Conservative Hoffman vs. RINO Scozzafava: 'We have her on the run!'

Doug Hoffman says his campaign in upstate New York's 23rd District is "squeezing" liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava in a three-way special election.

"There's only 20 days left . . . but we have her on the run," Hoffman told reporters, bloggers and conservative activists in a conference call Wednesday afternoon.

Running on the Conservative Party line, Hoffman's candidacy has hammered Scozzafava's extremely liberal voting record during her 11 years in the state assembly. And, as the Politico reported today, the GOP establishment's hand-picked candidate is rumored to be short on campaign cash, creating a legitimate opportunity for Hoffman to win the Nov. 3 special election.

"As a third-party candidate, I can win this race," Hoffman said, emphasizing that, with less than three weeks left until the election to succeed Rep. John McHugh in the 11-county district, fund-raising is essential. "We need to raise money to get the message out."

On his campaign Web site, Hoffman announced a fund-raising target of $125,000 this week. Noting that his opponent has previously been supported by ACORN and is currently a favorite of the liberal Daily Kos blog, Hoffman said his campaign has been "adopted" by the grassroots conservative Tea Party movement.

Hoffman has been endorsed by the "9/12" organization -- the political arm of the Tea Party movement, which staged major rallies on Sept. 12, including the 9/12 March On DC -- and says the grassroots activists are the foot soldiers of his campaign.

He recently held "six regional meeting with the Tea Party people," Hoffman said, and many visitors to his Web site have made online contributions of $9.12. The conservative Red State blog recently a $250,000 fund-raising goal for Hoffman's campaign.

In addition to Tea Party activists and major conservative blogs, Hoffmans third-party candidacy has also been endorsed by a broad range of free-market and social-conservative organizations, including the Club For Growth, the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, and the Political Action Committee of the American Conservative Union, which hosted Wednesday's conference call. The ACU's David Keene called the New York special election "an incredibly important race."

Political insiders now view Scozzafava as a certain loser. Her liberal GOP candidacy has not attracted either voter support or campaign contributions and she is being outspent 12-to-1 in TV ads by Democrat Bill Owens. Hoffman suggested favoritism as the most likely explanation why the New York state GOP picked Scozzafava out of nine candidates seeking the Republican nomination in the Nov. 3 special election.

"It was an anointment . . . The party bosses, the lords of the backroom, made this selection," Hoffman said.

When the going gets weird, the weirdos show up at your kid's high school

How did I miss this bizarre story last week?

The keen eyes of some Southern Illinois educators prevent an adult from walking the halls of a Heartland high school. Marion Police say a 24-year-old woman posed as a 15-year-old boy and attempted to enroll at Marion High School. . . .
[Superintendent Wade] Hudgens says the student claimed to be a 15-year-old boy by the name Jack Stones, whom just arrived from St. Louis and was now living in Marion with an adult male.
"They claimed that this person was homeless and they were attempting to gain guardianship through the court system," Hudgens added.
School staff referred the 15-year-old to the Marion High School Extension Center. Hudgens says Stones took a placement test at the center on Monday.
"Gaining that time, by saying that we needed to do the placement testing allowed our staff to do additional research and contact the FBI," Hudgens said.
Hudgens says they found a Facebook picture of Stones. . . .
"We've been told jack is a 24-year-old female," Hudgens said.
Marion Police says Jack's legal last name is Kaiser and she is from California. Police arrested Kaiser Tuesday and charged her with disorderly conduct for misrepresentation to state agencies.

OK, necessary clarification for those readers who are experiencing acute Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Syndrome, from the Associated Press:

Police in the southern Illinois city of Marion say they've arrested a 24-year-old woman who tried to enroll in the local high school as a 15-year-old boy.
Investigators say Jack Kaiser is a transgender person who also has gone by the name Jennifer May. Kaiser was arrested Tuesday and charged with disorderly conduct for misrepresenting herself to a state agency.

Riiiiight. Female-to-male transsexual gets pumped up on testosterone treatments, engages in reckless male behavior, decides to experience the boyhood she never had, enrolls in high school, goes out for football team . . .

No, wait, that's the thumbnail scenario of my new screenplay for the upcoming major motion picture, OMG! My New Boyfriend's a Gay Woman!

Oscar-bait, baby. The producers say Angelina Jolie's dying for the "Jack Stones" part, but Natalie Portman has seen the script, too. Of course, Ashton Kutcher as the high school quarterback whose girlfriend (Reese Witherspoon) dumps him for the new kid on the team. Madcap hijinks ensue!

Roman Polanski to direct, with Woody Allen as the quirky social studies teacher wrongly accused of being gay because of his misunderstood (and purely platonic) attraction to the girlish "Jack":

MR. MELLISH: Are you part Korean?
JENNIFER/JACK: No, why?
MR. MELLISH: Nothing, really. You just remind me of someone. Never mind. So, you're Jewish?
JENNIFER/JACK: What? No. I mean, not that there's anything wrong with being Jewish but . . . why would you ask somebody something like that?
MR. MELLISH: Oh, nothing. It's just that you look like you could have a little Jewish in you.
JENNIFER/JACK: Well, I don't.
MR. MELLISH: Not yet, anyway.

Of course, it would be wrong to make fun of the tragic plight of poor Jennifer/Jack, a victim who is struggling with serious identity issues in a cruel and homophobic society.

Wrong, I say, to laugh at Jennifer/Jack's misguided attempt to find acceptance and tolerance in the benighted and atavistic heartland community of Marion, Illinois.

But just wait until you see the soon-to-be-infamous "Zucchini Scene" in this new movie! Not since American Pie has gross-out humor been so genuinely gross . . .

Two thumbs up! A laugh riot!

How long before Charles Johnson denounces the Easter Bunny?

Picture totally stolen from Glenn Reynolds:

True or False?

• The Easter Bunny has been used as an anti-Muslim symbol by Belgian ultra-nationalists.
• Rush Limbaugh once made a racist joke about Al Sharpton and the Easter Bunny.
• Charles Johnson's credibility was banned by Sharmuta last night on LGF.

Answers: False. False. True.

Czar d'Oz Episode I: Incoming

by Smitty



Start with the Czar d'Oz Announcement

I. Incoming
"This is not a test. The Obama Weather Service…"

Julius "Scare" Crowe: [Addressing a lecture hall] American history can be viewed in three stages: pre-Progressive, Progressive, and Modern Obama. The pre-Progressive phase was the worst. The tyranny of an English autocrat was rejected, triggering a necessary, if flawed period where racism was rampant. A bloody Civil War claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and the Consitutional promise of equality was delivered, but the racism remained.

The next 140 years saw the birth of the Progressives, who understood the need to balance the Constitutional equality with the natural tendency towards racism. This would require increasingly diligent feedback from policy makers to ensure that the States took care of their citizens. The last gasp of the recidivists was the Bush administration, which threatened to plunge the whole country into a dark age.

The Modern Obama age began under something of a cloud, trying to dig the country out from under the avalance of social and economic woe visited upon us by Bush. By Barack I's closing term, the essential rights of medical coverage had been extended to all, and the economic damage brought on by the Scorched Earth Tea Baggers who resisted this improvement had begun to recede.

America's retreat from the evils of imperialism had begun under Barack I, and gathered steam under Michelle. The GOP's last gasp came in 2017, when their attempt at Social Security reform was laughed out of DC. The next year, ObamaLife absorbed it anyway.

The evil of American nationalism would not die for many decades, however. The bitter cling-ons would take another 57, yes, fif-TEE seven years before the signing of the WorldGov Treaty saw the creation of the Vortex as the successor to the United Nations in Holy Davos.

And now, 104 years after Obama, or 2112 by the Oppressor's Reckoning, is our satisfaction complete.

