Nice career you had, Susan Roesgen,it's sure a shame what happened . . .

. . . you no-talent evil bitch.

(H/T: Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: The first commenter said, "Dude, that was harsh." Harsh, my ass. Ed Driscoll has video of the idiotic and unprofessional spaz act this loser pulled at the Chicago Tea Party, which needs to be shown to every TV news wannabe in college who takes Intro to Broadcasting.

Lesson One: How to F*** Up Your Career.

Let me explain something about "media bias." I have an opinion about that no-talent bitch, Susan Roesgen, but if I were assigned to write a news story about Her Evilness, that story would be straight-out Joe Friday: "Just the facts, ma'am."

The opinions I spew here on my own time are one thing. When I'm paid to report news, that's something else entirely. The stronger my opinion, the greater my professional obligation to report like Joe Friday.

But that's the printed word, OK? National TV news is different. And when it's live TV news . . . Look, here's the transcript:

SUSAN ROESGEN: (Reading some of the signs held by protesters) Uh, let's see... 'Drop the taxes,' 'Drop socialism.' OK. Let's see. You're here with your two-year-old and you're already in debt. Why are you here today, sir?
MAN: Because I hear a president say that he believed in what Lincoln stood for. Lincoln's primary thing was he believed that people had the right to liberty, and had the right...
ROESGEN: Sir, what does this have to do with taxes? What does this have to do with your taxes? Do you realize that you're eligible for a $400 credit...?
MAN: Let me finish my point. Lincoln, Lincoln believed that people had the right to share in the fruits of their own labor and that government should not take it. And we have clearly gotten to that point.
ROESGEN: Wait, wait... Did you know that the state of Lincoln gets $50 billion out of the stimulus? That's $50 billion for this state, sir.

That's not reporting, you dumb bitch. What do you think this is, The McLaughlin Group? Who died and made you Eleanor Freaking Clift? You're just a third-string talent in the Chicago bureau. When you are sent to do a live news report about a protest, it's not your job to get into arguments with the protesters.

I've covered all kinds of crackpot protests over the years, including one absurd protest for The Worst Cause In The World, animal rights. (When I get a petition from the Orangutang Caucus or a press release signed by a spotted owl, I'll be willing to consider the possibility that these creatures have "rights." Until then, STFU, you idiots.)

Get the story. I have wandered among the Marxists, the spokesmen for Hamas front groups, Code Pinkos, Maoists, NARAL, union goons -- you name any disgusting constituency of the Left, I've covered them. And it never once occurred to me that I should argue with them.

Give 'em enough rope, see? They don't know me from Adam's housecat. If I bother to introduce myself as a reporter, I'm just asking simple questions and taking notes. Let 'em talk and, the nuttier they are, the more you're nodding along:

"Mmmm. Yes, I see. And when did you discover this scientific fact about fire not melting steel?" . . . Right. Wow. I didn't know that. I guess the administration doesn't want people to know, huh?"

Just the facts, ma'am. Joe Friday. And the neutral, objective fact is that I wouldn't hire that wretched idiot Susan Roesgen to clean the toilet in my newsroom.

Barbara Boxer, expert on energy, science and . . blackness?

Ed Morrissey:

I just love it when white politicians set themselves up as arbiters of racial authenticity, especially when they try to scold minorities for drifting off the political reservation.

And now, the YouTube instant classic video:

Harry Alford, an American hero!

Instant Blog Classic: 'Wise Latina'(To The Tune of 'My Sharona')

Music by The Knack, Lyrics by Dan Collins:

When you gonna give it to me, give it to me?
It is just a matter of time, Latina?
Judicial philosophy, philosophy?
Or is it just a game in your mind, Latina?

Read the whole thing, you racist!

Michelle Malkin: Best book evah!

And not just because, on Page 1, she begins by giving a well-deserved punk-smacking to David Brooks.

Culture of Corruption: Obama And His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies -- buy two copies and give one to a liberal friend, just to annoy him -- is the most thorough, well-documented history of Democratic Party corruption since . . .

Hey, wait a minute. What's this on Page 291?

No author is an island. Robert Stacy McCain, fellow ink-stained wretch-turned blogger and co-author of the essential Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party, provided invaluable writerly advice and counsel (every bit of which I took except . . .

Read the whole thing. I'm not authorized to give away all of Michelle's secrets, but for a mere $35.50 $18.45 -- our special Amazon discount! -- you can learn the hidden truth!

Not only that, but if you'll hit the tip jar and come back to this post later today, I'll update with some fascinating exclusive background about Michelle and explore the Big Question: "Why does Allah hate me?"

Gay Motors and the Beefcake Bailout

Now that Obama has taken over GM, henceforth Chevrolet will be known as the Gaymobile:

For a local movie promotion a week ago aimed at gay buyers, General Motors' Chevrolet sponsored an online video on YouTube featuring the "Bumble Bee Boys in Briefs" -- a couple of buff "go-go boys" wearing only Speedo-type swimsuits with the letters CAMARO stitched across the behind. In the video, they are washing a Camaro. . . .
The video was produced to promote Chevrolet Gay Days at the Movies in Los Angeles, part of an ongoing outreach program to minority groups and the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender community. The movie was a screening of the new Transformers movie, chock full of GM vehicles including Bumblebee, a Camaro.

If you see a guy driving a Chevy . . . well, NTTAWWT.

UPDATE: I'm thinking Chevrolet needs a new slogan: "We're here! We're queer! We're driving Chevy!"

UPDATE II: In keeping with their LBGT/Obama agenda, General Motors today unveiled a new logo:

Big Money and the Culture of Death

This morning, I watched Michelle Malkin on Fox News talking about Obama's "science czar" John Holdren, advocate of "compulsory abortion" and "involuntary fertility control" to deal with a non-existent overpopulation crisis.

Where did Holdren get his wacky ideas? His Ecoscience co-author Paul Ehrlich was the author of a notorious 1967 book, The Population Bomb, which promoted the overpopulation hysteria.

But where did Ehrlich get his wacky ideas? That story -- and a lot more besides -- is told in an excellent 2001 book by historian Donald L. Critchlow, Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Goverment in Modern America.

The population control movement, which generated the anti-baby hysteria that Ehrlich and Holdren promoted in their books, was largely the brainchild of John D. Rockefeller III. Rockefeller funded much of the movement himself and through a number of family trusts and foundations, and he encouraged other foundations (Ford, Scaife, Carnegie) to do the same.

Rockefeller promoted the population control movement through many means, but just to give you an example, between 1959 and 1964 one organization alone, the Population Council, got more than $5 million from the Rockefellers, $8.4 million from the Ford Foundation and $2.1 million from Scaife. So that's $15 million in five years, back when a million dollars was a lot of money.

'Babies: Threat Or Menace?'
One of the things that the population control movement did was to promote their agenda through the press, and by subsidizing writers with grant money. From page 54 of Critchlow's book:

[T]o raise the public's consciousness about the threat of overpopulation . . . the population movement undertook a concerted public relations campaign through a steady stream of books, pamphlets, and magazine and newspaper articles. This campaign was aided by the involvement of key publishers and editors who were actively involved in the movement, including George Hecht, editor of Parents Magazine. The drumbeat around the population crisis reached crescendo by the early 1960s. Readers of popular magazines were faced with a barrage of articles warning of an impending population crisis . . . Women readers were inundated with articles like "Are We Overworking the Stork?" (Parents Magazine, 1961), "Why Americans Must Limit Their Families" (Redbook, 1963), "Intelligent Woman's Guide to the Population Explosion" (McCall's, February 1965), "Overpopulation: Threat to Survival" (Parents Magazine, 1967) and "Population Increase: A Grave Threat to Every American Family" (Parents Magazine, 1969).

