Sadly, No!

I’ve been laughing at the Corner a lot today, but this might simply be the funniest post yet (emphasis mine):

A Reader to the Rescue [Peter Robinson]

From a reader:

[I]f I were McCain and trying to mend fences, I’d promise something along the lines of an executive order on building fences — maybe even on the day I take office. I’m not sure if that’s do-able under the Constitution, or not — but, it’s something I would definitely advise him to do.

That’s actually an excellent idea, don’t you think, John O’S?

It may be unconstitutional, but what the heck? Let’s do it anyway! There’s no surer way to prove yourself to the wingnuts than by having a strong wingnut executive give the other branches of government the finger.

Politics is so, so awesome.

The Corner seems intent on LOLing me to death:

McCain’s Moment (Possibly) [John Hood]

Just for the sake of argument, imagine that John McCain has the greatest success tonight, Romney doesn’t quite make it in the key states he needs, and so McCain has essentially clinched the nomination (Huckabee’s wins may please Huckabee and his fans, but they won’t block McCain). The senator would have a huge opportunity in his televised address, possibly carried on both cable and broadcast networks depending on the timing, to make an effective pitch to GOP conservatives. Some will never listen, but I suspect others remain persuadable.

You guys don’t seem to get it.

The way things work in American politics is that you appeal to your base during the primaries and then tack toward the center once you’ve secured the nomination. McCain is mostly winning the primaries because a lot of people buy into the media-fueled notion that he’s a “maverick” conservative who’s fundamentally different from the Bushies. Now while in reality this isn’t true — McCain has the same disastrous foreign policy ideas as Bush does and he’s just as liable to appoint wingnutty judges to the Supreme Court, for instance — he and his pals in the press have done a damn good job of selling it to independents and Republicans who want to pretend the Bush years never happened, but simply can’t stomach the thought of voting for a Democrat.

In other words, he’s succeeded largely because he’s convinced a sizable number of people in this country that he has nothing to do with all-out lunatics like you guys. If he’s come this far without your help, then there is no upside to him coming out and giving the finger to subprime borrowers who have just lost their homes, as you’d prefer him to do. Sorry, guys, but your ideology has become political poison in this country, even in the damn Republican primaries. If you want people to vote for you in the future, maybe you should stop wearing your sociopathy so overtly on your sleeves.

I am a RINO

Above: Goo-goo g’joob

• Yes, I admit it: I am actually a… Wait, why is everybody laughing?

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

Jonah Goldberg thinks this guy would fit perfectly into the liberal wing of the Democratic party.

Frenquently[sic] Asked Questions

Q.Why do you want to be President of the United States?

A.Because of my quest to use Fascism as a tool to upgrade the standard-of-living & improve the quality of life for each & every American man, woman & child.

Q.What are some key issues you and your party have?

A.We would like to restructure the American economy, bridging the gap between classes by instituting a form of socialism called Corporate Statism. Take America off of a metallic standard establishing instead a Work Point Standard like Mussolini did in Italy. We also favor abolishing paper money & the creation of a system of electronic credit & debit revolving around Transferable Work Point Cards.It is vital that we revive America’s heavy industry. The United Fascist Union could acheive this objective by replicating what Mussolini & Hussein have already achieved respectively in Italy & Iraq.

Q.If you could get on national TV & speak to everyone in America, how would you explain your agenda to the public?

A.Aside from telling them why they should elect me President of this country, I would tell them why they should NOT reelect my opponent, George W. Bush, as I am opposed to him & his actions everywhere, at all times, in all places simply because he is what he is.

Q.How would you reform the healthcare system in this country?

A.President Bush’s capping lawsuit amounts is not the solution, his caps are only encouraging a decline in medical care. We must determine why medical care is declining to solve the problem. The United Fascist Union has long believed that this country needs a system of socialized medicine.

Q.How would you institute social changes if elected President?

A.I would make utilities public, which would make them more affordable to the public & end the monopolies of utility cos. I would also halt urban sprawl by reviving center cities across America & enacting rules of public conduct that police would rigidly enforce. Lastly, in an attempt to save the American middle-class, the United Fascist Union would revive mercantile stores and attempt to preserve family farms.

Q.If you do not become President in 2008, what do you plan on doing afterwards?

A.Have you ever heard the old saying “try and try again”? There’s always 2012 isn’t there?

VOTE FASCIST!!!! Elect Jack Grimes U.S. President in 2008!!!!!

