Ayn Clouter's Blog

FOUND HANGING IN FREUD'S CLOSET:

It is widely assumed that the reason many painters do a lot of self-portraits (since Dürer basically invented the form, and Rembrandt developed its possibilities), is the ready availability of a free model to practice on. In fact, most of it is simply overinflated egotism. Consider this instance from a lefty heavily hyped in recent obits, Susan Sontag:

Machado de Assis's novel [Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas] belongs in that tradition of narrative buffoonery -- the talkative first-person voice attempting to ingratiate itself with readers -- which runs from Sterne [The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy] through, in our own century, Natsume Sōseki's I Am a Cat, the short fiction of Robert Walser, Svevo's Confessions of Zeno and As a Man Grows Older, Hrabal's Too Loud a Solitude, much of Beckett.

Again and again we meet in different guises the chatty, meandering, compulsively speculative, eccentric narrator: reclusive (by choice or by vocation); prone to futile obsessions and fanciful theories and comically designed efforts of the will; often an autodidact; not quite a crank; though sometimes driven by lust, and at least one time by love, unable to mate; usually elderly; invariably male.

(No woman is likely to get even the conditional sympathy these ragingly self-absorbed narrators claim from us, because of expectations that women be more sympathetic, and sympathizing, than men; a woman with the same degree of mental acuity and emotional separateness would be regarded as simply a monster.)

--(from the foreword to the 1990 edition of Epitaph of a Small Winner)

Such startling self-awareness would be witty if intentional, but insulting to the reader in its hypocrisy if unseen by willful self-blindness. As Peggy Noonan once said of The Clenis, it would be irresponsible not to speculate which is the case here.

THE FULL MAGGIE:

An honest confession can be good for the pocketbook. Williams, Gallagher, and McManus should now be drooling over lucrative book offers from the Vast Liberal Publishing Conspiracy. They need only tell their stories about how they were paid to write articles pushing Our Noble Lame Duck's agenda.

Not one to let such an enriching opportunity pass, I am revealing here for the very first time that I, too, have been a recipient of largess for my own work over the past year. Naturally, not being heartless enough to take money from an obese infant slowly drowning in its bathtub, I accepted no actual government payments. Instead, all those deposits to my offshore accounts came from private groups and individuals, making this not political bribery, but mere ideological product placement.

Furthermore, I have maintained my usual high ethical standards throughout. Yes, I was paid to push the meme that The Trentster was an impediment to our Congressional agenda, and should step down as Senate leader. However, when the very same folks from Nashville who made the substantial wire transfer to me for that, wanted me to go further and promote re-release of an old movie, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, I refused to violate my conscience by posting a phony favorable review. That time I just told Physicians For Feline Vivisection to keep their cash.

Nor was there any need to pay me to attack some people. I would have been bashing Kerry anyway, but the reason I kept denouncing him as The Ketchup Consort was to remind good conservatives how they were helping his family whenever they bought Heinz products. What was wrong with that? After all, I hadn't used a bottle of their stuff since putting it on fish sticks each Friday at my faith-drenched prep school. Hence I had no qualms about accepting token funds from their smaller competitors, the Condiment Micromanufacturers Association.

I would have happily written whatever was needed to try and break up the dangerous Anybody But Bush front, so why not take money from the Split Vote Arrangers For Truth to keep reminding voters of Jean Cherie's calls for compulsory national service?

Mocking Kucinich's vegekinkiness would have been natural to me, which is why the American Meat Advocacy Mob got a bargain rate each time I did that. Loving to further divide my enemies, I gleefully agreed to not mention the name of She Who Must Not Be Named, when hired by her publicity-suppressing foes at The Ad Hoc Committee To Draft President Boxer.

I had already been denouncing the tactics of Terror War I as wimpily inadequate before I was encouraged by checks to keep playing up my advocacy of preemptive nuclear strikes against the Taliban, Iraq, and the entire Muslim world. Obviously I was in full agreement on that point with my client, a fundamentalist Hindu group called SMASH (Smite Monotheists And Similar Heretics). Once we achieve that mutual goal, of course, I will turn my verbal guns against those aggressors from New Delhi as well.

Yes, anxious to quickly replace a deceased computer, I did accept a new machine from the dark side. A group of tree-huggers, knowing what terrible truths about them would be revealed when his new book came out, paid me to make fun of Michael Crichton. I tried to console myself that his best-seller would be able to withstand my small assault, but deep down I knew it was wrong. (I also had long borne him a geological grudge, since he foolishly labelled as "Jurassic" what was clearly "Cretaceous").

The only other possible sorority prank-type misuse of my vast power was accepting a major redo of my home, in return for help in Google-bombing a certain Senator from Pennsylvania. That came from The Log Cabaña League, a very, very small group of gay Hispanic Republicans. I hope he'll forgive my lapse, because the house looks really nice.

