Glenn Beck: When the Going Gets Weird . . .

OK, maybe you're familiar with the kind of intense insanity I've been confronting the past 10 days, and maybe not. But my e-mail inbox overflow situation has led to problems I can't even begin to explain, my wife isn't talking to me and if it weren't for prayer, I'd be a gibbering lunatic myself.

So as the mushroom clouds were exploding on the horizon last night, I was on deadline for an American Spectator column about Glenn Beck:

Time writer David Von Drehle begins his attack thus: "On Sept. 12, a large crowd gathered in Washington to protest ... what?… If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists. If you get your information from conservative sources, the crowd was hundreds of thousands strong, perhaps as many as a million, and the tenor was peaceful and patriotic."
So you see that Drehle can go either way here: He can use the crowd to discredit Beck, or use Beck to discredit the crowd. Either way, the point is to prepare the reader of Time magazine (who clearly does not get information from conservative sources) to be fearful of both Beck and the crowd at the Capitol, whatever their numbers might have been.
After a few more paragraphs, Von Drehle plays his trump card: "The old American mind-set that Richard Hofstadter famously called 'the paranoid style' -- the sense that Masons or the railroads or the Pope or the guys in black helicopters are in league to destroy the country -- is aflame again…"
Von Drehle's invocation of "the paranoid style," a trope that Hofstadter derived from Theodor Adorno's "authoritarian personality," is intended to clearly signal the reader that Beck is a kook, a conspiracy theorist, a demagogue pandering to the dangerous emotions of the ignorant mob.
You know. Nudge, nudge. Like Barry Goldwater. . . .

Please read the whole thing. And remember: Just because you're not paranoid, that doesn't mean there aren't actually people out to get you.

AT&T: Fall off the Planet

by Smitty

I had occasion to return my handset to the manufacturer today. I shipped the wee gadget off to Huntsville, AL for to see the phone doctor.

There is an AT&T shop near the mail joint, so I figured I'd go buy a cheap backup handset from my preferred vendor, slide in the SIM card, and have something to tide me over until my main handset returns.

I explained my situation, picked out a decent handset and set about buying the thing. The sales guy said that there would be no refund on an unlocked phone. Store credit, sure, but no money back, since I'm not an AT&T customer. I trust my brand, so fine. He has me sign something explicitly stating that I understand this proviso, which I think a bit much, but I'm still trusting the creep.

So I bought the thing, and then he started to tell me about the unlocking process, to get it to work outside of AT&T. He couldn't do that in the store, he had to call some service guy. Fine. Called up this guy, collected my contact information. They guy informed me that it's going to be 72 hours before they can email me the magic code to unlock the phone.

I assured the guy that I understood that this was not his policy but that this makes no sense in the Information Age. The phone's IMEI is broadcast every time you call. What sort of security is this buying?

Upon entry into the sales discussion, I had explained that I wanted a phone, now, to cover while awaiting my main unit. Yet the sales guy roped me in anyway, knowing that my instant gratification requirement would be stymied for three days.

Had the sales guy been forthright, I would have said "Thank you, no" and gone to my usual vendor at the mall for the purchase. My basic purpose was completely thwarted by a greedy salesperson.

AT&T: GET BENT!

I hope the negative advertising value of this blog post more than outweighs the value of the phone I bought. I expected to use it immediately, only to discover that what I thought was rain going down my back was something else entirely. Your policy blows the grand wazoo, and people should find other vendors with less crappy policies.

As predicted, LGF attacks Malkin

UPDATE 9/23: Who is Kejda Gjermani? Is she actually LGF's 'Medaura'? And if so . . .?

PREVIOUSLY (10:45 p.m., 9/22): He threatened her in April, and now follows through. The ex-lizards at Blogmocracy will be the definitive source on this episode, but I just wanted to quote one of the leading henchpeople:

287
Killgore Trout9/22/2009 6:36:40 pm PDT
5
down
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re: #280 Charles
What do you think their game is? RSM and Malkin seem to be baiting you into something. Could they possibly have some sort of trap set up or do they just think the time for open racism has arrived? I don't get the strategy.

No, Kilgore, you don't get the "strategy." It's called facts, and the fact is you're a stooge for a cowardly liar who is far gone in the process of complete self-destruction.

UPDATE: Smeared by Kejda Gjermani, an assistant online editor at Commentary:

White nationalist Robert Stacey McCain now prominently blogrolls lgf2, a hate site run by a couple of dangerous whacks prone to physical violence—and encourages its commenters to congregate at Hot Air.

There are these things called facts, Ms. Gjermani, and there are witnesses to those facts.

UPDATE II: Now we see where Kejda Gjermani is getting her misinformation. A commenter identifies her husband as software entrepreneur Michael P. Hussey a/k/a "mph" on VodkaPundit's comments:

Well, Stacy McCain does write for Taki Magazine and VDare…two absolutely disgusting (and racist) publications. McCain is openly friendly with the editor of Taki Mag, Richard Spencer, an avowed white nationalist (Spencer proudly told me this himself the one time I was disgraced to meet him – the guy is a f-ing lunatic and anyone who calls themselves a friend of this creature has serious issues of their own).
…and never mind that Stacy McCain is a member of the League of the South. What else do you need to know? Come on Stephen…you are one of the great ones. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. Don’t close your eyes to this filth.
Sep 12, 2009 - 3:41 pm

Get it? Apparently "mph" encountered Richard Spencer -- perhaps at a libertarian event? some sort of Paulista gathering? -- in New York, where they both live, and words were exchanged.

As I've said of Spencer several times, he's a brilliant young radical who is too much a fan of Nietzsche. And anyone may ask Suzanna Logan (a Christian who is most definitely not a white supremacist) about Spencer's arrogance.

Spencer was a graduate student at Duke during the lacrosse rape hoax, an episode that I suppose had a radicalizing effect on a lot of students. It was at a panel discussion of the Duke hoax that I met Spencer in Washington a couple of years back.

Spencer and I have had long telephone discussions about politics, and he could certainly testify to our disagreements. But he pays me to write at Taki's, and you can examine everything I've written there for what it's worth. "Racism"? It's not there. Oh, and contrary to what "mph" asserts, I've never written for VDare.com.

Speaking of arrogance, "mph" seems to be one of those young people who imagine that (a) anything written on the Internet must be true, and (b) all facts are available on the Internet. These beliefs are false.

If you'll look at the insulting tone "mph" takes in Vodka's comment thread, he seems even more arrogant than Spencer. Alas, "mph" has made serious mistakes by recycling materials of dubious credibility, and -- if it is true that "mph" is Hussey -- he has committed an even more serious error by involving Gjermani in what appears to be some sort of personal feud with Spencer.

Once again, you see how the question of motive is always relevant when these kinds of accusations are raised. What provoked "mph" to attack someone he doesn't know, based on second-hand information he evidently never bothered to verify?

Pay close attention, idiots: Just because I haven't bothered to deny something doesn't mean it's true. The burden of proof is on the accuser, and good luck proving some of the things you have so flatly asserted. There are facts. And there are witnesses.

Best. Blog. Headline. Evah!

"It took two years, and now the useless and damaging blogwar is finally over. . . . At this point virtually everyone in the blogosphere, except CAIR tool Charles Johnson's new Leftist and jihadist allies, knows what I have been pointing out ever since he began attacking me: that Charles Johnson is a smear merchant who traffics in half-truths, distortions, and outright lies, and whose testimony on any particular point is not to be trusted."
-- Robert Spencer, JihadWatch.org,
"Stacy McCain is a genius!"

UPDATE: While I'm always eager to hear praise -- who isn't? -- there is a very serious issue involved. Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and others were subjected to these LGF smears for nearly two years, going back to Geller's report on the October 2007 "counter-jihad" conference in Brussels. Too many people were silent, and I was silent too long.

