On Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs

You know, I've been thinking about Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs.

When I go over there nowadays I get confused. Last year LGF was doing some of the best pushback-blogging against leftist crazies like Markos Moulitsas. But now it seems Johnson's done an about face against conservatives, especially people of faith. I'm not a "creationist," but I've noted that Stephen Jay Gould's "doctrine of nonoverlapping magisteria" suggests a compatibility between Christian beliefs and scientific evolutionary theory.

Well, it turns out that yesterday Johnson basically joined the likes of Glenn Greenwald in attacking Glenn Beck for SIMPLY HYPOTHESIZING the possibility of an American anarchy:

There's not going to be any mass anarchy, and there's not going to be any sedition. Glenn Beck isn't going to bring about the End Times, or a financial crash.

But what he IS doing is encouraging and inciting the real nutjobs out there to do violence. One on one violence, stoked by paranoid fantasies.

It's crazy, and it's wrong, and it's irresponsible.

It's crazy? I'm sure many said the same thing about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina, despite the warnings of the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.

I have no personal quarrel with Johnson, although I'd just note here his tremendous inconsistency. On the one hand he attacks radical Islamists for practices such as child killing, and then on the other he attacks people like Geert Wilders for attacking, well, the exact same thing.

For some related matters, see Dr. Pat Santy's comments on the controversies Johnson's had with folks on questions of Islam and terror (see, "My Response to Blackmail Threats").

But also check out Stogie's post at Saberpoint for more on what folks are noticing about LGF:

I rarely read the blog "Little Green Footballs" any more. I have discovered that, as time goes by, I have less and less in common with its owner, Charles Johnson. Frankly, he acts like someone who is developing a brain chemistry imbalance. If so, he should consider a psychotropic medication like Prozac or Paxil. Personally I prefer Zoloft. Since I started taking it, I notice the ax murders are fewer and further between. Yes, we don't see that much of Mr. Hyde anymore.

Charley's latest gambit is to trash Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and to oppose Geert Wilders. Seems Charley is very adamant about the right of individuals to freedom of religion, apparently any religion, regardless of their practices, e.g. honor killings, genital mutilation, wife beating, polygamy, jihad, insistence on Sharia rather than democracy. No doubt Aztecs performing human sacrifices of virgins would be just fine with him. You can't oppose "freedom of religion" after all. Charley is so open-minded and tolerant that he would probably accept an invitation to dinner by a tribe of cannibals, and never notice when they shove an apple in his mouth and push him into a big pot of boiling water.

Another of Charley's annoying habits is that he has become a fanatical supporter of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. That's fine if that's your bag, but every other post is an ideological screed in support of this pseudo-science. Who cares?

Evolution, says Charley is absolutely true and beyond criticism. Today he was running an article entitled "Transitional Fossils Do Exist."

Charley should know. He's one of them.

My main interest here is as it relates to the broader internal debates I've been discussing on the freaky left-libertarian alliance of "liberaltarianism," as well as the continued and self-evident power of neoconservative clarity in combating the creeping totalitarianism of Islamic radicalization.

At lot of folks are focusing on electoral schisms within the GOP, but some of the more overarching issues of foreign affairs and moral authority are going to be increasingly important to the emergence of the next right-wing governing coalition.

More later ...

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UPDATE: Critical Thinker add this, from the comments:

Methinks ole Charlie might need to go back to playin' Jazz and leave the world of bloggin'. Seems he is turning into a control freak and might be the one going off of the deep end.

Worst of the Oscars 2009

The Los Angeles Times has all the photos and hot talk about last night's Academy Awards, "Best & Worst: Oscars 2009."

I noted to a friend of mine last night, who said she wasn't even watching the broadcast, that the Oscars is the one awards show I watch all year, and since I'm something of a movie buff, I try to get fired up about it. I started discounting the wild left-wing politics of some of Hollywood's greatest actors long ago - like Sean Penn, for example, who has given some powerful perfomances in recent years, in flicks like Mystic River.

Andrew Breitbart's analysis of the political stakes at Hollywood's big annual event:

On Sunday night at the Kodak Theater, where Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama debated each other in front of the same prideful crowd a year earlier, the political left convened to celebrate its progressive political agenda. The Oscars communicate post-modern, post-American liberal values more effectively than elected Democratic officials themselves. The liberal establishment understands this and uses the glamorous Hollywood elite and its incessant stream of left-leaning product and promotional vehicles as its proxy messenger.

This year's cause celebre was not the ailing American work force or the heroic and underappreciated U.S. military, but an attack on California's just passed traditional marriage amendment - as represented by the white ribbon worn by pliant celebrity throngs. Dissenters in the midst dare not wear their contrarian ribbons for fear of more punitive Proposition 8 backlash.

This year Gus Van Sant and his gay marriage public service announcement "Milk," garnered eight nominations while Clint Eastwood and his objectively conservative box office titan "Gran Torino" got completely shut out. Except for the expected (and deserved) posthumous Heath Ledger best supporting actor nomination, the good-vs.-evil international sensation "The Dark Knight," also was passed over by the Academy.

Last year, 31 million American voters watched. Perhaps a few million less will tune in this off-year in cinema ....
In Charlton Heston´s last years, the Academy paid tribute not to his legendary cinematic achievements but to a Michael Moore documentary that portrayed the screen legend as a doddering fool. Alzheimer's is known to have that effect.
Have you no sense of decency, Oscar? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

God, isn't that just awful.

As I was watching last night, I kept thinking, "where're the nominations for Defiance, which should have been Best Picture, at least out of the movies I saw last year (and no offense to Slum Dog Millionaire, as I've yet to see it).

Anyway, Breitbart's comparing last night's leftist enclave of the Hollywood elite to this week's CPAC conference in Washington. He notes that the right needs to shift gears in the culture wars, and engage the left's entertainment-establishment in the arena:

My biggest fear is that later this week I will be among the legions at CPAC rearranging the furniture. Instead, the conservative movement needs to think in revolutionary terms.

And the revolution must begin in Hollywood.

More later, dear readers ...

Glenn Greenwald's Hysterical Hypocrisy

Dan Riehl points his readers toward Glenn Greenwald, whose essay on the Glenn Beck survivalist episodes is the perfect primer on the contrast between the smug homosexual-progressive antiwar mandarins of the leftist elite and the silent majority of everyday Americans who truly grasp the cultural and political trainwreck of the new Democratic era. Here's Greenwald:

There is nothing inherently wrong or illegitimate with citizens expressing extreme anger towards the Government and the ruling political class ....

