Surfing

Only Congress has the Constitutional right, by the representative will of the people, to commit public funds. The Bear Stearns deal is a dangerous precedent and a dilution of Congressional prerogative. (bold in original)

They seldom miss a chance to grab more power. They really don't believe in a democracy or even a republic.

Mark Steyn's feelings are hurt by a woman, so he calls her one of hoards of "cobwebbed feminists." The inference of a vagina covered by cobwebs is so hilariously inappropriate, so hopelessly geriatric, that it has to be culled from the dim recesses of Steyn's empty attic of a brain. Daddy's words, or maybe an uncle, or a family friend.

That's a good little authoritarian, Mark. Daddy (or whomever) would be so proud.

Speaking of which, Kathryn Jean Lopez is concerned that Islamics will outbreed Catholics. And what are you doing about it, honey? You're not getting any younger you know, and we've all seen what happens to those selfish women who delay taking care of men and babies to have their own careers. Why aren't you popping out little Catholics, instead of thinking you're as good as a man and pretending you're a political writer?

They mean what they say and they say what they mean

There's a whole genre of chic lit called colloquially "Had I But Know." (HIBK) "Had I but known that the man I married was really a fortune-hunter with a mad wife and a homicidal mother-in-law, I never would have moved to this remote yet exotic island, where my life is in danger." Etc. The reader knew all along, of course, because when you pick up a book with a nervous-looking woman in a huge, billowing gown standing before a castle on the cover, the HIBK is implied.

And now we have a HIBK presidency, when all of us who looked at the cover of this particular book knew perfectly well what was going to happen. It was inevitable. Just as anyone who read the Republican Party platform knew perfectly well what they planned to do. It's not a secret. All you have to do is pay attention.

Via Chris Floyd, we see that Obama plans to run his foreign policy just like everyone else indebted to the military industrial complex. Now we know, and there should be no surprise later. Via Juan Cole, we see that everything the US government does in Iraq makes Iran stronger, and this is no surprise either. It's not an accident. People who pay attention have been saying for years that Bush will try to instigate an attack on Iran. Cheney said a foothold in the Middle East is essential to gain some control over their oil as it slowly grinds towards depletion. We are in the Middle East to stay, and that won't change.

So war with Iran, which everyone says is impossible, will almost certainly happen. It's what the Cheney administration wants, and they get what they want or people die. If I'm wrong, great. But we have to talk about this. This issue is too important. We can't be so afraid of looking stupid and being called conspiracy nuts that we remain silent.

The Cheney administration really does do what they say they will do.

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

Digby says:

I wrote about this before, but I think it's worth reiterating. The "special
relationship" between John McCain and the press is particularly dangerous in
one respect: he is not held accountable for his words on the stump, (while
Democrats' are used against them as if they'd carved them in stone from Mt
Rushmore) and he's not held liable for his gross and obvious panders and
policy shifts. I'm not sure I've ever seen a politician have this kind of
industrial strength teflon before.

Update: Classic Somerby...

"It’s all about Nam, [Chris] Matthews said. McCain served there, and we multimillionaires didn’t. “That gives him a moral edge over of us,” Matthews said. And then, the key part of his statement: That gives him a moral edge—and we show it. Shorter Matthews: We refused to serve during Vietnam. And because we feel so guilty about it, we refuse to serve today too."

Nam is an excuse; they'd fawn over him anyway, because whether they like it or not, he is theirs. If the Inner Circle rejects him, they are nobodies. How many times have we seen this? It's not exactly a surprise.

Forget the merits, pro and con, of the individuals. It is Republicanism that is corrupt and unworkable, the same way communism was unworkable. They vow to destroy the government, eradicate the common good, and establish their own religion as the state religion. If you waste your time denouncing their candidates, don't be surprised when they are easily replaced and you have to start all over again from the beginning.

And we have to treat Democratic candidates with the same skepticism and scrutiny. Why is everyone quiet about both candidates' vow to stay in Iraq? How valid are elections that ignore the will of the vast majority of the people of the nation?

