800 Pound Gorilla . . .

Somehow Glenn Reynolds and Michael Barone talk about polling and the election for more than thirteen minutes and never get around to discussing Nate Silver:

More Damaging Romney Footage . . .

This won't help the Romney campaign:

Operation Shift Blame

In the near term, at least, Barack Obama is a solid favorite to win the 2012 election. Since the economy is weak and the president is a KENYANSOCIALISTCHICAGOALINSKYITEMARXIST, his rightwing critics are straining for reasons that he is in the lead.

John Hindraker (via Memeorandum) thinks he has found it, and apparently, the fact that Republicans brought about the disaster in the first place and people don't trust them has nothing to do with it:

I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on entitlement programs–not to mention enormous numbers of public employees–we may have gotten to the point where the government economy is more important, in the short term, than the real economy.

I would give his argument more credence if he defined his terms and used hard data—how much "over 100 million" and what does he mean by "welfare"? The term "public employee" is reasonably precise, but as Paul Krugman notes, government payrolls have shrunk under Obama.

William Jacobson sees another cause—a Liberal Media Conspiracy to demoralize Republicans and conservatives:

It’s November 7.  Barack Obama has won.  The Republican presidential strategy has failed.  The media is jubilant.  The right-blogosphere is going through a serious introspection.  The left-blogosphere is dancing on our graves and shoving it down our throats.  Four years of fighting the Obama agenda was for nothing.
Oh, I’m sorry.  Let me correct that.  It’s September 9, not November 7.  The rest of the paragraph above can remain as originally written.

 The most absurd part is Jacobson's assumption that right-blogosphere is capable of "serious introspection."

I don't know how the election will come out, but I'm becoming more confident that Obama will prevail and I'm certain that far from introspection, the rightwing will become more detached from reality and blame the Liberal Media, or Hollywood or fraud: anything but their own failings.

Gotta Have Somebody Serve . . .

I read Michael Brendan Dougherty's article on Obama's Right Wing with interest. I would qualify as a member of that category except for the fact that I didn't vote for Obama in 2008 and I doubt I qualify as a conservative anymore.

I came close to voting for Obama in 2008 (I opted for Nader) and I favored his victory. This fall, I plan to vote for the President, which will be my first presidential vote for a Democrat and my first for a major party candidate since Reagan in 1984. I have little doubt that I will regret my vote, assuming that he wins, like I did after voting for Reagan.

The Obamacons Dougherty interviewed cite a variety of reasons for their apostasy but I was disappointed that none of them discussed the state of the broader conservative movement. I can think of many terms to describe the right-wing in the age of Obama, but the ones that spring to mind are "repulsive" and perhaps "insane." This applies to the leadership of the Republican party at the top, down to the creeps who at Weasel Zippers who think that Michelle Obama is some sort of fat cow.

Republicans amply demonstrated that they are terrible at governing between 2001 and 2008, and have attempted to make the country ungovernable in the Obama years. Since Mitt Romney seems to have no fixed beliefs other than that the rich are better than you and I, it's difficult to predict how he will govern.  I suspect that Romney will prattle about abortion, etc. just enough to placate the rubes and will appoint the most conservative judges confirmable; but his primary concern will be the care and feeding of corporations. The only upside of a Romney victory will be that Republicans will stop actively trying to destroy the country.

Stabbed in the Back!

The cultish nature of modern conservatism is obvious. Dan Riehl's response (via Memeorandum) to NRO's call for Willard to release more tax returns is simply example # 1,387,176 or so. For Riehl, National Review's editorial isn't simply a tactical error, but a betrayal:

Next time you opt to stab a GOP candidate in the back, how about having the balls to put your name on it? I don't think that's too much to ask. 

I really, really want to play nice with everyone on our side, but when I see this high minded BS from people who've never even run for anything, it smokes my butt. . .And don't give me this, well, we can disagree BS, either. 

You aren't even on any team you're a got damned cheerleader on the sidelines and right now you look silly in that frilly skirt you're wearing. So STFU if you don't have anything good to say, or just go the hell away. It isn't like anyone would miss most of NRO if it did, frankly. (emphasis added)

Get it NRO?—Mitt is now Leader of the Cause and the Cause must be served.