But this Rush-Limbaugh/Fox-News/nationalistic movement isn't driven by anything noble or principled or even really anything political. If it were, they would have been extra angry and threatening and rebellious during the Bush years instead of complicit and meek and supportive to the point of cult-like adoration. Instead, they're just basically Republican dead-enders (at least what remains of the regional/extremist GOP), grounded in tribal allegiances that are fueled by their cultural, ethnic and religious identities and by perceived threats to past prerogatives -- now spiced with legitimate economic anxiety and an African-American President who, they were continuously warned for the last two years, is a Marxist, Terrorist-sympathizing black nationalist radical who wants to re-distribute their hard-earned money to welfare queens and illegal immigrants (and is now doing exactly that) ....

In one sense, all of this drooling rage is nothing more than the familiar face of extreme right-wing paranoia, as Richard Hofstadter famously described 45 years ago:

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse. (“Time is running out,” said Welch in 1951. “Evidence is piling up on many sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin will attack.”)

But it's now inflamed by declining imperial power, genuine economic crises, an exotic Other occupying the White House, and potent technology harnessed by right-wing corporations such as Fox News to broadcast and disseminate it widely and continuously. At the very least, it's worth taking note of.

Well, I'll tell you what, having written two posts on this, one in which I noted how my buddy was thinking about buying a cabin somewhere up in Montana, I can guarantee you that people who are concerned about complete social breakdown are not apocalytic conspiracists.

But note especially Greenwald's reference reference to Richard Hofstadter's, The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Interestingly, Hofstadter himself backed away from his earlier theories, during his own intellectual evolution, and in fact flirted with neoconservative advocacy in the 1960s.

In "Ethnicity, Progressive Historiography and the Making of Richard Hofstadter," David Brown notes that Hofstadter, in his later work:

... promoted a "vital kind of moral consensus" that encouraged scholars to compete meritoriously in the market-place of ideas. The New Left's rejection of its historical fathers struck Hofstadter as a denial of the open contestation of interpretive techniques necessary for sustaining historical debate.

Or, as Hofstader's Wikipedia entry notes, "His friend David Herbert Donald recalled, 'he was appalled by the growing radical, even revolutionary sentiment that he sensed among his colleagues and his students. He could never share their simplistic, moralistic approach.'"

A "simplistic, moralistic approach."

Sounds like Professor Donald's describing Glenn Greenwald himself. As many readers may recall, Greenwald is prone to his own hysterical ramblings about the rise of fascism in the United States under the "evil" BushCo Halliburton corporatist state. Indeed, as Dr. Pat Santy has noted about Greenwald:

Glenn Greenwald claims that "fear of terrorism" has been "inflamed and exploited" by the Bush Administration for the purpose of gaining power:

Bush opponents must finally overcome the one weapon which has protected George Bush again and again: fear. Fear of terrorism is what the Administration has successfully inflamed and exploited for four years in order to justify its most extreme and even illegal actions undertaken in the name of fighting terrorism.

Let's discuss this from a psychiatric and psychological perspective since these are the terms used in the quote above.

This blogger is essentially arguing that-- instead of using a healthy and appropriate psychological defense called anticipation against terrorism and the Islamofascists (who most certainly want to kill us and destroy our society) - we should instead switch to a psychotic one, denial; and maintain that the only thing we have to fear is ... President Bush. The latter is a defense mechanism called displacement that I have already discussed in an earlier post.

In fact, there is a strong element of paranoia here too. And a noticeable touch of hysteria - though he thinks he can use it to describe normal people justifiably afraid of irrational fanatics not amenable to reason. The implication is that the only purpose such "fears" (judged "inappropriate" by Greenwald's) are being manipulated must be to "justify illegal actions."

The basic tenor of his fear is easy to deduce: while we are fighting this illusory enemy, Bushitler has been amassing power and will soon set himself up as a dictator and destroy our freedom. I will let you decide who we have to fear more - the President of the United States or the religious fanatics of Islam who want to obtain a nuclear weapon? Who do we have to fear more: those who are trying to prevent another 9/11 or those who would like nothing better than to do something even worse in our country?

Dr. Santy shows Greenwald to be deeply afflicted by Bush Derangement Syndrome, a term that's loosely thrown around in politcal debates, but was in fact first offered as a kind of clinical diagnosis in psychiatric medicine.

In other words, either Glenn Greenwald is sick.

In any case stay tuned ...

Penelope Cruz for Best Supporting Actress - UPDATE! CRUZ WINS!

Okay, I'm getting ready for the Academy Awards, and keeping with my pledge to feature more feminine lovelies around here (and with R.S. McCain's "Rule #5"), I give you Penelope Cruz:

Ms. Cruz is nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

I've long admired Penelope Cruz (see her in Volver, for starters), and she's much more attractive, IMHO, than Salma Hayek, who's the top-hottie of political scientist Daniel Drezner.

The complete list of Oscar nominations is at Big Hollywood, where they'll be live-blogging (no word yet on Althouse's live-blogging, however).

See also, "Penelope Cruz is 'Always Surprised' to Win Awards."

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UPDATE: Robert Stacy McCain's got an Academy Awards post up, where he notes that Kate Winslet, who's nominated for Best Actress, has "appeared nude in 10 films," which means "on average, Kate's gotten nakies for the camera every 18 months since she turned 18."

Also, Dan Collins gets hip to McCain's "Rule #5" (or, check out three beautiful lovies you don't want to miss).

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UPDATE II: Penelope Cruz wins Best Supporter Actress honors!

The Los Angeles Times is live-blogging:

Wow, what an acceptance speech from Penelope Cruz. That was her mother she kissed. She used her extra tickets to bring her brother, sister, and her childhood friend. Her dad went with her to the Golden Globes and Baftas. She told us ahead of time she was not going to prepare a speech. She opened with such a nice moment - "Has anyone ever fainted up here? I might be the first" and then ending with a salute to the unity of the Oscars and wrapping up in Spanish.

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UPDATE III: Ann Althouse is live-blogging after all:

7:43: Best Supporting Actress ... a stripper need never take off her dignity with her clothes... blah blah... bullshit. Ugh! this is boring. So so stilted. But yay! Penélope Cruz, won. I love her.