As Pamela told me in a recent phone conversation, LGF's attacks had the effect of disrupting attempts to forge a trans-Atlantic alliance to deal with a genuine problem. "Counter-jihad" activists in both Europe and America lost support because one of the biggest "conservative" blogs was repeating discredited accusations of "fascism" against Vlaams Belang and Sweden Democrats.

Too many bloggers seemed to think, "Well, there must be something to it, or else Charles wouldn't be posting this stuff." But to my knowledge, Charles has never traveled to Sweden or Belgium to investigate any of the supposed "Eurofascists" he's denounced.

Furthermore, by passing along second-hand accusations against these Europeans he's never met, Mad King Charles has hurt people far away from Sweden and Belgium. Israel Matzav blogger Carl in Jersulem commented this afternoon in the Green Room:

This is the first time I’ve written about this (I’ve barely discussed it on my own blog), and while I promised Charles (and myself) that I wouldn’t disparage him when he banned me, I have to get a few things off my chest.
I don’t know if Charles has found out yet that he can’t get away with anything. His traffic is still way beyond what most of us get (at least if you believe his own stats - he doesn’t use one of the services), so someone is still reading his blog. Maybe it’s Sharmuta clicking the page open all the time, but it’s still an awful lot of hits. And if you read nothing but LGF, the only indication that something’s wrong (aside from the constant bannings) is that when he opens registration, no one signs up anymore.
To people in Israel, Charles Johnson is a big pro-Israel blogger. Most of the people here think of him as the guy who exposed the photoshop in Lebanon during the war. They don’t understand that he’s banned many of the most pro-Israel people on his blog - some of us because we disagreed with him on intelligent design (or avoided posting on his blog because it degenerated into more and more threads about those kinds of topics where if we expressed our views, we’d be gone), and others because he deemed us Kahanists because we expressed views that have become quite mainstream here, but which were once the bailiwick of Meir Kahane. At the Jewish bloggers conference last week, the non-bloggers were shocked that I’ve been banned. And then there’s the personal side of it. A lot of us who had been there for years (I started posting on LGF in 2002 or 2003 - before there was registration) thought of Charles as our friend. Kind of like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Pam Geller once referred to him as her ‘blog daddy’ and I think that’s the way a lot of us thought of him. When you wake up one morning and discover that your ‘blog daddy’ has publicly attacked you, it gets personal. And that’s why you’re seeing so many attacks on Charles from real conservative bloggers today - because he has betrayed us. But for the people who just read LGF and don’t post and don’t blog themselves - they have no idea what all the fuss is about.

Exactly. This is why I wrote an entire post to explain, "Why it's not a blog war." At some point, the authority of LGF was abused to harm the innocent, and it became the duty of decent people to speak truth to the power of Mad King Charles. Instead, his arrogance inflated by the silence of those who feared him, Charles continued his mad vendettas until finally he provoked the Gaelic war cry.

Thanks and praise are welcome, but not necessary, for one who has only done what duty required -- and that duty was not done as promptly as it should have been, a delay for which I must apologize. But as I always say, if you feel the urge to hit the tip jar, don't fight the feeling.

Armstrong 'Moons' POTUS Over Healthcare

by Smith

It's right there on the shiny-nets, at Million Med March, emphasis mine:

I have read HR3200 and the proposed bill from the Senate finance committee. I must tell you, Mr. President, that these proposed pieces of legislation will not fix the problems. Each of these or a compromise of the two will do nothing but add to the cost, the beauracracy[sic] and the waste that you have said repeatedly that you want to reduce.

Dr. Richard A. Armstrong, whose real activities are nowhere near as sophomoric as my title, seeks to put a million doctors in DC on Thursday, 01Oct.
The MMM Mission Statement bears repeating:

1. Congress should scrap efforts for government to take over medicine through rationing, insurance mandates and the public option.
2. Congress should institute changes that empower patients and lower costs of health insurance through things like interstate purchasing, tort reform, individual tax credits to buy insurance and deregulation of the insurance market.
3. The AMA does not represent the physicians of America and are merely another special interest trying to gain financially while patients and the profession lose.
4. The American Taxpayer cannot afford the debt and entitlement programs – reform Medicare and Medicaid first.

The only major flaw I foresee in all of this is that the doctors' hand-written signs will be completely unintelligible. I recommend as many non-doctors as possible show up a week from Thursday for a legibility assist.

Godspeed, Dr. Armstrong.

A Civility Lesson for Young Gentlemen: The Art of Courteous Correspondence

Technology advances, but the requirements of courtesy endure. As print journalism has given way to online, and as the e-mail has supplanted the written letter, it is unfortunate that civility has suffered.

Once upon a time, the "poison pen" letter -- through which defamation was carried on by secret correspondence -- could lead to bloody duels, if ever the identity of the author could be discovered by the target of his falsehoods.

So when some vile creature with a Hotmail account sought to attack me by sending an e-mail to my editor -- in response to an AmSpecBlog post, and specifically demanding that I never be published in the print edition of the American Spectator -- he perhaps little suspected that his malicious missive would be forwarded to me by my dear friend Wlady Pleszczynski.

How should a gentleman respond to such an attack? With the utmost possible civility, to wit:

Dear Mr. D----:
You are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. To say that my "blogs provide nothing but red meat for people that could really use a bit less red meat" is contrary to fact, as I have repeatedly used AmSpecBlog to REPORT NEWS of which the readers might otherwise have been unaware, to wit:

• What Has Amtrak's Interim IG Been Up To?
• Could ACORN Video Maker Be Prosecuted Under Maryland Law
• RightOnline: Changing the World, One Mind at a Time
• Senators Seek Answer From ITG About IG
• Alaska Blogger Who Pushed Palin 'Divorce' Rumor Resigns From Anchorage School
• IG-Gate Update: 'No Doubt' Political Pressure Led to His Firing, Walpin Says

As for my inclusion in the print edition, if you'll turn to page 46 of the September issue, you'll find my article, "The War on Watchdogs," about the brewing Inspectors General scandal. At 3,000 words, it is the most extensive print article written on this topic to date, and is now available online in its entirety.
If you were actually a reader of the magazine, you would have already known this, just as, had you been a regular reader of AmSpecBlog, you would have known how much exclusive news reporting I have done there.
The discrepancy between your opinion and the demonstrable facts prompts me to ponder your motive in writing to my editor (whom I CC with BCC to others, including my personal attorney). It would be a matter for a jury to decide whether, as a matter of law, you have endeavored by libelous assertions, transmitted in such manner to my supervisors, to deprive me of gainful employment. Yet I will content myself to have been vindicated by the facts, and will ask only that you cease further efforts to disseminate these unjust and defamatory falsehoods against me, as I desire only to remain
Your most humble and obedient servant,
--
Robert Stacy McCain
Co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of DONKEY CONS: Sex, Crime & Corruption in the Democratic Party

Honesty, courtesy and courage will always triumph against a lying coward.

Can't all conservatives at least agree that Glenn Beck is not the enemy?

Lots of strong reaction to yesterday's dust-up. Yes, I know Dan Riehl is quoting Wehner, and yes, I know Mark Levin slammed Beck. That's OK with me.

Unlike a certain deranged blogger who sees enemies everywhere, I am not interested in running a personality cult where everyone who disagrees with me is a "fascist." The fact that Think Progress wants to see a Levin vs. Beck smackdown should be all the proof any conservative needs that such a fight is a bad idea.

