Let’s see what the old man is peddling right now. “Schools push a curriculum of propaganda.” The evil educators again. Maybe they’re hectoring the impressionable students with ‘slavery’ rather than instilling in them a love for our Ronald Reagan. That’s evil enough for me. Which reminds — remember when the Texas school board tried to re-classify American slavery as “Atlantic Triangular Trade”? What a howler. A real business/enterprise hot one. That’d be like calling Dear Ronnie a “Commie Lover.” Or saying he was “Animated And Sensate.” Don’t be silly.

Speaking of ole’ Arms For The Ayatollah, remember his 1980 campaign? In his triumphant march to the drooler presidency, the candidate professed his love for “State’s Rights” before the assembled people of Neshoba County, Mississippi. Ah, the good old days. The onlookers included some of the local police and Sheriff’s deputies, dba the Ku Klux Klan, who beat, shot and then buried those three niggah/jewboy Yankees back when LBJ was running for election. As the Klansmen saw themselves victims of Federal “civil rights” malarkey, and Reagan, for campaign purposes, touted the government as a fascist institution, everybody got along mighty fine. Ronnie went on to win every state in the South save Jimmy Carter’s Georgia and swept the election. Don’t know if that actually counts for propaganda any more than merely, say, political racism.

But that’s neither here nor there. Oh George, what’s it this time?

The three R’s — formerly reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. Consider Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction.

Will do.

Wisconsin’s DPI, in collaboration with the Orwellian-named federal program VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America; the “volunteers” are paid), urged white students to wear white wristbands “as a reminder about your privilege, and as a personal commitment to explain why you wear the wristband.”

Where is George getting his news from? Townhall.com. Honestly. His Eminence now uses the same fever bog to source his editorials that Chuck Norris uses to wipe the HITLER! from his shoes. Yoo-hoo, George? They don’t make clown noses your size any more? You couldn’t find your foot with the missus’ shiny revolver? Here’s the yawn-debunk, courtesy the same Wisconsin DPI:

It was not a VISTA document, nor was it a Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) document . .

To be absolutely clear, no DPI official has asked, requested, or
encouraged any school district, educator, or student to wear any
wristband, and none of our VISTA volunteers have had any children put on any wristbands.

So George was lying about that. Even if the thing were true, consider the prospect of TALKING ABOUT WHITE PRIVILEGE!!!1!1! Boo! Seriously boo!

In Delavan-Darien High School’s “American Diversity” curriculum, students were urged to verify white privilege by visiting a Wal-Mart toy section and counting the white and black dolls. After objections, the school district is reconsidering this curriculum.

This source: Todd from Fox News radio. Black dolls! YYEEEEAAARRGGHH!

No corner of the country is immune to propaganda pretending to be pedagogy. Lincoln Brown of KVEL-AM in Vernal, Utah, says one student from the University of Utah showed him required reading that told students to “list ways your family may have colluded with or benefited from the exploitation of African-Americans.”

George’s latest source? Townhall.com once again. A student! AAAAIIIEEEYYYY . .

But now. Let us, like post-earthquake responders walking among the Haitian dead, tally the damage here. Hmm? There were white-privilege wristbands that never existed. Check. There were visits to Wal-Mart children’s aisles that likely never happened. Check-check. And there was a certain someone who got pissed about his homework. Check checker zulu-niner-geronimo check and all this adds up to . . hmm see . . carry the conflagration . .

And Americans wonder why their generous K-12 financing (higher per pupil than all but three of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations) has done so little to improve reading, math and science scores.

The failure of U.S. Education. No choice but to defund the thing now, of course.

Poor poor Peggy. She’s come down with a pundit’s case of the Notices. Every time she gets a feeling about a thing, she Notices that it’s come to life. Her emotions routinely spring up everywhere around her. She’s happy. The daisies! She’s sad. The rain. Those things weren’t there before, folks.

When you’re a writer it just doesn’t get any better than that. It’s like a miracle, having the world made new every day by the whims of your moods. In the forms of other people, in their doings, and in their jobs. In the habits of their President, his icky words, and his pitiful failings. In the environs of the Wyndham of Bradford Woods, with its miserable employees, and dreary walkways:

I’m in Pittsburgh, making my way to the airport hotel. The people movers are broken and we pull our bags along the dingy carpet. There’s an increasing sense in America now that the facades are intact but the machinery inside is broken.