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UPDATE IV: It's quite a different-styled production, and while I think Hugh Jackman's doing well overall, I was curious as to the five-actor teams of previous Oscar winners who announced the nominees for Best Supporting roles. Check out this, from Niki Finke's Deadline:

The producers ... have dissed last year's actor winners by deciding that France's Marion Cotillard (Best Actress for La Vie En Rose) and Spain's Javier Bardem (Best Supporting Actor for No Country For Old Men), Scotland's Tilda Swinton (Best Supporting Actress for Michael Clayton) and even England's Daniel Day-Lewis (Best Actor for There Will Be Blood) weren't big enough names to carry on the time-honored tradition of announcing this year's winners by themselves. So, I've learned, the unusual step will be taken to bring onstage from a riser 5-person groups of other Best Actor or Best Supporting Actress winners from past eras in order to add more glitz and glamor to the presentations.

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UPDATE V: Check again at the Los Angeles Times' entertainment page for all the news and glamour on tonight's awards show. The New York Times has a big wrap up, "A ‘Slumdog’ Kind of Night at the Oscar Ceremony ."

I felt badly at the end of the broadcast, when Sean Penn won Best Actor for Milk, for all the other nominees would did not win. I'll never forget in 1997, Juliette Binoche won Best Actress for her role in The English Patient. She beat out Lauren Bacall, the grand dame of film noir of the 1940s, who had been nominated her very first time for The Mirror Has Two Faces. Bacall was visibly shaken at not winning the award, and there have been other times where the cameras flash across the faces, only to register the pain of loss.

I didn't get a look at Mickey Rourke tonight, but I'm sure it may well have been heartbreaking for him to come so far on his comeback and lose out at the end. That's some brutal competition.

It's a strange thing, all of it.

Reconciliation on Gay Marriage?

David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch have an essential essay today at the New York Times, "A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage":

It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill ....

Linking federal civil unions to guarantees of religious freedom seems a natural way to give the two sides something they would greatly value while heading off a long-term, take-no-prisoners conflict. That should appeal to cooler heads on both sides, and it also ought to appeal to President Obama, who opposes same-sex marriage but has endorsed federal civil unions ....

In all sharp moral disagreements, maximalism is the constant temptation. People dig in, positions harden and we tend to convince ourselves that our opponents are not only wrong-headed but also malicious and acting in bad faith. In such conflicts, it can seem not only difficult, but also wrong, to compromise on a core belief.

But clinging to extremes can also be quite dangerous. In the case of gay marriage, a scorched-earth debate, pitting what some regard as nonnegotiable religious freedom against what others regard as a nonnegotiable human right, would do great harm to our civil society. When a reasonable accommodation on a tough issue seems possible, both sides should have the courage to explore it.

Read the whole thing, here (via Memeorandum).

I doubt we'll find a better case for gay marriage compromise than this. As Dale Carpenter notes:

Rauch and Blankenhorn are among the ablest defenders of their respective positions, pro and con gay marriage, in the country. Both have written excellent books on the subject. What they say will be noticed by all sides, especially because they say it together. There will be strong objections on both sides: from SSM opponents who oppose recognition in principle and not just for instrumental reasons, and from SSM supporters who will worry about the practical consequences and who will wonder why such marriages alone will be qualified by morals exemptions ....

The devil is in the details ... but the op-ed starts a conversation about federal legislation that might be politically achievable in the near future.

Here's Rob Vischer's response, at PrawfBlawg:

For someone (like me) who believes that the legal treatment of same-sex relationships should remain a state-level responsibility, who believes that the law will (and should) do more to support long-term, committed relationships among gays and lesbians, and who is concerned that the rhetoric of "marriage equality" has shown a tendency to minimize the importance of religious liberty (especially institutional religious liberty), what's not to like about this proposal?

Not too much, in my opinion, but here's a taste of the "strong objections" that Carpenter envisions, from Pam Spaulding:

I have a problem with this already, though I see where they are trying to accomplish - getting same-sex couples access to the rights and benefits of civil marriage and cede the word marriage to those who cannot decouple it from religious marriage in their heads ... but Blankenhorn and Rauch's solution, by accommodating the "misunderstanding" about the word marriage -- rather than redefining it (something that has occurred countless times in the past), chooses to draw an institutionalized line of discrimination. Many of the same excuses for bans on interracial marriage revolved around religious objections to it, with scripture cited about the morality of race mixing ....

Sorry to say, our opponents are acting in bad faith. They attempt to sway positions with outright lies, such as conflating homosexuality with bestiality, thus leading to, say, man-goat nuptials, something that has nothing to do with any sane religious conviction, btw. That's extremism and intellectually bankrupt fear-mongering. The problem with the religious right is that they don't want any compromise, because the ultimate goal is to have government intervention and control on all matters of sex and reproductive freedom -- those are issues that extend way beyond civil marriage or social security benefits for same-sex spouses.

If anything, the marriage equality movement has been the faction constantly forced into compromise in the form of separate and unequal domestic partnerships and civil unions. These are incremental gains that have had a positive impact on same-sex couples, but it has also created this patchwork faux equality that is causing the legal machinations we are seeing.

The flawed premise of this op-ed is that both sides of the issue have equal power; that's illogical. The side on the status quo in this case holds the power and doesn't want to cede any of it, obviously, because it sees that granting the power of civil equality is threat to its vision of the country and the existence of marriage as they understand it. The side of social change always has the uphill battle, and the law leads, not follows the people when it is a contentious issue. And even when the law extends civil rights, that doesn't mean the public is ready to or willing to accept that change. We're clearly still fighting race-based civil rights issues, and that reflects a society that has not fully matured on the matter. It will be no different as LGBTs win civil rights, one by one.

Actually, Pam Spaulding imputes things to the traditionalist side that are virtually unheard of outside of the radical left's fever swamps? Bestiality? I've been blogging about this issue for months, and I can't recall the word ever being used by conservatives, or anything close to it. Not only that, where Blankenhorn and Rauch eschew taking sides, Spaulding adopts the stance of victimology. But Indeed, those "misunderstandings" on definition of marriage are found among gay rights advocates on the left, not of traditionalists, so her point's evasive, if not dishonest.

No doubt the left will smear advocates of even a fair-minded and reasonable proposal as bigots and religious fanatics. That said, I appreciate Blankenhorn and Rauch's serious effort to point the way ahead. We'll be seeing a lot more controversy over the issue, and real soon, considering the pending California ruling on Proposition 8.

So, stay tuned ...

Motivations of Contemporary Atheists

You know, I've spent a lot of time since the election thinking about the godlessness and moral relativism of the contemporary left.

