Tag: FJM

I could live a very complete and satisfying life on the internet simply by trolling the opinion columns at TownHall.com. From the profoundly mentally ill Doug Giles to K-Lo's supplicating feminism to idiot relatives of Newt Gingrich, it is a regular parade of the lame, the halt, the ugly, and the stupid. And I know – after years of lurking, my senses are sharp – as soon as I see a news story about racially-charged police misadventures I can head over to TownHall and they will feature the work of an objective commentator to get to the heart of the matter. Like, for example, 50-something year-old white "former law enforcement officer" Gary Aldrich. Does that name sound familiar? Good lord I hope not. We'll talk about how Gary achieved fame in the 1990s as we mournfully plow through "Race Baiter in Chief." The incident in question, of course, is the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. This is going to hurt.

I am angry and I am offended.

Stop the presses! A white man is offended! We must give an indeterminate but substantial number of shits!

As a former law enforcement officer who spent 26 years carrying a badge and a gun,

OK, you weren't a cop. You worked behind a desk at the FBI. Your job was to run background checks on White House hires. You were one step above the Equifax website. I'm sure you love regaling your buddies with harrowing tales of how you threw down on some serious paper jams in the copier, though.

when the President of the United States talks about law enforcement, believe me, I listen.

And when Gary Aldrich talks, America listens. We eagerly await the opinions of the man who got hounded out of his FBI desk job for writing Unlimited Access, an entirely fictional hatchet-job on the Clintons which a CNN book review summarized as "filled … with second-hand, unsubstantiated sexual rumors about and bitter attacks against President and Mrs. Clinton." When the author who wrote a book about how the Clintons decorated the White House Christmas tree with dildoes, latex vaginas, bongs, and assorted other drug paraphernalia talks, you stop whatever the fuck you are doing and you listen.

So when the president says something really ignorant – when he should know better – I am doubly disappointed.

I wonder if this will be followed immediately by an ignorant statement. Nah. That would be too funny.

If the country wanted to elect Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton as president we already had that chance.

"Jesse." Also, come on, Gary. Say "uppity." Do it. You're too old and fat to tap dance.

Instead, I think we have just had confirmed what some feared and suspected: we have elected the Race Baiter in Chief.

Do you know what hyperbole is, Gary? Also, race-baiting and dog-whistle politics are the exclusive province of socialists such as Ronald Reagan.

What other conclusion can one make when the facts of the incident in Cambridge, Massachusetts are closely examined and weighed against training, experience, common sense, and logic?

Oh, I don't know, maybe that the cops are assholes and not terribly bright? Note how law enforcement are unable to make arguments in their own defense without referring to their extra-special "training" and "experience." In other words, we don't really know what we're talking about because we haven't had their training (on how to racially profile) and experience (racially profiling and having their behavior positively reinforced from above). So, it makes perfect sense. If you spent any time in the law enforcement system which treats all black men like felons you'd understand why these cops made completely reasonable decisions. Whoops, the logic machine just took a shit and died.

And yet when the president was asked his opinion of the arrest by a member of the media, he used the occasion to reveal his true heart, thus lending us a preview of what the next four years will probably bring.

Well, we are in for four years of race-baiting. Here's an image emailed to a Tea Party listserv by a prominent Florida neurosurgeon and opponent of the President:

Which makes Obama no different than the agenda driven college professor, who having broken into his home, is apparently astonished that a well meaning neighbor, trying to protect his home, called the police – thinking he was, “Trying to jigger his way” into his own home.

Explain how this is a sentence. Also, I don't think anyone is upset that the police showed up. You appear to be missing both the point and a chromosome, Gary.

These are the president's words, not mine.

The President speaks in sentences, which is why he was elected.

The police arrived and adopted the only posture they are trained to take – to be on guard, perhaps catching a thief in the act who could turn out to be very dangerous.

Yes. And when they determine that they are not in fact confronted with a dangerous suspect but instead a rumpled 60 year old man who is unarmed, perhaps another posture is in order.

After all, they would like to end their shift safely and return to their families – to their homes – alive.

Young black men who have encounters with the police, on the other hand, want to be shot in the back while handcuffed.

The college professor knows who they are by their uniforms, and thus he has the advantage.

Yeah, ordinary citizens have a definite leg up in police encounters. Be fair, Gary: uniforms let us know who the police are, but black skin lets police know exactly who the criminals are, too! So it's really one of those level playing fields your kind so adores.

But they don't know who he is – yet. He protests that he is the owner of the home, but the police see the jimmied door and they are not convinced by his words alone. They ask for identification so that they may compare the man's face with his photo ID, and confirm the address. Instead of quickly sizing up the situation and seeing the humor in the misunderstanding, the college professor resorts to form and accuses the police of treating him differently because he is black.

You omitted the part where he produced his Driver's License, which included his home address, and his Harvard ID. I mean, the cop retroactively claimed that Gates was belligerent (this is the standard cop narrative in these incidents – the black suspect is always a rage-driven monster with the strength of 20 men, angrily flipping over cars and uprooting trees with his bare hands) and never showed an ID, so I guess we should just take him at his retroactive word, no? What incentive would he have to lie?

He misses an opportunity to build good relations between himself and the police

It is definitely the obligation of citizens, and black men in particular, to build good relations with the police. It is our responsibility, not that of the police. It's not like we pay them or anything. It's not like they serve us; we serve them. If we all bowed a little more deeply in their presence, incidents like this could be avoided.

This may shock Gary, but the basis of our criminal justice system from the street cop up to the Supreme Court is that the burden of proof rests with the state. And the duty of law enforcement is to serve and protect, not to act like a jagoff to citizens who do not work hard to earn the right to be treated well.

and maybe that's because he has no interest in building good relations.

Or maybe it's because we are not guilty and dangerously violent until we prove otherwise to every yahoo who amasses enough community college credits to make it through the Pigsknuckle County Sheriff's Department training program.

Maybe his entire career is built on highlighting the bad relations that he can find – or manufacture – between whites and blacks.

Manufacture. Definitely manufactured. I mean, one doesn't just find examples of bad relations between white and black in this country.

He is not grateful to a neighbor for watching his property for him.

He thanked his neighbor.

He is not grateful for a quick response by the police, acting professionally and competently – protecting everybody's safety as they are trained to do – oh no – he is not grateful, he is angry and so he “cops” an attitude.

No, Gary, he is not thankful for how quickly the police managed to arrive to drag him from his own home in handcuffs. This is like saying "The rape victim did not thank her assailant for his politeness and remarkable sexual abilities." A positive gleaned from a comprehensively bad set of events is not relevant.

In time we will find out what he did and said that forced the police to arrest him.

Wait, you already concluded it was justified, assrocket! This is without, as you now claim, relevant information about what happened. We are indeed discovering some new information like the fact that the 911 caller did not state the race of the "burglar," meaning that the police had absolutely no empirical basis for thinking the suspect was black. Except, of course, for their immediate mental association between "burglary call" and "black guy."

But the Commander in Chief – the new race baiter in town – cannot wait for the facts.

Gary wrote this column on August 30, 2009, shortly after all of the facts came out, and beamed it back to our time. He will now make millions of dollars betting on sporting events to which he already knows the outcome because he is from the future. You know, same basic plot as Back to the Future 2.

Like his college professor friend he too misses an opportunity to help heal relations between the races. He went so far as to accuse the police of acting stupidly. His golden opportunity came and went, and he blew it.

It really would have helped relations between the races for the President to blindly and unquestioningly back the police – before we have the facts, Gary claims – in a cop-on-old-black-man incident. That would have been very healing. For white people who read Gary Aldrich columns.

Maybe the stupid act on the part of the police here is choosing law enforcement as a career, thinking they were actually going to make a difference – actually going to help people. All people.

This accurately describes why not only some cops, but all cops, enter law enforcement. They just want to help people.

Obama and his administration have already maligned the military by suggesting that returning veterans may be closet terrorists.

No, they were citing statistics. Most people use facts and research as the basis for drawing conclusions.

Now the president himself makes numerous unfortunate statements that suggest behind every police badge may hide the evil soul of a racist.

Oh, that's hogwash. It's probably only 30 or 40 percent of them.

He says and I quote, “you know, race remains a factor in this society.” I assure you, sir, the race factor may remain in your heart – but not in mine.

I think the preceding column has made it abundantly clear that Gary Aldrich does not see race and harbors no animosity based on it.

And, not in the hearts of the thousands of police officers who protect all citizens regardless of race, gender, or any other difference, even if you and your college professor friend choose to believe otherwise.

As for the thousands of others, well, we're pretending they don't exist for the moment. As long as we confine our generalizations to the universe of "good cops," Gary's argument is airtight. Like a nun's butthole. For the purposes of this analogy, pretend that nuns have airtight buttholes.

Frankly I find your position on race matters to be disappointing, repugnant, and threatening to the health of our culture which is, by its very nature, both generous and diverse.

Gary then galloped away on his moral high horse to address a crowd of literally tens of people at the annual meeting of his tax shelter, the Patrick Henry Center, at the Pocatello airport Radisson.

I think the millions of black families who have their homes and persons protected by the police every night and day of the week would disagree with your ugly characterization of all police officers.

"I have a black friend. I watch The Cosby Show. I am not racist."

What we are witness to here is the amazing spectacle of a black man elected to the highest office in our land

Gary Aldrich doesn't see race. In addition to this amazing spectacle, he has also been blown away by a woman appearing in public unescorted by a male, a Hispanic man speaking English, and a gaggle of Chinamen wearing shoes!!!

continuing the claim that America is a nation plagued with racism.

In 1928, Oscar de Priest was the first African-American elected to Congress post-Reconstruction. He was elected to Congress forty years before he would have been served lunch in a restaurant in many states. In 1950, twenty-two years after his election, it was still illegal in eighteen states for him to marry a white woman (an act for which he might merely have been lynched in many other states).

Surely only the most gullible would continue to believe race baiting claptrap like that.

Surely. You'd have to be a complete idiot to not understand that electing a black President means that there is no more racism. Then again, this is a man who knows claptrap.

The fact is, the professor's hatred for “Whitey” overwhelmed his judgment and he lost his temper – and that is all that has happened here.

"Which we will see as soon as the facts come out, which, as I noted three paragraphs ago, hasn't happened. Also, I was there. Well, I wasn't there, but I've chosen to believe the cop's story, the reliability of which is not affected by his own motives and interests."

That is, until the president decided to weigh in.

It's Obama's fault. Obama is the real racist. I'm indescribably fucking bored with you, Gary. Carry on while I amuse myself with this collection of "Cathy" comic strips.