I scratch at the surface of something here. But just what? What is the thing? I don’t know. Is it bad? I think the thing is. I think it’s a bad thing.

The hotel has entrances on two floors. I search for the lobby, find it. Travelers are milling about, but there’s no information desk, no doorman, no bellman or concierge, just two harried-looking workers at a front desk on the second level.

There’s something here . . less. Smaller than it was. Not the full. Couldn’t call it proper. As if sagging. Or shrinking. A . . depressing. Yes. Of something, but what? I don’t know.

Things are getting pretty bare-bones in America. Doormen, security, bellmen, people working the floor—that’s maybe a dozen jobs that should have been filled, at one little hotel on one day in one town. Everyone’s keeping costs down, not hiring.

What that hotel looked like is America without its muscle, its efficiency, its old confidence.

That’s it. America. It’s not what it used to be. It’s not as good. It’s not as grand. The country is less. It’s all noticeable now. Things have changed, not for the better. Yes that’s it. Wonder. Somebody. Who did this?

Meanwhile, the president is stuck in his games and his history. He should have seen unemployment entering a crisis stage four years ago, and he did not.

He did not. That’s who did this. That’s how it happened. And where has he been? Why hasn’t he done anything? The way it is now, just look at it. Heavens. Business. Unemployment. I don’t. Like it.

At that time I was certain he’d go for public-works projects, which could give training to the young and jobs to the experienced underemployed, would create jobs in the private sector and, in the end, yield up something needed—a bridge, a strengthened power grid. He instead gave his first term to health care.

To healthcare. And the stimulus package. Let’s not forget that. That was, what, $700 billion? For? I don’t even know. A trillion dollars. For what?

Reading Whiskey Fire, I came across this post by ifthethunderdontgetya. Yes plenty of sharp minds have pointed this out before, WF included. But Jiminy Cripple Fred Hiatt is clueless. Pray tell what do you make of this editorial? Argument Kabuki? Syllable Charleston? Hoodang du paragraphs?

Again, the tug of global retreat
By Fred Hiatt | Washington Post

By nominating a defense secretary committed to shrinking the defense budget and openly entertaining a “zero option” for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, President Obama is sending a message: His promise to refocus on “nation-building at home” was no campaign slogan. He hopes for a second term with diminished foreign entanglement.

He’ll be running away, which brings us all ’round to women. Hello, ladies. A cliche as regards you. I understand it was the “tug of fashion footwear” that put high heels on your feet. After that, the Marines come home safe and sound and the recriminations start flying. Now to this. Let’s us gather the manner in which Fred writes his writing: His attempt to fashion sentences together was dramatic. Small wonder he runs the entire department.

But his ambivalence about making a commitment to Afghanistan was evident in the long and tortured decision-making process that led to the surge and the deadline for withdrawal that accompanied his escalation.

When as president you’ve committed your nation to a difficult and deadly war campaign, you might take into account Fred’s feelings. Spend a tad too much time talking with the generals and he’ll peg you for a coward. How much would that suck?

And the Afghan decision was followed by a retreat from Iraq and near-total passivity as fighting engulfed Syria, with 60,000 people killed so far.

Except that Obama threw down in Egypt. Fred’s forgotten. Or he’s calculated, since “Again, the tug of war” would sound stupid.

Nuzzleglance Pocketorbs, son of Alley Oop, doesn’t much care for government programs whereby you pay for retirement, then you get old and get your money back.

Our Enemy, the Payroll Tax
By ROSS DOUTHAT | New York Times

. . Payroll taxes are a relic of New Deal Machiavellianism: by taking a bite of every worker’s paycheck and promising postretirement returns, Franklin Roosevelt effectively disguised Social Security as a pay-as-you-go system, even though the program actually redistributes from rich to poor and young to old. That disguise has helped keep Social Security sacrosanct — hailed by Democrats because it protects the poor and backed by Republicans as a reward for steady work.

By “taking a bite of every worker’s paycheck and promising postretirement returns,” everyone is assured a minimal income in old age. Don’t know how this confuses.

For the Douthats, the human bulldozers mechanized under the philosophical tents of conservatism, they find it annoyingly hard to push the poor back into the Victorian dregs as long as the feds have provided a retirement program, and financed it with the poors’ own money. So this post provides no wonder.

Ross would love to see direct-pay Social Security savaged because its finances would get bounced into the nebulous world of appropriation foofery and budgets renoberation. After that, t’would be game on.

