Mary Matalin is a Vampire.

From the alternet review of Pamela Geller's The Post-American Presidency:

Number of times President Obama is referred to as Barack Hussein Obama (excluding notes and index): 52

Number of times the phrase "new world order" appears: 1

Number of pedophiles with whom Geller implies Obama had a less-than-wholesome relationship: 1

Number of conspiracies involving Timothy Geithner and Barack Obama’s mother: 1

Number of countries Obama is accused of "abandoning": 2 (Poland and the Czech Republic)

Number of facts attributed to African Press International, a fake news organization: 1

Yeah, Cole nails it again.

Hehindeedy:

Just so we’re clear, Sherrod was scarred by the murder of her father and subsequent failure to prosecute the murderers in the Jim Crow south, and Breitbart was scarred when Clarence Thomas was beaten to death on live television in the well of the Senate by Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden while the NAACP stood by and did nothing asked some questions before being promoted to a lifetime position in the highest court of the land. See- they’ve both been traumatized!

Hehindeedy!

Putz, two months ago:

MEGAN MCARDLE: “Andrew seems very pleased by the progress we’re making with the auto bailout. I’m not seeing it.["]

Yeah, well, you're an idiot.

[via]

Vintage Peretz.

Marty Peretz is nearing K-Lo territory:

Assange and, to a lesser extent, Manning are already heroes. So here is roughly my view of them...or at least of Assange. Well, it's not exactly my view but that of Tunku Varadarajan who writes brilliantly and regularly for the Daily Beast.

Anthony Weiner goes off.

How NOT to dispel the notion that you're a misogynistic asshole.

From Bret Easton Ellis' interview with Details:

Q:

When American Psycho was published, some of the attacks from feminists were so vitriolic. Did that bother you?

A:

Women are crazy! So no, it i didn't. I grew up with two sisters and my mom. I saw first-hand how emotionally unstable women can be. To a degree I do believe that the book is feminist in nature. I think it's a book that is criticizing certain male values and behavior. So the feminist response was just - you know, it was retarded.

Pretty Much.

Note to Andrew Exum...

Andrew Exum writes:

remember, the iconic image of the fall of Saigon was that picture of our embassy, proving how hard it is for us to focus on anything other than ourselves -- the men and women who had actually fought and bled alongside their Vietnamese counterparts still gave a shit about their well-being.

 True, except for the part about the embassy. It was an apartment complex.

Hobgoblin.

Back when Andy Breitbart was riding high, The Washington Post was in love with the guy and described him as a publisher, a new media mogul, an internet entrepreneur and "the conservative movement's new Web wizard."

Basically, the Post treated Breitbart like the second coming of Henry Luce.

So I find it, well, curious that just as Shirley Sherrod is threatening to sue the crap out of Breitbart, The Post decides to turn him into the little guy:

Why is the mean black lady picking on Breitbart?

"Restrepo."

Should have said something earlier: See Restrepo.

I am biased. My ridiculously talented old pal, Maya Mumma, is the associate editor. Look for her at the next Oscars. She will be wearing Brooklyn Industries, or Gucci.

As a film nazi, as a matter of pride I would not recommend this movie simply because she was one of the cutters. Restrepo, however, is the best war film I've ever seen. So you get where I'm coming from, this rounds out the top five:

• Paths of Glory
• Hearts and Minds
• Das Boot
• Three Kings

Good company.

Montreal, Vancouver, Tulsa, Dallas, Austin (ahem), Sacramento, Palm Springs, Phoenix, Jacksonville and Orlando -- Restrepo's coming your way tomorrow.

REPEAL OBAMACARE!!!!!!

Probably not going to happen.

Opposition to the landmark health care overhaul declined over the past month, to 35 percent from 41 percent, according to the latest results of a tracking poll, reported Thursday.

Fifty percent of the public held a favorable view of the law, up slightly from 48 percent a month ago, while 14 percent expressed no opinion about the measure, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

People are figuring out there's no death panels. Heckuva job, Quitter.

But it will be interesting to see what happens once the mandate kicks in without a public option and mid-income families are forced to become customers of Aetna and WellPoint.

Self-awareness is not his strong suit

In English, this Means 'Bomb Iran.'

Rather Choke on my Own Vomit, Thx.

Libertarians and Conservatives: The Video   [Jonah Goldberg]
For those interested in the never-ending Libertarian-Conservative kerfuffle, here's the video of that panel discussion between Brink Lindsay, Matt Kibbe, and me, over at Reason TV.

It's like Ayn Rand fucked the Stooges.

Pawlenty Rising!

PPP:

We get a lot of e-mail asking us to include Tim Pawlenty in all of our 2012 Presidential polling but his numbers here are a reminder of why we aren't- yet. Pawlenty was at 3% in our New Hampshire polling in April and he's still there.

Relative sanity doesn't get you very far in today's Republican Party.

Seems so Familiar!

Jeffrey Lord, last seen rewriting every dictionary in America, gives an unintentionally funny interview to TPM:

"What struck me about [the Sherrod speech] was that sort of little, casual aside, where she says something about health care, and 'I've never seen people so mean' ... The implication is -- and she uses the phrase at one point 'the black president' and 'we endured the Bush years'. And the implication to me was that she was saying 'if you didn't agree with Obamacare then you're a bigot,'" Lord said. "The essence of the formula is 'scare race X to death that race Y or Z is coming after them in some fashion, and then, you know, you get all the votes and the money, etc, etc, etc. And that all that's gone on over a couple years of history of the Democratic party is that the races have changed."

That sounds an awful lot like the Southern Strategy, which Lord's old boss, Ronald Reagan, knew something about.

Jeb! to sit out 2012.

JammieWearingPutz:

Time for a second look at Jeb Bush? Maybe.

Maybe not.

Former Florida GOP Gov. Jeb Bush said Tuesday that he is “not running” for president in 2012.