The point, you see, is that there was an organized propaganda campaign, funded and directed by big money. One of the most active promoters of this agenda was Hugh Moore, a millionaire who was a contributor to Planned Parenthood and who later founded his own organization, the Population Crisis Committee. In fact, the title of Ehrlich's book, The Population Explosion, was borrowed from a pamphlet of the same name published by Moore in 1954. And Ehrlich's book was then promoted by the Sierra Club, which had its own wealthy donors.

'We're the Smart Ones'
Big money continues to fund the Culture of Death. In 1999, I was the only reporter in the room when Ted Turner gave a speech at a conference of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association:

Mr. Turner, founder of CNN and now the vice chairman of Time-Warner Inc., also suggested that world population could be reduced by the adoption of an international "one-child policy."...
The Atlanta-based billionaire and his wife, actress Jane Fonda, are active supporters of the United Nations Population Fund. In 1997, Mr. Turner pledged $1 billion to a new foundation to support U.N. efforts on population and the environment.
Though he fathered "five kids -- boom, boom, boom -- by the time I was 30," Mr. Turner said, he now believes overpopulation is a major problem and suggested people should "promise to have no more than two children."
Mr. Turner recalled a discussion many years ago with Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book "The Population Bomb" predicted that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s and '80s as a result of global overpopulation. Mr. Turner said he asked Mr. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne, what the ideal world population would be.
"They told me about 2 billion," Mr. Turner said. World population is now 5.9 billion, but the world could reduce its population to that ideal, Mr. Turner suggested. "We could do it in a very humane way," he said, "if everybody adopted a one-child policy for 100 years."....
"If you're only going to have 10 rules, I don't know if [prohibiting] adultery should be one of them." Speaking of himself as a member of "the progressive movement," Mr. Turner urged the NFPRHA audience to "give 'em hell" when seeking more government funds for population control."People who think like us may be in the minority, but we're the smart ones," he said, and as a result should be able to defeat opponents he called "a whole bunch of dummies."
Mr. Turner, whose net worth is more than $3.2 billion, got laughs with his responses during a question-and-answer session after his speech. . . .
Asked what he would say to Pope John Paul II, who opposes abortion and artificial contraception, Mr. Turner responded with an ethnic joke -- "Ever seen a Polish mine detector?" -- and then suggested the Pope should "get with it. Welcome to the 20th century."

People like Turner think they're "the smart ones," and love to recite environmental nonsense, global warming idiocies and pro-choice talking points as if these were indisputable facts. The neo-Malthusian agenda (which I discussed in "Forbidding To Marry" in April) is advanced by people who don't even realize they're advancing an agenda at all.

"It's science!" these people declare, dismissuing skeptics as "ignorant," when in fact the real ignorance is on their part -- environmentalists and pro-choicers often don't know the real history of their own movement. A half-century ago, in Up From Liberalism, William F. Buckley Jr. wrote:

In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators . . .

It's even more true than ever.

"Megan McCain -- and you can quote me -- is less attractive than Jamie Kirchick"

Yeah, I know Smitty's already taken a whack at this particular pinata, but it was the New Republic's Jamie Kirchick -- my favorite gay Jewish writer -- who conducted the Out magazine interview, and since she's kinfolk, I figure I deserve a few whacks of my own.

And, unlike Meghan, Jamie is attractive. This I state as a journalist describing an objective fact since, as a married father of six, my hetero bona fides are beyond reproach. (Ignore that legion of online amateur psychologists shouting "overcompensation!")

"Does it sound campy to say I love gay men?" says Meghan in typical fag-hag fashion, since this is the only way she has of getting affection from men.

What Meghan does not fully comprehend is the special contempt that exists within gay male culture for such desperate female hangers-on otherwise known as fish. Very simple questions, Meg:

• If they actually like women, why are they gay?
• What makes you think you are the exception to the rule?

Lesbian culture is more honest. Lesbians don't hesitate to identify men as the enemy. Some are more tolerant than others, but there is no analog in lesbian culture for the fag hag. You don't see straight guys "hanging out" with their lesbian friends. The straight guy who walks into a dyke bar is an unwelcome presence, and may be asked to leave.

Women hanging around the gay disco, however, is a very familar phenomenon. And the belief of some women that they have a special friendship with their gay male friends is a myth.

Let me disabuse you ladies of your naivete: A reasonably attractive young gay man has no problem getting with two or three guys a night. And that's if he's really picky. (Read And The Band Played On, by Randy Shilts.) So when some lonely, frustrated woman wants to hang around with gay guys because it's the only male companionship she can get, she is recognized for the truly pathetic loser she is.

Show of hands: Who thinks Meghan McCain has the slightest inkling of the things her gay "friends" say behind her back?

Uh, I'm guessing Jamie Kirchick didn't raise his hand. In this, as in everything else, Meghan is clueless. And it is her cluelessness, nearly as much as her bitchy desperation, that makes her so unattractive. Look at this:

“Homophobia is the last socially accepted prejudice,” McCain says, repeating it for emphasis.

It's not true. It's just a politically correct slogan, dependent on a dubious pseudoscientific term, "homophobia." Grant that there are genuinely intolerant people in the world, in what sense does opposition to a political agenda -- and her support for same-sex marriage is the chief topic of the interview -- constitute a "phobia," an irrational pathology?

And if homophobia (whatever that means) is so "socially acceptable," then why did Ann Coulter get raked over the coals for calling John Edwards a "faggot"? Coulter was actually making reference to a celebrity imbroglio involving the cast of Grey's Anatomy, and defended herself: "I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean."

Still, even though liberals have spent years calling Coulter a "tranny" -- which is "socially acceptable" as a putdown, because they're liberal and she's not -- even though there is zero evidence that she is actually hostile to homosexuals, merely by saying the word "faggot" out loud, she was deemed worthy of banishment from the CPAC main stage.

Yet Meghan thought her little slogan was so important she repeated it for emphasis, so that the actual meaning was clear: "Like me! Please like me!"

Desperation, see? She's like one of these ridiculous white liberals who parade around denouncing racism as if the act of denunciation were in itself proof of moral superiority -- and proving their moral superiority is the entire purpose of such exercises.

In the end, we can only imagine the ironic thoughts that Kirchick pondered after his interview with Megan. Here he is, denied the right to marry a man. And there is Megan, who has that right -- but not a man on earth is interested in marrying her.

What a waste, eh, Jamie?

Dr. Douglas, they look like fakies to me

Breanne Ashley's breasts, I mean. Given the size, even if she is only 21, the gravity-defying spherical quality is an absolute giveaway.

I've been neglecting the Professor, I suppose. Neglecting too much of everything recently, what with the IG story, e-mail inbox overload and so forth.

BTW, we're closing in on the 2-million hit mark and look poised to cross that threshold on Rule 5 Sunday -- appropriately enough. So now we're open to suggestions on how to celebrate this momentous occasion, in addition to the forthcoming soon-to-be classic, "How to Get Your Second Million Hits in Less Than Six Months."

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers. Although I always thought Professor Reynolds was more of a leg man (you should see the stems on Dr. Helen) if it's major rackage he wants, it's major rackage he'll get. The biggest Republican boob -- evah!

And since we're discussing McCains who love gay men (an unrequited love, in Cousin Meghan's case), next time you see somebody driving a Ford, you should ask them, "Why do hate gays so much?"