When he did, he revealed his heart on the matter of race and it's sad to find out where he really stands on race relations. It appears that he will not be an agent of change, and that is a real shame.

Oh, you're done? Thank God.

In summary, healing race relations means placating white people. Assuaging their guilt. Reassuring them that only whiny, entitlement-hungry colored people keep racism alive in the United States. Convincing them that once the weekly lynchings stopped and politicians stopped saying "nigger" in public, racism disappeared. Unquestioningly taking the side of the police when their motives and actions are criticized. This is what it means to foster good relations among races. I'm glad we had this talk. I look forward to your well-researched, fact-laden book about Barack Obama. May it stand alongside your earlier work in both quality and relevance.

Being a staunch supporter of legal recognition of same-sex couples, this lengthy love letter from 1970s porn star John Stossel to glass-eyed future Federal courthouse bomber Glenn Beck does not offend me on those grounds. Mr. Stossel's burning, animal lust for Mr. Beck is his own business and whatever hot, sloppy things he wants to do to the World's Angriest Mormon in the back room at a gun show is fine with me. But I don't understand what he hopes to gain by making his love letters so public ("A Refreshing Spin on Cable TV"). If you are ready to see a grown man and alleged journalist re-define the adjective "masturbatory" in a fawning paean to a professional colleague, this is not going to disappoint.

Few of us had heard of Glenn Beck a few years ago. Now the conservative talk-jock is everywhere.

Forty years ago, few of us had heard of AIDS. Now that shit is everywhere. Based on World Health Organization data and John Stossel's logic, the sudden and widespread popularity of AIDS means that it deserves our praise. Salut, AIDS!

His radio show reaches eight million people.

Howard Stern has 20 million daily listeners. Just imagine the numbers Beck could put up if he had lesbians, an embarrassingly Uncle Tom-ish black sidekick, and rampant audible flatulence during his show.

He's performing live before sold-out crowds on a comedy tour.

Two shows. Two! He did two shows which were telecast in movie theaters around the country. He also didn't tell any jokes, unless we count the rape skit as a joke.

He's had No. 1 bestsellers in both fiction and nonfiction

Other #1 best-sellers from recent years include Who Moved My Cheese?, numerous entries from the Left Behind series, the Tori Spelling autobiography sTORI Telling, and You Can Run but You Can't Hide by Dog the Bounty Hunter.

plus a new book, "Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government" came out this week.

Book titles are italicized or underlined, shooter. Also, wow, what a subtle plug! In the first four sentences too! Impressive.

If you think this is fawning, well…John's just loosening up his jaw here. You haven't seen anything yet.

And now he's host of his own Fox News show, which, even though it airs in the ratings desert of late afternoon, has a bigger audience than every show on the other cable news channels.

"And he can ride his bike real fast and he scaled Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen and he can dunk a basketball from the free-throw line and he's hung like Seabiscuit and you haven't lived until you've tried his paella! GOD I just want to blow him. Why won't he like me?"

Why is he so popular?

Why is John Stossel such a colossal tool? Some questions simply have no answer.

Now watch as he unhinges his jaw like a snake and really gets down to business.

Beck says it's because he really believes what he says. I don't buy that. Rachel Maddow and Lou Dobbs believe what they say, but their audience is a fraction of Beck's.

Have we not long since established that liberal talking head shows (remember Air America?) do poorly while mouthbreathing please-digest-my-food-for-me conservatives literally can't get enough of being brayed at like the jackasses they are?

I hope he's popular because of what he says, like: "Both parties only believe in the power of the party"; "if we get out of people's way, the sky's the limit"; and the answers to our problems "never come from Washington."

God, how insightful. It's like Jesus and Kierkegaard had a baby.

Much of the mainstream media despises Beck.

Huh. I wonder if they feel humiliated to be associated with him.

"The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart quipped, "Finally, a guy who says what people who aren't thinking are thinking." MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has repeatedly named Beck "worst person in the world," and one of his MSNBC colleagues compared his TV show to watching a "car accident." On "The View," Whoopi Goldberg called him "a lying sack of dog mess."

It was nice of them to go easy on him.

Some of his critics dislike Beck because they consider him a Republican lapdog, but he attacks both parties. He criticized the Bush administration's spending and bailout of AIG. He says that politicians from both parties are "lying to the people that they're supposed to serve," "flushing our country down the toilet for power" and ignoring the Constitution.

Ah, the ol' "he gives it to both parties" bullshit. This is often cited to make extreme right-wing media figures appear non-partisan. It doesn't really count when his criticism of the GOP is that it isn't conservative enough. That's not indicative of fairness or non-partisan status. It's a sign of mental illness and it makes him a curiosity worthy of gawking, like that guy you see in a restaurant who puts half a shaker of salt on his food but you can't stop staring because holy shit he keeps putting more salt on it.

He points to the takeovers of General Motors and AIG as examples of government grabbing power it doesn't legitimately have. "We're giving our freedoms away," Beck says. "The American experiment was about freedom. Freedom to be stupid, freedom to fail, freedom to succeed."

My God, where does he come up with this kind of fresh, innovative rhetoric? You've sold me, John. Make room, I want to blow him too.

Though Beck is a success now, he struggled for years with serious personal problems. His parents divorced when he was a teenager. "My mother was an alcoholic and a drug addict," he told me when I interviewed him for a "20/20" profile. She later committed suicide.

In most human beings this experience would produce something known as "empathy." For Beck it's just an anecdote cited to defend why he is so fucking crazy.

"When I hit 30, I was going down that same path. I tried for almost two years to stop drinking. I was a jerk. I fired a guy one time for bringing me the wrong kind of pen," Yet, Beck says, "I'd look myself in the mirror every day, and say, "You're not an alcoholic. You don't have a problem."

I liked this story the first time I heard it from, oh, every celebrity windbag in the past fifty years who went public with his or her "brave struggle against addiction." Dick Van Dyke did a much better job with this material, Glenn.

(snip: pointless "I was such a drunk" anecdote)
That night he went to Alcoholics Anonymous. Not long after, he became a Mormon. I asked him why.

Yes, Glenn, please tell us why you took the monumental step of religious conversion during adulthood. What deep spiritual quest led you to Mormonism, the mightiest and least plausible of all religions?

"I apologize, but guys will understand this. My wife is, like, hot, and she wouldn't have sex with me until we got married. And she wouldn't marry me unless we had a religion." I asked Tania Beck about that. She laughed, saying, "He's not joking."

Awesome. I just checked my groin and I am in fact a "guy," yet for some reason I am not quite "understanding" this powerfully retarded and puerile anecdote/life lesson.

Now Beck says that Mormonism has grounded him, so he's grateful to his wife.

Yeah, he sounds profoundly spiritually moved by the whole experience. He's really grateful to Joseph Smith, the angel Moroni, and his smokin' hot wife with her fat-ass Mormon double-D's. You'd understand this kind of religious re-awakening if you were a guy.

Whatever grounded him, I'm glad something did. Because it's good to have a super-successful cable-TV host

*coughcoughslurp*

"Wow, I'm really giving him the business down here! I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am. By the way, on a completely unrelated note, does anyone have a mint? Maybe some gum?"

arguing that life would be better if government — Democrats and Republicans — just left Americans alone.

I hope he copyrighted this novel message of hope and self-absorbtion.

"We should reject big government and look inside ourselves for all the things that built this country into what it was," Beck says.

Yes, the many things that made us great – subsidized highways and subdivisions, a welfare state which made today's elderly the wealthiest such group in the history of civilization, the GI Bill, the regulatory state, and a now-extinct belief that we could solve problems collectively. No? OK, I guess Glenn is just talking about white male hegemony. And probably slavery.

So now that we've reached the end, can anyone tell me what in the flying hell was the point of this column? This piece is like the perfect hybrid of a ham-fisted sales pitch for Glenn Beck the brand and gay erotica written by a serial killer. It's bad, even for Town Hall Intellectual Chernobyl. If I wanted to read 700 words' worth of a hirsute, mustachioed white guy fellating a Mormon I wouldn't have cancelled my subscription to Boys on a Mission: Under the Magic Underwear.

The second Souter's replacement was named, I just knew. I knew that I was going to get some Grade A material out of the ensuing pantular soiling on the right. Knowing that the grass is always greenest where large numbers of animals are crapping, I headed directly to TownHall to choose among the (literally) 30+ columnists who chose to bloviate about Sonia Sotomayor this week. Way to book first-class passage on the RMS Obvious with your choice of topics, kids! Anyway, I freely admit to creating something of a straw man by picking the most egregiously retarded column (Terry Jeffery, who may be a NASCAR driver, provides us with "Apply a Litmus Test to Sotomayor") but trust me, they are all missing a chromosome or two. And you know as well as I do that the phrase "litmus test" can mean only one thing: batten down the hatches and prepare to weather the high winds of Hurricane Fuckin' Awesome.

Conservatives in the Senate should not treat Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in the same disgraceful manner that Senate liberals treated Clarence Thomas when he was nominated to the court in 1991

Yes, by confirming him. There were only 43 Republicans in the Senate when Thomas was nominated, T-Bone! And two of them frickin' voted against him! So we call him Justice Thomas today because of the 11 Democrats who confirmed him.

But it's easy to poke holes in arguments if you remember what happened. I'm being unfair.

but they should subject her to a similar philosophical litmus test.

Oh man, what a teaser! This is going to be awesome. They oughta sell tickets to Terry Jeffery's Awesome Argument. We need commercials like those monster truck extravaganzas. Terry Jeffery (Jeffery! Jeffery!) is going to BLOW. YOUR. MIND (mind! mind!) with the brutal power of his rhetorical (*switch to extra-deep voice*) SKILLLLLLLLLLLLZ! It's one day only! One day only! Tickets only FIVE BUCKS! We'll sell you the whole seat…BUT YOU'LL ONLY USE THE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDGE!

It is this simple: Does she believe the Constitution includes a "right" to kill an unborn child?

Very objective question wording, shooter. Let's try to divine her opinion on terror suspects by asking, "Do you believe the Constitution protects the brown Islamic hordes as they attempt to murder your children and invade our borders to rape our Christian women?"

If she does, she is morally and philosophically unqualified to serve on the court

That's "Court." Also, a fine literalist like Terry can surely point to the part of the Constitution which details the Moral and Philosophical qualifications for serving on the Court. They're clearly stated in Article III, Section Terry Jeffery Made This Shit Up.

and conservatives should say so and vote against her for that reason.

They will. All 40 of them.

When President George H.W. Bush nominated then-U.S. Appellate Court Judge Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, Democratic Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was unapologetic: He would subject Thomas to an explicit pro-abortion litmus test.