I like Glenn Beck -- which isn't the same as saying I always agree with Glenn Beck --and anyone who has been following this blog long enough knows how much I despise Crazy Cousin John:

I long worried that all the moonshine runners, snuff-dippers and bar brawlers in the Alabama branch of our family tree might feel I had failed to uphold our ancestral honor by working in the disgraceful racket that "journalism" has now become. Yet the two-faced, backstabbing, open-borders, bailout-endorsing crapweasel, Crazy Cousin John, has brought such odium upon our name that no one even pays attention to me.

By his disgraceful defeat and unprincipled politics, John McCain has disgraced not only himself, but has imputed an ineradicable stain to his innocent kindred. (The first time I was introduced to Ann Coulter, her greeting was, "A most unfortunate name.") And let's not even bring his idiot daughter into this, OK? If the blonde-joke punchline can't stop at three margaritas, that's certainly not my fault.

When Beck gets criticized for slamming Maverick as a "weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was," it's hard for honest men to disagree. My right-hand manque Smitty is a sworn antagonist of all things "progressive" and my basic attitude about the 2008 election is: Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Bob Barr.

Since I'm quoting myself again, let me repeat this: Short, old, bald and grumpy is not a winning combination in politics. The fact that John McCain thought he'd be a better Republican presidential candidate than Mitt Romney -- tall, handsome, hirsute, cheerful -- tells you everything you need to know about Maverick's poor judgment in terms of basic electoral politics.

Think about this: Why have you never seen me on TV? Because I suck on TV. I've done a few appearances, hated it because I'm not good at it, and don't want to do any more. I'm a natural on radio, however, and have appeared as a guest on scores of talk radio shows. So that's me: Never gonna be "TV-famous," doomed to perpetual obscurity.

A man's got to know his limitations. Crazy Cousin John never could accept the simple fact that everyone with the slightest media acumen could see: He lacked the fundamental telegenic quality necessary to be a winning presidential candidate in our era. He also lacks sturdy principles and emotional equipose, but from the standpoint of pure 50-percent-plus-one politics, those were secondary considerations compared to the clueless-old-coot vibe he emits on TV.

OK, so now we come to Beck's praise of Ron Paul. Aleister at American Glob writes:

Ron Paul is not wrong about everything. Many people who don't count themselves "Ron Paul supporters" agree with Paul on a great many things, particularly liberty and the out of control spending in Washington.

Look, I covered the 9/12 March On D.C. I talked to scores of attendees raaaaacists. If the policy of the march organizers had been No Beck Fans Allowed, you could certainly subtract 40%-50% from whatever you think the attendance was. And considering the degree to which the march was organized by free-marketeers, a No Ron Paul Supporters Allowed policy would have subtracted at least 40 staffers from the event.

Quoting myself once more: You can't build a successful movement by a process of subtraction. The urge-to-purge approach to coalition politics simply doesn't work, which is why winners avoid it. If we're going to purge anyone, we ought to purge the neurasthenic geeks whose predictable response to anything popular and successful is to attack it.

People who want to talk about the "New Majority" or "The Next Right" or "Republican renewal" need to get used to the idea that the conservative coalition of the future will be a loud, rowdy and unruly bunch, composed of diverse people with disparate beliefs.

"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."

We need fighters, and I suspect Beck will fight 'til ev'ry foe is vanquished. Bob Belvedere gets it. Phyllis Chesler gets it. We defend truth and liberty against lies and tyranny. Every eye is upon us and we are surrounded by enemies as numerous as the grains of sand on the shore. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer.

WOLVERINES!

UPDATE: Need more evidence? Andrew Sullivan:

Of course, disdain from the dogmatic right will only help Beck. As it should. He should wear the scorn of Levin like a badge of honor.

If an endorsement from Sully doesn't convince Mark Levin to make peace with Glenn Beck (or, at least, with Beck's fans), what ever could?

BTW, I've met Mark Levin, who is the size of a linebacker and is one of the last conservative pundits I would ever want to have angry at me. If the Levin-Beck feud were a prize fight, my money would be on Levin by a first-round knockout.

Meanwhile, Ran at Si Vis Pacem has related thoughts, and I have a new Twitter friend, 26-year-old Cubachi -- "Conservative, Catholic, Palinista, Cuban w/Chinese roots, and Geeky, while looking good!" -- who is proud to be a "Ted Nugent Republican." Works for me.

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! (Gee, Professor, you had me worried for a few days there, y'know?) New readers, please be sure to visit JihadWatch, Atlas Shrugs, Baldilocks, Blogmocracy, and Little Miss Attila.

A 10-day 'Lanche drought is scary enough, but never anger a Large-Breasted Lesbian . . . shudder.

How to Offend a Woman

Tell her she's "emotional," as does John Hawkins:

The old feminine ideal was the woman who got married to a good man, stayed home, took care of their house, took care of the kids, and took pride in making the whole family function.
Now, look at the messages women get from popular culture: Dress like a fashion model, cat around like the women from Sex in the City, get married, have a beatiful house, have 2.5 kids, have a career that’s every bit as successful and fulfilling as your husband’s, and still look like a professional actress, even when you’re 60 years old.
There are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, and weeks in a year and there just isn’t time for most women to do all that. Granted, there are a few who manage to pull it off — or at least seem to do it to the outside world.
But, the reality is that most people have skills, abilities, desires, and wants that they never fulfill — women, in part because of their emotional natures, are just made to feel worse about not living up to the hype of what modern feminism says a woman should be. (Emphasis added.)

As soon as you tell a woman she's emotional, she will . . . er, become emotional:

This is a lot of words to say that I think it’s wrong to dismiss the loss to the individual woman and to society when a woman doesn’t use her gifts and talents just as I think it is a loss to the individual man and to society when a man doesn’t involve himself with his child’s life.

OK, sweetheart. Now that you're done with that, how about you run along and fix me a cup of coffee?

(John, you can thank me later for taking the heat off you. Being the most-hated man in the blogosphere is a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.)

Neurasthenic geek decides Glenn Beck is 'harmful to the conservative movement'

Clearly frustrated because Moe Lane is still laughing at that dull-as-dishwater "Path to Republican Renewal" article he co-authored with Michael Gerson, Peter Wehner scapegoats Glenn Beck:

[T]he role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now-and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn't the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism.

I suppose the "face" and "disposition" Wehner wants is somebody more like him. You know, the "Mama Wouldn't Let Me Play Football" type who resents real ability and real success, because he's never had any.

If you want to know what's wrong with the conservative movement, take a look at Peter Wehner's biography:

Prior to joining the Bush Administration, Wehner was executive director for policy for Empower America, a conservative public-policy organization. Mr. Wehner also served as a special assistant to the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy and, before that, as a speech writer for then-Secretary of Education Bill Bennett.

In other words, the David Kuo type. They spend years as second-teamers in the GOP policy hive, writing other people's speeches, going from job to job, hired on the basis of being a Republican with good recommendations. Sooner or later, they become envious of people who are actually out there doing something. It is this envy that informs their elitist disdain of the conservative grassroots and of anyone who is genuinely popular with the grassroots, like Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh.

Lords of all they survey -- so long as what they survey is a Beltway think-tank policy shop -- the ambitious policy geeks look at somebody like Glenn Beck and say, "Hey, why is this bozo on TV? He's never attended any Heritage briefings and I never see him at the Wednesday morning meetings at Grover's!"

The GOP establishment in Washington has a surfeit of such parasitical careerists, who think that the Republican Party is about them, and not about all those millions of grassroots people who are, in fact, the conservative movement.

Wehner's attack on Beck is framed as if the problem is political or ideological, but in fact the problem is Wehner's own envy and ambition, which poisons his soul. And we know where that kind of attitude leads.

"Herewith, a brief primer," indeed!