So many - note that, many - of them extoll their atheism and they readily attack "Christianists" for their traditional values. Modern leftists excoriate traditionalists as blithering idiots or backwood hicks, or worse. Especially in the context of same-same marriage, where the debate is so intense, even violent, the more you listen to these people, the more clear it is that today's radicals want a wholesale revolution in society's moral regime, so they can "have it their way."

In any case, Dinesh D'Souza explains all of this perfectly in his interview at Salvo Magazine:

Atheists spend a lot of time thinking about the motives for belief. Why do religious people believe these ridiculous things? When you turn the tables on atheists and ask them why they don't believe, they will answer, "Because we don't have enough evidence. We don't believe because there's no proof." But if you think about it, this is an inadequate explanation, because if you truly believe that there is no proof for God, then you're not going to bother with the matter. You're just going to live your life as if God isn't there.

I don't believe in unicorns, so I just go about my life as if there are no unicorns. You'll notice that I haven't written any books called The End of the Unicorn, Unicorns Are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion, and I don't spend my time obsessing about unicorns. What I'm getting at is that you have these people out there who don't believe that God exists, but who are actively attempting to eliminate religion from society, setting up atheist video shows, and having atheist conferences. There has to be more going on here than mere unbelief.

If you really look at the motivations of contemporary atheists, you'll find that they don't even really reject Christian theology. It's not as if the atheist objects to the resurrection or the parting of the sea; rather, it is Christian morality to which atheists object, particularly Christian moral prohibitions in the area of sex. The atheist looks at all of Christianity's "thou shalt nots"—homosexuality is bad; divorce is bad; adultery is bad; premarital sex is bad—and then looks at his own life and says, "If these things are really bad, then I'm a bad guy. But I'm not a bad guy; I'm a great guy. I must thus reinterpret or (preferably) abolish all of these accusatory teachings that are putting me in a bad light."

How does one do that? One way is liberal Christianity—you simply reinterpret Christian teachings as if they don't really mean what they say. The better way, of course, is to ask where morality comes from. Well, it comes from one of two places. It either comes from ourselves—these are the rules that we make up as we go along—or it comes from some transcendent source. To get rid of God, then, is to remove the shadow of moral judgment. This doesn't mean that you completely eliminate morality, but it does mean that you reduce morality to a tool that human societies construct for their own advantages. It means that morality can change, and that old rules can be set aside. You can see why this would be a very attractive proposition for the guy who wants to live his life unmolested by the injunctions and prohibitions of Christian morality.

Hat Tip: Hot Air.

Worst President Ever...

I know, I know ... it's too soon to say if Barack Obama will go down as the worst president in history, but after just the first month of stumbles, and by the looks of the incredible grassroots anti-porkulus activism around the nation, "The One" sure is swinging for the bleachers.

But it's not just Obama's stimulus socialism. Scott at Flopping Aces has a run-down:

* He takes Bush’s position on warrantless wiretaps.

* He hires cronies for political appointments.

* He increases the deficit by a trillion or more (and that’s just his first month!) .

* He stops giving detainees trials.

* He hasn’t closed Gitmo (issued an order to try, but Bush tried too).

* He will still do renditions.

* He wrote caveats into his own Exec Orders to still allow for torture like water-boarding.

* He put a guy in charge at CIA who admits to doing 60-80 renditions HIMSELF.

* He sent 17000 Americans to Afghanistan w no plan and no timeline for withdrawal.

* He has not ordered the withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months.

* He ignored millions of Americans devastated by an ice storm in Tennesee, W Virginia, and Kentucky.

* He has NOT HELPED the economy one bit.

* He has no plan to solve even a single challenge facing his admin.

Oh well, at least he has a D next to his name and can read a teleprompter.

WORST PRESIDENT EVER.

Robert Stacy McCain's Full Metal Blogging

I'm still holding out on switching to the full advertising mode for this blog (although PrivatePigg certainly warmed me up to it a bit), but if folks have contemplated making a living as a blogger, look no further than Robert Stacy McCain for inspiration.

"The Other McCain" likes folks to call him by his middle name, so go check out "Stacy's" blog for today's lesson on building traffic, "Notes on Rule 4 ("Make Some Enemies"), which is a reference to a key section in his landmark recent post, "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year."

If you read Stacy's stuff regularly, you'll find that nothing's sacred - no issue and no blogger can find a snark-free zone when "Mr. Qwerty-quick" fingertips is on the assignment. Stacy's fair though - perhaps to a fault - as we can see in the decency of his commentary on Andrew Sullivan - a guy who's pretty much gone overboard, but perhaps has enough in the political-capital bank to stay relevant to the left-wing. And be sure to check Stacy's link to this essay at The Nation, where the "excitable one's" identification as "the neoconservative gay pundit" just about made me boogie to the bathroom on a porcelain-hurl run (and don't even get me going about the post-neo pomos at the Extraordinary Gentlemen!)

But read the whole post, in any case, "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog in Less Than a Year, and especially "Rule #5" on "hottie blogging":

* A. Everybody loves a pretty girl -- It's not just guys who enjoy staring at pictures of hotties. If you've ever picked up Cosmo or Glamour, you realize that chicks enjoy looking at pretty girls, too. (NTTAWWT.) Maybe it's the vicious catty she-thinks-she's-all-that factor, or the schadenfreude of watching a human trainwreck like Britney Spears, but no one can argue that celebrity babes generate traffic. Over at Conservative Grapevine, the most popular links are always the bikini pictures. And try as I might to make "logical arguments" for tax cuts, wouldn't you rather watch Michelle Lee Muccio make those arguments?

Now you know why I've got that beautiful picture of Fox News' Jamie Colby up there on top. Coffee and Colby on the weekends is what gets me fired-up for my heavy-duty early-morning writing sessions (I wrote an essay on the Fairness Doctrine this morning for Pajamas, which will probably be available early next week). So, there'll be more women around here, and folks'll have a bit of a respite from the full-bore high-powered neoconservative analysis that's the staple of American Power.

But wait! I'm currently working on Stacy's last directive:

* D. Feminism sucks -- You can never go wrong in the blogosphere by having a laugh at the expense of feminists. All sane people hate feminism, and no one hates feminism more than smart, successful, independent women who've made it on their own without all that idiotic "Sisterhood Is Powerful" groupthink crap.

That's right. I picked up a copy of Andrea Dworkin's Intercourse last night, which includes this for a teaser:

Can a man read Intercourse? ... Can a man read a book written by a woman in which she, the author, has a direct relationship to experience, ideas, literature, life, including fucking, without mediation - such that what she says and how she says it are not determined by boundaries men have set for her? Can a man read a woman's work if it does not say what he already knows? Can a man let in a challenge not just to his dominance but to his cognition? And, specifically, am I saying that I know more than men about fucking? Yes, I am. Not just different: more and better, deeper and wider, the way anyone used knows the user.

