I Just Threw Up In My Mouth a Little*

The fact that it's a Guest Essay in the New York Times.

The fact that they're casting themselves as the wise and far-seeing "we" here, and apparently everyone else is the "you" that got it all wrong.  

The fact that about halfway through they haul out the hoariest and (surprise!) most New York Times-pleasing of all media lies to elevate themselves above Both Sides:

Each of the major parties has pulled away from the libertarian elements of their coalitions (small-government, free-market types for the Republicans and civil libertarians for the Democrats), preferring instead the instant gratification of grasping power and wielding it as aggressively as possible for the period they hold it.

The fact that it's the fucking Libertarians.

And the fact that it just ain't so.

Meet Anthony L. Fisher:

When I worked for Reason magazine during Trump's rise to power in 2016, I was explicitly forbidden by the editor in chief from writing about Trump's racism, or the violence and racism at his rallies. It was a "sideshow," I was told.

[image or embed]

— Anthony L. Fisher (@anthonylfisher.bsky.social) February 9, 2026 at 8:10 AM

Then there is this from The Daily Beast, which was cited further down the BlueSky thread:

A leading critic of “cancel culture” is being accused of canceling one of its own—for speaking out too loudly and too often against President Donald Trump.

Throughout the Trump era, Reason magazine, a digital and print publication published by the nonprofit libertarian Reason Foundation, has routinely sounded the alarm about the perceived threat posed by “cancel culture,” the modern phenomenon in which people are publicly and professionally ostracized for heterodox beliefs or remarks. The magazine has lambasted other outlets like The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Intercept for firing or pushing out key staffers whose views or actions were determined to have conflicted with their respective editorial missions.

And yet, a long-time Reason columnist and policy analyst alleges that the libertarian magazine dropped her over her vehemently anti-Trump views.

“After 15 years, the curtains came down for me at Reason today. My views, I was told, had become too out-of-step with those of the organization,” Shikha Dalmia announced Tuesday evening in a Facebook post.

“Reason has some amazing writers who do great work on a whole host [of] issues that I will continue to read and share. And it has been an honor and pleasure to work with them,” she added. “However, I had a staunch and uncompromising anti-Trump voice calling out his authoritarian tendencies unambiguously. That this made many libertarians uncomfortable raises all kinds of interesting questions about the state of the liberty movement.”

From The Cato Institute (yes, it makes me feel dirty just writing that, but onward):

What’s Donald Trump Doing at the Libertarian Party Convention?

The Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention is coming up this weekend, with Donald Trump as a featured speaker. This is apparently the first time in US history that a political party has had another party’s nominee at its own nominating convention. And what a choice!

The Libertarian Party was founded to “challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual” and to specifically run candidates for office on a platform of personal liberty, economic liberty, and a peaceful foreign policy.

Needless to say, that’s not Donald Trump’s platform, nor does it describe his actions as president...

To be clear, I do appreciate various Johnny-Come-Latelies (even the Johnny-Galt-Come-Latelies) finally arriving where Liberals have already been for decades

I appreciate it even though, when they finally got to the party, it was already far, far too late. And I appreciate it even though these same people mocked and dismissed those of us who were right all along as alarmist crackpots right up until they had their long overdue moments of clarity.

What I do not appreciate -- what I might even call vexing (if you'll pardon the salty language because I know how important "tone" is in determining whether someone is right or wrong) -- is that every new arriviste to where the Left has been all along carries with them the same overweening, self-aggrandizing, and very thirsty, psychological disorder, best summarized here by the character of Bert Cooper on Mad Men

*(H/T @airbagmoments.bsky.social on Blue Sky for the heads up)

I Am The Liberal Media

Given Liz Mair's Hardcore Randite Proclivities...

...does this surprise anyone?

I have resorted to burning Pokémon cards as a punishment when my kid doesn’t do basic stuff he has to do.

— Liz Mair (@LizMair) October 15, 2021

 

  Burn Lifeboats Not Pokémon Cards

Rand Paul Running Away From Libertarianism

Over the past 162 years, we here at the driftglass blog have had a lot of fun with an occasional feature called "Rand Paul Running Away From Things" featuring the Junior Senator from Kentucky sprinting like Hell away from many things which he once claimed to believe in including history, civil rights, voting rights, science and his own father.

