Sadly, No!

I can’t even lampoon these guys anymore:

Advice to McCain [John J. Pitney, Jr.]

What demeanor should McCain display tonight? Angry doesn’t work. Solemn doesn’t work. ake-smiley doesn’t work. Instead, McCain should go back to his roots and unleash his inner smart-aleck. If Obama accuses him of being erratic in a crisis, he should say: “So I’m erotic in a crisis? Who knew?”

This approach has a couple of advantages. First, it enables McCain to show the more appealing side of his personality.

Uh, sleazy old men aren’t “appealing,” dude.

Second, it throws Obama off his game. His handlers have surely anticipated every possible attack line about Ayers and Wright. And as a good liberal, he’s waiting for the chance to say, “Have you left no sense of decency?” But he’d be hard put to defend against ridicule. The One can’t handle the jokes.

Well, having a 72-year-old man talking openly about his sex life on national television would throw anyone off their game. I just don’t think it will help him get elected.

So to get ready for the debate, McCain should lay aside the notes, crack open a beer, and watch Animal House.

I agree. God, I hope the McCain campaign reads the Corner every day.

Andy McCarthy gives a “heh-indeed” to this awe-inspiring rant from Melanie Philips:

You have to pinch yourself – a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States. And apparently it’s considered impolite to say so.

If you thought tales of Vince Foster’s murder and of smuggling cocaine through the Arkansas governor’s mansion were fun, then hold onto your seats. The next four years are going to be something to behold.

It’s been a long, long time since we checked in on Donald L. Luskin. For obvious reasons, the Donald has been having a tough week. Via LGM, we came across this 2003 classic from Luskin:

Krugman’s second-rate work in economics hardly deserves any special recognition[.]

Which makes this week’s statement somewhat puzzling:

The dead economist [Krugman, in Luskin speak] wrote eloquently of the supreme importance of globalization and international trade as engines of prosperity.

It also turns out we had missed this little number:

Paul Krugman — now a Princeton professor and once the winner of the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal as most important American economist under 40. Yet sadly, no.

Because I’ve mostly been working on mainstream wingnuts such as Bill Kristol and K-Lo lately, I began wondering today how some of the less literate wingnuts that comprise the conservative base are reporting on this year’s election. After all, if the folks at the National Review are going this delightfully bonkers over the prospect of an Obama win, surely more marginal wingnuts such as Pastor Joseph Grant Swank, Jr. must be going absolutely apeshit, right? Let’s take a look:

B. Hussein betrays Christ

By Grant Swank

B. Hussein Obama betrays Christ.

Christ said, “If you love Me, keep My commandments.”

B. Hussein does not keep Christ’s commandments.

First, B. Hussein enthusiastically applauds killing womb boys and girls, even saying that if his daughters became pregnant “by mistake” he would not want them punished with a “baby.” […]

B. Hussein without apology endorses slaying those lives any time a female wants to slice-and-dice those womb infants. In that, B. Hussein betrays Christ maximum.

B. Hussein also endorses homosexual match-ups per his “Christian ethos,” a twosome he used in New Hampshire when assuring homosexuals that he would support their “marriages.”

And:

B. Hussein’s 9/11 look-back pro-Muslim

[…]

With all this pro-Muslim stance, B. Hussein covers it on September 11, 2008 with his characteristic political opportunism by informing Americans that they can best serve the USA via service to others.

The truth is that B. Hussein will give full service to Muslims: “I will stand with them (Muslims) should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

The Muslims will call “ugly direction” every day once B. Hussein is in the Oval Office. He will have to come to their cries of being discriminated against so that non-Muslims will become the persecuted minority.

It will happen.

And:

Young evangelicals for Obama? Never!

[…]

Their choice come November is to sit out the vote or go for B. Hussein Obama, known to scores as a mask Muslim.

The former choice is to give up our democracy in action. The latter is to vote for The Boy who has countless ties to Islamics, even hiring those on his campaign and Congressional staff as well as buddying up to scores of Muslims in the Nation of Islam.

It is abhorrent even to imagine that any evangelicals would vote for B. Hussein. It is unthinkable.

