Sadly, No!

Well, here is something you don’t see everyday. John “Is that a corndog in your pants or are you just happy to see me?” Hinderaker is urging fellow wingnuts to restrain themselves from attacking (a certain aspect of the) Obama campaign. And Perfesser Corncob Hehindeeds! WTF?

Above: Intercontinental ballistic corndog enters one silo; tomorrow it will exit the other
as a post on Powerline.

Oh:

Holder is a legitimate target because of the Rich affair, I guess, but frankly I have little or no interest in who helps Obama choose a V-P. What bothers me most about these battles is the implicit assumption by some that just about any involvement in the business world is somehow suspect. . .

Yeah, because no matter how much Buttmissile would like to see Obama’s campaign torpedoed, if it means giving up corporate influence in politics in even the smallest way, then forget it.

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Above: Svelte ghetto anthropologist observes
darkies in their Detroit habitat.

‘New Book: “The Black Man’s Guide to How to Cheat on Your Woman”‘

• Apparently, black men have so little control over their animalistic passions that they’ll even commit adultery with fat ‘sistuhs’.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

I know, I know: to deal with Adam Yoshida is to scrape the bottom of the wingnut barrel. Still, it’s fun; also, it’s useful because Adam’s writing is like a distant early warning system. If you want to know what major wingnuts really think — if you want to know how most wingnuts really feel, and what their ideas and policies are really about when taken to the logical (if often unstated) extreme — then Yoshi’s one of the guys you read. Because Adam “Human-sized microwaves” Yoshida never minces words.

Above: Yoshi and his hand: this committed couple has no children
yet but not for want of trying.

Take, for instance this post, temperately titled ” First, Kill All The Environmentalists…” Yes, a Shakespeare reference. But Adam’s not smiling:
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Shorter Daniel “Crack” Pipes:

Above: “Klytus, I’m bored. What play thing can you offer me today?”

‘Prepare To Attack [Iran]’

• Because treasonous appeasers leaked the NIE which downgraded Iran as a threat, the mullahs have become so emboldened that the only recourse is for President Bush to prepare to annihilate their country — and then, if the filthy Muslims don’t capitulate, actually annihilate their country.

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard.

Question: Is a phrase inherently right-wing because it is used or abused by right-wingers?

I say no, but apparently many people disagree. For a while there, for example, one couldn’t criticize the most rabid Obama (or Clinton, for that matter — I’m ecumenical in my dislike for fanatics) supporters, and certainly not use the word “cult” in the criticism, without rousing suspicions that one was objectively pro-Freeper or something. But maybe that’s a bad example. I’ll try another. Remember how, during the run-up to the war, the Liberal Hawk types characterized anti-war rhetoric as being “right-wing” and “reactionary” because several slogans used by anti-war Leftists were similar to several slogans by the Buchananite Right? You know what I mean, how anti-war sentiment supposedly was invariably and inevitably a product of “isolationism” and “realpolitik” — rightwing viewpoints. Is the desire for the United States to be “a republic not an empire” somehow inherently right-wing to enunciate because it is the title of a Pat Buchanan book? According to Robert Farley’s rules, it has to be. Because, you see, if a phrase can possibly convey noxious sentiment, if it can possibly transmit bigoted code, then it just naturally follows that every speaker/writer of that phrase can be assumed a noxious bigot, and dealt with accordingly. No exceptions. Good faith? Otherwise impressive credentials? Sorry; fuck you. Meanwhile, definitions of bigotry expand faster than the universe, with the real bigots gladdened to see all the decent people consigned to their common moral plane.

When I hear the phrase “latte-sipping elitist,” I think of several things. Culturally, I think of scenesters or scenester wannabes, arbiters of taste, awful people very much on the make, navel-gazing yuppie scum… Fuck it; I could go on and on, but here’s a good shorthand: I think of people who write for Gawker. Politically, I think of people in the professions, some of them moving in and out of government, or otherwise involved in policy-making, who are very attuned to and conscientiously follow conventional liberal positions on cultural issues but are clueless — and often more than a little callous — when it comes to class issues. The shorthand here is “Brad DeLong.” I myself never use “latte-sipping elitist” but I have and do use “technocrat elitist,” in the exact same spirit I recognize in the former phrase, when describing such people who regard their poor countrymen with only a bit more humanity than Trevelyan and Lord John Russell had for the Irish.