Today we find Randal Howard Paul running away from Libertarianism, which he has claimed to be his core, defining philosophy ever since was created at a Koch Brothers research lab somewhere in Western Kentucky.

Sen. Rand Paul calls for arresting citizens first, investigating afterward: "The FBI needs to investigate but the only way you can do it is you have to arrest people." https://t.co/uwCndMljl2

— Steven Reisner (@Drreisner) September 3, 2020

This development came as a complete surprise to everyone...except for anyone who has bothered to pay attention to Rand Paul's political career long enough to notice that, like every other Republican, he has no core, defining philosophy whatsoever except packing the courts with wingnut judges, tax cuts for his billionaire patrons and hanging on to power at all costs.

No Half Measures

Rand Paul Running Away From Things: An Ongoing Series

As we have noted on this little blog many, many times, at the slightest provocation the easily-startled, over-caffeinated badger that lives on top of Ran Paul's head will run away from any democratic principle dragging the junior senator from the great state pf Kentucky right along behind it.

For example, this...

Rand Paul to travel to Russia after downplaying election meddling

And this:

"If there wasn't such acute hatred for President Trump, such a 'Trump derangement syndrome' on the left...," a meeting with a Russian leader could have happened sooner says Sen. @randpaul. The blow back from the meeting, "really shows people hatred for President Trump." pic.twitter.com/ejfBwqYduz

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) July 16, 2018

And gets his good doggie pay on the head from Il Douche for doing so:

Thank you @RandPaul. “The President has gone through a year and a half of totally partisan investigations - what’s he supposed to think?”

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 17, 2018

Rand Paul does this because "treason" is the Republican default setting.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Paul Ryan: Better Capitulate Than Never

Don't worry, peeps.  I've got this debt and DACA shit covered!

Oopsie.

Never mind.

If Republicans are surprised that Trump betrayed them, they haven't been paying attention

Paul Ryan has ridden the craven, unprincipled Randite granny-starver (h/t Brother Charlie Pierce) thing just about as far as theoretically possible.  And he managed to get as far as he has gotten becaise even back when he was just a 'lil shaver, telling bald-faced lies about his own budget numbers, he was apple of the Beltway's eye.  He was the smooth-talking, P90X wunderkind Aryan son (who knows The Maths and all of that stuff!) that David Brooks never had (from July of 2010) --

Paul Ryan, the most intellectually ambitious Republican in Congress, lavishly cites [Arthur] Brooks’s book. Over the past few years, Ryan has been promoting a roadmap to comprehensively reform the nation’s tax and welfare system. 

-- and who Mr. Brooks was sure could go on to make Political Centrist Superbabies with Barack Obama if only the two of them would heed Mr. Brooks' Sensible Centrist advice:

And despite the tough battle talk, they are combinable. At his best, Ryan wants to cleanse and rejuvenate the nation — to sweep away the special-interest sclerosis that strangles flexibility and growth. At his best, Obama wants to create a context for innovation — to employ blue-collar workers and to spur growth clusters like Silicon Valley, which, let us remember, was a magical cocktail of federal research subsidies, hippie culture, entrepreneurial daring and university settings.

But of course, Mr. Ryan's magic-math budget scams have never been anything but a political aphrodisiac engineered specifically to make Both Siderist hacks like Mr. Brooks salivate.  From Paul Krugman, in August of 2010, clearly subtweeting Mr. Brooks

Which brings me to the innovative thinker du jour: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Mr. Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, The Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”

...

So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power — the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes.

But they don’t. The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.

...

You see, for all of his fancy pomps and titles, Ryan is a man of simple tastes.   Since the days he was a mere barefoot boy, with cheek of tan doing keg stands with his Randite Bros at dear old Objectivist University, all he has ever wanted out of this life is drink wildly expensive wine on a lobbyist's tab, value-signal his "compassion" by fake-washing a few already clean pots at a soup kitchen, and strip million and millions of useless eaters and takers and moochers of the same government benefits that made it possible for Paul Ryan to afford to go to school and become a Randite superman in the first place.

And if the road to Galt's Gulch meant he had to bend the knee to a pig-ignorant, racist orange fire demon over and over and over and over again (NYT from last July) --

Paul Ryan’s Dance With The Donald

Among the Republicans going along with Donald Trump’s takeover of their party, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, has made a tortuous art — a zigzag of maybes, yes-buts and oh, I guess sos — of protecting his interests en route to capitulating to the inevitable at the nominating convention.

