Sadly, No!

Oh baby, the hits just keep on comin’. This time we have super-wingnut Rich Lowry practically begging Iowa evangelicals to stuff ice down their pants and vote for Romney:

Huckacide: A shiny Christmas present for the Democrats.
By Rich Lowry

The ghost of Howard Dean haunts the pundit class. As soon as a candidate of either party spikes up in the polls, he is compared with Dean, who had a spectacular boomlet in the second half of 2003 only to deflate as soon as people began to vote in early 2004.

After many false prophecies, Dean circa 2008 has finally arrived. He is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Not because he will inevitably blow himself up in Iowa. But because, like Dean, his nomination would represent an act of suicide by his party.

This is the best reason yet to support Huck’s nomination by the GOP! GO HUCK, GO HUCK!

Above: We can’t think of anyone else who fits such
a description.

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Like Dean, Huckabee is an under-vetted former governor who is manifestly unprepared to be president of the United States.

Like Dean, he is rising toward the top of polls in a crowded field based on his appeal to a particular niche of his party. As with Dean, his vulnerabilities in a general election are so screamingly obvious that it’s hard to believe that primary voters, once they focus seriously on their choice, will nominate him.

The GOP’s social conservatism inarguably has been an enormous benefit to the party throughout the past 30 years, winning over conservative Democrats and lower-income voters who otherwise might not find the Republican limited-government message appealing. That said, nominating a Southern Baptist pastor running on his religiosity would be rather overdoing it. Social conservatism has to be part of the Republican message, but it can’t be the message in its entirety.

Y’know what, Richie-Rich? You schmucks made your damn bed with this one, and I can’t wait to see you try to un-crap it. You guys encouraged Evangelicals to see themselves as persecuted and to find common cause with a similarly persecuted Jeebus-lovin’ soul (a.k.a., George W. Bush) in the 2004 election. You trashed John Kerry because you considered his faith in JEEEEEEEE-ZUS-AAAAAAAAH!!!! to be insufficiently sincere. You gleefully reported that Bush’s key to success in the ’04 election was his ability to get homophobic crazies fired up about them elitist sodomites up north try’nta git hitched just like us God-fearin’ folk. You went out of your way to fire up the wackos who wanted the federal government to intervene in the Terri Schiavo affair, and even compared her death to the deaths of Jews under Nazi Germany.

But something happened in between the 2004 election and today. All the scandals and broken promises by Bush and the GOP have really ticked the Evangelicals off. You guys promised them that you’d end abortion (hasn’t happened), ban gay marriage (ditto) and force popular entertainment to clean itself up (pfffffffft you’re kidding, right?) And while Bush has spent precisely zero real political capital pimping for these social-con issues, he’s done a hell of a lot to promote tax cuts for the rich and Social Security privatization. The Evangelicals finally understand that their purported Lord and Savior Jesus W. Bush is a complete fraud, and they want someone real.

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Hmm. Okay, which is more funny, a video tour of the Creation Museum:

Or this op-ed by Pam Atlas, published on actual paper in the Washington Times?

Judeophobia

A terrible line was crossed at Annapolis. With the world looking on, the president of the United States sponsored Judeophobia. Jew-hatred was OK, understandable even.

Apparently Mel Blanc has had another car accident, like the one during The Flintstones, and Daws Butler has stepped in to do Pam’s voice:

Above: Characterization influenced by Bert Lahr, first used for Snagglepuss cartoons

Under the auspices of a global ‘peace’ conference, the White House sanctioned Jew-hatred. The Jew is contemptible, inferior, ignorant, politically and socially disenfranchised:

Oop, looks like Mel is back again.

We couldn’t figure out what she was talking about until we realized it was exactly what this guy has been saying.

Then again, Shmuel Rosner might be one of those Judeophobes.

Ex-it! Stage ri-ght!

Update: We didn’t realize how mind-blowingly berserk Pam’s op-ed actually was, until thanks to the genius of J–, we saw the entire unedited text.

[Condoleezza Rice] doesn’t know what it means to be a Jew, to watch innocent people, babies, children, the old, the young, the tourist be blown to bits; shards of flesh flying in every direction, blood, guts strewn everywhere, missing body parts, and the survivors, with nails, nuts and bolts throughout their bodies, marred for life.

[…]

A line in the sand was crossed last week. And anyone who claims that Annapolis was a big yawn and that nothing would come of it is living in the land of unicorns and moonbeams. The Jew as dhimmi was made official and the world was there to bear witness. Moreover, Israel laid down. Sheba Farms, Golan, Jerusalem – all were thrown on the table like so many marbles.