"…has issued a tornado warning…"

Martin Mann: You must be having me on. [Throwing small boxes over his shoulder from a large box on the work bench in front of him.]

Those supply morons have Bushed it again. You go to the staff meeting. You explain to them what you need. They spout the usual crap about the Eternals, the Vortex, the Czars. They tell you that even if you're a war hero, you're still a Brutal.

You give the best years of your life to these people. You give your health, your senses, your smarts. They give you slideshows of chewing gum for the mind. If the economy is so rosy, if the education system is so great, if there really is nothing to worry about, then why are the little things like delivering an order for electronics so hard?

Most of these pointy-headed little bureaucrats haven't ever left Kanasas, much less served in the US military. And the pitiful few that have done so sure ain't ever gone overseas to a pitiful place like Zambiniland on a WorldGov mission. How I badly want to see their little Eternal butts taken away from their precious Vortex and made to understand what the Brutals go through.
If I hadn't got blown up, I wouldn't've had a chance to learn like I did and try to do a little better in life. But now I'm forced to find a way to polish a digital turd into a shiny thing of electronic beauty. Darn right I'm pissed. Those Eternals don't care about anything but getting their kids to the right school and either an elected position or a job working for a Czar. And they really don't know jack, except how to use big words to tell you that whatever they've done wrong is really YOUR fault. [The box is empty, and Mann smashes it with a metal forearm.]

"…for this area."

Peter Lyon: [Hastens up the broad steps and into the Temple of Cyrus Rinks (sometimes erroneously termed Syrinx by young hipsters) for his meeting. A disgruntled young man bursts out of the door, face in a rage, carrying a strange, flat, figure-8 device with a long handle, having wires along it. The conference room with the meeting already in progress is just off the atrium, thankfully, directly above boss Murdoch's office, and obviates the need to go through security. He grabs a seat in the back.]

Meeting Coordinator: Oh look, we were just joined by the illustrious Peter Lyon. Peter, I know you're busy, but can you offer us the benefit of your insight? A little birdy said you were actually just at the Flyover Czar's Budget Offsite. Have you got any hot, juicy presentation bullets for the Bureau of Administrative Affairs?

Woman in Front Row: That's Administrative Actions Bureau. We just changed last week, remember?

MC: Oh, right. Thank you. Doing my best to keep up with the re-orgs. Mr. Lyon?

Peter Lyon: [Standing] Well, the news breaks down into good, bad, and unknown.

MC: Unknown, bad, good.

Peter Lyon: That is our tradition, no? All right. The unknown piece is whether of not the Flyover Czar is going to wrest more control from counties on the East side of the Mississippi from the Southern Czar. While we'd like to expand our operations, and get the budget that goes with it, those areas are some of the least economically productive in the country. Could prove a Faustian bargain--that's when you make a deal and find out that guy across the table is named Bush.

The bad news is that this weather system is spitting out some monster tornadoes, and has already done some expensive damage in Texas and Oklahoma. This could negatively affect funds for the Obama Nativity Party at the end of the year.

[The room offers a collective groan]

The good news is that the new WorldGov budget finally passed. The WorldThalers now move to New Chicago. The Kansas team looks good for the new season of Political Cage Matches that starts Monday, so our funding stream should hold steady, as long as the Flyover Czar doesn't screw things up.

"All citizens are to seek shelter immediately."

Dorothy Zeda: OK, got the last of the water. [Zeda looks up from her clipboard at a worker in a jumpsuit. They stand in a basement area, to the right of stairs coming down.] We've got the combat rations, the medical supplies, the extra nylons. All of the windows are boarded. The blankets, the cots, and the batteries. Anything we're missing?

Worker: Nope, Zeda, we got it all. Except some dice, maybe?

Zeda: You little scamps do what you will, just don't come whining to me when all your WorldThalers are gone. The only sympathy you'll get from me will be delivered by 20 feet of bull whip. You got that?

[Worker smiles at the thought. People are coming down the stairs.]

Zeda: OK, this shelter is divided up into sleeping and recreational areas. Probably everyone is too worried to sleep. There is a copy of WorldGov Saves Zambiniland which is about to start playing, so pull up chairs and relax. We'll get through this storm in style.

[Crowe enters]

Crowe: Hi, Zeda. WorldGov Saves Zambiniland is a great patriotic film to show. Will you flog me if I yell out lines at the good parts?

Zeda: Of course not. You know all of the lines. I'm too busy for a session now.

[Mann enters, unsteadily, and has to stomp his foot to unfreeze the joint.]

Zeda: We're playing your show.

Mann: Great. I'd rather have a working leg.

[Lyon enters]

Lyon: Am I the last one in?

Zeda: Indeed you are.

Lyon: Then close the hatch. I fear this one's a doozy.

Episode II: Wreckage

Copyright 2009, Christopher L. Smith

French Vogue: White model in blackface

As Dave Barry says, I'm not making this up. Among popular American pastimes, denouncing the French ranks up there with baseball, so it would be un-American not to denounce the French for this hateful atrocity.

What has often happened to me over the years is that, in attempting to explain and understand Frenchiness as a cultural phenomenon, I have exposed myself to charges of defending France -- indeed, some people have even gone so far as to accuse me of being de facto pro-French.

Well, the natural reaction to such a vile accusation is to deny it, to attempt to disassociate oneself from the despicable doctrine of Francophilia. Ah, but that approach never works.

Once you come under the penumbra of suspicion, you are guilty until proven innocent and every little item in your resume is examined from the accuser's perspective: Didn't you once wear a Pierre Cardin tie? And is it not a fact, sir, that you took two years of French in high school? What are we to make of the fact that you sometimes make reference to le mot juste and other such Frenchified notions?

Therefore, the correct response is to lean into the accusation. If it is absurd to say that I am a Francophile -- as I assure you it is -- then why not treat it as a joke?

Have fun with your oh-so-serious accusers with a bit of high-concept humor at their expense. Make a little double-entendre (oops!) playing with the accuser's Javert-like quest for the smoking gun -- j'accuse! -- that proves what a degenerate Frog-lover you really are.

What, then, shall I say about French Vogue displaying 26-year-old Dutch supermodel Lara Stone in blackface? To quote Ace of Spades: "I'd hit it."

I'll be in my bunk . . .

L.A. Times art critic beyond parody

OK, when he makes Michelangelo's study of classic Greco-Roman statuary analogous to Alma Thomas copying Henri Matisse, you know Christopher Knight is full of crap. But then there's this:

And if the Obamas had chosen a Michelangelo for the Lincoln bedroom, the right-wing screamers would still have yelled. Because for them, it isn't about the art; it's about scorched-earth politics -- about not giving the president an inch, and about lying or fabricating or just pretending to be knowledgeable if necessary. And with Google and the great, bubbling Internet swamp at their cloven fingertips, they can fantasize all kinds of foaming fictions about art.

Via Brian Ledbetter at Snapped Shot. Don't feel bad if you're tempted to believe that "Christopher Knight" is a pseudonym for Charles Johnson.

In an age of unfathomable madness, sometimes the craziest hunches make more sense than "reasonable" explanations.

UPDATE: The world gets crazier. Most days, Memeorandum doesn't even link Ace of Spades HQ. As of 8:58 a.m.? Top of the page, baby. And 500+ comments.

And notice Allahpundit links Ace's takedown of LGF with a reference to "my moral superiors in the blogosphere." That's just it, you see? What Mad King Charles is doing -- the exposé of Rush's supposedly "secret" racism -- is an assertion of moral and intellectual superiority.

The crusading "anti-racist" accuser in such a situation is in fact proclaiming a message about himself: "Not only am I not a racist, but I am endowed with the superior insight and laudable courage to identify and denounce the hidden racism of others. Admire me!"

Charles Johnson: Philanthropic Humanitarian? Laughably implausible, which is your big clue that CJ is actually doing Something Else.