I'm guessing the reasons might be that his father was a 1-termer and his brother is still one of the most unpopular presidents in history.

But that's just a guess.

One-way street

The AEI has little problem (accurately, I believe) identifying "science phobia" as an impediment to realistic public policy goals when the question is a bunch of Haitian earthquake victims rejecting donations of GMO food. In this light it's not really surprising at all somewhat surprising that they fail to draw more attention to right-wing Sciencephobia as an obstacle to meaningful environmental, educational, social, and foreign policy. I'm sure the author will mention that in a future column.

This Warms the Cockles of My Heart.

Wingnuts are sad:

The Boy Scouts? Fuck those gay-hating, atheist-hating assholes.

TEAPARTY!!!!!!

How's all that protestin' and organizin' workin' out for ya?

Democrats have a 48% to 44% advantage for the week of July 19-25 in Gallup tracking of registered voters' preferences for the 2010 congressional elections. This marks the second straight week in which Democrats have held an edge of at least four percentage points.

Revealing.

As Matthew Yglesias notes, The American Spectator believes that when a man is beaten to death by a mob "with the complicity of local law enforcement" he has not, in fact, been lynched. "Shirley Sherrod's story in her now famous speech about the lynching of a relative is not true," claims Jeffrey Lord.

A lot of people are appropriately disgusted.

Short story: 10 years ago, Baylor University dismantled and defunded its Michael Polanyi Center after its director, William Demski, became an embarrassment. Demski, you see, was on the vanguard of the intelligent design movement and there was justified concern that the university had "gone fundamentalist."

Anyway, despite the dissolution of the Center, Dembski remained an associate research professor for another five years, during which time he did not "teach any courses ... and instead worked from home, writing books and speaking around the country."

What, you may ask, has this to do with The American Spectator? Here's their headline from November 15, 2000:

The Lynching of Bill Dembski

Doug Giles is so cool

Make it stop.

It was sadly inevitable that Mark Halperin would be the first to make the connection:

The Media Spiral: From O.J. to Sherrod

Sure, I get it. Shirley Sherrod was a great running back and dug white chicks.

K-Lo and the legal concept of "national secrets"

K-Lo brings the retarded:

Serious Now? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Earlier this summer, the following appeared in "The Week" section of National Review:

Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst, is accused of leaking classified video of a military engagement in Iraq in which two Reuters cameramen were killed. Of greater concern, Manning claims to have provided over a quarter-million highly classified State Department cables — intelligence that, if revealed, could badly compromise military operations — to Wikileaks, an online enterprise strategically based in Sweden, where impregnable confidentiality laws help it encourage the betrayal of U.S. national secrets. To wage war and protect its citizens in such an environment, a serious nation must be willing to play diplomatic hardball with the world’s Swedens and throw the book at our own Bradley Mannings; it must be deaf to the inevitable caterwauling of media adolescents for whom classified leaks are a game, not life-and-death. Are we still serious?

07/26 08:08 AMShare

What exactly is a "national secret" and in what context is it protected by law? "National secrets" appears to mean "things the government is keeping secret" which is explicitly does not mean that such things should or need to remain secret. State secrets can remain so upon successful implementation of the argument that they are matters of national security. Does any of the Wikileaks information meet that criterion? "Everyone will realize what lying cocksuckers the Department of Defense folks are if this information gets out" is not exactly the finest appeal for legal protection under the government cloak of secrecy.

Why Kids Don't Vote GOP.

There is no such thing as 'mosh pitting.'

Who's the fuddy-duddy now, old man?

Jane Galt, pwned again.

The fact that she doesn't actually slink away in shame at this point just points to some really serious psychopathy.

(h/t Atrios)

Kaplan Test Prep Delivers!

Last seen apologizing for kiddy-rapers, Bill Donohue returns to the pages of Sally Quinn Weekly to blame the Catholic Church's pedophile epidemic on -- wait for it... -- the gays:

The conventional wisdom maintains there is a pedophilia crisis in the Catholic Church; I maintain it has been a homosexual crisis all along. The evidence is all on my side, though there is a reluctance to let the data drive the conclusion. But that is a function of politics, not scholarship.

Alfred Kinsey was the first to identify a correlation between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of minors. In 1948, he found that 37 percent of all male homosexuals admitted to having sex with children under 17 years old. More recently, in organs such as the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the Journal of Sex Research, the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy and Pediatrics, it has been established that homosexuals are disproportionately represented among child molesters. ...

Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons is a psychiatrist who has spent years treating sexually abusive priests. "Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and pedophilia," he said earlier this year. Instead, they have found a "relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia." So are all of these psychologists and psychiatrists wrong?

In fact, "Fitzgibbons says, "every priest whom I treated who was involved with children sexually had previously been involved in adult homosexual relationships." Notice he didn't say "some" priests.

Via Kaplan Komments, Kinsey said no such thing. What he actually wrote:

37 percent of the total male population has at least some overt homosexual experience to the point of orgasm between adolescence and old age.

Richard Fitzgibbons? I'm having trouble believing a guy who a) is an adjunct professor at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at Catholic University and a "consultant to the Congregation for Clergy at the Vatican" and b) believes "there is substantial evidence based on years of clinical experience that homosexuality is a developmental disorder."

At this point in Kaplan's devolution, an Adam Yoshida column seems inevitable.

Pelosi at Netroots

This should be repeated loudly, and often.

By August, more jobs will have been created by Obama and Dem Congress than all jobs created by 8 years of Bush Administration.

BREAKING: Breitbart "got lucky" with Drudge!!!!!

Big Wannabe:

I’m telling a director in Hollywood who wants to make movies…you want me?

Left Hand, Right Hand.

Yesterday, Politico's Ben Smith wisely wrote:

Breitbart's sites now have a growing credibility problem.

Well, yes, this is what happens when you report the capture of the still-free Mullah Omar, smear a respected federal employee, and bring down an organization that for decades helped poor families register to vote and obtain healthcare. (And oh, by the way, ACORN was exonerated.)

