About writing he writes the phrases what render a thing heart-felt.

What is it about the liberal education monolith that so despises . .

Wait, first: “A new school curriculum which will affect 46 out of 50 states will make it compulsory for at least 70 per cent of books studied to be non-fiction, in an effort to ready pupils for the workplace.”

Right. As you were.

. . the liberal education monolith that so despises our cultural heritage? The bastardization of our history, the assault on values, the trivialization of profound truths that have defined western civilization for 500 years — there is a price to be paid in developing incomplete citizens who ignorant of the arts and unaware of the giants on whose shoulders they are supposed to stand.

‘Are.’ The leftist monolith bastardizes truth with incomplete citizens who tumble from big shoulders. Gads. Remember those filmstrips they made us watch? Oxygen: It’s No Laughing Matter. Make Pals With Your Teeth. Etcetera.

Beyond writing skill, there are the timeless ideas and themes in western literature that form the backbone of our civilization. Cultural relativity aside, there is a patrimony to be handed down from generation to generation that defines who we are and where we’ve been, and points the way to where we should be going. You are not going to discover this patrimony in government publications, but in the tangle of the minds of novelists who bring to life with words a time, a place, a circumstance that teaches us more than how to be a good writer or get a job in some government office someday.

Get most of that? I got stuck on ‘cultural relativity.’ It sounds like something I should know, yet here I am.

But what does it say to students when public schools downgrade the importance of being exposed to the classics? More prosaically, what does it say about the creators of this new curricula who think it’s alright to abandon our most precious heritage in favor of teaching our kids to be drones — uninspired automatons who are churned out of educational factories equipped with the bare minimum to survive?

This many curricula savaging their most precious heritage and rendering them automatons, the uninspired variety. I ask: Who but for Rick blah blah American moonsign and macabre? The gossamer salvo, the plenary ape? Bong Tidings, the axiron vis-a-vis clanking angst.

If you don’t challenge students to better themselves by acquiring knowledge for the sheer joy of learning, teachers, administration, and those governing bodies responsible for educating the young will be rightly seen as abject failures. Removing most good literature from the classroom cuts off a vital link to the past, and it should be fought by those parents and teachers who think kids should graduate as whole people and not simply potential cogs in in a planned economy.

Ricochet, belly wound. Sincerely: The Marksman.

The thing about conservatives is I just don’t know.

Once Obama voiced his support for the Tigers, their defeat was assured. The Giants played marvelously, that’s true, but they should also send a word of thanks to the President. Without the benefit of the curse he laid upon the Tigers, they might not have won.

Those Obama voters who are Detroit Tigers fans might want to rethink their support for the President. It’s really not nice what he did to their team.

But this one’s smart.

Obama didn’t like it during the first presidential debate when Romney said, “You don’t pick winners and losers; you pick losers.” Obama didn’t like it because it’s true. At least this time it was just the World Series in the balance, and not billions of taxpayer dollars.

But now I fully expect the President of the United States to say, “Let me be clear. As I’ve consistently said, and you know this: Go Giants!”

And that one’s smart.

In some ways, the teams reflect the values and image of these disparate cities. The Giants’ players boast a sort of alternative look that rubs some people the wrong way . .

Sure, as a city, San Fran might be more entrepreneurial these days, but Detroit is more culturally conservative and traditional. And it would be an understatement to say they haven’t been through some hard times of late.

Come to think of it, unless you’re from the Bay Area, it’s really hard to imagine why anyone wouldn’t be rooting for the Tigers this year.

So they are all smart.

“How would Lincoln vote in the 2012 election?” The right Reverend Michael Bresciani blogs this at Renew America. It is something he’d like to know. Not really, oh gee, the title’s a ruse. Michael already knows all about the Gentle Man with the Terrycloth Hands from the days when Folks Sat Around Playing Solitaire In Chains.

Any normal school student could research and find the heart of the Lincoln administration and of Lincoln himself, in very short time . . Only a cursory comparison of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama would force any discerning mind to a singular conclusion. One President was the great unifier and the other is the great divider.

I am no expert on Abraham Lincoln. I am hesitant to criticize. But there’s just, well, something about Michael’s argument. Something out of kilter. What is it?

Barack Obama has managed to set brother against brother, women against men and the rich against the poor.