By supporting the Trump candidacy, Mr. Ryan has revealed himself to be a weak opportunist, far from the ideas man and budget wonk he made himself out to be when he secured the vice-presidential nomination four years ago. It probably hasn’t been easy to engage in the political casuistry needed to simultaneously reject and embrace Mr. Trump.

While condemning Mr. Trump’s more hateful utterances, Mr. Ryan has been careful never, ever to criticize Mr. Trump himself...

-- well Freedumb Isn't Free people!

And so, arrogantly heedless of the same lesson history has taught about tyrants over and over again, and desperate to deliver massive tax cuts to his plutocrat sponsors and a knockout punch to America's already frayed and underfunded social safety net, Paul Ryan went right on ahead and did the one thing Churchill said that one should never, ever do with a crocodile:

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Unregulated Capitalism Gone Wild Revisited

(h/t Vault of the Atomic Space Age)

Many of our country's most prominent bi-line Americans are noticing-with-alarm the dead hand of Ayn Rand steering the Republican Killdozer.

Here is Jonathan Chait at the New Yorker today.

How Ayn Rand’s Theories Destroyed ‘Never Trump’ Conservatism

Here is the redoubtable Digby at Salon today.

Fountainhead of bad ideas: Ayn Rand’s fanboys take the reins of power

No, Donald Trump hasn't really read "Atlas Shrugged." Sad! But he's surrounding himself with Ayn Rand superfans

Here is The Washington Post yesterday:

The Daily 202: Ayn Rand-acolyte Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with fellow objectivists

So I thought, just for goofs, I'd hop in the wayback machine for a jaunt back to the Year of Our Lord 2011 to revisit the stridently not-ready-for-the-grownup-table comments one of the Midwest's least prominent, non-bi-line Americans:

Unregulated Capitalism Gone Wild 

Destroyed the work economy and eviscerated public service union pensions.

Period. Full-stop.

The Republican Capitalism-Gone-Wild Solution?

Double-down and keep kicking working people in the gut until they spit up blood, agree to throw away their children's future and beg to work for sub-minimum wage.

...

For anyone who cares to look, moldering away in the yellowing pages of Ayn Rand's lesser works the entire ideological infrastructure of the Modern Right is laid bare.

Of course, unlike Heaven's Gate or Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple (which disappeared once the madness of their founders was fully unfurled), by appealing to rich sociopaths and rich-sociopath-wannabees, the Randite Cult is specifically engineered to be a for-profit enterprise and so it goes on and on (Believe me, if the Branch Davidians had had the foresight to make their insanity capitalist-friendly, today, instead of being vaguely remembered as "that nut who set himself and his followers on fire", David Koresh would have his own show on Fox.)

Wow.  Very shrill.  Very rude.

And this mysterious-yet-strangely-charming bastard also had the fucking nerve to underscore his sorehead bitching with actual quotes from the actual dead Ayn Rand and her actual acolytes:

...

And how long has this Kult of the Kochsuckers been lighting votive candles at the altar of Unregulated Capitalism-Gone-Wild?

A long...

"Regulation -- which is based on force and fear -- undermines the moral base of business."

-- Alan Greenspan, "The Objectivist Newsletter", 1963

...Long...

"In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen."

-- Ayn Rand, 1961 Ford Hall Forum lecture

...Long...

"One of the most widespread delusions of our age is the belief that the American worker owes his high standard of living to unions and to "humanitarian" labor legislation."

-- Nathanial Branden, "Common Fallacies About Capitalism", 1962*

* ("..former student and one-time romantic partner of novelist Ayn Rand, Branden had a prominent role in promoting Rand's philosophy, Objectivism.)

...Long...

"If you want to gauge collectivist's theory's distance from reality, ask yourself: by what inconceivable standard can it be claimed that the broadcast airwaves are the property of some illiterate sharecropper who will never be able to grasp the concept of electronics, or some hillbilly whose engineering capacity is not quite sufficient to cope with a corn liquor still -- and that broadcasting, the product of an incalculable amount of scientific genius, is to be ruled by such owners?

...

"There is only one solution to this problem and it has to start at its base: nothing less will do. The airways should be turned over to private ownership. The only way to do it now is to sell radio and television frequencies over to the highest bidders...-- and thus put an end to the gruesome fiction of 'public property'."

Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Newsletter", April 1964

...Long...