Today, Politico published a list of '50 Politicos to Watch' who will, says Politico, "set this city’s agenda." Among this rarefied group -- one of the 'scenemakers' -- is... Andrew Breitbart!

Now you'd think, given all the embarrassing trail puff pieces and the fact that 24 hours ago one of Politico's best reporters called Breitbart a hack, the pub might just go easy on the gauze. You'd be wrong.

• The conservative writer and personality lives on the West Coast — a fact that gives him a certain mystique among Washingtonians accustomed to seeing the same faces again and again.

• Still, it’s more than rarity that makes Breitbart a party get. He’s an ideal guest. ... "Andrew’s fun, provocative and obviously not afraid to speak his mind,” Huffington said about her conservative counterpart.

• He’s dead-on and witty at the same time,” said [David] Bass.

Exactly how much more credibility must Breitbart lose before this stops?

Each time real media outlets and reporters treat Breitbart as a colleague -- an equal -- the more they devalue their own hard work and their profession.

Breitbart is Multifaceted.

Contrary to what recent days' events might lead you to believe, Andrew Breitbart isn't just a wingnut mogulette who intentionally slanders decent people/organizations. Sometimes his publications attempt actual journalism -- the results are kind of awful.

A reminder: check out today's New York Daily News, which reports that NATO blames Mullah Omar for the mortaring of civilians this week. Last month, Omar "instructed his commanders to capture and kill any Afghan supporting or working for coalition forces."

The fact that Omar was roaming freely in June and coordinating attacks must be an awful shock to readers of Breitbart's Big Government. From May:

There is, of course, no correction at the bottom of this story. Hilariously, it merely says "Developing."

Observation.

Relative to Tucker Carlson, Mickey Kaus looks like the epitome of journalistic integrity. Yecch.

GOP Minority Outreach, Take 2.

Dan Riehl actually wrote this:

If there's anyone who needs to apologize, it is a Shirley Sherrod unfit for public service and the NAACP—not Andrew Breitbart, who did precisely what he claimed he set out to do.

Cockswizzle Putz thinks this is the bee's knees, naturally.

Disingenuous.

Representative John Boehner:

No bill should be voted on without time for every American to know what’s in it. Rep. John Culberson of Texas has introduced a resolution (H. Res. 554) requiring a bill be available online for at least 3 days before a vote. I think this is a reform that’s needed right now.

I totally agree! Oh wait, what's this from 2005?

WASHINGTON, March 20 - The Senate approved legislation on Sunday that would allow a federal court to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo, and House Republican leaders spearheaded an extraordinary Sunday night session to speed the measure to President Bush, who rushed back to Washington from his Texas ranch.

"Every hour is incredibly important to Terri Schiavo," said Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the House majority leader, who led the effort to inject Congress into the long-running legal battle over Ms. Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged Florida woman whose feeding tube was disconnected on Friday afternoon at the direction of a state court. ...

The Democrats' refusal to allow the bill to pass without a roll-call vote prevented the House from taking up the measure early Sunday afternoon and sent Republican leaders scurrying to summon lawmakers scattered for the Easter recess back to Washington to provide a quorum.

House rules required that such a vote could not occur until Monday, so the Republican leaders suspended the vote until 12:01 a.m. so they would have time to assemble at least 218 of the 435 House members.

Needless to say, both Boehner and Culberson voted in favor of passing this bill.

Jackass.

Via Putz, Rush Limbaugh said this to Byron York, in response to those on "the left" who wish him dead:

“Not having wished anyone dead, nor having fantasized about watching someone die, I cannot possibly relate to this,” Limbaugh responded.

Nah.

Limbaugh was ranting against Sen. John McCain on his radio show this week when a caller asked whether he thought McCain would pick Sen. Lindsey Graham as his running mate. Limbaugh doubted it, though he admitted: "I may be wrong ... Lindsey Graham is certainly close enough to [McCain] to die of anal poisoning."

Rethinking the Breitbart Puff Pieces.

In light of Andrew Breitbart's slander of Shirley Sherrod, perhaps it's worth recalling a few of the Breitbart appraisals.

All lack any skepticism of Breitbart's mission but somehow manage a surplus of puffery:

"The conservative online news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart is, for the moment, doing little to dispel stereotypes about bloggers. During a recent visit to his home on the west side of Los Angeles, Breitbart, 41, is working from his own basement. Barefoot. At the beck and call of his own kids." (NPR)


"For Breitbart, bringing down the mainstream media isn't just a crusade. It's practically a civil rights issue—only more fun. He considers himself a journalist-slash-entertainer, an Edward R. Murrow by way of the Merry Pranksters." (Slate)


"On Sunday, March 21st, the day that the House voted to pass health-care reform, Andrew Breitbart, the conservative Internet entrepreneur, was thousands of miles away, at home in Westwood, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. Breitbart, who in the past year has become a fixture on Fox News and a regular at Tea Party events, spends a lot of time on the road. In the preceding weeks, he had addressed the California Republican Spring Convention, in Santa Clara—“It’s warfare to save the soul of the United States of America,” he told the audience—and had introduced Sarah Palin at the National Tea Party Convention, in Nashville. But, the weekend of the historic vote, Breitbart, who has four young children, was fulfilling paternal obligations: taking the kids to watch the Los Angeles Marathon; having a ragtag group of little friends over to play." (The New Yorker)


"Andrew Breitbart blew into Washington recently for what amounted to a victory lap.

"The Internet entrepreneur spent last week soaking up accolades from conservatives for having offered guidance to the two twenty-somethings who posed as a pimp and prostitute and took a hidden camera into several ACORN offices. The pair filmed workers from the national liberal community group appearing to aid them as they inquired about starting a brothel -- a move that has put ACORN on the defensive and made the activists, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, instant conservative heroes.

