental premise of Potok's piece -- that Coulter was "bolstering" or "defending" the CCC -- is false. For that matter, her putative "defense" of the CCC doesn't occupy "the better part of three pages," but actually less than two, beginning on the middle of page 24 and ending at the top of page 26.

What Coulter is actually doing in this passage -- is Mark Potok dishonest or merely dense? -- is contrasting the differing treatment that the media gave to (a) Barack Obama's 20-year membership in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, and (b) the CCC associations of Republicans Trent Lott and Bob Barr.

It's quite an interesting argument and perhaps the reason Potok couldn't bring himself to quote so much as two consecutive complete sentences of what Coulter wrote is that he's worried about copyright infringement. Or maybe he's dishonest, an interpretation supported by the way he quotes Coulter here:

"There is no evidence on its Web page that the modern incarnation of the CCC supports segregation," she says. "Apart from some aggressive reporting on black-on-white crimes -- the very crimes that are aggressively hidden by the establishment media -- there is little on the CCC website suggesting" that the group is racist. [Emphasis added.]

Contrast that to what Coulter actually wrote:

There is no evidence on its Web page that the modern incarnation of the CCC supports segregation, though its "Statement of Principles" offers that the organization opposes "forced integration" and "efforts to mix the races of mankind." But mostly the principles refer to subjects such as a strong national defense, the right to keep and bear arms, the traditional family, and an "America First" trade policy.
Apart from some aggressive reporting on black-on-white crimes -- the very crimes that are aggressively hidden by the establishment media -- there is little on the CCC website suggesting that the group is a "thinly veiled white supremacist" organization, as the New York Times called it in one of its more charitable descriptions. At least the crimes reported on the CCC's Web site actually happened, as opposed to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's claim that the U.S. government invented AIDS to kill black people. [Emphasis added]

Compare the two italicized passages. Notice that, when Potok quotes Coulter, the direct quote ends with "suggesting," and then follows with Potok's own characterization, "that the group is racist"; whereas Coulter's actual sentence ends with a specific description from the New York Times calling the CCC a "thinly veiled white supremacist" organization. One can be "racist" without being "white supremacist" (ask Reverend Wright!), and as to the matter of the thinness of veils -- well, as a liberal might say, "Who are we to judge?"

In a fair-and-balanced "we report, you decide" manner, Coulter quotes the CCC's statements about "forced integration" and race-mixing and leaves it to the reader to judge how "thinly veiled" these principles are, and whether they are "white supremacist" -- a judgment that the New York Times apparently doesn't trust its readers to make for themselves. It is neither here nor there what the reader's judgment is, since Coulter's purpose is not to "defend" or "bolster" the CCC, but rather to expose the media double standard involved.

Reverend Wright can stand in his pulpit denouncing Israel, shouting "God damn America!" and saying that the 9/11 attacks were "America's chickens coming home to roost," and the media dismisses as insignificant the fact that Obama spent 20 years in Wright's congregation. Yet Bob Barr gave exactly one speech at a CCC meeting and this speech (which had nothing to do with race) is treated as major political news by the New York Times. Perhaps if Barr had spoken to a meeting of Weather Underground terrorists . . .

Never mind. Coulter describes the consequences of the media attack on Barr:

After the initial flurry of articles, editorials, and news stories in the Times excitedly reporting that Barr had spoken to the CCC, Democratic representative Bob Wexler introduced a resolution in Congress for the sole purpose of denouncing the Council of Conservative Citizens. Other than the 9/11 terrorists, the CCC may be the only group ever singled out for denunciation in a congressional resolution. How about a resolution from Obama pom-pom girl Wexler on Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ?
When Barr later gave a speech on the House floor favorably citing President John F. Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy's son, Representative Patrick Kennedy, got in Barr's face, shouting, "How dare you! Anybody who has been in a racist group has no right invoking my uncle's memory!" Liberals are now reserving the right to tell us which former presidents we can mention by name.
Barr had given a speech to a group that, even assuming everything the Southern Poverty Law Center says about it is true, does not hold a candle to the racism of Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama was married by the Reverend Wright, his daughters were baptized by the Reverend Wright, Obama gave his second autobiography the title of one of the Reverend Wright's sermons. And yet after decades of majoring in Guilt By Association, liberals were indignant when an ad on cable television linked Obama and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr. The Times produced a blistering editorial decrying the "hate mongering" and calling the ads "the product of a radical fringe that has little regard for rational debate."

"Compare and contrast" -- the kind of exercise every college freshman is asked to do on essay-question exams -- and yet, when Coulter does it, her choice of the CCC as an analog to Wright's church is cited by the SPLC as evidence that she is a sympathizer of a "thinly veiled white supremacist" organization.

What Potok and the SPLC count on is that their gullible liberal readership will not bother to examine what Coulter actually wrote, nor question whether the SPLC's bawdlerization of Coulter's work is fair or accurate. Potok understands that Coulter occupies a special place in the liberal demonology, and that liberals are prepared to believe the worst about her. So he distorts her argument -- which, I repeat, is about media double standards -- into an accusation that she is "defending" and "bolstering" the CCC, and expects no one to contradict him.

Why? Because Potok suspects conservatives of cowardice. If you defend Ann Coulter, you'll be accused of sharing her "thinly veiled" sympathies, and there goes your book deal, there goes your think-tank fellowship, there goes your chance at a staff job in the next Republican administration. Potok believes that your ambition, your cowardly craving to be considered "respectable," will prevent you from defending the "rabid far-right" Coulter, and you will remain silent while she's dishonestly smeared by the SPLC.

Fine. You have the right to remain silent. And who will defend you when the SPLC comes smearing you?

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone!
-- Edmund Burke

UPDATE: Linked by Kathy Shaidle, who's been trying for years to get Canada to deport her to the United States, where that pesky First Amendment keeps hobbling the annihilationist impulses of liberalism.