Time for the Wall Street Journal to weigh in on the latest Romney shambles. Sniff, snort, publish. Roll over, order room service.

Whatever the timing of the Cairo Embassy’s statements, Mr. Romney is right that a U.S. Embassy ought to ignore YouTube videos produced by obscure cranks. As Tuesday’s events showed, pandering to Islamists who would use the video to inflame anti-American sentiment isn’t going to stop the protests.

So when the Cairo delegation smelled smoke in the wind, their official response should have been “Bring it on, motherfuckers.” None of these editorial geniuses has ever been posted abroad I’m thinking.

His political faux pax was to offend a pundit class that wants to cede the foreign policy debate to Mr. Obama without thinking seriously about the trouble for America that is building in the world.

Mitt Romney’s political “fake peace.” That is precious. I figure our president being a Kenyan ipso blackto confirms his desire to kiss Arab ass. You guys really showed the pundits who the smart ones are. Most of the goats on Murdoch’s farm eat tin cans, but some are used for fire prevention.

Speaking of horny, Ann Althouse. You politic-snots just can’t stand it, can you? It makes you jealous when a candidate tries to win.

There was an opportunity to go for the win, and Romney took it. The media noticed, of course, and sprang into such intense, concerted action that it was obvious that they knew it was a day to be won and if the other side was going to go for the win, they had to act quickly and ensure that their guy won the day.

But today? It’s Thursday. Today Ann won.

After some violent ‘left-wing’ asshole shoots a guard at the Family Research Council, brave Dana Milbank thinks everything over. He cuts through the reeds of confusion and partisanship (just listen to us: “He’s one of ours! Let him go!”), and he issues as surprisingly sage a tract as any villager ever wrote:

Hateful speech on hate groups
By Dana Milbank, August 16

Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization, posted an alert on its blog Tuesday: “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual Conference.”

The “hate group” that the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate would be addressing? The Family Research Council, a mainstream conservative think tank founded by James Dobson and run for many years by Gary Bauer.

You see where this is going.

Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the shooting. Neither should the organization that deemed the FRC a “hate group,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, be blamed for a madman’s act. But both are reckless in labeling as a “hate group” a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions, on issues from stem cells to euthanasia.

Let’s not play around. Okay?

1.) It’s okay to “hate” a hate group. Grow up, Dana.

2.) The Family Research Council is a hate group. They may advocate on a “full range” of issues, but their bread and butter, the advocacy that garners them the most kudos, attention and cash, is their raving, lying hatred for gay American men and women. They are nasty, immoral homophobes.

How do we know this? The FRC’s own words and deeds. But let’s not gloss over the charge (as Dana does), let’s instead put it to a test. Dana and the SPLC disagree, but who should win the argument? Has the “think tank” earned the hate group designation? Here’s the SPLC’s argument:

In Its Own Words

“Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”
— Robert Knight, FRC director of cultural studies, and Frank York, 1999

“[Homosexuality] … embodies a deep-seated hatred against true religion.”
— Steven Schwalm, FRC senior writer and analyst, in “Desecrating Corpus Christi,” 1999

“One of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.”
-1999 FRC pamphlet, Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex with Boys.

“[T]he evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners.”
— Timothy Dailey, senior research fellow, “Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse,” 2002

“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”
— FRC President Tony Perkins, FRC website, 2010

They add:

Other anti-gay propagandists at the FRC include Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies, who joined the organization in 2001. Sprigg authored a 2010 brochure touting “The Top Ten Myths about Homosexuality.” In the brochure, Sprigg claimed that ex-gay therapy works, that sexual orientation can change, that gay people are mentally ill simply because homosexuality makes them that way, and that, “Sexual abuse of boys by adult men is many times more common than consensual sex between adult men, and most of those engaging in such molestation identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual.” . .

In March 2008, Sprigg responded to a question about uniting gay partners during immigration by saying, “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than import them.” He later apologized, but in February 2009, he told Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied.

Okay. Now let’s see what the other side has to say. Dana?

The Family Research Council [is] a mainstream conservative think tank founded by James Dobson and run for many years by Gary Bauer.

Who wins the argument? The SPLC calls the FRC a hate group for routinely saying homosexuals are mentally ill, conspiracists, pedophiles, and asking they be criminalized and exported from the country. Dana calls the FRC “mainstream” for what peculiar reason, again? Because James Dobson and Gary Bauer are familiar to him.