Now Who's Being Naive?

I don't normally think of Jim Antle or Robert Stacy McCain as being naive, but I can't otherwise understand their praise for Mitt Romney's non-pandering before the NAACP. Antle wrote that, "Romney isn't exactly known for his willingness to communicate unpopular truths. He deserves credit for doing so here."

That's only true if you assume that the people in the room with Romney were his intended audience. I suspect that the NAACP crowd were simply props and Willard was pandering to the Republican base. And seeing some of the reactions; such as the comment from Skippy on Antle's post that "anyone belonging to the NAACP is a racist, or Rush Limbaugh's (via Memeorandum) idiotic ravings, it would appear that his pandering worked.
UPDATE: Antle replies.

It's Not A Lie . . . If You Believe It . . .

The USA Today reports that the President plans to host an Independence Day barbecue for military families. Admittedly, it is not a particularly exciting story, but Glenn Reynolds is telling Instapundit readers that the president plans to celebrate the 4th " with a fundraiser in Paris."
The link goes to a Big Government story with a headline reading "Obama Campaign Celebrates Independence Day . . . With Fundraisers in Paris."(emphasis added) Big Government links to an article in the Hollywood Reporter, that has the real story:

Meanwhile, the Continental branch of the Obama fundraising effort will kick off next week in Paris with an Independence Day reception at the Rosenbloom Collection on the chic Rue du Chevaleret. Organizers Forrest Alogna, Pamela Boulet, Zachary James Miller, Valerie Picard, Joe Smallhoover and Curtis Young will host an early-evening event whose ticket prices range from $250 to $1,500.

I searched several of those names and I don't think they should be confused with the "Obama campaign," but at least the Big Government story doesn't claim the President himself is going to raise money in France on the Fourth of July, of all days. It is tempting to say that Glenn Reynolds is simply lying, but it is more complex than that. Reynolds, it would appear, needs to believe the worst about his enemies; so a story about some Americans in Paris fundraising for the President's reelection on the Fourth is streamlined into a factoid about how Obama is evil. Reynolds—it would seem— has internalized the wisdom of George Costanza:





UPDATE-- Costanza, I mean Reynolds makes a rare clarification: " Let me be clear: It’s the Obama Campaign. Obama himself won’t be in Paris."

The Rifleman’s Stalking the sick and the Lame . . .

The above video features NRA executive Veep Wayne LaPierre from 2011 expounding a conspiracy theory about how the Obama administration plans to implement gun control in his second administration: "get re-elected, and with no other re-elections to worry about, get busy dismantling and destroying our firearms freedom." This sort of thinking is totally nuts but it explains the rightwing obsession with the Fast and Furious operation that was supposedly part of a nefarious Obama plan to—in David Limbaugh's words—"manufacture 'evidence' for tightening gun control legislation."
I reviewed the Steve Sailer book, America's Half-Blood Prince (cobbled together from VDare columns) for Chronicles and debunked a similar argument:

 Sailer suggests that Obama will save his true self for a second term. “In Obama, ambition and caution are yoked. Becoming president is not his ultimate objective. Becoming a two-term president is. . . . Nixon’s first administration was one of the most liberal in American history. There were hints at the beginning of his second term, before Watergate . . .that Nixon, . . . intended to move toward his innate conservatism. That analogy suggests that a second Obama administration might more truly reflect the real Obama.” This is dubious. If Obama has studied recent history he will have noticed that recent second presidential terms have been become mired in scandal.
Sailer is correct that Obama wants a second term—every president does; but if he wants accomplish anything, he needs to act while he has the votes in Congress and the support of the public.

Since the Democrats lost control of the House in the last election, even routine measures such as increasing the debt limit have become near impossible. The whole notion that Barack Obama plans to use a second term—currently somewhat in doubt—to enact some secret radical agenda known only to Wayne LaPierre and other delusional cretins is absurd.

Occam's Bullshit Detector

The simplest, and most likely explanation for this poll result (via Memeorandum) is that it is bogus:

President Barack Obama is rapidly losing support among African-American voters in North Carolina, a new poll out today from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows.
The poll finds that Mitt Romney would get 20 percent of the African-American vote if the election were held today, compared with 76 percent for Obama.