UPDATE II: Linked by Mark Steyn, likewise seeking deportation. Canadian refugee fever inspires some awesome political incorrectness.

UPDATE III: Linked by Ed Driscoll, who probably wants to be deported from California.

UPDATE IV: Somebody at LGF sides with the SPLC.

UPDATE V: Getting very interesting now. Raphael Alexander says that Charles (by whom I suppose he means Charles Johnson of LGF) says of what I've written: "That article is ludicrous and deceptive. He claims Coulter is being quoted out of context -- I have the book, and she is NOT being quoted out of context. The charge, by the way, is not that Coulter herself is a white supremacist. It's that she is defending a blatantly, openly white supremacist group -- and that charge is TRUE."

I couldn't find that quote at LGF, which is now at the 1,000+ mark in comments, but assuming that Alexander's quote is accurate, I'm kind of stumped. The extensive quotes from Coulter's book make clear that her argument was basically: If Trent Lott and Bob Barr are beyond the pale for their associations with the CCC, why isn't Obama beyond the pale for his association with Trinity? It's not about being "out of context," but rather that Potok misread (or misrepresented) the whole purpose of that two-page passage.

Is Coulter "defending" Jeremiah Wright? Is the analogy inexact? Surely she will clarify and is capable of defending her own arguments without any help from me, but I saw this passage as essentially a critique of the media double standard.

In every previous Coulter controversy (which, by now, is a long list), she has emerged undamaged. She has Sean Hannity on speed-dial, and if this SPLC thing gets her more TV time, she'll cry all the way to the bank.

What's weird is that Coulter appeared on "The View" a month ago and I don't recall that this CCC thing ever came up. Is Whoopi Goldberg OK with the CCC? Certainly Coulter would agree to return to "The View" to discuss the subject. She would also probably be willing to discuss the subject on "Today," "Larry King Live," "60 Minutes," Leno, Letterman, "Saturday Night Live," "American Idol" . . . if any other TV producers want to book Ann, I can give you her publicist's e-mail address.

UPDATE VI: Linked at Conservative Grapevine.

Popularity vs. reality

Ben Smith in the Politico:

Obama's approval rating remains well above 60 percent in tracking polls. A range of state pollsters said they'd seen no diminution in the president's sky-high approval ratings, and no improvement in congressional Republicans' dismal numbers. And that's before the stimulus creates billions of dollars in spending on popular programs, which could, at least temporarily, further boost Obama’s popularity.
"It's eerie -- I read the news from the Beltway, and there's this disconnect with the polls from the Midwest that I see all around me," said Ann Seltzer, the authoritative Iowa pollster who works throughout the Midwest.

Prompting Jonathan Singer to exult:

Perhaps more than ever, there is a real divide between what the chattering class inside the Beltway is saying and what the people of this country are saying. . . . [T]he establishment media focuses on the less meaningful back and forth while at the same time overlooking the larger picture being grasped by the public -- that is that President Obama is succeeding, in terms of both moving forward his policy agenda and bringing two-thirds of the country along with him in his effort.

Idiots. Economics is not public relations. Don't you people understand that it doesn't matter how "popular" you and your policies are, if what you are doing is the wrong thing to do? And that it doesn't matter how clever and persuasive your arguments are, if your policies bring disaster?

Think back to late 2002/early 2003, when Bush was soaring in popularity and even Democrats like Hillary Clinton were publicly insisting that military action against Iraq was an urgent national necessity. As even David Frum now admits, however popular Bush and his policy were, it was still a bad policy. And the result of bad policy . . . well, here we are, eh?

Idiots. And here's another one -- Daniel Gross playing armchair economic psychologist:

Psychology plays a big role in all sorts of economic decisions. And at times like these, when people are gripped with fear, it plays an even larger role.

Gross seems to assume that the public's economic mood is so divorced from economic reality that all we need is an injection of economic self-esteem and -- no matter what the underlying reality -- this "all must have prizes" approach will assure recovery.

Well, I'm sorry, sir: It Won't Work. Economics doesn't operate that way. People can't spend money they don't have -- unless they can borrow it, and they can't borrow it when they're already overleveraged and the financial industry is collapsing.

So, you say, "We'll rescue the financial industry with TARP." Fine. What's the price-tag and where will you get that money? Oh, you'll borrow that, too. Fine. Go talk to some people who know a bit about the bond market, and see how they think the global investor class -- U.S. debt is a commodity traded globally -- will react to the prospect of still more deficit spending piled on top of all the deficit spending for the $152 billion "stimulus" in May, $350 billion for TARP I, and now $789 billion for more "stimulus." Another $350 billion for TARP II? Oh, they're going to love that.

If the world's investor class believes that your Keynesian pump-priming will work, they'll be happy to buy up all those Treasury notes, just like they'll be happy to buy stock in U.S.-based corporations. Do you think those people are stupid, sir?

Hell, no. They'll be putting in more "sell" orders on Monday, and at least one analyst expects the Dow Jones Industrial Average to sink to 6,000 soon. As bad as the stock market is, God help us if the bond market goes wobbly. (And they're starting to sound a bit skittish to me.) And never mind that, at some point, the debt holders will expect repayment. Seriously, we could be on the brink of Weimar America.

What none of you "progressives" seem able to get through your thick skulls is that this recession -- the massive losses in the Dow, the massive losses of home values in the collapse of the "bubble" -- represents a loss of capital. The American economy doesn't need psychological confidence, or a few dribs and drabs of pork-barrel programs and tiny "tax credits" to favored constituencies. It needs fat chunks of cash -- investment capital. And the disastrous policies being enacted will only serve to drive capital out of the U.S. economy.

If you start walking in the wrong direction, every step you take leads you farther from where you're supposed to be. U.S. economic policy has been going in the wrong direction, and every additional step in this direction only compounds the damage. Poll numbers and public relations cannot trump the forces of the market. The law of supply and demand cannot be repealed.