Our national identity doesn't matter. Our need for belonging doesn't matter. Democrats don't matter. Stopping the crimes we are committing is all that counts.

Surfing

Larry Kudlow is concerned that the dollar seems limp. Flaccid, even. He thinks Europe is laughing at its weakness.

Folks are making fun of the dollar. Our enemies around the world are pointing to the unreliable dollar as evidence of American weakness. Weakness as a financial power. Weakness as a national-security power. Does an unreliable currency symbolize an unreliable nation?

Kudlow thinks it's time to elect McCain, because the former soldier will make the dollar "surge" and stand erect.

Strengthening the dollar isn’t only good financial policy, it’s an act of patriotism. A patriotic dollar will show our jihadist enemies and the rest of the world that there will be no declinist America.

Indeed, the dollar is still the world’s reserve currency, with the vast majority of financial transactions running through the dollar. By reminding voters of this fact -- by placing the U.S. dollar front-and-center in his campaign and emphasizing that there will be no falloff in dollar responsibility if he’s elected -- McCain can more than bolster his agent-of-change credentials and his standing as an economic reformer.

The time has come to end the dollar’s freefall. The time has come to end the international ridicule of the greenback. Making the dollar strong will America strong.

Could he possibly make it any clearer that this occupation is a matter of pride for so many conservatives, a personal ego boost? As if knowing our soldiers are holding a gun on the rest of the world is the most wonderfully warm feeling they've had since childhood.



Haaretz reports on Cheney's recent trip, and the article has a great deal more infomation than other articles on the same trip.

"America's commitment to Israel's security is enduring and unshakable, as is Israel's right to protect itself always against terrorism, rocket attacks and other attacks from forces dedicated to Israel's destruction," Cheney said ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert....The vice president also said on Saturday that, "we must not and will not ignore darkening shadows of the situation in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria and Iran, and the threats these areas pose to Israel....."

In welcoming Cheney, [Ehud] Olmert mentioned Iran first when outlining the subjects he planned to discuss with the vice president. Israel considers Iran to be the greatest threat to its survival, and rejects Tehran's claims that its nuclear program is not designed to produce arms.

Cheney wants a permanent foothold in the Middle East. He obviously does not consider ethics or morality in his decision-making process. He has no regard for the value of human life. And there is no one to stop him from achieving his goal.

Charlotte Allen is much better than you.

Charlotte Allen, last seen tarring all women with the stupidity brush in a ferver to insult Barack Obama, returns to her favorite subject, her religion, and how we all should celebrate it.

Your religion, or lack thereof, doesn't matter. Only Allen's religion is important. In fact, it's so important the entire world, as observed throught the locked and tinted window of her car as she drives past it, must observe it in the manner she deems appropriate.

Different neighborhoods on my route home provided little variance in this trend; whether the genteel and expensive post-Christian enclave in Northwest Washington where I lived, or the mostly African American and presumably fervently biblical ward in which the religious order that hosted my Good Friday liturgy resided, the general atmosphere remained consistent. A line of blue-jeaned college students snaked outside the door of my neighborhood pickup bar, the Cactus Cantina, as it did every other Friday night. Cars cruised and horns honked, and clusters of young people on the prowl for weekend adventure crammed the sidewalks.

The working-class Latino neighborhood through which I drove, whose residents nominally shared my Catholic faith and for whom Viernes Santo is a solemn fast day commemorating Christ’s death, was unseasonably merry: roaring crowds on the sidewalks, glittering lights from the bars, beer bottles smashing periodically against the asphalt.

Worse yet, there were only "spring" recipes in her favorite cooking magazine, and St. Patrick's Day falls during Lent, which means more drunken carousing. The situation is so dire that Allen laments:

Millions of American Christians will nonetheless celebrate Easter this year with church and sunrise services, and family lunches and brunches. But these commemorations are nowadays generally private and muted. Most schools and workplaces drone on in routine without even acknowledging the holiday (except in Hawaii, whose Good Friday legal holiday somehow survived a constitutional challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union).