Update: (Smitty)
SI VIS PACEM: "Glenn Beck and the Frog Pot"

'We are the Road Crew'

by Smitty

I wondered what the big Tea Party Express announcement was going to be.

It looks like they're out to pick up the rest of the country they missed the first time 'round, starting in San Diego, going up the left coast, then a nice bend in the road to the South, ending up in Florida. Dates are from the end of October to mid-November.

Spot on, say I. They announced it with the obvious Willie Nelson reference, "On the Road Again". I think I can do a better job of irritating Stacy by embedding somebody older than even him:

Lemmy is simply motivational. If he can earn a living in rock and roll, then we can survive anything, even this administration.

Go, Tea Party Express!

Michael Lind: 'Intellectual Conservativism, RIP'

by Smitty

I was once a young neoconservative. The word meant something different then, before it was hijacked by extremists, goes the blurb for this Lind piece at Salon.

Is it anti-intellectual of me to offer a 'STFU' in reply?

Oh, we're bemoaning the loss of Irving Kristol and William F. Buckley Jr. in the last couple of years.

A neoconservative of the older, Democratic school, I broke with the right in the early 1990s and warned about where right-wing radicals were taking the country in my book "Up From Conservatism." The train wreck I predicted occurred during the Bush years, and the postmortems have begun.

Your article nowhere mentions the Federal Constitution of 1787, or the growing sense that the last century of US history has been about creating a neo-aristocracy. Populated by the likes of Lind, no doubt.

Recall that the original definition of the neoconservatives was that they fully embraced the reforms of the New Deal and indeed the major programs of Johnson's Great Society ... Had we not defended the major social programs, from Social Security to Medicare, there would have been no need for the 'neo' before 'conservative.'"

Oh, that's interesting. Neo-conservative is just Progressive with some foreign policy muscle, then? Lind concludes:

The sins of the sons should not be visited upon the fathers. I hope that, in the judgment of history, the "paleoliberal" neoconservatism of the 1970s will overshadow the crude, militaristic neoconservatism of the 1990s and 2000s. For two decades, between the Johnson years and the Reagan years, neoconservatism really was the vital center that Arthur Schlesinger had called for in the late 1940s. A robust new liberalism, if there is to be one in the aftermath of the opportunistic triangulations of Clinton and Obama, cannot leapfrog back to the Progressives or New Dealers, but must begin closer to home, with the early neoconservatives, who had learned from the failures and mistakes as well as the successes of the Progressive Era, the New Deal and the Great Society.

Successes?

• The country is flippin' bankrupt,
• the existing policies you glorify are unsustainable where not outright train wrecks,
• the proposed policies promise to exacerbate an ugly situation,
• the modern liberals can't tell the difference between winning an election and a leftist coup,

and you're boring us with this nostalgia trip?

Wake up and smell the Tea from the Party, Mr. Lind. You and the rest of the modern liberal idiots should be having your Yamamoto moment right about now.

Update:

Troglanch

'Who is this gap-toothed weasel and what did he do with Tom Snyder?'

VodkaPundit deconstructs David Letterman. I've always liked Letterman's smart-alecky attitude, and never thought of him as having any particular political orientation. A few years ago, however, Letterman turned harshly against Bush and then became generically anti-Republican.

Sad. But I still like Dave's smart-alecky attitude. And Bush turned a lot of people anti-Republican.

'Hey, baby, let's destroy the planet'

Making babies? You're raping Gaia!

Unchecked population growth is speeding climate change, damaging life-nurturing ecosystems and dooming many countries to poverty, experts concluded in a conference report released Monday.
Unless birth rates are lowered sharply through voluntary family-planning programmes and easy access to contraceptives, the tally of humans on Earth could swell to an unsustainable 11 billion by 2050, they warned. . . .
"Continued rapid population growth in many of the least developed countries could lead to hunger, a failure of education and conflict," said Malcolm Potts at the University of California in Berkeley, which hosted the conference in February.
The papers, authored by 42 specialists in environmental science, economics and demography, are published by the Royal Society, Britain's de-facto academy of sciences.
"There is no doubt that the current rate of human population growth is unsustainable," summarised Roger Short, a professor at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
"The inexorable increase in human numbers is exhausting conventional energy supplies, accelerating environmental pollution and global warming and providing an increasing number of failed states where civil unrest prevails."

Don't argue -- they're experts and you're not. So just turn down the lights, put on some soft music and tell your sweetheart, "Hey, you want to contribute to environmental destruction, energy depletion and civil unrest?"

Father of six -- trying to my part!

'He's like a troll with his own website'

This inarguably apt description of LGF's Charles Johnson (hat-tip: Save the GOP) comes from a commenter on a post where Ace of Spades includes this video:

Ace complains:

I am trying to keep this a lively blog for the discussion of multiple topics of general interest, not solely for the discussion of an overrated and now discredited blogger.
Again: I do not object to the discussion. I object to the propensity of the discussion to dominate every single new thread on every single new subject.

Good point. The stock market lost about 40 points today, and I've got other work to do, but if any AOSHQ morons want to stop discussing this in every AOSHQ thread and start discussing it over here, I'd be grateful for the traffic.

BTW, what's up with this "Let's Don't Invite Stacy to Our Smart Girl Summit" deal, Tabitha Hale? You're hanging out with Erick Telford too much . . .

UPDATE: Fighting for Liberty:

LGF will eventually be DailyKos 2.0 as far as I can tell and I’m sure 8 years from now he’ll be touting those famous documents as “real, but inaccurate” or some such thing.

Via 2.0 Blogmocracy.

RECENTLY ON MAD KING CHARLES

• Gates of Vienna to the Cowardly Liar Charles Johnson: Vindication at Last!
• In the famous words of Ernie Anastos . . .
• LGF bans Shug and Baldilocks
• The latest from Lydia
• Remember when LGF's gutless God-hater Charles Johnson hated Bush, too?

Gates of Vienna to the Cowardly Liar Charles Johnson: Vindication at Last!

Last week, while I was engaged daily in defending myself against Charles Johnson's smears, Baron Bodissey of the Gates of Vienna blog sent me this e-mail:

Mr. McCain,
I’m glad to see you turn over the rock and expose the actions of Charles Johnson to the light. When someone of your stature weighs in, it’s bound to have a salutary effect.
That said, if we concentrate solely on the smears -- the innuendo, the guilt-by-association, the people who were in the same place at the same time with questionable people, etc. -- we miss the elephant in the room, namely:
CHARLES JOHNSON HAS PUBLISHED SEVERE *FACTUAL* ERRORS, AND NEVER RETRACTED OR CORRECTED THEM.
And I mean just plain old everyday vanilla facts, things that don’t involve interpretation or personal opinion.
The process started two years ago and has been going on continuously ever since. . . .
Two years ago, except for Atlas Shrugs and Gates of Vienna, nobody among the medium-to-large American blogs was willing to take CJ on. One can only assume that the large blogs were afraid of what he could do to them.
Back in 2007 I shouted as loud as I could, but not a single large blog would look at the evidence and point out that the Emperor had no clothes -- that Charles Johnson was as bad as Dan Rather when it came to publishing blatant falsehoods and then stonewalling about them.It’s good that all this is finally happening now. Charles has jumped several sharks in the meantime, and people are no longer afraid of him.
But it would be even better if the fallout of the 2007 Brussels conference -- in which he egregiously slandered the Sweden Democrats and Vlaams Belang -- were prominently rehashed.
Those people are my friends, and I would like to see their names publicly cleared in the American blogosphere. Better late than never.
But I’m not holding my breath. There’s no sign that this will move beyond an intramural American blog war.
And I’m not blaming you at all -- you came late to this game. I’m just trying to keep you informed.
If you’re interested, the whole sleazy affair was summed up here:
“Charles Johnson: The Dan Rather of the Blogosphere?”
And all the nitty-gritty factual details are here:
“Suggested Corrections for Charles Johnson”
We did due diligence, for all the good it did us.
Thanks once again for taking up the saber and joining the fray.
Baron Bodissey
Gates of Vienna
You have my permission to publish any or all of the above text.