You idiots can talk about poll numbers until you're blue in the face and try to blame Bush for everything bad that happens, but like it or not, you own this one, and it's going to be a millstone around your necks.

UPDATE: The fiscal trap of Hope.

Best Conservative Movies?

National Review has a list. I like James Bowman's pick, Blast From the Past, which comes in only at No. 9 on the NR list but I'd rank it above Groundhog Day (Jonah Goldberg's pick at No. 6) and Metropolitan (No. 3 by Mark Henrie).

Blast From the Past is a personal favorite because (a) Brendan Fraser's character is home-schooled, and (b) Christopher Walken as the father hates commies the way commies should be hated. As for Metropolitan, I dig Whit Stillman but prefer The Last Days of Disco.

A couple of films I'd add to the list: The original Terminator -- a powerful pro-life message, since the whole point is that John Connor must be born -- and Fatal Attraction, which has got to be the best argument against adultery ever filmed.

Sorry, Professor

If I didn't want to watch Katie Couric's colonoscopy, what makes you think I'd want to see Stephen Colbert's colonoscopy? At some point, this obsession with health becomes . . . unhealthy.

Nationalization + Socialism = ?

Ed Driscoll wonders what could possibly go wrong with this formula, proposed separately by two major "liberal" media institutions.

Dan Riehl on 'mental masturbation'

Denouncing the intellectual preference for ideological debate over organized action:

The Obama flirtation only confirms a significant element which hasn't come of intellectual, or political age. (Intellectually so, unless you value thought purely for its own pursuit and not for some effective, ultimate result.) - otherwise defined as mental masturbation by us realistic folk. . . .
[S]top thinking so damned much. America is about doing (instinctively) that which is right, not over-thinking something so well thought out over two hundred years ago.

Dan is appealing to Burke's "men of untaught feelings," and expressing in great measure what I was trying to say in the immediate aftermath of the election: Don't Overthink It. Nominating a short, bald, grumpy, 73-year-old RINO was not a smart political move. Let's don't do that again. The Democrats just rammed through an unpopular $789 billion pork package with zero GOP votes in the House and only 3 RINOs in the Senate. Let's make the Dems regret that.

The KISS Principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Faux argument

"Republicans have given us wage and price controls under Richard Nixon, Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force, The K-Street Project, and the Bush deficit."
-- Ron Chusid

Now, which of these policies am I accused of endorsing? I was 14 when Nixon resigned from office and, in point of fact, was raised a Democrat. So I can't be blamed for price controls, which I do not advocate.

Exactly what the Cheney Energy Task Force did to deserve Chusid's demonization, I don't know; I presume Chusid is merely channeling the Left's stereotype of Cheney as an evil Svengali who manipulated world events for eight years in collusion with Halliburton and the Bavarian Illuminati. At any rate, Cheney never consulted my opinion in the matter of U.S energy policy. If he had, my advice would have been to drill everywhere, especially off the Pacific coast within sight of Barbara Streisand's Malibu mansion.

That brings us to the K Street Project. Its origin is well-known: Tom DeLay observed in the late 1990s that Washington lobbying firms were dominated by Democrats. Even after the GOP took charge of Congress in 1995, former Republican members of Congress and their aides were outnumbered 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 in the ranks of top DC lobbyng firms -- and when those firms made political contributions, a similar disproportion was apparent. So DeLay brought pressure to bear to rectify what he saw as an unfair practice. End of story, unless you want to conflate this with corrupt influence-peddling, which is a glass house inside of which no wise congressional Democrat would dare throw a stone.

"The Bush deficit" -- Liberals spent the entire eight years of the Bush administration screaming that the budget for this or that pet liberal cause had been, or was about to be, "slashed." They also whined constantly that No Child Left Behind (a policy I adamantly opposed, BTW) was "underfunded." So while they endlessly complain that Republicans don't spend enough money, liberals then blame Republicans for deficits. Sic semper hoc.

Chusid's "about" page envisions a point at which "Republicans break free of their control by the religious right and neoconservatives." I'll let the neocons defend themselves, but what harm exactly has the "religious right" done to deserve Chusid's contempt or hostility? Who does he have in mind by this term, "religious right"?

What Chusid wants, of course, is the political disempowerment of the only solid voting bloc the GOP can count on. What would he say if I dreamt of a day when "Democrats break free of their control by labor unions and the abortion lobby"? He'd laugh me to scorn, of course, since the AFL-CIO, SEIU and Emily's List are the Democratic Party.

It's an annihilationist vision (a bumper sticker slogan, Imagine No Republicans) and nothing more. Chusid's just conjuring up propaganda bogeys -- Nixon! Cheney! and Bush! Oh, my! -- rather than engaging in argument. Fine. When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way.

Glenn Greenwald vs. David Brooks

Man, this is one of those "Jason vs. Freddie Krueger" match-ups of evil against evil where you don't really want either one to win, you just hope it's good and bloody.

RNC Tech Summit

"To call it hastily arranged would be an understatement. The RNC only announced it on Monday, giving participants two days to RSVP and four to prepare presentations. At the same time, organizers made the uncharacteristic decision to open it to the public: Anyone could show up and speak."

Yet another invitation I never got. How do they ever expect to fix their problems without asking me?

(Via Hot Air Headlines.)

Valentine's Day: Coffee for Cupid

My latest column at Taki's Magazine:

As Valentine’s Day 2009 arrives, the desperate real-estate salesmen of Glengarry Glen Ross are an apt metaphor for the romantic plight of our age. Plenty of prospects out there -- there are some 24 million women ages 18-29 in the United States -- but guys can't seem to close the deal: 65 percent of those women have never married. The median age at first marriage for women, which was 20 in 1960, is now at an all-time high of 25.3, and spinsterhood is an increasingly common fate. Thirteen percent of women 40-44 have never married, reflecting about a one-third rise since 1980 in the likelihood of being an old maid, a percentage that can be expected to increase given the current low marriage rates for young women. . . .