And that's just from the preface, so I'll keep readers updated with further installments from Intercourse (but check Cassy Fiano in the meanwhile, who's practiced at smacking-down the Dworkin-types).

In any case, that's all for this installment of the "Full-Metal Blogging" thing!

Worst Case Scenario? American Survivor Edition

Well, I'm pleased to notify readers that I beat Allahpundit to the Glenn Beck's "American apocalypse" story with my entry yesterday, "Worst Case Scenario? Preparing for Anarchy in America."

Allahpundit's piece, "Glenn Beck: The End of America is Nigh, Maybe," sounds a bit whacked at first, but check it out:

Even before watching this, if you’d asked me which media star’s most likely to turn survivalist, move to the mountains, and start doing his show from a lead-lined bunker, there’s no doubt what the answer would have been. There’s something “off” about Beck in a way that’s not true of other chat-show hosts, although that’s not necessarily a criticism: O’Reilly and Hannity can be tiresome in more than small doses but this guy I find watchable even at a stretch. Partly it’s the sheer bravado of the performance, partly it’s the challenge of trying to figure out what’s going on in his head to make him the way he is. As big an audience as he has, I’m surprised it’s not bigger. He’s one of a kind.

Videos of yesterday's entire show are at the link.

Some of the commenters at my post yesterday thought this stuff is out there, but Bloviating Zeppelin puts things in perspective:

You know sir, at first blush it's easy to dismiss those who may be motivated for preparation as merely apocalyptical moonbats requiring a tinfoil refit. However, at my advanced age, I am more inclined to fit into this category than any other. At 60, educated, BA in english and communications studies (hoped for an entire career in radio many years ago) and a recent Masters in emergency services (applicable to my job in law enforcement), I am yet and still of the opinion that we are about to witness a true landslide of biblical proportions.

I've lived 75 miles away from my job since 1993. I live at the 4,000-foot level in the Sierra Nevada mountains where most people know me in town, the Postmaster knows me, the store owner knows me, I can run a tab if I wish (but I don't wish), and I can leave the keys in my car on Main Street all day. I frequently leave my car running when I go for mail at the post office, or to pick up items in the store. Everyone in town knows, essentially, that everyone else is armed. Resultingly, it is predominantly a polite town. I've carried for years, due to my job. I was the recent Rangemaster for my 2,500+ officer department. I have long guns, handguns, a shotgun. I have requisite ammunition.

Given the current course of events as I've documented here and here, I am of the opinion that protests, marches, organizational resistance and then possible violent insurrection are likely in our future.

I can tell you that, by that time, I shall be retired and likely standing against the government that, as an active officer, I swore to uphold. My guns are mine. I bought them, lawfully. My ammunition is mine, I bought it lawfully. My thoughts and writings are mine, I hold them in my heart. My philosophy is mine, I've developed it over five decades. My religious beliefs are mine, I've seen them upheld in the world. My sense of history is mine, I still have a memory and am not subject to convenient Liberal Historical Alzheimers.

Gird thy loins, Americans. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Go check out BZ additional thoughts on all of this, at "Fomenting Civil War."

Al Qaeda Militants in Orange County, California

I first saw this story last night at Jawa Report, and it's creepy.

Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, who is the brother-in-law of Amin al-Haqan, an Afghan al-Qaeda operative and bodyguard to Osama bin Laden, has been arrested by federal officials in Tustin, California, on immigration-related charges. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Tustin man of Afghan origin, who failed to mention in his application for U.S. citizenship that his brother-in-law is designated as an Al Qaeda terrorist, appeared in federal court Friday to answer charges that could send him to prison for 35 years.

Ahmadullah Sais Niazi's detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana was postponed until Tuesday, but the 34-year-old defendant used the occasion to accuse federal agents of trying to force him to become an informant ....

Federal agents descended Friday at dawn on the tract home in Tustin where Niazi has lived for at least eight years with his wife and three young children. He submitted quietly to the arrest, and stunned neighbors watched for three hours as agents, some in body armor, searched the single-story house for evidence that Niazi lied to government officials about his background and foreign travel.

A five-count grand jury indictment, handed up a week ago and kept under seal until Friday, charged Niazi with two counts of perjury and one count each of naturalization fraud, misuse of a passport obtained by fraud and making a false statement to a federal agency.

Niazi, who has lived in the United States since 1998 and earned citizenship five years ago, is related by marriage to Amin al-Haq, an Afghan militant who fought the Soviet occupation of the 1980s with a U.S.-backed Islamic resistance force that now is branded an Al Qaeda affiliate.

Al-Haq is married to Niazi's sister, Hafiza, and is said to be Osama bin Laden's security coordinator. The 49-year-old Afghan was identified by the United Nations Security Council as an Al Qaeda operative in March 2001 and listed as a "specially designated global terrorist" by the U.S. government a month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Al-Haq's name came up during the terrorism trial of Bin Laden's driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, last year. There have been recent unconfirmed reports that Al-Haq has been detained by Pakistani security forces.

Niazi said he and other family members were upset by his sister's marriage because of Al-Haq's "past activities," an FBI agent who interviewed Niazi almost a year ago reported in a search warrant request that a federal magistrate approved Thursday.

This is unreal. According to the mapped location of Niazi's home, my son's orthodontist's office is basically across the street.

Read the whole thing, in any case. The Times' piece suggests that federal officials may have arrested Niazi after he refused to cooperate with the government as an informant. Niazi and his wife, Jamilah Romlas Amin, who is also a U.S. citizen, have wired $48,000 in remittances to relatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan over the last 8 years, and their close family members are suspected of transferring $364,000 to relatives overseas through a Cambodian bank.

Jawa Report has the posted a copy of the full federal indictment.

Tea Time? Anti-Stimulus Protests Surge Nationwide

Investor's Business Daily reports on the wave of anti-stimulus protests taking place nationwide:

Holding signs reading "Stimulate Business, Not Government," "Families Against Porkulus" and "Say No To Generational Theft," protesters opposed to the $787 billion stimulus package have been mobilizing across the country.

It started last Monday in Seattle, then moved Tuesday to Denver, where President Obama signed the stimulus bill into law. That was followed by another one in Mesa, Ariz., where Obama unveiled a mortgage rescue plan.