Only once have I been unsure who was buying my talents; that was when an anonymous woman with a car full of kids stopped by with a shoebox of small unmarked currency. Her request was that I belittle the attacks by two leftist scourges, Tbogg and World O'Crap, against some conservative columnist. I managed to do that and at the same time skewer an anti-draft writer.

I admit that I also received payment from yet another group for that same piece, to work in an example mocking the possible economic "opportunities" advocated by a different pundit, Thomas Sowell. There was no conflict of interest, since both customers got what they wanted, the mysterious box lady and the Acme Artificial Organ Company.

Clearly, when even good people can be tempted like this, we need to devise a new term for such blogging sins. I suggest calling them blins.

As a strong advocate of corporate dominance, I remind you that the real moral flaw is not in taking money for posting on behalf of sound-thinking customers, but in not begging forgiveness for advocating anything remotely leftist, even for money, and especially anyone connected with the civil union state. Always remember that payola for the promotion of liberalism is no virtue, but income from the defense of free enterprise is no vice.

OH, FANTASY FREE ME:

I always suspected that she lived in a dream world, but now the Leftist Parodess Regnant has openly confessed it. Mad Kane has started yet another site, presumably with serious intent, where she writes

Republicans feel free to create their own realities, so why can't I? And in my idealized reality, Senator Barbara Boxer is the President of the United States.

The backbone-starved liberal blogalaxy (n!sdnctw!) has been reduced to one-handed posting as they gush over the California Senator's alleged "grilling" of Her Fourth In Lineness. As I recall, throwing out "tough" statements at a televised Congressional hearing has not been a great predictor of Presidential potential. (Arlen Specter comes to mind.) Nor does beginning a political career as a Supervisor in Marvellous Moron County. Just because she was one of the only two on the committee to raise their index finger at the inevitable does not imply she has the stature needed to become the McGovern of 2008, or even the Kucinich.

No, I see this playing out like one of several old movies about other boxers. Not Rocky I-XXIII, but those predictable formula clunkers about someone who fights their way up to a title shot, then gets told by the big boss that the bets have been placed, and they have to throw tonight's bout (sort of like The Ketchup Consort's own campaign last year). Of course, maybe she'll decide to be the heroic martyr and go ahead to win anyway, only to be killed by the double-crossed thug, which will inspire her blind son to become an attorney by day and costumed crimefighter by night, until he falls for an ex-ninja assassin who ...

Oh, wait, that was Daredevil. Well, that comic book was much more realistic than expecting She Who Must Not Be Named to quietly sit by and let some other woman be the first Democratic nominee for President. Those into watching "cat fights" can go help encourage Mad's Improbable Dream at President Boxer. The rest of us will just wait for them to wound each other enough to help pave the way for the third Bush in the White House.

ANOTHER LIBERAL MYTH BITES THE DUST:

There is a widespread public misperception, particularly among the New Age sector, that the Chinese word for "crisis" is composed of elements that signify "danger" and "opportunity." ... Those who purvey the doctrine ... are engaging in a type of muddled thinking that is a danger to society, for it lulls people into welcoming crises as unstable situations from which they can benefit.

This U. Penn. prof goes into all the details you'll ever need HERE. (Found, as is so much good stuff, at Languagehat.)

QUICK!! PASS AN AMENDMENT:

Thankfully Our Noble Lame Duck has already recanted his answer to an interviewer that he won't seriously try to push for a Homogeneous Marriage Amendment this term, but now Overspun has spotted news that makes me think we have a much more pressing need for a different one.

Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking miniature US flags into piles of dog poo in public parks. ... "This has been going on for about a year now, and there must be 2,000 to 3,000 piles of excrement that have been claimed during that time."

The series of incidents was originally thought to be some sort of protest against the US-led invasion of Iraq. ... But it is still going on and the police say they are completely baffled as to who is to blame. ...

"...frankly, we don't know what we would do if we caught them red handed." Legal experts say there is no law against using faeces as a flag stand and the federal constitution is vague on the issue.

Let me advise you NOT to catch them by the hand at all, unless you are well protected by latex gloves. Meanwhile, this star spangled banner abuse has continued for a year. Obviously this country will be their next target. Just think of how many opportunities these leftist exterior decorators would find in the pastures of Texas. There must be thousands around Crawford alone. Our Supreme Illiterates may believe burning a flag is free speech, but hopefully spiking one in dog patties wouldn't even be defended by the ACLU.

SYCOPHANTS R US:

An hilarious example of just how the gushing celebrationist acolytes of the goddess Media waste better people's oxygen, as Chris Matthews and his guests conspire to miss the entire point of the Spanish Inquisition over Her Fourth In Lineness. Laugh at it at WuzzaDem's "Hardball: Barack Obama".

FAITH-BASED ELECTIONS:

As a public service, Blackfive has posted a letter (with an email link to the author) from the world's Next Democracy:

Chaplain (Captain) Lyle Shackleford asks for prayers for the transportation unit delivering voting machines and ballots throughout Iraq. ...

"Encourage your friends and family members and those within our churches to pray specifically for the electoral process. Historically, the previous totalitarian regime would not allow individual citizens to vote."

I have to correct the preacher here. The Man of Many Mansions actually required people to vote, which is proof that the value of high turnout is greatly exaggerated. Look at this report from 2002:

Ibrahim, who is also head of the Committee supervising referendum on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's reelection, announced that all of the 11,445,638 eligible voters across Iraq have turned out and unanimously cast their "yes" vote to Saddam. The president won 100 percent of votes in the nationwide referendum and his presidential term is thus renewed for another seven years....

No doubt he must have been doing something people liked to get that kind of massive support, if only not shooting them all. But back to the minister's missive:

"There is unlimited potential for God's presence in this process but if we do not pray then our enemy will prevail (See Ephesians 6:10-17)."

Before some leftist objects that that thirteenth verse ("Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God....") is a prophetic proscription of Rummy's procurement picayunity, let me point out that this is only metaphorical, and refers to preparing your soul for death before combat, not to bolting steel plates on your personnel carriers.

"This is a political battle that needs spiritual intervention. A powerful story about God's intervention in the lives of David's mighty men is recorded in 2 Samuel 23:8-33."

Ignore the obvious typo, that the last verse cited should be either 23 (the end of the story) or 39 (the end of the list of the heroes who helped smite the Philistines). When ripped from context, part of that text may give rise to another lefty distortion.

14 And David was then in an hold, and the garrison of the Philistines was then in Bethlehem.
15 And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!
16 And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the LORD.
17 And he said, Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it.

Water is life, the liberals will say, and in their materialist folly add that the life of modern industrial civilization is based on oil. Therefore, since brave American soldiers risked themselves to free the fuel from Baghdad's Unanimous Victor, this administration should follow David's example and refuse to profit from the products of the liberated pumps and pipelines. I believe we can rely on Our Noble Lame Duck to reject this rank sophistry (which, if taken literally, would require a gigantic oil spill with terrible "environmental" consequences).

Meanwhile, as the left continues its grumbling about the "accuracy" of Ohio exit polls, there is another opportunity here to use their own argument against them. We should conduct our own exit polls in Iraq. If turnout should be down in the elections, due to fear of attacks on the voting places, our computers can easily project from the ones who do appear just how the others would have voted, and allot the offices accordingly. Let us not be deterred by the hobgoblin of archaic tradition from the brave new world of virtual voting.

VLAD THE IMPOLLER:

A Romanian family who believed they buried their daughter two years ago were shocked when she came home to vote. ... She said she decided to return because she wanted to cast her vote in a poll regarding the revision of the Constitution.

Now that's not so unusual, even here in America. No doubt you've heard about the Texas child crying because his dead grandfather came back to vote for Lyndon Johnson, and didn't even stop by to say hello. Here's the Kafkaesque closer:

Because she is officially dead the now 24-year-old girl has to wait for a court decision which will confirm she is alive while police are trying to find the real identity of the dead woman.

SO NOW YOU KNOW:

This was spotted by Pascal Riché:

This notion of a "sex bomb" was conceived of by a U.S. military that apparently thought that gays in the military was so horrific that compelling gay behavior among the enemy might be a war-winning idea. ... Wait -- those pictures at Abu Ghraib of captives forced to engage in homosexual-like acts ... maybe that was just R&D.

I'm sure this will be another excuse for liberal hypocrisy. They denounce Our Noble Lame Duck for all those "civilian" deaths in Iraq, yet when he tries to implement a plan to develop a non-fatal alternative, they accuse us of "torture".

CAN ANYONE EXPLAIN THIS ONE?:

The new magazine Al Khansa proposes certain requirements for the potential female suicide-bombers. She has to know Koran by heart; she has to know CPR....

Whatever for? But perhaps we should take this with a shaker of salt, since the same publication also has a story that Russia and Iran join efforts to struggle against invasion of UFOs. So much for that liberal propagandist Seymour Hersh, fooled by flying saucers into believing our troops are already there.

DEVOLUTION IN ACTION:

A leading IVF expert is hoping Victorian state MPs can do for sperm donation what some high profile Australians have done for organ donation. Monash IVF national medical director Gab Kovacs has sent a letter to Victorian state male MPs aged 45 and under, encouraging them to donate sperm. ...

"We hope that if some of the leading role models within our community become donors, others may follow suit."

This story shows that the thinking of doctors in Oz is as upside down as their continent. What we need is to reduce the number of politicians who reproduce. We should rather take the approach of C. Northcote Parkinson, who wrote almost fifty years ago that we should select political leaders by running classified ads which included the line:

Candidates will die for their country, by painless means, on reaching the age of retirement (65).

As a minimal first step we could at least sterilize them, preferably as a requirement before they are allowed to file for their very first office. Perhaps in time we could completely breed out the genetic defect of ambition to be elected.

WINNOWING IN:

The Koufax Awards for "best lefty bloggers" (thus foolishly disqualifying many potential candidates at the start) has finally posted its ballot for Most Humorous Post of the last year.

I'm not voting myself, not even in the category of Most Humorous Blog, where I was nominated -- though it would be hilarious to see this un-humble and very un-leftist site steal a prize from them, since it might just demoralize their entire awards process from here on -- but I digress.

However, to save the invaluable time of my busy readers, I have nobly volunteered to read ALL of the ridiculously inflated list of sixty-nine entries, just to narrow down the choices for those of you who participate in such silly exercises.

To me, the five runners up were (in alphabetical order by blog name):

• Fafblog!'s memos, hypotheticals, motorcycles (One of the finest pieces of symbolic surrealism since An American Dream.)
  
  
• Ladies Village Improvement Society's Crazy Train or Emotional Subway Attack (Not political at all, except to Blue Statists, but a fantasy many there no doubt have.)
  
  
• Pandagon's Insert Snarky Title Here (Note that you really must read all the comments there, which are an essential part of this complete self-referential satire of blogging.)
  
  
• The Poor Man's Poker With Dick Cheney (An example of the nightmarish projections liberals make about our upstanding leaders and media.)
  
  
• Rising Hegemon's Busy days at Crawford (Which shows that the country's security will really be in fine hands after the 2024 election, when Barbara's sister follows her into the White House.)
  

And the winner should be, or at least my own pick for least unfunny of all the listed nominees, is:

• This is the Life! (of Nathaniel Jones)'s Osama binconceivable! (A delicious rewriting of one of my favorite movies.)
  

There, now you can just quickly vote for one of the very best, and get on with the many, many very important things you must have going on in your life if you're reading this now. Your appreciation can be shown by the usual wire transfers to my offshore account.

INGRATITUDE:

No good deed goes unpunished. In 1994 the wimpy moderate Republican Governor Pete Wilson of California thoughtfully tried to help state taxpayers with an initiative, Proposition 187, to curb public services for illegal immigrants. It passed, and he won reelection, but ever since then the poor misunderstood man has been attacked as a bigot by Democrats. The One True Party is still suffering from this demagogic charge among Hispanic voters, with the notable exception of Cuban-Americans obsessed with Fidel.

(This raises a thought for The Rovinator to consider. The much larger group of Mexican-Americans might drop their support of Democrats if there was a conveniently timed Marxist coup on the other side of the Rio Grande, thus encouraging them to join the ranks of saber-rattling patriots. This would also cause widespread support for a Second Mexican War to liberate another oil-producing oppressed nation. But I digress....)

It's all a matter of cultural differences. Another instance of a good Republican condemned for trying to help his fellow man came in Our Noble Lame Duck's home state last year. State Representative Talmadge Heflin was NOT paying a Ugandan immigrant $100 a week to take care of his mother-in-law; that was just Baptist charity. He was also letting her stay in his un-air conditioned Houston storage room with her infant son. When she got a better "off-the-books job paying $250 for an 85-hour week caring for patients in a home for the mentally disabled", he let her go on staying there, and even helpfully took her tiny son with him on his weekly legislative trips to the state capitol in Austin. Finally Mrs. Heflin filed a petition in court to take custody of the child, saying his mother wasn't taking care of him. What provoked this drastic action?

In many regions of Africa, including Katamba's native Uganda, leaving one's child in the care of neighbors is normal. "It's the concept of 'It takes a village,' " says Katamba's attorney....

Hearing that frightened the good Republican. He knew that he needed to save this lad from being indoctrinated with that awful leftist philosophy of She Who Must Not Be Named, the junior Senator from New York, who even had a book ghost-written with that title. Besides, as he testified in the court hearing,

"We all know the terrible problem that black male children have growing up into manhood without being in prison."