Franken's other Senate Judiciary appearance

by Smitty (h/t The Corner)

Kathryn Jean Lopez at the NRO Online links an SNL sketch transcript of the junior Senator from Minnesota's initial appearance in a Senate Judiciary Committee setting.
As a full-service blog, it is our pleasure to dig up the clip over on Hulu for those with an Attention Defici--I think I'll make some coffee.
At the time, Al Franken played Paul Simon (D-IL) and comes in at 5:00 to talk about a woman at Criminal Justice, and whether Thomas thought Franken had any chance with this famous "Sandy".

Can't figure out if the number of gasbags present in this sketch who are still cluttering public office is a bug or feature.
OK, enough of the Sotomayor spin: they're bugs.

Speaking of Stacy's cousin...

by Smitty

No sooner did Stacy start throwing out the M'n'Ms:

But why bring Meghan McCain into this?

...than, on cue at the Puffington Host:
Meghan McCain: "Joe the Plumber -- You Can Quote Me -- Is A Dumbass"
also starring, at the page top:
Meghan McCain: "I Love Gay Men"

Normally, an ad bimbo post isn't worth the effort, but Meghan writes them all by her own self.

Frum Treats Ace Like a Dirty Whore

OK, all I did was attend a cocktail party, but now -- as Justin Hawkins observes -- David Frum is imposing himself on Ace, an act of ideological date-rape, as it were.

The question is whether Ace was askin' for it, struttin' around in lipstick and tight jeans like a whore.

Oh, yeah. We know the story: Frum was just chillin' in his center-right Republican dorm room with a bit of herb, some cold malt liquor, watching ESPN with his moderate posse.

Knock, knock, knock -- "It's me, Ace." The sultry little minx wants to hang out with the homies, drinking a few of Frum's 40s. Starts doing the tease routine, talking sexy about "electability" and "pragmatism." Yadda yadda. Ba-da-bing. Et cetera.

So what if Conor got sloppy seconds after Ace passed out? Whose fault was that, huh?

Next morning, Ace runs off crying to the campus medical center claiming he said "no" (ah, but his eyes said "yes"), and before you can say "presumed innocent," there's a Take Back the Night candelight vigil with chants and posters and . . .

What? Too lurid, Ace? Am I "blaming the victim"? Is the trauma induced by your ordeal still a raw wound? Perhaps you'd prefer soothing poetry:

Ace and David,
Sittin' in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G

I could roll that way. (Outlaw!) But once I whip out my big thick analogy like this, I gotta go all the way.

I don't blame Frum for taking what he wants, seeing as how Ace was obviously so willing to give it up. The problem is this I'm-not-that-kind-of-girl victim act on Ace's part.

Like I said, I've got no problem with cocktail parties. That's just coalition politics, an obligatory ritual like the high school prom. Laura Ingraham and Mark Krikorian were there as chaperones, just in case things got out of hand. (Some conservatives have one too many glasses of that reserve pinot and start stumbling around, badmouthing NRA and Club For Growth like a whore.)

Oh, we all saw it coming. Signing that Coulter petition was like showing up for your date in a tube top and a mini-skirt, an unmistakable advertisement that you were ready for some action. Ace, you were like that stupid tramp in Colorado who thought she could just "fool around a little" with an NBA superstar and that Kobe Bryant would stop exactly where she said stop. A lesson learned the hard way, so to speak.

Now, Friedersdorf is accusing conservatives of trying to "purge" you, Ace. If that's what Hawkins or anyone else is up to, count me out.

I've had my bad moments, too, so I have empathy, like Sotomayor.

Ace, what I'm saying is that you made an error of judgment for which you are responsible, like that chubby freshman girl who arrives early at the Teke open-house party, starts right in on the tequila and doesn't stop until the pledges are lined up down the hall waiting to take their turns.

But why bring Meghan McCain into this?

My point is that if Ace is a dirty slut, he's our dirty slut. We don't blame Frum and Friedersdorf for wanting to do a three-way and then hand him off to David Brooks, David Letterman, David Gergen, David Brock, David Hasselhof, David Copperfield . . . but again, why bring Meghan McCain into this?

Ace knows what he is, and we respect what he is, insofar as he is at least honest enough to admit that he has these unfortunate tendencies to be "center-right," a weakness for "pragmatic" arguments about "electability."

Like a whore.

UPDATE: Speaking of which, who is this "Mindy" who shares her correspondence with Friedersdorf? The analysis Ace gives Mindy -- "The last 'good year' was the election of 2004" -- is solid, so far as it goes.

What it ignores is the original folly of making Philadelphia-on-the-Tigris the focal point of Republican electoral strategy. You can get away with that kind of blunder for a while, especially when the Democrats are content to nominate a guaranteed loser like John Kerry and rely on the strategic advice of Bob Shrum.

Karl Rove got his winning reputation too easily. The fundamental flaws in the policy/politics formula of Bushism were exposed just as soon as the Democrat grassroots used the Internet to organize a coup against their clueless leaders, installing Howard Dean at the DNC and putting Rahm Emanuel in charge of their congressional campaign.

However, the flaws of Bushism were there all along: The GOP cannot build an enduring majoritarian coalition on the basis of overseas adventures, nebulous domestic "triangulation" and a rhetoric of symbolic appeals to patriotism. If Bushism appeared to work for a while, that was mainly because Democratic leaders were out of touch with, and therefore incapable of effectively organizing, the grassroots resentment that the Kos/MoveOn axis saw as the natural fulcrum upon which to leverage a strategy of direct opposition (as opposed to an absurd DLC "Me-Too-ism") to the Bush agenda.

Never mind. t I don't want to discuss that now. What I want to do is to ask a question: Surely the "Mindy" who writes this is not Mindy Finn?

Clarify, Conor.

UPDATE II: Ace just e-mailed to say that "Mindy" is not Mindy Finn, so excuse my throwing that name out there. She just happened to be the only Republican named Mindy who came to mind. I'll await further information. This poison-pen stuff -- trashing an entire political movement in an e-mail exchange and then allowing the exchange to be published with only "Mindy" as identifying one half of the exchange -- is bad business.

An amazing fact

At 4 a.m. this morning, I noticed a visitor referred from Conservative Grapevine, Checking to see if CG blogger John Hawkins had linked me, I was disappointed. However, I could help but notice that John had a link to "Denise Milani lingerie pics."

OK, so who the heck is Denise Milani? Because I'm 49 and seldom watch TV, I'm all the time seeing names of "celebrities" I've never heard of, and naturally figure this must be one of those -- second-string TV actress who's dating an NBA star, or a pop singer with her own reality show, something like that.

Wrong. Denise Milani is a Czech-born pin-up model who is most famous for three things. Two of those things are kind of hard to ignore. But the third thing? She has never posed nude.

And now you know . . . the rest of the story. Good day!

Massachusetts: please nominate someone else in 2014

by Smitty

Senator John Kerry in the Puffington Host, "What Gov. Palin Forgot", emphasis mine:

Writing in this morning's Washington Post, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wrote, "many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges."
Unfortunately, her promise to roll up her sleeves and tackle serious issues is followed by a column that focuses on everything but the single grave challenge that forms the basis of all of our actions: the crisis of global climate change.
Yes, she manages to write about the climate change action in Congress without ever mentioning the reason we are doing this in the first place. It's like complaining about the cost of repairing a roof without factoring in the leaks destroying your home.
The global climate change crisis threatens our economy and our national security in profound ways.

Senator Kerry, one fails to see the justification for any Congress ever passing legislation that Does Not Exist.

Around the world, the effects are already being felt.