If I'm confident of anything in the coming election, it is that black people are going to vote overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. Of course, that won't stop people from reading into this outlier pole what they want to see. Maggie Gallagher thinks that it is about gay marriage. Glenn Reynolds who spent most of 2008(you know, when the economy collapsed) proclaiming "dude, where's my recession,"  thinks that it is about the economy. I think that it's bullshit.

"Copperhead Paddy"

From Chapter iv of The Copperhead:

I fairly yearned to ask him what this
something was, and what was the matter
with his face, but it did not seem quite the
right thing to do, and presently he began
mumbling, as much to himself as to me, a
long and broken discourse, from which I
picked out that he had mingled with a group
of lusty young farmers in the market-place,
asking for the latest intelligence, and that
while they were conversing in a wholly
amiable manner, one of them had suddenly
knocked him down and kicked him, and that
thereafter they had pursued him with curses
and loud threats half-way to the tavern.
This and much more he proclaimed between
mouthfuls, speaking with great rapidity and
in so much more marked a brogue than usual,
that I understood only a fraction of what he
said.

He professed entire innocence of offence
in the affair, and either could not or would
not tell what it was he had said to invite
the blow. I dare say he did in truth richly
provoke the violence he encountered, but at
the time I regarded him as a martyr, and
swelled with indignation every time I looked
at his nose.

I remained angry, indeed, long after he
himself had altogether recovered his equanim-
ity and whimsical good spirits. He waited
outside on the seat while X went in to pay
for the baiting of the horses, and it was as
well that he did, I fancy, because there were
half a dozen brawny farm-hands and villagers
standing about the bar, who were laughing
in a stormy way over the episode of the
" Copperhead Paddy " in the market.

"Negro Sovereignty in the Republic"

From the first chapter of The Copperhead:

Gradually the old blood-feud with the Brit-
isher became obscured by fresher antagonisms,
and there sprouted up a crop of new sons of
Belial who deserved to be hated more even
than had Hamilton and Marshall. With me
the two stages of indignation glided into
one another so impreceptibly that I can now
hardly distinguish between them. What I do
recall is that the farmer came in time to neg-
lect the hereditary enemy, England, and to
seem to have quite forgotten our own historic

foes to liberty, so enraged was he over the
modem Abolitionists. He told me about them
as we paced up the seed rows together in the
spring, as we drove homeward on the hay-load
in the cool of the summer evening, as we
shovelled out a path for the women to the
pumps in the farm-yard through December
snows. It took me a long time to even ap-
proximately grasp the wickedness of these
new men, who desired to establish negro
sovereignty in the Republic, and to compel
each white girl to marry a black man.

The fact that I had never seen any negro
" close to," and had indeed only caught pass-
ing glimpses of one or more of the colored
race on the streets of our nearest big town,
added, no doubt, to the mystified alarm with
which I contemplated these monstrous pro-
posals.

Copperhead the Movie: Week One . . .

Closed Window

Perhaps it is time to stop the insanity:

Tensions have risen between Washington and Kabul, as President Hamid Karzai criticized the U.S. for failing to consult with him on an air raid on an Afghan village killed 18 civilians including 9 children.

I would guess that the window of opportunity to accomplish anything in Afghanistan closed sometime in 2002, yet we are still there. Does every occupation have to turn into a quagmire?

Le-gal Dim-bulb-i-tude

Law professor, half-wit; William Jacobson is mad at people who publicly supported Barack Obama in 2008, and Amber Lee Ettinger in particular, she of the famed Obama Girl video: From what I gather, Jacobson began blogging because he couldn't understand how anyone could oppose the political party that dragged the country into two foreign quagmire and brought about the worst financial collapse since the Great Drepression.

Citing an article stating that Ettinger won't be endorsing anybody this election cycle, Jacobson excretes, "no, you are not excused, fool" even though she didn't ask to be. What an idiot.