"But in the end it's Breitbart who may be the biggest winner." (The Washington Post)


"Mr. Breitbart grew up in Los Angeles. His father owned a restaurant, mom was a bank executive. At Brentwood High School he watched administration types socialize with certain parents in the entertainment industry. He got C’s, played baseball, was a class clown, but hung out with the smart kids. He always suspected that school had been against him, a conspiracy theory that was eventually confirmed by a friend’s mom who confessed to him that the principal had called her into his office to turn her against the young Breitbart. This, he says, was the beginning of a lifelong crusade against bullies." (The New York Observer)


"Andrew Breitbart sits in an Aeron chair at an iMac computer gazing out the sliding glass door of his Los Angeles home office. On the patio, a hula hoop and a portable basketball rim await his children's return from school. Breitbart, 41, dressed on this late-winter day in his standard work uniform of a dirty oxford-cloth shirt and grungy khaki shorts, looks more like a surf bum than one of the most divisive figures in America's political and culture wars. Then his BlackBerry rings." (TIME)

White Law Professor Helps Defame Black Lady. Hehindeedy!

Before this whole disgraceful Shirley Sherrod affair has been forgotten, let's preserve a timeline of Putz's salivating eagerness to see Sherrod, whose father was killed by a white man, irreparably smeared and fired:

July 16

BREITBART TO NAACP HEAD: I have tapes. (1:34 p.m.)

July 19

WHAT BREITBART PROMISED, BREITBART DELIVERS: Video evidence of NAACP racism. “Breitbart delivers on that promise today at Big Government, showing USDA official Shirley Sherrod explain to an appreciative NAACP audience in July 2009 how she deliberately withheld information from a white farmer in Georgia trying to save his land and his business.” Maybe she should transfer to the Department of Justice. . . (1:03 p.m.)

BREITBART’S USDA RACISM VIDEO gets CBS coverage.  (8:53 p.m.)

RACIST, FIRED: USDA Official In Breitbart Video Goes Under The Bus.

Meanwhile, Breitbart promises more to come. (10:10 p.m.)

July 20

DAN CLEARY: “So here we have irrefutable video evidence of institutional racial discrimination, and it gets a round of applause from the NAACP – and also goes unreported for four months until Andrew Breitbart finally brings it to light. Yes, this is the same NAACP that cheered Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee as she smeared the Tea Party as a neo-KKK outfit.” (7:32 a.m.)

ANDREW BREITBART: PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: The truth hurts. (10:42 a.m.)

BREITBART INDUCES FRATRICIDE: Sherrod Blames NAACP For Firing. (11:03 p.m.)

At this point, even Jonah Goldberg believes that Sherrod "should get her job back" and that "she's owed apologies from pretty much everyone, including my good friend Andrew Breitbart."

I don't expect that Breitbart -- or Putz -- will do any such thing. This is unfortunate, but also ironic, particularly since Breitbart had no problem demanding that Max Blumenthal "[c]orrect, retract, and apologize to James O’Keefe for your slanderous attempt to ruin his life."

We'll see if he's decent enough to do the same to Shirley Sherrod.

Adventures in Etymology.

Joe Klein:

As an inveterate lover of  neologisms, I am fiercely approviating of Sarah Palin's recent coinage: she called on peace-loving Muslisms [sic] to refudiate the proposed mosque at the World Trade Center site. This continues two grand American political traditions. The first is benign. Those politicians who have only a passing familiarity with proper English tend to be the most creative when it comes to wordiating. Warren G. Harding was responsible for two classics: "normalcy" (as opposed to "normality") and my all-time favorite "bloviating."

I can't speak to normalcy, but I believe Mr. Klein is wrong about bloviating. In his defense, he has company, including Merriam-Webster, which dates the word to 1879 -- at which time Harding was 12 years old.

Here's a graf from the 1867 edition of The New York Times:

It does seem safe to say, however, that Harding popularized the word.

Pull Richard Cohen's Plug, Somebody.

This is some sad-ass shit:

Americans know Obama is smart. But we still don't know him. Before Americans can give him credit for what he's done, they have to know who he is. We're waiting.

Hey fuckface, Obama's not your uncle. You won't "know him" and probably if you did he would hate you because you're retarded.

"We're waiting"? Keeping waiting. In the meantime, Richard Cohen, I'm going to wait for you to justify your salary and write something that doesn't suck Mary Matalin's balls.

When lying on national television is a traditional family value.

My governor is such a loser.

Racist Republican admires totally non-racist group.

But...but...the Black Panthers!

New Hampshire residents must seek to preserve their racial identity if we want future generations to have to possibility to live in such a great state.

[...]

I think the Tea Party movement is doing great things.

And Don't Get Me Started on Philanthropy, You Cheap Fucks.

Ross Douthat's latest column of warmed-over Steve Sailerisms has been deservedly worked over, but I do wanna highlight this precious bit:

The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same underrepresentation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts.

Uh, the arts? Really?

I'd be a tad more sympathetic to the alleged underrepresentation of conservatives in the arts if I thought even for a goddamn minute that these people had an appreciation for it.

Exhibits A through Z is the chorus of attaboys from the premiere "white Christian" publication, The National Review, aimed at "An American Carol," which is, statistically-speaking, one of the worst movies of all time:

"It struck me as a bold and natural progression from a winning formula," said K-Lo. "It’s brave given the risk of peer ridicule and the potential for career suicide... And it’s funny," said Kathleen Parker.  "It is one of the most powerful pieces of cinematic artistry I have ever seen," said Frank Gaffney.

QEmotherfuckingD.

Read the whole thing, Glenn.

Putz:

TODD ZYWICKI is not buying the WaPo’s excuses for not covering the New Black Panthers story.

Well that would be something, if we lived in a world in which anyone gave a shit what Todd Zywicki thinks! On that note, who in the name of god is Todd Zywicki? Whoever he is, Volkoh Conspiracy let him post his skeptical screed. The first two comments - on Volkoh Conspiracy, noted conservative blog - sum it up.