If you really want to understand this "liberal crusader" mentality, go read The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, by that notorious hater, Thomas Sowell.

Michelle Obama's Victimhood Card . . . Or, Who's Afraid of South Carolina?

Michelle Malkin is so stunned, she can't even get snarktastic at the incredible absurdity of this one:

U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said Friday that a conversation with White House staff left him with the sense that a hostile environment in South Carolina is keeping the first lady from visiting.
The high-ranking South Carolina Democrat said he has received more than 100 invitations for Michelle Obama. But this summer when he brought one of those requests to her staff on behalf of his alma mater, South Carolina State University, Clyburn said her security was an issue.
The conversation came after former Richland County GOP activist Rusty DePass suggested on Facebook in June that an escaped zoo gorilla was not harmful because it was probably one of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors. . . .

Hmmm. Is Rusty DePass one of those hateful Darwinists? Never mind. The idea that the First Lady of the United States has any legitimate fear of violence in South Carolina -- but is safe in ultra-violent places like Chicago and D.C. -- is so transparently bogus that not even Robert Gibbs would dare defend it.

Exit question: If the White House wants to stigmatize South Carolina this way, what are the chances that Obama will carry North Carolina and Virginia again in 2012? IYKWIMAITYD.

The BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA Heard 'Round the World!

Allahpundit kept his powder dry for weeks, held his fire until the right moment, and then this evening -- discussing the less-than-stellar re-launch of GOP.com -- he finally touched the fire to the wick:

Oh, and apologies to LGF on behalf of our "wingnut blog" for failing to cover this sooner. Granted, there were not one but two items about it sitting in Headlines for hours, but when a site that gave up blogging about Iran and the New York City terror plot to focus on the urgent threat from creationism tells you you’re falling down on the job, you listen.

OK, so all the people who have been ragging on Allah in the Hot Air comment threads now owe him a huge apology. Whatever wrong Allah has done in the past, you've got to wipe the slate clean after that one.

For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them . . . and they shall not escape.
-- I Thessalonians 5:3 KJV

Thus does the Hindenberg-at-Lakehurst implosion of LGF occur, as Darleen Click finds Mad King Charles using the fake-but-accurate standard against Rush Limbaugh.

Remember how long Pamela Geller had to wait for her vindication, and never doubt for a minute that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwhind.

THE FLEMISH MENACE!

UPDATE: Dan Riehl joins the Bwaaahahahahaha Chorus:

I know Charles Johnson has denied ever performing oral sex on a lizard. But . . .

And you just knew the AOSHQ Morons were going to have a field day.

Caption Funny

by Smitty


Barack: "And so then Angela Merkel socked me in the jaw like this. I said 'I don't strike women.' She said 'Neither do I, but in your case I made an exception.' Can you take her down for me?"
Hillary: "That East-German Stasi ronin badass? Your best bet is a Tomahawk strike from the Baltic Sea. That woman makes The Bride look like Michael Moore."

Update: Apologies to PDB Watch for neglecting the linky-love when originally posting.

If there's anything I hate more than January Jones' big fake boobies . . .

. . . it's big fake Republicans like Sen. Olympia Snowe:

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) will vote to approve the Senate Finance Committee’s healthcare bill on Tuesday. . . .
"My vote today is my vote today. It doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow," Snowe said. . . .
"I happen to think the consequences of inaction dictate the urgency of Congress," she added. . . .

I'd call her ugly names, but what name could possibly be uglier than "Olympia Snowe," a synonym for everything unprincipled, selfish, dishonest and loathsome in American politics today? A name that ranks with that of the despicable John Cornyn in defining the utter worthlessness of Republican "leadership" in Washington.

For years, the national GOP has funneled money into the campaign coffers of two-faced RINO weasels like Snowe, Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chafee, et al., claiming that the existence of such fake Republicans provides some benefit to the party in general.

Exactly what this benefit is, no one has ever explained, since all these gutless wonders ever do is suck up money and whine, whine, whine -- and then stab the party in the back whenever a key vote comes up.

So now we see Cornyn and the NRSC backing Charlie Crist -- a less masculine clone of Olympia Snowe -- against Marco Rubio in Florida, and we know the answer to that:

NOT ONE RED CENT!

Let these self-serving RINOs swindle their money from some other bunch of suckers.

BTW, in reference to January Jones and the fake boob thing, I was Twittering about it and got this encouraging Tweet:

Not sure how many women will be replying, but..uh, well, that's encouraging to read. Sick of the fake boob craze.

That's Darcy, who has a sports blog. Real men like real boobs, not big fakies like Olympia Snowe.

UPDATE: Erick Erickson of Red State tries to beat me in the Snowe-Hating Derby:

Olympia Snowe has sold out the country. Having been banished to our world after Aslan chased her out of Narnia, Snowe is intent on corrupting this place too.

Pretty good. But try to top this one, Erick:

Q. What's the difference between Olympia Snowe and gonorrhea?
A. Gonorrhea can be treated with penicillin.

Back at ya . . .

Update, 2205 (Smitty):
Linked at American Glob.

'Evil is too weak a word'

"The fabulously wealthy SPLC exaggerates the scope of racism to frighten donors into opening their wallets. SPLC is nominally a public interest law firm, but it spends little on actual litigation. Instead, it uses politically skewed definitions of racism to indoctrinate children while smearing conservatives who question racial preference programs. Evil is too weak a word to describe the Southern Poverty Law Center."
-- Matthew Vadum, Capital Research Center, and author of The Southern Poverty Law Center: A Twisted Definition of "Hate" (PDF)

Kevin Binversie is not nearly so shameless a blogwhore as Troglopundit . . .

. . . but then again, nobody really is. OK, maybe Bob Belvedere, as if anyone could compete with Bob. Anyway, I was on Twitter explaining how Troglopundit became our Obama-like hate-magnet, the Wisconsininny everybody blames for whatever sucks about their state -- including the Badgers defense -- when I get this Tweet from Binversie:

The proper term is "Wisconsinites." And I too am a Wisconsin blogger. Thanks for the lack of link love.

You got to admire that kind of resourcefulness, even if you don't admire January Jones and her fake boobs. Here I am, doing my best to turn Troglopundit into the punchline of a Sean Hackbarth joke, and Binversie seizes the opportunity to promote his Lakeside Laments blog, which doesn't suck nearly as bad as the Grateful Dead.

Then again, not even Andrew Sullivan sucks like that. Maybe Meghan McCain sucks worse, but we can't accept the word of the Ohio State defensive line for such a malicious claim . . .

Why is Troglopundit everbody's scapegoat for Wisconsin's loss to Ohio State?

Are all Wisconsinians acromegalic blog whores? If I ridicule Troglopundit's shameless blogwhoring by posting a funny picture of a cute woodland creature, does that mean that I'm prejudiced against Wisconsinians? (Wisconsinites? Wisconsinistas? What the heck kind of morons would name their state "Wisconsin" anyhow? No wonder the Packers suck and the Badger defense gives up 25 points a game. BTW, what kind of morons would name their football team "Badgers"?)

Well, regardless of anything I've said here, I cannot be accused of hating every resident of Wisconsin merely because of one lame joke at the expense of a blogger who is to Milwaukee what Godzilla was to Tokyo.

To make such an absurd assertion would be even more stupid than the average UW-Madison coed. It would be as stupid as that liberal idiot at Sadly No claiming that Tammy Bruce is a racist. And surely the freakishly tall Troglopundit is not that stupid. Maybe Sean Hackbarth but . . .

At any rate, the assertion that Wisconsin produces only stupid bloggers is perhaps prejudicial, as is the claim that there are no sexy women bloggers in Wisconsin.

Just because I haven't seen any Wisconsin women bloggers posting sexy pictures of themselves cannot be considered proof that all women bloggers in Wisconsin are fat, hairy, buck-toothed and cross-eyed, no matter what Minnesota's Ed Morrissey says about them.