Senator Metzenbaum voted against Thomas, as was his right. He was one of the 48 "nays." Out of 100.

"I'm through reading tea leaves and voting in the dark," said Metzenbaum. "I will not support yet another Reagan-Bush Supreme Court nominee who remains silent on a woman's right to choose and then ascends to the court to weaken that right."

And then Howard Metzenbaum used his powers to dissolve the Senate and banish Thomas to the land of wind and ghosts. The seat was eventually filled by Judge Pennyroyal T. Wombscraper, who actually performed abortions on the bench while listening to oral arguments. During her confirmation hearing, Senator Metzenbaum presented a pregnant teen and told the judge "If you don't perform an abortion on this underage, mentally unstable woman right the fuck now you are not going to be confirmed."

I remember that.

(snip: redundant quotes from Pat Leahy and Joe Biden which make the same point)

Thomas dodged (Biden's question). "Senator," he said, "I think that the Supreme Court has made clear that the issue of marital privacy is protected, that the state cannot infringe on that without a compelling interest, and the Supreme Court, of course, in the case of Roe v. Wade has found an interest in the woman's right to — as a fundamental interest — a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy. I do not think that at this time I could maintain my impartiality as a member of the judiciary and comment on that specific case."

Sounds pretty standard for confirmation hearings, assmaster. Senators mug for the cameras and ask loaded questions while the nominee – wisely and appropriately – refuses to comment on precedent or to rule on hypothetical cases. Just because Bork droned on for hours, monotonously lecturing the nation with every legal thought that ever crossed his mind, doesn't mean that other nominees should follow suit.

Despite this dodge, Senate Democrats clearly suspected that Thomas embraced an "originalist" interpretation of the Constitution and would be disinclined to sustain Roe v. Wade.

(before they voted to confirm him)

Lacking the votes to defeat him for his judicial philosophy, however, they viciously attempted to assassinate his character.

Who's "they?" I don't recall the Democrats doing anything but calling to testify a subordinate Federal employee of Thomas during his time at the EEOC, a woman who alleged in detail a pattern of behavior in violation of numerous Federal laws. Sexually harrassing a female employee would speak rather prominently to Thomas's attitudes and belief system, no?

There I go remembering what happened again.

Led by the man who is now vice president of the United States, Judiciary Committee Democrats subjected Thomas to what Thomas called — to Joe Biden's face — "a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves."

That's what Thomas called it. What the Supreme Court called it, in Meritor v. Vinson (1986), is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Thomas survived Biden's lynch mob

Howard Metzenbaum: Northerner, Liberal, Jew, and Klansman.

and went on to become the most consistent and forceful voice on the court for interpreting the Constitution according to the meaning originally invested in it by the Framers.

Wait. What?

I can understand if you're not happy with his confirmation hearings, wondernuts, but "forceful"? The man who can sit through three years of oral arguments without asking a single question? The man whose judicial philosophy is "What Anton said."? The man whose evidence of intellectual dynamism is to claim that the idea of precedent simply doesn't exist and thus the Court should re-examine 200 year-old decisions like Calder v. Bull (1798)?

No, for realz. He actually argued that.

The correct answer to the question of whether the Constitution guarantees a "right" to kill an unborn child

Oh, good. T-Mac is taking some time from his busy writing schedule to let us know the "correct answer" to this complicated legal and moral question. Disband NARAL. Tell Randall Terry to find a new job. Abortion has been solved. How stupid we were to spend all that time and money debating it. All we had to do was ask Terry Jeffery.

was delivered by then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist in his dissenting opinion to Roe v. Wade itself. It was a resounding no.

Yep. It was a really resounding minority opinion. 7-2.

Rehnquist's argument was historically and intellectually unassailable

Yet somehow 7 of the most knowledgeable people on the Constitution, people hand-picked by the President and confirmed by the popularly-elected Senate, thought he was unequivocally full of happy horseshit.

unless you believe that a simple majority of the nine Supreme Court justices has the authority to rewrite the Constitution.

Which part did they re-write? No, they didn't amend it. They interpreted it, which is their job.

When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, Rehnquist noted, there were 36 state and territorial laws on the books restricting abortion. Twenty-one of those very laws were still on the books and still enforced in 1973, when the court considered Roe.

And every state had laws on the books forbidding women from voting. Does that imply that the 14th Amendment was not intended to provide women equal protection under the law? Someone clarify this please.

"The only conclusion possible from this history," said Rehnquist, "is that the drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the states the power to legislate in respect to this matter."

Yep. It implies exactly that. Flawless logic.

Sonia Sotomayor should be asked in her confirmation hearing whether she believes the Constitution guarantees a right to kill an unborn child.

Yeah, you already said that. Twice. In an 800-word column. This is the third time. Somehow, in violation of common sense and several laws of thermodynamics, it's actually getting dumber each time you say it.

If she says it does, it means she believes Supreme Court justices have the power to change the meaning of the Constitution itself, even to the point of depriving a whole class of human beings of their most fundamental right.

Boy, it would be pretty embarrassing to this argument if the Catholic nominee in question had ever ruled something like "The government is free to favor the antiabortion position over the pro-choice position and can do so with public funds." (Center for Reproductive Law v. Bush)

There can be no better reason for denying confirmation to a would-be justice.

None better? What if she wasn't an American citizen? What if she was guilty of sexual harrassment? What if she operated a child sex ring out of her garage? What if her basement is full of Chinese slaves forced to pirate DVDs of Chicago Hope and rebroadcast Major League Baseball without expressed written consent?

Words like "always" or "never" in the hands of stupid people and shitty writers are like giving a baby a hand grenade. That they will fumble around with it until disaster strikes is inevitable. T-Jeff is the audience to keep in mind as a small portion of the Senate GOP goes through the motions of stomping its feet, crying like a boatload of seasick orphans, and hurling their best late-period William Jennings Bryan populist-fundamentalist rhetoric at the nominee the cameras. As soon as Jeffery and his ilk are suitably enamored with their heroes (Inhofe, Hatch, etc.) and able to plausibly argue that the Christian Right has Done All it Can to stand up to godless liberalism, the Senate can get on with the business of conducting the kind of "up-or-down vote" that Our Dearly Departed Leader so loved for the past eight years.

I really want to stop doing FJMs so frequently. Really, honestly, sincerely I do. But I need to do this one. I can rest when I'm dead.

Kevin McCullough is a complete nobody, like 98% of the columnists who clog the cultural greasetrap of TownHall.com. He is the co-host of "XTreme Radio" with…wait for it…Stephen Fucking Baldwin. What, Daniel was busy?

Anyway, Kevin is here to tell us how a real (i.e., not gay) man would treat vapid pageant automaton Carrie Prejean when she expresses herself on the issue of "traditional" marriage. Traditional meaning "better." Like how "traditional" race relations in the US were way better than the new kind. By the end of this journey through "Why Satan's 'Tolerant' Spawn Hate Miss California" I think you will have a better understanding of traditional marriage, gays, and how badly Kevin McCullough needs to be locked in a state-run mental institution before he goes on a murder spree.

DISCLAIMER: In no way should the description of columnist Michael Musto and blogger Perez Hilton in the following piece be understood to apply to all males who engage or are curious about homosexuality.

Oh, this is going to be good. As we can take to the bank the fact that anything prefaced with "Now, I'm not a racist, but…" is certain to be really goddamn racist, a disclaimer like this is the most beautiful form of foreshadowing.

Has anyone seen Carrie Prejean's brother? I'm not even sure if she has one.

The only way this could possibly be relevant is if you were about to argue that…nevermind. He can't possibly be getting ready to imply that she needs a man to protect her. I won't believe it. No man good enough to co-host an internet radio show with Stephen Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ Baldwin could be so foolish.

But I know one thing, when I was in the sixth grade a boy in my school called my sister the name of a female dog, and he literally had a fight on his hands his entire way home that afternoon. His name was Chris Green he didn't even know my sister but in a moment of trying to injure me he called my sister that name.

Let's safely assume that Kevin has a long, long list of people who slighted him in grammar school, complete with Howard Unruh-style notes about the appropriate retaliation for each transgressor.

For the first few blocks my friend Shane and I shadowed him up the street off the junior high campus,

Sounds emotionally healthy so far.

and then when we thought we were outside of school jurisdiction Shane held my stuff while I tackled and then proceeded to punch the living daylights out of the bully who was two grades older than me and a good eighty pounds heavier.

Well, size is negated when one party sucker-punches the other like a coward. Good job, though. GRR! MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALE!!! Kevin McCullough is so fucking tough that the swine flu got him.

About five minutes into it campus security drove up and dragged us back on campus where both of us were sentenced to a week of after school study hall.

"Campus security"?? Where in the hell did you go to 6th grade, Kevin? An oil rig in the Straits of Hormuz? Marion Federal Prison? In The Road Warrior?

It was the only fight I ever participated in my entire educational experience. And it was the last time Chris Green ever brought up my sisters within earshot of me.

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Violence works! Also, thank God there was a man around to protect your sister from the verbal droppings of a goddamn 11 year-old boy.

Given the fact that Perez Hilton more than a week ago asked Miss Carrie Prejean her opinion and didn't like the result, someone like her brother needs to pay a visit to Perez Hilton and Village Voice columnist Michael Musto and remind them how men are expected to comport in society.

Violently! Comport yourself such that you are ready to lash out – unpredictably and without warning – in explosive bursts of retribution whenever you hear something that displeases you!

There was a day when even the word "prostitute" was not used in mixed company, even to describe women who actually were in fact prostitutes. Manliness constrained their speech, and pseudonyms were substituted like "lady of the night."

I don't even know where the fuck to begin. I'm just going to amuse myself with a ball of twine for a few minutes.

It's understandable that males who prefer women's underwear and their mother's earrings would be jealous of someone like Carrie.

Kevin, it's fair that you speak out so strongly against The Gay since you have such an accurate, well-developed understanding of The Gays. Also, when I have six spare hours, I will put on a sock puppet show explaining how "You're making fun of me because you're jealous" is perhaps the most shameful display of juvenile "logic" that can be employed rhetorically short of yelling "TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE!" or making farting noises with one's armpit.

But it is unacceptable from any person heterosexual or homosexual to abide the types of things these two males have uttered within the last week concerning Miss California. Oh yes, and you can add to that the rather saddest excuse for manhood in prime time cable today Keith Olbermann.

"rather saddest"? Oh, I forgot. We're still doing the RightWingSpeak thing.

Tub flange, doorbell compressor? Beiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiige!

