Sadly, No!

Pantload’s really outdone himself with this latest (not-)gotcha:

Questioning the Patriotism of High School Drop-Outs [Jonah Goldberg]

This is an intriguing passage from last night:

And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American.

What to make of that? On the one hand, it shows one of Obama’s great strengths and innovations as a liberal that he can invoke patriotism in a way that doesn’t seem affected.

Above: Turn around, bright ass

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But I thought invoking patriotism came naturally to fascists! Ein volk, ein reich… you know. Now Pantload’s saying it’s all affect and Obama just does it with less transparency. But then the only thing worse than a real Liberal Fascist is a pretend one, amirite? I imagine a conversation between like minds:

Otto from A Fish Called Wanda: It’s just as our fellow intellectual, Nietzsche (who was, like Aristotle, a Belgian) said: “What? A Great Man? I see only the actor of his own ideal.”

Pantload: Totally! And Obama’s ideal is, like, FASCISM!

N.Y. Post Cartoonist: I gotcher Nietzsche quote right here. “The disappointed man speaks: ‘I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the apes of their ideal.'” Neener neener!

Pantload: Exactly.

And.. scene. But I digress. Back to Pantload’s post, from which comes a punchline of sorts:

On the other hand, why is it okay to question the patriotism of high school drop-outs when it’s just about the worst thing in the world to question the patriotism of people in other circumstances?

Uh, because urging, even if in the negative, high schoolers to better themselves and their country does not equal smearing political opponents by calling them traitors.

Moreover, I think it says something telling about the current state of liberalism — and the political culture generally — that doing your part to sustain economic growth is a patriotic duty. This may seem normal and natural to people, but this notion is in fact a fairly recent development, with roots in the Progressive era but culminating with JFK’s Cold War liberalism, when outperforming the Soviets economically became a national imperative.

He means, of course, that it’s part and parcel of Liberal Fascism. (Actually, what he’s talking about started in the late Reconstruction Era, if not before. And it is neither liberal nor fascist in and of itself, but then you knew that.)

Update: From a reader:

Mr. JG:

Maybe I’m being too generous to Dear Leader, but I found his reference to the unacceptability of America’s high school drop-out rate to be a remark directed mostly (though subtly) toward black America where that problem is most severe. I would welcome more tough talk to the African-American community, especially coming from someone to whom they’re inclined to listen.

Me: I think this is largely right. I meant to make this point and somehow let it drop from my points. But I don’t think that’s all it’s about either.

Yeah, it can’t be all bad: consider its potential utility in getting the Negroes in line! But that point plus the points before it are merely central to Doughy’s point which has a point, should you decide to take his point (which you surely won’t if you’re a pointy-headed Liberal Fascist Poindexter who typically misses the point, which, the point being, that’s exactly what you are, though you will pointlessly deny it, even when Doughy’s pointing his points right at you.)

No, it can’t be. No, not him again.

Joe the Plumber laughs at Obama’s speech
The Politico

In town to promote his new book, “Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream”, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher — aka “Joe the Plumber” — stopped by Americans for Tax Reform Wednesday to review President Barack Obama’s Tuesday address before Congress and offer his own thoughts on American politics and current events.

Above: Norquist with bald-headed embarrassment
in background (Jeff Gannon edition)

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Subtext: As the turbines spin up for CPAC 2009, and Washington, DC is enhanced with right-wing extremists of every kind, a Politico staffer cries “aah, whatever,” and looks to Grover Norquist and his oompa-loompas for color commentary, lest there be a single Groverless day in the press.

Wednesday’s Norquist cite was provided by the DC Examiner. And heck, David Weigel of Reason also managed to stock the Independent with three stories from his encounter with Mr. The-Plumber, chez Norquist. Here’s one now:

When It’s Time To Party We Will Party Hard

My friend J.P. Freire, the managing editor of The American Spectator, is the brains behind NewAmericanTeaParty.com. When I saw him today after Grover Norquist’s meeting, he was driven, intense — gripping his MacBook like a life raft in the Arctic Ocean, updating the group’s Facebook page and list of sponsors.

I’ll bet they do Twitter too. Twitter is that new thing that’s like burping the alphabet. Republicans are big on it because they have nothing to say.

Freire’s site is only one node in a network of grassroots Tea Party sites, which are protesting the mortgage rescue plan and the more general “recent trend of fiscal recklessness in government.” The main Washington event will be a rally in front of the White House on Friday, at noon.