Meghan McCain: Military genius!

Or is she a "spoiled brat who has below average intelligence"? We report, you deride!

Synopsis of her latest column at the Daily Bestiality, which we read so you don't have to:

Gay people are special.
Haters!
My Dad's important and famous, so you can't argue with me!
Haters!
Does my ignorance make my butt look fat?
Haters!

Let's face it, folks: Even if you're pro-life like me, you certainly can understand why Meghan's mother is pro-choice. Can you say buyer's remorse?

Finally! Somebody invites me to a major gathering of conservative activists

This Erik Telford "let's not invite Stacy" thing was starting to annoy me, but apparently Telford's influence doesn't extend to The American Spectator, which not only invited me to attend, but invited all my friends, too:

The American Spectator
2009 Robert L. Bartley Gala Dinner
Celebrating Conservative Journalism with a Wink & a Smile
Mix and mingle with prominent national journalists, business leaders, policymakers, and others who champion economic freedom, individual liberty, and the values of a free society.

Keynote Speaker
The Honorable Mike Pence

Barbara Olson Award for
Excellence in Journalism Recipient
Daniel Henninger

Presenters
Alfred S. Regnery, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. & Other Friends

Entertainment
Alex Donner & His Orchestra

The Capital Hilton, Washington, DC
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Reception: 6:30 p.m.
Dinner & Awards Ceremony: 7:30 p.m.
Dancing to Follow
Cocktail Attire

All that for only $250! Wow! But wait . . . there's more!

Yes, by special arrangement with the American Spectator, I can promise that everyone who attends will have the opportunity to meet Mrs. Other McCain and tell her personally how cool her husband is.

What the heck are you waiting for? RSVP now! You can also call Patrick Pyles at (703) 807-2011 ext. 25 or e-mail Patrick for more information. .

* "Cocktail attire" means that young, atttractive female guests are required to wear their slinkiest and most revealing Little Black Dresses.

Kevin Johnson: Future neocon?

The Obama-emulating, AmeriCorps-defrauding Mayor of Sacramento got mugged by reality in Frisco -- and Red State blog-fu sensei Moe Lane has the video.

Cassandra: 'Angry'? Moi?

E.J. Dionne doth offend the Garter-Flashing Blog Goddess:

Dionne's language is a masterwerk of enlightened tolerance [and] civility: "rage" appears four times in a one page column. Various forms of the word "anger"? Five times. "Hatred" appears twice, "anxiety" three times, "extremism" twice. References to racism? A whopping seven times.

Professor Dionne evidently covets a White House position as Sycophancy Czar for the Whiner-in-Chief.

(Hat-tip: Memeorandum.)

Announcement: Czar d'Oz

by Smitty



Awash, after the fashion of a country wrecked by a tsunami, in the reviews of the previous efforts of Porch Manqué Productions, we called a meeting. Stacy flopped down on the dilapidated couch, expelling a cloud of dust, through which cover at least two cats made their escape.

"OediPOTUS Wrecks and Waiting for O-Dough were a train wreck followed by a volcanic eruption," declared Stacy. "We need something that will deliver eyeballs, not debris. You last ideas were so obscure that nobody cared about, much less had heard of, their sources."

"I have a cunning plan," I began, continuing on through Stacy's tortured glance heavenward. "A dystopian future view of the US, merging the plot of an old Sean Connery flick with an American classic, plus a few other elements that didn't move fast enough." I handed over a few pages of draft in dead tree format.

After a few moments glance, Stacy inquired, "Have you been tested for Mad Cow disease?"

Episode index:
I. Incoming
II. Wreckage
III. TOTO
IV. Porch
V. Vegas
VI. Sandog
VII. Vancouver
VIII. Seattle
IX. Lab
X. Dénouement

Stacy's initial take matched reviews remain as varied across time, if constant in theme, as ever:

• Sean Connery: Impossible! A human being that's a bigger piece of scum than Alex Trebek!
• Helmuth von Moltke the Elder: No plan of Smitty's extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with reality.
• Sigmund Freud: Hey, Smitty: your mother!
• Stevie Ray Vaughan: Hand me down my shootin' iron.
• Randy Rhodes: Next time the Crazy Train comes by, make sure Smitty is on it.
• Joe Satriani: Congress should limit Smitty to, at most, Ten Words.
• Burma Shave: In defiance of 'sane' / Again wrecks this train. /Far more favorable the /Frobnicated follicle to explain.
• Captain Ahab: Nothing wrong with Smitty that a firmly cast harpoon could not remedy.
• Joseph N. Welch: You have done enough, Smitty. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?
• Dan Riehl: Thanks, Smitty! I always like to start the morning by throwing up in my mouth!

Czar d'Oz runs at high noon right here for the next two weeks, or until the FBI shuts us down.

Copyright 2009, Christopher L. Smith

The Rule 5 Bride

Christina Hendricks gets married.

Don't mind me. I always cry at weddings. Especially when they won't let me shoot fireworks at the reception. But let's don't go there. Too painful.

Hat-tips: Kevin and Jimmie on Twitter.

Shocking! Bank of America disses American hero and U.S. flag?

They got their taxpayer-funded bailout, but they can't show respect for a fallen Marine?

A South Carolina Bank of America branch is drawing criticism Thursday after an employee reportedly ordered the removal of American flags placed to honor a fallen Marine over fears that people would be offended.
The Palmetto Scoop received one eyewitness email claiming that the branch manager at Bank of America’s Gaffney branch at 1602 West Floyd Baker Blvd. “told a citizen who was preparing the route for a U.S. Marine killed in action in Afghanistan by placing small American flags along the roadway that the flags might upset some of her customers.”
Said the outraged tipster, “[The branch manager] took them down and made the citizen go in to get them if she didn’t want them thrown away.”
The flags were part of the funeral procession of Lance Corporal Christopher Fowlkes, 20, who died last week after an explosion in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

More on this shocking scandal at Political Byline.

UPDATE: The cowardly swine are finally forced to 'fess up about that crooked Merrill swindle:

Facing mounting pressure from multiple investigations, Bank of America’s board has voted to reveal the legal advice that the bank received late last year in its merger with Merrill Lynch.

Another relevant headline:

Obama quietly deploying 13,000 more US troops to Afghanistan

Yeah, and his corporate patrons at Bank of America are quietly trying to prevent citizens from honoring the sacrifice of U.S. Marines. What a bunch of creeps. It's like the Second Coming of LBJ.

Fear and Loathing at Lake Tahoe

"Just when you think the Obama Administration couldn't get any more ridiculous, it does. Remember how the stimulus was supposed to be used for job creation? Remember how it was supposed to be used for 'shovel-ready projects' to repair and build things like roads and schools? Well, it turns out, the stimulus is also being used to bail out the homeless and low income. As you all know, I am currently on vacation at my family's cabin near Lake Tahoe. While here, I have been getting my news from talk radio. This morning, while listening to Rush Limbaugh, I heard a story of how homeless and low-income Detroit residents are applying for up to $3000 (per person) in stimulus money. . . ."

ASSOCIATED PRESS: THOUSANDS MOB DETROIT CENTER IN HOPES OF FREE CASH

ACORN transvestite vote fraud?

Jesse Hathaway is right: How the heck did I miss this one? I spent the weekend hanging out with Matthew Vadum, and surely at some point he told me about his American Spectator scoop:

The activist group ACORN, which has long worked with criminals as it preys on the weak and the troubled, is on the verge of yet another public relations catastrophe.
That's because a cross-dressing Ohio male escort whom ACORN registered multiple times to vote was convicted of full-fledged vote fraud in addition to the lesser crime of voter registration fraud. A spokesman for Cleveland prosecutor Bill Mason confirmed yesterday that a local investigation of ACORN remains wide open.
The conviction of Darnell Nash, apparently known by several aliases including Serina "Sexy Slay" Gibbs, is hugely significant for several reasons . . .