Gasp! Imagine, in a diverse nation, private religious celebrations are being celebrated privately. Instead of the State enforcing religion, it holds it separate! And equal!

But Allen ends her post with hope, for "We are all Easter people." If she means Easter Island people, destined to die off due to their own excess, yes, she is indeed "Easter people."

Newman!!

From Think Progress:

Fox News’s senior vice president for operations and engineering, Warren Vandeveer, admitted to the New York Times yesterday that Fox’s Midtown Manhattan newsroom was recently infested with bed bugs. “An exterminator determined that the incursion was limited to a ‘very small area in the newsroom,’” but added that the home of the employee who brought the pests into work had “the worst infestation he had seen in 25 years in the business.” Vandeveer says the bugs have now been “totally eradicated.”

I always thought they were scum; it seems they're just pestilential.

No, No K-Lo

Men can admire female beauty (it's only natural) without wanting to take that beautiful woman to bed.

No, they can't.

If you don't want people to keep calling you a virgin, don't talk like one.

Juan Cole has an interesting take on Fallon's resignation.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates denied Tuesday that the abrupt resignation of Admiral William Fallon as CENTCOM commander indicates an imminent war against Iran. I think Gates's denial is credible. There is no sign of an American war on Iran, which would involve key positioning of warships, materiel and troops. There is no congressional mandate for such a thing, despite the non-binding Kyl-Lieberman resolution in the senate. A provocation is not out of the question, but it would be a risky move in an election year and could easily backfire on the Republican Party (ask Aznar in Spain).

My guess is that the real reason for moving Fallon out is not Iran but Iraq....

Having such a big dissenter as CENTCOM commander is inconvenient for the Republican Party at a time when John McCain is admitting that if he fails to convince the American people that the surge is succeeding, he will lose the presidency. That is, Fallon may have run afoul not of Cheney on Iran but McCain on Iraq. This may be Bush's first favor to the Republican nominee, who after all had a career as a naval officer himself.

This is very reassuring to read and Cole knows the situation far, far better than I, of course. But I would feel more at ease if I didn't suspect that the White House has already written off the election, and had already declared that whatever the president did was legal.

He'll be feverish after so much thinking.

I had hoped to discuss someting else, but Jonah's being stupid again, and there's such a thing as civic duty.

This is one area where I most profoundly disagree with cultural libertarians. The more the state gets out of the business of policing the sin, the more the rest of the society needs to get into the business of condemning it....I agree with [Jonathan Rauch] entirely that some social deception is necessary to maintain a healthy society. But once the deception has been exposed, forcing everyone to take sides, everyone must in fact take sides. One can be humane or sympathetic, but they should also judge.

(I think I know who edited this post.)

Why, Jonah? Why is everyone obliged to take sides and judge? If the state declares the issue none of its business, why would it be the business of private citizens? That certainly smacks of the nanny state to me. Not even God wants people running around pronouncing moral judgements and delivering punishment; that right is his alone. Judge not lest ye be judged, vengence is mine saith the lord. Keep your nose out of consenting adults' bedrooms, saith I.

But no Jonah would be complete without the barnacles sticking to his whale. Jonah quotes a commentor:

First, marriage involves a public ceremony (with a state required license) with a public vow to forsake all others. A married man visiting a prostitute violates that public vow, and so the matter cannot be said to be private. Whether it should be criminal is another matter.

Quick, call the cops. Someone's getting divorced and refusing to forsake all others!

While You Were Sleeping

Jonah Goldberg says a lot of stupid things. Liberals are fascists. Progressives are authoritarian. The white man is the Jew of liberal fascism. And on and on and on and on. But by far the stupidest thing he's ever said is that the message of the latest version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers says, "...we should make peace with the fact that there is war and conflict in the world because that is the nature of humanity itself and it's better to stay human than surrender to a new order of eternal peace and unity if it would cost us our souls."

But first, let's explain the context. Jonah went to the movies, as he so often does. He chose The Invasion, but did not go into the movie without mental preparation.

