ABOVE: R. Emmett “Bob” Tyrrell is often mistaken for Fred Flintstone
Christmas has come and gone, but not without R. Emmett “Bob” Tyrrell reporting on this year’s winners and losers in the War on Christmas. As you might imagine, Bob sees the latest annual skirmish as one where the Christians only barely survived extermination by the grinchy liberals who ran even more amok than usual, burning Nativity scenes, lynching Christmas carolers, poisoning fruitcakes, pissing on snowmen and shooting flying reindeer out of the sky.
I have followed these disputes assiduously and watched an ever-wider array of Christmas decorations become malum prohibitum. At first, it was the Nativity scene …. Other traditional Christmas decorations are on the way out, too, though their religious content is often nil. Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer has been the subject of disputes, and Santa Claus, too.
This, of course, is a smelly pile of reindeer hooey. The only dispute I know of involving Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is whether there is another reindeer named Olive or not.
Apparently Bob has the idea that Rudolph is under attack not because of any actual evidence of that but merely because he didn’t happen to see any reindeer decorations in Chicago this year:
I was in Chicago a week or two before Christmas and found that these time-honored Christmas symbols have been replaced by tin soldiers, Raggedy Ann dolls and mysterious conical trees covered with colored lights [I believe they call these Christmas trees, Bob – ed. note]. In three days, I saw not one Rudolph and only an occasional Santa. … Ever the provocateur, I feigned mild indignation over a squad of tin soldiers deployed in the lobby of a posh hotel. The concierge deferred to me immediately, tremulous with alarm. I suspect he feared that I might be a member of America’s powerful anti-war movement, ready to charge him with militarizing “the holidays.”
Er, no, Bob, the concierge understandably thought you were a crazy person when you started shouting about tin soldiers and reindeer in the lobby of an expensive hotel. Sane people have conversations with the concierge about the best place to dine, which is the concierge’s job, and not about the hotel’s Christmas motif, which isn’t.
Bob’s little essay on how the liberals stole Christmas, however, is just a little amuse-gueule before the main course, which is Bob’s discussion of why liberals are unprincipled monsters:
The liberal activist aspires to be an agent of “progress.” In fact, the liberal activist, whether male or female, often calls himself a progressive. Yet through the years, you will spot no coherent system of political values motivating liberal reforms.
But lacking an editor, a memory, a conscience, and enough sense to take a bath without drowning, Bob immediately contradicts himself:
There is, however, one political value that can be discerned motivating every one of their legendary reforms, from the ambitious (world peace) to the trivial (the criminalization of trans fats). That value is to disturb one’s neighbor, to disturb the peace. In all civilized criminal codes, such behavior constitutes a misdemeanor. Yet it is at the heart of the liberal project. Disturbing the peace is, I believe, at the heart of rendering Christmas controversial.
That’s right. Liberals want world peace in order to disturb the peace of people like Tyrrell and other neocons who want to be able to make war on other countries in peace. And if our criminal code were civilized, liberals would be thrown in jail for disturbing the peace of those neocons and trying to interfere with their plans to invade other countries. And since we can’t actually achieve our goal of disturbing the peace of the neocons, we’ve decided to annoy our neighbors by attacking Christmas instead.
Does anyone else think that this column was ghost-written for Bob by Michael Medved?
Germans pay 8 to 9 percent of their income tax if they are members in one of the recognized religious communities. […] The German state agreed long ago with the Catholic and Protestant Churches that it would collect the levy and pass it on to them, and the state’s right do so is even laid out in Germany’s constitution. Other religious communities can also claim a piece of the pie, as long as they are registered as statutory bodies and recognized by the individual German states, which are responsible for collecting the tax.
Over at Blackfive, in the form of a tribute to the late Captain Travis Patriquin. They have a YouTube video of Cpt. Patriquin’s powerpoint presentation of what strategy we needed to win - and, as it turns out, the strategy we used to win.
Oh, I see. We’ve already won in Iraq. Well, that’s good news, then. What’s on the television tonight?
Wait…What? Did Mark Noonan just seriously say that we’ve already won in Iraq? Is there any context, in any language from any corner of the planet, with the most charitable reading imaginable, where that makes even the slightest sense at all?