"In a mixed economy, every government action is a direct threat to some men and an indirect threat to all. Every government interference in the economy consists of giving unearned benefits, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others. By what criterion of justice is a consensus-government guided? By the size of its gang."

-- Ayn Rand, 1961 Ford Hall Forum lecture

...Time.

"Should citizens have their wealth expropriated to support an educational system which they may or may not sanction, and to pay for the education of children who are not their own? To anyone who understands and is consistently committed to the principles of individual rights, the answer is clearly: No."

-- Nathanial Branden, 1963

Then this unnamed poopyhead had the sheer brass to insult one of the greatest half-term American quitters who ever quit everything like a boss:

Then dumb the whole mess down about 70% and stick it into a pair of fuck-me pumps and you have Sarah Palin.

Sadly we only had enough pocket change for one quick trip in the wayback machine, so we must now return now to the bitter dregs of 2016 where exactly the same, unholy mess been dumbed down an additional 12.5%.  Where -- thanks to the Kremlin, the High and Holy Church of Both Siderism and the head of the FBI really putting their collective backs into it -- we now have President-elect Trump.

Oops!  I had another dime in my pocket!  Just enough for one more short wayback moment from the same snippy crier-of-wolf, this time from the Year of our Lords 2008.  It seemed somehow appropriate to the occasion:

As we stare the latest Conservative catastrophe in the face, it is helpful to remember that, in practical, WYSIWYG terms, the key difference between Liberals and Conservatives is actually very simple:

The further Liberals stray from their core values – inclusive/democratic, social justice, fair trade, decent wages, excellent public education, religious tolerance, national health care, respectful diplomacy-first foreign policy, clean, sustainable energy, free and aggressive press, and caring for the environment -- the worse things get.

The closer Conservatives adhere to their core values – hierarchical/authoritarian, corporate feudalism, welfare for plutocrats, religious intolerance, drill-baby-drill, propaganda-as-news, imperial foreign policy, and fuck the future -- the worse things get.

Based on any objective calculus, the GOP should have been being flogged into the political wilderness for the next generation years ago.

The reason they haven't -- that "solid ring of diamond-hard stupid" that firewalls them against the getting what they deserve good and hard -- is their Base, which they understand to down to their constituent atoms. They know them street-by-street, district-by-district, and know exactly which buttons to push and nightmares to invoke to make them sit up and bark like trained seals. And they know we know. And we know they know we know. (h/t “Lion in Winter”)...

OK the ride is over and the park in closing, so if you're looking for me I'll be out on the porch, whittling, sipping corn liquor and trying my damnedest to look like a Rust Belt Working Class American Male so maybe David Brooks will drive by and ask me why I'm so pissed off.   

Rand Paul: Break The Government

Hello, Dollar! *

"Atlas Shrugged: A Thousand Pages of Bad Science Fiction About Sock-Puppets Stabbing Strawmen with Tax Cuts."

-- driftglass

Oh lord:

Ayn Rand-Inspired Sci-Fi Musical The Anthem Sets World Premiere

Jason Gotay, Remy Zaken, and Randy Jones will lead the cast of the political piece.
By Hayley Levitt • Apr 8, 2014 • New York City

The Anthem, a sci-fi musical inspired by Ayn Rand's novella Anthem, will make its off-Broadway world premiere at Culture Project's Lynn Redgrave Theatre this May. Performances will begin May 20 in advance of an official May 29 opening...

On the one hand, Anthem is very bad, short science fiction (as opposed Atlas Shrugged, which is very bad, looong science-fiction).  So if very bad science fiction is like unto, say, shooting yourself in the foot, then turning very bad science fiction into a musical on purpose is like taking another, bigger bullet and sloooowly pounding it through your through your other foot with a ball peen hammer.

On the other hand, I want to write the lyrics for at least one of the tunes so much it hurts.

*Judges would have also accepted The Lyin' King and The Wealth Producers. What other musical parody names can you think of?  The ones that crack me up will be posted with attribution on the front page of this blog.

The Seamless Robe and The Sleazy Rube

Although he doesn't know it, on a metaphysical level David Corn is making the case that Rand Paul has hauled the Blue Dress out of the closet --

...

Members of the politerati immediately seized on the most conventional explanation of Paul's 1990s obsession: As a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, he was taking an early stab at sullying the Clinton brand to do harm to Hillary Clinton's possible campaign and, perhaps as a side benefit, taint Bill Clinton prior to his joining Grimes on the campaign trail.

Paul's waving of the Monica flag has been dismissed by pundits on the right and left as odd and irrelevant (though a sign of an unpredictability that could shake up Republican presidential politics in the coming year or two). But Paul's fixation on Bill Clinton's tryst with Lewinsky—and his claim that this has a bearing on current political matters—ought to draw attention to his own approach to issues that involve women. His voting record on what might be called women's issues shows he's motivated more by libertarian ideology than concern for women contending with abuse or pay inequity. He was one of 22 Republican (and male) senators who voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Woman Act last year, noting that he believed that programs to counter domestic violence should be funded only at the state level. In 2012, he voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have provided women with new means to fight pay discrimination in the workplace. He compared that legislation to efforts made by the Politburo in the days of the Soviet Union to control the price of bread. And though as a libertarian he often decries federal encroachment on the rights of states and individuals, he does favor amending the Constitution to criminalize abortion across the country.

...

-- for the same reason that church authorities display the Holy Robe of Christ:

Cathedral of Trier Carries Seamless Robe of Christ

by Brian Kelly May 16, 2011

...

The Empress St. Helena, known for her pilgrimages to the Holy Land, reportedly brought back the Holy Robe of Christ from Jerusalem and entrusted it to her son's new church at Trier. The Holy Robe is the seamless garment said to be worn by Christ during the Crucifixion.

The Robe made its first appearance in written documents in the 12th century. In 1512, the Holy Robe was first displayed in Trier for a period of 23 days, during which more than 100,000 pilgrims came to venerate it.

The next year, a wooden balcony was built onto the west front of the cathedral in order to display the Holy Robe and the other Trier relics to crowds gathered in Cathedral Square. It has been periodically displayed since then, attracting ever-larger crowds.

The last display of the relic, for three weeks in 1933, drew two million pilgrims. In 1959, the relic was sealed in a splendid shrine in its own chapel, where it remains today.

...

Because to the faithful, they are both sacred relics -- sacred relics which began their journey to the reliquary as soiled garments, figuratively or literally handed down from antiquity and made holy by the removal of any shred of the actual, historical context of their origins.

Of course, the analogy fall apart once you understands that, for Republicans, "antiquity" means everything that happened between Genesis and the inauguration of President Barack Obama.  For them, nothing existed prior to  January 20, 2009, except  monsters...and demons..and the pillar of pure light and freedomy goodness that is Imaginary Reagan --

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

-- which is why Rand Paul can move in that world, saying ridiculous things like this with complete impunity:

Well, you know, I mean, the Democrats, one of their big issues is they have concocted and said Republicans are committing a war on women.  One of the workplace laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn't prey on young interns in their office.

And I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this.  He took advantage of a girl that was 20 years old and an intern in his office.  There is no excuse for that, and that is predatory behavior, and it should be something we shouldn't want to associate with people who would take advantage of a young girl in his office.

This isn't having an affair.  I mean, this isn't me saying, "Oh, he's had an affair, we shouldn't talk to him."  Someone who takes advantage of a young girl in their office?  I mean, really.  And then they have the gall to stand up and say, "Republicans are having a war on women"?  So, yes, I think it's a factor.  Now, it's not Hillary's fault.

Senator Paul does not have to worry about anything David Corn has to say, because the meatsticks whose votes he is trying to secure not only do not know or care who David Corn is, buy very likely either literally do not remember that Bill Clinton was impeached (or, for that matter, remember any of the roaring, paranoid, rage-drunk, conspiracy mongering with which Republicans filled the 1990s), or have just given the entire entire Clinton Administration the Etch-a-Sketch shake-shake-shake and made it disappear.

Hell, I'd give bankers odds that most Republicans have no recollection whatsoever of the long, rambling, conspiracy-laced treatise Rand Paul's crackpot old man laid down on the subject just before the House voted to impeach Bill Clinton:

The day the Right chose to go all-in on Collective Strategic Forgettery was the day that rise of creatures like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz became predictable.

And the day the Beltway chose to let them get away with it was the day that Senator Paul playing his GOP primary hand in this way became inevitable.

Do You Still Stand With Rand? Ctd.*

“The new evidence we have today — and that continues to mount — suggests that at the very least, Mrs. Clinton should never hold high office again.”

-- Rand Paul, (R-Galt's Gulch), May 10, 2013

Those of us who did not sleepwalk through Iran/Contra, the hunting and impeachment of Bill Clinton, the theft of the 2000 election and the first half of the Bush Era in a political stupor deep enough to believe that everything was basically A-OK and the country was "essentially on the right track" until, say, 2004 know how this movie goes.

Wake me when Joe Lieberman Mary Landrieu or whoever will be taking the "More In Sorrow Than In Anger" Brutus role in the upcoming farce...

...rises to make the rising chorus of calls for the impeachment of Barack O'Hitler "bipartisan".

*Thanks for the catch!

Do You Still Stand With Rand? Ctd.

Well the Pureblood Patron Saint of Independent Civil Libertarians has spoken. And the question -- the only question -- is whether or not you still stand with him.

And of course, the the only admissible answer is either an unreserved, dog-loyal "Yes, I agree completely with everything Rand Paul says and does." or an eternal, condemnatory "No, Rand Paul is an asshole who has never been on the right side of any issue in his life.".

No middle-ground will be accepted.  No conditional statements will be admitted.  Because as we all know, "Yes, if..."'s and "No, but..."'s are for pussies and nuance-drunk O-bots only.

Here is the Pureblood Patron Saint of Independent Civil Libertarians from CNN:

Rand Paul: Obama used Newtown families as 'props'

Washington (CNN) - Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky argued Wednesday morning President Obama is using the families of victims from the Newtown elementary school shooting for political purposes and compared them to "props" in the ongoing gun control debate.

...

And here is what the Pureblood Patron Saint of Independent Civil Libertarians helped to accomplish today:

Senate bill to extend background checks killed by filibuster

Posted by Brad Plumer on April 17, 2013 at 5:09 pm

So much for significant new gun-control legislation. The bipartisan Manchin-Toomey bill to extend background checks to gun shows and Internet sales has died in the Senate. It got 54 votes, but that wasn’t enough to overcome what was essentially a Republican filibuster. 

The Manchin-Toomey compromise bill was a scaled-back version of earlier proposals to extend background checks to unregulated private gun sales. Many gun experts argued that the slimmed-down proposal would have only marginal effects on gun violence. But even that small step couldn’t get through the Senate.

...

Charles Pierce summarizes:

Well, cut off my legs and call me a Democrat. The famous watered-down Manchin-Toomey "bipartisan compromise" on this country's preposterous infatuation with its firearms has gone down to an ignominious defeat in the United States Senate. So much for Newtown. So much for" tipping points." So much for the changing climate of the country. And so much, for good and all, for the absurd Beltway notion that "bipartisan compromise" is the golden key to Happyland. I can't imagine how all the members of the courtier press are feeling right now. I think my man Chuck Todd may be weeping. 

"Bipartisan compromise," as it turns out, is hopelessly vulnerable to empowered paranoids like Ted Cruz, and to abject bipartisan political cowardice as represented by Mmes. Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, and Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota. I have no hope for Ayotte who, between this fiasco and her performance piece on the Benghazi attacks, is plainly casting herself as Sarah Palin With Verbs...

So are you still Standing With Rand?

(Bonus points will be awarded for Rand Standers who also still feels the need to mansplain why there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the America's two major political parties.)

Ayn Rand *

To 

The

Rescue!

* In response to inquiries, each one of these has been subtly Photoshopped. If you click them to see the larger version you should be able to the alterations more clearly.

Three Cheers for Crazy Uncle Liberty

If you're like me (and why wouldn't you be), on any given day you get a whole clutch of THIS IS IMPORTANT FOLKS! (It's always "folks") forwarded to you from Crazy Uncle Liberty.

They are long on BIG FONT and short of "facts", these emails are, and judging by the embedding they have passed through the sweaty hands of many PATRIOTIC AMERICANS who READ THE CONSTITUTION before they reach my in-box, and if you can squint your way past the festoonage of American flags and giant, angry eagles holding assault rifles without laughing, you will be vouchesafed a privileged position from which to observe the screaming, batshit abyss of the wingnut soul (here is one of the tamer examples from my archives):

DIVORCE  AGREEMENT

THIS IS SO INCREDIBLY WELL PUT AND I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT'S BY A YOUNG PERSON, A STUDENT!!! WHATEVER HE RUNS FOR, I'LL VOTE FOR HIM.

Dear American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al: 

We have stuck together since the late 1950's for the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let's just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:
--Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

--We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them.