Bat Yeor was dead right in her reply when I asked her what had become of the people of Israel: “Israel is unworthy of her ancestors.”

Well, Pam is certainly qualified to judge. Unless something has changed regarding the, you know, fraud and murder investigations, Pamela Geller-Oshry remains a wealthy housewife and power-shopper in suburban Long Island, who has not only spoken with Bat Ye’or,* but has on more than one occasion vacationed with her family in Israel.

Above: “Yull nevah prove nuthin’, ya frickin’ Muzzie camel-humpah!”

* Johann Hari writes: “There are intellectuals on the British right who are propagating a conspiracy theory about Muslims that teeters very close to being a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca. Meet Bat Ye’or, a “scholar” who argues that Europe is on the brink of being transformed into a conquered continent called “Eurabia.”

Let’s see what silliness Glenn Reynolds is promoting today.

Above: Lee Harris

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LEE HARRIS ON UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: “It is simply a myth to believe that only interventionism yields unintended consequence, since doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. If American foreign policy had followed a course of strict non-interventionism, the world would certainly be different from what it is today; but there is no obvious reason to think that it would have been better.”

posted at 02:21 PM by Glenn Reynolds

Well, that’s certainly one way to look at things.

For that matter, if I hadn’t accidentally flushed my wallet down the toilet, who’s to say that some maniac wouldn’t have come along and flushed it down a toilet anyway? It would almost certainly have been a different toilet, but there is no obvious reason to think that the result would have been better.

It is simply a myth to believe that only self-wallet-flushing yields unintended consequences, for doing nothing at all may produce the same unexpected results. Say, can I see your wallet for a second?

Harris’s essay concludes:

If the concept of blowback is to serve any constructive purpose in our current debate over our future foreign policy, it must not be used to beat up those whose decisions turned out in retrospect to be wrong, but to remind us of the common lot of those sad creatures, known as human beings, who are constantly forced to deal with the future without ever being able to see into it.

Ah yes, it seems he’s onto something.

Bonus: Lee Harris in April, 2003:

Confronting The Myth

[…]

It is one of the most difficult things for us to understand about those who are in the grips of a collective fantasy — how even the most powerful, the most irrefutable evidence will be ignored and suppressed in order to keep the fantasy intact.

[…]

And yet this bold vision is one that the Bush administration must be given a chance to realize, and for two reasons.

First, because the Bush administration has earned it. It has proven itself right time after time. It has discomfited its critics and it has repeatedly astonished even its pessimistically inclined well-wishers, such as myself. It went into the war extravagantly claiming that the people of Iraq would greet us as liberators, and — by God — they did.

Second, because we have no other choice right now. The alternative to the optimism of George Bush is either the defeat of Western civilization or else a protracted apocalyptic struggle between Us and Them that will divide and torment the world for generations to come.

We all have a moral duty not to throw obstacles in the path of the United States as it proceeds with its great experiment in trying to reconstruct Iraq. Whatever our political goals may be — whether we love our country, or wish to see the people of Iraq flourish, or desire a more peaceful and harmonious world — it makes no difference. We are all in the same boat. If the administration succeeds, all of these various goals will be realized. And if it fails, none of them will be.

The United States is now faced with one of the great challenges that we have ever undertaken. Those who are not with us are not against us — they are against the people of Iraq, and the welfare of the human race.

Sure thing, Mr. Oopsie McSlippy Mistakeowitz.

[Bwahaha! Yes, it’s another Sadly, Sports! post. Today the Mitchell Report was released; I’m reading it right now.]

Sherlock Holmes vs. Barry Bonds:

Well, thanks to you, Mr. Holmes, it is very clear that we have traced the evil to its source.”

“The real source,” said Holmes, “lies, of course, in that [petulant, megalomaniacal desire for the home run title] which gave [Barry Bonds] the idea that he could only gain his wish by turning himself into a younger man. When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny.” He sat musing for a little with the phial in his hand, looking at the clear liquid within. “When I have written to [BALCO] and told [them] that I hold [them] criminally responsible for the poisons which [they] circulate[..], we will have no more trouble. But it may recur. Others may find a better way. There is danger there — a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?”

One doesn’t have to buy Holmes’s Edwardian notions of “Nature” nor Conan Doyle’s personal and (it must be said) pathetic ideas of “the spiritual” to appreciate the eloquent and timeless point that an obsessive and demented desire for a prize unattainable via fair channels inspires criminality of all sorts, moral and legal.