Read the whole thing. No doubt about it. I've been off my A-game lately. Got to get my mojo back.

In all probability, E.J. Dionne is the most useless journalist in America today

Today being Monday, and Tuesday being owned by David Brooks, the New York Times' living monument to journalistic uselessness. But it's not Tuesday quite yet. I'm tired and unusually irritable for some reason. Tried to go to bed early, reading Hunter S. Thompson's Songs of the Doomed, but that stuff is not recommended bedtime reading and I kept waking up with horrible nightmares.

So I checked the SiteMeter (still no Instalanche) and then I checked Memeorandum and saw an idiotic headline, Angry White Men Have Real Grievances, which was doubly idiotic in that it was on a column by E.J. Dionne, whose absolute uselessness probably explains why the Washington Post felt it could get away with hiring Michael Gerson to write a "Republican" column.

Dionne and Gerson: An even match, a absolute stalemate, the resistible force and the moveable object, the journalism of ignorance and inertia.

What is it that so irritates me about Dionne and Gerson? I look at Dionne's biography:

Before joining The Post in 1990 as a political reporter, he spent 14 years at The New York Times, covering local, state, and national politics, and also serve as a foreign correspondant in Paris, Rome and Beirut. Dionne began his column for The Post in 1993. He is a University Professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. . . .
Dionne received the American Political Science Association's annual Carey McWilliams Award in 1996 for a major journalistic contribution to the understanding of politics. In 2002, he received the Empathy Award from the Volunteers of America, and in 2004 he won the National Human Services Assembly's Award for Excellence by a Member of the Media.

Ah, that's it: The ambition to Change the World, to Make a Difference, the stultifying seriousness of his journalistic sincerity, the Politics of Earnestness.

From which, of course, derives his uselessness. It's rather jangling to imagine somebody so ultra-sincere, so horribly priggish, working for 14 years as an actual reporter. But he was, after all, working for the New York Times, which may explain everything.

For someone who once worked as a political correspondent, Dionne doesn't actually seem to know much about politics. He's got his Change the World agenda, and everything he sees is filtered through that peculiar lens:

The effort to understand where Obama hatred comes from has been one of the few growth areas in the American economy.

But the phenomenon isn't particularly mystifying: After 12 years of GOP congressional control, the electorate did one of their period "throw the bums out" moves in 2006, elevating Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to the top, putting the Democrats in control. Then, in 2008, the voters completed the housecleaning, electing Obama to the White House.

Now buyer's remorse is setting in. A substantial number of voters seemed to believe that Obama would bring to Washington a large supply of magic pixie dust, which he would sprinkle hither and yon to create Good Jobs, Peace, Prosperity and Social Justice.

Some nine months in, a lot of those people are baffled to discover that we have a pixie dust shortage. The "angry white males" of the Dionne headline are basically Republicans who didn't vote for Obama, and now they're saying, "Hey, you morons, we tried to tell you this guy was hosing you, but you wouldn't listen!"

How many people "hate" Obama? I don't know. Dionne talks about "too many racist signs at rallies and too many overtly racial pronouncements in the fever swamps of the right-wing media," but I spoke at two Tea Party rallies in Alabama -- of all places -- and don't recall any such signs. As for the "fever swamps," I suppose that Dionne means talk radio and Fox News, but cites no examples of the "overtly racial pronouncements" which alarm him.

Dionne's a worry-wart, is what he is. His natural posture is of thoughtful hand-wringing, and we're not really surprised when he goes off on an Australian tangent:

This is not a uniquely American problem. Last week I caught up with Australia's deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, who was visiting Washington for a conference on education. Though Gillard diplomatically avoided direct comment on American politics, she said what's happening here reminded her of the rise of Pauline Hanson, a politician who caused a sensation in Australian politics in the 1990s by creating One Nation, a xenophobic and protectionist political party tinged with racism.

Has E.J. been to Australia lately? Has he interviewed any Hanson supporters? For that matter, has he been to any of these Tea Party rallies and talked to any of the protesters?

What is Dionne actually up to with this column? He's offering excuses to his fellow liberal elitists, who are increasingly perplexed by the failure of the Pixie Dust Theory. What is slowly dawning on the elite is that the American people aren't quite so stupid as the elite always imagine them to be. They can learn, those voters, even if the process is too often difficult, painful and slow. I tried to explain this shortly after the election last year:

Perhaps the most brilliant thing about Barack Obama's successful campaign was its vagueness. In offering himself as the all-purpose Change We Can Believe In, Obama gave believers a blank slate and a tacit license to project upon him their deepest longings.
Not that there were no specifics. His promise of tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans and tax hikes for those earning over $250,000 had a statistical specificity that Obama's Republican rival never matched. And those who recall Obama's Democratic debates with Hillary Clinton will remember intense disagreements over ultimately forgettable details of their health-care plans.
Details, however, were not the Obama campaign's strongest selling point. Rather, Obama succeeded by capitalizing on the kind of boundless Hope that prompted a Florida woman, Peggy Joseph, to her memorable declaration after a late-October campaign rally: "I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car; I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know, if I help him, he's gonna help me."

If there are, as Dionne tells us, some substantial number of "angry white males" who are perpetrating "Obama hatred," they're wasting their time.

What is needed is not anger or hatred, but patient explanation to the Peggy Josephs that they've been scammed, hustled, burned by Democrats who have done what Democrats have always done: Promised voters the moon, stars and sun, without any real intention of delivering on the promise.

The answer to this kind of Pixie Dust nonsense is not for the Republicans to try to steal the Pixie Dust formula, offering their own magical policy panaceas. Rather, the GOP needs to speak the brutal truth: There are no pixies and no magic.

There are no panaceas. We can neither return to some mythical edenic Golden Age nor are we marching toward some future Utopia of perfection. Decades of trying to vote ourselves into Heaven-on-Earth have created the very problems -- e.g., the actuarial nightmares of Social Security and Medicare -- which today's promise-'em-anything Democrats claim they'll fix.

"Grow Up, America" would be an accurate slogan for what the nation really needs. It wouldn't be a popular message, but it would be a true assessment of what ails us: A childishness, a politics of wishing, of which the naivete of Peggy Josephs was but an extreme example.

Well, you won't get any such cold cynicism from the earnest hand-wringing columns of E.J. Dionne. And it's probably for the best. Better foolish sincerity than cynical wisdom, and I probably need to find something more tranquil for bedtime reading than Songs of the Doomed.

Godspeed to the Tea Party Express

by Smitty

Yeah, Tea Party Express: yeah. They've got a new ad on YouTube and are well worth your attention:

Also, check back here tomorrow at noon for the announcement post on this blog's next act of literary vandalism.

Quin Hillyer vs. Mark Salter

Oh, boy! Pop the popcorn:

Brian Faughnan has an interesting post about the potential primary challenge to the mercurial John McCain by conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth. It seems that McCain alter ego Mark Salter was not above some truly nasty political hardball against Hayworth back in 2006. Well, I hereby "call out" Salter. Mr. Salter: You sir, are a low-life, pompous windbag. Actually, you don't merit the honorific "sir." . . .

Read the rest, which ends with "vermin."

The Sour Grapes of Wrath

"In the 21st-century 24/7 cable-TV era, it sometimes seems there are two kinds of people: People who are TV-famous and people desperately trying to become TV-famous. Back when I was a young man with rock-star dreams, losers who wanted to impress you would drop the names of famous record producers who were supposedly interested in their latest demo tape. Nowadays, the same type of people are bragging about how their agent is this close to getting them a 'development' deal for a reality-TV show. But enough about Levi Johnston . . ."