Their criticism was beyond just differing on points of substance. Like pigs they wallowed in rhetorical feces, smeared it on their faces, as well as each others, and then belched it out across the airwaves.

Highly, highly credible criticism from the host of hard-right "X-FUCKIN-TREEEEEEEEEEEME RADIO" with Stephen Slap My Ass and Call Me Napoleon Baldwin. The one who introduced his discussion with a title about "Satan's spawn."

Do tell us, Professor. Do tell. Lecture us on rolling around in rhetorical shit.

(snipping a long string of quotes from Musto and Hilton)

Those little gems stemmed from a two minute interview conducted by Olbermann on his nightly news show in which the big breaking news of someone besides Carrie releasing her medical information was the scheduled topic to be discussed.

Well, it helps to euphemistically refer to "her medical information" rather than mentioning that California pageant officials paid to give her fake tits. Not relevant to her stupidity but, you know, it makes her look like a bigger ingrate for disrespecting the organization by violating her contract and using her position to advance a partisan agenda like a complete hack after they shelled out to help her compete in this twisted spectacle of degradation.

Had Olberman even an ounce of dignity, manhood, or integrity within him he would've cut the interview off and gone to break. But instead the adolescent boy within him kept laughing and going.

Unlike the adolescent boy in Kevin McCullough, who lashes out and kicks some motherfucking ass when he hears things he dislikes!

And here I sit still waiting for even one member of the cable news, or mainstream media circles to formulate an articulate defense of the beautiful, kind, compassionate woman

You forgot vapid and bigoted. Those two are important.

who is being treated this way for simply answering a question honestly.

OK, so answering a question "honestly" is supposed to shield someone from the repercussions of said response? If a reader asks me "Gee Ed, whaddya think about Hitler?" and my response is "He's a great, great man. Too bad we stopped him!" can I sidestep the ensuing furor by feigning Honesty?

Come on, people, I'm just keepin' it real! You can't give me shit for being Honest and telling you My Opinion! The Forcefield of Honesty protects me!

The fact that few men have had visceral reactions to this demonstrates how weak modern feminism has caused men to become.

This is Kevin McCullough's love letter to K-Lo. They can bond over their mutual love of blaming feminism. They can co-author a column blaming feminism for the fact that the children they produce will be hooved.

Simply put Musto and Hilton aren't just men who struggle with some sort of unnatural attraction to other males. They aren't even, for that matter, males that practice sexual behavior with other males that mind their own business and aren't out to upend the entirety of the free world.

THE GAY AGENDA

1. Upend entirety of free world
2. Wear panties
3. Wear mom's jewelry
4. Convert children
5. Bugger said children
6. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabulous parades!
7. Be legally recognized as human beings

Source: Stephen Goddamn Battle Hymn of the Republic Baldwin

Musto and Hilton are angry hateful males who have no concept of what manhood is. They are jealous of Carrie for the confidence she exudes, the kindness she genuinely expresses, and for the kind of men she is able to attract.

Of all the claims laid against Mr. Hilton and Mr. Musto, I'm pretty sure that accusing them of being jealous of the amount of ultraconservative cock Ms. Prejean can attract is the most ludicrous. I mean, is there ANYONE – even straight ultraconservative women – who thinks of Neil Cavuto, Ron Paul, or Jonah Goldberg as the dream lay? Something tells me Mr. Hilton is not hurting for male companionship and doesn't spend many nights alone wishing that he could slowly motorboat Rush Limbaugh's crenulated buttocks.

(Note: the above discussion excludes world-renowned gay icon Stephen Sweet Quivering Balls of the Blessed Virgin Baldwin)

Undoubtedly the tempers in the men who have said and expressed these diabolical statements stems from a deep and abiding hurt in their life that needs to be dealt with in mercy and kindness.

And punching.

But that still doesn't give them or any of the other hateful haters who hate out there

If one attempted to explain alliteration to a three year old, he or she would probably try the concept by repeating the same word. I mean, little kids just don't understand literary devices. Now, I'm not implying that Kevin McCullough is as good of a writer as a three year old, but Kevin McCullough is as good of a writer as a three year old.

the right to rhetorically bludgeon the name and reputation of a decent woman for answering a question honestly.

I honestly believe that someone should find Kevin McCullough's home address and burn his house to the ground after barricading all of the exits.

Forcefield of Honesty! This is an excellent legal defense. It will certainly hold up in court.

In my world growing up my mother made sure that I understood several things.

I'd say "several" is an excellent estimate of the number of things you understand, Shooter.

You always hold the door open for the ladies to go first.

Well, I prefer to hold the door open for whatever people I happen to be with. I don't see the need to discriminate. Sometimes, if I'm not the first person to reach a door, a woman holds the door for me.

Tell me I didn't just blow your fucking mind, Kev!

You never hit a woman.

I'd add "or men," but that might seem a little too gay to Kevin.

And you never speak to her in coarseness and filth.

Fine. What's the Emily Post-approved way to tell this dipshit to lean forward and blow it directly out her puckered asshole?

In the anonymity of a television studio, or the safety of a bedroom webcam,

Or from the safety of a syndicated column.

Musto and Hilton feel they can rhetorically rape the heart and soul of Carrie Prejean.

Kevin, you just raped logic.

What they are doing, K-Mac, is pointing out that someone in her position probably shouldn't be a racist, or a sexist, or an anti-Semite, or particularly unfond of Belgians. See, paegeants are disgusting anachronisms from an era best forgotten. But. BUT. If we accept the fact that they continue to exist and some women choose to participate, we can objectively agree that such a "position" should be used for the general good. You know, raising money for Jerry's Kids. Saving pandas. Telethons for pediatric AIDS. School books for kids in Ghana. It's not an invitation to become Trent Lott. She wasn't elected to office. She was declared the "winner" of a contest to see who could most completely conform to an idealized version of 1950s womanhood.

But friend, that's just pure evil. You simply do not treat a lady like that… ever. Especially if they have a big brother.

To quote Beavis, are you threatening me? Holy shit are you a creep, Kevin.

I feel like I'm reading John Hinckley's letter to Jodie Foster, a desperate attempt to impress Miss California with his toughness, feats of strength, manliness, intellect, agility, and Godliness. If he's as persuasive in the romantic sense as he is at political rhetoric, I have a feeling that they'll be married soon.

RNC Chairman Michael Steele sent the following email to the RNC listserve on Tuesday. Despite my explicit desire to spread out the FJM series, this is an opportunity one cannot overlook.

Dear _______,

I hope Arlen Specter's party change outrages you. It should for two reasons:

"Hi, I'm Michael Steele, token black guy and second-in-command to whichever talk radio jackass is leading you people these days. We fucked up – bad. But if your blind, ignorant rage got us into this mess it can certainly get us out! Am I right? Am I right?"

First–Specter claimed it was philosophical–and pointed his finger of blame at Republicans all over America for his defection to the Democrats. He told us all to go jump in the lake today.

Well, you were all really nice to him. This is quite a mystery. Scotland Yard is working on it. Two separate teams working in 12-hour shifts. One of them has a bloodhound.

I'm sorry, but I don't believe a word he said.

Luckily for Senator SuperJowls, it no longer matters whether or not you believe him.

Arlen Specter committed a purely political and self-serving act today. He simply believes he has a better chance of saving his political hide and his job as a Democrat. He loves the title of Senator more than he loves the party–and the principles–that elected him and nurtured him.

This is copied verbatim from the email the RNC sent out when Dick Shelby and Ben Nighthorse Campbell abandoned the Democrats and joined the GOP in 1994. The Republicans responded by refusing to admit those gentlemen to their caucus. Moral outrage knows no partisanship.

Second–and more importantly–Arlen Specter handed Barack Obama and his band of radical leftists

nearly absolute power in the United States Senate. In leaving the Republican Party–and joining the Democrats–he absolutely undercut Republicans' efforts to slow down Obama's radical agenda through the threat of filibuster.

According to a statistic I just made up, 97% of Americans vehemently oppose the President and his radical plan to steal our guns and fluoridate our water.

Facing defeat in Pennsylvania's 2010 Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record

No, I'd say it's primarily because the Pennsylvania GOP is tiny and unrepresentative of the majority of the voters in the state. You know, the people required to win the general election. The GOP brand name is as marketable as "E.

Coli Cafeteria" or "Childrape Daycare Center" up here. His voting record reflects his constituents. They live in Philly and State College and Scranton, not Beaumont, Texas.

and an end to his 30 year career in the U.S. Senate, he has peddled his services–and his vote–to the leftist Obama Democrats who aim to remake America with their leftist plan.

Oh, he didn't do that to help the leftist Obama leftists leftistly enact their leftist plan. He did it for revenge, to stick it in the GOP's ass sans lube. Unless blood counts as lube.

For the RNC, the last step in proofreading documents for release to the media is to have an intern go through and add "leftist" in as many places as possible.

As recently as April 9th, Senator Specter said he would run in the Pennsylvania primary next year as a Republican. Why the sudden change of heart?

Someday they will come for you too, Michael, and then you will understand. Also, I bet being assholes to the man for 25 years had something to do with it.

Clearly, this was an act based on political expediency by a craven politician desperate to keep his Washington power base–not the act of a statesman.

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Awesome. Accuse the man of being craven and desperate to keep his Washington power base as a means of criticizing him for undermining the craven GOP's desperate effort to keep its Washington power base.

His defection to the Democrat Party

"-ic". Someone really needs to catch this typo at RNC Headquarters, pictured here:

puts the Democrats in an almost unstoppable position to pass Obama's destructive agenda of income redistribution, health care nationalization, and a massive expansion of entitlements.

No, the fact that you can't win a Senate seat north of Gatlinburg put the Democrats in that position.

Arlen Specter has put his loyalty to his own political career above his duty to his state and nation.

This is why the GOP strongly opposed Joe Lieberman's independent candidacy. Principle First every time with these people. Also, Arlen Specter's duty is to obstruct the White House and the overwhelming Congressional majority while taking marching orders from backward closet cases in Colorado Springs.

You and I have a choice. Some will use Specter's defection as an excuse to fold the tent and give up.

Fortunately it's a pretty goddamn small tent – one of those 20-ounce ultralight backpacking jobs; I highly recommend Kelty – so it shouldn't take long.

I believe that you are not one of those people.

This is where he begins the Bill Pullman speech from the end of Independence Day. They originally used the "band of brothers" speech from Henry V but found that conservatives don't like things that come from books.

When Benedict Arnold defected to the British, George Washington didn't fold the tent and give up either.

