Thursday Olio: Seasonal Affective Disorder Edition

Disney's Copyright Lawyer Battalions have finally gone too far.

• Pierce dispatches Douthat's amplified and clarified excuse for that Sunday piece of his. Which, as usual, is all that needs to be said about it. So let me add:

• Douthat:  "(For now, Megan McArdle’s extended post on the subject deserves your attention.) The second group agreed with Matt Yglesias…"

For cryin' out loud, these people have sex with each other more often than the Manson Family did.

• And how many times now has Douthat taken to his supernumerary, third-nipple posts to explain something he tried to say in the most valuable political opinion mall space in America? And failed both times? Because, as Charlie has pointed out whenever he bothers with Cardinal Douthat (his construction, which I'm totally stealing), the man won't tell the truth about anything. This country paid an enormous price for the phony Reagan Revolution, followed by the Gingrich Revolution, and the Cheney House Revolt doubling down on the Crazy. Are we gonna spend another decade paying for the "Ah, but there are reasonable religious maniacs and thoughtful corporate mouthpieces" horseshit that centrist plutocrats and Beltway insiders try to console themselves with? The Times should insist that every Douthat missive be about abortion. It's all he has to talk about anyway.

• Wasn't Weigel supposed to be the ink-stained and diligent Post reporter who managed to get inside the Teabagger movement? Of course, he seemed to imagine, somehow, that it was a sui-generis, totally independent, totally fiscal-focused spontaneous political eruption, despite the fact that its astroturf roots were already exposed, and its connection to the obvious Birther Shit was, well, obvious.

Anyway, Dave's on top of the shocking story of how a couple of disruptive Teabagging nut cases got tossed from the House Budget Committee, and recommends you keep up with RedState for further developments. Meanwhile, a quote from Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, one of the two Holy Martyrs:

According to Amash, the party leaders were blaming the wrong people. They, not libertarian-leaning Republicans like him, were the ones who spent “$300 million on ads that didn’t work.”

Would this be a good time to remind you asshats that you got handed your hats, and your asses, in the Republican primaries, by committed "conservative" voters who had a smorgasbord of Crazy from which to select? And that that's why that $300 mil landed where it did?

• Joe "Like Sixteen Hours Every Morning Isn't Enough of You" Scarborough, in something called Politico:

By meeting more regularly with the leader of the opposition, President Obama may also learn what Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich learned in the 1990s and what Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill learned in the 1980s: that American government works best when political opponents build personal relationships.

Y'know, not only is rightist Clinton Nostalgia touching, it's doubly so when it comes from someone who voted to impeach the guy. And not only might this country be better off today if Tip had sworn off the Scotch and The Gipper, and not only is this country better off because Bill Clinton gave Newt the Full Deliverance, but shut th' fuck up. Obama came to Boehner and the Republicans as a fucking supplicant in 2009. Were you following politics then, Joe? This time all he has to do is watch Boehner stew. If you want "leadership" from the President now, why didn't you call for it then?

• Forget it Jake, it's Slate: "The Rise of the Hipster Hunter".

I Think You've Just About Got It Worked Out

Frank Donatelli, "What This Party Needs Is More Advice From Leftover Reagan Confidence Men". December 4

David Brooks, "One More Budget Battle And We're Back On Top". December 3

Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, "2016. What Else Is There To Write About?" December 4

REPUBLICAN Rebirth? More Like a Renaissance!™

Let's begin with the piece on Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio's "makeovers", which it took the combination of Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei to completely fill in. That's the sort of firepower Perry wished he could'a sailed into Edo Bay with.

Marco Rubio doesn’t want to be the “Hispanic candidate.” Paul Ryan doesn’t want to be the “austerity guy.”

And Daniel Craig doesn't wanna be typecast as Bond. So we have Cowboys vs. Aliens.

What a remarkable thing that, after fifty years of tone-deafness, Republicans figured out with just one little election that their message wasn't reaching everybody. And the solution, of course, is to try a different lipstick.

While Congress dawdled this summer, Rubio, 41, assigned his policy experts to figure out ways to help make the middle class wealthier — and add a dose of substance to the charismatic presidential hopeful’s résumé. Reaching out to academics and think tanks to build Rubio’s network, the senator and his staff developed a two-year reinvention project and an “upward mobility agenda,” including programs like early childhood education, school choice and incentives for entrepreneurs. Those are some of the proposals he’ll test-drive at the Kemp Foundation dinner, where he’ll receive the group’s second leadership award. The first winner: Paul Ryan.

Miss Congeniality: I dunno. Probably some white guy.

I'm sorry, but aren't "academics and think tanks" at the bottom of the present Republican message? And isn't "Support the elimination of taxes on the wealthy and we'll make you middle class, honest" pretty much it already?

As for "school choice", well, I've been watching domestic politics too long to imagine that shit will somehow stop floating, but do take a look at Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction election a month ago, fellas. This is not Taxes, this is not Abortion, or Incontinent Military Spending, issues you are convinced will live forever. You've promised the moon and a white picket fence over school "reform", and now there's enough of it around that people are beginning to notice the lack of miracles. Think "Mission Accomplished".

If he makes the sale in countless such appearances over the next two years, he’ll begin a formal presidential campaign shortly after the midterm elections of November 2014, Rubio sources tell us.

Wow. There's just no substitute for insider information.

Ryan, 42, will kick off his own drive to redefine the party — and himself — as the pre-dinner keynote speaker before 300-plus conservative faithful on the same stage, detailing his thinking on how people of all classes can rise up economically and improve socially. Top Republicans tell us Ryan tried to push his ideas for a more creative “war on poverty” during the presidential campaign but was muzzled by nervous Nellies at Mitt Romney’s Boston headquarters who didn’t see an immediate political payoff. So Ryan seethed when the “47 percent” tape emerged, convinced that the impact was worse because the campaign had no record on issues relating to inclusion or poverty, exacerbating the out-of-touch image that the hidden camera cemented.

You say "out-of-touch image", voters say "the condensed soul of the Republican party."

And, excuse me, but Paul Ryan sprung full-grown from Mitt Romney's spacious cranium this summer? He's been pelting the country with "ideas" for the last two years. He's suddenly noticed poverty?

Paul Ryan's toast, unless "still being taken seriously by Politico" becomes the major issue in 2016. Backwards-hat-wearin', flexin' motherfucker should have been smart enough to turn down Mitt Romney, if he isn't smart enough to do anything else. And he isn't.

But then, Ryan's still the House go-to guy on all things fiscally screwy, so he gets to bask in the headlines (something all these Republican intellectuals would be screaming bloody murder about if they really wanted to reform the party) for another couple years. Maybe he'll even take advice from Brooks:

But the big demand would be this: That on March 15, 2013, both parties would introduce leader-endorsed tax and entitlement reform bills in Congress that would bring the debt down to 60 percent of G.D.P. by 2024 and 40 percent by 2037, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Those bills would work their way through the normal legislative process, as the Constitution intended. If a Grand Bargain is not reached by Dec. 15, 2013, then there would be automatic defense and entitlement cuts and automatic tax increases.