Please read the whole thing!

UPDATE: Via electronic communication, G2 provides this intelligence from the front lines of the War of the Sexes, as a lovelorn young hottie confides:

The concept of "wooing" a girl is, if not entirely unheard of, at least unpracticed among practically every man I know. Still, I think it's largely the woman's fault. I was having this conversation with a girlfriend yesterday, and I realized that the once-masculine role of putting a woman on a pedestal, sweeping her off her feet, etc. has been assumed by females. Nearly every girl I know in a relationship or pseudo-relationship has been the one doing the wooing. She usually idolizes the man - and worse than that, lets him know it.

Things are getting desperate out there, you see.

UPDATE II: Another young lady writes:

Here's the real problem: men. Good luck to all the 18-to-29-year-old women out there trying to find a man who a) is not on drugs, b) is not in jail, c) is consistently employed and d) actually wants to get married and settle down someday. Apparently in this generation there are enough loose women that the men have realized they can get all the benefits of marriage without making the commitment. As the old adage goes, why work and buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? With that kind of a market, the cows who won't give away milk for free tend to have a tougher time.

Yes, there does seem to be too much surplus milk on the market nowadays.

1,000,000 hits!

The Site Meter rolled into 7-digit territory just before midnight! I am now a mega-blogger.

Still trying to think of a way to celebrate.

Kenny Chesney is so NOT GAY

And he wants to make sure you know that:

"I've got a long line of girls who could testify that I am not gay. . . . My first five years on the road were intense because I was the guy in college who never got laid until I started playing guitar. . . There were years when I had a better summer than A-Rod, buddy. You know?"

Yeah. We know. Sure, champ. I mean, until Renee Zellweger says anything different . . .

'Influential member of the local Muslim community'

Don't blame me, that's what the story says:

Orchard Park police are investigating a particularly gruesome killing, the beheading of a woman, after her husband -- an influential member of the local Muslim community -- reported her death to police Thursday.
Police identified the victim as Aasiya Z. Hassan, 37. Detectives have charged her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, 44, with second-degree murder. . . .
Muzzammil Hassan is the founder and chief executive officer of Bridges TV, which he launched in 2004, amid hopes that it would help portray Muslims in a more positive light.

How's that working for you, Mr. Hassan?

The 111th Congress Shall Live in Infamy

Join the Facebook group. The guilty shall be named and remembered. They shall regret this travesty but once -- and that will be forever!

Aaron in the graphics department: We'll need an appropriate logo. Classy, but vicious.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Acknowledgement is due to frequent commenter Smitty for creating the group.

UPDATE II: Of course, the Economic Destruction Act of 2009 was passed on . . . FRIDAY THE 13TH!

UPDATE III: Protectionist "Buy American" provision inspires Smoot-Hawley comparisons.

UPDATE IV: The disastrous effects are already being felt by . . . law professors? If you see Glenn Reynolds standing beside a freeway ramp with a crudely-lettered "Will Blog For Food" sign, blame Arlen Specter.

UPDATE V: Dr. Melissa Clouthier on "phallic issues." Everything is always "phallic issues" with her.

UPDATE VI: At the Facebook group (we've already got 272 members), one member wrote on the Wall that his father -- a Navy veteran whose ship was sunk at Pearl Harbor -- says what Congress just did was worse than the Japanese attack!

Three reasons never to give a dime to the National Republican Senatorial Committee

"Collins, Specter, and Snowe have all voted yes, and needless to say, no Democrat's going to torpedo The One's moment by switching. The deed is done."

My stimulus!

Thanks to Moe Lane for directing me toward the Personal Stimulus Generator, so that I now find this clause buried in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009:

wireless and broadband deployment grant programs
(including transfer of funds to Robert Stacy McCain for the Robert Stacy McCain Personal Economic Stimulus Program)
For necessary and unnecessary expenses related to the Wireless and Broadband Deployment Grant Programs established by section 6002 of division B of this Act, $2,825,000,000, of which $1,000,000,000 shall be for Wireless Deployment Grants and $1,825,000,000 shall be for Broadband Deployment Grants: Provided, That an additional $1,000,000 shall be paid directly to Robert Stacy McCain in the form of subsidized loans that do not require repayment. Provided Further, That the funds be used by Robert Stacy McCain to It's for the children or for whatever. Provided Even Further, That Robert Stacy McCain will receive free University of Alabama Crimson Tide tickets for life. Provided Even Further Still, That Robert Stacy McCain shall be treated as a cabinet-level appointment for the purpose of income tax reporting, and therefore no taxes shall be paid on any of the aformentioned benefits. And one more thing: Rep. Maxine Waters is hereby expelled from Congress, effective immediately upon enactment.

Good thing there's no time for those suckers to actually read what they're voting on!

UPDATE: Via Red State, Rep. John Boehner:

Valentine's Day advice

"All seductions begin by flirting. Flirting is the key which turns the engine on. It is as simple as that. Without flirting you cannot seduce, and without seduction the race becomes extinct."
-- Taki Theodoracopulos

More intellectual warfare

"The Left has won the culture war, and, at least in the near-term, its victory is irreversible. In social relations, the right to choose trumps all other considerations: to fornicate, marry, breed, abort, divorce, and abandon. That a single mother with six kids should opt for another eight because she feels like it captures the distilled essence of the cultural moment that we have entered. Somehow ritual expressions of support for 'family values' don't quite provide an adequate response."
-- Andrew Bacevich

"From Joseph de Maistre to T.S. Eliot and beyond, right-wing cultural critics since the French Revolution have made the case for authority, along with what it ultimately requires -- namely, the suicide of the critical intellect."
-- Damon Linker

"Linker's response says more about his inability to make arguments without resorting to theocratic or authoritarian bogeymen than it does about Bacevich's essay."
-- James Antle

James is onto something. The hysterical reactions of those who claim to see theocracy lurking around every corner can only be understood as the expression of inner psychodrama. What is it they really fear? What kind of emotional weakness manifests itself in these phobic fantasies of religious authoritarianism?