In her Wall St. Journal column today, Peggy Noonan offers up a Santa-like checklist of which presidential candidates are “reasonable” and which ones aren’t. In describing the attributes that Americans want in a President, she says: “I claim here to speak for thousands, millions.” On behalf of the throngs for whom she fantasizes she speaks, Noonan proclaims: “We are grown-ups . . . We’d like knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world and of the ways and histories of the men and women in it.”
This grown-up then proceeds to pronounce that Romney, McCain, Giuliani, Thompson and Duncan Hunter are all “reasonable” — as are Biden, Dodd, Richardson and Obama (though too young and inexperienced to be President) — but this is what she says about John Edwards:
John Edwards is not reasonable. . . . .[W]e can’t have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and poofing his hair. Really, we just can’t.
So Peggy Noonan is a “grown-up.”
Indeed she is, sir. However, I think the very finest example of Ms. Noonan’s sober-minded and grown-up political judgment can be found in this column written right after the 2004 presidential election. The column’s title, if you can believe it, is an approving reference to George W. Bush’s testicles [my emphasis]:
‘He’s Got Two of ‘Em’: Why I can’t stop being happy about the election result.
Well, I just can’t stop being happy. I don’t mean elated–it’s hard to get elated by big history, as opposed to by the birth of a baby, say, or a child’s being elected president of the debating club–but I continue to feel relief (the exit poll hives have gone down) and satisfaction (my countrymen, such good sense they have). So let’s just let the mood continue and have fun. […]
I think the people tended toward Mr. Bush because they saw him as a good American man, a man they know–an imperfect one with an imperfect past who turned his life around with grit and grace. That’s a very American story. It’s one we all know, and respect. […]
The American people arguably did not pick the more interesting man in the race. Mr. Kerry strikes me as a complicated and intelligent person, and the one time I spent any time with him he seemed to be bright, and to have an interesting range of thoughts on many issues. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, does not strike me as the most interesting man in the world. That’s one of the things I love about him. I sort of have a theory that Americans don’t necessarily desire terribly interesting men as presidents. “Interesting” tends to bring with it a whole bunch of other attributes–”complicated,” “hard to figure,” “unknowable,” “startling,” even sometimes “tortured and tragic.” A lot of us are Republicans, and we just hate tortured and tragic. […]
About a year ago I was visiting West Point, and I was talking to a big officer, a general or colonel. But he had the medals and ribbons and the stature, and he asked me what I thought of President Bush. I tried to explain what most impressed me about Mr. Bush, and I kept falling back on words like “courage” and “guts.” I wasn’t capturing the special quality Mr. Bush has of making a tough decision and then staying with it if he thinks it’s right and paying the price even when the price is high and–
I stopped speaking for a moment. There was silence. And then the general said, “You mean he’s got two of ‘em.” And I laughed and said yes, that’s exactly what I mean. And the same could be said of Reagan.
So three years after praising Bush’s balls, Peggy now wants a president who has “knowledge, judgment, a prudent understanding of the world.” Go figure.
Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser is discussin’ Liberal Fascism with Jonah hisself:
Today, we interview Jonah Goldberg on his controversial new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. He talks about how people throw the word fascism around without really understanding its meaning, why so many liberals want to turn America into a college campus with free food, shelter and recreation, and why the upcoming election is about collective vs. individual rights.
SIGH:
1.) When someone who complains about people throwing the term “fascists” around too freely then turns around and writes an entire book explicitly comparing his political foes to fascists, he should have less than zero credibility in anything he says.
2.) Giving out free food isn’t fascism. Look, Jonah, I’ve done some research into the matter and have determined that giving out free food is one of the least fascist things a government can do. Call this hyperbole if you will, but if the very worst thing the Nazis had ever done was to give people free food, they’d have probably gone down as the greatest government in history.
3.) I find it sickening to see you cast yourself as a champion of “individual rights,” even as you’ve actively cheered the Bush administration’s expansion of executive power, its advocacy of torture and its insubordination of both domestic and international law.
Oy. OK, here’s the podcast if you want to hear it. I don’t recommend it in the least.