For that permission I am most grateful, and apologize for having neglected publication until now. When a man swears the war-oath of Clan Cameron, a bloody rage descends upon his soul and he can think of nothing else except the destruction of the cowardly fool who has insulted him.

As my wrath has cooled somewhat, and as the Madness of King Charles continues to hasten his self-destruction -- Baldilocks is seriously worried about the man -- I'm beginning to reflect on what I've learned. And I'm becoming seriously interested in investigating the activities of these European parties for myself.

How much is a ticket to Brussels? Everybody hit the tip jar!

In the famous words of Ernie Anastos . . .

. . . well, I'm not actually going to quote the WNYW-TV (Fox5) news anchor, but my co-blogger Smitty sends along the Urban Dictionary Word of the Day. Will the FCC understand that Mr. Anastos was merely employing a colorful way of saying, "Keep up the good work"?

Exit question: Is Charles Johnson a chicken?

UPDATE: E-mail from a reader in Mobile, Alabama:

Attached is a photo I took on my patio this summer. I thought it was cool. I deleted King CJ a while back, too nutty for me. Reading your blog this morning the Idea struck me, might as well use that picture. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words . . .

While I am currently working on a long, slow, hard, deep response to this problem, interested readers are encouraged to see artful commentary on the latest LGF shenanigans at StopTheACLU and ChristmasGhost.

Meanwhile, keeping in mind that a link is not necessarily an endorsement, League of the South blogger Old Rebel offers his own idiosyncratic of Chronic Degenerative Lizardmania:

Charles Johnson hasn't changed. What's happened is that [Johnson's conservative allies] were fooled. In fact, now that DC's splendid little wars aren't fun anymore, the unnatural coalition that backed them is falling apart. What else but a nation-building crusade wrapped up in patriotic language could induce well-meaning, patriotic Americans to do the bidding of lefties such as Christopher Hitchens, Charles Johnson, Hillary Clinton, and Irv Kristol?

Old Rebel here expresses the kind of non-interventionist, anti-imperialist "Old Right" perspective held by Albert Jay Nock among others, and quite similar to Murray Rothbard's stance against the "Welfare-Warfare State" policies of Vietnam-era liberalism.

You don't have to agree completely, or approve of all the opinions of Nock, Rothbard, et al., in order to appreciate how much truth there is in this perspective. When war fever takes hold, wise leaders ought to give thoughtful consideration to the voices of those who warn -- as Nicias tried to warn the ancient Athenians about the Sicilian expedition -- of the potentially disastrous consequences of any war, even a victorious war.

While I agree with Da Tech Guy (now proudly banned from LGF) on the advisability of winning whatever wars we fight, that task would now be a lot easier had it not been for the unwise haste with which the Bush administration mounted the Iraq invasion, at a time when the business in Aghanistan (and, let's face it, the business in Pakistan) had by no means reached a stable conclusion.

My willingness to consider the arguments of people with whom I do not always agree is deeply implicated in my imbroglio with the Mad King of LGF, whose totalitarian theory of Charles Johnson supremacism does not permit him to tolerate the presence of anyone he suspects of doubting his theory. His protestations of his own "tolerance" are just so many more self-serving lies that Charles tells himself to justify his sadistic cruelty toward those who dare disagree with him.

Old Rebel may have many opinions with which I disagree, yet still be a gentleman of goodwill who deserves to be addessed with courtesy. On the other hand, there is the gutless God-hater Charles Johnson, and I will heed the advice of Ernie Anastos (and Clan Cameron) in that regard.

Chlanna nan con thigibh a so’s gheibh sibh feoil!

Bushism and Latimerism

From a long article at HuffPo, dishing on ex-Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer's new tell-all:

For a commencement address at Furman University in spring 2008, Ed Gillespie wanted to insert a few lines condemning gay marriage. Bush called the speech too "condemnatory" and said, "I'm not going to tell some gay kid in the audience that he can't get married." (Of course, Bush ran his 2004 campaign telling that kid just that.)

There are a several points I'd like to make here -- why did Gillespie want the president to raise this issue in a speech to college students? -- but the bizarre thing is Bush's reported unwillingness to speak on behalf of his own policy.

To me, it is evidence of a basic flaw in Republican political thinking Some pollster says 68% of college students favor gay marriage? Majority rules! This is politics as nothing more than a popularity contest.

Thus is statesmanship abandoned in favor of mere pandering. Sound policy is sound policy. One job of a political leader is to persuade the citizenry, to influence their opinions. To do this, one must sometimes go to Kansas and tell the corn farmers that ethanol subsidies are bad policy, or tell college students that their naive notions of "equality" are false.

Such arguments may not be popular, but if you believe what you say --if you are sincerely convinced of the merits of your policy, rather than merely pandering in search of short-term political gain -- your courage in defending an unpopular belief has a persuasive value.

Remember that when Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "Evil Empire," his words were intensely controversial. Yet Reagan was not pandering. Those who then suffered under communist tyranny, including those imprisoned in the gulag, heard Reagans words and felt that, at last, there was hope -- because Reagan had courage.

Alas, Bush had a knack for surrounding himself with mediocre minds, to which category Matt Latimer clearly belongs (along with David Kuo and Michael Gerson). Here is Latimer in a GQ article:

As a young political geek growing up in Flint, Michigan, I’d always dreamed of heading to Washington to work for a conservative president and help usher in another Reagan Revolution. . . .
My youthful exuberance cooled as I moved up the rungs of power. On Capitol Hill, I worked for a congressman who "misremembered" basic facts, such as the “Eisenhower assassination.” I worked for a senator who hid from his own staff. I was assigned to coach Republican senators on how to reach out to the media and entertainment world. (You try explaining The View to a group of 65-year-old white Republican men.) At the Pentagon, as chief speechwriter to Donald Rumsfeld, I battled an entrenched civil-service system and an inept communications team.
In 2007 I finally made it to the Bush White House as a presidential speechwriter. . . .

By which time he had mastered the two-faced ways of the ambitious Washington backstabber. Matt Latimer is exactly the sort of arrogant weakling that bad leadership attracts, so that George W. Bush is to blame for the knives in his own back.

UPDATE: Via Memeorandum, we next encounter the nuanced, Harvard-educated, perfect-SAT intellectualism of Douthatism:

Adding insult to injury, the umpteenth insider look at Bush administration's dysfunction was unveiled last week as well, courtesy of an obscure second-term speechwriter named Matt Latimer. (Next up: Bush's White House chef tells all!) Latimer's memoir, excerpted in GQ, offers grist for Bush-whackers of both parties. For liberals, there’s Dubya the incurious frat boy, flubbing policy details and cracking wise about Hillary Clinton’s posterior. For conservatives eager to prove that the most unpopular president in 50 years was never really one of them, there’s Bush the crypto-liberal, who dismisses the conservative movement and boasts that he personally "redefined the Republican Party."

Douthat is both intelligent and a good writer, but is too transparently conscious of writing for a specific readership. He expends more than 750 words en route to the conclusion that "it's possible to become a good president even -- or especially -- when you can no longer hope to be a great one."

Arguably true, as a general proposition, but is it really true of George W. Bush? Would it not be more true to say that, if Bush learned some lessons from his father's failed presidency, he nevertheless exemplified the hereditary faults of his father?

Bush 41 raised taxes. Dubya cut taxes (as a father of six, I am particularly grateful for that per-child tax credit). Bush 41 fought Iraq but left Saddam in power. Dubya cosquered Iraq and saw Saddam hanged.

