Sadly, No!

Regular readers already know we (Seb) have a (happy birthday!) 1 year old son. (Why yes, he is the Cutest. Baby. Ever. Thanks for asking.) Being a parent is, of course, hard, hard work. And like any parent, we worry. (Will he be handsome, will he be rich?) We have no reason to believe our worries differ from those of any other parent. Indeed, we suspect that if your wife called you and said she had found your son eating Liquid Paper, your first thought would be exactly the one we had on learning this news:
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Another day, another Bush failure:

The U.S. Senate on Thursday killed a bill backed by President George W. Bush that would have permanently repealed estate taxes.

On a vote of 57-41, the Senate blocked consideration of a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives that would wipe out what Republicans call the “death tax.”

Republican backers had acknowledged they were short of votes for full repeal, but they had hoped to offer an alternative that would have reduced the tax rate and exempted all but the wealthiest estates from the tax.

I still find it remarkable how successful the GOP has been in turning the repeal of the estate tax into a populist cause.

Thanks to the Poor Man for pointing us to the invaluable Instaputz, who reads Glenn Reynolds every day so we don’t have to.

We salute you sir/ma’am.  Your sacrifice for the greater good of humanity will not be forgotten.

They got al-Zarqawi.  That’s actually good news.  Unfortunately, it won’t do anything to stop the wave of sectarian killings.  Nor will it bestow legitimacy on an impotent central government in Baghdad.  But hey, it’s one less thing to worry about.  One down, a gajillion-billion other things to go…

It has been a long, long time since we last visited the website of the Swing family. Things have changed since then, but they still follow the principles laid down by Arthur Grayson all those years ago: 100% pure wingnuttery:

“Illegal Immigrants – Less Filling AND Taste Great”
by Bucktowndusty

I used to hate onions; now I love them.

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Everything was fine until membership lost its privileges.

Shorter Jeff Emanuel: The growing influence of hugely popular liberal blogs such as Daily Kos can only help Republicans.

Shorter Herman Cain: It’s time for a party purge, so we can ram through the legislative agenda favored by a majority of Americans. Or at least the most conservative ones.

Shorter Brent Bozell: You know who’s even less popular than President Bush? The media.

Shorter Thomas Sowell: Would your children like to read a book that reaffirms your preconceptions?

Shorter Walter Williams: Would you like to read a book by John Stossel that reaffirms your preconceptions?

Shorter Jacob Sullum: As a libertarian, I believe parents, and not the government, should decide whether their children watch that show about Janet Jackson’s boob.

Shorter Ivan Osorio: The blame for corporate misbehavior rests at society’s feet.

Shorter Ben Shapiro: When the framers wrote all that stuff in the Constitution about free expression, free assembly and unreasonable searches, I seriously doubt they were talking about radical Muslims.

Shorter Michelle Malkin: Civility is useless in the fight to preserve civilization.

Shorter Paul Greenberg: I’ll bet that in 40 or 50 years, historians will reassess President Bush as a leader of courage, faith and vision, much like Harry S Truman – or even a Lincoln. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Linda Chavez: The court-mandated resegregation of our public schools will, at long last, fulfill the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.

Shorter John Stossel: Laws will never completely end discrimination, so why bother passing them?

Shorter Terence Jeffrey: Unless the estate tax is repealed, people will basically stop inventing things, sell their existing businesses to out-of-town investors and kill themselves for the insurance money.

Shorter Tony Blankley: I blame the messengers.

Shorter Mike S. Adams: I thought of some more things I should’ve said to all those Mormons I ticked off.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: If only there were some multinational organization with international credibility that could help ease the burden on our military in Iraq.

Shorter Kathleen Parker: Legalized abortion is just a hop, skip and a jump from institutionalized eugenics. Creepy, isn’t it?

It’s getting to the point where I’m losing the will to make fun of this stuff:

On Fox News’ Your World, Jonathan Hoenig, managing member of Capitalistpig Asset Management LLC, asserted that bombing Iran would raise the Dow Jones industrial average. Hoening stated: “[F]rankly, if you want to see the Dow go up, let’s get the bombers in the air and neutralize this Iranian threat. We’ve gone to the negotiating table, we have danced around with these people” and “that’s not going to help this country nor the stock market.”