That's right. David Brooks wants us to govern by a fucking series of unworkable, unrealistic, and, frankly, clinically delusional Financial Cliff bargains. And he believes this will turn the national debate to the Republican's turf.

(Brooks, you'll recall, got burned by the Teabaggers in 2009, after declaring his heartfelt belief of the moment that the party needed to reform itself. So this time he's betting it all on Red, apparently. Foolproof system.)

Can we just mention something? Either go fucking soul search for twenty minutes, at least, or just admit you're never changing anything except your cosmetics. Why don't we convince Boehner to start showing up blue? Your problem--and it's been your problem since Reagan--is that the things you insist are solutions to national problems are shit. And they're proven to be shit. They don't fucking work. They're designed as slogans, not solutions, but somewhere along the line you all started to drink your own snake oil. Turning the national debate towards the Republicans is like turning the key light onto Lindsey Lohan at 5 AM.

Meanwhile, former Reagan functionary Frank Donatelli has some insights, and if "former Reagan functionary" is at the top of your resume, you know you've got something:

One much-discussed approach is totally counterproductive. A few conservatives continue to pursue unfettered purity in their candidates. They blame defeat on the GOP’s “moderation” and contend that Mitt Romney was an insufficiently conservative alternative. The reasoning is that “millions” of conservatives stayed home on Election Day. If the prospect of President Obama’s reelection couldn’t bring these “millions” out to vote, one wonders what would. I remember people telling me with a straight face that Ronald Reagan wasn’t conservative enough when he was running for president.

Who told you that, Frank? We need a name. Claire Chennault? Anna Chennault? George Lincoln Rockwell?

Pursuing everyone on the farthest end of the political spectrum is futile and only results in losing more independent voters. It is significant that despite overall disappointing results, the GOP won independent voters this time.

And it's nearly as significant that you still fucking lost.

On the other side are some, mostly non-Republicans, who claim that the GOP’s social conservative positions are “turning off” moderate voters and suggest Republicans abandon traditional value voters. The problem here is that the socially liberal, economically conservative Republicans barely exist in reality. The most prominent proponent of this approach, Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, was the only incumbent senator to lose his race last month. Social conservatives are a key part of the Republican coalition and among our most loyal supporters. It would be foolish in the extreme to walk away from such an important part of the GOP base .

True, "foolish and extreme" is what I think of, too.

By the way, Quarter-term Senator Scott Brown lost to a liberal in liberal Massachusetts. I know your people are out of it, but there can't be many who think they need to run someone more conservative to reclaim The Old Colony. Meanwhile, risible social "conservatives" lost in conservative Indiana and Missouri. But they weren't incumbents, just winners of Republican primaries, so it doesn't count?

The problem is not that social conservatives are an important part of the GOP, but rather that they are not enough alone to form a voting majority in the new America. Nor apparently are there enough social conservatives and economic conservatives to stitch together 270 electoral votes. The GOP cannot become a majority by reading people out of our party. We become a majority by adding new converts.

And one reason you're unable to do so is that most everyone else hates the fucking social "conservatives". Who, by the way, are the same people who're screaming for "more 'conservative'" candidates next time.

Fortunately, the targets available are obvious. First are Hispanics. Michael Barone compares them with the Italian immigrants of the last century and there is much truth in that comparison.

There's a shade of truth in that, at least. It's maybe the penumbra of truth. Colored by experience, perhaps. Not quite as black and white as with some other voting blocs, we might say. Quit listening to Michael Barone, we could add.

Both are family oriented and, yes, socially conservative. Italian-Americans were heavily discriminated against and chose Democrats and government help at first, but eventually sought opportunity over security and are now an important part of the GOP coalition.

Hey, Hispanics: If you make enough money, in forty or fifty years we'll treat you like family!  (Please vote like the Pope tells ya in the meantime.)

Second are women, especially single women. At a time in America when half of marriages end in divorce and an increasing number of children are born out of wedlock, women are rightly concerned about economic security. After all, they can suffer the most immediate consequences.

Maybe you can have the vital "social 'conservative'" wing pray for 'em.

I dare say Obama or liberals have no earthly idea what to do for these women – except for expanded welfare programs.

As opposed to no welfare programs.

And by the way, fuck you. "Obama or liberals" may have a lot to answer for, but it doesn't begin to touch your own little cosmetic problem with The Girls. Try the Earned Income Tax Credit. Try Headstart, the School Lunch Program, the expansion of the School Lunch Program, Medicaid, Title IX, Title X, or the national focus on domestic violence. All liberal, all Democratic programs. When last we left women to the Republican-rightist coalition they were little more than chattel.

It's the same motherfuckin' thing with you people every time. How do we keep our stranglehold on the white racist vote, and still appeal to non-whites?  How do we convince the 99% that the 1% Knows Best? What shade of lipstick will make this pig prom queen?

Keep it up.

Infantilism

Ross Douthat, "More Babies, Please". December 1

APOLOGIES for treading ground that Roy has already stomped much more efficiently, but yesterday, when my neighbor tossed the Times over the back fence it landed with such a resounding thud I knew I had to check out Douthat first thing.

Reader, is there any question that the whole right-wing "birthrate" thing is the Anti-Fluoridationalism of the 21st century? The most hopelessly bent, the most recursively insane, the signature folly of a parade of fools? They can't keep race out of it, the way their intellectual forebears couldn't keep backwoods theology out of dental hygiene. They can't keep Catholic theology out of it, even though most of 'em aren't Catholic.

They can't quit talking about it. Which, y'know, to each his own kink:

IN the eternally recurring debates about whether some rival great power will knock the United States off its global perch, there has always been one excellent reason to bet on a second American century: We have more babies than the competition.

So right off the bat: 1) Where are these debates occurring, let alone recurring? 2) Assuming they are, who is saying our great reliance is babies? I thought it was the fact that God needs us around to help with Armageddon?  That, and the superiority of Coca-Cola™ to all other beverages.

It’s a near-universal law that modernity reduces fertility. But compared with the swiftly aging nations of East Asia and Western Europe, the American birthrate has proved consistently resilient, hovering around the level required to keep a population stable or growing over the long run.

Okay, so the debate is being held in the sort of circles where Europe is referred to as "swiftly aging." I guess that's why I missed it.

America’s demographic edge has a variety of sources: our famous religiosity, our vast interior and wide-open spaces (and the four-bedroom detached houses they make possible), our willingness to welcome immigrants (who tend to have higher birthrates than the native-born).

Thanks for explaining the non-solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist.