Anyway, the point is that I defy anyone to argue that the images/characterizations conjured are “right-wing” much less “anti-Semitic.” On the contrary, they are left-wing — at times, so much so that they verge on Jacobinism. Poor people hating on elites in good faith aren’t wrong or ipso facto “anti-intellectual” (much less wingnutty or anti-Semitic) for believing the New Class/Creative Class (or whatever you want to call them — hence the admittedly silly shorthand “latte-sipping elitist”) has sold them out. Or do you really want to argue, inequality steadily on the rise and casualties piling up in Iraq, that the neoliberal-wingnut consensus on economics and foreign policy has done well by the poor?

Is every manifestation of contempt for cultural and political elites anti-Semitic and rightwing in origin? Apparently it is: Farley’s definition could not be broader. Since I, like many (most?) poor people, despise a large portion of the “Best and the Brightest,” I’m an anti-Semite. Similarly, I read not too long ago that any contempt shown for those ultimate economic elites (the banking industry) is also transparent anti-Semitism, because you know how people used to go on about the Rothschilds. Since I — like anyone who’s gone through bankruptcy and indeed like all farmers in the last, say, 150 years — loathe the banking industry, I’m an anti-Semite. Sooner or later, anyone who’s ever said anything bad about Wall Street will be an anti-Semite, too. And ultimately, we’ll get to the point that all populists who loathe the Establishment are anti-Semites. What did you say? Something about irresponsibly categorical smears? Something about how a generalization or stereotyping is one thing, but a willfully categorical smear-job is something else? Something about how one should take into account who is saying what and why they are saying it before one calls them something that no serious or decent person can be? GTFO! What are you, some “dumb motherfucker”? Go “sieg heil” with the rest of the anti-Semites, you horrible person you!

ABOVE: Iain Murray demonstrates the
best way to heat Pop-Tarts.

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Iain Murray, one of the Britwankers over at America’s Shittiest Website™, apparently had his bs-meter removed at the same time they carved out a large chunk of his cerebral cortex. The result, of course, is that if he sees a shiny little bauble of wingnuttery lying around somewhere on the web, he picks it up with glee and parades it around as if he had found the Hope diamond. To wit:

Latest from the U.N. Human Rights Commission [sic] [Iain Murray]

What’s the biggest human rights issue in the world?  The establishment of a military junta in Zimbabwe?  The callous indifference of the Burmese government to the suffering of their people after the cyclone?  The tyranny in Uzbekistan?  Of course not.  In a move that will gladden Lyndon LaRouche’s heart, they have decided that the British monarchy and unwritten constitution need to be challenged.

Oh, you mutter, there must be some mistake here (other than Murray’s fucking up the name of the Human Rights Council). And there is (in addition to Iain’s parents’ decision to bring him to full term).

And it’s a mistake that is readily apparent to anyone who can ask the Great Gazoogle to take him or her to the original source material, which is, in this case, the Report of the Working Group on Universal Periodic Review of the United Kingdom. Now go to page 17 of the Report and you will find this recommendation:

To consider holding a referendum on the desirability or otherwise of a written constitution, preferably republican, which includes a bill of rights (Sri Lanka)

You may wonder why “Sri Lanka” is in parenthesis at the end of that recommendation. That’s because Sri Lanka — and Sri Lanka alone — made the suggestion. Wander down a little further in the report and you’ll see this — in big, bold letters so that even wingnuts can’t miss them:

All conclusions and/or recommendations contained in this report reflect the position of the submitting State(s) and/or the State under review thereon. They should not be construed as endorsed by the Working Group as a whole.

Ah, so it’s not a recommendation of the Human Rights Council or even the Working Group but only a suggestion from the U.K.’s great friend and ally Sri Lanka. Actually, the former colony might have a little grudge to bear against the U.K. You see, after widespread criticism of the human rights record of Sri Lanka’s authoritarian regime, Sri Lanka recently lost its seat on the U.N Human Rights Council. And the U.K just won a seat on that council.