So it can be said that Bush the son sought to redeem the family name by reversing what were widely considered two of Bush the father's biggest errors. (Critics of the Middle East policies

Nevertheless, Bush 43 had that same New England WASP Republican commitment to "respectability" -- the Politics of Niceness -- which was the intrinsic flaw of his father's politics, and which is why New England WASP Republicans are a dying breed.

Victorious political movements cannot be built upon the principles of Bushism. Niceness and respectability did not bring that "angry mob" to Capitol Hill on Sept. 12. Republicans need to stop hitting the snooze button, wake the hell up and grab a hot cup of Libertarian Populism.

LGF bans Shug and Baldilocks

Via 2.0 Blogmocracy, Mad King Charles bans Shug, who on Sunday night said good-bye by writing this:

this place has molted like the island of Dr Moreau.
Charles is Moreau. Well intentioned. but the sycophants have ruined his site.
it’s a shame. so many smart people have bailed because if they disagree they are attacked by a small group of rabid sycophants.
but the last two weeks there is such a rabid group of toadies that I am reluctant to even visit here let alone comment. . . .
you might want to focus on the islamists rather than glen beck.
glen won’t kill you. the islamists will.

One of the ex-Lizards at 2.0 comments on the evidence of Shug's popularity:

Karma: 21,191
Shug
This user is blocked.
Registered since: May 14, 2006 at 2:18 pm
No. of comments posted: 18,764
No. of links posted: 151
The Karma count means the number of updings compared to any possible downdings.
Shug had more updings than the total number of posts.

Yeah, and he had been posting at LGF for more than three years, which is 19 months longer than I've been blogging full-time.

In describing the Little Green Meltdown, I've explained that CJ's mistake was to make the site about the commenters -- more or less permanent Open Thread mode -- as opposed to making it about any original content that he might contribute.

Mad King Charles, Lord of the Lizards, was deriving advertising revenue generated by traffic to a site where he didn't have to do much of anything except maintain the community of commenters. So he shifted into neutral and coasted. He seems to have handed over control of the community to a handful of stooges. (Who is this "Sharmuta" and why do all the ex-Lizards hate her so much?)

The "updings"/"downdings" feature, with its resulting "karma" score, was crucial to the creation of the third-grade playground atmosphere at LGF, where people competed for popularity among their peers. This organizational dynamic was like a magnet to attract the types of toadies and sycophants that Shug denounces.

Oh, yeah: And when I mentioned getting a note of encouragement from fellow Christian Baldilocks in an update to Saturday night's post, I didn't realize she was a registered commenter at LGF. So on Sunday, Mad King Charles banned her, too.

Guess Baldilocks didn't subscribe to the prevailing LGF ideology of Charles Johnson supremacism.

UPDATE: Baldilocks prays a benediction: "May the Lord Jesus Christ open your eyes before it's too late." And yet, I fear, it already is far too late.

Race card played in Virginia?

John J. Miller at NRO:

Democrat Creigh Deeds, in yesterday's Virginia gubernatorial debate: "There's a hint of racism in some of the opposition to President Obama. That is crystal clear."
Republican Bob McDonnell disagreed: "I don't see it and I don't feel it. . . . I think these are ideas that are fought over public policy."

Miller also notes this intriguing news:

Black Entertainment Television network co-founder Sheila C. Johnson, who endorsed McDonnell in July, also rejected the idea that the anger seen in town hall rallies and conservative "tea parties" is race-based.
"I don't buy it at all. We've really got to stop doing this, stop bringing this up," said Johnson, who had been a major donor to Obama, Gov. and Democratic National Committee chairman Timothy M. Kaine and other Democrats through 2008.

Smitty and I were having a Twitter conversation about this year's Virginia campaign with another conservative activist, who like Smitty lives in Northern Virginia. If McDonnell wins, it will be despite the fumbling incompetence of his campaign team, who seem determined to repeat the disastrous performance turned in by Dick Wadhams in the spectacularly mismanaged George Allen catastrophe.

"Strategists," my left butt-cheek. These stupid Republican sons of bitches never call me . . .

Vom Blogenkriege

by Smitty

As with Carl von Clausewitz, I'm mostly an observer in the recent round of blog-clock-cleaning. For those interested in a metablogological perspective, here are a couple of posts of note:

• The Libertarian Popinjay, Live from Lost Wages, brings us "How The Blogosphere Became Professional Wrestling"
  This meditation covers both Andrew Sullivan and Charles Johnson, and offers a broad perspective covering this decade on the rise and fall of two of the bigger names in the blogosphere. Key point (but read the full monty):

  Let's be clear: Sullivan and Johnson can have whatever beliefs they choose. They're free to go from right to left and everywhere in between to their heart's desire. What is so strange is that the very actions they used to condemn are now their modus operandi.

• Bill Quick, the Daily Pundit, who christened the blogosphere and has about seven times the posts that this blog has produced, cuts to the chase in "charles johnson: take the money and run":

  Charles will continue to move farther and farther to the left, goaded by his distaste for social conservatives, and in response to their attacks on him in answer to his loudly stated distaste, and as he does so, he will pick up legions of lefty moonbat readers. I have no doubt at all that his readership is rising - probably rapidly. The left is always looking for new champions in the endless battle against liberty, and the left rewards its fellow travelers with money, since it cannot offer self-respect.

I was going to embed War, "Why can't we be friends?" but let's go for realpolitik instead:

Update:
Jumping in Pools says that Congressman Roy Blunt is on the LGF radar as well.

MSM decline: Not a bug, but a feature

Stole that line from Dafydd ab Hugh in the Green Room, who relays this from The Hill:

The president said he is “happy to look at” bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.
“I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them,” Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called “Newspaper Revitalization Act,” that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin’s Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).

My senators from the People's Republic of Maryland, who are aiming to bail out the disastrously mismanaged (and transparently biased) Baltimore Sun. You'll notice that nine times out of 10, when my buddy Jeff Quinton at Baltimore's Inside Charm City blog posts a scoop, it's first reported by WBAL, which runs circles around the Sun's anemic online operation. As always, the Welfare State ignores success and rewards failure. Carolyn Tackett comments:

It seems the way to get taxpayer money these days is to make nice with the Administration. This is certainly true of this country's newspaper industry which has either ignored, downplayed or buried stories critical to the administration. It is highly doubtful that the industry will be more likely to view the administration with a critical eye if the are being propped up by the government.

More at Memeorandum, Toledo Blade, JammieWearingFool and RedState.

Wonder what Obama would say if Republicans sponsored a bailout for Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com?

So Icy Boys 38, Bebot 24

After Friday's humiliating defeat at the hands of son Bob's Brick Squad, the So Icy Boys recruited Bob's twin brother James for Sunday's game, and triumphed.

James (second from the right in back) actually ran for a touchdown. As a defensive back, he got beat on a couple of plays ("Don't let that man get behind you, boy!"), but also made some key tackles including three QB sacks in a row on the blitz. Did old No. 27 proud.

The general sloppiness of So Icy Boys on defense -- no way they should have given up four touchdowns to Bebot -- was frustrating. In the end, however, victory is the balm that heals all wounds.

Next Sunday, Brick Squad meets So Icy Boys, putting paternal loyalty in neutral. But I'm sure both teams will be fired up for . . . The McCain Bowl?

Paco lights up a camel

by Smitty

Your attention is drawn to the enterprising Paco, who delves into those gritty, hardboiled details that escape all but the most seasoned investigators. The story seems to involve a dromedary in heat, after a fashion.