And it clearly is an edge. Today’s babies are tomorrow’s taxpayers and workers and entrepreneurs, and relatively youthful populations speed economic growth and keep spending commitments affordable. Thanks to our relative demographic dynamism, the America of 50 years hence may not only have more workers per retiree than countries like Japan and Germany, but also have more than emerging powers like China and Brazil.

Not that this means Social Security and Medicare aren't doomed, mind you. Ya ever notice how, when the likes of Douthat wants to insist on innate ethical superiority of US Americans, they head right for that abiding human-heartedness which they, politically, fight against tooth and claw?

If, that is, our dynamism persists. But that’s no longer a sure thing. American fertility plunged with the stock market in 2008, and it hasn’t recovered. Last week, the Pew Research Center reported that U.S. birthrates hit the lowest rate ever recorded in 2011, with just 63 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. (The rate was 71 per 1,000 in 1990.) For the first time in recent memory, Americans are having fewer babies than the French or British.

Pretty impressive for swiftly-aging nations.

The plunge might be temporary. American fertility plummeted during the Great Depression, and more recent downturns have produced modest dips as well. This time, the birthrate has fallen fastest among foreign-born Americans, and particularly among Hispanics, who saw huge amounts of wealth evaporate with the housing bust. Many people may simply be postponing childbearing until better times return, and a few years of swift growth could produce a miniature baby boom.

Well, I think that's summed up the recurring debate nicely. We'll just wait and see.

Among the native-born working class, meanwhile, there was a retreat from child rearing even before the Great Recession hit. For Americans without college degrees, economic instability and a shortage of marriageable men seem to be furthering two trends in tandem: more women are having children out of wedlock, and fewer are raising families at all.

Thank God. For a minute there I thought realization that this was a non-debate over an imaginary issue which could go one way, or the other, was going to remove every opportunity for priggery.

Finally, there’s been a broader cultural shift away from a child-centric understanding of romance and marriage. In 1990, 65 percent of Americans told Pew that children were “very important” to a successful marriage; in 2007, just before the current baby bust, only 41 percent agreed. (That trend goes a long way toward explaining why gay marriage, which formally severs wedlock from sex differences and procreation, has gone from a nonstarter to a no-brainer for so many people.)

I'm gonna go waaaay out on a limb here, without even Pew to guide me, and suggest that The Childless Trend has convinced exactly zero percent of the population to change its attitude on gay marriage from "nonstarter" to "no-brainer".

Government’s power over fertility rates is limited, but not nonexistent. America has no real family policy to speak of at the moment, and the evidence from countries like Sweden and France suggests that reducing the ever-rising cost of having kids can help fertility rates rebound. Whether this means a more family-friendly tax code, a push for more flexible work hours, or an effort to reduce the cost of college, there’s clearly room for creative policy to make some difference.

So by the tenth paragraph we get around to mentioning that the non-story of a vapor argument having two nonexistent sides really has nothing much to do with political policy, and more to do with Douthat's recollection of the political ploys of his parents' generation, when Republicans sought to convince the white Middle Class it was discriminated against at every turn. A condition for which the solution, if I recall, was to vote Republican, and have Middle Class economic prospects shrink like a bar of soap for forty years.

Beneath these policy debates, though, lie cultural forces that no legislator can really hope to change. The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.

Well, it really is too bad, then, that the Republican party has spent 170 years championing unfettered corporate rapine, exploitative labor practices, and the demise of the family farm to multi-mega agribusiness. In fact, y'know, it's too bad that the standard "conservative" solution to our problems involves correcting what "conservatives" did a half-century previous, now that they've seen the light.

Such decadence need not be permanent, but neither can it be undone by political willpower alone. It can only be reversed by the slow accumulation of individual choices, which is how all social and cultural recoveries are ultimately made.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/DouthatNYT.

And, Ross, I invite you to get a real job for a couple years, and copulate to your heart's content.

Stand Up And Say That

THE real Mitch Daniels:

WASHINGTON -- Republican frustration over the election defeat of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett boiled over into the public this week with Gov. Mitch Daniels claiming at an education reform conference here that teachers used illegal and improper methods to oust Bennett.

"If you're a fan of anything-goes politics, it was a creative use of illegal -- but still creative use -- of public resources," Daniels said Wednesday at a Washington, D.C., meeting of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a group led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. "We got emails sent out on school time by people who were supposed to be teaching someone at the time, all about Tony Bennett. We have parents who went to back to school night to find out how little Jebbie is doing and instead they got a diatribe about the upcoming election."

If you're scoring at home, and I hope you are, that's one-time Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, still on company time [as he has been for the last four years, during which he 1) spent two and one-half years running for the money to not run for President, then 2) spent the next year ducking a subpoena in the IBM/FSSA billion-dollar boondoggle, on the grounds that as Governor he was Constitutionally protected from having to tell the truth, before 3) lining up employment as President of Purdue, after a rigorous selection process conducted by people he appointed], complaining that public school teachers illegally defeated his henchman Bennett. From six-hundred miles away. Before picking up his award (though it's dollars to doughnuts his fee cleared a couple weeks ago).

We're sure, though, that he's got solid evidence of this illegality, right?

Asked if the governor has proof of the illegal activities, spokesman Jake Oakman said the incidents "were rather well known during the campaign" but offered no specifics.

 Oakman said the Indiana Republican Party "received a number of complaints from parents about the personal attacks on Dr. Bennett during the election."

He referred to the state party the question of whether any action was taken to investigate the claims.

In other words, No.

Indiana GOP spokesman Pete Seat said the party received copies of emails about the election that were sent by teachers from school accounts. Seat said the party did not take action because those who provided the emails simply wanted the GOP to be aware of them. 

Asked if the emails were a violation of state law, Seat said they were "certainly inappropriate."

Now, first, kudos to Maureen Groppe for climbing the chain of bullshit here, and to the smoldering crater where once stood Gene Pulliam's flagship paper for actually allowing it, (and other questions about Daniels' pet projects, now that he's safely away from needing votes). But the issue isn't whether these people have something to say in reply; it's that they don't have anything to say in reply. Daniels didn't say "certainly inappropriate", which wouldn't have been nearly petulant enough to earn him his trophy, though it's just as inaccurate.  And this is the state, and the party, so concerned about voter fraud it was the first in the nation to chase its Voter ID law all the way to the Supreme Court. (We have, as a result, learned of three cases of vote fraud: Charlie White, Richard Lugar, and Richard Mourdock, although only the first can actually be called "criminal" by someone who observes the niceties.) Why aren't the State Police on the case?

Maybe because "using your professional email account to send email" isn't, um, illegal? Nor is "personally attacking" Tony Bennett a felony, unless you use a hatchet (if you use a gun it's a Second amendment exercise). If parents were unfairly harangued about Bennett at what they thought were school conferences, they should have complained to a) the teacher, b) the principal, and c) the superintendent. Or at least given the GOP permission to use their names. 