Maybe, in a Chris Matthews leg-tingle sort of way. But the jury is not quite taking that Sotomayor summary burial, as if Global Warming was the Ricci case: (h/t Tigerhawk)

"There appears to be something fundamentally wrong with the way temperature and carbon are linked in climate models."

'Mommy Alone Time'

Politics? Exclusive news? Yeah, but then you see something like this and say, "Awwwww!"

Every day, as I go about my daily activities, I notice little things about my girls. I notice the things that they like and enjoy, I notice the things that they take pleasure in doing…I notice that they each crave spending time with just me…to get some "Mommy Alone Time." (That is what my seven year-old calls it.) And, it is important to me to give them that time…time dedicated to listening to the things they want to tell me, time to instruct individually, time to be a Mother to each one.

That particular blog, Life Worth the Living, is by a Tennessee family with three young children. I was trying to clean out the overflow in my e-mail inbox -- man, do I need an intern! -- and just happened to come across a request for a Rule 1 clarification.

It's late, I'm tired, and can barely focus my eyes, but . . . but there are no accidents. So, I'll link the magic Little Miss Attila, and suggest that my new blogger friends e-mail Smitty, who can explain everything. Also, I'm thinking Pundette might want to throw some traffic around today.

UPDATE: Why stop there? Michelle Malkin's a mommy, too. I betcha The Boss might want to throw some linkage at "Mommy Alone Time." And I can think of at least one blogger in Middle Tennessee . . .

NBC Reliable Source: Ricky Hollywood!

Yes, when respectable mainstream journalists like NBC's Ann Curry want the authoritative word on Republican Party politics, they know who to call: High-school dropout, unemployed has-been hockey jock, the world's most famous deadbeat dad . . .

MEET RICKY HOLLYWOOD!

OK, so who's the bigger laughingstock: Curry or her source? Talk about someone whose 15 minutes of fame should have ended 16 minutes ago . . .

And can anyone now doubt that Pat Buchanan had the right answer to this problem?

(Hat-tip: Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Troglopundit has the perfect match for NBC's new political correspondent. And if Meghan McCain and Mr. Hollywood don't work out, his next conquest . . .

IG-Gate: Whispers of hints of shadows

Ever been in one of those situations where you don't know exactly what's going on, but somebody's hinting that something's going on?

Read every word of this.

The subject was raised in an indirect sort of way. I just jotted down some notes and didn't think too much about it. But my drive home from D.C. is more than an hour long, and as I mentally rehearsed what I'd seen and heard . . . Well, what was that about?

Maybe it was nothing. But maybe it was something. I'm trying to stay calm. Don't try to predict the future.

Shoe leather is an amazing journalistic resource. This is the kind of reporting that gets the blood pumping. Because of unexpected complications in my itinerary, I didn't park my car at Union Station until 4:09 p.m., but after I got through on the Hill, I was whistling a happy tune while I walked back down First Avenue, re-entering the marble lobby of the station at 6:37 p.m., as my meticulous notes show.

From the start: Tourists were still standing in line for a chance to get into the Sotomayor hearings, and I'd left my cell phone in the car. "Deep Cleavage" hadn't returned my calls, and nobody was expecting my arrival on the Hill. It was pleasantly sunny but not hot, and the biggest hassle I had was having to empty my pockets and remove my belt -- the buckle sets off the metal detectors -- to enter the different congressional office buildings.

"The Other McCain," said the receptionist, becoming accustomed to my unannounced arrivals. X is on vacation. Hmmm. What about X's Deputy, Y? Not in. Well, how about Z?

I'm sitting on the sofa and, on the lobby TV, Lindsay Graham is applying a flamethrower to Sotomayor, trying to produce that "meltdown" he'd previously suggested was so unlikely. Get 'em, Goober! I'm almost willing to take back some of those homophobic slurs . . .

Good news! The receptionist says that Z will be there momentarily. Z is "Deep Cleavage." We had never previously met but are already becoming . . . eh, bosom buddies. Z arrives and, as we make our way down the elevator to the basement cafeteria, this unexpected subject arises.

It must have been important, otherwise I wouldn't have a full page of notes about it. But it wasn't what I came to ask about. Deep Cleavage raises the subject and discusses it at some length before I even get a chance to start asking questions.

At the time, however, it didn't register. We were both in somewhat of a hurry. I had other people to see, and Deep Cleavage had a 5 o'clock conference call. It seemed like we talked for 45 minutes but since I didn't even go through the metal detectors until 4:25 p.m. -- meticulous notes, you see -- it couldn't have been that long.

Au revoir, Deep Cleavage, and off I go. Another office, another TV screen with Sotomayor hearings. The person I came to see is not in, but the deputy is available. OK. Actually, much better than OK. Introduction to a staffer who is eager (!) to help. All the charm I can muster is employed in a quick chat in the hallway and I take my leave with a courtly bow. This could become a very important source.

Quickly cutting across the Capitol grounds toward Independence Avenue. The woman walking across from the other side of the avenue is talking on a cell phone, but looks up. "Excuse me, ma'am, but which one is [name of office building]?" She points to the building.

When I get there, neither the communication director nor the press secretary is in the office. The receptionist -- actually, "staff assistant" is her title -- isn't exactly eager to help. It's past 5:30 now, she's running out the clock, and she doesn't know me from Adam's housecat.

Ah, but there is more than one way to skin Adam's housecat and, with the help of directions from an older gentleman, I'm on my way through an underground tunnel to another office building.

In the tunnel, I encounter a cluster of young aides. Obviously, Republicans. The girls are too pretty to be Democrats. Turns out they're Georgians and blonde Shannon, who just finished her junior year at UGA, went to Lassiter High. Ah, once dated a girl from Lassiter, and another one at Sprayberry, but that redhead from North Cobb -- her backyard was the 10th tee at the country club and . . .

The Georgians think I'm joking (I'm not) and they razz me when I start humming the University of Alabama fight song. This is fine amusement as we're walking through the tunnel.

Reaching my destination, I connect with my source of last resort. We're talking in the office vestibule when the Congressman, his wife and children pass through. My source doesn't want to trouble the boss, but I know the magic.

"Congressman!" And immediately I'm shaking hands and schmoozing it up, making sure to praise the excellent services peformed by the congressman's staffer, my source.

The congressman and family exit and, as soon as the door closes behind them, I high-five my source. That, my friend, is how it's done: Impose yourself. They're public servants, right? Well, I'm the freaking public.

Explain to the source who it is that I need to get direct contact with. We briefly discuss -- of all people -- Conor Friedersdorf, whose satire of my methods was both funny and accurate. If only I'd remembered to bring my pink camera . . .

Assured that I'll be contacted by the person I need to talk to, I'm ready for the return trip. I ride down the elevator with a recently-elected Democratic member of Congress. I cut back across the Capitol grounds and a few minutes later, as I cross the intersection of First and C, I'm jazz-whistling "Georgia On My Mind." The policeman on the corner says, "That's something you don't see anymore -- people whistling while they walk."

No, you sure don't, I answer. What I don't say is that you also don't see reporters take their leave with a courtly bow. A sense of history -- an evocative name -- now occupies my mind, and I find myself switching the tune to "Shenandoah" as I cross past the Columbus monument toward Union Station. In a few days, there will be a major deadline, but this is far from my thoughts.

I'm going to beat you today -- and didn't I?

A 150-mile round-trip drive, 2 hours and 28 minutes on the Hill, and I've got notes for my next article, as well as a quick blog post at AmSpec, plus promises of connections to more sources in coming days. No sir, you can't beat shoe leather, and it's good for the soul.