It’s these lazy calculations that render the villagers pathetic. They learned long ago that ethics present a serious impediment to maintaining a lucrative beat within the dreamy beltway. Somehow the practical result isn’t a soul-free mercenary, it’s a sophisticated journalist who can’t, golly god knows why, construct the flimsiest of arguments.

It would be one thing to ply your gutless profession and manage to cash the paychecks without whining. But when you see fit to lecture the rest of us about the dangerous rhetoric of morality (these people are immoral, Dana), you are one stupid asshole.

Now that we’re all being herded into Soviet gulags because we can see the doctor, there’s trouble afoot. Do you see it? Can you hear it? The foul wind it blows. The clouds chafe, then they scatter. Like the weather. ‘I used to like the weather,’ he thought. A baleful dog barks. It bales. The crow hiccups. ‘Don’t ever tell a Navy man he’s had too much to drink’ it says. She is dying because I loved her too much. I HAD TO KILL HER. The Supreme Court, they said. That’s what they all say.

Noonan: Obama Has a Good Day
But liberty has a bad one.
DECLARATIONS | Wall Street Journal

ObamaCare, including the insurance mandate, was upheld. What would have been a political disaster for President Obama has been averted. He has not been humiliated, and the centerpiece of his efforts the past 3½ years has not been rebuked by the Supreme Court.

And yet. I feel as if there’s something more to this. Something . . else.

The ruling strikes me as very bad for the atmosphere of freedom in our country, the sense of freeness and lazy, sloppy liberty we’ve long maintained with some hiccups along the way. Those hiccups seem to come more and more now, and closer and closer together.

‘She stole my hiccups’ he realized. ‘I should read this crap before I blog it’ he thought. No. It was too late for that.

There will be a downside: The president is left carrying the burden defending a bill nobody likes. It certainly has the worst public reputation of any new government program of my lifetime.

I suppose the War in Iraq wasn’t a program. Nor was Vietnam. And then he remembered Peggy Noonan’s face. Yes, the War of 1812 was fairly popular. Nice try.

Those already insured will find their coverage “more secure and more affordable,” insurance companies will provide “free preventive care like checkups and mammograms,” “seniors” and “young adults” will receive benefits, those with pre-existing conditions will no longer be denied coverage. Also, the insurance companies “won’t be able to charge you more just because you’re a woman.”

It was a targeted base-greaser.

‘Say, are you talking about me?’ he wondered. ‘That’s not my thing.’ He protested. He protested too much. ‘Something’s greased,’ Peggy thought. She knew.

The president had a good day, the first in a long time, in months.

Is it too late for him to change his image to modest and moderate man of the center who’s only trying to do what’s best for America?

Can we bomb Tehran? ‘I think so,’ he replied. They’re still around. We still have bombs.

Because that’s what he’s trying to do. He’s in a perfect position now to tell the leftwardmost parts of his base that he’s given them plenty and suffered for it, it’s time they got in line.

‘That would be good,’ Peggy thought. ‘After giving America tetanus shots, he could balance it. He could go blow up Iran.’ Yes.

‘Very good. Strong, and centrist.’ Her thinker shoulders did ache. She thought way more. To sink in her big chair. And pour a glass. ‘It would be good for him,’ she thought.

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.

There is an upside to narcissism. No matter what other people do, you are reminded of your greatness. Lucky you.

Someone invents the Segway, you thought of it years ago. Someone memorizes pi, you just did mom’s taxes. Somebody ran a marathon, you were in the office. All weekend. Challenge is a vestige of childhood.

It’s a cushy gig. The rest of the world busts out in manifold directions, the center of gravity, you, stays still. Greatness never sweats.

James Taranto, writer of Wall Street Journal editorials, is a great guy. He writes about America’s lameness. When a Massachusetts sociology professor describes her research in the New York Times, it’s lame. When she talks about sex, it’s lame. When 15 year old boys don’t want to get girls pregnant, it’s lame.

An odd recent New York Times op-ed by sociologist Amy Schalet touts the rise of, as the headline puts it, “Caring, Romantic American Boys.” Schalet, who studied American high school sophomores (along with Dutch ones) for a forthcoming book, reports that “boys [are] behaving more ‘like girls’ in terms of when they lose their virginity,” by which she means they “are becoming more careful and more romantic about their first sexual experiences.”

Lame.