Anyway, I figured the 2007 remake would try to conjure some anti-Bush or
anti-war themes (if memory serves the movie was actually filmed a couple years
earlier). I was right. For most of the movie, it seems like it's about the Iraq
war. At least the war is constantly being referenced in the background. For most
of the movie I surmised that they were trying to make some sort of point about
how sleeping (when the pods take over) is the moral equivalent of political
apathy. If you close your eyes, oppression and conformity win, or something like
that.

I haven't seen the movie but I've seen the 1956 version and the 1978 version multiple times, and read the book. Jonah's probably right, although the message is probably closer to this: If you close your eyes, people like Jonah win.

For Jonah everything is political, even (or especially) movies, and if a review of the movie can hawked for a few bucks to the LA Times or take up some space at the National Review Online, so much the better. Case in point:

But then, at the end of the movie, the moral of the story seems to be turned completely on its head.

Which is more probable, the filmmaker suddenly flipped his message 180 degrees, or Jonah gets it wrong again?

Yeah, I think so too.

Earlier in the movie some Russian diplomat gives a speech about how if we lived in a world without conflict and war we would be in a world where we cease to be human. This little speech is recalled at the end, and the lessen seems (again I say "seems" because I'm not sure the filmmakers really knew what they wanted to say) to be that we should make peace with the fact that there is war and conflict in the world because that is the nature of humanity itself and it's better to stay human than surrender to a new order of eternal peace and unity if it would cost us our souls.* *Yes, it's pretty much exactly the same lesson of the Jasime storyline in the "Angel" series.

No. No it really, really isn't. Jasmine didn't eliminate violence, she surrounded herself with it. Jasmine had her general, Angel, and his team to carry out the violence. Jasmine says, "They're my eyes, my skin, my limbs, and, if need be, my fists." She ate her followers. And those who were not eaten lost all free will, which was the point of the storyline. We're the free will gang, Gunn shouts, because despite the peace and surety of surrendering all your decisions to your god, you have to give up too much in return. Loving and being controlled by Jasmine made Angel and his gang happy, but it also made them horrifically indifferent to suffering, including their own. Everything is easier, and they no longer have to question anything. Keeping that feeling of being cared for and belonging, and of course making their god happy, was all that mattered.

After Jasmine's spell is broken, Fred also rejects Angel's belief that they have to be cold and indifferent to fight her. Fred asks, "That the world we're fighting for? The right to be heartless, an uncaring shell? To be dead inside?...Well, I don't know about you, but... I'd take [pain] over being a shell any day." Peace and unity are not costing people their souls. It's not a choice between war or humanity. It's a choice betweeen making your choices yourself, no matter how difficult and painful that may be, or letting someone or some god tell you what to do, no matter how terrible that action may be. Free will or obedient servitude.

But Jonah doesn't see this, just as Jonah doesn't see how his beloved conservative ideology translates into suffering for so many people. He made his choice, despite all his protestations of libertarianism, and he chose obedience to authority over free will.

God bless W. F. Buckley and pass the ammunition.

Wingnut Welfare to the Rescue

NRO contributor Jonah "My mom still gives me an allowance" Goldberg sups delicately at the teat of charity for conservative bloggers once again.

Jack Fowler — publisher extraordinaire — has agreed to buy a limited number of books for National Review which I will be selling signed copies of through NRO (at, alas, a slight premium to what you'd pay at Amazon or Barnes & Noble to cover shipping and the rest).

Jack Fowler is, naturally, associate editor of National Review.

If Goldberg were any more of a welfare case, he'd be one of the babies in Chris Muir's endlessly breastfeeding comic saga.

The Passing of the Prime of Miss Ann Althouse

Ann, Ann, Melots are red
Cameras lights are blinking green
And your face is aglow
While the Idols moan low, so
Come out to the Vlog, Ann

Ann, Ann, you were young and alive
Dreaming your Camelot dreams
But then fame passed you by,
now you Vlog while high
Open your eyes, bonnie Ann

For Ann, Ann, Merlots are red
And camera lights are blinking green
While the comments are ablaze with the sychophants' yelping praise
Come into the Vlog, bonnie Ann

(Crossposted at the comments section of TBogg's hacienda.)