Does Iain remind anybody else of the kid you told in elementary school that bacon grease was really good for your hair, only to see him the next day at school, followed by all the neighborhood dogs, his hair all shiny and reeking of smoky pig fat?

“Dng-a-ling down the street”

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You have probably been blissfully unaware that the latest tactic being employed by teh Moooslims in their battle to establish a caliphate in the United States and to replace your neighborhood Hooters with a Falafel Hut is going on in Dearborn, Michigan, and involves ice cream trucks. To learn more, we must enter the strange world of Debbie Schlussel where a Mooslim wielding a scimitar lurks behind every potted plant.

Some of my fondest memories as a kid, hanging out with my Dad, are when we’d meet up with the neighborhood ice cream truck, during the hot summer, and he’d buy me one of my favorites: The Bomb Pop–red, white, and blue, it was patriotic, yummy, and cool on a hot day. And as you know, the only way to know the truck is coming is to hear its music.

…

And these Muslims–who don’t like American culture and want to shut it, and all American-style fun, down–have now succeeded in getting Dearborn Heights police to enforce old, never enforced noise rules to keep ice cream trucks out.

Why teh Mooslims have issued a fatwa against ice cream trucks is never explained by Debbie. I assume it must have something to do with the red, white and blue “patriotic” Bomb Pops which steel young boys and girls against the wiles of the jihad. Without those Bomb Pops, American boys and girls will be kneeling on prayer mats and facing Mecca faster than you can say Allahu Akbar.

Nor is the connection of the Muslims to the truck ban explained. Let’s roll the Debbie tape:

On Tuesday, the City Council is expected to adopt an ordinance that will allow ice cream vendors to ring bells only while they are selling their goods. . . .

Oh noes, has Mooslims gotten in ur city council in Dearborn Heights? Sadly, no! — see all teh Mooslims for yourself:

Tomorrow Debbie will explain how teh Mooslims are responsible for the glut of reality programming on the TeeVee this summer, the disappearance of the chocolate-covered PayDay candy bar, and the end of Laura Ingraham’s radio program.

Above: Fraulein Schlüsselwurst

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Fraulein Schlüsselwurst, the perpetual embarrassment of her alma mater, the University of Wisconsin Law School, has predictably kicked into full hyperbole mode over today’s Supreme Court decision granting habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees. To say that she’s gone batshit crazy would be unjustly defamatory to guano-drenched bat cave floors throughout the world, so we’ll just say that the opinion, which she hasn’t apparently read, has made her crazier than a junkyard dog in a fully-stocked meat locker:

At least five of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices announced to the global Islamic terrorist community that open season on America has officially begun.

Scene: A run-down apartment in Lahore, strewn with empty Red Bull cans and Big Mac wrappers.

Dramatis personæ: Larry Lahore and Izzie Islamabad, two wannabe terrorists.

Larry: Allahu Akbar, Izzie. It’s time to attack America!
Izzie: Are you nuts, Larry? You drink too much Red Bull and eat too many Big Macs.
Larry: No, Izzie, I just read in a newspaper that now we have habeas corpus rights in the Great Satan’s own land. Woohoo! I’m getting a one-way ticket to New York. No habeas corpus — that’s all that was keeping me from doing this earlier. Get packed.
Izzie: Larry, you’re so dumb that not even the 72 virgins in paradise will have sex with you. Do you even know what habeas corpus rights are?
Larry: Sure, Izzie, it’s the right to habeas your corpus. Everyone knows that. It’s the first thing you learn at madrassa.
Isaac: No, Mr. Hummus-Brain. It means if you sit in Guantanamo with a soldier’s rifle barrel up your butt for a few years, some federal judge hundreds of miles away will finally decide that they have probable cause to keep you at Guantanamo and you’ll sit around for another few years with that same barrel up your butt and with ladies’ panties on your face until you go to trial.
Larry: Oh. … (pause) … You wanna watch that Baywatch video again? I didn’t want to blow myself up anyway.

And even though Fraulein Schlüsselwurst allegedly went to law school she seems to know less about habeas corpus than either Larry Lahore or Izzie Islamabad. Get a load of this little gem of fractured jurisprudence:

But now, the Supreme Court has announced to world that every terrorist, no matter how bent on destroying America–and regardless of whether or not the terrorist had any contact with American soil–now has a right to their own three ring court circus, MC’d by some ringmaster clone of Judge Ito and attended by his/her posse of O.J. jury replications.