Masters of War On Coal

Longer Glenn Reynolds: I was against coal pollution until Obama was, now I am against him: "WAR ON COAL: New ad targets Lamar Alexander. Not sure what he’s thinking here." The link is to this ad:
Reynolds adds, "Maybe there’s something I’m missing here, but it seems to me that Alexander should be emulating Bob Corker." That link is to a clip from Fox News and features Sen. Corker saying nothing about coal or mercury pollution but instead engaging in generic vitriol against Obama.

In case the real issue to Reynolds isn't clear enough, here he is again from a few days ago: "NOW WHY WOULD HE DO THAT? Lamar Alexander Siding With Obama On Coal?" Perhaps he breathes and eats.

People Who Don't Like Me . . .

 While searching my name in recent weeks, I discovered that my blogging at The American Conservative has frequently annoyed people.
One Charles Patrick Adkins, for example, who took umbrage at my use of the term "rightwinger" in this post. Adkins ranted and raved about me:

Now, I have not the least clue who Clark Stooksbury is, nor do I quite honestly give two flips really; but this quoted above, is why I distance myself from the Paleoconservative right. Because they are in bed with the liberal left. I mean, seriously? “Right-Wingers??!”  that term being used on “The American Conservative?!?” Does anyone else see a problem with that, besides me?!?!

He produced some non sequitors:

I guess one can expect this from a magazine that is quite known for its Anti-Israel and Anti-Jewish Bias.

He begged:

I have been blogging full time since 2006. First as a "skeptical left of center" and then as a right-libertarian. Needless to say, in the last 7 years my politics has changed greatly. I have been out of work all that time. Yes, I do live with my parents. I have to. I am all they have. I am an only child and they are in their mid-60's. . .

Another critic with a blog called His Vorpal Sword mentions my post titled Hanoi Jane Approximately without the benefit of a link and tarred me with a Scarlet "M" for misogyny. I discovered on his about page that the blogger, Hart Williams is a very distinguished,  "published author, novelist, literary critic and screenwriter. . ." He again notes on the about page " imdb lists him as a screenwriter" and indeed it does. It turns out that Mr. Williams is the distinguished writer of such classics as Gandi and The English Patient. Oops, I meant that he wrote Hard to Swallow and Caught from Behind 3, among other classics. I haven't seen any of his pictures, but it was the misogyny watchdog's job to find ways to get Little Oral Annie on her knees and I'm sure he put a lot of thought into it.

Another mortal enemy resides at the blog The Other McCain. Stacy McCain wrote, in a comment on this post, "don’t get me started on Stooksbury, a guy who got his nose out of joint over my panning of Crunchy Cons, identified me as an enemy on that basis, and never got over it." I think he may have it backwards. It was McCain who was worked up over my criticism of Donkey Cons, which he co-wrote, in Chronicles. I dislike (and that's putting it nicely) McCain's politics, but I always assumed that we had a friendlier rivalry—I even semi-seriously suggested that him as a ghost for Sara Palin and McCain offered what appeared to be sincere thanks.

The Trail of Crocodile Tears . . .

They must be terrified of Elizabeth Warren. After weeks of obsessing over her claim to be 1/32 Cherokee, The Boston Herald has opened up the latest front against her:

Elizabeth Warren, who has railed against predatory banks and heartless foreclosures, took part in about a dozen Oklahoma real estate deals that netted her and her family hefty profits through maneuvers such as “flipping” properties, records show.

The article lists several instances of Warren buying and reselling property or loaning money to relatives without alleging any wrongdoing or providing much in the way of context. Since she just won the Democratic nomination with 96% of the vote and is within the margin of error (via Steve M.) against Scott Brown, the attacks don't seem to be working.

For some reason, the Herald's idiocy is worthy of a Memeorandum thread.

Doc Watson, RIP

UPDATE: Doc Watson's first recording.

Why, Exactly?

This tendentious George Will column (via Memeorandum) has its good points, but this is a dumb question: "Why, exactly, would it be less “divisive” for the court to uphold the broadly disliked Obamacare 5 to 4 than to overturn it 5 to 4?"

The relatively easy answer that upholding by a 5 to 4 vote maintains the status quo and allows the political branches to decide the issue—if Obamacare is as unpopular as Wills believes it to be, then President Romney and a Republican Congress will have an opportunity to repeal it next year. My guess is that Wills is afraid the either Romney won't win, or even worse, he'll win but the Republicans will fail to repeal.