UPDATE: OH. MY. GOD. The Ole Perfesser at 9:40:
I guess the last gasp of that [liberal fascist] Jamesian thinking was Jimmy Carter trying to get us to turn down our thermostats and calling that the moral equivalent of war.
And Jonah at 11:30:
I think there is this burning desire to prove Francis Fukuyama right and reach the end of history. And for a lot of liberals and progressives, the end of history is a giant college campus, or increasingly, Europe. You know, this place where you’ve lost any great ambition, everyone’s much more concerned with self-esteem, with caring for each other.
It’s like Jonah’s never talked to a liberal in his entire life. He reminds me of Steve Carell in the 40-Year-Old Virgin describing a woman’s breast as a bag of sand.
John Ruberry (pronounced Rube-Airy), the Pajamas Media blogger who blogs as the “Marathon Pundit,” has injudiciously decided to play the “I bet the Founding Fathers didn’t (fill in the blank) game.” For example, since the Founding Fathers never heard of people piercing their nipples, then people with nipple rings have no Constitutional rights.
What has caused Ruberry to play the game is outrage that the Senate is staying in session to prevent the Greatest President Ever from making recess appointments:
Most of Congress has gone home for during the Christmas and New Year’s break. Virginia Senator James Webb headed home to, but he does that every day after his work in the Senate is done. But Webb lives just across the Potomac in McLean.
He “hurried back” to the Capitol today to keep the Senate open–and prevent Bush from using a recess appointment to get Bradbury on the job.
Today’s session lasted nine seconds.
This type of “democracy” is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind in 1787 in Philadelphia.
Oops. Yet another pair of pajamas soiled by a pantload of imbecility.
When playing the Founding Father’s game it’s a good idea to have a passing familiarity with things like, well, the Constitution, and the Federalist Papers, and other stuff that the “Founding Fathers” actually wrote. And what’s important here is what the Founding Fathers said about these Recess Appointments in Article II, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution:
The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.
The ordinary power of appointment is confined to the President and Senate JOINTLY, and can therefore only be exercised during the session of the Senate; but as it would have been improper to oblige this body to be continually in session for the appointment of officers and as vacancies might happen IN THEIR RECESS, which it might be necessary for the public service to fill without delay, the succeeding clause is evidently intended to authorize the President, SINGLY, to make temporary appointments ….
So, whatever the Founding Fathers thought about pro forma Senate sessions, and it’s likely they thought about as much about pro forma sessions as they did about nipple rings, they never intended the recess appointment power to be used by the President to fill without Senate consent vacancies that occurred prior to the recess.
Really. Particularly when he showed up in the comments for our post on his “review” of Jonah the Whale’s minimum opus Liberal Fascism: From Mussolini to Cocker Spaniel Rescue Leagues.
Let’s see what he had to say:
You do raise a few interesting philosophical questions, SN, such as, for instance, whether claiming that ACSH says trans fat [sic] cure [sic] cancer constitutes libel on your part, given that you’re not that funny, undermining your ability to claim “parody” or “comedy” as a defense for such a false statement.*
Ladies, Todd is not only a catch but he’s an amateur lawyer too, apparently learning everything he knows about the law from sitting around watching “Boston Legal” in his underpants. No, of course, the American Council of Wingnut Science and Industry Health didn’t say that trans fats cure cancer, but it has been in the forefront of whack-a-doodle “think” tanks, ignoring this evidence about trans fats and claiming that trans fats aren’t such a big deal. This probably wasn’t the best battleground for you to pick, Todd.
I don’t [sic] whether progressives located in Germany have been influenced by fascist traditions, but clearly they’re keeping the proud tradition of German comedy alive and well.
Well, I knew something felt funny this morning when I awoke from anxious dreams. I had been turned into a monstrous German.
I expect you will respond with more “comedy,” such as calling me a jerk or something, but I’m done with this particular dialogue, so do what you feel politics and comedy demand of you. Try not to let it angry up the blood too much. And read some history about Democratic presidents in wartime if you get bored.
Really, Todd we don’t have to call you anything. You do the work for us. In your case, as they say, the comedy just writes itself.