Well, he didn't give up because Arnold's fabled treachery had little military significance and no deterrent effect on Washington's ability to fight. It's exciting to think that the GOP might be adopting a "George Washington strategy" though – complete with 1000 Hessian mercenaries, numerous river fordings, and a nasty outbreak of typhus.

He grit his teeth more determined than ever to succeed. That's what I'm asking you to do today.

Source: an interview with George Washington that I just made up.

Join me in this fight by making a secure online contribution of $25, $50, $100, $500 or $1,000 right now to build our army of supporters and defeat Democrat candidates like Arlen Specter in next year's elections.

The cash will be used to print signs reading ARLEN SPECTOR – SOCIALEST which will bring his campaign to its knees.

Stand with me. I need your support today.

I'd rather spend my money on organizations with greater odds of success than the GOP. That is why I just bought four Washington Nationals season tickets.

Sincerely,

Michael Steele
Chairman, Republican National Committee

Not for long, Yankee.

The best part about being a Republican is that the right-wing media will defend anything. I mean, anything. There is nothing a Republican officeholder can say or do that is stupid, illegal, or offensive enough that an army of hacks won't take to their syndicated columns and talk radio mics to excuse it. This is why you are about to read a nugget of wisdom entitled "Was Rick Perry Just Kidding?" by a fifth-rate columnist whose own mother has never heard of him. If you haven't time to read the whole thing, here is the quick version of what happens in the following paragraphs: Bill Murchison lures Sound Logic and Good Argument into his dank, windowless van and proceeds to finger them.

Sneer, sneer, boo, hiss — and oh, boy!

A piece of prose that begins thusly can only be authored by A) Dr. Seuss or B) a man with a vast number of competing voices in his head. I don't want to give the rest of the column away, but Dr. Seuss died in 1991.

Did the "progressives" ever pour it on my governor, Rick Perry of Texas, for his playful reference at a Tea Party event to "secession" as an option possibly forming in the minds of sensible Texans.

Ah. It was "playful." All expectations that our public officials will not say things that are treasonous or completely retarded go out the window if spoken playfully. In his next column, Bill Murchison will go through airport security making jokes about the bombs in his luggage and wriggle out of legal trouble with a particularly wacky blazer and a spinning bowtie.

Why would we be thinking about such?

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.

Because of "progressive" depredations in Washington, D.C., the governor said, if not in so many words.

Bill is a contrarian. Since good writing involves communicating an idea using the smallest possible number of carefully chosen words, Bill goes for quantity and incoherence. He also sits angrily in his seat while everyone else in the stadium is doing the wave.

The establishment harrumphed and gagged and generally went red. Gail Collins of the New York Times: "[H]ave you noticed how places that pride themselves on being superpatriotic seem to have the most people who want to abandon the country entirely and set up shop on their own?"

That sounds like an entirely reasonable question. The kind a normal person would ask.

Come on, lady, back off a little. No one's going anywhere — as well you certainly know.

"As well you certainly know?" Either this was written in Urdu and translated back into English with a free online translator or Bill puts each word he wants to use on a notecard, scatters them to the afternoon breeze, and lets fate arrange them into sentences.

Nobody's called for a secession convention. I looked up and down the street this morning; not a single effigy of Nancy Pelosi dangled from the live oaks. Driving to the office, I heard no suggestion that we hang Harry Reid, Chris Dodd, or, preferably, both to a sour apple tree.

See? No one's violently trying to secede yet. They're just talking about it, which is always harmless and never progresses to the kind of behavior cited here.

No matter. Sigh.

Do you have any idea how big of a hack one must be as a writer to actually write "Sigh" to communicate that emotion? If your writing is so bad that you can't convey a simple emotion without saying "I AM EXASPERATED RIGHT NOW" then maybe writing isn't for you.

The progressives have the bit between their teeth and seem bent on the usual pretense that these Texans are a bunch of ingrates whom we shouldn't trust as far as we can throw a grand piano.
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Ingrates? No, Bill. We think you're borderline-illiterate yahoos in cowboy hats and Chevy Suburbans who say "y'all" a lot thanks in part to some of the worst public schooling north of El Salvador.

Well, you know what? It's too much trouble seceding, even if we could.

This is perhaps the least reassuring reassurance I have ever seen, rivalled only by Oswald telling the security guard "I just want a better view of the parade route so I can take pictures."

And, pace the governor, we can't.

Foil, runs nubuck gracefully. Pong lapdance railroad kidneys. Towel? Gap dash an eskimo!!

Rather than the secessionary right he alleged we brought with us into the Union, we brought the right — undoubted, but similarly impractical — to divide into five states.
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We'll have to stick around a bit longer.

This reminds me of that time I read the complete set of Time-Life Home Repair and Improvement books on peyote.

That shouldn't deprive us of the right to remind fellow Americans of some practices and virtues our land could do well to renew.

Oh, good. Please do lecture us so that we may become more like Lubbock and Beaumont. When I worry about our Practices and Virtues here in the midwest I often think, "You know how we oughta do things?
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Like they do things in Corpus Christi."

A key one is regard for the inherent right of local people, even under a federal union, to defend and oversee their own modes of life.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO STATES' RIGHTS!!!!!1!1!!!oneone!!!! A noble concept always used to defend other noble concepts. OMG let's have another nullification crisis!!

In other words — golly gee! — Texans might not want exactly the same things Californians want. They might wish lower taxes and less regulation by government. Their approaches to education and health care and energy might differ as well. So also the ways they deal with simple matters like eating: more sirloins in Texas, more tofu on the Left Coast.

Let's look at the rankings.

Life expectancy by state: #10. California, #30. Texas
Adult obesity by state: #10 Texas, #30 California
Heart disease deaths per 100,000: Texas 220, California 191

Nice.

Alas, the Obama regime, as we may decide to start calling it one of these days, has other notions.

"One of these days" = January 2009

It appears to cherish uniformity, the close alignment of ideals and methods: everybody doing the same thing the same way for the same reasons.

Well, technically it believes, as most of us left-leaning yankees do, in trying to bring our slow southern cousins up to first-world standards, perhaps by teaching science instead of the Bible and working on getting those teen pregnancy rates below Nigeria's. I disagree, but the bleeding hearts believe they can fix you. Maybe make you less of an embarrassment. Me, I'm Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross. I'm here on a mission of mercy. I came here because Mitch and Murray asked me for a favor. I said, "If you want a favor, take my advice and fire their asses, because a loser is a loser."

You think I'm fuckin' with you, Bill? I am not fuckin' with you.

The Obamanistas may want uniform rules regarding the cars and trucks we drive and the energy those vehicles consume.

Yep. Are we supposed to be ashamed of that? This is not unlike saying "Can you believe these nanny state liberals who want me to stop committing so many rapes?!?" I can live with having judged you on this point.

They want, it seems, national education standards — a goal furthered, as one hates to acknowledge, by a former Texas governor, George W. Bush via the No Child Left Behind Act.

Yep. And here's the important part, so stay with me: this time the national education (sic) standards won't be retarded. Semantics, semantics.

We may even wind up with national standards for humor. A joke, son, ain't a joke no more, and that's the truth.

This is the most forced transition to a slippery slope argument – and not even a good bad argument at that – in the history of whatever language Bill Murchison speaks.

The governor of Texas no more demanded secession from the Union than he called for a Lone Star Beer to be brought him.

Rick Perry, April 15, as the crowd chanted "Secede! Secede! Secede!": "There's a lot of different scenarios. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."

He raised an eyebrow; he winked. Never mind. A stalwart "progressive" trying to show up conservatives is ever alert to serendipitous events and occasions.

Here's an idea, Bill. Threaten to kill an elected official and give the jury the old "But I winked!" excuse. Write me a letter on your prison stationery letting me know how it worked out for you.

So maybe he shouldn't have said it. That's from one perspective. Here's another: A Union of the sort our wise and virtuous founders thought they were creating is as loose and flexible as a Union can realistically be made; accommodative of divergent viewpoints, and all the stronger for it, all the more united, too.

You know what kinds of viewpoints they didn't accomodate? Secession. That has a way of making us weaker and more divided, not quite stronger and more united.

The Union we seem to see dead ahead through the windshield, with the people of 50 different states all cuffed together in mutual subservience, isn't what the founders had in mind. Good for Rick Perry on that score: He raised a useful subject, even if to his own detriment. Let's enjoy. Such a moment may not come again for a long, long time.

Flawless, Bill. Just flawless. Undermining your own argument, stringing together words into incoherent non-sentences, coming to no conclusion, and fizzling out because you couldn't think of a way to end it – brilliant. Here's the rub. If you consider our current situation "mutual subservience" then your level of anger is appropriate, like if I referred to you as "Child pornographer and white supremacist Bill Murchison." That would justify some pretty extreme anger directed at you. And since none of that is true, you'd be pretty baffled by the response. Yet that's exactly what you're doing here, cubby. Those cuffs and that forced subservience aren't real. They exist only in your head. If the rest of us lived in your head then this piece and Rick Perry's bloviating would ring true and sound to a downtrodden nation like a call to action.

But we live on Earth and you sound like an idiot.

I was tempted to go the FJM route when I laid eyes upon "Christian conservatism just getting started" by Star Parker. The more I looked at it, however, I realized that if an undergraduate student submitted this in class I would not even be able to muster the strength to give it a pity D. Star Parker, wealthy author and syndicated columnist, is not nearly as good of a writer as a college freshman. I am about to prove it.

There are some today who suggest that Christian conservatism as a political force is over.

Star, it's a good idea to avoid generalized attributions like "Some people say." These usually are thinly-veiled attempts by an author to insert his or her own opinion. It is unpersuasive and lazy.

Those who make this claim point to the fact that liberal Democrats now control the White House and both houses of congress, that the number of Americans self identifying as Democrats compared to Republicans has increased, that the direction of public opinion, particularly among young people, on social issues is liberal, and that the Republican Party itself has been divided over the conservative agenda.

This is a run-on sentence. "Congress" is a proper noun. The evidence you have cited here severely undermines your own argument. You are missing the purpose of a persuasive essay.

But those who write off Christian conservatism as a political force have underestimated the driving compulsion behind traditional faith and American freedom.

This is an appeal to emotion, not an argument. Citing empirical evidence that disproves your argument and then refuting it with your opinion – and a vague one at that – is a poor strategy.

Just looking at who is in power does not reveal the depth of division in the country today and for the reasons that the nation is so deeply divided, may I suggest that Christian conservatism will not only survive but will thrive.

After reading this six or seven times I came to the conclusion that it is a sentence fragment at best, and incomprehensible at worst. Did you proofread this? Your rhetorical style seems to be to present contradictory evidence and then tell the reader that you think it is wrong.