If, on the other hand, the Court overturns Obamacare, it will be injecting itself into a hotly contested election in an unseemly fashion.

Naught, Save . . .

Literary historian, Paul Fussell has died at age 88. He wrote several books, the best known are The Great War and Modern Memory and Wartime.
One of my favorite sections of The Great War and Modern Memory is a brief discussion of elevated, heroic language:

The tutors in this special diction had been the boy's books of George Alfred Henty; the male-romances of Rider Haggard; the poems of Robert Bridges; and especially the Arthurian poems of Tennyson and the pseudo-medieval romances of William Morris. We can set out this "raised," essentially feudal language in a table of equivalents:

A friend is a               comrade
Friendship is             comradeship, or fellowship
A horse is a               steed, or charger
Danger is                   peril
To conquer is to       vanquish
. . .
Warfare is                strife
. . .
Nothing is                naught
Nothing but is         naught, save
. . .

The Jerk

What an idiot (via Memeorandum):

A teacher at a Rowan County school has been suspended after getting national attention for a YouTube video that surfaced last week showing her yelling at her students, saying it’s wrong to criticize the president.
In the YouTube video, North Rowan High School teacher Tonya Dixon-Neely and her students were debating several political issues, including a discussion about President Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

. . . “Let me tell you something.  You will not disrespect the president of the United States in this classroom.”

“I’ll say what I want,” countered one male student.

“Not about him you won’t,” yelled the teacher.
. . .
Later in the video the conversation turns foul-mouthed when the discussion changes to President Bush.

“Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush,” the teacher continued.  “You are not supposed to slander.

“As a social studies teacher I cannot allow you to slander any president in here, past or present.  If that’s the case, somebody could say negative things about the Tea Party.”

The article quotes Rush Limbaugh saying, "This teacher is a full-fledged leftist.  There's no question about it.  And sounds very much like a jerk to boot." I'm not sure I would characterize her as a leftist—she sounds too dumb to have a coherent world view and she apparently believes  that it is slander to criticize any president. But Limbaugh called it on the jerk part.

Born Again

Yet another example (via Memeorandum) of the lunacy that has overcome the Right in this election cycle. Arizona's Secretary of State, who denies being a birther is talking about keeping a sitting president off of the November ballot:

“I’m not a birther. I believe the president was born in Hawaii — or at least I hope he was,” Bennett said on the show. “But my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking.”

 One way to look at it is that these people are terrified that—in spite of the poor economy—the President is going to win the election.

There’s Lot of Pretty Girls in Mozambique . . .

Via Memeorandum, the hacks at Brietbart will leave no pile of stupid bullshit undisturbed in order to "vet" the president:

Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii." 

And . . . that's about it—a two decade old piece of publicity material has an error. We can look forward to this type of lunacy for the next six months (and another four years should Obama win) but at least one Brietbart reader is wary of crafty Obamites:

BUT LET'S be CAREFUL. It could be that Obama's team had someone give this to Breitbart, in order to get everyone on the right to latch on to it,, so his campaign could then market everyone on the right a "birther" They'd do this because polls says most people do not agree with birthers.

Cowboy Copas . . .

Lousian . . .

Les Whinin'

So, isn't Robert Stacy McCain a journalist? And isn't The American Spectator a publication? Perhaps these guys should do some more reporting and less whining:

We’ve never seen Barack Obama’s college transcripts, or senior thesis, and the only former girlfriend of his we know about is a composite perhaps based on a dead ex-girlfriend of his ghost writer, radical terrorist Bill Ayers. But the Washington Post can send a reporter out to do deep investigative journalism on Mitt Romney’s high-school days.

A Question That Nobody Asked

Newt Gingrich, ever the megalomaniac announces to the world (via Memeorandum) that he isn't interested in being veep:

Days after ending his run for the GOP presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich said Sunday he would not accept the Republican vice presidential slot if offered, and said Romney should focus on picking a young running mate.
“I can't imagine it,” said Gingrich on CNN's State of the Union Sunday of the possibility of joining Romney on the GOP ticket.

Nobody else can either, Newt.