Quick shout-out to Obi's Sister, Dan Collins, The Rhetorican and WWU-AM/Camp of the Saints, and this from Jimmie Bise:

So, keep the faith, folks. We may well get that accountability and transparency Barack Obama promised us yet, no matter how hard he fights to break that promise.

Ah, Jimmie, my boy! When will you be back in DC? Check your schedule for Friday. What tales I have to tell, and what new friends you must meet. Y'all be sure and hit the tip jar -- another courtly bow, and good-night!

Unions: Curiously Strong

by Smitty

Jennifer Rubin has an excellent PJTV clip on the distorting power of Unions.

Standard disclaimer: Unions had their historical time and place. A while ago. However, as Nietzsche put it:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

In this context, it means that the Free Employee Choice Act/Legislation (FECAL), has become something against which that famous über-Union, "We the People", had darn well better orgnanize. The WTF Card Check web site can help you understand the unbridled suckage that will result from passing this turd.
And while we're on the topic of organizing, I do hope that you're planning on joining a principled, pro-Consitutional demonstration happening in under two months.

The Joy of Plastic Surgery

Maria Geronazzo was once an attractive, normal-looking human being. Then she decided to become a porn star and get plastic surgery. Unfortunately, becoming a porn star was actually the better of these two decisions.

You may say, "That's not so bad." But wait . . .

"Yeah," you say, "I kind of see what you're talking about now." But wait . . .

At this point, I would suggest that her career might be enhanced if she wore a paper bag on her head and billed herself as "The Unknown Porn Star."

Rod Dreher Does Porn

OK, maybe that headline is misleading, but if it made you click the link, you should read Rod's column.

Despite all my disagreements with and criticism of Dreher, the problem of pornography is real. And it's spectacular.

Groan. I've got to stop using that joke so often. But I've been joking about sex since before I could spell "sex." Amidst all the tragedies (what heartbreaking stories a reporter hears) I try to keep my mind on the farce. Part of the problem is that people lack the perspective -- the objectivity about the absurdity of our sex-obsessed culture -- to admit how ridiculous their own desires really are.

My office TV won't get CNN or Fox News, so it's usually tuned to MSNBC. Sunday evening, they aired a couple of hours of re-runs of Chris Hansen's To Catch A Predator series and there was that tragedy/comedy reaction I always have to those shows.

"What were you thinking?" Hansen asks, after reciting some pathetic chat-room transcript where a 50-year-old teacher or clergyman was making ridiculous sex-talk with a 13-year-old "boy" or "girl" who was (of course) an undercover investigator. The perp shows up at the house with a pocketful of condoms and ruins his own life. Felony rap. Sex-offender registry. Etc.

How stupid do you have to be to think that a 13-year-old is going to go into a chat-room and arrange a rendezvous with a middle-aged man? Putting aside the moral repugnance, try to think about the vast chasm between the perv's fantasy and the reality of actual teenagers. (And leave the Jeff Goldblum-Tania Raymonde romance out of this.)

See? There I go again with the wisecracks. At any rate, read Rod Dreher's column. Seriously.

IG-Gate: Chugging Along

My last full-blown article about IG-Gate for The American Spectator was published June 25. Since then, I've updated the story several times at AmSpecBlog, NTCNews, and the Hot Air Green Room. So last week, when I suggested another article -- "The Little Scandal That Could," published today -- I didn't really think about how much news had occurred in the past three weeks, as for instance in the case of Amtrak IG Fred Wiederhold:

On June 18, Amtrak IG Fred Wiederhold submitted a 94-page report, prepared at his request by an outside law firm, showing that the federally subsidized passenger rail service had, as Grassley said, "systematically violated the letter and spirit of the Inspector General Act." Immediately after the Amtrak board meeting where he presented that report, Wiederhold submitted notice that he would retire.
Those familiar with the congressional investigation say Wiederhold has denied being forced out at Amtrak -- personal considerations were also involved in his decision -- but the report he submitted June 18 details a pattern of obstruction by Amtrak's law department.
This department is the bailiwick of Amtrak vice president and general counsel Eleanor "Eldie" Acheson, who just happens to be a longtime friend (and Wellesley College roommate) of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Acheson's deputy general counsel, Jonathan Meyer, joined Amtrak after spending six years as a top Senate aide to Joe Biden, who has long proclaimed himself as Amtrak's No. 1 advocate in Washington and who personally announced the $1.3 billion in "stimulus" funds for Amtrak.
Led by the well-connected Acheson and Meyer, Amtrak's law department tried to require the IG's office to get prior approval before communicating with Congress and instituted a policy where documents subpoenaed by the IG's office were first reviewed and occasionally redacted by Amtrak management.
None of this squares with the law and Grassley, the congressional patron saint of inspectors general, wrote in a letter to Amtrak chairman Thomas Carper that, in the wake of Wiederhold's retirement, IG staffers were "fearful of retaliation" if they spoke to congressional investigators. The seriousness of these charges prompted Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to join with the committee's ranking Republican, California Rep. Darrell Issa, in announcing an official investigation, parallel to the probe led by Grassley's team in the Senate. . . .

You can (and certainly should) read the whole thing, but just consider all that has been reported about the Amtrak case in the past three weeks. (USA Today is just now catching up to this scandal train.) Grassley's office published the 94-page report, detailing the pattern of obstruction by Acheson's department, disclosed the "retaliation" fears of IG staffers, the Towns-Issa inquiry was announced -- and that's just the stuff I can actually report about one of the IG cases.

There are various interesting off-the-record tips that I'm still trying to confirm, and there are more developments expected in coming days that I can't report yet. (Rule One: Never burn your sources.) Meanwhile, the Walpin case keeps simmering, with the stonewalling by AmeriCorps officials and other interesting developments.

There is lots of news here. If it weren't for Michelle Malkin, The Washington Examiner's Byron York, The Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe -- dig this document dump! -- Youth Today's Nancy Lewis and the Sacramento Bee, I couldn't keep up myself.

The source I call "Deep Cleavage"* didn't return phone calls yesterday. and there are a couple of big tips I need to follow up on, so I'm headed to Capitol Hill again today. Since I'm not one of those $100K-a-year bloggers (I'm starting to think they're a myth, like unicorns and sober Kennedys) please hit the tip jar to help fund this latest shoe-leather trip.

*NOTE: "Deep Cleavage" is a mnemonic device, not a description. It's also the kind of lame pun ("Big tips" = "Deep Cleavage") that appeals to my inner eight-grader. Whether or not this involves a "D" . . . hey, never burn your sources. But these tips are real and they're spectacular.

UPDATE: OK, I'm running behind schedule this morning, but the Spectator story is already linked at Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Red State, Sister Toldjah, Around the Sphere, Urbin Report, And So It Goes In Shreveport, and Memeorandum. Please pay attention to this very intelligent comment from Moe Lane:

So, we’ll see.

For less intelligent people, I recommend a certain tasty beverage known as STFU.

UPDATE 11:20 p.m.: Oh, boy. Chris Dodd? Just a hint from the Hill, but . . . oh, boy.

Memo to Judith Warner

"[Sarah Palin] is the 21st-century face of the backlash against women’s progress. . . . The hatred of women . . . is still alive and well in our society, and when directed at well-educated women, it’s socially acceptable, too."
-- Judith Warner

If Sarah Palin is "the 21st-century face" of anything, at least it's a pretty face, eh?

People who like Sarah Palin don't hate women. But everybody hates whiny bitches like you.

Now, get me a cup of coffee, hon. Cream only.

(Hat-tips: Little Miss Attila and Darleen Click.)