Why bother wasting hate on Obama?

by Smitty

The Anchoress has a great post: Why don't you "hate" Obama?

The gist of the Anchoress's post is the comparison method of Obama policies vs. the sadly similar policies of the Bush administration.

Cut that noise out.

You're playing straight into the Progressive hand. If they can get you to buy the premise that the centralization of everything is acceptable, they've won. All Your Wallets Are Belong To Us, speaketh the Federal Pharoah. It makes scant difference whether the name of the nitwit is suffixed with (D) or (R).

Young 4 Eyes will pop in here, laugh at the sudden consciousness of the danger, and then say "suck it, conservatives". I'll even allow this blog's favorite leftist troll a point: we've been asleep at the wheel since Reagan departed the pattern. And Ronnie didn't go far enough in trimming the Federal kudzu, either. So, fine. I'll buy you a cuppa Starbucks.

But let's not go wasting breath hating anything. Let us instead re-discover the wisdom of the Constitution's chain of command, so sadly sodomized since the Progressive era planted the seeds of this quasi-aristocracy we call modern liberalism, and the GOP played right along.

We'll indulge in a breach of Bonham's Law and let Hetfield deliver the final word:

Harry the Loser

Philip Klein at The American Spectator blog:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is increasingly looking like one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats in the 2010 election cycle.

That's based on a new poll showing Reid losing to either of two candidates for the GOP nomination in 2010.

Reid's biggest problem? It's The Stupid Economy, Harry -- oh, yes, and the heavy burden of Obama's plummeting job-approval numbers. Urgent Headline of the Day:

OBAMA FAILS TO WIN
NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS

I'm thinking that the definitive history of this administration will eventually be published by The Onion with the title Hope Beyond Parody: Obama's Prize-Winning Campaign to Rescue the Political Satire Industry and Revive the Republican Party.

It was just a fireworks demo

by Smitty

This blog has a long history of supporting fireworks displays.

So this recent launch of five short-range missiles from the Norks is easily seen as a celebratory gesture, a simple 'howgoezit' to our Nobel Appease Prize winner, the POTUS.

This blog loves the smell of cordite in the morning. It smells like Hopium and Changeeba.

Twittering with 'Gen. J.C. Christian': Thank God for foolish enemies!

OK, so I noticed this morning that a gay liberal blogger was sending Tweets trying to get one of my advertisers to cancel. The fact that his target was the much-criticized Pamela Anderson Extreme Video" ad was kind of surprising.

Little did I suspect that the silicone-boob-laden ad -- which I'd never bothered to click -- links to a PETA site attacking Kentucky Fried Chicken for alleged violations of animal rights. (Admit it: Every bucket of extra-crispy is a chicken-hating act of genocide.)

Let's evaluate the purely capitalistic angle for a minute: Internet advertisers pay for eyeballs. If PETA wants people to click through to see their anti-KFC site, would their money be best spent on:

• The blog that invented Rule 5 Sunday?

or

• Some gay left-winger's site?

The way I see it, PETA is making a shrewd move here. Nobody at a gay left-wing blog is interested in seeing a Pamela Anderson nude video and, as far as the animal-rights message is concerned, targeting a liberal audience would just be preaching to the converted. (Whatever private deviance "Gen. J.C. Christian" may indulge, no one has ever accused him of being a commercial poultry producer.)

God gives us enemies for a reason. So far I've been blessed with a non-stop parade of fools, and I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that this white gay liberal was pushing the "raaaaacism" smear at his PETA pals. (Fact: Hitler was a vegetarian.)

About three years ago, I had an e-mail exchange with this same blogger after he'd made the mistake of repeating an erroneous assertion from a Michelangelo Signorile column. He'd had the decency to correct his mistake, which lets me know that even if he's a total gay wackjob, he's at least cognizant that he can't make up his own facts. Therefore, when I noticed him attacking me this morning, I sent him a direct message via Twitter:

Criticizing me is fair game, JC. Trying to organize a smear-based advertising boycott? Not so much. Chill.

To which J.C. replied:

Don't care about your other advertisers, but PETA should be supporting liberal blogs.

Ah! So now we see the selfish greed behind all this. Repeating the Charles Johnson "white supremacist blogger" meme was just J.C.'s way of trying to leverage a few bucks of advertising out of my hands and into his own.

Capitalism is the Great Uniter, and once my gay liberal antagonist tipped his hand -- hey, I Write For Money, too -- I knew I'd found a friend. So I fired off a quick string of direct messages:

LOL. Oh, great -- now I'm accused of being a SPECIESIST!

In point of fact, some of my conservative readers have complained about that PETA ad. Also, my wife is SDA and (mostly) vegetarian.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, I realized that these raaaaacist smears were God's way of reminding me to have a sense of humor.

When you start taking politics too seriously, it'll drive ya nuts. So I'm just trying to relax, have a good time and earn a living.

The smear artists wouldn't bother attacking me if I was actually a Robert Byrd-type Klan Kleagle. There's no advantage in that, see? But if they can, by endless repetition, convince you that the World's Most Fun-Loving Blogger is in fact a secret agent for The Flemish Menace -- deprive me of readership by getting me de-linked by the conservative blogosphere -- then they'll have achieved something.

Which is why I don't play the "deny, denounce and repudiate" game that Republican idiots have been playing for the past 10 or 15 years. I know who I am, and my friends know who I am, and since I'm not who Charles Johnson says I am, I just laugh at his cheap lies and smack him around from time to time, as it suits my mood. His jealous rage is entirely impotent. From the standpoint of the convservative blogosphere, Mad King Charles is now as inert as argon.

The Left's smear artists are either bullies or dupes, or perhaps both. Once you figure out how they roll, and start throwing their bovine excrement back in their faces, they'll eventually learn to leave you alone.

Notice that Michelle Malkin doesn't fear them at all. I was in Denver when Michelle braved that crazy mob scene at the Mint, where Charlie Martin and Jim Hoft gallantly defended her from physical assault led by the unhinged 9/11 Truther Alex Jones. (Take a bow, Charlie.) When Michelle got back to the Founding Bloggers/PJM headquarters, she was in no way daunted, but indeed more determined than ever to expose The Mendacity Of Hope.

Having failed to silence or intimidate Malkin, now the Left deploys front-page Ransom Note smears in The Washington Post -- the only way she'll ever be mentioned in the Post, which would never publish her popular syndicated column.

Gutless liars and bullies. Thank God for such enemies!

UPDATE: "Springtime for Potok and Irony."

UPDATE II: VIDEO EXPOSE: Colonel Sanders and the Hate That's Finger-Lickin' Good!

It finally arrived

by Smitty

Stacy and I finally received it, courtesy of Durham Township, PA:

We're still awaiting O-Dough, however.

White House pimp-slaps gay-rights movement? That's gonna leave a mark

John Harwood, NBC News, on the smoldering discontent:

Barack Obama is doing well with 90% or more of Democrats so the White House views this opposition as really part of the Internet left fringe.

There are times when "gay" doesn't mean "happy," and they're definitely not happy about this little backhanded insult. (Did the "Internet left fringe" remark refer to Andrew Sullivan?)

Another Black Conservative hopes this a wake-up call to gays, who have apparently been so happy riding on the back of Obama's magic bus:

Perhaps things will start to come into focus for everyone that the disdain this White House has for Fox News and Tea Parties really isn’t the story. The truth is this White House has a problem with opposition in general.

To which Pundette adds:

Obama resents "chatter," a.k.a, criticism of Obama, from any source. We knew about this intolerance for dissent before the election but unfortunately no one on the Left wanted to pay attention.

Wouldn't it be a kick in the head if the gay-rights radicals joined Gay Patriot and conservative lesbians like Cynthia Yockey in supporting the Tea Party movement? Honestly, who treats people with more respect, Glenn Beck or Barack Obama?