--You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.

--Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.

--We'll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and you can go with wind, solar and biodiesel.

--You can keep Oprah ,  Michael Moore  and  Rosie O'Donnell . You are, however,  responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

--We'll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street.

--You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens.

--We'll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO's and rednecks.

--We'll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and  Hollywood  .

--You can make nice with  Iran  and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.

--You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we'll help provide them security.

--We'll keep our Judeo-Christian values.

--You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness and Shirley McClain . You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

--We'll keep the SUV's, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

--You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors.

--We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.

--We'll keep "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "The National Anthem."

--I'm sure you'll be happy to substitute "Imagine", "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing", " Kum Ba Ya" or "We Are the World".

--We'll practice trickle down economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.

--Since it often so offends you, we'll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this?   If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I'll bet you answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John   J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S. Also, please take  Ted Turner , Sean Penn ,  Martin Sheen , Barbara Streisand , &  Jane  Fonda with you.

P.S.S.  And you won't have to press 1 for English when you call our country.

Forward This Every Time You Get It !  Let's Keep This Going, Maybe Some Of It Will Start Sinking In.

Google a chunk of any of these missives and you will invariably find them all over the wingnut blogosphere like diaper rash, cropping up regularly on reliably crazy Conservative bilge-spigots with names like "Red State", "Free Republic", "Patriot Rising", "Barrons" and "The Wall Street Journal".  Then take two minutes to debunk any of these missives and you will get back grumbly complaints about factcheckers all being on the Soros payroll, or the boilerplate Centrist reply of "Libruls are just as bad or worse!" (here is another of the least racist/sweary samples from my archives):

The folks who are getting the free stuff, don't like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, Because the folks who are paying for the free stuff, Can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff, And, The folks who are paying for the free stuff, Want the free stuff to stop.

and the  folks who are getting the free stuff, Want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!

Now...The people who are forcing the people who Pay for the free stuff, Have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff,

That the people who are PAYING for the free stuff, Are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.

So...

the people who are GETTING the free stuff, Have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff, By the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff, And giving them the free stuff in the first place.

We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are Now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.

Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded.  The reason?

The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them. The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 231 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff.

We have one chance to change that in 2012.

Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it.

ELECTION  2012 IS  COMING

A Nation  of Sheep Breeds a  Government of Wolves!

Borders:  Closed!

Language:  English  only

Culture:  Constitution, and the Bill  of Rights!

Drug  Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before  Welfare!

NO  freebies to:  Non-Citizens!
We the people are  coming

Only inside the Beltway media bunker is it some kind of shock that the paranoid and often racist ravings found in the subterranean world of wingnut emails are actually the Mother Tongue of the Republican Party.  Only inside the Beltway media bunker is it a surprise that Willard Romney really is so oblivious to how good he has it thanks to the accident of his birth that he has devolved into a Dunning-Kruger-level of privileged Republican assholism.  From Charles P. Pierce:

...To this moment, I guarantee you, Romney is probably astonished at what all the fuss is about. This is simply the way the world is. There is himself, Willard Romney, and his perfect family, and his perfect life, and there is The Help, and The Help gets drunk on the job, and prunes the shrubbery badly, and pockets the silverware, and makes off with the odd can of salmon out of the pantry. He is who he is today because his breeding and his genes and his god have arranged him to be through a serious of immutable laws against which only a fool or The Help would presume to argue. He is what his golden life has made him to be, and his golden life was only the bare minimum of that to which god and nature entitled him. To ask him to doubt any of this is to ask him to doubt gravity or the movement of the tides....

Only inside the Beltway media bunker is it a source of amazement that scuttlefish like Michelle Malkin 

Michelle Malkin

• ✔

@michellemalkin

This election is about America's makers vs. America's takers. Romney should NEVER be defensive or apologetic about making that clear.

17 Sep 12

and Ewick Ewickson 

That the media and left think the Romney statement on taxes is a gaffe says more about them than Romney. Most ppl agree w/ him.

would be not only be publicly supportive of Willard Romney's comments, but would insist that he double down everything he said at the Conservative Orgy Guy's fundraiser:



So three cheers for Crazy Uncle Liberty for finally forcing the Party of Lincoln to run the bilious crazy they all secretly worship all the way to the top of flagpole, and then demanding that Willard Romney step into the public square and salute it.