"How do you do, Detective Paco?", the man inquired, extending a small, liver-spotted paw. "I'm Frederick Stuyvesant, and this is my wife, Minerva." The wife gave me a nod and a friendly smile. I invited them to sit down.

Sheila, who appeared to have developed an instant fondness for the Stuyvesants, put her hand on the back of the husband's chair and leaned over to ask if they wanted anything.

Now, one of the most fascinating things about Sheila is this: even when she’s wearing a loose-fitting blouse, as she was that morning, her upper-story charms tend to make the thing look very snug, particularly when the top two buttons are unfastened and she's leaning over a chair. Mr. Stuyvesant, presented with this unexpected view, began licking his lips, like a hungry bear in front of whom two honey pots had just been dangled invitingly, and his right hand wandered absent-mindedly inside his suit jacket, most likely to give his pacemaker a good thump. Minerva jabbed him in the ribs.

"She means coffee or tea, Freddie. Or maybe a nitroglycerine pill."

The whole thing promises to be a jolly romp in the Dashiell Hammett tradition.

Doug Giles writes column about Hannah, doesn't threaten to kill me (by name)

This is very good news!

It's been quite interesting watching and reading the statements coming from ACORN and various "news" organizations about the "facts" of the Giles/O'Keefe ACORN caper. . . .

Doug then proceeds to demolish all of the MSM/ACORN lies from start to finish. He does not specifically address the "Hannah Giles bikini" Google-bombs which conservative bloggers have deployed in defending his girl from the Left's predictable Photoshop smears.

I had a long phone conversation Friday with Jason "Big Sexy" Mattera, trying to get him to explain to our mutual (muscular and very well-armed) friend, Mr. Giles, exactly what the strategy was, and why the strategy could not be explained online, but had to be joked about. IYKWIMAITYD.

Mr. Giles will probably not hunt me down and shoot me like a dog. God forbid anybody is stupid enough to try to hurt Hannah. Here's some more from Doug's column:

Oh, FYI . . . if confessing I’m a sinner, believing orthodox Christian doctrine, saluting our flag and that for which it stands, loving the Constitution, hating terrorists, being fond of guns, hunting, country and rock music while adoring freedom makes me a crazy ultra-conservative Christian lunatic then I guess I am one of those. I will put that name right next to the other name Obama's former green czar called such a person back in March (I believe he called us "a**holes").

Oh, Doug, you should read some of the things Charles Johnson has said about people like you. Or then again, maybe you shouldn't. At any rate, my own 20-year-old daughter has a T-shirt from Rock For Life, which bears a motto:

You will not silence my message
You will not mock my God
You will stop killing my generation

Six kids, Doug. You wouldn't kill a father of six, would you?

The latest from Lydia

You remember Lydia, who contributed the LGF neo-Nazi expose this past week. She sent me an e-mail with mention of Johnson's attack on PJM -- where, according to William Teach, the kindness subsequently has been returned -- and ends her e-mail by asking:

Is it paranoid/crazy to think that he has been (literally) bought by one of the Sugar Daddies on the left? Or is he just establishing his ideological bona fides after switching sides? I know that you have a tough skin, but it couldn't have felt good to have Charles attack you like that. At least now, it's obvious that he is not rational.

Correct, it did not feel good to be attacked, ma'am, but pray that God always sends me only cowardly fools for enemies, as I thank God for sending such brave and wise friends like you, Lydia.

Many have speculated on the motives for the sudden Madness of King Charles, but as I noted earlier today, it wasn't really sudden. I had always been under the impression that CJ was independently wealthy, which would make the "Sugar Daddies on the Left" speculation moot. But . . . Sugar Bears? NTTAWWT.

And as for the obviousness of CJ's irrationality . . . well, he attacked me without cause, didn't he?

Chlanna nan con thigibh a so’s gheibh sibh feoil!

UPDATE 12:20 p.m. ET: Via 2.0 Blogmocracy, HadEnough at Comment #20, "Ruh-roh":

370 Killgore Trout
Sun, Sep 20, 2009 8:02:56am
Charles noticed last night that Malkin has added VDARE to her blog roll. Things are gonna get weird.

And when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. I saw where this was heading last week and sent an e-mail warning Michelle that Mad King Charles would eventually follow through on his April threat to her. If this is indeed a new add to The Boss's blog roll -- LGF'ers love to make stuff up -- then we can only assume she's daring him to try it.

Be ready for Bloggageddon. The revolution will not be televised, but the apocalypse will be blogged.

Rule 5 Sunday

by Smitty

Another day, another Rule 5 Sunday. And, another Czar.

• Fishersville Mike leads us off, having been the first I saw with a picture of the boob czar. If she has a little tit-for-tat with Rahm Emanuel, she might resolve some of the cleavage in the public discourse brought on by divisive policies that separate Americans into left and right spheres. Eventually, one suspects, she'll go bust and say her ta-tas to the administration in disgust over its inability to titivate the economy.
  Bleg: what does commenter Red mean by this?
• The Huffer has Garfunkel and Oates managing to be simultaneously Rule 5 and hilarious. The moral is that it's not an addiction if you have a prescription.
• Pat in Shreveport earns the mournful credit of being the first in with a Patrick Swayze tribute. My favorite Swayze line was "You get all the sleep you need when you die" from Roadhouse. Something of a Navy motto.
• Troglopundit hammered me over last week's usage of "metrosexual" and who did he deploy for the dirty work? Danic Patrick, that NASCAR Helen who can stop traffic moving at any speed. He celebrated 100 kilo-hits with a Bavarian mädchen doing a 1 liter curl. Finally, he features World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) CEO Linda McMahon, who is pondering 'getting into the ring', so to speak, with Chris Dodd for the CT race for US Senate. That lady could thrash Dodd and Lieberman together, and not because she's much of an amazon.
• Instapundit likes to find his conservative hotties on Tea Party buses, apparently.
• Knowledge is Power seems to have some inside jokes in parallel with their Rule 5 activities.
• Little Miss Attila is somewhat critical of Three Beers Later's use of a very Rule 5 trampoline video to grab some Hannah Giles traffic. LMA's review is critical to the fair and balanced conduct of Rule 5 Sunday, and should be read in full prior to taking in the video.
• Three Beers Later, very active in the Rule 5 community, has a comic book heroine, as well as a sardonic reminisce about the time he got chained to a rail at a chick concert. I'm pleased to discover I was not the only one to suffer such ignoble abuse back in the day. You are not alone, Richard! Good job on the vocals once you were released. He also put up the 1934 Tarzan skinny dipping scene, which is clearly why they had to have a ratings system for Hollywood.
• Dustbury contributes Cherry Valence, a study in the well-curved ankle.
• Atlas Shrugs rounds up some Abercrombie & Fitch advertising which strains the limit of our PG-13 rating.
• Rightofcourse submits a couple UCLA cheerleaders.
• At the Point of a Gun just converted me into a Patti Ann Browne devotee, or, as she's known in some circles, Sith Lord Darth Hottiness. Best poker face this side of Kristen Wiig. How do they serve it up like that?
• Painstaking and meticulous Rule 5 researcher Morgan Freeberg continues the pairwise alphabetic iteration task as only he can. This week it's Famke Janssen and Gemma Atkinson. I really don't understand how Freeberg can maintain this level of scientific detachment.
• Culture Honcho Paco contributes Rita Hayworth crooning "Amado Mio"
• WyBlog immortalizes obscure language variations. Saturday was Talk Like a Pirate Day. Just prior to that it was Accuse the Weatherman of Bestiality Day.
• The Classic Liberal continues to break new ground in the pursuit of Rule 5 excellence. This week we see him breath interest in the evils of income tax with an essay on Nicole Evangeline Lilly. Sterling work, old boy.
• Jeffords offers helpful suggestions to Jessica Simpson on how to find her dog.
• A Nation of Cowards continues to locate patriotic bikini photos, for which we're truly grateful.
• Bob Belvedere contributes Yvonne DeCarlo. Very nice. He also mentioned Mae West, and had some Boob Czar action. There was a Pirate's Cove-ish Saturday pinup, as well.
• HotMES contributes Kate Beckinsale.
• VodkaPundit plays the Ann Margaret card.