Another protest was planned for Saturday outside the office of Rep. Dennis Moore in Overland Park, Kan. The Democrat voted for the stimulus. His office didn't return calls seeking comment.

As unemployment soars and anger over Wall Street bailouts mounts, public outrage will seek an outlet. Populism could go in many directions — and could easily ebb when the economy revives.

But if it takes shape as an anti-spending movement, it could revive conservatives much as the 1970s tax protests did.

To be sure, the protest sizes so far are a far cry from the left's anti-globalization and anti-war demonstrations of the past decade. But they appear to have grass-roots origins. The organizer of the Kansas protest, Amanda Grosserode, calls herself a home-schooling mom who is "fed up" with the spending in Washington. She has been a member of Fair Tax Kansas City since last fall.

"My husband and I were feeling frustrated that the stimulus had passed with very little debate and no one had read it," she told IBD. "I said, 'We need to do something.' "

She began contacting family and friends, and eventually received attention via Fair Tax Kansas City and local talk radio.

Grosserode received considerably more publicity after e-mailing popular conservative commentator and blogger Michelle Malkin.

"I think the taxpayer revolt is the new counterculture," said Malkin, who has been publicizing the protests on her blog. "People want to stand up and say, 'Hey, I'm paying for that, I do not support that.' "

Malkin, who lives near Denver, attended the Mile High City protest, which also involved conservative groups like the Independence Institute, a Colorado think tank.

Michelle Malkin has been all over the issue, hammering the leftocrats. See, for example, "Tea Party U.S.A.: The Movement Grows."

Cartoon Credit: Michael Ramirez.

Islamic Radicalization and the West

I received a pointed e-mail this morning from a hostile reader, Maysoon Zayid, with the subject heading, "Racist":

Scott Peterson beheaded his wife ... was he Muslim? No! This is a case of pure domestic violence. It's a male issue, not Muslim ...

So continues the intense pushback against the possibility that the murder of Aasiya Hassan was not an "honor killing." Even Kamran Pasha, the Muslim author of a Huffington Post essay on the topic, weighed in at the comments, emphatically claiming, "'Honor killings' - the murder of an innocent woman to avenge some sense of 'personal honor' - are not part of Islam's true teachings or Prophet Muhammad's life example."

Well, on top of this, it turns out we have more news suggesting that the American Muslim community's campaign is escalating against the "honor killing" meme. As the New York Times reports this morning:

At 4:30 p.m. today at The Islamic Society of Niagara Frontier in Amherst, N.Y., the president of the Islamic Society of North America, Ingrid Mattson, and Salma Elkadi Abugideiri, the author of the book “Garments for One Another: Ending Domestic Violence in Muslim Families,” will be facilitating a discussion “in memory” of Ms. Hassan.

The Muslim-American community in Buffalo and around the United States has reacted with outrage over suggestions that this was a religiously motivated killing, an “honor killing” brought on by the shame of Mr. Hassan’s wife seeking a divorce.

Why is the public discussion so heated on this one killing? Most of the media coverage so far has been local to Buffalo, with the exception of some reporting on Fox News - and there's a clue. The left-wing media, in tandem with the Islamic community, wants to quickly quash "honor killing" talk. Should that meme gain a credible foothold in the national discussion, the notion that Muzzammil Hassan was a "moderate" Muslim would be obliterated, and of course conservative cultural arguments in the larger war-on-terror narrative would be all the more compelling. In other words, we're witnessing a high-stakes media framing-battle of epic cultural and political proportions.

Notice, for example, in Mark Steyn's essay this morning, how Britain has capitulated to the forces of pro-Islamist political correctness. Steyn suggests that the Muslim extremists have migrated from Pakistan to London:

Among the growing population of Yorkshire Pakistanis is a fellow called Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of Parliament. He threatened "to bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the House of Lords" if it went ahead with an event at which the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders would have introduced a screening of his controversial film "Fitna."

Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, reacted to this by declaring Wilders persona non grata and having him arrested and returned to the Netherlands.

Smith is best known for an inspired change of terminology: last year she announced that henceforth Muslim terrorism (an unhelpful phrase) would be reclassified as "anti-Islamic activity." Seriously. The logic being that Muslims blowing stuff up tends not to do much for Islam's reputation – i.e., it's an "anti-Islamic activity" in the same sense that Pearl Harbor was an anti-Japanese activity.

Steyn continues by noting that the greatest population growth in many of the world's Western nations is found in the Muslim communities:

Along with the demographic growth has come radicalization: It's not just that there are more Muslims, but that, within that growing population, moderate Islam is on the decline – in Singapore, in the Balkans, in northern England – and radicalized, Arabized, Wahhabized Islam is on the rise. So we have degrees of accommodation: surrender in Islamabad, appeasement in London, acceptance in Toronto and Buffalo.

Yep, accomodate, or you'll be branded as "racist" for even entertaining the concept that Muzzammil Hassan's alleged beheading of his wife is a classic case of Muslim honor killing.

And note as well Steyn's inclusion of Buffalo, New York, in the listing of Western cities lying down for Islamic radicals.

Despite signs of accommodation in New York to the Islamic interest coalition today, the debate over Mrs. Hassan's murder continues. Phyllis Chesler has a new piece on the question, "Beheadings and Honor Killings," and she points to an essay from World Net Daily, "Beheader Hubby Was Hero to U.S. Muslim Activists," which notes:

According to a Council on Foreign Relations report, David Powers, a professor of Islamic law and history at Cornell University, explained that the Quran permits men to use physical force against disobedient wives in some circumstances. A woman may ask for divorce, but only a man can grant her request.

"Classical Shariah lays out very limited conditions under which a woman can divorce a man – he must be infertile at the time of marriage; insane; or have leprosy or another contagious skin disease," the CFR report states.

Indeed, as scholar Timothy Furnish has written, the practice of Islamic decapitation "has both Qur'anic and historical sanction. It is not the product of a fabricated tradition."

Considering how hard the Muslim lobby is pushing back on this, it remains to be seen if the left's disinformation campaign against this scholarly consensus carries the day.

Indeed, new cries of "racism" and "bigotry" are already being hurled.

Worst Case Scenario? Preparing for Anarchy in America

I just watched Glenn Beck's show on Fox News. He's been doing a series of broadcasts on impending, all-out social breakdown, and he asks, "Our government thinks it needs to be prepared for the worst-case scenario. Why would it be crazy for you to want the same thing?"

Here's the video:

That's the conclusion to the episode.