In which I praise Glenn Greenwald

Mark this moment, friends, but Glenn Greenwald's chronicle of how panicky talk of financial "meltdown" led to the TARP bailout that benefitted Goldman Sachs -- well, it's a very valuable aggregation.

This is one of those left-right libertarian populist convergences. The Goldman Sachs bailout infuriates Greenwald because he hates greedy capitalists; it infuriates me because it shows how big government rigs the game, picking winners and losers.

I've got nothing against capitalism, but the buddy-buddy cronyism where Congress, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve decide which companies are "too big to fail," and cuts special deals for politically-connect companies at taxpayer expense -- that's not capitalism, it's Wesley Mouch from Atlas Shrugged.

Long before we had a Federal Reserve, the U.S. economy periodically experienced "panics" where markets collapsed and banks failed. The business cycle of boom and bust is no mystery, and last year's meltdown was just a repetition of a familiar historical pattern. Why, then, the hysteria that led to the recent mania for bailouts and "stimulus"?

So when the government engages in extraordinary interventions, and a few months later politically-connected Goldman Sachs announces record profits, I'm just as pissed off as Glenn Greenwald or any other lefty. It's the government intervention in the market, and not capitalist "greed," that is the object of my ire.

Je suis un bloggeur capitaliste! I'm in it for the money, and the bankers at Goldman Sachs are in it for the money, too. But my economic hardship -- hey, I know all about risky investments -- doesn't get me so much as a teeny little earmark from Chuck Schumer.

American taxpayers have been the victims of a scam. Unemployment is heading toward 10% while Goldman Sachs executives reap huge bonuses, I'm with Cody Willard: Prosecute the thieving jackals. And while we're at it, how about we prosecute Schumer and Chris Dodd and Barney Frank and maybe a couple of Cabinet-level officials, just for the spite of it.

Ben Bernanke! Hank Paulson! Neel Kashkari! Tim Geithner! Let's put 'em all in orange jumpsuits and perp-walk them straight to Leavenworth.

Sending Goldman Sach executives, a half-dozen members of Congress and a few senior administration officials to federal prison won't necessarily do anything to revive the economy, but won't we all feel a helluva lot better knowing the idiots who got us into this mess are being pimped out in Cellblock C for a carton of Newports?

That's not the kind of free-market transaction they teach in MBA programs, but maybe it should be.

The Annals of the Telprompter XXIX

by Smitty (h/t Drudge)

1. Samson had his hair. King David, his sling. And Barack Obama, his teleprompter.
2. And it came to pass, on the 13th day of July of that very odd year for all in the land, 2009, that the teleprompter, gravid with the weighty words of The One,
3. Did gravity-check itself while he was indeed mid-sentence, giving birth to a tinkling mess of tiny teleprompters, too young and innocent in His sight to remember The Words that had just been scrolling across their shiny little parts.
4. “Oh, goodness,” a startled President Obama said. “Sorry about that, guys.”
5. He then proceeded on with his remarks, “To pull our economy back from the brink, including the largest and most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation's history…”
6. For the rest of the speech the president relied on the one remaining teleprompter, to his right, and notes on his podium to finish his speech.
7. Shards of glass remained near the president’s feet for the duration of his speech.
8. And the chief sycophant Gibbs did hastily prepare remarks to the effect that this was a joyous event, that the little teleprompters would be nurtured into a new clutch of glorious teleprompters,
9. and that this event was in no way a sign of Divine disfavor, not the antithesis of a Dove descending, and it was at most an act of overt ill will plotted by Rush Limbaugh, or Karl Rove, or even pro-Cheney elements remaining embedded at the CIA.
10. Janet Napolitano immediately suspected a deranged Iraq war veteran running amok with a hex wrench of having perpetrated an act of overt insurrection.
11. Rahm Emmanuel, while unwilling to dignify the situation with the label 'crisis', was also unwilling to let the fragments go to waste, figuring to score a few sheckles each for keychains and accessories, even as much as a pair of earrings.
12. But the people of the land knew the symbolic importance of the teleprompter, how that its anguished self-sacrifice was a plea for rebirth, as a nation cried out for release from the worst outburst of Ugly Bar Charts and Heinous Line Graphs since Ross Perot ran for POTUS in 1992.

Pat Buchanan's Very Excellent Idea

Via Hot Air:

The problem with Pat's approach is that it's far more humane than this punk deserves. As I've said before, the big mystery to me is why Levi Johnston's horribly mutilated corpse hasn't been fed to a pack of wolves.

Complete Moral Authority! (BUMPED)

I'm watching Sen. Amy Klobuchar singing paeans to the authentic experience of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. One notes that liberals never seemed particularly impressed with the authenticity of the World War II experience of, inter alia, Strom Thurmond or Joe McCarthy.

Authentic experience only matters when it leads someone to endorse the regnant liberal consensus.

UPDATE 6:50: Never has a blogger been named with less irony than Instaputz, which gives me "Quote of the Day" status, links a 2002 Atrios post quoting League of the South founder Michael Hill and then misattributes Hill's quote to me, all of which is cited as proof that I am "an unrepentant white supremacist."

As to the matter of whether defending Trent Lott makes Michell Hill a "white supremacist" (unrepentant or otherwise) I'm content to let Hill speak for himself. The related question of Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurt School and cultural Marxism is something else entirely. Instputz apparently believes that his own confusion justifies dragging me into a seven-year-old controversy in which I was not a participant, so that he can accuse me of being "unrepentant" of an ideology I never espoused.

What infuriates me is that idiots who can't even get their facts straight, who play mix-and-match quotes in the process of assembling their "Ransom Note" smears, nevertheless consider themselves so much my moral superior as to authoritatively condemn me based on their own ignorant misconceptions, and then act astonished that others don't do the same.

FWIW, in referencing Klobuchar's paeans to Sotomayor, I chose the examples of Thurmond and McCarthy -- prominent figures in the liberal demonology -- specifically to highlight how liberals use "heroic" narratives to justify their own allies, as if a heroic biography proves political virtue. At age 38, Thurmond volunteered with the 82nd Airborne and participated in the Normandy invasion, yet none of the liberals who enthusiastically praised the Vietnam service of John Kerry ever counted Thurmond's service as evidence of virtue. Perhaps if Strom had thrown away his medals . . .

By what weird manner of Rorshach association this reference caused Instaputz to invoke Michael Hill and Trent Lott, I can only speculate. But given the universe of wild-assed things I've actually said -- hey, I'm a four-time Malkin Award nominee! -- this misguided attempt to indict me for something I never said shows the bizarre lengths to which liberals will go in their permanent campaign to convince themselves of their own moral superiority.

UPDATE: Linked by that unrepentant green supremacist, Instapundit. Y'know, I feel kind of guilty not jumping on board the green-for-Iranian-democracy blog bandwagon. But my failure to color coordinate my blog doesn't mean I hate either Iranians or democracy. It shouldn't be necessary to say that, but silence sometimes leads to bizarre interpretations, so I figure I'll get ahead of any rumors accusing me of fearmongering the Persian Menace.

Also, while I'm at it, I'm OK with women wearing trousers, but am willing to extend multicultural tolerance to Sudanese who feel otherwise. However, this should not be interpreted as an endorsement of flogging.

When did it get so complicated to be a bien-pensant?

OK, Conor, that was funny

As satire, "my" advice on methods of advanced blogwhoring is devastatingly accurate. However, you forgot the part about telling the bartender to put everything on Matt Welch's tab.

'The Rule 5 Community'?

In celebrating our Sunday babe-blogging ritual, Classical Liberal coins that phrase.