This is Mitch Daniels, by the way, the man many puditologically-inclined Republicans thought should get another crack at the Federal budget. When he controlled the sluice gates he was quickly surrounded by people who managed to keep his natural, Randian inclination to slime everyone and everything that begged to slightly differ with him. Not that he's reduced to the D list he's back home in the bicorne. His opponents are "dinosaurs", opponents of a progress so clear it never has to prove itself, or provide any evidence. Just like th' Guv'ner hisself. 

Why Do Missouri And Indiana Get To Have All The Fun?

SOMETHING called Politico brings us the sad news that someone called Erick E. Erickson, apparently a noted "conservative" intellectual, will not be challenging Saxby Chambliss in, I think, 2017.

And then someone, apparently figuring that the mere existence of this story did not incinerate everything decent, if anything, left in our political life, asked Erickson for an explanation.

This is, evidently, a quote. A quote from someone who someone else actually wanted to run for the U.S. Senate. Please do not operate heavy machinery within a week of reading it.

“Were I to run for the Senate, it would be a terribly nasty campaign. It’d actually be really awesome, but it’d be really nasty. I have a seven year old, a soon to be four year old, and a wife who does not like being anywhere near a stage. I’m not putting my family through that when the best outcome would mean a sizable pay cut in pay and being away from my kids and wife all the time huddled in a pit vipers often surrounded by too many who viewed me as a useful instrument to their own advancement.”

So, a couple things, here. One, I do hope that now, now, at long last and decades late, the Republican party, or whatever's left of it with a functioning cerebral cortex and a vague recollection of the word "dignity", if anything, regrets, the way someone else would come to regret killing his wheelchair-bound grandma with a hatchet so he could pawn her Hummel collection to pay for a sex-change operation--which was botched--ever insisting that it was unfairly under-represented in the "liberal" media.

Two: the most powerful electron microscope on the planet could not discern my interest in anything about Erick E. Erickson. He is Ann Coulter without the wit, Jim Inhofe without the erudition, and Glenn Beck without the artistic discernment. Rolled into one. I wish only to take the opportunity to say this about Erick E. Erickson. There are but two reasons why the term "goat fucker" would occur to someone in the heat of the moment. The first is wordsmithery.

Erick E. Erickson is not a wordsmith.

The Turnips Of Wrath

Stuart Stevens, "Mitt Romney. A good man. The right fight." November 28

Aisha Harris, "Glenn Beck puts 'Obama in Pee Pee', calls it art". November 28

INTRODUCTIONS, first: Stuart Stevens was the Romney campaign's chief strategist; Aisha Harris writes about teevee for Slate.  And both are brave enough to admit it.

Oh, look, hors d'oeuvres!

Glenn Beck has said and done many outlandish things in his career as a provacateur,

"Provocateur" being the alternate spelling of "guy who proved too crazy to be taken seriously, even on FOX." "Provacateur", meanwhile, is how people who take Glenn Beck seriously, and turn off Spell Check, spell "provocateur".

but yesterday he may have topped even his most clownish past antics by unveiling—and putting up for sale—a new work of art: “Obama in Pee Pee.”

Sorry, but nothing Glenn Beck, provacatuer, does will ever top things Glenn Beck did when he thought he was being taken seriously.

Brandishing his best—but still terrible—Pepé Le Pew impression,

Equating "art" with "snooty French accent"? Comedy genius. What a porvocoture!

Beck informed the audience that his own “specially brewed Country Time” in a mason jar would sell for the asking-price of $25,000,

Overpriced Art! Stop, you're killing me by proxy proovication!

The presentation, while infantile, is also surprisingly amusing.

Like Truck Nutz. Or, more accurately, like Truck Nutz fifteen years from now.

Beck’s job—like that of the one kid in elementary school who would incessantly repeat what other people said just to get a rise out of them—is to provoke as much outrage from the left as possible.

Don't most people get fired if they don't do their jobs?

Christ, lady, you should pardon the expression, if Glenn Beck had been chosen to deliver the Republican keynote address in Tampa "the left" would have erupted in spontaneous parades.

But let's just mention a couple things here, because we should. Sure, it's Slate, and there's a premium paid (for some reason) for being completely off the rails about anything. But, y'know, in 139 words there you said "outlandish" "provacateur" "clownish" "best, but still terrible" "while infantile" "surprisingly amusing" and "provoke" again. If you're that concerned about your reputation, then rethink this commitment you have to eating regularly. Or go work someplace real. Otherwise, you might consider just writing the damn story straight, then mentioning that Beck has a long, long, long way to go before the sum of the "provocations" in his "career" begin to match the outrage over Piss Christ. Or The Last Temptation of Christ. Or Jeremiah Wright. Or the Obama's fist bump. Or the Ten Commandments, Quemoy and Matsu, or the fluoridation of water. Or, you know, blackness.

By the way, maybe Slate should have spent those virtual column inches defending Country-Time ™ Lemonade.

Anyway, who's up for some post-election analysis of the Republican party? 'Bout time this got some attention:

Over the years, one of the more troubling characteristics of the Democratic Party and the left in general has been a shortage of loyalty and an abundance of self-loathing. It would be a shame if we Republicans took a narrow presidential loss as a signal that those are traits we should emulate.

Nothing like starting off the self-assessment by complaining about the ex-wife. Okay, you say "self-loathing", I say "wholesome and honest disagreements, which may result in endless quibbling but beat the hell out of being wedded to a bunch of backwoods religious maniacs who're never satisfied, and who force you to walk a tightrope over Shit Falls."

I appreciate that Mitt Romney was never a favorite of D.C.’s green-room crowd or, frankly, of many politicians.

Or your base. You guys just can't ever, ever, give up on the Elites routine, can you?

That’s why, a year ago, so few of those people thought that he would win the Republican nomination.

True, except for the fact that everybody knew he'd win, that he had the most money and the closest thing to a competent staff, and was the top runner-up still standing from 2008. Which is precisely who you guys tend to nominate. Other than that, complete surprise. I figured Cain had it in the bag.

Nobody liked Romney except voters. What began in a small field in New Hampshire grew into a national movement. It wasn’t our campaign, it was Romney. He bested the competition in debates, and though he was behind almost every candidate in the GOP primary at one time or the other, he won the nomination and came very close to winning the presidency.

Oh, if only he'd found sixty-five fucking Electoral votes! We should'a added six more states, or somethin'.

And for cryin' out loud, every other Republican led the race at some point---that includes three who gave every indication of being too fucking loony to lower their underwear before taking a dump--because of the electrifying dislike Mitt Romney inspired among voters.

In doing so, he raised more money for the Republican Party than the party did.