And the winner of our “Win a Date with Todd Seavey” contest is . . . <drum roll> . . . Todd! No, just kidding . . . it’s . . . <another drum roll> . . . Jennifer!
* Gavin adds:
UPDATE: Ya know, when Todd said in his original comment “I’m done with this particular dialogue,” he wasn’t telling the truth. He’s baaaack.
And he’s still fussing about his salary being understated, but won’t tell us what it is. Well, the latest IRS 990 for ACSH shows his salary for 2005 as $56,166, not a big difference from the $51,224 salary that Sourcewatch listed and which was based on the 2003 IRS 990. Now if Todd wants to reveal his salary rather than complaining that publicly-available figures are wrong, well, we are all ears.
UPDATE 2: Somebody said Todd needed a sammich. I thought something else might be appropriate in the place of the sammich.
Ho, ho, ho! Santa Brad is comin’ to give you this fine classic slice of wingnuttery from James D. Miller, the TechCentralStation columnist last seen here warning about China’s plans to create a master-race of baby Einsteins within the next 10 years. In this very special column from March 2006, Miller says that Republicans can guarantee themselves victory in the midterm elections by pledging to construct a space elevator. Enjoy!
For the 2006 midterm elections, Republicans should propose an idea so big that it stretches to the stars. Republicans should commit the government to building a space elevator by 2020.
Oh yes, let’s. Since America isn’t involved in a disastrous war in Iraq, and since it isn’t facing a catastrophic meltdown in the subprime loan industry, and since its citizens aren’t at all concerned about their job security in the era of globalization, it’s time to build a fucking space elevator. Because really, when a government looks up and down at its “to do” list and sees building a space elevator at the very top, it better have already created the best bloody utopia in human history.
A space elevator would essentially be a 62,000-mile cable stretching from the earth’s surface out into space. Because one end of the cable would be in high orbit, gravity would prevent it from falling back to earth. Once the cable was in place, space travelers would board n elevator-like device and ride up the cable.
Clearly, this would be a brilliant pander to the crazy-rich-guy-who-wants-to-live-in-space wing of the GOP.
The 62,000-mile cable would endure tremendous stress from supporting its own mass, so the primary challenge in building a space elevator lies in constructing the cable out of material strong enough not to break.
This doesn’t at all sound like an expensive waste of money.
Fortunately, scientists have determined that carbon nanotubes, which are over one hundred times stronger than steel, could be used for the cable. Unfortunately, no one yet knows how to fashion mile-long strands of carbon nanotubes — but we are close.
Which is more than enough reason to invest billions of dollars into it. And hey, once we use the space elevator to transport all of that precious oil found on the moon back to Earth, it’ll start paying for itself! Boo-yah!
While we’re waiting for Brad to give out with his Christmas thing (and for me to give out with the Christmas in the City ‘07 pix), how about some Techno (so-called) that was recorded in 1968?
Yes, really. This is one of my favorite things to spring on people. (If you’ve already heard it, please skip to #2):
Above: Silver Apples - ‘Oscillations’ (2:44)
Below: They started doing this in 1972 (this vid is from 1978):
Above: Suicide - ‘Ghost Rider’ (2:21)
Well, I hope it isn’t too late to say Merry Christmas! …istmas! …istmas!
I’m no good around here; I’m just the comedy relief, most times.
Okay, wait. I’m useless; it’s proven. Here’s a Christmas song:
Above: Alvin and the Chipmunks - ‘Chipmunk Song’ (at normal speed, without sped-up vocals) (2:24)
It takes a lot of faith to believe that I came from an amoeba. A lot of faith!
Faith bolstered. Tune in next time for another affirming message from our Wordsworth of Windham, as he… Oh wait, there’s more:
It’s a crazy world we live in. Crazier every day. But one of the craziest notions that ever came down the pike is evolution. Who in his right mind would ever believe that the complicated homo sapien derived from a speck? That’s getting the larger from the smaller.
Much like that crazy notion about sperm and egg cells supposedly growing into babies, and then into full-sized people.
When I was in school, we were taught that one of the fundamental postulates is that one cannot get the greater from the smaller. Yet that is what evolution is all about — greater from the smaller. Now that’s a crock.
Hmmm:
Above: Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, John “Bonfire of the Manatees” Podhoretz
Granted, this evolutionary progression violates several rules of nature. Then again, we’re not sure the Laws of Thermodynamics are literally among them.
Also, it depends on what sense of the word ‘greater’ you mean.
Evolution is furthermore an insult to the intelligent brain.
As opposed to the Banana Theory:
That’s why the world is crazy when the so-called intelligentsia defend this notion called “evolution.” The PhDs do that. The professors do that. The textbook writers and so forth do that. They all get in their clique and stroke one another
The Panty Doughload is doing a happy waddle today because he got a good review of Liberal Fascism: From Mussolini to the South Beach Diet. From a blogger named Todd Seavey. I guess Jonah’s expectations for good reviews are rather low, so, like the desperate movie executive who pastes a favorable quote from Jeff Craig (”Rousing!” “Inspiring!!” “Will keep you on the edge of your seat!!!”) into a movie trailer, Jonah is reaching for what he can.
First things first: who the hell is Todd Seavey? (Other than the scary guy in the picture on the right.) Well, for starters, he collects wingnut welfare ($51,224) from the Scaife and Olin-funded American Council on Science and Health, which regularly advocates that trans-fats actually cure cancer and that Twinkies will make you thin. He has also posted the most embarrassing personal ad ever posted on the Intertubes, complete with a picture of himself when he was apparently twenty years younger.
Now to the review itself, which is larded with even more chunks of foolishness than Jonah’s book itself, no mean accomplishment. Like this:
Woodrow Wilson, Mussolini, and later FDR and Hitler constituted a veritable (and vocal) mutual admiration society.
Fighting a war against someone, naturally, is the best expression of mutual admiration.
Once fascism became associated with the Holocaust, the left scrambled to paint fascism as a right-wing phenomenon and deny that the left itself had ever been entwined with fascism.
I can’t figure out if this blithering idiot is saying this because he’s never read a single word about the history of the 1930s and 1940s, or if he sincerely believes that William Randolph Hearst, Charles Lindbergh, IBM’s Thomas Watson, GM’s Graeme Howard and Henry Ford were all leftists.
If we drop the partisan allegiances and look with fresh eyes at, say, FDR interning tens of thousands based on their race … how vast are the differences between Italian, Russian, German, and American collectivism …?
Wait, did Todd just call Michelle Malkin a fascist? He did! He did!! Does he realize that? Sadly, no.
Like Mussolini, who said Wilson was plainly instituting the American version of fascism, American leaders in the early to mid-twentieth century felt that a powerful central state was the logical analogue of faster, more efficient, more modern methods in other areas of life: mass-market radio, automated assembly lines, modernist architecture,
If Mussolini said Wilson was a fascist, well, it’s case closed, isn’t it?* And who knew that the automated assembly line was a liberal idea, cooked up by the extreme left-winger Henry Ford, and that is was roundly opposed by the right who, of course, have always been powerful advocates for humane working conditions?
There’s more in Seavey’s sloppy, wet kiss for the Doughload, but you get the point. I leave the rest of Todd’s review to my fellow SadlyFascists, who will, no doubt, find much more fodder for ridicule in Todd’s post. And there’s a prize, of course, for the snarkiest comment. It’s a date with you-know-who.
* Gavin adds: Mussolini, a weapons-grade bloviator, said a lot of things, but if he was fluffing Wilson, it would have to have been in the late Teens or early ’20s — before he was in power, and right around the time his Fasci Italiani di Combattimento were running around beating the crap out of leftists.
…Who were also fascists, I guess, according to Goldbergian analytics. Fascist-on-fascist violence was apparently a real problem in the early-mid 20th Century.
Although I’m opposed to naughty words in general, “bitch” isn’t so bad, particularly since it’s the only word I can think of to describe Hillary Clinton.
Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser is 
Ho, ho, ho! Santa Brad is comin’ to give you this fine classic slice of wingnuttery from James D. Miller, the TechCentralStation columnist last seen 