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Above: Don Surber

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When last we attended on the Chaucer of Chucktown, the… Oh, fine. I’ll just skip the preliminaries.

Why can’t we be Prez?

If only the Iowa caucus were a musical.

I see where w00t is the word of the year for 2007. Hmm, didn’t “War” sing that in “Why Can’t We Be Friends”?

No, in fact they sung “doot-doot-doo.”

Well, we’re off to a great start already. I see where the word of the year for 2008 might be LOL.

Anyway, there have been some complaints

Don’s neighbors are annoyed with the life-sized plywood creche of a Muslim Bill and Hillary aborting the baby Reagan.

that I concentrate too much on the front-runners and not enough on the little guys, so I thought I’d let each make his case in today’s parody:

As Don knows, a key to successful parody is always to announce at the beginning that you’re doing a parody. This is one of the same principles by which successful knock-knock jokes are told, to wit:

YOU: Hey Froggie Bay-beee!

KERMIT: Oh no.

[slap your interlocutor sharply on the back, knocking him down]

KERMIT: Ack!

YOU: I am about to tell you a knock-knock joke about how someone named Tom saw your underwear.

KERMIT: You’re about to tell me a knock-knock joke about how someone named Tom saw my underwear?

YOU: That’s right! Get ready for my knock-knock joke!

KERMIT: [exasperated] But I don’t want to hear a knock-knock joke about…

YOU: [staring fixedly]

KERMIT: Okay, just this one time. [sighs]

YOU: Knock-knock!

KERMIT: [pained] Who’s there?

YOU: Tom Sawyer!

COOKIE MONSTER: Hi, can I play too?

YOU: I was just telling Kermit a knock-knock joke about how Tom Sawyer saw his underwear!

COOKIE MONSTER: Tom Sawyer saw Kermit’s underwear? [running into the distance] Hey everybody, wait ’til you hear this!

KERMIT: Oh no.

YOU: You’re supposed to say, “Tom Sawyer, who?”

[crowd gathers]

KERMIT: Uh, hey. There’s something of yours under there. Look under there.

YOU: Something of mine? Under where?

[laughter, general hilarity]

KERMIT: No, no, look: It’s under there.

YOU: Under where?

[laughter, whooping, pointing of fingers]

YOU: No! Under where? No! Under where?

ALL (CHANTING AND POINTING): No! Under where! No! Under where!

YOU: Aieee! [runs away]

Anyway, we were certainly off to a good start there.
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I received an urgent dispatch from the front in the War On Christmas:

Yesterday, the U.S. House passed a resolution recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith by a vote of 372 to 9. Nine members voted against the resolution, ten refused to support it by voting “present,” and 40 others members did not vote.

All but two of the representatives voting “present” or against the Christmas Resolution voted in favor of a resolution recognizing Ramadan, which passed by a 376-0 vote in October.

That meaningless yet traitorous bill, passed unanimously, greases the skids for sharia law by using cottony-soft language to recognize “the Islamic faith as one of the great religions of the world,” while simultaneously acknowledging the impending onset of Ramadan, as if nothing could be done to stop it, and proclaims the alleged existence of Islamaddans who “privately and publicly rejected interpretations and movements of Islam that justify and encourage hatred, violence, and terror.” This latest outrage in an ongoing series of head-shakingly outrageous acts is enough to make a person plumb the depths of his psyche and ask: “What will they think of next?”

Meanwhile, some of these same lawmakers went AWOL when the people of America meekly asked them to lend their support to a bill that simply “expresses continued support for Christians” and also “acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization.” Is that too much to ask? Apparently so, says the dean of the Liberty University School of Law:

Our Founders believed that Christianity was the best foundation for a republican form of government and freedom. It is disturbing that a small number of representatives support Ramadan and Islam but not Christmas and Christianity.

Disturbing, to be sure, but the numbers suggest the legislative will to authorize the use of force against the enemies of Christmas. Forward, march!

Gavin adds: The text of the bill is here.

So which entries won the Day By Day Remix Contest?

…Or is that a last-week sort of thing, such that there should just be a brand-new contest making fun of Chris Muir?

Huckabee is a creationist loon who wanted to quarantine AIDS patients in 1992. But I’ll be damned if every crazy asshole in the wingosphere doesn’t hate his guts.

This can only mean one thing: they know that in a general election, Huckabee will get schooled by any Democrat.

In other words: GO HUCK!!!! You officially have my blessing to win the GOP nomination for preznit!