Lysistrata (on Veteran's Day)

If you go to war we will tear down your memorial
And smother your eternal flame
And never speak your name again
And you will be forgotten.

If you go to war we will sleep with your best friend
And give away your dog
And torch your pickup
And you will come home to nothing.

If you go to war we won't mourn your death
And will neglect your grave
And send no condolence cards
And your mother will cry alone.

If you stay home
One day there will be no war.

Every time someone mentions Ann Althouse's name, a bell rings and an angel gets its wings.

Or a nutter gets her fix.

On Friday night, TRex put up a post at the high-traffic blog Firedoglake exhorting his readers: "Please feel free to post your comments on this post under the name 'Ann Althouse'. I've done it before. It's totally fun." Some time thereafter, he took the post down, but I have the text of it because I've set up a Google alert to keep track of the use and abuse of my name, so I received the text in my email.

Savor that for a moment. She has her name on Bat Alert.

Let's move on.

I've known for a long time that unscrupulous webwriters appropriate my name, and I have a longstanding dispute with the blog Sadly, No for refusing to take down comments that appropriate my name. I have emailed them politely and seriously making the request, but they have refused repeatedly.Now, I have TRex's confession that he is one of my impersonators. I don't know that he is an impersonator on Sadly, No, but the post he took down mentioned Sadly, No.

An amusing man who refers to himself as a dinosaur refuses to take her seriously. Really? And he impersonates her, stealing her good name to make snarky comments that people might think actually came from her! And if it weren't for the fact that anyone who ran their cursor over "Homepage" would know who he was, just like with the comments on Sadly, No, he would have been this close to getting away with it too.

The Midwest Cuckoos

Ten years in the future, a strange phenomenon will take place. From small towns all over the Midwest, strange children will come together to remake the nation in their image. They are alien in appearance, with strangely shaped hair and chillingly uniform behavior. And they have murder in their hearts.

They are....the illegitamite grandchildren of Mitt Romney!

Yes, while the sons of Mitt scour the Midwest for anyone willing to listen to Romney's speeches in exchange for a free meal, the farmers' daughters carry a secret. The bored brothers, encumbered with wives, children, Mom, and Dad, find a little space for themselves in the buxom arms of America's virgin womanhood. And lo, nine months later, when the campaigning is nothing but a smear of red ink in life's Ledger, the Midwest Coockoos will be born, ready to impose a new world order through mind control and magic undies.

Beware and remember: Think of a brick wall.

"Bring me the head of Bob Barker!"

Via the estimable TBogg, we see that Ann Althouse can find only one reason that anybody would criticize her--they are minions of the petulant, vain, homicidal minor god known as Glory Hillary Clinton.

You see, feminism failed Ann. She did it all, a career and marriage and motherhood, but it didn't work out. It must be feminism's fault, since it can't be Ann's! And when Ann thinks about feminism, she grows huge and green with rage, rampaging across the countryside and smashing everything in her path, for feminism was killed by Cock Robin Bill Clinton with his little sword.

Is Althouse really a feminist? Since she is content to go along with whatever authority is around, she has no idea what she really believes. She's obsessed with reflections, constantly trying to identify herself, usually through unflattering comparisons to others. She's a vortex all right, constantly moving in ever-tightening circles, chasing something she can't quite define, dizzy with her attempts to keep up.

There are three types of people; leaders, followers, and the emotionally healthy.

The Bush Administration is very gradually doing the same thing in the US that it is doing in Iraq. They replace civil servants with obedient partisans, deny basic government services to disrupt daily life, destroy the economy to replace it with one more favorable to themselves, run farcical elections, replace media with propaganda, pit ethnic, racial and social groups against each other to spread discord, and install unreasoning and overwhelming fear in every heart.

And they're doing it for the same reason.

Control.

There is no justice, there are only consequences.