For although the Pew Research Center reports

"For although" is redundant.

For although the Pew Research Center reports that the partisan gap in approval for President Obama is the widest this gap has been in modern times with the difference between Democrat approval of Obama, 88 percent, and Republican approval, 27 percent, the "values" gap reflected in Pew and other studies is far too significant for some to suggest that conservative Christians take their voting rights home to be buried.

Ms. Parker, I do not appreciate it when students waste my time. Papers that have not been proofread and do not adhere to the basic rules of English grammar do just that.

According to a recent Gallup poll, 76 percent of Republicans say that religion is an "important part" of their life, compared to 57 percent of Democrats. And 55 percent of Republicans go to religious services at least once per week compared to 34 percent of Democrats.

What does this prove? All I see is evidence that Republicans may tell survey researchers that they go to church more often.

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Whether or not they do, or what this means, is unclear.

Some 59 percent of Democrats

What does "some 59 percent" mean?

say out of wedlock births are morally acceptable, compared to 39 percent of Republicans. And with recent data showing 40 percent out of wedlock birth rates, what if any public policy should regulate this behavior?

The purpose of this assignment is to be persuasive by presenting evidence, not by asking rhetorical questions. You have offered no evidence to support the assumption that public policy should regulate the behavior in question.

Abortion is morally acceptable to 51 percent of Democrats compared to 25 percent of Republicans. And with 48 million abortion deaths since Roe v Wade, should no political concern address the societal costs of this law?

Star, you've had four abortions. Four! I hope you are prepared to defend your position in light of your own behavior.

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Homosexuality is morally acceptable to 55 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans. And 52 percent of Democrats are ready to legalize same sex marriage compared to 22 percent of Republicans. We only need to look at 30 years of inner city data and see the impact of coupling government social engineering with unbridled sexual impulse.

I am at a loss to figure out what this means. What is the connection between homosexuality and…whatever it is to which you're linking it in the second sentence?

Without a moral compass in politics and law, where do we go to answer the hard questions?

Your conclusions do not match your data. 55% of Democrats supporting gay marriage = no moral compass. 30% of Republicans supporting gay marriage = moral compass. Where's the break point? I estimate 37.8%.

The Christian right has interjected itself into the political world because the political world came into their world.

This is non-sequitur and confusing.

The public schools that are educating the majority of America's children have been increasingly secularized and politicized.

Do you know what "public" means?

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Public schools are by definition "secular." Christian conservatives have done much to politicize them, though, so your second point is valid.

The work place has been purged of biblical ethics. All public space is darkened by lawless and vulgar lasciviousness and becoming increasingly intolerant of practicing Christians.

We are not on Larry King. The assignment was not to submit a moral diatribe on what you consider "lawless and vulgar." You seriously misunderstand what "persuasion" means.

The result is that secular Americans have had a disproportionate impact on our country over recent years and biblical Americans are now fighting back with their voting rights.

"on our country over recent years" is poor syntax. Who are "biblical Americans?" If they are now fighting back with their voting rights, explain the November election results. And 2006. Do these examples mesh with your "argument?

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"

Abraham Lincoln said that a "house divided against itself cannot stand."

Trite, but accurately quoted. Cite, please. When and where was this said? In what context?

He recognized that when points of contention have to do with basic values on common ground, we've got to decide who we are going to be.

What does "have to do with basic values on common ground" mean? This sentence does not make any sense. This clearly was not proofread and it reads like you slapped it together 20 minutes before class.

He knew the country couldn't continue half slave and half free and would have to become all of one or all of the other.

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I fail to see how this is in any way related to your argument, or what your argument is for that matter. Only in the context of a paper with no argument is this sentence acceptable.

The divisions in America today have gotten beyond the political class and the talking heads.

Do you mean 'have gone beyond'? This appears to be your thesis, but no part of your paper has supported it.

It requires voting action to thread one worldview or the other into our rule of law and the Christian right has chosen the Republican Party as its needle.

"It requires voting action" sounds like this was written in Ukranian and translated into English – using a free, bad online translator. Your argument continues to damage itself. Having chosen the GOP as its needle, how does the party's failure support your point?

America is in a crisis because the wrong people have been making the wrong decisions for too many years.

Do you honestly not understand how badly this undercuts the entire point of your essay? Regardless, I am happy to see something true in this paper, even if it took 600 words.

Christian conservatives have an obligation to help lead America to it founding principles of traditional values and limited government. Christians must actively shape public policy in the country and inject our values into every part of our shared space.

It sounds like a conclusion, but it has little to do with what I just read.

So I would suggest that the naysayer put away their shovels

This kind of grammatical error insults the reader's intelligence.

because the religious right is not dead nor in a coma.

This should either read "or in a" or "nor is it in a." Two examples of grammatical butchery in one sentence.

Christian conservatives are not and never will withdraw. In fact, we are just getting started.

Read this sentence and tell me what grade you would give a paper that included it. What do you think? Here's what I think: I think your mother used a lot of powerful cleaning solvents without adequate ventilation while carrying you in utero. I feel like I have just watched Caddyshack 2 on peyote. This was so bad that it has to be a joke; if not, it is indicative of a complete disregard of the basic tenets of English composition and rhetoric. My first reaction was to ink "50/100. F" on this paper, but the more I thought about it I couldn't figure out what exactly you did to earn the 50 points. This is of a level of quality that I would not accept from a high school sophomore. You're in college. Act like it. There is no way that you will be able to get away with such poor writing in the real world beyond graduation, nor will you make it that far without a committment to improvement.

I usually try to space out the FJM series, as the entries tend to be a little overwhelming to read and labor-intensive to write. But K-Lo (a.k.a. Kathryn Jean Lopez) wrote something so stupid that were I in the midst of summiting Everest I would stop for an hour, possibly losing a toe in the process, to FJM it. K-Lo is a prominent wingnut and "neo-feminist." You know, the kind of "feminist" who thinks that gender discrimination is fictional and women need men to protect them. Yeah. One of those. Get ready. The treatise in question is "Confusion Reigns as Tradition Decays." If the use of the word "tradition" wasn't enough to send a chill down your spine, then you don't know K-Lo.

According to an article in the Boston Globe, an informal poll taken among 200 teenagers

It's "informal", i.e. not a poll and in no way indicative of a random sample of public opinion, and it was asked to high school kids. Boston high school kids. We're off to a great start.

has revealed that almost half of them blame the pop star Rihanna for her recent beating, allegedly by her boyfriend, Chris Brown.

According to the internet, these two people of whom I've never heard are celebrities who churn out the kind of brainless, ProTooled pop music that makes my soul weep with boredom. And he slapped her around. Well that's not good.

It's just one survey. But it's very bad news.

I agree. Domestic violence is a big problem, and male-on-female DV is especially prominent.

Everyone take a big mouthful of your favorite beverage at this point. You'll know why in a minute. Also, if you have a snooty English butler, ask him to bring you a monocle. One that you don't mind breaking. So, you know, not your good monocle.

And feminists are to blame.

*spit take*

*monocle shatters*

Whhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Wait, I thought it was Chris Brown's fault. Oh, you mean the childrens' survey responses. That is the fault of feminists? K-Lo, I've been to two county fairs and a Carrot Top show yet this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Think about that. Carrot Top.

I don't say that to bash Gloria Steinem or whomever the most easily blamed feminist would be at this point.

Heavens no! This doesn't read at all like a desperate attempt to go off half-assed on feminism.

I say it so we can collectively get our heads out of the feminist fog in which we've been lost.

OK, just to make sure we're all still on the same page: because of feminism, people think male-on-female violence is acceptable. Right? That's what we're doing here? OK.

I appreciate the kids wanting Rihanna to take some responsibility for her situation. She's an adult, after all, as is Brown. If Rihanna is getting beaten, she should get the heck away from the person responsible. And as a best-selling artist, she has the financial freedom to extricate herself from her trouble.

Well, the psychology of domestic violence is a lot more complex than that but, yes, as uninvolved observers it's pretty easy for us to say "Easy fix: dump his ass."

But where's the outrage over what Brown is accused of doing?

Well you could have written a column expressing outrage, but instead you wrote this idiotic piece of hackery about "the feminists." Maybe that's where all the outrage went.

There's something off when so many people blame the victim, not the aggressor.

But nothing wrong with blaming amorphous concepts like feminism. Also, "so many people" is a handful of Boston high school kids who probably got their ideas from their parents who got them from Rush and dipshits like you, K-Lo. So yeah, something is wrong alright.

As one male reader e-mailed me: "The only times I can remember my father hitting me was for fighting with my sisters. I resented it as a child, but I told my father, shortly before he died at age 90, that it was the best life lesson he taught me of many."

No, the best life lesson would have been "Don't hit people."

He added: "I am stunned by the number of women, young and old, abused by men. There isn't a hell hot enough for men responsible for the injustice of abusing women." Now there's an appropriate reaction!

Is there some evidence that this is not how a lot of people reacted? Seems like most of the people for whom this would not be the first reaction would be the religious "Woman obeys man" nutjobs in your neck of the woods, K-Lo.

What has happened — and what Rihanna and Chris have to do with Gloria — is that by inventing oppression where there is none and remaking woman in man's image, the sexual and feminist revolutions have confused everyone.

OK, checking in again to make sure I follow the argument. Women cried wolf, making up oppression where none existed, and now no one cares when the wolf comes. The wolf, in this case, is Chris Brown. So women cried Chris Brown one too many times and now Chris Brown is really here.

It's natural for us to expect men to protect women, and women to expect some level of physical protection.

Your entire argument would make sense if this statement was true, but…stay with me, because this is the important part…it's not. There's nothing natural about Protestant social conditioning. Your kids think this is the natural Order of Things because you tell them it is.

You know what you sound like, K-Lo?

Like an Uncle Tom. Like a black person in the 1800s standing up for white people and agreeing that subjugation is the Natural Order of Things. And that being a slave isn't really so bad. In fact, your argument is virtually identical. Just find-and-replace the nouns.

But in postmodern America, those natural gender roles have been upended by academic jargon and political rhetoric.

Let's summarize the historical record of America: the K-Lo version. Everything was great for women. There was no oppression. Then feminists invented some, and now everyone's confused because they said there was some when there wasn't and now when there IS some (which, according to the original K-Lo hypothesis, there isn't) we react incorrectly.

The result is confusion.

I'll give you that. I am fucking confused.

And perhaps, too, a neo-feminist backlash.