Lou Dobb hates him some pork

Embedded video from CNN Video

The luxury of 'liberaltarianism'

Ross Douthat weighs in with a commentary on "liberaltarianism," the proposed fusion of liberalism and libertarianism that started getting kicked around a bit on the blogosphere a couple of years ago. (Cf., "Obamatarians," a more recent expression of the same impulse.)

The problem with this concept was never really on the part of liberals, except insofar as they either (a) misunderstood libertarianism, or (b) simply lied about their openness to libertarian ideas. Confusion and deceit among liberals is a given. But the liberals always knew what they wanted from such a transaction: Elect more Democrats.

What did the libertarians want from the transaction? It is here that the ridiculous folly of the enterprise is found. Most of the Will Wilkinson types are intellectuals who are embarrassed by what Hunter S. Thompson called the "Rotarian" instincts of the Republican Party. That flag-waving God-mom-and-apple-pie stuff just doesn't light a fire under the American intellectual class, which is not now, nor has it ever been, enamored of religion, patriotism and "family values."

As a political impulse, the sort of libertarianism that scoffs at creationism and traditional marriage wields limited influence, because it appeals chiefly to a dissenting sect of the intelligentsia. It's a sort of free-market heresy of progressivism, with no significant popular following nor any real prospect of gaining one, because most Ordinary Americans who strongly believe in economic freedom are deeply traditionalist. And most anti-traditionalists -- the feminists, the gay militants, the "world peace" utopians -- are deeply committed to the statist economic vision of the Democratic Party.

There is no natural political constituency for the sort of libertarianism that considers marijuana legalization and the flat tax as equally estimable objectives. When it comes to the basic electoral calculus of 5o-percent-plus-one, this theoretical equation has never been shown to add up in terms of real-world coalition politics. (Maybe the stoners just forget to vote?)

During the "long boom" unleashed by the Reagan revolution, it was possible for libertarian intellectuals to believe that the arguments for economic freedom were now so blindingly vindicated that even their progressive peers must admit the obvious truth. All libertarians needed to do, they fancied, was to shed the unfashionable baggage of the GOP coalition -- the Falwells and Buchanans and Dobsons and other such lowbrows -- and the progressives would eagerly sign up for this new project: Free-market gay marriage! Free-market abortion! Free-market environmentalism! Free-market transhuman biotechnology!

If that idea ever made sense, it only made sense in a context of Republican political dominance. When the Democrats were putting up losers like Mike Dukakis and John Kerry, when Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay were crushing progressive dreams like so many ants underfoot, free-market intellectuals could attempt to inveigle their progressive friends: "Don't worry about those hayseed holy rollers, saber-rattling jingos and suburban Rotarians. They make a lot of noise, but they don't really call the shots. Look at your 401K balance. The market works."

Well, we passed the sell-by date of that argument somewhere between "Mission Accomplished" and "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." And all the libertarian intellectuals who've been sucking on the Koch tit over the past 25 years find that their progressive friends are as unpersuaded about the virtues of economic freedom as they ever were. Lending libertarian support to progressive causes -- the driving impetus of the gay-rights movement is egalitarian, not libertarian -- has strengthened progressivism, while doing nothing meaningful to advance the free-market cause.

With their Democratic friends now holding supreme power in Washington, progressives now openly celebrate Keynesian pump-priming and redistributionist economic schemes in a way they never would have done when Tom DeLay held the whip. Chuck Schumer can laugh that the American people don't care what's in the stimulus, and no one can effectively refute him.

At the apex of Republican power and at the zenith of the "long boom" ignited by Reaganomics, the "liberaltarian" impulse was a luxury that foundation-subsidized intellectuals could afford to indulge. The era of respectable intellectual luxury is now over, and serious people must now ponder the rude realities of coalition politics.

UPDATE: "Like the Higgs Boson, the liberaltarian is a phenomenon that hasn't yet been directly observed but that everybody hopes to find someday."

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! (Guess this means I'll hit the 1-million hits mark a bit early, huh?)

UPDATE III: A slight diversion, to take aim at the false dilemma (either tax cuts OR Keynesian spending) argument as put forward by Newsweek's Daniel Gross:

Adherents of the tax-cuts-only strategy are suspicious of free-spending Democrats, old-fashioned Keynesians, and big government. They believe -- no, they know --that tax cuts are more efficient than government spending, since people and businesses make better and quicker decisions about spending than government does. . . . The current, somewhat extraordinary circumstances, and the nation's changing economic geography, should make us wonder how effective tax cuts will be in stimulating new spending and investment.

Now, I addressed this either/or fallacy Monday, with reference to Megan McArdle's suggestion that marginal rates are now low enough that major Laffer-curve effects are not to be expected from further tax cuts. (Argue amongst yourselves.) What kills me is that Gross is allowed to make an expressly political argument under the guise of an economic expertise that he does not, in fact, possess:

Mr. Gross graduated from Cornell University in 1989, with degrees in government and history, and holds an A.M. in American history from Harvard University (1991). He worked as a reporter at The New Republic and Bloomberg News, and has contributed hundreds of features, news articles, book reviews and opinion pieces to over 60 magazines and newspapers. Areas of expertise include: economic and tax policy, the links between business and politics, the rise of the investor class, the culture of Wall Street, and business history. (Emphasis added.)

The man is a journalist, not an economist, and his echoing of Obama administration talking points ought not be disguised as economic analysis. Nothing wrong with being a journalist, you understand, it's just that Newsweek is doing a bait-and-switch by presenting Gross as an economic "expert." But if Paul Krugman can win a Nobel Prize, I suppose we're all experts now . . .