It used to be that people like this were consigned to begging for food on street corners. But in the brave new world of bizarro-America, they’re invited on nationally broadcast television programs to “inform” the public that bombing a major oil-producing country- thus killing lots of people, disrupting oil shipments and spawning even more instability in the Middle East- would actually boost the stock market. No really, that’s what he’s arguing.

How much longer can this country survive when people like Jonathan Hoenig are its opinion leaders?

Gavin adds: The company really is called Capitalistpig Asset Management, and Hoenig, age thirtysomething, is the author of a book, ‘Greed Is Good.’ Why do guys like this always seem to turn up all coked-up and smarmy and flashing their perfect teeth just before a major market crash?

Bradrocket adds: Well looky here:

We advocate and practice Objectivism, the moral philosophy developed by Ayn Rand.

Y’know how some people can have completely fucked up political beliefs and still be good people on a personal level? Has anyone else noticed that that is never the case for Randians, who on a political and personal level are the biggest fucking douchebags in the entire godless world?

(Incidentally, didn’t Arthur Silber used to be a hardcore Randian? How did he come out of it with his humanity intact?)

Gavin adds: Know who else is a Randroid?

I literally cannot believe that Ann Coulter attacked the 9/11 widows.  I don’t think it’s possible for her to become any more evil, unless she goes on Hannity and Colmes next week and starts sacrificing infants to Ba’al.

It’s 6/6/06, so I hope everyone had fun today while wingnuts cowered in their homes, no doubt speaking in tongues even more incoherent than Dear Leader’s speeches.

As for me, I celebrated by cashing my welfare check, getting two abortions, laundering welfare mothers’ food stamps for cigarette money, and smoking a whole QP through my bong. Right outside in broad daylight!

And I did it while rappin’ with our liberal friends Ba’al, Lucifer, Moloch, Aleister Crowley, and Eddie from Iron Maiden. Surprisingly, not once did I go into a trance muttering “Satan is God; kill your parents”! Damn you, James Dobson for getting my hopes up!

Tell us what you did for Satan Day in comments.

Wingnut prophylactic – This post is a joke. Duh. Like I could get any time with Moloch. Everyone knows that Moloch’s never in his office anymore because he’s always consulting with Dick Cheney.

Holy crap! Did you know motherfucking Pat Boone writes a column for Newsmax? Not since Pat Sajak wimped out on his political blog have I read such ill-founded musings by a more unlikely celebrity commentator:

When I was just a kid growing up outside Nashville, we had chickens. Quite a lot of chickens, most of the time. We kids only partly understood why Mama and Daddy wanted all those chickens, usually in coops and behind fencing, but…

Uh, let’s skip ahead a bit. It kind of goes on like that for a while:

…a little spot of some kind would appear on the back or wing of one of the chicks. And as it hopped around, oblivious to the little mark on its exterior, another chick would spot the blemish – and peck at it. Other chicks would also spot the mark, and thinking it was a bug or something worth eating, would peck … [whirrrrrrr, deedle-eedle-eedle-garble-arble-eek] … other chicks would be spotted by flecks of blood and find themselves the new targets of the deadly pecking. A feeding frenzy would ensue, and other chicks got spotted and flecked – and the orgy of mindless cannibalism would continue till almost no chicks were left alive.

Speed it up, granddad:

What’s my point?

I feel I’m seeing this very process play out in our national life, our big American coop, today. It’s motivated not by physical hunger or primal forces of nature, but by partisan politics and deep-seated ideological differences. Activists on all sides of important questions circle and peer and … [whuuuuurrrrrrp-eedle-eedle-eedle-weng] … peck with a deadly intensity. And as they repeatedly hit the mark, others rush in and join the attack, quite often succeeding in demolishing, at least politically, their target.

Ugh. If only our political system weren’t so divergent. Perhaps someday a wise and benevolent ruling class will rise up and establish order where chaos now reigns. Only then can we harness our divinely granted national might to vanquish our foes, instead of stabbing one another in the back and squabbling like barnyard fowl. Alas:

Today, the chief “target chicks” are the president of the United States, his vice president and administration, and any of us who still believe our leaders may actually know more than the average citizen and are diligently doing their best to protect our national interests and, indeed, all of us citizens.

In lieu of snark, I’m-a defer here to the inimitable James Ingram:

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