Dreams of My Confirmation Bias

Stacy McCain is on the case to prove that Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams of my Father, was written by Bill Ayers.The latest smoking gun is the revelation that an Obama girlfriend mentioned in his book is a composite. McCain writes,

The so-called “New York girlfriend” in Obama’s memoir bears specific resemblance to Ayers’s ex-girlfriend Diana Oughton, one of three Weather Underground members killed in 1970 when a bomb the terrorist group was building accidentally exploded.
Like the girlfriend in Obama’s memoir, Oughton had brown hair and green eyes, and came from an affluent background. Furthermore, Oughton’s family estate in Illinois is strikingly similar to one described in a sequence in Dreams when Obama and his “New York girlfriend” visit her family.

I can think of several possible explanations, including the conspiratorial notion promoted by McCain (and others) that Ayers ghostwrote Obama's book. It  There is, however, the distinct possibility that any resemblance is a coincidence and McCain is a victim of confirmation bias. It's also possible that the Obama made the resemblance intentional. I don't really know how close Obama was to Bill Ayers when he was writing the book. But like normal people, I don't care. This story (as well as the Obama eats dogs kerfuffle) isn't aimed at normal people. GOP shills like McCain (and Glenn Reynolds) are stuck with the unloved and unlovable Mitt Romney as their standard bearer, so they are tasked with keeping the base worked into a continuous lather for the next six months.

Considering some of McCains's more witless readers, the lather should be easy to maintain. There is Elaine, who wrote that, "I saw a video clip of Ayers pretty much taking credit for having written Obama's first book, after Andersen's book was released. . . "; referring, I think, to this clip of Ayers doing so with evident sarcasm. Also, too, is Yehiel—claiming without evidence—that "Obama said his father fought in WW II. He was about 5 or 6 years old." I'm fairly certain that Obama said that about his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who was born in 1918 and was in the Army in World War II.

Mission Accomplished

Memeorandum is aflame with complaints about Barack Obama capitalizing on the yesterday's anniversary of the bin Laden kill; so it is appropriate to remember on May Day how a real man capitalizes on a (seeming) military triumph:

A few years back, I noted some of the responses from that day, my favorite being from John Hindraker at Powerline. ""Yeah, we've had better leaders. Their names were Washington and Lincoln. And maybe Roosevelt."

Headline News

The most absurd headline (via Memorandum) ever beings with the phrase "Gingrich's future."

Levin on a Jet Plane

From Dan Riehl, I see that Mark Levin is a bit upset about the President's travels: "He doesn't mind taking that 747 one frivolous trip after another, one self-serving fundraising after another, but he minds what you drive and how much fuel you use. And we can go on and on."


I guess that Levin and Riehl are unaware that presidents, including Saint Reagan have been traveling on their own private airplane for some time now.

The Quick and the Dumb . . .

Bill Quick puts this post under the tags "race-baiting" and "assholes" which is interesting because he is a race-baiting asshole.

The Gingrich Card . . .

So Newt "food stamp president" Gingrich thinks that Barack Obama is playing the race card (via Memeorandum) with his comments on the Trayvon Martin killing:

“It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background," Gingrich said. "Is the President suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot that would be ok because it didn’t look like him?"

That's a ludicrous interpretation of the President's comment on a case where the victim's race is central:

"My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said. "All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves."

"Obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through," Obama said. "All of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how something like this has happened."

The only mystery here is how somebody as repulsive as Newt Gingrich is faltering in the Republican primaries.

The Vetting Continues . . .

As a citizen journalist inspired by Andrew Breitbart, I have uncovered shocking footage of Barack Obama from the 1970s:

Space Traders

the Breitbart idiots make me want to watch:

Postmortem

Given the lame revelations coming out of the Big sites as a part of the "vetting" process I am forced to conclude that Andrew Breitbart died of embarrassment.

You're Nothing to Me Now . . .

A couple of years ago, Rush Limbaugh failed in his attempt to become a part owner of the Saint Louis Rams. At the time, I wrote that, "I scarcely blame the NFL for not wanting to devote all of their public relations to defending and contextualizing the ravings of one of its part-owners on an almost daily basis. And that is what they would have to do if Limbaugh was involved."