1. I’m stunned, stunned, that a newspaper won’t cover every single conspiracy theory pushed by either side. “This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration,” said [Abigail] Thernstrom (note: a right-wing Bush appointee), who said members of the commission voiced their political aims “in the initial discussions” of the Panther case last year.

2. This will become news when someone, anyone brings forward a voter who was actually intimidated by anything. Until then, this is a crack conspiracy theory that plays to the racial anxieties of the average Fox News viewer. I understand that the increasingly irrelevant WaPo feels the need to explain why it doesn’t hand its news pages off to the far-right fringe the way it has handed off its opinion section, but I expect more serious material on this blog.

That'll do, pig. That'll do. Although 90% of the comments are equally critical.

Massa Dreher.

Rod Dreher asks what he obvious thinks is a profound, unanswerable question:

This is what haunts me when I think about what if I had grown up under segregation: what would I, a white person, have done?

Yes, what would this harmless, god-fearing, chicken-owning fellow do? Well, for an idea of how Dreher treats a minority group of which he is not a part, look at this headline in the wake of last year's California Supreme Court decision to uphold a ban on same-sex marriage:

Democracy wins in California gay marriage dispute

"Whatever you think of Prop 8, I don't see how you can disagree with the decision of the California Supreme Court to uphold it," Dreher intoned. "For a court to have nullified a constitutional amendment ratified by a popular vote, and to have done so on a legal technicality, would have been a terrible thing for the democratic process, and the system's legitimacy. ...

"It's dangerous," continued Dreher, "to believe that [a] fundamental right should be taken away from a sovereign people because you don't like the decision the people have made."

That oughta give you some idea of what the Dreher plantation would have been like prior to Brown v. Board of Education.

Weird Symmetry.

Max California, 1999:

There are some things that you see, and you can't unsee them.

Rod Dreher, 2010:

Once you've seen something, it's hard to un-see it.

Had Nine Tacos for Lunch, Need to Take a Massive Goldberg.

Jonah Goldberg:

And yet no corporation embraces this image [of cartoonish evil]. Even – especially! – the companies that are most reviled by the left are eager to spend millions on their public image and reputation. Tobacco and oil companies fund museums, educational programs and polar bear documentaries on PBS. BP is of course one of the premiere examples of this sort of thing. They went and ditched their name British Petroleum as part of their corporatist, liberal-placating, “Beyond Petroleum” campaign (because petroleum is evil, according to everyone Stan Greenberg knows). Needless to say that money went down a rat hole never to be seen again.

Needless to say, Goldberg is a fucking ass. British Petroleum became BP Amoco in December 1998 as a result of the $62 billion takeover of Amoco.

That and a Metrocard will get you to Red Hook.

Hilarious puffery:

There was no mention by Alexander [The Washington Post ombudsman] of Pajamas Media, where DOJ whistleblower J. Christian Adams has written most of his comments about his former employer. There was only some vague reference to right-wing blogs. Is that all we are? I would compare the vitae of many of the writers here at PJM quite favorably with the best at the Washington Post, but, hey, I’m biased. I’m the CEO.

Of a blog. Roger, you are Chief Executive Officer of... a blog.

Uh, Mr. Vice President? You had 60 votes.

I don't get this. The need to win Republican approval so the Villagers could golf clap the "bipartisanship" was self-imposed. So why is Biden blaming the GOP for the fact that they got the stimulus wrong, as Krugman and other warned?

Obey:

We started sending suggestions down to OMB waiting for a call back. After two and a half weeks, we started getting feedback. We put together a package that by then the target had been trimmed to $1.2 trillion. And then [White House Chief of Staff] Rahm Emanuel said to me, “Geez, do you really think we can afford to come in with a package that big, isn’t it going to scare people?” I said, “Rahm, you will need that shock value so that people understand just how serious this problem is.” They wanted to hold it to less than $1 trillion.

They wanted to.

Looks like Glenn Reynolds is wasting his time.

Poor Putz. Despite 18 months of obsessively linking daily to Black Panther stories, Teabagger rallies and hehindeeding the latest anti-Obama screed from the likes of Confederate Yankee -- not a dent.

Despite all the economic trouble, the oil spill, bad news abroad etc., over the past several months Obama’s approval rating has steadily held just a tad below 50% (the RealClearPolitics average has not strayed outside the 46-50% range since last year). It’s not great, but still healthy.

Just to put things in perspective, that’s a couple points higher than McCain’s share of the popular vote. It also means that roughly 90% of Obama voters still approve of him and thus he has not yet suffered any major erosion of support. Furthermore, while some 10% of his voters are disappointed in him, virtually none of them have yet turned against him, as evidenced by the fact that the RealClearPolitics average disapproval rating of 47.1% (as of right now) just happens to be exactly the same as the percentage of Americans who voted against Obama.

Incidentally, this also means that a year and a half of angry rhetoric by Limbaugh, Beck et al. did not manage to convince anybody other than McCain voters that the Obama presidency is not good for the country.

STFU.

If The National Review insists on subjecting us to a lecture from about the "descent" of the NAACP, I think it's fair to point out that they never, you know, liked the organization:

"[The] NAACP is fast becoming—like the Anti-Defamation League—a routine pressure group for the Liberal Left." -- 1958

Ooga Booga.

Putz has been pushing the bullshit DOJ/Black Panther thing pretty hard. Today, after linking to an editorial titled "Racialist Justice: Attorney General Holder's lawyers won't protect whites" in The Washington Times -- that Washington Times -- he says:

The Justice Department’s behavior here runs the risk of delegitimizing the entire civil rights and voting apparatus, which would be a disaster.

That sound you hear is Putz whispering "...for black people" under his breath, gleefully rubbing his hands together, and soulfully stroking his cat.

But if “civil rights” becomes a synonym for “helping Democratic constituencies only” then disaster is what it will be.

Which is funny, because I thought 'civil rights' was already synonymous with 'the inalienable right of honkies to have guns on Amtrak and sundry other places that guns should not be.

America to annoying Bush "Miss Me Yet?" billboards, stickers and signs: No, we don't.

TIME:

And despite the economic upheaval and political acrimony that have marked his term thus far, voters aren't pining for Obama's predecessor; they tapped Obama over George W. Bush by a 53%-33% margin. Nor are they convinced that Sarah Palin is up to the challenges of the Oval Office. Obama clobbered Palin, 55%-34%, in a hypothetical 2012 matchup that should have Democrats salivating.

I really hope they're stupid enough to nominate the Quitter in 2 years.

Maggie and her Boyfriend Rod Dreher will Be So Sad.

Maggie Gallagher, December '09:

An Argentine professor tells me the celebrated gay nuptials in Argentina were totally illegal — more like Mayor Gavin Newsom's blunder than the Goodridge court decision. And she points out a new poll shows 60 percent of Argentinians oppose gay marriage.

A mere few days ago, Ms. Gallagher released a statement of solidarity with the Argentine bigots.

Alas.

BUENOS AIRES — Argentina’s Senate narrowly approved a measure early on Thursday authorizing same-sex marriages, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to allow gay couples to wed.

Also?

Nearly 70 percent of Argentines believed it was time to legalize gay marriage, according to a recent poll by the Analogías polling firm.

WaPo pushes the limits of...everything

So Richard Cohen pens a column entitled:

"Thank You, Switzerland, For Freeing Roman Polanski"

Editors of the Washington Post see said headline and collectively think, "OK. Looks good so far!" Then they read the following:

The Swiss got it right. Their refusal to extradite film director Roman Polanski to the United States on a 33-year-old sex charge is the proper dénouement for this mess of a case. There is no doubt that Polanski did what he did, which is have sex with a 13-year-old after plying her with booze. There is no doubt also that after all these years there is something stale about the case, not to mention a “victim,” Samantha Geimer, who has long ago forgiven her assailant and dearly wishes the whole thing would go away. So do I.

When a 13 year old girl who was drugged and raped is referred to as a victim in print, it generally is without the skeptical quotes.

Score One for the MSM.

Lost amid the hubbub of a possible iPhone recall -- or, at the very least, an expensive fix -- is a heartening media story:

A 74-year-old publication with no advertising, no publicity photos, but a respectable 8 million subscribers may have given Steve Jobs the biggest headache of his life.

Three days ago, Consumer Reports said it "can't recommend" the new phone. Oh, and they called Apple liars -- "Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4's signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion..." -- and said AT&T wasn't the culprit.

So, in an era of epinions and buzzillions, is this staid dinosaur still relevant? No one knows what effect Consumer Reports will have on sales (TechCrunch says the mag is "completely schizophrenic") but this poll of Journal readers suggests Apple might suffer, at least a bit.

Anyway, CR's verdict garnered headlines all over the place, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. According to Reuters, this isn't lost on Apple, which has been "in talks" with the magazine's researchers.

It Burns.

Kathryn Jean Lopez asks:

Since when is human life a partisan issue?

Well, you asshole, maybe since your colleague published this?

In which Jonah Goldberg uses the Tea Party's Nazi billboard to bash the NAACP.

Gotta love the Pantload.

I don’t like this billboard either, and I don’t think the Iowa tea-party chapter behind it should have put it up. That said, it’s not as bad as Obama in a Hitler mustache, and it isn’t quite saying Obama is a Hitler.

A fake mustache is worse than explicitly comparing Obama's policies to Hitler's and Lenin's?

Anyway...

Meanwhile, I think the St. Louis tea party deserves a hearty round of applause for taking a higher road than the NAACP (which continues to prove that the moral and intellectual decay of that once honorable organization proceeds apace).

Translation: ""Now that I've gotten that bit of unpleasantness out of the way, I must say, the Tea Party folks who put up those Nazi signs are quite superior in character to those awful negroes."

"More."

Christopher Hitchens and Hugh Hewitt:

HH: Do you believe on weapons of mass destruction that we know the story completely, or that we ever will?

CH: I think there’s more to be found, and more people haven’t testified yet.

*fap fap fap fap fap fap*

Michael Medved over at Intellectual Chernobyl:

Right now, we punish people with higher tax rates when they make the positive choice to work harder and earn more. Defenders of the status quo might argue that earning income at a subsistence level is a necessity, not a choice, so it is rightly tax exempt -- we exclude the first $20,000 or so (or more, depending on your family circumstances). But if you choose to earn a higher income and bring home more than you need for a minimal standard of living, you pay taxes on those extra earnings with rates that increase along with your income.

"Now let's get cracking on that estate tax repeal!"

People who earn more work harder, and you would earn more if you chose to. This should be engraved in marble as the perfect expression of the right wing jerk-off fantasy version of how the world works.

The Most Trusted Worthless Name in News.

This just popped up on CNN.com:

Sarah Palin responds to allegations of Tea Party racism

(CNN) - Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin published the following message on her Facebook page on Tuesday night:

What follows is Palin's "message." And that's it. CNN simply reprinted Palin's words, sans context, which effectively makes them an extension of her press office.

A real news organization might have taken a moment to scrutinize Palin's words -- you know, for kicks? Here, for example, is what she says about "Tea Party Americans":

No one wants to be associated with any organization that is in any way racist in sentiment or origin. I certainly don’t want to be.

A half-sentient reporter might point to April's University of Washington poll that found that

Only 35 percent of those who strongly approve of the tea party agreed that blacks are hardworking, compared with 55 percent of those who strongly disapprove of the tea party. On whether blacks were intelligent, 45 percent of the tea-party supporters agreed, compared with 59 percent of the tea-party opponents. And on the issue of whether blacks were trustworthy, 41 percent of the tea-party supporters agreed, compared with 57 percent of the tea-party opponents.

Maybe I'm asking for too much.