Not sure what it is. Maybe you guys can see it. The devil if I can figure it out.

He has, with the help of the democratically controlled senate and Harry Reid managed to pit the senate against the congress. He has strangled bi-partisan political cooperation to the point of death.

…strange-looking president. Perfect opposition. Howls of victimization. Hysterical rage…

Creating warfare among citizen groups, sectors and individuals has been the hallmark of Barack Obama’s administration. This is hard to understand in view of the fact Obama has stated both that he would like to be a president like Lincoln . .

NOPE. There it goes, lost it. Damn. It was, like, right there and then it was *poof*.

This blog has avoided writing about Sally Quinn for good reason. Moth-brained debutantes, even as they gratifyingly shrivel in old age, are not interesting. But there is regular stupid, and there is this-is-entertaining stupid. Then there is I-saw-a-man-weep-cuz-he-lit-his-own-fart-afire stupid. And then, and only after that, far past that, in a territory where the natives wear bongos and eat the driest dirt so that they may sleep in daytime, there is Sally Quinn.

“What we really believed in and practiced was voodoo, psychic phenomenon, Scottish mysticism, palm reading, astrology, seances, and ghosts. And I have many, many stories about those, real stories. And that — those things were my true religion, aside from dancing.”

Aside from grooving to Pat Boone, Sally practiced ghosts. This would be a Washington Post columnist. Whose beat is religion. Here is the sophisticated scribe on Wednesday’s debate: “Part of claiming your citizenship is claiming a belief in God, even if you are not Christian.” Thanks for informing me I’m not American. Sally shook her dumb ass to Fabian, ran a few seances — ‘Coco Chanel? A maxi with the saffron flats?’ — and now she lectures our President. Really. “If Obama wants to win the next debate, he needs to wear God, as much as it offends him to do so . . ” Talk about gypsy balls. You’d figure Miss Cleo could have just whispered in his dreams.

“Aunt Ruth was psychic, my aunt Maggie was psychic, and I’m psychic. So we actually put hexes on people and they really worked. It was actually really scary and I finally stopped when my brother, who has a PhD. in religion from the University of Chicago and is a theosophist and also a practicing Buddhist, told me I had to cut it out because it would come back at me three times. And you know, anything that I did later that was troublesome, I kept thinking ‘I brought this on myself. I should never have put a hex on her.’”

And now Princess Di is dead. That’s what happens when you snub Sally at the Fire and Ice cotillion. Don’t ever tell me Beltway society is intelligent.

Read this and chuckle. When the wingnuts get this bizarre I consider mocking and finger-pointing to be perfectly civil and acceptable. So knock yourselves out.

. . much of the commentary has focused on Akin’s mistaken belief that women’s bodies have the capacity to “shut down” the reproductive process in cases of rape. . .

Is it such an outlandish idea?

Yes of course. Why must Republicans rescue this Akin fool? Who will change their opinion of him after reading this silly thing? What he said isn’t worthy of discussion. You dismiss it, you dismiss him, and you move on. Or maybe this: light a stick of TNT and stuff it in yer pants.

Is it such an outlandish idea? I looked it up, and it appears that there is no evidence that pregnancies are less likely in cases of rape, but it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility to me. Many things about the human body are peculiar and amazing. And frankly, more people than are today admitting it must believe that a woman’s mental state has something to do with her capacity to conceive.

It’s as crazy as bullshit gets. Good thing we agree about that. But is the silly notion really so bad friends? Is it so horrible for Akin to tell a lie when it feels like the truth to him? Because it feels true to me. O let me introduce myself . .

Consider that every woman (including me) who has ever experienced infertility is told, even by some doctors, that she should try to “relax.”

Though dismissed as a myth for some time, the role of stress in infertility is being reconsidered now by specialists.

. . my name is Mona Charen. And women are just weird aren’t they? So I’m hardly angry at someone who doesn’t understand the gooey things I don’t understand even though I’m a woman and I do admit we’re both totally wrong.

Impressive. Well I’m ready to vote for Todd and Mona if that’s possible. If an Akin/Charen ticket wouldn’t campaign by donning cast iron suits and rallying thunder and lightning. These two, thankfully, are hardly the only goofs in Ronaldus’ House of Nuts:

It is good that Joe Biden is going to the Republican National Convention to hold high the flag of his party. People make fun of his gaffes, of his embarrassing verbal forays, but he’s no fool and he knows how to take it to the other guy.