Genius move scheduling it at the same time as both the Student Luncheon and Newt Gingrich at the Regency Ballroom. All the grassroots will be at one event or the other, leaving nobody to come to the protest but unknown who-people from, uh, world place.

But indeed, ‘recent’ is the word for this recent trend toward risky fecklessness and vice versa in government, notable in its sudden happening and noneness of antecedents. Brazenly and suddenly it happens now, after [cough cough] deficit [cough] every [cough] Reagan [cough cough] Education of David Stockman [cough cough] got away with it for twenty-five years [cough] all blown to hell [cough]. Then this Obama comes along acting like he runs the place.

And it’s a good thing that the Internet — ooh wait, it also looks kind of tight there with the 1:00 Internet Activist Workshop. Whoopsicles! Failopotamus!

Among the ideas that people pitched while Freire was working:

– An appearance from Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher. (He plans on showing up as a reporter for PajamasTV and then commenting on the event on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.)

Perfection would be if he went on Hannity to comment on his reporting on the rally at which he also appeared.

Or, perfection would also be that the person who pitched the idea at Norquist’s place was Wurzelbacher.

– A garbage bag that tea partiers will fill with tea bags. Protestors might write the names of programs they don’t like on the tea bags.

How about silk screened ‘tea shirts’ that have a string and a paper tag hanging off them. You can write things on the tag. No no, our pleasure. If we need an idea later we’ll just think of another one.

– Doing the garbage bag idea, but with cardboard boxes.

See, I saw the garbage bag idea and it was like, Okay, so you put all these tea bags, perhaps with the names of government programs on them, into a garbage bag. And then unless I’m mistaken you’re standing there with a garbage bag.

“Har har, liberals,” you will say to passers-by, “Just guess what’s in this garbage bag right here!”

No, we think you should approach the idea in terms of tea bags coming out of a garbage bag — dumped in a place, given to a person, perhaps made into a giant cup of something which is a pun on the letter ‘t.’ Like if you have ‘reason‘ but someone dumps ‘t’ on it, what then do you have?

But it could be a cardboard box instead, sure.

– A cover of “Take This Job and Shove It,” with new lyrics that would attack the stimulus package.

Read the rest of this entry »

Shorter Megan McArdle

Above: “Moreover, I myself prefer to burn off leeches with a
stylish Colibri lighter, but ymmv.”

“Asymmetrical information”

• This economic crisis, like perhaps every other, comes from an inversion of normal Social Darwinist order: the strong but trusting were duped by the weak but devious; parasites did not ‘perish as they should’ — or rather, they did but they killed their hosts as well. But then such perversions of nature are inevitable when collectivists alter the economic ecosystem, when they suspend the properly-applying law of the jungle and instead force Randian supermen to give loans to duplicitous jungle bunnies.

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

Shorter Michelle Malkin:

Above: Doo-de-doo-de-doot, In-spec-tor Gid-get…

These foreclosure “victims” deserve no sympathy

• Howl rage, O loyal reader, for here is a symbol of yourself, and it is weak and sneering at you.

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

Notes:

^{1 – Title cf.
2 – Original art came out insufficiently Malkinesque, i.e. lacked bizarre costume and/or angry grimace.
3 – Discarded title: ‘That’s So Ravening!’ caption “Oh snap!” cf.
4 – So you see, the Shorter is unlike the one thing about being a cephalopod: You put on your hat, you put on your shoes, and you’re dressed.
5 – Shorter John Stossel: “Opposite!!! Stimulus works = we are right Obama is wrong!!! ha ha work out details in fin. draft”}

Not a War President

• Obama spent so much time talking about the economy and barely mentioned my wars! My precious, precious wars! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

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

Jindal’s Response to the President

• Hey, look at me. Both my parents were from a foreign country, not just my father. Neither, however, were from Africa. The stimulus bill doesn’t create jobs because the new cars bought for the government will be built by elves and fairies, not real workers. Also, that train to Las Vegas, it will be built by elves and fairies too. How else do you think it will “levitate”? And who do you think is going to monitor the volcanoes? Elves and fairies, I tell you. Oh, and another thing, tax cuts don’t create deficits. Vote for me in 2012. God bless Louisiana.

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

[Thanks whichwayisup for the Photoshop inspiration.]

Glenn Beck discusses what would happen if a bunch of hicks rose up and decided to violently overthrow the evil gubmint:

I just don’t get it.

