Sadly, No!

Confederate Yankee confrère MikeM is has kidnapped his vote for president and offers a ransom note to would-be aspirants to the Oval Office:

My Letter To A Presidential Candidate

Dear Mr. Candidate:

I’ve been following your campaign for awhile, and I might be willing to cast a vote for you. Over the last several decades, I’ve had the chance to live with presidents of both parties, and I’ve a learned a few things, particularly in the last two years. So I have some advice; I hope you’ll listen.

Sure thing, MikeM … and keep talking (we’ve almost got a trace).

Remember when Rush Limbaugh said that he hoped that Mr. Obama failed? Remember how Progressives went berserk? ‘How dare he!’ They cried. ‘He wants America to fail!’ That situation clearly illustrates our current national dilemma. You see, Progressives equate Mr. Obama and America. They think he is our voice, our face. Some of them even think he’s some kind of a deity, a god who transcends such a petty office as the Presidency of the United States and whose destiny is to remake America in his image. They’re wrong, badly wrong. It’s not about the man; it’s about his policies.

Okay, the perp is at 111 Dipshit Lane. We can have a SWAT team there in 10 minutes … oh, Christ, he’s still talking …

Mr. Candidate, the President of the United States is nothing more than a man, and someday I have no doubt, a woman.

Caribou Barbie thanks you, blah blah, yadda yadda — can you please get on with your list of demands?

So while you’re running, and particularly if you are fortunate enough to be trusted to be America’s temporary chief executive, there are some important things you ought to know, and more importantly, believe. I know that some of them will seem, well, elementary, but my experience of the last few years has taught me that some things likely need to be said.

* You must be personally humble. ‘I’ should be a tiny part of your private vocabulary and an even smaller part of your public vocabulary. But in your representation of America’s values and interests, you must be proud, fierce, resolute and honorable, for the people you represent are all of those things and more. Those who are full of hubris never end well, nor does their nation.

Humility good, hubris bad — difficult to disagree. Carry on.

* You must believe that America is the greatest, kindest, most free, just and generous nation ever to exist in the tide of time, because, well, because it is.

Or is it: humility bad, hubris good? Ah well, ‘foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds’ etc.

* Your job is also to pursue America’s interests, not those of victim groups, unions, billionaire donors, or those of a fictional, hopelessly utopian one world government.

And it really is a simple task, because ‘America’s interests’ perfectly coincide with those of all identifiable sub-groups of Americans, who are never in competition with each other for anything at all or able to show that their preferred policies would result in broader benefits for more people than those of their rivals or maintaining the status quo. And this is true because there is unanimous agreement on what ‘America’s interests’ really are, to the point that MikeM seems to feel it would be a waste of time to make the slightest attempt to define them in any coherent way.

* The UN does not share America’s interests. You must not share those of the UN.

* Global Warming is the biggest scientific hoax of all time. If you fall for that, you’ll fall for anything.

So you better not cave in to Antarctica’s demands in the New World Order!

* America’s economic system is capitalism. Its expression is free enterprise. It’s engine is small business and the rest of the private sector. Do you notice that government has no part in that? Do you realize that government can only hinder and interfere?

Why just the other day I was remarking to a friend that the threat of government enforcement of anti-fraud laws was hindering my ability to con other people out of their money. Talk about a commie plot!

* Government jobs don’t create wealth, they consume it.

Fire doesn’t provide warmth, it burns stuff! Food packaging doesn’t preserve perishable goods, it makes litter! Clocks don’t help you to be on time, they tell everybody else you were late! Etc., etc.

MikeM’s ransom note goes on for quite some time, but we started getting bored and just have to assume that it ends with a demand for safe passage to the airport where a reality-warping, time-traveling jet awaits to whisk him away to a make-believe America of the distant past.