Those of us who are genuinely evangelical, knowing our Bibles, knowledgeable concerning biblical doctrine, could never think of casting a ballot for the left-of-left abortion-approving, pro-sodomy Democrat candidate. It would be not only horrific but considered by many of us as sin.

To sin is to know to do good and do it not. That is the paraphrase of biblical counsel.

Therefore, to know that B. Hussein is pro-evil and still vote for him could be concluded as sinning against what is biblically ethical.

How could anyone who is biblically aligned be in favor of the anti-Bible, anti-God B. Hussein?

This is the best election ever.

I’m always amazed that the National Review has actual readers. Not because there are people out there who are crazy enough to read the National Review, mind you, but because the people who are crazy enough to read the National Review actually know how to read. Exhibit A is this K-Lo fan:

The Dow Today [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

An e-mail:

Kathryn:

Isn’t this a golden opportunity for John McCain? Supposedly, the wheels came off his campaign when he “suspended” it to go to DC to work on the bailout/rescue. He was hammered, and the bad Dow action of the last week or so made it look like he put his campaign on the Pass line and the dice came up snake eyes. And his poll numbers dropped along with the Dow.

But now – why doesn’t he come out and say, “My friends, the good news in the stock market shows all of us that the rescue plan took some time to get going. It shows I am not afraid to put my political career on the line to do what I think is right for America. Some say I should have done what my opponent did: make no phone calls to wavering members of my own party, make a few bland but inconsequential speeches, quietly vote for the bill, and then trash my opponent at every opportunity. But that’s not who I am.

“Some people in my own party said I took too much of a political risk. But like my early and strong support for the Surge in Iraq, I always put the interests of my country ahead of my interests as a politician.

“Like all Americans I’m glad to see the effects of the bailout become apparent. And I trust that all Americans will see which candidate is willing to do what he believes in and not stand on the sidelines.”

I swear – his poll numbers would skyrocket.

You know what? No. They really wouldn’t.

Though I do hope that McCain really is stupid enough to take credit for the rising Dow. That way, if the Dow tanks 300 points tomorrow, he can take the blame for a failed bailout bill.

Also, the $700 billion bailout bill isn’t what’s boosting the Dow and lowering the TED spread. It’s more because some European countries have elected leaders who aren’t total imbeciles and who are enacting a smart economic rescue plan that the US is now being forced to follow.

The staff here at Sadly, No! would like to take this occasion to remind our readers that Ms. Kathryn J. Lopez is the editor of National Review Online. In her defense, however, it should be noted that Ms. Lopez hasn’t been quite right since learning yesterday that An American Carol slipped from 9th to 15th in box office standings and last week rustled up the paltry sum of $861 per screen, not counting Sqwigglies Gummi Worms revenues.

It’s like you’re sitting at the bus stop and you notice a big mound of dog poop on the sidewalk, and then you see Ace all like “O! Solo Mio!” — stage-walking down the street with his arms in declamatory parentheses…

Obama Mentor Frank Marshall Davis an Admitted Child Rapist

• The National Enquirer and right-wing blogs are the only news organizations with the guts to tell THE TRUTH about Barack Obama and his gaylord butt buddy poet pal who is gay and into the homo sex.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

UPDATE: See also. This too.

Above: ‘Why is everybody always pickin’ on me?
Cuz I look like Louis Tully and write hackery?’

David Frum whines:

I receive emails from readers every day who tell me that the only possible motive I could have for expressing doubts about the McCain ticket is my desire to attend cocktail parties, appear on TV, apply for a job in the Obama administration etc. Now I see this line of accusation appearing in the Corner too.

Let’s develop this thought a little. Suppose it were true? Suppose I were indeed a venal, light-minded chaser after television appearances and social invitations. What difference would it make?

Do my correspondents (and now my Corner colleagues) truly believe that – but for my pitiful media and social ambitions – nobody in America would have noticeed that Sarah Palin cannot speak three coherent consecutive words about finance or economics?