Hell, he has more money than the Republican party does. And his pals want Republican tax policy without Republican social lunacy. Writ large, anyway. They'll settle.

He trounced Barack Obama in debate.

Well, y'know, once. An occasion most people attributed to the President's poor showing than anything Romney did. In fact, his "trouncing" performance would have been food for the buzzards if it had been evaluated on its own terms.

He defended the free-enterprise system and, more than any figure in recent history, drew attention to the moral case for free enterprise and conservative economics.

Yeah, it was a brave performance, all right.

When much of what passes for a political intelligentsia these days predicted that the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan meant certain death on the third rail of Medicare and Social Security, Romney brought the fight to the Democrats and made the rational, persuasive case for entitlement reform that conservatives have so desperately needed.

Right, by explaining how different his actual program would turn out to be from Ryan's, in the event he ever got around to outlining it. Man, that political intelligentsia, though, I'm with you there. Totally wrong about Ryan's effect on the election. Have you brought him out of hiding, yet?

The nation listened, thought about it — and on Election Day, Romney carried seniors by a wide margin. It’s safe to say that the entitlement discussion will never be the same.

It's gonna be rational, fact-based, and free from plutocrat piracies? Thanks, Mitt.

(By the way, remind me again about what "Seniors" said about Social Security and Medicare on election day. There seems to be some static on the line.)

On Nov. 6, Romney carried the majority of every economic group except those with less than $50,000 a year in household income.

Who knew there were enough Average Americans to swing an election?

That means he carried the majority of middle-class voters.

Which, according to Mitt, meant those earning $250,000.

While John McCain lost white voters younger than 30 by 10 points, Romney won those voters by seven points, a 17-point shift. Obama received 4½million fewer voters in 2012 than 2008, and Romney got more votes than McCain.

Then his mistake was in not running against John McCain. [/rimshot]  Oh, wait, he did.

The Obama organization ran a great campaign. In my world, the definition of the better campaign is the one that wins.

In my world, the definition of "back-handed compliment" is "something some dick of a sore loser spouts when he thinks people are listening."

But having been involved in three presidential races, two of which we won closely and one that we lost fairly closely, I know enough to know that we weren’t brilliant because Florida went our way in 2000 or enough Ohioans stuck with us in 2004.

You could'a won 'em both--for real or by Court intervention--and you still would have lost, genius.

Nor are we idiots because we came a little more than 320,000 votes short of winning the electoral college in 2012.

If this isn't the stupidest notion I've ever heard repeated in politics I'm forgetting something. The idea that you could cherry-pick a winning electoral slate, then count up the votes so you win by one, just beats everything.

Losing is just losing. It’s not a mandate to throw out every idea that the candidate championed, and I would hope it’s not seen as an excuse to show disrespect for a good man who fought hard for values we admire.

Question: is there some point at which I should just stand astride History and say "These are Mitt Romney's values"? Or is that just everything he ever said, much of it contradicted by something else he said?

In the debates and in sweeping rallies across the country, Romney captured the imagination of millions of Americans. /blockquote>

So does that show where D-level celebrities try to dance.

He spoke for those who felt disconnected from the Obama vision of America. He handled the unequaled pressures of a campaign with a natural grace and good humor that contrasted sharply with the angry bitterness of his critics.

Yes, America will never forget his cluelessness about actual food, his neatly combed hair, and his cheerful offer to throw half of his fellow citizens under a bus and run them over.

There was a time not so long ago when the problems of the Democratic Party revolved around being too liberal and too dependent on minorities.

Y'know, I like to sit back and remember my illusory childhood sometimes, too.

Obama turned those problems into advantages and rode that strategy to victory. But he was a charismatic African American president with a billion dollars, no primary and media that often felt morally conflicted about being critical. How easy is that to replicate?

Good point. How many educated African Americans are there, even? And next time the media won't be conflicted, and will call a spade a spade.

Yes, the Republican Party has problems, but as we go forward, let’s remember that any party that captures the majority of the middle class must be doing something right.

That close to Miss Congeniality. You lacked only the congeniality. And the women.

When Mitt Romney stood on stage with President Obama, it wasn’t about television ads or whiz-bang turnout technologies,

Or voting.

it was about fundamental Republican ideas vs. fundamental Democratic ideas. It was about lower taxes or higher taxes, less government or more government, more freedom or less freedom. And Republican ideals — Mitt Romney — carried the day.

Please, don't ever change.

Witless Protection Program

SHEESH. Weigel:

The grand master of the Bell Curve is used to liberals pointing and sputtering at his conclusions. He typically pre-empts this by burying them with research -- research they, the sort of people who believe that human evolution happened but that human biodiversity is a myth, sure have not done.

Is there some sort of prize for proving it's possible to be more than 100% wrong?

Okay, first: Murray? Murray? So he enjoyed a brief primary-season resurrection among already-desperate Republicans, including the sort of Republican who believes saying "White People are Civilization" is a mark of intellectual bravery. It didn't work. It didn't work to the extent that Charles Fucking Murray seems to've noticed, and now is trying to explain, to whom it's not clear, that Asians are actually honorary Whites, and ought to be smart enough (unlike the Coloreds) to realize which side they should be on.

Tell ya whut, Dave: when some rightist intellectual figures out how to tell Republicans why they've been so wrong about so much for so long, and show no signs of ceasing, I'll take notice. Just bringing up Murray more than a week after that last book of his is a sign of derangement. Or worse.

Second, "liberals" "pointing and sputtering"? Research?  For godssakes, The Bell Curve wasn't demolished by critical commentary. It was pre-demolished by basic research forty years prior to its publication. The only people who believed by 1994 that IQ tests measure anything quantifiable at all--let alone measure it well--were psychologists, and Murray wasn't even one of those.

Who sputtered? Really, name one. I can't think of anybody to the left of David Brooks who takes Murray seriously, and even Brooks was a little sheepish about that Decline of White People thing.

Research they "sure have not done"? I'm guessing few have studied Nostradamus, or combed the minutiae of UFOlogy, either. For precisely the same reasons.

We're already skating on the marbles of Hackitude Speedway. But "the sort of people who believe that human evolution happened "?  You mean "non-hallucinatory sentients born since the middle of the 19th century and taught a human language"? And whose "belief" that "human biodiversity is a myth" is somehow the greatest piece of pseudoscience on record? This blog certainly supports exaggeration for effect, especially comic effect, but it also believes that it should be easy, in 90% of the cases and with 90% of writers who employ it, to understand the exaggeration, and to understand what was meant. This, instead (I'm feeling charitable), is just another example of the modern fad for forcing the reader to fill in what you mean. We shouldn't believe that it takes a "sort" to accept evolution. We might grant the use of "human" there, but only on the grounds that it was needed to make a point which was wholly unneeded. Otherwise singling out a belief in "human" evolution sounds like the sort of special pleading a hopeless Evangelical makes if he gets a real high school education.