Anne Laurie reminds us that it’s the Ploughman Poet’s birthday. Here’s two versions of perhaps my favorite Burns poem turned into song, the first by the Corries, the second by the Dubliners, with Luke Kelly singing lead:

ABOVE: Dennis Prager Plays the
Hoop-Dee-Doo Polka

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Dennis Prager has a prediction about tonight’s State of the Union address and he’s over at America’s Shittiest Website™ pimping it out for all its worth. And, no, it has nothing to do with Obama. He’s not predicting that Obama will whip out a Kenyan birth certificate and a scimitar, shout Allahu Akbar and then turn around and behead John Boehner in the chair behind him. It is, rather, a sinister and heretofore unnoticed media conspiracy.

Tonight, when you tune in to the networks to watch President Obama give his State of the Union address … [h]ere is the one thing you will not see, and probably have never seen. You won’t see what is behind the president and above the vice president and the speaker of the House.

Oh and what on earth could that be? A wall, of course, but a very, very special wall.

I discovered the answer when I attended President Obama’s speech on health care to a joint session of Congress. I saw chiseled in the marble wall behind the speaker and vice president, in giant letters, the words, “In God We Trust.” My immediate reaction was to wonder: Why had I never seen that before? I have, after all, been watching State of the Union addresses for about 40 years.

Apparently all network cameramen and producers must be Muslims who refuse to film that wall until it says “In Allah We Trust.” Or worse yet: devil worshippers.

To the men and women of the left-leaning news media, in particular, “In God We Trust” is an anachronism at best, an impediment to moral progress at worst. The existence of those giant chiseled words so disturbs the media that, consciously or not, they do not want Americans to see them. … The words “In God We Trust” emblazoned in giant letters behind the president of the United States just don’t sit well with the secular media. So you won’t see them.

Sadly . . . . . . . NO!

It is a never-ending source of wonderment to me that right-wing whack-a-doodle dandies like Prager will dream up some improbable conspiracy based on wildly counterintuitive beliefs — such as the idea that not once in 40 years had a camera ever revealed the secret words on the wall — without taking a moment to see if what they are asserting is actually true or not. It took me less than five minutes to find a YouTube clip of the 2010 SOTU and to find one (of many) frames in it showing the frightful inscription that the demonic media is trying to suppress. Worse yet, Prager expounds with absolute certainty on this wholly imaginary state of affairs which he has fabricated from whole cloth and then doubles down by predicting that the conspiracy will continue for the 2011 SOTU address.

Prager is apparently still unaware that he has slobber and drool all over himself, so you might want to drop by the comments section at ASW™ and let him know.

Shorter Howie Kurtz, The Daily Beast
Keith Olbermann’s Righteous Rage

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

Shorter Msgr. Ross Xavier Pius Douthat, S.J., O.P., O.F.M., S.S.J., Th.D+, The New York Fucking Times Pope-Ed Page
Reforming the Reform

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

ABOVE: Dan McLaughlin

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Certain parts of the junior pseudo-intellectual division of the wingnut-o-sphere have been trying for quite some time to come up with the dispositive argument on gay marriage that does not rely on some proscription in Leviticus on feather boas and Lady Gaga records. The search for this Holy Grail has proved elusive, resulting so far only in such nonsense as “Every child deserves a mother and a father” which is, of course, more an argument against heterosexual divorce than an argument against, as they call it in the Swankish tongue, homonups.

Our latest participant in this quest is Dan McLaughlin, a blogger at Red State and, at least for the moment,* a securities lawyer of some kind at the firm of Sidley & Austin in their New York office. Dan’s entry is a post modestly titled “The Winning Statistic in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate: How Are Babies Made?” (Looking at Dan you can understand why he might indeed not be entirely clear how babies are made, but that’s another subject entirely.) Dan thinks he’s got the “winning statistic” that will once and for all dispose of all arguments in favor of gay marriage and that he can then collect the long-awaited prize for doing so, which is, he hopes, a gift certificate for a lifetime of bad Caesar cuts from the Hair Cuttery.

So … drum roll, please … what is this heretofore unknown statistic that Dan has for us? It appears to be his discovery that butt-fucking doesn’t always result in a pregnancy. No, seriously.