I doubt your sincerity.

The speech he is working on, to be given in the heart of downtown, just across from the convention site, will be stirring and stentorian: “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Tampa, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Tampon.’”

‘I’m a Tampax.’ Good one. That’s a dig because Joe would have to shrink down and crawl up a women’s vagina. How lame especially when you’re a man. Ditto if you’re running for high office. The conservative sense of humor would have to become plenty more sublime before it approached cerca World War I German. Let me introduce myself . .

I wish that were mine. It came in the mail from a Hollywood screenwriter, one of the gifted conservatives who quietly toil there.

. . my name is Peggy Noonan. Yes it’s Missus Clutches At Pearls. She thinks having the VP call himself “ein Tampon” puts her in Oscar Wilde’s company. Back when she was speech-writing for President Reagan her first drafts often referred to the senator from Massachusetts as “Turd Kennedy”. The good old days, they’re back.

People ask TV preacher Pat Robertson questions. He answers them.

[Viewer:] I am the mother of 3 adopted girls. I find the men I date are okay when I tell them I have three daughters, but when they find out they are adopted and from three different countries and not my own biological children, they don’t want to date any more. . . Why are these men reacting this way?

[Kristi:] That’s just wrong on every level . .

“No, it’s not wrong. I mean a man doesn’t want to take on the United Nations. And this woman’s got all these various children and blended family. I mean, what is it?”

What is it? It’s the viewer’s family. A family full of kids with different ethnicities that good Christian men run from like a foundering Nazi blimp afire. Which is understandable, as they’re men, good and Christian. So wake up lady! Dump the mismatches, then you might snare yourself a bashful Bland Wizard. You deserve a shot at a real family, one rich with indistinguishable white progeny, founded upon a love as real and alive as any forty-six chromosomes.

“I’ve got a dear friend, adopted a son, little kid from an orphanage down in Colombia. The child had brain damage. You know, grew up weird. And you just never know what’s been done to a child before you get that child; what kind of sexual abuse there has been, what kind of cruelty, what kind of food deprivation, etc., etc., etc.”

To the problem of which little orphan really deserves your love, we apply some TLC:

If you don’t have a car and you’re walking
Oh yes son I’m talking to you
If you live at home wit’ your momma
Oh yes son I’m talking to you
If you have a shorty but you don’t show love
Oh yes son I’m talking to you
Wanna get with me with no money
Oh no I don’t want no

No scrub
No scrub (no no)
No scrub (no no no no)

Get it? It’s the song of Pat Robertson’s righteous heart. Poor, lonely and brain-damaged little boys need not apply. Kick-asses who snatch the retards lunch money are wanted and welcome to live with Pat and heaven’s other Chosen Men. As for the little girls, I’ll say the same thing applies but in some opposite way. If you’re worthy, princess, you’ll figure it out.

“So, you’re not a dog because you don’t want to take on that responsibility, You don’t have to take on somebody else’s problems. I mean you really don’t. . . We love orphans, we love helping people. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I want to take all the orphans around the world into my home.”

What’s the takeaway? Jesus wasn’t stupid, pal. Here endeth the lesson.

So Mitt Romney chooses to have Paul Ryan by his side. It’s you and me against the crack babies and halfrican KGB assassins from here on in, kid. This time, I tells ya, it’s for real. This go-round, mack, it’s personal. Next time, sport, ditch the Eddie Munster cut for the Victor Mature.

The strategy here, I presume, is to tell the voters that Ryan is the heart-attack of Serious Conservatives. He’s the Judge Dredd of sober fiscal policy. If there’s any Republican who’s serious about this thing we call the government budget, it’s him except for there’s no Republican that’s remotely serious about the budget. This fact Ryan once demonstrated by warning that America was on its way to a fate nine times worse and extra more fire-spewing than the Krakatoa of fail they once and still called “Greece.” Krgthulu thought that was funny:

You know what? Religion is kinda funny. It requires you to be intolerant. Doesn’t it? You can only believe in one single thing. Which means everybody else is wrong. Your best friend, your barber, the mailman, they’re all wrong. Every one of them. This makes America a fractious place, where virtually nobody can get along. Everybody thinks they’re better and smarter than everybody else. It’s sad, but true. Religion just makes it hard for us to be friends. Seeing as how me, S.E. Cupp, am the Pope of Brains, you might imagine I’d be disappointed with my fellow man. No. I’m disappointed with myself. An intolerant whacko like me shouldn’t ever be president. Yeshua rayonpants, citizens. Thanks everybody for watching. And I’d hang myself, but you know, hell.