And no one says biodiversity is a "myth", nor are they required to do so in order to dispute Murray's voluminous evidence; one of his most prominent critics (and pre-critics) was the late great Stephen Jay Gould. (Gould, by the way, was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Hahvahd. Murray's a political scientist from AEI.)

It is, of course, the height of biological illiteracy to insist we have to accept Murray's racial "explanations". Especially seeing as how Murray couldn't be bothered to accept the scientific consensus about IQ testing before he spouted off. And we are left, at the end, with just another foolish qualifier designed to fit a preconceived conclusion, just for the satisfaction of claiming that "liberals think they're so smart, but their own beliefs prove them wrong." Cf "Liberals are the real racists/sexists/war mongers", "Welfare is the real slavery", et. al. It's the sort of thing that wows 'em from the pulpit; it's telling that your modern "conservative" either doesn't know the difference, or thinks everyone's in the choir.

The Conserative Jobs Problem Begins And Ends With The Gibbet

George Eff Will, "Digesting the Twinkies' lessons". November 23

THERE'S a small misconception I'd like to clear up first: at no time have I ever seriously suggested that every problem in America was directly traceable to 1970s television, and specifically to the hiring of Barbara Walters, a commercial real-estate pitchwoman with a crippling speech impediment, to wead the news, and the popularity of Star Trek. (Granted, that prosthetic ear-festooned Space Western was produced in the 1960s, where it fell flat on its half-black/half-white face, but its popularity soared in Saturday reruns in the next decade, among people who would later idolize Ronald Reagan, and for identical reasons.) I may be a poor student of History, educated at public expense, but even I know better than that. What I meant--what is self-evident--is that this is where we lost all hope of ever solving any.

George Eff Will haberdashered his way onto the tube at the end of what cultural sadists refer to as The Disco Era. This is not a coincidence. Will was a pwoduct of that same Roone Arledge ABC News Wevowution that gave us Walters. He was there to balance the radical leftism of David Brinkley. The Reader may be wondering how it is that in the intervening decades no one in the Industry has seen fit to re-jigger the equation in favor of clinical sanity. So am I. The only answer I have is to ask if you've taken a look at the talent pool lately.  Since Walters became an anchor, every megalomaniac boob in the country thinks he's worth millions. And why shouldn't he?

Earthquakes may strike, dynasties may fall and locusts may devour the crops, but Oldsmobile and Pan Am are forever. Never mind.

Who said there are no monarchist comedians?

Listen, things are going to get worse. A lot worse. There's going to be some cursing, so you might want to back out now, unless that's what you come here for. But let's go ahead and begin at the beginning.

I've been thinking about this for a week, and asking everyone I meet:  name another instance of such a recognizable brand as Hostess shutting its doors in the last thirty years. People have mentioned cigarette brands (though they're rarely sure which brands have actually disappeared), or gas stations. No one mentioned Oldsmobile (victim of a brand-reorganization by the geniuses at GM), or any of the US air carriers, which fell victim to incontinent "pro-business" deregulation (yes, done by the Carter administration, George, but no different in effect for it). Most normal Americans seem to consider heavy industry as something separate from shampoo production.

If the Big Three hadn't contested every safety and environmental regulation that came down the pike, and insisted on building cars like it was 1959 all over again, maybe it would be 1959 again. And the effect of religio-deregulation on the airline industry is too famous to bear repeating. That isn't what happened to Hostess, or the Twinkie.

But about the death of Twinkies: Write obituaries in the subjunctive mood. Like Lazarus, but for a reason more mundane than miraculous, this confection may be resurrected.

Maybe because Twinkies have $68 million in sales in 2012? Are we not, at the bottom, talking about six different management companies ("job creators") who have not been able to turn a profit or stay out of bankruptcy ("government intervention") in a decade despite having bankable, national brand names in their line-up?

And are we not, at bottom, really refusing to talk about the fact that the only way any of these entrepreneurial geniuses the Republican party (to name just one) lionizes can make enough money for themselves is by slashing costs to zero? That's not financial genius, it's third-grade arithmetic.

In any case, the crisis of Hostess Brands Inc., the maker of Twinkies, involves two potent lessons.

First, market forces will have their way.

Fuck that. Fuck all the fucking excuses made for Hostess, even before they found the union to be the ultimate Out. With people like you, that is.

This is the goddam history of brand management over the past thirty-five years, even since Reagan opened the floodgates of speculation. I'd like to know what grocery store brand has suffered. I'm sure there's a few, but it's not sugar-laden corn-syrup-laden Coca-Cola, or Pepsi. It's not Oreos. It's not Keebler, Little Debbie, or Moon Pies.  How'd they escape those market forces? I'm pretty sure what Philip Morris and Reynolds were doing in the 80s--they kill off their customers almost twice as fast as Wonder Bread does--namely, using their market placement to expand into other soul-deadening lines made all the financial papers at the time. Did they sleep through that at Hostess, or did the whole healthy eating thing just sneak up on them? If market forces beat th' fuck out of Hostess isn't that plainly the fault of management? All six of 'em?  Or do they only get the glory, and you've found a way to blame that on the Teamsters, too? The Fuck. Do not try to tell me that an honest man, an honest company, an honest management team could not take the Hostess line and turn a profit. It's beyond insulting.

Second, never underestimate baby-boomer nostalgia, which is acute narcissism. The Twinkies melodrama has the boomers thinking — as usual, about themselves: If an 82-year-old brand can die, so can we. Is that even legal?

Number of Baby-Boomers who ran the Roman Catholic Church while its employees helped themselves to the rectums of young acolytes, with impunity: Zero.

Hostess, which had 18,500 employees making and distributing more than 30 brands made in 36 plants, had been in and out of bankruptcy several times since 2004. Its terminal crisis began Nov. 9, when thousands of members of the bakers union went out on strike to protest wage, health-care and pension cuts imposed by a court.

A bankruptcy court which swept aside lawful contracts in order to facilitate profiteering, something Hostess' employees had already gone through before. The court didn't exactly cover itself with glory, or competence, in this one, any more than the various vultures who had hold of Hostess for a decade did.

The bakers objected to a 17 percent increase in their contribution for their health-care benefits.

Ah, the vaunted George Eff Will dedication to honest discourse. As Seen On TV, in the Carter-Reagan Debates. A 17% increase in their health-care contribution on top of a 26% pay cut, which followed a 21% pay cut the last time they had to play the Bankruptcy game.

Let's raise taxes an equal amount. Twice. And see what the Leisure class has to say. Fuck you.

Amazingly, Washington did not offer Hostess a bailout. This discriminatory policy may be a constitutional violation — denial of equal protection of the laws.