Is this guy a real candidate for President? Why, yes, he is.

If nothing we have said so far has convinced you that calling Jonah Goldberg a mouth-breathing moron is an insult to mouth-breathing morons everywhere, hopefully this will do it. Also, please use this space to try to decide whom you should laugh harder at – Jonah, or the guy in the Roman horsehair helm, looking like your sullen little brother getting suckered into his youth group’s Christmas production of a passion play.

Yeah, I know the Jonah stuff’s a little stale at this point, but I just can’t help it. Please indulge me – I’m a social studies teacher with a history degree, so Jonah’s arrant idiocy in this field causes me a bit more pain than your average blogger. It’s kind of like – for those of you who are football fans – if, in the wake of the Super Bowl, someone wrote a book about how the 2007 Dolphins are obviously the greatest football team in the history of the universe. It’s like if you’re a foodie, and someone starts telling you about this great steak they got the other night at Applebee’s. It’s like if you’re a cineaste, and your date surprises you with tickets to the latest Rambo movie. Doughbob Loadpants and his very special book just hit me where I live, and the humor in all of it has yet to go stale.

And yes, I know I haven’t been around much lately. It’s testing time here in Florida, and thanks to the wonders of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation, I haven’t seen enough sunlight nor enough of my bed lately to make me happy or functional. I’ll surface soon.

So no one* can be blamed for stuff like this:

The latest California Field poll […] shows Obama within two points of Clinton in the nation’s most populous state. Other polls are less favorable to Barack, but it’s clear the younger man is surging.

Dude, Hillary’s a woman.

* If by “no one” one means “the author.”

Arrrrrgh… K-Lo:

Bay State Blues [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I just got to Boston, about just as the West Virginia news dropped. It’s dreary here with no signs I’ve seen of an election going on, outside of the newspapers. I figure Boston is still in mourning over football, and could really use a hometown boost.

By “hometown boost,” I assume she means a Mitt Romney win. K-Lo, as a born-and-bred Masshole, let me be the first to tell you that we positively can’t stand Mitt, especially since he started using his contempt for us as a way to boost his right-wing credentials. Even the Republicans in this state hate his guts, since he basically did nothing as governor except using it as a platform to run for president. Nothing would make them happier than to see him go down in flames.

Things are getting funnier and funnier over at the Corner. Stanley Kurtz is bemoaning the fact that young people have largely turned their backs on conservatism as a philosophy and that the country will soon be overrun by Islam-loving hippies. The reason for this meltdown, Kurtz argues, isn’t due to the fact that George W. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress have overseen one catastrophic blunder after another – from the Iraq war to record deficits to the botched Katrina response to major corruption scandals – but rather that conservatives simply haven’t been as effective in implementing their propaganda as liberals have:

I want to underline something from Mark’s depressing late-night post. Here’s how Mark’s correspondent describes one of the factors threatening to “sink conservativism for at least a couple of decades:”

…years of liberals running their own private indoctrination camps through the American education system have finally taken their toll and are churning out reliably liberal kids who will inevitably come of age. Not enough of them are conservatives and not enough of them will be mugged by reality to convert to conservatism.

This guy is onto something, and it’s a problem conservatives have largely ignored, although it bears on our very existence. For all the grousing about liberal bias in education, conservatives have done virtually nothing substantive to combat it. And there are plenty of things we might have done, without in any way infringing on academic freedom. Unfortunately, the Bush administration has intentionally avoided fighting the education battles that earlier administrations pursued under the leadership of Bill Bennett and Lynn Cheney. Leading a public campaign against the bias and foibles of the American education system could have put a far larger question mark behind the taken-for-granted leftism students find at school.

It’s amazing. With Republican credibility at an all-time low on every major issue – from Iraq to the economy to health care to national security – Kurtz doesn’t even consider rethinking some of the disastrous policy decisions that he’s endorsed during Bush’s seven years in office. No, such immense public dissatisfaction with the GOP can only be the result of ineffective propaganda. The solution, of course, is to pump still more money into better propaganda:

The Bush administration’s attitude was that Bill Bennett/Lynn Cheney-type culture war issues sap political capital that could more profitably be put toward the war effort or social security reform. This was a huge mistake. Fighting the education culture war would have accumulated political capital. When it comes to the left-leaning craziness of the education system, the public is with us. The Lawrence Summers dispute, for example, was a disaster for the academy in the public eye. Linking the Democrats with their crazy leftist pals in the academy is the best way to beat them. The public is with us on this. The problem is that we haven’t developed any institutional way of harnessing public antipathy to educational bias.