Glenn Reynolds denounces Tea Party for comparing Obama to Hitler.

Hahaha. Just kidding. Of course he didn't.

But...but...MoveOn.org once had a user-submitted video comparing Bush to Hitler on its website for less than 24 hours.

Once You Accuse the AG of Treason, What's Your Next Act?

Remarkable, yet not at all surprising:

This is such a great typo I just want to hug it.

A Fine Line Between Reporter and Publicist.

Last night, The Washington Post posted a very important story:

Gingrich says he's considering presidential run

In other news, I, too, am considering a presidential run.

Newt Gingrich's Walter Mitty campaign fantasies are, well, just that. The former Speaker pretends to "consider" tossing his hat in the ring whenever he's got a book to sell. These trial balloons are, as a wise man once wrote, "as perennial as the grass."

In its defense, The Post, which ran an AP story, isn't the only offender. Outlets of all stripes get taken in. Here are some headlines from years past -- and books Gingrich just happened to be hawking at the time:

1995, Restoring the Dream and Quotations from Speaker Newt:

Gingrich Links Decision to Run To Whether Powell Enters Race

1998, Lessons Learned The Hard Way:

Rumors of Gingrich in Presidential Race Lead to Jostling Over a Successor

2005, Winning the Future:

Newt Gingrich Considers Presidential Run

2006, Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation's History and Future:

Gingrich Says 2008 Bid Depends on Rivals

2007, A Contract with the Earth:

Gingrich Tiptoes Toward a White House Bid

This year's tome, published in May, is To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine.

"I can't believe I'm losing to this guy!"

That's what Obama is thinking about Mitch McConnell and John Boehner right about now.

UPDATE

Stephen Bainbridge, quoting my post, thinks Obama has lost moderates because he isn't conservative enough. I tell him he's wrong, in comments.

Blogging is Hard.

The sum total of Althouse's thoughts on the death of Harvey Pekar:

Did you like Harvey Pekar? I didn't.

A commenter, who is apparently new here, asks Althouse to "please explain." Total mistake.

Stop with the bullshit, David. I don't have time for that.

Truer words...

Dear Simon & Schuster...

Pamela Geller, whose book you will inexplicably publish in two weeks, believes that Radovan Karadžić, the guy (allegedlyallegedlyallegedlyallegedlyallegedly) responsible for the deaths of more than 7500 Muslims, is getting railroaded.

"The real criminals," she writes, "presid[e] over the International Criminal Court."

Does this bother you?

Tips from real Professional Writers

It sure does...if you're a shitty writer or someone who chooses not to think before speaking.

Hewitt, Powerline Say Jump. Politico Sez, "How High?"

Friday's headline really chapped the respective asses of Hugh Hewitt and Powerline. In response, Politico excised the adjective.

I wonder why! Maybe it had something to do with Hewitt's threat?

I am pleased to feature Mike Allen and many others form the site on my show, but I worry about headlines like this one...

In short, Politico brass puts a greater premium on appearances on Hugh Hewitt's crappy show than it does on editorial independence.

Not surprising and pathetic, especially since -- as Steve M. points out -- "Politico had it right the first time."

Where was this David Frum in 2003?

Pretty interesting conversation.

Frum's comment about irresponsible speech is noteworthy, but what he doesn't acknowledge is that there are elected Republican officials comparing Obama to Hitler on the floor of the House of Representatives, almost on a regular basis.

GOP = Grand Old Pagans.

It constantly amazes me that the "Christian" party demonstrates complete disregard -- if not outright contempt -- for the actual tenets of their own religion.

TK TK CK??

Gershom Gorenberg's otherwise excellent piece in The American Prospect is somewhat marred by hilariously awful copy editing.

DeMint: everyone but me is guilty of treason.

I realize that Obama had to make some good faith bi-partisan efforts after 8 years of slash and burn, but given the state of the Republican Party, it's clear that it was a fool's errand all along.

And We Didn't Even Have to Bomb Them!

It's Michael Ledeen, so this could very well be bullshit:

The death spiral of the Islamic Republic seems to be gathering momentum.

Perhaps this would be a good time to recall Ledeen's reaction to the Obama Administration's decision last year to not put its thumb on the scales of Iranian politics? Behold:

This is pure appeasement, part of Obama's begging for a schmooze. ...

It's worse than Jimmy Carter. It's all appeasement, all the time, from South America to Central Europe, from the Middle East to South Asia. And it's a guarantee of greater violence, bigger crises, and more American dead.

As Churchill said to Chamberlain, so it should be said to Obama: You had a choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.

The Wages of Stupidity.

It's nice to be reminded that Hugh Hewitt, despite his immense influence and savvy, is basically just an idiot with a JD and a headset. His interview with Peter Beinart is only the most recent example:

HH: So when do you want us to leave [Afghanistan]?

PB: I would have rather President Obama, I think that I would have, I would start to draw down troops sooner than next summer, which is the date that Obama has set.

HH: And so no matter what the consequences were, even if the Taliban rolled into Kandahar, even if they began to march on Kabul, the heck with it, we’re just done?

PB: They already control Kandahar. They’ve controlled Kandahar for years now.

Oops.

In contrast to the Bush/Cheney administration, which, above all else, cherished open debate.

They really do live in another world.

They Both Suck.

CNN has finally gotten rid of its most embarrassing employee. Said Parisa Khosravi, a senior vice president:

“At this point, we believe Erick Erickson's credibility in his position as CNN contributor has been compromised[.]”

Just kidding! Mr. "David Souter is a goat fucking child molester" still has a job. Octavia Nasr does not.

Don't misunderstand me: I actually think Nasr deserves to be shitcanned for her Hezbollah tongue bath. But it is amusing that CNN blames her termination on, of all things, a lack of "credibility."

We at Instaputz like to think of ourselves as reasonably mature

...but come on, Reuters. For fuck's sake.

Good news, potential suicides!