I'm tired and my butt itches. I think I'll have a nap when I'm done protecting women and bench pressing this 1991 Hyundai Scoupe.

The need for some return to sanity forms the subtext of an article in this month's issue of O, the Oprah Magazine. The article explores how some women find themselves abandoning heterosexual relationships in favor of partners of their own gender.

"Subtext" in the hands of conservative columnist means "Seeing what we want to see and making up a right-wing moral where none exists or is intended." Like that bitchin' list of the greatest conservative rock songs.

One recently divorced academic describes what attracted her to a future female lover. "She got up and gave me the better seat, as if she wanted to take care of me. I was struck by that. … she took initiative and was the most take-charge person I'd ever met."

Scientists at the University of People have just discovered that people like it when other people are nice to them. This anecdote confirms and strengthens their findings.

This article isn't about closeted homosexuality;

No, this isn't about K-Lo's kids. Yet.

it's not asserting that there's a vast population of women who were born to be with women, and are instead trapped in unfulfilling heterosexual arrangements. No, this article, despite its celebration of unconventional lifestyles, boils down to something much more orthodox:

Being with someone who respects you: unconventional. Well, that probably is an unconventional idea for a lot of daily K-Lo readers.

Femininity and masculinity mix well together.

So do cockroaches and garbage.

And women are taking masculinity where they can get it, even if it's in the arms of a fellow female.

They could probably get it from a man – IF we accept the premise that these women are honestly hetero – if we didn't raise men to think that A) women are weak and need male protection and B) that the real force working against women isn't misogyny, it's feminism.

I wonder if reinforcing traditional M/F, Dominant/Weak gender roles has anything to do with encouraging domestic violence?

Nah…that's a stretch. It's probably feminism's fault.

Last year, author Kathleen Parker published a book called "Save the Males." What a perfect title, what a necessary cause, I thought at the time.

Yeah, Susan Faludi did that 10 years ago.

As Parker wrote: "For the past 30 years or so, males have been under siege by a culture that too often embraces the notion that men are to blame for all of life's ills. … While women have been cast as victims…
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men have been quietly retreating into their caves."

I try to be responsible for fewer ills. That seems a better response than retreating.

Men kinda are to blame for all of life's ills. Certainly more than half. Men brought you the Inquisition, the Holocaust, every war in recorded history, nerve gas, clip shows, the McRib, and Menudo.

Sometimes, of course, women are victims.

Yeah, but…they kinda want it, don't they? I mean, look at how they're dressed.

But while feminists whine about false pay gaps and oppression that doesn't exist,

Huh.

Well, this would be more credible if pay gaps were not an easily demonstrable fact, discrimination and harrassment in the workplace were not rampant, and this column weren't written by the National Review's Token Female Columnist.

we ignore the mess that we created by rejecting nature and tradition

"Tradition" means doing things the way they have been done previously. Which is, you know, just about the worst possible argument for continuing to do something unless it has proven to be very successful. At this point I should note that enforcing traditional gender roles has always worked well.

We've so confused ourselves that almost 100 teenagers in Boston are excusing Chris Brown.

And for my next act of contortion, I'll explain how Jesse Jackson causes racism! How abortion causes child abuse and breast cancer! How liberal judges cause genital warts! How BK Chicken Fries make your sons gay!

Why wouldn't they?

Well, maybe they wouldn't if their parents raised them to understand that people don't solve problems by hitting other people. And that hitting someone else, absent self-defense or an invitation to do so, is unacceptable behavior among adults.

Men and women are equal, but we've conditioned ourselves to expect a lot less of men, and maybe too much of women.

I've never felt that "Don't hit women" is either too much or too little to ask of men. But we do ask too little of men overall. For instance, we don't ask them to recognize that gender discrimination is a serious problem. Instead we write columns claiming that oppression doesn't exist and making excuses for widespread victim-blaming.

"Save the Males" needs a follow-up: A Woman's Memo to Her Sister Feminists: Let's Call the Whole Thing Off. Or instead of another book, why don't we just reboot?

Good idea, K-Lo. Go ahead and write that book. I'm sure your kind of "feminist" – a motley crew of homeschool moms and housewives who can justify the occasional black eye – will eat it up.

Was it really that bad when men didn't have to pretend to be what they weren't and women didn't have to try to reinvent themselves to make up for what they lost?

You're right. Things were better for women before the 1960s.
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Things were good. Reeeeeeeeeeal good.

This is the heart of the entire modern conservative movement: the constant, nonspecific yearning for the way "things" "used to be" back before The Fall, before the 60s came along and we lost our way. They yearn endlessly for a trip back in time to a fictional Norman Rockwell America that never was, a world in which everything was perfect. Men worked, kids were apple-cheeked, women were pregnant and baking, and everyone was white (OK, there were Coloreds, but they Knew their Place). You know, the good old days. Back before feminism caused all this confusion. Back when women were never beaten or, if they were, society unanimously condemned the act and no one, absolutely no one, looked upon spousal abuse understanding the urge and approving of the act.

I have no idea who in the hell John Andrews is.
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I know only that he publishes the occasional burst of stupidity on the intellectual Chernobyl that is the TownHall.com opinion page. His latest masterwork, "When Will Atlas Shrug?" sets a standard for inanity that may not soon be equalled. His title indicates his penchant for asking questions shortly before providing really, really bad answers. With a wary eye and a heavy heart we begin.

What is the breaking point?

The Breaking Point is a 1950 film based on Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not. It stars John Garfield and Wallace Ford.

Where will the resistance form?

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According to Red Dawn, it starts in Colorado. Remember this. It becomes relevant later in the column.

Heavy questions, but unavoidable in the current political climate. The productive members of society can only be pushed so far, some say.

"That's a great quote, who said that?"

"Some."

How far can productive people be pushed? Let's ask Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Or the heads of all the airlines (OK, they were railroads in the novel) who have leaned on the Federal Bankruptcy courts to stay alive in the past eight years. Or the Big Three. Come on, don't walk away. This is fun.

What they envision is not defiance of law or a reversal of the election.

That's big of them.

It is people's growing disengagement from a new economic order that punishes effort and rewards envy – the creepy future that Barack Obama and the Democrats intend for us.

If you want to learn more about this creeeeeeeeeepy fuuuuuuuuuture, send 10 Bazooka Joe wrappers and an SASE to:

John Andrews, Curator of the Future
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Columnist Michelle Malkin calls that withdrawal, "going Galt."

"I wonder if the term originated with her. In fact, it didn't. If I even bothered to Google it, I would have caught this."

Malkin was the first speaker when several hundred Coloradans gathered for a free-market leadership conference in Colorado Springs on March 6-7.

Wow, that sounds PRODUCTIVE! A forty-eight hour circle jerk echo chamber attended by a broad sample of Colorado Springs' most promising future Federal Courthouse bombers! Maybe the first step in going Galt is to waste one's time at shit like this.

Her reference was to John Galt, the individualist hero of Ayn Rand's novel, "Atlas Shrugged." She told of seeing a placard at the Denver protest rally for Obama's stimulus bill signing that warned: "Atlas will shrug."

Said sign was held by a 36 year-old assistant manager at the Lidz kiosk in the Greeley Mall. He likes to think of himself as "Atlas" when he's crying himself to sleep in his efficiency under a dangerously teetering mountain of discarded Hot Pockets boxes.

So what, you ask. So in human behavior, incentives matter. People are choosers, not automatons.

I think if anyone is going to lecture us on behaving like automatons (sic) it should definitely be Objectivists. And/or hardcore Rand fans. They aren't even slightly cult-like or apt to parrot the views of The Leader. They don't rigidly adhere to a dogma and blink in unison.

Of course in the 1950s, when Rand was writing her epic about a slow-spreading spontaneous strike among Americans fed up with big government, tomorrow supposedly belonged to New Soviet Man.

This fallacy of hindsight exists only in the minds of fourth rate conservative columnists. It becomes slightly more true every time they need it to prove a point.

Reagan, Thatcher, and John Paul II, the three champions of freedom who would prove otherwise, weren't yet heard of.

That was so awesome when they teamed up to defeat Communism! And Magneto! It's kind of amazing that the greatest sustained period of prosperity in the history of this nation was during the New Deal era yet those Presidents made no contribution to the inevitable implosion of the Soviet system. Hard to believe, but true.

But we're now told that 2008, with its routine recession and its celebrity election, showed freedom is untrustworthy after all.

You are told that at lunatic conferences at the airport Radisson in Colorado Springs at which Michelle Malkin is the keynote speaker.

The novel — with John Galt as capitalist superman and Dagny Taggart, Ayn Rand's alter ego, as railroad tycoon — may not be great literature.

It's not that it isn't great literature, John. It's that it is horrendous literature, literature written in some other language and translated into English with a free online translator. When something is A) a book and B) 1000 pages long, I'd say "bad literature" is a pretty significant shortcoming.

But its message of radical self-reliance has inspired millions across the decades.

Well, the Communist Manifesto has certainly inspired many millions more. So if popularity is the criteria for judging the merits of written work – and it isn't – Atlas comes in far behind Marx, The Grapes of Wrath, and Everybody Poops, which has inspired untold billions to poop.

And as a Coloradan, I like it that the story is set right here. "We can't lose Colorado. It's our last hope," says a Taggart employee at the start. A Rocky Mountain valley is the retreat from which Galt triumphs at the end.

HOLY SHIT! IT'S RED DAWN!

Retreat attendees…weren't about to unplug Galt-style from daily life in protest against wind power, national health care, and charity-choking taxes. But they took seriously the disincentive effects against wealth creation and social comity in these and other collectivist proposals. We should too.

*hits floor*

(there is a 72 hour gap in the entry at this point while Ed is administered smelling salts and various creams and lotions)

Read that amazing paragraph again to make sure it exists. To summarize: these bedwetters who won't shut the fuck up about "going Galt" for the past three weeks not only A) aren't productive but B) have no plans to actually do anything except sit around and talk about it before heading back to work at the screen door factory. So this is essentially the biggest exercise in autofellatio since…well, everything these people do follows the same all talk, no action pattern.

As ever more people ride in the wagon and fewer are left to pull it, there will come a breaking point.

Well, there are probably fewer people pulling it because millions upon millions of people are out of work thanks to two decades of policies intended to enrich the select few at the expense of everyone else.

But definitely also because Chad from Topeka has recognized that there is a disincentive for him to work any harder at his maintenance job.

Crowding taxation onto the highest earners and debt onto our kids, as President Obama proposes, invites collapse.