At the introduction he's talking about at the total collapse of the United States by 2014. All banks have been nationalized. Business and unions are run by the government. 50 million people are unemployed worldwide, and countries have collapsed. Mexico has been taken over by narco-terrorists. He even had to run a disclaimer at the beginning of the show, lest people think this was like "War of the Worlds."

The funny thing is that I just went out to lunch with a former student of mine and we were discussing this exact same thing.

I mentioned what I saw as frightening left-wing craziness and moral breakdown across the land, and I said off-hand that we needed to dig in our heels and fight the Obama hordes who are nationalizing everything. I suggested that we could have Democrats in power for two terms or more, and the total breakdown of society wasn't that far-fetched. Oh sure, we'd still have constitutional democracy, but America would be different: Abortion on demand, marriage abolished in favor of a civil-union smorgasbord, our military downsized and hollowed out, backed by unconditional diplomacy with our enemies from Caracas to Southern Lebanon to Tehran. Multiculturalism takes over the schools with conservatism and traditional speech prohibited under a new regime of "hate crimes" legislation (which is starting to happen now, for example, UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, "Hate Speech on Commercial Talk Radio").

My friend said he was thinking about buying a little house out in Montana or somewhere so he'd have a retreat for his family if the country erupted into Katrina-like anarchy on a national scale. He mentioned that California is expecting a Biblical-level earthquake at any time, and our state government is totally incompetent. He wants to be ready.

I spoke with another friend about this, and here's a snippet of what her family has been doing amid real concerns of American anarchy:

I think that there is going to be a serious shortage of food, and personally, we have been buying food for storage for the past few months, and will continue to do so.

Besides the food, we are stocking up on many other essentials ... like over-the-counter meds, and first aid supplies. We are stocking multi-vitamins and minerals, allergy meds, ibuprophen, etc. We are in town, which concerns me, but there is not much that we can do about that, now. As things progress, there are going to be roaming gangs of people, taking whatever they can get from anyone who has anything.

Up until last year, we never owned any kind of weapon, and now we have five. I don't know if you are aware of this, or not, but it is getting harder and harder to buy ammo..stores are selling out as quickly as they get it in ... and the price is going up by the week. Food prices are increasing rapidly. We are very aware of it ... Even in those stores, some items have increased as much as a dollar or more on some items.

I have a friend who was a teacher in Texas, who moved his entire family to Idaho, and built a home in the mountains, and has been stocking it for a long time. Another friend is on a mountain, outside of Atlanta, and he has made his home like a fortress.

So, let's think about Glenn Beck's hypothetical question, "Would it be crazy for us to prepare for a worst-case scenario"?

I don't really think so, although look at how easy it is for extreme left-wing blogger Dave Neiwert to smear Glenn Beck as an apocalyptic crackpot. I'm sure the prospect of conservative annihilation warms his heart.

Things are seriously out of whack in this country. My basic sense is that the economy will work its way out of recession in the next year or two. Companies will start hiring and investing, the housing market should bottom-out before too long (on its own, via the price mechanism and the shake out in toxic mortgages), and the Republican Party will emerge out of its current funk to offer up a credible - and potentially sensational - challenger to the White House in 2012.

That said, a possible two-terms of Barack Obama, and perhaps another Democratic administration after that, will leave a legacy of increasing socialization and social-leveling, while a growing moral decay sweeps across the land among the "multi-culti" constituencies of the Democratic Party establishment.

It is no wonder why regular Americans are making preparations for some type of end-times scenario. Taking into consideration what has happened in Washington this past couple of weeks, who can second guess them?

Jesus Christ: Dead Nihilist of the Week?

Where do we draw the line on respectable blogging? Is there no standard below which leftists will sink to ridicule and demonize?

To wit, at Repsac3's attack blog, American Nihilist, we have this post from Truth101, "Dead Nihilist of the Week - Jesus."

Folks can read the whole thing at the link, but even those who are but moderately religious would recoil at the blasphemy. Indeed, I have received this e-mail from a reader commenting on Repsac3 and his fellow bloggers:

The more I read the things these guys write, the more appalled I am at the way they seem to revel in their godlessness, as evidenced by their mockery and ridicule of God, and the Bible.

If they were as wise as they believe themselves to be, they would realize how close they have come to blasphemy, and instead of being in derision, they would be in fear - and since they are so familiar with the Bible, they should, also, know about this verse: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good," Psalm 14:1.

Moral-Economy and the Housing Bailout

David Brooks makes a fundamental point concerning the current rage for bailout politics:

Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible ...

That pretty much sums up my own feelings, and I'm facing some potentially wrenching personal economic change later this year, when I look to negotiate new terms with my mortgage banker, or failing that, to sell my home. Whatever I do, I'm not asking for any "bailout," and I'll accept the consequences of my own financial decisions regarding the purchase of my house.

In any case, the Los Angeles Times has a good piece on folks on both side of the debate, in Long Beach, where I teach: "Housing Relief Becomes a Fence Between Neighbors":

Ledeen Halloran and Harry Snegg live a few houses apart on Claiborne Drive in Long Beach. They both have good jobs, they both voted for John McCain -- and they both have seen their home values fall more than 40%.

But when it comes to their views on mortgage relief, these two neighbors are on different sides of the street.

Halloran, 50, is a fan of President Obama's new plan to stave off foreclosures and thinks it could provide the cushion she needs to stay in her home.

"These bad mortgages started this whole recession, and if they don't do something about it we can't turn things around," she said.

Snegg, 62, thinks the $75-billion plan amounts to a taxpayer-funded bailout for people who either couldn't manage their money or took a gamble to score easy winnings in the real estate boom.

"People should get some help, but I don't think I should have to pay for it," Snegg said.

Halloran and Snegg represent a debate that is happening across the country, although the two neighbors say they mostly keep their views to themselves.

Snegg, who is divorced, worries that talking too negatively about people who are hurting isn't very neighborly. Halloran, also divorced, said she hadn't told her mother or her friends that she was having trouble with her mortgage.

Halloran moved into the Bixby Knolls neighborhood of 1940s-era homes in 1996. In 2006, she was thinking about selling and moving to the East Coast, to be closer to her son's college. So she refinanced her 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, shifting to an adjustable rate loan and tapping some of her equity to pay for renovations.

A few months later, she borrowed against her house again to pay for more home upgrades and to cover her son's tuition.

There was one hitch, however: Her loan had an option that allowed her to pay the interest only, but when she did, the unpaid principal was added to her balance. Now her mortgage exceeds the value of her home by about $150,000, and her $3,400-a-month payment is more than an entire two-week paycheck.