The NRA, having essentially won the battle over the 2nd Amendment with Heller and the recent Chicago handgun ban ruling, is hard at work concocting ways to justify their continued existence. Mostly, it appears, by backing increasingly insane gun-rights minutiae.

To wit, there is now a proposal in Congress ("Supported by the National Rifle Association!!") to exempt personal firearms from bankruptcy. So they can garnish your paycheck, take your house, and drain your savings but you'll still have the opportunity to blow your brains out and/or commit acts of violence out of desperation.

I feel better.

The Formula.

To state the obvious: John Burns is a great reporter. Michael Barone, who isn't right about many things, is indisputably correct that Burns is "one of the great foreign correspondents of our time."

That said... Burns' reaction to Michael Hastings' Rolling Stone article is not one the Timesman's finer moments. Asked by Hugh Hewitt -- who is already on record preemptively blaming a loss in Afghanistan on the magazine -- how "The Runaway General" will affect the relationship between the media and the military, he replied: 

I think it’s very unfortunate that it has impacted, and will impact so adversely, on what had been pretty good military/media relations. I think, you know, well, this will be debated down the years, the whole issue as to how it came about that Rolling Stone had that kind of access. My unease, if I can be completely frank about this, is that from my experience of traveling and talking to generals, McChrystal, Petraeus and many, many others over the past few years, is that the old on-the-record/off-the-record standard doesn’t really meet the case, which is to say that by the very nature of the time you spend with the generals, the same could be said to be true of the time that a reporter spends with anybody in the public eye. There are moments which just don’t fit that formula. There are long, informal periods traveling on helicopters over hostile territory with the generals chatting over their headset, bunking down for the night side by side on a piece of rough-hewn concrete. You build up a kind of trust. It’s not explicit, it’s just there. And my feeling is that it’s the responsibility of the reporter to judge in those circumstances what is fairly reportable, and what is not, and to go beyond that, what it is necessary to report.

Has anything of late so well explained the institutionalized awfulness of the media's Pentagon coverage? Burns, who has won and deserved two Pulitzers, states the obvious: that there is a "formula" to the beat. This, as Charles Kaiser notes, is a big reason that "virtually every profile of McChrystal had either sharply downplayed the defects in his CV or ignored them altogether, including the general’s central role in the cover up of the killing of former football star Pat Tillman by friendly fire."

Trouble is, Burns doesn't decry this brand of rubber stamp journalism. Instead, he blames Michael Hastings for doing his job, and doing it well.

Rush: Still Classy

"If Obama Weren't Black He'd Be a Tour Guide in Honolulu."

And if Rush Limbaugh wasn't a fat, drug-addled, limp-dicked asshole, he would be...I don't know. My imagination can only go so far.

Shorter Joseph Phillips

The Declaration of Independence contains many references to private property, thus all property is private and taxation is evil.

Don't Believe It.

If baby Jesus butt plugs didn't convince her to jump ship, nothing will.

The courage of their convictions.

I'm getting pretty weary of these teabagger candidates -- for US Senate no less -- trying to hide their political views.

For people who can't get into the University of Phoenix...

More here.

Dear Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Jon Chait...

Mr. Tomorrow would like to have a word with you.

UPDATE

Hmmm...

Teabaggers: still not at all nonpartisan moderate centrists.

New Gallup poll shows 80% are Republicans. And right-wing Republicans.

Can't say that I blame them for rebranding themselves. After Bush/Cheney shit the bed, and 3 straight national losses, I wouldn't want to call myself a Republican either.

UPDATE

...and still totally not racist!

Jeez, Donald Douglas...

...at least have the decency to thank us for quadrupling the traffic to your site.*

As long as you keep coming back here, though, I have a few questions.

1. Do you frequently find yourself angry about having to stop blogging because your mom needs to use the phone? **

2. Do you understand the difference between good attention and bad attention? ***

3. Do you realize that using the word "fuck" a lot does not make you more correct?

4. Is your sense of irony particularly robust or did you write "Just saying you're right doesn't actually, you know, make you right." without the slightest hint of self-awareness? ****

5. You do realize that having literally hundreds of posts and not one single comment on your website (which really nails the 1997 vintage Geocities look, bt-dub) means that you have absolutely nothing interesting, relevant, or entertaining to say, right? Who in the holy hell are you talking to? *****

6. Robert Stacy McCain called and asked us to remind you about calling him in the middle of the night and mailing him vials of your blood. Be good.

OK, well, I'm sure you have to get back to the Wings of the Luftwaffe marathon or the latest Aryan Nations newsletter or fingerbanging a pack of Cub Scouts or whatever it is you do on a Friday morning. So, thank you for your time and good luck with your shitty website that no one reads. There is an important lesson here about picking fights with people smarter than you, which in your case means there is a lesson here about picking fights with anyone except Rod Dreher.


* "Quadruple" means "four times", in this case 4 x 3 visitors = 12 visitors.
** Alternatively, I suppose it is possible that there is an internet-capable computer in the Orange Julius stockroom that you are allowed to use on breaks.
*** For example, lots of people were staring at you when you were in the mall arcade and you took our your penis. But that was BAD attention. Remember all the sirens and those questions you had to answer from the police man?
**** Seriously? You're serious?
***** Aside from the many voices of regret, anger, and forbidden desire in your head.

Where have you gone, Edmund Burke?

Oops.

K-Lo:

Mel Gibson might be my favorite feminist.

Mel Gibson to Oksana Grigorieva, his ex-girlfriend:

You look like a fucking pig in heat, and if you get raped by a pack of niggers, it will be your fault.

Wow.

Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, Karl Rove's memoir, was published in March. It got a lot of attention (as you'd expect) and was reviewed in hundreds of venues.

Given this, I'm kind of amazed that David Bromwich is the first reviewer to flag this passage from chapter 12:

"The ugliness of the image and diction alike betrays a mental lowness," writes Bromwich. Which is why, I assume, The Wall Street Journal gave him a column.