The kind of collapse one might see if, hypothetically, a president spent 8 years and $1.5 trillion cutting taxes and leaving future generations to pay the bill. John Andrews, you're not very good at this. Refuting you is about as challenging as reading from the Twilight series. That's a good analogy, in fact. Both Twilight and this column are challenging inasmuch as they are so terrible that I have to threaten myself with bodily harm to make myself keep reading.

Ignoring the constitution at will, as statists and the spending lobby do, breeds contempt.

It did, hence the 2006/2008 elections, hence the reason you are writing this inane horseshit and (presumably) getting paid for it.

Ruin must result.

It did. Score another one for John!

Did the USA learn nothing from the USSR's implosion, wondered Vladimir Putin recently.

So we're taking advice from Putin now. What, was Mugabe busy? Couldn't find a copy of the collected works of Pol Pot? How about we learn something from the collapse of our own economy rather than taking GaltLessons from the Soviet straw man?

Cold War victory taught us the power of ideas. The East crumbled when the West asserted the superiority of liberty, wakened by thinkers like Hayek with his expose of the road to serfdom and Bastiat with his ridicule of "everyone seeking to live at the expense of everyone else."

Yep, that is what brought the Cold War to an end. B-52 Stratofortresses carpet-bombed the Warsaw Pact nations with copies of Hayek wrapped in American flags. Those who weren't killed by falling books said "Holy shit! This is brilliant!", overthrew their governments, bought Weber grills, and joined the John Birch Society.

Also influential was Rand with her capitalist commandos.

I asked the Capitalist Commandos for an autographed photo. It wasn't autographed, but they did send this:

And just so we're clear, he's crediting Ayn Rand for helping to end the Cold War. Just so we're clear.

Galt and Taggart's crusade was idea-powered.

No, it was fictional. Not quite the same thing.

With moral truth they defeated the lies of something for nothing and freedom through coercion. Not even the government office of Morale Conditioner, censoring radio, could stop their entrepreneurial comeback.

What a stirring fictional lesson. The rest of us will rely on a similar energy and spirit to get through this while you useless drags on society sit around conference rooms jerking each other off.

Their strike against the redistributionist guilt trip was fiction. But we can shrug it off for real. The Tea Party movement is a symptom.

Here is a photo of the Teabagging event in New York City, population 11 million:

The only movement of which this reminds me is a bowel movement. Here is the raucous crowd, a pleasant mix of toothless hillbillies and well-armed sociopaths, in Rochester (aka "God's Asshole"):

I don't mean to be crass, but…perhaps these people should consider going jogging rather than going Galt.

If the Teabagging "movement" is a symptom of anything, it's a symptom of how stupid these people are to gather in one place so the ATF and FBI can photograph the people they'll be busting in the next few years for hoarding ammonium nitrate.

Colorado may again play a role.

What do you call a state with a Democratic Governor, two Democratic Senators, a Democratic majority in both chambers of the State Legislature, and a 5-2 Democratic edge in House seats? If you're John Andrews, which is to say if you are retarded, you call it GROUND FUCKIN' ZERO for the new conservative revolution, baby!
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I am becoming more and more convinced that right-wing columns are all written as parodies by bored sociology grad students and a supercomputer which has attained the intellectual capacity of cattle and, therefore, Republicans.

(note: primer on the FJM can be found here)

We always knew this day would come.

Unless someone writes a musical comedy about the Symbionese Liberation Army, Thomas Friedman's attempt to re-invent himself as a progressive will stand as the most baffling, compelling, I-gotta-see-this event of my lifetime. His entire worldview has collapsed around him recently, so he wrote a book in his inimitably idiotic literary anti-style about his concern for the environment. That'll sell books to the kids and the liberals, right? Were it that easy, Mr. Friedman. Were it that easy.

New book persona aside, The Unit's weekly NYT columns show that he still has plenty of vigor for the kind of jingoistic, libertarian tent-pitching that made him famous. To wit: "Paging Uncle Sam," which is either the title of his column or an upcoming Charles Bronson movie that I absolutely have to see. The call is from rhetorical Excellence; is Friedman man enough to accept the charges?

Seoul, South Korea

Knowing what we know about this mustachioed twit, this simple byline foreshadows unspeakable horrors. We all know that 75% of this column is going to be based on throwaway comments from conversations with random Korean people.

I wish I could have been there to see the puzzled Koreans trying to mind their business on the subway and thinking "Why is this caucasian porn star asking me about tariffs?"

It is very useful to come to Asia to be reminded about America’s standing in the world these days.

Yep, nothing like randomly encountering some people in a foreign country to prompt some grandiose generalizing about what "the world" thinks about America.

For all the talk in recent years about America’s inevitable decline, all eyes are not now on Tokyo, Beijing, Brussels or Moscow — nor on any other pretenders to the world heavyweight crown.

Belgium? Belgium??? Are they even in the conversation? Is this like the NCAA tournament where we have to include Winthrop, Iona, UNC-Asheville, Siena, UM-Baltimore County, and Coastal Carolina because they won whatever turnip truck of a conference crowned them champion? Belgium: the token Benelux entry in the field of new world powers.

Take that, Luxembourg!

All eyes are on Washington to pull the world out of its economic tailspin. At no time in the last 50 years have we ever felt weaker, and at no time in the last 50 years has the world ever seen us as more important.

Friedman talked to the world. This is what it said. Verbatim.

While it is true that since the end of the cold war global leaders and intellectuals often complained about a world of too much American power, one doesn’t hear much of that grumbling today when most people recognize that only an economically revitalized America has the power to prevent the world economy from going into a global depression.

Little late to be talking about prevention, Tom. I suppose that "one doesn't hear much of that grumbling" in your social circles.

It was always easy to complain about a world of too much American power as long as you didn’t have to live in a world of too little American power. And right now, that is the danger: a world of too little American power.

National Review's Michael Leeden: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." That's the kind of power they want us to assert.

Somewhere in the back of their minds, a lot of people seem to be realizing that the alternative to a U.S.-dominated world is not a world dominated by someone else or someone better.

"(A) lot of people" "seem to be realizing" things. The depth of research, the empirical support! Stunning.

It is a leaderless world. Neither Russia nor China has the will or the way to provide the global public goods that America — at its best — consistently has. The European Union right now is so split that it cannot even agree on an effective stimulus package.

Maybe they lack your Napoleon complex, Tom, your need to dominate and control and subjugate, i.e. "lead."

No wonder then that even though this economic crisis began in America, with American bad borrowing and bad lending practices, people have nevertheless fled to the U.S. dollar. Case in point: South Korea’s currency has lost roughly 40 percent against the dollar in just the last six months.

Ah, the rock-solid American Buck! Given the extent to which the governments of Asia have gone all in on the dollar as a reserve currency, what you call fleeing to the US dollar has the desperate feel of good money chasing bad.
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“No other country can substitute for the U.S.,” a senior Korean official remarked to me.

Guy next to Friedman on the plane? Auto rickshaw driver? Bartender?

“The U.S. is still No. 1 in military, No. 1 in economy, No. 1 in promoting human rights and No. 1 in idealism. Only the U.S. can lead the world. No other country can. China can’t. The E.U. is too divided, and Europe is militarily far behind the U.S. So it is only the United States … We have never had a more unipolar world than we have today.”

It's uncanny how much this unsourced, unverifiable quote supports the author's thesis! What a happy coincidence. I'm not saying Thomas Friedman fabricated this quote, but Thomas Friedman fabricated this quote.

Yes, many Asians resent the fact that Americans scolded them about their banking crisis in the 1990s, and now we’ve made many of the same mistakes. But that schadenfreude doesn’t last long. In random conversations here in Seoul with Korean and Asian thinkers, journalists and business executives, I found people really worried.

"When I threw loaded questions at random people, their responses confirmed my preconceived conclusions. Amazing!"

This is a region where Western brands carry great weight, and for people to see giant U.S. financial brands like Citigroup and A.I.G. teetering is deeply unnerving.

Not to mention the weight Western brands carry with Friedman, the man who can't go three paragraphs without dropping a trademarked name.

“There is no one who can replace America. Without American leadership, there is no leadership,” said Lee Hong-koo, South Korea’s former ambassador to Washington. “That puts a tremendous burden on the American people to do something positive. You can’t be tempted by the usual nationalism. When things don’t go well, most people become nationalistic. And in the economic world, that is protectionism"

Uh oh! Throw in the Aerosmith CD, dim the lights, and let the free-market dry humping begin!!

"We are pleased to see President Obama is not doing that. Americans, as a people, should realize how many hopes and expectations other people are putting on their shoulders.”

Clearly the President's goal should be to do what makes other nations happiest: refuse to treat their goods the way they treat ours.

And that’s just on economics. President Obama’s first big security test could come here — and soon. North Korea has gotten crazier than ever; it has been made even poorer by the global economic crisis and by the withdrawal of aid by the new South Korean government.

This is a different column, but OK! I guess this is kinda important.

Now the North is threatening to test one of its Taepodong-2 long-range missiles, which may have the capacity to hit Hawaii, Alaska or beyond.

Alaska.

Was that a multiple choice question? Because I totally pick Alaska.

The North last tried such a test in 2006, but the rocket exploded 40 seconds after its launch. If the North does test such an intercontinental ballistic missile again, American forces will have to consider blowing it up on the launch pad or shooting it out of the sky.

YEAH! And then we gotta use our photon torpedoes and death rays and Dr. Manhattan and all kinds of other weapons that are as non-existent as a functioning Anti-Ballistic Missile system.

We never should have allowed the North to get a nuclear warhead; we certainly don’t want it testing a long-range missile that could deliver that nuclear warhead to our shores, or anywhere else.

So the fact that they do (or, more accurately, may) have nuclear warheads is a reason that we should start a war with them and WHAT THE HELL ARE WE EVEN TALKING ABOUT I thought this was about the economic crisis and leadership.

Never more inward-looking, never more in demand: that’s America today. This moment recalls a point raised by the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum in his book, The Case for Goliath.

No, to me it recalls a point raised by a more noted scholar, Rudyard Kipling, in his poem "The White Man's Burden" or perhaps by Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra.

When it comes to the way other countries view America’s pre-eminent role in the world, he wrote, “whatever its life span, three things can be safely predicted: they will not pay for it; they will continue to criticize it; and they will miss it when it is gone.”

If this logic worked for colonialism, I guess it'll work equally well for neo-colonialism!

Welcome to Friedman's world, a world desperately seeking a Caesar. When someone like Tom says "leadership" it means control; "setting an example" means establishing hegemony; "she was all over me" means date rape. This is in many ways the sickest and most dangerous worldview, one in which the rest of the world not only needs American hegemony, they want it. Just look at how they're dressed.