UPDATE: To answer this question:

OK, but why do you believe he would be more likely to lose than the others? If he’s polling well, doesn’t that seem to indicate that he could possibly do well?

The answer is: “No.”

(Via.)

UPDATE: Dr. Atrios informs me that David Broder is also a Huck fan. That kiss of death just got a little more decrepit-smelling. Nice.

HTML adds: Brad beat me to the punch, but I still want to throw in my two cents. Brad says in comments:

The GOP establishment similarly went after Buchanan when he challenged Bush I, not because they disagreed with his policies per se, but because they knew he’d be crushed in the general election.

But they did disagree. And they do. Huckabee, like Buchanan, is a truly flaming wingnut but on a few topics is actually decent (if through indecent reasoning). Like Buchanan, Huckabee is a populist Christianist: Not averse to spending gummint dollas on social programs, he’s against Free Trade, speaks to a lot of working class concerns. This of course means that the Chamber of Commerce/Club For Growth part of the wingnut establishment will rail against him. Huckabee’s also anti-torture; and while he’s an Iraq Dead-Ender, it’s for realist reasons (we broke it, we bought it), and isn’t crazy about that Bomb-Bomb-Iran tune. This of course guarantees the hatred of the neocons. It’s important to remember that there are degrees of awfulness within the wingnut movement; while the best are bad, the worst are living insults to humanity; there are worse wingnuts — and indeed worse, far worse candidates — than Huckabee. While it’s fine to hope that Huckabee is the nominee for partisan trick-fuckery reasons (if he wins, they lose!), I think it’s good to hope that Huckabee and/or Paul win broader support within the Right’s grassroots because they are a (relatively) moderating influence. I care about the short term goals of winning the ’08 elections, but I also care about long-term goal of moving the Overton Window. Believe it or not, a less-crazy Right-wing means that the Left can actually be, you know, Left-wing, instead of the sorry fucking excuse for Left-wing (socially liberal — oh yes of course — but economically conservative and, on foreign policy, de facto wingnut) that comes with letting the wishy-washy, disaffected, liberal -Republican, Kevin-Drum types take over the movement.

[Note to Andrew Sullivan: None of this means I’m “for Huckabee.”]

Thanks to Terry Teachout, I am now bored with Hitler.

“Shorter Leonard Pierce” concept © 2007, Prof. Glenn Poopypants.

Above: Award-winning newspaper columnist

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The Catullus of Chemical Valley, wielder of the #2 most informative blog in the world, sneezes forth another emerald:

Fixing FISA

Does the left care about protecting America?

Without reading ahead, can anyone guess what the answer might be?

The debate over FISA is silly but instructive as to how little some on the left care about national security. Maybe they figure that if terrorists start winning then the left can take over and really push a “1984”-style government upon the land.

That’s the dystopian novel of a world-gone-mad in which a future government refuses to spy on or torture its citizens.

(It’s often assigned in high school, along with the one by J.D. Salinger about the young guy in a rye field who keeps throwing kids off a cliff.)

It is really bad when a federal judge has to tell the ACLU that the proceedings of the secret FISA courts are just that: Secret.

It would be really, really bad if a federal judge had to tell the ACLU that the proceedings of the secret FISA courts are just that: Proceedings.

AP reported: “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in a rare public opinion, said the public has no right to view the documents because they deal with the clandestine workings of national security agencies.”

In other words, according to the AP, a FISA judge said that his secret court won’t release any of its secret court papers — which is a victory for liberty and against the forces of 1984-style totalitarianism (as personified by the American Civil Liberties Union). But hold on, there’s more:

FISA originally was passed by a Democratic Congress under a Democratic president as a reform to just allowing the CIA to do what it wished.

Don doesn’t realize that we’ve secretly replaced his regular coffee with “reasons it’s unacceptable for the White House to openly break the law by refusing to use the FISA courts.” Will it be rich and flavorful enough for Don?

The targets of our spies are not entitled to being tipped off.

Alas, our Pepys of the Pocatalico saw through the plan and secretly replaced our coffee with a pointless declarative sentence traumatized by a flailing grammatical error.

Oooh, we’ll be back, Surber! You got us this time, but we’ll be back!

Update: Surber continues with a relevant query:

How difficult is this concept? The courts review, the spies pursue.

Answer: That concept? Woo-whee. Boy howdy. Actually, you’d be surprised.

For instance, in visiting that Stop The ACLU page, which argues that Bush is not subject to court oversight and can spy on anyone he feels like, you can scroll down a bit, and see some of the people who…

Don Surber linked with Monday’s Best Posts