UPDATE IV: Linked by The American Catholic.

Mark Thompson says I'm "somewhat hyperbolic." Dude, you're just now noticing this tendency?

RELATED STUFF:

• Helen Rittelmeyer, "Oh, I'm sorry, did we get our movement in your status quo?"
• Jonah Goldberg, "Whither Liberaltarianism?"
• Austin Bramwell, "The Two Faces of Libertarianism"
• Reihan Salam, "The Point of Liberaltarianism"
• Matt Welch, "Liberaltarianism in the Age of Obama"

Lawrence Henry, R.I.P.

Longtime American Spectator contributor Lawrence Henry will file no more columns from North Andover, Mass. He died at age 61 from complications of kidney disease.

Blame game

"No matter how bad the economy is when the 2010 elections come, Democrats are going to argue that it would have been much worse had we not passed this $789 billion bill. It's something that's entirely non-falsifiable, since we don't get to know what would have happened without the legislation. That's why Obama keeps warning of double digit unemployment, 5 million job losses, an irreversible economic death spiral, etc. He wants to be able to say that he saved us from a return to the 1930s."
-- Philip Klein

The plight of the skanks

Hat-tip to Richard Spencer:

In The Know: Are Reality Shows Setting Unrealistic Standards For Skanks?

Now, speaking of Richard Spencer and skanks, here is a podcast of Richard talking libertarianism with Austin Bramwell, and here is a photo of Richard at the Reason magazine 2007 Christmas party with . . .

Yes, it's her -- Michelle Lee Muccio! So now, everybody at HotAir.com is going hubba-hubba over Michelle, but Richard was that close to her, and let her get away. You try to help these young fellows, but there's only so much you can do.

UPDATE: Dave addresses the decadence of it all.

UPDATE II: Empty threats from Spencer, who claims I've "romantically linked" him with Ms. Muccio. No, I stated quite clearly that Spencer missed his chance. When I saw him talking to her at the Christmas party, I thought young Richard was moving in for the kill, but he evidently did the Nice Guy thing and let her escape.

Coffee is for closers, Richard.

TARP! What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing! Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Co. just whizzed away $78 billion for no good purpose. And now the incompetent clowns are coming back for more.

Andrew Sargus Klein is an arrogant elitist douchebag . . .

. . . as is anyone who agrees with him:

The right has developed a visceral knee-jerk reaction to anything involving culture, and their "loyal opposition" stranglehold doesn’t seem to be loosening anytime soon. Bombs make jobs, but renovations and building projects and part-time jobs or anything else within a stones throw of a—gasp—opera house do not. This is government as violent adolescent child.

Listen up, punk: I majored in drama and minored in art and managed to squeeze in two semesters of music theory along the way. Right now, I've got a day gig as a documentary film editor. I've got more culture in the tip of my pinkie than you've got in your entire swinish soul. So don't you tell me about my "knee-jerk reaction."

Klein gives us a splendid insight into the central conceit of the liberal mind: Nothing exists -- or has existed, or ever will exist -- unless it's funded with federal taxpayer dollars.

Therefore, to oppose federal funding for "the arts" is to be anti-art, just as opposing federal funding for public schools is to be anti-education. Such is the shriveled state of the liberal psyche that it never even occurs to these dimwits to let people keep their own money to spend on whatever they want. You want to renovate a theater? Go renovate a theater. But don't bring the IRS down on my back to force me to pay for your tastes in architecture.

Is this what Russ Smith is paying you for, punk? To be a commissar for the People's Ministry of Kultur? And does he know that you're basically recycling the same kind of lame crap you wrote for your student paper at U of Michigan?

What hasn't been noticed is a distinct artistic apathy regarding politics, and though this is a more specific approach to a larger issue, in a university with as much opportunity for free expression as ours, it's just as relevant.
There are plenty of examples of this freedom, from Natural Resources and Environment students putting up installations on the Diag and in The Nichols Arboretum to performances of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues" and Moises Kaufman's "The Laramie Project."
But with the possibility of a few exceptions, the above examples represent the extent to which our University's art scene pushes the political envelope. The fact remains that not everyone is (or should be) politically oriented, nor should everyone should be held to a standard of artistic expression. But students in our School of Art and Design and School of Music, Theater & Dance seem to keep a tight lid on any overt political leanings - at least, there's little to no political expression to be experienced by the campus as a whole.

OK, I wrote some lame crap in college, too. But when I was your age, punk, I was driving a forklift in a warehouse on Atlanta's Fulton Industrial Boulevard, saving up money to buy a P.A. rig for my rock band. So exactly what right do you have to lecture me about "culture"? I've put my own sweat into culture, pal.

(One of my 16-year-old sons just interrupted me, walking in with his -- actually, my -- acoustic six-string to show me he's learned the guitar part to some song by Avenged Sevenfold.)

Where was I? Oh, yes: Andrew Sargus Klein, 25-year-old kultur commisar, telling the rest of us what lowbrow philistines we are! Nice work, if you can get it. "The Vagina Monologues," indeed . . .

UPDATE: Watch out, Klein: I've just been nominated for "culture czar," and you don't want me to send the cossacks after you!

UPDATE II: Enjoy that beer and chill, Andrew. Some of you people keep mistaking me for a serious intellectual, although I can't imagine why.

Avoid the rush . . .

. . . denounce Marcus Epstein now!

The aforementioned Mr. Epstein, writing in an anti-immigration blog and quoted in a recent New York Times editorial, said: "Diversity can be good in moderation -- if what's brought in is desirable. Most Americans don't mind a little ethnic food, some Asian math whizzes or a few mariachi dancers -- as long as these trends do not overwhelm the dominant culture." . . .
Mr. Epstein, assimilate this: There’s no one American "dominant" culture. There never has been. Throughout history, American culture has evolved, and will continue to evolve, with the ebb and flow of immigration from different parts of the world.
It’s all a matter of time. Send in the mariachis.

First, the New York Times, now the NY Daily News -- say what you will about the kid, but he's got all the right enemies.

Canada (hearts) Obama

The Great Beige North:

The new American president has even become the centerpiece of the Canadian Black History Month, which until 1995 had been known as "February."
Why do we have this? In 2002, the Parliament of Canada also transformed May into Asian Heritage Month. Both cases are somewhat inconsistent with the official Canadian cultural policy. Whereas the United States' "original sin" was African slavery, Canada chooses to hold a month-long celebration/dirge for the Aboriginal peoples. . . . Aboriginal history and questions of land claims, reservations, and self-government are regularly spot-lit in schools, the media, and politics. Yet, Aboriginal interest groups like RAPA are still lobbying the House of Commons to declare June the Aboriginal History Month, thus far only municipally successful in the prairie city of Regina. . . .

There's more, and you should go read the whole thing. But now, it's time for the Official Theme Song:

South Park - Blame Canada - The funniest bloopers are right here

Hate Canada: Because It Ain't Illegal Yet!

How Democrats destroyed the economy

Tom Blumer explains, with charts and statistics and stuff like that. Even if you only slightly understand Blumer's analysis, you'll know about 1,000 times more about economics than Maxine Waters does.

Scientific breakthrough!

Already, the Obama administration is producing wonderful new discoveries:

PALO ALTO, CA - An international mathematics research team announced today that they had discovered a new integer that surpasses any previously known value "by a totally mindblowing s---load." Project director Yujin Xiao of Stanford University said the theoretical number, dubbed a "stimulus," could lead to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and Chicago asphalt contracting. . . .

Yeah, you should read the whole thing.

Don't click that link

It's about 2 minutes of a stupid film trailer, and you'll never get that 2 minutes back again. To say nothing of the lost IQ points . . .

Gabriel Malor, you'll pay for this!

Mystery solved

Jules Crittenden informs us that the Dutch city of Leeuwarden has lost its municipal pornography archive.

Check Ace's hard drive. If Ace doesn't have it, it doesn't exist.

Next question?

1,434 pages, $789 billion and . . .

. . . not a red cent for me. Or you. Isn't that kind of interesting? I mean, Congress porks up a massive package that's supposed to stimulate the economy, and yet they're not giving me or you one thin dime? Who's getting all this money?

Never mind. It's such an emergency that they're going to vote to pass this damn thing Friday, before anyone can even begin to figure out where all that money's actually going. Philip Klein:

If they don't sleep, perhaps the American people will get a window of a few hours to learn what's happening with $789 billion of their money.

Michelle Malkin:

Chuck Schumer says we don’t care. President Obama says we don’t need anymore debate.

Allahpundit:

Hey, Michelle Lee Muccio is kinda hot.

OK, just a little snark to lighten things up. (I saw her first, Allah; she sent me the video via Facebook.) But now, back to the total bummer: The Economic Destruction Act of 2009 doesn't need more debate. The Democrats are going to rape the taxpayers, Arlen Specter's Jellyfish Caucus is going to assist in the crime, and that's all there is to it.

UPDATE: Via Sister Toldjah, Obama lied, jobs died:

President Obama today repeated the claim we asked about yesterday at the press briefing that Jim Owens, the CEO of Caterpillar, Inc., "said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off."
Caterpillar announced 22,000 layoffs last month.
But after the president left the event, Owens said the exact opposite.
Asked if the stimulus package would be able to stop the 22,000 layoffs or not, Owens said, "I think realistically no. The truth is we're going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again"

Ain't Hope wonderful?

UPDATE II: Conn Carroll of the Heritage Foundation says the actual pricetag of the Economic Destruction Act of 2009 will be $3.27 trillion. No matter how you calculate it, the amount going to me -- and I'm the only person I really care about -- is zero. And the amount going to you is exactly the same. So, that's two of us getting zero out of this transaction, buddy.

Somewhere out there are some people who are actually going to cash in big-time, and right now they're doing the happy dance. Look around you tomorrow, and if you see anybody looking especially happy, punch 'em in the nose. Call it "social justice."

UPDATE III: Jimmie at Sundries Shack:

Just know, as you're at work tomorrow, that the Democrats will be voting to spend about $800 billion dollars without having the foggiest idea what they'll be spending it all on. Oh, to be sure, they know how much money they'll spend on their little pet projects but that's it. They are taking on faith that throwing all that money at our economy is going to be good for us, even though they have no good idea where all the money is going to land.

Oh, they know enough, Jimmie. Not a penny for me, not a nickel for you, not a dime for any actual hard-working Ordinary American types. It's all going to the special interests that pump money and votes into the Democratic Party. You can go down to Hope HQ and try applying for your share of the "stimulus," if you want to give them a chance to laugh directly in your face.

Closing in on 1 million hits

As of 9 p.m. Thursday, The Other McCain had received 992K visits. Regular blogging began in March, when the monthly total was 6,629 visits. Traffic slowly built over the next several months, reaching 73K in August before the 292K awesomeness of September (thank you, Governor Palin).

The past couple of days -- with major linkage from HotAir.com, Instapundit.com, and Ace of Spades HQ -- have produced more than 23K visits, and it figures that if traffic remains at even a modest 3,000 visits per day, we'll cross the 1-million-visit mark sometime Saturday.

How should this occasion be celebrated?

What the Israeli elections mean

(BUMPED) I don't know, but Noah Millman is doing the parliamentary math. Based on his math, I figure a 65-seat Likud-led coalition makes the most sense. But what do I know?

UPDATE: Allison Kaplan Sommer: "Elections, shmelections!" (Click the link, guys. Trust me.) More seriously, Allison says:

[S]imple arithmetic shows that the right-wing bloc is significantly larger than the left-wing bloc . . .

A Likud-led coalition, it seems to me, would be more stable than a Kadima-led coalition and thus would be in a better negotiating position with the Palestinians, etc. But again, what do I know?

Did Juan Williams 'smear' the First Lady?

J.P. Freire has a post about the controversy surrounding this video of a Jan. 26 appearance on "The O'Reilly Factor" where Williams calls Michelle Obama "Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress":

Kiddies, if you don't know who Stokely Carmichael was, let David Horowitz tell you.

UPDATE: The liberals at NPR are wringing their hands.

Harry Reid's lips are moving

Every word is a lie, including "and" and "the." (Via Politico.)

Heterophobia

A college women's basketball player who isn't a lesbian? Believe It Or Not:

Central Michigan and its women's basketball coach are being sued by a former player, who claims her heterosexuality was a factor in losing a scholarship after two seasons. Brooke Heike said she fell out of favor with Sue Guevara immediately after the coach was hired in 2007. Heike said Guevara told her she wore too much makeup and was not the coach's "type." That meant she wasn't a lesbian, according to a lawsuit filed last week in federal court in Bay City. The former Romeo High School star lost her scholarship after the 2007-08 season.

(Via Instapundit.) If this lawsuit is successful, next thing you know, they'll be letting straight girls play college softball. They might even let them into the LPGA. Is nothing sacred?

The People's Stimulus

Michelle Lee Muccio of the Acton Institute will be at CPAC. Will you be at CPAC?

This is your Congress on Hope

Rep. Maxine Waters is on the House Financial Services Committee -- and clearly doesn't know the first thing about the banking industry.

Moe Lane asks, "How’s that Libertarians for Obama thing working out for people?" He has in mind Megan McArdle, who (a) voted for Obama, and (b) has belatedly realized that her vote has empowered the likes of "Kerosene Maxine":

[S]he clearly doesn't have the first shred of an inkling of a clue of how said financial system works. Her questions had the air of someone who couldn't quite wrap her mind around the complexities of the E-Z Reader consumer activist pamphlets from which she had presumably cribbed them. . . . This is the crack talent that's supposed to reform the banking system into something more robust?

Waters got the nickname "Kerosene Maxine" (so dubbed by Larry Elder) for her inflammatory rhetoric during the Rodney King/L.A. riots episode 17 years ago, when McArdle was still a teenager.

This goes to show one reason I've been amused by the entire "Obamatarian" phenomenon. Most of the libertarian types who supported Obama are impossibly young. McArdle is 36 and probably ought to know better. If you're under 30, you weren't even in high school the last time Democrats controlled both the White House and Congress. And Bush totally sucked, dude. So you think, "Hey, let's let the other guys have their turn." Only later do you realize who the Democrats actually are, and it ain't pretty.

I've gotten some grief for my "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Bob Barr" T-shirts (only $9.99!), but it wasn't because I wanted Obama to win. It was a protest against the tone-deaf stupidity of a Republican Party that thinks it can nominate a 73-year-old short, grumpy, bald RINO for president and expect anything except complete embarrassment. Say what you will about Sarah Palin, she is (a) attractive and (b) an actual Republican.

I'd been a yellow-dog Democrat my whole life and proudly plastered a Clinton-Gore bumper sticker on my car in 1992. But from Day One, Bill Clinton and the Democrats set out to make fools of us "Sam Nunn Democrats," and the 1994 "assault weapons" ban was the straw that broke the backs of a lot of us yellow dogs. I wouldn't vote Democrat again if you put a gun to my head, but after the experience of being screwed over by the Democrats, I'm not going to be a doormat for the GOP.

The Jellyfish Caucus -- spineless worms like Arlen Specters and Susan Collinses -- are not the kind of Republicans an ex-Democrat can support. If we were OK with Big Government liberalism, we'd still be voting Democrat. This is the heart of my grievance against David Brooks and his "national greatness" idiocy. The constituency for "national greatness" could meet in phone booth, whereas the potential constituency for libertarian populism is enormous.

Ronald Reagan was an ex-Democrat, too, which was why he understood the importance of offering a real alternative to Big Government liberalism. The future ex-Democrats are not going to vote for a watered-down Liberalism Lite, and some of the effete elitist intellectuals in the GOP orbit are going to have to get over their craving for a Republican Party that's "respectable" by the standards of Manhattan, Georgetown and Brentwood.

If the GOP is ever going to recapture power, it will first have to capture the rowdy, hell-raising "Spirit of '94," channeling the populist rage of Ordinary Americans whose interests aren't being served by Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Maxine Waters. And if David Brooks doesn't like it, to hell with David Brooks.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers. (He must have noticed the inclusion of Chris Dodd on that list. Insty hates Chris Dodd.)

UPDATE II: Now, Megan McArdle finds herself having to fight the Arnold-Kling-Is-a-Racist meme stirred up by Adam Serwer. We have arrived in The Progressive Future, where there are exactly two kinds of people: socialists and racists. Dissent = hate. Get used to it.

UPDATE III: Headlined at AOSHQ.

My son, the mechanic

The great thing about kids is that they're so helpful. I haven't had to mow my lawn in years. And now, I'm saving a fortune on auto repair -- here's my 16-year-old son Jim fixing the brakes on the car, with a little help from his 10-year-old brother Jeff.

Next: Teach 'em to blog, save myself the bother . . . I mean, the kid's already feeding me news tips.

Miley Cyrus, hatemonger

The "Hannah Montana" star has incited hate against Asian-Americans -- and they're suing her for $4 billion.

Don't laugh. It's California. They might win.

(Via Hot Air Headlines.)

Peter Suderman drops names

Like Hansel and Gretel dropping bread crumbs. I mean, what's up with that, Peter? If you keep this up, I'll have to mention it to Ed Meese or Al Regnery or possibly Newt Gingrich next time I see them . . .