During Bush’s presidency people like me were called traitors on a fairly regular basis because we didn’t show Bush the proper deference when he’d do some goofy shit like choke on a pretzel. Now we have guys on the teevee that are openly talking about armed insurrection against a democratically elected government and it’s considered the most patriotic and pro-American thing a feller could do with hisself.

This sort of thing doesn’t really offend me because I think most of Beck’s viewers would back down from starting a new civil war once they learned that it would likely lead to Cheeto rationing. But I am amazed at the sheer cognitive dissonance involved in simultaneously believing that it’s treasonous to peacefully oppose an unjustified war but that it’s patriotic to lead an armed insurrection against the government because they want to pay you unemployment benefits. If there’s a weirder political movement than American conservatism, I’ve yet to see it.

Via Glennzilla.

ABOVE: Tom wonders if Activia works
better than prune juice

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Who would have thought that lonely wingnuts, paralyzed by abject despair, would find their very own Dear Abby or Miss Lonelyhearts improbably tucked away in the Hoohah Institution and would, in their darkest hour, pen soul-searching letters to her (or him) seeking consolation, guidance and hope? Well, if our old buddy Tom Sowell is to be believed, he is being inundated by such letters:

An increasing number of recent letters and e-mails from readers strike a note, not only of unhappiness with the way things are going in our society, but of despair.

So he writes back: Dear Despairing Soul,

Those of us who are pessimists are only a step away from despair ourselves, so we may not be the ones to offer the best antidote to the view that America has seen its best days and is degenerating toward what may well be its worst. Yet what hope remains is no less precious nor any less worthy of being preserved.

Well, I feel much better already. Don’t you?

First of all, the day-to-day life of most Americans in these times is nowhere near as dire as that of the band of cold, ragged, and hungry men who gathered around George Washington in the winter at Valley Forge, to which they had been driven by defeat after defeat. …

Against the background of those and other desperate times that this country has been through, we cannot whine today because the stocks in our pension plans have gone down or the inflated value that our houses had just a few years ago has now evaporated.

Ah yes, the tried and true “at least you don’t have wooden teeth” argument. My mom used a variant of that when anyone would complain about getting socks and underwear for their birthday: “At least you don’t have leukemia, you know.” My guess is that “Despairing Soul” is now thinking he would have been better off writing to Amy Alkon.

Worse yet, there are moral corrosions within ourselves that weaken our ability to face the challenges ahead. One of the many symptoms of this decay from within is that we are preoccupied with the pay of corporate executives while the leading terrorist-sponsoring nation on earth is moving steadily toward creating nuclear bombs. Does anyone imagine that we will care what anyone’s paycheck is when we see an American city in radioactive ruins?

I know that I for one would survey a heap of nuclear rubble and kick myself over executive pay caps because, you know, in the time it took to pass those caps we could have invaded Iran, blown up their nuclear facilities, converted the population, given Hershey Bars and ponies to everyone and been back home by dinnertime.

It took only two nuclear bombs to get Japan to surrender — and the Japanese of that era were far tougher than most Americans today. Just one bomb — dropped on New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles — might be enough to get us to surrender. If we are still made of sterner stuff than it looks like, then it might take two or maybe even three or four nuclear bombs, but we will surrender.

And it’s not just because we have a hummus-eating eating surrender monkey in the White House. Read on.

How did we get to this point? It was no single thing. The dumbing down of our education, the undermining of moral values with the fad of “non-judgmental” affectations, the denigration of our nation through poisonous propaganda from the movies to the universities. The list goes on and on.

In short, we we will surrender to Iran because kids aren’t reading Shakespeare in high school anymore, because we aren’t sending teh gays to butch camps, and, natch, because we gave Slumdog Millionaire, a movie about winning rather than earning money the old-fashioned way, eight Oscars.

The shame of Stanford strikes again.

Yep, I miss Bush

• The fact that Bush never jailed people for calling him mean names shows that he was the most freedom-loving president our country has ever had.

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

Shorter “Very” Rich Galen:

Above: Galen enjoys ‘The Fountainhead’, an audiobook read by Scott Rolen

Atlas Raged
TownHall
Monday, February 23, 2009

• President Obama has made the fatal mistake of suggesting a means of governance contrary to that of a fictional character in a novel.

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

Notes:

^{1 – I Am Joe’s Elegant Sentence: “I happened to be watching CNBC when this all took place, although I suspect this may become one of those thinks like Woodstock which, over the years, seven million baby boomers have proclaimed they were in attendance.”}

^{2 – One man’s crisis is another man’s opporotunity.}

^{3 – Where is John Galt?}