UPDATE: Linked at the Hot Air Greenroom. Please also see my Twitter exchange with the gay atheist liberal blogger "Gen. J.C. Christian" (who is not actually Charles Johnson's sockpuppet, so far as I'm aware).

Thank you, Paleo Pat

My friend at Political Byline discovered that, according to Stormfront (which ought to know), Patrick Lanzo has made his restaurant available for "white pride" events organized by, inter alia, the late J.B. Stoner.

OK, so if this is true, it clearly puts Lanzo on the far side of a clearly defined line between any sort of mere "political incorrectness" and outright hatemongering.

Paleo Pat's research is appreciated; however, I disagree with his characterization that my own previous discussion of Lanzo's restaurant as "spinning" for Lanzo. As I clearly said, "To explain is not to defend." Obviously, I erred in failing to research Lanzo before endeavoring to explain him, which makes me guilty of carelessness, and I appreciate Paleo Pat clarifying the nature of Lanzo's operation.

What J.B. Stoner promoted ought to be called by its right name: Evil. Did Lanzo know what he was getting himself into when he hosted Stoner's events? I don't know. But he either needs to reconsider his actions or else admit that he's on the other side of that line.

A Weekend in Pittsburgh
It was probably unwise for me to rush to prepare that post about Lanzo's place Friday morning before I left for the Brindle wedding, knowing that I would be offline for most of the next two days. As I told Smitty when he called to tell me about Paleo Pat's post, it was not my intent to defend any of Lanzo's actions, but rather:

• To clarify that Lanzo is not representative of Paulding County or Georgia;
• To attempt to explain the cultural signficance of Lanzo's actions; and
• To repudiate the idea (promoted by CBS News) that what Lanzo has done has some meaningful relevance to political opposition to ObamaCare in general.

While I was riding back from Pennsylvania with Matthew Vadum this afternoon, we had a long discussion about how liberals, by dishonesty-in-labeling, attempt to suppress free discussion of sensitive issues. Fear of the smear causes people to shy away from discussing any issue where disagreement with liberals is characterized as racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.

The result of liberalism's "rhetorical terrorism" -- what else shall we call it? -- is that only liberals are permitted to discuss these issues. Those who protest against these limitations on free speech are subjected to a particularly vicious sort of attack from liberals, because where free discussion is allowed, liberalism loses.

Go read what terrible things were said about Michelle Malkin when she published In Defense of Internment. Malkin took on a very difficult topic, exploring the reality of the U.S. security situation circa 1941-42, explaining circumstances so as to cast a new light on that troubling episode in American history. For her skill in performing a difficult task -- a task she surely knew out that the outset would expose her to angry attacks -- Malkin was denounced as if she were actually endorsing the internship of Japanese during WWII, or advocating some similar policy today.

Liberalism and Half-Truths
Malkin didn't wilt under the heat of that particular furnace and having been tried by fire, as it were, is stronger for the experience. Yet most school textbooks continue to teach a dumbed-down PC-inflected version of that historical epoch, as if Malkin had never written her book. And this is yet another baleful consequence of liberalism: To suppress facts so as to facilitate the propogation of half-truths and prevent clear thought about difficult problems.

"Don't read Malkin!" is the effect of the smears against her, which is exactly what Charles Johnson was trying to do when he smeared Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.

Some people might tell you, "Don't read Paleo Pat!" or "Don't read Stacy McCain!" for very similar reasons. It's like that idiotic notation at the margins of medieval maps: Here be dragons!

It is not a convenient thing, career-wise, for a journalist to push back against liberalism's continual efforts to set limits on permissible discourse. And, I suppose, there might be some who would say that I am engaged in a similar practice by drawing a clear line and declaring the late J.B. Stoner to be on the opposite side of that line. Yet I think that anyone who will research the biography of Stoner would see why such a line must be drawn.

Furthermore, I'm only one person, and do not say that law or policy ought to be changed to punish people merely for disagreeing with me. Rather, I agree with Thomas Jefferson:

[T]ruth is great and will prevail if left to herself . . . she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

It is modern liberalism's hostility to "free argument and debate" that is the proper target of those forms of protest we call political incorrectness. To employ hateful epithets or associate with J.B. Stoner are certainly not helpful to this project and, I would argue, amount to lending aid and comfort to liberalism.

Finally, I do not consider it impossible to redeem someone who, for whatever reasons, has gotten themselves on the wrong side of a line. If Patrick Lanzo reads this and has cause to reconsider and reform, going forward to avoid repetition of past errors, this would be a great good. And he might, by his good example, persuade others to take similar steps in the same direction.

After all, I used to be a Democrat, so who am I to judge people for their unfortunate past associations?

Roll, Tide, Roll!

Now, No. 2 in the Associated Press poll, undefeated at 6-0 after a convincing 22-3 road win over a strong Ole Miss squad, and beginning to convince skeptics that they've got what it takes to deserve another shot at the championship.

It's a good day to be a 'Bama fan. OK, it's always a good day to be a 'Bama fan, but days like today -- the delightfully thrilling hope of another national championship -- are extra-good.

At some point this fall, I've got to find an excuse to get down to Tuscaloosa. Hit the tip jar.

Andrew Sullivan is still capable of intelligent, lucid, honest judgment

And this is so brutally true:

[The gay-rights group Human Rights Campaign is] putting pressure, as they always have, on gay people to go to the back of the line and be grateful a president attends their fundraising event. The only word for this is a racket. And if gay people do not rise up and demand change from this organization and stop funding a group whose goal has always been to sell the Democrats to gay people rather than secure civil rights, then they will continue to suffer the discrimination they live under day after day.

The HRC is now transparently the same "hoax of a sham of a farce" (to use Woody Allen's line from Bananas) that NOW and NAACP have been for so long. The Official Gay Movement, like the Official Women's Movement and the Official Civil Rights Movement, has been co-opted and sold to the Democratic Party, which is always the highest bidder in the identity-politics auction.

This explains why conservatives become so disgusted by Republicans who attempt to placate feminists and other such identity politics Mau-Maus -- racketeers who use guilt-trips, victimhood and accusations of mala fides to extort concessions from enemies and allies alike.

The "two-can-play-at-that-game" approach -- e.g., John McCain's pandering to MALDEF -- doesn't work for Republicans, simply because the essential spirit of the GOP is anathema to the identity-politics conception of politics. The Republican Party has for decades generally, and in the post-Reagan era especially, offered a basic message that ought to be of universal appeal: Prosperity through liberty, peace through strength.

The task of GOP leaders should be to explain to any individual (and the individual is the world's smallest minority) how this agenda is ultimately superior to the corrupt coalition politics of the Democrats. Sometimes the party has lost its focus or blundered through bad leadership, but if they would be true to to their basic message, they would be unconquerable, as they would solicit the support of all who are wise and honest.

"Compassionate conservatism" was a betrayal of that Reaganite spirit, which is what brought the GOP to such a low ebb and has allowed the Democrats to regain (by the usual dishonest methods) the upper hand.

If gay people vote Republican, they might not get the bullet-point agenda items demanded by HRC, but they will at least not have to accept the kind of two-faced, backhanded insults they get from Democrats who claim to be their "friends."

Cythia Yockey has often remarked that she was surprised at how warmly she, as a lesbian, was embraced by conservatives. Cynthia doesn't agree with my opposition to same-sex marriage, and I don't agree with her advocacy of it. So freaking what? At least I'm not playing the two-faced shtick of trying to win friends by lying.

Honesty is always the best policy, which is another reason why the Democrats are always wrong.
(Via Memeorandum.)

'Pistols at dawn, suh!'

My friend Sean Higgins appropriately captures the spirit of my reply to the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, which has neither retracted last week's odious editorial or responded to my e-mail.