After the most recent Limbaugh freakout, which has resulted in his show bleeding sponsors, I'm sure that the members of the NFL hierarchy are breathing a sigh of relief that they avoided the nightmare of allowing him into their exclusive club; even as Limbaugh's allies go to the mattresses to contain the damage wrought by the man quickly earning a reputation as the Fredo Corleone of the Right.

The Real Victims

Poor victimized rightwingers; "held to a standard of decorum which liberals aren't expected to abide" in Aaron Goldstein's words and it "hasn't been a good week" for them. Poor Dears.

Bob Dylan & the Band

Stuck in the Middle with You . . .

Makers v. Professors

One has to plow through acres of bullshit before getting to punchline in Today's Glenn Reynolds column in the Washington Examiner(via Memeorandum):

[A]fter a while, people who pay their bills on time start to feel like suckers. I think we’ve reached that point now:
* People who pay their mortgages - often at considerable personal sacrifice - see others who didn’t bother get special assistance.
* People who took jobs they didn’t particularly want just to pay the bills see others who didn’t getting extended unemployment benefits.
* People who took risks to build their businesses and succeeded see others, who failed, getting bailouts. It rankles at all levels.

And an important point of Sykes’ book is that moocher-culture isn’t limited to farmers or welfare queens. The moocher-vs-sucker divide isn’t between the rich and poor, but between those who support themselves and those nursing at the government teat. (emphasis added)

Only at the end does one discover that "Examiner Sunday Reflection contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a University of Tennessee School of Law professor, and founder and editor of Instapundit.com." Not only does Mr. Makers v. Takers nurse at the government teat, he does so in a singularly useless capacity—law professor.

Cancer Mall

Barbara Ehrenreich's excellent book, Bright-sided shined a light on the "infantilizing" pink-ribboned culture promoted by groups like the Komen foundation:

The first thing I discovered as I waded out into the relevant sites is that not everyone views the disease with horror and dread . . . There are between two and three million American women in various stages of breast cancer treatment, who, along with anxious relatives, make up a significant market for all things breast cancer related. Bears, for example: I identified four distinct lines, or species, of these creatures, including . . . the Nick and Nora Wish Upon a Star Bear, which was available . . . at the Komen Foundation Web site's "marketplace."

And bears are only the tip, so to speak, of the cornucopia of pink-ribbon-themed breast cancer products. . . "Awareness" beats secrecy and stigma, of course, but I couldn't help noticing that the existential space in which a friend had earnestly advised me to "confront [my] mortality" bore a striking resemblance to the mall.

Obama and his Enemies . . .

Rightwingers are the ultimate victims. Ted Olson(via Memeorandum), for example took to the Wall Street Journal today to whine on behalf of the Koch brothers, but his charges are exceedingly vague. He states:

Richard Nixon maintained an"enemies list" that singled out private citizens for investigation and abuse by agencies of government, including the Internal Revenue Service. When that was revealed, the press and public were outraged. That conduct will forever remain one of the indelible stains on Nixon's presidency and legacy

OK. So, has the Obama administration "singled out private citizens for investigation and abuse"? Olson is kind of sketchy. Giving utterly no specifics, Olson accuses the administration of "engag[ing] in derogatory speculative innuendo about the integrity of . . . tax returns." Obama is also guilty because his "surrogates and allies in the media" have "attacked" and "sullied" the reputation of the Kochs. Absent more specific charges of, you know, actual abuse; it seems as if the president stands accused of engaging in politics.

Reliable hack, Glenn Reynolds adds " I was talking to a CEO last year — an Obama supporter no less — who told me he was amazed at how openly Administration officials threatened to use media demonization if he didn’t play ball." So the administration will criticize those it disagrees with.

Molly Hemingway at Ricochet unwittingly (one is tempted to say "half-wittingly") explains why the comparison between the Nixon Enemies List and Obama's criticism of the Kochs is absurd: "Nixon's lists were secret. Obama is telegraphing his list in his very public rhetoric, the actions of the administration and the oversight of Congress." It was the secrecy of the first that made it so susceptible to abuse.

UPDATE: I should clarify the last line. Nixon's enemies list was secret because the purpose was abuse.