As I see no evidence of the hand of God in the suffering or elevation of either the guilty or the innocent, I am left with human laws. And human laws, faulty, arbitarary, and oppressive as they often are, do not always bring about justice. Perhaps they never do, for who or what can compensate for people or things permanently lost?

We will not punish those who committed these horrible crimes of war and indifference because we are complict. We let it happen because we flattered ourselves that we couldn't do such horrible crimes, couldn't kill around a million people including thousands of our own. We might wince and shrug at a lot, but we will not accept that we kidnap, torture and murder. That's what the bad guys do, we've heard incessently for six years. If we impeach Bush and Cheney, we would have to admit what we've become. All the dirty lies would come tumbling out, and we would no longer be the Good Guys.

No matter how hard they try, though, people can't live with this kind of dissonance between myth and reality. We are no longer as isolated from foreigners or the consequences of our actions. So we are going to flounder for a while, confused and unsure about what to do. And the anger that has been kept to a low simmer all these years will burn like the wildfires in California.

It's not our punishment. It's just a consequence of our actions.

The League of Extraordinary Bloggers, Part I

Part I: The Adventure Begins

In a Secret Location, deep beneath the bowels, entrails and colon of Pennsylvania Avenue, a Meeting of Diabolical Minds takes place. It is the League of Extraordinary Bloggers, each a hero (or a heroine or a Coulter) in his (or hers, or Coulter's) own sphere. They are:

Col. Glen Reynolds—famous defender of guns, wherever they are needed to fight the Brown Menace.

Michelle Malkin—a creature of the night, with an insatiable thirst for blood under her modest, cheerleader-clad façade.

Jonah Goldberg—A barefoot man-boy with cheek, famous for being so lazy he got his research assistant to paint his fence.

Hugh Hewitt—a man so colorless that he can be seen right through, unless clothed in the garb of authoritarian man-love. Might also be an albino.

Ann Althouse—A respectable professor who digs deep into the evil aspects of her psyche when she drink an experimental potion know as “Merlot.”


In this episode, our heroes gather to plan their latest campaign.

Reynolds: Ladies and gentlemen, we are here to investigate the latest Leftist plot, a purported attack on one Randi Rhodes. Our mission is to reconstruct the incident, thereby revealing her insidious lies.

Malkin: Perhaps we should just give her the benefit of the doubt. It could have had a perfectly innocent explanation.

The group bursts into peals of laughter.

Hewitt: (chuckling) That was a good one, Malkin. You’re brilliant.

Reynolds: Heh. Indeed. But back to our plan. We will reconstruct the incident here, in our Secret Location Deep under Pennsylvania Avenue. First we’ll need someone to pretend to be Rhodes.

Hewitt: Pick me! Pick me!

Reynolds: Ann, you be Rhodes.

Althouse giggles and blushes.

Reynolds: Malkin, you be the pavement.

Malkin: (shakes pom-poms) Yay! I get to smash a face! This sure beats hiding in the shrubbery! Can I have a snack if she bleeds?

Goldberg: What about me? Don’t I get paid, I mean have a job?

Reynolds: Jonah, you’ll count the broken teeth and measure the force of impact.

Jonah: Cool! (yelling) Hey, intern, get in her and measure something!

Althouse: Broken teeth? But I like my teeth. They’re shiny and all in a row.

Reynolds: Goldberg, we’re deep in the bowels of Pennsylvania Ave. Nobody can hear you yell for your intern. And somebody get Ann some Merlot.

Althouse: No, really, I oughtn’t, well, okay, just one glass.

Althouse drinks the seductive potion, shudders, and licks her lips, her eyes appreciatively taking in the small yet perky sweater that Malkin is wearing.

Hewitt: I think I hear screaming, Reynolds. I thought no one else was here.

Goldberg: You know what, I think someone’s screaming someplace. I thought you said no one was here, Glen.

Reynolds: By George, Jonah, I think you’re right. But don’t worry, he belonged to Karl Rove. We don’t ask questions here in the League of Extraordinary Bloggers.

All: Right, boss.

Althouse: Hic!

Part II Later, after this commercial message….