They underestimate me, as is their privilege. No one thought I'd actually drive 575 miles to the site where Bill Sparkman's body was found in Kentucky -- but I did. No one thought I'd bring Track-A-'Crat to a wedding in Pittsburgh -- but I did.

And if the editors of the Gazette think they'll never regret their idiocy . . . dear readers, hit the tip jar. Charleston, W. Va., is en route to Clay County, Ky., and I may be going back in a week or two.

BTW, Michelle Malkin's latest column mentions the Sparkman case.

If Davenport's analysis holds true, the US effort in Afghanistan may be saved

by Smitty

Kenneth G. Davenport has an interesting take on Nobel Committee's motives, emphasis mine:

But it is really more than just about Obama's willingness to talk. Rather, there is something more strategic involved: an attempt to restrict Obama's range of decisions in the critical reassessment of the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. According to Valle, the Nobel Committee reached its decision on the Obama award at their final meeting on October 5. It was thus no secret that the Obama Administration was in the midst of a full scale review of General Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 additional U.S. soldiers in an expansion of the U.S. mission. Nor was it a secret that Vice President Joe Biden and others in the Administration were openly lobbying for a change in U.S. strategy that would dramatically reduce the American footprint in Afghanistan in favor of a targeted "offshore" force that would be used for surgical strikes against terrorist targets. The Nobel Committee clearly also knows that in the wake of an all-out focus on health care reform, the Obama Administration has let public support for the Afghan war drift; the latest polling shows that less than half of America supports the war that Obama himself once called "necessary" for America's long-term security. The Norwegians know that Obama is wavering on Afghanistan, and that the Peace Prize could be an effective leverage point in convincing him to radically reduce – or even end – the U.S. war there.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee understands that awarding Obama the Peace Prize will appeal to the President's own image as a transformational figure, and will serve to heighten the already stratospheric confidence he has in his ability to alter the status quo ante. Obama's own belief in the power of his words is well known. Now, with the Nobel Prize in hand, he has a validation that Europe also sees him as The One. The net effect of this will put Obama in a tough position as he addresses America’s security concerns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and elsewhere. With little more than a press release, the Nobel Committee has achieved what Europe has been trying to do for a generation: it has handcuffed the American president with the imprimatur of "Peacemaker", narrowing the options for unilateral action in the process. For the peaceniks of Europe, awarding Obama the Nobel was a true masterstroke of preventive medicine.

All this is true, Kenneth, but the Obama brain does have another hemisphere beside the crypto-Marxist nitwit: the Chicago-style gangster. How many others have been tossed under the bus already? Does the Nobel Committee bethink itself a different case?

Below the Obama cranium is the suit. In the back of the suit is a slit. Into the slit goes the hand of the real decision makers. That's whose opinion is more important on Afghanistan.

Update: (2256)
The excellent Power Line has a related post that bears inclusion.

Professor Paul Rahe writes:

Next to no one has responded to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama with anything but disbelief, followed by embarrassed laughter and dismay.

There is, however, at least one exception to the rule -- Steven Clemons who directs the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation -- and his argument, such as it is, deserves, I think, attention. For, better than anything else that I have read, it echoes and fully articulates the presumption (and that is the appropriate word) underpinning the Obama endeavor as a whole.

That was just the intro. Rahe then posts Clemons's laughable statement, and then manages to maintain enough academic detachment to analyze it briefly.

Rule 5 Sunday

by Smitty

Rule 5 Sunday. That intellectual life preserver in a whacky world, where increasingly meaningless awards are hurled, discus-like, over the head of a shark, which, bemused and unimpressed, proceeds to munch the leg off of the stunned judge.

Ignore that.

Instead, focus on the beauty that can, like Helen, motivate necessary action.

• Boom Boom Boom brings the Sharon Tate. Bonus points for the trampoline usage. Rule 5 Sunday remains firm in its commitment to supporting Physics education.
• Three Beers Later includes Barbara Rhodes, as well as a Kirk Douglas/Henry Fonda bit from "There Was a Crooked Man". Then he features a certain Rotten Fringe Extremist who will be blowing up the book sales charts for some time to come. Still not done, he posts Juliana Moreira, before switching to relationship advice.
• At the Point of a Gun reports on the well-rounded artistic accomplishments of Carla Bruni, and offers Gerard Butler for feminine review.
• VodkaPundit, concerning Jacqueline Bisset:

  Two words: The Deep. First time we rented that movie (in Beta format!), I’m pretty sure I edged six months closer to puberty. And that was before she jumped in the water. By the time she got back out, I was a man.

  This invites the question: what are you now Stephen? No it doesn't. TMI.
• Honesty in Motion reports on the latest Italian news. Switching to Britain, he brings us Freema Agyeman.
• Ace of Spades has a couple of cheery cheerleaders.
• Morgan Freeberg seems to have a Rule 5 mailbox. His pairwise trip through the alphabet is 1/3 of the way there, and reaches Izabella and Jessica. If he has a follow-on kanji project, he could be at it a while. Which is not a bad problem to have. Then there is this interesting link to an image database of Rule 5 record cover photos from yesteryear.
• Yankee Phil covers that crucial topic: bacon.
• Left Coast Rebel tries to get all sneaky and use the Pamela Anderson ad on this blog as a Rule 5 post in its own right. Oh no no no no no no. You don't get by the referees quite that easily, hot rod. Uhhh...hold it a second.
• Fishersville Mike says "Anna Kournikova" and we say "yes".
• The Hyacinth Girl post Sean Connery and Steve McQueen. Spot on, ma'am.
• Dustbury manages to combine excellent Rule 5 sensibility and the relatively obscure, bringing us "Diane Lane". OK, she's only obscure because I'm paying insufficient attention.
• American Power points to, but does not include, some Sheryl Crow stuff at the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Douglas also reports on a new Jessica Simpson reality show, and brings a Bar Refaeli clip.
• Pirate's Cove features a Edward Runci study in red.
• The Classic Liberal wraps a lecture on ending the Federal Reserve around Kristen Bell, proof that even the driest topics can benefit from Rule 5. He chases this with Beyoncé on the topic of the unpopularity of capitalism.
• Troglopundit seems to imply that Sarah Palin's glare can cook bacon without harming other hotties wearing the bacon as a bikini. Advanced laser optical physiques, indeed. Switching from one fixation to another, he brings teh Megan Fox. He gets his kicks with Gina Carano and goes 'toonie with Marge Simpson. Overall, a hard working Rule 5 blogger, the Trog.
• In sports news, Rightofcourse features the LSU cheerleaders.
• The Camp of the Saints went Rule 5 in support of my Iowahawk art contest entry, which might as well have been a Bob Dole campaign poster, for all it was noticed *sniff*. But thanks for the support, Mr. Belvedere. TCotS also featured Claudia Cardinale, Sophia Loren meeting Jane Mansfield
• Jeffords reports: "Esquire named actress Kate Beckinsale the Sexiest Woman Alive. I will not put up much of an argument..." and then he puts up BHO, who is, indeed, not much of an argument.
• YHTBTTTGOTR seems to be rooting for the Tide.
• Nation of Cowards goes on a babes 'n' guns rampage.
• The WyBlog reports that Miley Cyrus is quitting Twitter. What rhymes with Twitter that we could say Twitter now resides within? Have to think about that one.
• Paco suggests Betty Hutton performing "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief".
• HotMES brings you Rachel Bilson, and you say "thank you".

That's your Rule 5 post. Please forward more tasteful updates to Smitty. Peace, out.

Update:The Indentured Servant Girl wonders if the Brigitte Bardot post didn't "make the cut". No, the sole point to draw from all this is that I wasn't aware of the post. The "line" is more or less drawn around the PG-13 area. The last conclusion anyone should draw from omission is negative feedback. When somebody sends links to stuff that isn't working for this roundup for content reasons, I'm quite good at letting them know why.