Maybe her book will flesh out that claim, but in her op-ed the boys sound downright terrified: “American boys often said sex could end their life as they knew it. After a condom broke, one worried: ‘I could be screwed for the rest of my life.’ Another boy said he did not want to have sex yet for fear of becoming a father before his time.”

If “I could be screwed for the rest of my life” is what passes for a romantic sentiment at the New York Times, the editors’ Valentine’s Day cards must be a laugh riot.

Nothing’s as erotic as caring for children. Harlequin Romance built an industry on the language of changing diapers. The Romeo and Juliet fable tickled orgasm as they argued over how to beat autism. Toddlers get fussy, nipples get sucked, and the silk sheets get plenty sweaty.

. . she offers this further point of comparison: “The 2002 National Survey of Family Growth found that more than one-third of teenage boys, but only one-quarter of teenage girls, cited wanting to avoid pregnancy or disease as the main reason they had not yet had sex.”

Given that nature imposes the physical burden of pregnancy on the female of the species, that sounds counterintuitive. And it’s possible that some of the boys in the survey, mindful of what Schalet quotes another sociologist as calling “the stigma of virginity,” are rationalizing away their lack of success with girls by chalking it up to prudence.

This is a WSJ hack pooh-poohing a sociology professor: “Since when do boys care about getting chicks pregnant?” I suppose if that were no longer true, it would be news. James once slagged a survivor of Vietnam, triple-amputee Max Cleland, for being a war critic because he had PTSD. What a loser, huh? Tough guys protect their territory. American boys wanna fuck, dude.

Just look at this. The Washington Post went after Rush Limbaugh. My, the analgesia. Warm linguini lashing hide.

Mr. Limbaugh is angry at President Obama’s efforts to require the provision of contraception under employer-paid health insurance and the White House’s attempts to make some political hay out of the policy. His way of showing this anger was to smear Ms. Fluke, who approached Congress to support the plan, as a “slut” seeking a government subsidy for her promiscuity.

We entreat Viscount Limbaugh tolerate her promiscuity. We’re not off our fancy rails, are we, in suggesting Fuck-all Fluke’s knee-high undulating and grasping be rounded without comment? The sluts have their place. Just between us, wink-wink.

Like other “shock jocks,” Mr. Limbaugh has committed verbal excesses in the past. But in its wanton vulgarity and cruelty, this episode stands out. Mr. Limbaugh’s audience, and those in politics who seek his favor as a means of reaching that audience, need to take special note.

Tonight, on “Universal Truth,” the vicious media expose’ written and produced by John Stossel, Ann Curry and Mark Burnett. Three seconds before midnight, a Special Note: “That Rush Darn Limbaugh.” Do people that people listen to, sometimes, sometimes go too far? (cue “The Entertainer,” by Sometimes Joplin).

In response to listener complaints and, apparently, the promptings of its own corporate conscience, Sleep Train Mattress Centers has quit advertising on Mr. Limbaugh’s show.

*door opens* You guys like sushi? It’s forklift Ed’s birthday, and H.R. reserved the Jubilee Room at Tuna Time. *carpet trample*

That tawdry wrestling infomercial on an endless loop, the conservative, wasted everyone’s time this week scolding America about contraception, abortion, sex in and out of marriage, and the reason why he threatened to deport his immigrant boy-toy after ramming a horny-butt deejay into some poor lady outside a disco tickle dangle, but, no, it wasn’t me.

That reminds me of a joke. It goes like this: neckbeard.

The ‘Safe, Legal, Rare’ Illusion
By ROSS DOUTHAT | Op-Ed Columnist

AMID the sound and fury of the latest culture-war battles . .

These people. Will. Not. Shut. Up.

Even the most pro-choice politicians, for instance . .

No sane human being wants to hear Ross Douthat weigh in on anything like sex, abortion or contraception. He’ll do it anyways, of course, because he’s the New York Times conservative. A.K.A., the kid with enormous keyboards of clay.

Instead, abortion rates are frequently higher in more liberal states, where access is often largely unrestricted, than in more conservative states, which are more likely to have parental consent laws, waiting periods, and so on.

It’s late in the column, and the kid is really bringing the heat. The liberals want to make it okay for people to have abortions. But you know what happens next? MORE ABORTIONS. Bet you didn’t realize that, buddy. This is why the Times hired Ross. He can tie his shoes — can you? Your shoes, I mean?

“Safe, legal and rare” is a nice slogan, but liberal policies don’t always seem to deliver the “rare” part.