You gotta be shitting me.

The Republicans have led us into a bloody mess in Iraq, they’ve aggressively redistributed wealth upward, they’ve squandered away the country’s fiscal resources, they’ve made our government vastly more corrupt than it’s been in years, they’ve appointed countless incompetent hacks and cronies to key positions within the federal government, they’ve been completely oblivious to middle and working-class economic insecurities, they’ve… well Christ, you get the idea. And you really think that you can win the public back to their side by RAILING AGAINST UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS???!!!!! ARE YOU GODDAMN KIDDING ME, MAN!!?!!!!?! WHAT KIND OF FREAKING DRUGS ARE YOU TAKING AND CAN YOU HOOK ME UP WITH YOUR DEALER?!?!!?!!!!!???

I mean, holy crap.

ABOVE: Bill Kristol

---

Bill Kristol throws a pie in his own face with his latest New York Times op-ed.

One reason conservatives have been able to navigate the rapids of modern America is that they’ve often gone out of their way to make their case with good cheer.

You know like when they said: “Liberals who question the war in Iraq are terrorist-supporting traitors. Have a nice day!” Or when they stalk seriously ill twelve-year olds because they have appeared in a commercial advocating health insurance for other twelve-year olds. Or when they claimed that all liberals are fascists, but say it with a smiley face . . . of Adolph Hitler. [Clif adds: And how could I forget mentioning that cheerful conservative Trent Lott, who publicly hoped that lightning would strike Hillary Clinton before she could take her seat in the Senate?]

But wait, there is more good cheer from the pie man:

William F. Buckley, the father of the conservative movement, skewered liberals, but always with wit and élan.

You’ll have to forgive Kristol because he was apparently trapped in an underground catacomb in the middle of North Dakota when Saint Bill called Gore Vidal a queer and threatened to punch him in the “goddamn face” while on national television.

Now it’s time for Kristol to spread a little good cheer himself:

If a Democrat wins the presidency, he or she will almost certainly have a Democratic Congress to work with. That Congress will not impede a course of dishonorable retreat abroad.

Michelle Malkin says we should all just ease up on the politicking all the time:

All in the family: Politics and perspective
By Michelle Malkin
February 4, 2008 08:05 AM

… as we start the week and head toward the high-stakes Super Tuesday contest, remember: There is more to life than politics.

Repeat after me: There is more to life than politics.

There is more to life than politics! There is more to life than politics! Jamil Hussein is going to murder me in my sleep if we don’t build a fiery moat along the Mexifascist border and dig through Graeme Frost’s garbage! Oops, sorry, what was I supposed to be repeating again?

When I’m not working, I’m quilting with my daughter, taking my son to his violin lessons, playing Monopoly Jr. 10 times in a row, giggling over “Make Way for Dumb Bunnies,” enjoying friends and family, loving and living life. I’ve learned over the years to work to live, not to live to work. It took time to learn that lesson. And it required making some tough (and not so tough) personal and professional choices. Best decisions I’ve ever made.

“Personal and professional choices.” It’s an unusual way to phrase “getting the sack from Fox News for idiotically tilting with Geraldo Rivera” … but I like it.

What prompted me to share all this with you? Well, there’s a story today in the NYT about Democratic families squabbling over politics. It’s a reminder of how ridiculous things can get when you let politics define your life …

You’ve got to love Michelle. In a post about taking a break from politics, she can’t help but wag her finger at the liberals. And there’s absolutely NOTHING political about that. Y’hear? Y’hear me, you weaselly little Dhimmicrats? I. AM. NOT. AFRAID!

In other news, my dog just told me that there’s more to life than licking your balls.

Brad adds: This coming from the woman who taunted Cindy Sheehan by posting her divorce papers online and who stalked the Frost family in order to prove that they were secret billionaires. Family values, thy name is Malkin.

The Conservative Minority

• I’ve begun to realize that most of my ideological cohort is completely insane.

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

Note to James: if you want, I can hook you up with the same deprogramming regimen that’s worked wonders for my pals John Cole and the Commissar. Just let me know, but be forewarned that it involves being tied down to a chair, injected with drugs and being forced to watch this over and over and over again: