Sadly, No!

Will I be attending Netroots Nation in Las Vegas from July 22-25? Why, of Kos!

Here’s the deal — you can get a room discount (it’s at the Rio) if you sign up today. Sorry for the late notice on that. Anyway, Bradrocket and yours truly will be speaking on a panel Saturday at 4pm, tentatively titled ‘Who The Fuck Are These Guys And Where’s The Box Office For Tonight’s Carrot Top Show?’

Actually, it’s called ‘Bringing the Snark after Winning Elections,’ meaning any wisdom we impart on that topic will have an expiration date of November 2, 2010. So be warned. Our co-panelists are some real-life Internet celebrities and truly funny people — Amanda Marcotte, Jesse Taylor and Sady Doyle.

Also, Roy Edroso.

Here’s the full agenda of seminars and panels and such. Personally, I will not be missing ‘From Facebook To British Petroleum: Radicalizing The Post-Situationist Agenda From A Trans-Normative Social Networking Perspective’ with Owen Gleiberman and Al Franken.

We call him Mr. Lambastic, say he mantastic…

Henry Lamb, RenewAmerica:
How do you spell incompetence?

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

* ‘Pwn’ is not of course pronounced this way, but when you pass up a title like that, come back and we’ll discuss it further.
 

The Stink of the Mayo, the Smell of the Crowd

Jim Terry, RenewAmerica:
Cinco de what?

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

* If seeing Cinco de Mayo signs at “several eating and drinking establishments” is the last interesting thing noticed by Jim “Tex” Terry, the very man who clattered, as we imagine, on an IBM Selectric in a knotty-pine basement office with old issues of National Geographic somewhere evident, to produce the line, “I celebrate holidays made in America, about America, for America,” then an interesting thing that we just noticed is that Juneteenth seems to have swung around and missed him this year, fancy that.

† Oh crappo, el double-o posto (below-o):

ABOVE: Jim Terry (center) and Mini Daddy (Adriansito) El Nino Mas Bonito*

Usually the columnists over at RenuMurka.com seem to be stuck back in the early nineteenth century, at least the more progressive ones do, with the others more firmly lodged in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. So, it’s quite refreshing to find Jim “Ugly American” Terry stuck only in early May.
Apparently he’s been mulling over the indignity of Cinco de Mayo since, well, Cinco de Mayo and finally got around to writing a lengthy column to get it all off his chest.

Our story starts in scenic Schuyler County, New York, in early May:

Schuyler County, New York is a beautiful area of the state. Watkins Glen, our ultimate destination and the county seat, sits at the south end of Seneca Lake. …

The forested hills which rise from Seneca’s shores are dotted with … vineyards. The Finger Lakes area of New York is wine country, and Seneca Lake is home to more wineries than any of the other lakes. …

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Schuyler County’s estimated 2009 population was 18,720, down about 2.6 percent from the 2000 census count. The 2008 estimate of white population was 96 percent. The 2008 estimate of persons of Hispanic or Latino origin was 1.5 percent.

Ah, yes, what travelogue would be complete without a prominent mention of the relative absence of brown people, taco stands and garlic breath? This is probably our first clue that something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong with Terry’s column.

We arrived in Watkins Glen late Sunday, May 2, and my wife and I checked into the hotel. As the week progressed we noticed signs at several eating and drinking establishments about the upcoming Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Sheez, even when you go out of your way to vacation in a place without any beaners, the sneaky little cucarachas sneak up on you anyway.

About one third of Texas’ population is Hispanic or Latino, the majority being of Mexican ancestry. We know about Cinco de Mayo in Texas. I asked a woman in Watkins Glen if she knew anything about Cinco de Mayo. “No,” she said. “Only that it is a reason to have drink specials.”

Whew! Just drink specials. Old Jimbo was getting worried that the town might bus in a bunch of poncho-clad Mexeecans from Juarez who’d get all liquored up on tequila and then go mariachi-ing and chimichanga-ing down the streets of Watkins Glen, trying to shove their thick pork quesadillas down the unwilling throats of decent white folks.

That gives us time for a little history lesson from Jim who, you’ll be surprised to learn, is quite the expert on the history of countries where dark people live:

On May 5, 1862, the Mexican army defeated a French force at the town of Puebla. Cinco de Mayo is observed in the state of Puebla, but it is not a national holiday in Mexico.

Ah yes, the well-established rule that only national holidays can be celebrated elsewhere. Wingnuts are always complaining about rules being shoved down their throats by the nanny state, but at least those rules sometimes make sense.

I wondered: Why is Cinco de Mayo celebrated in Watkins Glen, New York, 2000 miles from Puebla, Mexico and with an estimated Hispanic population (with no estimate of nationality) of fewer than 500 persons in the entire county?

The smart kids can see where this is going: we celebrate Cinco de Mayo in tiny little mostly-white villages in order to encourage illegal immigration

Many of the people who complain about the [illegal immigrant] problem are not beyond going to the local drive-in grocery, where out-of-work illegals often hang out, and raising two or three fingers to indicate how many workers they want to take home for cheap yard work. They then pay in cash, … and … they have encouraged to bring in more illegal foreign entrants/occupants with the hope of unreportable income. What message do America’s businesses send by adopting a minor foreign holiday which the majority of the population of the country of its origin doesn’t celebrate?

That’s right. The message we send is come on in, Mexicans, because if you do, then once a year near the beginning of May you can watch the gringos get silly on $3 Coronas and cheap margaritas while listening to bad mariachi music. Frankly, I’m surprised that given this opportunity there are any Mexicans left in Mexico.

Veal around the fountain

Michael Walsh, Big Journalism:
David Weigel, the ‘Journolist,’ Wolves In Sheep’s Clothing, and the Death Of Privacy

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

* Title cf.: one of Weigel’s not all that provocative private comments.

ABOVE: Andy McCarthy, Patriot

---

America’s Shittiest Website™ can sometimes be chock-full of surprises:

This Is Why I Love Ray Kelly   [Andy McCarthy]

Is that you, Andy? Where on earth have you been? I was getting worried about you! Seriously, dude, I was.

Reacting to the diatribe against America that Faisal Shahzad launched into at his guilty plea . . .

Guilty plea? Andy, did you say “guilty plea“?

Reacting to the diatribe against America that Faisal Shahzad launched into at his guilty plea earlier this week, the NYPD commish said, “The threat from radical Islam shows no sign of receding.”

Well, indeed you did say “guilty plea.” In fact, you mentioned Shahzad’s “guilty plea earlier this week.” Hmmm, that would be the guilty plea that Shazad entered four days earlier on Monday of this week, on June 21, 2010, at about 4:30 p.m. to be precise.

And just what, pray tell, Andy, where you doing just hours before that guilty plea? If I’m not mistaken hadn’t you just published an article — if I may be so generous as to call it that — at America’s Shittiest Website™ on Shahzad. At 11:30 a.m. to be precise

After the initial spate of chest-beating, we hadn’t heard much from the Justice Department about the case of would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and the many ways it illustrates how splendidly the criminal justice system performs in terrorism cases — even the cases of enemy combatants who could otherwise be held indefinitely and interrogated for intelligence purposes.

Now comes word from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York that Shahzad has been indicted. . . . This is a strange development.

Attorney General Eric Holder has been telling anyone who would listen that Shahzad is cooperating and providing valuable information. Civilian due process has been no obstacle at all, Holder insists . . . Yet it is highly unusual to indict a cooperator. . . . [T]he standard practice is to strike a deal, complete with a cooperation agreement and a guilty plea. . . .

That must have been just a teensy bit embarrassing for you, Andy, to be opining that Shahzad would never enter a guilty plea just hours before he did in fact enter a guilty plea. There you were dissing the Attorney General for insisting on all this useless due process folderol when he should have been water-boarding Shahzad in the bowels of the Justice Department until Shahzad revealed the details of his plan to build a nuke from lime Jello, kerosene, a glow-in-the-dark watch dial and four D batteries. And then it’s wham, bam, shazam, and Shahzad pleads guilty. How humiliating.

Of course, a real man would do a solid and admit his mistake. But, oh no, not Andy, who ran out of the room like a scalded dog and went into hiding until at last, days later, he scrounged up the stones to mention the embarrassing fact of the guilty plea that was never ever going to happen and even then only to suggest that the guilty plea was not a good thing but was further proof that the Mooslims were still eating Eric Holder’s lunch.

You know, the Obama administration could hunt down bin Laden and parade his head on a stick down Pennsylvania Avenue, and Andy would complain that the stick was too short.

There’s one; set for stun.

Sowell, go no more a roving.

Thomas Sowell, Investors Business Daily:
Is U.S. Now On Slippery Slope To Tyranny?

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

 
* Actual beginning of column.
 

Joan Swirsky, RenewAmerica:
The Obama disaster machine: unfortunate coincidences or malevolently premeditated?

• Testors model cement: delightful inhalant or magical genie gas?

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

* Title cf., cf.

It appears that an attractive-baby-making service — BeautifulPeople.com — has drawn in a lot of dumbasses. Some 600,000 customers from 150 countries, in fact.

The concept is simple and intuitive, if you have a very rudimentary understanding of genetics: take the jizz of two very attractive people, and the resulting baby will be even more attractive.

But this is not how genetics works. This is not how real-life experiments in genetics work. There are demonstrable factors like reversions to the mean and genetic drift that make a simple mating of the most-attractive couple not necessarily likely to produce the most-attractive child. Not to mention that the theory of natural selection does not hold that the conditions that define today’s beauty/strength/child-bearing capacity/wit/smarts will define tomorrow’s beauty/strength/child-bearing capacity/wit/smarts … in fact, quite the opposite. It’s a bit of a crap-shoot.

Only dumb and pathetic dumbasses are lured by this sort of pseudo-science. And there are a lot of them out there, so my advice is to invest in BeautifulPeople.com — it’s bound to make tons of money.