Because Oregon has more abortions than Oklahoma, liberals have failed in the ‘choice’ wars. We are hypocrites, unable to deliver on our abortion mission statement. In an ideal world, we’d stop women, like young terrified conservatives — whose fathers will kill them — from having abortions. In an ideal world, Ross would know the word ‘ideal.’ We’re done here, everybody back to the abortion factory.

But wait — do you know where ‘choice’ is truly ‘Safe, legal and rare’? Kansas. And how many abortion clinics do they have? Two. Maybe one. This is the reality Ross uses as a baseline to shame us into admitting failure. We allow more abortions than Cro-Magnon Kansas. We shoot fewer doctors, too, and these facts may be related.

For the rest of the editorial, the Gray Lady’s ace is nowhere near being interested in the history of abortion in America, our evolving attitudes towards sex, the current attacks on sex education, the propping up of abstinence-only efforts in the face of permanent failure, or in the record low rates of teen pregnancy and abortion. Or in women. Final paragraph, now we’re really almost done:

At the very least, American conservatives are hardly crazy to reject a model for sex, marriage and family that seems to depend heavily on higher-than-average abortion rates.

Shoot. So there’s only the one alternative: make abortion illegal. Okay. Thanks, Ross, well argued. Could you append a little comment about the happiness of American women in the 18th and 19th centuries?

As far as right-wing opinon-ers go, Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto is not the worst. He’s as overboard as anyone else is, but at least his stuff is written in a manner that’s easy on the brain. And he’s occasionally funny. So if you’re stuck, like me, reading these people, you know he’s not going to give you a headache.

Until today, when he weighed in on the Komen fiasco. This is pathetic:

Big Sister Is Watching You
Totalitarian feminism and the smearing of Susan G. Komen.
By James Taranto | Opinion | February 3 2012

Look at how we’ve imprisoned and tortured the poor Komen Foundation.

In breaking ties with Planned Parenthood, Komen made the same mistake: It failed to understand it was dealing with intolerant fanatics. Planned Parenthood’s attitude toward abortion opponents is not unlike that of Egyptian officials in the old regime toward Israelis.

When we’re not scouring the Sinai looking for pro-lifers to shoot, we’re putting the electrodes to anyone who’s circumcised. I’ve read enough: It’s time to pull the head off of James Taranto. Per usual, we’ll make him miserable first, perhaps by reading aloud editorials where he reminded us we’re given to hysteria.

The episode is reminiscent of George Orwell far more than Joe McCarthy. Komen’s actual aim was to extricate itself from the divisive national battle over abortion by severing its connection with a leading combatant.

There’s Planned Parenthood again, all hot-faced and fist-swinging in the national debate. I think Taranto actually believes this. I want a pound of whatever he’s smoking.

Yes, Planned Parenthood does abortions as a small part of its being the “nation’s leading sexual and reproductive health care provider.” No, it’s not a screaming partisan hack. Nor a keyboard-banging partisan hack writer. It just provides health services. Because 3% of this is abortion, James thinks that qualifies them as the hippie’s bug-eyed Bachmann. Grow a brain, pal.

And employing George Orwell for this? Photograph and all? Yes, isn’t liberal America a totalitarian government? Put your head in my cage of rats, Jim. You are the dead, buddy.

Totalitarianism politicizes everything, so that neutrality is betrayal–in this case, neutrality on abortion is portrayed as opposition to “women’s health.” As we wrote last year, this is also why purportedly pro-choice feminists can hate Sarah Palin and her daughter for choosing not to abort their children.

Oh, this sounds entirely plausible. Given the tenor of the piece so far, you wouldn’t expect James to back up his hallucinations with facts. But there is a link. So you click it, expecting to see the welcome page of “The Feminist Majority For Feeding Christians To The Abortion Machine”, but instead you get an opinion piece. Of his. Wherein, this:

Recently we were at a party where a woman in her 60s, a self-described feminist, called Palin a “moron” for having encouraged her daughter to carry her child to term and “to marry the sperm donor.”

Wow. Gaze upon the official gathering of America’s feminists. At some party.

Even apart from the gross language, this was a completely irrational thing to say.

Say what? How could that be? It’s the official political position of leftist women! Here they come, Jimmy. Pap Smear! Oogie Boogie!

JUST IN: Karen Handel, enemy of Planned Parenthood and political strategist behind the de-funding/bureaucratic purge, has resigned. Good riddance.