I have made the point at great length previously … that the most obvious legal argument for why opposite-sex relationships are different from same-sex relationships – and can be recognized as such in democratically enacted laws – is that they are vastly more likely to produce children, for reasons so biologically obvious they should not have to be repeated. Now the New York Times has given us some statistics from the Census Bureau that confirm the relatively low number of same-sex couples that are raising children

Now there are several layers of hilarity here. As something of an expert in, and participant in, the various permutations and combinations of homosex, I think I can provide my expert opinion that there is no risk of pregnancy from any of them. None. As in zero. So this business about straight sex being “vastly more likely” to produce children suggests that the next time Dan sees his Dad he gets a refresher of the “daddy-puts-his-thing-in-mommy-because-he-loves-her- and-then-a-baby-is-made” lecture.

But let us say for the sake of argument that you might become pregnant if you swallow or something and that some percentage of gay men really do get pregnant, the relative percentages of how often this happens is beside the point. Rich people have fewer children than poor people. Should only poor people be allowed to get married? And why should who is more likely to produce offspring determine who should get to import a spouse from Thailand, file a joint tax return, or send out wedding invitations to extort gifts from distant relatives? Shouldn’t other statistical differences be more relevant to marriage? Like whether straights or gays are more likely to have fabulous houses that increase property values of a neighborhood. Or whether straights or gays are more likely to drink blueberry mojitos. Or own pants. Or prefer the color blue. Or speak English.

Ah, there’s the ticket. Sociological research (which can be found in the nether regions of America’s Shittiest Website™) demonstrates that kids that have English speaking parents go to better schools, are less likely to do crack cocaine in sixth grade, and have higher median incomes when they grow up. So that’s the winning statistic, Danno. I win. But you can still keep the fucking Hair Cuttery Caesar Cut prize.

[h/t Evan Hurst]

*Speaking of loathsome law firm bloggers, this warrants an asterisk for Paul Mirengoff, who apparently was once a blogger over at Powerwhite Blog but now, it seems, not so much. His improvident rant on the ugliness of Native American blessings and the law firm beatdown he got as a result has now made it into, of all places, the American Bar Association Journal, extending Mirengoff’s humiliation far and wide.

At the end of the ABA article, we hear this from Mirengoff’s for-the-moment current law firm:

Akin Gump spokeswoman Kathryn Holmes Johnson tells the ABA Journal that the law firm is currently reviewing its social media policies.

Mirengoff has not posted anything at Powerwhite since January 15.

Above: Expert on female rejection.

Shorter James Taranto
The Robber Barons’ Journal
“Palinoia'”

• Liberal women hate Sarah Palin because they are gray and ugly while she is hot, and they love abortion but she does not.

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

Above: One Canuckistani dollar, minus sense.

Shorter Donald Wank
Reglued America
“We Are All Loonies Now'”

• Jared Loughner is like some loony libertarians I used to know, who acted as if the Constitution gave them a right to something for nothing. Loony liberals also want something for nothing. Ergo, Jared Loughner is a loony liberal. In contrast, I’m a god-fearing conservative who’s already forgotten my post’s title.

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

Above: Marty Parrots the AIPAC blastfax

Shorter Marty Peretz
Even The New Republic’s The Spine
“The Rapist Ex-President of Israel'”

• So the ex-President of Israel has been convicted of rape. Whattaya expect? He was born in Iran, and you know how they are. I bet he wishes he was in one of those cockroach countries now, where they love rapists!

“My Conclusion Is That You Simply Cannot Trust An Article By Isabel Kershner”

• It’s insufficient that this Times reporter doesn’t like Palestinians. She doesn’t like Netanyahu as much as I do, which means she’s a lying treasonous spy.

“The Invention of Islamophobia”

• “Islamophobia” is a term invented by a race of vile, disgusting subhumans who want to silence pure, Chosen people like me. Well it won’t work, ya stinky Arab Mohammedans, so just shut up!

“The States And Peoples Of Africa…The Coming Break-Up”

• All the atrocities in blackety-black Africa are due to identity politics on steroids, a continent full of people willing to kill each other because of tribalism.