Just like there’s no crying in baseball, there are no juries in habeas corpus hearings. Oh, and another thing: If Fraulein Schlüsselwurst had read the opinion she would understand that the ruling applies only to detainees held at Guantanamo because of the unique degree of control that the United States exercises over Guantanamo. The decision doesn’t apply to enemy combatants held in foreign countries. So her little rant about “regardless of whether or not the terrorist had any contact with American soil” is, well, flat-out wrong.

But Fraulein Schlüsselwurst already has an excuse as to why she hasn’t read the opinion. It’s waaaay waaay waaay toooo long and booooooooooorrrrrring!

Oh, and by the way, the Kennedy decision was 70 pages. If you have to write seventy pages to justify a simple, absurd decision, you know you’re wrong. You’re just fertilizing.

Why bother to read the thing when you can just count the pages and know it’s wrong? I bet the Constitutional Law class at Wisconsin Law is pretty short. And the exam has one question: “Which opinion is longer, Roe v. Wade or Brown v. Board of Education?” I mean, Fraulein Schlüsselwurst is such an embarrassment to Wisconsin that I’d imagine she even makes the non-partisan Professor Althouse cringe.

And no post from Schlüsselwurst would be complete without a closing illustration to make a point that might be too subtle for the lip-movers that read her blog if it were written out in words:

Which means — I think — that because a jury let OJ go free because he had dark skin, then all juries will let all terrorists go free because they all have dark skin, although not as dark as OJ, but dark still, and we all know that dark people go free and juries just send white people to jail or something. Or wait, was OJ a terrorist? Did he kill Nicole because she was drinking which is forbidden by sharia law or something? Is that why the jury let him go free? Oh, it’s all so confusing, even in simplified picture form, but it still gets us back to one thing:

There are no juries in habeas corpus.

[Hanx to John Cole for sending me an email pointing out this gem from Debbie]

Bless you, FOX News, for doing all you can to help Barack Obama get elected president:

(Via.)

Maybe next time FOX can express shock that catering at Obama’s fund raisers doesn’t consist solely of fried chicken and 40Oz. bottles of King Cobra.

Bloody racists.

Doop de-doop, reading the Cornhole, havin’ some laffs. Huh, whasis?:

Lennonism [John J. Miller]

K Lo: I’m with you on “Imagine” — love the piano, hate the lyrics. A band called A Perfect Circle has a great cover version. The music is bleak and the vocals are subdued. It’s a much-needed deconstruction of the song. It’s like the anti-“Imagine.” I’m not sure the musicians intended it that way, but that’s the result, by my lights. Definitely worth a 99-cent download.

Tee Hee. This isn’t exactly new territory for Miller, but whatever. As soon as Miller reads anything about Maynard Keenan, he’ll hate him as much as he hates Maynard Keynes — or John Lennon. But, anyway, what brought this on? Oh:

Sharansky vs. John Lennon [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

Imagine a world without Bret Stephens writing. What a nightmare.

Oh Gawd. I bet this will be awful. Sure enough…

The Sajudis anniversary came to mind after a meeting in New York last week with Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident turned Israeli politician turned political theorist. Mr. Sharansky has a new book, titled “Defending Identity.” It would be equally accurate to call it “The Case Against John Lennon.”

Or, more specifically, the case against “Imagine,” Lennon’s anthem to a world with “no countries . . . nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too.” For Mr. Sharansky, a nine-year resident of the Perm 35 prison camp, that’s a vision that smacks too much of the professed beliefs of the ex-Beatle’s near namesake, Vladimir Ilyich.

Stephens has constructed such a vortex of wingnut batshittery that Ann Althouse might die of envy and Stephen Hawking will be compelled to tweak his theories to account for it. Stephens, a Zhdanovian hack, attacks an artist of whose work the Wingnut Politburo has long disapproved (but many dissidents in the Soviet Union admired). All for the sake of — what? Not anti-communism, exactly (though that’s where he starts out) but tribalism/Identity Politics. Weird.

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