"Community" has a certain flavor of identity politics, suggestive of protest marches and the mau-mau routine, mindless chants led by some demagogic huckster with a bullhorn who insists on being addressed as The Reverend: "No Justice, No Peace!"

Are the Rev. Smitty and I "community organizers"? Do we need some slogans or chants? Our own Judge Sotomayor, to represent the "diversity" of the babe-blogging community?

Or, like the "issues" raised by the demagogic hucksters, is this all merely a shameless pretext to post a photo of Jeff Goldblum's 21-year-old girlfriend, Tania Raymonde?

NTTAWWT.

UPDATE: A card-carrying member of the Rule 5 community, Donald Douglas notes that the "Classy Mommy" blog gets its own New York Times feature based on "60,000 unique visitors every month."

Considering my monthly SiteMeter total hasn't gone below 115,000 since January, I ought to feel outraged. But what about Ace of Spades, whose monthly SiteMeter number is usually about 2 million? Where's the New York Times feature about the hobo-hating Ewok and his merry band of morons?

Nevertheless, despite my resentment at this injustice, I'll offer some useful advice to the Classy Mommy bloggers: Change the name to "Classy Mommy Nude."

You don't actually have to provide nudity. It's just what they call "search engine maximization." Traffic is traffic. Hits is hits. Which is why I'm thinking of changing my blog name to "Lindsay Lohan Topless." Also, dibs on "Selena Gomez Jailbait."

How to Blog?

I'd love to be asked that question, but instead they asked Felix Salmon of Reuters:

Blogs are a conversation. Remember that. They’re not a sermon, they’re not a news article, they’re much closer to a discussion in the pub, or sometimes a graduate seminar. They can be funny, or serious, or angry; they can be two words or 20,000 words long; they can be pretty much whatever you want them to be, including heavily reported. But they’re distinguished by having voice, which is one necessary part of a conversation.

Hmmm. I'm tempted to react to that, but then there's this:

Of course, having a good blog can get you hired, too: there are two sides to that coin, and right now the market in good bloggers is pretty hot, and the number of bloggers making six-figure incomes has never been higher.

Donald Douglas goes apeshit on that one:

I can't imagine anyone making $100,000 a year blogging . . . I want some names! Let's hear 'em: Who's making 100k?

What intrigues me more than the $100K number is Salmon's bland assertion that "having a good blog can get you hired" and that "the market in good bloggers is pretty hot," which I'm tempted to translate as: "Your blog sucks, otherwise somebody would be hiring you to do it."

Salmon, however, wrote his notes on blogging for the South Asian Journalists Association, and they are probably not perfectly applicable to the conservative blogosphere. I know conservatives who are getting paid to do political blogging of one form or another. But they aren't being paid for "voice." They're doing fee-for-service work, delivering an online product rather than personality.

'New Ideas' and Old Mistakes
Adding a personal perspective without becoming entirely personal, conservatives face a demand-side problem in the current blog market. The people who might have the wherewithal to provide $100K incomes for bloggers don't seem particularly interested in regular conservatism -- that is, conservatism of the sort that the average Republican voter wants.

Instead, the money people want "new ideas" from kids like The New Establismentarians or perhaps even, as Professor Douglas notes, Scott Payne's "Twenty-First Century Conservatism," which looks very much like a formula for re-making the GOP in the image of Susan Collins -- a conservatism that NARAL, AFSCME and the Sierra Club could love.

We see here a disconnect, a manifestation of the same problem that the Culture 11 disaster exemplified. Steve Forbes (and other investors whose identity we do not know) correctly believed that conservatism needed "something new," but they didn't have the slightest clue what that something should be. So they hired David Kuo and got Conor Friedersdorf and "The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage."

Mercifully, the investors had the good sense to pull the plug before Culture 11 could give us "The Conservative Case for Cap-and-Trade," "The Conservative Case for Keynesianism," "The Conservative Case for Infanticide" . . .

Steve Forbes has been a free-marketeer his entire life, and yet where was the free-market voice at Culture 11? Where was there anything remotely like the cheerful Reaganesque sensibility -- "Hope, Growth and Opportunity," to borrow Forbes' 1996 presidential campaign slogan?

Why is it that whenever someone like Steve Forbes gets the urge to give somebody a wad of money to generate "new conservative ideas," the money never ends up in the hands of actual conservatives? It's like watching a cable channel whose programming consists entirely of reruns of the David Brooks biopic: The Republicans Who Really Matter.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat
Immediately after the election, I warned against exactly the problems that are now affecting the conservative movement. Defeat inevitably induces doubt, and when the GOP gets its ass kicked, the experience characteristically induces in some Republicans a desire to emulate the liberal victors -- ergo, "new ideas."

In "You Did Not Lose," I argued against the tendency to see election results as an ideological referendum, a rejection not only of conservatism as an idea, but of conservatives as people. In "Don't Overthink It," I argued against the tendency to make an electoral debacle an occasion for the sort of intellectual navel-gazing which predictably leads some to conclude that Republicans could win if only they were more like Democrats.

The reason I warned against these tendencies was because I'd seen them displayed after the Bob Dole debacle in 1996, when both David Brooks in The Weekly Standard and Christopher Caldwell in The Atlantic Monthly launched vicious attacks on the red-state conservative grassroots.

My warnings evidently went unnoticed by anyone important, for once again we see the same gormless quest for "new ideas" we saw 12 years ago, a quest that produced George W. Bush and "compassionate conservatism" and -- eventually -- brought us full circle, right back to Square One. Except that this Square One is not 1997 (when at least the GOP still held its congressional majority) but more like 1965, 1977 or 1993, when the liberal Colossus bestrode the world triumphant, scornful of any restraint.

What the Official Conservative Movement really needs now, as in the wake of those previous electoral catastrophes, is not "new ideas," but rather courage and confidence in some very old ideas -- cf., "How to Think About Liberalism (If You Must)."

However, because my blog sucks, nobody's offering to pay me $100K to promote those ideas, so please hit the tip jar.

The United States of Goldman Sachs

"They exist, and others don't, and taxpayers made it possible."
-- anonymous "industry consultant," quoted by the New York Times, reporting that Goldman Sachs is expected to post record profits Tuesday, nine months after getting $12.9 billion in last fall's bailout

"The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
-- Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

Department of Excellent Questions

by Smitty

Pudge has some simple, yet interesting, questions for Sonia.

But I'd also ask what she thought of President Obama's judicial philosophy, as expressed in Audacity of Hope. In that book, then-Senator Obama criticized "strict constructionism" and its adherents. He wrote:

Some, like Justice Scalia, conclude that the Founding Fathers will tell us all that we need to know, and that if we strictly obey the rules they've laid out -- for example, that the only rights protected in the Constitution are those that are written in plain English as understood by those who wrote them -- then democracy is respected, and fairness is achieved.

After debunking this assertion, Pudge continues:

Obama notes correctly that Breyer is, in essence, a consequentialist ("take the practical outcomes of a decision into account", even if they violate the letter and intent of the law), but it gets worse than merely agreeing with Breyer (which is bad enough). He then writes:

The historical record supports such a theory. After all, if there was one impulse that was shared by all the Founders, it was rejection of all forms of absolute authority, whether the king, the theocrat, the general, the oligarch, the dictator, the majority, or anyone else who claims to make choices for us. But it's not just absolute power that the Founders sought to guard against. Implicit in its structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology, or theology, or ism ... any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.