The ladies of Brooklyn could use some pointers. Three weeks from today, the right Republican New York Senator Marty Golden will hold an event on 76th street, at Bay Ridge Manor. Lucky youze.

It won’t be no boring fundraiser. Naw, it’ll be like a debutante’s ball, or a cotillion. Or like a 17th century Viennese social, replete with powder-flecked waltzes and some delicious palace intrigue. If you don’t know what that is (I don’t), don’t you worry. Professor Higgins will be there to tell you:

SENATOR MARTY GOLDEN invites you to Refresh your Business Etiquette and Social Protocol Skills!

· HANDSHAKES AND INTRODUCTIONS
· POSTURE DEPORTMENT AND THE FEMININE PRESENCE

. . so. Youze been putting Marty in a headlock? No, no, ladies, that is no way to behave. We run a polite society here. Marty is a Republican. Upon presentation to Mister Monsignor Senator Fancysox Golden, you lie on your back and present the parts for wanding. Legs high, pinkies askew. Here I am. Now let me know who’s hiring, pal.

Providing good evidence that a tumor un-poisoned, choked, radiated and ripped from the body will hang around and lie to you, Sam the Douchebald addressed the controversy swirling around the deaths of millions of Jews, gypsies, leftists, gays and the disabled. Namely: Why did these idiots give their guns to the Nazis?

Because if they hadn’t, the Holocaust would not have happened. The other 99% of Third Reich warring, murdering and atrocitizing would have gone ahead apace, but at least the Jews could have stood up to the trains and crematoria and shot them right in the face:

“In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917 one-point-five million Armenians, unable to defend themselves were exterminated,” Mr. Wurzelbacher says in the clip. “In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others unable to defend themselves were exterminated.”

Turns out the opposite was true. From World War I to the beginning of World War II, Germany relaxed gun control laws. In accord with the Treaty of Versailles, Germany first passed a universal ban on the private ownership of guns.

In 1919, the German government passed the Regulations on Weapons Ownership, which declared that “all firearms, as well as all kinds of firearms ammunition, are to be surrendered immediately.” Under the regulations, anyone found in possession of a firearm or ammunition was subject to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of 100,000 marks.

In 1928, they passed the Law on Firearms and Ammunition, and the ban was relaxed:

This law relaxed gun restrictions and put into effect a strict firearm licensing scheme. Under this scheme, Germans could possess firearms, but they were required to have separate permits to do the following: own or sell firearms, carry firearms (including handguns), manufacture firearms, and professionally deal in firearms and ammunition. This law explicitly revoked the 1919 Regulations on Weapons Ownership, which had banned all firearms possession.

And then the Nazis rolled in. And with the 1938 German Weapons Act, relaxed the ban further. The ownership of rifles, shotguns and such became unregulated — only handguns were restricted to permits. It did restrict Jews from gun ownership, that’s true. But anyone who really wanted a 30-aught-6 could buy one, for a price. In contrast to 15 years earlier, guns were prevalent in Nazi society. Seeing as how none of the other millions of victims of the Holocaust, like the ‘armed’ gypsies and homosexuals, managed to escape death, I’d say Joe’s grasp of history is fanciful.

JTP’s spokesman is no brighter:

“It’s a historical fact that Hitler implemented gun control before the Holocaust and that’s just a fact that was pointed out in the video,” Mr. Christofanelli said. “There’s an entire organization called ‘Jews For The Preservation of Firearm Ownership‘ who put forward the argument for years that gun control was a contributing factor to the Holocaust.”

In addition to the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, Mr. Christofanelli also said gun control may have contributed the enslavement of African Americans.

“Well, blacks weren’t allowed to own guns in the south, that’s a historical fact as well,” said Mr. Christofanelli. “So, it would seem that the argument would apply there as well.”

People in prisons, for example, aren’t allowed to have guns. Did you ever wonder why they were so easy to arrest? Quod erat crazytown.