Naturally the Democrats started rousing the rabble over this, claiming the considerate legislator was anti-immigrant. Unfortunately, they were perfectly positioned to take advantage of this because their candidate opposing Heflin was Hubert Vo, an immigrant from Vietnam (there's that anti-commie vote again, Karl). The maligned incumbent tried to appease his enemies by dropping the custody suit, but it was too late. In a year when Bush carried Texas by a landslide, the Asian-American Democrat still won, by a mere 33 votes. Heflin demanded recounts, but lost again, so he decided to take the whole matter to the Republican-majority legislature. His claim is that the election should be overturned because there were illegal votes cast for Vo.

The Republican "Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, who also is the county's voter registrar", decided to help. No doubt he believed the counter-meme we've been pushing about massive illegal voting, which, with its implied threat of INS harassment, has kept down the brown balloting nationwide. Unfortunately he didn't get the full briefing from above. Poring over his records, he quickly found "35 foreign citizens either applied for or received voter cards last year by checking a box on the application saying they were U.S. citizens" and announced he was "investigating at least 70 others and will send a list of suspected offenders to the Harris County district attorney, who can charge them with a misdemeanor if they haven't voted or a felony if they have."

This shocking revelation, that 105 of the 1,937,072 registered voters there may have been aliens -- a terrifying one out of every 18,448 people on the rolls -- failed to help his fellow Republican. The only one he found in Heflin's district was Henning Eilert-Olsen. What he should have been looking for were Latin names who might have voted Democratic. Instead he picked on a Norwegian citizen, and one who was registered only because his office failed to do its job. "Eilert-Olsen filled out a vote application form noting that he was not a U.S. citizen, but was given a voter card anyway."

We can only assume that Bettencourt thought someone from Old Europe would have been anti-Bush, but the descendants of Vikings came through (sort of).

...Norway and Sweden ... advocated a war to unseat Saddam Hussein until it became clear the UN would not support such a war, at which point they espoused offical positions of opposition to the war. Nonetheless, Sweden continued to supply the Coalition with arms (in possible breach of the Constitution) and Norway contributed troops to the stabilisation of Iraq.

Perhaps he was mislead by this Scandinavian ambiguity, but that's just how they always act. Consider this hopelessly confused map of driving directions for the "shortest trip" from Haugesund, Norway to Trondheim, Norway -- by way of England, France, Belgium, Germany, and Sweden.

The pathetic result of Bettencourt's cluelessness was that he actually ended up costing Heflin, the misunderstood helper of immigrants, one of his votes, since Eilert-Olsen "said he voted a straight Republican ticket in the election." With bumbling local officials like these, no wonder the Democrats are starting a comeback in the biggest Texas counties. Next time, he needs to call Karl first for advice on ethnic voting trends.

THE IRAQI HITMAN PICTURE SHOW:

"Once again the scientific Faust has been destroyed by his Mephistophelean creation." --Isaac Asimov, The Rest Of The Robots, 1964

This musical movie opens at a gay wedding in Boston. Attending it are two young friends, Sean and Janeane. At the start, he is punching the wedding photographer, and then dangling him over the rail of the church stairs. The young couple then does a long Buddhist chant about how all life is sacred, and decide to go visit the man who taught them all killing is wrong, Professor Gnome Calumnisky, at the nearby Misplaced Intellect Tradeschool.

The film then cuts to the first of several appearances by a Pundit, in a bookish office with a University of Tennessee pennant on the wall. He covers transitions by telling us what we've just seen, then adds "indeed" or "heh".

We next see Sean and Janeane travelling in a Kerry For President van, listening to the Presidential candidates debate lumberyard purchases on the radio. Suddenly the van gets a flat tire, and they get out in the rain to walk to a nearby palace and call for help, pausing to sing a sappy song about how "There is peace, Even in the midst of war".

A servant, Alberto, lets them in and questions them suspiciously, telling them his master is having "one of his covert affairs." Alberto and another servant, Condie, then start singing and dancing a nostalgic song which begins "I remember, Kicking the leftists", and goes on to a refrain of "Let's stomp the leftists again." Sean and Janeane nervously back away from them, and wind up in a ballroom full of partying guests, all wearing black, brown, or silver shirts. Even the narrator gets up on his desk to take part in the song: "We all just jump on the left, And then move far to the right."

When this big number winds down, an elevator rises up from the cellar carrying the host, Blancoponte. He does a song of his own introducing himself:

I'm just a death squad starter
Who honed my technique
In El Salvador.

The pundit interjects at this point that this line is not relevant, since the Contras were actually in Nicaragua. The host then invites everyone down to the lab, where he is creating an amimatronic killer for Iraq, that will assassinate rebel leaders remotely by satellite.

In the lab, Blancoponte orders Condie and another servant, Rummie, to go and assist Alberto in activating the new machine murderer, named Iraqi Hitman. Iraqi sings a lament that he doesn't want to kill Sunnis for Blancoponte, because that would violate the Geneva Convention. Alberto sings a memo that those don't apply to a domestic insurrection. Iraqi then sings that it would violate international law, but Alberto sings another memo that this doesn't apply because Iraq doesn't have a valid government, so it couldn't ratify the statute for the International Criminal Court. Iraqi then claims killing fellow Muslims would violate the Koran. At that point Janeane pipes up to sing that the Koran doesn't matter, because she read somewhere that God is dead. Everyone turns and stares at her. Finally, Iraqi sings that if she's sure, he'll do it. Blancoponte praises his creation, but is irked enough by Janeane's opinion ("I don't like men who do too many murders") to shout at her "I didn't make him for you! He carries the Leo Strauss Seal Of Approval!" He goes on to sing to Iraqi "With just one mouse click, I can teach you to kill."

Blancoponte starts to lead the new creation to the assassination control room, but just then a door in the wall breaks open and some bearded hermit runs in from his cell. Rummie recognizes an old friend of his and shouts joyfully "Saddam!" The would-be escapee starts a song about how great it was to be able to slay anyone who pissed him off:

Deadly nerve gas,
Kill the Kurds!
I really like to say those words.

He begins zooming around the lab in a small hydrogen generating truck. When he stops to begin playing a solo on the mijwiz, Blancoponte bludgeons him to death with a desert entrenching tool, and shrugs that Saddam never had been a good servant; even with lots of aid, he couldn't defeat the Iranians. With bloody hands, he takes Iraqi away.

Sean and Janeane are shown to separate rooms. Later that night, Blancoponte goes into Janeane's and shows her films of how the Sunnis are oppressing women. This makes her angry, but not enough to be violent. He then shows her film of them abusing camels, and that makes the vegetarian angry enough to kill, so he shows her how to play a computer game and pretend to kill them at long range, like televised Texas deer hunts. This pleasures her immensely; it looks almost orgasmic on the screen. After she gets more and more excited watching the heads burst open on the monitor, he finally tells her it wasn't animation, but live video from Fallujah, where Iraqi Hitman is killing by satellite each person she marked for death. By that time she is so overcome with passionate hatred she says she doesn't care, because those animal mistreaters deserved it.

Blancoponte then goes into Sean's room and seduces him into the same kind of multiple killings. In his case he first shows Sunnis stoning adulterers to death, then beheading pacifists, and finally giving licenses to paparazzi. After that last one Sean happily continues the sport even when he finds out it was real. "See?" says Blancoponte, "Absolute power is absolutely delightful."

Meanwhile Janeane wanders out and finds Iraqi sitting in the control room. Looking thoughtful, she asks if he could kill some more people just as a favor for her. When the shy creature agrees, she starts gleefully picking out some Americans she hates, starting at the White House and working down the list. As he blasts them away from space, she's ecstatic again.

Alberto buzzes Blancoponte on an intercom that someone else is coming in. Blancoponte and Sean dash out to the lab, where the monitors show them a blind man with a guide dog entering. Sean says "Why, that's Dr. Calumnisky, with his seeing-eye dog Yasser." Blancoponte accuses the young couple of being part of a plan to uncover his latest project (which Sean denies), and orders the Doctor brought to the lab. They then discover Janeane breathing heavily in the control room with Iraqi. In the middle of this confrontation, Alberto announces dinner.

At the dining table, Dr. Calumnisky demands to know what happened to Saddam, who he reveals was secretly his own nephew. (No one looks surprised at this revelation, and the Pundit says it explains many things.) When Blancoponte goes on munching and says Americans feed on failures, they realize that Saddam's corpse is the meat they're eating. Calumnisky says "It's worse than I thought -- patriots!" Blancoponte says "Go on, Dr. Calumnisky -- or should I say Comrade Calumnisky?" Sean jumps up asking what he is implying, but the professor calms him and they sing a song about how misunderstood poor Saddam was. The smirking host pulls aside the tablecloth to reveal the ex-dictator's butchered body, and the guests all flee in horror.

They don't get far before Blancoponte paralyzes them all with another new toy of his. He then drugs them to make them obey, and arranges them in costumes and positions to perform in a new musical documentary he is going to film, called "Kelvin 4.5 x 10 (to the 7th power): The Temperature Of Deuterium-tritium Fusion In A Thermonuclear Bomb".

Wearing hangman's hoods, they join him to sing and dance a number praising the wonderful feeling you get from slaying people you hate. Iraqi's solo goes:

"It was great at the very start,
When we pricked names upon a chart.
But it's just not the same from space,
As it is to kill face to face.
The only consolation left
Is the corpses they have to heft.
Blood tints my screen -- the main
Thing's I'm watching their pain."

Suddenly Alberto comes in with a gun, and stops them with a recitative:

"Blancoponte,
You're arrested.
Your hitman was excessive.
He's even killed our leaders.
I'm next in succession.
You'll be tried at The Hague.
I have joined the ICC."

Blancoponte shouts "Wait! I've just reformed!" He begins another song, with the others on the stage serving as the chorus:

The first time that I did slay,
(Chorus: How sad)
Was more than I could say.
(Chorus: That cad)
Should not have got in my way.
(Chorus: Too bad.)
Now, I'll see a better day.

Obviously having prepared this defense in advance, he kicks a lever. A huge neon crucifix rises from the floor, while projectors begin showing scenes from "The Passion Of The Christ" on the curtains backstage. He goes on:

I feel my sin
Through the blood on my skin.
Since killers can't win,
I'm born again.
I'm born again.
I'm born again.

The calculated hypocrisy of this planned "conversion" finally proves too much for Alberto to stomach, and he just goes ahead and shoots Blancoponte and Iraqi Hitman. Sean, Janeane, and the Professor retrieve his dog (which was sniffing at the exploded corpses of Condie and Rummie), and flee the scene. Alberto flies back to Washington to draft a memo blaming everything on The Clenis.

PROSAIC JUSTICE:

I seldom bother writing to leftist snarkherrins to point out their obvious shortcomings; there are too many more serious threats to establishing Our Noble Lame Duck's Compassionately Reordered World. Some do make the effort, and it is delightful to see one such sniping snarlstress so eruditely eviscerated. No one is more deserving of this most hilarious scourging I've read in years. She has been shameless enough to print the entire epistle on her own site, allowing me to enviously applaud its well-struck ripostes. (My only objection is that he seems to quote from some Biblical translation I have never seen before.) One small but timely excerpt:

And while I know it is very un-Christian of me, I find I cannot suppress a mental image of you and Dorothy Parker and -- Heck, let's make it a threesome! -- Susan Sontag shackled to one another in a scalding hell-pit, shrieking pithy bon mots at one another and blithely debating the relative merits of "spitting" versus "swallowing" as your lips retract like shriveled apple-skins and your dental fillings bubble to vapor and splash against your swollen, blistered tongues. I take no joy in that image, but it is one that I hope you will ponder and reflect upon.

Go enjoy the skillful way he trashes the leftist bouquet of World O'Crap's "s. z." at "True Love Waits and Waits and Waits ...".

BRINGING PROACTIVE DEMOCRACY BACK HOME:

Zeynep of Under The Same Sun lambasts the administration for this item found in an L. A. Times story about Iraq:

At five heavily guarded entry points to the city, military interrogators are selectively asking returning residents whether they have heard of the upcoming election and, if so, which, if any, candidates they support.

That quote cleverly left out the vital next sentence from the article:

The goal, officials say, is not to influence how Iraqis vote but to gauge how well residents of politically isolated Fallouja understand the changes that have occurred in their country since Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled.

In this country the liberals are all atwitter because of long lines and sparse voting machines, but when Our Noble Lame Duck actually tries to encourage voters by reminding them of the election, the same lefties complain. There's just no satisfying some people.

Frankly, I think this would be a great advance in America as well. Set up lots of driver's license checks on election day, and ask the same questions here. The goal would be not to influence how folks vote, but to gauge how well residents of politically isolated communities understand the changes that have occurred in this country since 9-11, like the Patriot Act. I think this would make the message very clear.

FROM THE CIRCULAR COMPLAINT FILE:

Jill of Brilliant at Breakfast spotted this revealing rant:

Then, yesterday, up popped Rep. Jones and Senator Boxer, on the same day that a committee of the U.S. Senate was quibbling over the meaning of the word "torture," and I thought, good on all of you, and shame on me.

Because sometimes it's just good to say "no," simply for the sake of saying it, because doing so lessens your complicity in a comfortable politics in which the destruction of American ideals is more admired for its clever tactics than it is condemned for its lasting damage. ... Shame on any Democrat who votes to confirm Alberto Gonzales. Shame on any Democrat who attaches himself to any Social Security plan while this administration is in office. This is a time to say no, just for the pure hell of it.

That last sentence looks like good news, since it means that at least one noisome lefty has seen the handwriting on the wall and given up any hope for effectively opposing Our Noble Lame Duck's mandate, adopting the resigned "last act of defiance" style of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys of occupied Old Europe long ago:

Et puis, surtout, c'est reposant, la tragédie, parce qu'on sait qu'il n'y a plus d'espoir, le sale espoir; qu'on est pris, qu'on est enfin pris comme un rat, avec tout le ciel sur son dos, et qu'on n'a plus qu'à crier, -- pas à gémir, non, pas à se plaindre, -- à gueuler à pleine voix ce qu'on avait à dire, qu'on n'avait jamais dit et qu'on ne savait peut-être même pas encore. Et pour rien: pour se le dire à soi, pour l'apprendre, soi. Dans le drame, on se débat parce qu'on espère en sortir. C'est ignoble, c'est utilitaire. Là, c'est gratuit. C'est pour les rois. Et il n'y a plus rien à tenter, enfin!
--Antigone, Jean Anouilh, 1944

FOR WHOM THE BELL CURVE TOLLS:

I'm delighted to see one of my colleagues finally get over her unaccountable moderation. No longer calling only for the invasion and forcible conversion of our enemies, she is saying "I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning". But later in the same interview, she once again shrinks from the cold-bloodedness needed to carry her own ideas to the limit. She potentially transcends the qualms of any timorous conservatives over quick technical fixes for social ills, propounding a new science-fiction scenario that would avoid the need for that awful cloning to generate a vast political machine, when she says

"During the gay-marriage debate, these black ministers would come on TV and say things no white conservative would say. 'Sodomy? You’re going to burn in hell for that!' And I realized to my delight that if we can get blacks to be conservatives, we have an entire race of Ann Coulters...."

Why does she fail to follow through on this? Think of it as affirmative action with a reverse twist. It opens a whole new field of demographic political reconstruction. Could it be that America is so righteously Republican today only because of its large black population? Look at the socialist policies of the almost totally white nations like Canada, Scandinavia, and the (very) low countries. Even England's racial minorities are mostly Asian, not African. To reclaim Old Europe for conservatism, do we only need to send them several million new citizens from our own ghettos? If she's right, this would not only knock out the last major prop of the Democrats here, but add lot of cultural braking power to oppose elitist collectivism over there. We also reduce the welfare burden on our own taxpayers, while assuring the emigrants bigger checks from their new nations. It sounds like a perfect win-win solution for everyone.

THERE'S A BOAT THAT'S LEAVIN' SOON FOR CUBA....:

Gonzales ... said he recognized he would be assuming a new role. ... "This was simply people who were morally bankrupt trying -- having fun, " he said. "And I condemn that."

Now we finally see why the Party of Promiscuity is really upset with our next Witchfinder Attorney General. It's not their worries that this Hispanic in the cabinet might hurt them with the illegal alien vote, or that this post would grease his path to the Extreme Court, of even disagreements with him on issues. No, they are resentful that he would be another Puritan, laboring endlessly to wipe out amusements and recreation, and refusing to ever again reveal those statutory breasts in the briefing room. Such base canards are no surprise from the Epicurean Elitists. He clearly does support fun, but only for those noble patriotic soldiers who have earned the right to their relaxation. His proactive promotion of their prison pastimes prompts me to this parody of Gershwin's "It Ain't Necessarily So":

They're not an applicable law
They're not an applicable law
Geneva Conventions restricting detentions
They're not an applicable law

Our captives aren't prisoners of war
Our captives aren't prisoners of war
They have no such status -- ignore Swiss afflatus
Our captives aren't prisoners of war

It's not abuse if it's for fun
It's not abuse if it's for fun
It is only a tease to force them to their knees
It's not abuse if it's for fun

They are not entitled to clothes
They are not entitled to clothes
It's no crime if they're nude if it's just to be lewd
They are not entitled to clothes

They're just architectural games
They're just architectural games
If there's a rear amid a human pyramid
They're just architectural games

WHY LIBERALS LOSE:

Senator Barbara Boxer, the lone gunwoman from Californicatia, perfomed her usual version of Hamlet yesterday, forcing Congress to listen to her and other Democrats complain that their party, since the day when Daley and Connally stole the 1960 election for The Clenis's role model of profligacy, has lost its touch. We are all supposed to give them a group hug of sympathy, because the high-tech Republicans have bested them at their old game. Nevertheless, all of them were hasty to point out that they aren't really challenging the election of Our Noble Lame Duck, they are only sharing their pain.

This is why so many voters doubted that the party of the AWOL Ketchup Consort ("Kerry, traveling in the Middle East, has conceded defeat and wasn't even in the Capitol for Thursday's events....") would have had the courage to stand up to the impending WMD's in Iran. Contrast their display of moral cowardice with the people who stayed in sub-zero cold in the Ukraine night after night to force a new election. If the Donkeycrats truly believed this was stolen, they should not only have been shouting from the rooftops but if need be shooting from them. This backbone bankruptcy gives us a clear signal that nothing will stand in our way. They will always act just like a soulless character in a novel they never read:

"Please, Mr. Wynand, let's ... drop it. I don't know what ... I'm supposed to do."

"That's simple. You're supposed to slap my face. ... You were supposed to do that several minutes ago."