I'll bet this killed when you test-marketed it at a Heritage Foundation luncheon. In 1978.

Granted, it was not big in the technical, crabbed, hairsplitting, narrow-minded way that “big” is normally understood, as a boring matter of mere size. It was, however, big in what matters most — in boomers’ minds. They fondly remember opening their Roy Rogers or Hopalong Cassidy or Davy Crockett lunchboxes at school and finding Twinkies nestled next to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches made of Wonder Bread (another endangered Hostess species). Stendhal said that the only way ice cream could be better is if it were a sin. Boomers, a generation of food scolds, became adults who considered Twinkies and other sugary things sinful. They should be shedding scalding tears of remorse.

Who th' fuck are you even arguing with anymore, George?

Anyway, why GM and not Hostess? The Troubled Assets Relief Program, a.k.a. TARP, was passed to rescue financial institutions. But Washington reasoned: “What’s legality among cronies?” So soon TARP was succoring GM, which was not a financial institution. It was not even a car company. It was a health-care provider unsuccessfully trying to sell cars fast enough to generate enough revenue to pay health benefits for its employees and approximately twice as many retirees.

TARP, a Bush administration program which sunk no one knows how much money into rescuing the global financial markets, (mostly) American division, from the global financial crisis created by the global financial markets, mostly American: legal and good, because finance. Rescuing the American auto industry, an Obama administration program now repaid by its recipients: illegal, and bad, because "conservative" theory.

Hostess had in its far-flung operations 372 collective bargaining agreements with various unions that had sought and received — shed no tears for complicit management — some interesting benefits. The Teamsters liked the rule that bread and pastries might be going to the same place but must go in different trucks.

Okay, first, nobody loves a good Wall St. Journal rerun than I do. But tell me: how many management contracts did Hostess administer? How many separate health and benefit plans did they total?  How much were they increasing upper management wages all along, through two bankruptcies? Not much interest in those figures on your side, is there?

But those are the people who were in charge. All along those were the people in charge. If Hostess couldn't afford to operate thirty-six plants that produced more than thirty brands, then maybe it could have spun some of 'em off. Y'know, what th' hell, maybe Wonder Bread could be made by the Wonder Bread Company again. The way the Founders intended.

And I'm not here to defend the Teamsters, or analyze union contracts, nor to regurgitate whatever the Journal claims about 'em. But I do shop in grocery stores--that'd be Hostess' major client--and I bet they like having bread delivered separately from pastries. In fact, I'll wager most of 'em would insist on it.

The market said that Hostess as configured made no sense. If, however, Twinkies and perhaps other Hostess brands retain value, the market will say so, and someone will produce them. Probably in a right-to-work state, which is how “entrepreneurial federalism” (another Boorstin phrase) should work: Business moves to states that make it welcome.

Right. Because if there's one lesson we can all agree on in this, it's that given free rein, Hostess' management will be a roaring success. The Market tells us so.

And This Time We Mean It

ONCE More with Feeling: it is, without question, the election of Ronald Wilson "Gipper" Reagan which marks the beginning of the decline of the American Empire, though it had been busy shooting off its toes for the previous three-and-one-half decades. It's the election of Reagan, or more precisely, the mass-market mythologizing of him which began with the assassination attempt a couple months into his presidency, and took wing when the absurd claims about his scam economic program happened to coincide with an uptick in the business cycle (if by "coincide" one means "precede by two years") which marks the point at which a functional voting majority of Americans decided to pull the lever for Pure Horseshit That Makes Us Feel Better About Ourselves over trying to correct some of the dumbass moves we'd made after WWII made us a military superpower.

Reagan was the candidate of 1) Jim Crow Wasn't Really All That Bad, And Should Have Been Allowed To Die Out Naturally, Subject to States' Rights; 2) We Weren't Allowed To Win in Vietnam; 3) Environmentalism is Just Another Name for Godless Communism; 4) Ours is a "Judeo-Christian" Nation, and its twin corollaries, 4a) Jesus says no abortion, and 4b) the modern State of Israel is, in fact, our magical mystical 51st state. That is, the up-to-the-minute trends in right-wing dipshittery, coupled with the usual collection of antifluoridationist nuts and Gilded Age capitalist rapine. And bonus hippie punching. Delivered affably.

Tell me, really, that this isn't essentially the Republican platform  of 2012, and all the years in between. Whazzat? I left out No Taxes and National Debt? Yes, because those are to the Republican party what bikini-clad nubiles are to the producers of domestic beer. Got nothin' to do with the product, but they do draw in the rubes. Taxes? Republicans don't pay taxes. Debt? Who raised the debt more than Reagan? Bush II?

So someone tell me why anyone would believe, fall for, or pay any attention whatsoever to Republican make-over talk? What could possibly come of it?

Sure, there's been sufficient amusement in Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio complaining that post-defeat Mitt is unfortunately making the Republican party sound like Republicans. There's wizened mage Ted Cruz claiming Romney "French-kissed" Obama (is he unaware of the True "Conservative" talent that Romney defeated in the primaries?), and Mike Huckabee blaming Republicans for stabbing poor Todd Akin in the back, in defiance of all polling numbers.

Or this, which is the stupidest thing ever published in English.

But the real problem, if you ask me, hasn't been the ~10% of the electorate Reaganism managed to add to the "Conservative" coalition. It's so-called moderates, or centrists, who seem convinced that these people make so much noise they have to be on to something.

Consider Anne Applebaum.

After quickly dismissing, by cabbie proxy the idea of Republicans should consider the Hispanic voter (and sneering at Karl Rove's "voter suppression" line as an unfortunate appropriation of a standard liberal fantasy), Applebaum urges Republicans to return to their imaginary roots (apparently, dating to that imaginary amalgam of the 1950s and the 1880s they seem to inhabit): sensible Immigration reform (!), Public Healthcare (!!), higher gasoline taxes (!!!), conservation and budgetary austerity! (The last she's required to borrow from the Tories. But, really, if you already live there, is it stealing to lift a toothbrush? Or a couple of place settings?)

Do I hear scoffing? Well, 1) John McCain, Mr. Conservative himself, co-wrote the McCain-Kennedy Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, a piece of pre-campaign compromise he'd be repudiating less than a year later, when he needed actual Republicans to vote for him; 2) Ezra Klein, Mr. Conservative himself, has pointed out the the Heritage Foundation touted the individual mandate back in 1989; and 3) Charles "Merkwürdigeliebe" Krauthammer, Mr. Conservation himself, is for higher gas taxes (to offset eliminating income taxes, but leave us not mar a beautiful dream).

With this historical template in place, with this solid foundation of True "Conservative" values as a jumping-off point, one wonders how the Republican party so suddenly veered off the road into such frankly gauche displays of common yahooiganism. One tries to figure out why Mitt Romney, Mr. Patrician himself, found it necessary to stoop to such things (before righting himself, of course) like a common job applicant.