That's it for the moment. Send updates to Smitty for inclusion.

Update:
Chad includes Anyssa.
William Teach gives us yet another classic pinup.

Remember Hillary Clinton's 1969 Wellesley College thesis on Saul Alinsky?

Wow! Matthew Vadum caught this -- which was actually first reported last weeked while I was covering the 9/12 March On D.C. -- and he has the whole thing in PDF. Brief excerpts:

Democracy is still a radical idea in a world where we often confuse images with realities, words with actions. . . .
In spite of his being featured in the Sunday New York Times, and living a comfortable, expenses-paid life, he considers himself a revolutionary. In a very important way he is. If the ideals Alinsky espouses were actualized, the result would be social revolution. Ironically, this is not a disjunctive projection if considered in the tradition of Western democratic theory. In the first chapter it was pointed out that Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared -- just as Eugene Debs or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths -- democracy.

And democracy is a good thing! Maybe if I could have afforded to go to law school like Hillary and Bill Clinton did, I wouldn't have such an "infantile mind," like Professor Walter Williams and Professor Thomas DiLorenzo.

Go to law school kids, or else!

UPDATE: On reading through this loopy thesis, am I the only one who gets the feeling that if Bill didn't inhale, Hillary certainly did? Not that heavy drug use in college permanently impairs the ability to compose cogent prose, but . . .

UPDATE II: Wow! Talk about your weird coincidences, but as soon as I finished adding that first update, I went to comment moderation and found an anonymous comment on a previous post:

Anonymous said...
Doug Mataconis of "Below the Beltway" is a walking, talking mini-me to Charles Johnson. Nevertheless, his blog is listed under "Our Favorite Blogs" on your website. Have you ever bothered to read the crap he posts on his blogsite? He's no conservative, he's anti-homeschooling and violently anti-creationism, anti-Palin, in short, he's almost the antithesis of what this blog site stands for. "Below the Beltway" sucks. You heard it here first.
Sun Sep 20, 10:09:00 AM

So it appears that, even while I was busy traffic-baiting Professor Glenn Reynolds, this anonymous commenter was reading my post about gutless God-hater Charles Johnson and flaming Doug Mataconis. But whereas Charles Johnson is clearly evil, perhaps Mr. Mataconis is merely wrong. As I said last night, there is a difference between wrong and evil:

To fart in a crowded elevator is wrong, but does not necessarily make the perpetrator evil.

Generally speaking, it has been my experience that courtesy and a healthy sense of humor can prevent unnecessary arguments. So let us consider the biography of Doug Mataconis:

All I know is that the evidence is clear that Western Civilization is in a fight for its own survival right now.

On this, we are very much in agreement, and only a fool would desire to insult a man who wishes to fight for the survival of Western Civilization. Let us therefore read further:

Being from New Jersey . . . I am a huge science fiction fan . . .

Which is to say, his mama wouldn't let him play football.

In addition to writing, I enjoy listening to music, specifically jazz. . . . I’m a big Frank Sinatra fan . . .

As am I, having performed Sinatra's tunes many times in karaoke and even, occasionally, leading the audience in a Rockettes-style kick-line dance. NTTAWWT.

In college, I was a subscriber to National Review . . .

In college, I subscribed to Creem magazine. ("Boy Howdy!")

I’m a 37 year old attorney . . . practicing law . . .

(King Henry VI, Part II, Act 4, Scene ii, Dick the Butcher; cf., Luke 11:46.)

When I’m not enjoying time with my wife and dog . . .

Well, just because she's from Ohio, that's no reason to insult your own wife, sir. Of course, I married the only good-looking woman from Ohio, so if you insist that your wife is a dog, well, I have no desire to argue with you. Courtesy and humor . . .

At any rate, you see what can happen. If a blogger starts paying too much attention to his commenters, he might lose his sense of humor. So despite the insulting tone of this anonymous commenter, let me emphasize that I have never meant any insult to you, Mr. Mataconis, but as to what you said about Mrs. Mataconis, that's between you and her.

Remember when LGF's gutless God-hater Charles Johnson hated Bush, too?

Thanks to Basil's Blog for reminding the growing membership of Ex-Lizards Anonymous of this fact:

Many of LGF's posts from February 7, 2001 to September 11, 2001 are gone. At least, from what I remember of the posts during that time period. You may not be aware of this, but before the 9/11 attacks, LGF attacked George W. Bush (whom he called by the Molly Ivins-inspired nickname of "shrub.").

Basil furthermore reminds readers that Charles Johnson's implacable hatred of traditional Judeo-Christian belief is one of those feature-not-a-bug things:

Johnson has no respect whatsoever for anyone who believes in creationism, or intelligent design.

Basil continues by saying of the now-banned ex-Lizards dismayed by Johnson's attacks on Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party movement, talk radio, Fox News, home-schoolers, etc.:

None of what they are complaining about is new.
Those that jumped on the Charles Johnson bandwagon in 2004 (or in September 2001), didn't seem to understand what they were getting into.

My own view was explained to an agnostic ex-Lizard commenter earlier this morning:

As I've said before, any Christian can understand doubt, it is the intolerant certainty of atheism -- CJ's fanatical belief that he has proven the negative, that God cannot exist, and that the vast majority of Americans are therefore deluded ignoramuses -- which is intrinsically hateful.

What is most striking about all the vitriol now being poured out against conservatives by Charles Johnson is that he never seemed to complain about fundamentalist Christians, etc., when they were sending their sons and daughters to Afghanistan and Iraq to fight and die for his freedom. He never threatened Michelle Malkin, then, either. And during all the years when I was at The Washington Times, working under direct orders not to respond to the left-wing smears against me, Charles Johnson never wrote anything like what he wrote yesterday, quoted by ex-Lizard Lily at 2.0 Blogmocracy:

222 Charles
9/19/2009 1:11:21 pm PDT
A big reason why so many wingnuts are pissed off at me is because they assumed that since I was on the ‘conservative’ side on issues like foreign policy, I was also on board with the whole social conservative agenda, including all of the extreme forms like creationism and theocratic fundamentalism, the crypto-racism of people like Robert Stacy McCain, and the extreme anti-Islamism of Robert Spencer and the shrieking harpy Geller.
They made a lot of assumptions about my beliefs that were completely wrong. Now they're raging at me because they think I "betrayed" them -- when I was never on that train to begin with.

Well, I'm not sure what Michelle Malkin or Ed Morrissey will say about Charles Johnson's Crazy Train to Hell, but I know what I say:

Chlanna nan con thigibh a so’s gheibh sibh feoil!

CHRISTIAN HOME-SCHOOLERS ARRESTED IN N.Y. TERROR PROBE!

Actually, contrary to Charles Johnson's latest theory of right-wing evil, that's not the headline:

Najibullah Zazi, 24, and his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, were arrested by federal agents late Saturday at their suburban Denver homes. Ahmad Wais Afzali, 37, of Flushing, New York, also was arrested, the Justice Department said.

So, if it wasn't Christian home-schoolers, and it wasn't Glenn Beck or some of those Tea Party "crypto-racists," maybe Najibullah and Mohammed were part of the Vlaams Belang fascist conspiracy with Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer and the Gates of Vienna?

THE FLEMISH MENACE STRIKES AGAIN!

(Hat-tip: 2.0 Blogmocracy.)