Morons like Levin and K-Lo can develop their own theories on Frum’s hackery, but here’s mine:

You, David Frum, are a hack, full of shit, and a complete opportunist. You are venal, have no principles, but I doubt you’re doing it just for the money (though that has to be part of it, since I doubt Conrad Black can afford to keep paying you thousands in “consulting fees”). Rather, I think you are doing it for ego and for position within your party. Certainly you’re not doing it out of principle or intellectual consistency: Digby makes the excellent and obvious point that, when it suited your career, you had absolutely no problem with incoherent and clueless, fucktard-stupid candidates. And for that matter, your latest tome Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win makes many proposals that call for the sudden Republican endorsement of the welfare state, and at least philosophical acceptance of some degree of government protection for the middle class’s economic well-being. I found it especially hilarious coming from the same man who’d written Dead Right, recommending that Americans endure Donner Party levels of duress so that they might rediscover their “lost” moral character. (The one thing you have remained consistent on is the thing you’re most bugfuck insane about: War on Everybody, All the Time, for which you proselytized –with Richard Perle — with sociopathic lucidity in the book An End To Evil.) But then in the age of economic meltdown, openly wishing that people be deprived to Donner Party levels might get your fat carcass eaten. So, go with what’s popular — and pretend you’ve been consistent all along (certainly never admit that your God failed).

Incidentally, while we’re on the subjects of your grossly opportunist inconsistency and spontaneous hackery, I see you were on Rachel Maddow’s show recently, in one of those appearances which have so vexed your fellow Cornertards K-Lo and Levin. Actually, they should be proud of you: though you were inconsistent and wrongheaded when not hypocritical and dishonest in argument, you were a wingnut through and through in the sense that you were dependably vile:

Frum: You were talking, through much of the show, about the matter of tone in our politics. Yet, I think we are seeing an intensification of some of the ugliness of tone that has been a feature of American politics of the past eight years — and this show, unfortunately, is itself an example of that problem with its heavy sarcasm and sneering and its disregard for a lot of the substantive issues that really are important and I would hate to see Republicans go probably into opposition sustaining this terrible cycle of unseriousness about politics, turning it into a spectator sport. The Party’s going to have some important rebuilding to do, and it’s going to have to do that in an intelligent way, and we’re all gonna have to do better than we’ve been doing including in the last forty minutes.

Where to begin? First, Frum was replying to Maddow’s question about what Frum himself called the McCain/Palin campaign’s stirring up of conservative “fury.” So what does Frum do? Equate it with “eight years” of things said in opposition to George Bush! In other words (and Maddow takes him to task for this), he’s begging Republicans, who are shouting things like “Kill Obama” at McCain rallies, to not be as bad as people like… Rachel Maddow! Frum is just being too subtle for the likes of Levin and K-Lo: he’s not criticizing John McCain nearly as much as he’s intentionally insulting liberals. Also, Frum has always had a problem with real comedians: he hates them. On the other hand, he’s never had a problem with witless sarcasm (the Commentary style of political discourse), or, for that matter, utter nastiness. Nor, incidentally, has Frum ever thought there was anything much wrong with hypocrisy.

Also note how quickly Frum gets to the “rebuilding of the Party” line. Frum’s shtick here is self-serving, all right; but it’s all about his personal ambition to mold the Republican Party — how, he doesn’t care much, so long as it’s successful.

Maddow asks him if he’s implying equivalence; does he mean Rachel Maddow’s sarcasm is equivalent to some yahoo yelling, “Bomb Obama!”? Frum weasels out of that one and says:

I don’t think that’s the important question. I think the question is: Given the small plate of responsibility that you personally have, how do you manage that responsibility? The fact that other people fail in other ways is not an excuse for you to fail in your way.

Indeed. Like, just because David Frum, who was then a paid “consultant” for the candidate in question, effusively cited Rudolph Giuliani’s obnoxiousness (over John McCain’s relative civility!), it doesn’t excuse me from saying, with much sneering and in sarcastic tone, that David Frum is a horrible human being who should be set on fire and shot into outer space; but there it is, my cross to bear.

She’s able to be forceful and confrontational without shrieking and craziness. Compare and contrast with, say, this:

I still laugh my ass off when Malkin says, “There’s only one whore on this split screen, Mr. Shabazz, and it’s YOU!!!!” Ah, memories.