And one wonders what Republican party Anne Applebaum, born the year Barry Goldwater took over the party, has been looking at the last half century.

Your Alternate Bobby Jindal Translator

"WE must be all-inclusive; we must convince 100% of Americans to agree with the precise same ideas Mitt Romney defends so inelegantly."

Personally, I like Jindal as 2012's answer to 2008's Mitch Daniels, the guy who Republican insiders know will never become the nominee, and thus can come out and speak some semi-unpalatable truth ("social issues on the back burner!") designed to convince Beltway insiders (yet again!) that the Rockefeller-ish Republicans have some room to maneuver, at least electorally. With--and this is equally important--absolutely no intention to really do so, and no chance they could if they did.

I do hope the Reader appreciates as much as I Jindal's pledge that his party wants to make it possible for all Americans to join the middle class. 

By the way, thanks to David Weigel for breaking away from the fast-breaking Benghazi news long enough to cover Romney's comments. But:

Romney understood, and understands, that these people want to believe that poor voters are being exploited by Democrats and forced to vote themselves more benefits. It's a theory that undergirds a lot of conservative election analysis. Let's not just write off Romney as some gormless dweeb.

1) Is it not time to admit that "conservative election analysis" is not much of a cover? And 2) isn't "gormless dweeb", like, a contradiction in terms? Though it might actually describe Romney.

Wednesday Olio: Hey,The 1990s Called Edition

• In 1997, Lt. Kelly Flynn, the first female B-52 pilot, was discharged from the Air Force for adultery. As you may imagine--or will, once you consider that this was during the Clinton administration--the story made all the papers. Not being a student of the Uniform Code of Military Justice I remember, at the time, being astonished to learn that adultery was a courts martial offense. Or rather that--since I read the fine print--it constitutes one under certain circumstances. And among those circumstances are a) the rank of the accused (the higher the rank, the more serious the offense); b) the military status or connection of the other party (Flynn had an affair with the civilian husband of a woman in Flynn's command); and c) the effect on the military (Flynn's fame made her affair news; the fact that it was news made it a more serious offense. To the Air Force).

So, look, I understand that coverage of the Petraeus Affair Affair is inevitable.  I suppose this means we have to see Peter King's big ugly trash-fish head open up and discharge words, and we must wonder anew how Diane Feinstein got to Washington. There's no reason to ask where news judgement has gone. But fer chrissakes: it's no mystery why the FBI was keeping a criminal investigation secret (it's called "the law"), and there's no real puzzlement over the motive for Petraeus' resignation (which, evidently, came only after he learned that the matter would become public): the man's a fucking four-star general. He may be retired, but the fact that he conforms to a military sense of justice should not come as a surprise. Especially to media types who spend so much time fellating all things military.

• Meanwhile, Brian Williams found it necessary to evoke the famous generals of WWII in order to place Petraeus in historical perspective. Is there some sort of Tom Bwokaw virus still active at NBC?  (And am I the only one who remembers Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf ?)

• This, however, is a crime.

• One more thing: why is an affair a potential security risk, while having an Honorary Ambassador and Socialite to CENTCOM, who wears pearls bigger than her head, is no big deal?

• Thanks again to local Channel 8 News for bringing us, in the same week, a) the story of the Navy veteran who was flying the flag in front of his house upside down (which, he explained to the camera, he would have been doing "no matter who won the election", thereby proving that he wouldn't), and b) the Jim Shella report on the big Indiana secession petition at whitehouse.gov story, the latter despite the fact that most of the names on the petition that Shella checked weren't people from Indiana.

Fer fuck's sake, if these are stories then cover them as stories, if anyone remembers how that's done. If you're gonna stick a microphone in the first yahoo's face, ask him why he flies the flag if he doesn't respect its rules of etiquette. Ask him how he would have felt if Our Nation's First Responders had been involved in a high-speed crash rushing to his "emergency".  (By the way, when this routine appeared after the 2008 elections, I spotted one at the office of a local cemetery and called to complain. My mistake. I should have called 911.)

And if Shella wants to laugh off extremist crazies, maybe he could have followed the nigger in the white house meme instead.

• Forget it, Jake, it's Saletan:

That’s a neat fusion of conservative impulses: realism about human nature, skepticism toward naïve laws, attention to cultural consequences. You can see, in these reflections, how the GOP gradually reconciles itself to same-sex marriage.

Okay, forget the notion of the Republican party once again "reconciling" itself to social change, sometime after being crushed by the falling wall it was on the wrong side of and trying, until the last minute, to prop up. Which will, once again, be achieved by having Frank Luntz cleverly alter its rhetoric. This, after all, has "worked" so well in the past. I'd just like to know where, besides "inside the minds of moderate Republicans", "conservatism" has demonstrated a realism about human nature, or a skepticism about the efficacy of law, which is anything more than an extension of its temporal political interests? I've been listening to this shit for at least forty years, and I'd like to know when it goes into effect. "Conservative" realism about human nature consists of the heartfelt belief that all lower classes are greedy pickpockets with the sexual mores of feral cats, and its estimation of the naiveté of legislation depends on whether the law in question provides basic healthcare or forces a woman to hear that a fetus "can feel pain" before she can obtain an abortion. "Conservatives" supposedly start off with a metaphysical certainty about the imperfectability of Man (the one philosophical question the natural sciences have conclusively answered, while no one was looking, apparently). This translates into an unshakable conviction that nothing we can do will ever improve the lot of the Poor, but also, somehow, into the argument that we needn't bother making sure the wealthy don't steal anything that's not nailed down and surrounded by lawyers.

How is it that this is still being repeated? And forgive me for repeating myself, but that's not a philosophical position. It's a symptom.

The Carousel of History

I AGREE with almost everything Ross Douthat said in his Sunday column, and a good deal of what he said here the day after the election.

We can conclude from this:

1) There was recently a national election in which Republican results did not match Republican's estimation of their self-evident superiority.

2) That we are somewhere between that election and the opening of the next Congress, where the Republican leadership will, within a month, rewrite the story, to Ross' eventual satisfaction. 

The Reagan coalition is dead! Is that not the same Reagan coalition Douthat announced the demise of in 2008?

Anybody happen to see the slightest bit of evidence that Young Ross actually believed this between February 2009, when the Teabag Nation "revolutionized" the Republican party, and two days before the election?  

Takes him until the penultimate paragraph Sunday to allow as how the money men who run the GOP aren't exactly eager to see it revolutionized again. It's interesting how in 2009 few people, and almost no pundits, realized that money called the shots in Republican circles, ain't it?

I will give the man credit: that Day After piece was almost poignant in its description of the near-unanimous Republican conviction that the Obama Presidency was self-evidentally a failure.