Everybody’s favorite breeder of fancy-prancing Bugatti jackasses whacks the President. Someone’s got to take a stand for blue collar America, so it might as well be a quarter-billion dollar candidate for First Lady.

Ann Romney, the wife of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, said Monday that she doubted she and her husband would vacation overseas as frequently as the Obamas if her husband were elected . .

“I doubt that,” Romney replied. “Our vacations and our happiness come from being with our children and our grandchildren.”

First, Princess, you’re old and your kids are all grown. So they won’t be trapped in the White House. That would be a sensible reason to take them far, far away every once in a while. Yours aren’t gonna meet you in Madrid anyway as they have lives of their own, but nice try. Second, when Sasha and Malia do end up going somewhere, they rarely get the run of a place resembling this:

Guess who wins the award for the Republican presidential candidate with the most real estate? It’s Mitt! In 2009, Mitt Romney had four mansions. His post-and-beam-log lodge (pictured here) was listed that year for $5.35 million (then removed), but real-estate website Zillow.com estimates the value around $2.6 million.

That year, he also sold his Boston-area 1930 house for $3.5 million. Rounding out the collection are a $12 million beachfront compound in La Jolla, Calif., and a lake house in Wolfeboro, N.H.

After living in a place like that 24/7, the only reason to go to Versailles would be to point and laugh. And for the “criticism from conservative radio hosts for her international travel,” I just think going after the First Lady is roundly pathetic. The previous president was on something approaching permanent vacation. Someone could have apologized for that.

Also — the Daily Caller?

. . including trips to Martha’s Vineyard, Hawaii, Spain, and Mexico . .

. . is a little hazy on what’s “international travel.”

As if you hadn’t already heard enough from the gloating class. As if the post-recall partisans of doom hadn’t annoyed the hell out of us with their eulogies. Here comes Peggy Noonan to ponder it all.

Here comes Peggy of the Wall Street Journal with her gloat-free non-partisanship to tell you the president is doomed.

Mr. Walker was not crushed. He was buoyed, winning by a solid seven points in a high-turnout race.

. . about that. He ran against the exact same guy in 2010 and got almost the same percentage (then 52/now 53). My take on all this is that there were a significant number of people who were outraged by his attacks on working people, and that drove the ability to mount a recall. But only some of those were people who voted for Walker. There were others annoyed by the recall, feeling it was an illegitimate way of wielding political power. Once a governor is elected, they thought, he should get his full four years absent criminal wrongdoing, or the equivalent. Some of these had voted for Barrett. These two numbers, roughly being the same, switched sides, and the recall was a wash.

The last governor recall happened here in California, and the recall won. The key was who pulled it off: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Absent a crime, you have to turn a recall into a real election. You need to generate excitement about having a newer, better governor. Arnold probably would have beaten Gray Davis in the ‘regular’ election just a few months earlier if he’d run, so he won. The disaster here happened the minute Barrett again became the candidate. The only motivation was “How much do you hate Scott Walker?” You need an awful lot of people to answer “So much so that I’ll vote for a loser.” It’s very narrow, boring politics. If you won’t engage the consumer, you will lose. Democrats lost.

President Obama’s problem now isn’t what Wisconsin did, it’s how he looks each day—careening around, always in flight, a superfluous figure. No one even looks to him for leadership now. He doesn’t go to Wisconsin, where the fight is. He goes to Sarah Jessica Parker’s place, where the money is.

There is, now, a house-of-cards feel about this administration.

Right Peggers. There’s no particular reason you’re writing this essay now with its endless talk of Scott the Hero and Common Sense Wisconsin. Obama’s been a hollow, powerless figure for months. No one listens or looks to him, and the administration, White House included, has keeled over. The title of this let’s-finally-admit-the-truth post? What’s Changed After Wisconsin.

Governors and local leaders will now have help in controlling budgets. Down the road there will be fewer contracts in which you work for, say, 23 years for a city, then retire with full salary and free health care for the rest of your life—paid for by taxpayers who cannot afford such plans for themselves, and who sometimes have no pension at all.

See? Peggy cares about poor people. Of course, it was she and her close friends who, as writers for the neuro-degenerated amnesiac Reagan, started this kill the government wildfire. So it’s no wonder a city garbage man retiring with his salary and pension intact is a crime. Peggy surely will retire with better than that. This editorial is why she thinks she deserves it.