"I cut out coffee. I cut out movies. I cut out all kinds of things I was buying at the grocery store," Halloran said. "But when my property tax comes due in March, I'm probably not going to be able to pay."

Gone are thoughts of selling the home, and she worries that by this summer she will fall behind on her payments and lose it to the bank.

Halloran blames herself for spending money she did not have, but she also says her mortgage broker and the bank that gave her the loan -- the now failed Downey Savings & Loan in Newport Beach -- promised lower payments. The loan documents she signed show an initial payment of $2,900 a month. Her first bill was for $4,200 a month.

"We shouldn't get help for free," Halloran said. "There should be some penalty to the homeowner, but without some help, there are going to be a lot more people losing their homes."

Officials at U.S. Bancorp, which now owns Downey, said they could not comment on Halloran's loan.

A few houses down, Snegg says he knows full well the pain of foreclosure: He went through it himself in 1995.

At that time, he said, a downturn in the economy forced his advertising firm into bankruptcy. He tried to refinance his loan but, with home values sinking, could not secure a new loan with better terms.

So when he bought his current home in 2001, Snegg said he decided to play it safe. He took out a 30-year mortgage at an interest rate of 6.5% and resisted the urge to refinance at a lower rate, avoiding the associated fees.

"Interest rates are so low I sometimes feel foolish for not refinancing," he said.

He said he doesn't want people like Halloran to be forced out of their homes, but he also doesn't want to see his taxes raised in the future to cover the expanding government debt.

"I feel for people who are having trouble," Snegg said. "I've been there. And when I was in foreclosure, there were no government bailouts."

Snegg thinks that banks that have received taxpayer dollars through the Troubled Asset Relief Plan should use some of that money to help people like Halloranby granting easier payment terms.

But having the government take the extra step of actually giving banks more money to help Halloran cover her payments seems too far, he said.

There's more at the link.

I'll be writing more about this stuff as the months go by, but see my earlier post from this morning, "Perverse Incentives in Obama's Housing Plan."

Also, see Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, where after noting she scrimped and saved and budgeted to buy a house, we have this:

The larger picture is not "Where's my government handout?", but what the consequences are of letting millions of people be foreclosed out of their houses. What happens to a neighborhood when a third, or half, of your neighbors are forced out of their houses, which then fall into disrepair? What good is your gourmet kitchen going to do you when the house next door is boarded up after vandals come in and strip it of all the copper piping? The reality is that the age of "I got mine and fuck you" is over. The days of looking over one's shoulder to make sure that scapegoat-of-choice doesn't get a piece of the action are over. Like it or not, we are all in this mess together.

So, now we should socialize responsibility? I doubt that's the American way.

Jeffrey Goldberg Eviscerates Glenn Greenwald in One Paragraph

You know, I've been highly critical of Jeffrey Goldberg in the past, but the guy's actually growing on me a bit. Indeed, he wrote some of the most interesting essays during the recent Israel-Gaza war, brutally honest and fully respectable.

His reputation is getting another boost this afternoon with this brief but devastating takedown of Glenn Greenwald, "Glenn Greenwald is Hysterical":

Not funny-hysterical, just hysterical. I think he feels badly about writing for The American Conservative, maybe because he knows that writing for a magazine founded by Pat Buchanan and animated by Buchanan's hostility to Jews and to Israel is a self-marginalizing act for any Jewish person trying to convince other Jews to leave Team AIPAC and support J Street. I don't read Greenwald very much - only when Andrew links to him - but his characterization of my politics means that he's either dishonest or ignorant. If he hasn't read what I've written about, say, the settlements, or about AIPAC, then he's not qualified to comment on my politics. If he has read these articles, then he knows that I'm not a revanchist Zionist, but falsely accuses me of being one anyway. What a putz.

Now that's some decent blogging!

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For reference, see Glenn Greenwald, "Jeffrey Goldberg's Gasping, Dying Smear Tactics" (have doggy bags handy while reading this post).

See also, Robert Stacy McCain, "Glenn Greenwald: 'No Anti-Semite Could Possibly Hate Me Worse Than I Hate Myself'

Perverse Incentives in Obama's Housing Plan

The evidence is coming in immediately for the perverse market effects of President Barack Obama's mortgage-relief plan. Check out the guy below, who's facing foreclosure, and with the announcement of the Obama plan, his mortgage company is "barrreling full-force to take me out of this house":

I wrote about the inherent inequities in the mortgage-bailout plan yesterday (lots of folks "underwater" who continue to pay the bills will get no relief). Not only that, the administration may very well be saving untold numbers of borrowers who were untruthful in their original mortgage applications; and further, the mortgage "cram-down" provisions could "would jeopardize the endangered capital of banks, pension funds and other holders of such securities, including the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

As regular readers know, I'm interested to see how all of this turns out, so stay tuned ...

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The iReport link is here. It's tough to watch this guy, but be sure to read the comments for a flavor of the social divisions caused by any housing bailout.

Bikini-Clad Women as Objects, or Why I Like Going to the Beach...

You've got to love this CNN story, "Men See Bikini-Clad Women as Objects, Psychologists Say":

It may seem obvious that men perceive women in sexy bathing suits as objects, but now there's science to back it up.

New research shows that, in men, the brain areas associated with handling tools and the intention to perform actions light up when viewing images of women in bikinis.

The research was presented this week by Susan Fiske, professor of psychology at Princeton University, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"This is just the first study which was focused on the idea that men of a certain age view sex as a highly desirable goal, and if you present them with a provocative woman, then that will tend to prime goal-related responses," she told CNN.

Although consistent with conventional wisdom, the way that men may depersonalize sexual images of women is not entirely something they control. In fact, it's a byproduct of human evolution, experts say. The first male humans had an incentive to seek fertile women as the means of spreading their genes.

"They're not fully conscious responses, and so people don't know the extent to which they're being influenced," Fiske said. "It's important to recognize the effects."

Umm, I'm reminded of my breast blogging on Ann Althouse. Cracker asked how do I respond to "questions about the blog author's obsession with another blog author's breasts"?

Well, let's just chaulk it up to evolutionary biology, or as Jimmy Carter once said:

I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times.... This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it.

And don't forget, as Little Miss Attilla has noted , "There is a marked tendency for heterosexual men to be interested in women."

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P.S. I'm forwarding this to my breast-blogging mentor, Robert Stacy McCain, for a vote of approval on some shameless blogwhoring.