“Gabrielle Giffords’ Jewish Testament. May She Live Till 120”

• Wait, Gabrielle Giffords is Jewish? Oh, well let us now praise her to high heaven!

“Europe is Not Entitled to Hector Any Country”

• Hahaha silly Eurotards are going broke! And everyone knows that bankrupt countries have no right to lecture the finest country in the world — Israel — for its alleged human rights violations.

“Most Jewish Israelis Want To Live Separately From Their Ultra-Orthodox Brethren. And The Haredim Don’t Want To Live With Modern Jews Either. “

• Judaism, like Islam, has its own crazy, corrupt, and misogynist fundamentalists. But ours are of course better cuz, you know.

“Today’s News Is Like Yesterday’s: Killings In The Muslim World”

• Self-immolation as a political act is so unseemly; it disgusts me. Jews would never do it; only freaks like Buddhists and Muslims are so zealous. By the way, Tunisia will end up as a disaster because those people are congenitally incapable of anything else.

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

Not one to let the pressing issues of last century pass him by, Pastor Swank has turned his sights on China’s infamous One Child policy. Set aphasia-ers to stun!

China’s Abortion Dilemma
By J. Grant Swank, Jr.
Jan 19, 2011 – 12:05:25 AM

It’s the health of an entire nation.

China may run out of females. That means a culture with nothing but males. Now it won’t come to such an extreme; then again, it could.

Pastor Swank may run out of ways to butcher the language. But he probably won’t. Then again, he probably will. And he won’t. But he could. And he will. But he won’t. But he can.

That’s what happens when mortals play God. That’s what happens when mortals kill babies inside female bodies. That’s what happens when mortals take charge on the dark side of the devil.

Still, you have to admit that ‘Dark Side of the Devil’ was a classic, easily one of Mötley Flöyd’s best-ever albums. Almost as good as ‘Dr. Piper At The Gates Of Feelgood’ and certainly better than ‘A Momentary Lapse of Girls, Girls, Girls’.

Seriously, though, is Pastor Swank suggesting the devil has a ‘light side’? That would seem to run counter to his ordinarily Manichean view of such things. But maybe he’s just slyly hinting at material for the long-awaited successor to Dave Berg.

So China is faced with a real-life dilemma. Marriage hungry males can’t find the brides they were hoping for.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, marriage thirsty males are going to have wait another six months before Starbucks unveils the new 916-milliliter Trenta bride au lait in select Chinese cities.

Their parents can’t find their prospective daughters-in-law because somewhere along the line, baby girls in mothers’ wombs were scalded or scraped or whatever out of the wombs.

The nice thing about the upcoming Trenta is that it’s actually larger than the size of the average womb, so the scalding contents will be difficult to scrape out or whatever.

The government demands one child per family. That means that if a mother becomes pregnant with a female, kill the female before she breathes. Can’t betray the government, after all. Better a male than a not-wanted female. So the female babies-in-wombs have heaped high in the garbage pile up. Sad.

It is sad. Point to the pastor, despite the grotesque and arguably not-quite-accurate image of disembodied female torsos ‘heaped high’ on Chinese garbage piles.

Therefore, the demons have certainly had their day, or it appears their night of sin nationwide. Evil pays with its own death salary check. Wickedness sanctioned by a politic eventually calls for accounts payable.

Maybe they do now. But I bet Evil and Wickedness wouldn’t have dared to call accounts payable if Herbert Kornfeld (R.I.P. playa!) were still alive — not for all the death salary checks in China.

China is now considering putting into law that baby girls aborted will bring criminal consequences to those performing the killings.

To be honest, the Pastor has been almost intelligible up to this point and his opinion on this matter is one with which we broadly agree, all things considered. So what we really need is some classic Swank, a paragraph so mangled, so tortuous, so poorly constructed and so flatly incomprehensible that it is the literary equivalent of Victor of Aveyron dictating the plans for the Kansas City Hyatt Regency hotel walkway while having his arms run through a roll bender operated by Charles Graner and Lynndie England.

There must come about an evening out of females and males or male-female marriages are not going to continue in the offing. And that quite soon.

Bingo.