Coming back to Pudge and Sonia, emphasis mine:

But to bring it back to Sotomayor and her hearings, I'd ask her if she agrees that some notion of a historical rejection of absolute truth or authority of any kind -- explicitly including that of the Constitution itself -- justifies a Justice ignoring what the Constitution actually says in favor of pushing for certain higher "purposes" or preferred "consequences."

'Ignoring' might be a heavy word choice here. Clearly, in altering the fundamentally libertarian course of the Constitution towards a Progressive, utopian course, you can't just turn the ship on a dime. Or course you are not so crass as to 'ignore' the Constitution.

• You have to shame the Constitution as a tool of white, European male oppression. Apologize early, apologize often. The less historically founded, the better.
  
• You have to obscure the timelessness of moral hazards. These had been substantially checked by the three-branch/three-level design of the Constitution. Focus on the shininess of new technology. New people require new thinking. The very age and stability of the Constitution are a bug, not a feature. The fact that it has not already been scuttled, far from indicating a substantially reasonable approach (modulo slavery) instead mean that Progress has more work to do. Trust instead the Latina who is wise.
  
• You have to support leaders who are ready to blow Article Five right off.
• You have to be patient. The cranks who adhere to the Constitution will die slowly enough. It took Moses two generations to prepare the Israelites to enter the promised land. It may take as many as ten to prepare Americans for re-entry into a symbolic Egypt.
• You have to own the media. Get them to lie for you, early, often, systematically. Provide a scapegoat (e.g. a Sarah Palin) figure for them on whom to pour the bile with which they'd love to decorate you.
• You have to have tools like Affirmative Action that claim to promote fairness while, over time, increasingly achieving opposite results. There is sweetness in perversion.
  

So, it's all good. The demolition of all that was good about America can be accomplished.
Sonia is a sufficiently skilled sophist to appreciate the humor in Pudge's question. She may not like him exposing the project in quite so succinct a question. But subverting his mind might make a fine side project for her, along the way to wrecking the Constitution itself. But slowly, with much ornate phraseology.

Rule 5 Sunday

by Smitty

Welcome to Rule 5 Sunday, a pleasant roundup of loveliness from all over the tubey-clouds.

• Now, when when you hear the words "fiction" and "science", your first association might by "Al Gore". Back in the day, though, we did have the likes of Erin Gray. Good times.
• The Daley Gator has some YouTube content with Bar Refaeli that is probably NSFW, to judge by the cheeky still. I can honestly say I havne't followed the link, in the name of preserving my remaining three shreds of my credibility. Two.
• The Classical Liberal classically blended flags with a liberal dose of bikini. The Parthian shot alludes to the CSA Battle Flag. Now, what could that choice possibly mean? Bikini? Coded message? I question the timing! Then he posts an Ali Larter review on Saturday. I fear he is taking over the Stacy-McCain-o-sphere.
• The Patriot Room, always willing to Go Where Lesser Men Fear To Tread, has something of PETA "expose", if you will. For the rest of us, proxy courage will have to do. As a diplomatic gesture towards PETA, we'll throw in a link to a pair of primate ballerinas. This is actually an excuse to wonder out loud if this pair symbolizes US foreign policy, at a high enough level of abstraction. Discuss.
  
• Dustbury: we don't need no stinkin' GPS. And then he confesses to a Melanie Chartoff crush.
• Fishersville Mike thinks Sarah Palin recalls Shania Twain.
• Donald Douglas investigates the political science aspects of women on full-auto. He also introduces Anna Faris, in all her lovliness.
  
• Morgan Freeberg apparently had to "move something" recently.
• Bob's Bar and Grill, which we had feared a victim of the cratered economy, is open for business and admonishes us all to "appreciate the balance and aesthetics (assthetics) of the photograph."
• Esquire has a roundup of 54 jokes from beautiful women. Favorite joke: #42. Favorite lady: why?
• Joyce DeWitt looks slightly the worse for wear after the Troglo-treatment. But he throws in some of Joan Jett-sans-guitar pics of her as compensation. His Trogularity made up for all this with a patriotic roundup. He also posted a picture of Miss Wisconsin, including her name. Plus a Weisz and Shue meditation.
• Three Beers Later has an investigation into Comparative Scandalography as well as an Iranian protestor. Finally, a Brandi Chastain clip, and a wry comment.
• Kottke has a clip about Anna Wintour making the September issue of Vogue "An apt demonstration that an editor/curator's main job is saying no to almost everything." Porch Manqué recommendation: make this woman the Speaker of the House. Yesterday. No, make that last January.
• Lisa Hannigan, courtesy of Chicago Boyz is exactly what we're talking about. Contrast her authenticity with the complete lack thereof in Anna Wintour:

• Jeffords manages to raise a question powerful enough to over-ride our standing "No Britney Rule".
• Chad at KURU's naval architecture studies have him looking for buoyancy in strange places.
• The Paco delivery truck just came by and delivered yet another crucial supply of retro classiness.
• Chris in NJ has some LBI liberation.
• Teach at the Pirate's Cove has a birthday pinup.
• Bob at The Camp of the Saints sends Ava Gardner to, you know, rough Paco up a bit around the edges. This blog hopes to fuel a positively dame-a-licious blog noir war.
• Attention all of you Megan Fox fans out there, Deuce at the Skepticrats has done something, really, really edgy. This blog just links, and takes no responsibility for the side effects. Responsibility is sooo last administration, don't you know.
• Sparing this post from being a total estrogen-fest, Carol presents Hugh O’Brian.

Spam Smitty with cheers, jeers, and links.
Love, peace, and hair grease.
Out.

Doctor Zero vs. Peggy Noonan

A long-form dissection of Noonan's anti-Palinism:

Palin doesn’t "read anything," you see. She's probably not even literate. The moment Noonan is fretting over came when Katie Couric asked Palin which newspapers and magazines she reads regularly, and she couldn’t name one. Given the cratering circulation of print media, Palin is clearly in good company. I suspect the sin that truly damns her in Noonan's eyes is her failure to read Peggy Noonan columns. At least America was spared the horror of a Vice President who doesn't spend much time reading newspapers. Instead, we got a Vice President who should have left his debate with Palin in a straitjacket, and shows no sign of coherent thought at all. . . .

You can read the whole thing. Palin inevitably confronts a problem affecting nearly all busy people in the Information Age: With so much job-related communication to process, there is very little time for non-job-related reading.

People in the news business (e.g., Katie Couric) might consider it proof of erudition that someone regularly reads the New York Times or Newsweek, but many people simply don't have the leisure. It's merely the self-regarding snobbery of the chattering classes that hold that against Palin. The idea that the governor of Alaska needs to read the New York Times every day is silly.
I think Palin suffers in Peggy Noonan's estimation by comparison to Ronald Reagan. When he first emerged as a national political figure with his 1964 "Time for Choosing" speech, Reagan was 53 years old and had spent years traveling the country as a spokesman for General Electric. He was a man of some wealth and, prior to 1966, when he ran for governor of California, also a man of much leisure.

California was a large, rich state, so that the governor had an extensive staff to which he could delegate work, leaving him more leisure than Palin would have as governor of Alaska. And between leaving the governorship in 1975 and becoming president in 1981, Reagan had another period of relative leisure, which he devoted to writing a newspaper column and doing daily radio broadcasts. He was therefore in the news business himself.

So if Noonan compares Palin to the Reagan she knew -- a man in his 70s who had been studying and discussing national political issues for more than two decades -- obviously Palin comes up short, through no real fault of Palin's. The real mystery is exactly why Obama stands so comparatively high in Noonan's esteem, even when it is increasingly clear that Obama's reputation for erudition has been inflated by, among other things, a ghostwritten memoir.